Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on October 05, 2006, 08:31:28 AM
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Woof All:
Herewith a thread dedicated to this area.
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Taliban lay plans for Islamic intifada
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
THE PASHTUN HEARTLAND, Pakistan and Afghanistan - With the snows approaching, the Taliban's spring offensive has fallen short of its primary objective of reviving the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan, as the country was known under Taliban rule from 1996-2001.
Both foreign forces and the Taliban will bunker down until next spring, although the Taliban are expected to continue with suicide missions and some hit-and-run guerrilla activities. The Taliban will
take refuge in the mountains that cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where they will have plenty of time to plan the next stage
of their struggle: a countrywide "Islamic Intifada of Afghanistan" calling on all former mujahideen to join the movement to boot out foreign forces from Afghanistan.
The intifada will be both national and international. On the one hand it aims to organize a national uprising, and on the other it will attempt to make Afghanistan the hub of the worldwide Islamic resistance movement, as it was previously under the Taliban when Osama bin Laden and his training camps were guests of the country.
The ideologue of the intifada is bin Laden's deputy, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has assembled a special team to implement the idea. Key to this mission is Mullah Mehmood Allah Haq Yar. Asia Times Online was early to pinpoint Haq Yar as an important player (see Osama adds weight to Afghan resistance, September 11, 2004).
Oriented primarily towards Arabs, especially Zawahiri, Haq Yar speaks English, Arabic, Urdu and Pashtu with great fluency. He was sent by Taliban leader Mullah Omar to northern Iraq to train with Ansarul Islam fighters before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. He returned to Afghanistan in 2004 and was inducted into a special council of commanders formed by Mullah Omar and assigned the task of shepherding all foreign fighters and high-value targets from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan.
He is an expert in urban guerrilla warfare, a skill he has shared with the Taliban in Afghanistan. His new task might be more challenging: to gather local warlords from north to south under one umbrella and secure international support from regional players.
A major first step toward creating an intifada in Afghanistan was the establishment of the Islamic State of North Waziristan in the Pakistani tribal area this year. This brought all fragmented sections of the Taliban under one command, and was the launching pad for the Taliban's spring offensive.
Subsequently, there has been agreement between a number of top warlords in northern Afghanistan and the Taliban to make the intifada a success next year. Credit for this development goes mainly to Haq Yar.
Haq Yar was recently almost cornered in Helmand province in Afghanistan by British forces. Before that, he spoke to Asia Times Online at an undisclosed location in the Pashtun heartland straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Asia Times Online: When are the Taliban expected to announce the revival of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan?
Haq Yar: Well, the whole Islamic world is waiting for the revival of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan, but it will take some time. But sure, it will ultimately happen, and this is what the Taliban's struggle is all about.
ATol: Can you define the level of Taliban-led resistance in Afghanistan?
Haq Yar: It has already passed the initial phases and now has entered into a tactical and decisive phase. It can be measured from the hue and cry raised by the US and its allies. Daily attacks on NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] forces are now routine and suicide attacks are rampant.
ATol: To date, the Taliban have been very active in southwestern Afghanistan, but traditionally success comes when a resistance reaches eastern areas, especially the strategically important Jalalabad. When will this happen?
Haq Yar: Well, I do not agree that the Taliban movement is restricted to southwest Afghanistan. We have now established a network under which we are allied with many big and small mujahideen organizations, and in that way we are fighting foreign forces throughout Afghanistan. In a recent development, the deputy chief of the Taliban movement, Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, is now positioned in the eastern zone, including Jalalabad, from where he is guiding attacks on coalition forces. This eastern zone is also part of the Taliban's stronghold.
ATol: What is the role of bin Laden and Zawahiri?
Haq Yar: We are allies and part and parcel of every strategy. Wherever mujahideen are resisting the forces of evil, Arab mujahideen, al-Qaeda and leaders Osama bin Laden and Dr Zawahiri have a key role. In Afghanistan they also have a significant role to support the Taliban movement.
ATol: Is the present Taliban-led resistance against the US and its allies a local resistance or is it international? That is, are resistance movements in other parts of the world led from Afghanistan?
Haq Yar: Initially it was a local movement, but now it is linked with resistance movements in Iraq and other places. We are certainly in coordination with all resistance movements of the Muslim world.
ATol: What is the Taliban strategy with groups like Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (Khalis)?
Haq Yar: The Hezb-i-Islami of Hekmatyar and the Taliban are fighting under a coordinated strategy and support each other. The leadership of the Khalis group is now in the hands of his son, who is coordinating everything with Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani.
ATol: What is the Taliban's weaponry? Is it old Russian arms or they have acquired new ones - and if so, where are they getting them?
Haq Yar: The Taliban have all the latest weaponry required for a guerrilla warfare. Where does it come from? Well, Afghanistan is known as a place where weapons are stockpiled. And forces that provided arms a few decades ago - the same weapons are now being used against them.
ATol: The Taliban contacted commanders in northern Afghanistan. What was the result?
Haq Yar: About one and a half years ago these contacts were initiated. Various groups from the north contacted us. We discussed the matter with [Taliban leader] Mullah Mohammed Omar Akhund and then, with his consent, I was assigned to negotiate matters with the Northern Alliance.
The first meeting was held in northern Afghanistan, where I represented the Taliban. Many individuals from various groups of the Northern Alliance attended the meeting and they all condemned the foreign presence in the country, but insisted that the Taliban should take the lead, and then they would follow suit. Another meeting was held after that in which various individuals come up with some conditions, and there was no conclusion. There was no collective meeting, but there are contacts.
ATol: What is the role of the tribal chiefs?
Haq Yar: The tribal chiefs have always been supportive of the Taliban and still are. How could they not be? The US bombed and killed thousand of their people and the puppet [President Hamid] Karzai government is silent. All Afghans are sick and tired of US tyrannies and daily bombardment, whether they are commoners or chiefs, and that is why they are all with the Taliban.
Actually, we have also worked on organizing that support. On the instructions of Mullah Mohammed Omar Akhund, I met with tribal chiefs last year and prepared the grounds for this year's battle [spring offensive], and all tribal chiefs assured me of their support. And now there is support - it is there for everybody to see.
ATol: It is said that the Taliban are now fueled by drug money. Is this correct, and if not, how do they manage their financial matters?
Haq Yar: It is shameful to say that the Taliban, who eliminated poppies from Afghanistan, are dependent on the drug trade to make money. This is wrong. As far as money is concerned, we do not need much. Whatever is required, we manage it through our own limited resources.
ATol: Are you satisfied with the media's role?
Haq Yar: Not at all. They do not publish our point of view. They never tried to talk to the genuine Taliban. Rather, they go after not genuine people who are basically plants and rejected by the Taliban leadership.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
'War on terror' returning to its cradle (Oct 5, '06)
Pakistan reaches into Afghanistan (Oct 3, '06)
Afghanistan: Why NATO cannot win (Sep 30, '06)
Military policy in Afghanistan 'barking mad' (Sep 30, '06)
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Geopolitical Diary: Musharraf Gets a Warning
A bomb exploded on Wednesday around 9:30 p.m. local time in Rawalpindi's Ayub public park, about a mile from Pakistani President Gen. Perez Musharraf's army residence. The explosion took place at a time when most residents in the area would have been indoors attending congregational prayers after breaking their fast for Ramadan. No casualties have been reported and Pakistani officials deny that this was an attempt against Musharraf's life.
Though Musharraf has more enemies than Saudi Arabia has princes, assassination attempts against him are usually more serious than this. Recall December 2003, when Musharraf's convoy was targeted twice by al Qaeda in the same month as his car crossed the bridge leading to his army house in Rawalpindi. When Musharraf's assassins get to work, they mean business.
Instead, Wednesday's explosion appears to be carrying a political message for the embattled president, who has come under intense pressure upon his return home from a lengthy visit to the United States. Musharraf has been placed in the hot seat by the White House to deliver a high-value al Qaeda target and suppress the Taliban insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan. His peculiar behavior in the past month revealed that he has caved in to U.S. demands -- and is struggling for ways to absolve himself of blame and buy time before U.S. forces expand their operations on Pakistani soil.
The thought of Musharraf sacrificing Pakistan's territorial sovereignty is troubling, to say the least, for the Pakistani masses; but is of utmost concern for former members of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). There are a number of former ISI officers who were heavily involved in supporting the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, and then went on to support militant groups working on the Kashmir front to aid in the Pakistani policy of keeping India's hands tied. These former officers see the militants (both in Afghanistan and Kashmir) as state assets that they worked long and hard to cultivate -- and they fear Musharraf is now compromising those assets and throwing everything away.
While Musharraf has more or less cleansed the ISI of dissenters, many former ISI officers maintain close links with the Pakistani establishment. These officers are often paid as military contractors to maintain contacts with various militant groups after retiring from service; or they are given other civilian jobs, as was the case with former ISI Director-General Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, who got the boot the day the United States began bombing Afghanistan in October 2001.
This network of ISI veterans has ideological and material interests in maintaining the status quo. They strike a delicate balance between supporting Musharraf on the one hand, to avoid being arrested and stay on the military's payroll, while on the other hand furthering their ideological interest in resisting foreign intervention by providing support to militant groups such as the Taliban. Musharraf has threatened this delicate balance in his deals with the United States and in recent remarks he made on the involvement of former ISI officials with the Taliban. In an interview with NBC News, Musharraf said he keeps a "very tight watch" on his intelligence agency as army chief, though he has "some reports that some dissidents, some retired people who were in the forefront in ISI during the period of 1979 to 1989, may be assisting the links [to the Taliban] somewhere here and there."
This blatant admission by Musharraf prompted a flood of backlash from former ISI officials, who have taken every opportunity to voice their criticism of the president. Former ISI Director-General Lt. Gen. Asad Durrani said there was no evidence to support Musharraf's remarks. Another former ISI director, Hameed Gul, called Musharraf a team captain scoring goals against his own team, and said that Pakistan was astonished to see the captain hell-bent on his own team's defeat. While saying that he prays for the Taliban's success to drive U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, Gul said that no Afghan leader, including President Hamid Karzai, has leveled such an allegation against the ISI.
In a particularly eye-opening statement, retired squadron leader and former ISI official Khalid Khawaja said "General Musharraf is playing the role Saddam Hussein played in Middle East. He did all the nuisance jobs in the region with U.S. support, but could not save his own country from American occupation. Similarly, the real target here is Pakistan, its army, ISI and Pakistan's nuclear program. The U.S. used Musharraf to destroy them one after other."
Khawaja's remark about the nuclear program refers to mid-October 2001, when the United States began to launch airstrikes in Afghanistan. Washington did not feel it could rely on the ISI at the time, and took it as its duty to secure access to Pakistani nuclear facilities in order to prevent nuclear materials from being handed over to the ISI. The United States threatened not only to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age, but also to take out the country's nuclear capabilities if Musharraf failed to cooperate.
Cooperating, however, has also put Musharraf in a dangerous position. The level of outrage against the president by former ISI operatives strongly suggests that Wednesday's explosion was, not an assassination attempt, but rather a stern warning: Musharraf cannot unravel the old system without suffering the consequences.
www.stratfor.com
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This is about 4 weeks old.
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Pakistan: Hello al-Qaeda, goodbye America
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
MIRANSHAH, North Waziristan - With a truce between the Pakistani Taliban and Islamabad now in place, the Pakistani government is in effect reverting to its pre-September 11, 2001, position in which it closed its eyes to militant groups allied with al-Qaeda and clearly sided with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
While the truce has generated much attention, a more significant development is an underhand deal between pro-al-Qaeda elements and Pakistan in which key al-Qaeda figures will either
not be arrested or those already in custody will be set free. This has the potential to sour Islamabad's relations with Washington beyond the point of no return.
On Tuesday, Pakistan agreed to withdraw its forces from the restive Waziristan tribal areas bordering Afghanistan in return for a pledge from tribal leaders to stop attacks by Pakistani Taliban across the border.
Most reports said that the stumbling block toward signing this truce had been the release of tribals from Pakistani custody. But most tribals had already been released.
The main problem - and one that has been unreported - was to keep Pakistan authorities' hands off members of banned militant organizations connected with al-Qaeda.
Thus, for example, it has now been agreed between militants and Islamabad that Pakistan will not arrest two high-profile men on the "most wanted" list that includes Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
Saud Memon and Ibrahim Choto are the only Pakistanis on this list, and they will be left alone. Saud Memon was the owner of the lot where US journalist Daniel Pearl was tortured, executed and buried in January 2002 in Karachi after being kidnapped by jihadis.
Pakistan has also agreed that many people arrested by law-enforcement agencies in Pakistan will be released from jail.
Importantly, this includes Ghulam Mustafa, who was detained by Pakistani authorities late last year. Mustafa is reckoned as al-Qaeda's chief in Pakistan. (See Al-Qaeda's man who knows too much, Asia Times Online, January 5. As predicted in that article, Mustafa did indeed disappear into a "black hole" and was never formally charged, let alone handed over to the US.)
Asia Times Online contacts expect Mustafa to be released in the next few days. He was once close to bin Laden and has intimate knowledge of al-Qaeda's logistics, its financing and its nexus with the military in Pakistan.
Militants at large
"Now they [Pakistani authorities] have accepted us as true representatives of the mujahideen," Wazir Khan told Asia Times Online at a religious congregation in Miranshah. "Now we are no longer criminals, but part and parcel of every deal. Even the authorities have given tacit approval that they would not have any objections if I and other fellows who were termed as wanted took part in negotiations."
Wazir Khan was once a high-profile go-between for bin Laden and one of his closest Waziristan contacts. He was right up there on the "wanted" list. Now he can move around in the open. "The situation is diametrically changed," he said.
From a personal point of view, things have changed for Wazir Khan and others like him, but in the bigger picture things have also changed diametrically.
Pakistan, the leading light in the United States' "war on terror" and a "most important" non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, is returning to the heady times of before September 11 when it could dabble without restraint in regional affairs, and this at a time when Afghanistan is boiling.
"The post-September 11 situation [in Pakistan] was draconian," a prominent militant told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity. "All jihadi organizations were informed in advance how they would be [severely] dealt with in the future and that they had better carve out an alternative low-profile strategy. But some people could not stop themselves from unnecessary adventures and created problems for the establishment. This gave the US the chance to intervene in Pakistan, and over 700 al-Qaeda mujahideen were arrested.
"Now the situation changed again ... we know the state of Pakistan is important for the Pakistan army, but certainly we know that the army would never completely compromise on Islam."
The truce between Islamabad and the Pakistani Taliban in Waziristan has been a bitter pill for Washington to swallow, although Pakistan's pledge to allow foreign troops based in Afghanistan hot pursuit into a limited area in Pakistan softens the blow a bit.
Islamabad's overriding concern, though, is to earn some breathing space domestically, as well as get Uncle Sam off its back.
The situation in Waziristan was becoming unmanageable - it's already virtually a separate state - and trouble is ongoing in restive Balochistan province, especially since the killing at the hands of Pakistani security forces of nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti. Fractious opposition political parties have shown rare unity in attacking the government of President General Pervez Musharraf on the issue.
Redrawing the map
An article by retired US Major Ralph Peters titled "Blood borders" published in the Armed Forces Journal last month has given Pakistan some food for thought over manipulating the geopolitical game on its own terms and conditions.
Peters, formerly assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, where he was responsible for future warfare, argues that borders in the Middle East and Africa are "the most arbitrary and distorted" in the world and need restructuring.
Four countries - Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - are singled out for major readjustments. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are also defined as "unnatural states".
Though the US State Department was quick to deny that such ideas had anything to do with US policymaking, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey read much between the lines of talk of restructuring their boundaries.
Among Peters' proposals was the need to establish "an independent Kurdish state" that would "stretch from Diyarbakir [eastern Turkey] through Tabriz [Iran], which would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan".
Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz recently visited Turkey and then Lebanon, where he announced that his country would not send any peacekeeping troops to the latter. Ankara then said that if peacekeeping forces tried to disarm Hezbollah, Turkey would pull out of the peace mission. These decisions are the result of back-channel diplomacy among Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan.
Across Pakistan's border in Afghanistan, the Taliban have control of most of the southwest of the country, from where Mullah Omar is expected soon to announce the revival of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan - the name of the country before the Taliban were driven out in 2001. Once the proclamation is made, a big push toward the capital Kabul will begin.
The sounds of jail doors opening in Pakistan will jar with the United States, as will Islamabad adopting a more independent foreign policy and, crucially, aligning itself with the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, which once again could become a Pakistani playground.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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The 7 clips on this site, plus the readings therein are well worth the time:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/view/
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Another recent reading from www.stratfor.com
On 9/14/06, :
Geopolitical Diary: The Afghan Stalemate
The NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones, publicly requested an additional 2,000-2,500 troops last week for operations in Afghanistan, to supplement the 20,000 already in-country. That request was soundly rebuffed on Wednesday in Brussels when a meeting of the 26-nation alliance failed to produce a single offer of reinforcements on the first day of the conference. Hopes are not high that there will be a change. Britain and Canada in particular are already stretched thin.
However, a leak to the press Sept. 11 revealed that Canada is planning to deploy 15 Leopard C2 main battle tanks and some 120 additional personnel to Afghanistan to reinforce its own units already there. This will certainly give the Canadians more firepower, though the bulk of Afghanistan is not particularly suited to tank warfare. The Canadian military will now have a full 25 percent of its tanks deployed overseas -- the first time a Canadian tank has headed into foreign combat since the World War II.
Military commanders in Afghanistan admit to being surprised at the intensity of fighting that has occurred this summer. Twenty-three NATO soldiers have been killed in the southern part of the country since deploying there in July. When British troops deployed earlier this year, their government expressed hopes of a deployment with no shots fired; last week, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported that some 80,000 rounds had already been expended. Meanwhile, suicide attacks are on the rise, with 14 in August. September is on track for even more.
The Taliban have successfully regained strength since the 2001 invasion. While the U.S. military conducted and continues to conduct major operations, some sources report that a bunker mentality fell over U.S. operations in Afghanistan: patrols were not conducted as often as they might have been, interactions with the population were not proactive and attempts were not made to integrate operations with the fledgling Afghan National Army.
So as we watch the violence in Afghanistan rise, we are seeing two phenomena. First, the Taliban are back with a vengeance, with poppy cultivation offering both a solidified financial base and a point of major contention that drives farmers away from the Afghan government and toward the Taliban. With an unstable countryside, reconstruction has not progressed as it might have and the government has not been reaching out to people. The public increasingly feels alienated from the Karzai government; there is a growing perception that the aid money coming to the government has not improved the lives of the common man. This situation is being exploited by the Taliban and their allies, helping allow the jihadist insurgency to grow. Meanwhile, tactics and techniques from the Iraqi insurgency have continued to flow eastward as foreign jihadists and new aggressive commanders pour in.
At the same time, new British and Canadian NATO operations are leaving their forward operating bases more often and taking new initiatives to interact with the people -- and in the process they are coming in more regular contact with Taliban forces. For centuries, controlling the countryside has always been the challenge for foreign powers in Afghanistan. The main cities, connected by a long road loop, have been comparatively easy to maintain control over; but any effort to win the "hearts and minds" of the populace has to risk moving out into the countryside.
Fighting will almost certainly become more intense before the winter downturn, but it will not be an entirely quiet winter. Supplies of both ammunition and explosives, as well as foreign jihadist radicals who carry out many of the suicide bombings in Afghanistan, will be hindered by the harsh climate. But they will not halt, and bombings in urban areas could continue unabated. Thus, despite all these problems, there is no reason to suggest that the stalemate between NATO and the Taliban will see any major shifts. The Taliban are no longer a national-level movement with the capacity to overrun the Afghan nation as they did in the 1990s -- at least not while NATO troops are in the country.
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Taliban put Pakistan on notice
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - With trouble on the battlefield, US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has recommended, for the first time since September 11, 2001, the need to bring the Taliban into the Afghan government. At the same time, Pakistan is secretly playing its own game of carrot and stick in Afghanistan to influence events to its liking.
However, two quick warning signals to Islamabad this week convey the unmistakable message that regardless of what
Washington or Islamabad might desire, the Taliban are the ones who will decide which carrots and which sticks to play.
Last month could prove to be pivotal in determining the ultimate fate of the Taliban and Afghanistan, and even the United States' "war on terror".
The Taliban, after the success of this year's spring offensive, have drawn up a blueprint for an Islamic intifada in Afghanistan next year in the form of a national uprising and an internationalization of their resistance.
This followed a "peace" deal between the Pakistani Taliban in the Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan in which Islamabad agreed to release some al-Qaeda suspects in return for the Taliban stopping cross-border activities.
President General Pervez Musharraf then went to Washington, where he announced that foreign forces in Afghanistan would be given the right of hot pursuit into the tribal areas. He also said the authorities would take action against former army officials associated with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for supporting the Taliban.
That all is not well with this agreement is illustrated by two events this week. First, a missile landed in Ayub Park, the highest-security zone in Rawalpindi, just a few hundred meters from Musharraf's official residence at Army House. The next day, several rockets apparently linked to a mobile phone for firing were found near parliament in Islamabad.
Asia Times Online has learned that the incidents were a clear show of disapproval in Waziristan over Musharraf's basking in "Washington's charm", and that he had not implemented a key aspect of the peace accord - the release of al-Qaeda suspects - despite numerous promises.
In other words, the Pakistani Taliban are using their own stick to keep Islamabad in line.
The sore point, as mentioned, was the release of "al-Qaeda-linked" Pakistani militants arrested in Pakistani cities. The Pakistani authorities did release many, but a few, whose arrest was also known to US intelligence, were not. Musharraf said they would be freed once he returned from Washington, but this did not happen. Negotiations were still taking place when an incident happened that angered the Pakistani Taliban.
Progress arrested
Shah Abdul Aziz of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a six-party religious alliance, is a member of the National Assembly from Karak in North-West Frontier Province. Though his direct party affiliation is with the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam led by Maulana Samiul Haq (the father of the Taliban), his real status derives from his being a veteran mujahideen from the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He vocally supports the Taliban, Arab militants and Osama bin Laden, and his fiery speeches on these topics are compiled into compact discs that are popular among the Pakistani Taliban.
Shah Mehboob Ahmed is a younger brother of Shah Abdul Aziz and also enjoys a great deal of respect among local as well as Afghan Taliban for helping the mujahideen.
The story starts when Mehboob hosted a British-born Pakistani, known only as Abdullah, who was on a list of wanted people. Abdullah then went to Islamabad and met with the biggest Taliban-supporting cleric, Ghazi Abdul Rasheed, at Lal Mosque. As Abdullah left the mosque, he was picked up by intelligence agencies. One of the leads acquired from Abdullah was that he had been hosted by Mehboob. So Mehboob was also detained.
Shah Abdul Aziz, the member of parliament, contacted ISI high-ups about his brother's arrest and was informed that he would be released soon after formal investigations. However, neither Abdullah nor Mehboob was released.
This took tension between the Pakistani Taliban and the authorities to boiling point, with the former charging that not only had Islamabad not fulfilled its promises to release all Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees, but it was violating the agreement and arresting such people as Mehboob and Abdullah.
Islamabad responded that the two were part of Indian intelligence's proxy network, and that was why they had been held - not because of any possible links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban did not buy this and made it clear that as the authorities had violated the agreement, they should be ready to face the Taliban's music.
At this point Musharraf said in an interview in the US that some retired ISI officials could be assisting Taliban insurgents, adding: "We are keeping a very tight watch and we will get hold of them if that at all happened. I have some reports that some dissidents, some retired people who were in the forefront in the ISI during the period of 1979 to 1989, may be assisting the links somewhere here and there."
This set off heated debate in Pakistan, leading some people to speculate that Hamid Gul, one of the most popular Islamist generals and Musharraf's immediate boss and close associate before September 11, 2001, might be arrested. Speaking to Asia Times Online, Gul termed Musharraf's statement a reflection of his "impulsive nature" and said he was in danger of opening up a "Pandora's box".
The upshot of all this, according to signals reaching this correspondent, is that Musharraf has been put on notice. The first two incidents this week caused no damage. That was possibly the intent. This is unlikely to be the case with the next ones.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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British hire anti-Taliban mercenaries
The Sunday Times - October 08, 2006
Christina Lamb, Kabul
BRITISH forces holed up in isolated outposts of Helmand province in Afghanistan are to be withdrawn over the next two to three weeks and replaced by newly formed tribal police who will be recruited by paying a higher rate than the Taliban.The move is the result of deals with war-weary locals and reverses the strategy of sending forces to establish ?platoon houses? in the Taliban heartland where soldiers were left under siege and short of supplies because it was too dangerous for helicopters to fly in.
Troops in the four northern districts of Sangin, Musa Qala, Nawzad and Kajaki have engaged in the fiercest fighting since the Korean war, tying up more than half the mission?s available combat force. All 16 British soldiers killed in the conflict died in these areas.
?We were coming under as many as seven attacks a day,? said Captain Alex Mackenzie of the 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, who spent a month in Sangin. ?We were firing like mad just to survive. It was deconstruction rather than reconstruction.?
Lieutenant-General David Richards, commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, has long been critical of tying up troops in static positions, while the British government has grown increasingly concerned that it was affecting public support for the mission.
Since taking command of the British forces at the end of July, Richards has been looking for a way to pull them out without making it look like a victory for the Taliban.
?I am confident that in two to three weeks the securing of the districts will be achieved through a different means,? he said. ?Most of the British troops will then be able to be redeployed to tasks which will facilitate rapid and visible reconstruction and development, which we?ve got to do this winter to prove we can not only fight but also deliver what people need.?
The districts will be guarded by new auxiliary police made up of local militiamen. They will initially receive $70 (?37) a month, although it is hoped that this will rise to $120 to compete with the $5 per fighting day believed to be paid by the Taliban. ?These are the same people who two weeks ago would have been vulnerable to be recruited as Taliban fighters,? said Richards.
?It?s employment they want and we need to make sure we pay more than the Taliban.?
The withdrawal of the British troops will coincide with the departure of 3 Para, whose six-month deployment is coming to an end. The battalion will be replaced by Royal Marines from 3 Commando Brigade who started arriving last week.
Locals in these districts are fed up with the fighting that has led to the destruction of many homes, bazaars and a school. A delegation of more than 20 elders from Musa Qala met President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday evening and demanded to be allowed to look after their own security. ?The British troops brought nothing but fighting,? they complained. They pledged that if allowed to appoint their own police chief and district chief, they would keep out the Taliban.
The other crucial factor has been Nato?s success last month in inflicting the heaviest defeat on the Taliban since their regime fell five years ago. The two-week Operation Medusa in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province left between 1,100 and 1,500 Taliban dead, many of whom were believed to be committed fighters rather than guns for hire.
?Militarily it was against the odds ? it was only because the Taliban were silly enough to take us on in strength when we had superior firepower and because of very, very brave fighting on the part of Americans, Canadians, British and Dutch, as well as the Afghan national army,? said Richards.
The Taliban, emboldened by their successes in Helmand, had changed their strategy from hit-and-run tactics to a frontal attack, apparently intending to try to take the key city of Kandahar. They had taken advantage of a change of command of foreign troops in the south from American to Canadian and eventually Nato to move large amounts of equipment and men into the Panjwayi district southwest of the city. The area was a stronghold of the mujaheddin during the Russian occupation and contains secret tunnels and grape-drying houses amid orchards and vineyards alongside the Argandab River.
After initial setbacks, including the crash of a British Nimrod aircraft in which 14 servicemen died and an incident in which an American A10 bomber strafed Canadian forces, killing one and wounding 35, Nato forces turned the situation around. Wave after wave of Taliban arriving on pick-ups to join the fight were mown down. More than 100 are believed to have been captured and reports from Quetta in neighbouring Pakistan suggest that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, has instructed his men to return to their old guerrilla tactics.
The number of daily ?contacts? between troops and insurgents has since dropped from a high of 24 in September to just two, although the lull in fighting may be partly because of Ramadan, the fasting month.
Richards believes that the victory has won his forces a six-month window during which the international community must make visible changes for the people of southern Afghanistan or risk losing everything.
?Fighting alone is not the solution,? he warned. ?We?ve got to win over the 70% of people in southern Afghanistan who are good peasant stock and basically want security and the means to feed their families. If it?s only fighting they see ahead of them for the next five years, chances are that they will say well, we?d rather have the Taliban and all that comes with it.
?The means to persuade them is not just to show we can win, as we have done, but also that it?s all worth it, which means pretty visible and ready improvements.?
He added: ?The military can?t do much more ? it?s up to the government and development agencies. At the moment somehow it isn?t happening and we?re beginning to lose time.?
The military is locked in a debate with the Department for International Development (DFID) which has ?20m to spend in Helmand but feels that the situation is too insecure for development and believes the focus should be on long-term projects.
Asked last week what reconstruction it had carried out in Helmand so far, a DFID representative could cite only the rebuilding of market stalls in two districts. The official added that the department did not want to draw attention to any improvements because that might make them targets.
The military want the DFID to hand over some of its funds to enable them to carry out work. ?We have to prove to the population today that tomorrow is worth waiting for,? said Richards.
He said that in Helmand?s main town of Lashkar Gah last month, only one young man in a group of 20 he met had a job. ?If there aren?t any jobs and the Taliban come along and say we?ll offer you $5 a day for taking pot-shots at the Brits then they will,? he said.
?That?s where we should be spending our money ? creating jobs. And it really isn?t good enough just doing the long-term stuff.?
Karzai will chair a meeting on reconstruction this week, including ministers and foreign donors, in the hope of kickstarting programmes such as road building and irrigation.
?We?ve got six months to prove to the 70% that it?s all worth it, that we can not only deliver security but the things they really want,? Richards said. ?If we do, I think things will be much better and we will have turned the curve. If we don?t, then my prognosis is that next year will be even worse than this year.?
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Moving GM's post from "Islam in Islamic Countries" to here:
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http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?rep=2&aid=329257&sid=SAS
Pak signed deal with Mullah Omar's men to halt Wazir fighting
Islamabad, Oct 14: The much-talked about deal between tribal elders in Waziristan and Pakistan Government which was defended by President Pervez Musharraf during his recent US visit was actually signed by pro-Taliban militants owing allegiance to Mullah Omar, a media report said today.
The agreement, which aroused suspicion all around was signed with militants and not with tribal elders, as is being officially claimed, it said.
"As such the argument that the peace agreement is against the Taliban, and not with the Taliban, just does not hold water. One expert asks: How could the militants in North Waziristan, who owe their allegiance to Mullah Omar and his commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is responsible for southern Afghanistan, sign a deal against their brothers in arms", the Dawn quoted an official as saying.
The deal was signed between the administrator of North Waziristan and pro-Taliban militants and clerics who until September 5 were on the wanted list.
Among them are Hafiz Gul Bahadar, Maulana Sadiq Noor who were top militant clerics and the remaining six, Azad Khan, Maulvi Saifullah, Maulvi Ahmad Shah Jehan, Azmat Ali, Hafiz Amir Hamza and Mir Sharaf, were nominated by them to co-sign the agreement.
The agreement says that there will be no cross-border infiltration but NATO military officials stationed in Afghanistan have been quoted as saying there is a 300 per cent increase in militant activity in the Afghan border regions.
The death of a local militant commander, Maulvi Mir Kalam and his men in an operation across the border and the capture of 10 of their comrades by security forces is a case in point, it said.
Bureau Report
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In the Land of the Taliban
By ELIZABETH RUBIN
Published: October 22, 2006
One afternoon this past summer, I shared a picnic of fresh mangos and plums with Abdul Baqi, an Afghan Taliban fighter in his 20?s fresh from the front in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. We spent hours on a grassy slope under the tall pines of Murree, a former colonial hill station that is now a popular resort just outside Pakistan?s capital, Islamabad. All around us was a Pakistani rendition of Georges Seurat?s ?Sunday on La Grande Jatte? ? middle-class families setting up grills for barbecue, a girl and two boys chasing their errant cow with a stick, two men hunting fowl, boys flying a kite. Much of the time, Abdul Baqi was engrossed in the flight pattern of a Himalayan bird. It must have been a welcome distraction. He had just lost five friends fighting British troops and had seen many others killed or wounded by bombs as they sheltered inside a mosque.
He was now looking forward to taking a logic course at a madrasa, or religious school, near Peshawar during his holiday. Pakistan?s religious parties, he told me through an interpreter, would lodge him, as they did other Afghan Taliban fighters, and keep him safe. With us was Abdul Baqi?s mentor, Mullah Sadiq, a diabetic Helmandi who was shuttling between Pakistan and Afghanistan auditing Taliban finances and arranging logistics. He had just dispatched nine fighters to Afghanistan and had taken wounded men to a hospital in Islamabad. ?I just tell the border guards that they were wounded in a tribal dispute and need treatment,? he told me.
And though Mullah Sadiq said they had lost many commanders in battles around Kandahar, he and Abdul Baqi appeared to be in good spirits, laughing and chatting loudly on a cellphone to Taliban friends in Pakistan and Afghanistan. After all, they never imagined that the Taliban would be back so soon or in such force or that they would be giving such trouble to the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai and some 40,000 NATO and U.S. troops in the country. For the first time since the fall of 2001, when the Taliban were overthrown, they were beginning to taste the possibility of victory.
As I traveled through Pakistan and particularly the Pashtun lands bordering Afghanistan, I felt as if I were moving through a Taliban spa for rehabilitation and inspiration. Since 2002, the American and Pakistani militaries have focused on North Waziristan and South Waziristan, two of the seven districts making up Pakistan?s semiautonomous tribal areas, which are between the North-West Frontier Province and, to the south, Baluchistan Province; in the days since the 9/11 attacks, some tribes there had sheltered members of Al Qaeda and spawned their own Taliban movement. Meanwhile, in the deserts of Baluchistan, whose capital, Quetta, is just a few hours? drive from the Afghan city of Kandahar, the Afghan Taliban were openly reassembling themselves under Mullah Omar and his leadership council. Quetta had become a kind of free zone where strategies could be formed, funds picked up, interviews given and victories relished.
In June, I was in Quetta as the Taliban fighters celebrated an attack against Dad Mohammad Khan, an Afghan legislator locally known as Amir Dado. Until recently he was the intelligence chief of Helmand Province. He had worked closely with U.S. Special Forces and was despised by Abdul Baqi ? and, to be frank, by most Afghans in the south. Mullah Razayar Nurzai (a nom de guerre), a commander of 300 Taliban fighters who frequently meets with the leadership council and Mullah Omar, took credit for the ambush. Because Pakistan?s intelligence services are fickle ? sometimes supporting the Taliban, sometimes arresting its members ? I had to meet Nurzai at night, down a dark lane in a village outside Quetta.
My guide was a Pakistani Pashtun sympathetic to the Taliban; we slipped into a courtyard and behind a curtain into a small room with mattresses and a gas lamp. In hobbled a rough, wild-looking graybeard with green eyes and a prosthetic limb fitted into a permanent 1980?s-era shoe. More than a quarter-century of warring had taken its toll on Nurzai?s 46-year-old body but not on his spirit. It was 10 at night, yet he was bounding with energy and bombast about his recent exploits in Kandahar and Helmand. A few days earlier, Nurzai and his men had attacked Amir Dado?s extended family. First, he told me, they shot dead his brother ? a former district leader. Then the next day, as members of Dado?s family were driving to the site of the first attack, Nurzai?s men ambushed their convoy. Boys, cousins, uncles: all were killed. Dado himself was safe elsewhere. Nurzai was mildly disappointed and said that they had received bad information. He had no regrets about the killings, however. Abdul Baqi was also delighted by the attack. He would tell me that Dado used to burn rocket casings and pour the melted plastic onto the stomachs of onetime Taliban fighters he and his men had captured. Abdul Baqi also recalled that during the civil war that ended with the Taliban?s seizure of Kabul, Dado and his men had a checkpoint where they ?grabbed young boys and robbed people.?
Mullah Omar and his followers formed the Taliban in 1994 to, among other things, bring some justice to Afghanistan and to expel predatory commanders like Dado. But in the early days of Karzai?s government, these regional warlords re-established themselves, with American financing, to fill the power vacuum that the coalition forces were unwilling to fill themselves. The warlords freely labeled their many enemies Al Qaeda or Taliban in order to push the Americans to eradicate them. Some of these men were indeed Taliban. Most, like Abdul Baqi, had accepted their loss of power, but they rejoined the Taliban as a result of harassment. Amir Dado?s own abuses had eventually led to his removal from the Helmand government at United Nations insistence. As one Western diplomat, who requested anonymity out of personal safety concerns, put it: ?Amir Dado kept his own prison, authorized the use of serious torture, had very little respect for human life and made security worse.? Yet when I later met Amir Dado in Kabul, he pulled out a letter that an officer in the U.S. Special Forces had written requesting that the Afghan Ministry of Defense install him as Helmand?s police chief and claiming that in his absence ?the quality of security in the Helmand Province has dramatically declined.?
One Place, Two Stories
I went to Afghanistan and Pakistan this summer to understand how and why the Taliban were making a comeback five years after American and Afghan forces drove them from power. What kind of experience would lead Afghans to reject what seemed to be an emerging democratic government? Had we missed something that made Taliban rule appealing? Were they the only opposition the aggrieved could turn to? Or, as many Afghans were saying, was this Pakistan up to its old tricks ? cooperating with the Americans and Karzai while conspiring to bring back the Taliban, who had been valued ?assets? before 9/11?
And why has the Bush administration?s message remained that Afghanistan is a success, Iraq a challenge? ?In Afghanistan, the trajectory is a hopeful and promising one,? Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wrote on the op-ed page of The Washington Post earlier this month. Afghanistan?s rise from the ashes of the anti-Taliban war would mean that the Bush administration was prevailing in replacing terror with democracy and human rights.
Meanwhile, a counternarrative was emerging, and it belonged to the Taliban, or the A.C.M., as NATO officers call them ? the Anti-Coalition Militia. In Kabul, Kandahar and Pakistan, I found their video discs and tapes in the markets. They invoke a nostalgia for the jihad against the Russians and inspire their viewers to rise up again. One begins with clattering Chinooks disgorging American soldiers into the desert. Then we see the new Afghan government onstage, focusing in on the Northern Alliance warlords ? Abdul Rashid Dostum, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Karim Khalili, Muhammad Fahim, Ismail Khan, Abdul Sayyaf. It cuts to American soldiers doing push-ups and pinpointing targets on maps; next it shows bombs the size of bathtubs dropping from planes and missiles emblazoned with ?Royal Navy? rocketing through the sky; then it moves to hospital beds and wounded children. Message: America and Britain brought back the warlords and bombed your children. In the next clip, there are metal cages under floodlights and men in orange jumpsuits, bowed and crouching. It cuts back to the wild eyes of John Walker Lindh and shows trucks hauling containers crammed with young Afghan and Pakistani prisoners ? Taliban, hundreds of whom would suffocate to death in those containers, supposedly at the command of the warlord and current army chief of staff, General Dostum. Then back to American guards wheeling hunger-striking Guant?namo prisoners on gurneys. Interspliced are older images, a bit fuzzy, of young Afghan men, hands tied behind their backs, heads bowed, hauled off by Communist guards. The message: Foreigners have invaded our lands again; Americans, Russians ? no difference.
During the period from 1994 to 2001, the Taliban were a cloistered clique with little interest in global affairs. Today they are far more sophisticated and outward-looking. ?The Taliban of the 90?s were concerned with their district or province,? says Waheed Muzhda, a senior aide at the Supreme Court in Kabul, who before the Taliban fell worked in their Foreign Ministry. ?Now they have links with other networks. Before, only two Internet connections existed ? one was with Mullah Omar?s office and the other at the Foreign Ministry here in Kabul. Now they are connected to the world.? Though this is still very much an Afghan insurgency, fueled by complex local grievances and power struggles, the films sold in the markets of Pakistan and Afghanistan merge the Taliban story with that of the larger struggle of the Muslim umma, the global community of Islam: images of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Israelis dragging off young Palestinian men and throwing off Palestinian mothers clinging to their sons. Humiliation. Oppression. Followed by the same on Afghan soil: Northern Alliance fighters perching their guns atop the bodies of dead Taliban. In the Taliban story, Special Forces soldiers desecrate the bodies of Taliban fighters by burning them, the Koran is desecrated in Guant?namo toilets, the Prophet Muhammad is desecrated in Danish cartoons and finally an apostate, Abdul Rahman, the Afghan who was arrested earlier this year for converting to Christianity, desecrates Islam and is not only not punished but is released and flown off to Italy.
It is not at all clear that Afghans want the return of a Taliban government. But even sophisticated Kabulis told me that they are fed up with the corruption. And in the Pashtun regions, which make up about half the country, Afghans are fed up with five years of having their homes searched and the young men of their villages rounded up in the name of counterinsurgency. Earlier this month in Kabul, Gen. David Richards, the British commander of NATO?s Afghanistan force, imagined what Afghans are thinking: ?They will say, ?We do not want the Taliban, but then we would rather have that austere and unpleasant life that that might involve than another five years of fighting.?? He estimated that if NATO didn?t succeed in bringing substantial economic development to Afghanistan soon, some 70 percent of Afghans would shift their loyalty to the Taliban.
Nation-Building, Again
In the middle of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, a metal sign tilts into the road advertising the New York English Language Center. It is a relic of the last American nation-building scheme. Half a century ago, this town, built at the confluence of the Arghandab and Helmand Rivers, was the headquarters for an ambitious dam project partly financed by the United States and contracted out to Morrison-Knudsen, an engineering company that helped build Cape Canaveral and the Golden Gate Bridge.
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Lashkar Gah (literally, ?the place of soldiers?) was to be a model American town. Irrigation from the project would create farms out of the desert. Today you can still see the suburban-style homes with gardens open to the streets, although the typical Afghan home is a fort with walls guarding the family?s privacy. Those modernizing dreams of America and Afghanistan were eventually defeated by nature, culture and the war to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan in the 1980?s. What remains is an intense nostalgia among the engineers, cooks and farmers of Lashkar Gah, who remember that time as one of employment and peace. Today, Lashkar Gah is home to a NATO base.
Down the road from the base stands a lovely new building erected by an N.G.O. for the local Ministry of Women?s Affairs. It is big, white and, on the day I visited, was empty except for three women getting ready to leave. ?It?s so close to the foreigners, and the women are afraid of getting killed by car bombs,? the ministry?s deputy told me. She was a school headmistress and landowner, dressed elegantly in a lime-colored blouse falling below the knees and worn over matching trousers. She weighed the Taliban regime against this new one in terms of pragmatic choices, not terror or ideology. She said that she had just wrapped up the case of a girl who had been kidnapped and raped by Kandahari police officers, something that would not have happened under the Taliban. ?Their security was outstanding,? she said.
Under the Taliban, she said, a poppy ban was enforced. ?Now the governors tell the people, ?Just cultivate a little bit,?? she said. ?So people take this opportunity and grow a lot.? The farmers lease land to grow poppies. The British and the police eradicate it. The farmer can?t pay back the landowner. ?So instead of paying, he gives the landowner his daughter.?
A few weeks before I arrived in Helmand, John Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, told reporters that Afghan authorities were succeeding in reducing opium-poppy cultivation. Yet despite hundreds of millions of dollars being allocated by Congress to stop the trade, a United Nations report in September estimated that this year?s crop was breaking all records ? 6,100 metric tons compared with 4,100 last year. When I visited Helmand, schools in Lashkar Gah were closed in part because teachers and students were busy harvesting the crop. A prosecutor from the Crimes Department laughed as he told me that his clerk, driver and bodyguard hadn?t made it to work. They were all harvesting. It requires a lot of workers, and you can earn $12 a day compared with the $2 you get for wheat. Hence the hundreds of young, poor Talibs from Pakistan?s madrasas who had flocked to earn that cash and who made easy converts for the coming jihad.
Walters had singled out Helmand for special praise. Yet just a short drive from the provincial capital, I was surrounded by poppy farmers ? 12-year-old boys, 75-year-old men ? hard at work, their hands caked in opium paste as they scooped figlike pulp off the bulbs into a sack tied around their waists. One little boy was dragging a long poppy stem attached to a car he had made out of bulbs. Haji Abdul, a 73-year-old Moses of a man, was the owner of the farm and one of those nostalgic for the heyday of the Helmand Valley project. He had worked with Americans for 15 years as a welder and manager. He was the first to bring electricity to his district. Now there was none.
?Why do you think people put mines out for the British and Italians doing eradication when they came here to save us?? He answered his own question: ?Thousands of lands ready for harvest were destroyed. How difficult will it be for our people to tolerate that! You are taking the food of my children, cutting my feet and disabling me. With one bullet, I will kill you.? Fortunately he didn?t have to kill anyone. He had paid 2,000 afghanis per jerib (about a half acre) of land to the police, he told me, adding that they would then share the spoils with the district administrator and all the other Interior Ministry officials so that only a small percentage of the poppy would be eradicated.
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Part Two
Page 3 of 10)
When I asked Manan Farahi, the director of counterterrorism efforts for Karzai?s government, why the Taliban were so strong in Helmand, he said that Helmandis had, in fact, hated the Taliban because of Mullah Omar?s ban on poppy cultivation. ?The elders were happy this government was coming and they could plant again,? Farahi told me. ?But then the warlords came back and let their militias roam freely. They were settling old scores ? killing people, stealing their opium. And because they belonged to the government, the people couldn?t look to the government for protection. And because they had the ear of the Americans, the people couldn?t look to the Americans. Into this need stepped the Taliban.? And this time the Taliban, far from suppressing the drug trade, agreed to protect it.
A Dealer?s Life
The Continental Guest House in Kandahar, with its lovely gardens, potted geraniums and Internet access in every room, was mostly empty when I arrived, a remnant of the city?s recently stalled economic resurgence.
To find out how the opium trade works and how it?s related to the Taliban?s rise, I spent the afternoon with an Afghan who told me his name was Razzaq. He is a medium-level smuggler in his late 20?s who learned his trade as a refugee in Iran. He was wearing a traditional Kandahari bejeweled skull cap, a dark blazer and a white shalwar kameez, a traditional outfit consisting of loose pants covered by a tunic. He moved and spoke with the confident ease of a well-protected man. ?The whole country is in our services,? he told me, ?all the way to Turkey.? This wasn?t bravado. From Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, he brings opium in the form of a gooey paste, packaged in bricks. From Badakhshan in the northeast, he brings crystal ? a sugary substance made from heroin. And from Jalalabad, in the east on the road to Peshawar, he brings pure heroin. All of this goes through Baramcha, an unmanned border town in Helmand near Pakistan. Sometimes he pays off the national soldiers to use their vehicles, he said. Sometimes the national policemen. Or he hides it well, and if there is a tough checkpoint, he calls ahead and pays them off. ?The soldiers get 2,000 afghanis a month, and I give them 100,000,? he explained with an angelic smile. ?So even if I had a human head in my car, they?d let me go.? It?s not hard to see why Razzaq is so successful. He has a certain charm and looks like the modest tailor he once was, not a man steeped in illegal business.
Razzaq?s smuggling career began in Zahedan, a remote and unruly Iranian town near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is filled with Afghan refugees who, like Razzaq and his family, fled after the Russian invasion in 1979. Razzaq apprenticed as a tailor under his father and eventually opened his own shop, which the Iranians promptly shut down. They said he had no right as a refugee to own a shop. He began painting buildings, but that, too, proved a bureaucratic challenge. He was paid in checks, and the bank refused to cash them without a bank account, which he could not get.
Razzaq was newly married with dreams of a good life for his family. So one day he took a chance. ?I had gotten to know smugglers at my tailoring shop,? he told me over a meal of mutton and rice on the floor of my hotel room. ?One of them was an old man, so no one ever suspected him. The smugglers asked me to go with him to Gerdi Jangel? ? an Afghan refugee town in Pakistan ? ?and bring back 750 grams of heroin to Zahedan. The security searched us on the bus, but I?d hidden it in the heels of my shoes, and of course they didn?t search the old man. I was so happy when we made it back. I thought I was born for the first time into this world.?
So he took another chance and managed to fly to Tehran carrying four kilos in his bag. Each time he overcame another obstacle, he became more addicted to the easy cash. When the Iranian authorities imported sniffing dogs to catch heroin smugglers, Razzaq and his friends filled hypodermic needles with some heroin dissolved in water and sprayed the liquid on cars at the bus station that would be continuing on to Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz. ?The dogs at the checkpoint went mad. They had to search 50 cars. They decided the dogs were defective and sent them back, and that saved us for a while.? Eventually, he said, they concocted a substance to conceal the heroin smell from the new pack of dogs.
After the fall of the Taliban, Razzaq moved back to Helmand, built a comfortable house and began supporting his extended family with his expanding trafficking business. Razzaq?s main challenge today is Iran. While the Americans have turned more or less a blind eye to the drug-trade spree of their warlord allies, Iran has steadily cranked up its drug war. (Some 3,000 Iranian lawmen have been killed in the last three decades battling traffickers.) To cross the desert borders, Razzaq moves in convoys of 18 S.U.V.?s. Some contain drugs. The rest are loaded with food supplies, antiaircraft guns, rocket launchers, antitank missiles and militiamen, often on loan from the Taliban. The fighters are Baluch from Iran and Afghanistan. The commanders are Afghans.
Razzaq?s run, as he described it, was a scene out of ?Mad Max.? Three days were spent dodging and battling Iranian forces in the deserts around the earthquake-stricken city of Bam. Once they made it to Isfahan, however, in central Iran, they were home free. They released the militiamen, transferred the stuff to ordinary cars and drove to Tehran, where other smugglers picked up the drugs and passed them on to ethnic Turks in Tabriz. The Turks would bring them home, and from there they went to the markets of Europe.
Should he ever run into a problem in Afghanistan, he told me, ?I simply make a phone call. And my voice is known to ministers, of course. They are in my network. Every network has a big man supporting them in the government.? The Interior Ministry?s director of counternarcotics in Kabul had told me the same thing. Anyway, if the smugglers have problems on the ground, they say, they just pay the Taliban to destroy the enemy commanders.
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Razzaq has at times contemplated getting out of the smuggling trade, he said, but the easy money is too alluring. Depending on the market, he can earn from $1,500 to $7,500 a month. Most Afghans can?t make that in a year. Besides, he said, ?all the governors are doing this, so why shouldn?t we??
Losers Become Winners
In December 2001, not long after the Taliban were routed, I visited the Shah Wali Kot district, several hours? drive on unpaved roads from Kandahar, a Mordor land of rock mountains shaped like sagging crescents and mud-baked houses melting into the dunes. The Taliban leaders had fled, mostly to Pakistan. Gul Agha Shirzai, formerly a local warlord and soon-to-be new governor, and his soldiers had swarmed into power while the Americans set up their operations base in Mullah Omar?s Xanadu-like residence. I was with a large group of Populzai, the clan of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.
We were in a big guest room with more than a dozen men gathered in a circle, all wearing the kind of turbans that look like gargantuan ice-cream swirls. The ones in black turban swirls were giggling, chatting and slapping one another on the back. The ones in white turban swirls were sulking, grumbling or mute. In this group, the miserable white turbans were Taliban men. They had just lost their pickup trucks, weapons, money, prestige and jobs, all of which had gone to the gleeful black turbans.
Today those miserable white turbans have taken to the mountains to fight. The gleeful black turbans are under siege. I saw one of the black turbans this summer, the Shah Wali Kot district leader, in the garden of the Kandahar governor?s palace. He was a mess. He chuckled loudly when I asked him how it was back in Shah Wali Kot. ?Frankly, we are just defending ourselves from the Taliban,? he said. ?Our head is on the pillow at night, but we do not sleep.?
That small division among the Populzai in Shah Wali Kot echoes the larger division of the Pashtun into two main branches: the Durrani and the Ghilzai. The Durrani, Karzai?s tribe, have dominated for the last two centuries in Afghanistan and regard themselves as the ruling elite. In the south, the Ghilzai were often treated as the nomadic, scrappy cousins. With the exception of Mullah Omar, who had been a poor Ghilzai farmer, the leaders of the Taliban tended to be Durrani. These days, the perception among the southern Ghilzai is that they are persecuted, that the jails are filled with their people, while the Durrani in the south received all the Japanese, U.S. and British contracts and jobs. From what I could gather during my weeks in Afghanistan, these perceptions were mostly true. But even if they were exaggerated, such perceptions, in an illiterate society, have a way of quickly morphing into reality.
Take Panjwai, a district just outside Kandahar, where hundreds of Taliban massed this summer, taking advantage of the changeover from American soldiers to a NATO force of Canadian troops. One afternoon I met a red-haired propagandist and writer for the Taliban in a Kandahar office building. With his slight lisp, chain-smoking habit and eclectic reading ? French novelists and Arabic philosophers ? he seemed more a tormented graduate student than the landless villager from Panjwai he was. Panjwai is a mishmash of tribes, and the Taliban were exploiting the grievances of the Nurzai, a tribe that has felt persecuted and unfairly targeted for poppy eradication. Traders in Kandahar, he said, were donating money to the Taliban. Landowners were paying them to fight off eradicators. The Taliban were paying poor, unemployed men to fight. And religious scholars were delivering the message that it was time for jihad because the Americans were no different from the Russians. Just a few weeks earlier, the Taliban went on a killing spree in Panjwai. They beheaded a tribal leader in his home, shot another in the bazaar and hanged a man near a shrine with a note tacked on his body: ?SPY.?
The Taliban were feeling bold enough that one afternoon Mullah Ibrahim, a Taliban intelligence agent, dropped by my hotel for lunch. He was a Ghilzai, from Helmand, and told me he had tried to lead a normal life under the official amnesty program. Instead, he was locked up, beaten and so harassed by Helmandi intelligence and police officers that his tribal elders told him to leave for Pakistan and join the Taliban there. Then, about a year ago, he decided that he was tired of fighting and living as a fugitive and accepted a reconciliation offer from an Afghan general. Pakistani intelligence got wind of this and imprisoned him; upon his release, the Pakistanis gave him money and a motorbike and pressured him to go back to war. He is still tired of war, but the Pakistanis won?t let him live in peace, and now if he tries to reconcile with the Kabul government, he told me, the Taliban will kill him.
When fighting broke out on the main highway near Kandahar, I saw that the police had tied up a group of villagers ? but the Taliban had all escaped. One of those village men, his hands bound behind his back, told me that he had peeped out from his house earlier that day and saw some 200 Taliban with new guns and rocket launchers. They wanted food and threatened him and other villagers. ?But I am not afraid of them,? he said loudly. ?I am only afraid of this government.? Why? ?Look at what they do. They can?t get the Taliban, so they arrest us. We have no hope from them anymore. And when we call and tell them Taliban are here, no one comes.? As an engineer from Panjwai who had been an Afghan senator during the Communist era told me: ?We are now like camels. In Islam, a camel can be slaughtered in two different ways.
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Part Three
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(Page 5 of 10)
?The Taliban are using rivalries and enmities between people to get soldiers, the same tactics as the mujahedeen used against the Russians,? the engineer continued. ?Just like in Russian times they come and say, ?We are defending the country from the infidels.? They start asking for food. Then they ask the people for soldiers and say, ?We will give you weapons.? And that?s how it starts. And the emotions are rising in the people now. They are saying, ?Kaffirs have invaded our land.??
Qayum Karzai, the president?s older brother and a legislator from Kandahar, seemed utterly depressed when I met him. ?For the last four years, the Taliban were saying that the Americans will leave here,? he said. ?We were stupid and didn?t believe it. Now they think it?s a victory that the Americans left.?
With the Americans on their way out and the NATO force not yet in control, the Kandahar Police were left on the front line: underfinanced, underequipped, untrained ? and often stoned. Which is perhaps what made them so brave. One afternoon I ran into a group who said their friends had just been killed when a Talib posing as a policeman served them poisoned tea. A shaggy-haired officer in a black tunic was standing by his pickup, freshly ripped up by a barrage of bullets, and staring at my feet. ?I envy your shoes,? he said, looking back at his own torn rubber sandals. ?I envy your Toyota,? he said and laughed. And then looking at my pen and notebook, he said, ?I envy you can read and write.? It?s not too late, I offered feebly, but he tapped his temple and shook his head. ?It doesn?t work anymore,? he said. ?I smoke hash. I smoke opium. I?m drinking because we?re always thinking and nervous.? He was 35. He had been fighting for 20 years. Four of his friends had been killed in the fighting the other night. He had to support children, a wife and parents on a salary of about $100 a month. And, he said, ?we haven?t been paid in four months.? No wonder, then, that the population complained that the police were all thieves.
At Kandahar?s hospital I met a 17-year-old policeman (who had been with the police since he was 14) tending to his wounded friend. He was in a jovial mood, amazed he wasn?t dead. He said they had been given an order to cut the Taliban?s escape route. Instead they were ambushed by the Taliban, ran out of bullets and had no phones to call for backup. ?We ran away,? he said with a nervous giggle. ?The Taliban chased us, shouting: ?Hey, sons of Bush! Where are you going? We want to kill you.??
Last month, NATO forces struck back around Panjwai with artillery and aerial bombardments, killing an estimated 500 Taliban fighters and destroying homes and schools. But unless NATO can stay for years, create a trustworthy police force and spend the millions necessary to regenerate the district, the Taliban will be back.
Deciding to Fight
Inside the old city walls of Peshawar, Pakistan, a half-hour drive from the Afghan border, in a bazaar named after the storytellers who enthralled Central Asian gold and silk merchants with their tales of war and tragic love, sits the 17th-century Mohabat Khan Mosque. It is a place of cool, marble calm amid the dense market streets. Yousaf Qureshi is the prayer leader there and director of the Jamia Ashrafia, a Deobandi madrasa. He had recently announced a pledge by the jewelers? association to pay $1 million to anyone who would kill a Danish cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad. Qureshi himself offered $25,000 and a car. I found Qureshi seated on a cushion behind a low glass desk covered with papers and business cards ? ambassadors, N.G.O. workers, Islamic scholars, mujahedeen commanders: he has conversed with them all. His office resembles an antiques shop, the walls displaying oversize prayer beads, knives inlaid with ivory and astrakhan caps. It was day?s end, and Qureshi was checking the proofs for his 51st book, called ?The Benefits of Koran.?
Qureshi told me that he meets with Pakistan?s president, Pervez Musharraf, about twice a year. Qureshi understands Musharraf?s predicament: ?The heart of this government is with the Taliban. The tongue is not.? He didn?t claim total insider knowledge, but he said, ?I think they want a weak government and want to support the Taliban without letting them win.? Why? ?We are asking Musharraf, ?What are you doing,? and he says: ?I?m moving in both ways. I want to support the Taliban, but I can?t afford to displease America. I am caught between the devil and the deep sea.??
Not long ago, Qureshi said, he received three emissaries from Mullah Omar who wanted Qureshi to warn another religious leader to stop preaching against the Taliban. ?I refused,? he said. Later Sheikh Yassin, one of the messengers, was arrested by the I.S.I., Pakistan?s military intelligence service. So why, I asked, does Qureshi say the I.S.I. is supporting the Taliban? ?That is the double policy of the government,? he replied. Even in the 1990?s, he said, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was supporting the official Afghan government of Burhanuddin Rabbani while the I.S.I. was supporting his opponent, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, as he rained thousands of rockets upon Rabbani?s government and the citizens of Kabul. Qureshi told me that if he and local traders didn?t want Al Qaeda or the Taliban to flourish, then they wouldn?t. ?We are supporting them to give the Americans a tough time,? he said. ?Leave Afghanistan, and the Taliban and foreign fighters will not give Karzai problems. All the administrators of madrasas know what our students are doing, but we won?t tell them not to fight in Afghanistan.?
The new Taliban fighters in Afghanistan are of three basic types. There are the old war-addicted jihadis who were left out of the 2001 Bonn conference, which determined the postwar shape of Afghan politics and the carve-up of the country. There are the ?second generation? Afghan refugees: poor, educated in Pakistan?s madrasas and easily recruited by their elders. And then there are the young men who had jobs and prestige in the former Taliban regime and were unable to find a place for themselves in the new Afghanistan.
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Coincidentally, there are also now three fronts. One is led by Mullah Omar?s council in Quetta. The second is led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a hero of the jihad against the Soviets who joined the Taliban. Although well into his 80?s, he orchestrates insurgent attacks through his sons in Paktia, Khost and Paktika, the Afghan provinces close to Waziristan, where he is based. Finally, there is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the former leader of Hezb-i-Islami, the anti-Soviet fighters entrusted with the most money and arms by the U.S. and Pakistan. He had opposed the Taliban, living in uneasy exile in Iran until the U.S. persuaded Tehran to boot him out; he sneaked into the mountainous eastern borderlands. Since the early days of Karzai?s government, he has promised to organize Mullah Omar?s followers with his educated cadres and finance their jihad against Karzai and the American invaders. Old competitors are coming together in much the way the mujahedeen factions cooperated to fight the Russians. Hekmatyar adds a lethal ingredient to this stew: his ties and his followers extend all through Afghanistan, including the north and the west, where he is exploiting factional grievances that have nothing to do with the Pashtun discontent in the south.
An Afghan I met outside Peshawar ? for his safety he asked me not to use his full name ? was typical of the 20-something Talibs who had flourished under the Taliban regime. He was from Day Chopan, a mountainous region in Zabul Province, northeast of Kandahar. When the Northern Alliance and the Americans took Afghanistan, he escaped through the hills on an old smuggling route to the North-West Frontier Province.
It was familiar terrain. A.?s father had been a religious teacher who studied in Sami ul-Haq?s famous Haqqaniya madrasa near the Khyber Pass and preached jihad for Harakat, one of the southern mujahedeen parties whose members filled Mullah Omar?s ranks. Those old ties still bind and have provided a network for recruiting. A. grew up in madrasas in the tribal Pashtun lands of Waziristan, where he learned to fire guns as a child in the American-financed mujahedeen camps. As a teenage religious student in Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, he would go door to door collecting bread for his fellow Talibs. Behind one of those doors, he saw a girl and fell in love. When his father wouldn?t let him marry the girl, he threatened to go fight in Afghanistan. His father would not relent, and A. signed up at the local Taliban office in Peshawar. ?We got good food, free service, everything was Islamic,? he told me. ?It was the best life, rather than staying in that poor madrasa.? His father soon did relent, and A. became engaged, but he was only 15 and had no money. So he went back to the Taliban and was soon working beside the deputy defense minister. ?Of course, then there were bags of money,? he said.
A., now 28, was living in an Afghan refugee village that used to belong to Hekmatyar?s group. Weak with malaria, he was nevertheless plump and jovial, even funny at times. Only when the Pakistani intelligence services came up did his already sallow hues pale to old bone.
After fleeing the American bombardment in 2001, he told me, the Taliban arrived in Pakistan tattered, dispersed and demoralized. But in the months after the collapse, senior Taliban leaders told their comrades to stay at home, keep in touch and wait for the call. Some Taliban told me that they actually waited to see if there was a chance to work with Karzai?s government.
?Our emir,? as A. referred to Mullah Omar, slowly contacted the commanders and told them to find out who was dead and who was alive. Those commanders appointed group commanders to collect the underlings like A. Weapons stashed away in Afghanistan?s mountains were excavated. Funds were raised through the wide and varied Islamic network ? Karachi businessmen, Peshawar goldsmiths, Saudi oil men, Kuwaiti traders and jihadi sympathizers within the Pakistani military and intelligence ranks.
Mullah Omar named a 10-man leadership council, A. explained. Smaller councils were created for every province and district. Most of this was done from the safety of Pakistan, and in 2003 Mullah Omar dispatched Mullah Dadullah to the madrasas of Baluchistan and Karachi to gather the dispersed Talibs and find fresh recruits. Pakistani authorities were reportedly seen with him. Still, neither Musharraf nor his military men in Baluchistan did anything to arrest him.
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Part Four
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It was a perfect job for Dadullah, whose reputation for bravery was matched by his savagery and his many war wounds, collected in more than 25 years of fighting. In 1998, his fighters slaughtered hundreds of Hazaras (Shiites of Mongol descent) in Bamiyan Province, an act so brutal it was even too much for Mullah Omar, who had him disarmed at the time. Dadullah?s very savagery, filmed and now often circulated on videotape, coupled with his promotional flair, were just the ingredients Omar needed to put the Taliban back on the map.
Today, Quetta has assumed the character of Peshawar in the 1980?s, a suspicious place of spies and counterspies and double agents. It is not just the hundreds of men in typical Afghan Pashtun clothing ? the roughly wound turbans, dark shalwar kameez, eyes inked with kohl ? who squat on Thursday afternoons outside the Kandahari mosque in the center of town, comparing notes on the latest fighting in Helmand or the best religious teachers. Rather, as I wandered the narrow alleyways of the Afghan neighborhoods, my local guides would say, ?That?s where Mullah Dadullah was living? or ?That?s where Mullah Amir Khan Haqqani is living.? (Haqqani is the Taliban?s governor in exile for Zabul Province.) Mullah Dadullah is now a folk hero for young Talibs like A. And all the Taliban I met told me that every time Dadullah gives another interview or appears on the battlefield, it serves as an instant injection of inspiration.
By 2004, A. said, he was meeting a lot of Arabs ? Saudis, Iraqis, Palestinians ? who taught the Afghans about I.E.D.?s (improvised explosive devices) and suicide bombings. ?They taught us how to put explosives in plastic,? he told me. ?They taught us wiring and triggers. The Arabs are the best instructors in that.? But now the Afghans are doing fine on their own. Pakistani jihadis in Afghanistan received their training, they told me, from Pakistani officers in Kashmir.
The southerners have also forged ties with the Pakistani Taliban in Waziristan. There is a free flow of arms and men between Waziristan and the Afghan provinces across the border. According to A., even Uzbeks from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have joined some of the fighters now in A.?s home mountains in Day Chopan.
It was disheartening to hear A. describe his first encounter with Americans, who were trying to set up a base in a remote region of Zabul. Though they were building a road where no roads had gone before, he could perceive that asphalt only as a means for the Americans to transport their armored vehicles and occupy Muslim lands. A friend of his joined us as we were talking. He had just arrived in Pakistan from the Day Chopan region and said that the Americans were like a cyclone of evil, stealing their almonds and violating their Pashtunwali (the Pashtun tribal laws). In this instance, he meant the law by which even a cousin will not enter your house without knocking first.
A. is now a media man in Pakistan, coordinating the editing of films for discs, censoring them in case there are commanders who don?t want their faces seen and distributing them. He proudly offered me the latest disc of Mullah Dadullah beheading some ?spies for the Americans.? He said he had sold 25,000 CD?s about the fighting in Waziristan.
He was full of contradictions. He said that if he didn?t have a house in Day Chopan, he would never spend a single night there because there was no education, no electricity, no power, nothing, just a heap of stones. Yet he did not want America to change all that. ?We don?t like progress by Americans,? he declared. ?We don?t like roads by Americans. We would rather walk on tired feet as long as we are walking in an Islamic state.?
Was it all just bravado speaking? Was an opportunity to build bridges to young men like A. somehow lost or just neglected? It was hard to tell. But when the I.S.I. subject came up again, his tone changed. ?They are snakes,? he told me. He said that they were trying to create a new, obedient leader and oust the independent-minded Mullah Omar, and for that, the real Taliban hated them. Then he said: ?I told you that we burn schools because they?re teaching Christianity, but actually most of the Taliban don?t like this burning of schools or destroying roads and bridges, because the Taliban, too, could use them. Those acts were being done under I.S.I. orders. They don?t want progress in Afghanistan.? An Indian engineer was beheaded in Zabul in April, he said, and that was also ordered by Pakistan, which, from fear of the influence of its enemy, India, was encouraging attacks on Indian companies. ?People are not telling the story, because no one can trust anyone, and if I.S.I. knows I told you,? he said, he would be dead.
Pakistan?s Assets
There are many theories for why Pakistan might have wanted to help the Taliban reconstitute themselves. Afghan-Pakistani relations have always been fraught. One among the many disputes has to do with the Durand Line, the boundary drawn up by the British in 1893 partly to divide the Pashtun tribes, who were constantly revolting against the British. The Afghan government has never recognized this line, which winds its way from the Hindu Kush mountains of North-West Frontier Province 1,500 miles down to the deserts of Baluchistan, as its border. Nor have the Pashtun tribes. The Pakistanis may hope to force Karzai to recognize the Durand line in exchange for stability.
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Another theory is that Musharraf must appease the religious parties whom he needs to extend his power past the end of his term next year. Musharraf bought them off, gave them control of the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan and let them use the Taliban. And finally, the Pakistanis see Afghanistan as their rightful client. They want an accommodating regime, not Karzai, whose main backers are the U.S. and India, Pakistan?s nemesis.
Pakistan?s well-established secular Pashtun nationalist political leaders remain distraught that their lands have again become sanctuaries for the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani religious parties, which, since elections in 2002, rule these provinces and are completing a Talibanization of the region. The secular leaders point to another layer in Pakistan?s games: keeping the tribal areas autonomous enables Pakistan?s intelligence services to ward off the gaze of Westerners and keep their jihadis safely tucked away.
One thing you notice if you visit the homes of retired generals in Pakistan is that they live in a lavish fashion typical of South America?s dictatorship-era military elite. They control most of the country?s economy and real estate, and like President Musharraf, himself a former general, they do not want to relinquish power.
Although there is a secularist strain in the Pakistani military, it has been aligned with religious hard-liners since the army?s inception in 1947. Many officers still see their duty as defending the Muslim world, but their raison d??tre has been undermined by the fact that though Pakistan was founded as a refuge for South Asia?s Muslims, more Muslims today live in India. They seem to envy the jihadis? clarity. The militants had no identity crises. According to Najim Sethi, a prominent Pakistani journalist, military officers often have ?a degree of self-disgust for selling themselves? to the Americans, and they still bear a grudge against the United States for abandoning them after the Afghan jihad and, more recently, for sanctioning Pakistan over its nuclear program. The standard army phrase about the Americans was, he said, ?They used us like a condom.?
Officers spoke to me as if they were simply translating the feelings of the jihadis for a tone-deaf audience, but they sounded more like ventriloquists. One retired colonel I spoke to was a relative of a Taliban leader from Waziristan, Abdullah Massoud, who had earned both sympathy and reverence for his time in Guant?namo Bay. Massoud was captured fighting the Americans and the Northern Alliance and spent two years there, claiming to be a simple Afghan Talib. Upon his release, he made it home to Waziristan and resumed his war against the U.S. With his long hair, his prosthetic limb and impassioned speeches, he quickly became a charismatic inspiration to Waziristan?s youth.
Since 2001, some of Waziristan?s tribes have refused to hand over Qaeda members living among them. Under intense American pressure, Pakistan agreed for the first time in its history to invade the tribal areas. Hundreds of civilians and soldiers were killed. American helicopters were seen in the region, as were American spies. The militants (with some army accomplices) retaliated with two assassination attempts against Musharraf late in 2003. He struck back, but as the civilian casualties mounted and the military began to balk at killing Pakistanis, Musharraf agreed to a deal in the spring of 2004 whereby the militants would give up their guests in return for cash. Pakistani officers and the militants hugged and shed tears during a public reconciliation. But the militants did not relinquish their Al Qaeda guests, and they took advantage of the amnesty to execute tribal elders they said had helped the Pakistani military. The tribal structure in Waziristan was devastated, and the Taliban took to the streets to declare the Islamic emirate of Waziristan. Since Musharraf signed a truce with the militants last month, attacks launched from Waziristan into Afghanistan, according to NATO, have risen by 300 percent.
?Muslim governments are not able to face the Americans,? the retired colonel from Waziristan said, explaining the mujahedeen mind-set. ?If Muslim governments should stand up against duplicity and foreign hegemonic designs, and they don?t, who will? Someone has to stand up to defend the Muslim countries, and it?s this that gives the jihadis the courage and zeal to stand up to the worst atrocities. This is the core issue of the mujahedeen movement. You call it the war on terror. The mujahedeen call it jihad.? And so, essentially, did he.
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Part Five:
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One afternoon, in the midst of a monsoon, I sought out one of the founders of the pro-jihadi strategy, the retired general Mirza Aslam Beg. He lived in Rawalpindi, the military capital half an hour from Islamabad, in a brick and tile-roofed mansion with a basketball hoop, flowing greenery and Judy, his one-eyed cocker spaniel. The house was immaculate, with marble floors, rugs, fine china and porcelain on display behind glass and an amusing portrait of Aslam Beg as a young, Ray-Banned, pommaded officer. His mansion sits across the street from Musharraf?s.
Aslam Beg played a leading role in the military?s creation of ?asymmetrical assets,? jargon for the jihadis who have long been used by the military as proxies in Kashmir and Afghanistan. He was chief of the army staff from 1988 to 1991, while the Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan was selling the country?s nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Beg held talks with the Iranians about exchanging Iranian oil for Pakistani nuclear skill.
Aslam Beg likes to remind visitors that he was one of a group of army officers trained by the C.I.A. in the 1950?s as a ?stay-behind organization? that would melt into the population if ever the Soviet Union overran Pakistan. Those brigadiers and lieutenant colonels then trained and directed the Afghan jihadis.
In the 1980?s, ?the C.I.A. set up the largest support and administrative bases in Mohmand agency, Waziristan and Baluchistan,? Aslam Beg told me. ?These were the logistics bases for eight long years, and you can imagine the relations that developed. And then Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Saudis developed family relations with the local people.? The Taliban, he said, fell back after 2001 to these baselines. ?In 2003, when the U.S. attacked Iraq, a whole new dimension was added to the conflict. The foreign mujahedeen who?d fought in Afghanistan started moving back to Afghanistan and Iraq.? And the old Afghan jihadi leaders stopped by the mansion of their mentor, Aslam Beg, to tell him they were planning to wage war against the American occupiers.
As the rain outside turned to hail, banging against the windows, Aslam Beg ate some English sandwiches that had been wheeled in by a servant. ?As a believer,? he went on, ?I?ll tell you how I understand it. In the Holy Book there?s an injunction that the believer must reach out to defend the tyrannized. The words of God are, ?What restrains you from fighting for those helpless men, women and children who due to their weakness are being brutalized and are calling you to free them from atrocities being perpetuated on them.? This is a direct message, and it may not impact the hearts and minds of all believers. Maybe one in 10,000 will leave their home and go to the conflicts where Muslims are engaged in liberation movements, such as Chechnya, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir. Now it?s a global deterrent force.?
The Authentic Jihad
The old city of Lahore, with its broad boulevards and banyan-tree canopies, remains the cultural and intellectual heart of Pakistan. It is home to a small elite of journalists, editors, authors, painters, artists and businessmen. Najam Sethi, editor in chief of The Friday Times, and his wife, Jugnu Mohsin, the publisher, are popular fixtures among this crowd. Like so many of Pakistan?s intellectuals, they have had their share of run-ins with government security agents. For pushing the bounds of press freedom, Sethi was dragged from his bedroom during Nawaz Sharif?s reign, beaten, gagged and detained without charge. Musharraf, in his new autobiography, claims that Nawaz Sharif wanted him to court-martial Sethi for treason, an act that seemed ludicrous to him, and he refused.
I met him one afternoon at the newspaper?s offices as he was preparing his weekly editorial. He is a tall, affable man with smiling eyes and large glasses. And he got right down to business, providing an analysis of why Pakistan had decided to bring its ?assets? ? by which he meant the Taliban and Kashmiri jihadis ? off the shelf.
In the days following 9/11, when Musharraf gathered together major editors to tell them that he had no choice but to withdraw his support for the Taliban, Sethi raised the touchy issue of the other jihadis. He said that if Musharraf was abandoning the Taliban, he would have to abandon the sectarian jihadis (fighting the Shiites), the Kashmir jihadis, all of the jihadis, because they were all trained in mind by the same religious leaders and in body by the same Pakistani forces.
In January 2002, Musharraf gave an unusually long televised speech to the nation. He reminded the people that his campaign against extremism was initiated years before and not under American pressure. He vowed that Pakistan would no longer export jihadis to Kashmir, that he was again placing a ban on several jihadi organizations, that camps would be closed and that while the madrasas were mostly educating the poor, some were centers of extremist teaching and would be reformed. A month later, Musharraf was at the White House next to President Bush, who praised him for standing against terrorism.
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Sethi characterized Pakistani authorities as believing that the U.S. in Iraq ?will be a Vietnam.? He said: ?Afghanistan will be neither here nor there. So we cannot wrap up our assets. We must protect them.? The I.S.I. realized it could help deliver Al Qaeda to the U.S. while keeping the Taliban and the jihadis on the back burner. At the same time, Musharraf?s moderate advisers were telling him that holding on to those assets would eventually boomerang. And soon enough, the assets began to come after Musharraf ? while the people of Pakistan were turning against him for being pro-American. ?So going after jihadis who were protecting the Taliban came to a halt,? Sethi said.
Meanwhile the landscape next door in Afghanistan was changing. The warlords were back in action. The drug economy was surging. By 2003 and 2004, Musharraf?s men were becoming hysterical about what they saw as a growing Indian presence in Afghanistan, particularly the Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad, the Pashtun strongholds that Pakistan considered its own turf. Karzai was doing business with Indians and Americans and was no longer a Pashtun whom Pakistanis would want to do business with.
As Sethi spoke, I recalled a meeting I had with one of Kandahar?s prominent tribal leaders. He recounted a visit from a former Pakistani general who had been active in the I.S.I. The general invited Kandahar?s leaders to lunch and warned them not to let the Indians put a consulate in Kandahar and to remember who their real benefactors were. Today there is a consulate there, and Indian films and music are sweeping through the Pashtun lands. What is more, many Pakistanis believe India is backing the Baluch insurgency in Pakistan?s far south, clouding the prospects for the new, Chinese-built port in Gwadar. The port is Pakistan?s single largest investment in its economic future and has been attacked by Baluch rebels.
In many ways, Pakistani policy is already looking beyond both Karzai and the Americans; they believe it is prudent to imagine a future with neither. That future will be shaped by the past: the past with India, the past with the Soviet Union, the past with America. For Pakistan?s hard-liners, at least, the obvious choice was to take their assets off the shelf and restart the jihad.
A Difficult Choice
On the wall outside the Eid Ga madrasa, in Kuchlak, a parched town near Quetta, Afghan students and teachers were debating the merits of jihad. One boy had just fled an American assault on Day Chopan in Zabul Province. He had never been to Pakistan before. He was frenzied, in shock. As a student from Kandahar led the others in dusk prayer, a young boy whispered to me, ?I like America.? They were hardly a unified group. One young Helmandi told me, ?We want our traditions of Islam and Sharia, not your democracy,? while another argued for peace. Then the Helmandi asked, with genuine confusion: ?Why are Muslims being tortured everywhere in the world, and no one is there to stand up for them? But if you touch one Westerner, the sky is on your head??
Most madrasas in Pakistan are run by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, the religious-party alliance that has joined with Musharraf to keep the popular parties of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif from regaining power. The J.U.I. madrasas usually endorse jihad, although even here I met madrasa students who were against the war. They subscribed to a vision of jihad as a struggle for self-improvement and the improvement of society. Mawlawi Mohammadin, a cleric from Helmand, went so far as to tell me that these are the true roots of jihad, though he confessed that his is a lonely voice. He was afraid of everyone ? Taliban, Pakistani intelligence, even his pupils. ?If we start openly supporting Karzai, we could be killed by our own students,? he told me with nervous laughter. Only a month earlier, a Taliban official from Helmand who had reconciled with Karzai?s government was gunned down by assassins on a motorbike in Quetta.
Mohammadin said that it is now open season for jihad in Afghanistan under J.U.I. guidance. Government ministers were even attending funerals to praise Pakistani Pashtuns who had died fighting in Kandahar. He estimates that there are some 10,000 Taliban fighters in Baluchistan. Despite the intimidation, he says he feels that his mission is to steer his students away from war.
One of these was Mohamed Nader, who had just attended a cousin?s funeral and was wondering what it all meant. His cousin?s family was poor, and without their knowledge, he had gone to earn money first by harvesting poppies in Helmand and then by fighting for the Taliban. Finally he was killed. Among the biggest problems, Nader told me, was that the cohesion of the Afghan family has been shredded by decades of poverty and refugee life in Pakistan. In a typically strong Afghan family, young adults obey their parents, even asking for permission to go fight. But here, boys just run off.
Rahmatullah was one of those who had run off and returned. He was skinny and disheveled, having just faced heavy fighting in Kandahar. Though an Afghan, he had grown up in Baluchistan, near the border, in an area where he said 200 fighters were now living. The mullah at his madrasa told all the students that it was time for jihad. And the I.S.I. was paying cash. But his father was old and against the war; he pleaded with him to abandon fighting. So he sent Rahmatullah to his friend Mohammadin, hoping he might open another path for his son. Rahmatullah told me that he wasn?t sure yet which mullah he would listen to.
(Next week, Part 2: How U.S. and NATO forces have been battling the Taliban and fighting for hearts and minds.)
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A quiet salute to our Canadien brothers in arms.
OTTAWA - Sgt. Darcy Tedford's widow gently stroked her husband's beret and medals as he was laid to rest today at the national war cemetery.
Family, friends and comrades from the Royal Canadian Regiment gathered at the graveside under a grey sky to pay their last respects following a private funeral service.
With her two young daughters by her side, Charmaine Tedford was presented with her husband's beret, medals and the Canadian flag that had been draped across his coffin.
No family members or friends spoke at the burial, but Charmaine and daughter Kaeleigh touched the coffin in a final tearful farewell.
Tedford, 32, was killed in Afghanistan along with Pte. Blake Williamson on Oct. 14.
They were patrolling a road west of Kandahar when their unit was ambushed by Taliban insurgents, who fired a flurry of rocket-propelled grenades and small arms.
Several Canadian soldiers have died along the stretch of road, which is under construction in the Panjwaii district.
Tedford, based at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, Ontario., was remembered by friends serving overseas as a quietly confident soldier who had several deployments to his credit.
In an interview shortly after both men were killed, Capt. Ryan Carey said Tedford could be relied on for wise advice.
Forty-two Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan since 2002.
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AFGHANISTAN: Taliban fighters are planning attacks on civilians in Europe in retaliation for the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by a U.S.-led coalition, Taliban commander Mullah Amin said Oct. 23 on Sky television, Pakistani newspaper The News reported. Amin added that ordinary people in Europe are acceptable targets because they voted for their governments. He also said tactics used by Iraqi insurgents, such as suicide bombers, land mines and remote-detonated bombs, inspired the Taliban.
www.stratfor.com
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One of FBI's 'Most Wanted Terrorists' confirmed dead
From Henry Schuster
CNN
(CNN) -- An al Qaeda operative wanted in connection with the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings was killed in April in Pakistan, American officials have confirmed.
Pakistani officials had said that Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah was killed in North Waziristan during an airstrike by Pakistani forces near the border with Afghanistan.
DNA testing confirmed the Pakistani government's claim, U.S. officials said, and Atwah's name was removed from the FBI's list of Most Wanted Terrorists.
Atwah, 42, was born in Egypt. He was indicted in connection with al Qaeda's suicide bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
There was a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.
Atwah, who also went by the alias Abdel Rahman al-Muhajer, had been a member of al Qaeda since at least 1990 and provided explosives training in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan, according to his indictment.
The indictment also charged that Atwah had been part of an al Qaeda cell operating in Somalia in the early 1990s that provided training to Somali tribesmen who attacked U.S. forces in that country.
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The West is Running Out of Time in Afghanistan
10/17/2006 - By Michael Scheuer (from Terrorism Focus, October 17) - From all observables, the Taliban insurgency is spreading from its deeply rooted base in southern and southeastern Afghanistan to provinces in the west and east. In addition, several Islamist insurgent organizations active during the 1979-89 jihad against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan?the "old mujahideen"?have allied themselves with the Taliban. Among the more important and militarily powerful of these long-established groups are Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami and the forces of Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, which belong to the Hezb-e-Islami-Khalis organization. Historically, both groups have been able to deploy substantial forces in the strategically vital corridors from the Khyber Pass through Jalalabad to Kabul, and along the only major highway running from Kabul to the southern provinces. Prior to the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, the first of these organizations was hostile to the Taliban, while the second was at best neutral toward it (Asia Times, October 5).
Also noticeable in 2006 has been the strongly Afghan-centric nature of the insurgency. As in the jihad against the Red Army, the most important insurgent forces are made up of the Afghans themselves. Since Western leaders and the media focus so much attention on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, the Afghans' dominant role in the war is often lost sight of. While al-Qaeda fighters and other so-called foreign fighters are active in Afghanistan?London's al-Hayat reports that more and more Saudi men are going to fight there since the Taliban assumed the military initiative this year?they are important but secondary contributors to the war effort (al-Hayat, October 3). As in the 1980s, the Afghans publicly and correctly point out that the U.S.-led coalition is increasingly facing a "nation in arms." On this question, for example, Taliban spokesman Abdul-Hai Mutamen highlighted the always intense nationalism and xenophobia of his countrymen when he said that while Afghans and foreign fighters "have spiritual sympathy with each other...Our resistance is a pure Afghan resistance" (Pakistan Observer, October 8).
Another aspect of the Taliban's current agenda that is identical to the mujahideen's political tack in the 1980s is its definitive position that it will not participate in, or even negotiate with, President Karzai's government. In words familiar to those knowledgeable about the absolute intransigence of the Soviet-era mujahideen leaders, Taliban spokesman Mutamen recently explained that there would be no peace talks with Kabul because: "There is no independent government in Afghanistan now. The foreigners have established the current government. The occupying forces should first leave Afghanistan. We can then think of future peace talks...Our resistance, which has now spread throughout the country, is not for the sake of power or government. This is a very silly thought. We want to regain independence so our people can live under the system which they desire which is, of course, and Islamic government" (Afghan Islamic Press, October 7).
As much as the Taliban's improved military performance is an ill omen for Karzai's government and the U.S.-led coalition, three other factors greatly augment the progress that the Taliban is making on the battlefield:
Law-and-order: Western media reporting, newspapers published in Kabul, Herat and Kandahar, and statements by the Taliban show that crime rates are high in urban areas and that much of rural Afghanistan is plagued by bandits, warlords and narcotics traffickers. In other words, the law-and-order situation in most of the country is uncannily similar to the neatly anarchic environment that helped facilitate the Taliban's ascendancy in 1996. The failure of the Karzai government and its Western allies to deploy enough military forces to establish a reliable, country-wide law-and-order regime is the Taliban's most valuable non-military ally. Afghans invariably put the security of their families, businesses and farms above the implementation of elections and parliaments.
Pakistan and Waziristan: The Afghan government and some Western officials have condemned Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's peace deal with the Pashtun tribes in the country's Waziristan region as being intended to strengthen the Taliban. The reality, however, seems to be that Musharraf made the deal because his army's presence in the tribal lands had become unsustainable politically. In addition to suffering heavy casualties in fighting Pashtun tribes, the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Waziristan?heavier casualties than those sustained by the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan?the Pakistani army's "invasion" of the province smashed Islamabad's 50-year-old modus vivendi with the tribes to live-and-let-live and brought the area to the verge of civil war. In making peace, Musharraf did what he had to do by choosing to protect Pakistan's political stability and geographic integrity over continuing an armed intervention that threatened both and which would ultimately be feckless because of the U.S.-led coalition's failure to defeat the Taliban and control the Afghan countryside. There is no question that the Taliban is stronger because of the deal?if for no other reason than the safe haven it provided?but so is Pakistan's political stability, which was being undermined by the radicalizing impact that the army's incursion had on the country's powerful pro-Taliban and pro-al-Qaeda religious parties (Daily Times, October 3).
Time: The old adage that familiarity breeds contempt is no place on earth truer than in Afghanistan, and there it additionally always breeds armed resistance. In the Afghans' view, the U.S.-led coalition has occupied Afghanistan for five-plus years, has failed to deliver a more prosperous and safer society, has killed a large number of Afghan civilians and shows no sign of planning a near-term departure. Always short of patience in regard to foreigners running their affairs, most Afghans probably would concur with Taliban spokesman Mutamen's statement that "the people of Afghanistan...never accept foreign dominance...America has attacked Afghanistan without any reasonable plan or suggestions. The Americans, therefore, get nothing but the death of their soldiers in Afghanistan. We want NATO and other foreign troops to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible" (Afghan Islamic Press, October 7). Ominously, another Taliban leader, Mullah Mehmood Allah Haq Yar, claims that not only has the Pashtun-dominated Taliban's patience run out, but that the forces of the late Ahmed Shah Masood?heretofore backing Karzai?are beginning to decide that they did not defeat and evict Moscow only to be ruled by the West. In late spring 2005, Yar claims to have talked with Northern Alliance representatives who "condemned the foreign presence in the country, but insisted that the Taliban take the lead [in attacking it] and then they would follow suit." Yar claims that the Taliban's contacts with the Alliance commanders are continuing (Asia Times, October 5).
Overall, the increasing pace of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan suggests it is only a matter of time until the commanders of the U.S.-led coalition are faced with telling their political leaders that a decision must be made to either heavily reinforce coalition forces?it appears that more than the 120,000 men Moscow deployed to Afghanistan in the 1980s would be necessary?or begin preparations to withdraw from the country. If taken now, such a decision would be made in the context of polls showing popular opinion in Canada and Britain turning decidedly against continued participation in the Afghan war and media reports that France may begin to withdraw its special forces from Afghanistan next spring (Associated Press, October 15).
Michael Scheuer served as the Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is now a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation.
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MORNING INTELLIGENCE BRIEF
10.31.2006
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Geopolitical Diary: Claiming a Strike in Pakistan
A Pakistani seminary in Chingai, near the border with Afghanistan, was struck by missiles on Monday -- an attack that leveled the building and killed at least 80 people. A Pakistani source told ABC News that al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri was the target of the strike, but thus far only one known militant -- a local leader thought to have provided shelter to al-Zawahiri -- has been confirmed dead; most of those killed are thought to have been teachers and students from the madrassa.
There have been conflicting reports as to who carried out the airstrike: Authorities have barred journalists from entering the area, in Bajaur agency, of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), but eyewitnesses and residents have said the hit was carried out by U.S. forces using an unmanned Predator drone. Other reports suggest the strike came amid a joint operation by U.S. and Pakistani forces. And still other reports, the most curious of all, cited Pakistani officials who said the strike came from their own military forces.
It certainly is interesting that the seminary targeted in Monday's attack was just over a mile from the village of Damadola, the site of a U.S. airstrike that killed four senior al Qaeda operatives in January. (Al-Zawahiri was the chief target, but was not present when that attack occurred.) But that this second attempt on his life should come in such close proximity to the first, and within a matter of months, should not be surprising. Al-Zawahiri reportedly is married to a woman from the Mohmand tribe who lives with her father in the border area between Bajaur and Mohmand agencies, toward the northern end of the tribal badlands. Bajaur also borders the Dir and Malakand districts of the North-West Frontier Province -- which we long have believed to be the likely hiding place of al Qaeda leaders.
The notion that Pakistani forces would themselves have carried out the strike, however, does raise an eyebrow.
For one thing, Pakistani forces have not attempted targeted strikes against militants in this area in the past. Second, it would be highly unusual for Pakistani forces to carry out such an attack while the government is engaging in high-profile negotiations with leaders in the tribal badlands -- hoping they will prevent the area from being used by Islamist militants as a safe haven and launch-point for attacks, especially in Afghanistan. And of course, there are the eyewitness reports saying that three missiles were fired by a U.S. Predator, reportedly seen flying over the same area the previous night.
Though CIA-operated Predators have launched precision strikes using Hellfire missiles on at least two occasions, the actions of Pakistani forces against militant strongholds (which are widely dispersed through the region) have been limited to standard military assaults, lasting several days. Moreover, Stratfor has learned that Pakistani forces in the past have been reluctant to take part in attacks against their fellow countrymen, especially if there is a possibility of civilian casualties.
This, in fact, is one of the reasons the government opted to pursue negotiations with tribal leaders, hoping to minimize the need for a military option. Therefore, it is unlikely that Pakistani forces would even attack a seminary -- knowing it would house a number of teenaged religious students, in addition to any potential militants -- let alone level the place.
Moreover, statements by both U.S. President George W. Bush and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in September made it clear that Musharraf's government has been under intense pressure to permit U.S. forces to operate on Pakistani soil.
Musharraf assigned the governor of the North-West Frontier Province, retired Lt. Gen. Ali Jan Muhammad Orakzai, the task of forging agreements with tribal maliks, seeking to counter the rise of Pashtun and other transnational jihadists. The deal made with the tribal leaders in North Waziristan has been advanced by Islamabad as a model to be replicated not only in other parts of FATA, but in Afghanistan as well. Musharraf and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, also have agreed for each country to host loya jirgas, hoping to undermine support for the jihadist cause.
Though Washington publicly has expressed support for these initiatives, the administration remains unsatisfied. In fact, Central Command chief Gen. Johan Abizaid, who meets often with Pakistani military leaders, has been skeptical of the tribal deal. The Washington Times quoted him on Oct. 27 as saying, "I did talk to President Musharraf about it. I told him I was concerned about it ... The long run is, you've got to go forward in the tribal areas with economic, political and military solutions that the tribes cooperate with. But I'm very, very skeptical about this notion that people that have been harbored in the tribal areas are no longer going to be harbored. I'll believe that when I see it."
From all appearances, Monday's airstrike was either a U.S. operation or one that involved Pakistani forces at a minimal level. The curious question is why Pakistan would claim -- as some reports had it -- that the operation was carried out by its own military forces instead.
To answer that, it must be recalled that -- in addition to pursuing political deals in hopes of quashing support for transnational militants -- Musharraf also has agreed that U.S. forces can carry out their own operations, as intelligence dictates. And that means allowing the Americans to act without regard for Islamabad's timetable. Should Pakistani citizens be killed in those operations, claims of responsibility by the government at least help to counter perceptions that Islamabad no longer has any say in the matter.
From Musharraf's standpoint, the notion that Pakistani forces carried out a strike against their fellow citizens is somewhat less damaging than the perception that he has permitted infringements of national sovereignty. The problem, of course, is that the public already harbors both views, to varying degrees -- and the strongest card Musharraf has to play in this matter represents only the lesser of two evils.
www.stratfor.com
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Pakistan: Attacks and Retaliation in the NWFP
Summary
A suicide bombing killed more than 42 soldiers at a Pakistani army training base Nov. 8 in the town of Dargai, in the country's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). This followed a Nov. 7 attack in which tribal militants fired rockets during NWFP Gov. Ali Mohammed Jan Orakzai's visit to the town of Wana, in the tribal belt. These attacks are retaliation for the Pakistani military's Oct. 30 strike against a religious school in the Bajaur area, which the army asserted was being used as a militant training facility. The Pakistani military will almost certainly respond aggressively to such a blatant provocation, especially considering the army's precedent for responding to militant attacks. Such a response will further destabilize the country's restive northwest.
Analysis
More than 42 Pakistani soldiers died in a Nov. 8 suicide bombing attack at an army training base in Dargai, a town in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). On the previous day, during NWFP Gov. Ali Mohammed Jan Orakzai's visit to the town of Wana -- the capital of South Waziristan, in the country's northwestern tribal areas -- tribal militants fired two rockets during the assembly and three more after the delegation had left the area. Security forces responded by firing mortar shells at the hills southeast of Wana.
It is hard to conclude that these attacks were anything other than retaliation for the Pakistani army's Oct. 30 strike against a madrassa in the Bajaur area. The army base targeted Nov. 8 is located about 30 miles southeast of the site of the Oct. 30 military strike. The town of Dargai is a stronghold of the banned pro-Taliban movement Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-Mohammadi, and sentiment ran strongly against Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf there even before the madrassa attack. Furthermore, Dargai is located in the Malakand tribal region, a possible hideout for al Qaeda's top leaders.
Tribesmen had publicly promised to retaliate against the madrassa attack, so the Nov. 8 suicide bombing attack was hardly a surprise, even if the scale and audacity of the attack were substantial. The Pakistani military had shown a willingness to talk with the militants and strike a deal, but the deadly attack against the military base destroyed any chances for diplomacy between the two parties by practically guaranteeing a bloody retaliation.
Militant jihadists, who are very much in league with tribal pro-Taliban forces in Pakistan's restive northwest, are attempting to make it clear to Pakistan's security establishment that their strength has yet to be sapped. This is a major escalation on the militants' part, in that they now are striking at the country's top institution -- the military, whose leaders they see as agents of the United States. The use of suicide bombers draws comparisons with militant tactics in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. Furthermore, the al Qaeda-linked jihadists sense that Musharraf's domestic standing -- especially within the military -- has deteriorated and they are exploiting that deterioration as a window of opportunity, narrow though it is.
However, the Pakistani army will not allow the Nov. 8 attack to go unpunished. The army thinks of itself as the steward of the nation and cannot accept an attack that demonstrates its vulnerability. The military has never been shy about hitting back when it is threatened or under attack; for example, the upswing in military operations in Balochistan in January followed the December 2005 attack against the helicopter of the army's Frontier Corps inspector-general, Maj. Gen. Shujaat Zamir Dar. The military also has conducted largely retributive operations in the wake of assassination attempts against Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Musharraf's military deputy, Gen. Ahsan Saleem Hayat.
Furthermore, considering that the United States was likely heavily involved in the Oct. 30 strike, it is highly possible that militants will seek to attack U.S. interests in Pakistan. Vulnerable targets include U.S. diplomats' residences, consulates in Lahore or Peshawar (as opposed to the more heavily guarded Karachi consulate) and five-star hotels frequented by Western nationals.
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When we think of brave, thoughful and patriotic reporters, Michael Yon is amongst the first we should think of. Here's his most recent entry. He says if we don't change what we are doing in Afg-Pak, we are going to lose.
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/the-perfect-evil-2.htm
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Michael Yon is the MAN! If you are going to read anyone, read him.
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SPIEGEL ONLINE - November 24, 2006, 05:40 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,450605,00.html
PAKISTAN
Headquarters of the Taliban
By Susanne Koelbl
The strongholds of the Taliban lie in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
To understand the war in Afghanistan, one must go to Pakistan. There, in Quetta, the leaders of the Taliban find safe harbor. Afghan President Hamid Karzai claims Taliban leader Mullah Omar is living there.
Quetta is located in western Pakistan. It is the capital of Balochistan, the largest and poorest of the Pakistani provinces. Somewhat like a lunar outpost, the 800,000-resident city is situated at an altitude of nearly 1,700 meters between the sand-brown peaks of Chiltan, Takatoo, Mordar and Zarghun. Quetta originally means "fort," and it has always been just that: a fortress, where opposing forces are battling for regional hegemony.
Quetta is considered the center of terror and resistance against the Americans and their allies -- the "occupiers" of Afghanistan. In the backrooms of radical parties and in the white-washed mosques whose towers spiral decoratively skywards, the elite of the holy warriors meet regularly to organize their comeback. Right out in the open streets -- between the market stalls with pomegranates and dates, the currency exchanges and the vats where meat and beans steam on open fires -- the Taliban recruit the holy warriors who will blow themselves up as suicide bombers in Afghanistan.
Quetta is also home to the "Command and Staff College," the elite school of the Pakistani military and the headquarters of the Frontier Corps of Balochistan with some 40,000 men. Both embody the power of the Pakistani General President Pervez Musharraf, America's most important regional ally in the war on terror.
What may seem like a contradiction -- the co-existence of extremists with the Pakistani government in the same place -- is perhaps best explained by a visit to the Shaldara Koran School in the Pashtunabad slum. Roughly 700 children of penniless parents receive a free religious education here, most of the time by memorizing the Koran in didactic lessons. Western intelligence services consider the madrassa to be one of the secret headquarters of the Taliban. Indeed, school director Maulana Noor Mohammed openly supports the jihad in Afghanistan.
His office is situated along a dusty downtown alley, a room in a narrow courtyard. The Sharia teacher is sitting bare-footed and cross-legged on a floor pillow; he is wearing white harem pants and a white shirt, his turban is as white as his long beard. For over 30 years, Noor Mohammed has been in the business of holy war. He wants to free Afghanistan of the "infidels" and erect a theocracy there. Then the movement will expand to neighboring countries "and finally to the whole world."
A servant brings a tin pitcher with green tea and sets down small porcelain bowls on the worn velour rug. An old-fashioned landline telephone sits on the floor. Men sneak in silently, they kiss Noor Mohammed's hands.
Islamic agitators like Maulana Noor Mohammed are not prosecuted in Quetta, as the Afghan and American governments have been demanding for months. On the contrary: He is a respected member of the community. As the Balochistani leader of the radical Islamic party Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islam he belongs to a politically influential alliance of Islamists, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). When necessary, the MMA mobilizes people on the street against the government and threatens to destabilize the country, which is, after all, a nuclear power.
Mullah Dadullah, 40, the military head of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan was a former student of Noor Mohammed. He lost a leg in the war and organizes terrorist attacks. He deals with "traitors" who cooperate with the Afghan government by chopping off their heads, live on camera. "I am proud of him," says Noor Mohammed.
Under massive pressure from the United States, President Musharraf is now taking action against the Taliban. He ordered the bombing of a Koran school -- allegedly a "terror camp with terrorist activities" and many foreigners -- in the village Chingai on the Afghan border in the tribal region of Bajaur. Among the 80-plus casualties was the school's director, Maulana Liaqatullah Hussain, without a doubt a supporter of the extremists. But the victims also included students and innocent civilians.
After that, 15,000 people protested against Musharraf and the meddling of the US in their affairs, while leading Islamists swore revenge. Since then, the atmosphere in the tribal area has been fervid. "Now more than ever, Bajaur could become Talibanized, as could other tribal areas," says a lawyer who traveled through the region to investigate the incident with colleagues.
Not long ago, the British commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, David Richards, paid a visit to President Musharraf in Islamabad. Previously, secret intelligence had trickled through: Videos and satellite images show training camps in Pakistan and document how terrorists, with the help of Pakistani security officials, slip through the border into Afghanistan unhindered. Recently imprisoned Taliban fighters testified that they were trained by agents of the Pakistani secret service Inter-Services Intelligence. The message was that the Pakistani president has to prove which side he supports.
Western allies have often demanded this of Musharraf, not always successfully. And the Pakistani president probably has no other choice but to play a double game. If he were to align himself fully with one side -- say, with the West -- then the jihadists could turn against him, plunging Pakistan into a wave of terror. This would also not be in the interest of the West.
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NATO and the Taliban
November 28, 2006; Page A14
The NATO forces battling resurgent Taliban in southern Afghanistan call to mind the Normandy landing. Once again, mostly Canadian, British and American troops are fighting and dying. Most of the rest of Europe is absent from the fight, a fact sure to be discussed at the NATO summit this week.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is desperately seeking an additional 2,500 troops to suppress the Taliban. But with a few exceptions, such as the Dutch and Danes, most NATO members prefer the by now traditional division of labor: The Anglo-Saxons do the fighting while the others compete for popularity as armed aid workers.
The cover of last week's Der Spiegel magazine neatly captured the problem. "Germans Must Learn to Kill" read the headline above a picture of a German soldier in Afghanistan. The magazine wasn't advocating a more muscular German army. Rather, it was citing what American officials had told Karsten Voigt, Berlin's coordinator for U.S.-German relations.
The 2,900 German troops in Afghanistan are concentrated in the relatively safe north, focusing on reconstruction. France may withdraw its 200 special forces and opposes American plans for NATO to establish stronger links with like-minded countries outside the alliance. Most NATO members, including Italy, France and Spain, have placed absurd restrictions on their troops in Afghanistan. Some can operate only in certain (read: calm) regions; others won't fight in winter. These limits partly reflect the insufficient training and equipment of many European armies. While the U.S. spends about 4% of GDP on defense, the European average is half that.
Whatever the reason, this resistance to committing the troops and funds necessary to defeat the Taliban hardly matches the rhetorical commitment to the cause. The same NATO partners that refuse to provide adequate resources declare that losing Afghanistan is not an option. And right they are. If the Taliban are allowed to re-establish Afghanistan as global jihad's international headquarters, Europe would probably suffer more than the U.S. or Canada. The terrorists are opportunistic killers, attacking where there is the least resistance. Since September 11, they have failed to carry out another attack on U.S. soil. Scores have died in bomb attacks in Europe.
Afghanistan is both a test case for the West's resolve in the fight against Islamic terror and portent for the future of NATO. It is supposedly the "good" war, the multilateral war, the war that even the United Nations approved. If NATO can't muster the forces to defeat the remnants of al Qaeda's original state sponsor, what is it good for?
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**I wish someone would explain to them that "jihad" is an internal struggle against sin.**
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=500838&ObjectID=10413099
Disembowelled and murdered for teaching girls
Thursday November 30, 2006
By Kim Sengupta
GHAZNI - The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.
The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely.
But his life was over.
He was partly disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes. The remains were put on display as a warning to others against defying Taleban orders to stop educating girls.
Halim is one of four teachers killed in rapid succession by the Islamists at Ghazni, a strategic point on the routes from Kabul to the south and east which has become the scene of fierce clashes between the Taleban and United States and Afghan forces.
The day we arrived an Afghan policeman and eight insurgents died during an ambush in an outlying village. Rockets were found, primed to be fired into Ghazni city during a visit by the American ambassador a few days previously. But, as in the rest of Afghanistan, it is the civilians who are bearing the brunt of this murderous conflict.
At the village of Qara Bagh, Halim's family is distraught and terrified. His cousin, Ahmed Gul, shook his head. "They killed him like an animal. No, no. We do not kill animals like that. They took away a father and a husband, they had no pity. We are all very worried. Please go now, you see those men standing over there? They are watching. It is dangerous for you, and for us."
Fatima Mustaq, the director of education at Ghazni, has had repeated death threats, the notorious 'night letters'. Her gender, as well as her refusal to send girls home from school, has made her a hate figure for Islamist zealots. "I think they killed him that way to frighten us, otherwise why make a man suffer so much? Mohammed Halim and his family were good friends of ours and we are very, very upset by what has happened. He came to me when the threats first began and asked what he should do. I told him to move somewhere safe. I think he was trying to arrange that when they came and took him."
The threats against Mushtaq also extend to her husband Sayyid Abdul and their eight children. "When the first letters arrived, I tried to hide them from my husband. But then he found the next few. He said we must stand together. We talked, and we decided that we must tell the children, so that they can be prepared. But it is not a good way for them to grow up."
During the Taleban's rule she and her sister ran secret schools for girls at their home. "They found out and raided us. We managed to persuade them that we were only teaching the Koran. But they spied and found out we were teaching algebra. So they came and beat us. Can you imagine, beating someone for teaching algebra."
- INDEPENDENT
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**I wish someone would explain to them that "jihad" is an internal struggle against sin.**
I read an interesting article just recently about the situation in Afghanistan. There was a quite well-stated comment from an Afghan, saying that the Taliban are only muslims because its the only thing in their miserable life that promises them glory in death - they have nothing else but war. Their funding by drugs is in islamic terms forbidden, it's dirty money . Therefore there are many radical muslims, even Shiites in Iraq and Pakistan, which even though being radical, consider the Taliban to be unworthy of Islam. Interesting notion.
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It depends on who is doing the interpreting, there are those who find theological justification in using drugs to fund the jihad.
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Today's NY Times
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 29 — After a series of bruising battles between British troops and Taliban fighters, the Afghan government struck a peace deal with tribal elders in Helmand Province, arranging for a cease-fire and the withdrawal of both sides from one southern district. A month later, the ripples are still being felt in the capital and beyond.
The New York Times
The elders in the Musa Qala district brokered a local peace pact.
The accord, reached with virtually no public consultation and mediated by the local governor, has brought some welcome peace for residents of the district, Musa Qala, and a reprieve for British troops, who had been under siege by the Taliban in a compound there for three months.
But it has sharply divided former government officials, legislators and ordinary Afghans.
Some say the agreement points the way forward in bringing peace to war-torn parts of the country. Others warn that it sets a dangerous precedent and represents a capitulation to the Taliban and a potential reversal of five years of American policy to build a strong central government. They say the accord gives up too much power to local leaders, who initiated it and are helping to enforce it.
“The Musa Qala project has sent two messages: one, recognition for the enemy, and two, military defeat,” said Mustafa Qazemi, a member of Afghanistan’s Parliament and a former resistance fighter with the Northern Alliance, which fought the Taliban for seven years.
“This is a model for the destruction of the country,” he said, “and it is just a defeat for NATO, just a defeat.”
As part of the deal, the district has been allowed to choose its own officials and police officers, something one member of Parliament warned would open a Pandora’s box as more districts clamored for the right to do the same.
Some compare the deal to agreements that Pakistan has struck with leaders in its tribal areas along the Afghan border, which have given those territories more autonomy and, critics say, empowered the Taliban who have taken sanctuary there and allowed them to regroup.
“It is the calm before the storm,” one senior Afghan military officer said of the accord.
Even President Hamid Karzai, who sanctioned the deal, has admitted to mixed feelings. “There are some suspicions in society about this,” he said in a recent radio interview with Radio Free Europe.
“I trust everything these elders say,” Mr. Karzai said, but he added that two recent episodes in the area — of killing and intimidation — gave pause and needed investigation.
For their part, foreign military officials and diplomats expressed cautious optimism, saying the accord had at least opened a debate over the virtues of such deals and time is needed to see if it will work. “If it works, and so far it appears to work, it could be a pointer to similar understandings elsewhere,” said one diplomat, who would speak on the topic only if not identified.
The governor of Helmand, Mohammad Daud, brokered the deal and defended it strongly as a vital exercise to unite the Pashtun tribes in the area and strengthen their leaders so they could reject the Taliban militants.
Appointed at the beginning of the year, Mr. Daud has struggled to win over the people and control the lawlessness of his province, which is the largest opium-producing region as well as a Taliban stronghold.
Some 5,000 British soldiers deployed in the province this year as part of an expanding NATO presence have come under repeated attack. Civilians have suffered scores of casualties across the south as NATO troops have often resorted to airstrikes, even on residential areas, to defeat the insurgents.
It was the civilians of Musa Qala who made the first bid for peace, Mr. Daud explained.
“They made a council of elders and came to us saying, ‘We want to make the Taliban leave Musa Qala,’ ” he said in a telephone interview from the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. “At first we did not accept their request, and we waited to see how strong the elders were.”
But the governor and the British forces soon demanded a cease-fire, and when it held for more than a month, they negotiated a withdrawal of British troops from the district, as well as the Afghan police who had been fighting alongside them. The Taliban then also withdrew.
Eventually the governor agreed on a 15-point accord with the elders, who pledged to support the government and the Afghan flag, keep schools open, allow development and reconstruction, and work to ensure the security and stability of the region. That included trying to limit the arming of people who do not belong to the government, namely the Taliban insurgents.
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They drew up a list of local candidates for the posts of district chief and police chief, from which the governor appointed the new officials. They also chose 60 local people to serve as police officers in the district, sending the first 20 to the provincial capital for 20 days of basic training, according to provincial officials.
“Musa Qala is the way to do it,” Mr. Seraj said. “Sixty days since the agreement, and there has not been a shot fired.”
The agreement has been welcomed by residents of Musa Qala, who said in interviews by telephone or in neighboring Kandahar Province that people were rebuilding their houses and shops and planting winter crops, including the ubiquitous poppy, the source of opium.
The onset of the lucrative poppy planting season may have been one of the incentives behind their desire for peace, diplomats and government officials admitted.
Elders and residents of the area say the accord has brought calm, at least for now. “There is no Taliban authority there,” said Haji Shah Agha, 55, who led 50 members of the Musa Qala elders’ council to Kabul recently to counter criticism that the district was in the hands of the Taliban.
“The Taliban stopped fighting because we convinced them that fighting would not be to our benefit,” he said. “We told the Taliban, ‘Fighting will kill our women and children, and they are your women and children as well.’ ”
What the Taliban gained was the withdrawal of the British forces without having to risk further fighting. Meantime, the Taliban presence remains strong in the province, so much so that road travel to Musa Qala for a foreign journalist is not advised by United Nations security officials. While residents are happy with the peace, they do not deny that the militants who were fighting British forces all summer have neither disbanded nor been disarmed.
According to a local shopkeeper, Haji Bismillah, 40, who owns a pharmacy in the center of Musa Qala, the Taliban have pulled back to their villages and often come into town, but without their weapons.
“The Taliban are not allowed to enter the bazaar with their weapons,” he said in a telephone interview. “If they resist with guns, the tribal elders will disarm them,” he said.
He said the elders had temporarily given the Taliban “some kind of permission to arrest thieves and drug addicts and put them in their own prison,” since the elders did not yet have a police force of their own.
The district’s newly appointed police chief, Haji Malang, said the Taliban and the police had agreed not to encroach on each other’s territory. “They have their place which we cannot enter, and we have our place and they must not come in,” he said in a telephone interview this week.
Some residents said the deal would benefit the Taliban. “This is a very good chance for the Taliban,” said Abdul Bari, 33, a farmer who accompanied a sick relative to a hospital in neighboring Kandahar province.
“The people now view the Taliban as a force, since without the Taliban, the government could not bring peace in the regions.” he said. “It is not sure how this agreement will work, but maybe the Taliban will get more strength and then move against the elders.”
Opponents of the agreement warned that the elders were merely doing the bidding of the Taliban and would never be strong enough to face down Taliban commanders.
“The Taliban reappeared by the power of the gun, and the only way to defeat them is fighting, not dealing,” said Haji Aadil Khan, 47, a former police chief from Gereshk, another district of Helmand.
One event that has alarmed all sides was the killing and beheading of Haji Ahmad Shah, the former chief of a neighboring district, who returned to his home after the agreement was signed. Beheading is a tactic favored by some Taliban groups, and his friends say it is a clear sign that the Taliban are in control of the area. Elders of Musa Qala said that Mr. Shah had personal enemies and that they were behind the killing.
The governor, Mr. Daud, and the elders said a number of the opponents to the agreement were former militia leaders who did not want peace. “The people of Musa Qala took a step for peace with this agreement,” said the chief elder, Haji Shah Agha. “The Taliban are sitting calmly in their houses.”
Another elder, Amini, who uses only one name, said: “For four months we had fighting in Musa Qala and now we have peace. What is wrong with it, if we have peace?”
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Stratfor: 12/5/06
AFGHANISTAN: British marines withdrew after attacking a Taliban-held valley in southern Afghanistan when artillery fire and airstrikes failed to stop a Taliban counterattack. Resistance was expected, but the British force did not anticipate its strength, Reuters reported, citing British Maj. Andy Plewes. He added that there were not enough coalition troops in the area to hold it completely.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/world/asia/11pakistan.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
THE BORDER Pakistan has a military base in South Waziristan, an unruly region on the Afghan border that is dominated by local tribes. But one sign of how limited the Pakistani government’s reach is here is that soldiers on a United States base nearby say they routinely see Taliban fighters cross the mountains at night.
By CARLOTTA GALL and ISMAIL KHAN
Published: December 11, 2006
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Islamic militants are using a recent peace deal with the government to consolidate their hold in northern Pakistan, vastly expanding their training of suicide bombers and other recruits and fortifying alliances with Al Qaeda and foreign fighters, diplomats and intelligence officials from several nations say. The result, they say, is virtually a Taliban mini-state.
The militants, the officials say, are openly flouting the terms of the September accord in North Waziristan, under which they agreed to end cross-border help for the Taliban insurgency that revived in Afghanistan with new force this year.
The area is becoming a magnet for an influx of foreign fighters, who not only challenge government authority in the area, but are even wresting control from local tribes and spreading their influence to neighboring areas, according to several American and NATO officials and Pakistani and Afghan intelligence officials.
This year more than 100 local leaders, government sympathizers or accused “American spies” have been killed, several of them in beheadings, as the militants have used a reign of terror to impose what President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan calls a creeping “Talibanization.” Last year, at least 100 others were also killed.
While the tribes once offered refuge to the militants when they retreated to the area in 2002 after the American invasion of Afghanistan, that welcome is waning as the killings have generated new tensions and added to the region’s volatility.
“They are taking territory,” said one Western ambassador in Pakistan. “They are becoming much more aggressive in Pakistan.”
“It is the lesson from Afghanistan in the ’90s,” he added. “Ungoverned spaces are a problem. The whole tribal area is a problem.”
The links among the various groups date to the 1980s, when Arabs, Pakistanis and other Muslims joined Afghans in their fight to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, using a network of training camps and religious schools set up by the Pakistani intelligence agency and financed by the C.I.A. and Saudi Arabia.
The training continued with Pakistani and Qaeda support through the 1990s, and then moved into Afghanistan under the Taliban. It was during this time that Pakistanis became drawn into militancy in big numbers, fighting alongside the Taliban and hundreds of foreign fighters against the northern tribes of Afghanistan. Today the history of the region has come full circle.
Since retreating from Afghanistan in 2002 under American military attacks, the Taliban and foreign fighters have again been using the tribal areas to organize themselves — now training their sights on the 40,000 American and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
After failing to gain control of the areas in military campaigns, the government cut peace deals in South Waziristan in 2004 and 2005, and then in North Waziristan on Sept. 5. Since the September accord, NATO officials say cross-border attacks by Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and their foreign allies have increased.
In recent weeks, Pakistani intelligence officials said the number of foreign fighters in the tribal areas was far higher than the official estimate of 500, perhaps as high as 2,000 today.
These fighters include Afghans and seasoned Taliban leaders, Uzbek and other Central Asian militants, and what intelligence officials estimate to be 80 to 90 Arab terrorist operatives and fugitives, possibly including the Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri.
The tightening web of alliances among these groups in a remote, mountainous area increasingly beyond state authority is potentially disastrous for efforts to combat terrorism as far away as Europe and the United States, intelligence officials warn.
They and Western diplomats say it also portends an even bloodier year for Afghanistan in 2007, with the winter expected to serve as what one official described as a “breeding season” to multiply ranks.
“I expect next year to be quite bloody,” the United States ambassador in Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann, said in a recent interview. “My sense is the Taliban wants to come back and fight. I don’t expect the Taliban to win, but everyone needs to understand that we are in for a fight.”
Foreign Influence
One of the clearest measures of the dangers of this local cross-fertilization is the suicide bombings. Diplomats with knowledge of the area’s Pashtun tribes say they have little doubt the tactic emerged from the influence of Al Qaeda, since such attacks were unknown in Pakistan or Afghanistan before 2001.
This year suicide attacks have become a regular feature of the Afghan war and have also appeared for the first time in Pakistan, including two in this frontier province in recent weeks, indicating a growing threat to Pakistan’s security.
In recent weeks, Afghan officials say they have uncovered alarming signs of large-scale indoctrination and preparation of suicide bombers in the tribal areas, and the Pakistani minister of the interior, Aftab Khan Sherpao, publicly acknowledged for the first time that training of suicide bombers was occurring in the tribal areas.
The Afghan intelligence service said last week in a statement that it had captured an Afghan suicide bomber wearing a vest filled with explosives. The man reportedly said he had been given the task by the head of a religious school in the Pakistani tribal region of Bajaur, and that 500 to 600 students there were being prepared to fight jihad and be suicide bombers.
The bomber said that the former head of Pakistani intelligence, Gen. Hamid Gul, was financing and supporting the project, according to the statement, though the claim is impossible to verify. Pakistani intelligence agencies have long nurtured militants in the tribal areas to pressure the rival government in Afghanistan, though the government claims to have ceased its support.
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December 11, 2006
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So numerous are the recruits that a tribal leader in southern Afghanistan, who did not want to be named because of the threat of suicide bombers, relayed an account of how one would-be suicide bomber was sent home and told to wait his turn because there were many in line ahead of him.
The Taliban retreated to Pakistan after American forces drove them out of Afghanistan. They now train fighters in camps across the lawless region.
American military officials say they believe much of the training in Waziristan is taking place under the aegis of men like Jalaluddin Haqqani, once one of the most formidable commanders of the anti-Soviet mujahedeen forces who joined the Taliban in the 1990s.
He has had a close relationship with Arab fighters since the 1980s, when Waziristan was his rear base for fighting the Soviet occupation. Arab fighters had joined him there in the struggle, among them Mr. bin Laden.
Mr. Haqqani later became the Taliban’s minister of tribal affairs and was the main protector for the foreign fighters on their exodus from Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. He and his son, Sirajuddin Haqqani, remain the most important local partners for Al Qaeda in Waziristan.
Mr. Haqqani bases himself in North Waziristan and has a host of other Taliban and foreign commanders, in particular Uzbeks, who are loyal to him, United States military officials say.
Money continues to flow in from religious supporters at home and in the Persian Gulf, as well as from a range of illicit activities like a lucrative opium trade, smuggling and even kidnapping, said diplomats, United Nations analysts and local journalists.
“There are clearly very substantial training facilities that are still operating in Waziristan, both north and south, and other parts of FATA and Baluchistan,” said a diplomat in Kabul, referring to the region by the acronym for its formal name, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
“Even more worrying is the continued presence of the Taliban and Haqqani leadership networks,” the diplomat said, dismayed at what he characterized as Pakistani passivity in breaking up the networks.
“They haven’t been addressed at all on the Pakistani side,” he added. “They haven’t been pursued.”
The diplomat also singled out Saddique Noor, a Pakistani militant commander in his mid-40s who he said was training suicide bombers in Waziristan and sending them into Afghanistan. Mr. Noor fought in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban in the 1990s and is a determined opponent of the American and NATO presence in Afghanistan.
Another commander, Beitullah Mehsud, about 40 and also from the region, is now probably the strongest Pakistani Taliban commander and may also be dispatching suicide bombers. He also fought in Afghanistan under the Taliban and claims to have 15,000 fighters under him now.
Both men are loyal to Mr. Haqqani, whom Western diplomats consider one of the most dangerous Taliban commanders because of his links to Al Qaeda and his strong local standing.
The other, for the same reason, is Mullah Dadullah, a ruthless Taliban commander from southern Afghanistan, who has emerged as the main figure in the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban.
The one-legged Dadullah — he lost a leg in fighting — has a flamboyant if cruel reputation. He narrowly escaped capture in northern Afghanistan in 2001, often gives boastful interviews to news agencies, and is known to have personally ordered the killings of aid workers. His latest announcement, made in a phone call to Reuters, was that the Taliban had infiltrated suicide bombers into every Afghan city.
He is widely thought to be based in or around the southern Pakistani town of Quetta but is reported to be constantly on the move. He visited various areas of southern Afghanistan this year and has traveled to Waziristan repeatedly, in particular as the tribes of North Waziristan negotiated their Sept. 5 peace deal with the government, which he sanctioned, according to local reporters and intelligence officials.
Push for Order
The increasingly urgent question for Pakistani, Afghan, American and NATO officials is what can be done to bring the region under control. The Pakistani government’s latest attempt was the Sept. 5 peace accord in North Waziristan.
Under the deal, both the government and militants agreed to cease attacks, and the militants agreed to end cross-border help for the Afghan insurgency, the killings of tribal leaders and accused government sympathizers, and to cease the “Talibanization” of the area.
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Taliban commanders sanctioned the deals, arguing that the militants should concentrate their efforts on the foreign armies in Afghanistan and not waste their energies on clashing with the Pakistani military, journalists working in Waziristan say.
Critics say that the agreement is fatally flawed since it lacks any means of enforcement, and that it has actually empowered the militants. In a report to be released on Dec. 11, the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization, brands it as a policy of appeasement.
The government has taken down checkpoints, released detainees, returned confiscated weapons and vehicles and issued an amnesty. But the militants have increased their activities, benefiting from the truce with the Pakistani military, the groups said.
“From the start the agreement was not good because there are too many concessions and no clauses that are binding,” said Brig. Mahmood Shah, who served as secretary of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas until 2005. “This agreement is not going to work, and if it is working, it is working against the government interest.”
Afrasiab Khattak, a local politician and spokesman for the Awami National Party in Peshawar, also criticized the agreement. The militants rather than the traditional tribal leaders have the power now, he said.
“They have imposed a new elite in Waziristan,” he said. “More than 200 tribal chiefs have been killed, and not a single culprit brought to justice.”
Still, Javed Iqbal, the newly appointed Pakistani secretary of the tribal areas, defended the North Waziristan accord as an effort to return to the traditional way of running the tribal areas, through the tribal chiefs. That system, employed by the British and Pakistani rulers alike, was eroded during the military campaigns of the last few years.
“We have tried the coercive tactic, we did not achieve much,” he said in an interview in Peshawar. “So what do you do? Engage.”
He said the government had let down the tribal elders in Waziristan who had wanted dialogue with the government, but were murdered one after another by the militants. But the big turnout of some 500 to 600 tribal elders at a meeting in Miramshah in North Waziristan in November was encouraging, he said, and showed that the tribes wanted to engage. “We are back in business,” he said.
Loss of Control
Some Pakistani officials admit they have made a serious mistake in allowing the militants so much leeway, but only if they will not be quoted publicly.
Afghan and Pakistani Taliban leadership networks run training camps in various parts of the 500-mile length of the tribal areas, from Baluchistan in the south to the hub of North and South Waziristan, and farther north to Bajaur, said a Western diplomat in Kabul.
A diplomat who visited Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, said the government had almost no control over either of the Waziristans.
“They are absolutely not running the show in North Waziristan, and it runs the risk of becoming like South Waziristan,” he said. “In South Waziristan the government does not even pretend to have a remit that runs outside of its compounds.”
The fundamentalists’ influence is seeping outward, with propaganda being spread on private radio stations, and through a widening network of religious schools and the distribution of CDs and DVDs. It can now be felt in neighboring tribal departments and the settled areas of the North-West Frontier Province. In recent months, Pakistani newspapers have reported incidents of music and barber shops being closed, television sets burned and girls’ schools threatened.
The militants are more powerful than the military and the local tribal police, kill with impunity and shield criminals and fugitives. Local journalists say people blame the militants for a rising tide of kidnappings, killings, robberies and even rapes.
The brutality of some foreign militants has led to rising discontent among their Pakistani hosts, many of whom are also armed and militant, making the region increasingly volatile and uncontrollable.
“Initially, it was sympathy,” one Pakistani intelligence official said. “Then came the money, but it was soon followed by fear. Now, fear is overriding the other two factors, sympathy and money.”
For now, however, the Taliban commanders and the Pakistani militants under them remain unswervingly loyal to jihad in Afghanistan and, despite the tensions, still enjoy local support for the cause, officials and local journalists say.
The failed government military campaigns of recent years, which are seen as dictated by the United States, have further radicalized the local population, many in the region say.
As a potential indicator of local support, the families of two suicide bombers sent to Afghanistan from Waziristan gained renown in the community, according to a local journalist.
“The people support the militants because they are from their own tribe, they are family,” said the journalist, who asked not to be named out of fear of the militants.
Morale is high among the resurgent Taliban after their revival in Afghanistan this year, one Pakistani security official said. That will lead to still more recruitment and better organization and planning in the year ahead.
Fighting traditionally dies down in winter because of the inhospitable conditions in the mountains.
But the new fighting season in the spring will be even bloodier, a Western diplomat in Kabul said. “We have to assume that things will be bad again,” he said, “because none of the underlying causes are being addressed
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One War We Can Still Win
By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN
Published: December 13, 2006
Washington
NO one can return from visiting the front in Afghanistan without realizing there is a very real risk that the United States and NATO will lose their war with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the other Islamist movements fighting the Afghan government.
Declassified intelligence made available during my recent trip there showed that major Al Qaeda, Taliban, Haqqani Network and Hezb-i-Islami sanctuaries exist in Pakistan, and that the areas they operate in within Afghanistan have increased fourfold over the last year.
Indeed, a great many unhappy trends have picked up speed lately: United States intelligence experts in Afghanistan report that suicide attacks rose from 18 in the first 11 months of 2005 to 116 in the first 11 months of 2006. Direct fire attacks went up from 1,347 to 3,824 during the same period, improvised explosive devices from 530 to 1,297 and other attacks from 269 to 479. The number of attacks on Afghan forces increased from 713 to 2,892, attacks on coalition forces from 919 to 2,496 and attacks on Afghan government officials are 2.5 times what they were.
Only the extensive use of American precision air power and intelligence assets has allowed the United States to win this year’s battles in the east. In the south, Britain has been unable to prevent a major increase in the Taliban’s presence.
The challenges in Afghanistan, however, are very different from those in Iraq. Popular support for the United States and NATO teams has been strong and can be rebuilt. The teams have created core programs for strengthening governance, the economy and the Afghan military and police forces, and with sufficient resources the programs can succeed. The present United States aid efforts are largely sound and well managed, and they can make immediate and effective use of more money.
The Islamist threat is weak, but it is growing in strength — political as well as military. The Afghan government will take years to become effective, reduce corruption to acceptable levels and replace a narcotics-based economy. As one Afghan deputy minister put it to me during my trip: “Now we are all corrupt. Until we change and serve the people, we will fail.”
No matter what the outside world does, Afghans, the United States team and NATO representatives all agree that change will take time. The present central government is at least two or three years away from providing the presence and services Afghans desperately need. The United States’ and NATO’s focus on democracy and the political process in Kabul — rather than on the quality of governance and on services — has left many areas angry and open to hostile influence. Afghanistan is going to need large amounts of military and economic aid, much of it managed from the outside in ways that ensure it actually gets to Afghans, particularly in the areas where the threat is greatest.
This means the United States needs to make major increases in its economic aid, as do its NATO allies. These increases need to be made immediately if new projects and meaningful actions are to begin in the field by the end of winter, when the Islamists typically launch new offensives.
At least such programs are cheap by the standards of aid to Iraq. The projects needed are simple ones that Afghans can largely carry out themselves. People need roads and water, and to a lesser degree schools and medical services. They need emergency aid to meet local needs and win hearts and minds.
The maps of actual and proposed projects make it clear that while progress is real, it covers only a small part of the country. Even a short visit to some of the districts in the southeast, near the border with Pakistan, suggests that most areas have not seen any progress. Drought adds to the problem, much of the old irrigation system has collapsed, and roads are little more than paths. The central government cannot offer hope, and local officials and the police cannot compete with drug loans and income.
The United States has grossly underfinanced such economic aid efforts and left far too much of the country without visible aid activity. State Department plans call for a $2.3 billion program, but unless at least $1.1 billion comes immediately, aid will lag far behind need next year.
Additionally, a generous five-year aid plan from both the United States and its NATO allies is needed for continuity and effectiveness. The United States is carrying far too much of the burden, and NATO allies, particularly France, Germany, Italy and Spain, are falling short: major aid increases are needed from each.
And United States military forces are too small to do the job. Competing demands in Iraq have led to a military climate where American troops plan for what they can get, not what they need. The 10th Mountain Division, which is responsible for eastern Afghanistan, has asked for one more infantry brigade. This badly understates need, even if new Polish forces help in the east. The United States must be able to hold and build as well as win — it needs at least two more infantry battalions, and increases in Special Forces. These increases are tiny by comparison with American forces in Iraq, but they can make all the difference.
The NATO allies must provide stronger and better-equipped forces that will join the fight and go where they are most needed. The British fight well but have only 50 to 75 percent of the forces they need. Canadians, Danes, Estonians, Dutch and Romanians are in the fight. The Poles lack adequate equipment but are willing to fight. France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Turkey are not allowed to fight because of political constraints and rules of engagement. Only French Special Forces have played any role in combat and they depart in January. NATO must exercise effective central command; it cannot win with politically constrained forces, and it must pressure the stand-aside countries to join the fight.
Finally, the United States and NATO have repeated the same mistakes that were made in Iraq in developing effective Afghan Army and police forces, rushing unready forces into combat. The manning of key Afghan army battalions is sometimes below 25 percent and the police units are often unpaid. Corruption and pay problems are still endemic, equipment and facilities inadequate. Overall financing has been about 20 percent of the real-world requirement, and talks with Afghan and NATO officials made it brutally clear that the Germans wasted years trying to create a conventional police force rather than the mix of paramilitary and local police forces Afghanistan really needs.
The good news is that there is a new realism in the United States and NATO effort. The planning, training and much of the necessary base has been built up during the last year. There are effective plans in place, along with the NATO and American staffs to help put them into effect.
The bad news is the same crippling lack of resources that affect every part of the United States and NATO efforts also affect the development of the Afghan Army and police.
It was obvious during a visit to one older Afghan Army battalion that it had less than a quarter of its authorized manpower, and only one man in five was expected to re-enlist. At one police unit, although policemen were supposed to be paid quarterly, they were sometimes not paid at all, leaving them no choice but to extort a living. (In one case, the officer in charge of pay didn’t even fill out forms because he had been passed over for promotion because of his ethnicity.)
The United States team has made an urgent request for $5.9 billion in extra money this fiscal year, which probably underestimates immediate need and in any event must be followed by an integrated long-term economic aid plan. There is no time for the administration and Congress to quibble or play budget games. And, once again, the NATO countries must make major increases in aid as well.
In Iraq, the failure of the United States and the allies to honestly assess problems in the field, be realistic about needs, create effective long-term aid and force-development plans, and emphasize governance over services may well have brought defeat. The United States and its allies cannot afford to lose two wars. If they do not act now, they will.
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Some details...below..note the relationships in the 2 imams from MA...Yash
TERRORISM INDICATORS FROM PAKISTAN - INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO. 165
By B. Raman
(A collation of reports carried by the Pakistani media)
JIHADIS PLAN REPRISAL ATTACK
Militants belonging to banned jihadi outfits are planning suicide attacks on army installations in Pakistan and foreign troops in Afghanistan in revenge for the air strike on a Bajaur madrassa on October 30, 2006. According to reports submitted by intelligence agencies to the Interior Ministry, Maulvi Inayatur Rehman and Maulana Faqir Mohammad of the Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) have pledged before their supporters to target VIPs in Pakistan and US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The bombed Bajaur madrassa was run by the TNSM and is thought to have been used as a training camp for militants. British and US diplomats and nationals were also possible targets of the militants. Leaders of the Harkatul Mujahideen (HUM), Lashker-e-Jhangvi (LEJ)and Khudamul Islam have also pledged to cooperate with the TNSM and called for a joint strategy. These banned militant organisations have procured explosives and recruited and trained a number of suicide bombers. The training and enrolment of suicide bombers is the sole responsibility of the LEJ. The suicide bombers are most likely to hit targets in the guise of beggars with explosive material weighing 2.5-3.3kg fastened around their bodies, say the reports.
The suicide bombers could also target army installations and units in the tribal areas, Peshawar, Nowshera, Risalpur, Dir, DI Khan, Abbottabad, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Jhelum, Khariaan, Lahore, Multan, Hyderabad and Karachi. In the light of these reports, the Interior Ministry has ordered the police to tighten security around important personalities. The Islamabad, Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir administrations have also been directed to check people who had previously provided shelter to militants.-----DAILY TIMES of Lahore, dated December 18, 2006.
THREAT OF HELICOPTER-BORNE ATTACKS
2. The intelligence agencies have unearthed a plan of the jihadi organisations to hijack helicopters used by courier services and humanitarian relief organisations and use them for launching terrorist strikes. They have told the Interior Ministry that the jihadis might also try to hijack helicopters of the Civil Aviation Authority and the Maritime Security Agency. The jihadi organisations have formed a special task force for carrying out these operations. They are also planning to kidnap and kill senior government officials in emulation of the tactics followed by the jihadis in Iraq.----DAILY TIMES, dated December 4, 2006
NEO TALIBAN: SUICIDE TERRORISM TRAINING IN PAKISTAN
3. According to Sayed Ansari, a spokesman for the Afghan National Directorate of Security, 17 suicide attackers were arrested in Afghanistan in September, 2006, before they could carry out their suicide missions. He said: "All the detained have confessed that they had received training for launching deadly suicide attacks against individuals and institutions in Afghanistan from Arab, Chechen and Uzbeck instructors on the Pakistan side of the border. "The bombers were being trained at Shamshatoo, an Afghan refugee camp near Peshawar, and at another place near Data Khel in North Waziristan.--- POST of Peshawar, dated October 20, 2006.
NEO TALIBAN: WINTER & POST-WINTER PLANS
4. With the onset of winter, the NATO forces and the Neo Taliban are expected to bunker down till next spring, but the Neo Taliban will continue with its suicide missions and hit and run guerilla activities. The Neo Taliban militia is planning to take refuge in the mountains that traverse the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and plan the next stage of their struggle, which will be a countrywide Islamic Intifada campaign in Afghanistan. All former Mujahideen commanders will be urged to join it to throw out the foreign troops from the Afghan soil. The forthcoming Islamic Intifada will be both national and international. While organising a national uprising, it will seek to make Afghanistan once again the base for the global jihad as it was before 9/11. Dr.Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No.2 to Osama bin Laden in Al Qaeda, has assembled a special team to implement this idea. A key role will be played by Mulla Mehmood Allah Haq Yar, who was sent to Northern Iraq by Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, before 9/11 to undergo training in a training camp of the Iraqi Ansar-ul-Islam. Mulla Yar returned to Afghanistan from Iraq in 2004 and was inducted by Mulla Omar into a special council of commanders. The council was given the special task of mobilising all foreign jihadis in Pakistani territory for paticipating in the jihad in Afghanistan. A major step towards the launching of the Islamic Intifada was the establishment in September, 2006, of an Islamic Emirate of Waziristan to bring under one umbrella the various jihadi groups operating in the border areas. Many Neo Taliban supporters in Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment believe that the Intifada to be launched in April, 2007, would bring about the downfall of the Hamid Karzai Government and the return of the Neo Taliban to power.---- POST of Peshawar,dated October 20,2006
THE NEO TALIBAN BACK IN SOUTH WAZIRISTAN
5. At a meeting of the Shura of the Neo Taliban held at Wana in South Waziristan on November 26, 2006, Mullah Nazir was appointed as the commander-in-chief of all Mujahideen groups operating in South Waziristan. He is in his 40s and belongs to the Kakakhail sub-tribe of the Wazir Tribe. He enjoys the total support of Mullah Mohammad Omar and Gulbuddin Heckmatyar of the Hizb-e-Islami as well as of Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam of Pakistan. He had fought against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan and returned to Waziristan from Afghanistan in November, 2001. He started operating in Waziristan along with Naik Mohammad, Haji Omar, Muhammad Sharif, Mullah Abdul Aziz, and Maulvi Abbas. Of the various Mujahideen groups operating in South Waziristan, the Haji Omar group, the Noor Islam group, the Halimullah group, the Saifuddin group, the Meta Khan group, the Malang group, and the Javed group have accepted the leadership of Mullah Nazir and agreed to fight jointly under him. The Iftikhar group and the Ghulam Jan group, which refused to accept his leadership, have been dissolved by the Neo Taliban. The Shura also appointed a three-member committee consisting of Bakht Khan Giyankhail from Afghanistan, an Arab (name not given), and an Uzbeck (name not given) to advise Mullah Nazir in his operations. He has been told that he should not take any action without its approval. ---POST of December 1, 2006
RE-ORGANISATION OF LASHKAR-EJHANGVI (LEJ)
6. The intelligence agencies have informed the Interior Ministry that Matiur Rehman, the 32-year-old explosive expert close to Al Qaeda, has been tasked with re-organising the cells of the LEJ all over Pakistan. He belongs to Bahawalpur, which is also the home town of Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM). He is one of the prime suspects in the plot discovered by the British Police on August 10,2006, to blow up a number of US-bound planes. He is also a wanted suspect in the cases relating to the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist in Karachi in January-February, 2002, the two assassination attempts on Gen.Pervez Musharraf at Rawalpindi in December, 2003, the assassination attempt on Prime Minister Shukat Aziz (then Finance Minister) at Fateh Jhang in June 2004, and the explosion outside the US Consulate in Karachi in March 2006 in which a US diplomat was killed. The LEJ, which has become the favourite organisation of intending jihadis, is estimated to have carried out 500 terrorist strikes all over Pakistan since its formation in 1996, resulting in the death of over 1500 persons. It was also strongly suspected in the Nishtar Park suicide bombing in Karachi in April, 2006, in which 58 people, including many Barelvi leaders, were killed and in the May 2005 suicide attack on a Shia congregation at the Bari Imam shrine of Islamabad in which 25 Shias were killed. When the Taliban was in power in Kabul, the LEJ had set up its headquarters near Kabul and its training centres in Afghan territory. After the fall of the Taliban, it shifted to Pakistani territory. Initially, its preferred modus operandi (MO) was to attack its targets from moving motor-bikes. It then started using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) with timers, hand-grenades and machine guns. Of late, it follows the MO of throwing hand grenades on a crowd and then opening fire with a machine gun or carrying out a suicide attack on those fleeing. It operates in cells of not more than two to seven trained volunteers. The trained volunteers are called "the armoured corps of jihad". After training, the volunteers are advised to return to their normal avocations and await instructions till they are called for an operation. They are told that while following their normal avocations, they should not keep beards and should dress normally so that they do not attract attention to themselves and should not indulge in any unlawful activities. Muhammad Ajmal alias Akram Lahori is believed to be its Saalar-e-Aala (Commander-in-chief). He and two of his associates were arrested in June, 2002, and prosecuted before an anti-terrorism court on a charge of killing Dr. Safdar, a Shia doctor of Karachi. The court sentenced them to death, but they were acquitted on appeal by the Sindh High Court on November 30, 2005.---POST of November 25, 2006.
RASHID RAUF: CURIOUSER & CURIOUSER
7. Rashid Rauf, a 25-year-old Mirpuri from Birmingham related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, who was arrested by the Pakistani authorities in August, 2006, and projected as close to Al Qaeda and as the Pakistan-based co-ordinator of the alleged conspiracy to blow up a number of US-bound planes originating from the UK, has been acquitted of terrorism charges by Judge Safder Hussan Malik of the Rawalpindi Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) on December 13, 2006.He has transferred the case of Rashid Rauf to the city's District and Sessions Court for trial on charges of false impersonation, document forging and possession of material capable of being used as explosives. The prosecution had argued that Rauf's possession of 29 bottles of hydrogen peroxide underlined his intent to make bombs. However, Rauf's lawyer had argued that the chemical compound was also a recognised antiseptic used to clean wounds. The Rawalpindi police chief Saud Aziz has said that he would contest the ATC verdict and pursue the case, especially relating to hydrogen peroxide, in the sessions court under the same charges. A senior security official familiar with the case said that Rauf could be detained without charge for up to a year under the Security of Pakistan Act.-----DAILY TIMES, dated December 14, 2006.
(Please see the previous article on Rashid Rauf at http://www.saag.org/papers21/paper2052.html
HM DEPUTY CHIEF RELEASED
8. Karamatullah Awan, deputy chief of the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), has returned home after being detained for six months by security officials. He refused to disclose the identity of his captors and how he had been treated during his detention. He said that he had been released a few days ago, but stopped short of giving the exact date. "Contact the Jamaat-e-Islami provincial chief if you want more details on the issue," said Awan. The HM deputy leader and two others had been taken into custody six months ago, but his companions were freed after four months.-----DAILY TIMES , dated December 16,2006.
ANOTHER NOTORIOUS TERRORIST RELEASED
9. Law-enforcement agencies have released Maulana Abdul Jabbar, chief of the banned Khudamul Furqan, after almost three years in detention. Jabbar was arrested with his close aides on charges of attacking President Musharraf on December 14, 2003 in Rawalpindi. "Jabbar was released recently after a long detention," sources told Daily Times. The sources said that Khudamul Furqan militants were suspected to be behind terrorist attacks on churches in Pakistan. Maulana Jabbar started his militant career by joining the Harkatul Ansar, headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, in the early 1980s and stayed in Afghanistan till the fall of the Taliban government there. He later joined the Jaish-e-Mohammad formed by Maulana Masood Azhar, but after developing differences with Azhar, Jabbar formed the Khudamul Furqan. Jabbar is an expert in Afghan affairs, heading the Afghan cell of each militant group he was in, and maintained close contacts with Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.---DAILY TIMES, dated November 13, 2006.
LET CHIEF'S RELATIVES ARRESTED IN US
10. Two imams recently arrested in the US for visa violations and released on bail in Boston are related to Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), now operating as Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD).The 33 arrests made in November, 2006, were part of a wide swoop carried out by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in eight states and the district of Columbia in connection with an ongoing investigation into a specific visa fraud scheme that was designed to help large numbers of illegal aliens, primarily from Pakistan, fraudulently obtain religious worker visas to enter or remain in the United States. The two imams, Hafiz Muhammad Hannan and Hafiz Muhammad Masood are related to Hafiz Mohammad Saeed. Masood is his brother and Hannan his brother-in-law. Masood is an imam at the Islamic Centre of New England, Sharon, Massachusetts, while Hannan is an imam at the Islamic Society of Greater Lowell, Massachusetts. . Masood's son, Hassan was also arrested. Another member of the family, Imam Hafiz Mahmood Hamid, who is the brother of both Hafiz Saeed and Hafiz Masood, has also been arrested.Hafiz Masood came on a student exchange visa to the Boston University in 1988 and studied there till 1990, but stayed on, violating his visa status. Hafiz Hannan came to the US and applied for a religious worker visa which was granted. He made his application through one Muhammad Khalil of Brooklyn, New York. In 2004, Khalil was convicted of visa fraud and is currently in prison.---DAILY TIMES, dated December 8,2006.
FATWA TO KILL DANISH CARTOONIST
11. The chief priest of Peshawar's Mohabbat Khan Mosque, Khateeb Maulana Muhammad Yousuf Qureshi, said on December 13, 2006, that a fatwa (decree) issued by him for killing the Danish cartoonist who had drawn caricatures of the Holy Prophet last year continues to remain in force and would not be withdrawn. "We have put a price on the blasphemer's head, and will pay one million dollars to the person who kills him," Qureshi told the "Daily Times".----DAILY TIMES, dated December 14,2006.
FUND COLLECTION BY BANNED TERRORIST ORGANISATIONS
12. US authorities have expressed their concern to the Pakistani authorities over the fact that banned or suspected terrorist organisations such as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa ( the parent organisation of the LET), Al Rashid Trust etc continue to collect funds in Pakistan through advertisements in the Urdu press. Following this, the authorities have advised the Urdu press not to accept advertisements from such organisations.---POST of November 25, 2006.
TAKING JIHAD TO NEPAL
13. The Pakistani authorities arrested at Karachi on October 17 one Shafiq Alam Falahi, a resident of Basantpur in Nepal, on a charge of unauthorised fund collection for a madrasa being run by him at Basantpur. He was subsequently released following the intervention of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), which clarified that he had come along with 10 other Muslims from Nepal at its invitation with valid visas for fund collection for the Basantpur madrasa. The JEI also clarified that they had been coming every year for fund collection.---DAILY TIMES of October 18, 2006
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: itschen36@gmail.com)
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Levine News:
U.S.: TOP BIN LADEN ASSOCIATE KILLED: MULLAH AKHTAR MOHAMMAD OSAMI: U.S. FORCES SAY THEY HAVE SEVERAL SOURCES SAYING HE WAS KILLED. A top Taliban military commander described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar was killed in an airstrike this week close to the border with Pakistan, the U.S. military said Saturday.Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani was killed Tuesday by a U.S. airstrike while traveling by vehicle in a deserted area in the southern province of Helmand, the U.S. military said. "We have various sources saying he was in fact killed in the attack," coalition spokesman Col. Tom Collins told CNN in an exclusive interview Saturday.
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stratfor.com
PAKISTAN -- Pakistan will begin laying mines and fencing its borders with Afghanistan in order to stop militants from crossing into Afghanistan, Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said Dec. 29. The move has been protested by both Afghanistan and the United Nations. Pakistan has so far deployed 80,000 troops and established more than 800 checkpoints in an attempt to stop the cross-border movement of terrorists.
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1244 GMT -- AFGHANISTAN -- NATO-led ground troops backed by air support killed about 150 Taliban militants in a late Jan. 10 battle in Afghanistan's Paktika province, close to the Pakistani border, NATO said in a statement Jan. 10. NATO had observed the two large groups of insurgents infiltrating the province from Pakistan, according to the statement.
stratfor.com
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Geopolitical Diary: Considering Mullah Omar's Location
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is not harboring Taliban leader in Afghanistan Mullah Muhammad Omar, a Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Monday. She added that Mullah Omar is probably in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar gathering fighters.
The denial comes a day after The New York Times published a report that details the role ISI played in supporting the Taliban resurgence. On Jan. 17, Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, released a video in which captured Taliban spokesman Abdul Haq Haqiq confesses to his role in the Pashtun jihadist movement and says Mullah Omar is hiding in Pakistan under the ISI's protection in the southwestern city of Quetta.
These are the latest in a flurry of recent statements alleging the Taliban leader is in Pakistan and that Islamabad supports the jihadist movement to maintain its influence over Afghanistan. U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte recently told a Senate committee hearing that al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are seeking refuge in Pakistan's frontier areas, namely Quetta. There are a few explanations for the sudden increase in discussion about the Pakistani connection to the Taliban and the whereabouts of Mullah Omar.
The Taliban are expected to resume their operations on a grand scale in spring. Given the problems that U.S., NATO and Afghan forces faced before the winter snow brought the fighting season to an end, Kabul and the West hope to increase the pressure on Pakistan to cooperate in order to help thwart Taliban attempts to strike.
Afghanistan and NATO also want to get as much cooperation as they can from Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf before his time is devoted to the upcoming elections. Musharraf needs to promote domestic political stability, and knows any U.S. action on Pakistani soil would stir up jihadist and Islamist groups inside Pakistan, as well as secular groups opposed to what they consider U.S. violations of Pakistani sovereignty.
The Pakistani Taliban are now regularly targeting Pakistani security forces. Both Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government and NATO think this threat could force Musharraf to cooperate in fighting the Taliban. The United States also hopes that U.S. airstrikes on jihadists inside Pakistani territory could further aid in pushing Musharraf into a corner during an election year.
Though Mullah Omar's location is not known for certain, he likely is in an area that affords him security as well as the ability to lead the insurgency. This means he can probably cross the Afghan-Pakistani border when needed. However, he is probably more secure on the Pakistani side of the border since it offers some protection from the Afghan and NATO forces searching for him.
However, Mullah Omar's likely location must also let him directly communicate with his commanders -- whose base of operations is in southeastern Afghanistan in the provinces of Zabul, Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan. Mullah Omar's hideout in Pakistan is likely near these areas -- he is not hiding in the North-West Frontier Province, and is unlikely to be in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas since it is the focus of global attention and the target of U.S. airstrikes and Pakistani operations. Mullah Omar also must be in a tribal and religiously conservative Pashtun region.
Taking all of these factors into consideration, only one area is left -- the Pashtun belt in the northwestern part of Pakistan's Balochistan province, as it is directly located opposite the Taliban stronghold areas in Afghanistan.
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Afghan Town Is Overrun by Taliban
NY Times
By CARLOTTA GALL and TAIMOOR SHAH
Published: February 3, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb. 2 — Taliban militants overran the town of Musa Qala in southern Afghanistan just three months after NATO troops had withdrawn and handed over control to a tribal council, officials said Friday. The insurgents detained police officers and tribal elders, seized weapons and government equipment and bulldozed part of the district offices, according to residents.
An Afghan’s Path From U.S. Ally to Drug Suspect (February 2, 2007) Residents fled in fear that the Taliban’s arrival would precipitate further fighting with NATO forces, according to one family. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Kabul, Zemarai Bashary, confirmed the attack, which took place on Thursday night, and said the Taliban had disarmed the police stationed there.
A provincial governor, Asadullah Wafa, told Agence France-Presse on Friday that the Taliban had left the town again and that the district offices were now empty. In a statement, NATO said that although the situation remained unclear, the town elders were safe in their homes. A NATO security force was monitoring the situation and ready to support the government and the elders of Musa Qala, it said.
The attack ended a British-brokered experiment aimed at bringing some control over remote regions and keeping Taliban insurgents at bay. Under the plan, British troops agreed to withdraw from the town, leaving a tribal council in charge with a locally recruited police force, and Taliban forces agreed to withdraw to nearby villages.
American officials in Afghanistan had opposed the agreement because it left the broader district of Musa Qala, a poppy-growing region of Helmand Province, open to the Taliban. But the British commander in Helmand at the time defended it as a way to release his men from a pointless and occasionally bloody siege of the town. Residents had welcomed the deal, brokered in October, because it brought a temporary peace to the badly damaged town. But some had warned at the time that it was handing a victory to the Taliban.
A Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Ghafoor, led the assault on the town Thursday in a rage, because his brother had been killed a few days before in a NATO airstrike, residents said. Leading a large group of armed men, he used a bulldozer to smash through the wall of the district office, said Abdul Razziq, a shopkeeper who said his family fled Musa Qala on Friday. Mullah Ghafoor ordered the elders to leave the compound, burned the government flag and hoisted the banner of the Taliban, Mr. Razziq said.
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Afghanistan: Indications of a Busy Year Ahead
February 05, 2007 22 41 GMT
Summary
Taliban fighters attacked Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers Feb. 4 in western Afghanistan's Farah province. The attack came as the Afghan government vowed to retake Musa Qala, a town in southern Afghanistan that has been overrun by the Taliban. Both the attack in Farah and the looming battle for Musa Qala indicate 2007 will be a busy year for NATO forces and the ANA in Afghanistan.
Analysis
Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers and coalition troops fought a small-arms battle against Taliban fighters in Afghanistan's Farah province Feb. 4. The fight started when the Taliban attacked an ANA checkpoint near the village of Farah. One Afghan soldier was killed and two were wounded in the battle. At least 10 Taliban fighters were reported dead. The engagement at Farah came as the Afghan government pledged to retake Musa Qala, a town in southern Afghanistan, from the Taliban.
The Farah engagement and the ANA's preparation for the battle in Musa Qala are examples of the ANA's increasing involvement in the fight against the Taliban -- and indications that the ANA will have plenty of opportunities to demonstrate its abilities in the coming year.
NATO, coalition forces and contractors in Afghanistan are heavily engaged in training ANA units in an effort to prepare them to play a more active role in the fight against the Taliban and the insurgents' allies. Troops from the ANA's 201st Corps, based in Pole-i-Charki, east of Kabul, increasingly are taking responsibility for security in the capital and recently formed the second of three authorized brigades.
NATO's focus on training the ANA is switching to a heavier emphasis on mobile training teams, which give ANA units instruction on staff operations, noncommissioned officer battle staff management, training management and decision-making. These skills are required if ANA officers and noncommissioned officers are to organize and lead their units in the field in a way that is compatible with NATO and coalition units.
On Feb. 1, just a few days before the battle in Farah, the U.S. military gave the ANA more than 200 up-armored Humvees, 800 trucks and 12,000 small and heavy arms. This was the U.S. military's first major presentation of new equipment to the Afghan forces.
Despite the equipment, the ANA will still depend completely on NATO and U.S. forces for air and artillery support. However, the new equipment replaces the ANA's old worn-out Soviet-era equipment, which was not compatible with the gear NATO and U.S. forces use. This new equipment and training will make the ANA more mobile and more capable of conducting patrols and taking on other battlefield responsibilities.
This move is geared toward NATO's overall strategy of eventually being able to hand over security to some form of native force so that NATO can leave -- but, realistically, this cannot happen for years. This kind of equipment is similar to that which the United States handed over to the Lebanese armed forces after the 34-day Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. Humvees and machine guns will give the ANA enhanced mobility and better firepower, but -- unlike heavier weapons, such as armored fighting vehicles and artillery -- they do not indicate that NATO especially trusts the ANA.
The equipment handover and intensified training comes ahead of the anticipated spring offensive by the Taliban and their al Qaeda and local militia allies. This offensive happens annually as the winter snows melt, clearing the mountain passes between Afghanistan and Pakistan. NATO believes that although the Taliban and their allies will launch a spring offensive, the Taliban are no longer capable of overrunning and holding any part of the country for any significant length of time. This diminished capability is likely due to the constant pounding NATO has delivered to the Taliban over the last several months in response to a record number of militant attacks, including a dramatic increase in suicide bombings.
This year is shaping up to be a violent one in Afghanistan, despite NATO's efforts. The spring offensive is expected to be intense, with large numbers of suicide attacks. NATO is preparing by sending in more forces. The ANA's increased mobility will allow it to join in the fight to a greater extent in 2007.
stratfor.com
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ITALY/AFGHANISTAN: Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi's Unione coalition voted to keep 1,800 troops in Afghanistan during a late-night coalition meeting, despite disagreements among coalition members. Prodi's allies in the coalition confirmed their full support for the prime minister and the military operation. Approximately 50 percent of Italians oppose Italy's involvement in the war.
stratfor.com
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR8bclqexbY&mode=related&search=
Just started watching, but seems to be quite intersting , , ,
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stratfor.com
Pakistan, U.S.: Gates, Musharraf and Political Ammunition
Summary
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates briefly met with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Feb. 12 in Pakistan, where Gates praised the Pakistani leader for his strong efforts in containing jihadist activity in the region. With a counterterrorism operation in Pakistan's northwestern Pashtun areas in the works, Musharraf needs political ammunition from the United States in order to win support from his allies in the ruling Pakistan Muslim League. Part of containing the political fallout from these operations also will include giving the Pakistani military more authority to carry out attacks against Taliban and al Qaeda militants on Pakistani soil.
Analysis
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates held a one-hour meeting with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Feb. 12 at the Pakistani president's home in Rawalpindi, where the two discussed how the Pakistani and U.S. militaries would work together to combat the Taliban's renewed spring offensive in neighboring Afghanistan. After traveling to Munich, Germany, for an international security conference, Gates added 30 hours of travel time to his original itinerary for the meeting with the Pakistani president.
Gates was particularly generous in his praise for Musharraf, saying, "Pakistan is clearly a very strong ally of the United States" and "is playing a very constructive role" in containing the Taliban and al Qaeda insurgency in the region. Pakistan, he added, is "incurring a significant cost in lives and, I might add, in treasure, in fighting this battle on the border."
Gates' comments were most welcome by Musharraf as he has spent the last month fending off strong criticism from the United States that Islamabad is providing refuge for Taliban and al Qaeda leaders along Pakistan's frontier. The apparent shift in U.S. attitude toward Pakistan can be attributed to an anticipated uptick in counterterrorism operations and Pakistan's willingness to engage in a more comprehensive military strategy in its northwestern areas along the border with Afghanistan. Thus far, Pakistan has agreed to limited operations on a case-by-case basis. Musharraf probably has sorted out his domestic political situation, managing to balance it with U.S. demands and allowing Pakistan to make a more concerted effort against jihadists.
The Taliban and its allies in al Qaeda are prepping for a renewed spring offensive. As soon as the ice melts in the mountain passes between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Taliban and al Qaeda fighters will be able to ramp up their campaign against NATO forces in the region with increased suicide attacks. The United States and its NATO allies are in the process of diminishing Taliban and al Qaeda capabilities as much as possible prior to the spring offensive, which inevitably will involve counterterrorism operations against militant strongholds on Pakistani soil. U.S. forces already have increased their presence along the Afghan side of the border in preparation for this counteroffensive.
For Musharraf to completely sign on to these operations, he must receive assurances from the United States that Washington has no plans to compromise his political career or that seriously would risk destabilizing the country, particularly since Pakistan is in the middle of a heated election season. Musharraf and his allies want assurances that there will not be a decline in U.S.-Pakistani relations once U.S. counterterrorism goals are accomplished. Such a guarantee is critical for Musharraf's ability to mitigate the domestic risk of cooperating with the United States. Gates assured Musharraf and his political allies that the United States has a long-term investment in Pakistan, saying, "After the Soviets left, the United States made a mistake. We neglected Afghanistan, and extremism took control of that country. The United States paid a price for that on Sept. 11, 2001. We won't make that mistake again. We are here for the long haul."
Musharraf's principal allies in the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) fear that U.S. operations on Pakistani soil will prove costly for them in the coming elections, and Musharraf shares these concerns. A recent incident, in which U.S. soldiers fired artillery rounds from Afghanistan into Pakistan at Taliban targets, allegedly in self-defense, has exacerbated these political sensitivities. With parliamentary elections approaching in early 2008, the PML worries it will be the main party to suffer from another major U.S. operation in the country, such as the October 2006 madrassa strike in the northwestern tribal belt that resulted in a high number of civilian casualties. Whereas Musharraf has the means to split his political opponents and ensure his own victory, PML party members face a more difficult challenge in holding onto their supporters, and cannot risk the political fallout of supporting these U.S. operations.
The PML probably has received a guarantee from Musharraf that the United States will allow Pakistan to take more control over these operations and demonstrate that it has not become a U.S. lackey in fighting jihadists at the expense of Pakistan's sovereignty. As a result, the coming airstrikes and operations in Pakistan's tribal areas primarily will be conducted by Pakistani forces. The ongoing suicide attack campaign in Pakistan also has provided Musharraf with the political justification to crack down on jihadist targets in the South Asian country. Though Musharraf and his allies are sure to face considerable constraints in the coming months in containing the domestic backlash from these counterinsurgency operations, Gates' assurances have provided Musharraf with a bit more room for maneuver in the political arena.
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Look for a renewed level of violence and aggression in Afghanistan, regardless of a possible loss of Osama Bin Laden
Geopolitical Diary: Osama Bin Who?
Feb 14, 2007
A new audiotape surfaced Tuesday from al Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In this latest message, al-Zawahiri pledges allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who he calls the leader of the worldwide jihadist movement. Even more striking, there is no mention whatsoever of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. This suggests that al Qaeda has been weakened to the point that a major shift in the leadership of the wider jihadist movement is under way.
There is no proof that bin Laden is dead, but he is certainly missing in action. His last video message surfaced more than two years ago -- a few days before the U.S. presidential election in 2004. That said, bin Laden did issue an audio statement as recently as July 1, 2006.
In comparison, there has been a robust flow of video and audio communiques from al-Zawahiri since late 2004. This means that bin Laden is most likely incapacitated, or at least is unable to oversee operational matters personally. Al-Zawahiri has been left to lead the movement.
While al-Zawahiri might be the network's theoretician and even bin Laden's ideological guru, he does not possess bin Laden's leadership qualities. And not only is al-Zawahiri trying to fill in for bin Laden, he is doing this pretty much by himself, given that the U.S.-jihadist war has resulted in the death or capture of many of the senior leaders of al Qaeda "prime."
Al-Zawahiri is also heavily dependent upon his Pashtun hosts in northwestern Pakistan -- not just for the ability to operate, but also for his own physical security and that of his surviving comrades who constitute al Qaeda's central leadership circles. Meanwhile, there has been a significant resurgence of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan's Pashtun regions. From al Qaeda's point of view, Afghanistan is starting to look more promising than Iraq -- where, with Sunnis in the minority, the movement's influence is fundamentally limited by demographics.
These circumstances have created a situation that has allowed Mullah Omar to reassert himself as the leader of the jihadists. This is not the first time that al Qaeda has been forced to recognize Mullah Omar as its overall leader. After the U.S. cruise missile strikes against al Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan, in retaliation for the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998, the question of authority became an issue between Mullah Omar and bin Laden.
At the time, bin Laden agreed to respect the leadership of Mullah Omar and promised that al Qaeda would not behave as a state within a state. Instead, the jihadist network would coordinate its activities with the Taliban regime. In 2005, however, Mullah Omar met with the al Qaeda leadership and expressed his displeasure at their over-emphasis on Iraq and neglect for Afghanistan. Mullah Omar reminded bin Laden that the Taliban had sacrificed their own regime for the sake of al Qaeda.
It was as a result of this important meeting that al Qaeda began reinvesting in Afghanistan, most significantly by providing funds and suicide bombers, and training the Taliban in the art of suicide bombings. In fact, the Taliban resurgence to a great degree has been made possible by the renewed al Qaeda commitment to the Taliban insurgency.
Now that bin Laden is no longer leading al Qaeda, and with the Taliban revived as a major force, al-Zawahiri has no choice but to acknowledge Mullah Omar as the supreme jihadist leader. Al Qaeda's dependency on the Taliban (as opposed to the other way around) will create a struggle over operational planning and allocation of resources -- directly impacting the network's global reach.
Copyright 2007 Strategic Forecasting Inc. All rights reserved.
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C-Stray Dog:
Interesting how "off the radar screen" OBL has become , , ,
I must say that it looks to me like the Bush Administration really took its eye off the ball here and has allowed what was a promising situation turn into , , , a mess.
Anyway, here's this from today's WSJ.
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Taliban Spring
February 14, 2007; Page A20
American and NATO military planners in Afghanistan are bracing for what they anticipate will be a major Taliban offensive this spring. Expect more terrorism in Kabul, attacks on positions in and around the key Pashtun city of Kandahar, ambushes on vehicles and attacks on European and Canadian forces, which the Taliban consider, with good reason, to be the weak link in the NATO chain. Expect, too, for the Taliban to be decisively defeated.
The year 2006 was a bad one for Afghanistan. The rate of suicide bombings throughout the country soared. The Taliban found sanctuary in Pakistan's Waziristan province and, thanks to their "truce" with Islamabad, more than doubled the number of raids into Afghanistan. Entire provinces in the country had almost no military or police presence to speak of. And NATO was unable to secure further troop commitments from its non-U.S. members.
Now the picture is brightening. A year ago there were no Afghan troops and no more than 150 U.S. special forces in the southern province of Helmand. Today, there is an Afghan infantry battalion and a British air-assault brigade. The U.S. is deploying thousands of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division while extending the deployment of the Tenth Mountain Infantry brigade in anticipation of the spring offensive. That brings total U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan to 24,000, roughly 6,000 more than this time last year. So much for the idea that the surge in Iraq is starving our efforts in Afghanistan.
The situation with the Afghan military is also improving, though a senior U.S. military official describes the process as a "steep uphill climb." In 2005, the desertion rate was 25%. Today it is 10%. It helps that the Afghan soldier has now had a raise, to about $100 a month. It helps, too, that the U.S. is now investing $8.6 billion over two years to better equip and train the army, and to double its size to 70,000.
Where the U.S. still has significant problems is with its partners in the region. The fighting capabilities of European, Canadian and even British forces continue to lag far behind America's, as does their willingness to fight. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has been under intense political pressure to withdraw Italy's 1,800-man contingent in Afghanistan. This week, a Canadian senate committee recommended withdrawing their forces if other NATO countries don't increase theirs.
More problematic is Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf's recent proposal to mine the border with Afghanistan along the so-called "Durand line" is probably not serious, but if it were it would not be helpful. And while it's true that the Pakistan army lost some 400 soldiers in fighting against the Taliban, it's also true that their September truce represents an abdication of their sovereign responsibility to control their borders.
Still, the combination of more troops and a keen appreciation of last year's mistakes puts the U.S. and Afghanistan in a better position than a year ago to repulse the Taliban's expected spring offensive. We hope our wavering NATO allies feel the same way. After all, isn't Afghanistan supposed to be the "good war" in the broader war on terror?
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As best as I can tell, there is merit to the analysis that says that President Bush really took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan. Although I supported the decision to go into Iraq, I cannot say that those who said we needed to finish in Afghanistan first did not have a valid point.
Afg in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Taliban seemed to have plenty of warm fuzzies for what we might bring, but now 5 years later much more has happened and the terrain is different.
Do we have a coherent strategy at this point?
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — President Bush warned on Thursday that he expected “fierce fighting” to flare in Afghanistan this spring, and he pressed NATO allies to provide a bigger and more aggressive force to guard against a resurgence by the Taliban and Al Qaeda that could threaten the fragile Afghan state.
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Back Story With The Times’s Sheryl Gay Stolberg (mp3)With American and NATO commanders pressing for more troops and experts predicting that further gains by the Taliban could put the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai in danger, Mr. Bush used his presidential platform to lay out what he said was substantial progress in Afghanistan since 2001, but also a continuing threat.
The remarks, to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization here, amounted to an unusually high-profile acknowledgment from Mr. Bush of the precarious state of the effort to stabilize Afghanistan, a country the administration long held up as a foreign policy success story.
The speech renewed criticism from Democrats that had the United States not been tied down in Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan would not have turned dire. At the same time, some Republican lawmakers said Mr. Bush’s new strategy would not do enough to tamp down the Afghan drug trade. Outside experts criticized the president for painting too rosy a picture.
The speech was also a striking effort by the White House to focus attention back on Afghanistan at a time when Congress is debating resolutions criticizing Mr. Bush’s strategy in Iraq and the administration is making a case that Iranian forces are supplying Shiite militants in Iraq with roadside bombs.
“Across Afghanistan last year, the number of roadside bomb attacks almost doubled, direct fire attacks on international forces almost tripled, and suicide bombings grew nearly fivefold,” Mr. Bush said. “These escalating attacks were part of a Taliban offensive that made 2006 the most violent year in Afghanistan since the liberation of the country.”
Mr. Bush said the question now was whether to “just kind of let this young democracy wither and fade away” or to step up the fight.
“The snow is going to melt in the Hindu Kush mountains, and when it does we can expect fierce fighting to continue,” Mr. Bush said. “The Taliban and Al Qaeda are preparing to launch new attacks. Our strategy is not to be on the defense, but to go on the offense.”
Mr. Bush noted that he has already extended the tour of a 3,200-soldier American brigade and called on Congress to provide $11.8 billion more to pay for operations in Afghanistan over the next two years.
The president said his administration had completed a review of its Afghan strategy, and would work to increase the size of the Afghan army from 32,000 troops to 70,000 by the end of next year, and to bring in additional allied troops to support the fledgling army.
“When there is a need, when the commanders on the ground say to our respective countries, ‘We need additional help,’ our NATO countries must provide it in order to be successful in the mission,” Mr. Bush said.
He promised to build new roads that would help spur economic development, to battle an increase in the opium trade and to try to forge better ties between Afghanistan and its neighbor, Pakistan.
At the same time, Mr. Bush pledged to work with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to root out Taliban and Qaeda fighters who hide in that country’s remote mountainous regions — a situation he described as “wilder than the Wild West.” And, echoing his lament that 2006 was a difficult and disappointing year for Iraq, the president said the same had been true in Afghanistan.
Some critics of the administration’s handling of Afghanistan said Mr. Bush was still understating the difficulties there.
“We underfinanced, undermanned and under-resourced the war in Afghanistan for the last four years, and now we face a serious threat that the Taliban will succeed in destabilizing the country enough in 2007 to make the Karzai government collapse at some point,” said Bruce Riedel, a scholar at the Saban Center for Middle East Studies at the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning research organization in Washington. He called the speech “a long overdue recognition that we need to do a lot more.”
Both Mr. Riedel and Rick Barton, an expert in Afghanistan reconstruction at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Mr. Bush’s new strategy did not do enough to promote security and economic development. Mr. Barton, who published a report in 2005 measuring progress in Afghanistan in that year, is about to publish another, and said the situation has turned measurably worse since his first study.
“We’ve gotten into a situation where things have really turned negative and the average Afghan has lost confidence in both the safety of his country and the ability of the leadership to turn things around,” Mr. Barton said. He said the president “is definitely acknowledging that, but his reality therapy is not as thorough or as complete as I think it needs to be.”
On Capitol Hill, the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, released a statement criticizing the speech. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen and several other Republicans have been pressing the Bush administration to do more to crack down on Afghanistan’s opium trade; she said the new strategy lacked “practical initiatives to target major drug kingpins and warlords whose trade in opium finances the Taliban’s campaign.”
As Iraq has dominated the American psyche, some lawmakers, most recently the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, have called Afghanistan “the forgotten war.” The Democratic National Committee, responding to Mr. Bush’s speech on Thursday, issued a statement saying, “The Bush administration took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan.”
But Mr. Bush pointed to what he called “remarkable progress” since the American invasion in 2001: A democratically elected government with a parliament that includes 91 women; more than five million children in school as opposed to 900,000 under the Taliban; and the return of more than 4.6 million refugees.
The president’s speech came after his new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, attended his first conference of NATO defense ministers last week in Seville, Spain. At the meeting, Mr. Gates pressed his allied counterparts to fulfill their commitments of troops in time for a spring offensive against the Taliban.
Currently, NATO has about 35,000 troops in Afghanistan, about 13,000 of them American. The United States has 9,000 more troops in Afghanistan operating outside the NATO mission, handling tasks like specialized counterterrorism work and helping to train Afghan forces. Gen. David J. Richards of Britain, the outgoing NATO commander in Afghanistan, said last month that NATO was 4,000 to 5,000 troops short.
But NATO commanders have been constrained by so-called caveats — restrictions imposed by member nations on how their troops may be used and where they may be sent. The Bush administration has been pressing the allies to lift those restrictions, and the president renewed that call on Thursday, saying NATO commanders “must have the flexibility they need to defeat the enemy wherever the enemy may make a stand.”
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Bush to Warn Pakistan to Act on Terror
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By DAVID E. SANGER and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: February 26, 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 — President Bush has decided to send an unusually tough message to one of his most important allies, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda, senior administration officials say.
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The Reach of War
Go to Complete Coverage » The decision came after the White House concluded that General Musharraf is failing to live up to commitments he made to Mr. Bush during a visit here in September. General Musharraf insisted then, both in private and public, that a peace deal he struck with tribal leaders in one of the country’s most lawless border areas would not diminish the hunt for the leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban or their training camps.
Now, American intelligence officials have concluded that the terrorist infrastructure is being rebuilt, and that while Pakistan has attacked some camps, its overall effort has flagged.
“He’s made a number of assurances over the past few months, but the bottom line is that what they are doing now is not working,” one senior administration official who deals often with South Asian issues said late last week. “The message we’re sending to him now is that the only thing that matters is results.”
Democrats, who took control of Congress last month, have urged the White House to put greater pressure on Pakistan because of statements from American commanders that units based in Pakistan that are linked to the Taliban, Afghanistan’s ousted rulers, are increasing their attacks into Afghanistan.
For the time being, officials say, the White House has ruled out unilateral strikes against the training camps that American spy satellites are monitoring in North Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal areas on the border. The fear is that such strikes would result in what one administration official referred to as a “shock to the stability” of General Musharraf’s government.
General Musharraf, a savvy survivor in the brutal world of Pakistani politics, knows that the administration is hesitant to push him too far. If his government collapses, it is not clear who would succeed him or who would gain control over Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.
But the spread of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas threatens to undermine a central element of Mr. Bush’s argument that he is succeeding in the administration’s effort to curb terrorism. The bomb plot disrupted in Britain last summer, involving plans to hijack airplanes, has been linked by British and American intelligence agencies to camps in the Pakistan-Afghan border areas.
General Musharraf has told American officials that Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas in recent years so alienated local residents that they no longer provide the central government with quality intelligence about the movements of senior Islamic militants.
Congressional Democrats have threatened to review military assistance and other aid to Pakistan unless they see evidence of aggressive attacks on Al Qaeda. The House last month passed a measure linking future military aid to White House certification that Pakistan “is making all possible efforts to prevent the Taliban from operating in areas under its sovereign control.”
Pakistan is now the fifth-largest recipient of American aid. Mr. Bush has proposed $785 million in aid to Pakistan in his new budget, including $300 million in military aid to help Pakistan combat Islamic radicalism in the country.
The rumblings from Congress give Mr. Bush and his top advisers a way of conveying the seriousness of the problem, officials said, without appearing to issue a direct threat to the proud Pakistani leader themselves.
“We think the Pakistani aid is at risk in Congress,” said the senior official, who declined to speak on the record because the subject involved intelligence matters.
The administration has sent a series of emissaries to see the Pakistani leader in recent weeks, including the new secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates. Mr. Gates was charged with prompting more action in a region in which American forces operate with great constraints, if they are allowed in at all.
“This is not the type of relationship where we can order action,” said an administration official involved in discussions over Pakistan policy. “We can strongly encourage.”
Relations between General Musharraf and Mr. Bush have always been tense, as the Pakistani leader veers between his need for American support and protection and his awareness that many Pakistani people — and the intelligence service — have strong sympathies for Al Qaeda and the resurgent Taliban. Officials involved with the issue describe the current moment between the leaders as especially fraught.
Mr. Bush was deeply skeptical of the deal General Musharraf struck with the tribal leaders last year, fearing that it would limit the government’s powers to intercede in what Mr. Bush has called the “wild west” of Waziristan, administration officials said at the time.
During his visit to Washington last fall, General Musharraf said the agreement he signed with tribal leaders, giving them greater sovereignty in the region, had “three bottom lines.” He said one was “no Al Qaeda activities in our tribal agencies or across the border in Afghanistan.” The second was “no Taliban activity” in the same areas. And the third was “no Talibanization,” which he described as “obscurantist thoughts or way of life.”
American intelligence officials have made an assessment that senior Qaeda leaders in Pakistan have re-established significant control over their global network and are training operatives in some of the camps for strikes on Western targets.
One American official familiar with intelligence reports about Pakistan said intelligence agencies had established “clear linkages” between the Qaeda camps and the plot to blow up trans-Atlantic flights that was thwarted last August. American analysts said the recent trials of terrorism suspects in Britain showed that some defendants had been trained in Pakistan.
American officials say one reason General Musharraf agreed to pull government troops back to their barracks in North Waziristan and allow tribal leaders greater control over security was to give him time to rebuild his intelligence network in the border region gradually.
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PAKISTAN: Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said he is willing to hold talks with the nationalist rebels in Balochistan in order to stop the violence in the region, the Press Trust of India reported. Musharraf made the comments during a public meeting in the district of Sibbi, where he also said the Pakistani government is ready to "give [the rebels] everything." Musharraf made it clear, however, that no amount of force would separate Balochistan from Pakistan.
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AFGHANISTAN: Afghan troops captured senior Taliban leader Mullah Mahmood on March 6 as he attempted to flee the Panjwaii area, NATO said. Mahmood is believed to be an expert bombmaker who organized suicide attacks.
stratfor.com
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The first is from 2/27 and the second is from today:
The Relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan's Domestic Stability
By Kamran Bokhari
While returning from East Asia on Feb. 26, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney made a surprise stopover in Islamabad, where he met with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The same day, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett also met with Musharraf, urging him to control the Taliban traffic along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Meanwhile, reports surfaced that U.S. President George W. Bush has sent a strong message to Musharraf, warning him that the Democratic-controlled Congress could cut aid to Pakistan unless Islamabad aggressively cracks down on jihadist activity in the country.
Beckett's was the latest in a long series of calls from senior U.S. officials and those representing Washington's NATO allies for the Musharraf government to do more in the fight against jihadists. Given that the war in Iraq has gone badly for the United States, the Bush administration is under great pressure domestically to show progress in Afghanistan (and by extension Pakistan). Similarly, their military involvement in Afghanistan is a major domestic issue for many European states.
Though political concerns at home are contributing to the U.S./Western pressure on Islamabad to get tougher on the jihadist problem, Pakistan's inability to oblige its Western allies is also a function of its own domestic political concerns. There also is a certain level of unwillingness on Islamabad's part because its interest in maintaining relations with Washington goes beyond having status as an ally in the war on terrorism. The United States and the Europeans understand the concerns of the Pakistanis and do not want to rock the Musharrafian boat, especially when the country is headed into presidential and parliamentary elections beginning as early as September.
That said, the West is not willing to continue with business as usual, which has led to the strengthening of the jihadist forces in Afghanistan and allowed al Qaeda to continue its global operations -- albeit at a reduced pace. From viewpoint of the United States and its NATO allies, the Pakistanis could be doing a lot more without triggering political instability on the home front.
The Pakistanis, on the other hand, say they are fed up with being asked to do more, arguing that using force alone is undermining their own domestic security -- which could indeed start churning up a tide of political instability. Musharraf is caught between the external pressure to assume a more robust attitude with regards to counterterrorism, and dealing with terrorism from within.
On both counts, Islamabad has a point. Following the U.S. airstrike on a madrassa in the northern part of the tribal belt in late October 2006, jihadists have unleashed an unprecedented wave of suicide attacks across the country against government and Western targets. Other than a few bombings against Western targets and assassination attempts against Musharraf, jihadists had not attacked inside Pakistan. In fact, until this recent wave of suicide attacks, jihadists in Pakistan were using the country as a launchpad for attacks against third parties.
This nascent jihadist insurgency does not have widespread support within the country and, given the militants' limited capabilities, is a problem Pakistani security forces can handle. The real obstacles to Musharraf's ability to wage a successful crackdown have to do with domestic political stability in light of the coming elections.
At present, Musharraf's domestic position is secure, in that no political force (party or even a coalition of parties) exists that can remove him from office through mass unrest. The fact that the political structure that emerged from the 2002 elections is managing to reach the end of its term clearly underscores his ability to maintain power. This, to a great degree, is the result of Musharraf being a military ruler.
Despite the military-dominated political order, however, the current civil-military government is not completely exempt from public accountability, especially if it expects to garner votes. On the contrary, the civilian setup that Musharraf is relying on to sustain his hold on power and to keep his political opponents at bay is a complex system crafted with great difficulty. Musharraf has kept this system afloat by forging alliances and creating and sustaining divisions among the opposition parties.
Both the president and the parliamentary component of his regime will have to pass the test of elections. Musharraf has told Stratfor he wants to remain president for another five years to reach the goals he has outlined for himself. For this he needs to have the current ruling coalition led by the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), at a bare minimum, retain its majority in the parliament and its current standing in the provincial legislatures. Accomplishing this task could guarantee his re-election as president.
But Musharraf is uncertain whether the next round of parliamentary elections -- set for January 2008 -- will produce the desired results, which is why he has moved to hold the presidential election in September. This way he can be certain of his own re-election as president in the event that his allies are not able to retain their majority in the federal and provincial legislatures.
Musharraf's opponents, however, are up in arms over his bid to seek a second term from the same electoral college. So the question is, can the opposition pull together the much-discussed grand alliance to force Musharraf's hand? Here is where terrorism and counterterrorism play a pivotal role in shaping events. Attacks in the country, along with the government's counterterrorism efforts, can create a dynamic that his opponents can exploit to generate public unrest. Certain forces already are taking advantage of the suicide attacks as an opportunity to target rival political forces in the hope of stirring political unrest ahead of the elections.
The purpose of the jihadist suicide bombing campaign is to create enough political problems for the Musharraf government to force Islamabad's attention away from counterterrorism operations. The situation in Afghanistan and the threat from the wider jihadist movement, however, has Musharraf under pressure to stay focused on counterterrorism. Thus, he needs to be able to figure out a way to satisfy international demands with regards to counterterrorism and keep his opponents from undercutting stability.
While Musharraf is reluctant to take on the risks associated with going after the Afghan Taliban, he is also deeply worried about the Talibanization of certain parts of his own country. In particular, the jihadists' influence is growing in the Pashtun-dominated areas in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and northwestern Balochistan.
Musharraf also wants to be able to roll back the power of the six-party Islamist political coalition, Mutahiddah Majlis-i-Amal (MMA). The MMA not only controls the NWFP government and is part of the coalition government with the pro-Musharraf PML in Balochistan, but also is the largest opposition bloc in the national parliament. The Islamists, who historically were divided and never gained more than a handful of seats in any previous election, contested the 2002 elections on a single platform and exploited the anti-American sentiment among the Pashtuns and others in the country in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.
Another key reason behind the MMA's extraordinary showing at the polls was the fact that the mainstream opposition parties -- the Pakistani People's Party-Parliamentarians (PPP-P) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) -- were marginalized because of certain electoral and constitutional engineering aimed at preventing the two groups from making significant gains in the elections. Furthermore, the Musharraf government engineered a significant number of post-election defections of parliament members from the PPP-P. The PPP-P emerged as the largest opposition party in parliament in the last elections. The defections, however, decreased the number of seats it controlled -- and the MMA, which was in third place, emerged as the largest opposition bloc.
Since the last elections, Musharraf has seen how the military's historical relationship with Islamist and jihadist forces has cost the country -- and not just in terms of external pressure. It also has allowed these forces to emerge as a threat on the domestic front. Though the jihadists have staged a few suicide bombings in response to counterterrorism operations by Pakistani and U.S. forces, the MMA can exploit this issue in the elections, potentially consolidating its hold in the Pashtun areas and even enhancing it.
This would explain why Musharraf sees the coming parliamentary elections as a decisive battle between the forces of extremism and moderation. Though Musharraf might have clearly identified the battle line, he faces problems in gathering the forces of moderation to defeat the radicals.
The quandary has to do with the fact that two critical moderate political forces -- the PPP-P and the PML-N -- are not ready to do business with him. These two parties, which together form the secular opposition bloc called the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD), are not willing to accept a president in military uniform.
That he is the president as well as the military chief is not only the source of Musharraf's power; it is also the biggest sore point with regard to his future as leader of the country. Musharraf realizes that at some point he needs to step down as chief of the army staff. But from his point of view, how does he do so without incurring a loss of sovereignty? One way to do this, perhaps, is to change the political system from a parliamentary to a presidential one.
Considering that the constitution says the country should have a parliamentary form of government, he needs to be able to balance the powers of the parliament with those of the presidency. This can be done by amending the constitution in keeping with a negotiated power-sharing mechanism. This way Musharraf could retain control over power by serving as a balance between the military establishment and the civilians. But for this to materialize, he and his allies must get over the hurdle of the twin elections. In this respect, there are two possible outcomes.
1. Musharraf is able to get re-elected in September without any backlash from the public, meaning he is able to keep not just the ARD and MMA apart, but also to sustain internal divisions within the two alliances. Additionally, his civilian allies at a bare minimum retain more or less the same number of seats in the incumbent legislatures. Given the divided state of the Pakistani electorate, achieving this objective is not impossible.
2. Should an outcry occur over vote-rigging -- one big enough for the opposition to exploit -- then Musharraf would be in trouble, both and home and abroad. The Bush administration, for instance, would not want to come out in support of him in the wake of mass cries of fraud. In such a situation, things could spiral out of hand and he could be forced to step down. In the event of major public protests, even his generals could be forced to call on him to step down or strike a compromise with the opposition.
Musharraf would want to avoid at all costs the latter outcome, which means his government cannot afford to allow the opposition to exploit the issue of electoral fraud. This is why it is even more important that he not engage in actions that will make it even more difficult for him and his allies to get re-elected.
This complex domestic political situation raises the question of whether the United States and its allies can delay their demand for Islamabad to take more action until after the electoral storm for Musharraf has passed. In many ways it is a timing issue because NATO is looking at the coming spring offensive from the Taliban and needs Pakistani cooperation to act. Musharraf and Washington, therefore, likely will work out a formula whereby the jihadists can be dealt with without creating problems for Musharraf in the elections. This is because, from Washington's point of view, long-term success in the war against the jihadists depends on political continuity in Islamabad.
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Geopolitical Diary: The Second Search for Moderate Taliban
In an interview that appeared on Wednesday in German magazine Der Spiegel, Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed willingness to negotiate with the Taliban and their Pashtun militant Islamist allies in order to quell the raging jihadist insurgency in his country. Karzai said, "I will embrace [Taliban chief] Mullah [Mohammad] Omar and [Hezb-i-Islami leader and former Prime Minister] Gulbuddin Hekmatyar for peace in Afghanistan, for stability in Afghanistan. But it is the Afghan people who should decide on the atrocities committed against the Afghan people."
This statement raises a couple of questions: Why is Karzai extending an olive branch to the Taliban-led jihadists at a time when their resurgence would allow the Taliban to negotiate from a position of strength? Doesn't the Afghan leader know Mullah Omar is not interested in negotiating with Kabul, given that his alliance with al Qaeda is incompatible with Karzai's ties to the United States? Moreover, Karzai is not in a position to engage in such negotiations unless he has clearance from his NATO supporters.
The Western military alliance has been quietly exploring alternative ways of undercutting the Taliban. It also has been advised to simultaneously push ahead with the military campaign to weaken the Pashtun jihadist movement by focusing on taking out the Mullah Omar-based leadership and exploring negotiations with more pragmatic elements within the Taliban leadership. This would partially explain Karzai's statement.
The president's offer to engage Mullah Omar and Hekmatyar in negotiations can only be understood within the context of the Taliban landscape, which consists of at least three different factions:
1. Those engaged in ground combat inside Afghanistan's Pashtun majority areas in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
2. Those connected to Pakistan.
3. Those with ties to al Qaeda.
Karzai is aware of this configuration and knows Mullah Omar will reject negotiations. Therefore, by offering to make peace with Mullah Omar and even to include the Taliban in his government, Karzai is attempting to drive a wedge between these various factions. Kabul has no interest in cutting deals with those Taliban who are close to al Qaeda. Instead, he is trying to extract the "moderate Taliban" by creating a schism within the Pashtun jihadists. By demonstrating he is ready to give the Taliban a piece of political pie, Karzai hopes to spur a significant number of the movement's members to move away from Mullah Omar and his cabal.
The Afghan government also hopes to sideline Pakistan's Taliban proxies in order to prevent Islamabad from regaining influence in Kabul. This is not the first time Kabul has attempted such a move. During 2003-2004, then-U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad (a Pashtun) tried to seek out the moderates among the Taliban. Those efforts led a handful of senior Taliban members to part ways with Mullah Omar. But it failed to put a dent in the fighting because the bulk of the Taliban fighters did not heed the call.
This second search for moderate Taliban will meet a similar fate unless Karzai is willing to embrace those Taliban with connections to Pakistan. This is the only way he will be able to isolate the religious nationalists from the transnationalists and potentially isolate Mullah Omar. Therefore, it appears Karzai must work out a deal with Islamabad before he can negotiate with the Taliban.
stratfor.com
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AFGHANISTAN: Fugitive Afghan militant leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said his forces have stopped cooperating with the Taliban, and suggested that he is open to talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Hekmatyar told The Associated Press in a video response to questions that his group contacted Taliban leaders in 2003 and agreed to wage a joint holy war against U.S. troops. He did not say when the split occurred, but that "certain elements among the Taliban rejected the idea of a joint struggle against the aggressor." Hekmatyar said his forces are now mounting only restricted operations, partly because of a lack of resources.
stratfor.com
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0308/p01s02-wosc.html?page=1
The Afghan guard who stops suicide bombers
A gatekeeper's resolve has earned him the nickname 'Rambo' at a US base in Kabul.
By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
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Reporters on the Job
We share the story behind the story. KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - There is trouble outside Camp Phoenix. The American base on the dusty outskirts of Kabul has called for English translators. The problem is, the Americans have now hired their translator, and a crowd of Afghan job hunters at the camp gate is getting unruly.
The US soldiers are nervous. One yells obscenities and waves his gun. The crowd cowers but doesn't budge. Then, another soldier steps forward, armed only with a thick wooden staff, wrapped in peeling red tape.
The name tag on his broad chest says "Rambo," and though he wears US Army fatigues, he speaks in perfect Dari, ordering the crowd to leave. It reluctantly disperses.
This is a normal day for Rambo, an Afghan who has stood guard here for more than four years, pledging his life to the American soldiers that rid his land of the Taliban. But on Jan. 16, Rambo's gatekeeping made him a bona fide hero.
On that day, Rambo wrenched open the driver's side door of a moving car and wrestled a suicide bomber into submission before he could detonate his explosives. President Bush lauded him in a nationally televised speech several weeks ago, and before that, slightly exaggerated accounts of his feat circled through cyberspace, pleading for America to offer him citizenship or at least a medal.
Dutiful: Four days off in four years
On this gray day, amid the intermittent raindrops of a coming storm, Rambo seems somewhat weary of the story, asking a lieutenant whether he really needs to tell it again. So far as he is concerned, his only job is to protect those American soldiers at the gate. It is why he has taken only four days off in more than four years, even working Fridays, though that is the Muslim day of rest.
But the lieutenant kindly requests Rambo's patience. To Rambo, that is an order. "If you want me to do it, I will do it," he tells her with martial deference.
In fairness, his story is not just about the day he stopped a suicide bomber, when the steel of his resolve to protect American troops became so apparent to all who did not know him. To those who do, who gave him the "Rambo" nickname, the name tag, and the stick, his devotion was already evident.
At every corner of Camp Phoenix, Rambo stops to salute American officers. Soldiers heading out on patrol call out his name as if he were a fraternity brother. He is unquestionably one of them, because he is so willing to make the same sacrifice that they, too, have been called upon to make.
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COMMENDATIONS: The Afghan security guard 'Rambo' was praised in a speech by President Bush, and he proudly displays awards in his room at Camp Phoenix, near Kabul, Afghanistan.
ANDY NELSON – STAFF
The Afghan guard who stops suicide bombers
A gatekeeper's resolve has earned him the nickname 'Rambo' at a US base in Kabul.
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Page 1 | 2 | Page 3
Reporters on the Job
We share the story behind the story. Yet he is also unquestionably Afghan, and never more so than when he smothered his countryman and would-be martyr at the front gate. To Rambo, whose name has been withheld for his protection, what happened that day was a matter of pride – a personal pride that burns deeper than love of country, or family, or faith.
"I made a promise to every American soldier," he says in grave tones. "Even if there is only one American soldier, I will be here to protect him."
Amid Camp Phoenix's soil-filled blast walls and bristling guard towers, designed to keep soldiers separate from the unsettled Afghanistan beyond, Rambo is a living lesson in the character of his country, where friends pledge their lives to defend you and enemies never rest until you have been destroyed.
On a clear, chilly Tuesday in mid- January, those two perceptions of the American presence here collided.
How he spotted the suicide bomber
Having spoken for five loving minutes about his well-worn red stick and its many uses in crowd control, the black-bearded Rambo is at last primed to talk about his legendary feat, his dark eyes bright with enthusiasm. He sits on a cold, wooden picnic bench in the Camp Phoenix compound, immune to the freezing rain, his rough and blackened hands working frantically to depict the scene.
When the driver of an off-white sedan did not brake as he approached the gate, Rambo sensed danger. He ran to the door, flung it open, and saw two buttons by the gearshift, each with a wire running to a gas tank that filled the entire back seat.
Before the terrorist could reach the buttons, Rambo seized his hands, and a Security Forces soldier arrived to help. In an instant, it was over.
Later in the day, the car exploded when a demolition team failed to disarm it, but no one was injured.
Before and since the event, Rambo has gotten recognition for his role at Camp Phoenix. In his dark and low-ceilinged room – a nestlike clutter of boxes and badges and potato-chip bags – Rambo displays a letter from the former commander of NATO. There is a framed commendation that bears both the US and Afghan flags, as well as a jumble of military coins given for his service.
In another corner, he uncovers a pile of letters from American soldiers, their wives, and their mothers – one with a lipstick-stained kiss of gratitude. These are his treasures. The thanks he has always received for his service makes his monastic existence worthwhile. Even before Jan. 16, he stayed here from before dawn until after dusk. Now, he lives on the base full time. In fact, he has not been home for three months.
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A gatekeeper's resolve has earned him the nickname 'Rambo' at a US base in Kabul.
Page 3 of 3
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Reporters on the Job
We share the story behind the story. He bears the security measures joyfully. And he doesn't heed the Afghans who roll down their windows and shout obscenities at him as they pass. "I don't care what they say," he says. "I will protect my friends."
Yes, he says, the Americans are here to help hold his country together as it attempts to heal after three decades of misrule and civil war. But more than that, he loves Americans because they have treated him with respect.
"They are good and they have strong hearts," he says.
They have given him this uniform, which is frayed at the cuffs from constant use. They have created a "Rambo fund" to help him get a TV, and have helped two of his sons get jobs. On his shoulder he proudly wears the patches of every unit that has come through Camp Phoenix – each vying for the esteemed piece of real estate that is Rambo's uniform.
"When you think of Camp Phoenix, you think of Rambo," says 1st Lt. John Stephens of 1-180th Infantry Battalion, who is in the midst of his second tour here. "He's the rock of Camp Phoenix."
Taliban rocket killed his wife and child
Rambo's journey to the American side of the war is a simple one. During the days of the Taliban, his wife and one of his children were killed when a rocket crashed into their home. It was not intentional, he says, but it was indicative of the lives ruined by Taliban rule. Moreover, as a member of the Army during a former government, he felt unsafe and eventually fled to Pakistan for refuge.
The fall of the Taliban in 2001 brought him back to Kabul, where he resumed an old job as a truck driver and security guard at a transportation company. When Camp Phoenix commandeered the building used by the transportation company in 2003, Rambo stayed on as a security guard for the new installation. He has been here ever since, and he has been "Rambo" for almost as long.
His handle was the suggestion of a woman who was here during the early days of Camp Phoenix. "I liked Rambo even from before," he says, betraying no knowledge of anyone named Sylvester Stallone, as if Rambo and the actor are synonymous. "Sometimes he is in a movie where he is wild, and sometimes he has a necktie and is very respectable."
Which Rambo is he? "It depends," he says with a smile. "If a polite man comes, I will be a Rambo who is polite and gentle. But if it is Al Qaeda, I will be the wild Rambo."
Soldiers here will vouch for that, telling of instances where Rambo pulled people out of car windows. Back during Communist times, when he was a tank commander, Rambo says that he cut all the medals off the uniform of a superior officer when the officer (falsely, he insists) accused him of not fixing a tank correctly.
Today, he returns to the gate, huddling beside a fire in an old oil drum along with his American colleagues. They are his responsibility, he says, and he is determined not to forsake that trust.
"I don't want to be blamed," he says. "I promised these people a lot. Dying is better than to be blamed."
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AFGHANISTAN: Swiss weekly newspaper SonntagsBlick reported that former Taliban Defense Minister Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, who was captured in February in Pakistan, was set free after only two days. While the report has not been confirmed by Pakistan, a SonntagsBlick reporter allegedly met with the former leader Feb. 28.
PAKISTAN: More than 20 people were injured when riot police clashed with 3,000 lawyers in Pakistan. The lawyers were striking to protest the suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The strike affected superior and lower courts all over the country.
AFGHANISTAN: The first joint meeting of the Pakistani-Afghan Jirga Commission began. The two-day talks are aimed at convening traditional jirga meetings on both sides of the border in an attempt to control violence in the tribal regions. These talks also will include a discussion of ways to stop illegal cross-border migration.
PAKISTAN: U.S. and Pakistani agents have arrested two suspected German terrorists in Pakistan, German magazine Der Spiegel reported. The men are accused of contacting terrorists and visiting an al Qaeda camp near the Afghan-Pakistani border.
stratfor.com
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Today's NY Times:
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 12 — The departing American ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald E. Neumann, said Monday that he did not see the Taliban as the big threat it appeared to represent a year or two ago, and that he was leaving feeling “reasonably optimistic” about the state of the insurgency and the country’s progress.
“We spent a lot of last year worrying about this year,” he told a small group of journalists in the refurbished old embassy building, which reopened recently. “We will certainly face hard fighting in the south,” he said, “but I am going away feeling reasonably optimistic.”
More British and American troops had been supplied for the effort, he noted, providing the needed military support for the anti-insurgency effort, especially in the southern part of the country by fighters associated with the former Taliban rulers.
“We will see a hard fight,” Mr. Neumann said, but added, “We have the basics of what it takes.”
The Taliban, who were ousted in late 2001, mounted a strong comeback last year, leading to fierce fighting with American and NATO forces. The Taliban also appear to have joined forces with drug traffickers in Helmand Province in the south.
The NATO troops who took control of southern Afghanistan last year began a large offensive in the area early this month.
Mr. Neumann said he did not believe that time was on the Taliban’s side. “I don’t see where the Taliban are going to increase,” he said.
Comparing the violence to that of Iraq, where he served in 2004 and 2005, he said there were no battleground cities in Afghanistan like Falluja that would require large-scale military operations to secure. In Afghanistan, “We are talking of protecting a town with 50 police,” he said.
“This does not tell me this is a 10-foot-tall movement,” he said. “It’s tough. It’s resilient. It’s dangerous. I just don’t see it as being that strong. It is still a race, but inch by inch the government is getting a little better.”
The ambassador said that the Afghan Army, which initially had been envisioned as a light force reliant on American allies, was being strengthened, with a goal of building it to 70,000 troops, and that it was being supplied with armored vehicles, aircraft and body armor.
The program to develop a police entity was two years behind that of the army, he said, but current plans also call for more support for the police. He said he was confident that Congress would approve the extra money needed for those efforts.
Of Pakistan, which has come under persistent criticism over the past year for its failure to stem cross-border infiltration by insurgents, he said, “We are getting more cooperation, and I think we need more cooperation.”
He said the Pakistani government should impose more control on the tribal areas along the Afghan border. “It will have to be done one piece at a time, and we need to help them bring control in the tribal areas,” he said, adding that he would like to see Pakistan pursue more Taliban leaders believed to be on its side of the border.
Mr. Neumann said people in Afghanistan and abroad should understand that it would take considerable time to see results in the country. It had taken four years to set up a military justice system for the Afghan National Army — from drafting the law to training legal personnel — before the army could hold its first court-martial, he said. Plans to train a civilian judiciary are proceeding, but the effects will not be felt on the ground even in a year’s time, he said.
International commitment remained high, however, and there were no signs of donor fatigue for Afghanistan, he said. Even though nations have been slow to meet their commitments to provide soldiers for the NATO peacekeeping force, none of the countries were talking of pulling out. “Inch by inch we are seeing more commitment,” Mr. Neumann said.
The Afghan government is also slowly moving in the right direction, he said. The new Parliament has been a generally positive addition, and there have been some improvement in the situation with provincial governors, some of whom were warlords who were seen as more powerful than President Hamid Karzai.
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Today's NY Times
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Along the Afghan border, not far from this northwestern city, Islamic militants have used a firm foothold over the past year to train and dispatch suicide bombers against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistani tribal areas are home to both the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
But in recent weeks the suicide bombers have turned on Pakistan itself, carrying out six attacks and killing 35 people. Militant leaders have threatened to unleash scores more, in effect opening a new front in their war.
Diplomats and concerned residents see the bombings as proof of a spreading “Talibanization,” as Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, calls it, which has seeped into more settled districts of Pakistan from the tribal areas along the border, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have made a home.
In Peshawar and other parts of North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the tribal areas, residents say English-language schools have received threats, schoolgirls have been warned to veil themselves, music is being banned and men are told not to shave their beards.
Then there is the mounting toll of the suicide bombings. One of the most lethal killed 15 people in Peshawar, most of them police officers, including the popular police chief.
The police, on the front line of the violence, have suffered most in many of the suicide attacks, diplomats and officials say. They are increasingly demoralized and cowed, allowing the militancy to spread still further, they warn.
In Tank, a town close to the lawless tribal area of South Waziristan, where militants have their own Taliban ministate, the police have taken off their uniforms, essentially ceding control to the militants, who now use the town as a logistics supply base, according to one Western diplomat in Pakistan.
“It’s not good,” he said. “You have ungovernable space and the impact is expanding ungovernable space.”
Suicide bombings are not new in Pakistan. There have been several high-profile cases linked to Al Qaeda in which bombers have tried to kill General Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, and singled out foreign targets, French engineers and the United States Consulate in Karachi.
But the indiscriminate terror, sown by lone bombers, with explosives strapped to their chests wandering into a crowd, is a new experience for Pakistanis, and it has shocked and angered many here.
“Are these attacks isolated incidents of fanatic wrath, or is it some widespread coordinated effort to intimidate the state itself?” asked The Nation, a daily newspaper, in an editorial after the latest bombing against an antiterrorist judge in Multan. “Coordinated or not, these are dangerous times to be seen as representatives of the state; the militants are driving home a point.”
The attacks all stem from the tribal area of Waziristan, according to a senior government official, who asked not to be identified because investigations are continuing. There, he said, groups supporting jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan, sectarian groups and militant splinter cells have morphed into a kind of hydra.
“They are all there in South Waziristan’s Wana region,” the official said. “It’s no longer an Afghan-only problem. It has become as much a Pakistan problem too.”
Still, it remains unclear if there is a single strategy behind the suicide bombings. Some have been apparently sectarian in nature, part of a decades-old problem in Pakistan between extremist Shiite and Sunni groups.
But militants allied with the Taliban and Al Qaeda appear to be behind four of the six most recent attacks, acting in retaliation for military strikes by Pakistani forces against their groups in the tribal regions.
Of those, at least three attacks can be traced back to Baitullah Mehsud, a militant commander based in South Waziristan, who is known to have sent suicide bombers from his mountain redoubt to Afghanistan, police officials said.
Mr. Mehsud, a former fighter with the Taliban, said his main desire was to fight United States-led coalition and NATO forces in Afghanistan. He entered into a peace deal with the Pakistani government in 2005, agreeing not to attack Pakistani forces, as long as he could continue his jihad across the border.
But under increasing pressure from the United States, and acting on a tip from American intelligence, Pakistani authorities sent helicopters to strike at a presumed hide-out of his followers on Jan. 6, killing eight people.
Mr. Mehsud vowed revenge, and several of the recent suicide bombings are believed to be in retaliation.
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A suicide bomb attack on a military convoy on Jan. 22 was carried out by Mr. Mehsud’s men. Another attack by a bomber on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Jan. 26, which killed a policeman, was attributed to Mr. Mehsud as well. So was an attack that killed a policeman in Dera Ismail Khan on Jan. 29, police officials say.
General Musharraf vowed at a Feb. 2 news conference to go after Mr. Mehsud. But the governor of North-West Frontier Province, Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, preferred to send a delegation of elders to talk to him. The militant commander later denied any involvement, but the bombings slowed.
Mr. Mehsud may also have orchestrated the suicide attack here, in the old city of Peshawar on Jan. 27, when a bomber approached police officers on foot and detonated himself as they were organizing security for the Shiite festival to mark Muharram.
Police investigators say the method, grenade lot numbers and other explosives used were identical to those in previous attacks. DNA tests also showed that all the bombers were 17 to 20 years old, they said.
But a security official said other leads pointed more to another militant group, Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi aimed at setting up Shariah, or Islamic law, which is active in the tribal areas north of Peshawar.
The movement closely supports the Taliban and is linked to Al Qaeda. It was almost certainly behind the suicide bombing that killed 44 military cadets in November in Dargai, in retaliation for an airstrike against a religious school run by one of its members in the tribal area of Bajaur.
The group had been training suicide bombers, Pakistan’s interior minister, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, said after the Bajaur strike.
The attack on the cadets was a major escalation on the militants’ part. It was apparently aimed at the army as an institution, rather than its top leaders, whom the militants blame for pro-American policies. The target, too, was an easy one — the cadets were unarmed, on an open playing field.
“They are attempting to make it clear to Pakistan’s security establishment that their strength has yet to be sapped,” a private policy group based in the United States, Strategic Forecasting Inc., wrote at the time.
The militant group remains active and may be behind some other attacks in the frontier region, a Western diplomat said. They and other militants are also trying, with increasing effect, to intimidate populations beyond the tribal areas.
A girls’ high school in Mardan was recently warned that the girls should veil themselves or stay home, a tactic typical of groups like Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi. Four English language schools closed for four days last month after the police learned of another possible threat.
“These are acts of terror to psychologically defeat the people to accept the force of the Taliban and the ways of the Taliban,” said Latif Afridi, an opposition politician and a member of the provincial bar association in Peshawar.
The creeping militancy has frustrated government agencies, who disagree over what to do about it, according to one intelligence official.
There is consensus that a large-scale military operation, like the kinds that have failed in recent years, is not the solution. But some diplomats say that the series of peace deals that the government struck with tribal leaders and militants in South and North Waziristan has not worked either.
For instance, according to another Western diplomat, General Musharraf knows the North Waziristan agreement is only 20 to 30 percent effective, but he continues to back it for lack of another plan.
The accord has brought some order to the area’s capital, Miram Shah, according to officials with knowledge of North Waziristan. It has also forced a split among the militants, with the more aggressive followers of Mr. Mehsud and their Qaeda allies congregating in the town of Mir Ali, they said.
Some officials are now arguing that the government should move against the militants in Mir Ali, while supporting the more reasonable ones.
One practical solution is to train local tribesmen to buttress the Frontier Corps, which polices the tribal areas and could be used as a buffer to protect the settled neighboring districts.
Hundreds of recruits from Waziristan are already training in border and customs control, among other things, under a program sponsored by the United States Department of Justice, according to an American diplomat. But it is not clear whether the program will succeed.
While local men would be more acceptable to the tribesmen, their sympathies may well lie with the militants, and the Frontier Corps has been accused of turning a blind eye to the militants’ cross-border activities.
Meanwhile, the problems continue to spread to other part of the tribal areas, and beyond.
“Taliban militants have emerged in Kurram, as well as Orakzai,” said Mr. Afridi, the opposition politician, referring to other tribal regions. “They are trying to emerge in Mohmand.”
“In my area the clouds of Taliban and civil war are in sight,” he added. “We are worried, we really are.”
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Second post of the day:
AFGHANISTAN/RUSSIA: Afghanistan is interested in cooperating with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and in purchasing arms from Russia, RIA Novosti reported, citing CSTO officials. After completing a three-day trip to Kabul, members of the CSTO -- comprised of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan -- said representatives from Afghanistan spoke unanimously on cooperation and joint initiatives to stem terrorism and drug trafficking in the region.
stratfor.com
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I have often wondered what would happen to our strategy if Musharef were to fall/be killed. Do Pak's nukes/nuke tech fall into AQ/Taliban hands? Things are looking grimmer for Gen M. This piece from today's Financial Times of London looks at the situation more closely than the usual US enemedia.
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This article from todays FT is pertinent to your discussion.
Pakistanis fall out of love with Musharraf
By Jo Johnson andFarhan Bokhari
Published: March 14 2007 02:00 | Last updated: March 14 2007 02:00
In the boardrooms of Karachi, Pakistan's commercial hub, multinationals
are grimly reassessing the "key man risk" line of their business plans.
Throughout the country's history, no military ruler has left power
gracefully.
General Zia ul-Haq died in a mysterious aircraft crash in 1988. Field
Marshal Ayub Khan was drummed out of office in 1969 by protests that
paralysed the country, as was General Yahya Khan after Pakistan's
humiliating defeat in the 1971 war with India.
General Pervez Musharraf, the current president, looks unlikely to be an
exception to the rule. Seven years after he seized power in a bloodless
coup, diplomats say he needs a credible exit strategy of his own.
The honeymoon that followed the 1999 coup, based on relief at an end to
venal party politics, is coming to an end.
Yesterday saw intensified nationwide protests against Gen Musharraf's
decisionto suspend Pakistan's chief justice. The move was seen as a
flagrant attempt to pack the Supreme Court with pliable allies ahead of
expectedlegal challenges to his plans to have himself re-elected
president-in-uniform later this year.
At the same time, US lawmakers have weakened Gen Musharraf by demanding
that aid to Pakistan be made conditional on his doing more to crack down
on Taliban forces sheltering in lawless tribal areas along the Afghan
border, and by pushing for democratic reform.
Analysts said that for Gen Musharraf to push troops back into Taliban
strongholds in tribal areas, from which they were withdrawn in a
controversial agreement with local leaders last August, could lead to
such bloodshed that the military might impose full martial law on Pakistan.
While the Pakistani street may be awakening, big business, for the
moment at least, remains overwhelmingly supportive of Gen Musharraf,
whose seven years in power have seen some of the fastest growth in the
country's history.
"All governments in the past in Pakistan have spoken of privatisation,
but Musharraf has actually implemented it in a systematic way. It has
taken real political will," said H. Reza-ur-Rahim, JPMorgan's
Karachi-based head of investment banking in Pakistan.
"Investors want continuity and political stability. They do not want to
see too much change."
The head of a big international pharmaceutical group said: "The worst
outcome for Pakistan would be a situation where the political parties
exploit the situation and come out on to the street. The rhetoric from
the US in recent days has even alienated liberals in Pakistan.
"How can we have a longstanding relationship with the US based on them
threatening to take out a big stick? . . . No government can be seen as
weak externally and hope to command respect internally," he said.
Islamist politicians said much of their support was based on surging
anti-Americanism. The situation was made worse by Gen Musharraf's
"revelation" in his autobiography that Richard Armitage, the former US
deputy secretary of state, had threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the
Stone Age" if Islamabad failed to help avenge the September 11 2001 attacks.
"Musharraf is associated with America. For ourpeople, US policies are
anchored against Muslims in many countries," said Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a
leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of six Islamist parties.
Analysts said that the MMA, which has a share in power in two of
Pakistan's four provinces, would find it easier to harness
anti-Musharraf and anti-US opinion if Pakistan's ruling generals
continued to refuse to allow Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the
leaders of the two main opposition parties, to return from exile.
More destabilising for Gen Musharraf would be a decision by Washington
and its allies to take unilateral action against Taliban forces living
in Pakistani tribal areas.
Western diplomats said that such a scenario, which could trigger a
revolt against Gen Musharraf in the army, was "extremely unlikely".
"Slagging off Pakistan in public is not the best way to solve this
problem," said one western diplomat.
"The US needs Pakistanas a partner in fightingal-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Whatever they do, theywill be at great pains to doit with the support
ofPakistan."
Even though the temperature is rising in Islamabad, few expect Gen
Musharrafto leave the political scene soon. If he were to do so, the
line of succession, in the short term, seems clear.
General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, an officer with pro-western credentials who
has been the target of assassination attempts by militant groups, would
take over the military.
Mohammad Mian Soomro, chairman of the Senate, would become president.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
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Geopolitical Diary: Judge's Ouster Causes an Uproar in Pakistan
An extraordinary meeting of Pakistan's military commanders will be held in the next few days, Pakistani daily The News reported Wednesday. Sources told the newspaper the meeting was called to discuss the crisis caused by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's March 9 suspension of Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.
Musharraf's move against the country's senior judiciary official was intended to help the president secure a second term in September. Musharraf likely was advised by close aides that Chaudhry, who has demonstrated a certain degree of independence since Musharraf appointed him in June 2005, cannot be relied upon to rule in Musharraf's favor should his opponents challenge his re-election bid in the highest court.
Acting on this advice, Musharraf suspended the chief justice on allegations of corruption, misconduct and other wrongdoings, and referred the matter to the country's highest judicial authority, the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC). The government expected that, like all of its previous decisions, Chaudhry's suspension would go smoothly. But the government was taken by surprise when the country's legal community sternly opposed the move. The chief justice himself has chosen to fight the decision in the SJC.
Meanwhile, declaring the suspension an attack on the judiciary, lawyers and judges are boycotting courts across the country and have staged demonstrations that police have violently suppressed. The government reportedly has tried to restrict media coverage of the controversy.
The crisis is quickly turning into the most serious challenge Musharraf has faced since coming to power in October 1999. Political opponents from across the ideological spectrum are trying to exploit the opportunity and force Musharraf from office. Chaudhry's lead attorney is Aitzaz Ahsan, a senior leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians and a current parliament member.
Though there is a consensus against the ouster of the chief justice, a grand strategy on how to use the crisis to generate enough unrest against the government to force Musharraf from power is still in the works; it is too early to tell just how the strategy will unfold. There also is dissent within ruling political circles, and many of Musharraf's senior civilian allies are critical of his decision to suspend Chaudhry.
Musharraf can do one of two things: He can have the SJC declare Chaudhry guilty and remove him from the post of chief justice. This would not be easy, given the current national uproar and the likelihood that the protests would intensify in the run-up to the September election. The government might be reluctant to take such a bold step when it has very little support on the matter. The second option would involve cutting a deal with the suspended chief justice whereby the SJC acquits him and restores him to his position. This would be in exchange for assurance that the chief justice would not move against Musharraf. This way, the president could demonstrate that he respects the law of the land and thereby undercut his opponents.
This second option, however, assumes that the sacked chief justice would be willing to negotiate. Musharraf also would be dealing from a position of relative weakness, which Chaudhry and his supporters could exploit. Given the adverse effects the chief justice's restoration could have on Musharraf's hold on power, the regime might not be inclined to move in that direction.
It is quite possible that the current situation will not create an immediate crisis of governance for Musharraf, but it could lead to more trouble as the country gets closer to election time. Increasing international pressure on Islamabad to more effectively contain the jihadists would complicate matters for Musharraf all the more.
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Pakistan: Musharraf on the Defensive
Summary
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has condemned the March 16 police action against the office of GEO TV. This and related developments suggest the government has gone on the defensive as the controversy worsens over the government's suspension of the country's top jurist. Musharraf might not be the only casualty in this crisis; the military's hold on power could also be weakened once the dust settles.
Analysis
Demonstrations continue in Pakistan against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's March 15 suspension of Pakistani Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, with ordinary citizens joining the legal community in protest. Significant clashes took place March 16 in the federal capital, Islamabad, and in the provincial capitals Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi. The most serious incident involved security forces raiding the office of private satellite television network GEO TV, ransacking the facility and physically assaulting employees.
Such was the gravity of the situation that many senior members of the Cabinet condemned the incident -- as did Musharraf, who publicly apologized for the raid. Appearing on the network's popular talk show "Capital Talk," Musharraf vowed to oversee personally the investigation of the attack and to take action swiftly against those found responsible. Musharraf also apologized personally to the show's anchor, Hamid Mir, who was manhandled by police officials during the incident.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Judicial Council, which is hearing the government's case against the chief justice, ruled that restrictions against Chaudhry be lifted.
These events have further exacerbated the crisis and have put the government in such a panic mode that various state agencies are starting to commit blunders. There seems to be a disconnect between orders given from above and how they are being handled by subordinates. After turning the legal community against it, the government has now angered the media. All the while, Musharraf's political opponents are trying to exploit the situation.
The Musharraf regime also is reportedly trying to cut a deal with the chief justice to resolve the matter. Any compromise, however, will not help the regime recover from this crisis. In fact, it will only make matters worse for Musharraf, since it will lead to the empowerment of the judiciary and opposition political forces, the cooperation of which Musharraf needs in order to defuse the crisis.
The growing sentiment against the military-dominated regime could force Musharraf into a corner, especially given that 2007 is an election year. Should Musharraf be forced to step aside, it is unlikely that his successors in the military would take over. A caretaker government would emerge and hold elections in three to six months, as one did when the last military ruler of Pakistan, Gen. Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, was killed in plane crash in 1988.
In that case, even though a civilian government took power, the military establishment continued to control it from behind the scenes. This time around, it is unlikely that the military will be able to do that -- at least not to the degree it did in 1988. This is because the corps commanders and agency heads who would form a post-Musharrafian military hierarchy would be a group of young and inexperienced generals, the result of Musharraf's periodic reshuffling of the deck and frequent promotions.
Another Musharraf legacy is the rise of a relatively free media, especially the proliferation of private television networks. This is opening up the country's political culture and eroding the military's ability to control the political process.
There are too many moving parts in the current crisis to predict a likely outcome. One thing is clear, however: Once the dust settles, Musharraf will lose sovereignty, whether he continues to rule or not, and the military will be forced to share political power with civilian institutions.
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PAKISTAN: Residents in Pakistan's South Waziristan agency said at least 10 people were wounded following fighting between al Qaeda-linked Uzbek militants and Pakistani tribesmen. Hundreds of foreign militants, including Uzbeks, Arabs and Chechens, have been hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
PAKISTAN: Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said in an interview with television channel Geo News that general elections will be held on schedule. Despite the current crisis, Musharraf said he will not declare a state of emergency or bring in the army to quell riots.
stratfor.com
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Shaky Musharraf holds only the military card
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - As Pakistan's judiciary crisis deepens and a political storm escalates as daily developments spin the situation into new dimensions, maintenance of public order is uppermost in the minds of those in the corridors of power at military headquarters in Rawalpindi.
Should they leave the maintenance of public order to the civilian administration and the police, who have already failed to control violent protests over the "reference" of Chief Justice Iftikhar
Chaudhary for alleged abuse of power to the Judicial Council, given that further mishandling could easily be exploited by opposition politicians?
Even bigger questions are, what options would be left for President General Pervez Musharraf if military or paramilitary forces are used to confront the mobs, and where would this leave the army? Musharraf, who is also chief of army staff, will seek re-election in presidential polls this year.
While these questions are being pondered, the Judicial Council hearing on the Chaudhary reference has been deferred from March 21 to April 3, giving the authorities some breathing space.
Despite the deferment, the pace of developments is so rapid that anything could happen in the interim. Qazi Hussain Ahmed, president of the six-party opposition religious alliance Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, has already announced that protests will continue. On Monday seven judges from Sindh and Punjab quit their posts and on Tuesday two more judges tendered their resignations.
The deferment also provides opposition political parties with an opportunity to mobilize their members to take advantage of the snowballing anti-Musharraf campaign.
Such developments leave plenty of potential for more mob violence, and many expect that the next hearing on April 3 will bring out the protesters in numbers not seen during the previous two hearings.
Nevertheless, Musharraf has dismissed the idea of declaring an emergency or deploying the army, despite the fact that all armed-forces intelligence agencies have reported the failure of the civilian administration and the police to handle the protests. The agencies say that probably the only way to contain the protests would be the deployment in sizable numbers of paramilitary forces such as the Pakistan Rangers.
The crisis is being compounded by other developments. According to latest reports, the Pakistani Taliban have seized control of settled areas such as Tank in North West Frontier Province, and the leader of the Awami National Party, Isfandyar Wali, revealed on television that the Taliban now control Frontier Region (FR) Kohat, just 15 kilometers from the provincial capital, Peshawar. "I am constantly saying that Taliban are very rapidly getting powerful in the North West Frontier Province, but nobody is listening to me," said Wali.
FR Kohat is hardly three hours from the national capital, Islamabad, and such a development will undoubtedly bolster the anti-Musharraf forces. As it is, Islamabad itself is home to many Taliban who have been preparing for Musharraf's ouster.
The police are also coming under increasing fire at a time when any missteps could touch off a wildfire of rioting. After failing to contain the protests in Islamabad and Lahore last Friday, they became embroiled in fresh controversy when they received an instruction to "fix" a senior journalist from a national newspaper. The instruction came at an individual level from an intelligence agency, under pressure from the minister for law, Wasi Zafar, whose elder brother was previously director general of internal security in the Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Zafar had previously abused a journalist on a Voice of America talk show, and a local TV channel repeatedly broadcast a recording of the program. As soon as the police received the "advice" from the intelligence agency, they entered the offices of the largest media group of the country and ransacked them. Fortunately, the journalist was not present at the time and escaped being "fixed".
Thereupon, the government banned many talk shows that discussed Musharraf's action against the chief justice. In the ensuing media havoc, some TV channels announced the ban and at the same time openly defied it. Musharraf then personally appeared on TV and apologized to the nation and the media for the mishandling of the situation.
Countdown to chaos
This is the first judicial crisis of its kind in Pakistan's history. It began with the chief justice being referred by Musharraf to the Judicial Council, on the advice of Pakistan's Military Intelligence (MI).
MI is responsible for counterinsurgency operations in Balochistan, where Chief Justice Chaudhary comes from. Chaudhary had incurred the military's wrath by ruling in some cases in favor of those who were defined as "insurgents" by the military apparatus. He had also taken up the issue of people who had gone "missing" in the "war on terror".
The military establishment had misgivings about the whole modus operandi of the court. But getting rid of Chaudhary is doing nothing to help their cause. Rana Bhagwandas, the new acting chief justice who will preside over the Judicial Council, is a Hindu. He is well known for his integrity and professionalism, and could prove to be a sharp thorn in Islamabad's flesh.
Weakening the case against Chaudhary, all those named as "victims" in the reference against him have denied that they have any complaint against the chief justice. And retired justice Fakharuddin G Ibrahim, who was named as government counsel, refused to appear on behalf of the government and instead appeared on TV to appeal to the nation to stand against the high-handedness of the government.
The crisis has thus severely eroded the credibility of the Musharraf government, and when the dust settles, both he and the military will find themselves on shaky ground.
Compounding the situation are regional developments. The Taliban are about to launch an offensive in Afghanistan, and a US attack on Iran is not out of the question. These events could propel stronger Iraqi resistance to the US-led occupation there, and set shock waves in motion from Pakistan to Israel. As a major US ally in a region where anti-US forces are calling the shots, any weakening of the Pakistani leadership would have far-reaching ramifications.
It would seem that the military card is the only one Musharraf has left to play. He is truly between the proverbial rock and hard place.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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Geopolitical Diary: Afghan Taliban and Talibanization of Pakistan
Pakistani Taliban commanders on Thursday tried to negotiate a cease-fire between Pashtun fighters linked to tribal maliks and Uzbek militants linked to al Qaeda. The negotiations come after several days of fighting in the country's northwestern tribal badlands, which has killed at least 135 people. The fighting, which began March 19 after former militant commander Mullah Nazir, who Islamabad says is now on its side, ordered fighters loyal to Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan leader Tahir Yuldashev to disarm. The jirga overseeing the negotiations includes Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mahsud (wanted in connection with a wave of jihadist attacks across the country) and Sirajuddin Haqqani (the son of senior Afghan Taliban leader Jalaluddin Haqqani).
Meanwhile, Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said the battles between tribesmen and foreign militants underscore the government's success in establishing a policy for the "betterment of tribal people," and in persuading such people to drive-out foreign militants.
That the Pakistanis have been able to turn some tribal Pashtuns against transnational jihadists is a significant development. The fact that the Taliban are now trying to mediate between the maliks allied to the government and the jihadists shows that they are worried, which means Islamabad might have had a considerable degree of success in its efforts to drive a wedge between the guests and their hosts. But it remains to be seen whether this is a single event in a limited area of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), or whether it will spread across the tribal region.
The Taliban's efforts to end the fighting also indicate their own vulnerability. Since they rely on foreign jihadists in their cause, they cannot afford to see the destruction of these allies; they also need to manage their ties to the maliks. The Taliban know that some of the maliks have turned against the foreign jihadists and that these tribal leaders could turn against them as well -- the Pakistani Taliban have even challenged the tribal leadership in FATA.
The Talibanization of Pakistan's Pashtun areas is a much bigger problem for Islamabad, and not just because of issues that deal with domestic political stability. Pakistan needs to figure out how it can continue to use the Afghan Taliban as an instrument in gaining influence in Kabul without Talibanizing its own territory.
The problem for Islamabad is that the Pashtuns are the only ethnic group that Pakistan can use to gain influence in Kabul. What is even more problematic is that, among the Pashtuns, the Taliban is the most powerful movement. This means the Taliban are the only force that can aid the Pakistanis in securing their geopolitical objectives in Afghanistan.
But the Taliban are a bad option because of their ideology and because the same Pashtun ethnic medium that Pakistan is using to gain influence in Afghanistan is the one the Taliban are using to gain influence among Pakistani Pashtuns.
This explains why the Pakistanis are more concerned about the Taliban in FATA than the Taliban waging the insurgency in Afghanistan, and hence make a distinction between the two. But the reality is not as simple as Islamabad would like to believe. The Taliban cannot be easily bifurcated along nationalistic lines because of both ethnic and ideological reasons. Ethnically both are Pashtuns, and ideologically they both adhere to the same transnational jihadist cause. Though they have different areas of operation, they cooperate.
Therefore, Pakistan's efforts to block Taliban activity in its territory while it seeks to use the Pashtun jihadist movement to gain a foothold in Afghanistan are not going to work.
stratfor.com
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-hindu25mar25,1,3397867.story?coll=la-headlines-world
Pakistan gets its first Hindu chief justice
Judge Rana Bhagwandas is on panel that will hear charges against suspended top jurist Chaudhry.
By Henry Chu, Times Staff Writer
March 25, 2007
KARACHI, PAKISTAN — He is the first Hindu to preside over this Muslim nation's highest court. And he is now in the eye of a political hurricane engulfing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
Judge Rana Bhagwandas, 64, was sworn in Saturday as acting chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court. Upon taking the oath in this southern port city, Bhagwandas was thrust into the controversy surrounding the removal of the man who had held the top job.
Musharraf suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry on March 9 on the basis of charges that he had abused his position. The move prompted street protests that caught the Pakistani leader off guard and triggered his most serious domestic crisis since he came to power in a coup nearly eight years ago.
Critics see Chaudhry's removal as a naked attempt to silence a judge who had embarrassed the government on several occasions, including by making a strong push to make Pakistan's powerful intelligence services subject to the rule of law. A police crackdown on lawyers and opposition politicians protesting Chaudhry's dismissal has fueled public anger at Musharraf, whose grip on power, analysts say, has been compromised as he prepares for national elections this year.
As the acting chief justice, Bhagwandas will head the panel of five senior jurists hearing the case against their colleague. Chaudhry, who was appointed by Musharraf in 2005, has called the charges a sham, and his supporters are demanding his reinstatement.
Bhagwandas, who joined the Supreme Court in 2000 after serving on the bench here in Sindh province, told reporters Saturday that the judges would "decide this case on merit, without any favor or ill will."
A member of Pakistan's tiny Hindu community, Bhagwandas has a master's degree in Islamic studies. He has been treated as something of a rock star since his return a few days ago from a visit to India. Cameras and reporters surround him wherever he goes.
He is not the first non-Muslim to preside over Pakistan's high court. In the 1960s, a Roman Catholic, A.R. Cornelius, served in the post for eight years.
But the appointment of a Hindu in a nation that was founded as a homeland for Muslims by breaking away from predominantly Hindu India, has stirred up consternation among hard-line religious parties. The Daily Times quoted an academic last week as saying Bhagwandas' elevation would be "against Islam."
Such voices appear to be in a very small minority. Many analysts and observers described Bhagwandas as an ethical judge who would act fairly.
Even a member of Chaudhry's legal defense team, which boycotted Saturday's swearing-in ceremony on the grounds that their client was still the rightful chief justice, praised Bhagwandas.
"No reasonable man can raise an objection," said attorney Tariq Mahmood. "He is a man of integrity."
No one is taking bets as to how the judges' council will rule on Chaudhry's case.
The suspended chief justice is popular among Pakistanis because of stands he has taken against powerful interests. Last year, he voided the privatization of the nation's largest steel mill, which critics said would line the already-deep pockets of a well-connected clique.
In recent months, Chaudhry has repeatedly ordered Pakistan's intelligence agencies to answer allegations that they are illegally holding dozens of people officially listed as missing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
henry.chu@latimes.com
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stratfor.com
Geopolitical Diary: A Jihadist War Against the ISI?
Suspected jihadists in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt on Tuesday attacked a vehicle belonging to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the country's premier intelligence agency. The incident took place near the village of Rashakai -- six miles from the town of Khar, in the Bajaur agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) -- when masked assailants on a motorbike opened fire and lobbed grenades at the vehicle, which was on its way from the town of Nawagai to Khar. At least four ISI officials, including a deputy director who is also a major in the Pakistani military, were killed.
This is perhaps the first incident in which jihadist elements have staged an attack against the ISI, which is indicative of a change -- especially given the historically close relationship between the two. Even now, certain elements within and close to the ISI are believed to maintain relations with militant Islamists. The political context and the location of the recent attack suggest the perpetrators likely are Pashtun jihadists with close ties to al Qaeda.
The travel itineraries of ISI officials are not easy to acquire, especially by those living in the tribal badlands. The only way the attackers could have gained access to such information is through a tip-off from someone within or close to the ISI office in which the officials worked. This lends credence to the suspicion that there are still ties between the agency and some Islamist militants, despite the purges and shakeups the ISI has undergone since Sept. 11, 2001.
This also shows that, connections not withstanding, the jihadists view the ISI as a threat to their existence, and are targeting it. This decision likely has to do also with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's move to de-Talibanize the country's Pashtun areas, even as Islamabad continues to exploit the Afghan Taliban for its foreign policy objectives vis-a-vis Kabul.
The attack against the ISI officials took place a day after the Pakistani government signed a peace deal with the Salarzai and Utmankhel tribes, under which the tribal leadership in Bajaur agreed to work with the government to rid the agency of foreign militants. This is the third such deal between Pashtun tribal militants and the government in the past three years, including one in South Waziristan in 2004 and in North Waziristan in 2006.
While the 2004 agreement did not produce the desired results, the 2006 deal caused fighting to break out between tribal maliks and al Qaeda-linked militants. The Taliban, who are trying to maintain ties to both al Qaeda and local Pakistani contacts, were caught in the middle.
There appears to be a fault line running through the militant spectrum in the Pashtun areas, causing a rift between transnational al Qaeda elements and religious nationalists. The foreign militants are seeing Islamabad's attempts to use regional religious elements against them, and are reacting. Al Qaeda also worries that, unlike the North and South Waziristan deals, the Bajaur deal threatens the group directly because the northernmost agency in the FATA is a known operating area for al Qaeda. Four ranking al Qaeda operatives were killed in a Hellfire missile strike in January 2006, and later in October, another U.S. airstrike against a madrassa killed some 80 individuals. Deputy al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is known to frequent the area as well, and escaped the January 2006 missile attack by a CIA Predator drone.
Moreover, Bajaur borders Dir and Malakand, the two districts of the North-West Frontier Province and the likely location of al Qaeda's global headquarters and the hideouts of its apex leadership. A number of people deemed U.S. spies have also been killed in the area, because al Qaeda knows that human intelligence, as opposed to signals intelligence, will reveal its hideouts.
It is too early to predict the outcome of the deal in Bajaur, but the killing of the ISI officials suggests that at least some jihadists have declared war on their former handlers.
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1135 GMT -- PAKISTAN -- Militants equipped with rockets and mortars attacked a police station and Frontier Constabulary paramilitary base in the Pakistani town of Tank in the North-West Frontier Province on March 28. Fighting lasted from midnight until dawn and several buildings reportedly were destroyed. The town is near the border of the restive Waziristan tribal region.
1114 GMT -- AFGHANISTAN -- A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle targeted Kamaludin Khan Achikzay, a director of Afghanistan's secret service agency, the National Directorate of Security, on March 28 in Kabul. Achikzay and his guards were unhurt, though some four people were killed in the blast. Achikzay is the former intelligence chief of counter-insurgency in the southern province of Kandahar. This is the second suicide bombing in the Afghan capital in 2007.
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Sorry no URL on this one but it comes to me from a highly reliable internet friend from India.
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Note the concluding point of this article...
*Paper no. 2189*
*30.03.2007*
*LOOMING JIHADI ANARCHY IN PAKISTAN - INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM
MONITOR--PAPER NO. 212*
by B. Raman
There has been an increasingly disturbing challenge to the authority of
Pakistan's President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, from jihadis inspired by the
Neo Taliban and Al Qaeda, who are actively supported by a group of retired
officers of the Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This group
is led by Gen. Mohammad Aziz, a Kashmiri Sudan from the Pakistan-Occupied
Kashmir (POK), Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, Lt. Gen. Javed Nasir, Lt. Gen. Mahmood
Ahmed, Maj.Gen. Zahir-ul-Islam Abbasi and Sq. Leader Khalid Khawaja.
2. Mohammad Aziz and Mahmood Ahmed used to be the most trusted Lt.Gen. of
Musharraf when he took over as the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) in
October,1998. It is they who staged the coup against Nawaz Sharif, the then
Prime Minister, on October 12,1999, when he dismissed Musharraf while he was
flying from Colombo to Karachi and ordered Lt. Gen. Ziauddin, the then DG of
the ISI, to take over as the COAS. They prevented Ziauddin from taking over
and overthrew Nawaz even before Musharraf's plane landed in Karachi. After
taking over as the Chief Executive, Musharraf sacked Ziauddin and had him
arrested. He promoted Mahmood Ahmed in his place as the DG of the ISI.
3. The US did not feel comfortable with them because of their perceived
links with the Islamic fundamentalist elements and they had to be shifted by
Musharraf under US pressure in October 2001. Mohammad Aziz, who was then the
Chief of the General Staff (CGS) in the Army Headquarters, was transferred
to Lahore as a Corps Commander. Ahmed was also transferred to a Corps. Both
of them have since retired. They were lying low for a while avoiding
participating in any activities directed against Musharraf. Even now, they
avoid any statements, remarks or actions, which could be misinterpreted as
anti-Musharraf, but they have been increasingly hobnobbing with Hamid Gul.
4. Hamid Gul was the DG of the ISI under Mrs.Benazir Bhutto during the first
few months of her first tenure as the Prime Minister (1988 to 90), but she
removed him from the post following the fiasco of an attack by the Afghan
Mujahideen and Osama bin Laden's followers which he had organised in a bid
to capture Jalalabad from the control of the then Afghan President
Najibullah's army in 1989. The attack was repulsed by the Afgan Army after
inflicting heavy casualties on the invaders.
5. After his retirement, Hamid Gul joined the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Qazi
Hussain Ahmed and worked for some years for the Pasban, the militant youth
wing of the JEI. He is no longer with the Pasban. He now owns a flourishing
road transport business and has been at the forefront of all anti-Musharraf
and anti-US activities by ex-servicemen. He has also been helping the Neo
Taliban and its Amir, Mulla Mohammad Omar, in running their training camps
in Pakistani territory. He has also rallied the support of many
ex-servicemen for the current agitation by the lawyers and the JEI against
Musharraf over the suspension of Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury, the Chief
Justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, on March 9, 2007.
6. Javed Nasir, former Amir of the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), was the DG of the
ISI during Nawaz Sharif's first tenure as the Prime Minister (1990-93). The
US forced Nawaz to sack him because of its unhappiness over his perceived
non-co-operation in the implementation of a project of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the purchase of the unused Stinger missiles
from the Afghan Mujahideen. Since then, he has been virulently anti-US and
has been helping the Neo Taliban and the TJ. He has also been playing an
active role in the mobilisation of TJ cadres to join the lawyer's agitation.
Mohammad Rafique Tarar, former President, who was removed from office by
Musharraf in 2001, has also been in the forefront of this agitation. He was
and continues to be an active member of the TJ.
7. Abbasi used to be the ISI station chief in New Delhi in the late 1980s.
He was expelled by the Government of India. In 1995, the Pakistan Army then
headed by Gen. Adul Waheed Kakar, discovered a plot by Abbasi and some other
officers to have the General and Benazir Bhutto, then Prime Minster for a
second time (1993-96), assassinated and capture power. They were working
secretly with the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI). They were arrested,
court-martialled and jailed. After coming out of jail, Abbasi has been
active in campaigning against the policies of Musharraf. He is since
reported to have joined the Hizbut-Tehrir (HT), which has many followers in
the lower levels of the army.
8. Khawaja was also in the ISI and used to be in touch with the Taliban
after it came into being in 1994 and Osma bin Laden after he shifted to
Afghanistan in 1996. After leaving the ISI, he joined the Jamaat-ul-Furqa
(JUF) of Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Jilani, which has many followers in
the Muslim communities of the US and the West Indies. Daniel Pearl had
sought his help for arranging a meeting with Jilani. Pearl wanted to enquire
about any links between the JUF and Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. It was
Khawaja, who had tipped off the kidnappers of Pearl about his Jewish
background and created a suspicion in their mind that Pearl had links with
the CIA and Mossad. He is now in detention on a charge of instigating the
women students of a madrasa of Islamabad (Jamia Hafsa) to start an agitation
against the demolition of some mosques in Islamabad. This agitation has been
going on for the last two months. In addition to other demands, the
agitating women students, who project themselves as future wives and mothers
of suicide bombers, are now demanding his release from jail. They have been
shouting slogans in praise of bin Laden and Mulla Omar.
9. These retired officers and their followers have been actively helping the
Neo Taliban by organising training camps for its recruits and by
facilitating its procurement of arms and ammunition. They have also been
instigating the madrasas not to comply with the orders of Musharraf for
their registration and for the expulsion of foreign students. They have also
been urging the tribals in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)
and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) to continue to provide
hospitality to the Neo Taliban and Al Qaeda in their territory and help them
in their operations in the Afghan territory. They have been encouraging the
lawyers to keep up their agitation against Musharraf.
10. The jihadis trained, armed and motivated by them have stepped up their
activities not only in Afghan territory against the NATO forces, but also in
Pakistani territory in reprisal for the co-operation allegedly extended by
Musharraf to the US in its war against Al Qaeda and the Neo Taliban. Recent
examples of the resulting escalation in the jihadi violence in Pakistani
territory are:
- An unidentified suicide bomber blew himself up at a military
training ground near Kharian, 130 kilometers south-east of Islamabad, on
March 29, 2007, killing one (some reports say three) soldier and wounding
at least six more. Three Lt. Gen of the Pakistan Army were to visit the camp
that day. It is not yet known whether he was planning to kill them and blew
himself up prematurely. As the suicide attacker approached the training
centre, an Army security guard stopped and asked him to show his identity
card. The attacker blew himself up. This is the eighth incident involving a
suicide bomber in Pakistani territory since the beginning of this year.
- On March 27, 2007, unidentified gunmen on motorbikes hurled
grenades and opened fire on an army vehicle in the Bajaur Agency, killing
five persons, including two officials of the ISI, one of them a
middle-level officer of the rank of Assistant Director. This attack came
despite a cease-fire agreement concluded by the Army earlier this week with
the pro-Neo Taliban tribal leaders of the Agency.
- On March 28, there was a confrontation between the Islamabad police
and the agitating women students of the Jamia Hafsa madrasa. The students
took hostage three women from a house near Lal Masjid to which the madrasa
is attached. They accused them of running a brothel. The police retaliated
by capturing four members of the staff of the madrasa. The women retaliated
from their side by setting fire to a police van and taking two police
officers hostage. Ultimately, the two sides released their respective
hostages. The deputy imam of the Lal Masjid, which is headed by Qazi Abdul
Aziz, and the agitating women students have given a 15- day ultimatum to the
police to release Khalid Khawaja and four other activists of their movement
who have been detained. The agitating women students and their male
supporters from other madrasas nearby attacked police vehicles and seized
their communication sets. The pro-Neo Taliban madrasas and mosques in the
Islamabad area have managed to get hold of FM radio equipment from the FATA,
to which many of the women students belong, and started making
anti-Musharraf and anti-US broadcasts to the people of the capital.
- On March 26, 2007, there was a clash between the police of Tank
(previously known as Tonk), a district headquarters town of the NWFP, and
some recruiters of the Neo Taliban who went to a local school to recruit its
students to the Neo Taliban. One police officer and one of the recruiters
were killed. About 200 members of the Neo Taliban raided the town in
retaliation for the death of the recruiter on March 28, looted the local
banks and engaged in exchanges of fire with the local security forces for
six hours in different parts of the town. The Army had to be called out and
a curfew imposed in order to restore law and order.
11. Earlier, on March 6, 2007, the Governor of the NWFP Lt-Gen (retd) Ali
Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, had convened a meeting attended by the Chief
Minister, Mr. Akram Khan Durrani, and senior officials of the province to
discuss the worsening law and order situation in the province due to the
escalation in the activities of the Neo Taliban and its local supporters.
According to the "Dawn" of Karachi (March 29), the local officials gave the
following assessment to the Governor: ""Inaction on the part of the
law-enforcement agencies has led to the Government being on the retreat.
Writ of the government shrinking with every passing day. Vacuum being filled
by non-state actors. Respect for law and state authority gradually
diminishing. Morale of the law-enforcing agencies and people supportive of
the Government on the decline. Talibanisation, lawlessness and terrorism on
the rise."
12. The following points were reportedly made at the meeting: The number of
bomb explosions in the NWFP increased from 27 in 2005 to 35 in 2006.In the
first two months of this year, there have already been 25 explosions,
killing 23 persons. Talibanisation has particularly affected Tank, Dera
Ismail Khan, Bannu and Lakki Marwat. There has been a resurgence of the
activities of the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat Muhammadi, particularly in the
Swat region where Maulana Fazlullah alias Maulana Radio was making full use
of his illegally set up FM radio station to carry on propaganda against the
Government. While the situation is getting out of control, there appears to
be a total paralysis and inaction on the part of the Federal Government.
13. Sources in the local police force say that a time when there has been
an escalation in the activities of the Neo Taliban and Al Qaeda in the FATA
and the NWFP, they are finding themselves handicapped in dealing with the
situation for want of adequate forces. According to them, Musharraf has
been giving priority to quelling the Baloch nationalist movement in
Balochistan rather than to action against the Neo Taliban and Al Qaeda. As a
result, there are more security forces deployed in Balochistan than in the
FATA and the NWFP. The peace agreements signed by him with the pro-Taliban
elements in South and North Waziristan and Bajaur agencies were mainly
intended to enable the Army to divert forces to Balochistan. This has given
a free field for the Neo Taliban and Al Qaeda in the FATA and the NWFP. They
have not only stepped up their offensive against the NATO forces in
Afghanistan, but also launched an offensive against the Pakistani security
forces themselves in Pakistani territory.
14. The Neo Taliban, assisted by Al Qaeda, has become Musharraf's
Frankenstein's monster. He helped in its post-9/11 resurgence to achieve
Pakistan's Afghan agenda. It is showing signs of slipping out of his
control. As regards the role of the retired officers backing the Neo Taliban
with their own anti-US agenda, it is doubtful whether they would have
instigated some of the incidents mentioned above such as the suicide attack
at a training camp of the army and the killing of two ISI officers.
15.It would seem that the Neo Taliban has assumed a momentum of its own and
is increasingly not amenable to anybody's control----either Musharraf's or
his detrators'. The international community has reasons to be seriously
concerned over the goings-on in Pakistan. It is slowly moving towards a
situation of jihadi anarchy.
*(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Government
of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical
Studies, Chennai. E-mail: itschen36@gmail.com) *
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PAKISTAN: Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said he will not dissolve the country's assemblies, despite calls to do so. Musharraf added that this is the first time in Pakistan's history that the assemblies will finish their full terms, and that elections will be held to continue the democratic process.
PAKISTAN: An operation in the Wana Valley of Pakistan's South Waziristan agency has cleared out all foreign militants, regional commander Maj. Gen. Gul Muhammad said. However, he added, a key Uzbek militant linked to al Qaeda has not been captured. The general said the operation's success was due to the cooperation of local tribesman, whose relations with the foreign fighters soured after the militants killed several locals.
PAKISTAN: The radical fundamentalist Red Mosque in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad has weapons on the premises and will defend itself should the government attempt to crack down on its Taliban-style "morality campaign," deputy mosque leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi said. The government has continued to negotiate with the mosque's leaders despite public pressure to crack down on "Talibanization" in the city.
stratfor.com
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Pakistan: The Challenge of Religious Extremism and the Musharrafian State
Summary
Pakistan's government remained internally divided April 11 over how to handle the standoff with extremist mullahs running a key mosque in Islamabad. Just as civil society groups -- rather than secular political parties -- spearheaded the public unrest stemming from the legal crisis over the sacking of Pakistan's top judge, ultra-conservative social elements -- not Islamist political parties -- are stirring the controversy over vigilante attempts to Islamize the capital. The nature of the controversy and the manner in which it is being handled will prove detrimental to both President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and his opponents.
Analysis
Since February, radical clerics and their followers at a mosque/seminary facility in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad have been challenging the government's authority by trying to impose their version of "Islamic" law in parts of the capital through kidnappings, illegal occupations of buildings and attempts to forcibly prevent "un-Islamic" behavior. Moreover, these armed mullahs have established a self-styled Islamic court and have said that if the Pakistani government does not enforce Islamic law, the mullahs will do it themselves. The extremist clerics have also reportedly threatened suicide attacks in response to a government crackdown.
The standoff between authorities and the hard-line mullahs from the Red Mosque continued April 11. Despite a second meeting with ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) party chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the two top clerics at the mosque/madrassa complex -- Maulana Abdul Aziz and Ghazi Abdul Rasheed -- are in no mood to negotiate an end to the standoff at the mosque and its affiliated madrassa, Jamia Hafsa. Meanwhile, senior Cabinet members are at odds over how to resolve the matter; some advocate an ironhanded policy, while others urge caution.
Meanwhile, in northwestern Pakistan, fighting between Pashtun tribesmen and transnational jihadist elements is continuing in the South Waziristan agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). A PML parliament member appealed to Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to deploy the army to quell raging Sunni-Shiite clashes in FATA's Kurram agency. In Karachi, a new kind of sectarian violence has emerged; a Barelvi religious group (the main school of thought in Pakistan that adheres to Sunni Islam's Sufi leanings) used high-powered assault rifles to attack Wahhabi mosques April 10 in retaliation for a jihadist suicide attack that killed top leaders of the Sunni Tehreek.
The growing security problems and political unrest would explain Musharraf’s comments April 11 in a speech at a political rally in the eastern city of Narowal, during which he said he will not dissolve parliament despite growing pressure to do so. The crisis involving the mullahs has overshadowed the legal crisis over Musharraf's dismissal of Pakistan's chief justice, giving the president a breather, but the mosque/madrassa standoff could create both short-term and long-term problems for the Pakistani state.
Ruling PML party chief Hussain has been pushing for a negotiated settlement with the mullahs, arguing that the government cannot handle the black coats (a euphemism for the legal community) and the black burkas (the female vigilantes who have symbolized the religious extremist campaign in Islamabad) teaming up against it. However, the Red Mosque issue has given Musharraf something with which to scare his secular political opponents into treading carefully, lest they empower the religious right. Conversely, his political opponents -- particularly the Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPP-P), with whom Musharraf is engaged in power-sharing negotiations -- hope to convince the president he needs them to stem the rising tide of religious extremism. His secular opponents hope that a Musharraf weakened by the Red Mosque crisis would be more likely to deal on their terms. Put differently, each side wants to use the situation to extract concessions from the other.
While Musharraf has been focusing on dealing with the political forces -- both secular and Islamist -- the problems he is facing are not coming from political groups. In both the legal crisis and the mosque/madrassa controversy, his opponents are civil society groups. In fact, the mosque controversy is posing problems for the country’s main Islamist group, the Mutahiddah Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), which is worried that the religious vigilantes in Islamabad are actually hurting their cause. Moreover, the crisis has sharpened the differences between the MMA’s two main component parties.
Having contained the MMA and engaged the PPP-P, the government feels that it still has a handle on the overall situation in Pakistan. However, because the political parties have proven ineffective, public discontent of one kind or another has found other channels of expression, including civil society groups. This was the case in the aftermath of the suspension of the country’s top jurist, when the legal community and the media took to the streets to demand rule of law while the pro-democracy groups either did not want to or were not able to take up the cause.
Similarly, the social liberalization that Musharraf has been pushing has triggered another backlash from the conservative elements of society -- people affiliated with mosques and seminaries who have taken it upon themselves to thwart the re-secularization of state and society.
Musharraf must hold and win a presidential election at some point between late September and early October, but his problems seem to be increasing with time. On one hand, the legal crisis is still playing out; on the other hand, he is faced with religious extremists in the heart of the capital creating an even more disturbing crisis of governance.
He has some time to fix the legal crisis because it has now moved to the Supreme Court, and the wheels of the judicial system turn very slowly. But the crisis with the rogue mullahs in Islamabad will have to be dealt with much sooner. Part of the problem is that the president's current civilian allies in the ruling PML are not on the same page as he is on issues related to the role of religion in society and state.
This would explain why Hussain has pushed for a conciliatory approach to the mullahs. Musharraf's lack of social capital, due to his alienation of mainstream political forces, prevents him from taking a firmer stance against religious extremism in the country. Part of the reason he has agreed with the defensive approach is his concern over the backlash that could come should he adopt an ironhanded policy against the mullahs when dealing with such a sensitive issue.
If the crisis deepens, Musharraf could impose some form of emergency rule -- which does not involve dismissing the Cabinet or the parliament. But in the end, Musharraf’s only hope for effectively combating growing religious extremism in the country is a deal with mainstream political parties. For that, he will need to cut a power-sharing deal with his opponents, which is something he wants to avoid for as long as possible.
Whether the standoff with the mullahs ends peacefully (which would involve the government giving concessions to the mullahs) or in police action, it will have long-term repercussions for both the current government -- in terms of its ability to maintain power -- and for its opponents, who will be around long after the Musharrafian period has ended.
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Second post of the day:
PAKISTAN: Gunmen thought to be Sunni Muslim tribesmen on April 11 raided the Shiite Muslim village of Chardiwar in Pakistan's Kurram tribal region, near the Afghan border, killing five people, officials said.
AFGHANISTAN: Former Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef said he and other members of Afghanistan's old regime will not mediate between the current government and rebel forces, as President Hamid Karzai has asked them to do, until the United States backs the plan, and unless they receive safety assurances from the government and their Taliban comrades. Zaeef said that while the Taliban believe Karzai is serious about his desire for peace talks, the Pashtun jihadist movement does not think the Afghan leader is free to make this decision.
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=25111_Video-_Taliban_Safe_Havens_in_Pakistani_Mountains&only
Footage from the Afghani/Pakistani border region.
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No URL for this, but from a usually reliable source.
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Jihadist video shows boy beheading man
By ABDUL SATTAR, Associated Press Writer
Fri Apr 20, 2:24 PM ET
The boy with the knife looks barely 12. In a high-pitched voice, he denounces the bound, blindfolded man before him as an American spy. Then he hacks off the captive's head to cries of "God is great!" and hoists it in triumph by the hair.
A video circulating in Pakistan records the grisly death of Ghulam Nabi, a Pakistani militant accused of betraying a top Taliban official who was killed in a December airstrike in Afghanistan.
An Associated Press reporter confirmed Nabi's identity by visiting his family in Kili Faqiran, their remote village in southwestern Pakistan.
The video, which was obtained by AP Television News in the border city of Peshawar on Tuesday, appears authentic and is unprecedented in jihadist propaganda because of the youth of the executioner.
Captions mention Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's current top commander in southern Afghanistan, although he does not appear in the video. The soundtrack features songs praising Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar and "Sheikh Osama" — an apparent reference to Osama bin Laden, who is suspected of hiding along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The footage shows Nabi making what is described as a confession, being blindfolded with a checkered scarf.
"He is an American spy. Those who do this kind of thing will get this kind of fate," says his baby-faced executioner, who is not identified.
A continuous 2 1/2-minute shot then shows the victim lying on his side on a patch of rubble-strewn ground. A man holds Nabi by his beard while the boy, wearing a camouflage military jacket and oversized white sneakers, cuts into the throat. Other men and boys call out "Allahu akbar!" — "God is great!" — as blood spurts from the wound.
The film, overlain with jihadi songs, then shows the boy hacking and slashing at the man's neck until the head is severed.
A Pashto-language voiceover in the video identifies Nabi and his home village of Kili Faqiran in Baluchistan province, which lies about two hours' drive from the Afghan border.
A reporter went to the village, and Nabi's distraught and angry father, Ghulam Sakhi, confirmed his son's identity from a still picture that AP made from the footage. He said neighbors had told him the video is available at the village bazaar, but he had no wish to see it.
Sakhi said his son had been a loyal Taliban member who fought in Afghanistan and sheltered the hard-line Afghan group's leaders in the family's mud-walled compound.
He blames the Taliban and wants to avenge his son's death.
"The Taliban are not mujahedeen. They are not fighting for the cause of Islam," the 70-year-old said. "If I got my hands on them I would kill them and even tear their flesh with my own teeth."
Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, told AP he had no information about Nabi or the video. None of the group's commanders he contacted could confirm the execution, he said.
The method of Nabi's death was not unusual for Pakistan's lawless tribal regions. Suspected informers are regularly found beheaded and dumped along the side of the road in the lawless, mountainous regions along the Afghan-Pakistani border where al-Qaida and Taliban militants find sanctuary.
But such al-Qaida-style killings are rarely featured in the Taliban's increasingly frequent propaganda videos. The use of a child to conduct the beheading stands out even among those filmed by militants in Iraq.
"This is outright barbarism," Iqbal Haider, secretary-general of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said after viewing the video. "Whosoever has committed this, whether they are Taliban or anybody else or any Afghan or al-Qaida or anybody, they are enemy No. 1 of the Muslims."
The video accuses Nabi of responsibility for a U.S. airstrike that killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, who was regarded as one of the top three associates of Omar, the Taliban supreme leader. He was hit while traveling by car in Afghanistan's Helmand province Dec. 19.
Osmani was the highest-ranking Taliban leader to die since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan that ousted the hard-line regime in late 2001 for refusing to hand over bin Laden following the Sept. 11 terror attack on the United States.
The U.S. military said at the time that Osmani's death was a serious blow to militant operations, and NATO commanders said this week that a feared spring offensive had yet to materialize.
Sakhi, a retired mosque preacher with a long gray beard, spoke unashamedly of his son's Taliban affiliation and wept twice during an interview in his simple home at the foot of a mountain valley in Baluchistan province.
He said Nabi fought against the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance that helped U.S. forces to victory in Afghanistan.
After returning to Pakistan, Nabi ran a religious school in the Baluchistan capital of Quetta and had regularly sheltered both Osmani and Dadullah at the family compound, the father said.
He said Nabi also bought weapons for Taliban fighters and organized medical treatment for those injured during fighting in Afghanistan.
Some days after Osmani's death, Nabi went to Peshawar and then to Wana, a tribal town considered a militant stronghold, to collect money from Taliban officials to buy guns and food for militants in Afghanistan, Sakhi said.
He said his son called at the end of January to reveal that a tribal council had sentenced him to death on charges of tipping off U.S. forces about Osmani's movements, despite his denials.
His son passed the phone to Dadullah, but the militant leader ignored his pleas for clemency, Sakhi said.
"I talked to him and said you visited us and my son was a close friend so why are you going to hang him? He just said, 'How are you?', and switched off the phone," Sakhi said.
"They are the enemies of Islam," he said of the Taliban. "They are behaving like savages."
Sam Zarifi, Asia research director for Human Rights Watch, said the use of a child to commit such an act constituted a war crime and was a "new low" in the conflict in Afghanistan.
He noted the Taliban had teenage combatants but they were not recruited on a large scale because of the availability of adult fighters. He said he had seen children in the background of some jihadist videos but none in which they were directly involved in violence.
"I don't know why they would do this," Zarifi said. "The Taliban have to some extent tried to play to the public in Afghanistan and have not engaged in the complete sowing of mayhem that we have seen in Iraq. But this kind of act is really egregious. It's off the charts."
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070420/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_child_executioner_1
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AFGHANISTAN: Approximately 200 Taliban fighters have been surrounded by Afghan and NATO forces in a village in the Chora district of Afghanistan's Uruzgan province, the Afghan Interior Ministry said. Several Taliban leaders, including Mullah Dadullah, are believed to be in the group, though the Taliban have denied Dadullah is in Uruzgan province. U.S. forces also reported that rebel leader Gul Haqparast was killed in an April 20 air attack in Afghanistan's Laghman province.
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Pakistan: Political Pressure on the President
Summary
Pakistani opposition forces prepared for a large demonstration outside the Supreme Court in Islamabad on April 21 to protest the suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and his aides have made plans to instigate clashes between the opposition and government supporters to justify a police crackdown in the Pakistani capital and send a strong message to the Red Mosque mullahs who are pursuing an aggressive Talibanization campaign. Though Musharraf still faces intense political pressure, he and his advisers seem to have more tricks up their sleeves to help the general finagle his way out of this political fracas.
Analysis
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party plans to lead a massive rally outside the Supreme Court in Islamabad on April 24 to express the opposition's solidarity with Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, whose suspension by the government sparked a national outcry that threatens Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's hold on power. Musharraf might have thought the agitation caused by Chaudhry's suspension would fizzle out and give him room to ensure his and his party's victory in upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections; but the opposition, despite ongoing government raids and arrests targeting opposition leaders, has sustained a relatively solid campaign to oust Musharraf.
The chief justice issue is the driver behind a host of problems Musharraf is facing, including ongoing tensions between Kabul and Islamabad over Pakistan's involvement in sustaining the Afghan Taliban insurgency, a growing Talibanization campaign in Pakistan (especially the one led by a group of rogue mullahs from the Red Mosque in Islamabad), fresh sectarian clashes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the ongoing struggle to crack down on jihadist and Talibanizing forces in order to manage Islamabad's relations with Washington. Musharraf has had one too many sleepless nights riding this derailing train but knows that if he can manage to hold off the opposition on a couple of these fronts, he can handle the other issues and ensure he remains Pakistan's president.
In line with this plan, Musharraf is temporarily escaping the heat from the Chaudhry protests by going on a tour to Poland, Spain, Bosnia and Turkey to enhance Pakistan's trade ties. By leaving the country during a political imbroglio, Musharraf is indicating that he has things under control and his government is still in the driver's seat. The trip also will give Musharraf a chance to tackle one of his difficulties: Afghanistan. During the president's April 29-30 visit to Ankara, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will mediate a face-to-face meeting between Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Musharraf realizes the need to sustain Pakistan's relevance in Washington's eyes and has thus tacitly allowed Islamist militants to use Pakistan as a launchpad for attacks in neighboring Afghanistan, much to the ire of the Afghan government. Islamabad previously brushed off Karzai's allegations that Pakistan was fueling the Taliban insurgency as mere lies; however, Musharraf is likely to exhibit a marked change of attitude during the Turkey visit. Already fearing the growing Talibanization in his own country, Musharraf will assure Karzai that Pakistan will do more to rein in the Taliban along the border. Nothing concrete is likely to come out of these talks, but Musharraf could take incremental steps toward smoothing over Pakistan's relations with the Afghan government by the time he leaves Ankara.
While traveling, Musharraf has left his security and intelligence agencies in charge of managing the opposition protests. To counter the opposition's April 24 demonstrations, the Pakistani government has organized a 2,000-strong pro-government procession from Punjab to Islamabad, led by supporters of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League. Two notable figures that helped plan this march were Punjabi Law Minister Muhammad Basharat Raja and Salman Shah, financial adviser to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
Islamabad is eager to show that there are sizeable numbers of pro-Musharraf lawyers willing to contend with the anti-government protesters. The purpose of the pro-government lawyers' march is to create the perception that the lawyers protesting the government are not the sole representatives of the legal community -- rather, they are a section of the legal community manipulated by the PML-N and Jamaat-e-Islami, the more radical of the two top parties in the Mutahiddah Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) Islamist alliance. The pro-government march planners also have arranged for several delinquents, party strongmen and government agents to take part and set off a confrontation between the chief justice supporters and the pro-government demonstrators. The anticipated clashes are intended to justify a government crackdown against the opposition protesters and demonstrate how the government is going on the offensive. Musharraf hopes to kill two birds with one stone by using this police crackdown to send a message to the Red Mosque mullahs, who have taken advantage of the Chaudhry debacle to advance their own aggressive Talibanization campaign.
Meanwhile, rumors abound that Musharraf has finally cut a deal with his primary political opponent, Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan People's Party-Parliamentarians (PPP-P). The two are ready to cut a deal, but there is no assurance that either side will uphold its part of the bargain without backstabbing the other. In essence, Musharraf is being advised that Bhutto will betray him while Bhutto thinks Musharraf does not want to give up power to the extent the PPP-P would like. Bhutto is working on a power-sharing agreement with Musharraf that would allow her to return to Pakistan from exile in Dubai and build up the PPP-P's presence in the government. To finalize a deal, however, Musharraf has to stand down as the country's army chief to allow for the return of a civilian government. Musharraf has indicated during closed-door meetings that he will give up the army uniform in October. Nothing is set in stone yet, but it looks as though Musharraf will not be able to escape from this political storm without giving up his military title once the electoral transition is over.
The talk of Musharraf-Bhutto deal-making has also given the Pakistani government enough fodder to keep the Pakistani opposition front divided. The country's main Islamist group, the MMA, voiced its concerns April 22 about Bhutto's intentions when party leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman said in a Daily Times report that if the PPP-P was planning a deal with the government, it should do so in the open and not through hidden channels. Bhutto's PPP-P has long been wary of joining hands with the MMA because of ideological differences. This has prevented Bhutto from entering into any "grand alliance" with both the MMA and the PML-N (the smaller of the country's two main opposition parties led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf ousted from office in the 1999 coup). Knowing that Musharraf would not bend to the demands of a broad opposition coalition, Bhutto sees it in her interest to wage an independent campaign that would allow her to shore up her political position while keeping Musharraf in the picture to manage the army generals.
More important -- and contrary to public statements -- Bhutto sees Musharraf, who shares with the PPP-P a common secular ideology, as a medium through which her party could stage a political comeback. Should Musharraf lose his power, all bets are off. This is why, unlike Sharif, Bhutto does not favor using the Chaudhry crisis to oust Musharraf. She wants to use the crisis to pressure Musharraf into negotiating with her.
For any real deal to come from the Bhutto-Musharraf talks, the Pakistani president needs to devise some way to ensure he remains president without making the PPP-P look like it has sold out. One plan that has been circulating involves Musharraf getting re-elected by a comfortable majority in the current parliament before the parliament is dissolved ahead of general elections, thereby ensuring that he would not have to go up against a possibly unfriendly parliament when the time comes to vote on who takes the presidency in September or October. Such a move would be easily labeled unconstitutional, however, and would be a big risk for Musharraf considering the political pressure he already faces over the chief justice suspension. Another plan is to finish the current government's term as planned, dissolve the parliament and bring in an interim government to conduct the elections. Without the parliament in session to form an electoral college for the presidential election (the federal parliament and the four provincial legislatures constitute the electoral college that elects the president, per the constitution), the constitution dictates that the sitting president remains in charge. Musharraf can then step down as army chief, and give Bhutto and a large chunk of the opposition a legitimate reason to vote for him after the new parliament is voted in.
A number of different plans are in the works, and Musharraf is unlikely to have decided just yet on how he plans to contain the opposition forces. One thing for certain is that the general has not run out of options, and officials in Washington are just as eager to see how Musharraf manages to work his way out of this political fracas to ensure U.S. interests in combating al Qaeda and Taliban militants do not get tangled up in Musharraf's mess.
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PAKISTAN: Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais published today that Afghan and NATO forces are losing the war against Taliban militants. Musharraf also said claims that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is aiding Taliban fighters are false and were invented by Afghan and NATO officials attempting to "hide their shame because they are losing."
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PAKISTAN: Pakistan has enlarged its military presence along the Afghan border, increasing the number of troops from 80,000 to 90,000 and increasing the number of military posts from 100 to 110, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said. Kasuri also said Pakistan expects Afghanistan to increase its efforts to secure the border. The increases are aimed at stopping Taliban militants from crossing the border.
PAKISTAN: NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer visited Pakistan to meet with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri. They are expected to discuss regional security with a special focus on Afghanistan, where militant violence has recently increased. There has been pressure on Pakistan to stop militants from using the country as a base to stage attacks inside Afghanistan.
PAKISTAN: Rustam Shah Mohmand, head of the Pakistani delegation for the Pakistani-Afghan Peace Jirga Commission, said he does "not have much hope" that the commission will succeed against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. The commission is scheduled to hold its first meeting in August.
AFGHANISTAN: The upper house of the Afghan parliament voted to hold direct talks with Taliban members and other opposition forces. Parliament members also voted to advise coalition forces to stop pursuing militants in the country. The resolution will go to President Hamid Karzai for approval.
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Geopolitical Diary: Examining Mullah Dadullah's Death
Afghan intelligence announced on Sunday that top Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah was killed early Saturday during a battle with an Afghan-NATO force in Helmand province. The 40-year-old Taliban leader had emerged as the most important operational commander on which Mullah Mohammad Omar could rely in pressing ahead with the jihadist insurgency in the country. Under his leadership, the Pashtun jihadist movement adopted the tactic of suicide bombings, and he represented the faction close to al Qaeda.
Dadullah's killing is the first major success for Kabul and NATO against the Pashtun jihadists since the resurgence of the Taliban shortly after the ouster of their regime in 2001. Until now, fighters and low- to mid-level leaders had been killed; this is the first time a major Taliban figure has been eliminated. He is known to have been a member of the 10-man Taliban leadership council. His death also will have serious implications for al Qaeda's plans involving the Taliban.
Media reports based on information released by Afghan and NATO officials suggest Dadullah was killed during one of the many battles that have taken place between Taliban fighters and coalition troops in southern and eastern Afghanistan over the past several years. Given the operational security protocols of the Taliban and the stature of Dadullah, however, the official version does not add up. In other words, Afghan and NATO forces carried out the operation to take out Dadullah on the basis of specific human intelligence regarding his location. It is not likely a matter of coincidence nor is it probable that Afghan and NATO troops have been able to enhance their intelligence capabilities on the jihadists. This leaves only one possibility -- the involvement of a third party.
Given the close ties between the Taliban and the Pakistani state and society, it is highly likely that Islamabad is the source of the intelligence on Dadullah. It should be noted that after several years of tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with Kabul claiming that Islamabad was backing the Taliban, the Pakistanis pledged to cooperate with the Afghans against the Taliban. This was relayed by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to Afghan President Hamid Karzai at an April 30 meeting in Turkey, during which they agreed to share intelligence on militant groups.
Though the Musharraf government's decision to work with Kabul on containing the Taliban is fueled by its domestic concerns, Dadullah's death has certain implications for the domestic situation in Afghanistan. Though the insurgency will continue, it has been dealt a significant blow -- and the pace of the Taliban's advance has likely been dampened. More important, the vacuum created by Dadullah's death could trigger infighting between hard-liners linked to al Qaeda and more pragmatic elements.
The Taliban will be worried about how their organizational security net was penetrated and will be suspicious of many within their own ranks, which could lead to internal strife. Already those close to Omar and al Qaeda are concerned about the more pragmatic elements talking to the Karzai administration. There are signs that such elements, knowing Kabul would not strike a deal with them unless they parted ways with Omar and his allies, might have actually helped in the elimination of Dadullah; many within the movement actually did not approve of Dadullah's harsh policies.
Former Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Abdus Salam Zaeef, who represented the Taliban in recent talks with Karzai, reacted to Dadullah's killing by saying it would lead to more fighting, and that talks are the only way to bring the violence to an end. Dadullah's killing also comes a few days after the upper house of the Afghan legislature approved a bill calling for direct talks with the Taliban and a halt to NATO operations against jihadists.
Though anti-jihadist operations will continue, negotiations involving Kabul and Islamabad geared toward further weakening those loyal to Omar and strengthening pragmatic leaders within the movement will become increasingly important in the months ahead.
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Pakistan: A Border Shooting and Musharraf's Troubles
Summary
A NATO soldier was killed and four were wounded May 14 after meeting with Pakistani and Afghan forces. NATO said "unknown assailants" opened fire on the soldiers. The Pakistani and Afghan governments have offered wildly different accounts of the attack. The incident spells more trouble for Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's ability to tame his government's relations with Afghanistan and to convince Washington he has what it takes to hold the Pakistani army together while a political crisis boils at home.
Analysis
Service members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) held a flag meeting with Pakistani and Afghan forces May 14 in the Kurram tribal agency on the Pakistani side of the Pakistani-Afghan border. After the meeting, which was called to stem a border clash between Pakistani troops and Afghans that started the previous day, "unknown assailants" ambushed the ISAF members near Teri Mangal as the convoy traveled back to the Afghan side of the border, leaving one NATO solider dead and four wounded, according to a NATO statement.
Three to four U.S. soldiers and three to four Pakistani soldiers also were injured, Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said, though Pakistan's GEO TV reported that one U.S. soldier and one Pakistani soldier were killed. Another senior Pakistani security official said a man disguised as a Pakistani paramilitary soldier had opened fire on the troops.
The Afghan government offered a starkly different account, however. Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi said that at the meeting, "A Pakistani officer rose up and fired at U.S. soldiers, resulting in the deaths of two soldiers and the wounding of two others."
Evidently, many different stories are circulating. But it appears that a group of jihadists fired at the NATO convoy after the meeting ended. A great deal of resentment is brewing among Pashtuns in the Kurram tribal agency, and it would be reasonable to assume that a NATO convoy would be vulnerable to an attack in the area, particularly after the killing of the Taliban's top military commander, Mullah Dadullah.
The attack and recent border clashes between Pakistani troops and Afghan troops follow an April 30 meeting between Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Ankara, Turkey, aimed at quelling hostilities between the two governments. Afghan-Pakistani relations have long been on the rocks because of Kabul's repeated allegations that Islamabad is dangerously undermining stability in the region by fueling the Taliban insurgency next door. Pakistani moves to build a security fence along the border have further inflamed tensions between Kabul and Islamabad, since the Afghan government views such an effort in an area that is essentially impossible to fence because of the terrain as a blatant attempt to seize Afghan territory.
Faced with a growing political imbroglio at home over the suspension of Pakistan's chief justice, Musharraf has decided to clear his plate a bit by making a concerted effort to improve relations with his Afghan neighbors. Though the two countries have deep-rooted Pashtun ties, Pakistan cannot afford to alienate the Afghan government too much for fear of losing influence in Kabul, contributing to the spread of Talibanization within Pakistan's own borders and giving longtime rival India an opportunity to cozy up to the Afghan government and team up against Islamabad.
Musharraf's meeting with Karzai did result in some notable improvements in the Afghan-Pakistani relationship, with both sides agreeing to share intelligence and quell the jihadist insurgency engulfing the region. The intelligence that led to the death of Dadullah might have been the Musharraf government's way of delivering on the promises it made to Karzai at that summit, though the Afghan government clearly is not ready to ease the pressure off the Pakistani leader any time soon.
By claiming that a Pakistani soldier simply stood up at the meeting and fired at U.S. soldiers, the Afghan government delivered a politically motivated message to Washington that Musharraf cannot be relied on to cooperate on the counterterrorism front, and that he cannot even control his own military. Though the NATO statement contradicted the Afghan story, the idea that Musharraf is gradually losing his grip on the Pakistani army could be gaining some ground in Washington.
The political crisis in Pakistan reached its tipping point May 12-13, when more than 42 demonstrators in the southern port city of Karachi were killed in clashes between pro-government and opposition protesters. The legal row over suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry's dismissal has so emboldened Pakistan's civil society and political opposition parties that everywhere Chaudhry travels massive street demonstrations follow in a show of support against the Musharraf government.
The Pakistani government attempted to quell the demonstrations by playing up militant threats against Chaudhry, urging him to not travel by car and to keep a low profile, but Chaudhry saw through the political ploy and has continued to catalyze mass protests throughout the country. By instigating violent protests, Musharraf and his advisers likely were hoping the ensuing instability would pressure Chaudhry into toning down his campaign and bring calm to Pakistan. But this appears to be yet another miscalculation by Musharraf, as the opposition protesters have only became more emboldened following the deadly riots in Karachi.
Pakistan's generals are watching closely as Musharraf's support is rapidly eroded, and they are now seeing it in their best interest to distance themselves as much as possible from the president. It appears that even the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media arm of the military, has been told to back away from Musharraf. Though the director-general of ISPR has recently operated as Musharraf's press secretary and has often come to the defense of the president, routine journalistic inquiries addressed to the ISPR are now being directed to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. In other words, the ISPR appears to have been issued a directive of some sort telling it not take a stand and to keep a safe distance from the political crisis.
The Karachi riots have backed Musharraf into a tighter corner, and if he wants to finagle his way out of this mess, he will have to make the appropriate concessions: reinstate the chief justice, stand down as army chief and strike a deal with the country's main opposition group, Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPP-P) that allows PPP-P leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to save face for dealing with a president whose image has been severely tarnished.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Musharraf has been left with little choice but to yield to the demands of his opponents -- or else risk being pressured by the army generals to step aside in the interest of safeguarding the authority of the military establishment. The Karachi riots have created a scenario in which the best Musharraf can hope for is to be able to play a role in the transition from military to civilian rule during the early 2008 general election and negotiate to stay on as a transitional president, a post that could provide him a safe exit from power. If he does not move soon to quell this political crisis, Washington could need to seriously consider what it can expect from a post-Musharraf regime in Islamabad.
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Geopolitical Diary: Examining a Post-Musharraf Pakistan
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in an interview published Wednesday in the British daily Times Online, calls President Gen. Pervez Musharraf "a gone man." Sharif, who also is leader of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and was ousted from power by Musharraf in 1999, said Musharraf's "options are totally exhausted, and starting from today [his fall] is simply a matter of time." Sharif is not exaggerating -- with each passing day Musharraf appears to be losing his hold on power.
Musharraf's own constituency, the military, is beginning to show signs of concern -- even his close generals are now privately admitting things have gotten out of hand. There also are indications that the United States has begun to gradually move away from the embattled Pakistani leader.
The developing shift in Washington's attitude is notable, considering that the Bush administration has heavily depended on Musharraf being at the helm in Islamabad during the war on terrorism. But the United States has been preparing for a post-Musharrafian Pakistan for at least a little over a year. In the beginning, however, the U.S. move stemmed from a desire to move beyond reliance on a single individual leader, not because of any threat to Musharraf's hold on power.
Now that the political crisis has imposed a crisis of governance on the Musharraf regime, it is only natural that the United States now move from planning to actually preparing for the time when Musharraf will no longer be Pakistan's president. But the military establishment dominates Pakistan, and Musharraf being both president and military chief raises the question of who will replace him.
However, it is unlikely that one successor will hold both positions because the domestic and international situation precludes the possibility of a military takeover of the country. It should be noted that this assumes that Musharraf continues to try and tough it out, in which case the growing unrest and violence in the country could prompt the corps commanders and agency heads to force him to step down.
In such a situation, the chairman of the Senate, Muhammad Mian Soomro, would become acting president and an interim prime minister would be appointed to lead a caretaker government. Such a government would then be tasked with holding new parliamentary elections. The interim administration would be based more or less on a consensus between the political forces and the military. Such elections would lead to a coalition federal government likely composed of at least the two main parties -- the PML-N and the Pakistan People's Party -- with the latter being the senior coalition partner. The new parliament and provincial legislatures, which together constitute the Electoral College that elects the president, would install a new head of state who likely would be a consensus candidate of the parties in the coalition government.
Regarding the position of the chief of the army staff, it is likely that the current vice chief of army staff (VCOAS), Gen. Ahsan Saleem Hayat, would succeed Musharraf. This is assuming that, if current trends persist, Musharraf will be unable to hold on to power until October, when Hayat is expected to retire. Hayat has worked extensively with Washington in the past several years, especially since he assumed the post of VCOAS in October 2004.
Furthermore, though the current political crisis will lead to the ouster of Musharraf, the military establishment will remain in control of the state for some time. From the U.S. viewpoint this is important because it ensures continuity in policy on the war on terrorism. In the long run it is in Washington's interest to see the military come under civilian control because such a government allows for relatively smooth transitions of power. But in the current circumstances, such a political dispensation could create hurdles in the path of ongoing counterterrorism cooperation because elected regimes are answerable to the masses, which in this case resent U.S. foreign policy toward their region of the world.
Musharraf's exit certainly will represent a major shift in the Pakistani political scene, but it is one for which the United States has been preparing.
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We better hope he ain't a goner. Without him in office, we would have had a much tougher road to hoe in Afghanistan, the place we did need to go into and clean house.
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http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/05/hostage_of_the_talib.php Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail has daily updates on Islam over the World. He frequently travels to the different areas for first hand looks.
Pakistan - Hostage of the Taliban
Hostage crises ended in Islamabad & North Waziristan as one begins in Bannu; anti-Taliban elements calls for help go unheeded
As the political crisis over the suspension of Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry for alleged misconduct consumes the energy of the government of President Pervez Musharraf, the Taliban and its allies continue to push forward with the establishment of Talibanistan in Pakistan. In Islamabad, the capital, the clerics of the Lal Masjid – or Red Mosque – held police hostage and faced no repercussions. In the Northwest Frontier Province two hostage crises involving government officials went unanswered by the Pakistani government. All the while, the Northwest Frontier Province descends further into a Taliban dominated state within a state.
The hostage standoff in Islamabad began after the Lal Masjid 'brigade' kidnapped 4 Pakistani policemen on May 18 and accused them of ‘spying’ for the government. two days later, the government caved to the kidnappers' demands and released 4 members of the mosque in exchange for 2 of the 4 kidnapped police. Security forces then cordoned the area around the mosque and arrested 36 members, while the "Lal Masjid brigade" began setting up fighting positions. Maulana Ghazi then threatened a wave of suicide attacks against Pakistan if an assault ensued.
One day later, the security forces called off any potential operation to free the two remaining policemen, and two days later the standoff has ended as the 2 remaining police have been released.
The Lal Masjid showdown intensified at the end of March, when Maulana Abdul Aziz, the senior cleric at the mosque gave the government 7 days to impose sharia law, and began setting up sharia courts and sending out the burke clad, baton wielding female students as enforcement squads. Maulana Abdul Aziz, the leader of the Lal Masjid, stated the brigade can now enforce sharia and attack CD and video shops in the capital. “Our students can attack these outlets anytime because the deadline given to their owners had already passed,” Aziz said in his Friday sermon. Aziz also encouraged the Taliban “to continue their jihad against obscenity, prostitution, video shops and other social vices and expand it to every nook and corner of the NWFP,” Dawn reported.
To the west, in the lawless, Taliban dominated regions of the Northwest Frontier Province, the other hostage drama played itself out in North Waziristan. The Taliban kidnapped nine government employees, including six women, and held them for five days before releasing them on May 23. The Taliban openly run North Waziristan, and were unhappy they were not informed of an outside presence. "The militants [Taliban] complained that they were not consulted by the government on development works launched in the area," said Zair Gul Wazir, one of the hostages. "He said that the militants had kidnapped them to protest against the policies of the NWFP governor and the agency’s political administration."
North Waziristan has been a hotbed of activity the past week. On May 20, the Taliban beheaded a 'US spy' in the tribal agency. Thirteen dead Taliban were repatriated to North Waziristan after being killed in the fighting in Afghanistan. The Pakistani military purportedly struck an al Qaeda training camp in the village of Zargarkhel, where three Uzbeks were said to be among the 4 killed. Eleven of the 15 members of the North Waziristan "tribal peace committee," which is responsible for maintaining the North Waziristan accord, resigned over the Zargarkhel strike. The reason given was they believe the Pakistani government broke the terms of the accord, despite the fact that the Taliban violates the terms of treaty on a daily basis.
Pakistani Police believe Matiur Rehman, al Qaeda commander in Pakistan, is "spending most of his time in Waziristan training and organizing al Qaeda militants." President Pervez Musharraf admitted that al Qaeda is in Pakistan on local television. "Al -Qaeda is in our mountains, in Mir Ali [North Waziristan]. This is completely true." Several days later, Pakistan's Foreign Office claimed "there is no Al Qaeda base in Pakistan."
As the hostage crises ends in Islamabad and North Waziristan, another begins in the Northwest Frontier Province district of Bannu. The Taliban kidnapped 3 government agents, including a military intelligence officer, as they were driving through the region. The officer's driver and other official were released, but the intelligence officer is still in custody. On May 20, Bannu police found 3 suicide vests on a bus bound for Lahore. In early March, the Pakistani government assessed Bannu, along with several other districts and tribal agencies, as falling under the influence of the Taliban. The situation has gotten so bad the Bannu tribes vowed to take action against the Taliban if the government would not. The tribes request for help has fallen on deaf ears.
The situation in Charsadda has faired no better. The Taliban bombed a music shop in the settled district on May 23. A "student of a local madressah" detonated a bomb near Pakistani Interior Minister Sherpao's home. A suicide bomber attempted to assassinate Mr. Sherpao in Charsadda in April and South Waziristan's Abdullah Mehsud was behind the attack. And the Christian residents of Charsadda have pleaded with the government to provide protection after the Taliban threaten to kill them if they failed to convert to Islam. The government has remained silent on the issue of protecting Charsadda's Christians.
Elsewhere in the Northwest Frontier Province, the Taliban’s power grows. Taliban fighters from Waziristan are reported to be massing in the district of Swat and are being sheltered by Faqir Mohammad’s banned Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi [TNSM - the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad's Sharia Law]. Faqir, who is based out of the Taliban and al Qaeda sanctuary of Bajaur and is an ally of Ayman al-Zawahiri, was recently pardoned by the Pakistani government.
In Tank, where a curfew was imposed after the Taliban raided cities and towns in the settled district, the Taliban fired 7 rockets at a military outpost on May 24. In Bara, the Lashkar Islam put out a order for a journalist’s death and ordered the closure of music shops. In Torkhum, the Taliban bombed 10 fuel tankers, which were heading to Afghanistan to supply NATO forces. Pakistani truck drivers have gone on strike out of fear of being attacked.
In Mohmand Agency, a tribal jirga met to discuss the prevention of the ‘Talibanisation’ of the agency. Like the Charsadda Christians and the Bannu tribes, the Mohmand tribal leaders’ calls for help from the Pakistani government have gone unanswered.
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Geopolitical Diary: Musharraf Cracks Down
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Thursday called an emergency meeting of the country's top military brass, including corps commanders and agency heads, for June 1 to discuss the domestic political situation. The same day, Information and Broadcasting Minister Sen. Muhammad Ali Durrani said all private electronic media outlets must now obtain permission from the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority before each live broadcast. Pakistan's Supreme Court also said it plans to investigate reports of state authorities and political groups harassing and threatening journalists.
The country's increasingly assertive judiciary and media have played a key role in the growing crisis of governance. The most recent blow to Musharraf came May 26 during a Supreme Court Bar Association seminar titled "Separation of Powers and Independence of the Judiciary," when several prominent lawyers harshly criticized the government and the military's control of the state. Several TV channels carried the event live.
The seminar enraged the Musharraf regime, which responded by saying abusive and derogatory remarks about national institutions, especially the armed forces, will not be tolerated. In a May 30 speech to officers at the Jehlum garrison, Musharraf warned the media to stop politicizing the judicial crisis, though media criticism of the Pakistani government is hardly unprecedented.
In fact, the country has seen a major proliferation of private television channels under Musharraf's rule. The government allowed this in order to counter public criticism that it is a military-dominated autocratic regime. It also could afford to allow the increasingly vibrant media its freedom since Musharraf faced no real challenge to his rule.
But in the wake of the suspension of Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, this vibrancy has damaged the public perception of the government. Yet, because the country's opposition parties continue to be divided over how to move against Musharraf, media coverage of political events and the broadcasting of damning criticism have not resulted in the protests attaining critical mass. Nonetheless, the government is moving toward a major crackdown that will drastically curtail free speech.
The nature of the criticism -- which has been aimed not only at the president, but also at the military's domination of the state -- and its reception within Musharraf's own constituency could present major problems for Musharraf's ability to rule.
Musharraf's most important source of power is the support he receives from the military, particularly the army. Criticism of Musharraf due to his dual role as military chief and president is one thing, but the questioning of the military's control over the state changes things dramatically. This forces the top generals to question Musharraf's ability to look after the military's interests. Hence, Musharraf is rushing to clamp down on the media. He must now show the generals he is very much in control and is capable of ensuring that the military maintains its hold on the state. Losing the confidence of the army's senior leadership would prove fatal to his own hold on power.
It is unlikely a crackdown on political dissent will help Musharraf shore up his position; in fact, it likely will make the situation worse for him. The verdict in Chaudhry's appeal case and the controversial presidential vote set to take place in September will only accelerate the momentum of the country's growing unrest.
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Geopolitical Diary: The Meltdown of the Musharraf State
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Monday amended laws governing the country's electronic media, GEO television reported. Musharraf empowered the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) to block transmissions, suspend licenses, confiscate equipment and seal the buildings of electronic media organizations deemed in violation of PEMRA regulations. This, combined with the ongoing political crisis, has increased the number of protests in Pakistan. The same day Musharraf also chaired a special meeting of the National Security Council, during which he discussed ways and means of dealing with the increasingly deteriorating crisis of governance.
Thus far all the steps taken by the Musharraf government to fix the growing political instability have backfired, and even have made matters worse. For the most part, this outcome is the result of serious miscalculations. This is not altogether surprising because Musharraf is now relying on a small circle of bureaucratic advisers, and is no longer listening to his political allies in the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML).
However, not heeding the PML's advice might not have major consequences, since it is the party that is dependent on Musharraf for its position of power. But Musharraf is critically dependent on the military's support to ensure his regime's continuity. This is why Musharraf on June 1 called an emergency meeting of the corps commanders and army's agency heads, during which the top generals reportedly expressed complete support for the president.
During this meeting Musharraf made use of the increasingly loud criticisms of the military's domination of the state. He was able to convince the generals that the government's opponents are not just out to force the country's military chief from power, but also want the military establishment to lose control of the political system.
In this regard, Musharraf also exploited the recent release of the new book "Military, Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy," authored by Ayesha Siddiqa, a top Pakistani political and military analyst. Siddiqa's book, which provides a detailed account of the military's hold over Pakistan's economic system, has further fueled the public ire against the military's domination of the country. As a result the government scrambled to torpedo the launching ceremony of the book and has accused the author of spreading lies and of being an enemy of the state. There are reports that Siddiqa is being intimidated by intelligence officials.
Taking all of this into account, the generals are currently rallying around Musharraf and are saying they will support his efforts to do all that is necessary to remedy the faltering situation. But they, more than anyone else, know that the need to hold such a special meeting indicates a weakness in Musharraf's position.
Therefore, the generals will be watching the situation more closely than ever and will be considering contingency plans as the political temperature rises in the coming weeks. Then, if needed, they can intervene and force Musharraf to step down in order to avoid risking an ugly confrontation on the streets.
For now, the generals figure the anti-Musharraf movement, though growing in size, lacks direction, organization and critical mass because the main opposition parties remain divided. Put differently, they believe their interests can still be secured through a compromise involving the reinstatement of the chief justice, and perhaps even with Musharraf assuming the role of a civilian president. But Musharraf does not believe he can both compromise and sustain power, which is why he has decided to tough it out in an effort to get past the re-election in September.
The generals would prefer a situation in which they are not forced to move against Musharraf because they know such a situation does not necessarily help them salvage the position of the institution. Having Musharraf step down could land them in a situation in which the new military leadership would be forced to negotiate a new civil-military power-sharing mechanism with the political forces, and from a position of relative weakness. Part of this has to do with the fact that Musharraf has been reshuffling the military deck so much that most of the top generals have not had much experience in dealing with national politics.
But when the generals know things have reached a point of no return, they will act; this could happen before the end of summer depending on how fast events progress. The prevention of news broadcasts and political talk shows deemed critical of the government on private television channels could prove to be one key step in that direction. Because of the immense popularity of these private channels, the anti-Musharraf movement is likely to gain greater momentum -- and rapidly.
The growing public unrest will only get worse because the government is determined to deal with the situation by cracking down. Unless Musharraf reverses course and opts for the path of accommodation with his opponents -- both among the political parties and with civil society -- it is quite feasible that the unrest, which is expected to peak around the time of the presidential vote in September, could surge earlier. Even his key civilian partner, the PML, is starting to show signs of hemorrhaging, indicating that it might not be possible for Musharraf to secure a second term.
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Geopolitical Diary: Washington and the Musharraf Administration's Future
Great expectations have been attached to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher's visit to Islamabad, which began on Tuesday. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is hoping the visit will help him sustain his faltering hold on power. Musharraf's opponents hope the Bush administration will help them eventually force Musharraf from office. The day of Musharraf's departure is imminent; he has simply made too many mistakes and burned too many bridges.
Yet, despite all of his eminent and obvious weaknesses, Musharaff's (many) opponents have not been able to eject him from the scene. This is in part because of an odd belief within Pakistani structures.
Many within the Pakistani political world believe that the player with the most irons in the Pakistani fire is the United States. Understanding that mindset is not particularly difficult. One of the commonalities in Pakistani governments going back to nearly the country's creation is that the United States has ultimately played the role of security supporter, if not outright guarantor. Regardless of whether the opponent was Soviet or Indian, the United States has played a critical role in Pakistani security, leading to the cynical view among many Pakistanis that their governments have been supported by three As: Allah, the army and America. And with the war in Afghanistan almost exclusively supplied via Pakistani supply routes, that does not appear about to change.
Therefore many Pakistani political players -- particularly within the military -- are unwilling to move against Musharraf, no matter how bad things get, without a green light from Washington, for fear they could get burned.
Ultimately, however, such thinking not only misses the point, it is simply wrong. It is Pakistan that holds the balance of power in this relationship, not the United States. And though Islamabad depends on financial and military assistance from Washington, it is Washington that cannot fight the war in Afghanistan without Pakistan, not the other way around. It is the United States that is bogged down in Iraq, not Pakistan.
Strategically, Washington would much rather count India as an ally. It is bigger, richer and the political culture is more similar. Yet the United States is fighting a war that requires troops and materiel to be moved through Pakistan. That means the United States will work with whoever happens to be in Pakistan's big chair, not because Washington wants to, but because it must.
The United States, then, is not allied with Musharraf the person, or the Musharraf government, but with the state of Pakistan -- read: its military. This means should Musharraf suddenly be out of the picture, the United States, after few heartburn-filled meetings, will simply hammer out a new deal with his replacement.
Put another way, the United States does not much care who runs Pakistan as long as there is stability in Islamabad; after all, it currently is supposedly enamored with a man who rose to power via a coup in 1999. And as soon as the various power players in Pakistan recognize that little fact, Musharraf's days truly will be numbered.
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WSJ
Pakistan in the Balance
By NAJAM SETHI
June 16, 2007
LAHORE, Pakistan -- As lawyers, civil society activists and now journalists protest President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's ham-handed ouster of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry last March and his recent crackdown on the press, most Pakistanis are convinced the military strongman is a "goner." Most international commentators see Mr. Musharraf's increasingly repressive measures as a sure sign of his regime unraveling. Others are already calculating the beneficial effects of a likely return to "civilian democracy" sooner rather than later.
Mr. Musharraf has other ideas. Last week he told worried bigwigs of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party that he might be down but was definitely not out. This storm will pass, he assured them, the next general elections would be held as pledged by the end of this year, and they would win.
Pervez Musharraf
So how is the United States' core ally in the war against terror going to fare? Who will replace him if he is ousted, will there be greater or lesser democracy, and would that be good or bad for Pakistan?
The protests aren't sufficient to end Mr. Musharraf's rule. They lack a mass base. There haven't been any prolonged countrywide shutdowns. Traders and businessmen still support Mr. Musharraf. Opposition parties have failed to impress in the numbers game. The two main opposition leaders, former Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, are reluctant to end their exile and return to Pakistan, fearing arrest. Even the most virulent opposition from the Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA), an alliance of six religious parties who hate Mr. Musharraf because of his support for the U.S. war against terror, is tempered with pragmatism. Its leading political party, Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam, is averse to clashing with the federal government, which could endanger its political rule in two provinces.
All political parties fear that any head-on confrontation with Mr. Musharraf might lead to martial law. As if to reinforce this fact, Mr. Musharraf last week called a meeting of his top military commanders -- who duly warned against the expression of any anti-army sentiment in public or in the media.
The situation could worsen for Mr. Musharraf if the Supreme Court were to reinstall the chief justice and thereby invigorate the pro-democracy movement. Or if the government were to blunder into killing protestors, fueling their anger and swelling their ranks. Or if Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Sharif were to return to the country and succeed in whipping up a storm. Or if Washington were to nod at another general to take over.
But all these scenarios are uncertain. The Supreme Court case may drag on until next year. The government may successfully avoid provoking more violence. Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Sharif might stay away longer. Finally, the U.S. is unlikely to ditch Mr. Musharraf, partly because he is still shoring up the war against terror in Pakistan and partly because there is no guarantee that his military or civilian successor would fare any better in fulfilling this international agenda.
Pakistan's experience with "democratic" governments hasn't been reassuring. Previous administrations under Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Sharif saw corrupt, squabbling politicians drive the economy to bankruptcy. They lost their sheen when they became dynastic, autocratic and repressive. Worse, their political failures no less than those of the military led to the growth of the religious right.
If Mr. Musharraf were to be ousted by the popular forces of "undiluted democracy" in a country that is deeply fissured by regionalism, ethnicity, religious sectarianism, separatism, Talibanism and class struggle, the result could be political anarchy and economic meltdown. There is no single mainstream party strong enough to hold the center and the periphery. Stumbling and squabbling coalition governments would bring democracy into disrepute again. This would only benefit the forces of political Islam, which are the real long-term pretenders to the throne in Pakistan because of their strategy of merging religious ideology, Islamic nationalism and class struggle.
Meanwhile, shorn of all responsibility for its actions after retreating to the barracks, the powerful army would start pulling strings to destabilize and discredit elected governments from behind the scenes, as it has done during every civilian stint in power. Under these circumstances, the gains made under Mr. Musharraf's regime, like the peace initiative with India, economic revival, efforts to stall religious extremism and support for the war against terror -- however insufficient -- would fall by the wayside without generating an alternative sustainable governance paradigm.
One other significant issue needs to be factored into the analysis. In the next five years, many middle-class army officers recruited from the urban areas of Pakistan during the Islamicization years of Gen. Zia ul Haq in the 1980s will become three-star generals. These homespun officers are all imbued with Islamic nationalism, anti-India sentiment and anti-Westernism.
Their anti-Americanism is rooted in the 1990s, when the U.S. cut off all military aid to Pakistan for pursuing its nuclear program. As field officers they compelled Mr. Musharraf not to wage war against "our own people in Waziristan" at the behest of America. They remain unhappy at the ostracism of Pakistan's nuclear hero, A.Q. Khan, by Gen. Musharraf, again at America's behest. And they have personally benefited in terms of perks and privileges from the direct intervention of the army in politics and civilian affairs. If the army is not led in the future by a strong, moderate and cosmopolitan leader, it could institutionally succumb to the collective mindset of Islamic nationalism.
Pakistan's military has historically been part of its problem. But, left to themselves, Pakistan's mainstream democrats, conservative and liberal alike, have not been able to provide the solution. Meanwhile, the country has become seriously ungovernable and the state's writ has progressively broken down in large areas of the nation. Political Islam is seeking to fill these spaces.
What is needed is a transitional power-sharing partnership between the military and political parties on the basis of an agreed moderate and liberal reform agenda -- a sort of truth and national reconciliation process that heals political wounds and charts the road to a new Pakistan. It is a tall order.
Much will depend on whether or not Mr. Musharraf can pull off the next general elections without provoking an effective opposition boycott and further instability. That, in turn, will depend on renewed efforts to diffuse the current judicial crisis and make new political allies. After the elections he will have to take off his uniform and share power with mainstream politicians in order to enlarge the new government's capacity to reform state and society.
In the past, Mr. Musharraf has demonstrated the skills of a commando in blasting his way out of trouble or beating a tactical retreat when the odds were against him. But in recent times he has seemed isolated, arrogant and rigid. Which Mr. Musharraf will prevail? What will Pakistan look like with or without him in the near future? The conclusions are not foregone.
Mr. Sethi is the editor of the Friday Times and Daily Times in Lahore, Pakistan.
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PAKISTAN: Osama bin Laden has been awarded the Pakistani Ulema Council's highest honor as a reaction to the United Kingdom knighting Salman Rushdie The Pakistani Ulema Council, a leading group of Pakistani Islamic scholars with a purported membership of 2,000 Pakistanis, gave bin Laden the title of Saifullah, meaning "sword of God."
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http://hotair.com/archives/2007/06/25/tears-flow-as-talibans-baby-bomber-tells-troops-elders-of-plot/
6 year old jihad!
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PAKISTAN: Pakistani students of the madrassa affiliated with Islamabad's Red Mosque are fortifying their positions using barbed wire and have closed down a road adjacent to the mosque facility, GEO News reported. They are reportedly using walkie-talkies to coordinate their preparations for a possible operation. Authorities have asked residents in the vicinity to relocate for a few days, and the Environment Ministry building and a girls' school have also been asked to close in anticipation of the operation.
PAKISTAN: Pakistan's Supreme Court suspended the law license of Chaudhry Akhtar Ali, a government lawyer representing President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in his case against the country's dismissed chief justice. The court also asked the Intelligence Bureau to make sure the Supreme Court and its judges' residences are free of electronic bugging devices, barred intelligence agency personnel from entering the Supreme Court or high court offices or seeking any documents from the courts, and ordered court officials not to surrender any documents to intelligence agency workers.
Stratfor.com
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Pakistan: After the Red Mosque Operation
July 05, 2007 18 57 GMT
Summary
Regardless of whether it ends by force, the security operation at the Red Mosque in the Pakistani capital will result in the militant Islamist cult losing control of the mosque. The end of the standoff could allow Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf some degree of a temporary reprieve from the ongoing political crisis in the country. However, the coming elections and the verdict in the case of suspended Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry will return to center stage quickly, putting Musharraf's troubles back in the spotlight.
Analysis
The security operation against the Islamist cult holed up in the Red Mosque in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad has entered its final stages. Since the standoff began July 3, the on-and-off heavy gunfire exchanges between security forces and the militants have resulted in some two dozen casualties. Authorities are trying to avoid storming the mosque/madrassa complex by getting the remaining militants and seminary students inside the facility to surrender.
Regardless of whether the standoff ends with a surrender, with security forces storming the complex or with a combination of the two, the defeat of the Red Mosque cult will give Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf some relief from his larger legal and political crisis. But this reprieve likely will be temporary, because the case of suspended Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and Pakistan's coming elections will once again take center stage.
Though the Musharraf government will gain some political capital from its ability to end the standoff with the Red Mosque cult, expectations will increase -- within the country and, more important, internationally -- for the Musharraf government to deal with the Taliban and al Qaeda militants and their allies using Pakistan to launch attacks in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This expectation will come from the perception that if the Musharraf government can successfully crack down on militants in one part of the country, it can reproduce those results in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas, North-West Frontier Province and the Pashtun corridor in northwestern Balochistan. The Pakistani government's ability to actually crack down on Islamist militants had been in question up until now, but the Red Mosque situation has dispelled those doubts.
For now, Musharraf will be able to use the Red Mosque operation to impress upon the United States and the West that he must stay in power if the fight against Islamist radicalism and militancy is to continue. This could help counter any slide in Washington's support for his government. However, this support will not take care of the domestic situation, in which -- now more than ever -- Musharraf needs support from the main opposition party, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP). This situation could give Bhutto a certain element of leverage in her back-channel communications with Musharraf, allowing her to drive a harder bargain and potentially forcing Musharraf to make concessions.
Additionally, this unprecedented operation against a mosque likely will create more resentment among conservative and extremist circles, which could lead the mainstream Islamist coalition, the Muttahida Majilis-i-Amal (MMA), to lose some of its influence to more extremist elements.
Musharraf, who already is in negotiations with the PPP and the largest component party of the MMA -- the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman -- to help him get over the hurdle of his own re-election and the parliamentary polls, will now need the opposition parties' support not only to secure a second term but also to deal with the fallout from the Red Mosque operation, which could see increased militancy in the country.
Prior to the Red Mosque operation, Musharraf was already headed toward a situation in which he would at least be forced to share power. The operation could prevent him from losing power altogether -- which has been a prospect since early March, given the brewing crisis. That said, the continuing crisis and upcoming elections will put him in a position in which he cannot avoid giving up some of his power to the next civilian administration.
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U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ’05
NY Times
By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: July 8, 2007
WASHINGTON, July 7 — A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.
The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.
But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.
Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.
The decision to halt the planned “snatch and grab” operation frustrated some top intelligence officials and members of the military’s secret Special Operations units, who say the United States missed a significant opportunity to try to capture senior members of Al Qaeda.
Their frustration has only grown over the past two years, they said, as Al Qaeda has improved its abilities to plan global attacks and build new training compounds in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which have become virtual havens for the terrorist network.
In recent months, the White House has become increasingly irritated with Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for his inaction on the growing threat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
About a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials were interviewed for this article, all of whom requested anonymity because the planned 2005 mission remained classified.
Spokesmen for the Pentagon, the C.I.A. and the White House declined to comment. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed about the planned operation.
The officials acknowledge that they are not certain that Mr. Zawahri attended the 2005 meeting in North Waziristan, a mountainous province just miles from the Afghan border. But they said that the United States had communications intercepts that tipped them off to the meeting, and that intelligence officials had unusually high confidence that Mr. Zawahri was there.
Months later, in early May 2005, the C.I.A. launched a missile from a remotely piloted Predator drone, killing Haitham al-Yemeni, a senior Qaeda figure whom the C.I.A. had tracked since the meeting.
It has long been known that C.I.A. operatives conduct counterterrorism missions in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Details of the aborted 2005 operation provide a glimpse into the Bush administration’s internal negotiations over whether to take unilateral military action in Pakistan, where General Musharraf’s fragile government is under pressure from dissidents who object to any cooperation with the United States.
Pentagon officials familiar with covert operations said that planners had to consider the political and human risks of undertaking a military campaign in a sovereign country, even in an area like Pakistan’s tribal lands, where the government has only tenuous control. Even with its shortcomings, Pakistan has been a vital American ally since the Sept. 11 attacks, and the militaries of the two countries have close ties.
The Pentagon officials said tension was inherent in any decision to approve such a mission: a smaller military footprint allows a better chance of a mission going undetected, but it also exposes the units to greater risk of being killed or captured.
Officials said one reason Mr. Rumsfeld called off the 2005 operation was that the number of troops involved in the mission had grown to several hundred, including Army Rangers, members of the Navy Seals and C.I.A. operatives, and he determined that the United States could no longer carry out the mission without General Musharraf’s permission. It is unlikely that the Pakistani president would have approved an operation of that size, officials said.
Some outside experts said American counterterrorism operations had been hamstrung because of concerns about General Musharraf’s shaky government.
“The reluctance to take risk or jeopardize our political relationship with Musharraf may well account for the fact that five and half years after 9/11 we are still trying to run bin Laden and Zawahri to ground,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.
Those political considerations have created resentment among some members of the military’s Special Operations forces.
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“The Special Operations guys are tearing their hair out at the highest levels,” said a former Bush administration official with close ties to those troops. While they have not received good intelligence on the whereabouts of top Qaeda members recently, he said, they say they believe they have sometimes had useful information on lower-level figures.
“There is a degree of frustration that is off the charts, because they are looking at targets on a daily basis and can’t move against them,” he said.
In early 2005, after learning about the Qaeda meeting, the military developed a plan for a small Navy Seals unit to parachute into Pakistan to carry out a quick operation, former officials said.
But as the operation moved up the military chain of command, officials said, various planners bulked up the force’s size to provide security for the Special Operations forces.
“The whole thing turned into the invasion of Pakistan,” said the former senior intelligence official involved in the planning. Still, he said he thought the mission was worth the risk. “We were frustrated because we wanted to take a shot,” he said.
Several former officials interviewed said the operation was not the only occasion since the Sept. 11 attacks that plans were developed to use a large American military force in Pakistan. It is unclear whether any of those missions have been executed.
Some of the military and intelligence officials familiar with the 2005 events say it showed a rift between operators in the field and a military bureaucracy that has still not effectively adapted to hunt for global terrorists, moving too cautiously to use Special Operations troops against terrorist targets.
That criticism has echoes of the risk aversion that the officials said pervaded efforts against Al Qaeda during the Clinton administration, when missions to use American troops to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan were never executed because they were considered too perilous, risked killing civilians or were based on inadequate intelligence. Rather than sending in ground troops, the Clinton White House instead chose to fire cruise missiles in what became failed attempts to kill Mr. bin Laden and his deputies — a tactic Mr. Bush criticized shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Since then, the C.I.A. has launched missiles from Predator aircraft in the tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence officials say they believe that in January 2006, an airstrike narrowly missed killing Mr. Zawahri, who hours earlier had attended a dinner in Damadola, a Pakistani village.
General Musharraf cast his lot with the Bush administration in the hunt for Al Qaeda after the 2001 attacks, and he has periodically ordered Pakistan’s military to conduct counterterrorism missions in the tribal areas, provoking fierce resistance there. But in recent months he has pulled back, prompting Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to issue stern warnings in private that he risked losing American aid if he did not step up efforts against Al Qaeda, senior administration officials have said.
Officials said that mid-2005 was a period when they were gathering good intelligence about Al Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas. By the next year, however, the White House had become frustrated by the lack of progress in the hunt for Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri.
In early 2006, President Bush ordered a “surge” of dozens of C.I.A. agents to Pakistan, hoping that an influx of intelligence operatives would lead to better information, officials said. But that has brought the United States no closer to locating Al Qaeda’s top two leaders. The latest message from them came this week, in a new tape in which Mr. Zawahri urged Iraqis and Muslims around the world to show more support for Islamist insurgents in Iraq.
In his recently published memoir, George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director, said the intelligence about Mr. bin Laden’s whereabouts during the Clinton years was similarly sparse. The information was usually only at the “50-60% confidence level,” he wrote, not sufficient to justify American military action.
“As much as we all wanted Bin Ladin dead, the use of force by a superpower requires information, discipline, and time,” Mr. Tenet wrote. “We rarely had the information in sufficient quantities or the time to evaluate and act on it.”
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Geopolitical Diary: The War Between Pakistan and its Ex-Proxies
After days of avoiding an all-out assault against the mosque/madrassa complex, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf reportedly has issued orders to storm the Red Mosque in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. The government also has claimed that the Islamist militants holed up in the mosque include both wanted hard-core Pakistani jihadists and foreign fighters -- mostly Arabs -- affiliated with al Qaeda. The six-day security operation to dislodge Islamist militants from the Red Mosque thus appears to have entered a decisive stage.
The government's new claims could have some merit, thus warranting an examination of the facts associated with the operation. The Pakistanis, fearing possible public backlash in an already charged political atmosphere, have until now avoided taking the facility by force. Nonetheless, the government has brought in some of its best security units to flush the militants from the mosque. These include the army's 111th Brigade, its Special Services Group (SSG) commando force, the ninth wing of the Pakistan Rangers paramilitary force and the elite anti-terrorism squad of the Punjab police.
Despite being up against some 12,000 well-trained, professional and heavily armed security personnel, the militants inside the Red Mosque have managed to hold their ground. They have managed to survive several days of intense bombardment in the form of shelling and gunfire. Moreover, they managed to kill a commander of the SSG (a lieutenant colonel) during one operation late July 6.
All of this does not appear to be the work of mere seminary students who are followers of the rogue mullahs running the Red Mosque, perhaps boasting only a little experience handling an AK-47. Radical seminary students do not possess the skills to strategize against -- let alone hold off -- a superior force. Holding out in the face of insurmountable odds demands a certain level of nerve as well.
The leaders of the resistance in the mosque probably are battle-hardened jihadists, not a mere ragtag band of seminarian zealots, which raises a number of questions. How did these elements establish themselves in a major mosque in the South Asian country's capital, just a few miles from the city's diplomatic enclave, key government institutions and -- above all -- the headquarters of the country's premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate? How did the fighters procure the weapons and other supplies needed to sustain such a standoff without setting off alarms? Why are the militants able to make back-channel contacts with some key top officials even after the government has made it clear the fighters must surrender unconditionally?
The answers to such questions are not readily available, but the questions themselves bolster claims that the Pakistani state, especially its military and intelligence agencies, has been significantly infiltrated by jihadist elements. This has directly resulted from the army's past practice of employing Islamist militant actors to pursue its domestic and foreign policy objectives.
Pakistani media reported July 7 that a close relative of the mullahs controlling the Red Mosque is the driver for Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao, and he was also the driver for the minister's two predecessors. Meanwhile, the bodyguard of the deputy leader is an employee of the National Crisis Management Cell, led by retired Director-General Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema -- who is also the Interior Ministry's spokesman.
Consequently, these militants are not just challenging the writ of the state; they enjoy a significant number of sympathizers within both the government and wider society. The military leadership led by Musharraf might have embarked upon a strategic shift as far as the role of Islam in state and society is concerned, but clearly a large number of people both inside and outside the government do not subscribe to his philosophy of "enlightened moderation."
Though radical Islamist forces constitute a minority, they constitute a significant one. And while the vast majority of Pakistanis do not support jihadists, they do not necessarily support Musharraf's agenda either. Overall, Pakistan lacks a national consensus regarding Islam's role in public affairs, something extremist and radical forces are exploiting.
Therefore, the Red Mosque operation does not amount to a one-off event. Rather, it is likely the beginning of a long confrontation between the state and radical/militant Islamist forces. Such a clash will involve military operations in areas such as the North-West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, as well as nationwide social unrest.
stratfor.com
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NY Times
QALAI SAYEDAN, Afghanistan, July 9 — With their teacher absent, 10 students were allowed to leave school early. These were the girls the gunmen saw first, 10 easy targets walking hand-in-hand through the blue metal gate and on to the winding dirt road.
The stataccato of machine-gun fire pelted through the stillness. A 13-year-old named Shukria was hit in the arm and the back, and then teetered into the soft brown of an adjacent wheat field. Zarmina, her 12-year-old sister, ran to her side, listening to the wounded girl’s precious breath and trying to help her stand.
But Shukria was too heavy to lift, and the two gunmen, sitting astride a single motorbike, sped closer.
As Zarmina scurried away, the men took a more studied aim at those they already had shot, killing Shukria with bullets to her stomach and heart. Then the attackers seemed to succumb to the frenzy they had begun, forsaking the motorbike and fleeing on foot in a panic, two bobbing heads — one tucked into a helmet, the other swaddled by a handkerchief — vanishing amid the earthen color of the wheat.
Six students were shot here on the afternoon of June 12, two of them fatally. The Qalai Sayedan School — considered among the very best in the central Afghan province of Logar — reopened only last weekend, but even with Kalashnikov-toting guards at the gate, only a quarter of the 1,600 students have dared to return.
Shootings, beheadings, burnings and bombings: these are all tools of intimidation used by the Taliban and others to shut down hundreds of Afghanistan’s public schools. To take aim at education is to make war on the government.
Parents are left with peculiar choices. “It is better for my children to be alive even if it means they must be illiterate,” said Sayed Rasul, a father who had decided to keep his two daughters at home for a day.
Afghanistan surely has made some progress toward development, but most often the nation seems astride some pitiable rocking horse, with each lurch forward inevitably reversed by the backward spring of harsh reality.
The schools are one vivid example. The Ministry of Education claims that 6.2 million children are now enrolled, or about half the school-age population. And while statistics in Afghanistan can be unreliably confected, there is no doubt that attendance has multiplied far beyond that of any earlier time, with uniformed children now teeming through the streets each day, flooding classrooms in two and three shifts.
A third of these students are girls, a marvel itself. Historically, girls’ education has been undervalued in Afghan culture. Girls and women were forbidden from school altogether during the Taliban rule.
But after 30 years of war, this is a country without normal times to reclaim; in so many ways, Afghanistan must start from scratch. The accelerating demand for education is mocked by the limited supply. More than half the schools have no buildings, according to the Ministry of Education; classes are commonly held in tents or beneath trees or in the brutal, sun-soaked openness.
Only 20 percent of the teachers are even minimally qualified. Texts are outdated; hundreds of titles need to be written, and millions of books need to be printed. And then there is the violence. In the southern provinces where the Taliban are most aggressively combating American and NATO troops, education has virtually come to a halt in large swaths of the contested regions. In other areas, attacks against schools are sporadic, unpredictable and perplexing.
By the ministry’s estimate, there have been 444 attacks since last August. Some of these were simple thefts. Some were instances of tents put to the torch. Some were audacious murders under the noon sun.
“By attacking schools, the terrorists want to make the point of their own existence,” said Mohammad Hanif Atmar, the minister of education.
Western-educated and notably energetic, Mr. Atmar is the nation’s fifth education minister in five and a half years, but only the first to command the solid enthusiasm of international donors. Much of the government is awash in corruption and cronyism. But Mr. Atmar comes to the job after a much-praised showing as the minister of rural redevelopment.
He has laid out an ambitious five-year plan for school construction, teacher training and a modernized curriculum. He is also championing a parallel track of madrasas, or religious schools; students would focus on Islamic studies while also pursuing science, math and the arts. “This society needs faith-based education, and we will be happy to provide it without teaching violence and the abuse of human rights,” Mr. Atmar said.
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To succeed, the minister must prove a magnet for foreign cash. And donors have not been unusually generous when it comes to schools. Since the fall of the Taliban, the United States Agency for International Development has devoted only 5 percent of its Afghanistan budget to education, compared with 30 percent for roads and 14 percent for power.
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Afghanistan School Attacks
Virtually every Afghan school is a sketchbook of extraordinary destitution. “I have 68 girls sitting in this tent,” said Nafisa Wardak, a first-grade teacher at the Deh Araban Qaragha School in Kabul. “We’re hot. The tent is full of flies. The wind blows sand and garbage everywhere. If a child gets sick, where can I send her?”
The nation’s overwhelming need for walled classrooms makes the killings in Qalai Sayedan all the more tragic. The school welcomed boys through grade 6 and girls through grade 12. It was terribly overcrowded, with the 1,600 students, attending in two shifts, stuffed into 12 classrooms and a corridor.
But the building itself was exactly that: two stories of concrete with a roof of galvanized steel, and not a collection of weather-molested tents. Two years ago, Qalai Sayedan was named the top school in the province. Its principal, Bibi Gul, was saluted for excellence and rewarded with a trip to America.
But last month’s attack on the school caused parents to wonder if the school’s stalwart reputation had not itself become a source of provocation. Qalai Sayedan is 40 miles south of Kabul, and while a dozen other schools in Logar Province have been attacked, none has been as regularly, or malignly, singled out. Three years ago, Qalai Sayedan was struck by rockets during the night. A year ago, explosives tore off a corner of the building.
In the embassies of the West, and even within the Education Ministry in Kabul, the Taliban are commonly discussed as a monolithic adversary. But to the villagers here, with the lives of their children at risk, it is too simplistic to assume the attacks were merely part of some broad campaign of terror.
People see the government’s enemies as a varied lot with assorted grievances, assorted tribal connections and assorted masters. Villagers ask, has anyone at the school provided great offense? Is the school believed to be un-Islamic?
At the village mosque, many men blame Ms. Gul, the principal. “She should not have gone to America without the consultation of the community,” said Sayed Abdul Sami, the uncle of Saadia, the other slain student. “And she went to America without a mahram, a male relative to accompany her, and this is considered improper in Islam.”
Sayed Enayatullah Hashimi, a white-bearded elder, said the school had flaunted its success too openly. “The governor paid it a visit,” he said disparagingly. “He brought with him 20 bodyguards, and these men went all over the school — even among the older girls.”
Education is the fast track to modernity. And modernity is held with suspicion.
Off the main highway, 100 yards up the winding dirt road and through the blue metal gate, sits the school. It was built four years ago by the German government.
On Monday, Ms. Gul greeted hundreds of children as they fidgeted in the morning light: “Dear boys and brave girls, thank you for coming. The enemy has done its evil deeds, but we will never allow the doors of this school to close again.”
These would be among her final moments as their principal. She had already resigned. “My heart is crying,” she said privately. “But I must leave because of everything that people say. They say I received letters warning about the attacks. But that isn’t so. And people say I am a foreigner because I went to the United States without a mahram. We were 12 people. I’m 42 years old. I don’t need to travel with a mahram.”
In the village, she wears a burqa, enveloped head to toe in lavender fabric. This is a conservative place. For some, the very idea of girls attending school into their teens is a breach of tradition.
Shukria, the slain 13-year-old, was considered a polite girl who reverently studied the Koran. Saadia, the other student killed, was remarkable in that she was married and 25. She had refused to let age discourage her from finishing an education interrupted by the Taliban years. She was about to graduate.
A new sign now sits atop the steel roof. The Qalai Sayedan School has been renamed the Martyred Saadia School. Another place will be called Martyred Shukria.
For three days now, students have been asked to return to class. Each morning, more of them appear. Older girls and women are quite clearly the most reluctant to return.
Shukria’s home is only a short walk from the school. Nafiza, the girl’s mother, was still too scalded with grief to mutter more than a few words. Shukria’s uncle, Shir Agha, took on the role of family spokesman.
“We have a saying that if you go to school, you can find yourself, and if you can find yourself, you can find God,” he said proudly. “But for a child to attend school, there must be security. Who supplies that security?”
Zarmina, the 12-year-old who had seen her sister killed, was called into the room. She was not ready to return to school, she said. Even the sound of a motorbike now made her hide. But surely the fear would subside, her uncle reassured her. She must remember that she loves school, that she loves to read, that she loves to scribble words on paper.
Someday, she would surely resume her studies, he told her.
But the heartbroken girl could not yet imagine this. “Never,” she said.
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stratfor.com
Pakistan: Al Qaeda After the Red Mosque
Summary
The Red Mosque operation in Pakistan has created both a major opportunity and a serious challenge for al Qaeda prime. The standoff, which ended bloodily, has generated a significant degree of resentment among many Pakistanis, something al Qaeda can be expected to exploit. But the post-Red Mosque operation atmosphere also represents a major security threat to al Qaeda's apex leadership -- which is hiding out in northwestern Pakistan -- explaining the remarks from al Qaeda's No. 2 in his latest communique.
Analysis
Deputy al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri's most recent taped message, which addresses the Red Mosque standoff in Pakistan's capital, contains very telling insights about the situation facing the apex leadership of the transnational jihadist organization, despite being issued before Pakistani security forces overran the mosque/madrassa complex. Now that the mosque operation has ended, having whipped up a great degree of anti-government sentiment, al-Zawahiri can be expected to release a follow-up tape to try to exploit the situation. But even in this initial tape, which was made some time after Red Mosque cult leader Maulana Abdul Aziz was arrested while trying to escape from the facility wearing female robes, al-Zawahiri demonstrates an awareness of the threat to al Qaeda that lies ahead.
As far back as June 2005, we identified that al Qaeda's clandestine global headquarters had relocated to the area comprising the districts of Dir, Malakand and Swat in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) following the ouster of the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan. Being based in Pakistan meant al Qaeda could not go too far in staging attacks in country for fear of attracting unwanted attention. It therefore tried to ensure that jihadist activity in the country did not become a security liability for the apex leadership.
Clearly, a great deal of militant activity within Pakistan is not commissioned by al-Zawahiri, but rather is the handiwork of domestic jihadist actors. Despite several attacks against Western and Pakistani government targets since Islamabad joined the U.S. war against jihadism, the government of Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf refrained from engaging in major action against the Islamist militancy. The Red Mosque crisis, however, forced the Pakistanis to change their attitude. Not only did the government decided to engage in an unprecedented assault against a mosque, but in a July 12 address to the nation Musharraf also announced plans to go after militant groups all over the NWFP and the adjacent tribal badlands.
We forecasted this move, predicting it could prove devastating for al Qaeda prime. Al-Zawahiri is well aware of the potential for such an outcome, which explains his remarks urging Pakistanis to focus on jihadist activity in Afghanistan as opposed to the situation in Pakistan -- which, from al Qaeda's point of view, is hopeless. Al-Zawahiri said, "Muslims of Pakistan ... you must now back the mujahideen in Afghanistan with your persons, wealth, opinion and expertise, because the jihad in Afghanistan is the door to salvation for Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the region. Die honorably in the fields of jihad."
The call to focus on Afghanistan makes sense given the strategic and tactical situation al Qaeda faces. Pakistan has thus far provided the leadership sanctuary, but at the cost of significantly diminishing al Qaeda's operational capability. Furthermore, despite the significant radical Islamist presence within Pakistan, the country poses significant structural impediments to al Qaeda's objectives.
What al Qaeda really needs is the anarchy Afghanistan offers, presenting conditions conducive not only to the group's survival but also to a revival of its operational capabilities. Al Qaeda calculates that, given U.S. problems in Iraq and the disarray among NATO member states, the United States eventually will force the West yet again to abandon Afghanistan. The jihadists would then be able to use Afghanistan again for their purposes. The West is not going to leave Afghanistan anytime soon, but al Qaeda prime, which faces only bad options, will pursue the best one.
Although al Qaeda would love to exploit the anti-government sentiments that have arisen among Pakistanis in the wake of the storming of the Red Mosque, the group probably is bracing for what Stratfor has identified as the beginning of a long-term struggle between the Pakistani state and the jihadist Frankenstein it created over an extended period. While the struggle against the jihadists will be a long engagement, the founders of al Qaeda could get caught in the cross-fire between Islamabad and its former proxies in the not-too-distant future.
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GHALANAI, Pakistan — The United States plans to pour $750 million of aid into Pakistan’s tribal areas over the next five years as part of a “hearts and minds” campaign to win over this lawless region from Qaeda and Taliban militants.
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Suicide Bombers Kill at Least 49 in North Pakistan (July 16, 2007)
But even before the plan has been fully carried out, documents and officials involved in the planning are warning of the dangers of distributing so much money in an area so hostile that oversight is impossible, even by Pakistan’s own government, which faces rising threats from Islamic militants.
Who will be given the aid has quickly become one of the most contentious questions between local officials and American planners concerned that millions might fall into the wrong hands. The local political agents and tribal chiefs in this hinterland on the Afghan border have for years accommodated the very groups the American and Pakistani governments seek to drive out.
A closely scripted visit to the hospital here, used for a pilot project by the United States Agency for International Development, showed the challenges on full display. The one-story hospital here was virtually empty on a recent day.
Local people had no way to get there. Three of the 110 beds were occupied. Two operating tables had not been used in months. Many doctors had left because the pay was too meager and security too precarious, said Dr. Yusuf Shah, the chief surgeon.
Sher Alam Mahsud, the local political boss who escorted this reporter on a rare visit, said he wanted all the American aid money “delivered to us.” But the precarious security does not allow the Americans to assess the aid priorities firsthand, or to provide oversight for the first installment of $150 million allocated by the Bush administration.
“Delivering $150 million in aid to the tribal areas could very quickly make a few people rich and do almost nothing to provide opportunity and justice to the region,” said Craig Cohen, the author of a recent study of United States-Pakistan relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Yet it is here in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, as the region is formally called, that Washington is intent on using the development aid as a counterinsurgency tool, according to a draft of the Agency for International Development plan given to The New York Times by an official who worked on it.
The draft warns that the “severe governance deficiencies” in the tribal areas will make it virtually impossible for the aid to be sustainable or to overcome the “area’s chronic underdevelopment and consequent volatility.”
The ambitious plan was publicly highlighted during a visit to Pakistan in June by Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, as a measure of Washington’s support for Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
“The objective driving this decision is the hope that by bringing the FATA into the mainstream and assuring that basic human services and infrastructure are on par with the rest of Pakistan, the people of FATA would be less likely to welcome the presence of Al Qaeda and Taliban,” the draft states. The projects include health and education services, water and sanitation facilities, and agricultural development, it says, making clear that these are a means to a broader end. “The main goal of the United States government in relation to the FATA is counterterrorism,” it says.
One way to improve the chances of the aid’s efficacy would be greater emphasis on political reform in the tribal areas, according to the draft. The Pakistani government has created a panel to study reform of the political structure in the areas, the draft noted, adding that “Usaid should explore opportunities for contributing its substantial experience in local government capacity building to any reform efforts the government of Pakistan decide to undertake.”
Even if the tribal areas were not under the sway of the Taliban, which they increasingly are, the development challenge here would be steep enough, the document and interviews make clear.
The area, home to 3.2 million people, remains a desolate landscape where women are strictly veiled. Female literacy — at 3 percent — is among the lowest in the world. Schools are often used to run businesses. There is no banking system. Smuggling of opium and other contraband is routine.
The hostility to almost anything that smacks of foreign influence is such that money from the modest development agency program, administered by the charity Save the Children at the hospital here, was being delivered anonymously, undercutting any potential public relations benefit for the United States.
“We can’t do branding,” said Fayyaz Ali Khan, the program manager for Save the Children, in an interview in the city of Peshawar. “Usually we say the aid comes from the American people, but here we can’t.”
Suspicions about modern medicine are rife. A Pakistani doctor was blown up in his car in June after trying to counter the anti-vaccine propaganda of an imam in Bajaur, one of the tribal agencies, Pakistani officials said.
The Pakistani government has virtually no authority here. After years of fighting to assert its authority, at the cost of about 600 soldiers, it negotiated peace accords with tribal authorities that have all but confined Pakistani troops to their barracks.
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Published: July 16, 2007
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Tribal elders, local imams and governors known as political agents — their title goes back to the British colonial days — are the on-the-ground arbiters of all decisions in many districts. The political agents are widely considered corrupt.
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Suicide Bombers Kill at Least 49 in North Pakistan (July 16, 2007) A senior American official in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, who would not speak for attribution, defended the plan’s goals as necessary and achievable. The official said that “Pakistani firms, consulting organizations and nongovernmental organizations” would be the main deliverers of the assistance.
The official said, referring to the international aid agency, that these would in turn be “managed under Usaid direct contracts and grants to American and international organizations.”
Mr. Cohen, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was skeptical. Almost every potential recipient of the money was suspect in the eyes of the people it was supposed to help, he said. “The notion that there’s going to be $150 million a year to Pakistani nongovernmental organizations who are going to be out in the open seems naïve to me,” he said.
“The insecurity of the area will require a heavy reliance on local partners” like Pakistani nongovernmental organizations to administer projects, he added. “But the nongovernmental organizations don’t trust the military, the military doesn’t trust the tribal chiefs, and the tribal chiefs won’t trust us unless they’re getting a cut of the money.”
Such Pakistani groups were often targets of the Islamic militants in the tribal areas. The militants are increasingly destroying CD shops and attacking small efforts to gain advantages for women.
Mr. Mahsud, the political agent for the tribal agency, or district, of Mohmand, where the hospital is, had his own ideas. Any aid money from Western donors should be “pooled here,” he said, during an interview at the FATA secretariat headquarters in Peshawar, meaning it should be distributed through local officials.
His power was evident when he drove in his impressive new four-wheel-drive vehicle through the heavy metal black gates that mark the boundary to his tribal agency. Armed men in heavy gray uniforms, wearing black felt berets in the summer heat, snapped to attention.
The hospital itself was barren, and silent. Dr. Shah, the chief surgeon, and other doctors who had come to the hospital for the visit of an outsider, said water was a luxury trucked in by tanker, arriving at best every other day.
One doctor, Aaquila Khan, brimmed with passion about helping the poor and feeble women who came to visit the woefully underequipped hospital, but she lives in Peshawar, more than an hour’s drive away, and so comes in just two or three days a week, mornings only, to treat those female patients.
“They are very much anemic,” she said of eight women she treated during a recent visit. “They are not educated, they are not aware of family planning, they have no money.” Only the women living within walking distance could come, she said.
The aid program run by Save the Children, a small $11 million starter project that hints at the bigger things planned by the Americans, formally began last December with a signing of a memorandum of understanding with the tribal authorities.
The idea is for Pakistani doctors to train health care workers who will go into the field and train traditional health assistants on more modern methods.
But the first training sessions have only just begun, said Mr. Khan, the program manager for Save the Children. The only sign of the program was a “resource room” with a large blond wood table and a dozen or so chairs still in their plastic wrapping.
The training sessions take place in Peshawar, over the tribal boundary, to ensure the safety of the doctors.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-alqaeda20jul20,1,47411.story?track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true
From the Los Angeles Times
Al Qaeda said to operate across Pakistan
By Josh Meyer
Times Staff Writer
8:10 PM PDT, July 19, 2007
WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda has strongholds throughout Pakistan, not just in the areas bordering Afghanistan that were emphasized in a terrorism assessment this week, according to U.S. intelligence officials and counter-terrorism experts who say Osama bin Laden's network is more deeply entrenched than described.
The National Intelligence Estimate on the Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland, which reflects the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, described Al Qaeda as having "regenerated key elements" and freely operating from bases in northwestern Pakistan. But several officials and outside experts interviewed since the document's release this week say the situation is more problematic.
These analysts said the Bush administration was blaming Al Qaeda's resurgence too narrowly on an agreement that the Pakistani government struck in September with tribal leaders in the country's northwest territories.
In recent years, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials focused on South Asia say they have watched with growing concern as Al Qaeda has moved men, money and recruiting and training operations into Pakistani cities such as Quetta and Karachi as well as less populated areas.
Militant Islamists are still a minority in Pakistan — commanding allegiance of a little more than 10% of the population, judging by election results. But Al Qaeda has been able to widen its sway throughout the country by strengthening long-standing alliances with fundamentalist religious groups, charities, criminal gangs, elements of the government security forces and even some political officials, these officials said.
Bin Laden's network also has strengthened ties to groups fighting for control of Kashmir, most of which is held by India, a broadly popular cause throughout Pakistan that has the backing of the government and military.
"It is a much bigger problem than just saying it is a bunch of tribal Islamists in the fringe areas," said Bruce Riedel, a South Asia expert who served at the CIA, National Security Council and Pentagon and retired last year after 30 years of counter-terrorism and policy-making experience.
Riedel disagreed, in particular, with the administration's effort to blame Al Qaeda's resurgence primarily on the September peace agreement. Under the terms of that truce, Pakistan pulled its troops out of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in North Waziristan in exchange for promises by tribal leaders that militants affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban would not engage in violent activity, in Pakistan or across the border in Afghanistan.
The peace accord has been roundly criticized as having backfired, with Taliban attacks and suicide bombings in Afghanistan soaring, and Al Qaeda activity in the tribal areas growing noticeably, according to top U.S. military and intelligence officials.
The Pakistani government has limited authority in the largely autonomous tribal areas, and has had little success in attacking Al Qaeda there, but it also has refused to allow U.S. forces to go in.
Reidel and others who share his view said the intelligence estimate put too much emphasis on the September agreement. "By putting it all in the [tribal region] we are trying to downplay this, saying it is all a problem of one cease-fire agreement that was a bad idea, when in fact Al Qaeda has spread throughout Pakistan," said Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.
One U.S. counter-terrorism official confirmed Riedel's assessment that Al Qaeda's influence extended far beyond the tribal areas, but said those areas had become more important to the group in recent years because of increased pressure by Pakistani authorities in urban centers.
"As pressure increased in the urban areas, you look for a more permissive environment, and the tribal areas are thought to have provided that. You tend to go to where your opponent isn't," the counter-terrorism official said in reference to Al Qaeda. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he was not allowed to discuss counter-terrorism operations on the record, especially regarding the sensitive but fragile U.S. alliance with Pakistan.
But, the official, said Al Qaeda's presence in the rest of Pakistan remains a problem. "Nobody is looking at one to the absolute exclusion of the other," the official said. "This is not a one-dimensional problem."
The signs of Al Qaeda's spread across Pakistan have been apparent for years. The 15 so-called muscle hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks trained at an Al Qaeda hide-out in the southern port city of Karachi, according to the 9/11 Commission report.
Husain Haqqani, a former advisor to several Pakistani prime ministers, said that before the Sept. 11 attacks, Al Qaeda had hide-outs and logistical bases throughout Pakistan from where it moved foreign fighters into and out of Afghanistan.
"Once their headquarters in Afghanistan was shattered, they turned to making their logistical bases in Pakistan into operational bases," said Haqqani, director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University and the author of "Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military."
"Look at the arrests of Al Qaeda in recent years," he said. "They have been all over the country. People there were providing them with guidance and help."
Top Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubeida was captured in Faisalabad in 2002 and reputed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who also had close ties to Karachi, was caught in 2003 in the city of Rawalpindi, headquarters of Pakistan's military. Mohammed's replacement, Abu Faraj Libbi, was arrested in 2005, in Mardan, about 75 miles northwest of Islamabad, the capital.
U.S. intelligence officials believe Al Qaeda's presence throughout Pakistan has enabled it to recruit and train operatives, raise significant sums of money, and to film and disseminate high-quality propaganda videos through its Al Sahab multimedia arm.
Al Qaeda's No. 2 and chief propagandist Ayman Zawahiri has released numerous tapes in recent months, each of them issued with increasing speed after a significant event. After Pakistani troops stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad, killing and captured Islamist militants, Zawahiri's professional-looking video was coursing through cyberspace in a matter of days.
"When you look at the quality of these propaganda tapes, they are not being produced in some primitive area but where you can get access to news media on a regular basis," Riedel said.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry issued a statement Wednesday in response to the U.S. intelligence paper, strongly protesting the conclusion that the government had allowed Al Qaeda a haven in the tribal areas.
"It does not help simply to make assertions about the presence or regeneration of Al Qaeda in bordering areas of Pakistan," the statement read. "What is needed is concrete and actionable information and intelligence sharing."
The Foreign Ministry statement added that Pakistan was determined not to allow Al Qaeda or any other terrorist entity to establish a base on its territory, but in an apparent reference to the U.S.. said no foreign security forces would be allowed to pursue militants in Pakistan.
Last week during testimony to Congress on global threats, Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of National Intelligence for analysis, cautioned against an overly aggressive effort to crush Al Qaeda in the tribal areas.
"Part of the dilemma ... here is the risk of taking actions in the less-well-governed areas of Pakistan, the federally administrated tribal areas ... that could lead to developments in all of Pakistan, that would increase the problem," Fingar told the House Armed Services Committee.
"There are an awful lot of potential recruits that are being engaged in the struggle in Kashmir that are held in check by the security forces in the rest of Pakistan. So it is not too great an exaggeration to say there is some risk of turning a problem in northwest Pakistan into the problem of all of Pakistan."
josh.meyer@latimes.com
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Interesting piece GM.
Here's this from Stratfor:
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Geopolitical Diary: Pakistan on the Table, Germany on the Rise
Frances Townsend, Homeland Security adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush, said on Thursday that the United States would be willing to send troops into Pakistan to root out al Qaeda, noting specifically that "no option is off the table if that is what is required." Just in case Islamabad -- or al Qaeda -- missed Townsend's statement, White House spokesman Tony Snow paraphrased it shortly afterward.
While the statements are hardly a declaration of war, one can be positive that Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is going to need a nightcap to get to sleep. It is not every day that the global superpower ruminates that invading your country is an option "not off the table."
Townsend and Snow are hinting at an operation that has been six years in the making. There never really has been any doubt that al Qaeda sought refuge in northwest Pakistan after fleeing the United States' November 2001 assault on Afghanistan. But the absolute necessity of maintaining Pakistan as an ally has stayed Washington's hand (aside from nearly continuous small-scale border raids against targets of opportunity). Rooting out al Qaeda from the tribes that shield it would require a thousands-strong force, ideally with Pakistani cooperation. Until now, the dominant belief in Washington has been that such an operation would lead to a Pakistani rebellion and the consequent overthrow of the Musharraf government. Ergo, the attack has not happened.
But now two things have changed. First, Islamic radicals of the Red Mosque -- whom Pakistani security forces raided July 12 -- have tripped public anger. Out of a mixture of necessity and opportunism, Musharraf is now moving in force against Pakistani's long-ignored jihadist circles.
Until now, the jihadists have been quiet in Pakistan because that is where they recruit, train and fundraise. Now that the state is closing in on them, the suicide bombs have started going off in earnest, with more than 50 dead just on Thursday and more than 200 since the wave of explosions began. The conflict is going to be a bloody one no matter how it goes -- not only does Musharraf need to battle a desperate, experienced force with few places to retreat to, but many within his intelligence services actually are pro-jihadist. The purge and the fighting could well happen simultaneously.
The second big change is that Washington is becoming convinced Musharraf is on his last legs -- and that if his government is going to implode anyway, the United States might as well go in and get al Qaeda. From Washington's viewpoint, if statements alone are sufficient to get the good general to dispose of the jihadists on his own, fanbloodytastic. If not, then the United States has thousands of troops just across the border in Afghanistan available for the job.
Not that this would be easy, of course. As Snow noted, "You don't blithely go into another nation and conduct operations," and this is more than just an issue of politeness. NATO's Afghan operation, as it is now, would be flatly impossible without the supply lines that snake through Pakistan. And if the United States had reliable intelligence as to exactly where al Qaeda's apex leadership was, a grossly excessive tonnage of GPS-guided ordnance would have been dropped on that location ages ago. That means the United States would have to go in with ground forces, and go in big -- and immediately upon arrival, they would be hit from all sides: the Afghan Taliban, and the Pakistani jihadists, the Pakistani public, and even the military.
Situation Reports
1145 GMT -- AFGHANISTAN -- Taliban insurgents kidnapped 23 South Korean Christian volunteers from a bus traveling from the Afghan capital of Kabul to Kandahar late July 19, an Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman said July 20. The incident happened in Ghazni province, 110 miles south of Kabul. A Taliban spokesman said the group kidnapped only 18 South Koreans, though he did not outline the group's demands. Two Germans were abducted in Afghanistan on July 18 and the Taliban demanded the pullout of German forces.
1127 -- PAKISTAN -- Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled July 20 that the suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was illegal, GEO television reported. The 13-member court ruled 10-3 against the suspension. Chaudhry, who was suspended March 9, is to be reinstated. The government had accused him of obtaining a series of promotions for his son and of assembling a fleet of cars and demanding the use of planes he was not entitled to. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf announced plans to chair a high-level emergency meeting to discuss the growing jihadist violence in the country and the court's decision.
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stratfor.com
Afghanistan: A Possible Move by a Political Survivor
Reuters, citing Afghan television, reported July 19 that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the Afghan insurgent group Hizb-i-Islami, has issued a signed statement saying his group will cease fighting U.S., NATO and Afghan government forces, and that it will resume political activities. If the statement is true -- and not one invented by the Afghan government and foreign agents, as a purported spokesman for Hekmatyar later claimed -- it indicates Hekmatyar is changing sides -- again. Given the beating his Taliban and al Qaeda allies have been taking at the hands of U.S. and NATO forces, Hekmatyar could be trying to cut his losses and maneuver himself into a more advantageous position on Afghanistan's political scene.
It does seem unusual for Hekmatyar to announce a major shift in his strategy and allegiance in a written statement. In May 2006, when he declared his allegiance to the Taliban and al Qaeda, he did so in a videotaped message. Furthermore, Hekmatyar's latest position seems out of context given his recent condemnation of the United States and its allies. On July 12, via a purported spokesman, he strongly condemned the storming of Islamabad's Red Mosque by Pakistani security forces, calling it part of a "crusader war" against Muslims by U.S. President George W. Bush and his allies. Hekmatyar, a northerner from Kunduz province, also called for a revolt against Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Furthermore, rumors of changing alliances are often floated by both sides in Afghanistan in an effort to keep each other off balance. These factors, however, do not necessarily mean that Hekmatyar's cease-fire statement is bogus. He rarely appears in public or issues statements using the Internet or other media. In addition, as a Sunni militant leader, Hekmatyar would have to have gone on record as condemning the Red Mosque siege in order to maintain his credentials and legitimacy.
In recent months, the Taliban and their allies have been unable to dictate the tempo of combat in Afghanistan as they did in 2006, when NATO troops new to the country took over from more experienced U.S. units. Since then, NATO -- particularly the Britons and Canadians in Helmand and Uruzgan provinces -- has had more success at preventing insurgent attacks and destroying large Taliban formations. In response to this, the Taliban and their allies have been adopting tactics such as suicide bombings and assassination attempts, rather than traditional Afghan methods of fighting.
Hekmatyar has always been a survivor. He has been a military and political figure in Afghanistan since before the 1979 Soviet invasion, which is no small achievement. Shifting allegiances has been one of his main methods of staying alive in the region's tumultuous political and militant environment. Over the years, he has sought refuge in Pakistan and Iran when various Afghan governments have hunted him. He also has been a CIA asset, has fought with and then against Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud before the Taliban came to power, and has fought against the Taliban. Before this latest statement, his most recent shift in allegiance occurred when the Taliban and al Qaeda were increasing attacks against U.S., NATO and Afghan forces, and Hekmatyar was trying to take advantage of the situation. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been trying to reach out to the various insurgent factions in Afghanistan in an effort to divide them. Indeed, Hekmatyar apparently has been considering ending his alliance with the Taliban for some time.
Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami group, which operates on the Afghan-Pakistani border, is a minor player among Afghan militias and militant groups. Over the years, it has lost many leaders and members as a result of combat, shifting alliances and desertions. For Hekmatyar to remain a viable player among Afghanistan's factions, he has to use his political -- rather than his military -- weight.
If Hekmatyar believes the insurgency is going badly at the moment, it would not be surprising to see him try to better position himself on the Afghan political scene -- and declaring a cease-fire would be one way to go about it. In doing so, Hekmatyar would be giving Karzai little, since his group is not a major player. Given Karzai's beleaguered position, however, any apparent defection from the insurgency is a welcome development.
For an insurgency like the Taliban's to win, it just has to survive. The current military situation in Afghanistan is certainly subject to change, and could be altered by a single dramatic event. However, to survive for as long as he has in Afghan politics, Hekmatyar has to think and move in the short term, rather than the long term.
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/rssarticleshow/msid-2222490,prtpage-1.cms
'Action in tribal areas can split Pak army'
21 Jul, 2007 l 0945 hrs ISTlPTI
NEW YORK: A strong action in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan by beleaguered Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf could lead to a spilt in the army, a media report said on Saturday.
Detailing a multitude of troubles that Musharraf faces at home, Time magazine quoting a former head of the powerful intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence said many foreign observers believe that his days are numbered as leader of Pakistan, raising the issue of who could possibly replace America's primary ally in the war against terror in this critical region.
The Pakistan President has come under strong criticism from the United States for his policy of non-engagement in the tribal areas which is now considered a complete failure.
Washington is demanding that Musharraf do more to rein in terrorists, extremists and religious fundamentalists. But in an interview with the magazine, Hamid Gul, former head of ISI, has warned that if Musharraf does take both gloves off in tribal areas, it would just increase the likelihood of a split in army.
"The officer cadres are liberal, secular, they come from the elite classes. But the rank and file of the army were never secular, they were always religious," Gul said.
"If there is a face-off between the army and people, the leadership may lose control of the army. The army does not feel happy. They are from the same streets, the same villages, the same bazaars of the lower and middle classes, and they want the same thing (Islamic law) for their country."
The increasing suicide attacks in Pakistan in the wake of storming of Lal Masjid by army in which a large number of militants were killed have brought some relief to Afghanistan.
Time reported that the spate of suicide bombings in Pakistan seems to have cooled the immediate sense of crisis in Afghanistan.
Word on the streets of Kabul is that the suicide bombers from Pakistan's tribal areas who until recently headed west into Afghanistan to train Afghan militants or carry out attacks themselves are now heading east into the cities of Pakistan, where they have new motives and better targets to attack, it added.
"Normally the Pakistanis come to Afghanistan, but now they are busier in Pakistan," Waheed Muzhda, an Afghan political analyst who worked for the foreign ministry during the Taliban regime, is quoted by Time as saying.
"The media is also focusing on Pakistan's violence. That is why everyone thinks the violence has been reduced here."
Talking about jubilations following reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Time has said the decision is a major blow for Musharraf who is facing increased resistance to his rule, new pressure from Washington to crackdown on militants and a wave of suicide bombings in the country.
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MSNBC.com
Al Qaeda: Internal Power Struggle Looms
By Sami Yousafzai And Ron Moreau
Newsweek
July 30, 2007 issue - Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf's moment of triumph was brief. Even before his soldiers had overrun the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque—a complex in the heart of the normally sleepy capital of Islamabad that had been occupied by extremists—the retaliations began. Early last week Afghan Taliban and Pakistani tribal militants launched suicide attacks against several Pakistani military convoys. Another bomber walked into a police recruiting center, killing 29 in a single gory blast. The next day militants launched a classic guerrilla ambush using small arms and rocket-propelled grenades that killed 14 Pakistani soldiers traveling in a convoy. The attacks demonstrated a shocking degree of organization and speed—not to mention strategic cunning. After former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto publicly backed Musharraf's counter terror operation against the Red Mosque, yet another suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle of a group waiting to attend a rally of her Pakistan Peoples Party in Islamabad. At least 13 people died in that incident, bringing the week's toll to more than 150 killed in retaliatory attacks since the Red Mosque was raided.
Who was the shadowy general behind the wave of violence? Pakistani and Taliban officials interviewed recently by NEWSWEEK say it was none other than Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the Qaeda No. 2 who has also been appearing in a recent flurry of audio- and videotapes. While Osama bin Laden has been keeping a low profile—he may be ill, U.S. intel officials say—Zawahiri has moved aggressively to take operational control of the group. In so doing, Zawahiri has provoked a potentially serious ideological split within Al Qaeda over whether he is growing too powerful, and has become obsessed with toppling Musharraf, according to two jihadists interviewed by NEWSWEEK last week.
After years in which Zawahiri seemed constantly on the run, his alleged orchestration of last week's attacks would be further evidence that Qaeda and Taliban forces are newly empowered and have consolidated control of a safe haven along the Pakistani border. A new National Intelligence Estimate out of Washington last week also concludes that Al Qaeda is resurgent in Pakistan—and more centrally organized than it has been at any time since 9/11. The NIE—a periodic intel assessment that is considered the most authoritative issued by the U.S. government—concluded Al Qaeda has "regenerated key elements" of its ability to attack the United States. These include a sanctuary in Pakistan's tribal regions of North Waziristan and Bajaur, and an intact hierarchy of top leadership and operational lieutenants.
The anti-Zawahiri faction in Al Qaeda fears his actions may be jeopardizing that safe haven, according to the two jihadists interviewed by NEWSWEEK. Both have proved reliable in the past: they are Omar Farooqi, the nom de guerre for a veteran Taliban fighter and chief liaison officer between insurgent forces in Afghanistan's Ghazni province, and Hemat Khan, a Taliban operative with links to Al Qaeda. They say Zawahiri's personal jihad has angered Al Qaeda's so-called Libyan faction, which intel officials believe may be led by the charismatic Abu Yahya al-Libi, who made a daring escape from an American high-security lockup at Baghram air base in 2005. The Libyan Islamists, along with bin Laden and other senior Qaeda leaders, would love to see Musharraf gone, too. But they fear that Zawahiri is inviting the Pakistani leader's wrath, prematurely opening up another battlefront before the jihadists have properly consolidated their position.
Pakistani intelligence officials believe Zawahiri was behind two attempts to kill Musharraf that failed in December 2003. Since then, Zawahiri has been on an almost personal crusade to assassinate or overthrow the Pakistani leader. In his latest video, which is among at least 10 audio and video spots he has released this year, and which was produced and put on a jihadist Web site in record time, Zawahiri condemned the Red Mosque raid and urged Pakistani Muslims to "revolt," or else "Musharraf will annihilate you." (The mosque apparently served as a safe house for foreign and jihadist militants moving between urban areas and the tribal agencies until Pakistani security forces stormed it on July 10, killing about 70 militants and students holed up inside.)
The Egyptian-born Zawahiri is nominal leader of the Egyptian faction, the Jamaat al-Jihad, which he united with Al Qaeda in the 1990s. It is larger and contains more senior people than the Libyan group. Both jihadist sources who spoke to NEWSWEEK say there is now what Khan calls "a clear divide" between the two factions. In part, the Libyans seem to be irked by Zawahiri's unchecked ego and self-righteousness. "The Libyans say he's too extremist," says Farooqi, and they resent Zawahiri for appearing to speak for bin Laden. "Libyans tell me that the sheik [bin Laden] has not appointed a successor and that only the U.S. government and the international media talk of Zawahiri as being the deputy," Farooqi says.
A senior U.S. official involved in counterterrorism policy, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was addressing sensitive matters, agrees that there are tensions between Al Qaeda's Egyptian and Libyan factions, as well as between Saudi and Central Asian elements. "These guys are not immune to nationalist tendencies," he says. John Arquilla, an intelligence expert at the Naval Postgraduate School who closely follows radical Islamist traffic, calls it "the battle for Al Qaeda's strategic soul. There is a profound strategic debate over whether to focus on overturning the government in Pakistan ... because that puts them in control of a nuclear capacity."
Bin Laden himself has not personally intervened to end the internal feud, according to the jihadist sources. For security reasons he rarely has face-to-face meetings with his deputies. "He doesn't want to get involved," says Khan. "He's already too busy with strategic planning and inspirational duties and with directing his own security." Instead, bin Laden has tried to resolve the dispute by dividing duties between the two factions and appointing a pair of mediators, these sources say.
The infighting also hasn't prevented Zawahiri and his Qaeda brethren, along with Afghan Taliban and militant Pakistani tribal leaders, from establishing a complex command, control, training and recruitment base largely in Waziristan, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials. U.S. officials say Al Qaeda has vastly improved its position there since Musharraf signed a controversial peace deal with North Waziristan's Pashtun tribal elders in September 2006, which gave pro-Taliban tribal militants full control of security in the area. Al Qaeda provides funding, training and ideological inspiration, while Afghan Taliban and Pakistani tribal leaders supply the manpower: both fighters and the growing ranks of suicide bombers. Scattered across the rugged and remote mountains are small training camps and command and communications posts set up in hundreds of mud-brick compounds.
Last week tribal officials, who have become increasingly radicalized, indicated the deal was off. The governor of Afghanistan's Khowst province, Arsala Jamal, told NEWSWEEK that Qaeda and Afghan and Pakistani militants have moved some of their top fighters and commanders from Waziristan into safe areas in Afghanistan in case Pakistani and U.S. forces launch retaliatory raids.
U.S. counterterrorism operatives have been reluctant to cross into Waziristan for fear of violating Pakistani sovereignty and upsetting Musharraf. The general—who has refused demands to relinquish his uniform since taking power in a coup—has faced dramatically rising opposition from both secular and Islamist Pakistanis. On Friday, Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled against Musharraf's summary suspension of the nation's top judge—a move that had triggered widespread demonstrations.
But Hank Crumpton, a longtime CIA senior official and former counterterrorism coordinator for the State Department, says U.S. reluctance must be overcome, because Musharraf can't deal with the problem alone. The Pakistani leader sent more than 100,000 troops to the tribal areas last year, but "they lacked the requisite counterinsurgency skills," Crumpton says. And if Musharraf doesn't confront the situation more squarely, he'll face a growing Taliban movement in Pakistan. "There is encroaching Talibanization now outside the tribal areas into Pakistan proper," says Crumpton, a judgment seconded by a confidential report from Pakistan's Interior Ministry, obtained by NEWSWEEK.
U.S. and Pakistani officials hope that Zawahiri overreaches in his zeal to kill Musharraf, and they get an intel break on his whereabouts. Crumpton says the United States needs to lead an effort with anti-Taliban local tribes, some of whom have been targeted by Al Qaeda. "If we are attacked here [in the United States], which we will be, it almost certainly will have originated from that territory. What will we do then?" One hopes that Ayman Al-Zawahiri—and his resurgent Al Qaeda—can be stopped before that happens.
With Michael Hirsh, Jeffrey Bartholet and Mark Hosenball in Washington and Zahid Hussain in Islamabad
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19886668/site/newsweek/page/0/
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stratfor.com
Geopolitical Diary: Pakistan Reacts to U.S. Call for Action
U.S. forces on Monday moved a day closer to launching a major military operation into Pakistan -- or more accurately, the Pakistani public and government came to realize that the United States was not kidding when, last week, it broached the topic of launching major operations into Pakistan.
The U.S. government -- and Stratfor -- remain convinced that the apex leaders of al Qaeda, those behind the 9/11 attacks, currently are hiding out in northwest Pakistan. And with the government of Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on the ropes largely due to its own devices, the United States no longer feels the need to go around the issue. The U.S. message is fairly simple: Take care of the problem, or we will.
The message has definitely been received. The topic of a pending U.S. invasion was all the Pakistani press could discuss Monday, and the unfortunate Pakistani foreign ministry spokeswoman who was given the task of addressing the issue stumbled trying to hit that balance between bluster and calm.
U.S. foreign policy has become hopelessly bogged down in all things Iraq of late, with precious little bandwidth left for anything else. So it is no small accomplishment that the United States has finally broken through the noise and gotten the attention of the Pakistani government. After all, Pakistan has enough crises in various states of percolation these days to outfit an entire continent.
A partial -- and by no means conclusive -- list of Pakistani problems includes the legal and political crisis that stems from Musharraf's now unsuccessful attempts to sack the country's chief justice; the debate over Musharraf's position as military chief; Musharraf's controversial re-re-election bid; competing opposition party demands for fresh parliamentary elections; fallout from the Red Mosque protests and raids; the insurgency in Balochistan; the chaos of ethnic politics in Karachi; the split within -- and Islamist-riddled nature of -- the intelligence agencies; the social divide over the very nature of the republic; the rising power of extremists in general; and the identity crisis that comes natural in a country whose name is actually an acronym.
Make no mistake. It is not as if the United States is looking forward to a Pakistan operation. Any such operation would need to secure and segment a large tract of land before additional forces could come in and scour it bit by bit. This would not be a snatch and grab, but a major sweep through a large area. The United States would not be looking for an army, but instead for a handful of individuals that would include Osama bin Laden. That sort of operation would require thousands of troops -- and is not something that could be done quickly and quietly. U.S. forces would swiftly find themselves in direct conflict with local tribes and perhaps even the Pakistani military -- not to mention that any incursion into Pakistan would also energize the Taliban in Afghanistan to attack from behind. And if the Pakistani government did start to totter, Washington would have to make a very uncomfortable decision about what to do about the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.
Getting out would be even worse. The troops that would be used are all in southeast Afghanistan -- part of an operation that is logistically possible without the go-ahead from Islamabad. So immediately after doing a tour of the wonders of northwest Pakistan, the Defense Department would then need to figure out how to get its people -- and likely the other coalition forces still in Afghanistan -- out of the landlocked South Asian state as well.
Like we said, this is nothing the United States is champing at the bit to do. Actually, the United States would much rather have Pakistan take care of the issue itself. And there is nothing like the threat of invasion to slice through a list of Pakistani problems and seize people's attention.
But seize their attention the United States has done. Now the question will be whether the chaos that is Pakistani politics can solidify for an internal housecleaning that precludes the need for Washington to decide whether this was an ultimatum or a bluff.
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Pakistan: The Implications of a Jihadist Commander's Death
Summary
One of the most senior Pakistani Taliban commanders active in the country's tribal belt, Abdullah Mehsud, killed himself July 24 during a raid in the province of Balochistan. Mehsud's rank, along with the timing and location of his death, provide several insights into the problems that thwart effective counterjihadist efforts. In the past, the elimination of a high-value target helped Pakistan satisfy U.S. concerns; however, Mehsud's death will increase the pressure on Islamabad to show more progress.
Analysis
Perhaps the most publicly renowned Pakistani Taliban commander, Abdullah Mehsud, killed himself July 24 by detonating a hand grenade in order to avoid capture from a house in the town of Zhob in Balochistan province. Mehsud's two brothers and a third Taliban leader were arrested in the raid provincial police conducted on the house, which allegedly belongs to a senior leader of the country's main Islamist political coalition, the Mutahiddah Majlis-i-Amal (MMA).
Mehsud's status, the circumstances of his death and the timing of the incident point to a number of problems associated with counterjihadist operations in Pakistan. For starters, it is hard to swallow the idea that authorities just happened to stumble upon the intelligence pertaining to Mehsud's whereabouts and then caught up with him within hours of U.S. threats of unilateral action against jihadists in northwestern Pakistan. The likely reason the government was able to track down Mehsud quickly is that Pakistani intelligence has at its disposal certain resources that it brings to bear in a very selective and limited manner in response to domestic and foreign policy needs.
The historic links between jihadist forces and Pakistani intelligence have led to contacts that both sides recently have been using in their war against one another. The jihadists have been aggressive in using their connections to the state's security and intelligence apparatuses to conduct their operations. The state, however, is only now beginning to employ its connections within the murky jihadist universe to undercut the militants.
Clearly, Pakistani intelligence has been in touch with elements who had information concerning Mehsud's whereabouts. These elements with ties to both sides were called upon to offer their assistance at a difficult time, and they obliged. This is not the first time this has happened. As recently as May 14, Pakistani authorities made a similar demonstration of abilities when they relayed intelligence to Afghan and NATO forces about the whereabouts of the Afghan Taliban's senior-most commander, Mullah Dadullah, who was then killed in an operation.
While not as illustrious as Dadullah, Mehsud was the best-known Pakistani Taliban commander operating in the Waziristan agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The 30-something-year-old Mehsud, who lost one leg while fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan before the extremist movement seized Kabul in 1996, had quite a jihadist career. He was among those jihadists who surrendered to northern alliance forces in the city of Kunduz in late 2001, after which he was transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. U.S. military officials released him in March 2004 after concluding that Mehsud did not pose a threat.
After returning to the tribal belt, Mehsud resumed his old activities and, after the killing of another top Pakistani Taliban commander, Nek Mohammed, emerged as a major figure. Mehsud was behind the abduction of Chinese engineers in 2004 shortly after his return and a rash of suicide attacks against Pakistani security forces. Like his predecessor, Mehsud struck and then scrapped a peace deal with Islamabad. He was also reportedly engaged in the recent fighting between jihadists and pro-government tribal militias. In the wake of the Red Mosque operation, Mehsud declared war against the Pakistani state and is believed to have been behind the latest wave of suicide attacks against security forces.
There are two noteworthy aspects of the location where Mehsud was tracked down. First, it is in the Pashtun corridor in the northwestern part of Balochistan, which runs roughly between FATA's South Waziristan agency to the north and the provincial capital of Quetta in the south. The town of Zhob -- the likely location of Taliban leader Mullah Omar -- is in this area. Second, the house where Mehsud killed himself belongs to Sheikh Mohammed Ayub, who is allegedly the district leader of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazlur Rehman (JUI-F) -- led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the opposition in Pakistan's parliament. JUI-F is not only the largest component within the MMA alliance, it also holds the majority of Cabinet positions in Balochistan's coalition government with the pro-Musharraf ruling Pakistan Muslim League party. The leader of JUI-F in the province, Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani, who has a close relationship with the Musharraf government, said the house's owner was no longer with the party since he had been expelled four months ago because of indiscipline.
Regardless of whether Ayub is still part of the JUI-F, Mehsud's capture from Ayub's house is a classic representation of the fluid nexus involving radical Islamists of various shades and the Pakistani state. These complex relationships are what allow jihadists to sustain themselves and their activities and at the same time prevent the Pakistani state from effectively pushing ahead with counterjihadist efforts.
Pakistan's elimination of Mehsud -- just days, if not hours, after the highest political offices in Washington threatened Islamabad with unilateral military action against jihadists in northwestern Pakistan -- will not elicit as much praise from the United States as it will trigger increased pressure to "do more." This is because, from the U.S. viewpoint, it is clear that the Pakistanis can do a whole lot more in the war against jihadists. Also, Mehsud was more of a threat to the Pakistanis than to Afghanistan, NATO or the United States. There is still the matter of going after al Qaeda and the real Taliban in Afghanistan, and there will be both more action against high-value targets and more jihadist attacks in the coming days.
stratfor.com
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Woof, These kind of storys help keep me depressed in our efforts to effectivly fight a "global war" on terror.
My interpretation of the Stratfor report: Mehsud killed himself because he was tipped off that the Pakistani Gov. was comming for him, because of pressure from the U.S. to do more, we do this periodacly to justify the Bazzilions that we give thier Gov. for no apparent good reason.
The tipped off Target(mehsud) was more of a threat to the Pakistani Gov. than he was to us.(So big deal)
Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows this is a joke and just another successful application of making the U.S. out to be the fool that our Gov. so williningly plays to be. (by the Paki. gov) Maybe we will send them another gazillion in support for this great feat.
Weve been doing this for YEARS now with no real success.
How about we for a change we thumb our noses at the Paki GOV. send our troops across the border and start to do some real operations, and seriously start to fight this golbal war on terror.
I will give you one good reason that most won't care to admit to.........because It will be a real war and a bloody one and most likley a good number of American troops will be hurt/killed, but thats when and where we will find a real sucess to fighting this war.
Of course our Gov. won't do this because of how badly they've messed up the "Global war" on terror in Iraq, and they know the American people will no longer tolerate a large number of casualtys even if they are for good reason.
We have missed this window of oppertunity, due to a poor war effort by our Gov.
Soon Bush will be out of office and most likely a peace loving Dem will be elected........and essentially the war will be lost.
I'am no defeatist but I try to be a realist......and we never fought this to win.....nor are we making any direction change to win and so we most likely won't......
TG
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2159249.ece
The Sunday Times (of London)
July 29, 2007
Musharraf risks civil war as he invades the Al-Qaeda badlands
Pakistan’s president takes on the Islamic militants who have set up a rogue state on his country’s wild north
IN North Waziristan, the wild border land that America hopes will be Osama Bin Laden’s graveyard, the normally busy roads are almost deserted and the fear is pervasive. Army helicopters sweep the valleys at night hunting for Al-Qaeda militants as troops and gunmen exchange artillery and rocket fire.
America and Britain regard this usually autonomous tribal area - where Bin Laden is long believed to have been hiding - as the logistics centre of Islamic terrorist attacks around the world.
President Pervez Musharraf sees it as the centre of a campaign to “Talibanise” Pakistan. Spurred on by Washington, he has abandoned a truce with Waziristan’s Islamist guerrillas and ordered his army to root them out.
There are believed to be about 8,000 gunmen – a mix of foreign Al-Qaeda volunteers, Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Islamists and local Waziris whose families have for centuries fought off any attempt to impose outside rule on this area. In modern times, even map-makers have been shot to hide the region’s mysteries from the outside world.
Last week soldiers sealed all the roads into Miran Shah, the provincial capital, occupied the hills around it and fired the first artillery salvo in what Musharraf’s many critics have called a war on his own people.
On Friday morning the army moved into parts of Miran Shah itself after militants blew up government buildings overnight. Most of the 60,000 townspeople are feared trapped, but hundreds of families have fled their mud homes in villages nearby and headed east for the sanctuary of Bannu, a town in the neighbouring North West Frontier province.
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Haven't had a chance to review these yet, but it seems like a interesting list
of sources.
Marc
===========================
UNDERSTANDING PAKISTAN:
Jinnah's Pakistan: An Interview with MA Jinnah, and how the Pakistan of
Yesterday is the Pakistan of Today
http://iref.homestead.com/Messiah.html
Know Your Pakistan
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/MONITOR/ISSUE6-1/Shiv.html
The Monkey Trap: A synopsis of Indo-Pak relations
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/MONITOR/ISSUE5-2/khayyam.html
A landmark article that demolishes myths built up about Pakistan
http://www.saag.org/papers8/paper710.html
Pakistani Role in Terrorism Against the U.S.A
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/MONITOR/ISSUE5-2/narayanan.html
Pakistani Education, or how pakistan became what it is: Curricula and
textbooks in Pakistan
http://www.sdpi.org/archive/nayyar_report.htm
Making Enemies, Creating Conflict: Pakistan's Crises of State and Society. A
book written by Pakistanis on Pakistan.
http://members.tripod.com/~no_nukes_sa/Contents.html
Should Pakistan Be Broken Up? by Gul Agha
http://pakistan70.tripod.com/gul.html
PAKISTAN & TERRORISM:
Pakistani sponsoring of Terrorism
http://www.geocities.com/charcha_2000/
http://pak-terror.freeservers.com/Terror_as_a_Policy_Tool.htm
Ethnic cleansing in Pakistan - a statistical analysis
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/MONITOR/ISSUE6-2/sridhar.html
A chronicle of genocide by the Pakistan army
http://www.gendercide.org/case_bangladesh.html
Inside Jihad - How Pakistan sponsors terrorists in India
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/2001/0205/kashmir_sb1.html
Pakistan's Role in the Kashmir Insurgency - Op-ed by Rand's Peter Chalk
http://www.rand.org/hot/op-eds/090101JIR.html
http://www.boycott-pakistan.com/
This is a list of Pakistani businesses that may be aiding and funding terror
against India and other countries.
PAKISTAN TODAY:
On the Frontier of Apocalypse: Christopher Hitchens seminal article on
Pakistan today
http://newsstuff.0catch.com/article5.htm
Nuclear Enabler - Pakistan today is the most dangerous place on Earth by Jim
Hoagland
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8422-2002Oct24.html
http://meaindia.nic.in/bestoftheweb/2002/10/14bow2.htm
A Slender Reed in Pakistan - Editorial in the Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1229/p08s03-comv.html
Seymour Hersh Interview
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_hersh.html
Pakistan's Nuclear Crimes (Wash. Post editorial)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14272-2004Feb4
Commentary: The real culprit of 9/11?
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040722-051231-9906r.htm
http://www.indiadefence.com/LOA07Aug04.htm
BOOK REVIEW Fulcrum of Evil: ISI-CIA-Al Qaeda Nexus
http://www.saag.org/papers19/paper1844.html
PAKISTAN-FAILED STATE: an ebook that owes its origin and existence to BRF.
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/EBOOKS/pfs.pdf
Article from Vinni Capelli - Foreign Policy Research Institute:
Containing Pakistan: Engaging the Raja-Mandala in South-Central Asia
http://www.fpri.org/orbis/5101/cappelli.containingpakistan.pdf
Essential videos on Pakistan actively supports the Taliban - Files are WMV
http://hosted.filefront.com/C0pyLeft/1870150
The videos are from this documentary:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/
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Second post of the day:
====================
Pakistan: Mooting the Bhutto-Musharraf Alliance
Summary
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the South Asian country's largest opposition party, could be on the verge of the much-awaited deal catapulting Bhutto out of exile and into the prime minister's chair. Contrary to expectations, the deal could end up damaging both. It also is unlikely that a power-sharing agreement between the military and Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party will help the struggle against extremism in the country -- and even could exacerbate it.
Analysis
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the country's main opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), met July 27 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Pakistani presidential spokesman retired Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi officially confirmed July 30. Meanwhile, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Niazi, himself a former PPP leader, said Musharraf can step down as military chief in order to facilitate the power-sharing agreement being worked out with Bhutto. Reports also surfaced that a number of Bhutto's bank accounts were unfrozen ahead of the meeting.
It appears back-channel negotiations between the Musharraf regime and the PPP, which have been going on for several years now, finally are headed toward the much-anticipated Musharraf-Bhutto power-sharing arrangement. Both Musharraf and Bhutto face intense opposition from within their respective camps regarding any deal. Musharraf's allies in the ruling Pakistan Muslim League are worried about their party's future in any power-sharing arrangement with the PPP, while Bhutto's party is very concerned about the fallout of doing business with a military ruler, an unthinkable deal not too long ago.
We have predicted that Musharraf is unlikely to emerge unscathed -- to say the least -- from the multiple crises brewing in Pakistan, especially his attempts to deal with the situation. But Musharraf might not be the only casualty from the political wheeling and dealing: Bhutto and her party also could end up being damaged. The expectations in various quarters -- such as the Pakistani government, Washington, etc. -- that Bhutto's entry into the Pakistani political system will stabilize it and will be good for democracy ignore certain ground realities.
First, Bhutto's party does not enjoy a monopoly over the Pakistani electorate. Though in a relatively free and fair parliamentary election the PPP probably will emerge as the single-largest party in parliament, a fresh legislative vote will produce a parliament divided among five major political forces and a number of smaller parties. This means the PPP probably will head an unstable coalition government, one far more volatile than during two previous PPP governments in the 1990s.
Second, the PPP is not what is used to be in 1986, when Bhutto made her first dramatic return to her country. The PPP's reputation has been tainted by allegations of corruption during her two terms. Moreover, in the last five years, the party has been weakened significantly because of the defection of some two-dozen members of parliament who joined the Musharraf government. Thus, going into the negotiations the PPP already is a weak force.
Deal-making between Bhutto and Musharraf, which has become a very public affair, is bound to cost the PPP some more votes no matter how carefully its leadership pursues the negotiations. Bhutto knows this well, and has acknowledged as much. She faces an uphill task involving doing business with a military government to stage a political comeback and avoid the cost of abandoning her party's historic image as the anti-establishment party.
PPP re-entry into the halls of power in Islamabad is thus unlikely to put Pakistan on the path of democracy, or for that matter even political stability. More disconcertingly, for a number of reasons a PPP government will be unable to deal effectively with increasing extremism and militant activity in the country.
Pakistan's problems run much deeper than a simple question of democracy versus authoritarianism, and extremism and militant activity are not simply byproducts of chronic political instability. The issue goes to the historical debate over the nature of the Pakistani state, which has raged since before the country's birth. The debate is over whether Pakistan should be secular or "Islamic;" and over who would define the latter using what criteria.
Further complicating matters, the historic mullah-military relationship has empowered radical and militant Islamist forces. Extremism and militancy are problems that cannot be cured alone by a democratically elected government working with the country's military establishment. As a secular party, the PPP cannot contain extremism and radicalism without working with moderate and pragmatic Islamist forces. Even the United States, with all its resources, is forced to work with political Islamists to contain the violent ones.
Historically, the PPP has faced the religious right's ire. In the current polarized atmosphere, particularly in the wake of the Red Mosque operation and Bhutto's open support for the facility's storming, such anti-PPP sentiment is likely to have grown. The PPP has gone out of its way to shun the country's main Islamist alliance, the Mutahiddah Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), fearing that by cooperating with the MMA against Musharraf could strengthen the MMA.
Even assuming the PPP would work with the MMA or its relatively moderate component, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the incoherent nature of the MMA and/or the JUI would present a serious obstacle. Pakistani Islamists not only are divided, they also have a murky relationship with the jihadists, further complicating matters from an anti-extremism and counterterrorism perspective. Overall, political Islamists in Pakistan are far more radical in their agenda than their Muslim Brotherhood counterparts in the Arab World.
Regardless of whether a deal between Musharraf and Bhutto emerges and how political events unfold as elections approach, the PPP is unlikely to create a stable democratic setup by partnering with the Musharraf government's civil-military hybrid. And the PPP not only would fail to curb extremism and militancy, the situation could get worse.
stratfor.com
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MUSHARRAF & BENAZIR: A THREE-LEGGED RACE TO SAVE PAKISTAN
By B. Raman
Pakistan's President Gen.Pervez Musharraf and Mrs. Benazir Bhutto, twice Pakistan's Prime Minister in the past, have met in Abu Dhabi to discuss their plans for a three-legged race to refurbish their dented image and save Pakistan from a fate similar to what happened to Afghanistan post-1994, when the two acting in tandem----she as the Prime Minister and he as the Director-General of Military Operations--- brought the Taliban into existence and allowed Osama bin Laden to shift from Khartoum in the Sudan to Jalalabad in Afghanistan.
2. Nobody can question their patriotism. Both wish well of Pakistan and want it to play an important role not only in South Asia, but also in the Islamic world and the international community as a whole. Unfortunately, both have a strongly dented image.
3. Benazir's image got dented during her two spells as the Prime Minister (1988-90 and 1993-96). Her most important contribution to Pakistan during this period was in persuading North Korea, through the intermediary of Beijing, to sell medium and long-range missiles and related technologies to Pakistan in return for Pakistan's help to North Korea in getting over its food crisis and developing a military-related nuclear technology. The proliferation activities of Dr. A. Q. Khan reached their zenith when she was the Prime Minster and continued thereafter under Mr. Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf.
4. She had no other contribution to make to the well-being of Pakistan and its people. Karachi was up in flames. The Sindhis and the Mohajirs hated her despite the fact that she was from Sindh. Pakistan's economy went into the intensive care unit (ICU) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Fears that Pakistan might become a failed state surfaced for the first time when she was the Prime Minister. She let her husband Mr.Asif Zirdari handle the governance of the country for all practical purposes and draw financial benefit from it.
5. When Musharraf seized power in October,1999, and jailed his democratically-elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his action was greeted with some public applause. Not because he was popular with the people, but because Benazir and Nawaz through their misgovernance had become so unpopular that anybody after them was seen as a possible source of salvation. Musharraf's brief honeymoon with his people was not the outcome of any positive qualities which he had, but because of the people's disenchantment with the political class in general and with Benazir and Nawaz in particular.
6. Musharraf, a zig-zagger and a tactician par excellence, exploited the newly-realised importance of Pakistan for the US post-9/11, not only to improve his image in the eyes of the West, but also to take Pakistan out of the IMF's ICU. Pakistan has benefitted in some ways under Musharraf. Its economy has done well. Its strategic importance to the West is once again admitted. Its Armed Forces have once again been the recipients of military equipment from the US. Musharraf too has been a beneficiary of these changes. He is no longer seen as an unadulterated military dictator in the mould of Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and Zia-ul-Haq. He has managed to have himself perceived as an enlightened authoritarian ruler----- just the medicine the jihadi-ridden Pakistani society supposedly needs.
7. But, unfortunately for him, his honeymoon with his people ended after the ham-handed manner in which he tried to intimidate Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury of Pakistan. His honeymoon with the US shows signs of ending after his repeated failures to implement his promises to modernise the madrasas, bring them under effective state control and put a stop to the use of Pakistani territory by Al Qaeda, the Neo Taliban and other terrorist organisations.
8. After Musharraf, the jihadi deluge. That was the impression he had managed to create in the US State Department. That impression now shows signs of changing. The present belief in the State Department is: Musharraf is good for the US so long as he lasts, but the jihadi deluge is already there.
9. The exercise to explore the possibility of power-sharing by Musharraf and Benazir, which has been undertaken, is an attempt by two leaders----one military and the other political--- whose image has been dented by their sins of commission and omission, to prop up each other and help each other in retrieving some of their lost image. Domestically in the case of Benazir and domestically and internationally in the case of Musharraf.
10.If the two reach a final understanding and rule Pakistan jointly---he as the President with or without the uniform and she as the Prime Minister--- will Pakistan and its people benefit, will it be the beginning of the end of jihadi terrorism,will moderate forces ultimately prevail in Pakistani society?
11. Unlikely. Benazir and Musharraf let loose the jihadi Frankenstein's monsters during her second tenure as the Prime Minister. It will be unwise to believe that these two joint creators of the monsters will be able to vanquish them. Both are manipulators and opportunists to the core. Look at the way Musharraf is prepared to ditch the Pakistan Muslim League (Qaide Azam), which he brought into existence in 2002, in order to ensure his continuance in power. Look at the way Benazir is prepared to ditch the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif and other political leaders, who had suffered under Musharraf, in order to get back into the political orbit with the help of Musharraf.
12. What Pakistan needs today is a sincere ruler genuinely committed to the task of ridding Pakistan of the evil of religious extremism and jihadi terrorism. Neither Musharraf nor Benazir is such a figure. There is no such candidate for power visible on the horizon. Pakistan will continue to bleed till such a leader emerges.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
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PAKISTAN: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto will return to Pakistan from self-imposed exile to run in parliamentary elections expected in December or January 2008, despite running the risk of being arrested, Reuters reported, citing comments from a Bhutto spokesman. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has met with Bhutto, who leads the opposition Pakistan People's Party, twice recently in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, creating speculation that the two have reached a political compromise allowing for her return.
stratfor.com
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Whos really running the show...... :roll:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070804/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_afghanistan
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Another record poppy crop in Afghanistan By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 59 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Afghanistan will produce another record poppy harvest this year that cements its status as the world's near-sole supplier of the heroin source, yet a furious debate over how to reverse the trend is stalling proposals to cut the crop, U.S. officials say.
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As President Bush prepares for weekend talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, divisions within the U.S. administration and among NATO allies have delayed release of a $475 million counternarcotics program for Afghanistan, where intelligence officials see growing links between drugs and the Taliban, the officials said.
U.N. figures to be released in September are expected to show that Afghanistan's poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and that the country now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop, 3 percentage points more than last year, officials familiar with preliminary statistics told The Associated Press.
But counterdrug proposals by some U.S. officials have met fierce resistance, including boosting the amount of forcible poppy field destruction in provinces that grow the most, officials said. The approach also would link millions of dollars in development aid to benchmarks on eradication; arrests and prosecutions of narcotraders, corrupt officials; and on alternative crop production.
Those ideas represent what proponents call an "enhanced carrot-and-stick approach" to supplement existing anti-drug efforts. They are the focus of the new $475 million program outlined in a 995-page report, the release of which has been postponed twice and may be again delayed due to disagreements, officials said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because parts of the report remain classified.
Counternarcotics agents at the State Department had wanted to release a 123-page summary of the strategy last month and then again last week, but were forced to hold off because of concerns it may not be feasible, the officials said.
Now, even as Bush sees Karzai on Sunday and Monday at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Md., a tentative release date of Aug. 9, timed to follow the meetings, appears in jeopardy. Some in the administration, along with NATO allies Britain and Canada, seek revisions that could delay it until at least Aug. 13, the officials said.
The program represents a 13 percent increase over the $420 million in U.S. counternarcotics aid to Afghanistan last year. It would adopt a bold new approach to "coercive eradication" and set out criteria for local officials to receive development assistance based on their cooperation, the officials said.
Although the existing aid, supplemented mainly by Britain and Canada and supported by the NATO force in Afghanistan, has achieved some results — notably an expected rise in the number of "poppy-free" provinces from six to at least 12 and possibly 16, mainly in the north — production elsewhere has soared, they said.
"Afghanistan is providing close to 95 percent of the world's heroin," the State Department's top counternarcotics official, Tom Schweich, said at a recent conference. "That makes it almost a sole-source supplier" and presents a situation "unique in world history."
Almost all the heroin from Afghanistan makes its way to Europe; most of the heroin in the U.S. comes from Latin America.
Afghanistan last year accounted for 92 percent of global opium production, compared with 70 percent in 2000 and 52 percent a decade earlier. The higher yields in Afghanistan brought world production to a record high of 7,286 tons in 2006, 43 percent more than in 2005.
A State Department inspector general's report released Friday noted that the counternarcotics assistance is dwarfed by the estimated $38 billion "street value" of Afghanistan's poppy crop, if all is converted to heroin, and said eradication goals were "not realistic."
Schweich, an advocate of the now-stalled plan, has argued for more vigorous eradication efforts, particularly in southern Helmand province, responsible for some 80 percent of Afghanistan's poppy production. It is where, he says, growers must be punished for ignoring good-faith appeals to switch to alternative, but less lucrative, crops.
"They need to be dealt with in a more severe way," he said at the conference sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There needs to be a coercive element, that's something we're not going to back away from or shy away from."
But, in fact, many question whether this is the right approach with Afghanistan mired in poverty and in the throes of an insurgency run by the Taliban and residual al-Qaida forces.
Along with Britain, whose troops patrol Helmand, elements in the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, the Defense Department and White House Office of National Drug Control Policy have expressed concern, saying that more raids will drive farmers with no other income to join extremists.
There is also skepticism about the incentives in the new strategy from those who believe development assistance should not be denied to local communities because of poppy growth, officials said.
Opponents argue that the benefits of such aid, new roads and other infrastructure, schools and hospitals, will themselves be powerful tools to combat the narcotrade once constructed.
One U.S. official said the plan was a good one but might take another year or two before it can be effectively introduced
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Certainly no Micheal Yon Blog.....Just good old AP...... I post this because it shows the troubles we are having in Afghanastan, but not onley that.....how much more do these very things apply to Iraq for many many years to come.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070805/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_karzai
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Karzai sees no gains in bin Laden hunt By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer
25 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - In the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the United States and its allies have essentially gotten nowhere lately, says Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
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"We are not closer, we are not further away from it," Karzai said ahead of his two-day summit with President Bush at Camp David, Md. "We are where we were a few years ago."
Karzai ruled out that bin Laden was in Afghanistan, but otherwise said he didn't know where the leader of the al-Qaida terror network was likely hiding. Karzai's comments, in an interview on CNN's "Late Edition," were taped Saturday in Kabul and broadcast Sunday.
Bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaida network and mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is believed to be living in the tribal border region of Pakistan. His ability to avoid capture remains a major source of frustration for U.S.-led forces.
Karzai arrived at Camp David in the late afternoon greeted by Bush and first lady Laura Bush. The president did a 360-degree spin in a golf cart for the assembled media and drove the three of them away.
The Afghan leader's visit comes as he faces competing troubles at home — civilian killings, surging opium production and steady violence.
All of those matters are expected to be discussed with Bush.
Afghanistan's fragility remains of paramount concern to the United States. Bush is expected to prod Karzai on how his government can exert — and extend — its authority.
"Karzai wants to shore up his ties in Washington," said Teresita Schaffer, a former top State Department official for south Asia. "And I think the U.S. government very much wants to get a stronger sense of how we can develop a common political strategy."
Despite its progress since U.S.-led forces toppled the militant Taliban regime in 2001, Afghanistan still is dominated by poverty and lawlessness. Stability has been hindered by the lack of government order, particularly in the southern part of the country.
"The security situation in Afghanistan over the past two years has definitely deteriorated," Karzai said in the interview. "There is no doubt about that."
Overshadowing the Bush-Karzai meeting is the fate of 21 South Korean volunteers who were abducted by the Taliban on July 19 and are now believed to be in central Afghanistan. The captors took a total of 23 people hostage and have shot and killed two of them.
The Taliban is seeking the release of prisoners; the Afghan government has refused, and the U.S. adamantly opposes conceding to such demands. The crisis has put considerable pressure on Karzai and raised more doubts about his ability to enforce the rule of law.
Bush and Karzai are also likely to discuss Afghanistan's distrustful relationship with neighboring Pakistan. Karzai said the flow of foreign fighters from Pakistan into his country is a concern he will address soon with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
The two are expected to meet this month as part of a gathering of tribal elders in Kabul.
Karzai said he is investigating reports that Iran is fueling violence in Afghanistan by sending in weaponry such as sophisticated roadside bombs. Yet he also praised Iran as a partner in peace and against narcotics. "So far, Iran has been a helper," he said.
On another front, Afghanistan now accounts for 95 percent of the world's poppy production used to make heroin and profits from the drug trafficking have helped the Taliban.
Violence has been rising sharply in Afghanistan, led by different Taliban groups with various links to tribal leaders and residual al-Qaida forces.
As U.S. and NATO forces target Taliban insurgents, the civilian deaths associated with the attacks have enraged the Afghan population and eroded Karzai's authority. He has repeatedly asked military commanders for more caution and lashed out at foreign forces aiding his nation.
Karzai is likely to seek some reassurance from Bush that "whatever the U.S. is doing is going to result in fewer civilians killed," said Schaffer, now the director of the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Militants often wear civilian dress and seek shelter in villagers' homes, making it hard to differentiate the enemy from the innocent. Bush "is absolutely satisfied" that the U.S. military is doing all it can avoid civilian casualties, spokesman Scott Stanzel said.
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Woof, I was googling around trying to find out where A'Q gets its money and I came across this article. I thought it intresting, it is from the Seattle Times ......I'am guessing its just more left wing propaganda....but seems logical.
anyway.......
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003714521_alqaida20.html?syndication=rs
Iraq a "big moneymaker" for al-Qaida, says CIA
By Greg Miller
Los Angeles Times
Related
Prewar intelligence foretold Iraq upheaval
Carter flays U.S. foreign policy
WASHINGTON — A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of al-Qaida operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials.
In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said al-Qaida's command base in Pakistan increasingly is being funded by cash from Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.
The influx of money has bolstered al-Qaida's leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping. The trend also signals a reversal in the traditional flow of al-Qaida funds, with the leadership surviving to a large extent on money from its most profitable franchise, rather than distributing funds from headquarters to distant cells.
Al-Qaida's efforts were aided, intelligence officials said, by Pakistan's withdrawal in September of tens of thousands of troops from tribal areas along the Afghanistan border where bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding.
Little more than a year ago, al-Qaida's core command was thought to be in a financial crunch. But U.S. officials said cash shipped from Iraq has eased those troubles.
"Iraq is a big moneymaker for them," a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said.
Big undercover effort
The evolving picture of al-Qaida's finances is based in part on intelligence from an aggressive effort launched last year to intensify pressure on bin Laden and his top deputies.
The CIA deployed as many as 50 clandestine operatives to Pakistan and Afghanistan — a dramatic increase over the number of case officers permanently stationed in those countries. New arrivals were given the primary objective of finding what counterterrorism officials call "HVT1" and "HVT2." Those "high value target" designations refer to bin Laden and al-Zawahri.
The CIA operation was part of a broader shake-up designed to refocus on the hunt for bin Laden, officials said. One former high-ranking agency official said the CIA had formed a task force that involved officials from all four agency directorates, including analysts, scientists and technical experts, as well as covert operators.
The officials were charged with reinvigorating a search that had atrophied when some intelligence assets and special-forces teams were pulled out of Afghanistan in 2002 to prepare for war with Iraq.
Nevertheless, U.S. intelligence and military officials said, not a single lead that could be substantiated has been produced on the location of bin Laden or al-Zawahri.
"We're not any closer," said a senior U.S. military official who monitors the intelligence on the hunt for bin Laden.
Despite a $25 million reward, current and former intelligence officials said, the United States has not had a lead on bin Laden since he fled U.S. and Afghan forces in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in early 2002.
"We've had no significant report of him being anywhere," said a former senior CIA official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing U.S. intelligence operations. U.S. spy agencies have not even had information that "you could validate historically," the official said, meaning a tip on a previous bin Laden location that could be verified subsequently.
President Bush is given detailed presentations on the hunt's progress every two to four months, in addition to routine counterterrorism briefings, intelligence officials said.
The presentations include "complex schematics, search patterns, what we're doing, where the Predator flies," said one participant, referring to flights by unmanned airplanes used in the search.
Still, officials said, they have been unable to answer the basic question of whether they are getting closer to their target.
"Any prediction on when we're going to get him is just ridiculous," the senior U.S. counterterrorism official said.
Pakistan's pullback
In a written response to questions from the Los Angeles Times, the CIA said it "does not as a rule discuss publicly the details of clandestine operations," but acknowledged that it had stepped up operations against bin Laden and defended their effectiveness.
"The surge has been modest in size, here and overseas, but has added new skills and fresh thinking to the fight against a resilient and adaptive foe," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said in the statement. "It has paid off, generating more information about al-Qaida and helping take terrorists off the street."
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials involved in the operation said it had been hobbled by other developments. Chief among them, they said, was Pakistan's troop pullout last year from border regions where the hunt has been focused. Only months after the CIA deployed dozens of additional operatives to Pakistan, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced "peace agreements" with tribal leaders in Waziristan.
Driven by domestic political pressures and rising anti-American sentiment, the agreements called for the tribes to rein in the activities of foreign fighters, and bar them from launching attacks in Afghanistan, in exchange for a Pakistani military pullback.
But U.S. officials said there is little evidence that the tribal groups have followed through.
The pullback took significant pressure off al-Qaida leaders and the tribal groups protecting them. It also made travel easier for operatives migrating to Pakistan after taking part in the insurgency in Iraq. Some of these veterans are leading training at newly established camps, and are positioned to become the "next generation of leadership" in al-Qaida, the former senior CIA official said.
"Al-Qaida is dependent on a lot of leaders coming out of Iraq for its own viability," said the former official, who recently left the agency. "It's these sorts of guys who carry out operations."
The official added that resurgent Taliban forces in Afghanistan are "being schooled" by al-Qaida operatives with experience fighting in Iraq.
Money is flowing
Pakistan's pullback also has reopened financial channels that had been constricted by the military presence.
The senior U.S. counterterrorism official said there are "lots of indications they can move people in and out easier," and that Iraq operatives often bring cash.
"A year ago we were saying they were having serious money problems," the official said. "That seems to have eased up."
The cash is mainly U.S. currency in relatively modest sums — tens of thousands of dollars. The scale of the payments suggests the money is not meant for funding elaborate terrorist plots, but for covering al-Qaida's day-to-day costs: paying off tribal leaders, hiring security and buying provisions.
Al-Qaida in Iraq has drawn increasingly large contributions from elsewhere in the Muslim world — largely because the fight against U.S. forces has mobilized Middle East donors, officials said.
"Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the reason people are contributing again, with money and private contributions coming back in from the gulf," the senior U.S. counterterrorism official said.
He added that al-Qaida in Iraq also has become an effective criminal enterprise.
"The insurgents have great businesses they run: stealing cars, kidnapping people, protection money," the counterterrorism official said.
The former CIA official said the activity is so extensive that the "ransom-for-profit business in Iraq reminds me of Colombia and Mexico in the 1980s and '90s."
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I've seen similar reports-- although the idea of Iraqi "donations" sounds a bit implausible, the ransom racket is probably pretty active.
As for financing AQ, I suspect the fact that Afg now produces over 95% of the western world's opium may have something to do with it even more.
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Woof Guro Crafty, I agree, but is not the poppy crop something that we should be able to directly control?
I just posted a report the other day that claims this years crop was at a all time record high?
How does that corerelate with us being serious with the war on terror and more specificly A'Q
TG
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I suspect it has to do with the fact that if you stand for wiping out most of the income of a really poor country and the other side is more than willing to benefit from it, that it looks like a losing equation.
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The way I see it is this mentality is at least a 3 fold loser.
1.We are directly or indirectly providing a source of income to the very people that fly jets into our sky scrapers.(not good)
2.) We are allowing for the spread of herion around the world furhter complicating the war on drugs, let alone the enabling of serious drug addicts.........
3.) By allowing this to continue we offer no long term hope for the people of Afghanstan.
Probably an easy few more good reasons that record crops of poppys is bad for us and the war on terror 6years after 9/11 but those are just 3 in no particular order that popped in off the top of my head.
I would suggest again that we are not really serious about our war on terror, or we might consider talking a look at doing some serious work on Afghanstans economic infastructour........but then that would take some serious work/commitment.....
TG
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I didn't say I supported it. I simply answered your questin as to why it was like that.
That said, I think if you were to surf through the past several years of this forum you will find kindred spirits around here for getting serious. Amongst the more recent calls for getting serious is the thread called "The Phony War" started by yours truly.
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Woof Guro Crafty, By no means was I insinuating that you did support this type of reasoning.
It is just that these very types of things make me beleive that we are indeed in a "phony war" on terror.
I feel when a good hard look is made at a lot of different variables one could easily conclude that the American people are being dupped and ripped off.
Frustrating........
TG
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The Fourth Rail: Pakistan: Concern over nukes as al Qaeda camps empty
Written by Bill Roggio on August 11, 2007 2:45 AM to The Fourth Rail
Available online at: http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/08/pakistan_concern_ove.php
Red agencies/ districts controlled by the Taliban; purple is defacto control; yellow is under threat.
US intelligence investigates Pakistan's nuclear security and the military’s loyalty to Musharraf as the Northwest Frontier Province spins further out of control
As the security situation in the Northwest Frontier Province continues to deteriorate and President Pervez Musharraf's political stock continues to drop, the US military intelligence community is "urgently assessing how secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. Pervez Musharraf were replaced." Meanwhile, the Taliban and al Qaeda have dispersed operatives from the training camps in the Northwest Frontier Province and are preparing to fight on their own terms.
With the Pakistani government facing a robust Taliban insurgency in the Northwest Frontier Province, a significant al Qaeda presence inside the country and a violent cadre of home grown Islamist extremists, the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has taken on an elevated importance. The US intelligence community believes it has a handle on the location of Pakistan’s nuclear warhead, but there are questions over who controls the launch codes in the event of Musharraf’s passing.
The Us is also looking past the issue of the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. The loyalty of the conventional Pakistani military to President Musharraf is in question, according to CNN. Musharraf controls the loyalty of the commanders and senior officials in charge of the nuclear program, but those loyalties could shift at any point," CNN reported on August 10. "There is also a growing understanding according to the U.S. analysis that Musharraf's control over the military remains limited to certain top commanders and units, raising worries about whether he can maintain control over the long term."
On the same day of the release of news on concerns over the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and the loyalty of the Pakistani military, the Asia Times' Syed Saleem Shahzad reported al Qaeda and Taliban camps in North and South Waziristan have emptied, the Taliban and al Qaeda are expanding into the settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province, and are reorganizing in both Afghanistan and Pakistan for a major fight.
The Fourth Rail interviewed a senior military intelligence official and a military officer, both of whom are familiar with the situation in the Northwest Frontier Province and wish to remain anonymous. The sources confirmed Mr. Shahzad's information concerning the al Qaeda and Taliban camps in North Waziristan and the Taliban’s reorganization is accurate. Both sources are particularly concerned about the implications of the emptying of the camps.
Mr. Shahzad reported there were 29 al Qaeda and Taliban camps in North and South Waziristan, and all but one "have been dismantled, apart from one run by hardline Islamist Mullah Abdul Khaliq." [Note: on October 4, 2006, The Fourth Rail reported "there are over 20 al Qaeda and Taliban run training camps currently in operation in North and South Waziristan."] While The Fourth Rail sources verify the camps' existence, they noted the camps have not been dismantled, but the infrastructure is still in place. "The physical infrastructure (camps and the like) still exist, they haven't been dismantled. They've just been abandoned or are being operated by skeleton crews," the senior military intelligence source said, while noting "the Khaliq camp is only churning out Taliban, not al Qaeda."
The al Qaeda and Taliban personnel abandoned the 28 camps after "the US had presented Islamabad with a dossier detailing the location of the bases as advance information on likely US targets," Mr. Shahzad reported. "All other leading Taliban commanders, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, Gul Bahadur, Baitullah Mehsud and Haji Omar, have disappeared,” said Mr. Shahzad.
"Similarly, the top echelons of the Arab community that was holed up in North Waziristan has also gone." Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies are believed to have leaked information to the Taliban and al Qaeda in the past, and appears to have done so again.
The emptying of the camps is a cause for great concern in the military and intelligence communities. "We don't know where they went to or who was in the camps," the military officer told The Fourth Rail.. "They are well trained, these aren't your entry level jihadis. They are dangerous."
"This is one of the reasons that we are worried about a major CONUS [Continental United States] attack," the senior military intelligence source told The Fourth Rail, noting the recent influx of news of terror cells attempting to penetrate the US. "If they evacuated their bases, they almost certainly did so out of fear of more than just the Pakistani army."
Mr. Shahzad also reported Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second in command, along with the Shura Majlis, is currently based out of the village of Jani Khel village in the settled district of Bannu. Sirajuddin Haqqani and the Taliban Shura are operating in the eastern Afghan provinces of Khost and Gardez.
A spillover of al-Qaeda's presence in Jani Khel is likely to spread to Karak, Kohat, Tank, Laki Marwat and Dera Ismail Khan in Pakistan. Kohat in NWFP is tipped to become a central city in the upcoming battle, as the office of the Pakistani Garrison commanding officer is there and all operations will be directed through this area. In addition, Kohat is directly linked with a US airfield in Khost for supplies and logistics.
A second war corridor is expected to be in the Waziristans, the Khyber Agency, the Kurram Agency, Bajaur Agency, Dir, Mohmand Agency and Chitral in Pakistan and Nanagarhar, Kunar and Nooristan in Afghanistan.
The Fourth Rail has repeatedly identified Bannu, Kohat, Tank, Laki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber, Kurram, Dir and Mohmand as Taliban controlled or influenced territory over the course of the past two years.
Quetta. Satellite Town is in the southwest corner.
According to Mr. Shahzad, the Afghan Taliban has reorganized its leadership and devolved its command structure away from senior, regional leaders to local leaders after the death of senior Taliban commanders Mullah Akhtar Usmani and Mullah Dadullah Akhund. The Taliban leadership has been decimated by NATO and Afghan strikes in southern Afghanistan over the past year, and have regrouped in Satellite Town in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan. Quetta has long been identified as a Taliban command hub. Pakistani security forces captured Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, a former Defense Minister and member of the Shura Majlis, in a hotel in Quetta.
According to the senior military intelligence source, senior Taliban leaders are hesitant to enter southern Afghanistan due to NATO successes against the Taliban command structure, and have devolved control to the regional commanders out of necessity.
Mr. Shahzad postulates the Pakistani military will move in force into the Northwest Frontier Province after the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal jirga concludes. But the existing evidence does not support this theory at this time. While the Pakistani government claims it has moved additional forces into the tribal areas, these troops have been subjected to brutal suicide, roadside bombs, ambush and mortar and rocket attacks. Over 200 military personnel have been killed since mid-July, while the Pakistani military’s previous foray into North and South Waziristan from 2004 – 2006 resulted in upward of 3,000 soldiers killed. The Pakistani military has done little other than press for more negotiations with the Taliban while conducting retaliatory strikes, largely using artillery and air power.
On August 10, 16 Pakistani troops were kidnapped in South Waziristan. Yet Pakistani military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad confirmed the military is still in a defensive posture, reacting to attacks. "There is no planned operation going on in North Waziristan but we are responding with greater force against militant attacks on security forces now," said Arshad.
Also, the end of the summer is approaching and the Pakistani military has yet to launch the purported campaign. Winter is fast approaching in some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet, where al Qaeda and the Taliban are dug in and have deep ties with the local residents. The ideal time for the military to launch operations would have been the spring, leaving the summer open to conduct a campaign which will be difficult and bloody enough without battling the terrain and elements.
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GM, I read your post. Care to translate it?
TG
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This may be where AQ tries to seize Pakistan and Pakistan's nukes. This may also signal an offensive in europe and possibly the continental US as well.
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GM,This may signal the time where president Mushy has to finally take a side...... and quit playing both sides. I'am in some ways kinda glad this day has come (finally)
Its really disheartning to read that all those known A'Q and Taliban go hand in hand off into the sunset....esp when you read the article it states pretty much who they are and where they ....WERE.
SO goes my knock on the our realistc approach to the global war on terror.
Just curious as to what kind of launch capablities Pakistan has on thier nuke weapons.
Last thing I heard about their nukes was they exploded a underground weapon a short time after India did......this was several years ago though.
TG
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Off the top of my head, India's nukes are mostly bomber deployed, while Pakistan has them mounted on missiles. I'm guessing that Pakistan anticipates India holding air superiority in a potential war. Musharraf may either soon be dead or in exile, he probably tilted as far as he could to "ally" himself with us. He's been on the edge of declaring martial law already, the problem being the loyalty of the military in the coming conflict.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/11/intel-jittery-as-al-qaedas-training-camps-empty-out/
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http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/12/say-didnt-al-qaedas-camps-empty-out-before-911-too/
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http://formerspook.blogspot.com/
Watching the Camps
Bill Roggio was the first to report some rather significant--and possibly, troubling--developments from Pakistan's tribal region, where Al Qaida (and its Taliban allies) have established a new safe haven over the past year. On Saturday, Mr. Roggio noted an article by Asia Times writer Syed Saleem Shahzad, claiming that Al Qaida and Taliban camps have "emptied out" over the past month, ahead of anticipated strikes by the Pakistani military, and possibly, by U.S. special operations forces.
The implications of that move are obvious. Not only will scores of terrorists live to fight another day, but it also raises renewed questions about security and loyalty within the Pakistani military. According to Mr. Shahzad, the U.S. had developed extensive intelligence on 29 suspected camps in the Waziristan and passed the information to Islamabad, in preparation for an expected offensive. The quick exodus of insurgents from that camp suggests (once again) that the Taliban has a number of "friends" in the upper echelons of Pakistan's military (particularly within the intelligence service or ISI), who provide tipoffs and warning to the terrorists.
Shahzad's sources also claim that "all but one of the 29 camps" have been dismantled, although U.S. officials (questioned by Bill Roggio) deny that report. Clearly, there's a critical difference between an abandoned camp (or one where no activity is observed), and a facility that is being disassembled. Empty camps would suggest that Al Qaida and Taliban elements have temporarily relocated, moving into defensive positions against expected Pakistani attacks, with plans to return once the government's offensive ends.
Another--albeit less likely--explanation is that the Taliban and Al Qaida have become increasingly aware of U.S. satellites (and other surveillance platforms), scheduling training and other "outside" activity to coincide with known "breaks" in coverage. Information on various spy satellites and their coverage windows in readily available on the internet, and years of aircraft and UAV flights along the Afghan border have provided insight into their operational patterns as well.
While terrorists could use that data to developed their own "activity scheduling" program to inhibit our surveillance efforts, they would face the challenge of disseminating that information to widely-scattered camps in a timely manner. Beyond that, the "absence" of activity is likely based on all-source intelligence reporting, which indicates that the camps are empty, at least for now. In other words, not only are the imagery platforms showing an absence of activity, it's being confirmed by SIGINT and other measures.
But would Al Qaida and the Taliban be willing to permanently surrender their Waziristan bases? That's the $64,000 question, and for now, it defies a clear answer. Most of the analysts we spoke with believe that the terrorists would give up their safe havens only if (a) their training and logistical goals had been met; (b) they were anticipating a permanent Pakistani military presence in the region, (c) they anticipate access to better locations/facilities in the near future, or (d) they plan to return to the camps in the months ahead.
While the Waziristan camps have been a boon for Al Qaida and their Taliban allies, they have not achieved mid or long-term training and logistics goals in the past year. Like any other military organization (or more, correctly, quasi-military organization), the terrorists face the challenge of recruiting, training and equipping enough fighters for a multi-front war. A permanent shut-down of the 29 camps--without dedicated replacements--would put Al Qaida and the Taliban in the same fix they faced before the Waziristan Accords: a need to prepare more terrorists for jihad, without the large-scale training facilities that operated openly in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.
We also concur with Bill Roggio's assessment that the "threat" of a Pakistani military presence did not force the evacuation. As he notes, limited Pakistani forays into Waziristan have come at a high price, and despite hints from Islamabad, there are no signs of a pending government offensive into the tribal lands. Attacks by the Pakistani military may be limited to air and artillery strikes against "known" targets (i.e., the camps), so a temporary evacuation would allow terrorists to minimize their losses, and return after the offensive ends.
In terms of accessing "new" locations, the terrorists may have that opportunity in the coming weeks. Mr. Shahzad's article identified two "war corridors" that represent key axis of communications in potential battles with Pakistani forces. Success in those clashes would allow Al Qaida and Taliban operatives to extend their reach, and move closer to areas now under government control. Relocating the camps to those areas would make them more accessible, but also more vulnerable to future Pakistani attacks. Barring a major change in the balance of power, such a relocation seems unlikely.
Available information suggests that the fourth option--a return to the Waziristan camps--appears most likely. With winter looming on the horizon, the terrorists know that any Pakistani offensive (or U.S. SOF raids) will be of limited duration, allowing them to reoccupy their safe havens in a matter of weeks. That suggests that the current "evacuation" serves two operational goals: minimizing losses from potential strikes against the camps, while putting more fighters in the field to deal with potential ground incursions by Pakistani forces. Once the "immediate" threat eases, the terrorists will likely return to their camps, which are still being maintain by skeleton staffs.
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ADDENDUM: There has been considerable speculation about the camps' sudden evacuation, and possible attacks by Al Qaida inside the CONUS. As one intelligence official told Bill Roggio, there were a number of experienced terrorists in those camps, operatives who are quite capable of conducting operations overseas. While we concur that assessment, it is worth remembering that those terrorists were a minority within the "local" Al Qaida population. Most of the fighters who recently dispersed were likely trained for operations within the region--Afghanistan or Pakistan.
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On the Road to Jalalabad
Don't believe the naysayers. Afghanistan is doing as well as anyone has a right to expect.
WSJ
BY ANN MARLOWE
Monday, August 13, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
AFGHANISTAN--Sen. Hillary Clinton has cynically charged that we are "losing the fight to al Qaeda and bin Laden" in Afghanistan. But on my eighth trip to Afghanistan (last month) I saw that the trend lines are up, not down.
The first encouraging sign came in Dubai as I boarded my flight for Kabul. Afghanistan's main private air carrier, Kam Air, has recently added a second daily round trip between Kabul and Dubai.
Once in Kabul I bought a new SIM card for my mobile phone and found that what would have cost me $40 a few years ago and $9 in September last year now cost only $3. Not surprisingly, mobile phones have spread to a broad section of Afghanistan's 24 million people, with the two major providers, AWCC and Roshan, claiming a total of three million subscribers, up from two million in September last year. Amin Ramin, managing director of AWCC, estimates that his company alone will count two million subscribers by the end of 2007 and three million by the end of 2008.
I spotted similarly hopeful trends in three heavily Pashtun provinces--Nangarhar, Laghman and Khost--in eastern Afghanistan.
But first, it's important to note that to talk about "reconstruction" is the biggest lie in Afghanistan. Before the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghanistan was long one of the poorest countries in the world and has never had a lot of infrastructure. There are ruins in the country, of course, but 95% of them are in or near Kabul itself. Most of Afghanistan lives much as it always has, subsisting on small-scale farming and trading.
We can do nothing about many of Afghanistan's barriers to development. For starters, 86% of its land area is non-arable. It has also never had a broad distribution of income or land. According to Afghan-Australian historian Amin Saikal, up until the early 1920s when King Amanullah gave crown lands to the poor, only 20% of peasants worked their own properties.
This is why many foreign development experts working in Kabul say privately that if in a couple of decades Afghanistan reaches the level of Bangladesh--which in 2006 had a per capita GDP of about $419 per year, one of the lowest in the world--then they will judge their time in the country a success.
But I am more optimistic. Jalalabad, the largest city of eastern Afghanistan, with 400,000 people, is now just a three-hour drive to Kabul on a good road recently built by the European Union. Another hour's drive brings you to Mehtar Lam, capital of Afghanistan's Laghman province, on another good road funded by USAID.
The U.S. is now planning to start a second provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Nangarhar Province, and it will be staffed by military reservists who are farmers and ranchers in civilian life. This second PRT will work with local farmers in Nangahar's lush river valley, while also building infrastructure to get crops to market--cold storage facilities and local roads. Air Force Lt. Col. Gordon Phillips, the commander of the existing PRT, says that blacktop roads will link all district centers in the province to the main road to Kabul by the end of this year.
"Every day we open 15 to 20 new accounts," says Maseh Arifi, the 24-year-old manager of the Jalalabad branch of Azizi Bank, one of Afghanistan's two homegrown consumer banks. The branch opened at the end of last August and has 18,000 accounts. Next door, rival Kabul Bank has opened 9,400 accounts totaling $7 million in two years. The 27,000 bank accounts represent about 15% of 660,000 adults of Jalalabad--and doesn't count some of the most prosperous locals, who commute to Peshawar to do their banking. In Nangarhar, AWCC and Roshan together have about 206,000 mobile phone customers, 31% of the adults.
Further south is Khost, a province that received little help from the central government in recent decades. Now construction cranes hover over Khost City, with modern five- and six-story office buildings and shopping centers rising amid grimy two-story concrete bazaars. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently finished building a new university in the city. And this month the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency, an investment-facilitating agency, is inviting 300 overseas Khostis to come discuss building an industrial park.
Both Kabul Bank and Azizi Bank opened their Khost branches in the summer of 2006, and each have about 3,000 accounts. Both branch managers expect their numbers to double this year. The numbers are low because some local residents view even non-interest bearing accounts as un-Islamic. (Competing fatwas have been issued by various mullahs on the topic.) About 65,000 people have mobile phones in the province.
Many of its men emigrated to the UAE and Saudi Arabia and did well for themselves as merchants. As many as 200,000 overseas Khostis (about a million people live in the province) send $6 million to $12 million annually to their families at home. USAID spent just $10 million in the province from 2002-2006.
Culturally, Khost has always been an outward-looking place. It's not an opium-producing province. In the 1970s and '80s it was a stronghold of the Khalq Communist party, as the party provided a vehicle for the Ghilzai Pashtun to challenge leaders from other tribes. The 99% Pashtun population is also about 70% literate, according to Babaker Khil, a member of parliament from Khost.
Khost should really take off when it's linked to Kabul by a blacktop road. Construction of a $70 million, 103-kilometer long Khost-Gardez road is slated to begin next spring (it will be built by USAID) and is supposed to be finished in September 2009. The U.S. Army, which moves at a much faster pace than USAID, expects to link 90% of the population of Khost to the main provincial road by the end of this year.
There have been no conventional attacks on Coalition or Afghan security forces in 2007 so far, but the long border with Pakistan makes suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices (IED) an ongoing threat.
The insurgents are seeking "soft targets" such as civilians. There have been at least 67 IED explosions this year, killing more than two-dozen Afghans and wounding one American. But, encouragingly, 51 IEDs were found and reported by locals before detonating in Khost. Twelve other devices were turned in by locals looking for reward money.
"We've got the wholehearted support of 85%-90% of the population here," Major Timothy Kohn of the 82nd Airborne told me. "The mullahs have put out fatwas against suicide bombers, saying that the victims of these bombings are the martyrs, not the extremists. Thousands of people attended peace rallies in the city."
The most economically backward of the eastern provinces I visited is Laghman. Its 400,000 people eke out a living by working rice paddies and wheat fields along the Alingar and Alishang Rivers. Even the provincial capital, Mehtar Lam, is so small you could miss it driving by. It has only a couple of two-story buildings in the bazaar. Still, an astonishing 77% of Laghman's 176,000 adults have mobile phones--also implying that a good percentage of the women have phones, too.
Nangarhar and Laghman are also known for relatively high levels of education, and in the eastern region overall, UNICEF reports that this year 737,975 children were enrolled in school, up 17,000 from 2006 and six times the figure for 2003.
Laghman is never going to be rich, but Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Ricci, the Mehtar Lam PRT commander, points out that the district of Qarghayi had Afghanistan's highest per-hectare wheat production last year. The new Nangarhar PRT will help the local farmers here, too, while Mr. Ricci's team fixes the roads so that farmers in remote areas can bring their crop to the provincial capital, and from there to Kabul. The PRT is planning to blacktop the dirt road from Mehtar Lam to the most remote district capital, Daulat Shah, 47 kilometers away, at a cost of around $16 million.
Security in Laghman is better than in the frontier provinces, but there is a well-established route for al Qaeda, Taliban and other fighters to cross from Pakistan and make their way north through Laghman. A suicide bombing in April seems to have been a turning point in Laghman. The bomber killed a mullah and several schoolgirls, and according to Mr. Ricci, local residents were so angry that they left the bomber's body parts on the road, refusing him burial. Since then, just nine IEDs have been detonated in Laghman, while 25 were turned in by locals.
Of course, one suicide bombing or IED is one too many, but every society is violent in its own way. The 58 killed by IEDs and suicide bombers in Khost could be compared with the 2006 murders in some American cities with around Khost's one-million population: There were 29 murders in San Jose, 108 in Indianapolis, and 373 in Detroit.
Afghanistan is still a poor rural country with a mainly illiterate population, but it's improving rapidly, and with the exception of Helmand Province and a few bad districts in Uruzgun, Kandahar and Loghar, it's much like any number of developing countries in terms of security. We can't give every country everything they'd like, and it will take decades for the rule of law to be as firmly established here as it is in the West. But we can and are helping the Afghans pull themselves up to the next rung on the development ladder.
Ms. Marlowe is author of "The Book of Trouble" (Harcourt, 2006), a memoir.
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I always find it interesting to get the perspective of Indians on the situation in Afg/Pak. Due to their long history of problems between Pak and them, they tend to be quite informed and thoughtful.
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Pakistan Tribal Unrest Intensifies- International Terrorism Monitor- Paper No. 267
By B. Raman.
Anti-Musharraf and anti-US anger continues to run high in the Pashtun tribal areas of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan.
2.The fresh wave of anger, which initially started after the raid of the Pakistani Army commandoes on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad between July 10 and 13,2007, has further intensified after the death of Abdullah Mehsud, a pro-Taliban tribal leader of South Waziristan and a former detenu at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, at Zhob in Balochistan on July 23,2007 . According to the Pakistan Army, he blew himself up when he was surrounded by the security forces. But, his supporters allege that he was shot dead at point-blank range by the security forces.
3. The intensified anger has not only led to many more clashes between the tribals and the security forces, but also to a boycott of the celebration of Pakistan's 60th Independence Day anniversary in many tribal villages.
4.The "Daily Times" of Lahore reported as follows on August 15,2007: " Many people in the tribal areas marked August 14 as a "black day", in protest at the stepped up military presence in the region near the Pak-Afghan border. Many tribesmen in Khyber Agency and 25 disputed villages adjacent to Mohmand Agency observed the 60th Independence Day by hoisting black flags on their homes. Similarly, tribesmen in South Waziristan, North Waziristan and Bajaur
agencies did not observe Independence Day due to the military's operations in the tribal areas. "For the first time in the country's history, numerous tribesmen did not celebrate Independence Day. There were no selling and buying of national flags and other relevant things in North Waziristan," Haji Gul Noor from Miranshah told Daily Times. "This could be a reaction to military operations and the Taliban may have forbidden tribesmen to celebrate the day," he added."
5.On August 17,2007, seven soldiers and 15 tribals were reportedly killed in clashes in Chackmalai and adjacent areas of North Waziristan. Eleven soldiers were also injured. The clashes occurred when a military convoy came under attack and the security forces retaliated. On August 16,2007, 10 tribals were killed and many injured when Pakistan Army gunship helicopters retaliated after an attack on a military convoy near the same area. In the attack on the convoy, three soldiers were killed and six others injured. On August 14, 2007, the beheaded body of one of the 16 paramilitary Frontier Corps soldiers, kidnapped by militants in the South Waziristan agency a week ago, was found on the Tank-Jandola road. A note left on the body warned that the remaining soldiers would be punished in the same fashion if the tribals' demand for the release of 10 tribal detenus (reportedly Mehsuds) was not met by the Army.
6.Is Pakistan a jihadi volcano waiting to erupt?
7.That is the question which has been worrying the minds of many intelligence analysts, Congressmen and policy-makers in the US.
8.They may differ in their assessment of the ground situation in Iraq.
9.But they are all agreed that the ground situation in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region does not bode well for the success of the so-called war on global jihadi terrorism.
10.Recent testimonies by senior intelligence and military officers and non-governmental analysts before Congressional committees and recent debates among aspirants for the Presidential race next year have revealed a convergence of views on both sides of the political spectrum that there has been a worrisome resurgence of Al Qaeda from new sanctuaries in the Pakistani territory.
11.According to them, its command and control, which was badly disrupted by the post-9/11 US military operations in Afghanistan, has been repaired and revamped. It has set up a new jihadi training infrastructure in the North Waziristan area in replacement of its previous infrastructure in Afghan territory, which was destroyed by the US security forces. New recruits have started flowing in---- Arabs as well as non-Arabs. Recruits from the Pakistani diaspora in the West have been in the forefront of the flow of new non-Arab volunteers.
12.The determination and motivation of Al Qaeda and its mix of leaders of old vintage such as Osama bin Laden and his No.2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the crop of new post-9/11 recruits remain as strong as ever despite the losses in leadership, cadre strength and resources suffered by it in 2002 and 2003.
13.There is an apparent realization----not yet openly expressed---- that Pakistan's President Gen.Pervez Musharraf has not been such a sincere front-line ally in the war against jihadi terrorism as he was projected to be. He made brave statements on his determination to act against jihadi extremists and terrorists, but his actions on the ground belied his statements.
14.He promised action against the madrasas producing terrorists, but refrained from action against them. He was reluctant to act even against the Lal Masjid, which had set up a jihadi GHQ right under his nose in Islamabad. He was forced to act not by US threats, but by Chinese unhappiness over the kidnapping of six Chinese women by the girl students of the Masjid's madrasa for girls, who accused them of loose morals.
15.He claimed to have effectively sealed the Pakistan-Afghanistan border by deploying thousands of extra troops in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to prevent the ingress of the Neo Al Qaeda and Neo Taliban elements from Afghanistan to set up new bases in Pakistani territory. These troops, instead of fighting the terrorists, made peace with them---initially in South Waziristan in 2005 and then in North Waziristan in 2006.
16.He assured the international community that his peace agreements were meant to encourage the local people to rise against the Neo Al Qaeda and the Neo Taliban. Instead of doing so, they joined hands with them and helped them set up new training bases in North Waziristan.
17.The realization is slowly dawning on US intelligence analysts and policy-makers that Musharraf is either unable to act or insincere or both.
18.All this has been taking place at a time when Musharraf's authority has been weakening due to his ill-advised confrontation with the judiciary and the lawyers' fraternity, which ended in an embarrassing loss of face for him when the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the reinstatement of the suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury. The public rallies in support of the wronged Chief Justice demonstrated the extent of the growing alienation against the General.
19.Balochistan continues to burn. There is a growing clamour for his discarding the post of the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) to which he continues to cling due to fears that he may not be able to control the Army effectively if he ceased to be the COAS. His uniform gives him the power to intimidate his people and opponents. Once he discards it, he may lose his power of intimidation. So he apprehends.
20.He does not have the confidence that his political supporters in the Pakistan Muslim League (Qaide Azam), who are in a majority in the present National Assembly, may be able to retain their majority in the new Assembly to be elected later this year. If his detractors secure a majority, his hopes of continuing as the President for a second term may be belied. Hence, his desperate anxiety to have himself re-elected by the present National Assembly before it is dissolved.
21.The Supreme Court, headed by a Chief Justice who was sought to be humiliated by the General, may come in the way. Nawaz Sharif, the former Prime Minister, has already challenged the various executive orders passed by Musharraf against him. If the Supreme Court upholds Nawaz's petition, it might severely weaken the legal basis of Musharraf's rule.
22.Musharraf has for the present given up the idea of imposing a State of Emergency in order to escape the consequences of his sins of commission and omission. But, he may still use that sword. If he does, there may be violent street protests against him.
23.Public disenchantment on the one side and the spreading Talibanisation and jihadi anger on the other. That is the situation facing Musharraf today. The US is not yet prepared to write him off, but is already considering fall-back options if it has to. Inducting Benazir Bhutto as the Prime Minister to soften the arbitrary image of Musharraf is unlikely to work. She is not very popular among the Mohajirs, the Balochs and even large sections of the Sindhis, despite her being from Sindh. Large sections of senior Army officers do not feel comfortable with her. Moreover, it is doubtful how effective a woman Prime Minister will be against the jihadis, who would look upon her as apostate.
24.Pakistan is not Iran. An Islamic revolution of the Iranian model of 1979 is unlikely. But its FATA and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) are no different from Afghanistan. The Pashtun tribes, who inhabit these areas, are strongly anti-US and anti-Musharraf. The 9/11 terrorist strikes came from the Pashtun areas of Southern and Eastern Afghanistan. If there is a repeat of 9/11, it would have originated in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan.
25.The anger against both Musharraf and the US is so intense in the Pashtun belt on both sides of the Durand Line that no precise human intelligence has been forthcoming from the people of the area. The communications security of the Neo Al Qaeda is so strong that the available technical intelligence is weak. Despite nearly four years of its operations, the US' intelligence agencies have not been able to establish wherefrom As-Sahab, the Neo Al Qaeda's Psychological Warfare unit, has been operating and silence it.
26.The US is thus in a dilemma. It is not in a position to act on its own due to inadequate intelligence. Nor is it in a position to depend on Musharraf due to his insincerity and ineffectiveness.
27.This dilemma is likely to continue for some time till the capability of the US for the collection of precise intelligence improves. Fears of instability in Pakistan due to political factors and insecurity due to the uncontrolled activities of the Neo Al Qaeda and the Neo Taliban would continue to confront the US policy-makers. Their bold statements of their intention to act are just whistling in the dark in the absence of precise intelligence.
28.There is no end in sight to the US military operations against the Neo Al Qaeda and the Neo Taliban even almost six years after the operations started. This is nothing to be surprised about. Victory in the war is not for tomorrow or the day after. There is no doubt that the US will one day ultimately prevail over the jihadi terrorists. It has to in order to protect its homeland. But that day is still far off.
29.The time has come for the US to have a revamped policy on Pakistan and to make it clear to Musharraf that the days of lollipops are over. That is what the recently passed Congressional Resolution seeking to tie future military and economic assistance to his actions against the jihadis does. This is a good beginning. This has to be followed by pressing him to hold free and fair elections and seek a new mandate from a new Assembly and not from the present one in which his followers have an engineered majority. The lollipops should be withheld if he does not do so.
30.India cannot remain unaffected by these developments. Some of the associates of Al Qaeda in the International Islamic Front (IIF) such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) are active in India for many years. The developing Indian relations with the US and the increasing US presence in India are a cause for provocation for Al Qaeda. Its intention to target India is already being reflected increasingly in the statements of its leaders. Al Qaeda as an Arab terrorist organization has not yet carried out a terrorist strike in Indian territory. But it is wanting to do so. India should take Al Qaeda's threats seriously and avoid an Al Qaeda orchestrated Pearl Harbour in its territory.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2311110,prtpage-1.cms
Scores of Pak soldiers desert forces
26 Aug 2007, 0255 hrs IST,AGENCIES
ISLAMABAD: Scores of Pakistani soldiers have deserted the security forces deployed in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, mainly because they were not sure whether fighting against their 'own people' was morally right, media reports said on Saturday.
"I did not desert the force because I feared death, but I was not sure whether the fighting in tribal district Waziristan was Islamic or not," a soldier from paramilitary Frontier Corps told the Daily Times.
The man, who recently refused to serve in tribal areas, claimed the same question was haunting many other soldiers and the confusion was stopping them from "putting up a tough fight" against the Taliban and Al-Qaida elements in the area. Pro-Taliban militiamen pulled out of peace treaties with the government after troops stormed the Lal Masjid in the capital on July 10, and launched a series of raids on security forces.
He confirmed the desertions but insisted these should be ignored as "insignificant incidents�. "Small-scale desertion takes place in any force and in any country for one reason or another," Arshad told the newspaper.
However, six soldiers from only one suburb of Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, have deserted the Frontier Corps. The force is the first line of defence of around 90,000 troops deployed along the country’s western border against militants launching attacks at international forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is setting in process a plan to withdraw its army from the restive tribal areas and replace them with paramilitary forces, a news report has said.
President Pervez Musharraf told a group of parliamentarians from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas that army would be withdrawn from tribal areas after January 2008, the same newspaper reported.
"Paramilitary forces including Frontier Constabulary, Levies and Khasadars will take over the charge of tribal areas from the military, which would be withdrawn after January 2008,"sources quoted the Musharraf as saying.
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From a website that IMHO hyperventilates on occasion, but here it is:
'Convert or die,' Christians told
Muslims flood neighborhoods with threats
Posted: August 23, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
Christian residents of several neighborhoods in northern Pakistan have been sent letters "inviting" them to abandon Christianity and join Islam – or be killed, according to a new report from Voice of the Martyrs, the ministry to persecuted Christians around the world.
"There have been numerous threats sent to Peshawar's Kohati area," sources for VOM reported this week. "The letters say if we don't become Muslim we will be killed."
The unsigned threats began several weeks ago, when residents of Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province, reported receiving the letters threatening suicide bombings if they did not convert.
(Story continues below)
The letters went to Christian residents of the Tailgodom, Sandagodom and Goalgodom neighborhoods, according to a report from Assist News Service.
"These letters sent a wave of fear and uncertainty among the Christian residents of these … areas," Kamran George, a Peshawar government member, told the news service.
Each of the districts houses an estimated 2,000 Christians.
"Through this open letter you are openly invited to convert to Islam and quit Christianity, the religion of infidels," the letter said. Readers could "ensure your place in heaven" by adopting Islam.
"We will wipe out your slum on next Friday, August, 10th, 2007. And you, yourself would be responsible for the destruction of your men and material. Get ready! This is not a mere threat, our suicide bombers are ready to wipe out your name and signs from the face of earth. Consider it be the Knock of Death," it said.
Although that deadline has passed, Christians still fear the threat, a government official told Assist. He noted that a man dressed in Pakistan's national dress managed to get inside a recent meeting at St. John Catholic Church in Peshawar, but fled immediately when he saw police.
George said the threats were prompted by the suggestion from U.S. presidential candidate Tom Tancredo that the U.S. threaten to bomb Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in retaliation if there would be a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States.
"We would be pleased to send those to Hell who dared casting malicious eye on Khana Kaba (Mecca, Saudi Arabia) and Prophet's Mosque (Medina, Saudi Arabia). There is death here (in Pakistan) for the agents and followers of the religion of Americans (Christians)," said the letter, written in Urdu, Pakiston's national language, Assist reported.
"We would wipe out the Churches from the face of the earth because our mosques, seminaries and children are being martyred on the directions of United States. We would write a new history with the blood of Infidels. Our suicide bombers, lovers of Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) are ready to strike churches, to protect the sanctity of Mecca and Medina, and pride of Islam.
"These suicide bombers would strike at any time or day. It is our first and foremost Jihad (Islamic Holy war) to assassinate and eradicate the infidels from the face of earth," the letter said.
Additional police have been assigned in the region, the same area where a surge of violence followed the recent occupation and storming of the nation's Red Mosque. There, as WND reported, radical leaders faced off against Pakistani forces and said the 1,800 children in the compound had taken oaths on the Quran to fight to the death.
Followers of Abdul Rashid Ghazi, leader of the pro-Taliban mosque, staged the standoff after a crackdown was launched on the mosque for a months-long campaign to expand Islamic religious law.
A minority member of Pakistan's parliament, Pervaiz Masih, even raised the issue of the threats in the legislature's National Assembly, reading the letter to lawmakers and calling on the government to note the insecurity it had created.
The Voice of the Martyrs cited a list of other attacks on Christians in Pakistan in recent weeks that also have raised concerns.
For example, the organization reported that Muslims had confessed and apologized for attacking a church in the Punjab region, but have to this point offered no compensation for injuring Christians and damaging their building.
Reports confirmed seven Christians were hurt and Christian literature was destroyed at a Salvation Army church north of Faisalabad in the attack, and attackers admitted they had planned to burn a page of the Quran – which can bring a life prison sentence in Pakistan – and then blame the Christians of the community.
The attack happened just as Christians were assembling for a worship meeting, and several victims were hit with axes. Bibles and hymn books also were destroyed.
Just weeks earlier, a formal court session in Lahore also sentenced a Pakistani Christian to death for blasphemy. Authorities said Younis Masih, a Christian from Chungi Amar Sadu in Lahore, was accused of blasphemy of the Prophet Muhammad.
Although no one has yet been executed by the state for blasphemy, several have been murdered by extremists.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide says Pakistan's blasphemy laws are regularly misused as a means of settling scores or targeting religious minorities.
The blasphemy laws require only an accusation by one man against another for a case to be filed. In almost all cases the charges are entirely fabricated. Masih was outspoken against incidents of rape committed against Christian girls, and is a Christian himself. It is believed these were the reasons he was accused of blasphemy, according to reports.
VOM is a non-profit, interdenominational ministry working worldwide to help Christians who are persecuted for their faith, and to educate the world about that persecution. Its headquarters are in Bartlesville, Okla., and it has 30 affiliated international offices.
It was launched by the late Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, who started smuggling Russian Gospels into Russia in 1947, just months before Richard was abducted and imprisoned in Romania where he was tortured for his refusal to recant Christianity.
He eventually was released in 1964 and the next year he testified about the persecution of Christians before the U.S. Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee, stripping to the waist to show the deep torture wound scars on his body. The group that later was renamed The Voice of the Martyrs was organized in 1967, when his book, "Tortured for Christ," was released.
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Making
Summary
It no longer is a matter of if, but of when Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf will leave the helm in Islamabad. The judiciary and the man he ousted from power, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, are threatening to throw a monkey wrench into his evasive maneuvers. The issue, however, now turns from the day-to-day drama of internal Pakistani politics to the much deeper issue of whether Musharraf's fall from grace will be paralleled by that of the Pakistani military as a whole.
Analysis
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced Aug. 30 that he will return to Pakistan from forced exile Sept. 10. The same day, another exiled former leader, Benazir Bhutto, announced breakthroughs in negotiations with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that would ease the general out of power. Meanwhile, the country's Supreme Court began proceedings on petitions challenging on constitutional grounds Musharraf's bid to seek re-election.
Stratfor forecast months ago that Musharraf would have to concede his position as military chief if he intended to stay on as a civilian president, and that he would have no choice but to work out a political agreement with Pakistan's opposition parties, specifically Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party. Prompted by advice from his closest aides, Musharraf is now quietly working toward securing an honorable exit from the scene. He could be forced to throw in the towel sometime after the appointment of a successor military chief on or around Oct. 8.
Once Musharraf vacates the presidency, events will pretty much unfold as per the constitution -- the way they did when the death in 1988 of Pakistan's last military dictator, Gen. Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, created a power vacuum. A caretaker government headed by an acting president and an interim premier will be charged with holding fresh legislative elections, which will likely produce a highly divided parliament resulting in a coalition government.
Beyond the change in political personalities and groups, a far more important shift will take place in Pakistan in the coming months. For the first time since the army took control of the state in 1958 under Field Marshal Ayub Khan, the military's grip on the reins of the state is in the process of weakening.
This did not happen even when Pakistan's second military dictator, Gen. Yahya Khan, stepped down in 1971 after civil war led to the secession of a major chunk of the country and the surrender of some 100,000 troops to Indian forces. Neither did it happen when Zia-ul-Haq and his top generals died in a mysterious plane crash, ending his 11-year stint. In both cases, the military merely went into the background for some years -- only to return when the politicians could not agree to disagree. Even when the army was not directly ruling, the civilian leaders had to look over their shoulders continuously to see whether the generals were still with them nearly each step of the way.
That was in the past, however, when there were essentially two players in Pakistan -- the army and the political parties. Today, a vibrant civil society and increasingly independent and assertive judiciary have emerged within the country.
The empowerment of Pakistan's civil society was catalyzed by Musharraf's ill-fated decision to sack Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in March. Chaudhry, breaking with tradition, would not fold, which set in motion a series of events that, within a matter of days, energized bar associations across the country. In turn, this emboldened the judiciary to assert its independence and challenge the military's hold on power.
The Supreme Court already has asserted its power, reversing a number of the Musharraf regime's decisions. The court reinstated the chief justice, released a top Musharraf opponent who was jailed on charges of treason and ensured Sharif's right of return. The judiciary also has taken steps to limit interference by the military and the intelligence agencies in matters of governance.
Meanwhile, the country's media, particularly the private television news channels, also have emerged as a powerful driver of events. In the wake of the judicial crisis, Musharraf tried June 4 to place restrictions on the electronic media through new ordinances empowering the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) to block transmissions, suspend licenses and confiscate equipment of electronic media organizations deemed in violation of the new laws. But five days later, under intense domestic and international pressure, he was forced to withdraw the controversial restrictions.
Pakistan also has witnessed an unprecedented surge in civil society activism. Instead of the political parties that historically have led protests, civil society groups -- especially the legal syndicates -- drove the protests during the legal crisis. There also has been an unprecedented outbreak of social debate on national issues, not only regarding the military's role in politics but also on the issue of rule of law. This debate has included criticism of men in uniform, as well as politicians.
All of this has been made possible by several structural changes that took shape mostly during the first seven years of Musharraf's rule. In order to counter the perception that he was a military dictator, Musharraf created a hybrid political system with a significant civilian component. Despite having manipulated the constitution on a number of occasions, he relied heavily on it to strengthen his grip on authority. In the process, he inadvertently strengthened the country's constitutional roots, which is now weakening the very power he consolidated.
Even within the military, Musharraf's repeated reshuffling of positions has contributed to his own undoing. It has brought to the fore a junior crop of generals that is inexperienced in politics and government. For a long time, this worked to his advantage by preventing any of his subordinates from rising up to challenge him. Now, however, as he faces challenges from Pakistan's civilian sectors, his top generals are unable and/or unwilling to support him.
In essence, the law of unintended consequences has worked against Musharraf. Moreover, it has weakened the military's ability to dominate the state. For now, this is limited to the political sphere. Eventually, the judicial branch can be expected to empower the legislative branch by forcing the military and the intelligence community to open up their books to parliamentary scrutiny. The weakening of the military's hold over the country's economic sector will be the next stage in the ongoing systemic change.
The question moving forward is: How far will the military's grip slacken before arrestors force the generals to take a firmer role? For now, the trend is running against the military -- and historical positions are being reversed. As the civilians entrench their power, it is the military -- not the civilian politicians -- that will mostly have to contend with limitations imposed by the judiciary. And civil society will serve as the watchdog.
And yet, there are plenty of issues that have the potential to topple this emerging civilian structure, such as the ability of Sharif and Bhutto to get along with one another and cooperate in order to check the military's power; the Islamists' level of power in the political system; the level of security in the country's Northwest; the status of the war on terrorism; the amount of pressure from the United States; and, of course, how India reacts to the changing political dynamic in Islamabad.
Any of these issues could lead to the military's return. Pakistan might be moving into the hands of civilians, but half a century of political culture does not die easily.
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Note whom the author is:
US PARADROP FOR A NEOBENAZIR
By B. Raman
The much talked about US plans for a political paradrop of a neo Benazir Bhutto into Pakistan in the hope of providing the badly-needed oxygen to President General Pervez Musharraf and saving the country from Al Qaeda, the Neo Taliban and an assortment of other pro-Al Qaeda and anti-US jihadi terrorist groups is likely to create a third mess in a row for the US after the earlier two in Afghanistan and Iraq.
2. All the reports from a variety of sources in Pakistan are clear on one point---- there is widespread anti-Americanism in the general public. This is not confined to the fundamentalist and jihadi parties. It is widely shared right across the country.
3. One of the reasons for the growing unpopularity of Musharraf is the public perception of him as a collaborator of the US in its so-called war against jihadi terrorism, which is viewed as a war against Islam. Outside the tribal areas, the Pakistani people are by and large moderate. They are unhappy over the role of the fundamentalists and the jihadis in hampering the modernisation of the country and in retarding its economic development. But they are equally unhappy over the perceived role of the US in influencing, if not dictating, not only the foreign, but also the domestic policy of the country.
4. Any leader---whether it be the Neo Benazir or anyone else--- who seeks to regain power with the support of the US with promises to co-operate with the US more effectively than at present in the so-called war against jihadi terrorism is unlikely to have much credibility in the eyes of the people.
5. Moreover, anyone even with rudimentary knowledge of Pakistan would know that Benazir, like Musharraf, is an opportunist par excellence. Both have broken more promises than kept them in the past. Both have betrayed more political allies than stood by them. Look at the way the Neo Benazir let down Mr.Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League (PML) in her anxiety to come to power. Look at the way Musharraf is apparently prepared to ditch the PML (Qaide Azam), whose formation was engineered by him in 2002 in order to have himself elected as the President, in order to get her support for his re-election.
6. Benazir and Musharraf were birds of the same feather in the past. Remember how she, as the Prime Minister in her first term (1988-90) asked the Inter-Services Intelligence to start terrorism in India's Jammu and Kashmir in 1989? She, Maj.Gen.Naseerullah Babar, her Interior Minister during her second term (1993-96), and Musharraf, then the Director-General of Military Operations (DMO), were the joint creators of the Taliban and facilitated its capture of Kabul in September, 1996.It was she, who allowed Osama bin Laden, to shift from Khartoum to Jalalabad in 1996, thereby paving the way for the creation of Al Qaeda's infrastructure in Afghan territory. She was as responsible as Musharraf for the rogue activities of Dr.A.Q.Khan and other nuclear scientists. Pakistan's clandestine nuclear co-operation with Iran and Libya, started under Zia-ul-Haq, made headway under her and its clandestine nuclear and missile co-operation with North Korea started during her second tenure .
7. Musharraf has not kept up his promises to co-operate sincerely with the US in neutralising Al Qaeda activities from Pakistani territory.He has avoided action against the operations of the Neo Taliban in Afghan territory from its sanctuaries in Pakistani territory. Not having learnt any lessons from its pathetic faith in Musharraf, which has not produced results, the US is banking on Benazir's promise of strong action against the extremists and terrorists if the US supports her return to power. It seems to believe that Musharraf and Benazir acting together could save Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal from falling into the hands of the jihadi terrorists.
8. To expect that two opportunists such as Musharraf and Benazir, known for their insincerity, would now mend their ways and work jointly against terrorists is to live in a fools' paradise. Musharraf wants desperately to continue in power to save himself from ignominy. He believes, rightly or wrongly, that he would need the support of the US for this. She wants desperately to return to power, to have the corruption cases against her closed and to let her husband Asif Zirdari make more money as if the millions, if not billions, made by him during her first two tenures are not adequate.She feels she can do so only with US support.
9. Sections of the US media have quoted US officials as justifying the proposed Musharraf-Benazir patch-up as the best of the bad options available. So they said, when they gave unqualified backing to Musharraf post 9/11. So they are saying now.
10. US calculations of political stability in Pakistan under such a patch-up may be belied. Benazir of today is not the Benazir of 1988. She came to power in 1988 through her own efforts with the support of the people of Sindh and southern and central Punjab. The voters rejected the PML of Nawaz Sharif, which they saw as the creation of the Army and the ISI. She made a deal with the US after winning the elections in order to make the Army drop its objections to her becoming the Prime Minister.
11. Today, the Neo Benazir, who denounced Nawaz and his PML in 1988 as the stooges of the Army and the ISI, is seeking the benediction of the US even before winning the elections and the support of Musharraf and his Army for her return to power and the closing of the corruption cases against her and her husband.
12.Even if the US-engineered patch-up ultimately materialises and she returns to contest the elections, the victory of her party will be uncertain. The elections will be seen as between the collaborators of the Army and the US on the one side and their opponents on the other. The opponents will have a decided advantage in view of the prevailing anti-Army and anti-US atmosphere. Moreover, she and her party could face difficulties even in Sindh in view of the expected strong showing of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) of Mr.Altaf Hussain.
13. Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal need to be protected from the hands of Al Qaeda and other jihadi terrorists. Nobody can find fault with the over-all US objective, but it has been going about it in the wrong way. It should have allowed genuine democracy to take its own course, even at the risk of political forces not well disposed towards the US coming to power. Instead, by giving the impression of taking sides even before the elections and by making its ill-advised preferences known before the elections, it has given rise to the strong possibility of more instability, not less, more terrorism, not less.Even if Benazir comes to power in an election rigged by the Army,she will be seen as Pakistan's Hamid Karzai, who came to power not by the will of the people, but by riding on the shoulders of the US.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail:seventyone2@gmail.com)
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Round Trip
September 11, 2007
Nawaz Sharif's triumphant return to Pakistan ended with a fizzle yesterday. Only a few hours after landing in Islamabad, the former Prime Minister was shuttled into a waiting aircraft and shipped back to Saudi Arabia. But that doesn't mean Pakistan's troubles are over; if anything, the domestic political environment may now get more complicated.
First it's important to remember that Mr. Sharif, like former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, isn't a democrat-in-waiting. Under his leadership in the 1990s, corruption in Pakistan flourished, the military was strengthened and the judiciary weakened. So even if Mr. Sharif had been allowed to return to Pakistan yesterday, as the Supreme Court had ordered, his presence was unlikely to have promoted the speedy return of democracy.
But by not allowing Mr. Sharif into the country, President Pervez Musharraf has set himself up for another possible confrontation with the courts that he can ill afford. Mr. Sharif's supporters have already shown themselves to be prone to violence; police fired teargas at a rowdy group outside the airport yesterday. They're not likely to be mollified by a government explanation of why Mr. Sharif "agreed" to go back to Saudi Arabia, where he's been living in exile since 2000.
All of which points to Mr. Musharraf's deepening dilemma: For a man reluctant to give up power, he's under increasing pressure both at home and abroad to move democracy forward. How he does that will determine the internal stability of this volatile nuclear state.
Mr. Musharraf's choices are quickly narrowing. He can either declare martial law or move toward an alliance with Ms. Bhutto. But the longer he waits, the harder it will be for Ms. Bhutto to rally her base around such a deal. Mr. Sharif may be out of the picture for now. But the repercussions of his round trip are just beginning.
WSJ
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The Times of India -Breaking news, views. reviews, cricket from across India
Musharraf set to do a Lalu on Pakistan
15 Sep 2007, 0000 hrs IST, Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN
SMS NEWS to 58888 for latest updates
WASHINGTON: Lalu Prasad Yadav's wild popularity in Pakistan is the stuff of political lore, but Pakistanis might not have bargained for the Bihari leader's buccaneering brand of proxy politics at home.
Military ruler Pervez Musharraf is all set to do a Lalu on the hapless nation, foisting his wife Sehba as a proxy presidential candidate to get around the constitutional and judicial hurdles he faces.
Under a formula hammered out under Uncle Sam's watchful eyes, Sehba Musharraf will be a cover candidate for Musharraf in the upcoming Presidential poll, with or without Benazir Bhutto running for Prime Minister.
The military government will also allow exiled prime minister Nawaz Sharief's wife Kulsoom Nawaz to return to Pakistan and run for election if she wishes maintaining that she is not bound by the exile arrangement that has kept her husband and his brother out of the country.
That would give the exercise a modicum of respectability, while promoting the image of Pakistan as a moderate Islamic society that allows women a role in the affairs of the state.
It will also mean Pakistan emulating Bangladesh, where two women -- Begum Hasina Sheikh and Begum Khaleda Zia -- have been locked in a familial power struggle for more than a decade.
The family project -- which will come into effect only if Musharraf himself is unable to get elected --has the imprimatur of the U.S which wants a firm handle on what is now acknowledged as the world's most dangerous and unstable state without having to deal with the uncertainties of democracy.
While Musharraf will continue to be the power behind the Sehba-Benazir dispensation which is in the offing, the power behind Musharraf will be the United States, which incidentally is home to Musharraf's son Bilal, who recently graduated from Stanford, and his brother Naveed, who lives in Chicago.
The mastermind of this Made-in-USA arrangement is said to be former intelligence czar and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who is credited with managing delicate regime changes in Latin America.
Negroponte and his state department colleague, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, were very much in the picture in Islamabad when the Musharraf regime forcibly deported Nawaz Sharief with help from Bush ally, the House of Saud, in contravention of a Supreme Court ruling.
Washington has repeatedly winked at Musharraf's political, constitutional and judicial transgressions, describing them as Pakistan internal matter, while paying lip service to democracy and free elections.
In effect, while Musharraf does a Lalu on his country, Negroponte is doing a Honduras on Pakistan.
As the US ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte propped up a military government led by Policarpo Paz García as a bulwark against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua, which had close ties to both Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Political crackdowns and human rights exercise by the Garcia regime reported in the U.S media and observed by American lawmakers and activists were glossed over in Washington's ''larger'' interests, an argument that is being advanced in the Pakistan's case too vis-a-vis the war on terror.
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Pakistan's newest threat: Army officer turns suicide bomber
B Raman | September 14, 2007 | 12:17 IST
According to reliable sources in the local police, a Pashtun army officer belonging to the elite Special Services Group, whose younger sister was reportedly among the 300 girls killed during the Pakistan Army's commando raid on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad between July 10 and 13, blew himself up during dinner at the SSG's headquarters mess at Tarbela Ghazi, 100 km south of Islamabad, on the night of September 13, killing 19 other officers.
The incident coincided with United States Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte's visit to Kabul and Islamabad for talks with leaders and officials of the two governments.
According to the same sources, the Pashtun army officer belonged to South Waziristan, but Tarbela Ghazi is not located in the tribal belt. The SSG, to which General Pervez Musharraf belonged, was specially trained by the US Special Forces for covert operations and for counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency duties.
The usually well-informed News of Pakistan reported as follows on September 14: 'The area where the incident occurred is the headquarters of the Special Services Group also known as SSG and Special Operation Task Force of the Pakistan Army. Sources said the blast was so powerful that it destroyed the Officers Mess. There are also reports that a company known as Karar of the SSG based in the area had taken part in the operation on Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad where hundreds of religious students, including religious school administrator, Maulana Abdur Rashid Ghazi, were killed. ...There were rumours that CIA personnel were also present in the area where the blast occurred.'
According to the police sources, a training team of the Central Intelligence Agency and a team of technical intelligence personnel of the US National Security Agency were also stationed at Tarbela Ghazi. The NSA personnel were reportedly running a monitoring station to intercept communications of Al Qaeda and the neo-Taliban.
While there are no reports of any American casualties, there have been rumours that the NSA's monitoring station was badly damaged. It is not clear whether it was damaged by the impact of the explosion inside the officers' mess or by a separate explosion.
Pakistani army sources initially projected the incident as due to the explosion of a cooking gas cylinder. Subsequently, they said it was caused by a remote-controlled improvised explosive device and then that it was caused by an unidentified suicide bomber, who drove a vehicle filled with explosives into the mess at dinner time.
They have not so far admitted that it was actually caused by a Pashtun officer of the SSG itself and not an outsider. No other details are available so far.
The daring attack came two days after another attack of suicide terrorism in which at least 17 people, including three security forces personnel, were killed and 16 others injured when a 15-year-old Mehsud suicide bomber blew himself up in a passenger van at Bannu Adda in Dera Ismail Khan district of the North-West Frontier Province on September 11.
The Pakistan army has not been able to re-establish its writ over South and North Waziristan, where the Mehsuds and the Uzbeks supporting them have been holding in custody 240 members of the security forces captured by them and have been repeatedly attacking posts of the army and the Frontier Corps. Repeated use of helicopter gunships by the army has not had any impact on the various sub-tribes of Pashtuns, who have been attacking the security forces almost daily.
URL for this article: http://ia.rediff.com/news/2007/sep/14raman.htm
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http://hotair.com/archives/2007/09/20/breaking-osama-to-deliver-new-audio-tape-declares-war-on-pakistan/
So, should our "friend" Mushy buy green bananas?
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http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/09/print/obl_pakistan_transcript.php
Counterterrorism Blog
Bin Laden "Come to Jihad" Pakistan Message Transcript
By Jeffrey Imm
From Laura Mansfield - complete transcript of Osama Bin Laden September 20, 2007 message "Come to Jihad"
Image from Laura Mansfield
Complete message video link - from Laura Mansfield
CTB Analysis posting - September 20, 2007
"Come to Jihad: A Speech to the People of Pakistan
Shaykh Usama bin Ladin
(May Allah protect him)
September 2007/Ramadan 1428"
"All praise is due to Allah. We praise Him and seek His aid and forgiveness, and we seek refuge in Allah from the evil in ourselves and from our bad deeds. He whom Allah guides cannot be led astray, and he who is led astray cannot be guided. I bear witness that there is no God other than Allah alone, without partners, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger."
"As for what comes after:"
"To my Muslim brothers in Pakistan:"
"Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.
"Allah, the Most High, says, 'O Prophet! Strive hard against the disbelievers and the Hypocrites, and be harsh against them. Their abode is Hell, and an evil destination it is.' (9:73) And the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, says, 'There is no one who abandons a Muslim in a place where his honor is violated and his sanctity is infringed upon except that Allah, the Most High, abandons him in a place in which he would like His aid. And there is no one who aids a Muslim in a place where his honor is violated and his sanctity is infringed upon except that Allah aids him in a place in which he would like His aid.' (Narrated by Ahmad)"
"Pervez's invasion of Lal Masjid in the City of Islam, Islamabad, is a sad event, like the crime of the Hindus in their invasion and destruction of the Babari Masjid. And this event has crucial and critical connotations, most important of which are:"
"First, this event demonstrated Musharraf's insistence on continuing his loyalty, submissiveness and aid to America against the Muslims, and this is one of the ten nullifiers of Islam, as the people of knowledge have determined, and makes armed rebellion against him and removing him obligatory. Allah, the Most High, says, 'O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guides not a people unjust.' (5:51) And His statement 'And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them' means that he is of them in Kufr (unbelief), as the people of Tafseer (explanation) have said. This ruling was the one given and confirmed by Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, may Allah have mercy on him, in his famous Fatwa following the raids on New York, and among the things which he said: 'If any ruler of an Islamic state provides aid to an infidel state in its aggression against the Islamic states, it is the legal obligation of the Muslims to remove him from power and consider him to be legally a traitor to Islam and Muslims.' People of Islam in Pakistan: Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, may Allah have mercy on him, discharged a great duty which was upon him, and declared the word of truth and didn't care about the anger of the creation. He endangered himself and his wealth and made clear the ruling of Allah regarding Pervez: that he is a traitor to Islam and Muslims and must be removed. This Fatwa enraged Pervez and enraged his masters in America, and it is my opinion that the murder of the Mufti - may Allah have mercy on him - was at their hands. And Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai died without having replaced the word of truth with falsehood, in contrast to what many of the 'Ulama of vice do. And the obligation on us remains, and we have been extremely late in carrying it out, six years having passed, so we should make up for lost time. May Allah forgive me as well as you."
"Second, the government's showing of Maulana Abd al-Aziz Ghazi in women's clothing in the media is clear evidence of the extent of the great hostility, hatred and contempt held by Pervez and his government towards Islam and its sincere 'Ulama, and that is greater Kufr which takes one out of Islam. Allah, the Most High, says, "And if you question them, they will most surely say, 'We were only talking idly and jesting.' Say, 'Was it Allah and His Signs and His Messenger which you were mocking?' Make no excuses. You have certainly disbelieved after believing. If We forgive a party from among you, a party We shall punish, for they are criminals." (9:65-66) And read, if you wish, the Tafseer of Ibn Katheer - may Allah have mercy on him - regarding this Ayat."
"Third, in such events, the people are tested and the friends of the Most Merciful are separated from the friends of Satan. The 'Ulama who are from the friends of the Most Merciful declare the truth, and if they are unable or are weak, they observe silence and don't help falsehood with their words or actions. As for the friends of Satan, they are led by Pakistani military intelligence to speak falsehood and help its people. Some of them deem it obligatory to unite with Pervez and his army, while others deem as Haraam martyrdom-seeking fedayee operations against the soldiers of the Taghut (idol-king), while still others assail the Mujahideen, slandering and defaming them. And this is the way of the Munafiqeen (Hypocrites). Allah, the Most High, says, "They are stingy [in helping] you. And when danger comes, you see them looking towards you, their eyes rolling like one fainting as death approaches. But when the fear has passed away, they assail you with sharp tongues, being stingy with good deeds. Those have never believed, so Allah has rendered their works null and void. And that is easy for Allah." (33:19)"
"So everyone who refrained from helping the Imam Maulana Abd al-Rashid Ghazi is from the sitters, whereas those who attacked him to help Pervez, claiming that Islam isn't established through fighting and calling fighting in the path of Allah "terrorism" - in the context of invective - and saying that the way is through peaceful demonstrations and democratic methods are from those who have gone astray and followed the path of the Munafiqeen."
"Nearly two decades ago, the soil of Pakistan saw and was watered by the blood of a great Imam of the Imams of Islam - i.e. the Mujahid champion Imam Abdullah Azzam, may Allah have mercy on him - and today, we have seen another great Imam, not at the level of Pakistan alone, but at the level of the entire Islamic Ummah: i.e. the Imam Maulana Abd al-Rashid Ghazi, may Allah have mercy on him. He, his brothers, his students and the female students of Jami'ah Hafsa demanded the application of the Shari'ah of Islam, as the reason for our creation is that we worship Allah the Most High through His religion, al-Islam, and they were killed because of this great objective. Allah, the Most High, says, "And I have not created jinn and men but that they may worship Me." (51:56) They sacrificed the great thing they owned: they sacrificed themselves for their religion. I ask Allah to accept them among the martyrs. They were killed treacherously and treasonously at the hands of the apostate infidel Pervez and his aides. The purpose of the army - or so they say - is to protect the Muslims against the Kuffaar, but now we see the armies becoming tools and weapons in the hands of the Kuffaar against the Muslims. Pervez threw away the cause of Kashmir and restrained those fighting to liberate it, in accordance with the wishes of the Hindus and Nazarenes. Then he opened his bases and airports to America for invading the Muslims in Afghanistan, and as you've seen before, the army attacked the people of Swat who also demanded the rule of Shari'ah, and attacked the people of Waziristan, in addition to betraying and extraditing hundreds of Arab Mujahideen from the grandsons of the Sahabah (Companions), with whom Allah was pleased, to the head of Kufr, America. So Pervez, his ministers, his soldiers and those who help him are all accomplices in the spilling the blood of those of the Muslims who have been killed. He who helps him knowingly and willingly is an infidel like him, and as for he who helps him knowingly and under compulsion, his compulsion isn't legally valid, as the soul of the one forced to kill isn't better than the soul of the one killed, and the Messenger of Allah - peace and blessings of Allah be upon him - said, "Were all the inhabitants of the heavens and earth to participate in the spilling of a believer's blood, Allah - the Great and Glorious - would throw them into the Fire." So I tell the soldiers who perform the Salaat (prayer) in the military organs: you must resign from your jobs and enter anew into Islam and disassociate yourself from Pervez and his Shirk (polytheism)."
"Some of the Munafiqeen among the 'Ulama of vice and others may say that Islam orders us to stay together and the people to unite with the army and government to stand in the face of the enemies and avoid Fitnah (strife). I say: the one who says this is creating lies about Allah. The government and army have become enemies of the Ummah, after becoming a weapon in the hands of the Kuffaar against the Muslims. And they refuse to rule by the religion of Islam in all of life's affairs, like politics, economy, social life and other matters. Allah has ordered these and their like to be fought, not to be united with and hung onto, as those hypocrites claim. Allah, the Most High, says, "And fight them until there is no Fitnah [polytheism], and religion is wholly for Allah." (8:39) So if some of the religion is for Allah and some of it is for other than Allah, fighting is obligatory to make the religion entirely for Allah, the Most High."
"By the grace of Allah, the Most High, we performed Jihad with the Afghan Mujahideen against the Russians, and the Afghan army was a weapon in their hands against us. They would pray and fast, but despite that, the senior 'Ulama of the Islamic world, including the 'Ulama of Pakistan, ruled that they are to be fought. And after the exit of the Russians, the 'Ulama of Pakistan also supported Taliban against the Northern Alliance, although they also pray and fast. So is there any difference between Pervez and his soldiers and Ahmad Shah Massoud, Rabbani and Sayyaf and their soldiers? There is no difference at all. All of them have pledged to the Crusaders to fight true Islam and its people, and those who say it is forbidden to fight Pervez and his soldiers and exclude him from the general ruling have an illness in their hearts: they prefer this life to the next. Allah, the Most High, says, "Are your unbelievers better than those or have you an immunity [from punishment] in the sacred books?" (54:43)"
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"I tell Pervez and his army: your betrayal of your nation and people has been exposed, and the people are no longer fooled by your showing off militarily by launching some missiles after every disaster and massacre you commit against the populace, as has occurred repeatedly in the border regions, or after the biggest massacre in Lal Masjid most recently. How is the nation benefited by these weapons and tests of yours? The same goes for the nuclear bomb itself. When the American foreign minister Powell came to you, you cowered, bowed and submitted to him like a lowly slave, and you permitted the American Crusader forces to use the air, soil and water of Pakistan, the country of Islam, to kill the people of Islam in Afghanistan, then in Waziristan. So woe to you and away with you."
"Against the peoples attacking lions"
"And against the enemy rabbits and ostriches?"
"And your going to Makkah and performing the Tawaaf (circling) of the Ka'aba won't benefit you when combined with Kufr and combating of Islam and its people. Were it to benefit anyone in combination with Kufr, it would have benefited Abu Lahab, the uncle of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him."
"Then someone might say that armed rebellion against Pervez will lead to the spilling of blood. But I say: were the order to fight the apostate ruler was from the people, like 'Amr and Zayd, then it would be permissible for minds and opinions to intervene and discuss what they should do or not do. However, as you know, the order to fight the apostate ruler is an order in the Shari'ah of Allah, and it is not permissible for the Muslim to make his opinion a rival to the order of Allah and order of His Messenger, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. Allah, the Most High, says, "And it is not for a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decided a matter, to exercise their own choice in the matter concerning them. And whoso disobeys Allah and His Messenger goes manifestly astray." (33:36) "
"So when the capability is there, it is obligatory to rebel against the apostate ruler, as is the case now. And the one who believes that the strength required to rebel has not yet been completed must complete it and take up arms against Pervez and his army without procrastination. Pervez and most of the Muslims' rulers jumped to power and usurped it and ruled us by other than what Allah sent down by force of arms, and the situation will not return to normal through elections, demonstrations and shouting. So beware of the polytheistic elections and futile actions, for iron is only dented by iron, and it is through fighting in Allah's path and exhorting of the believers that the might of the Kuffar is restrained. Allah, the Most High, said, "So fight in Allah's Cause - you are held responsible only for yourself - and rouse the believers. It may be that Allah will restrain the might of the unbelievers. And Allah is strongest in might and strongest in punishment." (4:84)"
"Fighting in Allah's path is an act of worship, and it is based on sacrifice of selves. Muslim blood is spilled and poured out to protect the religion, which only reached us after his (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) cuspid tooth was broken, his head cut open and his noble face bloodied, and after the blood of the best of people, like Hamza, Mus'ab, Zaid and Ja'afar (with whom Allah was pleased), was poured out. This is the path, so follow it."
"The people have forgotten the path of victory"
"They think it comes easily"
"Or without blood running"
"Where is the Jihad of the Messenger of Allah? (Peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)"
"So to sum up: It is obligatory on the Muslims in Pakistan to carry out Jihad and fighting to remove Pervez, his government, his army and those who help him. And it is obligatory on them to pledge allegiance to an Amir of the Believers who observes the rule of Shari'ah rather than Pervez's polytheistic positive-law constitution. And the Muslims will not be successful in liberating themselves from slavery to Pervez and his polytheistic laws until they are successful in liberating themselves from many of the leaders and 'Ulama falsely affiliated with Islam who are in fact the first line of defense for Pervez and his government and army. You have seen with your own eyes the stances they took previously, when, rather than moving to break the siege placed on the Muslims of Afghanistan, they moved to break the siege placed on the bases and airports which Pervez gave to America and from which the planes were taking off to pound us in Tora Bora, Kabul, Kandahar, Paktia, Nangarhar and other places. And for your information, Pervez only dared to invade Lal Masjid and Jami'ah Hafsa after he was satisfied that most of the 'Ulama and leaders of the Jama'ats (groups) had renounced the Jihad which Allah the Most High legislated to enforce the truth and whose banner was tied by the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), and replaced it with polytheistic democratic solutions and with peaceful demonstrations and bogus threats to absorb the anger of the masses. Pervez had tested them before, when he broke the back of the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan, after which they came to him voluntarily and of their own accord to participate in the polytheistic parliament, as if nothing had happened."
"So O people of Islam in Pakistan: the truth is greater than everyone, and if truth is not greater than everyone and if we don't apply the Hudood (punishments) to both the nobleman and weak, that is the road to ruin, as the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) informed, "Those before you were ruined because when the nobleman among them stole, they would let him go, but when the weak one among them stole, they would execute on him the Hadd (punishment). And by He in whose Hand is my soul, were Fatima, daughter of Muhammad, to steal, I would cut off her hand." (Agreed upon)"
"O youth of Islam in Pakistan: the Pen is writing what is for you and what is against you, and it won't benefit you to make excuses by saying that many of your 'Ulama and leaders have allied themselves to the infidel rulers and that the rest have failed to speak the truth and declare it out of fear of the ruling Taghuts, except those on whom Allah has had mercy, and these are either in prison or on the run. This huge disaster - i.e. the marching of the 'Ulama of vice in line with the apostate ruler and their currying favor with him and attacking of the sincere Mujahid 'Ulama - isn't peculiar to Pakistan, but rather, is a disaster covering the entire Islamic Ummah. And there is no power nor might except with Allah."
"So O people of Islam in Pakistan: every one of you will come alone to Allah, the Most High, and be held to account for his own actions, so discharge your duty. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) has said, "The smart one is he who subdues his self and works for what comes after death, and the feeble one is he who lets his self chase after its desires and [then] hopes from Allah." And be aware that if the Jihad becomes an individual obligation, as is the case today, there are only two ways with no third: either Jihad, which is the way of the Messenger, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, and those who believed with him, or sitting, which is the way of the disobedient ones and Munafiqeen. So make your choice. Allah, the Most High, says, "They prefer to be with the womenfolk who remain behind at home, so their hearts are sealed so that they understand not. But the Messenger and those who believe with him strive [in the cause of Allah] with their wealth and their persons, and it is they who shall have good things, and it is they who shall prosper." (9:87-88)"
"And we in al-Qaida Organization call on Allah to witness that we will retaliate for the blood of Maulana Abd al-Rashid Ghazi and those with him against Musharraf and those who help him, and for all the pure and innocent blood, foremost of which is the blood of the champions of Islam in Waziristan - both North and South - among them the two noble leaders, Nek Muhammad and Abdullah Mahsud. May Allah have mercy on them all. The tribes of Waziristan have made a great stand in the face of international Kufr - America, its allies and its agents - and the major states have been unable to make the stands they have made. They have been made resolute in this stance by their Iman (faith) in Allah, the Most High, and their Tawakkul (reliance) on Him, and they have withstood huge sacrifices of souls and wealth. We ask Allah to compensate them well. And the Muslims shall not forget these magnificent stances, and the blood of the 'Ulama of Islam and leaders of the Muslims and their offspring will not be spilled in vain or neglected as long as there remains in us a pulsing vein or a blinking eye. We ask Allah to help us to fulfill that."
"O Allah, our Lord, accept those of our brothers and sisters who have been killed among the martyrs and heal the wounded; O Allah, make their graves spacious for them, and take care of their families and raise their grades in 'Illiyeen (Heaven); O Allah, Pervez, his ministers, his 'Ulama and his soldiers have been hostile to your friends in Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially in Waziristan, Swat, Bajaur and Lal Masjid: O Allah, break their backs, split them up and destroy their unity; O Allah, afflict them with the loss of their dear ones as they have afflicted us with the loss of our dear ones; O Allah, we seek refuge in You from their evilness and we place You at their throats; O Allah, make their plotting their destruction; O Allah, suffice for us against them with whatever You wish; O Allah, destroy them, for they cannot escape You; O Allah, count them, kill them, and leave not even one of them; O Allah, our Lord, give us in this world goodness and in the last goodness, and protect us from the torment of the Fire; O Allah, send prayers and peace on our Prophet Muhammad and on all his family and Companions."
By Jeffrey Imm on September 20, 2007 3:30 PM
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AFGHANISTAN: The process of letting Afghan forces take over from NATO in large-scale regional security operations in Afghanistan has already begun and is expected to be complete by 2009 or 2010, NATO Brig. Gen. Vincent Lafontaine said. The Afghan National Army is expected to reach 70,000 troops by 2009, and NATO troops will help with their training and conduct of operations.
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LOS ANGELES, Oct. 3 — The studio distributing “The Kite Runner,” a tale of childhood betrayal, sexual predation and ethnic tension in Afghanistan, is delaying the film’s release to get its three schoolboy stars out of Kabul — perhaps permanently — in response to fears that they could be attacked for their enactment of a culturally inflammatory rape scene.
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Trailer: 'The Kite Runner'
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Ahmad Jaan Mahmoodzada, father of Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, an actor in “Kite Runner.”
Executives at the distributor, Paramount Vantage, are contending with issues stemming from the rising lawlessness in Kabul in the year since the boys were cast.
The boys and their relatives are now accusing the filmmakers of mistreatment, and warnings have been relayed to the studio from Afghan and American officials and aid workers that the movie could aggravate simmering enmities between the politically dominant Pashtun and the long-oppressed Hazara.
In an effort to prevent not only a public-relations disaster but also possible violence, studio lawyers and marketing bosses have employed a stranger-than-fiction team of consultants. In August they sent a retired Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorism operative in the region to Kabul to assess the dangers facing the child actors. And on Sunday a Washington-based political adviser flew to the United Arab Emirates to arrange a safe haven for the boys and their relatives.
“If we’re being overly cautious, that’s O.K.,” Karen Magid, a lawyer for Paramount, said. “We’re in uncharted territory.”
In interviews, more than a dozen people involved in the studio’s response described grappling with vexing questions: testing the limits of corporate responsibility, wondering who was exploiting whom and pondering the price of on-screen authenticity.
“The Kite Runner,” like the best-selling 2003 novel by Khaled Hosseini on which it is based, spans three decades of Afghan strife, from before the Soviet invasion through the rise of the Taliban. At its heart is a friendship between Amir, a wealthy Pashtun boy played by Zekiria Ebrahimi, and Hassan, the Hazara son of Amir’s father’s servant. In a pivotal scene Hassan is raped in an alley by a Pashtun bully. Later, Sohrab, a Hazara boy played by Ali Danish Bakhty Ari, is preyed on by a corrupt Taliban official.
Though the book is admired in Afghanistan by many in the elite, its narrative remains unfamiliar to the broader population, for whom oral storytelling and rumor communication carry far greater weight.
The Taliban destroyed nearly all movie theaters in Afghanistan, but pirated DVDs often arrive soon after a major film’s release in the West. As a result, Paramount Vantage, the art-house and specialty label of Paramount Pictures, has pushed back the release of the $18 million movie by six weeks, to Dec. 14, when the young stars’ school year will have ended.
In January in Afghanistan, DVDs of “Kabul Express” — an Indian film in which a character hurls insults at Hazara — led to protests, government denunciations and calls for the execution of the offending actor, who fled the country.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the “Kite Runner” actor who plays Hassan, Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, 12, told reporters at that time that he feared for his life because his fellow Hazara might feel humiliated by his rape scene. His father said he himself was misled by the film’s producers, insisting that they never told him of the scene until it was about to be shot and that they had promised to cut it.
Hangama Anwari, the child-rights commissioner for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said on Monday that she had urged Paramount’s counterterrorism consultant to get Ahmad Khan out of the country, at least until after the movie is released. “They should not play around with the lives and security of people,” she said of the filmmakers. “The Hazara people will take it as an insult.”
The film’s director, Marc Forster, whose credits include “Finding Neverland” (2004), another film starring child actors, said he saw “The Kite Runner” as “giving a voice and a face to people who’ve been voiceless and faceless for the last 30 years.” Striving for authenticity, he said, he chose to make the film in Dari, an Afghan language, and his casting agent, Kate Dowd, held open calls in cities with sizable Afghan communities, including Fremont, Calif., Toronto and The Hague. But to no avail: Mr. Forster said he “just wasn’t connecting with anybody.”
Finally, when Ms. Dowd went to Kabul in May 2006, she discovered her stars. “There was such innocence to them, despite all they’d lived through,” she said.
Mr. Forster emphasized that casting Afghan boys did not seem risky at the time; local filmmakers even encouraged him, he said: “You really felt it was safe there, a democratic process was happening, and stability, and a new beginning.”
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Ms. Dowd and E. Bennett Walsh, a producer, said they met in Kabul with Ahmad Khan’s father, Ahmad Jaan Mahmoodzada, and told him that his son’s character was the victim of a “vicious sexual assault.” Mr. Mahmoodzada seemed unmoved, they said, remarking that “bad things happen” in movies as in life. The boy, they continued, did not receive a script until a Dari translation was available on the set in western China. The rape scene was rehearsed twice, they said, once with the father present.
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Musadeq Sadeq/Associated Press
Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, one of the film’s Afghan stars.
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Trailer: 'The Kite Runner'
Phil Bray/Paramount Vantage
Khaled Hosseini, in baseball cap, author of “The Kite Runner,” and Marc Forster, director of that novel’s film version.
On Tuesday the elder Mr. Mahmoodzada, reached by cellphone, rejected this account, and said he never learned the rape was a plot point until the scene was about to be shot. He also said his son never received a script.
Mr. Forster said that during rehearsals he considered including a shot of Hassan’s pants being pulled down, exposing his backside, and that neither Ahmad Khan nor his father objected. But the morning the scene was to be filmed, Mr. Forster found the boy in tears. Ahmad Khan said he did not want to be shown nude, Mr. Forster agreed to skip that shot, and the boy went ahead with the rape scene. Mr. Mahmoodzada confirmed this.
In the final version of the film, the rape is conveyed impressionistically, with the unstrapping of a belt, the victim’s cries and a drop of blood.
The filmmakers said they were surprised when Ahmad Khan and his father told The Sunday Times of London in January that they feared for their lives. Mr. Walsh and Rebecca Yeldham, another producer, flew to Kabul to learn more in February.
The producers dispelled one fear, that the filmmakers would use computer tricks to depict the boy’s genitals in the rape scene. But Ahmad Khan’s parents also pressed for more cash, the producers said.
On the advice of a Kabul television company, the boys had been paid $1,000 to $1,500 a week, far less than the Screen Actors Guild weekly scale of $2,557, but far more than what Afghan actors typically receive.
In late July, with violence worsening in Kabul, studio executives looked for experts who could help them chart a safe course. Aided by lobbyists for Viacom, Paramount’s parent company, they found John Kiriakou, the retired C.I.A. operative with experience in the region, and had him conduct interviews in Washington and Kabul.
“They wanted to do the right thing, but they wanted to understand what the right thing was,” Mr. Kiriakou said.
There was one absolute: “Nothing will be done if it puts any kid at risk,” Megan Colligan, head of marketing at Paramount Vantage, said.
Mr. Kiriakou’s briefing, which he reprised in a telephone interview, could make a pretty good movie by itself. A specialist on Islam at the State Department nearly wept envisioning a “Danish-cartoons situation,” Mr. Kiriakou said. An Afghan literature professor, he added, said Paramount was “willing to burn an already scorched nation for a fistful of dollars.” The head of an Afghan political party said the movie would energize the Taliban. Nearly everyone Mr. Kiriakou met said that the boys had to be removed from Afghanistan for their safety. And a Hazara member of Parliament warned that Pashtun and Hazara “would be killing each other every night” in response to the film’s depiction of them. None of the interviewees had seen the movie.
Another consultant, whom Paramount did not identify, gave a less bleak assessment, but Ms. Colligan said the studio was taking no chances. “The only thing you get people to agree on is that the place is getting messier every single day,” she said.
So on Sunday Rich Klein, a Middle East specialist at the consulting firm Kissinger McLarty Associates, flew to the United Arab Emirates to arrange visas, housing and schooling for the young actors and jobs for their guardians. (The United States is not an option, he said, because Afghans do not qualify for refugee status.)
Those involved say that the studio doesn’t want to be taken advantage of, but that it could accept responsibility for the boys’ living expenses until they reach adulthood, a cost some estimated at up to $500,000. The families, of course, must first agree to the plan.
“I think there was a moral obligation even before any of these things were an issue,” said Mr. Hosseini, the novel’s author, who got to know the boys on the set. “How long that obligation lasts? I don’t know that anybody has the answer to that.”
NY Times
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By KIRK SEMPLE and TIM GOLDEN
Published: October 8, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 7 — After the biggest opium harvest in Afghanistan’s history, American officials have renewed efforts to persuade the government here to begin spraying herbicide on opium poppies, and they have found some supporters within President Hamid Karzai’s administration, officials of both countries said.
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Taliban Raise Poppy Production to a Record Again (August 26, 2007)
The New York Times
Helmand accounts for nearly half Afghanistan’s opium.
Since early this year, Mr. Karzai has repeatedly declared his opposition to spraying the poppy fields, whether by crop-dusting airplanes or by eradication teams on the ground.
But Afghan officials said the Karzai administration is now re-evaluating that stance. Some proponents within the government are pushing a trial program of ground spraying that could begin before the harvest next spring.
The issue has created sharp divisions within the Afghan government, among its Western allies and even American officials of different agencies. The matter is fraught with political danger for Mr. Karzai, whose hold on power is weak.
Many spraying advocates, including officials at the White House and the State Department, view herbicides as critical to curbing Afghanistan’s poppy crop, officials said. That crop and the opium and heroin it produces have become a major source of revenue for the Taliban insurgency.
But officials said the skeptics — who include American military and intelligence officials and European diplomats in Afghanistan — fear that any spraying of American-made chemicals over Afghan farms would be a boon to Taliban propagandists. Some of those officials say that the political cost could be especially high if the herbicide destroys food crops that farmers often plant alongside their poppies.
“There has always been a need to balance the obvious greater effectiveness of spray against the potential for losing hearts and minds,” Thomas A. Schweich, the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics issues, said in an interview last week in Washington. “The question is whether that’s manageable. I think that it is.”
Bush administration officials say they will respect whatever decision the Afghan government makes. Crop-eradication efforts, they insist, are only part of a new counternarcotics strategy that will include increased efforts against traffickers, more aid for legal agriculture and development, and greater military support for the drug fight.
Behind the scenes, however, Bush administration officials have been pressing the Afghan government to at least allow the trial spray of glyphosate, a commonly used weed-killer, current and former American officials said. Ground spraying would likely bring only a modest improvement over the manual destruction of poppy plants, but officials who support the strategy hope it would reassure Afghans about the safety of the herbicide and make eradication possible.
Aerial spraying, they add, may be the only way to make a serious impact on opium production while the Taliban continues to dominate parts of southern Afghanistan.
On Sunday, officials said, a State Department crop-eradication expert briefed key members of Mr. Karzai’s cabinet about the effectiveness and safety of glyphosate. The expert, Charles S. Helling, a senior scientific adviser to the department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, met with, among others, the ministers of public health and agriculture, both of whom have opposed the use of herbicides, an Afghan official said.
For all the controversy over herbicide use, there is no debate that Afghanistan’s drug problem is out of control. The country now produces 93 percent of the world’s opiates, according to United Nations estimates. Its traffickers are also processing more opium into heroin base there, a shift that has helped to increase Afghanistan’s drug revenues exponentially since the American-led invasion in 2001.
A United Nations report in August documented a 17 percent rise in poppy cultivation from 2006 to 2007, and a 34 percent rise in opium production. Perhaps more important for the effort to stabilize Afghanistan, officials said, the Taliban has been reaping a windfall from taxes on the growers and traffickers.
The problem is most acute in the southern province of Helmand, a Taliban stronghold. It produced nearly 4,400 metric tons of opium this year, almost half the country’s total output, United Nations statistics show.
Moreover, as Afghanistan’s opium production has soared, the government’s eradication efforts have faltered. Federal and provincial eradication teams — using sticks, sickles and animal-drawn plows — cut down about 47,000 acres of poppy fields this year, 24 percent more than last year but still less than 9 percent of the country’s total poppy crop.
And even that effort had to be negotiated plot by plot with growers. Powerful and politically connected landowners were able to protect their crops while smaller, weaker farmers were made the targets. The eradication program was so spotty that it did little to discourage farmers from cultivating the crop, American and European officials said.
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“The eradication process over the past five years has not worked,” Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said in an interview. “This year, it was a farce.”
A United Nations report estimates that the country’s cultivation of poppy buds has risen 17 percent in the last year.
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has opposed spraying but his administration is re-evaluating that stance.
The Americans have been pushing the Afghan government to eradicate with glyphosate for at least two years. According to current and former American officials, the subject has been raised with President Karzai by President Bush; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser; and John P. Walters, the director of national drug-control policy.
American officials thought they had the Karzai administration’s support late last year to begin a small-scale pilot program for ground spraying in several provinces. But that plan was derailed in January after an American-educated deputy minister of public health presented health and environmental concerns about glyphosate at a meeting of the Karzai cabinet, Afghan and American officials said.
Since then, Mr. Karzai has said he opposes spraying of any kind.
“President Karzai has categorically rejected that spraying will happen,” Farooq Wardak, Afghanistan’s minister of state for parliamentary affairs, said in a recent interview. “The collateral damage of that will be huge.”
Yet in the weeks since the latest United Nations drug report, the Bush administration’s lobbying appears to have made new headway. It has already won the backing of several members of Mr. Karzai’s government and the spray advocates here are now trying to swing other key Afghan officials and Mr. Karzai himself, one high-level Afghan official said
“We are working to convince the key ministers and President Karzai to accept this strategy,” said the official, who supports spraying but asked not to be identified because of the issue’s political delicacy. “We want to convince them to show some power. The government has to show its power in the remote provinces.”
General Khodaidad, Afghanistan’s acting minister of counternarcotics (who, like many Afghans, goes by only one name), said in an interview last week that ground spraying is under careful consideration by the Afghan government. A high-level official of the Karzai administration said he believed some spraying might take place during this growing season, which begins in several weeks.
The American government contends that glyphosate is one of the world’s safest herbicides — “less toxic than common salt, aspirin, caffeine, nicotine and even vitamin A,” according to a State Department fact sheet.
One well known supporter of glyphosate as a counternarcotics tool is the American ambassador in Kabul, William B. Wood, who arrived in April after a four-year posting as ambassador to Colombia. There, Mr. Wood oversaw the American-financed counternarcotics program, Plan Colombia, which relies heavily on the aerial spraying of coca, the raw material for cocaine.
Mr. Wood has even offered to have himself sprayed with glyphosate, as one of his predecessors in Colombia once did, to prove its safety, a United States Embassy official in Kabul said.
But among European diplomats here, a far greater concern than any environmental or health dangers of chemical eradication is the potential for political fallout that could lead to more violence and instability.
Those diplomats worry particularly that aerial spraying would kill food crops that some farmers plant with their poppies. European officials add that any form of spraying could be cast by the Taliban as American chemical warfare against the Afghan peasantry.
The British have been so concerned that on the eve of Mr. Karzai’s trip to Camp David in August, Prime Minister Gordon Brown called President Bush and asked him not to pressure the Afghan premier to use herbicides, according to several diplomats here.
In something of a reversal of traditional roles, officials at the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency have also challenged the White House and State Department support for spraying, raising concerns about its potential to destabilize the Karzai government, current and former American officials said.
American officials who support herbicide use do not dismiss such concerns. They say an extensive public-information campaign would have to be carried out in conjunction with any spraying effort to dispel fears about the chemical’s impacts.
Mr. Schweich, the assistant secretary of state, emphasized that a new American counter-narcotics strategy for Afghanistan, introduced in August, went far beyond eradication. He noted that it would increase punishments and rewards, including large amounts of development aid, to move farmers away from poppy cultivation. It also calls for more forceful eradication, interdiction and law enforcement efforts, and closer coordination of counternarcotics and counterinsurgency efforts, which until now have been pursued separately.
“We will do what the Afghan government wants to do,” Mr. Schweich said, referring to the use of herbicides. The Bush administration, he added, simply wants to ensure that the Afghans “have all the facts on the table.”
NY Times
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Musharraf in the Middle
By NAJAM SETHI
October 11, 2007; Page A20
Lahore, Pakistan
When Gen. Pervez Musharraf won 99% of the votes cast in Pakistan's presidential election on Saturday -- an election that was boycotted by the opposition, no less -- one national newspaper headline aptly screamed: "Musharraf steals the show." Not quite yet, that is: The Supreme Court will decide later this month whether or not to validate the election results. If it does, Mr. Musharraf has promised to doff his uniform and hold elections. If it doesn't, he may impose martial law.
This acute uncertainty has created a flurry of debate here and, more importantly, in Washington, where the Bush administration is belatedly working out how to proceed. Is Mr. Musharraf a failing military dictator or a burgeoning democrat? And more importantly, should the U.S. back him or ditch him? The answer isn't as clear cut as the White House might like.
The radical view, outlined by Sandy Berger and Bruce Riedel in yesterday's International Herald Tribune, proposes to ditch Mr. Musharraf altogether and push for "free and fair elections." In this perfect world, a secular civilian government with legitimacy to tackle religious extremism would emerge, saving America's face.
But this kind of proposal grossly misrepresents the on-the-ground reality. Free and fair elections would likely produce a deeply divided polity, one in which the religious forces would likely hold the balance of power between Benazir Bhutto's secular People's Power Party (PPP) and Mr. Musharraf's conservative ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML). In the absence of Mr. Musharraf, the PML would most certainly ally with the Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA), an alliance of five bitterly anti-American religious parties.
If that happened, the first casualty of a rightwing coalition government would be Washington's war on terror. In the political paralysis that would inevitably follow, the Pakistani army would welcome the opportunity to retreat to the barracks rather than fight "its own people" in the border provinces. Then America wouldn't have Mr. Musharraf to lean on to "do more" to fight terror; it would have to go it alone.
Other analysts contend that the U.S. should not back an emerging alliance between Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Musharraf because the former is corrupt and the latter is unpopular. That leaves ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif in contention. Ousted by Mr. Musharraf in 1999 and exiled to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Sharif gained in popularity recently when he tried, unsuccessfully, to defy the president and return to Pakistan last month.
A Sharif government probably wouldn't be much to America's liking, either. Mr. Sharif is a deeply conservative politician who has always ruled in alliance with the mullahs, going so far as to pass various Islamic laws to appease them. Recently, he set up the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM) to oppose Mr. Musharraf. This grouping comprises all the religious and anti-American parties in the country. Like Ms. Bhutto, Mr. Sharif has dodged corruption charges. When he was in power, he suppressed the free press with a vengeance. Under the circumstances, he is hardly likely to prove Pakistan's long lost democratic savior and champion of the war on religious extremism.
That leaves Mr. Musharraf, who is quickly consolidating his power base. On Monday, he named Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the former head of the Interservices Intelligence, vice chief of the army. That puts Mr. Kayani, a Musharraf loyalist, in line to become the next army chief. Another trusted aide, Gen. Tariq Majeed, became chairman of the joint chiefs of staff committee. Mr. Musharraf is also strengthening his position by rupturing the MMA's grip on the volatile North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan and his influence is growing in the Taliban-al-Qaeda infested tribal badlands of Waziristan.
Mr. Musharraf's alliance with Ms. Bhutto isn't perfect, by any means. The twice-sacked former prime minister Ms. Bhutto, a pro-West liberal in self-exile since 1997, struck a deal to have her corruption charges dropped in exchange for supporting Mr. Musharraf's bid for the presidency. Mr. Musharraf, who's survived three assassination attempts, remains deeply unpopular with middle-class Pakistanis because he is perceived as a U.S. puppet and an anti-Islamic secularist. Ms. Bhutto, by contrast, is still quite popular. But that may not matter: Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban-al Qaeda commander in Waziristan, says he is planning to welcome her back home with suicide bombers "because she is an American agent."
The Bush administration can't ask Mr. Musharraf to "do more" in the war against radical Islam at a time when he is so unpopular at home, nor can they ask him to hold free and fair elections immediately and quit the scene. The best bet for Pakistan and its friends abroad would be a liberal-secular civil-military alliance that leads to a stable and moderate government. Sometimes, that takes more patience than Washington is willing to extend.
Mr. Sethi is editor of the Friday Times and Daily Times in Lahore, Pakistan.
WSJ
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Campaigning
In the Face
Of Terror
By BENAZIR BHUTTO
October 23, 2007; Page A19
I survived an assassination attempt last week, but 140 of my supporters and security didn't.
This mass murder was particularly sinister, since it targeted not just me and my party leadership, but the hundreds of thousands (some estimate up to three million) of our citizens who came out to welcome me and demonstrate their support for democracy and the democratic process. Their deaths weigh heavily on my heart.
Oct. 18 underscores the critical situation we confront in Pakistan today -- trying to campaign for free, fair and transparent elections under the threat of terrorism. It demonstrates the logistical, strategic and moral challenge before us. How do we bring the election campaign to the people under the very real threat of assassination and mass casualties of the innocent?
The attack on me was not totally unexpected. I had received credible information that I was being targeted by elements that wanted to disrupt the democratic process -- specifically that Baitul Masood (an Afghan who leads the Taliban forces in North Waziristan), Hamza bin Laden (an Arab), and a Red Mosque militant had been sent to kill me. I also feared that they were being used by their sympathizers, who have infiltrated the security and administration of my country, and who now fear that the return of democracy will thwart their plans.
We had tried to take precautions. We requested permission to import a bulletproof vehicle. We asked to be provided technology that would detect and disarm IEDs. We had demanded that I receive the level of security to which I'm entitled as a former prime minister.
Now, after the carnage, the fact that the street lights around the assassination site -- Shahra e Faisal -- had been turned off, allowing the suicide bombers to gain access near to my truck, is very suspicious. I am so discomfited that the bomb investigation has been assigned to Deputy Inspector General Manzoor Mughal, who was present when my husband was almost murdered under torture some years back.
Obviously I knew the risks. I had been targeted twice before by al Qaeda assassins, including the infamous Ramzi Yousef. Knowing the modus operandi of these terrorists, coming back to the same target again (i.e. the World Trade Center), certainly underscored the danger.
Some in the Pakistani government criticized my return to Pakistan, and my plan to visit the mausoleum of the tomb of the founder of my country, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. But here was my dilemma. I had been in exile for eight painful years. Pakistan is a country of mass, grassroots, people-to-people politics. It is not California or New York, where candidates can campaign through paid media and targeted direct mail. That technology is not only logistically impossible, but it is inconsistent with our political culture.
The people of Pakistan -- whatever political party they may belong to -- want and expect to see and hear their party leaders, and be directly part of the political process. They expect mass rallies and caravans, and to hear directly from their leaders through bullhorns and loud speakers. Under normal conditions it is challenging. Under the terrorist threat, it is extraordinarily difficult. My task is to make sure that it is not impossible.
We are consulting with top political strategists on the problem. We want to be sensitive to the political culture of our nation, give people the opportunity to participate in the democratic process after eight long years of dictatorship, and educate the 100 million voters of Pakistan on the issues of the day.
But we do not want to be reckless. We do not want to endanger our leadership unnecessarily, and we certainly don't want to risk potential mass murder of my supporters. If we don't campaign, the terrorists have won and democracy is set back further. If we do campaign, we risk violence. It is an extraordinary dilemma.
We are now focusing on hybrid techniques that combine individual and mass voter contact with sharp security constraints. Where people have telephones, we can experiment with taped voice messages from me describing my issue positions and urging them to vote. In rural areas we are contemplating taped messages from me played regularly on boom boxes set up in village centers. Instead of the traditional mass caravans of Pakistani politics, we are discussing the feasibility of "virtual caravans" and "virtual mass rallies" where I would deliver important campaign addresses to large audiences all over the four provinces of Pakistan. We are thinking of new voter education and get-out-the-vote techniques that minimize my vulnerability, and minimize the opportunity for successful terrorist attacks over the next critical weeks leading to our parliamentary elections.
The sanctity of the political process must not be allowed to be destroyed by the terrorists. Democracy and moderation must be restored to Pakistan, and the way to do that is through free and fair elections establishing a legitimate government with a popular mandate -- leaders supported by the people. Intimidation by murdering cowards will not be allowed to derail Pakistan's transition to democracy.
Ms. Bhutto was prime minister of Pakistan from 1988-1990 and 1993-1996.
WSJ
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Terror vs.
Democracy
In Pakistan
By HUSAIN HAQQANI
October 25, 2007; Page A23
After more than a decade in exile, Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan, returned home to Karachi last week to throngs of cheering supporters. Her triumphal arrival was marred by a terrorist bombing that killed more than 130 people, and underscored this fact: Terrorism is a threat to Pakistan and its people, and not merely a response to the foreign policy of a distant superpower.
For too many Pakistanis, this is a hard fact to accept. Many seem to believe that the war on terrorism is America's war and that if it did not stand with the U.S., then Pakistan would be safe from attack. This is not true. Pakistan has been a terrorist target since the 1980s, when its security services got involved in proxy wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
A compilation of published figures shows the trends. In 2006, 1,471 people were killed in terrorist attacks in Pakistan. Of these, 608 were civilians, 325 were security personnel and 538 were terrorists. That's an increase over 2005, when the number of fatalities was much lower: 430 civilians, 137 terrorists and 81 security personnel.
This year terrorists stepped up their attacks even before Ms. Bhutto's return. In the first 10 months of the year, a reported 2,037 people were killed. The number of suicide bombings in Pakistan is also up compared to previous years.
Pakistan clearly has a terrorist problem and needs to fight the organizations that carry out these attacks for the sake of its own people.
The willingness of the United States to provide economic and military aid for fighting terrorism is incidental. Those who punish men for not growing a beard, or who wish to subjugate women, or who behead human beings like animals are not open to persuasion. They will not stop if Pakistan were to distance itself from the U.S.
The attack against Ms. Bhutto reflects a deep-seated anger among global jihadis who shake at the thought of a woman leading the world's only nuclear-armed, majority-Muslim country. It's not the first time this anger has been directed at Ms. Bhutto. When she was elected prime minister for the first time in 1988, fatwas were issued by radical clerics condemning her and the decision to elect her. Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 attack on New York's World Trade Center, has also admitted to plotting an attack on Ms. Bhutto in 1989.
Ms. Bhutto is clearly a brave and courageous woman who cannot and will not be deterred easily by either the threats of terrorists, or the machinations of those within Pakistan's covert security services who have consistently conspired against her. Even after the attacks, Ms. Bhutto did not change her stance against terror, nor did she back away from her demand for restoration of democracy and free and fair elections.
Ms. Bhutto's suspicion is that certain elements within Pakistan's ruling establishment might be behind the bid to kill her. These fears should not be disregarded, even though it is difficult for Gen. Pervez Musharraf to accept that some of his close friends and associates may be complicit or tolerant of mass murder. Ms. Bhutto's fears come from almost two decades of being hounded by jihadis and their allies in Pakistan's security establishment. It's crucial for Pakistan to address her concerns.
Mr. Musharraf needs to open his heart to genuine democracy. And that must include listening to the complaints lodged by the people's representatives against his friends and allies in the establishment. In any case, Mr. Musharraf has wasted six critical years in the war against terrorism by failing to purge the government and intelligence services of hard-liners who supported jihadis in the past, and who have maneuvered behind the scenes to stop true democrats from gaining power.
The massive demonstration of support for Ms. Bhutto and her Pakistan Peoples Party last Thursday confirms that her popularity remains undiminished by the political developments of the past two decades.
Before Ms. Bhutto's return, the conventional wisdom offered by many pundits and some politicians was this: Ms. Bhutto is seen to be too pro-American and too pro-Musharraf to be popular in Pakistan. But neither of these suggestions, nor the charges of corruption and misrule that have been repeatedly lodged against her over the past 19 years, seemed to carry much weight with the millions of people enthused about Ms. Bhutto's return.
From America's point of view, the good news is that the people who were cheering in the streets of Pakistan for Ms. Bhutto will likely cheer against terrorism under a government run by her. Pakistan's war against terrorism will likely make better progress with the support of the people than it has in recent years under an embattled military dictator.
Mr. Haqqani is director of Boston University's Center for International Relations and author of "Pakistan Between Mosque and Military" (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005). He has also served as an adviser to several Pakistani prime ministers, including Ms. Bhutto.
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Normally I put Michael Yon reports on the Mil-blog/Michael Yon thread, but for reasons that will be obvious once you read it, I post this one here. MY dishes it up very straight here-- the situation in Afg is fcuked.
http://michaelyon-online.com/wp/the-perfect-evil-coming-to-roost.htm
Note that there are two more parts to this report which can be found at this URL.
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NY Times: Caveat lector
GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Afghan police officers working a highway checkpoint near here noticed something odd recently about a passenger in a red pickup truck. Though covered head to toe in a burqa, the traditional veil worn by Afghan women, she was unusually tall. When the police asked her questions, she refused to answer.
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Tomas Munita for The New York Times
Afghan officials say Muhammad Kuzeubaev, 23, of Kazakhstan, is a bombmaker. He says he was visiting as a tourist.
VideoMore Video » When the veil was eventually removed, the police found not a woman at all, but Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes. Inside the truck was 1,000 pounds of explosives.
Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.
The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.
They are also helping to change the face of the Taliban from a movement of hard-line Afghan religious students into a loose network that now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers.
Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.
Their growing numbers point to the worsening problem of lawlessness in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which they use as a base to train alongside militants from Al Qaeda who have carried out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe, according to Western diplomats.
“We’ve seen an unprecedented level of reports of foreign-fighter involvement,” said Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “They’ll threaten people if they don’t provide meals and support.”
In interviews in southern and eastern Afghanistan, local officials and village elders also reported having seen more foreigners fighting alongside the Taliban than in any year since the American-led invasion in 2001.
In Afghanistan, the foreigners serve as mid-level commanders, and train and finance local fighters, according to Western analysts. In Pakistan’s tribal areas, they train suicide bombers, create roadside-bomb factories and have vastly increased the number of high-quality Taliban fund-raising and recruiting videos posted online.
Gauging the exact number of Taliban and foreign fighters in Afghanistan is difficult, Western officials and analysts say. At any given time, the Taliban can field up to 10,000 fighters, they said, but only 2,000 to 3,000 are highly motivated, full-time insurgents.
The rest are part-time fighters, young Afghan men who have been alienated by government corruption, who are angry at civilian deaths caused by American bombing raids, or who are simply in search of cash, they said. Five to 10 percent of full-time insurgents — roughly 100 to 300 combatants — are believed to be foreigners.
Western diplomats say recent offers from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to negotiate with the Taliban are an effort to split local Taliban moderates and Afghans who might be brought back into the fold from the foreign extremists.
But that effort may face an increasing challenge as foreigners replace dozens of midlevel and senior Taliban who, Western officials say, have been killed by NATO and American forces.
At the same time, Western officials said the reliance on foreigners showed that the Taliban are running out of midlevel Afghan commanders. “That’s a sure-fire sign of desperation,” General Champoux said.
Seth Jones, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, was less sanguine, however, calling the arrival of more foreigners a dangerous development. The tactics the foreigners have introduced, he said, are increasing Afghan and Western casualty rates.
“They play an incredibly important part in the insurgency,” Mr. Jones said. “They act as a force multiplier in improving their ability to kill Afghan and NATO forces.”
Western officials said the foreigners are also increasingly financing younger Taliban leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas who have closer ties to Al Qaeda, like Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed. The influence of older, more traditional Taliban leaders based in Quetta, Pakistan, is diminishing.
“We see more and more resources going to their fellow travelers,” said Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United Nations in Afghanistan. “The new Taliban commanders are younger and younger.”
In the southern provinces of Oruzgan, Kandahar and Helmand, Afghan villagers recently described two distinct groups of Taliban fighters. They said “local Taliban” allowed some development projects. But “foreign Taliban” — usually from Pakistan — threatened to kill anyone who cooperated with the Afghan government or foreign aid groups.
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Hanif Atmar, the Afghan education minister, said threats from foreign Taliban have closed 40 percent of the schools in southern Afghanistan. He said many local Taliban oppose the practice, but foreign Taliban use brutality and cash to their benefit.
Skip to next paragraph VideoMore Video » “That makes our situation terribly complicated,” Mr. Atmar said. “Because they bring resources with them, their agenda takes precedence.”
Large groups of Pakistani militants operate in southern Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials. In the east, more Arab and Uzbek fighters are present.
Mr. Bataloff, the Russian arrested in a burqa, insists he is a religious student who traveled to Pakistan last year to learn more about his new faith. In an hourlong interview in an Afghan jail in Kabul, he said his interest in Islam blossomed three years ago when he was living in Siberia.
“First, I heard from TV, radio and newspapers about Islam,” he said in Russian. “I found Islam had a lot of good things, especially that Islam respects all prophets, including Jesus.”
But he declined to describe many details of his trip and grew angry when asked about his personal background. “Homicide and suicide is not allowed in any religion,” he said, when asked about the allegations against him. “Why are you asking me these questions?”
Mr. Bataloff said he grew up in Siberia, but would not identify his hometown or region. He said he could not remember the names of the Pakistanis he met or the two Afghan men who drove the pickup truck.
He said he decided to go to a predominantly Muslim country last fall to study Islam and learn about “the morals, the customs, the ethics and the literature.” He flew alone from Russia to Iran, he said, and met a Russian-speaking “guide” in the airport.
After spending 10 days in Iran, he crossed into Pakistan and traveled to North Waziristan, a remote tribal area that is a longtime Taliban and Qaeda stronghold. There, he spent a year living and studying in a small mosque in Mir Ali.
Pakistani security officials say the Islamic Jihad Union, a terrorist group led by militants from Uzbekistan, operates a training camp in Mir Ali.
[In mid-October, in some of the heaviest fighting in four years, the Pakistani military said 50 foreign fighters were among 200 militants reported killed in three days of clashes around Mir Ali. The dead foreigners were said to include mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks, as well as some Arabs, the army said.]
Some of the suspects arrested in a failed bombing plot in Germany in September received training in the tribal areas, according to German officials. Several men involved in the July 2005 London transit bombings and a failed August 2006 London airliner plot did as well.
Mr. Bataloff said he met no foreign militants in his 10 months in the tribal areas. But American military officials said he had told interrogators that he had attended a terrorist training camp in North Waziristan. He said local militants forced him to go to the camp and taught him how to fire an AK-47 assault rifle, the officials said.
“I didn’t have any specific teacher,” he said, when asked about Pakistanis he met there. “There were local people who knew the Koran.”
A second foreign prisoner produced by Afghan officials identified himself as Muhammad Kuzeubaev, a 23-year-old from Temirtau, Kazakhstan. Afghan officials said he was a bombmaker arrested in September in Badakhshan Province in northern Afghanistan.
In an interview, Mr. Kuzeubaev, who also spoke fluent Russian, said he was visiting Afghanistan as a tourist. “I was close to the border,” he said. “I thought I would go explore the country.”
In Badakhshan, he said, two Afghan men abducted him and demanded he join Al Qaeda. He agreed to do so fearing he would be killed, he said. That night, the men showed him parts of a suicide vest and promised to take him to Pakistan for training.
“They showed me the explosives, the vest and grenade,” said Mr. Kuzeubaev. “The next day, they brought some kind of weapons.”
Two days later, Afghan police officers surrounded the house and arrested him, he said. Afghan interrogators beat him, chained him to a wall and prevented him from sleeping for four days, he said.
“They are saying, ‘You are the man who was making the vests,’ ” said Mr. Kuzeubaev. “But the ammunition and other explosives were not mine.”
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November 02, 2007
Al Qaeda's Taliban Troubles
By Ray Robison
The signs of al Qaeda's downward spiral are accumulating. If the media were as anxious to find signs of victory as signs of failure in our war with al Qaeda, the incipient crumbling of its support in South Asia would already be noted. But of course that would require giving credit to the Bush Administration's war policies.
Already beleaguered in Iraq, where tribal leaders have turned against it, al Qaeda faces a crumbling of its tribal alliances in the Afghanistan/Pakistan borderland regions. New reporting reaffirms my belief that substantial portions of the Taliban, a tribal entity which is under the influence of the Maulana Fazlur Rahman, have turned against al Qaeda. To be sure, not every Taliban leader is going to turn, but a significant portion of them will.
The Maulana is already a target of al Qaeda, and he is working against them.
President Mushareef finally showed the will to act against the Maulana and his jihadists with a raid on a mosque a few months back, letting him know there is pressure. In addition, Mushareef is now sending forces -- which have been getting trounced by Taliban and tribal forces so far -- into tribal lands.
Enter back into the Pakistani political mix former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazeer Bhutto. She worked closely with the Maulana when she was PM. He was then and is still the political leader of the militant Islamic faction in Pakistan. Bhutto will help bring him back into the inner circle. Though he will not act by proclamation and his changes will be covert, he will affect the Taliban by internal political maneuvering within his jihad-centric political parties.
Al Qaeda has targeted the Maulana. Undoubtedly the U.S. is applying more than a little bit of pressure on him, and his former foreign sponsors Saddam and Qaddafi are no longer pumping millions to his jihad groups. The new Bhutto/Mushareef alliance leaves him divided from the military and democratic political interests of Pakistan. He is increasingly isolated.
But Bhutto also gives the Maulana an escape valve; a chance to earn a powerful ally. The Maulana is no fool and he sees the weakness of al Qaeda and the end of the current incarnation of its international jihad just around the corner. Already his vitriol against the United States has lessened.
He is positioning the Taliban to start making peace agreements.
Faced with the looming conflict with the Maulana, Al Qaeda is concentrating its forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The New York Times describes a new influx of foreign fighters into Pakistan and Afghanistan. As always, the Times spins the hollowest analysis to portray defeat for the United States. But there are some questions the Times didn't bother to ask or answer, beyond the usual "the U.S. made them do it" tripe anyway. Chiefly, "why are they coming to Afghanistan"?
As the Times notes, many of these new foreign fighters in Afghanistan are being placed in leadership positions within the Taliban, usually under newer, younger Taliban commanders. The article even notes that this is a somewhat "new" vs. "old" battle for Taliban leadership. The Times fails to realize the obvious, that these are al Qaeda fighters, and instead refers to them as new Taliban recruits. But the timing of this "new phenomenon" makes the reality self-evident.
These fighters were meant for Iraq but the core al Qaeda leadership has realized that the war there is lost. They are no longer sending the new recruits in large numbers. In the current environment, only small teams can go unmolested in the Iraqi lands al Qaeda used to control. Since al Qaeda can no longer send large numbers of fighters to Iraq and since their Taliban support base is slipping away at home they have one option left to them.
Al Qaeda is attempting a hostile takeover of the Taliban.
And that signals the end of al Qaeda in Pakistan/Afghanistan just as it did in Iraq when they tried to take over from local chieftains.
Other tribal leaders are also reported to be turning against AQ. The Telegraph reports: [H/T Larwyn/Prairie Pundit]
The Daily Telegraph has learned that the Afghan government hopes to seal the deal this week with Mullah Abdul Salaam and his Alizai tribe, which has been fighting alongside the Taliban in Helmand province.
Diplomats confirmed yesterday that Mullah Salaam was expected to change sides within days. He is a former Taliban corps commander and governor of Herat province under the government that fell in 2001.
Military sources said British forces in the province are "observing with interest" the potential deal in north Helmand, which echoes the efforts of US commanders in Iraq's western province to split Sunni tribal leaders from their al-Qa'eda allies.
Older Taliban commanders are flipping to our side. In response, al Qaeda is seeking out young leaders to take over with the support of al Qaeda fighters. Now we know that UBL's latest statement was about more than just the split of his jihadists in Iraq. It is about the coming crumbling of the Taliban in Southern Asia.
You can bet that Taliban commanders like Mullah Salaam would not be making deals if they didn't have the support of the major players in Pakistan, namely Maulana Fazlur Rahman. If this "new" vs. "old" stew with al Qaeda stirring the pot comes to a boil, the fighting will resemble the Iraqi sectarian fighting, except this time is will be all Taliban and al Qaeda fighters killing each other in an all out war. And here is the bad news for The New York Times. When that happens, we win.
In fact, al Qaeda is now engaging in a propaganda effort to conceal its' Achilles heal of fractionalization. The Times of India is now reporting that a significant Taliban leader has just released a rare video reaffirming his commitment to al Qaeda:
A top Taliban commander has said his group maintains good relations and military cooperation with the Al-Qaida insurgents not only in Afghanistan but in Iraq as well.
"We have good and strong relations with Al-Qaida mujahideen in Iraq, provide them with our expertise and share with them military information," Taliban southern commander Dadullah Mansoor on Wednesday said in a video produced by Al-Qaida's media production wing, as-Sahab .
How very interesting that al Qaeda is so concerned about the jihadist split that it is running videos from sympathetic Taliban commanders to refute it.
Hold on to your seats, things are about to get messy in South Asia. A war is shaping up between New Taliban backed by al Qaeda on one side and Old Taliban backed by Fazlur Rahman/Mushareef/Bhutto on the other side. The first shot came with the bombing of Bhutto's motorcade, which killed over a hundred.
When these murders are fully targeting on each other instead of innocents they will kill thousands of their own fighters.
Ray Robison is proprietor of Ray Robison: Pointing out the Obvious to the Oblivious.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/al_qaedas_taliban_troubles_1.html at November 03, 2007 - 10:27:11 PM EDT
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Geopolitical Diary: Making Sense of Pakistan
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf finally pulled the trigger Nov. 3 after many weeks of keeping the world guessing. He declared a state of emergency, essentially took control of the judiciary, arrested a group of dissidents and shut down private media outlets (including access to foreign media). The immediate issue was the role of the Supreme Court in freeing 61 individuals charged with terrorism. The deeper issue has to do with the role of the military in Pakistani society.
The Pakistani military has been the guarantor of the state from the beginning -- and therefore has been, in the long run, the arbiter of Pakistani politics. Musharraf's coup in 1999 simply made clear Pakistan's underlying reality. Pakistan is a deeply divided entity (it is not quite reasonable to call it a nation) presided over by a state. Whatever the formal character of the state, be it democratic, military, Islamist or otherwise, the greatest threat to Pakistan's territorial integrity comes from the divisions among the country's various ethnic groups. Pakistan requires a unified military to ensure cohesion.
Whatever demonstrations there are, whatever politicians may say, whether elections are held or not -- so long as military cohesion holds, the military will be the glue of society. Much of the rest that goes on is irrelevant.
Two things are therefore interesting and important. First, there is no visible sign of dissent within the military concerning Musharraf's move; thus far, the corps commanders or their subordinates do not appear to be resisting. Second, there is no indication of any mass resistance to the state of emergency. Nov. 5 will be the test -- so far it has been the weekend -- but by all reports any demonstrations have been scattered, small and quickly suppressed.
The question is why Musharraf made this move. To a great extent it had to do with his own political survival rather than survival of the regime. There was great pressure on Musharraf to take off his uniform -- to leave the military and become a civilian leader. However, Musharraf understands what many others do not: His power and legitimacy come from his role in the military, not in spite of it. By giving up his uniform, he would be leaving the chain of command and thereby turning ultimate power over to his successor in the military. However carefully picked, that successor would command the army, and in due course would hold ultimate political power as well.
Musharraf was not going to allow that to happen. He was not prepared to leave the stage just yet; he planned to stay in uniform and put off the election. The challenge from the Supreme Court was simply the catalyst for Musharraf's deeper decision. His calculation was that, following the immediate shock to the Pakistani polity, things would settle down and he would continue to hold power. There is no indication thus far that he was wrong about this.
The United States scolded Musharraf publicly (and likely privately as well), but in truth Washington has only two interests in Pakistan. First, it wants a state that will fight Islamists along the Afghan border. Second, it wants a government that will hold Pakistan together and prevent internal collapse. In that sense, whatever the moral sentiments expressed by the administration, the United States has only one issue with Musharraf's move: that it had better not fail.
We suspect that the army remains united and will support Musharraf, and therefore we expect the move to work. Musharraf (or someone like him) will continue to govern. But that doesn't bring us closer to answering the fundamental question: what exactly is this entity he is governing?
stratfor
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And now here's the WSJ's take on this-- not quite the same as Stratfor:
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Pakistan Emergency
Musharraf backs himself into an even tighter corner.
Monday, November 5, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
In the war on terror, few problems are more difficult for U.S. foreign policy than our alliance with the nuclear-armed Muslim state of Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule this weekend is the latest setback. It runs the risk of making Pakistan even less stable than it already is and makes it harder for Mr. Musharraf to restore democratic legitimacy, as he says he still wants to do.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quick to criticize Mr. Musharraf's move and said yesterday that the U.S. would review its financial aid to Pakistan, which has amounted to more than $10 billion over the past five years (most of it for the military). Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, issued a statement urging the Administration to "move from a Musharraf policy to a Pakistan policy." That oversimplifies both current U.S. policy and the options going forward, but it should indicate to General Musharraf how his "second coup," as some are calling it, will be received in Washington.
Mr. Musharraf defends his emergency decree as a response to rising Islamic militancy and political instability caused by an interfering judiciary. But the timing and his sacking of the chief justice of the Supreme Court suggest that the general was mainly interested in pre-empting a ruling on his recent re-election, which the opposition boycotted. The high court was expected to make a decision soon on that October referendum, and the General couldn't be sure of the outcome.
No one can dispute that Islamic violence is on the rise in Pakistan. Three weeks ago 139 people died in a bomb attack on a homecoming parade for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. More than 800 Pakistanis have perished in suicide bombings and militant attacks since July, when Mr. Musharraf ordered troops to storm the Red Mosque in Islamabad to destroy a Taliban-style movement headquartered there.
But the violence is not the product of democratic opponents of Mr. Musharraf's rule. It is the work of the same Islamist extremists who have also tried to kill the General more than once. Thanks to some of Mr. Musharraf's own mistakes, such as a 2006 truce, those forces have been able to build safe havens in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Far from targeting those forces, however, the weekend action has included rounding up democratic politicians, lawyers and human rights activists. The General also suspended the constitution and closed down the free media. By attacking these sources of moderate civil society, Mr. Musharraf makes it easier for the Islamists to pose as the main opposition.
A more effective way to defeat the extremists is by respecting the rule of law and introducing a democratic government that reflects the wishes of Pakistan's mostly moderate population. This is the course Pakistan had been on in recent weeks. With encouragement from Washington, Mr. Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, was working toward a political compromise with democratic opponents. He had pledged to give up his military role by mid-November and become a civilian President. He brokered a tentative power-sharing deal with Ms. Bhutto that would have curtailed religious parties' power in Parliament. Elections, which may now be delayed, were scheduled for January.
It will now be more difficult, though not impossible, to get back on this track. Ms. Bhutto, who condemned the state of emergency as the "blackest day" in Pakistan's history, pointedly did not rule out continuing power-sharing talks with Mr. Musharraf. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told a news conference yesterday that "We are committed to making sure that elections are held and that \[the\] democratic process flourishes in Pakistan." But the decree will make it harder for Ms. Bhutto to agree to any deal with the General.
The main U.S. interest here is a stable Pakistan that can help defeat the jihadists. That interest won't be served by precipitously moving to sever ties with Mr. Musharraf, or with the Pakistan military the way the U.S. did in the 1990s. That would only reduce whatever leverage the U.S. continues to have with Islamabad, as well as reduce the prospects for cooperation in pursuing al Qaeda safe havens.
The Bush Administration will have to speak clearly to Pakistanis that its support for its government is not limited to Mr. Musharraf, and to loudly and publicly urge the General to honor his pledge to relinquish his military commission and hold elections as soon as possible. After this weekend, it is clearer than ever that U.S. policy has to prepare for the post-Musharraf era.
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Pakistan and its Army
By George Friedman
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency over the weekend, precipitating a wave of arrests, the suspension of certain media operations and the intermittent disruption of communications in and out of Pakistan. As expected, protests erupted throughout Pakistan by Nov. 5, with clashes between protesting lawyers and police reported in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and several other cities. Thus far, however, the army appears to be responding to Musharraf's commands.
The primary issue, as Musharraf framed it, was the Pakistani Supreme Court's decision to release about 60 people the state had charged with terrorism. Musharraf's argument was that the court's action makes the fight against Islamist extremism impossible and that the judiciary overstepped its bounds by urging that the civil rights of the accused be protected.
Musharraf's critics, including the opposition's top leader, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, argued that Musharraf was using the Supreme Court issue to protect his own position in the government, avoid leaving the army as promised and put off elections. In short, he is being accused of staging a personal coup under the guise of a state of emergency.
Whether Musharraf himself survives is not a historically significant issue. What is significant is whether Pakistan will fall into internal chaos or civil war, or fragment into smaller states. We must consider what that would mean, but first we must examine Pakistan's underlying dilemma -- a set of contradictions rooted in Pakistani history.
When the British conquered the Indian subcontinent, they essentially occupied the lowlands and pushed their frontier into the mountains surrounding the subcontinent -- the point from which a relatively small British force, augmented by local recruits, could hold against any external threat. The eastern line ran through the hills that separated Bengal from Burma. The northern line ran through the Himalayas that separate China from the subcontinent. The western line ran along the mountains that separated British India from Afghanistan and Iran.
This lineation -- which represented not a political settlement but rather a defensive position selected for military reasons -- remained vague, driven by shifting tactical decisions designed to secure a physical entity, the subcontinent. The Britons were fairly indifferent to the political realities inside the line. The British Raj, then, was a wild jumble of states, languages, religions and ethnic groups, which the Britons were quite content to play against one another as part of their grand strategy in India. As long as the British could impose an artificial, internal order, the general concept of India worked. But as the British Empire collapsed after World War II, the region had to find its own balance.
Mahatma Gandhi envisioned post-British India as being a multinational, multireligious country within the borders that then existed -- meaning that India's Muslims would live inside a predominantly Hindu country. When they objected, the result was both a partition of the country and a transfer of populations. The Muslim part of India, including the eastern Muslim region, became modern Pakistan. The eastern region gained independence as Bangladesh following a 1971 war between India and Pakistan.
Pakistan, however, was not a historic name for the region. Rather, reflective of the deeply divided Muslims themselves, the name is an acronym that derives, in part, from the five ethnic groups that made up western, Muslim India: Punjabis, Afghans, Kashmiris, Sindhis and Balochis.
The Punjabis are the major ethnic group, making up just under half of the population, though none of these groups is entirely in Pakistan. Balochis also are in Iran, Pashtuns also in Afghanistan and Punjabis also in India. In fact, as a result of the war in Afghanistan more than a quarter century ago, massive numbers of Pashtuns have crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan -- though many consider themselves to be moving within Pashtun territory rather than crossing a foreign border.
Geographically, it is important to think of Pakistan in two parts. There is the Indus River Valley, where the bulk of the population lives, and then there are the mountainous regions, whose ethnic groups are deeply divided, difficult for the central government to control and generally conservative, preferring tradition to modernization. The relative isolation and the difficult existence in mountainous regions seem to create this kind of culture around the world.
Pakistan, therefore, is a compendium of divisions. The British withdrawal created a state called Pakistan, but no nation by that name. What bound its residents together was the Muslim faith -- albeit one that had many forms. As in India -- indeed, as in the Muslim world at the time of Pakistan's founding -- there existed a strong secularist movement that focused on economic development and cultural modernization more than on traditional Islamic values. This secularist tendency had two roots: one in the British education of many of the Pakistani elite and the second in Turkish founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who pioneered secularism in the Islamic world.
Pakistan, therefore, began as a state in crisis. What remained of British rule was a parliamentary democracy that might have worked in a relatively unified nation -- not one that was split along ethnic lines and also along the great divide of the 20th century: secular versus religious. Hence, the parliamentary system broke down early on -- about four years after Pakistan's creation in 1947. British-trained civilian bureaucrats ran the country with the help of the army until 1958, when the army booted out the bureaucrats and took over.
Therefore, if Pakistan was a state trying to create a nation, then the primary instrument of the state was the army. This is not uniquely Pakistani by any means, nor is it unprincipled. The point that Ataturk made -- one that was championed in the Arab world by Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser and in Iran by Reza Pahlavi -- was that the creation of a modern state in a traditional and divided nation required a modern army as the facilitator. An army, in the modern sense, is by definition technocratic and disciplined. The army, rather than simply an instrument of the state, therefore, becomes the guarantor of the state. In this line of thinking, a military coup can preserve a constitution against anti-constitutional traditionalists. If the idea of a military coup as a guarantor of constitutional integrity seems difficult to fathom, then consider the complexities involved in creating a modern constitutional regime in a traditional society.
Although the British tradition of parliamentary government fell apart in Pakistan, one institution the Britons left behind grew stronger: the Pakistani army. The army -- along with India's army -- was forged by the British and modeled on their army. It was perhaps the most modern institution in both countries, and the best organized and effective instrument of the state. As long as the army remained united and loyal to the concept of Pakistan, the centrifugal forces could not tear the country apart.
Musharraf's behavior must be viewed in this context. Pakistan is a country that not only is deeply divided, but also has the real capacity to tear itself apart. It is losing control of the mountainous regions to the indigenous tribes. The army is the only institution that transcends all of these ethnic differences and has the potential to restore order in the mountain regions and maintain state control elsewhere.
Musharraf's coup in 1999, which followed a series of military intrusions, as well as attempts at secular democratic rule, was designed to preserve Pakistan as a united country. That is why Musharraf insisted on continuing to wear the uniform of an army general. To remove the uniform and rule simply as a civilian might make sense to an outsider, but inside of Pakistan that uniform represents the unity of the state and the army -- and in Musharraf's view, that unity is what holds the country together.
Of course the problem is that the army, in the long run, reflects the country. The army has significant pockets of radical Islamist beliefs, while Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the military's intelligence branch, in particular is filled with Taliban sympathizers. (After all, the ISI was assigned to support the mujahideen fighting the Soviets in the 1980s, and the ISI and other parts of the army absorbed the ideology). Musharraf has had to walk a tightrope between U.S. demands that he crack down on his own army and his desire to preserve his regime -- and has never been able to satisfy either side fully.
It is not clear whether he has fallen off the tightrope. Whatever he does, as long as the army remains united and he controls the corps commanders, he will remain in power. Even if the corps commanders -- the real electors of Pakistan -- get tired of him and replace him with another military leader, Pakistan would remain in pretty much the same position it is in now.
In simple terms, the real question is this: Will the army split? Put more broadly, will some generals simply stop taking orders from Pakistan's General Headquarters and side with the Islamists? Will others side with Bhutto? Will ethnic disagreements run so deep that the Indus River Valley becomes the arena for a civil war? That is what instability in Pakistan would look like. It is not a question of civilian institutions, elections or any of the things we associate with civil society. The key question on Pakistan is whether the army stays united.
In our view, the senior commanders will remain united because they have far more to lose if they fracture. Their positions depend on a united army and a unified chain of command -- the one British legacy that continues to function in Pakistan.
There are two signs to look for: severe internal dissent among the senior generals or a series of mutinies by subordinate units. Either of these would raise serious questions as to the future of Pakistan. Whether Musharraf survives or falls and whether he is replaced by a civilian leader are actually secondary questions. In Pakistan, the fundamental issue is the unity of the army.
At some point, there will be a showdown among the various groups. That moment might be now, though we doubt it. As long as the generals are united and the troops remain under control, the existence of the regime is guaranteed -- and in some sense the army will remain the regime. Under these conditions, with or without Musharraf, with or without democracy, Pakistan will survive.
stratfor
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Joel Hafvenstein returned to Afghanistan in late 2004 armed with nothing but good intentions. Employed by Chemonics, a private company with a contract from the United States Agency for International Development, he was part of a team trying to discourage cultivation of the opium poppy by providing an alternative income for poor farmers.
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OPIUM SEASON
A Year on the Afghan Frontier
By Joel Hafvenstein
The Lyons Press. 337 pages. $24.95.
Within months the mission was in disarray, its American workers huddled in a fortified bunker after eight of its Afghan employees had been murdered. The next year’s poppy harvest would be the largest on record.
The sobering dispatches in “Opium Season,” a wrenching account of lofty hopes and bitter disappointments, shed a dismal light on American efforts to improve the lot of ordinary Afghans. All over the country development projects are under way aimed at winning over the Afghan people, depriving the Taliban of popular support and propping up Hamid Karzai’s government. The obstacles are as steep as the surrounding mountains, as Mr. Hafvenstein discovered and ruefully recounts in this bitter but affectionate book about his three stints in Afghanistan from October 2003 to May 2005.
In Helmand Province, where Mr. Hafvenstein had his final tour of duty, the immediate plan was simple: hire local people for big public-works projects and put money in their pockets before the government started cutting down profitable poppy fields. This stopgap effort would be the prelude to large-scale infrastructure projects that would lift the local economy permanently. Easier said than done.
Getting a multimillion-dollar project up and running plunged Mr. Hafvenstein and his co-workers into a social, political and economic morass that eventually sucked them under. In a country with scant resources, every dollar shifted the local balance of power in unforeseen ways.
The influx of international development companies distorted the Afghan economy, driving up the cost of housing and drawing educated Afghans away from vital but poorly paid jobs in, for example, education. Local power brokers, whether government officials or tribal leaders, eyed the Americans askance, worried that their own influence might be diminished. Big landowners schemed to steer benefits in their direction.
Mr. Hafvenstein arrived eager but unprepared in a region known to the ancient Persians as “the land of the unruly.” Racing to set up a project office, he interviewed a long line of Afghans with spotty qualifications and modest expectations. One stated on his application that he looked forward to working in “a mullet-cultural environment.” Another, hesitant to accept a job that required him to travel with payroll money, said, “I would like a job where I will not be killed.”
The security situation was indeed tenuous. Early on Mr. Hafvenstein got a cold dose of reality when the company’s security officer rattled off a list of must-buy items for the offices. These included blast film for the windows, razor wires for the walls and a windowless safe room lined with sandbags “if things get ugly.” Nevertheless, before safes arrived, Mr. Hafvenstein carried around bricks of American, Afghan and Pakistani currency in the inside pockets of his waistcoat.
The cash-for-work program showed progress. Chemonics hired thousands of laborers to do roadwork or dig out the silt from canals in a huge irrigation system built in the 1940s by Morrison-Knudsen, the engineering company that built the Hoover Dam and the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Spurred on by an energetic, idealistic Afghan-American in the office, the company made every effort to extend its reach to remote valleys badly in need of development aid.
But the hard realities of the poppy economy quickly reasserted themselves. The local government would plow under the poppy fields belonging to poor farmers just enough to mollify the central government, while powerful landlords paid the police to pass them by. After a particularly heavy rain in Lashkargah, the provincial capital, Mr. Hafvenstein noticed a thriving poppy field directly across the street from the American military outpost, its existence revealed by a collapsed section of earthen wall.
Everyone in Helmand, directly or indirectly, depended on poppy income, including top officials. In June 2005 police raided the mansion of Helmand’s governor, Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, and found nine metric tons of opium. Mr. Akhundzada, who enjoys close family ties to Mr. Karzai, explained that he had seized the opium from traffickers and was merely waiting for the appropriate moment to dispose of it.
Mr. Hafvenstein and his team disturbed the status quo, although they were never clear precisely when or how. When several workers were victimized by a carjacking, informants blamed common thieves, but the act might have been retaliation for giving too many jobs to members of the wrong clan. Later, in the same area, two Afghan workers were ambushed and killed. A party that set out the following day to transport the dead bodies to a cemetery in Kabul was also ambushed and its members executed. One man, an ethnic Hazara (member of the Shiite minority) was shot through the eyes.
Local leaders blamed the Taliban. But the killings might have been ordered by poppy growers angry that the American project was depriving them of badly needed labor for the harvest. The police showed little enthusiasm for investigating the matter.
That was it for Mr. Hafvenstein and his American colleagues. They headed home, sadder and wiser. “We had come to Helmand thinking of opium as the local currency, and had tried to replace it with cash,” Mr. Hafvenstein writes. “But security was the real currency of Afghanistan. The traumatized population of Helmand would trade anything for it, follow anyone who could offer it.”
In a country where violence trumps money every time, the United States, Mr. Hafvenstein suggests, will have to work out a different equation.
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Pakistan's nuclear history worries insiders
'Nuclear coup' in 1990 and bin Laden meeting offer two chilling precedents
ANALYSIS
By Robert Windrem
Senior investigative producer
NBC News
updated 5:04 p.m. PT, Tues., Nov. 6, 2007
It is the most disturbing element in the mix that makes Pakistan the most dangerous country in the world: its stockpile of at least 30 and perhaps as many as 45 nuclear weapons. And it is always the element that captures the most attention from US intelligence officials.
The United States has essentially let Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal grow over the past three decades, as succeeding governments in Islamabad have supported US policies in neighboring Afghanistan, first in thwarting the Soviet occupation and then in driving out the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Still, the fear is that in the chaos that regularly afflicts Pakistan, al-Qaeda or other jihadis will somehow gain control of one of the weapons, some of the highly enriched uranium that forms the core of a bomb or the technology to make a bomb -- or even gain control of the government.
“It’s always been easier to steal a government in Pakistan than to steal a bomb,” said one former senior US intelligence official.
It is not an abstract concern, one driven by war game scenarios. There have been two incidents in the past 20 years that call into question who controls the weapons, controls the technology.
Indeed, the incidents offer chilling precedents to what could happen now in a chaotic Pakistan. One is what Benazir Bhutto called a “nuclear coup” in 1990, while the other is knowledge from intelligence that al-Qaeda’s top leaders, including Osama bin Laden, met with Pakistani nuclear scientists in Afghanistan just before September 11 and offered the terrorist group advice on how to build a crude nuclear device.
For better or worse, the US is confident that it knows where the Pakistani nuclear arsenal is located and that it is secure. And in 2003, the US secretly provided technology and training to Pakistani nuclear scientists so they could develop “permissive action links”—codes that prohibit unauthorized detonation. Prior to US intervention in this area, none of the Pakistani warheads were protected, say US and Pakistani officials.
Moreover, military and intelligence officials have told NBC News that should the need arise, the US is prepared to take out—or simply take—the weapons from Pakistani control. As Condoleezza Rice said at her confirmation hearings in January 2005, “We have noted this problem, and we are prepared to try to deal with it. I would prefer not in open session to talk about this particular issue.”
“There wasn’t much concern about physical security, but a high degree of angst that the government would fall into the hands of bad guys and they would be in charge,” said the former official, who added that there were “some in the nuclear program who are sympathetic to the radicals”.
As laid out in “Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World," a 1994 book by Robert Windrem and William E. Burrows, the first incident unraveled in the summer of 1990 when India and Pakistan were in one of their seemingly innumerable crises. For the first time, the US had detected that Pakistan had actually put together a nuclear weapon without the knowledge of the country’s prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. And not long after Bhutto learned what her military had done, she was deposed by the same men who had kept the weaponization secret from her.
The CIA had determined that in May 1990 Pakistani scientists had succeeded in converting highly enriched uranium from a gas into a heavy metal. The uranium had undergone successive changes, going from gas to pellets to the mold and machined spheres—perfect spheres—that constituted the cores of atomic bombs. The CIA knew that the cores were then stored near the other components needed to make a complete weapon so the Pakistani bomb could be assembled in as little as three hours at Dalbandin, an airbase in the Baluchistan desert well out of reach of Indian jets. There was enough metal to make between six and eight nuclear weapons, each with the explosive capability equivalent to the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The United States later learned the final number of cores was seven. Two cores had been machined in May, and five more were turned out by the end of July. The first two used about 40 pounds of uranium while the last used about 26 pounds each. Like most other things, a learning curve improves efficiency.
The Pakistanis had not only “crossed the line” as the saying went in Washington’s nuclear precincts. They had actually prepared bombs for delivery. More importantly, in relation to the current crisis, the whole scenario had been carried out without Bhutto even knowing what had happened.
“I think it is criminal that the Prime Minister, who is ultimately responsible in the eyes of the people and in the eyes of history, should not be taken into confidence on such a major issue.” She told NBC two years later. “I did not know.”
Bhutto in fact had not just been Prime Minister. She was Defense Minister and Atomic Energy Minister as well.
The decision had been taken by the Army chief of staff, Mirza Aslam Beg, and the country’s president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan. The presidency then, unlike now, was more of a ceremonial post. Both had been proponents of the Pakistani bomb program, which ironically had been started by Bhutto’s father when he had been prime minister. Khan in fact had run the program.
Bhutto also found out in a most unorthodox way. In late June, two long time American friends of hers had come to Islamabad to tell her what happened. Peter Galbraith, then the south Asia specialist on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Mark Siegel, her Washington lobbyist, took her to a garden outside her offices in the Pakistani capital to inform her.
The news Galbraith and Siegel had delivered took Bhutto by surprise, but she knew the consequences. The United States now had the proof it needed to cut off aid to Pakistan under a law called the Pressler Amendment, and ultimately the US did just that.
A few weeks later, the US ambassador delievered the news to her. Robert Oakley informed her that US law required a cutoff in aid to Pakistan if it possessed a “nuclear explosive device” and demanded that Pakistan reverse the process.
Around the same time, US officials flew to Islamabad while Bhutto was on a state visit to the Gulf States to warn Ishaq Khan and Beg there was no way Pakistan could win a war with India and that continued nuclear brinksmanship would risk a catastrophe.
Bhutto, unaware of the US meeting, contacted Ishaq Khan to relay Oakley’s warning and three times called for a meeting of the top-secret committee that ran the nuclear weapons program. Each time Ishaq Khan said he would get back to her. She also asked Beg for an explanation as well and he promised one would be forthcoming.
Neither happened, but on Aug. 6, less than three months after Pakistan had begun the process of building a bomb, Bhutto was deposed. With the world’s attention then focused on Saddam Hussein’s four-day old occupation of Kuwait, Ishaq Khan went on Pakistani television to denounce Bhutto’s government as corrupt and incompetent.
“I have no proof of this,” Bhutto later told NBC News, “but I feel that someone may have turned on the switch in the spring of 1990 to justify the dismissal of my government.” She called it a “nuclear coup.”
More troubling was what former CIA Director George J. Tenet wrote about in his memoir, “At the Center of the Storm” about al-Qaeda’s attempt to obtain nuclear know-how from Pakistani scientists.
In August 2001, just weeks before the 9/11 attacks, two officials of an ostensible Pakistani charity, both senior scientists in the country’s nuclear weapons program, met with Osama bin Ladin and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Afghanistan.
“There, around a campfire, they discussed how al-Qa’ida should go about building a nuclear device,” wrote Tenet.
The scientists were not ordinary scientists. Sultan Bashirrudan Mahmood, was the former director for nuclear power at Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission. Chaudiri Andul Majeed, a prominent nuclear engineer, had retired from the Pakistani Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology in 2000. Both institutes were part of the nuclear weapons establishment. Their charity, UTN, also included retired Pakistani nuclear scientists, military officers, engineers, and technicians.
The United States had already learned from Libyan intelligence that UTN scientists had approached Moammar Khaddafi’s government with an offer they thought the Libyans couldn’t refuse: “They tried to sell us a nuclear weapon,” Tenet quoted Musa Kusa, the head of Libyan intelligence, as saying. “Of course, we turned them down.” The CIA was able to confirm through other sources that indeed the offer had been made, according to Tenet.
“CIA passed our information on UTN to our Pakistani colleagues, who quickly hauled in seven board members for questioning,” Tenet wrote, adding with some exasperation, “The investigation was ill-fated from the get-go. The UTN officials all denied wrongdoing and were not properly isolated and questioned.
“In fact, they were allowed to return home after questioning each day. Pakistani intelligence interrogators treated the UTN officials deferentially, with respect befitting their status in Pakistani society. They were seen as men of science, men who had made significant contributions to Pakistan. Our officers read the question etched in the faces of their Pakistani liaison contacts: Surely, such men cannot be terrorists?”
Ultimately, after more intelligence came in, President Bush dispatched Tenet to Islamabad in November 2001 with a file of accusations and a less than subtle threat.
“After a few pleasantries, I explained to President Musharraf that I had been dispatched by the U.S. president to deliver some very serious information to him. I launched into a description of the campfire meeting between Usama bin Ladin, al-Zawahiri, and the UTN leaders. ‘Mr. President,' I said, ‘you cannot imagine the outrage there would be in my country if it were learned that Pakistan is coddling scientists who are helping Bin Ladin acquire a nuclear weapon. Should such a device ever be used, the full fury of the American people would be focused on whoever helped al-Qa’ida in its cause.'”
Musharraf was incredulous.
“But Mr. Tenet, we are talking about men hiding in caves,” Tenet quotes Musharraf as saying. “Perhaps they have dreams of owning such weapons, but my experts assure me that obtaining one is well beyond their reach. We know in Pakistan what is involved in such an achievement.”
“Mr. President, your experts are wrong,” Tenet said he responded.. “I told him that the current state of play between weapon design and construction and the availability of the needed materials made it possible for a few men hidden in a remote location—if they had enough persistence and money, and black enough hearts—to obtain and use a nuclear device.”
A second round of interrogations followed and the full story finally emerged. As Tenet recounts it, there was little doubt that bin Laden and Zawahiri saw Pakistan’s nuclear fraternity as its most likely source of help. Moreover, there was even less doubt of bin Laden’s interest in nuclear weapons.
“Mahmood confirmed all we had heard about the August 2001 meeting with Usama bin Ladin, and even provided a hand-drawn rough bomb design that he had shared with al-Qa’ida leaders. He told his interrogators that he had discussed the practicalities of building a weapon. ‘The most difficult part of the process,’ he told Bin Ladin, ‘is obtaining the necessary fissile material.’ ‘What if we already have the material?’ Bin Ladin replied. This surprised Mahmood. He said he did not know if this was a hypothetical question or if Bin Ladin was seeking a design to use with fissile material or components he had already obtained elsewhere.”
An unidentified senior al-Qaeda leader also present at the campfire displayed a canister for the visitors that may or may not have contained some kind of nuclear material or radioactive source. He also shared his ideas of building a simple firing system for a weapon using commercially available supplies, according to the interrogation quoted by Tenet.
Tenet says in spite of extensive efforts to learn whether bin Laden actually had HEU, the US intelligence and law enforcement community had no luck. Luck in fact may be what is needed more than anything else in dealing with Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21660667/
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WSJ
Jailed in Pakistan
November 8, 2007; Page A22
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf says he imposed a state of emergency to limit terror attacks. Then why is he arresting so many nonterrorists?
Beginning Saturday, the main targets of police have been human rights workers and Mr. Musharraf's political opponents. While precise figures are hard to come by, more than 1,500 people -- mostly lawyers who participated in anti-Musharraf protests -- are thought to be incarcerated, either in their homes or in jails.
Topping the detainee list is Asma Jahangir, the Lahore-based head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Ms. Jahangir, a lawyer who is also a United Nations' special rapporteur on freedom of religion, agitated publicly for an independent judiciary and has represented the families of "disappeared" political dissidents. She was placed under a 90-day "preventative" house arrest on Saturday in Lahore.
Next comes Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, a member of Parliament and a former law minister. Mr. Ahsan, who defended former Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry earlier this year when Mr. Musharraf sacked him, stood up at a press conference Saturday and denounced the state of emergency. Mr. Ahsan is now in Adiala Jail near Rawalpindi.
Then there's Ali Ahmed Kurd, another lawyer for former Chief Justice Chaudhry, who human rights groups claim is now under the supervision of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Other lawyers in that case, including Munir Malik and Tariq Mahmood -- both former presidents of the Supreme Court Bar -- have also been arrested.
Other detainees include Javed Hashmi, the acting president of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party; Imran Khan, a famous cricketer and leader of a new, small political party; and hundreds of workers for Jamaat-e-Islami, a large religious party. Mr. Khan managed to give the slip to his minders at his home and is now on the run.
If Mr. Musharraf wants to fight terrorism and move Pakistan toward democracy, arresting democrats and lawyers is an odd way of doing so. By targeting members of civil society, he's weakening the very forces that would have supported him had he moved forward with a power-sharing arrangement with Benazir Bhutto. Instead, he's angering the country's middle class and empowering militants.
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Pakistanis Say No
By HUSAIN HAQQANI
November 8, 2007; Page A23
When Gen. Pervez Musharraf suspended Pakistan's Constitution, declared a state of emergency and put the nation once again under martial law, he expected limited civilian resistance and only ritual international condemnation, in view of his role in the war against terrorism. On both counts, Mr. Musharraf appears to have badly miscalculated.
Police officers clash with lawyers outside the district courts in Multan, Pakistan, on Nov. 6, 2007.
Pakistan's burgeoning civil society, led by lawyers and encouraged by judges ousted from the Supreme Court, is refusing to be cowed. Protests are spreading despite thousands of arrests and the use of tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators. More than 1,700 attorneys have been jailed but still more are taking to the streets. University students have joined the lawyers, and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has vowed to violate a ban on public meetings by leading a rally on Friday.
There are a number of important reasons why Pakistan's attorneys are leading the protests against Mr. Musharraf. They have a long tradition of activism for rule of law and human-rights issues. In 1968-69, the lawyers started the campaign that resulted in the ouster of Pakistan's first military ruler, Field Marshal Ayub Khan. They also were at the forefront of the campaign against Mr. Zia-ul-Haq, whose 11-year military rule ended when he died in a 1988 plane crash.
The legal fraternity has another advantage, in that they can afford to confront the government without fearing starvation for their families. Some 65 million of Pakistan's 160 million people subsist on less than $1 a day, while another 65 million survive just above the poverty line. The poor are willing to participate in organized rallies, such as the one that welcomed Ms. Bhutto back to Pakistan on Oct. 18 (and was targeted by a suicide terrorist), but they generally avoid protest demonstrations where getting arrested and missing work is almost inevitable.
That could change in the days and weeks to come. Although Mr. Musharraf has taken all private and international television channels off the air, images of the protests are being seen all over Pakistan through the Internet and with satellite dishes. Middle-class Pakistanis, and increasingly the poor, are making it clear that they want political freedom, along with an improvement in their economic prospects, and do not consider prosperity and democracy to be mutually exclusive.
The international community has also responded more strongly than Mr. Musharraf expected. The Netherlands has suspended aid, and several donors are reviewing their policy on military and economic assistance. The Bush administration is hoping to defuse the situation through assertive diplomacy. But withdrawal of aid, supported by several congressional leaders, remains a possibility.
Since 9/11, Mr. Musharraf has positioned himself as the key Western ally in the global war against terrorism. But in recent months, he has been too distracted with domestic politics to play an effective role. The U.S., in particular, does not want anti-Musharraf sentiment to result in a fresh wave of anti-Americanism in Pakistan that further fuels terrorism. While some in the U.S. argue about America's limited options in dealing with the crisis in Pakistan, one could argue that Mr. Musharraf's options are even more limited.
The more he has to repress critics and political opponents, the less Pakistan will be able to fight terrorism. After all, when troops have to be deployed to detain Supreme Court judges, journalists, lawyers and politicians, there are fewer troops available to fight terrorists. Pakistan's intelligence services can either spy on dissenting Pakistani civilians or focus their energies on finding Osama bin Laden and his ever increasing number of deputies and operatives around Pakistan. But Pakistan needs to fight terrorism for Pakistan's sake. Mr. Musharraf cannot endlessly blackmail Washington by hinting that he would withdraw antiterror cooperation if the U.S. pressures him on other issues, including democracy and human-rights violations.
One thing is clear: Mr. Musharraf's authoritarianism is being challenged by diverse elements in Pakistani society. His self-cultivated image as a benign dictator is a thing of the past, and his recent harsh measures have failed to frighten Pakistan's civil society and political opposition into submission.
The defiance of the judiciary and the media might not immediately topple Mr. Musharraf, but it could render him ineffective to a point where the military rethinks its options. The army will soon recognize that the only thing keeping the general and his civilian cronies in power is the army's support. It risks further alienating the Pakistani people and losing their respect as long as it continues to act solely in the interests of Mr. Musharraf and his small band of political allies. At some point, the professional soldiers will wonder whether they should risk their institution's position to keep him in power.
The army is Mr. Musharraf's support base. It is a major beneficiary of U.S. security assistance, having received $17 billion since 1954 with equipment worth several hundred million dollars currently in the pipeline. Since 2002, the U.S. has subsidized the Pakistani army to the tune of $150 million per month. The army is also a stakeholder in Pakistan's growing economy, which benefits from international aid and investment. If Mr. Musharraf's autocratic policies threaten Pakistan's prosperity, the army is likely to be less unanimous in its support of its commander.
Already, there are signs of economic fallout from the political turmoil. Rumors of an anti-Musharraf military coup on Monday caused the biggest one-day decline in 16 months on the Karachi Stock Exchange, resulting in losses of an estimated $1.3 billion. Pakistan's credit rating has been revised downward in anticipation of further civic unrest and international sanctions.
Pakistanis are used to coups d'état where the army takes the helm of government. Things are different this time. In the past, generals have suspended the constitution to remove from power unpopular rulers, usually weakened civilians rightly or wrongly accused of corruption (as was the case when Mr. Musharraf ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in October 1999). This is the first time an unpopular military ruler has suspended the constitution to preserve his own rule. In doing so, Mr. Musharraf has clearly overplayed his hand.
Mr. Musharraf cannot blame a civilian predecessor for bringing the country to the brink. If there is internal chaos in Pakistan today, it is of the general's making. After all, it was his arbitrary decision to remove Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry in March that initiated the political crisis which has led to the current "state of emergency."
Justice Chaudhry, on the other hand, has become a symbol of resistance to arbitrary rule -- the man who refused to roll over and disappear, unlike earlier judges who cooperated with military rulers or simply went home when their conscience dictated otherwise. Justice Chaudhry's call upon the legal fraternity to "Go to every corner of Pakistan and give the message that this is the time to sacrifice" for the supremacy of Pakistan's Constitution has drawn elements disillusioned with existing political leaders to anti-Musharraf protests.
Among Pakistani political leaders, Ms. Bhutto has emerged as the viable civilian alternative to Mr. Musharraf, with public support at home and acceptance abroad. As the only politician in Pakistan to publicly describe Islamist extremism and terrorism as the principal threat to the nation, Ms. Bhutto was initially measured in her response to Mr. Musharraf's reckless actions. She demanded that he restore the constitution and call elections as scheduled. She hoped to change his attitude with the threat of putting hundreds of thousands of supporters in the streets, without actually doing so. But Mr. Musharraf's stubbornness is changing that position.
Like many in the U.S., Ms. Bhutto appears worried about directing attention away from fighting terrorism and destabilizing Pakistan further. But leaving the anti-Musharraf campaign leaderless is not an option. She has positioned herself as an opposition leader who represents the sentiment of the people, but is also willing to accept a negotiated settlement that restores the constitution, ends persecution, and results in free and fair elections leading to full civilian rule.
So far Mr. Musharraf has shown no inclination to negotiate in good faith with Ms. Bhutto or the international community. With each passing day, the Bush administration's hopes -- that with its help there could be a transition to democracy in Pakistan with a continuing role for Mr. Musharraf -- are diminishing. Unless Mr. Musharraf changes course quickly, the U.S. will be compelled to start looking beyond him to a more legitimate leader.
Mr. Musharraf seems determined to put his own political survival before the rule of law -- actions that warrant the label dictator. Pakistan's attorneys, and increasingly the rest of its citizenry, seem equally determined to prevent this from happening.
Mr. Haqqani is director of Boston University's Center for International Relations and the author of "Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military" (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005). He also has served as adviser to several Pakistani prime ministers, including Ms. Bhutto.
WSJ
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http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2007/November/subcontinent_November284.xml§ion=subcontinent&col=
Khaleej Times Online >> News >> SUBCONTINENT
‘Pakistan cuts troops on Indian border’
By our correspondent
7 November 2007
NEW DELHI — For the first time in 60 years, Pakistan has considerably reduced the number of troops along the heavily guarded border with India.
The matter has come up in the Cabinet Committee on Security headed by the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.
Turmoil in Pakistan and unrest in its western areas, have resulted in Pakistani troops being pulled away in large numbers from the border areas adjoining Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat.
Reports quoting intelligence agencies said here yesterday that the aggressively positioned eastern frontier areas adjoining India have become extremely thin. Pakistani troops that otherwise are positioned to counter Indian forces, have been moved out to Waziristan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the western borders, reports said.
Intelligence officials have been quoted as saying that strain is starting to tell on the regular Pakistan army with tensions mounting in the north west frontier. “The very sign of pressure building up against Pakistan is that their forces which never compromised on its eastern border have been moved out leaving the border areas along India lean and lanky,” said top officials.
Some 38,000 troops from key border installations have been repositioned, the Caninet Committee has been told. It is said as many as 15 Infantry Brigades of Pakistan army have been repositioned on the border areas of north west frontier to fight Taleban.
Many reserve troops and units that were on duty on the borders at Indo-Pak Line of Control have been moved out. Even soldiers from the elite strike corps that are trained to slice into India in the event of war along with reserves with the army GHQ in Rawalpindi have been mobilised. However, this doesn’t indicate that Pakistan’s eastern border has been left totally unattended.
The thinning of troops indicate that Islamabad is quite apprehensive about internal developments more than any untoward events unfolding with India. Officials were quoted as saying that Islamabad isn’t worried with New Delhi that has seemingly been sympathetic with the situation in its neighbour that forced President Pervez Musharraf impose 'emergency' last Saturday.
“For them the priority is surely the western flank that has brought them more trouble as of now. With Indo-Pak peace process still on, Islamabad can at least trust its new found camaraderie with New Delhi,” officials said. Latest inputs have shown that the Mangla-based Army Reserve North (ARN) and Multan-based Army Reserve South (ARS) too have been repositioned, said Indian Express newspaper.
“They have been dispatched to Peshawar or Quetta for deployment along the troubled Afghan frontier. Units from the Force Command Northern Area (FCNA) that controls Pakistan’s Azad Kashmir region and forces from the dual-role XI Corps in Peshawar — tasked with defending the Afghan border have also been moved to fight the Taleban,” said the report.
The reports quoting valid details, point out that written instructions were sent by Pakistan Army GHQ to all formation commanders to determine the quantity of forces each unit could relieve for deployment along the Afghan border and even the hinterland. After that a classified list of ‘extra troops’ was drawn up by GHQ based on an internal audit that was carried out by all formations.
Top US-based defence analysts watching developments in India and Pakistan, have warned that this pressure on Pakistani armed forces could lead to an ‘abnormally high percentage of Pakistani troops on active duty’ — a factor that is dangerous, as it can ‘crack open’ the army against President Musharraf himself.
“Intelligence data says that out of the 66 Infantry Brigades (about 1.65 lakh troops) in the Pak army, 33 brigades are currently on active duty. Of these, 18 brigades (45,000 troops) are deployed for counter-terror operations. With half its troops committed to active duty, the army is finding it hard to rotate and relive formations,” said reports.
“It is a major operational constraint. In the event of war, the whole army gets mobilised but in an ideal scenario, one-third of the troops should be on duty, while the rest are in transit or in a peace area. In long term, it will get increasingly difficult to manage the already strained forces,” top officials were quoted as saying.
On this scenario, strategic affairs expert Stephen Cohen has pointed out that “the (Pakistani) army might lose its coherence. It is a multi-ethnic army, derived from the old British Indian army, and from time to time it, like its predecessor, has had ethnic-based mutinies (the most notable being the revolt of the Bengali elements of all three services in 1970).”
“At present, about 18 per cent of the Pakistan army are Pushtuns or of Pushtun-origin. There are reports of officers refusing to attack targets, and the astonishing case, still unexplained, of nearly 300 officers and jawans surrendering to the militants in Waziristan — where they are still being held hostage,” Cohen wrote for Brookings Institution explaining that America was in for a tough ride with developments in Pakistan.
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GM:
Good to have you with us again.
Given the history of the border with India, this development seems quite significant. Is it a sign that Mush fears the situation unravelling completely? Or is he readying a genuinely aggressive move against to Whackostans? Or?
We certainly live in interesting times , , ,
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WSJ
The Bush-Biden Doctrine
November 10, 2007; Page A10
Whatever Pervez Musharraf's failings in Islamabad, his impact in Washington has been nothing short of miraculous. With his declaration of emergency rule, the Pakistan President has single-handedly revived the Bush Doctrine. The same people who only days ago were deriding President Bush for naively promoting democracy are now denouncing him for not promoting it enough in Pakistan.
"We have to move from a Musharraf to a Pakistan policy," declared Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden on Thursday. "Pakistan has strong democratic traditions and a large, moderate majority. But that moderate majority must have a voice in the system and an outlet with elections. If not, moderates may find that they have no choice but to make common cause with extremists, just as the Shah's opponents did in Iran three decades ago."
HOT TOPIC
Pakistan Plunges Deeper Into ChaosJoe Biden, neocon.
The Senator's epiphany underscores that Pakistan has long been the playground not of democracy promoters but of the foreign-policy "realists." General Musharraf may have taken power in a coup, but when Colin Powell famously gave him the for-us-or-against-us choice after 9/11, the general chose "for." He is a U.S. ally in a rough neighborhood, his government captured such al Qaeda bigs as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and as an authoritarian he was of the moderate kind. The Bush Administration did push Mr. Musharraf to restore democratic legitimacy, but quietly and without great urgency. Brent Scowcroft would have approved.
We don't summarize this history to deride it the way Mr. Biden and many neocons-come-lately are. There are exceptions to every foreign policy rule, and sometimes democracy promotion must compete with other American interests, such as the need to pursue al Qaeda. In the Cold War, Americans often had little choice but to support authoritarian rulers who were allies in the larger struggle against Communism. Sometimes the alternatives are worse, and Pakistan is a hard case.
Clearly, however, this calculation has to change after Mr. Musharraf's "emergency" declaration. His arrest of lawyers, human-rights activists and political opponents shows that his main targets aren't Islamists. They are the pro-Western parts of Pakistan civil society that oppose Islamism more than the general does. He is making a heavy-handed play to avoid a Supreme Court ruling against his recent Presidential election, and he has undermined the talks he was having with opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on a transition to democracy. As a national leader, he has made himself even less legitimate.
So what should the U.S. do? To some, like Mr. Biden, the answer is to issue an ultimatum to restore elections by a date certain, and if Mr. Musharraf refuses, cut off the U.S. aid of $150 million a month and walk away. This has its virtues as a political threat, but it is less useful if you actually have to follow through.
The last time the U.S. tried to isolate Pakistan, after its nuclear test in the late 1990s, we lost contact with a generation of Pakistani military officers. Pakistan also got in bed with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the U.S. had little or no influence. It was only after 9/11, with the resumption of U.S. aid, that Mr. Musharraf replaced some generals and intelligence officials who sympathized with the Taliban. There are benefits to staying engaged with the military and other parts of Pakistan society -- both to understand it better and to help deter the worse possible outcome, which would be an Islamist coup.
At the same time, however, the U.S. can't quietly acquiesce in the status quo. Mr. Musharraf's days are numbered, and his country's democrats need to know that the U.S. stands squarely for restoring the rule of law, freedom of the airwaves, and democratic legitimacy. President Bush already seems to be making some progress on this front, calling Mr. Musharraf this week and urging him both to resign his military commission and set a date for elections. The general has responded by saying elections will be held by February, a month after they had been scheduled before the "emergency" was declared.
Some of our neocon friends point to the Cold War precedent of the Philippines, where Ronald Reagan helped to push long-time ally Ferdinand Marcos from power. What they forget is that the Gipper's push came at the end of a long process of private engagement and public pressure, and only after Marcos had tried to steal a Presidential election. It also came in a country whose political culture we clearly understood, and one with close bilateral military ties. When Marcos ordered military leaders to arrest the opposition, they refused and a bloodbath was prevented.
Others point to the Iran example of 1979, but that too is an imperfect model. Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski abandoned the Shah with little understanding that the military as an institution would crumble, and none at all about the radical designs of the Ayatollah Khomeini. We have been living with the consequences of that blunder ever since.
Pakistan today is not Iran in 1979, but neither is it the Philippines in 1986. It requires its own unique U.S. engagement and diplomacy. The restoration of democracy should be one goal of that engagement, even if we have to call it the Bush-Biden Doctrine.
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Being Pervez Musharraf
What's it like to be Pakistan's ruler?
BY BRET STEPHENS
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
Imagine yourself as Pervez Musharraf, the 64-year-old military ruler of Pakistan. As a young artillery officer, and later as a commando, you acquired a reputation for personal bravery--and for doing just as you pleased, whatever your orders. Your subsequent performance as a general and politician has been of a similar piece. In recent days, you have declared a state of emergency, imprisoned thousands of lawyers and civil society types, fired the Supreme Court and put its chief justice under house arrest, and shut down much of the independent media. You have done all this to keep your grip on power, all the while insisting you have "no personal ego and ambitions to guard."
Abroad, the conventional wisdom is that you have shredded what little legitimacy you had and that your days, politically or otherwise, are numbered. You think they're wrong. You're probably right.
No doubt you are sensitive to the appearance of hypocrisy. In your self-applauding autobiography, "In the Line of Fire," you wrote about former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as follows: "He threw many of his opponents, including editors, journalists and even cartoonists, into prison. He was really a fascist--using the most progressive rhetoric to promote regressive ends, the first of which was to stay in power forever." Of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, you recalled how he "got his party goons to storm the Supreme Court building while the court was in session. . . . This was, to put it mildly, a very low point in Pakistani political history." Concerning the efficacy of martial law, you said that "our past experience had amply demonstrated that martial law damages not only military but also civilian institutions."
The way you see it, however, there's just no comparing you to Pakistan's past leaders. The elder Bhutto, his daughter Benazir, and Mr. Sharif were a trio of political mesmerists--aristocrats posing as populists--who enriched themselves and their friends to the tune of billions as they bankrupted the country. You are a refugee from partition, a man for whom Pakistan is a sanctuary that must be preserved at all cost. You have raised your family on a soldier's wages. Nobody can accuse you of being a thief.
Besides, who in his right mind would want to return to the days of Mr. Sharif or the Bhuttos? When you took over in 1999, the country was $30 billion in debt and its credit rating was among the world's worst. Since then, the number of cell phone subscribers is up 100%, the number of air conditioners sold is up 200%, the stock market is up 800%, foreign direct investment is up more than tenfold and the economy has averaged 7% annual growth over five years. Did the shambolic democracy of years past ever register these kinds of figures?
That's one reason why you are confident you can ride out this storm, just as you have so many others. The intellectuals, the leftists, the human-rights activists and the lawyers--lawyers!--may be against you, but the worst they can do is write nasty op-eds in the pages of the Western press. That may be a stain on your vanity, but it is not a threat to your regime.
By contrast, the merchant classes, political allies from the beginning, remain your great beneficiaries and would be the last to cheer your ouster. As for the poor, they will do nothing to risk their livelihoods for the sake of politics. Come to think of it, that's another excellent reason to enforce the state of emergency well past the next election.
Then there is Ms. Bhutto, whose political smarts don't quite match her rhetorical gifts. She did you a favor earlier this year when she all but agreed to rule in condominium with you in exchange for having her corruption charges dropped. But she was under the mistaken impression that you needed her "democratic legitimacy" every bit as much as she craved a return to power. You've rubbished that assumption. Maybe now she'll understand the favor you have done her by keeping her under house arrest, thereby preserving the pretense of her political oppositionism.
As for the military, you've had eight years to make sure your lieutenants are loyal. Not only do they see you as one of their own, they also see you as the man who will keep the money coming from Washington. And the money will keep coming. The ostensible purpose of President Bush's phone call last week may have been to insist that you hold elections and relinquish your uniform, and you're probably prepared to meet him halfway. But the subtext of the call is that the two of you remain on speaking terms. Had it been otherwise, the consequences could have been devastating to you. For now, though, you're still the one.
What worries you? The business about the uniform, for starters. You are old enough to remember 1958, when a former general turned civilian president named Iskander Mirza dissolved the government, declared martial law and put Ayub Khan, the army chief of staff, in charge. Bad move: Khan exiled Mirza to London in three weeks flat.
You also can't be sure the street violence won't spiral out of control. You have gone out of your way to treat the detained lawyers gingerly, by local standards. What if they don't get the message and return to the streets, unchastened and emboldened? What if there is some kind of "event" that galvanizes the protestors? Most of your army is Punjabi: Could they be counted on to crack the heads of fellow Punjabis in Lahore, if it came to that?
There's also this pesky matter of increasingly assertive Islamist militants in the North-West Frontier Province, who have repeatedly humiliated the army in recent confrontations. Your motives for declaring an emergency have been so transparently self-serving that it's easy to forget there really is a terrorist threat to the country. It may soon dawn on you that your assault on civil liberties has only ripened the conditions in which terrorists thrive.
Fortunately for you, the first two scenarios aren't likely to come to pass, and the third you'll somehow handle. Your support, both at home and abroad, may never again be what it was, but the absence of support does not necessarily mean active opposition. In your case it will probably mean reluctant acquiescence to the facts you lay on the ground. Were you a democrat, you might feel ashamed to carry on ruling that way. Soldier that you are, it won't make you lose much sleep.
Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.
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And here is a completely different take, also from the WSJ:
Indira and the Islamists
By SHIKHA DALMIA
November 13, 2007
The Bush administration has so far taken only perfunctory steps to prod Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to lift "emergency rule," reinstate the constitution and hold elections. Doing anything more, the United States seems to fear, might produce an Islamist victory at the polls -- and undermine a key ally in its war on terror. In effect, the old foreign policy bogeyman of the "fear of the alternative" is back in the White House.
But at least with respect to Pakistan, this fear ought to be banished. If anything, the longer Mr. Musharraf is allowed to suspend democracy, the more politically powerful Pakistan's religious extremists are likely to become. Those who doubt this thesis should peer across Pakistan's southern border and examine what happened during India's two-year flirtation with emergency rule in 1975.
Like Mr. Musharraf, India's then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared emergency after a state high court invalidated the elections that had brought her to power, on grounds of corruption and fraud. But instead of stepping down, she gave herself extraordinary powers and launched a massive crackdown on every democratic institution that India had painstakingly built since its independence from the British in 1947. She threw leaders of opposition parties behind bars and clamped down on the press, threatening to cut off the power supply to newspapers that refused to submit to her censorship. She also banned political activity by grassroots organizations.
Shutting down these institutions had a perverse side effect from which India's secular democracy has yet to fully recover: It left the field of resistance open to Hindu extremist groups such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its then political front Jan Sangh, allowing them to regain the political legitimacy they had lost after one of their erstwhile recruits assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. The RSS was banned shortly after the assassination, but once the ban was lifted, it decentralized its organization further, making it harder for authorities to keep track of all its activities. The RSS maintained a public face of a charitable social organization, but beneath that facade lay a more sinister side that engaged in communal sectarian incitement and other subversive activities.
The RSS's quasi-underground character proved to be a vital asset after Gandhi choked off all regular channels for political organization. Unlike the other parties, Jan Sangh was quickly able to mobilize the nationwide network of RSS's "shakhas," or highly disciplined cadres, and take over the mantle of resistance. It temporarily suspended its ideology of "Hindutva," or Hindu nationalism, to make common cause with what it dubbed the "second struggle for independence." It played an important role in producing and disseminating underground literature chronicling Gandhi's excesses, publishing speeches by her opponents and reaching out to families of arrested dissidents.
The upshot was that once the emergency was lifted and elections called, Jan Sangh declared itself the savior of Indian democracy -- a boast that its successors like the Bharatiya Janata Party still make -- and won a prominent place in the coalition of secular parties that ultimately defeated Gandhi. This alliance collapsed in less than two years, thanks in no small part to Jan Sangh's sectarian demands. Nevertheless, as New York University Professor Arvind Rajagopal has noted, this brief stint in power proved an invaluable launching pad for the group's virulent ideology and did lasting damage to the country's commitment to secularism.
Indeed, although Gandhi, like her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was an ardent secularist, after she returned to power she assiduously tried to build her Hindu bona fides, even accepting an invitation by a Hindu fundamentalist group to inaugurate the Ganga Jal Yatra, an annual event under which Hindus gather in a show of unity and collectively march to the mountains to get water from the holy Ganges river. Gandhi's gesture was significant because it legitimized the use of Hindu symbolism for political mobilization, something that subsequently produced immense tensions and ugly confrontations among Hindus and Muslims.
* * *
A similar political mainstreaming of radical Islamist groups might occur in Pakistan if Mr. Musharraf is allowed to prolong his power grab. In fact, the situation could be worse, given that, unlike India, Pakistan has never been a secular country and Islamists have always exerted considerable behind-the-scenes influence on government. They have infiltrated the Pakistani intelligence services and are well represented in the ranks of the civil bureaucracy. And there has always been close cooperation between Pakistan's generals and mullahs because of their common interest in cultivating Pakistan's Islamic identity and playing up the threat that Hindu India poses to it. The one government institution where Islamists have only a minority presence is the Pakistani Parliament.
But that might change if Mr. Musharraf continues to postpone elections and crush political opponents. Under such circumstances, Jammat-e-Islami (JI), Pakistan's oldest religious party with ties to the Taliban -- and an organization that harbors a long-standing desire to impose Shariah, or Islamic law, on the country -- and its sister organizations might well become useful to secular parties such as former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party. JI and its cohorts command even bigger powers of mobilization than Jan Sangh did during India's emergency. They run madrassas, or religious schools, publish newspapers and have sizeable cadres that can be quickly deployed for street protests. These resources might prove vitally important in resisting Mr. Musharraf.
"Instead of the secular and religious parties working against each other, they will start working together," fears Prof. Hasan-Askari Rizvi of Punjab University in Lahore. Indeed, the Associated Press has already reported that Ms. Bhutto is inviting the Islamist parties, many of whose members too have been thrown in jail, to "join hands" with her. All of this will allow the Islamists to mask their real agenda and piggyback on a popular cause to win more representation in parliament when elections are held. Even if secularists like Ms. Bhutto prevail in these elections eventually, it will be much harder for them to resist Islamist demands if they are beholden to them for beating back the emergency. In effect, the Islamist reach will not only gain in depth -- but legitimacy as well.
* * *
If Mr. Musharraf were prodded to call off the emergency and honor his commitment to hold genuinely free and transparent elections in early January, would that lead to an Islamist victory, or at least significant gains, as the Bush administration fears? Not at all.
Islamist parties had their best showing in the 2002 general elections, when they secured 11.1% of the vote and 53 out of 272 parliamentary seats -- a major gain over the pathetic three seats they won a decade before. But this gain was less serious than it seems. Most of the additional seats came not from Pakistan proper, but a few border provinces in the West that were experiencing a resurgence of anti-Americanism given their deep cross-border ties with the Taliban in Afghanistan. More crucially, however, Mr. Musharraf banned Ms. Bhutto and leaders of other secular parties from running, making it hard for these parties to secure a decent voter turnout. If free and fair elections were to be held today, Prof. Rizvi estimates secular parties would win handily, with the Islamists commanding no more than 5% of the national vote.
Islamist victory at the polls is not a real threat in Pakistan right now. The Bush administration should not allow that fear to deter it from applying maximum pressure on Mr. Musharraf to hold elections posthaste. The U.S. can, for instance, threaten to cut off Pakistan's supply of F-16 fighter jets and other nonterrorism-related aid.
India's example shows that even one vacation from democracy can be a huge setback for secularism. Yet another prolonged suspension of democracy will leave Pakistan few resources to beat back its Islamists. This is one instance where the Bush administration's avowed commitment to democracy is not just the more principled -- but also the more practical -- way of countering the threat of Islamic extremists.
Ms. Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based think tank.
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hotair.com
NYT: U.S. has highly classified program to help safeguard Pakistani nukesposted at 3:35 pm on November 17, 2007 by Allahpundit
Send to a Friend | printer-friendly The least surprising surprise since Ehud Olmert accidentally let slip that Israel has nukes. To its credit, the Times evidently sat on the story for three years in the interests of security; only after the Pakistanis themselves started talking about it and the administration dropped its objection to publishing details are they moving forward.
As with all other forms of military aid to Pakistan, we’re getting very little bang for our buck.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/washington/18nuke.htm...WAY&pagewanted=print
November 18, 2007
U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding Nuclear Arms
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 — Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million so far on a highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, secure his country’s nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials.
But with the future of that country’s leadership in doubt, debate is intensifying about whether Washington has done enough to help protect the warheads and laboratories, and whether Pakistan’s reluctance to reveal critical details about its arsenal has undercut the effectiveness of the continuing security effort.
The aid, buried in secret portions of the federal budget, paid for the training of Pakistani personnel in the United States and the construction of a nuclear security training center in Pakistan, a facility that American officials say is nowhere near completion, even though it was supposed to be in operation this year.
A raft of equipment — from helicopters to night-vision goggles to nuclear detection equipment — was given to Pakistan to help secure its nuclear material, its warheads, and the laboratories that were the site of the worst known case of nuclear proliferation in the atomic age.
While American officials say that they believe the arsenal is safe at the moment, and that they take at face value Pakistani assurances that security is vastly improved, in many cases the Pakistani government has been reluctant to show American officials how or where the gear is actually used.
That is because the Pakistanis do not want to reveal the locations of their weapons or the amount or type of new bomb-grade fuel the country is now producing.
The American program was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration debated whether to share with Pakistan one of the crown jewels of American nuclear protection technology, known as “permissive action links,” or PALS, a system used to keep a weapon from detonating without proper codes and authorizations.
In the end, despite past federal aid to France and Russia on delicate points of nuclear security, the administration decided that it could not share the system with the Pakistanis because of legal restrictions.
In addition, the Pakistanis were suspicious that any American-made technology in their warheads could include a secret “kill switch,” enabling the Americans to turn off their weapons.
While many nuclear experts in the federal government favored offering the PALS system because they considered Pakistan’s arsenal among the world’s most vulnerable to terrorist groups, some administration officials feared that sharing the technology would teach Pakistan too much about American weaponry. The same concern kept the Clinton administration from sharing the technology with China in the early 1990s.
The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable. The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.
Since then, some elements of the program have been discussed in the Pakistani news media and in a presentation late last year by the leader of Pakistan’s nuclear safety effort, Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who acknowledged receiving “international” help as he sought to assure Washington that all of the holes in Pakistan’s nuclear security infrastructure had been sealed.
The Times told the administration last week that it was reopening its examination of the program in light of those disclosures and the current instability in Pakistan. Early this week, the White House withdrew its request that publication be withheld, though it was unwilling to discuss details of the program.
The secret program was designed by the Energy Department and the State Department, and it drew heavily from the effort over the past decade to secure nuclear weapons, stockpiles and materials in Russia and other former Soviet states. Much of the money for Pakistan was spent on physical security, like fencing and surveillance systems, and equipment for tracking nuclear material if it left secure areas.
But while Pakistan is formally considered a “major non-NATO ally,” the program has been hindered by a deep suspicion among Pakistan’s military that the secret goal of the United States was to gather intelligence about how to locate and, if necessary, disable Pakistan’s arsenal, which is the pride of the country.
“Everything has taken far longer than it should,” a former official involved in the program said in a recent interview, “and you are never sure what you really accomplished.”
In recent days, American officials have expressed confidence that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is well secured. “I don’t see any indication right now that security of those weapons is in jeopardy, but clearly we are very watchful, as we should be,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference on Thursday.
Admiral Mullen’s carefully chosen words, a senior administration official said, were based on two separate intelligence assessments issued this month that had been summarized in briefings to Mr. Bush. Both concluded that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was safe under current conditions, and one also looked at laboratories and came to the same conclusion.
Still, the Pakistani government’s reluctance to release information has limited efforts to assess the situation. In particular, some American experts say they have less ability to look into the nuclear laboratories where highly enriched uranium is produced — including the laboratory named for Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man who sold Pakistan’s nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
So far, the amount the United States has spent on the classified nuclear security program, less than $100 million, amounts to slightly less than one percent of the roughly $10 billion in known American aid to Pakistan since the Sept. 11 attacks. Most of that money has gone for assistance in counterterrorism activities against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The debate over sharing nuclear security technology began just before then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was sent to Islamabad after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the United States was preparing to invade Afghanistan.
“There were a lot of people who feared that once we headed into Afghanistan, the Taliban would be looking for these weapons,” said a senior official who was involved. But a legal analysis found that aiding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program — even if it was just with protective gear — would violate both international and American law.
General Musharraf, in his memoir, “In the Line of Fire,” published last year, did not discuss any equipment, training or technology offered then, but wrote: “We were put under immense pressure by the United States regarding our nuclear and missile arsenal. The Americans’ concerns were based on two grounds. First, at this time they were not very sure of my job security, and they dreaded the possibility that an extremist successor government might get its hands on our strategic nuclear arsenal. Second, they doubted our ability to safeguard our assets.”
General Musharraf was more specific in an interview two years ago for a Times documentary, “Nuclear Jihad: Can Terrorists Get the Bomb?” Asked about the equipment and training provided by Washington, he said, “Frankly, I really don’t know the details.” But he added: “This is an extremely sensitive matter in Pakistan. We don’t allow any foreign intrusion in our facilities. But, at the same time, we guarantee that the custodial arrangements that we brought about and implemented are already the best in the world.”
Now that concern about General Musharraf’s ability to remain in power has been rekindled, so has the debate inside and outside the Bush administration about how much the program accomplished, and what it left unaccomplished. A second phase of the program, which would provide more equipment, helicopters and safety devices, is already being discussed in the administration, but its dimensions have not been determined.
Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, which designed most of the United States’ nuclear arms, argued that recent federal reluctance to share warhead security technology was making the world more dangerous.
“Lawyers say it’s classified,” Dr. Agnew said in an interview. “That’s nonsense. We should share this technology. Anybody who joins the club should be helped to get this.”
“Whether it’s India or Pakistan or China or Iran,” he added, “the most important thing is that you want to make sure there is no unauthorized use. You want to make sure that the guys who have their hands on the weapons can’t use them without proper authorization.”
In the past, officials say, the United States has shared ideas — but not technologies — about how to make the safeguards that lie at the heart of American weapons security. The system hinges on what is essentially a switch in the firing circuit that requires the would-be user to enter a numeric code that starts a timer for the weapon’s arming and detonation.
Most switches disable themselves if the sequence of numbers entered turns out to be incorrect in a fixed number of tries, much like a bank ATM does. In some cases, the disabled link sets off a small explosion in the warhead to render it useless. Delicate design details involve how to bury the link deep inside a weapon to keep terrorists or enemies from disabling the safeguard.
The most famous case of nuclear idea sharing involves France. Starting in the early 1970s, the United States government began a series of highly secretive discussions with French scientists to help them improve the country’s warheads.
A potential impediment to such sharing was the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which bars cooperation between nations on weapons technology.
To get around such legal prohibitions, Washington came up with a system of “negative guidance,” sometimes called “20 questions,” as detailed in a 1989 article in Foreign Policy. The system let United States scientists listen to French descriptions of warhead approaches and give guidance about whether the French were on the right track.
Nuclear experts say sharing also took place after the cold war when the United States worried about the security of Russian nuclear arms and facilities. In that case, both countries declassified warhead information to expedite the transfer of safety and security information, according to federal nuclear scientists.
But in the case of China, which has possessed nuclear weapons since the 1960s and is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Clinton administration decided that sharing PALS would be too risky. Experts inside the administration feared the technology would improve the Chinese warheads, and could give the Chinese insights into how American systems worked.
Officials said Washington debated sharing security techniques with Pakistan on at least two occasions — right after it detonated its first nuclear arms in 1998, and after the terrorist attack on the United States in 2001.
The debates pitted atomic scientists who favored technical sharing against federal officials at such places as the State Department who ruled that the transfers were illegal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and under United States law.
In the 1998 case, the Clinton administration still hoped it could roll back Pakistan’s nuclear program, forcing it to give up the weapons it had developed. That hope, never seen as very realistic, has been entirely given up by the Bush administration.
The nuclear proliferation conducted by Mr. Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who built a huge network to spread Pakistani technology, convinced the Pakistanis that they needed better protections.
“Among the places in the world that we have to make sure we have done the maximum we can do, Pakistan is at the top of the list,” said John E. McLaughlin, who served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, and played a crucial role in the intelligence collection that led to Mr. Khan’s downfall.
“I am confident of two things,” he added. “That the Pakistanis are very serious about securing this material, but also that someone in Pakistan is very intent on getting their hands on it.”
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Op-Ed Contributors
Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem
NY Times
By FREDERICK W. KAGAN and MICHAEL O’HANLON
Published: November 18, 2007
Washington
AS the government of Pakistan totters, we must face a fact: the United States simply could not stand by as a nuclear-armed Pakistan descended into the abyss. Nor would it be strategically prudent to withdraw our forces from an improving situation in Iraq to cope with a deteriorating one in Pakistan. We need to think — now — about our feasible military options in Pakistan, should it really come to that.
We do not intend to be fear mongers. Pakistan’s officer corps and ruling elites remain largely moderate and more interested in building a strong, modern state than in exporting terrorism or nuclear weapons to the highest bidder. But then again, Americans felt similarly about the shah’s regime in Iran until it was too late.
Moreover, Pakistan’s intelligence services contain enough sympathizers and supporters of the Afghan Taliban, and enough nationalists bent on seizing the disputed province of Kashmir from India, that there are grounds for real worries.
The most likely possible dangers are these: a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over outlying provinces, which splinter along ethnic and tribal lines; or a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda try to establish Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.
All possible military initiatives to avoid those possibilities are daunting. With 160 million people, Pakistan is more than five times the size of Iraq. It would take a long time to move large numbers of American forces halfway across the world. And unless we had precise information about the location of all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and materials, we could not rely on bombing or using Special Forces to destroy them.
The task of stabilizing a collapsed Pakistan is beyond the means of the United States and its allies. Rule-of-thumb estimates suggest that a force of more than a million troops would be required for a country of this size. Thus, if we have any hope of success, we would have to act before a complete government collapse, and we would need the cooperation of moderate Pakistani forces.
One possible plan would be a Special Forces operation with the limited goal of preventing Pakistan’s nuclear materials and warheads from getting into the wrong hands. Given the degree to which Pakistani nationalists cherish these assets, it is unlikely the United States would get permission to destroy them. Somehow, American forces would have to team with Pakistanis to secure critical sites and possibly to move the material to a safer place.
For the United States, the safest bet would be shipping the material to someplace like New Mexico; but even pro-American Pakistanis would be unlikely to cooperate. More likely, we would have to settle for establishing a remote redoubt within Pakistan, with the nuclear technology guarded by elite Pakistani forces backed up (and watched over) by crack international troops. It is realistic to think that such a mission might be undertaken within days of a decision to act. The price for rapid action and secrecy, however, would probably be a very small international coalition.
A second, broader option would involve supporting the core of the Pakistani armed forces as they sought to hold the country together in the face of an ineffective government, seceding border regions and Al Qaeda and Taliban assassination attempts against the leadership. This would require a sizable combat force — not only from the United States, but ideally also other Western powers and moderate Muslim nations.
Even if we were not so committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, Western powers would need months to get the troops there. Fortunately, given the longstanding effectiveness of Pakistan’s security forces, any process of state decline probably would be gradual, giving us the time to act.
So, if we got a large number of troops into the country, what would they do? The most likely directive would be to help Pakistan’s military and security forces hold the country’s center — primarily the region around the capital, Islamabad, and the populous areas like Punjab Province to its south.
We would also have to be wary of internecine warfare within the Pakistani security forces. Pro-American moderates could well win a fight against extremist sympathizers on their own. But they might need help if splinter forces or radical Islamists took control of parts of the country containing crucial nuclear materials. The task of retaking any such regions and reclaiming custody of any nuclear weapons would be a priority for our troops.
If a holding operation in the nation’s center was successful, we would probably then seek to establish order in the parts of Pakistan where extremists operate. Beyond propping up the state, this would benefit American efforts in Afghanistan by depriving terrorists of the sanctuaries they have long enjoyed in Pakistan’s tribal and frontier regions.
The great paradox of the post-cold war world is that we are both safer, day to day, and in greater peril than before. There was a time when volatility in places like Pakistan was mostly a humanitarian worry; today it is as much a threat to our basic security as Soviet tanks once were. We must be militarily and diplomatically prepared to keep ourselves safe in such a world. Pakistan may be the next big test.
Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
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WSJ
With the Afghan Army
By ANN MARLOWE
December 4, 2007; Page A20
Kabul, Afghanistan
The half dozen cadets at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan stood straight and tall in the cramped room they share with six others. I asked, "Are you worried about graduating and going to fight the Taliban?" They smiled. "If you are afraid, you are not here," one said in English.
Seeing these self-assured young men, each of whom has beat out five others for one of the 300 places in the freshman class, it's not hard to understand why the Afghan National Army is one of the unqualified success stories of coalition nation-building efforts. "Since April, the ANA has not lost an engagement with the insurgency," says Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, in six eastern Afghan provinces. A 2006 survey showed that 91% of Afghans in the volatile eastern provinces had "a lot" or "some" confidence in the ANA.
Beginning in 2002 with a few dozen officers, the ANA is now 50,000 strong. Most have come through the Kabul Military Training Center (KMTC), which currently puts 5,000 men at a time through a 10-week Basic Warrior Training course modeled on the program at Fort Benning, Ga. A kandak, or battalion, of 1,000 soldiers leaves to fight every two weeks, each one deploying as a unit in a province where security is iffy. Just two corps of the army are in the stable northern and western provinces; three are in the south and east.
The KMTC replaces academies that ceased to function during the war years, and represents a sea change in Afghan military culture. Instructors are no longer allowed to hit the students, and the laws of war are taught early on. Drill is kept to a minimum -- "just enough for them to be soldiers," as Brigadier Tim Allen, who mentors the ANA training command, puts it -- with the focus on maneuvers.
The KMTC retains some distinctively Afghan aspects. One is the attention paid to ethnic balance. Another is basic literacy training. After four weeks of training, soldiers are tested for literacy in their mother tongue (Dari or Pashto) and sent for instruction accordingly. The most recent kandak to pass through was just 30% literate at the four-week mark; trainers admit that the 10-week course isn't long enough to bring everyone up to full literacy. NCOs must be literate to enter training.
According to Maj. Jim Fisher, a reservist and the senior U.S. mentor for Basic Warrior Training, the dropout percentages are in the low 20s. Not every recruit has what it takes, and some soldiers turn out to have left home without telling their families, who find out and implore them to return. Others turn out to be under the age minimum, 17. And some, faced with a deployment in a dangerous area in a remote province, instead elect to join the Afghan National Police near their homes. This option has grown in popularity lately, since police salaries are due to reach parity with the army in January.
In some eastern and southern provinces, recruits face Taliban intimidation. Many recruits admitted to me that they do not wear their uniforms home on vacation.
Officers follow a different path. A British-run officer training school, established in 2006 and based on Sandhurst, has graduated around 100 high school and college graduates. Now it is taking in 130 men in each class with a target output of 102 second lieutenants after the program.
The 630-student National Military Academy of Afghanistan (NMAA) is the gem of the system. Founded in March 2005 and modeled on West Point, it's currently admitting classes of 300 cadets and expecting a 25% attrition rate. It will admit women as 10% of the student body in 2011, when female dorms are ready. The applicant pool has been steadily rising, mainly by word of mouth, with 1,200 applying last year and 1,800 this year. All the professors are Afghan, with the exception of the instructors in foreign languages.
Everything at the NMAA is geared to producing a national army free of regional and ethnic biases. Even their living quarters take ethnic and regional balance into account. In one random dormitory room I visited, the 12 cadets came from all over the country. In fact, these young men have been so well drilled that random questions about unrelated issues are apt to include a reference to the fact that "we are one Army for all of Afghanistan."
ANA officer pay is decent by Afghan standards, but, as in the U.S., money would not be anyone's primary motivation. A brigadier general makes $580 a month, a major $330, a second lieutenant $210. The cadets I met seemed driven by patriotism and, in many cases, family tradition: As at West Point, many cadets have relatives who are officers.
Col. Scott Hamilton, a graduate of West Point and a civil engineering professor there, terms the achievement "staggering." "Imagine starting a four-year liberal arts college from scratch," he says. "And then imagine that in Afghanistan."
Ms. Marlowe is the author of "The Book of Trouble" (Harcourt, 2006), a memoir.
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Woof,
The death of Benazir Bhutto will probably spell the end of the Musharraf regime if for no other reason than that he could not protect her. If he does step down, hopefully General Ashfaq Kiyani will stabilize the country until elections can be held. General Kiyani however will also be a target for Al Qaeda because he is even more friendly to the West than Musharraf. The Pakistani army was just recently handed over to General Kiyani as Musharraf stepped down from his military post.
Kiyani was Bhutto's deputy military secretary when she was Prime Minister in the 80's. And he was Musharraf's director of Inter Services Intelligence. Kiyani had close ties with the U.S. intelligence agencies and was a graduate of the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth Kansas. He is definitely the guy we want in charge of maintaining order and keeping Pakistan's nukes safe.
On a personal note It really sadden me when I heard Benazir Bhutto had been killed. In all the interviews I saw of her she seemed sincere in her efforts to improve the lives of the Pakistani people. She was a very serious, intelligent lady with a sense of humor and warmth that showed through when she was answering very difficult questions. She would have been a strong ally in the War on Terror and to the West in general. She had degrees from both Harvard and Oxford. The free world cannot afford to lose friends like her. Of course that is the reason she was a target.
P.C.
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I gather her administration was quite corrupt, but nonetheless she seemed to have substantial genuine support. Perhaps he death at the hands of the IslamoFascists will p*ss off a lot of Pakistanis similar to how AQ PO'd Sunni Iraqis?
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Wow. Ralph Peters did not think much of Bhutto.
THE BHUTTO ASSASSINATION: NOT WHAT SHE SEEMED TO BE
December 28, 2007 -- FOR the next several days, you're going to read and
hear a great deal of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of
Pakistan's former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.
Her country's better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after
her death than she did in life.
We need have no sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists
behind him to recognize that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest and
utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country.
She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and
"hardheaded" journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in
the Islamic wilderness, but also a thoroughbred democrat.
In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak
poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always more
concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani. Her
program remained one of old-school patronage, not increased productivity or
social decency.
Educated in expensive Western schools, she permitted Pakistan's feeble
education system to rot - opening the door to Islamists and their religious
schools.
During her years as prime minister, Pakistan went backward, not forward. Her
husband looted shamelessly and ended up fleeing the country, pursued by the
courts. The Islamist threat - which she artfully played both ways - spread
like cancer.
But she always knew how to work Westerners - unlike the hapless Gen. Pervez
Musharraf, who sought the best for his tormented country but never knew how
to package himself.
Military regimes are never appealing to Western sensibilities. Yet, there
are desperate hours when they provide the only, slim hope for a country
nearing collapse. Democracy is certainly preferable - but, unfortunately,
it's not always immediately possible. Like spoiled children, we have to have
it now - and damn the consequences.
In Pakistan, the military has its own forms of graft; nonetheless, it
remains the least corrupt institution in the country and the only force
holding an unnatural state together. In Pakistan back in the '90s, the only
people I met who cared a whit about the common man were military officers.
Americans don't like to hear that. But it's the truth.
Bhutto embodied the flaws in Pakistan's political system, not its potential
salvation. Both she and her principal rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif, failed to offer a practical vision for the future - their political
feuds were simply about who would divvy up the spoils.
From its founding, Pakistan has been plagued by cults of personality, by
personal, feudal loyalties that stymied the development of healthy
government institutions (provoking coups by a disgusted military). When she
held the reins of government, Bhutto did nothing to steer in a new
direction - she merely sought to enhance her personal power.
Now she's dead. And she may finally render her country a genuine service (if
cynical party hacks don't try to blame Musharraf for their own benefit).
After the inevitable rioting subsides and the spectacular conspiracy
theories cool a bit, her murder may galvanize Pakistanis against the
Islamist extremists who've never gained great support among voters, but who
nonetheless threaten the state's ability to govern.
As a victim of fanaticism, Bhutto may shine as a rallying symbol with a far
purer light than she cast while alive. The bitter joke is that, while she
was never serious about freedom, women's rights and fighting terrorism, the
terrorists took her rhetoric seriously - and killed her for her words, not
her actions.
Nothing's going to make Pakistan's political crisis disappear - this crisis
may be permanent, subject only to intermittent amelioration. (Our State
Department's policy toward Islamabad amounts to a pocket full of platitudes,
nostalgia for the 20th century and a liberal version of the white man's
burden mindset.)
The one slim hope is that this savage murder will - in the long term -
clarify their lot for Pakistan's citizens. The old ways, the old
personalities and old parties have failed them catastrophically. The country
needs new leaders - who don't think an election victory entitles them to
grab what little remains of the national patrimony.
In killing Bhutto, the Islamists over-reached (possibly aided by rogue
elements in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, one of the murkiest
outfits on this earth). Just as al Qaeda in Iraq overplayed its hand and
alienated that country's Sunni Arabs, this assassination may disillusion
Pakistanis who lent half an ear to Islamist rhetoric.
A creature of insatiable ambition, Bhutto will now become a martyr. In
death, she may pay back some of the enormous debt she owes her country.
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Woof,
I get the feeling that Mr. Peters would say the same thing about any member of any Royal or wealthy family regime including the British Royals or the Kennedy's. It doesn't take much research to figure out that the corruption charges against her where brought up by her opposition and the enemies of her father who was himself killed in office. Peters also fails to mention that all charges were dropped against her for this reason.
Peter's quest to be a force in the world of punditry leads him to write in a self-serving way; that in my opinion, makes him more of a putz than a pundit. Speaking of Bhutto's murder by our enemies as if it was a good thing, is sickening. His comments adds nothing of any use to the story, but he is right that her death may lead to a more stable government in the long run; however, that stability would have came much sooner and without the bloodshed and the unrest if she had lived to have been elected by the majority of the Pakistani people. Of course Mr. Peters thinks he knows what the Pakistani people need. Hell, maybe he should hand pick all the world leaders for us. :-P What an nut job.
P.C.
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FWIW (I have no idea who to believe or what is truth, what is opinion, and what is distortion):
http://www.gertzfile.com/gertzfile/InsidetheRing.html
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I dunno, Wikepedia has sections that get into more details about the sources and allegations of Bhutto and her husband laudaring money that has all the appearances of bribes. Of course as I have pointed out in the past Wikepedia is not always reliable either:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benazir_Bhutto
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Woof,
There is no doubt that a ton of charges were brought against her and her husband because of evidence brought to the attention of various banks or nations that somehow were completly clueless that all this corruption was going on under their noses. The question is whether this material evidence that came out of the investigations by Bhutto's enemies was manufactured. If you read down past the list of allegations in the Wikipedia section on the corruption charges, it states that the Auditor General of Pakistan supports Bhutto's claim that her political enemies falsified and forged the documents and filed a report that brought out that then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan Illegally paid legal advisor's 28 million Rupees to file 19 corruption cases against Bhutto and her husband based on documents they forged in 1990 that resulted in their being ousted from power. :-P
P.C.
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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2007
The Musharraf Problem: Full Text from WSJ
With the permission of the Wall Street Journal, I reproduce below my whole article of yesterday on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
I drafted this article in the first few hours after Bhutto's death before any public attribution of responsibility. Since then, as partly reflected in the final version, the Government of Pakistan has claimed it has evidence or the responsibility of Baitullah Mahsud, Amir of the Taliban Movement of Pakistan (Tahrik-i Taliban-i Pakistan), and Mahsud has denied involvement through his spokesman, Mawlawi Umar.
As Juan Cole reports today, signs of a cover-up are increasing. Please note that the hypotheses of a plot by al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban on the one hand and of involvement by the Pakistani military and government (including in a cover-up) on the other hand are not mutually exclusive.
The Musharraf Problem
Barnett R. Rubin
Reprinted with permission from the Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2007
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto was probably a strategic attack by al Qaeda and its local allies—the Pakistani Taliban—aimed at achieving Osama bin Laden's and Ayman al-Zawahiri's most pressing political objective: destabilizing the government of Pakistan, the nuclear-armed country where al Qaeda has re-established the safe haven it lost in Afghanistan.
Many in Pakistan nevertheless will blame their own military, which has failed to stop the suicide bombings over the past five years, including that of Bhutto's motorcade in Karachi in October. Pakistani intelligence now claims to have intercepted a phone call from Baitullah Mahsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, offering congratulations for the operation. It may be true. But the skepticism with which this announcement was greeted in Pakistan shows that the Bush administration's strategy of trying to shore up the power of President (former general) Pervez Musharraf cannot work. Even if it is innocent of involvement in this assassination, the Pakistan military under Mr. Musharraf has no intention of ceding power to civilians.
Pakistani newspapers have already published what they claim are the planned results of the rigged elections. Nothing short of a genuine transition to democracy that replaces rather than complements military rule has a chance of establishing a government with the capacity to regain control of the country's territory and marginalize the militants.
The murder of Bhutto was not just an attempt to derail Pakistani democracy, or prevent an enlightened Muslim woman from taking power. It was a counterattack, apparently by the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda, against a U.S.-backed transition from direct to indirect military rule in Pakistan by brokering a forced marriage of "moderates."
According to last July's National Intelligence Estimate on the al Qaeda threat, bin Laden has re-established his sanctuary in the Pakistani tribal agencies. According to a report by the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, the suicide bombers for Pakistan and Afghanistan are trained in these agencies.
Most global terrorist plots since 9/11 can be traced back to these areas. And Pakistan's military regime, not Iran, has been the main source of rogue nuclear proliferation. It is therefore the U.S. partnership with military rulers in Pakistan that has been and is the problem, not the solution.
Last September, bin Laden released a video declaring jihad on the Pakistani government. When Bhutto returned to Pakistan from exile on Oct. 18—as part of a U.S.-backed strategy to shore up Musharraf's power through elections—her motorcade was bombed as it passed by several military bases in Karachi, killing over 100.
In October and November, groups allied with the Pakistani Taliban captured several districts in Swat, in the Northwest Frontier Province, not in the tribal agencies. When I was in Pakistan in early November, I was told that this offensive was part of a larger effort by the Pakistani Taliban to surround Peshawar, capital of NWFP, and put increasing pressure on nearby Islamabad, the capital. The next key step, I was told on Nov. 5, would be an attack on Charsadda, northeast of Peshawar, on the Muslim feast of 'Id al-Adha.
Sure enough, on Dec. 21 a suicide bomber killed 56 people during 'Id worship in Charsadda. This suicide attack followed by a week the announcement that leaders of various Taliban groups had agreed to establish a common organization—the Taliban Movement of Pakistan—under the command of Baitullah Mahsud, the Taliban commander in the South Waziristan Tribal Agency, where the meeting took place.
But if bin Laden declared jihad against Mr. Musharraf, Pakistan's leader saw greater threats elsewhere. When he declared an emergency on Nov. 3, he was responding mainly to the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which was about to rule that his standing for president while a serving general violated the constitution. Mr. Musharraf continued the longstanding policy of the Pakistani military of putting its own power, justified by the Indian threat, ahead of all other concerns.
Mr. Musharraf dissolved the Supreme Court and arrested thousands of democratic opponents before sending the army to recapture portions of Swat. His priorities—seeing unarmed civilian opponents as the main threat to the country—helps explain why many Pakistanis believe that the military is behind Bhutto's assassination.
These priorities are consistent with the message that Mr. Musharraf has been sending for years. On Sept. 19, 2001, he told the Pakistani public that he would support U.S. efforts in Afghanistan in order to "save Afghanistan and Taliban, ensure that they suffer minimum losses." He presented Pakistan's support for U.S. efforts against the Taliban as reluctant compliance, required to assure the security of Pakistan from India.
Bhutto, however, had started to present a different message: that the people of Pakistan want a government and a state that serves them, not a state that serves the military's pursuit of a failed strategic mission. She spoke of the Pakistani Taliban and their al Qaeda backers as the greatest threat to the country. She and other parties proposed to extend civil authority over the tribal agencies, ending their role as a platform for covert actions.
An interim of emergency rule and the postponement of national elections may now be inevitable. But if the military re-imposes martial law, further guts Pakistan's judiciary and legal system, and blocks democratization, Pakistan's people will resist.
For the first time in the history of Pakistan, respect for the military as an institution has plummeted. The vacuum of authority and legitimacy created by military rule will provide the Taliban and al Qaeda the opportunity they seek.
The Bush administration's nightmare scenario—the convergence of terrorism and nuclear weapons—is happening right now, and in Pakistan, not in Iraq or Iran. Yet as recently as Dec. 11, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, speaking to the House Armed Services Committee with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, hardly mentioned Pakistan, and characterized Afghanistan as second in priority to Iraq.
It is critical that the Bush administration put Pakistan and Afghanistan where they should have been for the past six years: at the top of this country's security agenda. The most fitting memorial to Bhutto would be to recognize that the battle for a democratic Pakistan is the centerpiece of the global fight against terrorism.
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http://www.breitbart.com/print.php?id=upiUPI-20071230-175007-1941&show_article=1
Analysis: Military slew Bhutto -- sources
Dec 31 11:11 AM US/Eastern
WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on orders of lower- and middle-level officers of the Pakistani army and air force, according to various intelligence sources, including members of India's counterintelligence service.
According to a source who asked to remain unnamed, members of the Pakistani armed forces involved in Thursday's killing of the former prime minister and leader of the opposition are sympathizers of the ultra-conservative Islamists with ties to the jihadis.
"It's worrying when half of your lower or mid-level Pak intelligence analysts have bin Laden screen savers on their computers," a former official of the CIA was reported to have commented.
More than one analyst is of the opinion al-Qaida and other jihadis have managed to successfully penetrate Pakistan's armed forces and security services. Given the fact Pakistan is in possession of nuclear weapons, the possibility of a pro-al-Qaida regime replacing President Pervez Musharraf would radically change the entire geopolitical alignment in southwest Asia, and it would have a spin-off effect on the Middle East, as well, primarily in regards to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
And it's not for lack of trying, either. Pro-Islamist groups have tried to assassinate Musharraf multiple times. Two attempts took place in December 2003 when rockets were fired at his vehicle during a visit to Rawalpindi, the same city where Bhutto was assassinated last Thursday.
Then there was an attempt to shoot his plane down with anti-aircraft fire in early 2007. There were also two suicide attacks on the army's general headquarters and two attacks outside the offices of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency after Pakistani security forces, acting on orders from Musharraf, assaulted the Red Mosque in Islamabad last July; Islamists had sought refuge inside the mosque with dozens of hostages. Scores of people died in the assault, and hundreds were arrested.
Following the two attacks on Musharraf, lower-ranking army and air force officers were placed under arrest. The investigation that followed discovered that the officers had ties with Jaish-e-Mohammad, an Islamist group. In the rocket attack, security forces arrested the son of an army brigadier general. According to the same source, however, only lower-ranking army officials were arrested and court-martialed. "The investigations are dead in the water," said the source.
Bhutto's main fear, according to a well-placed source in the intelligence community, was that retired Brig. Gen. Ijaz Shah of the Pakistani Intelligence Bureau would prove a grave threat to her. Bhutto was worried about her security but did not make a big issue of it, some say believing in destiny. But as recently as Dec. 26 she complained that the electronic jammers used to neutralize improvised explosive devices provided by the government were faulty.
Bhutto was well aware of the dangers she faced, having been briefed and having received death threats from her enemies. "She was warned of the dangers yet she continued to behave in a way in which the Secret Service in the U.S. would never accept," said Thomas Houlahan, director of military assessment with the Center for Security and Science in Washington.
Bhutto insisted on having her own people run her protection, said Houlahan, who added, "but nothing would protect her when she decided to stand through the sunroof of her car."
"That was extremely reckless," he said. "I don't see what could have been done."
Opposition to Bhutto was to be found not only in the country's armed forces and bin Laden sympathizers, but also from old Zia ul-Haq loyalists who did not want the daughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in a position of power. "They especially loathed the idea that Bhutto had pledged the United States to allow U.S. intelligence to interrogate rogue atomic scientist A.Q. Khan and allow U.S. forces to hunt for bin Laden on Pakistani soil.
"She did not have much of a chance," Houlahan said.
(Claude Salhani is Editor of the Middle East Times.)
(e-mail: Claude@metimes.com)
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GM:
Interesting.
Here's the WSJ's take:
Target: Pakistan
Losing in the West, the jihadis hit Pakistan, with its nuclear prize.
Friday, December 28, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
"In Pakistan there are two fault lines. One is dictatorship versus democracy. And one is moderation versus extremism." Thus did Benazir Bhutto describe the politics of her country during an August visit to The Wall Street Journal's offices in New York. She was assassinated yesterday for standing courageously, perhaps fatalistically, on the right side of both lines.
We will learn more in coming days about the circumstances of Bhutto's death, apparently a combined shooting and suicide bombing at a political rally in Rawalpindi in which more than 20 others were also murdered. But there's little question the attack, which had every hallmark of an al Qaeda or Taliban operation, is an event with ramifications for the broader war on terror. With the jihadists losing in Iraq and having a hard time hitting the West, their strategy seems to be to make vulnerable Pakistan their principal target, and its nuclear arsenal their principal prize.
In this effort, murdering Bhutto was an essential step. Hers is the highest profile scalp the jihadists can claim since their assassination of Egypt's Anwar Sadat in 1981. She also uniquely combined broad public support with an anti-Islamist, pro-Western outlook and all the symbolism that came with being the most prominent female leader in the Muslim world. Her death throws into disarray the complex and fragile efforts to re-establish a functional, legitimate government following next month's parliamentary elections, which seemed set to hand her a third term as prime minister.
This is exactly the kind of uncertainty in which jihadists would thrive. No doubt, too, there are some in the Pakistani military who will want to use Bhutto's killing as an excuse to cancel the elections and reconsolidate their own diminished grip on power. In the immediate wake of the assassination, members of Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party have accused President Pervez Musharraf of being complicit in it. But whatever Mr. Musharraf's personal views of Bhutto--with whom he had an on-again, off-again political relationship--his own position has only been weakened by her death. It would be weakened beyond repair if he sought to capitalize on it by preventing the democratic process from taking its course.
That goes even if the immediate beneficiary of Bhutto's death is her onetime archrival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Mr. Sharif, an Islamist politician with close ties to Saudi Arabia and a reputation for incompetence and corruption, said yesterday he would boycott next month's election even as he is seeking to assert himself as the man around whom all opponents of Mr. Musharraf can rally. We have no brief for Mr. Sharif, except to say that his claim to that position would be strengthened if the military indefinitely postpones or usurps the election.
Beyond the elections, Mr. Musharraf needs to move aggressively to confront the jihadists, and not the lawyers and civil-rights activists he has been jailing in recent months. Hundreds of Pakistanis have been murdered in recent months in terrorist acts perpetrated by fellow Muslims, and many of these perpetrators have, in different ways and at different times, been connected to the Pakistani government itself: as beneficiaries of the terrorist war Pakistan has supported over the years in Kashmir, or as beneficiaries of the support Pakistan gave to the Taliban until 9/11, or as beneficiaries of the ill-conceived "truce" Mr. Musharraf signed last year with Taliban- and al Qaeda-connected tribal chiefs in the Waziristan province. Worst of all has been the look-the-other-way approach successive Pakistani governments have taken to the radical, Saudi-funded madrassas throughout the country.
That will require a more radical reshaping of Pakistan's politics than Mr. Musharraf has so far been able, or willing, to undertake. But if Bhutto's assassination has any silver lining, it may be to show that there is no real alternative.
During her meeting with us last summer, Bhutto warned that while the jihadist movement would never have the popular support to win an election in its own right, they had sufficient means at their disposal to "unleash against the population, to rig an election, to kill the army and therefore to make it possible to take over the state." Today those words seem grimly prophetic. And while she was in many ways a flawed figure, her answer to that challenge--a real fight against terrorism that would give jihadists no rest; and a real democracy that would give them no fake grievance--looks to be the only formula by which Pakistan may yet be saved.
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Third post of the day:
In response to some questions from me, the following is from a friend who is a MD in India. Over the years informed by a far greater level of coverage than is the case here in the US, he has been a serious student of these matters and so I give weight to what he says.
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Assuming an honest vote, I dont think Bhutto can win. I doubt, the average Pakistani is going to vote for Mr.10% her husband. My experience from India has been again and again that even the uneducated masses will choose an honest leader and kick out the corrupt. In this election there are three complicating factors. The importance of the sympathy vote, the role of Bilawal and the growing clout of AQ/Taliban.
Sympathy vote: This could be huge, but is mitigated by Mr.10%. Bilawal is only 19 and ineligible for Parliament. Any victory for Bhutto's party will leave Mr.10% as lead dog. This cannot be acceptable to many Pakistanis.
Bilawal: He will be a force to reckon with in the future...but not now. To rule on the asian sub-continent, you need to be a son of the soil...somebody who speaks the language, somebody who was bought up in the country, went to school in the country. Bilawal is an oxford educated elite...he would be an important voice in the future, akin to Sonia Gandhi...king maker but not king.
AQ/Taliban: I think they are the underdogs...soon to be lead dogs. Nawaz Sharif is on relatively good terms with them. From what I read the Taliban already control large areas of the NWFP, call themselves the Islamic Emirates or something to that effect.
For the present I think no party can win an absolute majority, but if Nawaz Sharif plays his cards right (gets the support of Taliban) and the Army he could have a future. I think Mush will have to go, but he may take a last stand.
Army: The Pak army is a professional force, While their leadership is likely not in nexus with the AQ/Taliban types, I read that there is sympathy for the Taliban in the lower ranks of the army. The army however has a vested interest to maintain power, for they have always done so. What many people dont realize is that the army elite are a ruling class, they have great perks and a lot of money is chanelled to them. I once read it is a significant portion of the national income (distinct from the weapons purchases). A purely civilian ruler may decide to cut back on the army's priviledges. So I dont see the army giving all this up. Any leader must have the support of the army.
ISI: The spy agencies are thoroughly infiltrated with AQ/Taliban sympathizers. The ISI is like our CIA...deep infiltration of the CIA could have severe consequences for national security.
Nukes: Time and again one reads that the US has some assets/means to monitor the nukes. Even if this is true, I doubt Pak would be stupid enough to give all control to the US, they likely have some assets hidden outside of US control. I suspect it is these which could get in the hands of the wrong guys. But we are not there yet, for this to happen AQ/Taliban needs to become stronger more influential. This may happen if Nawaz Sharif comes into power. With govt. support, a AQ can achieve a lot. Overall, its not a question of IF but WHEN AQ will be able to get their hands on the stuff.
I dont know enough about nukes to say if they can be destroyed, but certainly Pak's main nuclear reactors are well known. Bombing them would certainly over throw the govt...and like a nuclear reaction, the aftermath of that is unpredicatable.
Future of Pak: Atleast I am not very optimistic on the country, they have been dismembered once (Bangladesh), many areas of NWFP are outside govt control, others like Balochistan seek independence. To rule such a place, requires making unsavoury alliances, as well as selling your soul. This is the reason, one cannot find a honest candidate.
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Cleric’s chilling warning to UK
By OLIVER HARVEY
Chief Feature Writer
in Kahuta, Pakistan
Published: 31 Dec 2007
A FANATICAL Pakistani cleric told The Sun yesterday of his chilling dream to turn the world Muslim – by force if necessary.
Qari Hifzur Rehamn, 60, spoke openly of imposing Islamic law’s stoning and beheading on Britain – as Pakistan was rocked by unrest over the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
He warned: “We want Islamic law for all Pakistan and then the world.
“We would like to do this by preaching. But if not then we would use force.”
Rehamn, 60, spoke in the Pakistani town of Kahuta as the call to prayer echoed over the dusty streets.
He is Imam of the town’s fundamentalist religious school or madrassa, where classes for kids as young as nine include Jihad or Holy War and barbaric punishments. His teachings are frightening enough. But his mosque lies in the shadow of the secret bunker where Pakistan produces nuclear weapons. And when asked if it would be right to nuke British infidels, he laughed and answered: “Probably.”
Rehamn, in a flowing grey beard and turban, explained Islamic, or Sharia Law as we sat surrounded by some of his 250 students.
He said: “Adulterers who are married should be buried in earth to the waist and stoned to death.
“Homosexuals must be killed – it’s the only way to stop them spreading. It should be by beheading or stoning, which the general public can do.
“Thieves should have their hands cut off. Women should remain indoors and films and pop music should be banned.”
So what does he think of Britain? The dad insisted: “The nonbelievers must be converted to Islam. Morals in your society, with women wearing revealing clothes, have gone wrong.”
Scary ... playground nuke
The spot where enriched uranium is produced for Pakistan’s 80 to 120 nuclear warheads is behind razor wire less than five miles from where we spoke. A dummy missile even sits in a children’s playground in Kahuta.
Only this month, doomed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto raised the spectre of al-Qaeda-linked Islamic militants seizing control of Pakistan’s nuclear warheads – and activity by radicals near Kahuta. Despite the efforts of politicians such as her to champion democracy, the country has long been a hotbed of Islamic extremism and there is no shortage of potential martyrs.
At the Red Mosque in the heart of the capital Islamabad, Maulana Mohavya Irshad, 24, stared coldly at me. He said: “I’m ready to become a suicide bomber and lay down my life for Islam. Democracy is wrong. Earth belongs to God and God’s law must be implemented.
“I hope Britain and the rest of the world will have Sharia Law this century. We will continue to sacrifice our lives to achieve this.”
Meanwhile, the al-Qaeda warlord accused of masterminding the death of Ms Bhutto, 54, has warned his 13,000-strong private army will fight to the death against any troops sent to seize him. Long-bearded Baitullah Mehsud, holed up in the bandit country of South Waziristan on the Afghan border, denied being behind Bhutto’s murder last Thursday in a suicide bomb attack in Rawalpindi.
But his cousin Shehryar Mehsud, 34, told The Sun: “Baitullah and the rest of us will fight to the last man. Our army of thousands of Muslim brothers is ready for Jihad against the infidels and against the infidel government in Pakistan. UK and America are the enemy number one of Islam. We have joined the Taliban troops fighting in Afghanistan and will continue Jihad until we liberate the country.”
The Pakistani government claims a phone-tap caught Mehsud, 34, and a cleric gloating over Bhutto’s death, calling it “spectacular”.
His cousin insisted: “Baitullah Mehsud is not involved in the killing of Western ally Benazir Bhutto. We did not kill her but she was against Islam and Islamic teachings.”
Another of his clan, Mohamad Ali Mehsud, 26, bragged to The Sun about Mehsud striking from his lair in Pakistan against British and US forces in Afghanistan.
Mohamad said: “Baitullah is cunning. He moves positions all the time and uses disguises. Many times he has survived by a whisker. His men cross into Afghanistan, fight infidel soldiers and steal laptops, mobile phones and money. They bribe the soldiers guarding the border to get back into Pakistan.”
But did Mehsud kill Bhutto? Mohamad said: “Baitullah didn’t like Bhutto’s lipstick and Western ways. But he didn’t kill her. He only kills men.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...icle634210.ece
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Second post of the day:
Tribes of Terror
A guide to the wilds of northwest Pakistan.
WSJ
BY STANLEY KURTZ
Wednesday, January 2, 2008 12:01 a.m. EST
Lord Curzon, Britain's viceroy of India and foreign secretary during the initial decades of the 20th century, once declared:
No patchwork scheme--and all our present recent schemes . . . are mere patchwork--will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steam-roller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine.
Nowadays, this region of what is today northwest Pakistan is variously called "Al Qaedastan," "Talibanistan" or, more properly, the "Islamic Emirate of Waziristan." Pakistan gave up South Waziristan to the Taliban in spring 2006, after taking heavy casualties in a failed four-year campaign to consolidate control of this fierce tribal region. By the fall, Pakistan had effectively abandoned North Waziristan. The nominal truce--actually closer to a surrender--was signed in a soccer stadium, beneath al Qaeda's black flag.
Having recovered the safe haven once denied them by America's invasion of Afghanistan, al Qaeda and the Taliban have gathered the diaspora of the world-wide Islamist revolution into Waziristan. Slipping to safety from Tora Bora, Osama bin Laden himself almost certainly escaped across its border. Now Muslim punjabis who fight the Indian army in Kashmir, Chechen opponents of Russia, and many more Islamist terror groups congregate, recuperate, train and confer in Waziristan. This past fall's terror plotters in Germany and Denmark allegedly trained in Waziristan, as did those who hoped to hijack trans-Atlantic planes leaving from Britain's Heathrow Airport in 2006. The crimson currents flowing across what Samuel Huntington once famously dubbed "Islam's bloody borders" now seem to emanate from Waziristan.
Slowly but surely, the Islamic Emirate's writ is pushing beyond Waziristan itself, to encompass other sections of Pakistan's mountainous tribal regions--thereby fueling the ongoing insurgency across the border in Afghanistan. With a third of Pakistanis in a recent poll expressing favorable views of al Qaeda, and 49% registering favorable opinions of local jihadi terror groups, the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan may yet conquer Pakistan. Fear of a widening Islamist rebellion in this nuclear-armed state was Gen. Pervez Musharraf's stated reason for the recent imposition of a state of emergency. And in fact Osama bin Laden publicly called for the overthrow of Mr. Musharraf's government this past September. It is for fear of provoking such a disastrous revolt that we have so far dared not loose the American military steamroller in Waziristan. When Lord Curzon hesitated to start up the British military machine, he was revolving in his mind the costs and consequences of the great 1857 Indian "Mutiny" and of an 1894 jihadist revolt in South Waziristan. Surely, Curzon would have appreciated our dilemma today.
Foreign journalists are now banned in Waziristan, and most local reporters have fled in fear for their lives. Because scholars have long neglected this famously inhospitable region, Waziristan remains a dark spot, and America remains proportionately ignorant of the forces we confront in the terror war. Yet an extraordinary if neglected window onto the inner workings of life in Waziristan does exist--a modern book, with deep roots in the area's colonial past.
The British solution in Waziristan was to rule indirectly, through sympathetic tribal maliks (elders), who received preferred treatment and financial support. By treaty and tradition, the laws of what was then British India governed only 100 yards on either side of Waziristan's main roads. Beyond that, the maliks and tribal custom ruled. Yet Britain did post a representative in Waziristan, a "political agent" or "P.A.," whose headquarters was protected by an elite military force, and who enjoyed extraordinary powers to reward cooperative maliks and to punish offenders. The political agent was authorized to arrest and jail the male kin of miscreants on the run (particularly important given the organization of Waziristan's tribes around male descent groups). And in special cases, the political agent could blockade and even destroy entire settlements. After achieving independence in 1947, Pakistan followed this British scheme, indirectly governing its many tribal "agencies" and posting P.A.s who enjoyed the same extraordinary powers as under the British.
Akbar Ahmed, a British-trained social anthropologist, served as Pakistan's P.A. in South Waziristan from 1978 through 1980. Drawing on his academic background and political experience, he has written a fascinating book about his days as "king" (as the tribesmen used to call the political agent). First published in 1983 under the title "Religion and Politics in Muslim Society," the book was reissued in 1991, and revised and released again in 2004, each time under the title "Resistance and Control in Pakistan." Its obscure title and conventional academic introductory chapters explain why it has been neglected. Yet that neglect is a serious mistake. Given Waziristan's newfound status as the haven and headquarters of America's global enemies, Mr. Ahmed's book is an indispensable guide to thinking through the past and anticipating the future of the war on terror. In addition to shedding new and unexpected light on the origins of the Taliban, "Resistance and Control in Pakistan" offers what is, in effect, a philosophy of rule in Muslim tribal societies--a conception of government that has direct relevance to our struggle to stabilize Iraq.
Since completing the book, Mr. Ahmed, a devout Muslim who holds a chair in Islamic studies and is a professor of international relations at American University, has gone on to write several works analyzing the dilemmas of the Islamic world and explaining Muslim perspectives to Westerners. These include "Islam Under Siege" (2003) and his recently published "Journey Into Islam." For a time, he served as the high commissioner of Pakistan to Great Britain, and in a note at the end of "Journey Into Islam," he says that he coined the term "Islamophobia" shortly after taking that post.
Having once been tasked with governing the most notoriously unruly tribes in the Muslim world, Mr. Ahmed never entirely embraces the politically fashionable line. More than his academic colleagues in Middle East studies, he acknowledges the contribution of tribalism's violence and traditionalism to the Middle East's contemporary dilemmas. In fact, the story of the "king" of Waziristan's transformation into the man who coined the term "Islamophobia" reveals some extraordinary tensions and tragedies lurking beneath our polarized political debates.
The first thing that strikes the reader of "Resistance and Control in Pakistan" is the pervasive nature of political violence in South Waziristan. And here, in contrast to his later work, Mr. Ahmed himself is at pains to emphasize the point. A popular novelist of the British Raj called Waziristan tribesmen "physically the hardest people on earth." British officers considered them among the finest fighters in the world. During the 1930s Waziristan's troublesome tribesmen forced the British to station more troops in that agency than in the remainder of the Indian subcontinent. In more settled agricultural areas of Pakistan's tribal Northwest Frontier Province, Mr. Ahmed says, adults, children and soldiers mill about comfortably in the open, while women help their men in the fields. No guns are visible. But arid Waziristan is a collection of silent, fortresslike settlements. Women are invisible, men carry guns, and desolation rules the countryside.
Even in ordinary times, from the British era through the present, the political agent's headquarters at Wana in South Waziristan wears the air of a fortress under perpetual siege. Five British political agents died in Waziristan. Mr. Ahmed reports that during a visit to Wana by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1976, the entourage of Pakistan's prime minister was kept nervously awake most of the night by machine gun and rifle fire from the surrounding hills. In short, the Wana encampment in South Waziristan seems like nothing so much as a century-old version of Baghdad's Green Zone.
Politics in Waziristan is inseparable from violence. A British official once called firing on government officers the local "equivalent for presenting a petition." Sniping, explosions on government property, and kidnappings are common enough to necessitate continuous military protection for political officials. And the forms of routinized political violence extend well beyond direct attacks on government personnel.
Because government allowances are directed to tribal elders who control violent troublemakers in their own ranks, ambitious maliks have reason to insure that such outlaws do in fact emerge. Waziristan's many "Robin Hoods," who make careers out of kidnapping even non-government officials and holding them for ransom, are simultaneously encouraged and controlled by local maliks. This double game allows the clans to profit from their own capacity for causing trouble, while also establishing a violence valve, so to speak, through which they can periodically convey displeasure with the administration. "To create a problem, control it, and terminate it is an acknowledged and highly regarded yardstick of political skill," writes Mr. Ahmed. For the most part, income in Waziristan is derived from "political activity such as raiding settled districts" and "allowances from the administration for good behavior." Unfortunately, a people that petitions by sniper fire seems poorly suited to democratic citizenship.
In his later work, Mr. Ahmed's insight into the subtle choreography of tribal violence dissolves in a haze of cultural apologetics. In "Islam Under Siege," for example, he argues that Americans misunderstand what they see when Afghan tribesmen fire rifles into the sky, or store ammunition and weapons in caves. Although Americans associate these actions with terrorism, Mr. Ahmed calmly explains that firing into the sky is simply a mark of celebration at birth and marriage. Weapons storage, he reassures his readers, is merely "insurance against tribal rivalries." But is there not some connection between the resort to terror tactics, on the one hand, and societies characterized by violent tribal rivalry and demonstrative gunfire, on the other?
The connection arises from the way Middle Eastern tribes are organized. These tribes are giant lineages, traced from male ancestors, which subdivide into tribal segments, which in turn divide into clans, subclans and so on, down to families, in which cousins may be pitted against cousins, or brother against brother. Traditionally existing outside the police powers of the state, Middle Eastern tribes keep order through a complex balance of power between these ever-fusing and -dividing ancestral groups. (Anthropologists call such tribes "segmentary lineages.")
In such tribes, the central institution is the feud. Absent state policing, security depends on the willingness of every adult male in a given family, clan, tribe, etc., to take up arms in its defense. An attack on a lineage-mate must be avenged by the entire group. Likewise, any lineage member is liable to be killed for an offense committed by a relative, just as all lineage members would collectively share in compensation should peace be made (through, say, a tribal council or the mediation of a holy man). Tribal feuding and segmentation allow society to keep a rough (sometimes very rough) peace in the absence of a state. Conversely, societies with strong tribal components tend to have weak states.
A powerful code of honor ties the system together. Among the Pushtun tribes that populate Waziristan and much of Afghanistan, that code is called "Pushtunwali." Avenging lineage honor is only one aspect of Pushtunwali. The code also mandates that hospitality and sanctuary be provided to any stranger requesting them. Thus a means is provided whereby, in the absence of a state, zones of security are established for travelers. Yet the system is based on an ever-shifting balance of terror which turns friends into enemies, and back again into friends, in a heartbeat. And this ethos of honor writes violent revenge and collective guilt deep into the cultural psyche. Although the British political agents who learned to live with Pushtunwali generally lionized it, Winston Churchill condemned it as a "system of ethics, which regards treachery and violence as virtues rather than vices." In any case, the dynamics of the war on terror are easily recognizable as an extension of this tribal system of collective guilt, honor, humiliation and revenge.
The years immediately prior to Mr. Ahmed's term as South Waziristan's P.A. saw the rise and seeming collapse of an Islamist rebellion that, in retrospect, clearly stands as a precursor to the Taliban. Led by a mullah named Noor Muhammad, the movement was crushed by Pakistan's army in 1976. Armed with documentary resources, including access to the personal diary of Noor Muhammad, Mr. Ahmed takes us through the riveting story of this uprising.
On the one hand, the mullah's rebellion was classically Islamist. He established a traditional madrassah (religious school) in South Waziristan, whose students, or talibs (whence the word "Taliban"), were among the rebellion's core supporters. He criticized Pakistan's government for failing to adopt Islamic law, forbade the use of "un-Islamic" innovations, like the radio, and had violators of his various prohibitions beaten. Yet these familiar Islamist features were built upon a tribal foundation. The mullah's ascent was due, in part, to his ability to mediate tribal feuds.
South Waziristan is populated by two major tribes, the Wazirs and the Mahsuds. (A century ago the Mahsuds were part of the Wazirs, but have since split off and gained their own identity.) The Mahsuds traditionally outnumbered the Wazirs and were at least relatively more integrated into modern society. After Pakistan gained independence in 1947, a few Mahsuds moved to "settled areas" and entered school. Many of these made their way into government service, thus connecting the Mahsuds to influential bureaucratic networks. Others started businesses, which brought a modern source of wealth to the tribe.
Noor Muhammad's ability to resolve tribal feuds, at a time when the Wazirs felt intense humiliation in the face of rising Mahsud power and wealth, turned him into a symbol of Wazir honor. Under the mullah's leadership, the Wazirs effectively declared a jihad against both the government of Pakistan and the Mahsuds, demanding a separate tribal agency for themselves. Properly speaking, of course, a jihad can be fought only against non-Muslims. The mullah solved this problem by declaring the Mahsuds to be infidels--a tribe of toadies to an un-Islamic Pakistani regime--who had sold out their Wazir cousins for government allowances and debased modern ways. Of course, this accusation of infidelity is exactly how al Qaeda and the Taliban justify their attacks on fellow Muslims today.
Notice, too, that Noor Muhammad's movement developed in the early '70s, well before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The rise of the Taliban is often ascribed to "blowback" from CIA support of Pakistani Islamists who fought the Soviets in the 1980s. Mr. Ahmed's account shows that simplistic "blame America" theories cannot hold. Critics of the blowback argument rightly note that America had no other means of fighting the Soviet invasion than to work through the Pakistani government, which for its own reasons needed to deploy Islamist proxies. (Supporting Pushtun nationalist proxies, the only other option, would have played into the hands of those in Afghanistan and India seeking to dismember Pakistan.) The problem is that this entire debate passes over the deeper social sources of the contemporary Islamist ascendancy.
Mr. Ahmed argues that the mullah's insurrection was "generated by Muslim actors as a result of internal tensions in society." And at one level, this proto-Taliban movement was deeply traditional. Mullah-led tribal rebellions have a long history, not only in Waziristan but in Muslim society as a whole. The great 14th-century philosopher-sociologist Ibn Khaldun famously described a cyclical process in which, unified by a righteous mullah, fierce outlying tribes conquer an effete and corrupt state. Over time the new set of ruling tribesmen falls into luxury, disunity and corruption, and is in turn overthrown by another coalition of the righteous. These rebellions generally fuse an Islamic aspect with some narrower tribal interest, and the Wazirs' jihad against an allegedly "infidel" rival tribe certainly fits the bill.
There may be at least something new under that harsh Waziristan sun, however. Modernity's manifold economic opportunities seem to supercharge traditional tribal resentment at substantial disparities of wealth and status. And paradoxically, modern wealth also subverts such shallow internal tribal hierarchies as once existed, with explosive results.
Following the oil boom of the 1970s, Wazirs and Mahsuds alike migrated to the Persian Gulf to work the oil fields and send their remittances back home. Maliks from the most prestigious tribal lineages initially resisted the call of migration. So the oil boom created an opening that "depressed lineages" happily filled. By the time the maliks began to send their sons to the Gulf, intratribal disparities of wealth and influence were disappearing.
So while the Mahsuds had outpaced the Wazirs, the power of maliks was waning among the Wazirs themselves. Now the Wazirs could afford to throw off those pliant elders who had taken and distributed British and later the Pakistan government's pelf; and by supporting a radical mullah, the restive tribe could feed its resentment of both the government and the Mahsuds.
As Mr. Ahmed notes, and in pointed contrast to the "poverty theory" of Islamism, modern education and wealth seem to have sparked this early Islamist rebellion. Instead of spurring further development, economic opportunities have fed the traditionalist reaction. Waziristan's tribesmen understand full well that their rulers mean to transform their way of life, thereby "taming" them through the seductions of education and modern forms of wealth. While some have accepted the trade, the majority consciously reject it. During the colonial period, education was despised as an infidel plot. In the 1970s, conservative tribesmen systematically destroyed electrical poles, which were seen as a threat to Waziristan's isolation and therefore to the survival of traditional Pushtun culture. Economic development might well "tame" these tribesmen, yet poverty is less the cause of their warlike ways than the result of a deliberate decision to preserve their traditional way of life--their Pushtun honor--even at material cost.
The Islamist revolution is a conscious choice--an act of cultural self-defense against the intrusions and seductions of an alien world. Although the social foundations of the traditional Muslim way of life have been shaken, they are far from broken. So long as these social foundations cohere, advancing globalization will provoke more rebellion, not less--whatever America decides to do in Iraq and beyond. The root of the problem is neither domestic poverty nor American foreign policy, but the tension between Muslim social life and globalizing modernity itself.
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In a sense, we are the Mahsuds. The Wazirs ached with humiliation at the loss of their dominance. Their grudge against the Mahsuds stemmed far more from Waziri decline than from any specific complaint. Even as the Mahsuds were scapegoated for the Wazirs' diminishment, America and the West have been blamed for world-wide Muslim decline. Addressing Muslim "grievances" won't solve this problem, because the professed grievances didn't start the jihad to begin with.
Mr. Ahmed is clearly embarrassed by the Wazirs' intra-Muslim jihad against the Mahsuds. Foreshadowing his later apologetics, he is at pains to distinguish between "authentic" Islam and Noor Muhammad's seemingly bogus claim of Mahsud infidelity--a claim obviously rooted in narrow tribal rivalry and interest. In his recent work, Mr. Ahmed puts much of what seems warlike or problematic in traditional Muslim society into the "tribal" basket, segregating out a supposedly pure and peaceful Islam. There is some justification for this procedure. Middle Eastern conceptions of honor, marriage practices, female seclusion, revenge and much else can fairly be understood as practices with tribal roots, rather than formal Islamic commandments. Reformist Muslims therefore make a point of separating the tribal dross from authentic Islamic teachings.
Yet there is clearly some sort of "elective affinity" between Islam, in the strict sense, and tribal social life. The two levels interact and interpenetrate, leaving the boundaries undefined. Pushtuns who set out to avenge purely personal offences will dress and scent themselves as if embarking on jihad. So a given theologian's "true" Islam is one thing; "actual existing" Islam on the ground is another. Noor Muhammad's jihad against Muslims he judged to be infidels turns out to be representative of the new religious wave, and reflects a complex and longstanding Muslim synthesis between theology and tribalism. Nor was the mullah's accusation of Mahsud infidelity without resonance. He accurately identified the modernist thread that united his immediate tribal enemies, the developing state of Pakistan, and ultimately the West itself.
If Islamist rebellion and narrow tribal interest are difficult to disentangle, the opportunity to separate them is the key to America's sophisticated new counterinsurgency strategy (actually a rediscovery of classic British and Pakistani strategies for dealing with Muslim tribes). Inveterate Wazir/Mahsud rivalry was the single greatest weakness of the tribes throughout the British era in Waziristan. The British ignored tribal feuding when the stakes were small. Yet if one tribe seemed at risk of gaining a permanent upper hand, the Brits intervened to keep opponents more or less equally at each other's throats. And since nearly every clan troublemaker has rival kin, the P.A. cultivated multiple factions, so as to play one off against the other. Under Pakistan, the tribes have sometimes turned this game against the government, playing a sympathetic official (often a fellow Pashtun) against a rival administrator.
America's new counterinsurgency strategy seeks to appeal to tribal interests, as a way of breaking the link between al Qaeda's global jihad and its erstwhile Sunni allies in Iraq. So far the new strategy has helped to stabilize Anbar and other rebellious tribal regions in Iraq. The danger is that the tribal winds will shift, and our military will likely come under constant pressure to favor one tribal faction or another. If mishandled, this could drive less favored clans back into enemy hands. Tribal politics can be mastered, yet it requires a constant presence. And learning to play the tribal game is very different from establishing a genuine democracy, which would mean transcending the game itself.
Can America or Pakistan adopt this new strategy in Waziristan itself--breaking the link between al Qaeda and the tribal coalition now united against us in jihad? Theoretically this is possible, yet the outlook is far from ideal. Al Qaeda has already murdered many of Waziristan's maliks. (Mullah Noor Muhammad rose to power in the '70s on assassination threats and violence against traditional maliks.) Insofar as economic and educational change has penetrated Pakistan's tribal areas, it seems to have undercut the basis for creating a new generation of government-friendly maliks, and fed into a populist Islamist revolt instead. Nevertheless, there are unconfirmed reports that America and Pakistan are even now exploiting latent tensions between al Qaeda and the Taliban in Waziristan.
In the 1970s, once Noor Muhammad's combination Islamist rebellion/tribal war got out of hand, Pakistan was forced to crush it. The army bulldozed Wana's thriving traditional market, turning the Wazirs' most important trading center into little more than freshly plowed ground. Tipped off, the mullah took to the hills. Employing tactics reminiscent of Britain's original P.A.s, Pakistan seized his followers' property and systematically blew up their homes and encampments. After three months of this, the disheveled mullah and his followers came down from the hills and surrendered. Nowadays, burning a thriving Waziristan marketplace to the ground and blowing up civilian settlements as ways of getting to Osama bin Laden would doubtless elicit global howls of protest. Yet far from the glare of international publicity, Pakistan once freely employed such tactics.
When, a couple of years after the destruction of Wana's market, Mr. Ahmed took over as P.A., the defeated Wazirs were looking to restore their lost honor and prove their loyalty to Pakistan. Trained as an anthropologist and convinced he could use the Pushtun's code of honor to good effect, he decided to give the Wazirs their chance. Breaking with established agency precedents, he placed his own life at risk by taking regular evening strolls around Wana without bodyguards. Mr. Ahmed could easily have been kidnapped and held in exchange for the imprisoned mullah's release, but the Wazirs left him untouched. Mr. Ahmed then visited the Wazirs' holiest shrine, on the far border with Afghanistan--territory where no P.A. had ever set foot. As a guest of the Wazirs, he once again staked his own life and honor on the Pushtunwali of his Wazir hosts. In this way, he both pacified the Wazirs and extended Pakistan's writ in Waziristan further than it had ever gone. He even managed to coax a number of the region's storied "Robin Hoods" into surrender.
Based on these impressive successes, Mr. Ahmed concludes in his book that despite their reputation for violence and double-dealing, tribesmen can be peaceably governed within the terms of their own code of honor, if only they are given the chance. He regards solving tribal problems through military action as a sign of failure. Unfortunately, despite his considerable insight, his optimistic conclusions far outrun the terms of his own account.
Mr. Ahmed was the consummate good cop, in the right place at the right time. His ability to use the Pushtunwali code to evoke the best in the Wazirs clearly depended upon the army's violent actions in Wana two years before. Even the cross-border miscreants talked into surrender were balancing the refuge and respect he promised against the substantial dangers of living under the Soviets, who had entered Afghanistan during Mr. Ahmed's term. The former P.A. acknowledges some of this in passing, yet his unrelievedly sunny conclusions about tribal governance don't begin to acknowledge the depth of his own dependence on Soviet and Pakistani bad cops for success. His account has much to teach us. The honor code can indeed serve to offset and minimize tribal violence, and that effect can be encouraged by wise rule. But taken alone, Mr. Ahmed's analysis and prescriptions are dangerously misleading and incomplete.
The thesis of his next book, "Islam Under Siege," was an extension of the analysis presented in "Resistance and Control in Pakistan." The Muslim world as a whole is suffering from a loss of dignity and honor, Mr. Ahmed argues. As mass-scale urbanization, uneven economic development, migration and demographic expansion undercut traditional social forms, the Muslim response has been to resist these changes and interpret them as outrages against collective honor. His solution was for the West to accept, support and ally with traditional Muslim society, thereby helping the Islamic world to recapture its lost sense of honor.
Mr. Ahmed's latest book, "Journey into Islam," is riven by tensions between the author's public battle against "Islamophobia" and his reluctant acknowledgment that the Islamist ascendancy might be worth fearing after all. "Journey Into Islam" is based on Mr. Ahmed's recent travels across the global Muslim community, and he bills this tour of the Muslim world (with American students in tow) as an "anthropological excursion." Yet constant coverage of his entourage in Middle Eastern media outlets likely gentled his interviewees' responses. Pictures of Mr. Ahmed and his smiling American students posing with friendly Muslims get the central message across. Unless one desperately wants to be persuaded that all is well, however, his reassurances fall flat.
The book's Panglossian facade is broken by a single, searingly powerful moment. Mr. Ahmed's entourage visited Aligarh University in India, expecting to rediscover an academic beacon of Anglo-liberalism that had long and famously spread democratic values throughout India and Pakistan. Aligarh University shaped Mr. Ahmed himself in his youth, allowing him to synthesize his pride in Islam with a genuinely liberal and modern sensibility.
Yet moments after entering the Aligarh University campus, Mr. Ahmed and his American companions were surrounded by furious Muslim students praising bin Laden and raging at President Bush. Students came even closer to descending into mob violence here, at India's erstwhile bastion of Muslim liberalism, than they had during Mr. Ahmed's visit to Deoband, the acknowledged center of South Asian Islamism. This frightening, unexpected encounter at his beloved alma mater was clearly agonizing for Mr. Ahmed, and forced him to acknowledge the collapse of the "Aligarh model" of liberal Islam. "The nation-state and the Aligarh model are not a viable alternative in the Muslim world at present," he concedes sadly.
This is indeed a tragedy. Mr. Ahmed himself embodies another side of the Aligarh model's fate in today's world. Modern and liberal though he may be, he is unwilling to concede the need for fundamental reform within Islam. Instead of facing the evident incompatibility with modernity of core aspects of Muslim religious and social life, he reverts to sanitized accounts, accusations of Islamophobia, and complaints about American foreign policy. Although he bitterly resents the influence of Bernard Lewis on American conservatives, Mr. Ahmed periodically (and reluctantly) mimics Mr. Lewis's claim that Americans are being scapegoated for the Muslim world's own decline. Mr. Lewis's conviction that the use of force must be a key aspect of American foreign policy in the Middle East infuriates Mr. Ahmed. Yet, rightly understood, his own account in "Resistance and Control in Pakistan" confirms Mr. Lewis's insight. Without the destruction of the Wana market and the capture of Noor Muhammad, not to mention the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Mr. Ahmed's gentle, honor-based rule in Waziristan would not have been possible.
In a sense, global Islam is now Waziristan writ large. Mr. Ahmed rightly spots tribal themes of honor and solidarity throughout the Muslim world--even in places where tribal social organization per se has receded. Literally and figuratively, Waziristan now seeks to awaken the tribal jihadist side of the global Muslim soul. This has effectively thrust the leaders of the Western world into the role of British and Pakistani P.A.s (a famously exhausting job, Mr. Ahmed reminds us). With technological advance having placed once-distant threats at our doorstep, the West may soon resemble South Waziristan's perpetually besieged encampment at Wana. Perhaps it already does. Yet Waziristan was ruled indirectly, without ordinary law or policing. Preventing terror plots and the development of weapons of mass destruction requires a more active hand.
Muslim society will have to reform far more profoundly than Akbar Ahmed concedes if the worst is to be avoided. Our best option may be to reintroduce somehow the Aligarh University tradition of liberal learning and merit-based employment (independent of kinship ties) to the Muslim world. With our strategy in Iraq now reinforcing tribalism, the obvious front to try this is Europe, where concerted efforts must be made to assimilate Muslims to Western values. Globalization may then work for us, as cultural changes bounce back to the Middle East.
Even in the best case, we face a long-term struggle. Simmering tensions between modernity and Muslim social life are coming to a head. Yet all our present recent schemes are patchwork. And someday, perhaps at the peak of a post-emergency civil war between the army and the Islamists in Pakistan, the military steamroller may be called upon to settle the Waziristan problem once and for all. Who knows if, even then, it will work.
Mr. Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/01/02/pakistani-government-oh-hey-never-mind-what-we-said-about-bhuttos-cause-of-death/
:roll:
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GM:
What a bizarre saga this is. The list of plausible suspects is quite long , , ,
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CD,
Yeah, probably a half dozen other would-be assassins were killed when the IED detonated in the crowd.....
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Pakistan, Bhutto and the U.S.-Jihadist Endgame
January 2, 2008 | 2205 GMT
By George Friedman
The endgame of the U.S.-jihadist war always had to be played out in Pakistan. There are two reasons that could account for this. The first is simple: Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda command cell are located in Pakistan. The war cannot end while the command cell functions or has a chance of regenerating. The second reason is more complicated. The United States and NATO are engaged in a war in Afghanistan. Where the Soviets lost with 300,000 troops, the Americans and NATO are fighting with less than 50,000. Any hope of defeating the Taliban, or of reaching some sort of accommodation, depends on isolating them from Pakistan. So long as the Taliban have sanctuary and logistical support from Pakistan, transferring all coalition troops in Iraq to Afghanistan would have no effect. And withdrawing from Afghanistan would return the situation to the status quo before Sept. 11. If dealing with the Taliban and destroying al Qaeda are part of any endgame, the key lies in Pakistan.
U.S. strategy in Pakistan has been to support Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and rely on him to purge and shape his country’s army to the extent possible to gain its support in attacking al Qaeda in the North, contain Islamist radicals in the rest of the country and interdict supplies and reinforcements flowing to the Taliban from Pakistan. It was always understood that this strategy was triply flawed.
First, under the best of circumstances, a completely united and motivated Pakistani army’s ability to carry out this mission effectively was doubtful. And second, the Pakistani army was — and is — not completely united and motivated. Not only was it divided, one of its major divisions lay between Taliban supporters sympathetic to al Qaeda and a mixed bag of factions with other competing interests. Distinguishing between who was on which side in a complex and shifting constellation of relationships was just about impossible. That meant the army the United States was relying on to support the U.S. mission was, from the American viewpoint, inherently flawed.
It must be remembered that the mujahideen’s war against the Soviets in Afghanistan shaped the current Pakistani army. Allied with the Americans and Saudis, the Pakistani army — and particularly its intelligence apparatus, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) — had as its mission the creation of a jihadist force in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. The United States lost interest in Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet Union, but the Pakistanis did not have that option. Afghanistan was right next door. An interesting thing happened at that point. Having helped forge the mujahideen and its successor, the Taliban, the Pakistani army and ISI in turn were heavily influenced by their Afghan clients’ values. Patron and client became allies. And this created a military force that was extremely unreliable from the U.S. viewpoint.
Third, Musharraf’s intentions were inherently unpredictable. As a creature of the Pakistani army, Musharraf reflects all of the ambivalences and tensions of that institution. His primary interest was in holding on to power. To do that, he needed to avoid American military action in Pakistan while simultaneously reassuring radical Islamists he was not a mere tool of the United States. Given the complexity of his position, no one could ever be certain of where Musharraf stood. His position was entirely tactical, shifting as political necessity required. He was constantly placating the various parties, but since the process of placation for the Americans meant that he take action against the jihadists, constant ineffective action by Musharraf resulted. He took enough action to keep the Americans at bay, not enough to force his Islamist enemies to take effective action against him.
Ever since Sept. 11, Musharraf has walked this tightrope, shifting his balance from one side to the other, with the primary aim of not falling off the rope. This proved unsatisfactory to the United States, as well as to Musharraf’s Islamist opponents. While he irritated everybody, the view from all factions — inside and outside Pakistan — was that, given the circumstances, Musharraf was better than the alternative. Indeed, that could have been his campaign slogan: “Vote for Musharraf: Everything Else is Worse.”
From the U.S. point of view, Musharraf and the Pakistani army might have been unreliable, but any alternative imaginable would be even worse. Even if their actions were ineffective, some actions were taken. At the very least, they were not acting openly and consistently against the United States. Were Musharraf and the Pakistani army to act consistently against U.S. interests as Russian logistical support for U.S. operations in Afghanistan waned, the U.S./NATO position in Afghanistan could simply crack.
Therefore, the U.S. policy in Pakistan was to do everything possible to make certain Musharraf didn’t fall or, more precisely, to make sure the Pakistani army didn’t fragment and its leadership didn’t move into direct and open opposition to the United States. The United States understood that the more it pressed Musharraf and the more he gave, the less likely he was to survive and the less certain became the Pakistani army’s cohesion. Thus, the U.S. strategy was to press for action, but not to the point of destabilizing Pakistan beyond its natural instability. The priority was to maintain Musharraf in power, and failing that, to maintain the Pakistani army as a cohesive, non-Islamist force.
In all of this, there was one institution that, on the whole, had to support him. That was the Pakistani army. The Pakistani army was the one functioning national institution in Pakistan. For the senior leaders, it was a vehicle to maintain their own power and position. For the lowest enlisted man, the army was a means for upward mobility, an escape from the grinding poverty of the slums and villages. The Pakistani army obviously was factionalized, but no faction had an interest in seeing the army fragment. Their own futures were at stake. And therefore, so long as Musharraf kept the army together, they would live with him. Even the less radical Islamists took that view.
A single personality cannot maintain a balancing act like this indefinitely; one of three things will happen. First, he can fall off the rope and become the prisoner of one of the factions. Second, he can lose credibility with all factions — with the basic political configuration remaining intact but with the system putting forth a new personality to preside. Third, he can build up his power, crush the factions and start calling the shots. This last is the hardest strategy, because in this case, it would be converting a role held due to the lack of alternatives into a position of power. That is a long reach.
Nevertheless, that is why Musharraf decided to declare a state of emergency. No one was satisfied with him any longer, and pressure was building for him to “take off his uniform” — in other words, to turn the army over to someone else and rule as a civilian. Musharraf understood that it was only a matter of time before his personal position collapsed and the army realized that, given the circumstances, the collapse of Musharraf could mean the fragmentation of the army. Musharraf therefore tried to get control of the situation by declaring a state of emergency and getting the military backing for it. His goal was to convert the state of emergency — and taking off his uniform — into a position from which to consolidate his power.
It worked to an extent. The army backed the state of emergency. No senior leader challenged him. There were no mutinies among the troops. There was no general uprising. He was condemned by everyone from the jihadists to the Americans, but no one took any significant action against him. The situation was precarious, but it appeared he might well emerge from the state of emergency in a politically enhanced position. Enhanced was the best he could hope for. He would not be able to get off the tightrope, but at the same time, simply calling a state of emergency and not triggering a massive response would enhance his position.
Parliamentary elections were scheduled for Jan. 8 and are now delayed until Feb. 18. Given the fragmentation of Pakistani society, the most likely outcome was a highly fragmented parliament, one that would be hard-pressed to legislate, let alone to serve as a powerbase. In the likely event of gridlock, Musharraf’s position as the indispensable — if disliked — man would be strengthened. By last week, Musharraf must have been looking forward to the elections. Elections would confirm his position, which was that the civil institutions could not function and that the army, with or without him as official head, had to remain the center of the Pakistani polity.
Then someone killed Benazir Bhutto and changed the entire dynamic of Pakistan. Though Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party probably would have gained a substantial number of seats, it was unlikely to sweep the election and seriously threaten the military’s hold on power. Bhutto was simply one of the many forces competing for power. As a woman, representing an essentially secular party, she was unlikely to be a decisive winner. In many ways, she reminds us of Mikhail Gorbachev, who was much more admired by Westerners than he ever was by Russians. She was highly visible and a factor in Pakistani politics, but if Musharraf were threatened, the threat would not come from her.
Therefore, her murder is a mystery. It is actually a mystery on two levels. First, it is not clear who did it. Second, it is not clear how the deed was done. The murder of a major political leader is always hard to unravel. Confusion reigns from the first bullet fired in a crowd. The first account of events always turns out to be wrong, as do the second through fifth accounts, too. That is how conspiracy theories are spawned. Getting the facts straight in any murder is tough. Getting them straight in a political assassination is even harder. Paradoxically, more people witnessing such incidents translates into greater confusion, since everyone has a different perspective and a different tale. Conspiracy theorists can have a field day picking and choosing among confused reports by shocked and untrained observers.
Nevertheless, the confusion in this case appears to be way beyond the norm. Was there a bomber and a separate shooter with a pistol next to her car? If this were indeed a professional job, why was the shooter inappropriately armed with a pistol? Was Bhutto killed by the pistol-wielding shooter, shrapnel from the bomb, a bullet from a third assassin on a nearby building or even inside her car, or by falling after the bomb detonated? How did the killer or killers know Bhutto would stand up and expose herself through her armored vehicle’s sunroof? Very few of the details so far make sense.
And that reflects the fact that nothing about the assassination makes sense. Who would want Bhutto dead? Musharraf had little motivation. He had enemies, and she was one of them, but she was far from the most dangerous of them. And killing her would threaten an election that did not threaten him or his transition to a new status. Ordering her death thus would not have made a great deal of sense for Musharraf.
Whoever ordered her death would have had one of two motives. First, they wanted to destabilize Pakistan, or second, they wanted to kill her in such a way as to weaken Musharraf’s position by showing that the state of emergency had failed. The jihadists certainly had every reason to want to kill her — along with a long list of Pakistani politicians, including Musharraf. They want to destabilize Pakistan, but if they can do so and implicate Musharraf at the same time, so much the sweeter.
The loser in the assassination was Musharraf. He is probably too canny a politician to have planned the killing without anticipating this outcome. Whoever did this wanted to do more than kill Bhutto. They wanted to derail Musharraf’s attempt to retain his control over the government. This was a complex operation designed to create confusion.
Our first suspect is al Qaeda sympathizers who would benefit from the confusion spawned by the killing of an important political leader. The more allegations of complicity in the killing are thrown against the regime, the more the military regime is destabilized — thus expanding opportunities for jihadists to sow even more instability. Our second suspects are elements in the army wanting to use the assassination to force Musharraf out, replace him with a new personality and justify a massive crackdown.
Two parties we cannot imagine as suspects in the killing are the United States and Musharraf; neither benefited from the killing. Musharraf now faces the political abyss and the United States faces the destabilization of Pakistan as the Taliban is splintering and various jihadist leaders are fragmenting. This is the last moment the United States would choose to destabilize Pakistan. Our best guess is that the killing was al Qaeda doing what it does best. The theory that it was anti-Musharraf elements in the army comes in at a very distant second.
But the United States now faces its endgame under far less than ideal conditions. Iraq is stabilizing. That might reverse, but for now it is stabilizing. The Taliban is strong, but it is under pressure and has serious internal problems. The endgame always was supposed to come in Pakistan, but this is far from how the Americans wanted to play it out. The United States is not going to get an aggressive, anti-Islamist military in Pakistan, but it badly needs more than a Pakistani military that is half-heartedly and tenuously committed to the fight. Salvaging Musharraf is getting harder with each passing day. So that means that a new personality, such as Pakistani military chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, must become Washington’s new man in Pakistan. In this endgame, all that the Americans want is the status quo in Pakistan. It is all they can get. And given the way U.S. luck is running, they might not even get that.
Stratfor
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Woof,
Now that we are connecting the dots, I think we can see just how wrong Ralph Peters was in his article. :wink:
P.C.
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A lucid point PC :lol: What do you make of this?
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NY Times
WHEN, in May 1991, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India was killed by a suicide bomber, there was an international outpouring of grief. Recent days have seen the same with the death of Benazir Bhutto: another glamorous, Western-educated scion of a great South Asian political dynasty tragically assassinated at an election rally.
There is, however, an important difference between the two deaths: while Mr. Gandhi was assassinated by Sri Lankan Hindu extremists because of his policy of confronting them, Ms. Bhutto was apparently the victim of Islamist militant groups that she allowed to flourish under her administrations in the 1980s and 1990s.
It was under Ms. Bhutto’s watch that the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, first installed the Taliban in Afghanistan. It was also at that time that hundreds of young Islamic militants were recruited from the madrassas to do the agency’s dirty work in Indian Kashmir. It seems that, like some terrorist equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster, the extremists turned on both the person and the state that had helped bring them into being.
While it is true that the recruitment of jihadists had started before she took office and that Ms. Bhutto was insufficiently strong — or competent — to have had full control over either the intelligence services or the Pakistani Army when she was in office, it is equally naïve to believe she had no influence over her country’s foreign policy toward its two most important neighbors, India and Afghanistan.
Everyone now knows how disastrous the rule of the Taliban turned out to be in Afghanistan, how brutally it subjected women and how it allowed Al Qaeda to train in camps within its territory. But another, and in the long term perhaps equally perilous, legacy of Ms. Bhutto’s tenure is often forgotten: the turning of Kashmir into a jihadist playground.
In 1989, when the insurgency in the Indian portion of the disputed region first began, it was largely an amateur affair of young, secular-minded Kashmiri Muslims rising village by village and wielding homemade weapons — firearms fashioned from the steering shafts of rickshaws and so on. By the early ’90s, however, Pakistan was sending over the border thousands of well-trained, heavily armed and ideologically hardened jihadis. Some were the same sorts of exiled Arab radicals who were at the same time forming Al Qaeda in Peshawar, in northwestern Pakistan.
By 1993, during Ms. Bhutto’s second term, the Arab and Afghan jihadis (and their Inter-Services Intelligence masters) had really begun to take over the uprising from the locals. It was at this stage that the secular leadership of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front began losing ground to hard-line Islamist outfits like Hizbul Mujahedeen.
I asked Benazir Bhutto about her Kashmir policy and the potential dangers of the growing role of religious extremists in the conflict during an interview in 1994. “India tries to gloss over its policy of repression in Kashmir,” she replied. “India does have might, but has been unable to crush the people of Kashmir. We are not prepared to keep silent, and collude with repression.”
Hamid Gul, who was the head of the intelligence agency during her first administration, was more forthcoming still. “The Kashmiri people have risen up,” he told me, “and it is the national purpose of Pakistan to help liberate them.” He continued, “If the jihadis go out and contain India, tying down their army on their own soil, for a legitimate cause, why should we not support them?”
Benazir Bhutto’s death is, of course, a calamity, particularly as she embodied the hopes of so many liberal Pakistanis. But, contrary to the commentary we’ve seen in the last week, she was not comparable to Myanmar’s Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Ms. Bhutto’s governments were widely criticized by Amnesty International and other groups for their use of death squads and terrible record on deaths in police custody, abductions and torture. As for her democratic bona fides, she had no qualms about banning rallies by opposing political parties while in power.
Within her own party, she declared herself the president for life and controlled all decisions. She rejected her brother Murtaza’s bid to challenge her for its leadership and when he persisted, he was shot dead in highly suspicious circumstances during a police ambush outside the Bhutto family home.
Benazir Bhutto was certainly a brave and secular-minded woman. But the obituaries painting her as dying to save democracy distort history. Instead, she was a natural autocrat who did little for human rights, a calculating politician who was complicit in Pakistan’s becoming the region’s principal jihadi paymaster while she also ramped up an insurgency in Kashmir that has brought two nuclear powers to the brink of war.
William Dalrymple is the author, most recently, of “The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857.”
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Here's this from Stratfor:
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Jan. 2 he will deploy the army during the general elections scheduled for Feb. 18. He did not say what would happen to anyone brazen enough to question the results.
The political situation in Pakistan is chaotic and delicate. The Dec. 27 assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto undid most of the political compromises made in the past several months — Bhutto was widely expected to be invited into the government in the aftermath of the upcoming elections. Now Pakistan’s various factions — especially those within the military, the only institution in Pakistan that truly matters — are all scrambling for alternatives.
For Musharraf, Bhutto’s departure from this world is a mixed blessing. While it certainly complicates his efforts to maintain control — Bhutto would have, after all, been joining his government — it also forces everyone else into a new round of negotiations with each other. As president and, until recently, military chief, Musharraf holds an institutional advantage in that race. He is one man with an apparatus at his back, rather than a collection of men who need to consult and build an alliance.
But as one might expect in a country where the military holds supreme power, Musharraf’s strength comes far more from his links to the military than his holding of the presidency. Thus it attracted our attention on Thursday when Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, chairing his first corps commanders conference since becoming chief of the army, flatly stated, “Ultimately it is the will of the people and their support that is decisive.” That, he said, will allow the army to “thwart and defeat all kinds of threats.”
This statement is the first sign that Musharraf and Kayani may not be on the same page as far as how to deal with the issue of elections. There are two potential outcomes of the Feb. 18 elections, both equally dangerous for Musharraf’s political health.
The first possibility is that the election is viewed by his opponents –- the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) — as reasonably free and fair, because it has produced a parliament dominated by them. The resulting government will in turn eventually be engaged in a tug of war over power between an aggressive parliament and a presidency asserting its right to oversight of the political system. This is not to mention the problems Musharraf could face in attempts to legalize his Nov. 3 move to suspend the constitution. Nevertheless, two past presidents were forced to step down by the military in similar gridlock situations during the 1990s.
A second possibility is that the opposition gets fewer seats than it is expecting and the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League emerges with a disproportionately greater number of seats. Such a move is very likely to stir up the proverbial hornet’s nest. A much more organized and sustained version of the rioting that took place in the aftermath of Bhutto’s assassination can be expected.
Given that his opponents have little faith in the judiciary or the election commission, which they see as consisting of Musharraf appointees, agitation is an even more likely recourse on the part of the opposition. Musharraf is well aware of this potential scenario, which is why he has specifically noted that the army will remain deployed even after the elections and that no one will be allowed to engage in civil disturbances. But this assumes that the army chief will order troops to open fire on unarmed demonstrators angry over what they perceive as government foul play in the elections.
Considering the current political climate and the existing negative sentiment against the army’s hold over the state, Kayani is unlikely to play with fire to salvage the future of one man, even if it is the president. His statements on Thursday serve as an indicator of what he is likely to do when faced with such a situation.
In no country is a spat between the president and the army something to scoff at, and Pakistan is not exactly known for having robust civilian oversight of the military. We are hardly to the point of a coup yet, but this is how the path to a coup starts.
Musharraf should know. He staged the last one.
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Woof,
I think Mr. Dalrymple is right that the conditions under her regime made a good soup for militants to prosper in but we could say the same for the leadership of India, Russia, and the U.S. who's intell agencies all played a role at the same time and made deals with the devil so to speak. Bhutto had little choice but to deal with the players in the game, the same as everyone else. That doesn't mean that she personally intended to give rise to the conditions we face now any more than we did. The political climate of that area is brutal and if you're going to survive as a politician there you are going to be rubbing elbows with the worse of the worse, so I'm not saying Bhutto is without blood on her hands, I'm saying she was the closest thing to it that would have been willing to deal with us. It could be pointed out to Mr. Dalrymple, that the militants had their own agenda and are themselves responsible for their own actions and that Bhutto was killed because she, like Gandhi would have had a policy of confronting them if she had lived. I will note that Mr. Darlymple also has a soft spot for India, now do you think he would let that color his view of Pakistan and its leadership? Nah! :roll:
P.C.
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You seem to have followed this area more than most people. I am curious:
Where do you think things heading?
What do you think the US should do?
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Second post of the morning. This very interesting piece was sent to me by a friend in India. As best as I can tell, I have found the commentary from India about Afg-Pak often to be quite superior to that which we generate here in the US.
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2008: Bleeding Pakistan - International Terrorism Monitor---Paper No. 345
By B. Raman
"It is obligatory on the Muslims in Pakistan to carry out Jihad and fighting to remove Pervez, his government, his army and those who help him. We in al-Qaida Organization call on Allah to witness that we will retaliate for the blood of Maulana Abd al-Rashid Ghazi and those with him against Musharraf and those who help him, and for all the pure and innocent blood, foremost of which is the blood of the champions of Islam in Waziristan - both North and South - among them the two noble leaders, Nek Muhammad and Abdullah Mahsud." (My comment: Maulana Ghazi died in the Pakistan Army commando raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad between July 10 and 13, 2007) ---- From my article on "Bin Laden's Fatwa Against Musharraf & Pakistani Army" of September 22, 2007, at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers24/paper2388.html
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Pakistan has gone through a traumatic 2007. The trauma started with the Pakistan Army commando action in the Lal Masjid of Islamabad from July 10 to 13, 2007, during which about 300 young tribal girls from the Pashtun tribal belt, who were studying in a girls' madrasa run by the masjid, were allegedly killed. These girls came from poor tribal families. Many of them were the daughters or sisters of Pashtuns from the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) serving in the Army and other security forces.
2.The anger caused by the commando action, the resulting death of a large number of young tribal girls and the damage to the masjid triggered off a wave of suicide terrorism, the like of which Pakistan had not seen before. The number of acts of suicide terrorism increased nine-fold from six in 2006 to 55 in 2007. The most dramatic victim of this wave was Mrs. Benazir Bhutto, who was killed by unidentified terrorists at Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007.
3. Unless one constantly keeps in mind the traumatic impact of the commando action on the minds of the Pashtuns, one is likely to err in one's assessment of the worsening state of jihadi terrorism in Pakistan and blame everything that is happening in Pakistan on Al Qaeda. There has been a frightening wave of tribal anger in the wake of the Lal Masjid operation. Al Qaeda and other pro-Al Qaeda jihadi terrorist organisations have been capitalising on this anger to promote their own pan-Islamic, anti-US and anti-Musharraf agenda, but they were not the cause of this anger.
4. President Pervez Musharraf caused this anger by his inept handling of the Lal Masjid episode. Initially, he did not act against the members of the Laskar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), who were gathering inside the Masjid in order to instigate the madrasa students against the Government and the liberal sections of the Pakistani society. When these extremists started targeting some Chinese women working in Islamabad, he over-reacted, sent the commandos of the US-trained Special Services Group (SSG) in and used force, which was perceived by many as disproportionate.
5. The result---the current wave of suicide terrorism by angry tribals and others. The suicide bombers are of varying backgrounds--- Al Qaeda, pro-Taliban and pro-Al Qaeda tribals, the LEJ, which is largely an anti-Shia organisation of Punjabis, ex-servicemen not belonging to any organisation whose daughters or sisters died in the commando raid, the male students of a madrasa attached to the Lal Masjid, who want to avenge the death of the women students etc. Attempts to attribute everything to Al Qaeda and see everything that has been happening in Pakistan as part of Al Qaeda's global jihad against the US are too simplistic and would not permit a lucid understanding of the situation.
6. The international community and the post-9/11 crop of Al Qaeda watchers, who are largely influenced by American perceptions, may have difficulty in understanding the roots of the anger sweeping across Pakistan's tribal belt, but we in India should be able to understand it better. We passed through a similar trauma in the months after the Army's raid into the Golden Temple at Amritsar in June 1984, to flush out a group of Khalistani terrorists, who had taken control of the Temple. During the Army operation, many civilians, including Bhindranwale, the religious mentor of the extremists, were killed and some parts of the temple premises were badly damaged by the exchange of fire between the Army and the terrorists. The only saving grace for us was that there were no religious schools inside the temple complex and hence no young students were killed.
7. The Army raid into the Gold Temple, called Operation Blue Star, had a disastrous sequel---- many Sikh soldiers of the Indian Army deserted just as Pakistani tribal soldiers are deserting after the Lal Masjid raid; four Sikh deserters crossed over into Pakistan and sought political asylum; some of the Sikh deserters shot dead a serving Brigadier; Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, was gunned down inside her house by her own Sikh security guards; Gen. A. S. Vaidya, who was the Chief of the Army Staff during Operation Blue Star was shot dead by Khalistanis at Pune where he was living after retirement; Khalistanis unsuccessfully tried to assassinate Mr. Jule Ribeiro, who had served as the Punjab police chief, at Bucharest where the Govt. had sent him as Ambassador in order to protect him from the wrath of the Khalistanis, Mr. Bhajan Lal, former Chief Minister of Haryana, escaped a plot to kill him in the US due to the timely detection of the conspiracy by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); the Kanishka aircraft of Air India flying from Toronto to India was blown up in mid-air off the Irish coast by Khalistanis, coinciding with the first anniversary of Blue Star; another Air India aircraft escaped a similar disaster due to the premature explosion of the device at the Tokyo airport; Liviu Radu, a Romanian diplomat posted at New Delhi was kidnapped, migrant Hindu agricultural workers working in Punjab were targeted and killed; there was an upsurge in the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) not only in Punjab, but also in Delhi etc etc. The post-Blue Star trauma and anger started subsiding only after 1992. It lasted eight years.
8. Popular perceptions---right or wrong--- of acts of desecration against places of worship and religious significance have disastrous after-effects. We saw it after Operation Blue Star and after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in India. We have been seeing it in Malaysia in recent months. The Hindus of Malaysia were a very law-abiding people. They had never in the past taken their economic and social grievances out into the streets, but their anger over the demolition of some Hindu temples and alleged bulldozing of some Hindu idols by municipal authorities at some places provoked them to come out in the streets in large numbers in defiance of the police and the law. We have been seeing a growing wave of anger among the Hindus of India over the alleged plans of the authorities to demolish the Ramar Setu, a site of religious significance, for the construction of the Sethusamudram Project in India's southern coast.
9. The suicide wave, which we have been seeing in Pakistan, is partly---if not largely--- the result of the anger unleashed among the tribals by what happened in the Lal Masjid. This anger is among the Pashtun tribals on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Even Afghan Pashtuns in large numbers, who were previously fighting against the US and other NATO forces in Afghan territory, have now been moving into Pakistan since July for acts of reprisal against Musharraf and his perceived collaborators----military as well as civilian. Action to kill Musharraf, whom they view as apostate, and other apostates has assumed priority in their eyes over action against the NATO in Afghan territory. Moreover, in their view, if they eliminate these apostates, their jihad in Afghanistan against Western forces would be facilitated.
10. There are over a dozen jihadi terrorist organisations operating from the tribal belt---- Al Qaeda, the Neo Taliban, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan of which Baitullah Mehsud is the Amir, the TNSM of which Maulana Fazlullah is the Amir, the Lashkar Islam, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), the LEJ, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihad Union etc. Periodically, they have been putting out their own demands. Most of their agenda is influenced by local factors. But there is one agenda item which is common to all of them--- the need to avenge the alleged massacre in the Lal Masjid by Pakistani Army commandoes.
11. Even before the Lal Masjid episode, Al Qaeda, the Neo Taliban and other jihadi organisations were well entrenched in the tribal belt, but they were facing difficulty in getting volunteers for suicide terrorism, but after the Lal Masjid raid, they are getting volunteers in their hundreds from the tribal areas on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. In its issue of August 3-9, 2007, the "Friday Times" of Lahore wrote as follows: "Recruits are formally registered with the Taliban as suicide bombers and given a receipt indicating their registration number. At any given point, there are thousands in line waiting to sacrifice their lives, an observer returning from South Waziristan told the weekly. If one of them is selected to be the next bomber, the news is a cause for celebration in his household. Once confirmation arrives of his death, the funeral prayers are substituted with congratulatory messages for the family....Women, because of the Taliban's strict anti-wife-beating policy, are largely in favour of them..... This is part of the strategy of winning over the mothers, who, according to the Taliban, have the greatest influence on the child as he grows up. Women are thus actively involved in the process of indoctrinating children in favour of the Taliban." The deaths of a large number of tribal girls in the Lal Masjid have further motivated Pashtun women to act as recruiters of suicide terrorists for whichever organisation wants them.
12. Al Qaeda is growing stronger in Pakistan. It has spread its tentacles even to Rawalpindi and into the lower and middle ranks of the Armed Forces. But, any counter-terrorism strategy, which focusses exclusively on the physical threat from Al Qaeda, without paying attention to the psychological factors being exploited by it, would prove ineffective. While stepping up action against Al Qaeda and other pro-Al Qaeda organisations, it is equally important to address the post-Lal Masjid anger in the tribal belt through actions such as an enquiry into the alleged deaths, compensation for the families of those killed etc. By refusing to admit the role of the commando raid in the upsurge of jihadi terrorism, Musharraf is only making the situation worse. If he continues with his ill-advised policies, Pakistan will continue to bleed.
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You seem to have followed this area more than most people. I am curious:
Where do you think things heading?
What do you think the US should do?
Woof,
Well, before Bhutto's death I would have said Pakistan was going to become more balanced between the power that the military holds and the Government institutions and that could lead to a reining in of the various tribal faction leaders and thus a start at rooting out the more militant members of those enclaves where the Taliban and al Qaida have strongholds. But poof, that's all gone now. The key now (as it has always been), is the military. With Musharraf embattled as he is now his situation is only going to worsen as the few supporters he has start to jump ship and even worse than that, start turning against him. Musharraf's days are numbered. The leadership in the higher ranks of the military is fairly solid and General Kayani is firmly pro West. The bad news is that the militants have infiltrated the mid and lower ranks of the military as well as the intell agencies. Not good. So my assessment of the future would be touch and go for Pakistan. It is a very complicated situation on the ground there to say the least. Almost none of the Tribal leaders lend any loyalty to the government or the military, the various militant groups of course don't either, Iran is meddling as well as India, we are pouring billions into the region and the everyday Pakistani that just wants to feed his family, has no place at the table at all. In a word, I think they're screwed and so are we unless Kayani can perform a miracle and manage to purge the military of militants and restore order while bringing back civilian governance that will somehow come up with a way other than just military force, to put pressure on the tribal areas to kick out the Taliban and al Qaida. I think it's going to get worse, much worse and it may never get better.
As for what the U.S. should do? Get behind kayani, put diplomatic pressure on India and economic pressure on Iran to quit stirring the pot, and quit going after the brass ring of using the Pakistani military to bull their way into the tribal areas to get Bin Laden and the Taliban and start helping the Pakistani civil government in coming up with the carrot on a stick programs that will cause the tribal leaders to want to push out the militants on their own.
P.C.
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I confess bafflement and anger at the officials who leak these sorts of things to the press and the press that print them.
I also note the apparent cluelessness of our officials analysis from the perspective of the Indian article that I posted. I have no idea if the Indian article's point about the anger over the raid on the mosque is correct, I simply note the disparity.
Personally I find myself dubious of the effect of minor, incremental steps. The Whackostans/Taliban/AQ have repeatedly launched attacks both successful and unsuccessful against the US, UK, and other parts of Europe. To my way of thinking plenty of causus belli exists.
We helped Afg fight the Soviets, then left them alone. In return they gave AQ safe harbor to attack us and now the same folks (in Afg and the Whackostans) produce 90% of the world's heroin and opium while lecturing us about morality and decadence and continue to launch attacks upon the US, UK, and elsewhere in Europe. When I read “He is in South Waziristan agency, and let me tell you, getting him in that place means battling against thousands of people, hundreds of people who are his followers, the Mehsud tribe, if you get to him, and it will mean collateral damage,” my reaction is to wonder whether our incremental and incompetent dithering and meddling will ever get the job done. Perhaps a goodly dose of Jacksonian War will be required?
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NY Times
U.S. Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan
By STEVEN LEE MYERS, DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: January 6, 2008
This article is by Steven Lee Myers, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt.
The New York Times
Al Qaeda and the Taliban use the tribal areas as a base.
WASHINGTON — President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.
Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. There was also talk of how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections, and the aftermath of those elections.
Several of the participants in the meeting argued that the threat to the government of President Pervez Musharraf was now so grave that both Mr. Musharraf and Pakistan’s new military leadership were likely to give the United States more latitude, officials said. But no decisions were made, said the officials, who declined to speak for attribution because of the highly delicate nature of the discussions.
Many of the specific options under discussion are unclear and highly classified. Officials said that the options would probably involve the C.I.A. working with the military’s Special Operations forces.
The Bush administration has not formally presented any new proposals to Mr. Musharraf, who gave up his military role last month, or to his successor as the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who the White House thinks will be more sympathetic to the American position than Mr. Musharraf. Early in his career, General Kayani was an aide to Ms. Bhutto while she was prime minister and later led the Pakistani intelligence service.
But at the White House and the Pentagon, officials see an opportunity in the changing power structure for the Americans to advocate for the expanded authority in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country. “After years of focusing on Afghanistan, we think the extremists now see a chance for the big prize — creating chaos in Pakistan itself,” one senior official said.
The new options for expanded covert operations include loosening restrictions on the C.I.A. to strike selected targets in Pakistan, in some cases using intelligence provided by Pakistani sources, officials said. Most counterterrorism operations in Pakistan have been conducted by the C.I.A.; in Afghanistan, where military operations are under way, including some with NATO forces, the military can take the lead.
The legal status would not change if the administration decided to act more aggressively. However, if the C.I.A. were given broader authority, it could call for help from the military or deputize some forces of the Special Operations Command to act under the authority of the agency.
The United States now has about 50 soldiers in Pakistan. Any expanded operations using C.I.A. operatives or Special Operations forces, like the Navy Seals, would be small and tailored to specific missions, military officials said.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who was on vacation last week and did not attend the White House meeting, said in late December that “Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people.”
In the past, the administration has largely stayed out of the tribal areas, in part for fear that exposure of any American-led operations there would so embarrass the Musharraf government that it could further empower his critics, who have declared he was too close to Washington.
Even now, officials say, some American diplomats and military officials, as well as outside experts, argue that American-led military operations on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan could result in a tremendous backlash and ultimately do more harm than good. That is particularly true, they say, if Americans were captured or killed in the territory.
In part, the White House discussions may be driven by a desire for another effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. Currently, C.I.A. operatives and Special Operations forces have limited authority to conduct counterterrorism missions in Pakistan based on specific intelligence about the whereabouts of those two men, who have eluded the Bush administration for more than six years, or of other members of their terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, hiding in or near the tribal areas.
The C.I.A. has launched missiles from Predator aircraft in the tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence officials said they believed that in January 2006 an airstrike narrowly missed killing Mr. Zawahri, who had attended a dinner in Damadola, a Pakistani village. But that apparently was the last real evidence American officials had about the whereabouts of their chief targets.
Critics said more direct American military action would be ineffective, anger the Pakistani Army and increase support for the militants. “I’m not arguing that you leave Al Qaeda and the Taliban unmolested, but I’d be very, very cautious about approaches that could play into hands of enemies and be counterproductive,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. Some American diplomats and military officials have also issued strong warnings against expanded direct American action, officials said.
Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani military and political analyst, said raids by American troops would prompt a powerful popular backlash against Mr. Musharraf and the United States.
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In the wake of the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, many Pakistanis suspect that the United States is trying to dominate Pakistan as well, Mr. Rizvi said. Mr. Musharraf — who is already widely unpopular — would lose even more popular support.
“At the moment when Musharraf is extremely unpopular, he will face more crisis,” Mr. Rizvi said. “This will weaken Musharraf in a Pakistani context.” He said such raids would be seen as an overall vote of no confidence in the Pakistani military, including General Kayani.
The meeting on Friday, which was not publicly announced, included Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and top intelligence officials.
Spokesmen for the White House, the C.I.A. and the Pentagon declined to discuss the meeting, citing a policy against doing so. But the session reflected an urgent concern that a new Qaeda haven was solidifying in parts of Pakistan and needed to be countered, one official said.
Although some officials and experts have criticized Mr. Musharraf and questioned his ability to take on extremists, Mr. Bush has remained steadfast in his support, and it is unlikely any new measures, including direct American military action inside Pakistan, will be approved without Mr. Musharraf’s consent.
“He understands clearly the risks of dealing with extremists and terrorists,” Mr. Bush said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday. “After all, they’ve tried to kill him.”
The Pakistan government has identified a militant leader with links to Al Qaeda, Baitullah Mehsud, who holds sway in tribal areas near the Afghanistan border, as the chief suspect behind the attack on Ms. Bhutto. American officials are not certain about Mr. Mehsud’s complicity but say the threat he and other militants pose is a new focus. He is considered, they said, an “Al Qaeda associate.”
In an interview with foreign journalists on Thursday, Mr. Musharraf warned of the risk any counterterrorism forces — American or Pakistani — faced in confronting Mr. Mehsud in his native tribal areas.
“He is in South Waziristan agency, and let me tell you, getting him in that place means battling against thousands of people, hundreds of people who are his followers, the Mehsud tribe, if you get to him, and it will mean collateral damage,” Mr. Musharraf said.
The weeks before parliamentary elections — which were originally scheduled for Tuesday — are seen as critical because of threats by extremists to disrupt the vote. But it seemed unlikely that any additional American effort would be approved and put in place in that time frame.
Administration aides said that Pakistani and American officials shared the concern about a resurgent Qaeda, and that American diplomats and senior military officers had been working closely with their Pakistani counterparts to help bolster Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations.
Shortly after Ms. Bhutto’s assassination, Adm. William J. Fallon, who oversees American military operations in Southwest Asia, telephoned his Pakistani counterparts to ensure that counterterrorism and logistics operations remained on track.
In early December, Adm. Eric T. Olson, the new leader of the Special Operations Command, paid his second visit to Pakistan in three months to meet with senior Pakistani officers, including Lt. Gen. Muhammad Masood Aslam, commander of the military and paramilitary troops in northwest Pakistan. Admiral Olson also visited the headquarters of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force of about 85,000 members recruited from border tribes that the United States is planning to help train and equip.
But the Pakistanis are still years away from fielding an effective counterinsurgency force. And some American officials, including Defense Secretary Gates, have said the United States may have to take direct action against militants in the tribal areas.
American officials said the crisis surrounding Ms. Bhutto’s assassination had not diminished the Pakistani counterterrorism operations, and there were no signs that Mr. Musharraf had pulled out any of his 100,000 forces in the tribal areas and brought them to the cities to help control the urban unrest.
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Most in this country are living in a 9/10 mindset. Until the next time....
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Woof,
I think it would be a disaster if we sent U.S. troops into those tribal areas; yes we could get some immediate success on a few strongholds but we could not possibly hold any ground there and the militants will move back in with even more support from the tribal leaders after we move on to another site. We would in the long run waste tons of money and lose a lot of lives in those mountains and come out in worse condition than we are right now. As I said before the only way I see us getting anywhere in the tribal areas is to get the tribal leaders to push the militants out. That's not going to happen militarily and I hope Musharraf has got more sense than to let the U.S. go in.
This spring as the Taliban cranks up their attacks in Afghanistan, we will need to boost our troop levels there by about 20,000 and place many of them right there at the border to intercept the hard core Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters that will be moving out of the tribal regions anyway. Why go in there when they are going to be coming to us? I'm normally very hawkish and would love to go after the leadership but now is not the time. A girl scout with a slingshot can protect those mountain passes long enough for the leadership elements to escape an attack, even by our very best.
P.C.
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I note that the level of intel here from a retired Indian cabinet member, FAR exceeds just about anything that we read here. Why is that? If correct, and it reads to me like it is , , ,
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Baitullah Mehsud Steps up Attacks in South Waziristan - International Terrorism Monitor---Paper No. 355
by B. Raman
The Mehsud followers of Baitullah Mehsud, assisted by some Uzbeks of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), have stepped up their attacks on the thinly-manned outposts of the Frontier Corps (FC) in different parts of South Waziristan. These outposts were withdrawn under a peace agreement signed by the Pakistani Army with Baitullah at the Sararogha fort in February, 2005. When President Pervez Musharraf ordered the commandoes of the Special Services Group (SSG) to raid the Lal Masjid of Islamabad in July, 2007, he also ordered the re-establishment of these outposts of the FC since he apprehended that the Mehsuds, many of whose children were studying in the two madrasas attached to the Lal Masjid, could retaliate for the commando action.
2. Baitullah interpreted the re-establishment of these outposts as a bad breach of faith by Musharraf and announced that the Mehsuds would no longer be bound by the ceasefire agreement of February, 2005. Since then, the Mehsuds have unleashed a wave of suicide attacks not only in South Waziristan, but also in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Punjab, Balochistan and Sindh. He had also resumed the guerilla attacks of his force on the para-military forces and captured nearly 300 of them. Under a fresh cease-fire agreement reached in November, 2007, Baitullah agreed to suspend his operations and release the captured personnel of the FC in return for the Government closing again the FC outposts re-established in South Waziristan, releasing all Mehsuds arrested in South Waziristan and the NWFP, and also Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi, the chief cleric of the Lal Masjid, and the students of the madrasas of the mosque arrested during the commando action.
3. Baitullah released all the FC personnel captured by his force. In return, Musharraf ordered the release of all but six of the Mehsuds arrested by his security agencies. He has not ordered the release of these six on the ground that they are under trial before the Anti-Terrorism courts and hence he has no powers to order their release. He has not agreed to release those arrested during the commando raid in the Lal Masjid. Nor has he agreed to withdraw the FC outposts re-established in the area. On the contrary, after the assassination of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007, allegedly at the instance of Baitullah, he has reinforced the FC posts in South Waziristan in an attempt to hunt for Baitullah.
4. This has provoked Baitullah to step up attacks on the FC posts. Though the FC consists largely of Pashtun tribals recruited in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the NWFP, these Pashtuns are looked upon by Baitullah and Al Qaeda as apostate for allegedly collaborating with Musharraf, who has already been declared an apostate by Al Qaeda since 2003. The FC comes operationally under the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Army and administratively under the Ministry of the Interior.
5. Between 1878 and 1903, the British set up the various tribal agencies, which, after Pakistan's independence in 1947, were constituted into the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The British created in each agency para-military forces called militias recruited from amongst the various Pashtun sub-tribes in that agency. Thus came into existence militias such as the Khyber Rifles (1878), the Zhob Militia (1883), the Kurram Militia (1892), the Tochi Scouts (1894), the Chagai Militia (1896), the South Waziristan Scouts (1900) , the Chitral Scouts (1903) etc. Lord Curzon, who became the Viceroy in 1899, created the Frontier Corps to serve as the umbrella organisation of these militias and to co-ordinate their functioning in all the tribal agencies. This arrangement has continued till now. The Frontier Corps, whose General Headquarters are located in Peshawar, functions under the over-all supervision of the Corps Commander of the Pakistan Army at Peshawar.
6. As mentioned by me in my article of November 15, 2007, titled "The State of Jihadi Terrorism in Pakistan" ( http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers25/paper2459.html), a major blunder committed by Musharraf was the over-use of para-military forces such as the Frontier Constabulary and the Frontier Corps in the operations against terrorists in the tribal areas. He wanted to avoid using the Punjabi-dominated Army for ground operations. While the Army is actively involved in the ground operations against the Baloch freedom-fighters in Balochistan, it was confining itself to the barracks in the FATA and in the Provincially-Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). American officials and their counterparts in Pakistan often claim that Musharraf has deployed nearly 80,000 troops in the tribal areas. The Americans cite this as one of the reasons for their strong backing to the General despite his growing unpopularity.
7. What they do not mention is that many of these security personnel are the tribal members of the para-military forces, who come from that area, and not Pakistani military personnel recruited from other areas of the country. A large number of the Pakistani army personnel are used not for ground operations against the terrorists, but for providing physical security to American and other NATO military supplies to Afghanistan from the Karachi port after they are landed there. This has been creating resentment among the tribal personnel of the para-military forces, who feel that Musharraf, under US pressure, is making not only Muslims kill Muslims, but also Pashtuns kill Pashtuns, in the name of the so-called war on terrorism. The FM radio stations operated by pro-Al Qaeda jihadi leaders in the tribal areas have been repeatedly alleging in their broadcasts directed to the fellow-tribals in the para-military forces that innocent tribals are being killed in order to save American lives in the US homeland.
8. As a result of this, there has been a growing number of desertions of Pashtuns serving in the para-military forces. Musharraf did use regular Army units to counter the supporters of Maulana Fazlullah in the Swat Valley, but afraid that the Pashtun soldiers of the Army too might start deserting their units like the Pashtun members of the para-military forces, he has been avoiding the use of the army in ground operations and has instead been relying increasingly on helicopter gunships. This has, on the one hand, resulted in an increase in the number of civilian casualties due to indiscriminate air-mounted actions and, on the other, further fuelled the resentment in the para-military forces, whose personnel are asking: Are the lives of the Army personnel more precious than those of the Frontier Constabulary and the Frontier Corps?
9. I had also written that Musharraf has so far not told his people and the international community that Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organisations in the tribal areas have been increasingly targeting Shias and Christians. Captured Shia members of the para-military forces are being treated with brutality and killed by beheading or by cutting their throats. Shia members of the civil society are also being targeted. The FM radio stations have been indulging in the most horrible anti-Shia broadcasts. Shias are being projected as American agents in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. They are alleging that the majority of the prostitutes in Pakistan are Shias and projecting the Shias as the sect of the prostitutes in the Ummah. A highly reputed school for poor tribal girls run in the FATA by a Christian missionary organisation was targeted and forced to close through intimidation. There are no Buddhists in the tribal areas, but many historical Buddhist heritage sites are there. These too are systematically being attacked. Al Qaeda is trying to replicate Iraq in Pakistan by exacerbating the already existing divide between the Shias and the Sunnis in the civil society as well as in the Army.
10. In their renewed offensive in the wake of the assassination of Benazir, the Mehsuds and the Uzbeks of the IMU have been taking advantage of the low morale of the personnel of the FC. After overrunning the FC outpost in the Sararogha fort on January 15, 2008, they are reported to have overrun another post of the FC located at a place called Seplatoi in South Waziristan. What is disquieting is that whereas the FC personnel at Sararogha put up a fight against the Mehsuds and Uzbeks and suffered fatalities before they were overrun, those ( 60 in number) at Seplatoi are alleged to have either run away or surrendered without even a semblance of a fight.
11. Of course, the Army has strongly denied this, but other reliable sources say this incident did happen. The declining morale of the Pashtun members of the Frontier Corps should be a matter of serious concern. Can it spread to the Pashtuns in the Pakistani Army? That is a question, which should worry not only Musharraf, but also the international community.
12. The time has come for Pakistan and the international community to review the physical security arrangements in Pakistan's nuclear establishments in order to look for signs of declining morale there. While Pakistan's principal nuclear establishments are located in Punjab and are guarded by carefully selected Punjabi soldiers, its nuclear waste dumps are located in the tribal areas of the NWFP such as Dera Ismail Khan and are guarded by the FC.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
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:evil: HA-HA! :evil:
Suicide bomber falls down stairs ...
Article from: Agence France-Presse
From correspondents in Khost, Afghanistan
January 24, 2008 12:39pm
A WOULD-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say.
It was the second such incident in two days, with another man killing himself and three others on Tuesday when his bomb-filled waistcoat exploded as he was putting it on in the southern town of Lashkar Gah.
Yesterday's blast was in a busy market area of the eastern town of Khost, a deputy provincial police chief said.
The would-be attacker tripped as he was leaving a building apparently to target an opening ceremony for a mosque that was expected to be attended by Afghan and international military officials, said Sakhi Mir.
"Coming down the stairs, he fell down and exploded. Two civilian women and a man were wounded,'' Mir said.
Suicide attacks are regular feature of an insurgency led by the extremist Taliban movement that was in government between 1996 and 2001. The most deadly was in November 2007 and killed nearly 80 people, most of them school students.
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A well-informed friend in India sends the following:
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These 2 items are related. Apparently about 40 % of NATO supplies to Afghan go via Pak. Now the Taliban is starting to hijack the military trucks/tunnels. This may in part explain the US offer to "help" in ferreting out Talib from NWFP. Interesting times ahead ... X.
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Pakistan troops pound militants holding key tunnel PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 27 (AFP) - Pakistan artillery backed by gunship helicopters pounded militant positions in an attempt to take back control of a key road tunnel, blocking traffic between the main city of Peshawar in North West Frontier Province and the city of Kohat. As the operation entered a third day Sunday, troops were using artillery, long-range weapons and helicopters to dislodge militants from their bunkers on hills overlooking the tunnel, a military spokesman said. Residents said hundreds of vehicles were stranded on both sides of the tunnel, with the militants having erected barricades on the road to the tunnel. "Fighting is going on near Kohat tunnel and troops have purged militants from a large area," chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP. Troops had made good progress in their advance, he said, expressing hope that the rebels would be flushed out from the area by Monday and the tunnel freed. "They are holding key positions on mountain tops; that is why it is taking time," the spokesman said, adding security forces suffered no casualties and there were no details of militant losses in the latest clash. He said 25 militants were killed late Saturday. On Friday the troops said they had killed 30 rebels and lost two soldiers in Darra Adam Khel, which is known for its weapons bazaar and illegal arms manufacturing factories.(Posted @ 11:21 PST, Updated @ 17:09 PST)
Top U.S. intelligence officials made secret trip to Pakistan WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (AP): The top two U.S. intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek permission from President Musharraf for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out Al-Qaeda and other militant groups active in the tribal regions along the Afghanistan border, a senior U.S. official said. The official wishing to remain anonymous, declined to disclose what was said, but Musharraf was quoted two days after the Jan. 9 meeting as saying U.S. troops would be regarded as invaders if they crossed into Pakistan to hunt Al-Qaeda militants. The New York Times which first reported the secret visit by CIA Director Michael Hayden and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, said Musharraf rebuffed an expansion of an American presence in Pakistan at the meeting, either through overt CIA missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces. In a Jan. 11 interview, Musharraf told The Straits Times of Singapore that U.S. troops would be considered invaders if they set foot in the tribal regions. "If they come without our permission, that's against the sovereignty of Pakistan," he said. "I challenge anybody coming into our mountains. They would regret that day." (Posted @ 10:00 PST)
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Canadians need help fighting the resurgent Taliban in Kandahar. A top provincial official says only Americans can do the job.
By Bruce Wallace, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 6, 2008
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- As the most powerful Afghan official in the troubled southern province of Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai says he knows just how to tame the shadowy Taliban campaign of suicide bombs and assassinations that have raised the specter of a country sliding toward anarchy.
He wants more American soldiers on the ground.
"The Canadians are fine, but Americans are Americans -- the mentality is different," said Karzai, chairman of the provincial council in Kandahar where the Canadian-led military mission has struggled to contain the regrouped Taliban.
Amid the recent deluge of discouraging reports citing declining security in swaths of southern Afghanistan, Karzai's is a rare voice of optimism, claiming that U.S. special forces already have begun to turn the tide in Kandahar with targeted strikes against individual commanders of the fundamentalist group, which was ousted from power six years ago.
"These operations are extremely quiet. They cause no civilian casualties and no damage to the villages," said Karzai, whose power derives in part from being the younger brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
"The Americans are very professional," he said. "They go in; they get out. It's just like you see in the movies."
Karzai is about to get his wish for a greater American presence. About 3,200 U.S. Marines are set to deploy to Afghanistan in coming weeks, most of them ticketed for a seven-month stay in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's traditional heartland and home of its revived insurgency.
Beleaguered Canadians in Kandahar can't wait for the Americans to arrive either. They acknowledge that their 2,500 troops have not been enough to create much of a footprint across the province. And they say they are not able to undertake regular patrols of the dangerous back roads in the fertile farming region outside the city of Kandahar, with the result that the Taliban now operates with impunity in some villages not far from the provincial capital.
The implications of a Taliban comeback are being felt far beyond Kandahar, placing a major stress on the 41,000-strong international alliance, led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, that was supposed to secure and rebuild all of Afghanistan. The jump in insurgent violence over the last two years has led to recriminations within NATO, with the U.S. military leaders questioning whether their partners have the stomach for the fight against the Taliban, and the Canadians, British and Dutch complaining that risks are not being evenly shared across the alliance.
The Canadian government recently warned that it would end its mission in Kandahar by early 2009 unless NATO sends an additional 1,000 soldiers into the fray. The British are also appealing for help containing an equally violent insurgency in neighboring Helmand province.
And the violence has opened up wide disagreements over strategy, mostly over how much force to direct against the Taliban.
In Kandahar, the Canadians are particularly bitter over U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' widely quoted comments last month that some of America's allies "don't know how to do counterinsurgency operations."
His unusually pointed criticism was part of a wider whispering campaign by American officials that accuses Canadian and European forces of being locked in a peacekeeping mind-set, of playing fanciful diplomatic games trying to woo less extreme elements of the Taliban away from the hard core, and of not pushing Afghan soldiers into the forefront of counterinsurgency missions.
"I frankly don't know where Gates gets that," said Brig. Gen. Guy Laroche, who commands the Canadian contingent in Kandahar. Laroche contends that training the Afghan army and police to take over the sharp end of the fighting is actually now the centerpiece of the Canadian approach in Kandahar.
And suggestions that the Canadians might be trying to avoid casualties enrages soldiers who have been taking a pounding from roadside bombs. With 78 soldiers and one diplomat killed since 2002, Canada has the highest casualty percentage among all nations in the NATO forces, and Canadian officers say attacks against troops in Kandahar rose by 50% last year from 2006.
Laroche said there is no friction between Canadian and American troops on the ground. Yet Canadian soldiers and diplomats also say they do not share what some see as an American obsession with tracking down the Taliban.
"We're not hunting Taliban," Laroche said. "We're not going to win by killing every Taliban. We're going to win by getting the Afghan population to say 'enough' to the Taliban."
Canadian troops did initially find themselves engaged in ferocious fighting with the Taliban when they took over command of the NATO forces in the province in 2006. But the Taliban has mostly avoided direct engagements since then, and Laroche says he is happiest avoiding the kinds of clashes that can kill civilians.
Instead, the Canadians say their counterinsurgency strategy is based on securing areas where productive reconstruction and development can occur: supervising the recent completion of a bridge across the Arghandab River north of the city of Kandahar using well-paid local labor, and a road-paving project that will employ 400 Afghans.
Yet the Canadians say their attempt to build trust among the people of Kandahar is undermined by confusion surrounding the future of the mission.
"The Afghans have to make a decision about where to put their loyalties," said one Canadian officer who deals with the people in Kandahar on a regular basis. "They say, 'You're here during the day, a couple of times a week, but the Taliban are here all the time.' I tell them not to worry, that we're staying, that the rest is just politics.
"But they worry that they are going to be stuck with the Taliban."
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The Jihadist Insurgency in Pakistan
February 6, 2008 | 1616 GMT
By Kamran Bokhari
The increasing crisis of governance in Pakistan over the past several months has triggered many queries from Stratfor readers, most wanting to know how events will ultimately play out. Would a collapse of the Musharraf regime lead to a jihadist takeover? How safe are the country’s nuclear weapons? What are the security implications for Afghanistan? Topmost among the questions is whether Pakistan will remain a viable state.
Globally, there are fears that the collapse of the current regime could lead to an implosion of the state itself, with grave repercussions on regional and international security. Pakistanis themselves are very much concerned about a disaster of national proportions, particularly if the Feb. 18 elections go awry.
Although there are conflicting theories on what will happen in and to Pakistan, most have one thing in common. They focus on the end result, seeing the unfolding events as moving in a straight line from Point A to Point B. They deem Point B — the collapse of Pakistan — to be an unavoidable outcome of the prevailing conditions in the country. Such predictions, however, do not account for the many arrestors and other variables that will influence the chain of events.
Though there are many, many reasons for concern in Pakistan, state breakdown is not one of them. Such an extreme outcome would require the fracturing of the military and/or the army’s loss of control over the core of the country — neither of which is about to happen. That said, the periphery of the country, especially the northwestern border regions, could become an increasing challenge to the writ of the state.
We have said on many occasions that Islamabad is unlikely to restore stability and security any time soon, largely because of structural issues. In other words, the existing situation is likely to persist for some time — and could even deteriorate further. This raises the question: How bad can things get?
The answer lies in the institutional cohesiveness of Pakistan’s military establishment and the geographical structure of the country.
The Army
Stratfor recently pointed out that the army — rather than any particular military general — is the force that holds the state together. Therefore, the collapse of the state would come about only if the military establishment were to fracture. For several reasons, this is extremely unlikely.
Pakistan’s army is a highly disciplined organization made up of roughly half a million personnel. This force usually is led by at least two four-star generals — the chief of the army staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. The leadership also consists of nine corps commanders and several other principal staff officers — all three-star generals. Beneath these approximately 30 lieutenant generals are about 150 two-star generals and some 450 one-star generals.
Moreover, and unlike in the Arab world, the Pakistani army has largely remained free of coups from within. The generals know their personal well-being is only as good as their collective ability to function as a unified and disciplined force — one that can guarantee the security of the state. The generals, particularly the top commanders, form a very cohesive body bound together by individual, corporate and national interests.
It is extremely rare for an ideologue, especially one with Islamist leanings, to make it into the senior ranks. In contrast with its Turkish counterpart, the Pakistani military sees itself as the protector of the state’s Islamic identity, which leaves very little room for the officer corps to be attracted to radical Islamist prescriptions. Thus, it is extremely unlikely that jihadism — despite the presence of jihadist sympathizers within the junior and mid-level ranks — will cause fissures within the army.
In the absence of strong civilian institutions, the army also sees itself as the guardian of the republic. Because of the imbalance in civil-military relations — there is virtually no civilian oversight over the military — the army exercises nearly complete control over the nation’s treasury. Having directly ruled Pakistan for some 33 years of the country’s 60-year existence, the army has become a huge corporation with massive financial holdings.
While these interests are a reason for the army’s historical opposition to democratic forces, they also play a major role in ensuring the cohesiveness of the institution. Consequently, there is no danger of the state collapsing. By extension, it is highly unlikely that the country’s nuclear assets (which are under the control of the military through an elaborate multilayered institutional mechanism) would fall into the wrong hands.
Although a collapse of the state is unlikely, the military is having a hard time running the country. This is not simply because of political instability, which is hardwired into Pakistan’s hybrid political system, but rather because of the unprecedented jihadist insurgency.
While civilian forces (political parties, civil society groups, the media and the legal community) are pushing for democratic rule, jihadists are staging guerrilla-style attacks in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the rural Pashtun districts of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Moreover, they are mounting a campaign of suicide bombings in major urban centers. The military does not have the bandwidth to deal with political unrest and militancy simultaneously — a situation that is being fully exploited by the jihadists. The likely outcome of this trend is the state’s relative loss of control over the areas in the northwestern periphery.
Geography and Demography
From a strictly geopolitical point of view, Pakistan’s core is the area around the Indus River, which runs from the Karakoram/Western Himalayan/Pamir/Hindu Kush mountain ranges in the North to the Arabian Sea in the South. Most areas of the provinces of Punjab and Sindh lie east of the Indus. The bulk of the population is in this area, as is the country’s agricultural and industrial base — not to mention most of the transportation infrastructure. The fact that seven of the army’s nine corps are stationed in the region (six of them in Punjab) speaks volumes about its status as the core of the country.
In contrast, the vast majority of the areas in the NWFP, FATA, Balochistan province, the Federally Administered Northern Areas and Pakistani-administered Kashmir are sparsely populated mountainous regions — and clearly the country’s periphery. Moreover, their rough terrain has rendered them natural buffers, shielding the core of the country.
In our 2008 Annual Forecast for South Asia, we said the country’s Pashtun areas could become ungovernable this year, and there already are signs that the process is under way. Pakistani Taliban supported by al Qaeda have seized control of many parts of the FATA and are asserting themselves in the districts of NWFP adjacent to the tribal areas.
While Islamism and jihadism can be found across the country, the bulk of this phenomenon is limited to the Pashtun areas — the tribal areas, the eastern districts of NWFP and the northwestern corridor of Balochistan province. Unlike the vast majority of Pakistanis, the Pashtuns are disproportionately an ultra-conservative lot (both religiously and culturally), and hence are disproportionately more susceptible to radical Islamist and jihadist impulses. It is quite telling that in the last elections, in 2002, this is roughly the same area in which the Islamist alliance, the Mutahiddah Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), won the bulk of its seats in the national legislature. In addition to maintaining a large parliamentary bloc, the MMA ran the provincial government in NWFP and was the main partner with the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League in the coalition government in Balochistan.
Social structures and local culture, therefore, allow these areas to become the natural habitat of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Because of the local support base, the jihadists have been able not only to operate in these parts, but to take them over — and even to project themselves into the more settled areas of the NWFP. In addition to this advantage by default, security operations, which are viewed by many within the country as being done at the behest of the United States, have increasingly alienated the local population.
Given the local culture of retribution, the Pashtun militants have responded to civilian deaths during counterinsurgency operations by increasingly adopting suicide bombings as a means of fighting back. (It was not too long ago that the phenomenon of suicide bombings was alien to the local culture). The war in Afghanistan and its spillover effect on the border regions of Pakistan have created conditions in the area that have given al Qaeda and the Taliban a new lease on life.
Insurgency and Counterinsurgency
Resentment first toward Islamabad’s pro-U.S. policies and then the security crackdown that began in early 2004 to root out foreign fighters has developed into a general uprising of sorts. A younger, far more militant generation of Pashtuns enamored of al Qaeda and the Taliban has usurped power from the old tribal maliks. Not only has the government failed to achieve its objective of driving a wedge between foreign fighters and their local hosts, it has strengthened the militants’ hand.
One of the problems is the government’s haphazard approach of alternating military operations with peace deals. Moreover, when the government has conducted security operations, it not only has failed to weaken the militancy, it has caused civilian casualties and/or forced local people to flee their homes, leading to a disruption of life. When peace agreements are made, they have not secured local cooperation against Taliban and al Qaeda elements. The lack of a coherent policy on how to deal with the jihadists has caused the ground situation to go from bad to worse. At the same time, on the external front, Islamabad has come under even more U.S. pressure to act against the militants, the effects of which further complicate matters on the ground.
On a tactical level, while the Pakistani army has a history of supporting insurgencies, it is ill-equipped to fight them. Even worse, despite the deployment of some 100,000 soldiers in the region, the bulk of security operations have involved paramilitary forces such as the Frontier Corps, which is mostly made up of locals who have little incentive to fight their brethren. Furthermore, Pakistan’s intelligence capabilities already are compromised because of militant penetration of the agencies.
In addition to these structural problems, the Musharraf government’s battle for political survival over the past year has further prevented the government from focusing on the jihadist problem. The only time it acted with any semblance of resolve is when it sent the army to regain control of the Red Mosque in the summer of 2007. However, that action was tantamount to pouring more fuel on the militant fire.
President Pervez Musharraf, by stepping down as army chief and becoming a civilian president, did not resolve his survival issues. In fact, it has led to a bifurcation of power, with Musharraf sharing authority with his successor in the militaryGen. Ashfaq Kayani. While Musharraf remains preoccupied with making it through the coming election, Kayani is increasingly taking charge of the fight against jihadism. The assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto further complicated the regime’s struggle to remain in power, leaving very little bandwidth for dealing with the jihadists.
What Lies Ahead
With the army’s successful retaking of the district of Swat from militants loyal to Mullah Fazlullah, Kayani has demonstrated his abilities as a military leader. Despite this tactical victory, however, the situation is far from stable. From a strategic point of view, Kayani’s plans to deal with the insurgency depend heavily on the outcome of the Feb. 18 elections (if indeed they are held). The hope is that the political turmoil can be brought back within acceptable parameters so the army can focus on fighting jihadists.
That would be an ideal situation for the army, because the prevailing view is that the military needs public support in order to be successful in combating religious extremism and terrorism. Such public support can only be secured when an elected government comprising the various political stakeholders is in charge. The assumption is that the policies of such a government would be easier to implement and that if the army has to use a combination of force and negotiations with the militants, it will have the public’s backing instead of criticism.
But the problem is that there is an utter lack of national consensus on what needs to be done to defeat the forces of jihadism, beyond the simplistic view that the emphasis should be on dialogue and force should be used sparingly. Most people believe the situation has deteriorated because the Musharraf regime was more concerned with meeting U.S. demands than with finding solutions that took into consideration the realities on the ground. Islamabad knows it cannot avoid the use of force in dealing with the militants, but because of public opposition to such action, it fears that doing so could make the situation even worse.
Moreover, regardless of the election outcome (assuming the process is not derailed over cries of foul play), the prospects for a national policy on dealing with the Islamist militancy are slim. Circumstances will require that the new government be a coalition — thus it will be inherently weak. This, along with the deteriorating ground reality, will leave the army with no choice but to adopt a tough approach — one it has been avoiding for the most part.
Having led the country’s premier intelligence directorate, Inter-Services Intelligence, Kayani is all too aware of the need to overhaul the country’s intelligence system and root out militant sympathizers. This is the principal way to reduce the jihadists’ ability to stage attacks in the core areas of the country, where they have limited support structure. While this lengthy process continues, the army will try to contain the jihadist phenomenon on the western periphery along the border with Afghanistan.
The Pakistani government also needs to address the problems it has created for itself by distinguishing between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” Taliban. Islamabad continues to support the Taliban in Afghanistan while it is at war with the Pakistani Taliban. Given the strong ties between the two militant groups, Islamabad cannot hope to work with those on the other side of the border while it confronts those in its own territory.
Further complicating matters for Islamabad is the U.S. move to engage in overt military action on Pakistani soil in an effort to root out transnational jihadist elements. The Pakistanis need U.S. assistance in fighting the jihadist menace, but such assistance comes at a high political cost on the domestic front. The ambiguity in the Pakistani position could allow the Taliban and al Qaeda to thrive.
What this ultimately means is that the Pashtun areas could experience a long-term insurgency, resulting in some of these areas being placed under direct military rule. With the militants already trying to create their own “Islamic” emirate in the tribal areas, the insurgency has the potential to transform into a separatist struggle. Historically, the Pakistani army tried to defeat Pashtun ethnic nationalism by promoting Islamism — a policy that obviously has backfired miserably.
The Bottom Line
The good news for the Pakistanis — and others interested in maintaining the status quo — is that the ongoing jihadist insurgency and the political turmoil are unlikely to lead to the collapse of the state. The structure of the state and the nature of Pakistani society is such that radical Islamists, though a significant force, are unlikely to take over the country.
On the other hand, until the army successfully cleans up its intelligence system, suicide bombings are likely to continue across the country. Much more significant, the Pashtun areas along the Afghan border will be ungovernable. Pashtun jihadists and their transnational allies on both sides of the Durand Line will continue to provide mutual benefit until Pakistan and NATO can meaningfully coordinate their efforts.
Imposing a military solution is not an option for the Pakistanis or for the West. Negotiations with the Taliban in the short term are not a viable alternative either. Therefore, a long-term insurgency, which is confined to the Pashtun areas on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, is perhaps the best outcome that can be expected at this time.
stratfor
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WSJ
Beyond Musharraf
By HUSAIN HAQQANI
February 20, 2008; Page A15
Pakistan has never voted a military ruler out of office. That could change following Monday's parliamentary elections. Though President Pervez Musharraf was not on the ballot, the election was about his fate.
The people voted overwhelmingly against Mr. Musharraf. Even though the election was held under rules that favored his political allies, almost every candidate who served in his government lost. So did all major leaders of the Kings Party that Mr. Musharraf cobbled together with the help of his security services soon after taking power in a 1999 military coup. The Islamists, who Mr. Musharraf used as bogeymen to garner Western support, were trounced. This is good news for everyone worried about an Islamist takeover of the world's only nuclear-armed, Muslim-majority nation.
The result was a posthumous victory for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. This victory vindicated the sacrifice of every Pakistani who was imprisoned or exiled during eight years of autocratic rule but continued demanding freedom. Bhutto returned to the country seeking its return to democracy, only to be assassinated by terrorists on Dec. 27.
Pakistan's powerful army, now under the command of Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, is beginning to distance itself from politics. The army's refusal to side with Mr. Musharraf's political allies sealed their fate. Now, the army must help put Pakistan back on the constitutional path by undoing the arbitrary constitutional amendments decreed by Mr. Musharraf as army chief a few days before he relinquished his command.
The depth of opposition to Mr. Musharraf, coupled with his tendency to change or break rules to stay in power, had raised serious concerns that Mr. Musharraf would manipulate the election results in favor of his allies. In the end, international pressure, represented by the presence of three prominent U.S. senators -- John Kerry (D., Mass.), Joe Biden (D., Del.) and Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.) -- on Election Day helped stay Mr. Musharraf's hand. Mr. Musharraf also seemed to think that tilting the rules in his party's favor would be enough for victory, and thus fraud on polling day would be unnecessary.
That does not mean, however, that Mr. Musharraf might not still try to manipulate the situation to cling to power. He could try and create rifts between the various opposition parties by negotiating separately with them, and by using his intelligence services to bribe or blackmail individual politicians. Late last year, Mr. Musharraf had himself "elected" president by Pakistan's outgoing parliament, which was itself chosen through a dubious election in 2002. He then fired 60% of superior court judges to forestall judicial review of the presidential election.
Trying such antics again would be a disastrous mistake. Some members of the Bush administration have repeatedly described Mr. Musharraf as an indispensable ally in the war against terrorism. Economic and military assistance from the U.S. and other Western countries has been crucial for Mr. Musharraf's political survival thus far, and has probably contributed to his arrogance.
This might be the moment for Mr. Musharraf's Western backers to help him understand that annulment or alteration of the election results would plunge Pakistan deeper into chaos. Mr. Musharraf should not only abide by the verdict of his people but also recognize that Pakistan -- not he -- is the crucial ally the world needs to defeat terrorists.
Pakistan faces an al-Qaeda-backed insurgency along its border with Afghanistan, which is spilling over into other parts of the country. Any attempt by Mr. Musharraf to insist on retaining absolute power -- rather than allowing opposition leaders Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari to return Pakistan to normal constitutional governance -- would only anger the vast majority of Pakistanis who have just voted for moderate, antiterrorist parties. The ensuing chaos could strengthen the violent Islamist insurgents.
Pakistan's two major opposition parties -- the pro-Western, center-left Pakistan Peoples Party now led by Bhutto's widower Asif Zardari, and the center-right Pakistan Muslim League -- together could have a two-thirds majority in the 342-seat National Assembly. Mr. Musharraf's allies have been virtually wiped out. The opposition can now form a government that is no longer subservient to Mr. Musharraf.
Even if he remains president, Mr. Musharraf will no longer remain the most powerful man in Pakistan. He has said in the past that he would rather step down than face the ignominy of being impeached by the newly elected parliament, which is now possible. The opposition would be well advised to exercise restraint. At the same time, Mr. Musharraf would have to reverse many of his arbitrary decisions in order to qualify for the opposition's minimal cooperation.
Since 9/11, Mr. Musharraf has marketed himself to the West as the man most capable of saving Pakistan from a radical Islamist takeover. But under his rule Pakistan has become more vulnerable to terrorists than before. Mr. Musharraf's government has squandered good will through its arbitrary actions against the political opposition and judiciary. Furthermore, only a small sliver of the country's 160 million people have benefited from the economic achievements of the past eight years.
The recent election campaign was marred by violence, which the government blames on terrorists. But the targets of violence have been the secular opposition parties -- the most notable victim being Bhutto, who became an icon of democracy for Pakistanis after her assassination. Opposition politicians justifiably questioned why the terrorists have not attacked pro-Musharraf groups, if he was the one fighting terror.
Mr. Musharraf must now accept the consequence of defeat, and work out an honorable exit or a workable compromise with the opposition. The two parties that have emerged with popular support from this election should get full backing from the international community in restoring democracy to Pakistan. This might prove more effective in combating terrorism than continuing to prop up a discredited and despised dictator.
Mr. Haqqani, professor of international relations at Boston University, is co-chair of the Hudson Institute's Project on Islam and Democracy. He is the author of the Carnegie Endowment book, "Pakistan Between Mosque and Military" (2005), and served as an adviser to former prime ministers, including Benazir Bhutto.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.
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New Pakistani Leaders, U.S., at Odds on Militants
Key Parties Seek Talks
With Islamic Forces;
Americans Urge Battle
By YOCHI DREAZEN in Washington and ZAHID HUSSAIN in Pakistan
February 23, 2008; Page A4
The U.S. wants Pakistan to take stronger measures against Islamic militants who are threatening the stability of neighboring Afghanistan. But the country's new leaders are already signaling that they would prefer a softer approach.
With Pakistan being hit by a wave of suicide bombings and other attacks, including a car bomb Friday that killed at least 12 people, U.S. policymakers believe senior Pakistani military officials have come to see Islamic violence as a serious threat to the country's future and may now be willing to mount an aggressive campaign against the religious militants responsible for the bloodshed.
• The News: The U.S. wants Pakistan to take stronger measures against Islamic militants who are threatening the stability of neighboring Afghanistan.
• The Background: Policy makers believe Pakistani officials have come to see Islamic violence as a serious threat and may be willing to mount an aggressive campaign against the militants.
• The Other Side: The country's new leaders already are signaling that they would prefer a softer approach.Pakistan's unpopular president, Pervez Musharraf, has expressed concern about the possible "Talibanization" of his country by al-Qaeda and Taliban militants and periodically ordered his military to battle the extremists.
But key officials in Pakistan's two main opposition parties -- the Pakistan People's Party, led by the widower of assassinated former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, and the Pakistan Muslim League of ex-Premier Nawaz Sharif -- say that they want instead to open talks with the Islamic militants operating along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.
"We will use force wherever it is necessary, but will also use other means to veer them away from extremism," said Asif Ali Zardari, Ms. Bhutto's widower and the leader of the PPL.
The two parties swept to victory in the past week's parliamentary elections and are working together to form a new government. They spent Friday mulling candidates for prime minister.
The Bush administration is using the violence to prod Pakistan to take steps it has long resisted, like giving the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Special Operations commandoes a freer hand to hunt Islamic militants within Pakistan and agreeing to have larger numbers of American military trainers deploy to Pakistan to help the country's army prepare for a long-term struggle against Islamic guerillas.
Pentagon officials have also publicly expressed a willingness to mount joint combat operations with the Pakistani military, should Pakistan request such assistance.
"If I was wearing a different hat and was in the Pakistani military, I would be deeply concerned about the unrest and the lack of stability and security that appears to be caused by Talibanization," said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, who commands the Army's 101st Airborne Division, which is deploying to Afghanistan this spring.
The push comes amid mounting American concern about the situation in the largely lawless tribal regions along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, which have devolved into safe havens for Islamic militants carrying out attacks inside both countries. Senior American commanders had long worried that an unstable Afghanistan had the potential to spark unrest inside Pakistan but now worry just as much about instability inside Pakistan spilling over into Afghanistan.
U.S. officials worry that Pakistan's next government may try to back out of agreements Mr. Musharraf made with the Pentagon on operations in the tribal areas, including the mobilization of a tribal military unit and the aggressive use of American Predator drones to attack terrorist targets.
"We're not saying that the leader has to be Musharraf," said a U.S. official working on Pakistan. "But we're concerned that politics could end up distracting" Pakistan from the growing threat posed by the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The Pakistani armed forces have long believed that India posed the biggest threat to Pakistani national security, and senior Pakistani officials may be unwilling -- or unable -- to reorient their military towards a protracted conflict with Islamic militants inside their own borders.
"The Pakistani armed forces are trained to fight India and fighting pro al-Qaeda insurgents in the tribal areas is a completely new experience for them," a senior Pakistani official acknowledged.
James Dobbins, an analyst at the Rand Corp. who served as the Bush administration's first envoy to Afghanistan, said many Pakistani leaders fundamentally disagree with American officials about the magnitude of the threat posed by Islamic violence. "The popular attitude towards the attacks is that they are a reaction to the U.S. war on terror rather than an intended threat to the Pakistani sovereignty and government," he said.
Pakistani officials say that they have nearly 30,000 troops battling militants in northwest Pakistan and in the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, as well as an additional 70,000 deployed on the entire 1,500-mile-long border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The size of that deployment, they argue, shows that the country is already serious about battling Islamic extremists.
Still, Pakistani commanders acknowledge that their forces have struggled to oust the well-entrenched militants, who have inflicted heavy casualties on the Pakistani troops and shown resiliency in the face of Pakistani and U.S. strikes.
A senior Pakistani commander said that the army's morale had plummeted after a long series of tactical setbacks, including the killings of hundreds of troops by suicide bombers who struck their convoys, camps and mess halls, and the videotaped beheadings of some of the soldiers who fell into the hands of the militants. "This challenge cannot be met until the army's standing is restored," the officer said.
WSJ
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Summary
A Feb. 25 suicide bombing in Rawalpindi killed the Pakistani army’s surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Mushtaq Ahmed Baig. This is the second attack in less than a month that has targeted the army’s medical corps in Rawalpindi, and it likely signifies that Pakistan’s jihadists now are targeting senior military officials.
Analysis
A Feb. 25 suicide bombing in the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi killed the army’s surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Mushtaq Ahmed Baig. Preliminary reports said the bomber, who was disguised as a beggar, approached Baig’s car in a crowded commercial area on Mall Road, not far from the army’s general headquarters, and detonated. Baig was traveling with his driver and bodyguard. Eight people were killed and another 35 were injured. This is the second attack targeting the army’s medical corps in Rawalpindi in less than a month; on Feb. 4, a suicide bomber drove his car into a bus carrying doctors from the Army Medical College, killing eight people.
Baig is the first general to be killed in the jihadist insurgency, which mostly has targeted security forces, especially the army. The three-star surgeon general is among the lesser-known principal staff officers. He likely was the easiest to target, given his modest security. Nevertheless, it seems that the jihadists, after striking various key institutions (the army, air force, Inter-Services Intelligence and Special Service Group), have started targeting senior military officials — several of whom live and work in Rawalpindi.
It is worth noting that the Pakistani Taliban, led by Abdullah Mehsud, declared a cease-fire a few days ago, and Islamabad said it is engaged in talks with the group. Following the Feb. 18 elections, which passed without any jihadist-related violence, Mehsud issued a statement via his spokesman saying he is ready to enter into a peace agreement with the new government.
That said, the jihadist insurgency is a key issue for Pakistan’s new civilian government.
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Al Qaeda, Afghanistan and the Good War
February 25, 2008
By George Friedman
There has been tremendous controversy over the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which consistently has been contrasted with Afghanistan. Many of those who opposed the Iraq war have supported the war in Afghanistan; indeed, they have argued that among the problems with Iraq is that it diverts resources from Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been seen as an obvious haven for terrorism. This has meant the war in Afghanistan often has been perceived as having a direct effect on al Qaeda and on the ability of radical Islamists to threaten the United States, while Iraq has been seen as unrelated to the main war. Supporters of the war in Iraq support the war in Afghanistan. Opponents of the war in Iraq also support Afghanistan. If there is a good war in our time, Afghanistan is it.
It is also a war that is in trouble. In the eyes of many, one of the Afghan war’s virtues has been that NATO has participated as an entity. But NATO has come under heavy criticism from U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates for its performance. Some, like the Canadians, are threatening to withdraw their troops if other alliance members do not contribute more heavily to the mission. More important, the Taliban have been fighting an effective and intensive insurgency. Further complicating the situation, the roots of many of the military and political issues in Afghanistan are found across the border in Pakistan.
If the endgame in Iraq is murky, the endgame if Afghanistan is invisible. The United States, its allies and the Kabul government are fighting a holding action strategically. They do not have the force to destroy the Taliban — and in counterinsurgency, the longer the insurgents maintain their operational capability, the more likely they are to win. Further stiffening the Taliban resolve is the fact that, while insurgents have nowhere to go, foreigners can always decide to go home.
To understand the status of the war in Afghanistan, we must begin with what happened between 9/11 and early 2002. Al Qaeda had its primary command and training facilities in Afghanistan. The Taliban had come to power in a civil war among Afghans that broke out after the Soviet withdrawal. The Taliban had close links to the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). While there was an ideological affinity between the two, there was also a geopolitical attraction. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan concerned Pakistan gravely. India and the Soviets were aligned, and the Pakistanis feared being caught in a vise. The Pakistanis thus were eager to cooperate with the Americans and Saudis in supporting Islamist fighters against the Soviets. After the Soviets left and the United States lost interest in Afghanistan, the Pakistanis wanted to fill the vacuum. Their support of the Taliban served Pakistani national security interests and the religious proclivities of a large segment of the ISI.
After 9/11, the United States saw Afghanistan as its main problem. Al Qaeda, which was not Afghan but an international Islamist group, had received sanctuary from the Taliban. If the United States was to have any chance of defeating al Qaeda, it would be in Afghanistan. A means toward that end was destroying the Taliban government. This was not because the Taliban itself represented a direct threat to the United States but because al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan did.
The United States wanted to act quickly and decisively in order to disrupt al Qaeda. A direct invasion of Afghanistan was therefore not an option. First, it would take many months to deploy U.S. forces. Second, there was no practical place to deploy them. The Iranians wouldn’t accept U.S. forces on their soil and the Pakistanis were far from eager to see the Taliban toppled. Basing troops in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan along the northern border of Afghanistan was an option but also a logistical nightmare. It would be well into the spring of 2002 before any invasion was possible, and the fear of al Qaeda’s actions in the meantime was intense.
The United States therefore decided not to invade Afghanistan. Instead, it made deals with groups that opposed the Taliban. In the North, Washington allied with the Northern Alliance, a group with close ties to the Russians. In the West, the United States allied with Persian groups under the influence of Iran. The United States made political arrangements with Moscow and Tehran to allow access to their Afghan allies. The Russians and Iranians both disliked the Taliban and were quite content to help. The mobilized Afghan groups also opposed the Taliban and loved the large sums of money U.S. intelligence operatives provided them.
These groups provided the force for the mission. The primary U.S. presence consisted of several hundred troops from U.S. Special Operations Command, along with CIA personnel. The United States also brought a great deal of air power, both Navy and Air Force, into the battle. The small U.S. ground force was to serve as a political liaison with the Afghan groups attacking the Taliban, to provide access to what weapons were available for the Afghan forces and, above all, to coordinate air support for the Afghans against concentrations of Taliban fighters. Airstrikes began a month after 9/11.
While Washington turned out an extraordinary political and covert performance, the United States did not invade. Rather, it acquired armies in Afghanistan prepared to carry out the mission and provided them with support and air power. The operation did not defeat the Taliban. Instead, it forced them to make a political and military decision.
Political power in Afghanistan does not come from the cities. It comes from the countryside, while the cities are the prize. The Taliban could defend the cities only by massing forces to block attacks by other Afghan factions. But when they massed their forces, the Taliban were vulnerable to air attacks. After experiencing the consequences of U.S. air power, the Taliban made a strategic decision. In the absence of U.S. airstrikes, they could defeat their adversaries and had done so before. While they might have made a fight of it, given U.S. air power, the Taliban selected a different long-term strategy.
Rather than attempt to defend the cities, the Taliban withdrew, dispersed and made plans to regroup. Their goal was to hold enough of the countryside to maintain their political influence. As in their campaign against the Soviets, the Taliban understood that their Afghan enemies would not pursue them, and that over time, their ability to conduct small-scale operations would negate the value of U.S. airpower and draw the Americans into a difficult fight on unfavorable terms.
The United States was not particularly disturbed by the outcome. It was not after the Taliban but al Qaeda. It appears — and much of this remains murky — that the command cell of al Qaeda escaped from Afghan forces and U.S. Special Operations personnel at Tora Bora and slipped across the border into Pakistan. Exactly what happened is unclear, but it is clear that al Qaeda’s command cell was not destroyed. The fight against al Qaeda produced a partial victory. Al Qaeda clearly was disrupted and relocated — and was denied its sanctuary. A number of its operatives were captured, further degrading its operational capability.
The Afghan campaign therefore had these outcomes:
Al Qaeda was degraded but not eliminated.
The Taliban remained an intact fighting force, but the United States never really expected them to commit suicide by massing for U.S. B-52 strikes.
The United States had never invaded Afghanistan and had made no plans to occupy it.
Afghanistan was never the issue, and the Taliban were a subordinate matter.
After much of al Qaeda’s base lost its sanctuary in Afghanistan and had to relocate to Pakistan, the war in Afghanistan became a sideshow for the U.S. military.
Over time, the United States and NATO brought about 50,000 troops to Afghanistan. Their hope was that Hamid Karzai’s government would build a force that could defeat the Taliban. But the problem was that, absent U.S. and NATO forces, the Taliban had managed to defeat the forces now arrayed against them once before, in the Afghan civil war. The U.S. commitment of troops was enough to hold the major cities and conduct offensive operations that kept the Taliban off balance, but the United States could not possibly defeat them. The Soviets had deployed 300,000 troops in Afghanistan and could not defeat the mujahideen. NATO, with 50,000 troops and facing the same shifting alliance of factions and tribes that the Soviets couldn’t pull together, could not pacify Afghanistan.
But vanquishing the Taliban simply was not the goal. The goal was to maintain a presence that could conduct covert operations in Pakistan looking for al Qaeda and keep al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan. Part of this goal could be achieved by keeping a pro-American government in Kabul under Karzai. The strategy was to keep al Qaeda off balance, preserve Karzai and launch operations against the Taliban designed to prevent them from becoming too effective and aggressive. The entire U.S. military would have been insufficient to defeat the Taliban; the war in Afghanistan thus was simply a holding action.
The holding action was made all the more difficult in that the Taliban could not be isolated from their sources of supply or sanctuary; Pakistan provided both. It really didn’t matter whether this was because President Pervez Musharraf’s government intended to play both sides, whether factions inside the Pakistani military maintained close affinities with the Taliban or whether the Pakistani government and army simply couldn’t control tribal elements loyal to al Qaeda. What did matter was that all along the Afghan border — particularly in southern Afghanistan — supplies flowed in from Pakistan, and the Taliban moved into sanctuaries in Pakistan for rest and regrouping.
The Taliban was and is operating on their own terrain. They have excellent intelligence about the movements of NATO forces and a flexible and sufficient supply line allowing them to maintain and increase operations and control of the countryside. Having retreated in 2001, the Taliban systematically regrouped, rearmed and began operating as a traditional guerrilla force with an increased penchant for suicide attacks.
As in Vietnam, the challenge in fighting a guerrilla force is to cut it off from its supplies. The United States failed to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and that allowed men and materiel to move into South Vietnam until the United States lost the appetite for war. In Afghanistan, it is the same problem compounded. First, the lines of supply into Pakistan are even more complex than the Ho Chi Minh trail was. Second, the country that provides the supplies is formally allied with the United States. Pakistan is committed both to cutting those lines of supply and aiding the United States in capturing al Qaeda in its Northwest. That is the primary mission, but the subsidiary mission remains keeping the Taliban within tolerable levels of activity and preventing them from posing a threat to more and more of the Afghan countryside and cities. There has been a great deal of focus on Pakistan’s assistance in northwestern Afghanistan against al Qaeda, but much less on the line of supply maintaining the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. And as Pakistan has attempted to pursue a policy of balancing its relations with the Taliban and with the United States, the Pakistani government now faces a major jihadist insurgency on its own turf.
Afghanistan therefore is not — and in some ways never has been — the center of gravity of the challenge facing the United States. Occupying Afghanistan is inconceivable without a fundamental shift in Pakistan’s policies or capabilities. But forcing Pakistan to change its policies in southern Afghanistan really is pointless, since the United States doesn’t have enough forces there to take advantage of a Pakistani shift, and Washington doesn’t care about the Taliban in the long run.
The real issue is the hardest to determine. Is al Qaeda prime — not al Qaeda enthusiasts or sympathizers who are able to carry out local suicide bombings, but the capable covert operatives we saw on 9/11 — still operational? And even if it is degraded, given enough time, will al Qaeda be able to regroup and ramp up its operational capability? If so, then the United States must maintain its posture in Afghanistan, as limited and unbalanced as it is. The United States might even need to consider extending the war to Pakistan in an attempt to seal the border if the Taliban continue to strengthen. But if al Qaeda is not operational, then the rationale for guarding Kabul and Karzai becomes questionable.
We have no way of determining whether al Qaeda remains operational; we are not sure anyone can assess that with certainty. Certainly, we have not seen significant operations for a long time, and U.S. covert capabilities should have been able to weaken al Qaeda over the past seven years. But if al Qaeda remains active, capable and in northwestern Pakistan, then the U.S. presence in Afghanistan will continue.
As the situation in Iraq settles down — and it appears to be doing so — more focus will be drawn to Afghanistan, the war that even opponents of Iraq have acknowledged as appropriate and important. But it is important to understand what this war consists of: It is a holding action against an enemy that cannot be defeated (absent greater force than is available) with open lines of supply into a country allied with the United States. It is a holding action waiting for certain knowledge of the status of al Qaeda, knowledge that likely will not come. Afghanistan is a war without exit and a war without victory. The politics are impenetrable, and it is even difficult to figure out whether allies like Pakistan are intending to help or are capable of helping.
Thus, while it may be a better war than Iraq in some sense, it is not a war that can be won or even ended. It just goes on.
stratfor
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Pakistan's Progress
By KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON
March 11, 2008; Page A20
A democratic transition of power is taking shape in Pakistan. Last month, the country held parliamentary elections that were a resounding defeat for President Pervez Musharraf. This week the country's two main political parties worked out a power-sharing agreement. A new prime minister could be named within days.
This is encouraging, but it fuels a debate in Washington over whether the United States should prop up Mr. Musharraf. My view is that we have a better chance of finding a strong ally in the war on terror in Pakistan if a legitimate democratic government takes root.
And make no mistake, we need a strong ally against al Qaeda in Pakistan. The country is fighting terrorism at every level of its society, but its ability to carry on this fight is weakened by the fragility of its constitutional order and the impotence of its governing institutions. Terrorists thrive when a nation can't control its own territory, and when the government is seen as illegitimate by its people -- two conditions that have existed in Pakistan for years as it has exported both terrorism and black-market nuclear technology.
Unfortunately, all of Pakistan's leaders are flawed. Mr. Musharraf took power in 1999 in a military coup. Ali Zardari, head of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), spent time in prison on corruption charges, which he claimed were politically motivated (some have recently been dismissed). Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister who is head of the Muslim League, has a tendency toward anti-Americanism.
However, there are redeeming qualities in all of these men. Mr. Musharraf loosened his grip on power, took off his military uniform, and allowed fair parliamentary elections. He also conceded defeat on election day. He has been a partner in the war on terror. He believes that, above all else, Islamist extremists must be defeated. He is willing to defer to the new parliamentary majority and possibly to step down or slip into a ceremonial and advisory role.
Mr. Zardari succeeded his wife, Benazir Bhutto, as head of the Pakistan People's Party after she was killed in a terrorist attack in December. He has publicly pledged to fight the war on terror and echoes his late wife's calls for a strong democracy, a parliament that represents the people, and improved education and economic conditions.
Mr. Sharif often seems hostile to America. In the 1990s, he supported Shariah law and tended to interfere with the judiciary. When asked who might replace Mr. Musharraf as president, Mr. Sharif once responded with the name of A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and the chief proliferator of nuclear technology. But even Mr. Sharif now champions the rule of law and an independent judiciary, and defends Pakistan's constitution.
Regardless of who becomes the next prime minister, the issue of how he comes to power is now vitally important. Mr. Musharraf must be allowed enough room to peacefully transition to a strong democracy, and to figure out how to exit the stage with the grace of a leader who recognizes the will of the people.
There is talk of hastening him out the door with impeachment proceedings. The U.S. should caution Pakistani leaders to consider the consequences carefully. Impeachment could destabilize Pakistan and postpone work that must be done to establish an independent judiciary, crack down on terrorists, and jump-start development.
The new coalition has suggested that it might de-emphasize military operations against terrorists along the western frontier provinces where al Qaeda made its stronghold after the fall of Afghanistan. The leaders have suggested dialogue, economic development, and political enfranchisement as the key tools for pacifying Pakistan's frontier. These comments concern many of us who take this as a sign that Pakistani efforts against the terrorists might further flag. But the emphasis on providing services to the population -- from security to running water -- in order to win their participation in the political life of the state is fundamental to starving extremists of popular support. The Islamist parties' dismal showing in the recent election suggests that this strategy may already be working.
As long as Pakistan's leaders support democracy and practice it, we will be their enthusiastic partner. Our security depends on helping them improve internal security and the rule of law, which are prerequisites of popular legitimacy for any government and essential for foreign investment. As support for a secular and democratic government grows, our ongoing efforts to help turn the Pakistani army into an effective counter-terrorism force will start paying enormous dividends. If that happens, Pakistan will emerge as a more effective and reliable partner in the war against terrorism and Islamic extremism.
Ms. Hutchison, a Republican U.S. senator from Texas, recently returned from a trip to Pakistan.
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This article was sent to me by someone who has been to Afg. more than twice. The piece does manage to leave out the little matter that after being helped by us against the Russians it hosted the preparations of a brutal terrorist attack upon us.
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Afghanistan comes full circle as NATO seeks Russian help
ChronicleHerald.ca, Canada
By SCOTT TAYLOR On Target
Mon. Mar 10
ONE OF THE most ironic twists to the ongoing mission in Afghanistan emerged from the NATO meetings held in Brussels last week. With member countries either reluctant or unable to add military resources, NATO is now seeking assistance from Russia, its erstwhile Cold War enemy and one-time "evil occupier" of Afghanistan. In fact, the irony is so thick that we should first roll back decades’ worth of propaganda and start at the very beginning.
NATO was formed in 1949 as a collective self-defence alliance to prevent any encroachment of the Soviet Union into Western Europe. The Soviets responded to this by creating their own defensive coalition of Communist countries (the Warsaw Pact) to protect them from any eastward expansion of NATO’s influence. The nuclear arms race was at its zenith and even Europeans, still recovering from the massive destruction and carnage of the Second World War, understood the importance of maintaining large conventional armies. Troops and tanks were regarded as a preferable deterrent to an apocalyptic mushroom cloud.
The impasse that resulted in Europe did not prevent the U.S. and Soviets from waging war by proxy in non-aligned Third World countries around the world. Afghanistan, in fact, became a key battleground for the CIA and the KGB. Since it bordered the Soviet Union’s central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, the U.S. knew that Moscow could not afford to ignore events in impoverished and underdeveloped Afghanistan.
Throughout the ’50s and ’60s, Soviet engineers undertook several major infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, including the construction of the Salang tunnel through the Hindu Kush Mountains, which provided the first viable access between the country’s northern and southern provinces. A full-scale program was introduced to train Afghan army officers and a large number of economic aid packages were extended to Kabul’s Communist government.
The Americans decided things were going a little too smoothly for the Kremlin, so they decided to stir things up a little. By arming and funding Afghan Muslim extremists who were already resisting the social changes, the Americans sought to draw the Soviets into a full-scale military intervention. By 1979 events had escalated to the point where the instability, lawlessness and flourishing drug trade along their shared border could no longer be ignored by the Kremlin. Following a coup staged by the KGB in Kabul, the newly appointed Afghan Communist president invited Soviet troops to deploy a security assistance force to help him stabilize Afghanistan.
It would have been high-fives all around for the CIA planners watching the Soviet tank columns rolling south through the Salang tunnel. The Russian bear had taken the bait and put his paw squarely on the American trap. On the surface, the U.S. vehemently denounced the invasion of Afghanistan and in protest they pulled their athletes out of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Behind the scenes, the U.S. ramped up military aid to the Afghan guerrillas and assisted in bringing in foreign mujahedeen fighters — such as a young Saudi Arabian zealot named Osama bin Laden — to bleed the Soviets white.
The stated objectives of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan were to provide a secure environment, equality for women, a centralized education and medical system, and the training of a self-sufficient Afghan army. While this may sound eerily similar to the current wish list for the NATO coalition in Afghanistan, a friend of mine at the American embassy was quick to point out one fundamental difference: "The (Soviets) were Communists," he emphatically stated, as if that in itself made any further explanation unnecessary.
The U.S. plan worked like a charm and by the time the last of the Russian troops retreated out of Afghanistan in 1989, they had left behind 50,000 dead comrades, the Moscow treasury was bankrupt and the Soviet Union was in a state of dissolution. The U.S.-equipped Afghan warlords finally triumphed over the Communist regime in Kabul and then turned on each other in an orgy of destruction and bloodletting. Whatever Soviet-built infrastructure was still intact in Kabul in 1996 was destroyed when the Taliban movement forced the mujahedeen warlords north of the Hindu Kush.
In the wake of 9-11, the planners in the White House must have suffered from short-term memory loss as they rushed to throw their troops into the very same trap they had built to destroy the Soviets. After using military force to topple the Taliban, the Americans appointed Hamid Karzai as president. His first act as leader was to invite the U.S.-led coalition to deploy a security assistance force to prop up his regime.
Unlike the Soviets, the Americans didn’t need to deploy in support of this request — they were already on the ground.
Now into the seventh year of their occupation and with the American economy on the point of collapse, NATO is looking to Russia for help in transporting troops and equipment into Afghanistan. (Any source of this assertion?) With the skyrocketing oil prices boosting the Russian ruble to dizzy new heights and no one asking for their troops to fight and die in Afghanistan, it would seem that the wheel of fate has turned a full circle.
If you want to drive this point home, go out and rent an old copy of Rambo III. That’s the sequel wherein Sylvester Stallone fights alongside the guerrillas, and the final credits dedicate the movie to "the brave mujahedeen in Afghanistan."
I kid you not.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/18/meet-baitullah-mehsud-the-next-osama/
Hello muddah, hello fatah, meet Baitullah.
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Appearing in the NY Times, our embassador to the UN makes a proposal
By ZALMAY KHALILZAD
Published: March 20, 2008
BAN KI-MOON, secretary general of the United Nations, has appointed a seasoned Norwegian diplomat, Kai Eide, as his special representative to Afghanistan. Mr. Eide’s success will depend not only on his skills, but also on the friends of Afghanistan at the United Nations providing him with the proper mission, mandate and resources.
The most important task for the new special representative is to form a trusting, collaborative relationship with President Hamid Karzai, enabling them to agree on Afghanistan’s key challenges and on how aid money and military assistance can best be used. Today in New York, the Security Council is scheduled to extend the mandate of the United Nations’ Assistance Mission in Afghanistan for another year — the perfect chance to provide a clear set of priorities.
This resolution rightly gives Mr. Eide the powers to directly coordinate all of the support provided by international donors. As things stand, more than 30 national embassies and bilateral development agencies, several United Nations agencies, four development banks and international financial institutions, and about 2,000 nongovernmental organizations and contractors are involved in rebuilding in Afghanistan.
However, because of a lack of coordination among these donors, reconstruction resources often fail to arrive in a timely way after areas have been cleared of the enemy. Hundreds of projects are undertaken by allies and nongovernmental groups without coordination with the Afghan government, leading to cases of “ghost” schools or health clinics that are built but sit idle because they cannot be staffed or equipped.
Ministries are often hamstrung by having to comply with the varying procurement and accounting rules of dozens of foreign agencies, many of which are not consistent with Afghan law. This puts the international community at cross purposes with our goal of helping Afghanistan build coherent national systems for education, health and other services.
There is only one way to end the confusion: the United Nations must take on the primary coordination role, and donors must show a willingness to be coordinated. The new resolution allows this to happen in a number of ways.
First, Mr. Eide will need to oversee the coordination of civilian assistance with military efforts of the two military organizations operating in Afghanistan, NATO and the International Security Assistance Force. While it’s promising that those two organizations are meeting in Bucharest, Romania, next month to discuss better integrating their efforts, success against the insurgency will require efforts to ensure that military actions to secure areas from the enemy are coordinated with civilian efforts to establish good governance and economic development.
Second, Mr. Eide must coordinate the efforts of the international community to support the Afghanistan Compact, a five-year plan agreed upon in 2006 by the government of Afghanistan, the United Nations and the international community that requires Afghan leaders to take steps in reform and institution-building in exchange for commitments of sustained support. The United Nations must have a stronger role in overseeing the increasing capacity of Afghan ministries and their anti-corruption efforts.
Third, the new United Nations special representative should help the leaders and people of key donor countries understand achievements and challenges. This is the only way that the friends of Afghanistan can fully appreciate the return on their investments.
Last, Mr. Eide will have a mandate to engage Afghanistan’s neighbors to help stabilize the country. In the aftermath of 9/11, regional powers came together to support the so-called Bonn agreement, which enabled Afghans to freely choose their own government. Reclaiming the spirit of Bonn must be a priority.
The United States is fully behind the United Nations in the mission. Afghanistan is important not only because it was the origin of the attacks of 9/11 but also because it is the keystone of the geopolitical stability of Central and South Asia. Moreover, success in Afghanistan will be a major step in helping to create security, stability and progress in the broader Middle East, which is the defining challenge of our time.
Zalmay Khalilzad is the United States permanent representative to the United Nations.
Next Article in Opinion (6 of 15) »
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Sent to me by someone who has seen interesting things in Pak and Afg.
It's Payback Time
Times of India, India
Haroun Mir
9 Apr 2008
In 1994 when Pakistani officials decided to create a dreadful monster called the Taliban, they didn't bother to estimate its impact on their own society.
In fact, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence's (ISI) militaristic policies, which consisted of bleeding the Indian army in Kashmir and turning Afghanistan into their virtual fifth province, have blinded them to the consequences.
Their ill-conceived strategy has failed once again. Consequently, the Indian military has emerged stronger from the long conflict in Kashmir and the coalition forces have assisted Afghans to liberate Kabul from the grasp of the Taliban.
Eventually, Pakistan has become the biggest loser because the same radical movements, which its military leaders have created, threaten its very existence.
In the spring of 1992, the communist regime fell and Ahmad Shah Massoud's forces entered Kabul. Pakistani officials instructed their trusted man and surrogate Gulbudin Hekmatyar (leader of Hezb-e-Islami), who had just been appointed the prime minister of the newly established coalition government in Kabul, to burn down the city.
From 1992 to 1994, the Afghan capital became a living hell. Despite intensive efforts, Hekmatyar's forces were stuck in the southern and eastern parts of Kabul and were unable to make significant progress. Pakistani authorities decided to shift their support from Hekmatyar to a then-unknown radical movement — the Taliban.
Along with the ISI the late Benazir Bhutto and Nasrullah Babar — then respectively the prime minister and interior minister of Pakistan — are also to blame because the movement was created under their direct watch.
Few politicians in Pakistan and in the rest of the world ever questioned Pakistan's dangerous policy of purposely nurturing a radical Islamist group.
In September 1995, Colonel Imam (a senior ISI official), with impunity and consent of western officials who had an interest in the Turkmen pipeline project, personally led Taliban forces to capture Herat, which is the largest city in western Afghanistan.
In 1996 when Bin Laden's airplane landed in the Afghan city of Jalalabad, no alarm went off in the capitals of the West.
When the Taliban were beating women, destroying schools, and holding public executions, Pakistani officials were trying to convince the rest of the world by saying that Afghanistan was a backward, fragmented, and ethnically divided country which needed an iron hand to stabilise it.
Today, the same ills that destroyed Afghanistan plague Pakistan. Pakistani society today has become fundamentally divided. The home to Pakistan's intellectuals and moderate middle class is Punjab and Sindh, while radicalism, terrorism and poverty thrive in the Pashtun heartland and in Baluchistan province.
Up to the present moment, Pakistan's military authorities have favoured radical Islamist groups at the expense of moderate and democratic movements.
For example, President Musharraf didn't hesitate to jail lawyers who protested in favour of rule of law and democracy but appeased murderous radical Islamists and Taliban leaders under the phony Pashtun code of conduct enforced in the tribal area.
Until now, Pakistani authorities have been able to avoid a full confrontation with local Taliban groups for fear of alienating Pashtuns who constitute over 15 per cent of Pakistan's popu-lation, but are intentionally over-represented up to 25 per cent in Pakistan's army.
Despite continuous pressure from the US, Pakistan's military authorities have resisted bringing their Punjabi elite units to the tribal battlegrounds against the Pashtun radical movements.
Instead, they heavily relied on militia forces from the tribal zone to secure the area. Pakistani leaders rigorously want to avoid a rift and direct confrontation between Punjabis and Pashtuns.
Indeed, there is a real risk that the "war on terror" in Pakistan might transform into a full war for autonomy or independence of Pashtun tribes from Islamabad.
Pakistani authorities have broken the status quo in the tribal zone by promoting radical Islam and extremist religious leaders at the expense of traditional tribal leaders and institutions.
Pakistan's policy in the tribal zone has been a continuation of former British colonial policy, which consisted of keeping Pashtun tribes economically dependent, politically fragmented, and intellectually backward.
The government in Islamabad has continued to subsidise them and bribe their leaders, instead of creating a sustained economy and providing modern education.
The ageing Al-Qaida leaders and Afghan veterans of the Soviet war are ceding leadership to much younger and emerging local Taliban leaders.
Baitullah Mehsud is the best example of the new leaders, who want to set the agenda rather than follow anyone's orders.
Despite the efforts of ISI and Pakistani religious leaders to force him to fight against "infidel troops" in Afghanistan, Mehsud persisted with his goal to take the battle to Islamabad instead of Kabul.
Many fellow Afghans praise him for taking on Pakistani forces. Indeed, Pakistani authorities created Taliban to protect their interests in Afghanistan and in Kashmir, but are now faced with uncalculated consequences, which seriously threaten Pakistan's own existence.
The newly elected civilian leaders will have a hard time setting right the mistakes committed by the military over more than three decades.
(The writer served as a special assistant to late Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghanistan's former defence minister.)
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Afghanistan: Why India’s Cooperation is a Problem for Pakistan
Stratfor Today » April 11, 2008 | 2253 GMT
MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images
Afghanistan’s Defense Minister Abdul Rahim WardakSummary
Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak is visiting India amid talks of New Delhi providing counterinsurgency assistance to Kabul. Increased Indian-Afghan cooperation — at a time when Islamabad’s Taliban card has become problematic — would place the Pakistanis at a disadvantage with India, its long-time rival.
Analysis
The Indian army will train Afghanistan’s army in counterinsurgency operations — the latest development in a growing alliance between India and Afghanistan that threatens the country sandwiched between: Pakistan.
For Pakistan, it would appear that this triangular relationship is coming full circle.
Afghanistan’s Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak met with his Indian counterpart A. K. Antony in the Indian capital April 10 to discuss bilateral military cooperation, The Associated Press of Pakistan reported April 11.
While the Indian defense minister ruled out any military involvement in Afghanistan, the increased cooperation between New Delhi and Kabul puts Pakistan in a weakened position with its neighbors.
Wardak also visited the 15th Corps of the Indian army headquartered in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, and will visit the Indian air force’s training command and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in Bangalore in southern India. These visits are coming amid reports that Afghanistan might be considering sending its air force pilots for training to India. Moreover, Wardak said his country would seek New Delhi’s help in maintaining Soviet-era helicopter gun ships and medium helicopters to provide logistical support to its armed forces.
Related Links
Making Sense of the Fighting in Kashmir
Pakistan: Democratization and U.S. Interests
Pakistan: Democracy and the Jihadist Threat
Pakistan: Toward Constitutional Regime Change?
Pakistan: Adjusting Relations with the Taliban Under U.S. Pressure
The Jihadist Insurgency in Pakistan
Afghanistan, Pakistan: The Implications of Talibanization
NATO can also use the increased interest in Indian involvement in counterterrorism with Afghanistan as leverage against Pakistan to rein in militants on its soil.
India and Afghanistan are pushing the idea that the faster India trains the Afghan army, the quicker NATO can withdraw troops from Afghanistan. India’s goal is to gain a toehold in the Afghan military establishment, creating goodwill that it can cash in when the time comes. This prospect worries Pakistan, which sees India as its biggest rival. Antony assured Wardak that India would remain “actively engaged” in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of war-wrecked Afghanistan.
While it will be some time before the relationship between the Indian and Afghan militaries is solidified in a meaningful way, even the meager assistance India provides Afghanistan would be a significant enhancement of its military involvement, which until now has been mostly related to reconstruction and development work in Afghanistan. New Delhi’s key interest in Afghanistan has to do with its security vis-a-vis its neighboring rival, Pakistan, and the transnational Islamist militant groups headquartered in Pakistan.
To best understand the impact of India’s growing support in Afghanistan, one must understand Pakistan’s recent history of backing Islamist militant groups and how Pakistan has tried to use Afghanistan to gain strategic advantage against India.
Long before the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan during the 1980s, Islamabad viewed Kabul as aligned with New Delhi. Pakistan felt sandwiched between its archrival to the east and a hostile regime to the west. Another issue was secular left-leaning Pakistani Pashtun forces were pushing for a separate homeland for their ethnic group — a demand backed by Afghanistan in those days.
To deal with these threats, the Pakistanis decided to employ the Islamist card to counter Pashtun nationalism on both sides of the Durand Line — the line drawn in 1893 that divides the Pashtun people, and a continual source of tension between the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Even before 1977, when the Islamist-leaning regime of Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq came to power, the Pakistanis had aligned themselves with Afghan Islamist dissidents such as Gulbadin Hekmatyar. Then came the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan starting in 1979, when Islamabad’s backing for Afghan Islamists increased, with the support of the United States and Saudi Arabia.
By the time the Soviets withdrew in defeat from Afghanistan a decade later, the Pakistanis had successfully contained ethnic Pashtun nationalism. Pakistan unwittingly sowed the seeds of a deadlier Frankenstein’s monster in the form of jihadism, which would bite the hand of its creator years later.
The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan provided the Pakistanis the opportunity to direct its attention to Indian-administered Kashmir, the disputed region on the border that Pakistan has long sought to control. A separatist rising in Kashmir gave Pakistan a chance to play a new hand in its same Islamist militant strategy. As early as the 1947-1948 India-Pakistan War, the Pakistanis employed Pashtun tribesman in its bid to seize control of the parts of Kashmir that are now under Pakistani administration.
In 1996, the Pakistani military realized its objective of installing a pro-Islamabad regime in Kabul when it supported the Taliban, the extremist Islamist movement that controlled Afghanistan until the U.S.-backed coalition drove them from power after Sept. 11, 2001. Pakistan had hoped that with its rear flank secure it could then deal with India, especially in the context of Kashmir, which it unsuccessfully tried to do in the Kargil mini-war in 1999. Between the failure of the Kargil operation and the events of 9/11, Pakistan lost its ability to project power into Kashmir and Afghanistan. The Pakistanis also began to lose control over the Islamist militant landscape with the rise of al Qaeda, which brought together the various strands of militant forces that threatened both Kabul and New Delhi.
Thus, Pakistan opened a process of normalization with India and established a cooperation of sorts with Washington against al Qaeda but continued to maintain an ambiguous stance toward the Taliban. That was because the Pashtun jihadist movement was the only available card Islamabad could play as it pursued its interests in Afghanistan and keep India out.
By offering economic and developmental assistance to Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government, India has been able to establish a sphere of influence, which has alarmed the Pakistanis. Even so, Islamabad had been able to take comfort in knowing that it had an asset in the insurgent Taliban, which they could use to block Indian moves in Afghanistan.
However, things have changed. With the complex nature of Pakistan’s alignment with the United States and the gravitation of jihadist forces toward al Qaeda, Islamabad no longer has an effective response to India’s plans for counterinsurgency cooperation with Afghanistan.
The relationship between Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban has been complicated by the rise of the Taliban in Pakistan.
Moreover, Pakistan’s ability to counter India’s moves has been weakened because it is going through internal convulsions brought on as a coalition government — formed by foes of President Pervez Musharraf — swept parliamentary elections, and Musharraf no longer heads the military. If, at some point in the future, the Taliban gain a larger share of power in Afghanistan, Pakistani influence would be limited because of the break between the Taliban and Islamabad.
With the Taliban no longer in the Pakistani camp as they once were, Afghanistan could return to being hostile to Pakistan. There is significant anti-Pakistani sentiment in Afghanistan because of the perception of Pakistani interference in their country. In contrast, Afghan attitudes in general are far more positive toward India because of the increased assistance India has begun to provide.
Thus, when it comes to Pakistan and its complicated relationship with neighbors Afghanistan and India, it appears what goes around comes around.
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By BRET STEPHENS
• Afghans Build an Army, and a Nation
•
ABOUT BRET STEPHENS
Bret Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. He joined the Journal in New York in 1998 as a features editor and moved to Brussels the following year to work as an editorial writer for the paper's European edition. In 2002, Mr. Stephens, then 28, became editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, where he was responsible for its news, editorial, electronic and international divisions, and where he also wrote a weekly column. He returned to his present position in late 2004 and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum the following year.
Mr. Stephens was raised in Mexico City and educated at the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics. He lives with his family in New York City. He invites comments to bstephens@wsj.com
Afghans Build an Army, and a Nation
April 22, 2008; Page A23
Kabul, Afghanistan
From a hard and arid plain about a 30-minute drive out of downtown Kabul, a squad of Afghan soldiers is mounting an attack on a small rise to the south. Three soldiers lie flat on their stomachs, providing covering fire as four of their comrades rush forward, Kalashnikovs in hand. Shots are fired, startling a visiting columnist.
"Um, they're blanks," explains Lt. Col. Paul Fanning. "Live-fire exercises take place behind that hill over there," he adds, pointing north.
Lt. Col. Paul Fanning, US Army
Afghan army recruits in basic training at the Kabul Military Training Center, April 21, 2008.
Lt. Col. Fanning, of the New York National Guard, has recently deployed to nearby Camp Alamo to help train the Afghan National Army. Adjacent to the camp is the rehabilitated Kabul Military Training Center (KMTC), whose principal ornament is a Soviet T-55 tank chassis mounted with a T-62 turret. In the past six years, more than 70,000 recruits have spent 10 weeks or more learning the basics of soldiering. Of that number, about a third trained here in the last year alone.
I came to Afghanistan with the idea that the key to building a nation is building its army. Militaries attract young men who otherwise would have remained strangers, if not enemies, and might well have joined militias or criminal gangs. Militaries instill discipline, purpose, patriotism, values and the brotherhood of the foxhole. Militaries create their own middle class: The salary of an Afghan private, at $1,300 a year, may seem minuscule but is twice the Afghan average. And militaries get soldiers to fight a common enemy, instead of each other.
That point is not lost at the KMTC, whose motto, "Unity Starts Here," is inscribed in large letters over the entrance gate. On the field, about 100 recruits sit on the clay earth waiting their turn to "take the hill." The faces are Uzbek, Hazara, Tajik, Pashtun; a mixture that is nearly as racially and ethnically diverse as what you'll find in the U.S. military. Dari and Pashto are spoken interchangeably, but the army being forged here is a genuinely national one.
Lt. Col. Paul Fanning, US Army
It is also one that's willing to fight. "The Afghan soldiers are a lot tougher than the Iraqis," says Lt. James Harryman, one of the British trainers on site. "This is a warrior culture." Between March 1, 2007, and March 30, 2008, some 370 Afghan soldiers were killed in Afghanistan – by comparison, U.S. military fatalities in Afghanistan numbered 117; British fatalities, 43; Canadian fatalities, 36. Still, Afghan soldiers routinely express shame that foreigners are doing the work of dying for their country. That job, they insist, is one they want for themselves.
"I want to protect my country from terrorists who call themselves Taliban," says Said Ismail, a 21-year-old recruit from Mazar-i-Sharif. "These people call themselves Muslims but they are killing Muslims." Three of his buddies gather around, nodding agreement.
This isn't to say the Afghan Army is problem-free. Lt. Harryman complains about an ingrained culture of soldiers not wanting to "get into trouble" by taking responsibility for their decisions. Afghan officers and NCOs are in the habit of seeking the consent of their soldiers before undertaking operations. The army still lacks some of the most basic logistical and command-and-control skills.
But many of the Afghan army's problems are a function of NATO's neglect. France was supposed to have taken the lead in training the army – a role it abandoned in 2003. Ditto for the Germans and the Afghan police.
Nor has the U.S. been blameless. The Afghans are only now getting their first sizeable shipments of M-16 rifles and up-armored Humvees. There was no Afghan air force to speak of until this year. That's now being remedied by the acquisition of some Russian-made Mi-17 and Mi-35 cargo and attack helicopters, along with some medium-sized prop planes. None of the American officers I interviewed can offer a clear explanation for the delays, though the likely answer is that a sense of urgency about Afghanistan's security situation only came about after it became a news story early last year.
Then again, that precariousness has been somewhat exaggerated. "A year ago people were talking about the Taliban taking Kandahar and isolating Kabul," says Maj. Gen. Robert Cone. It didn't happen. Neither has the Taliban's fabled "spring offensive," which should be happening right around now but isn't.
How much of this can be attributed to the Afghan army, how much to NATO operations, how much to Taliban weakness, and how much to luck and circumstance is anyone's guess. What is clear is that Afghanistan really does have an army that's willing to stand up for its country – and, as a result, a country that is prepared to stand by their army. All this bodes well for Kabul. And once the dust settles in Basra, we might begin to say the same about Iraq and its army, too.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
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The New Strategy for Afghanistan's Cops
By ANN MARLOWE
April 25, 2008; Page A13
Kabul
Afghanistan will be a stable, self-sufficient state only when it can both defend its borders and provide law and order to its citizens.
The country is much further along on the first test: The Afghan National Army hasn't lost an engagement with the insurgents in a year, and is beginning operations without coalition aid.
But the Afghan National Police (ANP) is still dysfunctional, despite years of training by NATO and U.S. mentors. A new American plan offers hope of changing that.
"The police are the face of government in Afghanistan," says Maj. Gen. Robert W. Cone, the American commander in charge of police training. He has a tough mission: reforming a police force of 78,000 and overseeing 7,000 trainers in 280 locations. "We don't need to make these cops as good as the 82nd Airborne," he says, referring to the storied unit that just finished a 15-month rotation here. "We just need to make them two-and-a-half times better than the enemy."
This is already happening with the elite units of the ANP. The 1,600-strong Afghan National Civil Order Police (Ancop) has only lost one man to the insurgency since it was fielded in May 2007. In southern Zabul province, a police unit recently eliminated the Taliban forces that attacked them.
But for the most part, the ANP has proved an expensive quagmire. After Europeans charged with its training failed, the U.S. Army took up the task in late 2005, spending more than $1 billion in 2006 and $2.5 billion in 2007. This bought training, new Ford Ranger pickup trucks, weapons and barracks for the police in two-thirds of the country. Much of the $2.5 billion won't be spent until later this year, and much of this year's $800 million budget will be used in 2009, due to the timing of Congressional appropriations.
Gen. Cone's men are trying to improve the police faster than the insurgents can kill them, which is often by explosives. The ANP is especially vulnerable in unarmored, U.S.-provided Ford Ranger trucks. The Afghan National Army is just now getting up-armored Humvees like those of U.S. troops. But neither the army nor the police have the jamming capacity to prevent phone-activated, improvised-explosive devices.
The police casualty rate has been alarming. According to Gen. Cone, 825 police died last year. By comparison, 181 police died in the line of duty in the 10-times larger U.S. in 2007.
So Gen. Cone is trying a new approach. The Focused District Development (FDD) plan was rolled out last year in seven of Afghanistan's most dangerous districts, selected to track the ring road around the country. The same process is scheduled for 172 districts by 2010. (Afghanistan has 365 districts, but many are in the relatively tranquil north, west or center regions.)
Assessment teams vetted the cops in the seven districts, separating the irredeemable officers from the promising. The latter were sent to a regional training center for two months to learn everything from how to handcuff suspects and search a house to what rights suspects have. They worked with police mentoring teams composed of U.S. Army and Dynacorp trainers.
The Ancops were sent in for two months while the old cops trained. ("A lot of the people didn't want the Ancops to leave," Gen. Cone comments. "They say that these police are on our side.") Then the new trainees came back with their police mentoring teams to live and work together for two to four months. Eventually, the mentoring teams would no longer live with the police, but come in for occasional inspections and advice.
Reform will not happen overnight. Gen. Cone explains: "We're going as fast as we can, and the product we put out at eight weeks training can survive on this battlefield, in Helmand and Kandahar. We need 2,300 more trainers to do this job. I've used up 81 training teams to date, the next round of FDD will take 11 more, and I've only got 102 mentor teams."
It is too soon to tell if the first phase has led to more local support for the police, and greater police effectiveness against the insurgents. Gen. Cone's attempts to attract better cops may be succeeding, even if the eight-week training doesn't work on everyone. Recently, in the district of Zurmat in Paktia province, the existing police returned from their training. Some of the better qualified officers caught eight of the freshly trained ANP setting up illegal checkpoints.
There is still a ways to go. But if our Army can make the ANP a respected and trusted institution, Afghanistan will have passed a major milestone on the road to self-sufficiency.
Ms. Marlowe is a New York-based writer who just finished her third embed with U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.
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Geopolitical Diary: The Difficulty of Managing Afghanistan
April 28, 2008
A Taliban attack April 27 in Kabul, Afghanistan, shook up a ceremony celebrating the mujahideen victory over the Marxist regime in 1992. The strike left three people dead; Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was in attendance, escaped uninjured. The attack underscores the problems of achieving some kind of stability in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is made up of a central mountain range (the Hindu Kush) surrounded by plains. It has no meaningful barriers, and the plains that surround it are a virtual invitation for invasion. Mountains form an excellent defense, but since they are in the center of the country rather than on the edges, they divide Afghanistan rather than protect it. The British created Afghanistan to put some breathing room between its Indian colonies and an aggressive Russia to the north. Afghanistan excels as a buffer zone, but as a state, it struggles terribly. The country’s geography disjoints it so that it is, in reality, ruled by whatever army happens to control its separate regions. Currently, NATO is battling it out with the Taliban for that control.
The country’s lack of cohesion is a detriment to the authority of the man overseeing this geographic nightmare. Karzai is Afghanistan’s president basically because the United States picked him shortly after the 2001 invasion. However, his position is very weak; the country he is in charge of is so splintered that consensus is nearly impossible. He is in power because an intervening force found him to be the least offensive candidate and has protected him ever since. Karzai is the linchpin making Afghanistan work for now, but his primary purpose is to survive and represent a fledgling government. He is far from being the country’s true power broker.
This brings us to Gen. David Petraeus, whom U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently tapped to take the helm at Central Command. In his new position, Petraeus’ area of responsibility would shift from Iraq to the entire Middle Eastern theater — focusing on Afghanistan. The general was relatively successful at handling the situation in Iraq, but Afghanistan is a different picture.
In Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran (and the Central Asian countries, to a lesser degree) are needed to secure the country so that militant Islam can be kept in check without NATO forces. The Pakistanis face a dilemma in how to handle the Taliban, and the Iranians will only help for a price. Furthermore, the United States does not want to give Iran another bargaining chip during attempts to find a solution in Iraq.
In Iraq, Petraeus made some progress in creating a system that will hopefully, one day, establish a balance of power between the Sunnis and Shia, and the Arabs and the Iranians. In Afghanistan, his goal will be much more modest. NATO and the United States are increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, which will help Petraeus keep the Taliban back — for now, at least — and prevent incidents like the April 27 attack. But even with more troops — and Karzai alive and in office — Petraeus faces the tough task of getting disparate groups, interests and militias to coalesce into a country that can survive on its own. Meanwhile, geography will not be on his side.
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Pakistan: A New Peace Deal With the Taliban
Stratfor Today » April 25, 2008 | 2240 GMT
TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images
Pakistani army soldiers display weapons recovered from militantsSummary
Pakistan and the Taliban are about to conclude a peace deal on April 25, the first fruits of the new government’s effort to increase dialogue with the Taliban. Unless the Pakistanis come up with a comprehensive strategy, the deal will ultimately empower the jihadists.
Analysis
Pakistan is on the verge of completing a new peace deal with Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the militant jihadist group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in North and South Waziristan, Reuters reported April 25. Though the TTP claimed responsibility for a car bombing targeting police in Mardan today, the group maintains that the peace deal is still moving ahead. The deal will entail the cessation of hostilities by the Pashtun fighters, an exchange of prisoners, and the withdrawal of Pakistan forces from the area.
Pakistan’s government has negotiated with militants in the tribal badlands before: President Pervez Musharraf’s regime made three pacts with radical groups between April 2004 and September 2006. Yet these pacts were essentially ad hoc, involving payments of cash or exchange of prisoners, and orchestrated under the tacit assumption that hostilities would shortly resume.
The new peace deal is different. The recently formed democratic coalition government under the leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party is broadly in agreement about the need to increase official talks with radical groups to work out a lasting cease-fire. Both of the major political factions want to move past the purely military strategy of combating extremism, which they see as a result of Musharraf’s close alignment with the United States. They are touting a homegrown policy with public support that features greater emphasis on negotiations and dialogue as a means of reducing violence.
Signals from the jihadists also suggest that the current peace initiative differs from previous ones. No bombing has occurred under the new government (the last one happened March 20, four days before the administration took office). Also, the Pashtun jihadists have announced their willingness to endorse talks between the provincial government and tribal leaders. For their part, Pakistani authorities have sought to encourage the jihadists’ cooperation by releasing Maulana Sufi Muhammad, the founder of the Swat-based militant Movement for the Imposition of the Shariah of Muhammad.
The latest peace effort could well usher in a respite from violence. The new government is weak and must restore peace in order to fulfill its mandate and gain the confidence of the people. From its point of view, the current peace initiative is a test case to find out which groups are willing to compromise. If it leads to a breakthrough, the relative security will meet with widespread relief from the Pakistani public, which has endured a jihadist campaign for more than a year and a half.
Yet the long-term effects of the deal are likely to benefit the jihadists and create an even more deeply entrenched militant presence in Pakistan. First of all, the government’s willingness to grant the jihadists an official audience means that suicide bombing has successfully weakened the government’s will. The jihadists will recognize that they are in the better position to negotiate, since Islamabad is pleading for peace. Moreover, Pakistan’s and the Taliban’s aims are irreconcilable, and the jihadists will resort to militant tactics in the future knowing that they are effective.
Furthermore, the jihadist ideology conceives of any negotiations in light of an epic struggle to establish a transnational Islamist state in the region. The core members of the movement do not recognize Pakistan in its current form and therefore do not accept the legitimacy of any talks. They are willing to cease attacks in Pakistan if Islamabad eases pressure on their tribal areas, marking an effective return to the status quo before March 2004, when the Pakistani army first entered the area to support U.S. operations in Afghanistan. Such a peace will allow the militant groups to focus on the battle in Afghanistan, or rest up and consolidate their forces before waging the next assault.
The United States is cautiously supporting Pakistan’s new approach to the Taliban. Gen. David Petraeus, the current top U.S. commander in Iraq, is slated to be the next Central Command chief — an indication that the United States will be far more focused on Afghanistan than before. Ideally Washington does not want to undermine an already weak state, especially one so crucial to its interests in the region. But if solid intelligence comes through revealing Pakistani jihadists’ support of their allies in Afghanistan, or the whereabouts of high-level jihadist targets in Pakistan, Washington will either force Pakistan into acting or act unilaterally (it may not want to wait). Such action would trigger a response from militants in Pakistan, destroying the peace agreement.
Islamabad is trying to strike a balance between its international commitments and the need to maintain security at home. Unless it can come up with a comprehensive strategy for containing terrorism — one that addresses the jihadists’ tendency to take advantage of cease-fires — it will risk failing in its commitments to the United States and to international security, and might not even forestall violence at home.
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GEOPOLITICAL DIARY: NEGOTIATING WITH THE TALIBAN IN AFGHANISTAN
Canadian troops in Afghanistan are looking for opportunities to carry out
tactical-level talks with Taliban insurgents, Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail
reported on Thursday. The paper added that discussions are under way in Afghan
government circles regarding strategic negotiations with the Taliban, including some
controversial suggestions that Taliban leaders could receive political appointments
or provincial governing posts. Furthermore, international stakeholders in the Policy
Action Group reportedly are discussing "red lines" to set boundaries for what the
talks could include.
The West has come to the realization that "solving" Afghanistan is not something
that can be done militarily. The country, with its size and geographic complexity,
is -- at best -- an artificial state held together by nothing more than an occupying
force and neighbors who think that imposing direct control is more trouble than it
is worth. Put another way, if the Soviets -- with as many troops in Afghanistan as
the United States now has in Iraq and with the will to kill anyone, anywhere --
could not handle the country, NATO will certainly not be able to handle it with
Western rules of engagement.
Yet that is how the war has been fought since 2002. Note we say 2002, not 2001. In
2001, the war was a different creature: The operation entailed overthrowing the
then-Taliban government, and not imposing some flavor of stability. Overthrowing a
manpower-light, geographically dispersed military proved rather simple. But then
again, most of the Taliban chose not to stand still and let themselves be bombed
from 20,000 feet; they melted away into the countryside. They began their resurgence
in 2002 -- which, six years later, has taken the form of a full-fledged insurgency.
The state of war that has existed since the Taliban began their comeback is what has
defined the "country" for the past six years. And that war is what the U.S.
administration is now attempting to redefine. The first step in that process is the
installment of Gen. David Petraeus as chief of U.S. Central Command.
Petraeus' most impressive claim to fame so far was turning the Iraqi war of
occupation around. Instead of using military force to make Iraq look like a sandy
Wisconsin, he instead engaged select foes and turned them into allies, adding
American firepower to their own. This not only whittled down the number of militants
fighting U.S. forces, but it allowed those forces to concentrate their efforts on
the foes that they had to fight, instead of needing to patrol regions that -- with
the right deals cut -- could patrol themselves.
The war in Iraq is hardly "over," but Petraeus' strategy has proven sufficient to
make the task manageable. Perhaps there are lessons from Iraq that can be put to
work in Afghanistan such that the United States and its NATO allies can reach a
point where the chaos there can be managed as well. If re-Baathification worked and
the Americans are working with Islamist actors in Iraq (both Sunni and Shiite),
perhaps they can do the same in Afghanistan. In other words, if there is a need to
bring back the Taliban, then that has to be managed.
Petraeus has juggled a complex situation in Iraq, consisting of multiple groups
divided along ethno-sectarian, ideological, political and tribal lines. Dealing with
a much less complex militancy landscape involving (more or less) a singular trend --
that of the Taliban -- is therefore not an unreasonable expectation. That said,
there is one major difference: Unlike the Iraqi actors Washington has dealt with,
the Taliban could be the first jihadist group with which the United States engages
in talks.
The operating assumption in any negotiations is that an armed nonstate actor is
willing to be pragmatic -- something very difficult for religious ideologues. What
this means is that initial talks will be about gaining a clear understanding of the
nebulous nature of the Taliban phenomenon such that pragmatic elements can be
identified among what appears to be a collection of armed Pashtun mullahs.
Separating those who are willing to do business from those who are engaged in a
zero-sum game could help transform the belligerents into a much more manageable
entity.
The West's goal in Iraq is to re-create a buffer state that can contain an Iran with
regional ambitions, whereas the objective in Afghanistan is far more modest. In
Afghanistan, the West is not even looking to create a state in the normal sense of
the word. An arrangement that can keep chaos within tolerable parameters would
suffice.
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Geopolitical Diary: The Possible Meanings of an Airstrike in Pakistan
May 15, 2008
An airstrike in the northwestern Pakistani town of Damadola on Wednesday struck the home of a Taliban leader, according to a militia spokesman quoted by Pakistan’s AAJ TV. Normally such events would not hold our attention, but a conflux of events on Wednesday suggests that this attack is laden with implications.
Details are still sketchy — partly due to the location’s remoteness, partly due to the security concerns of any U.S. military force acting there, partly due to the opaqueness of the Taliban’s internal workings and partly because the locals tend to recycle names with such alacrity that positive identifications require an uncomfortable amount of guesswork — but here is what seems to have happened.
The airstrike appears to have been launched from Afghan airspace, suggesting that it was almost certainly American in origin. This in and of itself is not particularly odd.
The United States only has two routes of supply into Afghanistan: one through the political ice floes of post-Soviet Central Asia and one through Pakistan. That dependence on Pakistan has forced the United States to turn a blind eye to Pakistan’s own blind eye regarding the Taliban. Pakistan’s government — especially its intelligence arm — sees some Taliban factions as a tool of influence, and so grants them succor. This limits U.S. military flexibility in hunting the Taliban, and similarly leads the Taliban to use the Pakistani side of the border to rest, recuperate, recruit and rearm.
What results is a merry-go-round of denials. The Taliban deny that they operate in Pakistan (yet have bases there), the United States denies that it pursues Taliban targets in Pakistan (yet has special forces on sustained deployments there hunting the aforementioned bases), and Pakistan denies that either of the others is doing anything in Pakistani territory (yet cooperates with the Taliban in hiding from the Americans and with the Americans in hunting the Taliban). This is all standard fare in Afghan-Pakistani border politics.
But two twists prompt us to think something more is going on.
The first — and this is where the tendency for a large number of people to use a small number of names comes into play — regards the name of the Taliban leader whose house was hit: Maulvi Ubaidullah. Maulvi Ubaidullah is the name of the Taliban defense minister from the pre-9/11 era when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. In April the Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan was kidnapped, and the terms of the ambassador’s release included Islamabad setting free captured Taliban leaders — including one Maulvi Ubaidullah. For someone to be terminated by Hellfire within a few weeks of being in Ameri-, er, Pakistani custody indicates more might be at work than simple coincidence. (In the American counterterrorism lexicon, such operations are called “catch and release.” Suspects are caught, interrogated and released so American operatives can track them back to their bases and allies — at which point liberal amounts of American military hardware are distributed from altitude.)
Second, the Pakistani army began “thinning out” troops from two areas in the South Waziristan region and had a prisoner exchange in an effort to make peace with the Taliban a day after the provincial government in North-West Frontier Province agreed to implement Shariah in the Swat and Malakand districts. Pakistan is in the throes of an unsteady freshman coalition government desperate to prove its strength. One surefire crowd-pleaser in Pakistan is to snub the United States publicly.
Taken together, the events point to one of two possible intriguing conclusions. First, that just because the United States is willing to grimace its way around Pakistan’s blind eye, it cannot let naked collusion pass. The Ubaidullah assassination could have been simply to emphasize for the new Pakistani authorities that Islamabad can say — and maybe even do — whatever it likes, but when it comes down to it the United States will not hesitate to attack high-value targets who have allied with al Qaeda, no matter in whose territory they happen to bed down. And if that destabilizes Pakistan, then so be it. For Washington, progress in the Afghan war might now (oddly) be more important than retaining the means to fight it effectively.
Second — and not particularly more or less likely — is that U.S. cooperation with the Pakistani government is independent of public relations between the two states. Washington has long enjoyed functional and fruitful — if not always friendly — ties with the Pakistani military, which remains the real power in the country. It is certainly feasible that American-Pakistani military cooperation has not suffered a whit even as political Islamabad becomes ever more shrill in voicing its unwillingness to cooperate with Washington.
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Geopolitical Diary: The Pakistani-Indian Rivalry Intensifies
May 20, 2008
After much delay, India and Pakistan will hold foreign secretary-level talks in Islamabad on May 20 as part of the ongoing Indo-Pakistani peace process. Confidence-building measures will be discussed, including expanding trade and transit links across the border, but the political theater of the summit will still do little to cover up a growing security conflict between the two South Asian rivals.
The peace talks are taking place against a backdrop of heightened border tensions across the Line of Control (LoC) — the border that splits the highly disputed region of Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The past month, in particular, has witnessed a series of cease-fire violations across the LoC (ostensibly provoked by Pakistan) detailed below that have placed India on guard.
May 8: Indian border guards spotted a group of armed men cutting through a barbed wire fence to cross into Indian-held Kashmir in the Samba sector, prompting cross-border fire.
May 13: Islamist militants, likely backed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, launched a bomb attack in the northern Indian city of Jaipur, killing 63 people. India’s ruling Congress party refrained from blaming Pakistan outright, but said a “foreign hand” was responsible for the attack
May 14: The Indian military accused Pakistani troops of firing at an Indian army post across the LoC in the Tangdhar region.
May 15: India announced its deployment of an additional 5,000 troops to Tangdhar, Keran, Macchal and Gurez along the LoC to prevent further militant infiltration. A few days later it was announced that another 1,000 troops were deployed to the Samba sector.
May 19: Pakistan rejected as baseless an Indian claim that Pakistani troops had fired on an Indian post across the LoC, killing an Indian soldier. Cross-border firing is typically used as cover for insurgents to cross the border into Indian-administered Kashmir.
The situation has not yet reached a critical point, but as we watch further developments along this geopolitically contentious border, we must keep in mind the competing interests of the three main players who have a stake in the conflict: the United States, India and Pakistan.
The current U.S. priority in South Asia is to sustain pressure on Islamabad to deliver on its counterterrorism commitments. With the U.S. military focus shifting more toward NATO operations in Afghanistan, Washington is not exactly thrilled with the Pakistani government’s preferred method of dealing with its insurgents — which usually entails a balancing act of backdoor deals with militants that do little to stem the insurgent tide across the Afghan-Pakistani border. One way for Washington to turn the screws on Pakistan is to try the old U.S. game of exploiting tensions between India and Pakistan and then swooping in to demand concessions from Islamabad in return for getting the Indians to stand down. It is not yet clear whether this is a strategy Washington wants to pursue, however.
India so far has given off a fairly muted response to the recent Pakistani actions. After the Jaipur attack, India was quick to reaffirm that it would not walk away from its scheduled peace talks with Pakistan, while taking care not to blame the Pakistani government outright. The troop build-up along certain sectors of the LoC was motivated primarily by the ruling government’s need to fend off domestic opposition for being “soft on terror.” With state and general elections looming, the ruling Congress party has to show it actually has the political muscle to deal with Pakistan, but it also is facing a slew of problems domestically over rising inflation, food and fuel prices. Starting things up with Pakistan could allow the Indian government to distract the people from their domestic ailments, but it’s highly questionable whether the government can deal effectively with an escalated military conflict across its Pakistani border while juggling these other issues.
Pakistan meanwhile appears to be pursuing a far more complex strategy. As mentioned, the Pakistanis are facing pressure from all sides to get a grip over their jihadist problem. While insurgent management is a tricky business, the Pakistani security apparatus has an old method of reshuffling its militant proxies back and forth between its border with India and Afghanistan depending on its geopolitical priority at the time. Since Pakistan can’t afford to employ a force-only method in dealing with the insurgents, it has instead given the green light to a number of Islamist militant groups to ramp up attacks in Kashmir to go along with its plan of gradually shifting the militant focus away from the Pakistani-Afghan theater.
Just as the United States has played the India card, Pakistan, too, appears to have learned the benefits of raising the specter of a military conflict with India to deal more effectively with Washington. Pakistan needs to get the United States off its back as it tries to figure out how to manage its militant problem, particularly as the United States is exhibiting a higher tolerance for incurring domestic instability in Pakistan. In light of the domestic political pressures India currently faces, if Pakistan can show it’s willing to go the extra step to provoke a military conflict with India, it can distract its populace from the insurgency problem and spur the United States to reconsider pushing Pakistan too far.
And there is yet another added benefit to this strategy for Pakistan: Since 2001, Islamabad has warily been eyeing Washington’s warming relationship with New Delhi. Islamabad thus will jump at any opportunity to throw a wrench into U.S.-Indian relations. As long as Pakistan can plant the idea in India that the United States is turning a blind eye to an uptick in Kashmiri militant traffic in return for Pakistan’s cooperation in stemming jihadist traffic along the Afghan border, the United States and India could be headed for a rough patch.
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Pakistan’s government on May 21 reached a 15-point peace deal with Taliban militants in the country’s northern Swat valley, The Associated Press reported, citing Bashir Bilour, a senior minister in the North-West Frontier Province. The deal, which was signed in Peshawar, requires militants to recognize government authority, halt suicide and bomb attacks and turn over foreign militants in the region, Bilour said. In return, Bilour said the government must release prisoners and make certain concessions on the demands of pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Fazlullah for Islamic law in the region. The army also will gradually pull out of the Swat area, Bilour added, one of the militants’ key demands.
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A thoughtful Indian friend forwards me the following:
While this sort of thing is usual at the Indo-Pak border, at the present
time...Mush may use this as a pretext to bring back military rule....Yash
Pak troops fire at Indian post
8 Jun 2008, 0232 hrs IST,Anil Kotwal,TNN
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JAMMU: In yet another incident of unprovoked cross-border firing,
Pakistani troops targeted second battalion of Eighth Gurkha Rifles at the
Krnati post along the Line of Control in Poonch district's Mendhar area,
official sources said in Jammu.
Sources also said intermittent firing was reported for more than an hour at
the post on Thursday. They said the Gurkhas returned the fire without
suffering any casualty. Army spokesperson Lt Col S D Goswami, however,
refused to comment on the latest ceasefire violation.
Pakistani troops had resorted to firing at Regal in Samba, Salhutri in
Mendhar and Tangdhar in Kupwara sector in violation of ceasefire agreement.
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Afghanistan: British troops shooting themselves in the foot over Taliban fight
By Thomas Harding
Last updated: 2:15 AM BST 21/06/2008
Outdated tactics and severe equipment shortages are our worst enemies in Afghanistan, not the Taliban, argues Thomas Harding.
It's been a good fortnight for the Taliban. Nine British soldiers dead in 10 days, hundreds of imprisoned fighters set free in a daring jailbreak and the floundering Afghan government struggling to convince the population that the security they long for is close at hand.
They will be happy, too, that they have probably made the British commander regret telling me three weeks ago that the insurgency was on the verge of defeat.
Power in Afghanistan is all about posture and perception. The Taliban swept through the country in 1996, barely firing a shot, because local warlords saw that the future was with the black turban and did not want to be left behind. What will be the perception now?
First a suicide bomber killed three Paras, and then a well-planned ambush accounted for another two. Tuesday's bomb attack left a further four soldiers dead – including, in an invaluable publicity coup for the insurgents, Corporal Sarah Bryant, 26, the first female British soldier to die in Afghanistan.
From the safety of their hideouts in Pakistan, the Taliban's leaders and their al-Qa'eda cronies will be counting the dollars from the opium harvest haul, ready to purchase more men, bombs and bullets as the fighting season begins.
After spending a week on the ground with our commanders in Lashkar Gah, and then a fortnight marching, eating and sleeping alongside the Parachute Regiment, I have heard first-hand the worries of our troops – and their diagnosis of the problem.
They fear that the "war of our generation" is turning into a slog that will suck in more troops, who will require increasing logistical support, which will in turn give the enemy many more targets.
This is because the Taliban's tactics are changing. For the first two years, we fought pitched battles against an insurgency determined to over-run our undermanned outposts, which often came close to running out of food and ammunition.
The Taliban's losses were very heavy – in the thousands. But the last fortnight could signal the start of a new approach. Why waste a score of fighters when a suicide bomber or well-placed mine will do?
With more than 8,000 British troops in Helmand, supported by 2,400 Americans, there are plenty of targets to go round.
The Taliban knows the value of public opinion – so important in a counter-insurgency battle – but you sometimes suspect that Whitehall does not. In the opening rounds of the battle for Helmand in 2006, there was no serious public debate about what the mission was. When it became clear that a very serious battle was unfolding, Downing Street banned the press from covering it, in case the public got a whiff that another bloody campaign was unravelling while the insurgency in Iraq was in full cry.
The senior members of the military cannot complain. They were the ones who assured ministers that fighting a war on two fronts was feasible, so long as troop numbers came down in Basra. They also agreed with the politicians that 3,000 men was a suitable number to contain Helmand.
Two years on, we are approaching three times that number, but the increase has gone largely unnoticed, with increments of a few hundred here and there.
Many of our best and brightest military minds – such as Brigadier Ed Butler of the SAS – have called it a day, fed up with poor pay, uncaring civil servants and having to spend too much time away from their families. But there are some very sharp men left, and many of them believe that our greatest enemy is not the Taliban, but our own doctrines and regulations.
The enemy has been forced to adapt to survive. A full-frontal assault on allied positions will fail: indeed, firing anything more than a couple of mortar rounds will attract a vicious hail of retaliatory fire.
So when he hears an Apache attack helicopter approaching, or sees a jet overhead, he no longer stands and fights, but drops his weapon and melts away, no longer a legitimate target. He knows the rules: if you are not carrying a weapon, you cannot be killed. And time is on your side.
Yes, the British might enter a district for a few weeks, but when they leave, the Taliban return, meting out brutal punishment to anyone who has co-operated with the foreigners. And the amount of force needed to take these towns and overwhelm the Taliban makes our own troops less nimble, thereby absorbing manpower, supplies and precious helicopter hours.
"The problem," says one officer, "is that we are focusing on protective mobility. We are definitely going down the road the Russians went in the Eighties, with over-reliance on massive armoured vehicles."
The debate is starting on the ground because soldiers are frustrated that they can march their hearts out all day to track the enemy, only to be blown up by a mine. They query how a lumbering convoy of 100 armoured vehicles can ever surprise an enemy who knows every rock and cave in his own back yard. The time has come, suggest some, to fight the way the enemy fights – but smarter.
In the Rhodesian insurgency, tiny units called fire forces, working in groups of four or eight, would drop into enemy territory by parachute or helicopter, unheard and unseen.
With the aid of local trackers, they remained concealed for days, watching the enemy's movements and waiting patiently for the optimum time to strike. Again and again the guerrillas were horrified as their safety cordon unravelled, with colleagues falling dead around them.
By contrast, our strategy is static, based on bases in fixed locations. Troops leave them to go on patrol in full view of the enemy – which had fatal consequences this month. "It's bloody hard to deceive the enemy with a column of ground movement that can be picked up 500 metres beyond the base," says one veteran. "The effect of four helicopters disgorging 100 soldiers from an unexpected direction would have a huge impact, and would lead to a reduction in the opportunities to blow us up with mines."
Partly, the problem is the same risk-averse culture that enveloped our campaign in Basra, where the highest priority, to which everything else was subordinated, was avoiding British deaths.
At the moment, regular troops are only allowed to move around in numbers considerably larger than the small groups of the Rhodesian campaign. Even snipers, whose pricey new long-range rifles could be a massive asset, are not allowed to go out with just a spotter, but have to be part of more unwieldy units.
For some soldiers, the excuses about excessive danger wear thin, given the huge support available from air and artillery if things go sour. "At times," one told me wearily, "I am waiting for someone to mention the Health and Safety Executive."
However, the single greatest symbol of what is going wrong with our campaign is the lack of helicopters. At some point a senior commander is going to have to find the courage to mortgage his career and say in public what so many have said to me in private – that we are losing lives needlessly because there are not enough.
The eight RAF Chinooks are being flown relentlessly, and fatigue must be setting in. The Ministry of Defence says that the answer is to fly them for even more hours per month, but that's a stupid argument: we need more airframes, more spare parts and more pilots.
This is a refrain that occurs again and again in conversations with senior officers and seasoned NCOs. "Helicopters would put you in places where vehicles cannot," says one. Another says wistfully: "If I could get my hands on four Chinooks for two whole days…"
The reason why the US Marines were so successful in southern Helmand this spring was because they were able to land 600 troops in one lift in one night. In the two weeks I was with them, the Paras could only muster one air assault of two helicopters that had to go in three lifts, hugely increasing the risk of the enemy assembling an anti-aircraft team to attack them.
Then, as we pushed further into Taliban territory, we were forced to travel on foot alongside vehicles, because there were no helicopters available. The Taliban probably just laughed and walked off into the next valley.
Even when we detained a suspected roadside bomber – after slogging through the desert for hours – we almost had to release him because there was no helicopter to take him back to a legal holding facility for three days – the maximum detention time is four days.
The MoD knows that what we have is not enough, and has done for years. But the bean counters have never listened. "If the Government really cared about troops, they would pull their fingers out and get the resources out here," says one soldier.
We can win in Afghanistan, but to do so we will have to find the courage and resourcefulness shown by the enemy – not to mention a few of those long-prayed-for Chinooks.
Story from Telegraph News:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ban-fight.html
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July 7, 2008
A suicide bombing Monday in a central part of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, killed 19 people — 15 of whom were policemen — and wounded dozens of others. The bomber targeted a security detachment at an event organized by radical Islamists to mark the first anniversary of the storming of the city’s Red Mosque by elite Pakistani military units. The operation — ordered by then-military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf after Islamist militants occupied the mosque — ended July 11, 2007, with an official death toll of more than 100 and unofficial claims that several hundred were killed, including women and children.
Islamabad regained control of the mosque, but in the year since then it has lost control of large parts of the Pashtun-dominated northwestern areas along the border with Afghanistan to Taliban forces. Furthermore, the use of suicide bombings has allowed these forces to reach beyond their strongholds and strike with impunity at the core of Pakistan, including the country’s main urban centers. Accompanying the rapidly deteriorating security situation has been political instability, which has only grown after the Feb. 18 elections. As Stratfor predicted, the elections — which the country’s main opposition won by a landslide — failed to quell the political unrest that severely weakened not only Musharraf’s hold on power but also the army’s. Musharraf’s regime has been replaced by a civil-military hybrid which lacks the willingness and/or ability to take on the threat posed by Islamist extremism and militancy. The fact is that the civilian government and the country’s military establishment appear to be losing control of the situation.
By opting to negotiate with the jihadists from a position of weakness, the Pakistani authorities inadvertently are sending a message to every armed non-state actor of any worth in the country (of which there is no shortage) that all the jihadists have to do to make the government more pliable is use their weapons. This signal has led to the spread of the Taliban in Pakistan. Any pause in militancy is not because the state has succeeded in containing the insurgency; rather, it is because the jihadists have made a tactical decision to pause in keeping with their strategy. While the jihadists are brimming with confidence, judging from the way Islamabad is randomly oscillating between negotiations and military operations, the government does not appear to have a discernable policy for dealing with this situation.
Stratfor extensively has addressed Pakistan’s intelligence problem which enables militant activity and prevents the state from doing much about it. The problem is actually far larger than an intelligence failure: We are told that many of Pakistan’s senior and military officials are caught up in Pakistani society’s conspiracy theories about the causes of the growing chaos in the country. In other words, there is national lack of acknowledgement that the country is being torn apart by religious extremism.
What is even worse for Pakistan is that its jihadist problem is a geopolitical issue rather than a strictly political one. This means that the Pakistanis cannot deal with it at a time of their choosing. This would explain the United States’ increasingly aggressive attitude in dealing with the situation. U.S. airstrikes in the country’s tribal badlands have become an almost daily occurrence, and it is only a matter of time before Washington escalates its unilateral military operations deeper into Pakistani territory.
A key purpose of Stratfor’s diary is to try and look over the horizon at what can be expected. A year after Red Mosque operation, Pakistan appears to be spinning out of control. It is difficult to say with any clarity what will happen in another year, other than that there do not appear to be many arrestors to counter the current trend toward anarchy — even if the military steps in.
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From asia times..
Militants ready for a war without borders
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - From thinly disguised insinuations against Pakistan following the suicide attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul this month to outright accusations against Islamabad by the Afghan government over the unrelenting Taliban-led insurgency, the blame game has entered a critical time: a major regional battle could erupt in a matter of days.
Last week, US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen paid a sudden visit to Pakistan during which he revealed to Pakistani leaders and military officials the possibility of surgical strikes on Taliban and al-Qaeda networks operating in the border regions and that coalition forces in Afghanistan would not hesitate
to conduct hot-pursuit raids into Pakistan.
Mullen urged Pakistani leaders to play their part from their side. He pin-pointed the North and South Waziristan tribal areas as a focal point, along with the areas of Razmak, Shawal, Ghulam Khan and Angor Ada along the border with Afghanistan. Across the divide, Khost province is considered a likely target for carpet bombing and an offensive by the Afghan National Army.
Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani was quick to call in senior strategic analysts, who pointed out that the military would only follow the directions of the civilian government. Yet just days earlier, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani had announced that all decisions concerning military operations would be decided by the army chief. This does not bode well for Pakistan's whole-hearted cooperation.
But regardless of how sincerely the Pakistani army fights against the Taliban, the fact is that the Taliban have already staged a virtual coup in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan.
They have established a reign of terror against which the state writ is powerless. In all districts, the Taliban have taken security officials hostage to press their demands that a strict Islamic code be enforced. Many officials have been killed when the Taliban's wishes have not been granted.
As a result, the middle and lower members of the security forces are effectively non-functional and answer to the Taliban's call across NWFP.
This has left the secular and relatively liberal government of the province, led by the Awami National Party, with no choice but to form "defense committees" at the district level to organize civilians against a complete Taliban take-over.
Across the border, a similar situation exists in Ghazni province, close to the capital Kabul, where, apart from the provincial headquarters, the Taliban call the shots in all districts once dusk descends - the district administrations and the police simply give up control, giving the Taliban freedom of movement.
In Kunar and Nooristan provinces, the Taliban are fighting for similar dominance and already most security checkpoints have been abandoned out of fear of the Taliban.
On Monday, a high-level al-Qaeda shura (council) concluded in Miramshah in North Waziristan with instructions to all members with families to retreat to safe locations in expectation of the Afghan war spreading into Pakistan's tribal areas.
Not that this alarms al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. They reason that should coalition forces seriously enter into Pakistan (they have in the past sent unmanned Predator drones on raids into Pakistan), the reaction in Pakistan, even among liberals, would be so fierce that the Pakistani army would not dare to follow up with action of its own. This would leave the militants with a free hand to launch operations inside Afghanistan.
The shura also noted that militant ranks in the region had received their biggest boost since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, including growing numbers from Muslim countries.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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Geopolitical Diary: The Situation on the Afghan-Pakistani Border
July 17, 2008
Media reports about a Western military buildup in Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan have created a considerable stir in the region and beyond about a potential U.S. offensive against jihadists in northwestern Pakistan. This is something we at Stratfor have been predicting for some time. There is definitely a buildup taking place, but we are not quite yet at the point where U.S. forces will be conducting large-scale military operations on Pakistani soil.
Following a large, coordinated Taliban attack on a small military outpost in the eastern province of Nuristan in Afghanistan that killed nine U.S. soldiers July 13, reports have been flying of military activity on the border by both sides. Unconfirmed reports (later denied by both Pakistan and NATO) of U.S. armored vehicles, artillery and troops taking up positions along the border further south in Paktika province, opposite North and South Waziristan, emerged July 15. That night, NATO claims the Afghan National Army and U.S. Special Forces killed some 150 fighters entering Afghanistan from Pakistan and insisted that most were Pakistani. Then, on July 16, Pakistani security forces reportedly engaged Taliban fighters on their side of the border. U.S. forces, meanwhile, abandoned the outpost that was attacked over the weekend, claiming that it was only temporary anyway. The Taliban quickly claimed to have overrun it. A counteroffensive could be in the works.
Though the toll to U.S. forces July 13 was high, much of the subsequent activity — some unconfirmed — is not necessarily out of the ordinary. As Taliban fighters in Afghanistan rest and resupply in Pakistan, NATO and U.S. military activity along the border is hardly abnormal (the United States is heavily involved in the International Security Assistance Force’s Regional Command East, which is responsible for that portion of the border). Furthermore, with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri still at large (likely somewhere in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan), the White House has renewed interest in securing a capture before inauguration day in 2009.
But ultimately, there is no doubt that activity along that part of the border has been on the rise in the past few months, and it is equally clear that both NATO and the United States are publicly emphasizing the problem.
The extent of the problem is difficult to overstate. Top U.S. military commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus has been confirmed as the new head of U.S. Central Command, and as we have argued, his tenure is largely about bringing the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan under control. His challenge extends across the border into Pakistan. Islamabad has never really been able to control the tribal belt. In 2004, the Pakistani army was unable to impose a military solution when under U.S. pressure it entered the Waziristan region of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA); instead, it negotiated several arrangements and left the paramilitary Frontier Corps as a notional presence. However, those arrangements were short-lived, and the situation has deteriorated to the point that Taliban control is not limited to the autonomous tribal belt but has spread to many areas of the NWFP.
For most of the time since the Taliban’s regime in Afghanistan fell in late 2001, Taliban activity was concentrated predominantly in the southern provinces, with very little activity in the eastern parts of the country along the border with Pakistan’s tribal belt. In the last year or so, Taliban forces in Pakistan’s Pashtun areas have been able to undermine the writ of the state (which is already weakened by political strife). The deterioration of the situation in FATA and NWFP has affected the areas west of the border — hence the rise in jihadist activities in eastern Afghanistan in recent months.
In turn, this has led to the growing impatience in Washington, Kabul, and New Delhi over the state of affairs in Pakistan, where paralysis has exacerbated the regional security situation. Stratfor has on several prior occasions discussed the growing U.S. assertiveness to deny the Taliban and al Qaeda the sanctuaries they enjoy in Pakistan. But that goal remains elusive because of tactical realities on the ground — insufficient troops, inhospitable terrain, lack of intelligence capabilities and the strong anti-U.S. sentiment among the natives.
This would explain why until fairly recently the United States mostly relied on precision airstrikes using Predator drones and clandestine operations, which have grown more frequent in recent months. The situation created by Islamabad’s engaging in talks with militants from a position of weakness has forced Washington to take a much more aggressive stance — an example of which was the airstrike that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers manning an outpost toward the northern rim of the FATA. To a great extent, the increase in pressure from the United States is designed to force Islamabad to adopt a more decisive attitude towards the problem.
The incoherence within Pakistan’s political and military circles, however, prevents any success in this regard. This leaves the United States with no choice but to move ahead on the unilateral front. As cross-border ground operations — such as hot-pursuits, interdiction of militant traffic, or hitting targets of opportunity — become the norm it will create a battlefield that doesn’t recognize the Afghan-Pakistani frontier — at least in the FATA. The jihadists are actually hoping for large-scale U.S. military activity on Pakistani soil because they desperately want to broaden the scope of their insurgency from one currently being waged by a religious ideological minority to one of a nationalistic flavor bringing in participation from more mainstream cross-sections of Pakistan.
In the meantime, Petraeus will be massing troops and formulating a strategy. The Pentagon also announced July 16 the potential for additional troops to be surged to Afghanistan this year. This will take time (and the Afghan winter will soon begin to loom), but the tempo, nature and depth of U.S. operations into Pakistan will play an important role in the way the situation escalates. However, it is the definition of a slippery slope, as the United States has neither the troops nor the legal authority to attempt to command the ground in — much less reconstruct — Pakistani territory. While it would almost certainly limit itself to pointed raids and focus on denying the territory as sanctuary for the Taliban, the consequences in terms of nationalist sentiment in Pakistan will be profound. And ultimately, the Pakistani state has the most to lose from such a scenario, as it will be caught between the United States and its own people.
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SECOND RESURGENCE OF TALIBAN: INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER
NO.413
By B.Raman
The Neo Taliban of Afghanistan has demonstrated a dual capability---- as a
terrorist organization specializing in suicide terrorism and as a
conventional guerilla force capable of conventional set-piece battles
involving attack-stand-and fight tactics.
2. Its capability as a terrorist organization has remained unimpaired for
the last two years. So far this year, it has already committed 73 acts of
suicide terrorism as compared to 137 during the whole of last year.
3. Its acts of suicide terrorism are almost as numerous as those witnessed
in Iraq, but not as deadly due to the poor training of the suicide bombers.
4. It demonstrated its capability for set-piece conventional battles
involving the engagement of large forces during the fighting season of
2006-07. The Taliban units engaged in many of those battles in Afghan
territory were trained, motivated and led by Mulla Dadullah.
5.The death of Mulla Dadullah in Afghan territory in an incident in
May,2007, impaired its conventional capability. It faced difficulty in
finding a suitable replacement for him. This had an impact on the ground
situation during the summer of 2007. The much-threatened (by the Taliban)
and much-dreaded (by the NATO forces) summer offensive did not materialize.
6. As the NATO commanders were hoping that the tide has started turning
against the Taliban, it is showing signs of a second resurgence of its
conventional prowess. One has already seen two instances of this. The first
was its audacious attack on the Kandahar prison on June 13,2008, during
which it took the NATO and Afghan National Army (ANA) forces totally by
surprise and rescued about 400 imprisoned Taliban cadres and took them away
in motor vehicles without being intercepted by the Canadian forces deployed
for the security of this area.
7. The second instance was on July 13,2008, when an estimated 200 jihadi
fighters , who had taken shelter, without being detected, in a village
called Wanat in the Kunnar province in Eastern Afghanistan managed to attack
and over-run an outpost jointly manned by US and ANA forces, after killing
nine US soldiers. The US has since vacated this indefensible area, which has
reportedly been occupied by the jihadi fighters.
8.What should be worrying is not the occupation of this area by the
jihadis, but their ability to keep their movement, assembling in the village
and preparations for the attack a secret and the tenacity with which they
reportedly fought despite the US outpost calling for air strikes to disperse
them.
9.The identity of the fighters and their commander is not yet certain. The
Taliban, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizbe
Islami and Al Qaeda are known to be active in this area-----with greater
activity by the Hizbe Islami than others. There have also been reports from
tribal sources in Pakistan that the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which has been
operating in tandem with Maulana Fazlullah's
Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) in the Swat Valley of the
North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), has now moved some of its trained
cadres to the Kunnar province to fight along with the Hizbe Islami. However,
the JEM is essentially a terrorist organization with very little
conventional capability.
10.The kind of conventional capability, which was exhibited during the
2006-07 fighting season and is being exhibited now, could come only from
either serving or retired Pashtun soldiers of the Pakistani and Afghan
armies and those trained by them.
11. In a report carried by it on July 18,2008, the "Financial Times" of
London has quoted Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of
Staff, as saying that the July 13's "well co-ordinated" attack by hundreds
of insurgents against a US military outpost near the border with Pakistan
demonstrated that the enemy in Afghanistan had "grown bolder, more
sophisticated, and more diverse".
12. He added: "We're seeing a greater number of insurgents and foreign
fighters flowing across the border with Pakistan, unmolested and unhindered.
We simply must all do a better job of policing the border region and
eliminating the safe havens, which serve today as launching pads for attacks
on coalition forces."
13. An agency report carried by the "News" of Pakistan on July 17,2008, has
quoted Admiral Mullen as further saying as follows: "The group that launched
the attack trained in safe havens in Pakistan. We see this threat
accelerating, almost becoming a syndicate of different groups who heretofore
had not worked closely together."
14. Till recently, Al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and
the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), another Uzbek group, were content with
keeping their role confined to training the jihadis of the Taliban, the
various Pakistani organizations and volunteers from outside. They were not
participating in actual battles due to their small number, which they wanted
to conserve for operations outside this region. There have been reports that
their number has now been bolstered by the arrival of not only experienced
fighters from Iraq, but also fresh recruits from the Central Asian
Republics, Chechnya and Turks and members of the Uighur diaspora from
Turkey.
15. The Pentagon is reported to have ordered an enquiry into the July 13
fiasco in order to establish the identity of the jihadi forces which
attacked the outpost, how the outpost was taken by surprise and how the
intelligence agencies failed to detect the movement and assembling of the
jihadis near the outpost. It has been reported that the jihadis managed to
plan and carry out the attack within two days of the outpost being set up.
16. The US forces should re-examine their present policy of setting up
thinly-manned outposts in apparently indefensible areas. They only hand over
a seemingly spectacular victory on a platter to the jihadis. They should
reverse this tactics and inveigle the jihadis into setting up their presence
in such areas and then attack and kill them with superior force. The
objective in such isolated areas should be not territorial control, but
inflicting heavy attrition on the jihadis.
17.The jihadi battles presently going on in Pakistan's tribal belt and in
Afghanistan have serious security implications for India. Mehsuds, Wazirs
and Afridis were the tribals used by the Pakistan Army in 1947-48 to capture
what is now called the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). The Pakistan Army
again used them before and during the war of 1965. Zia-ul-Haq used them for
suppressing a Shia revolt in Gilgit in 1988.
18. President Bush often says with some validity that if the US troops
withdraw from Iraq without defeating Al Qaeda, the Arab terrorists now
operating in Iraq could move over to Europe and the US and step up
terrorism.
19. If the US and other NATO forces fail to prevail over the jihadis in the
Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt, these tribals, fresh from their victories
in that region, would move over to Kashmir to resume their jihad against
India. What we are now seeing in Kashmir is the beginning of the end of one
phase of the jihad involving jihadis of the 1980s vintage. We might see the
beginning of a new phase involving better-trained and better-motivated
jihadis of the latest stock.
* **(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt.
of India, New Delhi, and ,presently, Director, Institute For Topical
Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China
Studies.E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )*
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One of the biggest concerns I have is the near complete failure of reports and analysis putting the problems there in the context of the drug trade. Afg supplies some 90-95% of the world's opium and THAT'S A LOT OF MONEY a goodly % of which goes into our enemies hands. The alliance between the Taliban, AQ, and the people dedicated to producing opium seems to me to be a key piece of the puzzle, yet I see no one really address it.
I have no idea as to the merits of this article. I post it here because it addresses questions and doubts I have about how we are going about things.
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WSJ
Afghanistan Doesn't Need a 'Surge'
By ANN MARLOWE
July 22, 2008; Page A17
Afghanistan needs many things, but two more brigades of U.S. troops are not among them.
Barack Obama said: "We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there." Mr. Obama should have supported the surge in Iraq, but that doesn't mean that advocating one in Afghanistan makes sense.
Afghanistan's problems are not the same as Iraq's. Its people aren't recovering from a brutal, all-controlling tyranny, but from decades of chaos and centuries of bad government. Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, is largely illiterate and has a relatively undeveloped civil society. Afghan society still centers around the family and, for men, the mosque. Its society and traditions are still largely intact, in contrast to Iraq's fractured, urbanized and half-modernized population.
The Afghan insurgency has no broad popular base and doesn't mirror an obvious religious or ethnic fault line. It is also far more linked with Pakistani support than the Iraqi insurgency or militias were with Iran. Afghanistan needs a better president, judiciary and police force -- and a Pakistani government that is not playing footsie with the Taliban.
In Afghanistan, the situation can differ radically in provinces just a half-hour helicopter ride away. There has been much recent hysteria about an incident on July 13 when nine American soldiers were killed in an insurgent assault on a combat outpost in Want, in Nuristan (mistakenly reported as taking place in Wanat in neighboring Kunar Province). This was the deadliest attack on American soldiers since 16 troops were killed in Kunar in 2005. It was a tragic event, but does not demonstrate that the American effort in Afghanistan is on the brink of disaster, as some commentators have risibly argued.
"RC-East has pushed up to new areas and the bad guys are pushing back there," a serving U.S. government official who requested anonymity told me. Regional Command East has been applying a standard formula in 14 Afghan provinces, usually with great success. Even privates can tell you that it's about living among the people, building projects for them, and, in the Pashtun belt, getting the tribes on your side. This won't do the trick unless the governor and sub-governors are decent and respected by the tribal leaders, and the tribes themselves are cohesive.
"But there is no such thing as tribe in Nuristan," the official continued. "There is no unit above the corporate community." The last governor was fired, but it's not clear how much even a brilliant, honest governor could do in a place so unaccustomed to authority above the village level.
Nuristanis -- who were converted from paganism to Islam only about 100 years ago -- live in isolated villages in terrain that is rugged even by Afghan standards. There are no paved roads in the province, and helicopters can be shot down from above in the narrow valleys, as two U.S. military helicopters were in the last year.
So how do we bring security to Nuristan? Is bringing in thousands of American troops the answer?
"No!" the official said. "It's using Special Forces to get the bad guys who are infiltrating from Pakistan. Our enemy only attacks when they expect to win. If we have to go after them, we need the capacity to hunt them with stealth over trackless mountainsides for which our infantry, cavalry and airborne soldiers are not trained or equipped to operate." Defeating the enemy is best accomplished by highly trained fighters who travel light.
Counterinsurgency is not one-size-fits-all. While there are best practices, they must be applied in a nuanced way. In poorly governed countries where insurgencies are likely to arise, the solution may vary from valley to valley.
It shouldn't be hard to see that adding men, helicopters or projects is not always the solution. But then, a would-be commander in chief who announces his prescription for Afghanistan before setting foot there has a lot to learn about America's top job.
Ms. Marlowe is a New York-based writer. This year she completed her 10th trip to Afghanistan and her third embed with U.S. forces there.
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We've chosen to pursue our anti-drug agenda, thus ensuring AQ and the Talibs have a sufficient money supply to continue their jihad in the Stans and globally.
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I have long objected to our War on Drugs based on libertarian type thinking-- and am surprised to read what you say here :lol:
What would you suggest we do?
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There is no policy decision that won't result in ugly spinoff consequences. The legalization of drugs will create a loss of life and impact the social fabric of the US, still not to the degree that a drug money-fueled global jihad will. Not a happy choice, but one that needs to be examined.
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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24078316-25837,00.html
Rebels could win Pakistan's nuke haven
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | July 26, 2008
A CRISIS meeting of Pakistan's new coalition Government has been warned that it could lose control of the North West Frontier Province, which is believed to hold most of its nuclear arsenal.
The warning came yesterday from the coalition leader, who, although he is part of the new Government, is regarded as having the closest links to al-Qa'ida and Taliban militants sweeping through the region.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman bluntly told his colleagues: "The North West Frontier province is breaking away from Pakistan. That is what is happening. That is the reality."
This came just days before new Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's scheduled meeting with US President George W. Bush to discuss al-Qa'ida and Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.
Reports last night said Maulana Fazlur Rehman, regarded as having unparalleled insight into the mood of the three million tribesmen in the NWFP, and leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, was backed in his assessment by members of the coalition Government from the Awami National Party, which rules in the province's capital, Peshawar.
They, too, told the meeting of jihadi militant advances throughout the province, with their influence extending to most so-called "settled areas", including Peshawar.
Yesterday, the army was reported to have abruptly ended an operation in the Hangu district, close to Peshawar, after threats by militant leaders.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman and the ANP members blamed the worsening situation on "President (Pervez) Musharraf's eight-year policy to deal with the issue through the barrel of a gun, and the alliance with America".
The crisis meeting resolved to pursue dialogue with the jihadis, a policy derided by US and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.
It also declared itself to be implacably opposed to US or other forces entering Pakistani territory to deal with the growing jihadi militancy.
Analysts in Islamabad believe the warning about the situation in the NWFP will prompt renewed concern about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in Australia, suggested the restive border region was the source of a surge in Taliban-related violence in Afghanistan, and said Pakistan needed to do more to prevent attacks.
"We understand that it's difficult, we understand that the North West Frontier area is difficult, but militants cannot be allowed to organise there and to plan there and to engage across the border," Dr Rice said.
"So, yes, more needs to be done."
Al-Qa'ida's operational commander in Afghanistan, a 53-year-old Egyptian named Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, was interviewed on Pakistani television yesterday and claimed the organisation's strength in Afghanistan was growing so rapidly it would "soon occupy the whole country".
He claimed that "the morale of our fighters in Afghanistan is very high and they are putting up a tough fight against US troops".
He also claimed responsibility in the interview for a terrorist attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad.
The fact of the interview, as much as what he said, is seen as indicating an important new stage in the crisis.
"The bad guys are even popping up and giving television interviews: that's a reflection of what's happening," one foreign diplomat in Islamabad said last night.
A leading think tank warned this week about the Taliban's use of a media strategy to exaggerate their strength and undermine confidence in the Afghanistan Government.
The International Crisis Group says the administration and its backers must counter this propaganda if they are to defeat an insurgency "that is driving a dangerous wedge between them and the Afghan people", in a report entitled Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words?
The Taliban now publicise their messages, warnings and claims of battle successes through a website, magazines, DVDs, cassettes, pamphlets, nationalist songs, poems and mobile telephones.
Audacious tactics such as the Kandahar jailbreak last month and the April assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai show that the intent is to grab attention.
"The result is weakening public support for nation building, even though few actively support the Taliban," the report says.
It says the international community should also examine its own actions, adding the benefits of military action are outweighed by the alienation they cause.
"The Taliban is not going to be defeated militarily and is impervious to outside criticism," the ICG says.
"Rather, the legitimacy of its ideas and actions must be challenged more forcefully by theAfghan government and citizens."
Additional reporting: AFP, AP
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Summary
The Pakistani government has been forced to reverse a move to place the country’s top intelligence service under civilian control. The incoherence of the various stakeholders in Islamabad, which Stratfor has been pointing out, is a key reason behind this fiasco. The ill-fated move underscores the immense difficulty of reforming the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, which is a precondition for Islamabad to solve its jihadist problem and play its role as an ally in the U.S.-jihadist war.
Analysis
Pakistan’s recently elected Pakistani People’s Party (PPP)-led government, under pressure from the military, had to take back its July 26 decision to place the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate — the country’s main intelligence service — under civilian control, Pakistan’s English-language daily Dawn reported July 28.
According to the report, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas explained that the army chief and the top brass had not been taken into confidence on the issue. “Although there is an ongoing debate that there should be close coordination between all intelligence agencies, placing ISI under the direct control of the interior division was never discussed. When we realized that the decision had been taken, we discussed the issue with the government and are thankful that there was a realization of ground realities and our position was accepted,” the Director-General of the Inter-Services (DG-ISI) Public Relations was quoted as saying.
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Stratfor’s initial analysis on this matter pointed out that it is extremely unlikely that the army would allow the ISI — a powerful arm of the military that plays a major role in domestic and foreign policy matters — to come under civilian control. We had also noted that, due to the civil-military imbalance in favor of the latter, the civilians are incapable of just assuming control of the directorate. Such a move requires a decision by the army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani in coordination with the top generals. It turns out that that is exactly what did not happen.
There were discussions between the civil and military leadership on how to improve the country’s intelligence operations — especially the ISI — in the wake of the international pressure on Islamabad because of the directorate’s complex relations with jihadists. In a mixture of miscommunication and the PPP government’s desire to increase its influence over the organization, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani — who is currently in Washington for meetings with U.S. officials — likely overstepped the consensus (or the lack thereof) with the military. This would explain why PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar told Dawn that he did not know at what level the earlier decision was made, adding that he thought “a miscommunication had led to the mess.”
This is not the first time that a PPP government has tried to expand its influence over the ISI. Assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1989 was able to remove Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul (a known jihadist sympathizer) as DG-ISI and replace him with a retired three-star general, Shamsur Rahman Kallu. Then-army chief Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg countered the move by having Lt. Gen. Asad Durrani — director-general of Military Intelligence (MI) at the time — handle both ISI and MI for some time. The tensions that emerged between the Bhutto government and army hierarchy played a key role in the dismissal of her government in 1990.
Now, the current PPP government is engaging in damage control, with de facto party leader and Bhutto’s widower Asif Ali Zardari giving a statement that the move was designed to shield the army from growing international criticism. PPP Information Minister Sherry Rehman was also quoted by state-owned news agency the Associated Press of Pakistan as saying that the ISI was already under civilian control because it reports to the prime minister.
Constitutionally, the prime minister has the authority to appoint the ISI chief. President Pervez Musharraf exercised that authority during his regime. But functionally, the ISI is a branch of the army and thus falls under the command of the army chief.
Thus, control over the directorate was already in many ways a contested matter, which this fiasco has exacerbated. While both the civilian and military leaders are trying to downplay the matter, the incident has likely irked sensibilities (to say the least) within the military-intelligence complex, already feeling threatened as the ongoing political strife and a raging jihadist insurgency weaken its hold over the state. The army will increase its oversight on the PPP government, which could lead to additional tensions.
All of this is happening as the United States — now more than ever — wants the Pakistanis to deal with the jihadist problem both at home and in neighboring Afghanistan. Gilani’s visit to Washington centers on this very issue; the ISI fiasco just made matters worse regarding his efforts to get the United States to limit its unilateral actions in the tribal areas. Even on July 28, a U.S. missile strike on a madrassa in South Waziristan killed six people.
Elsewhere, Pakistan’s Chairman of Joints Chiefs of Staff Gen. Tariq Majeed, in a meeting with acting U.S. CENTCOM chief Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey warned that U.S. operations on its Pakistani soil would lead to a deterioration of relations between Islamabad and Washington. Both the Gilani administration and the Pakistani army have been relaying to the Bush administration that the current setup in Islamabad is under the threat of destabilization in the wake of U.S. pressure, and the alternative could very likely be chaos that works to the jihadists’ advantage.
This is why the ISI fiasco is important: It has further exposed the internal contradictions within the Pakistani system. More importantly, however, it shows how very difficult it is to reform the directorate — a step that must be taken for Islamabad to defeat the jihadists threatening it at home and to act as an ally to Washington in the war against militant Islamists.
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An Indian friend knowledgeable about these things comments:
A lot has changed in pak. A year or two ago Pak denied that the US was
even allowed to fly over pak..let alone bomb at will. now its an
everyday occurence. the US has a lot of leverage over Pak
military...and the one who controls the military controls pak. This
leverage is financial...becaue much of the US money goes to finance
the lavish life style of the officers and not to fight terrorism as we
are told. Pak's main fear is that they will be left behind India
militarily. This fear is also being exploited with the recent sale of
F16's to ostensibly fight terrorism. The ISI otoh is a jihadist
organization since it was the ISI who created much of the terror
groups. Cracking down on the ISI is harder because they are a more
ideological org...and until the isi is broken things will not change.
This is the reason pak is being pressurized to bring it under civil
control.
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If there is a coherent strategy here, I'm not seeing it. Again, the issue of the money from the drug trade simply is not on the radar screen. The idea that ISI or the army will really turn on the Whackos is self-delusion. So if we ain't doing it ourselves, it aint gettin' done. And it doesn't look like we are willing to look that one in the face. Where's the raw material for a Surge type of success in the Whackostans? For that matter do we have a strategy for Afg? Looks to me we are headed for doing more of what hasn't worked-- kind of like JFK got us into Vietnam as a way out of Laos.
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Geopolitical Diary: U.S., Pakistan and the Saudi Analogy
July 29, 2008 | 0319 GMT
A combination of events brought Pakistan to the forefront on Monday, casting light on the complexity of the problem that the United States faces in attempting to stabilize operations in Afghanistan and pressuring Islamabad to reassert control over the jihadists operating on its side of the Afghan-Pakistani border.
In Washington, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani met with U.S. President George W. Bush, while in Islamabad, acting U.S. Central Command chief Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey met with Pakistan’s top generals, Ashfaq Kayani and Tariq Majid. In both negotiations, tensions ran high, with the Americans warning that they are growing increasingly impatient with lawlessness on the border and the Pakistanis replying that they are doing everything within their power to stop it.
Two incidents served to ratchet tensions even higher as the U.S.-Pakistani talks took place. First, the government in Islamabad retracted its decision on July 26 to bring the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency under civilian control. The ISI fiasco helps to explain the jihadists’ ineradicable involvement in Pakistan’s state structures, since the agency is notorious for having operatives with hidden links to jihadists. The prospect of bringing the ISI under the civilian government’s supervision was never actually feasible because the military — the real source of power in Pakistan — opposed it. Later came news that a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle had fired missiles at a religious school in South Waziristan, killing six civilians on Pakistani soil and fueling Pakistani hostility toward their own government and the United States.
The ISI incident and the airstrike exemplify both the internal and external challenges facing Pakistan. If it is to rein in the jihadists, Pakistan must consider three basic strategies for fighting such an insurgency. The first involves using its military’s brute force to stamp out the threat, as Egypt, Syria and Libya have done in the past. The second consists of allowing the United States to quell the insurgency unilaterally, as it has attempted to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. The third entails trying to resolve the conflict solely by means of negotiations and diplomacy. Any one of these strategies is inadequate on its own, however, and only a clever combination of negotiation and force has a chance of arresting the conflict’s downward spiral.
Such a combination of strategies is precisely what Saudi Arabia employed, beginning in 2004, to shut down its jihadist insurgency. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are drastically different countries, but what they share is the potential to host thriving Islamist movements — emerging among the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia and the Deobandis in Pakistan — that exist at radical variance with the U.S.-supported, conservative central governments. These religious movements create a wide social network that lends support to militant jihadist groups that define themselves in contrast to the regime and the United States.
Saudi Arabia, like Pakistan, was an ideal breeding ground for jihadist militants, but the Saudis were able to dampen homegrown militant ideology through a full-fledged security crackdown enabled by dependable intelligence, under-the-table politicking and bribes to gain the cooperation of various factions, and deliberate engagement with the religious establishment to promote nonviolent alternatives. For a time, the Saudis also sent jihadists to join the fray in Iraq, further whittling down the movement’s ranks, though the United States soon put a stop to this practice just as it is attempting to do with the Pakistani militants funneling into Afghanistan. By 2005, Saudi Arabia had dramatically trimmed its radical Islamist fringe, with militants consistently botching their attacks or security forces pre-empting them.
Yet the Saudi analogy only goes so far — in fact, it contrasts so starkly as to make the challenges of Pakistan even clearer. Pakistan’s mountainous terrain makes it difficult to scour the whole country as easily as Saudi security forces scoured theirs, and Pakistan does not have an official religious hierarchy like the Saudis’ ulema, capable of exerting organizational control over masses of believers while working in tandem with the government. Also, crucially, the Saudis had petrodollars to throw at the problem, while Pakistan must rely on U.S. aid to fund its civilian activities.
Moreover, while Saudi Arabia’s jihadist movement emerged out of resentment of U.S. foreign policy, that policy has a harsh and direct bearing on Pakistanis today — making them unwilling to play into Washington’s hands. As the United States has grown more frustrated with Pakistan’s inability to control its rogue elements, it has taken more strident and independent military actions, occasionally harming or killing Pakistani civilians and thus generating sharper resistance within Pakistan. A distinct danger of U.S. military operations in Pakistan is that as anger with the United States grows, so does the possibility of driving people toward sympathizing with the jihadist factions.
Furthermore, the United States has limitations on how much pressure it can apply on Pakistan’s military. Since the military is the sole guarantor of order in Pakistan — a nuclear-armed country — the United States needs it to stay in a strong and stable position. Washington cannot push too hard to have its way without making the military vulnerable to reaction by anti-U.S. popular forces within Pakistan.
As the U.S. military draws closer to tying up the loose ends in Iraq, the complications of the task awaiting it in Afghanistan seem to multiply. Pakistan is the source of much uncertainty and contingency in this theater, and there is no clear solution to the mess there. If the United States and its allies are to succeed, they will have to do so despite exceedingly narrow constraints.
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but misses the point on drilling:
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NY Times
Drilling in Afghanistan
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By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: July 30, 2008
Sometimes in politics, particularly in campaigns, parties get wedded to slogans — so wedded that no one stops to think about what they’re saying, whether the reality has changed and what the implications would be if their bumper stickers really guided policy when they took office. Today, we have two examples of that: “Democrats for Afghanistan” and “Republicans for offshore drilling.”
Skip to next paragraph
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
Go to Columnist Page » Republicans have become so obsessed with the notion that we can drill our way out of our current energy crisis that re-opening our coastal waters to offshore drilling has become their answer for every energy question.
Anyone who looks at the growth of middle classes around the world and their rising demands for natural resources, plus the dangers of climate change driven by our addiction to fossil fuels, can see that clean renewable energy — wind, solar, nuclear and stuff we haven’t yet invented — is going to be the next great global industry. It has to be if we are going to grow in a stable way.
Therefore, the country that most owns the clean power industry is going to most own the next great technology breakthrough — the E.T. revolution, the energy technology revolution — and create millions of jobs and thousands of new businesses, just like the I.T. revolution did.
Republicans, by mindlessly repeating their offshore-drilling mantra, focusing on a 19th-century fuel, remind me of someone back in 1980 arguing that we should be putting all our money into making more and cheaper IBM Selectric typewriters — and forget about these things called the “PC” and “the Internet.” It is a strategy for making America a second-rate power and economy.
But Democrats have their analog. For many Democrats, Afghanistan was always the “good war,” as opposed to Iraq. I think Barack Obama needs to ask himself honestly: “Am I for sending more troops to Afghanistan because I really think we can win there, because I really think that that will bring an end to terrorism, or am I just doing it because to get elected in America, post-9/11, I have to be for winning some war?”
The truth is that Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Pakistan are just different fronts in the same war. The core problem is that the Arab-Muslim world in too many places has been failing at modernity, and were it not for $120-a-barrel oil, that failure would be even more obvious. For far too long, this region has been dominated by authoritarian politics, massive youth unemployment, outdated education systems, a religious establishment resisting reform and now a death cult that glorifies young people committing suicide, often against other Muslims.
The humiliation this cocktail produces is the real source of terrorism. Saddam exploited it. Al Qaeda exploits it. Pakistan’s intelligence services exploit it. Hezbollah exploits it. The Taliban exploit it.
The only way to address it is by changing the politics. Producing islands of decent and consensual government in Baghdad or Kabul or Islamabad would be a much more meaningful and lasting contribution to the war on terrorism than even killing bin Laden in his cave. But it needs local partners. The reason the surge helped in Iraq is because Iraqis took the lead in confronting their own extremists — the Shiites in their areas, the Sunnis in theirs. That is very good news — although it is still not clear that they can come together in a single functioning government.
The main reason we are losing in Afghanistan is not because there are too few American soldiers, but because there are not enough Afghans ready to fight and die for the kind of government we want.
Take 20 minutes and read the stunning article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine by Thomas Schweich, a former top Bush counternarcotics official focused on Afghanistan, and dwell on his paragraph on Afghan President Hamid Karzai:
“Karzai was playing us like a fiddle: The U.S. would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure improvement; the U.S. and its allies would fight the Taliban; Karzai’s friends could get rich off the drug trade; he could blame the West for his problems; and in 2009, he would be elected to a new term.”
Then read the Afghan expert Rory Stewart’s July 17 Time magazine cover story from Kabul: “A troop increase is likely to inflame Afghan nationalism because Afghans are more anti-foreign than we acknowledge, and the support for our presence in the insurgency areas is declining ... The more responsibility we take in Afghanistan, the more we undermine the credibility and responsibility of the Afghan government and encourage it to act irresponsibly. Our claims that Afghanistan is the ‘front line in the war on terror’ and that ‘failure is not an option’ have convinced the Afghan government that we need it more than it needs us. The worse things become, the more assistance it seems to receive. This is not an incentive to reform.”
Before Democrats adopt “More Troops to Afghanistan” as their bumper sticker, they need to make sure it’s a strategy for winning a war — not an election.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/08/01/cbs-message-indicates-zawahiri-critically-wounded-possibly-dead/
Is Al Zawa-lumpy now a martyr? My fingers are crossed.....
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Why terror flourishes in Pak
5 Aug 2008, 0052 hrs IST, Subodh Varma,TNN
NEW DELHI: In the Global War on Terror (GWOT) declared by the United States after the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan has occupied a key status. In the past seven years, the US government has given over $10 billion to Pakistan for the specific purpose of fighting extremists and helping in the war in Afghanistan. Over 80% of cargo and 40% of fuel supplies for the US-led Nato forces in Afghanistan pass through Pakistan.
Yet, Pakistan has slowly descended into an ever-widening whirlpool of extremist violence, with its western region bordering Afghanistan becoming a virtual safe haven for extremists. Data from the World Incident Tracking System of the US National Counter-terrorism Centre shows that more people were killed in terror attacks in Pakistan than in Afghanistan in 2008 (527 against 351 till March). While the number of deaths in such incidents was under 400 from 2004 to 2006, they went up to 1,335 in 2007 and the trend in the current year suggests it could be worse.
The 'long war' against international terrorism appears to be floundering right next door to India, which is itself fighting an increasing terrorist threat, often with links in Pakistan. So, why is it that despite the full backing of the world's foremost economic and military power, terror continues to flourish in Pakistan?
Recent hearings of the US Congress, and audit reports of the funding of GWOT in Pakistan have, for the first time, started giving answers to this question. At a recent hearing of the sub-committee on Middle East and South Asia, its chairman, Gary Ackerman sarcastically noted that US foreign assistance has three pillars — lawyers, guns and money, except that, in Pakistan, only these pillars are there, without any structure to uphold.
Experts say that the huge funding has largely gone to shore up Pakistan's military facilities and line the pockets of the military establishment. According to the testimony of Gene Dodaro, acting comptroller general before a Senate sub-committee in May this year, of the $5.56 billion directed at the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), 96% was spent on military, 3% on border security and just 1% ($40 million) on developmental activities. FATA, which has a 600km long border with Afghanistan and has become a safe haven for extremists, remains a very poor and backward region.
In a belated recognition of the need to spend on development, President Bush in 2007 announced a five-year programme for spending $1 billion for economic and social development in FATA. Even, this has come under question with Mark Ward, a senior official in USAID admitting that up to 30% of such funds may be costed as overheads and never leave the US.
The propensity of the US government to keep funding the military in Pakistan, which in turn bargains for ever more, has come in for increasing criticism. In his testimony before a House sub-committee, Husain Haqqani, director, Center for International Relations, Boston University said that between 1954 and 2002, "on average, US aid to Pakistan amounted to $382.9 million for each year of military rule compared with only $178.9 per annum under civilian leadership."
Apart from the fact that much of the funding is misdirected, there is accumulating evidence of embezzlement too. "The Bush administration has provided $1.6 billion in foreign military financing and $5.56 billion in coalition support funds. The former funds to buy radars and antisubmarine planes to track the nonexistent al-Qaida air force and navy, and the latter funds disappeared into the Pakistani treasury for unspecified services allegedly rendered," Ackerman said at the hearing.
An audit done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of the expenditure incurred by Pakistan from the Coalition Support Fund given under GWOT during 2004-2007, found huge anomalies in the government's claims for reimbursements of over $2.2 billion.
These included expenses claimed without backing of documents, unreasonably high rates for certain items, like food for navy sailors billed at $800 per month, claims for construction of bunkers and roads without any evidence of these actually being built, and using a standard exchange rate for conversion of dollars to Pakistani rupees even though the rupee's value had declined by over 6% during the period.
Meanwhile, Pakistan continues to reel under economic and social backwardness, with nearly 10% unemployment and a 34% literacy rate. In the FATA, literacy is a shocking 2%. No political parties are allowed and a special law — Frontier Crimes Regulation of 1901 — governs its 3.1 million people, with no recourse to appeal.
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It's Curtains for Musharraf
By NAJAM SETHI
August 11, 2008; Page A13
After months of prevarication, the Pakistani government, led by Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, has finally decided to impeach President Pervez Musharraf. Although a fighting man, Mr. Musharraf is expected to quit within the week. He doesn't have enough parliamentary backing to thwart the move, and the army and America, his main sources of support, have abandoned him in the face of popular pressure.
Ken Fallin
The government has been mulling this move for months. Mr. Zardari, of the People's Party of Pakistan (PPP), and Mr. Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), both hate the president for political and personal reasons.
Mr. Musharraf ousted Mr. Sharif from power in 1999, exiled him to Saudi Arabia, and only allowed him to return last year to contest the February elections because of Saudi pressure. Mr. Zardari was imprisoned for six years, then permitted to leave the country to join his wife Benazir Bhutto in exile in Dubai. Thanks to American pressure, she was allowed to return last October to contest the elections, and he only returned after she was assassinated in December.
The popular Bhutto accused Mr. Musharraf of an assassination attempt last October. When she was killed two months later, many Pakistanis remembered that accusation.
The Zardari-Sharif cooperation has been driven by political missteps on all sides. Mr. Zardari's decision to work with Mr. Musharraf -- under American urging -- alienated the PPP's rank and file, which has been historically antiarmy and anti-American. At the same time, Mr. Sharif took an anti-Musharraf and anti-America stance, boosting his popularity. Mr. Musharraf didn't help matters when he tried to oppose Mr. Zardari's prime minister pick. Later, he also criticized the new government's "dysfunctionality" in the face of an "impending economic meltdown."
Mr. Musharraf's biggest mistake was to lose focus on the war on terror, alienating his Washington backers without winning domestic public support. For months now, the U.S. has been upset at Pakistan's lackluster cooperation with coalition forces in the war on terror in Pakistan's tribal areas. Washington also accused Pakistan's powerful Interservices Intelligence (ISI) agency, which is associated with Mr. Musharraf, of complicity in the Taliban attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul last month. On the eve of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's state visit to Washington last month, the government decreed the ISI would henceforth be answerable to the home ministry, instead of to the army chief or President Musharraf.
Mr. Musharraf couldn't countenance this loss of power. He accused the government of trying to "politicize the ISI and undermine national security" at America's prodding, forcing it to backtrack clumsily and lose face. To stave off a possible sacking at Mr. Musharraf's hands, Mr. Zardari joined hands with Mr. Sharif to impeach the president.
Washington, which had not so long ago advocated "working relations" between Mr. Zardari and Mr. Musharraf -- and later shifted its stance to a "dignified exit" for Mr. Musharraf -- responded with a studied silence. "The impeachment of President Musharraf is an internal matter for Pakistan that must be resolved in accordance with the law and constitution," said a White House spokesman on Aug. 7, the day the impeachment decision was announced.
In other words, "go Musharraf go." The U.S. realizes that Mr. Musharraf is extremely unpopular at home, and has concluded that the army is not prepared to risk propping him up any longer. So he is no longer useful. A working relationship with the new civilian order is a better bet.
The Pakistan army is the key to what happens next. Formally, the impeachment of Mr. Musharraf is a numbers game. The ruling coalition needs 295 votes out of 442 in a joint sitting of both houses of parliament to clinch it. They claim the motion will sail through.
But the result will critically depend on about 27 independent members of parliament, and members from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. If the ISI chooses to support Mr. Musharraf, it could probably manage to sway the tribal votes for the president. But it would need the green light from the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, before doing this.
It's unlikely Gen. Kayani will dive into this fray. The army is hugely unpopular at home for fighting "America's war on terror." It is dispirited because it is being criticized by its American ally not just for not doing enough, but for complicity in harboring and protecting the Afghan Taliban. It is demoralized, having lost over 2,000 men fighting terrorists in the tribal areas without sufficient training or motivation. The army remains the prime target of suicide bombers in the urban areas of the country, so much so that its officers no longer go about town in uniform.
Gen. Kayani successfully salvaged some public respect by refusing to tilt the February election results in favor of Mr. Musharraf's party. Therefore, while the officers abhor the "corrupt and bungling civilians," the grudging view is that any overt or covert military backing for Mr. Musharraf would be hugely unpopular, and any formal intervention untenable in the difficult economic and political environment facing the country.
If Mr. Musharraf throws in the towel this week, the current political paralysis might end, but the instability will remain. Mr. Sharif will play to public opinion and press Mr. Zardari to punish Mr. Musharraf for treason. He wants the deposed chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry, and his erstwhile colleagues restored with full powers.
Mr. Zardari, for his part, may heed advice from the army and Washington and facilitate a safe exit for the president. He will, in all likelihood, refuse to reinstate the chief justice for fear that a reinvigorated judiciary will hold every Musharraf action to date as illegal, including the amnesty from corruption charges granted to him in November. Mr. Zardari also wants to become president himself, a prospect Mr. Sharif cannot stomach.
Pakistan's neighbors India and Afghanistan, and its strategic ally America, cannot be too sanguine about this continuing political instability. Their core interests require Pakistan's civilian leadership to lean on the Pakistan army to rein in and retool the ISI, support the war on terror in Afghanistan, and refrain from refueling Islamist jihad in India-administered Kashmir. But with the army sulking politically and licking its wounds militarily, the Zardari government looks unlikely to deliver on these fronts -- with or without a President Musharraf.
Mr. Sethi is editor of the Friday Times and Daily Times in Lahore, Pakistan.
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"Pakistan's neighbors India and Afghanistan, and its strategic ally America, cannot be too sanguine about this continuing political instability. Their core interests require Pakistan's civilian leadership to lean on the Pakistan army to rein in and retool the ISI, support the war on terror in Afghanistan, and refrain from refueling Islamist jihad in India-administered Kashmir. But with the army sulking politically and licking its wounds militarily, the Zardari government looks unlikely to deliver on these fronts -- with or without a President Musharraf"
If we have a coherent strategy for Pak-Afg, I'm not seeing it.
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I think the problem with Pakistan is that it's such a mess, that if we push them too hard they could crumble and then we have a nuclear armed Al-qaedastan in it's place.
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So why don't we:
a) Do an Osirak on their nuke capabilities, and
b) burn all the opium fields in Afg
c) leave them to stew in their own mess?
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So why don't we:
a) Do an Osirak on their nuke capabilities, and
Their nukes are dispersed specifically to prevent India from being able to launch a successful first strike against Pakistan's nuclear assets. We have SpecOps assets pre-positioned to seize their nukes in the worse case scenario of Pakistan falling apart, but I'd tend to think this would be a "Hail-Mary" rather than something that would have a high potential for success.
b) burn all the opium fields in Afg
Burned opium fields grow back. It might raise the price of heroin a bit globally, but they'd be planting as soon as the last embers faded.
c) leave them to stew in their own mess?
One of the lessons of 9/11 is that failed states are incubators for nightmares that can transit the globe and kill us right here at home. Those big oceans that once sheltered us are meaningless in a technologically networked planet.
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I know, I know. I'm venting.
But another lesson of Life is not to get sucked into endless quagmires-- which in the absence of a coherent strategy, may well be where we are headed.
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Very rarely do we have "good" policy solutions to the world's problems. Usually it's a matter of choosing between bad and worse.
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"So why don't we: a) Do an Osirak on their nuke capabilities, and b) burn all the opium fields in Afg c) leave them to stew in their own mess?"
I agree with the other comments. A Hail Mary is right but the idea of strikes without further occupation should certainly be on the table. Many lessons come from the Iraq effort. For me, I question whether the obligation exists to guarantee security after a justified strike. I would say no. The rebuild dollars and the human sacrifice to win long term security needs to be with conditions and only where it lines up with our own best interests IMO. In the case of Iraq, it was broken before we deposed Saddam. Remember the pre-war the Afghan economy. George Gilder described it as incapable of manufacturing a flashlight. Yet they harbored the training facilities to attack us with our own assets and technology. Also, the Afghanistan choices come with the constraint of being part of a coalition.
An occupation and security guarantee in Pakistan I assume is impossible and leaving nukes in the wrong hands after a coup or shakeup is unthinkable. Maybe our friends the Indians have a take out plan.
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I'm fairly sure India's plan has Pakistan looking like a post-apocalyptic scene from the "Terminator" movies, only quieter.
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Stratfor
August 19, 2008
Pervez Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan for nearly nine years, was forced to resign Monday in the face of moves by the South Asian country’s recently elected coalition government to impeach him. Musharraf’s resignation has been a long time coming, with stops along the way over the last nine months during which he was forced to give up control over the military and then the government.
Almost immediately following his announcement, Pakistanis took to the streets to celebrate, demanding that he be tried for crimes against the nation. Musharraf’s personal fate is of no consequence to the continuity (or discontinuity) in the geopolitics of Pakistan. But the conditions in which he fell from power have wide-ranging geopolitical implications not just in his country, but for U.S. policy toward Southwest Asia.
His exit from the scene symbolizes an end of an era for many reasons. The former Pakistani leader was the pointman in U.S.-Pakistani cooperation in Washington’s war against jihadism, which many Pakistanis — both within the government and in wider society — feel has destabilized their country. Now, the country’s democratic government must search for the elusive balance between domestic and foreign policy considerations. This will prove challenging for all the stakeholders in the post-Musharraf state. It also will complicate (to put it mildly) U.S. efforts to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border.
A far greater implication of the decline and fall of the Musharraf regime, however, is that the process has altered the nature of the Pakistani state. Until fairly recently, the Pakistani state was as robust as its army’s ability either directly to govern the country or to maintain oversight over civilian administrations. Policies pursued under the Musharraf government generated two very different kinds of potent opposition to the state, however. The state found itself caught between democratic forces on the one hand and Islamist militant forces on the other, something compounded by a deteriorating economic situation.
As a result, for the first time in the history of the country, the army is no longer in a position to step in and impose order as before. Recognizing that any attempt to impose order militarily on a growing crisis of governance would only further destabilize the country, the army’s new leadership has put its weight behind the civilian government. But since Pakistani civilian institutions historically have never really functioned properly, serious doubts about the viability of the newly democratic Pakistan arise.
Musharraf’s decision to quit has greatly empowered parliament, but the legislature is a collection of competing political forces that for most of their history have engaged in zero-sum games. Meanwhile, the civil-military imbalance — despite the desire of the army to back the government — remains a source of tension within the political system. Moreover, at a time when parliament really has yet to consolidate power, the rise of an assertive judiciary is bound to further complicate governance.
Islamabad will be searching for pragmatic prescriptions to balance the domestic sentiment against the war against jihadism with the need to play its role as a U.S. ally and combat the extremism that also threatens Pakistan. At the same time, however, the legislature and the newly empowered judiciary will be playing an oversight role over the actions of the government in keeping with public sentiment. It will emphasize due process, which will force the hands of the government in the fight against both transnational and homegrown militancy. In other words, an already weakened state will be further handicapped in dealing with the need to combat a growing jihadist insurgency.
The multiple problems Pakistan faces now that the military no longer can simply step in and stabilize the system underscore the potentially dangerous situation in the South Asian country. And this has obvious and grave geopolitical implications for the wider region and the United States.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/2650734/Pakistani-city-of-Peshawar-could-fall-to-Taliban-as-fear-and-attacks-grow.html
When the summer holidays end tomorrow, the parents of 1,400 pupils at the Badabher Government Girls' School will face a difficult choice. By Nick Meo in Peshawar
Last Updated: 7:22PM BST 30 Aug 2008
Should they let their daughters go back to lessons in the rubble of their school, blown up by the Taliban in the middle of the night, or should they keep them safe at home?
Hashim, the caretaker who was held at gunpoint by masked gunmen, was warned that they would be back if the school is rebuilt. He fears that next time they could blow it up with pupils inside.
Yet this is not Kandahar, the Taliban capital of southern Afghanistan, but Peshawar - a city of 1.4 million people in neighbouring Pakistan, once celebrated as a cultural haven for artists, musicians and intellectuals.
A year ago schools were considered safe in the city, the capital of North-West Frontier Province. But the Taliban insurgency that has been growing in the wild mountains that rise in the distance is spreading into urban Pakistan.
Clerics and political leaders critical of the Taliban have been kidnapped and shot dead, around 15 suicide bombers have attacked inside the city, and to escape kidnappers businessmen are giving up and moving to the capital Islamabad, two hours drive away, or overseas to Dubai if they can afford to.
Nobody has ever known the city so fearful.
Musli Khan, a clerk who lives near the remains of the school, was disconsolately picking through the mess. The main building collapsed from the force of the explosion and the walls that were left were riddled with giant cracks.
Some chairs and schoolbooks had been pulled from the rubble, he said, gesturing at a damaged Koran.
"And these people say they are Muslims," Mr Khan muttered, shaking his head sadly before checking himself: it is dangerous now to be too critical of the Taliban, especially in suburbs on the outskirts of Peshawar. Here, at night, the police must lock themselves into fortified outposts for safety, and armed fighters prowl at will.
During a hasty and nervous drive to Badabher, only six miles from the city centre, The Sunday Telegraph passed three police stations which have been attacked with rockets in the past few weeks. "You must not stop for long at the school," said our guide, a local reporter. "Out here the Taliban have their spies everywhere."
On the same morning that the school was blown up last week, America's chief diplomat in the province narrowly escaped assassination when her car was ambushed as she drove to work.
A day earlier four Pakistani employees of an international aid organisation were kidnapped.
The stuttering new government in Islamabad has promised a bold strategy to fight militants with new vigour, but their words were greeted with jaded sceptism by those who can't afford to leave the besieged and fearful city.
A protective ring of security checkpoints is supposed to hold back the anarchy in the mountains, at the edge of a huge swathe of the nation that the Government has lost to bandits and rebels, but the checkpoints are slowly retreating nearer to the city and some police stations are now abandoned entirely at night.
Muhammad Asaf, president of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce, said that for the first time ordinary people are really scared.
"The Taliban is getting stronger day by day," he said. "They are more confident now – every time there is a suicide bomb they are on television claiming responsibility. They didn't used to do that."
Mr Asaf, whose daughter lives in Britain, counts himself as a friend of America but he blames the US for goading former president Pervez Musharraf into a bloody war with the Pushtun tribes around Peshawar, some of which support the Taliban and al-Queda. "The tribal people are peaceful but if you bomb their lands their families will want revenge," he said.
Sultan Agha, the head of a moderate Sufi religious sect and a man of influence who is consulted before a chief minister is appointed for the province, said he now travels no more than six miles from Peshawar's boundary.
"It is unsafe to say anything against the Taliban because they will come and kill you," he said over a cup of green tea, before listing the moderate clerics who have been murdered for speaking out against suicide bombers – now known as "suiciders" in Pakistani English.
"The Taliban are growing in number and it is quite possible that they could take control of Peshawar," he said. "The Government could stop them, certainly, but it is too preoccupied with political infighting."
Since Pervez Musharraf was forced from office a fortnight ago, the ruling coalition has fallen apart amid bitter recriminations, leaving Pakistan hovering on the brink of violent political turmoil.
The former coalition partners, Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, are now preparing to fight an electoral battle for control of the country - but their feuding has raised a disturbing question: can the eventual winner cope with the terrorism that threatens to destroy their troubled nation?
Britain and America, deeply alarmed at the deterioration, are throwing money at development projects in the almost lawless tribal areas, but in conditions of anarchy it is hard to know whether the cash is being well spent.
It is too dangerous for the influx of aid workers who have arrived in Peshawar's safer suburbs to get out and visit the projects, so they have no idea whether their efforts to build schools or drainage systems are winning over tribesmen.
More lethal Westerners are also said to be at large. Crew-cut, Pushtun-speaking Americans have arrived again in the big hotels, keeping themselves to themselves and reminding people of the 1980s when CIA operatives haunted Peshawar as they armed the tribesmen against the Soviets.
As Pakistanis never tire of pointing out, those same tribesmen are now fighting jihad once again, but this time against American soldiers on the other side of the border.
Taliban influence has even crept into Qissa Kawani, the street of the storytellers, in the heart of Peshawar's bazaars, where the mournful chanting of a Taliban CD was playing.
"I hate that noise," said Insanullah, the owner of a shop selling Pushtun music DVDs which he is now too scared to play.
Music store owners have been killed in bombings and he receives threatening letters but said he will continue because he has invested all his money in his little shop and has no other livelihood. On the city outskirts most have closed down.
"People still like music, but they are afraid for their lives and business is terrible," he said.
One of the city's most famous singers, Baryali, moved to Kabul to be safe and another, Wazir Khan, was briefly kidnapped by the Taliban and has gone into hiding since his release.
The city's cinemas are almost empty because customers fear bombs and even Peshawar's poets are censoring themselves.
Taous Dilsouz used to write songs about the war against the Soviets, then about Pakistani politics, but these days he sticks to safe subjects. "No poets will write songs about what is happening to our city," he said. "And even if they did they could not find singers who are brave enough to sing them."
Outside Peshawar it is much worse. Assadullah Khan, a watchman from the town of Mardan which is still nominally under government control, said: "Out of five brothers in my town, one will support the Taliban. The people are poor and illiterate, and they listen to what the clerics say. Some of my friends have joined the Taliban – they pay them for fighting."
In Bajaur Agency, a Taliban stronghold a few hours from Peshawar, the new government has launched a military offensive which it said has killed hundreds of militants.
According to the UN 260,000 have fled the fighting, and refugees interviewed by The Sunday Telegraph spoke of civilians killed in bombing raids. Dislike of the Taliban runs so deep that many want the government to continue the offensive nevertheless.
"We want to be part of Pakistan and we want the army to get rid of the Taliban," said one 18-year-old, who described seeing dogs eating the bodies of bombing victims lying in his village before he fled.
However, with ordinary people suffering in the air raids, a new generation is turning its anger on the government. It is a sign that the blunt instrument of the Pakistani army may sometimes be counter-productive.
Mohammad Ali, a 20-year-old man who was squatting in the middle of a flyblown camp rolling a lump of hashish in the palm of his hand said he could still hear the sound of the planes and the bombing in his head.
"Why didn't they just arrest those Taliban, why were they bombarding us?" he asked. He claimed that about a dozen civilians had died in his village but that the Taliban fighters had left long before the planes arrived.
"We want peace, but we can not have it because of this terrorist America which orders our government to attack its own people," he said. "The Taliban are Godly people, they are Islamic, and we are happy that they send suicide bombers for revenge.
"If it is God's Will, definitely I will join them now. We have to defend our villages and our religion."
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Selling the Taliban
By JOANNA NATHAN
FROM TODAY'S WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE
September 2, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan
In the West, assumptions about Afghanistan too often seem premised on the idea that the Taliban are "men in caves," raising questions about why thousands of international troops cannot quickly defeat them.
However, an insurgency is at its heart a battle of wills and staying power, not of military might. Insurgents in Afghanistan appreciate this and have created a sophisticated propaganda operation that both targets what is seen as weakening support back in foreign capitals and seeks to mold perceptions among the Afghan population.
This is no small-scale operation. The efforts include a Web site, Al Emarah, which is updated several times a day in five languages. The English may often be laughable -- with reference to gourds (guards), a "poppet" (puppet) government and "spatial fours" (special forces) -- but it does the job. The Web site mocks government weakness and highlights every perceived foreign misstep to tap a deep vein of nationalism in Afghanistan -- and to raise questions back in foreign capitals about the role of their forces.
For the local audience there are also magazines in Arabic and Pashto, DVDs showing gruesome beheadings and Taliban attacks, and audio cassettes of nationalist chants -- also available as ringtones. Much of this material apparently is produced across the border in Pakistan in the name of the former regime, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, or by supporters and sympathizers. All of it seeks to tap historic patriotism and fuel often legitimate grievances in Afghanistan. Journalists can reach Taliban spokesmen for a fiery quote day and night, in stark contrast to their government and international counterparts.
All in all, the Taliban are successfully driving the news agenda and creating a perception of a movement far stronger and more omnipresent than it really is. Taliban atrocities often go unreported in areas they have made off-limits to independent verification. And their methods to control the message go beyond those of your typical press office: Community leaders and journalists who might speak up are cowed with threats or worse.
While the Taliban use their media operation to highlight civilian casualties caused by foreign forces, they also deliberately target civilians -- as with the recent murder of three Western women aid workers and their Afghan colleague just an hour from Kabul. Much less reported internationally are the Afghans who work for international NGOs or the government in rural areas and who often face roadblocks where they are checked for any sign of working with foreigners.
One journalist from an insurgency-hit province, whom I recently met, has moved to Kabul because of the relentless pressure. Among other incidents, he says some pupils he interviewed at the opening of a new government school were killed soon afterward for taking part in the event.
The Taliban realize that they will never win head-on engagements with the international forces, but also that they do not have to. A new emphasis on spectacular attacks in 2008, such as the June jailbreak in Kandahar and an assault on Kabul's only five-star hotel in January, has won global headlines and aims to erode international consensus on the need to stay the course. There is talk on the streets of Afghanistan's "worst ever military defeat," with images circulating of local soldiers fleeing April's three-man attack on a military parade attended by President Hamid Karzai and foreign and local dignitaries.
To combat the Taliban, international forces -- and even more importantly the Afghan administration -- need to be much more responsive and proactive in getting their messages out. Highlighting the Taliban's brutality will undercut its claims to legitimacy.
The corollary to this would be enhancing the government's legitimacy, particularly through support of Afghan institutions and security forces. International troops are essential to create a security umbrella for such developments to take place. However, the current focus on increasing troop numbers is meaningless if there is not a strategic plan in which building local capacity is the priority. Most Afghans are still far more fearful of what would happen should foreign troops leave than if they stay, but there are limits to their patience. Enhanced Afghan institutions taking the lead would help negate the Taliban's relentlessly xenophobic campaign.
The Afghan government still needs to prove that this is an administration worth fighting for. It should tackle the current culture of impunity in cases of corruption and abuses by members of the administration. The international community, too, must foster accountability in its actions. With Guantanamo having entered the folk culture of Afghanistan, appearing in poems and songs and undercutting claims about the rule of law, arbitrary detentions by Afghan and foreign forces alike must stop. Much greater transparency and accountability is also needed in cases where there are civilian deaths.
Propaganda may be powerful, but it can be countered by both better communications and, ultimately, with deeds on the ground.
Ms. Nathan is senior adviser in Kabul for the International Crisis Group.
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second post of the day:
Pakistan's Next President
Is a Category 5 Disaster
September 2, 2008; Page A21
If there's a case to be made against democracy, few countries make it better than Pakistan.
On Saturday, Pakistani legislators will elect a new president to replace Pervez Musharraf, the general-turned-strongman who resigned the office last month.
In one corner there is Mushahid Hussain Sayed, a former journalist and one-time political prisoner of Mr. Musharraf who is nonetheless running as the candidate of the general's old party. Mr. Mushahid, probably the best of the bunch, stands next to no chance of winning.
In another corner there is Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, candidate of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party. Mr. Sharif -- whose record includes bankrupting his country, presiding over a disastrous military campaign against India, and attempting to implement Sharia law while awarding himself near-dictatorial powers -- has made it clear he intends to gut the powers of the presidency should he return to office.
And then there is Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and leader of the Pakistan People's Party. Mr. Zardari, who has compared himself to Jesus (an innocent accused of crimes he did not commit), is easily one of the most notorious figures in the long parade of horribles that make up the country's political history. He is, of course, expected to win Saturday's ballot handily.
Just how bad is Mr. Zardari? It would be a relief if it were true that he was merely suffering from dementia, a diagnosis offered by two New York psychiatrists last year. But that diagnosis seems to have been produced mainly with a view toward defending himself against corruption charges in a British court.
Mr. Zardari -- who earned the moniker "Mr. 10%" for allegedly demanding kickbacks during his wife's two terms in office -- has long been dogged by accusations of corruption. In 2003, a Swiss magistrate found him and Mrs. Bhutto guilty of laundering $10 million. Mr. Zardari has admitted to owning a 355-acre estate near London, despite coming from a family of relatively modest means and reporting little income at the time it was purchased. A 1998 report by the New York Times's John Burns suggests he may have made off with as much as $1.5 billion in kickbacks. This was at a time when his wife was piously claiming to represent the interests of Pakistan's impoverished masses and denouncing corrupt leaders who "leave the cupboard bare."
It's an open question whether Mr. Zardari will be more or less restrained in his behavior if he's elected: His return to politics has meant the dropping of all charges against him and the release of millions in frozen assets. (The presidency will also confer legal immunity.) That may make him one of the few men in Pakistan to get richer this year: The economy, which grew in an unprecedented way under Mr. Musharraf, has tanked under civilian management. The Karachi stock exchange has lost about a third of its value and the currency about a fifth in recent months. Markets often have better memories than voters.
It's also an open question whether Pakistan's increasingly dire security outlook will focus Mr. Zardari's mind on the urgent tasks of governance. Mr. Zardari has sought to parley himself internationally as a pro-Western candidate, and maybe he is. Yet over the weekend the Pakistani government agreed to stop its air strikes on the Taliban, in exchange for which Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a religious party, agreed to throw its support to Mr. Zardari. The Taliban has used previous cease-fires to regroup and re-arm for operations against both Afghanistan and Islamabad.
Then there is al Qaeda, now openly endeavoring to use its last redoubts in Pakistan to take over the country. Last month, Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a long broadcast (in English, no less) denouncing Mr. Musharraf as an American tool and calling on Pakistan's army to come over to his side.
That call was unlikely to be heeded against Mr. Musharraf, who could count on the loyalty of his troops. But Mr. Zardari is a caricature of everything that's morally bankrupt with the country's Westernized elite, and thus an inviting propaganda target for al Qaeda and the Taliban. It doesn't help, either, that they are working fertile political soil: 71% of Pakistanis oppose cooperating with the U.S. in counterterrorism, and 51% oppose fighting the Taliban at all, according to a June poll.
Al Qaeda and the Taliban feed on chaos, and a Zardari presidency will almost certainly provide more of it. For Pakistanis, this is a self-inflicted wound and a rebuke to their democracy. For the rest of world, it's a matter of hoping that Pakistan will somehow muddle through. For now, however, this looks like a Category 5 hurricane, dark and vast and visible just offshore.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
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Originally posted by BBG in the China thread:
China to provide Pakistan four AWACS aircrafts
Updated at: 1510 PST, Friday, September 05, 2008
ISLAMABAD: Air Chief Marshall Tanvir Mahmood Ahmed on Friday said China would provide four AWACS aircrafts to Pakistan for the purpose of aerial surveillance, adding an agreement in this regard has been signed by the two countires.
Talking to Geo News, he said talks were also underway to purchase FC-20 aircrafts from China and added 30 to 40 planes would be provided to Pakistan under the agreement signed by China and Pakistan.
Air chief Marshall further said four such aircrafts were being also acquired from Sweden for aerial surveillance.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=54260
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Every now and then the old gray hag publishes something interesting.
September 7, 2008
Right at the Edge
By DEXTER FILKINS
I: The Border Incident
Late in the afternoon of June 10, during a firefight with Taliban militants along the Afghan-Pakistani border, American soldiers called in airstrikes to beat back the attack. The firefight was taking place right on the border itself, known in military jargon as the “zero line.” Afghanistan was on one side, and the remote Pakistani region known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, was on the other. The stretch of border was guarded by three Pakistani military posts.
The American bombers did the job, and then some. By the time the fighting ended, the Taliban militants had slipped away, the American unit was safe and 11 Pakistani border guards lay dead. The airstrikes on the Pakistani positions sparked a diplomatic row between the two allies: Pakistan called the incident “unprovoked and cowardly”; American officials regretted what they called a tragic mistake. But even after a joint inquiry by the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan, it remained unclear why American soldiers had reached the point of calling in airstrikes on soldiers from Pakistan, a critical ally in the war in Afghanistan and the campaign against terrorism.
The mystery, at least part of it, was solved in July by four residents of Suran Dara, a Pakistani village a few hundred yards from the site of the fight. According to two of these villagers, whom I interviewed together with a local reporter, the Americans started calling in airstrikes on the Pakistanis after the latter started shooting at the Americans.
“When the Americans started bombing the Taliban, the Frontier Corps started shooting at the Americans,” we were told by one of Suran Dara’s villagers, who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being persecuted or killed by the Pakistani government or the Taliban. “They were trying to help the Taliban. And then the American planes bombed the Pakistani post.”
For years, the villagers said, Suran Dara served as a safe haven for jihadist fighters — whether from Afghanistan or Pakistan or other countries — giving them aid and shelter and a place to stash their weapons. With the firefight under way, one of Suran Dara’s villagers dashed across the border into Afghanistan carrying a field radio with a long antenna (the villager called it “a Motorola”) to deliver to the Taliban fighters. He never made it. The man with the Motorola was hit by an American bomb. After the fight, wounded Taliban members were carried into Suran Dara for treatment. “Everyone supports the Taliban on both sides of the border,” one of the villagers we spoke with said.
Later, an American analyst briefed by officials in Washington confirmed the villagers’ account. “There have been dozens of incidents where there have been exchanges of fire,” he said.
That American and Pakistani soldiers are fighting one another along what was meant to be a border between allies highlights the extraordinarily chaotic situation unfolding inside the Pakistani tribal areas, where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban, along with Al Qaeda and other foreign fighters, enjoy freedom from American attacks.
But the incident also raises one of the more fundamental questions of the long war against Islamic militancy, and one that looms larger as the American position inside Afghanistan deteriorates: Whose side is Pakistan really on?
PAKISTAN’S WILD, LARGELY ungoverned tribal areas have become an untouchable base for Islamic militants to attack Americans and Afghans across the border. Inside the tribal areas, Taliban warlords have taken near-total control, pushing aside the Pakistani government and imposing their draconian form of Islam. And for more than a year now, they have been sending suicide bombers against government and military targets in Pakistan, killing hundreds of people. American and Pakistani investigators say they believe it was Baitullah Mehsud, the strongest of FATA’s Taliban leaders, who dispatched assassins last December to kill Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister. With much of the North-West Frontier Province, which borders the tribal areas, also now under their control, the Taliban are increasingly in a position to threaten the integrity of the Pakistani state.
Then there is Al Qaeda. According to American officials and counterterrorism experts, the organization has rebuilt itself and is using its sanctuaries inside the tribal areas to plan attacks against the United States and Europe. Since 2004, six major terrorist plots against Europe or the United States — including the successful suicide attacks in London that killed 52 people in July 2005 — have been traced back to Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University. Hoffman says he fears that Al Qaeda could be preparing a major attack before the American presidential election. “I’m convinced they are planning something,” he told me.
At the center of all this stands the question of whether Pakistan really wants to control the Talibs and their Qaeda allies ensconced in the tribal areas — and whether it really can.
This was not supposed to be a major worry. After the attacks of Sept. 11, President Pervez Musharraf threw his lot in with the United States. Pakistan has helped track down Al Qaeda suspects, launched a series of attacks against militants inside the tribal areas — a new offensive got under way just weeks ago — and given many assurances of devotion to the antiterrorist cause. For such efforts, Musharraf and the Pakistani government have been paid handsomely, receiving more than $10 billion in American money since 2001.
But as the incident on the Afghan border suggests, little in Pakistan is what it appears. For years, the survival of Pakistan’s military and civilian leaders has depended on a double game: assuring the United States that they were vigorously repressing Islamic militants — and in some cases actually doing so — while simultaneously tolerating and assisting the same militants. From the anti-Soviet fighters of the 1980s and the Taliban of the 1990s to the homegrown militants of today, Pakistan’s leaders have been both public enemies and private friends.
When the game works, it reaps great rewards: billions in aid to boost the Pakistani economy and military and Islamist proxies to extend the government’s reach into Afghanistan and India.
Pakistan’s double game has rested on two premises: that the country’s leaders could keep the militants under control and that they could keep the United States sufficiently placated to keep the money and weapons flowing. But what happens when the game spins out of control? What happens when the militants you have been encouraging grow too strong and set their sights on Pakistan itself? What happens when the bluff no longer works?
II. Being a Warlord
Late in June, to great fanfare, the Pakistani military began what it described as a decisive offensive to rout the Taliban from Khyber agency, one of seven tribal areas that make up the FATA. “Forces Move In on Militants,” declared a headline in Dawn, one of Pakistan’s most influential newspapers. Reporters were kept away, but footage on Pakistani television showed troops advancing behind trucks and troop carriers. The Americans were pleased. “We think that’s a positive development and certainly hope and expect that this government will continue,” Tom Casey, the deputy spokesman at the State Department, said.
The situation was serious indeed: Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province and just east of Khyber agency, was almost entirely surrounded by Taliban militias, which had begun making forays into the city. The encirclement of Peshawar was the culmination of the Taliban’s advance: first they conquered the tribal areas, then much of the North-West Frontier Province, and now they were aiming for the province’s capital itself. The Talibs were cutting their well-known medieval path: shutting girls’ schools, banishing women from the streets, blowing up CD kiosks and beating barbers for shaving beards.
A few days into the military operation, the photographer Lynsey Addario and I, dressed in traditional clothes and with a posse of gunmen protecting us, rode into Khyber agency ourselves. “Entry by Foreigners Prohibited Beyond This Point,” the sign said on the way in. As we drove past the dun-colored buildings and corrugated-tin shops, every trace of government authority vanished. No policemen, no checkpoints, no guards. Nothing to keep us from our appointment with the Taliban.
It was a Friday afternoon, and our guides suggested we pull off the main road until prayers were over; local Taliban enforcers, they said, would not take kindly to anyone skipping prayers. For a couple of hours we waited inside the home of an uncle of one of our guides, listening to the muezzin call the locals to battle.
“What is the need of the day?” a man implored in Pashto over a loudspeaker. “Holy war — holy war is the need of the day!”
After a couple of hours, we resumed our journey, traveling down a mostly empty road. And that is when it struck me: there was no evidence, anywhere, of the military operation that had made the news. There were no Pakistani soldiers, no trucks, no tanks. Nothing.
After a couple of miles, we turned off the road and headed down a sandy path toward a high-walled compound guarded by young men with guns. I had come to my destination: Takya, the home village of Haji Namdar, a Taliban commander who had taken control of a large swath of Khyber agency.
Pulling into Namdar’s compound, I felt transported back in time to the Kabul of the 1990s, when the Taliban were at their zenith. A group of men and boys — jittery, clutching rifles and rocket-propelled grenades — sat in the bed of a Toyota Hi-Lux, the same model of truck the Taliban used to ride to victory in Afghanistan. A flag nearly identical to that of the Afghan movement — a pair of swords crossed against a white background — fluttered in the heavy air. Even the name of Namdar’s group, the Vice and Virtue brigade, came straight from the Taliban playbook: in the 1990s, bands of young men under the same name terrorized Afghanistan, flogging men for shaving their beards, caning women for walking alone and thrashing children for flying kites.
The young fighters were chattering excitedly about a missile that had recently destroyed one of their ammunition dumps. An American missile, the kids said. “It was a plane without a pilot,” one of the boys explained through an interpreter. His eyes darted back and forth among his fellows. “We saw a flash. And then the building exploded.”
His description matched that of a Predator, an airborne drone that America uses to hunt militants in the tribal areas. Publicly, at least, the Predator is the only American presence the Pakistani government has so far allowed inside its borders.
We walked into the compound’s main building. In a corner, Namdar sat on the floor, wearing a traditional salwar kameez, but also a vest that looked as if it had been plucked from a three-piece suit. He stood to shake my hand, and he gave a small bow. To break the ice, I handed him a map of Pakistan and asked him to show me where we were. Namdar peered at the chart for several seconds, his eyes registering nothing. He handed it to one of his deputies. He resumed his stare.
Trying again, I asked about the Pakistani military operation — the one that was supposed to be unfolding right now, chasing the Taliban from Khyber.
Why, I asked Namdar, aren’t the Pakistani forces coming after you?
“The government cannot do anything to us, because we are fighting the holy war,” he said. “We are fighting the foreigners — it is our obligation. They are killing innocent people.” Namdar’s aides, one of whom spoke fluent English, looked at him and shook their heads to make him speak more cautiously. Namdar carried on.
“When the Americans kill innocent people, we must take revenge,” he said.
Tell me about that, I asked Namdar, and his aides again shook their heads. Finally Namdar changed his line. “Well, we can’t stop anyone from going across” into Afghanistan, he said. “I’m not saying we send them ourselves.” And with that, Namdar raised his hand, declining to offer any more details.
By many accounts — on the streets, among Western analysts, even according to his own deputies — Namdar was regularly training and dispatching young men to fight and blow themselves up in Afghanistan. An aide, Munsif Khan, told me that his group had sent “hundreds of people” to fight the Americans. At one point, he described for me how the Vice and Virtue brigade had recently set a minimum-age requirement for suicide bombers. “We are opposed to children carrying out suicide bombings,” Khan said. “We get so many young people coming to us — 15, 16 years old — wanting to go on martyrdom operations. This is not the age to be a suicide bomber. Any man who wants to be a suicide bomber should be at least 20 or 25.”
Khan himself, a former magazine reporter in Peshawar, had been gravely wounded in a car-bomb attack last year. His feet were mangled, and he could walk only with crutches. A bloody struggle for power rages among the many Taliban warlords of the FATA; Khan said his assailants had likely been dispatched by Baitullah Mehsud, the powerful warlord in South Waziristan, because Namdar had refused to submit to Mehsud’s authority.
Another of Namdar’s aides had spoken enthusiastically of his commander’s prowess in battle. “He is a great fighter!” the aide told me. “He goes to Afghanistan every month to fight the Americans.”
So here was Namdar — Taliban chieftain, enforcer of Islamic law, usurper of the Pakistani government and trainer and facilitator of suicide bombers in Afghanistan — sitting at home, not three miles from Peshawar, untouched by the Pakistani military operation that was supposedly unfolding around us.
What’s going on? I asked the warlord. Why aren’t they coming for you?
“I cannot lie to you,” Namdar said, smiling at last. “The army comes in, and they fire at empty buildings. It is a drama — it is just to entertain.”
Entertain whom? I asked.
“America,” he said.
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III. Playing the Game
The idea that Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies could simultaneously be aiding the Taliban and like-minded militants while taking money from the United States is not as far-fetched as it may seem.
The relationship dates to the 1980s, when, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan became the conduit for billions of dollars of American and Saudi money for the Afghan rebels. Pakistan’s leader, the fundamentalist Gen. Zia ul-Haq, funneled the bulk of the cash to the most religiously extreme guerrilla leaders. After the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989, Pakistani military and intelligence services kept on supporting Islamist militants, notably in the Muslim-majority Indian state of Kashmir, where they threw their support behind a local uprising. Through time, with the Pakistanis closely involved, the Kashmiri movement was taken over by Islamist extremists and foreign fighters who moved easily between Pakistan and Kashmir.
Then, in 1994, Pakistani leaders made their most fateful move. Alarmed by the civil war that engulfed Afghanistan following the Soviet retreat, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her government intervened on behalf of a small group of former anti-Soviet fighters known for their religious fanaticism. They called themselves “the students”: the Taliban.
With Pakistan providing support and the United States looking the other way, the Taliban took control of Kabul in 1996. “We created the Taliban,” Nasrullah Babar, the interior minister under Benazir Bhutto, told me in an interview at his home in Peshawar in 1999. “Mrs. Bhutto had a vision: that through a peaceful Afghanistan, Pakistan could extend its influence into the resource-rich territories of Central Asia.” That never happened — the Taliban, even with Pakistani support, never completed the conquest of Afghanistan. But the training camps they ran, sometimes with the help of Pakistani intelligence officers, were beacons to Islamic militants from around the world.
By all accounts, Pakistan’s spymasters were never terribly discriminating about who showed up in their training camps. In 1998, when President Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes against camps in Afghanistan following Al Qaeda’s bombings of American embassies in East Africa, several trainers from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, were killed. Osama bin Laden was supposed to be there when the missiles struck but apparently had already left.
After 9/11, President George W. Bush and other senior American officials declared in the strongest terms that Pakistani leaders had to end their support for the Taliban and other Islamic militants. Pakistan’s military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, promised to do so.
Yet the game did not end; it merely changed. In the years after 9/11, Musharraf often made great shows of going after militants inside Pakistan, while at the same time supporting and protecting them.
In 2002, for instance, Musharraf ordered the arrest of some 2,000 suspected militants, many of whom had trained in Pakistani-sponsored camps. And then, quietly, he released nearly all of them. Another revealing moment came in 2005, when Fazlur Rehman, the leader of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, one of the most radical Islamist parties, denounced Musharraf for denying the existence of jihadi groups. Everyone knows, Rehman said in a speech before Pakistan’s National Assembly, that the government supports the holy warriors. “We will have to openly tell the world whether we want to support jihadis or crack down on them,” Rehman declared. “We cannot afford to be hypocritical any more.”
In 2006, a senior ISI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told a New York Times reporter that he regarded Serajuddin Haqqani as one of the ISI’s intelligence assets. “We are not apologetic about this,” the ISI official said. For a presumed ally of the United States, that was a stunning admission: Haqqani, an Afghan, is currently one of the Taliban’s most senior commanders battling the Americans in eastern Afghanistan. His father, Jalaluddin, is a longtime associate of bin Laden’s. The Haqqanis are believed to be overseeing operations from a hiding place in the Pakistani tribal agency of North Waziristan.
But such evidence, however intriguing, fails to answer the critical questions: Exactly who in the Pakistani government is helping the militants and why?
THE MOST COMMON THEORY offered to explain Pakistan’s continued contact with Islamic militants is the country’s obsession with India. Pakistan has fought three major wars with India, from which it split violently upon independence from Britain in 1947. To the east, the Pakistani military and intelligence services have long tolerated and sometimes directed militants moving into Indian Kashmir. To the west, Afghanistan has long been seen as a potentially critical arena of competition with India. After the U.S.-led invasion in the fall of 2001, for example, India lost no time in setting up consulates throughout Afghanistan and beginning an extensive aid program. According to Pakistani and Western officials, Pakistan’s officer corps remains obsessed by the prospect of Indian domination of Afghanistan should the Americans leave. The Taliban are seen as a counterweight to Indian influence. “We are saving the Taliban for a rainy day,” one former Pakistani official put it to me.
Another explanation is growing popular hatred of the United States. Pakistan’s leaders — whether Musharraf or the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, or the country’s leading civilian politicians — are finding it more and more difficult to mobilize their own army and intelligence services to act against the Taliban and other militants inside the country. And while the Pakistan Army used to be a predominantly secular institution, increasingly it is being led by Islamist-minded officers.
The pro-Islamist and anti-American sentiments pervading the armed forces might help explain why a group of ill-trained, underpaid Pakistani Frontier Corps soldiers would open fire on American troops fighting the Taliban. Those same sentiments buttress the notion, offered by some American and Pakistani officials, that rogue officers inside the army and ISI are supporting the militants against the wishes of their superiors.
Finally, there is the problem of the Pakistan Army’s competence. For all the myths that officers like Musharraf have spread about the institution, the simple fact is that it isn’t very good. The Pakistan Army has lost every war it has ever fought. And it isn’t trained to battle an insurgency. Each of the half-dozen offensives the army has launched into the tribal areas since 2004 has left it bloodied and humbled.
For all these reasons, when it comes to the militants in their midst, it’s easier for Pakistan to do as little as possible.
“There is a growing Islamist feeling in the military, and it’s inseparable from anti-Americanism,” I was told by a Western military officer with several years’ experience in the region. “The vast majority of Pakistani officers feel they are fighting our war. There is a lot of sympathy for the Taliban. The result is that the Pakistanis do as little as they possibly can to combat the militants.”
These are reasonable explanations, offered by reasonable people. But are such explanations enough? The more Pakistanis I talked to, the more I came to believe that the most reasonable explanations were not necessarily the most plausible ones.
ONE SWELTERING AFTERNOON in July, I ventured into the elegant home of a former Pakistani official who recently retired after several years of serving in senior government posts. We sat in his book-lined study. A servant brought us tea and biscuits.
Was it the obsession with India that led the Pakistani military to support the Taliban? I asked him.
“Yes,” he said.
Or is it the anti-Americanism and pro-Islamic feelings in the army?
“Yes,” he said, that too.
And then the retired Pakistani official offered another explanation — one that he said could never be discussed in public. The reason the Pakistani security services support the Taliban, he said, is for money: after the 9/11 attacks, the Pakistani military concluded that keeping the Taliban alive was the surest way to win billions of dollars in aid that Pakistan needed to survive. The military’s complicated relationship with the Taliban is part of what the official called the Pakistani military’s “strategic games.” Like other Pakistanis, this former senior official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of what he was telling me.
“Pakistan is dependent on the American money that these games with the Taliban generate,” the official told me. “The Pakistani economy would collapse without it. This is how the game works.”
As an example, he cited the Pakistan Army’s first invasion of the tribal areas — of South Waziristan in 2004. Called Operation Shakai, the offensive was ostensibly aimed at ridding the area of Taliban militants. From an American perspective, the operation was a total failure. The army invaded, fought and then made a deal with one of the militant commanders, Nek Mohammed. The agreement was capped by a dramatic meeting between Mohammed and Safdar Hussein, one of the most senior officers in the Pakistan Army.
“The corps commander was flown in on a helicopter,” the former official said. “They had this big ceremony, and they embraced. They called each other mujahids. ”
“Mujahid” is the Arabic word for “holy warrior.” The ceremony, in fact, was captured on videotape, and the tape has been widely distributed.
“The army agreed to compensate the locals for collateral damage,” the official said. “Where do you think that money went? It went to the Taliban. Who do you think paid the bill? The Americans. This is the way the game works. The Taliban is attacked, but it is never destroyed.
“It’s a game,” the official said, wrapping up our conversation. “The U.S. is being taken for a ride.”
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IV. A New Government, A New Tack
In February, nationwide elections lifted to power Pakistan’s first full-fledged civilian government in nine years. The elections followed the tumultuous events of Benazir Bhutto’s return from exile and her assassination.
If there was any reason to hope that the government’s games with the Taliban would end, this was it: Pakistan’s new leaders declared they had a popular mandate to steer the country in a new direction. That meant, implicitly, reining in the military and the spy agencies. At the same time, the country’s new civilian leaders, led by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, made it clear that they would not be taking orders from officials in the Bush administration, whom they resented for having supported Musharraf for so long. (Musharraf, facing impeachment, finally resigned from the presidency last month.) Instead of launching military operations into the tribal areas, Pakistan’s new leaders promised to embark on negotiations to neutralize the militants.
The leader of this new civilian effort in the tribal areas is Owais Ahmed Ghani, governor of the North-West Frontier Province. Since February, Ghani is said to have embarked on a series of negotiations in tribal areas.
I went to see Ghani earlier this summer at the governor’s mansion in Peshawar, inside a lovely compound built by the British at the height of their imperial power. Ghani seemed as if he might have stepped from the Raj himself: he gave off an air of faint amusement, a British affectation common in the upper tiers of Pakistani society. On his wall hung a British-made Enfield rifle, preserved from colonial days. Outside, peacocks strolled across the manicured lawn.
“You know the joke about the Pathans,” Ghani began, using the old British name for the Pashtuns, the ethnic group that dominates the tribal areas and the Taliban. “A Pathan’s heart hammers harder when he has a gun than a woman!”
Suddenly turning serious, Ghani spelled out a state-of-the-art counterinsurgency campaign to defeat the militants in control of the FATA. He emphasized that the purely military approach to the tribal areas had failed — not merely because the army has been unable to succeed militarily but also because it no longer could count on popular support. “No government can afford to make war on its own people for very long,” Ghani said.
The new approach, Ghani said, would entail negotiations and economic development. Under the plan, the government would pour billions into the region over the next five years to build schools, roads and health clinics. (The United States has agreed to pitch in $750 million.) The political negotiations, Ghani said, would be conducted by civilian members of the government and the region’s tribal leaders, not, as in the past, by military officers and Taliban militants. Ghani called this new strategy “Jang and Jirga” — the Pashto words for “war” and “tribal council.” Carrot and stick.
“The idea is to drive a wedge between the militants and the people,” Ghani said. “There will be no negotiations with the militants themselves.”
Ghani’s previous post had been as governor of Baluchistan Province, to the south, where he had weakened an ethnically based insurgency that had churned on for decades. He said he was confident he could do the same here. “Don’t underestimate the Pakistani desire to confront the militants,” he insisted. “Ninety percent of the country is behind us.”
It was sundown when Ghani and I finished talking. As I strolled across the grounds of the governor’s compound, a group of soldiers had just begun lowering the Pakistani flag. Another man blew into a bugle, playing “A Hundred Pipers,” a Scottish air.
FOR GHANI AND PAKISTAN’S civilian government, the crucial players in achieving peace are traditional tribal leaders whose power is independent of the Taliban or other militants. This method of governing the tribal areas — indirect rule through local chiefs — dates back to the British imperial period. The British put tribal leaders — known as maliks — on the payroll to stand in for the central government, which imposed no taxes or customs duties and, in turn, did very little. At the same time, imperial administrators reserved for themselves extraordinary powers of arrest and punishment that extended to collective reprisals against entire tribes. The purpose of the malik system was to keep the tribal areas quiet and at least nominally under the thumb of the imperial government. This preserved a feudal political structure, and feudal levels of economic development, into the 20th century.
The British system, with a little tinkering, has survived to this day: the FATA stands apart from the rest of Pakistan, with little or no government presence and little or no development. Not 1 person in 5 can read or write. Pakistani political parties are banned. Universal suffrage wasn’t allowed until 1997. Until recently, tribesmen could claim no protection by Pakistan’s Constitution or its courts. Inside the FATA, the locals do not even change the time on their clocks, as other Pakistanis do, when daylight savings begins. “English time,” it is called.
A few days after my talk with Ghani, I met an elder of one of the two main tribes of South Waziristan. He refused to give his name and insisted that I refer to him as Jan. South Waziristan is believed to contain the largest number of militant Arabs and other foreign fighters, possibly even bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. To be more specific about Jan — to use his name, to identify the tribe he leads, to name the town where he lives — would almost certainly, he said, result in his death at the hands of the militants and Taliban fighters who control South Waziristan.
“There are many Arab fighters living in South Waziristan,” Jan told me. “Sometimes you see them in the town; you hear them speaking Arabic.
“But the important Arabs are not in the city,” he continued. “They are in the mountains.”
Important Arabs? I asked.
“They ride horses, Arabian horses; we don’t have horses like this in Waziristan,” Jan said. “The people from the town take food to the Arabs’ horses in the mountains. They have seen the horses. They have seen the Arabs. These horses eat better than the common people in the town.”
How do you know?
“I am a leader of my tribe. People come to me — everyone comes to me. They tell me everything.”
What about Osama? I asked. Is he in South Waziristan?
“Osama?” Jan said. “I don’t know. But they” — the Arabs in the mountains — “are important.”
The labor it took to persuade Jan to speak to me is a measure of what has become of the area over which his family still officially presides. Since it was not possible for me to go to South Waziristan — “Baitullah Mehsud would cut off your head,” the Taliban leader, Namdar, told me — I had to persuade Jan to come to Peshawar. For several days, military checkpoints and roadblocks made it impossible for Jan to travel. Finally, after two weeks, Jan left his home at midnight in a taxi so no one would notice either him or his car.
Jan had reason to worry. Seven members of his family — his father, two brothers, two uncles and two cousins — have been murdered by militants who inhabit the area. Jan said he believed his father was killed by Uzbek and Tajik gunmen who fled to South Waziristan after the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. His father had opposed them. Jan’s cousins, he said, were killed by men working for Baitullah Mehsud. Jan’s father was a malik, and thousands of Waziri tribesmen came to his funeral: “the largest funeral in the history of Waziristan,” Jan said.
The rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda has come at the expense of the maliks, who have been systematically murdered and marginalized in a campaign to destroy the old order. In South Waziristan, where Mehsud presides, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have killed more than 150 maliks since 2005, all but destroying the tribal system. And there are continual reminders of what happens to the survivors who do not understand this — who, for example, attempt to talk with Pakistan’s civilian government and assert their authority. In June, Mehsud’s men gunned down 28 tribal leaders who had formed a “peace committee” in South Waziristan. Their bodies were dumped on the side of a road. “This shows what happens when the tribal elders try to challenge Baitullah Mehsud,” Jan said.
Like Taliban militias in other parts of Pakistan, Mehsud’s men have been strong-arming families into turning over their young sons to join. “They have taken my own son to be a suicide bomber,” Jan said. “He is gone.” The Talibs, he said, now control the disbursement of all government money that comes into the area.
The Taliban have not achieved this by violence alone. They have capitalized on the resentment many Pakistanis feel toward the hereditary maliks and the government they represent. Taliban leaders and their foot soldiers come mostly from the lower classes. Mehsud, the Taliban chieftain, was an unemployed man who spent his time lifting weights before he picked up a gun. Manghal Bagh, the warlord in Khyber agency whom the Pakistan military went after in June, swept public buses. “They are illiterate people, and now they have power,” Jan said.
EVERYWHERE I TRAVELED during my stay in the tribal areas and in Peshawar, I met impoverished Pakistanis who told me Robin Hood-like stories about how the Taliban had challenged the wealthy and powerful people on behalf of the little guys. Hamidullah, for instance, was an illiterate wheat farmer living in Khyber agency when, in 2002, a wealthy landowner seized his home and six acres of fields. Hamidullah and his family were forced to eke out a living from a nearby shanty. Neither the local malik nor the government agent, Hamidullah told me, would intervene on his behalf. Then came Namdar, the Taliban commander. He hauled the rich man before a Vice and Virtue council and ordered him to give back Hamidullah’s home and farm.
Now Hamidullah is one of Namdar’s loyal militiamen.
“There are so many guys like me,” he said, cradling a Kalashnikov.
The social revolution that has swept the tribal areas does not bode well for the plans, laid out by Governor Ghani, to oust the Taliban by boosting the tribal elders. Nor does it hold out much promise for the Americans, who have expressed hope that they could do in the FATA what they were able to do with the Sunni tribes in Iraq. There, local tribesmen rose up against, and have substantially weakened, Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia.
Indeed, in some cases the distinction between tribe and Taliban has vanished altogether. Baitullah Mehsud, for instance, comes from the Mehsud tribe, one of the two largest clans of South Waziristan. (“The Taliban is the Mehsud tribe,” Jan said. “They are one and the same now.” )
Mehsud is the most powerful of dozens of Taliban chieftains who control the tribal areas. Some of them answer to Mehsud; some do not. The others are no less brutal: in July, for instance, in Bajaur tribal agency, the Taliban leader Faqir Mohammed staged a public execution of two men “convicted” of spying for the United States. One was shot; the other beheaded. A photograph of the men’s last moments was displayed on the front page of The News, a Pakistani newspaper.
The chieftains’ rivalries are intense, too. Six weeks after I met Namdar, he was gunned down by one of his bodyguards, in the very house where I met him. It isn’t entirely clear who ordered the killing of Namdar, but many of his followers suspect it was Mehsud.
V. The Game Changes
While most of the Taliban chieftains do share a basic ideology, they appear to be divided into two distinct groups: those who send fighters into Afghanistan to fight the Americans and those who do not. And that is an important distinction for the Pakistanis, as well as for the Americans.
After the rout of the Taliban government in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, many militants fled across the border, and the Taliban inside Pakistan grew. At first, they largely confined their activities to the tribal areas themselves, from where they could send fighters into Afghanistan. That started to change last year. Militants began moving out of the FATA and into the rest of Pakistan, taking control of the towns and villages in the neighboring North-West Frontier Province. Militants began attacking Pakistani police and soldiers. Inside the FATA, Mehsud was forming Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella party of some 40 Taliban groups that claimed as its goal the domination of Pakistan. Suddenly, the Taliban was not merely a group of militants who were useful in extending Pakistan’s influence into Afghanistan. They were a threat to Pakistan itself.
The turning point came in July last year, when the government laid siege to a mosque in Islamabad called Lal Masjid, where dozens of militants had taken shelter. The presence of the militants inside Islamabad itself, Pakistan’s stately, secular-minded capital, was shock enough to the country’s ruling class. Then, after eight days, on orders from Musharraf, security forces stormed the mosque, sparking a battle that left 87 dead. The massacre at Lal Masjid became a rallying cry for Islamic militants across the country. Mehsud and other Islamists declared war on the government and launched a campaign of suicide bombings; there were 60 in 2007 alone. In an act of astonishing humiliation, Mehsud’s men captured 300 Pakistan Army soldiers that came into South Waziristan; Mehsud eventually let them go. And then, in December, a suicide bomber, possibly dispatched by Mehsud, killed Bhutto.
The bloody siege of Lal Masjid, Western and Pakistani officials say, finally convinced senior Pakistani military and ISI leaders that the Taliban fighters they had been nurturing for so many years had grown too strong. “Now, the militants are autonomous,” one retired Pakistani official told me. “No one can control them anymore.”
IN JANUARY OF THIS YEAR, Pakistan opened an offensive into South Waziristan that was far fiercer than any that had come before. It inflicted hundreds of casualties on Mehsud’s forces and caused at least 15,000 families to flee. Then, after just three weeks, the operation ended. As they had before, Pakistani commanders and Mehsud struck a deal. But this time, remarkably, the deal seemed to stick. The army dismantled its checkpoints and pulled back its troops, and the suicide bombings all but stopped.
What happened? A draft of the peace agreement struck between the army and Mehsud may help explain. The agreement itself, which has not been officially released, provides a look into the Pakistani government’s new strategy toward the militants. According to the agreement, members of the Mehsud tribe agreed to refrain from attacking the Pakistani state and from setting up a parallel government. They agreed to accept the rule of law.
But sending fighters into Afghanistan? About that, the agreement says nothing at all.
And that appears to be the essence of the new Pakistani game. As long as the militants refrain from attacking the state, they are free to do what they want inside the tribal areas — and across the border in Afghanistan. While peace has largely prevailed between the government and the militants inside Pakistan since earlier this year, the infiltration of Taliban fighters from the tribal areas into Afghanistan has risen sharply. Even the current Pakistani offensive, according to Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, the top American commander in eastern Afghanistan, has failed to slow the influx.
In short, the chaos has been redirected.
This must have been why Namdar told me with such confidence that “fighting the jihad” insulated him from the Pakistani government. The real purpose of the government’s Khyber operation became clear: to tame Manghal Bagh, the warlord who does not send men into Afghanistan and who was encroaching on Peshawar. Indeed, after more than a week of enduring the brunt of the army’s assault, Bagh agreed to respect the Pakistani state. Namdar had been left alone by government troops all the while.
If channeling the Taliban into Afghanistan and against NATO and the Americans is indeed the new Pakistani game, then one more thing is also clear: the leaders of the Pakistan Army and the ISI must still be confident they can manage the militants. And it is certainly the military and ISI officers who are doing the managing — not the country’s elected leaders. When I asked Jan, the tribal elder, about the negotiations that Ghani had described for me — talks between the country’s new civilian leaders and FATA’s tribal elders — Jan laughed. “The only negotiations are between the army and the Taliban, between the army and Baitullah Mehsud,” he said. “There are no government officials taking part in any negotiations. There are no tribal elders taking part. I’m a tribal elder. I think I would know.”
Western officials agreed that the influence of Pakistan’s new civilian leaders over strategy in the tribal areas was close to nil. “Until the civilians get their act together, the military will play the dominant role,” a Western analyst in Pakistan, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told me. The parliamentary coalition cobbled together earlier this year is already falling apart.
“It’s a very close relationship,” Jan said, describing the meetings between the Pakistan Army and the Taliban. “The army and the Taliban are friends. Whenever a Taliban fighter is killed, army officers go to his funeral. They bring money to the family.”
Indeed, American officials said in July that the ISI helped Jalaluddin Haqqani’s fighters bomb the Indian Embassy in Kabul. The attack killed 54, including an Indian defense attaché. American officials said the evidence of the ISI’s involvement was overwhelming. “It was sort of this ‘aha’ moment,” one of them said.
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VI. The Path of Jihad
After I met Namdar, the Taliban commander, he ordered some of his young fighters to take me to the Afghan border. The mountains that ran along the border shimmered in the monsoon rains, and a new stream was running down from the peaks. It was this range, called the White Mountains, through which Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001. The Afghan frontier, the fighters told me, was a day’s walk over the hills.
It was along a similar route, two years ago, that an 18-year-old Pakistani named Mudasar trekked into Afghanistan to blow himself up. His family, who live in the town of Shakhas in Khyber agency, told me they learned of his fate in a telephone call. “Your son has carried out a suicide operation inside of Afghanistan,” a man said without identifying himself. There was no corpse to send home to Pakistan, so Mudasar’s family and the rest of the villagers of Shakhas gathered for a ghaibana, a funeral without a body.
“It is very respectable to die this way,” Abu Omar, Mudasar’s brother, told me one day at a cafe in Peshawar. Mudasar and Abu Omar were both part of the tide of young Pakistani men that has been surging across the Afghan border to fight the Americans. Abu Omar described his brother as intensely religious, without hobbies — unlike Abu Omar himself, whose passion was playing fullback on the soccer field. “Mudasar would lie awake at night crying for the martyred people in Afghanistan,” Abu Omar said.
What finally drove Mudasar to want to kill Americans was a single spectacular event. In January 2006, the Americans maneuvered a Predator drone across the border into Pakistan and fired a missile at a building they thought contained Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s deputy leader. The missile reportedly missed Zawahiri by a couple of hours, but it killed his son-in-law and several other senior Al Qaeda members. A number of civilians died as well, including women and children. Television footage from the scene, showing corpses lying amid the rubble, sparked protests across Pakistan.
“My brother saw that and resolved to become a martyr,” Abu Omar told me.
Confiding in only his mother and brother, Mudasar enrolled in a local camp for suicide bombers. Abu Omar declined to tell me who ran the camp or where it was, saying such things were military secrets. “There are many such camps,” he said and shrugged.
It was during our second meeting, in Peshawar’s main shopping area, that Abu Omar agreed to talk about his own mission across the border. We sat in a shabby second-floor office in the Saddar bazaar. Last October, following the death of his brother, Abu Omar enrolled in one of the Taliban training camps inside Khyber agency operated by Mehsud’s organization. The camp, Abu Omar said, was split into three sections: one for bomb making, one for reconnaissance and ambushes and one for firing large weapons. Abu Omar’s section was given a heavy machine gun.
“Big enough to shoot down helicopters,” he said.
Abu Omar spoke listlessly but in great detail. The militant camp sat within a few miles of the Afghan border, he said, and only a few miles from a Pakistan military base. Most of the volunteers were Pakistani, he said, although foreigners trained, too, including a Muslim convert from Great Britain.
“He had blond hair, but a very long beard,” Abu Omar said, breaking into his only smile of the afternoon. “A good Muslim.”
When the time finally came, Abu Omar said, he and about 20 of his comrades moved at night to a safe house near the Afghan frontier, in Mohmand tribal agency. They were just across the border from Kunar, one of the most violent of Afghanistan’s provinces. There, he said, he and his comrades waited for two days until the way was clear. Then, when the signal came, they moved across. None of the men, Abu Omar said, were particularly worried about what would happen if they were spotted by Pakistani troops. “They are Muslims,” he told me. “They support what we are doing.”
Fighting in Afghanistan, Abu Omar said, was a hit-and-miss, sometimes tedious affair: once across the border, he and the other fighters sat inside another safe house for two days, waiting for word to launch their attack. Finally, Abu Omar’s commander told them that there were too many American and Afghan soldiers about and that they would have to return to Pakistan.
The second time, the mission worked. Crossing into Kunar once more, Abu Omar and the other fighters attacked a line of Afghan army check posts just inside the border. Omar put his heavy machine gun to good use, he said, and four of the posts were overrun. “We killed seven Afghan soldiers,” he claimed. “Unfortunately, there were no Americans.”
Their attack successful, Abu Omar and his comrades trekked back across the Pakistani border. The sun was just rising. The fighters saw a Pakistani checkpoint and headed straight for it.
“They gave us some water,” he said of the Pakistani border guards. “And then we continued on our way.”
VII. The Rose Garden
From the Rose Garden of the White House, you could just make out the profile of the Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, sitting across from President Bush inside the Oval Office. It was Gilani’s first official visit and, by all accounts, not a typical one. That same day, July 28, as Gilani’s plane neared the United States, a Predator drone had fired a missile into a compound in South Waziristan, killing Abu Khabab al-Masri, an Al Qaeda poison and bombing expert. The hit was a significant one, and Al Qaeda posted a eulogy to al-Masri on the Internet a couple of days later. Gilani, according to the American analyst who was briefed by officials, knew nothing of the incident when he arrived in Washington. “They just did it,” the analyst said. The Americans pressed Gilani, telling him that his military and security services were out of his control and that they posed a threat to Pakistan and to American forces in Afghanistan.
At the Rose Garden, though, appearances were kept up in grand style. Bush and Gilani strode from the Oval Office side by side. Gilani laughed as the two leaders stopped to face the assembled reporters. Over to the side, to the right of the reporters, the senior members of Bush’s foreign-policy team had gathered, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, John Negroponte.
“Pakistan is a strong ally and a vibrant democracy,” Bush said. “We talked about the common threat we face: extremists who are very dangerous people. We talked about the need for us to make sure that the Afghan border is secure as best as possible: Pakistan has made a very strong commitment to that.”
“Thank you,” Gilani said, hesitating, looking at Bush. “Now?”
“Please, yes, absolutely,” the president said.
Gilani played his part. “We are committed to fight against those extremists and terrorists who are destroying and making the world not safe,” Gilani said. “There are few militants — they are hand-picked people, militants, who are disturbing this peace,” he concluded. “And I assured Mr. President we’ll work together for democracy and for the prosperity and peace of the world.”
And then the two men walked together back into the White House, with Rice and Negroponte trailing after them.
Dexter Filkins, a correspondent for The Times, reported from Afghanistan and Pakistan from 1997 to 2002. He is the author of ‘‘The Forever War.’’
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07pakistan-t.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
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BBG:
That was an excellent read, thank you for taking the time to post.
Respects to the reporter for both courage and quality of reporting.
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@ Everyone:
What do we make of the following? I continue to deepen in my concern that our strategy in Afg-Pak is conceptually clueless and unsound.
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http://www.longwarjournal.org/archiv...loses_tork.php
Pakistan closes Torkham border crossing, shuts down NATO's supply line
By Bill RoggioSeptember 6, 2008 12:04 AM
Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the tribal areas. Map from PBS' Frontline. Click to view.
Pakistan closed the Torkham border crossing in the Khyber tribal agency. The road through the Khyber Pass is NATO's primary supply line into Afghanistan.
The government claimed Taliban threats and poor security on the strategic road into Afghanistan forced the closure. The road has been shut down exclusively for NATO traffic.
"All Afghanistan-bound supplies for the International Security Assistance Force have been stopped as the [Torkham] highway is vulnerable," the Khyber Agency’s political agent told Daily Times.
According to Dawn, the closure only applies to fuel trucks heading to Afghanistan. But trucks carrting supplies other than fuel have been held up at the border. "Over 20 heavily-loaded vehicles, including oil tankers, were stranded at the border town of Torkham following the government’s decision," the Pakistani newspaper reported.
An estimated 70 percent of NATO supplies move through Khyber to resupply troops fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The bulk of NATO's supplies arrive in the port city of Karachi, move north to Peshawar, and head west to the Torkham crossing into Afghanistan and the final destination in Kabul. The rest of the supplies pass through the Chaman border crossing point in Baluchistan or arrive via air.
The Taliban has increased attacks against trucks shipping NATO supplies. The group has issued death threats to Pakistani truckers hauling NATO goods into Afghanistan.
A response to US attacks in Pakistan
The closure of the Torkham crossing point to NATO traffic occurs just as the US has ramped up its cross-border strikes inside Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agencies.
The Pakistani government denied the move to close the road in Khyber to NATO traffic was related to the recent US airstrikes and a ground assault in the Waziristan tribal agencies further south.
"This decision has nothing to do with the situation in Waziristan or the US attacks,' the political agent said.”This is purely a security issue and we want no untoward incident to take place as far as supplies for ISAF are concerned." No timeframe was given for the reopening of the road for NATO supply columns.
The move to close the border occurred the same day the Pakistani military said it could respond to US attacks inside Pakistani territory.
"Pakistan reserves the right to appropriately retaliate in future," General Tariq Majid, the Chairman of Pakistan's Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, told Germany defense minister.
The US has conducted an unprecedented air campaign over the past week in North and South Waziristan. The US has conducted five cross-border attacks inside Pakistan since Aug 31. Three of the strikes occurred in North Waziristan, and two in South Waziristan.
The US has stepped up its attacks against al Qaeda and the Taliban's networks inside Pakistan over the past year. There have been 13 confirmed cross-border attacks by the US in Pakistan this year [see list below]. Five safe houses have been hit in North Waziristan, six have been hit in South Waziristan, and two have been targeted in Bajaur this year. Only 10 such cross-border strikes were recorded in 2006 and 2007 combined.
The most controversial strike involved special operations teams inserted by helicopters in a village in South Waziristan just one mile from the Afghan border on Sept. 3. This is the second recorded incident of the direct involvement of US ground troops in a raid inside Pakistan since 2006.
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Crafty: "What do we make of the following?" - The first part seems like terrible news, a border crossing closed that is essential for NATO supply lines. Reminds me of Turkey blocking us late in the planning of operation Iraqi freedom. Also a threat of retaliation for any American attack.
Far more importantly, the piece ends with this mention in passing:
"The US has conducted an unprecedented air campaign over the past week in North and South Waziristan. The US has conducted five cross-border attacks inside Pakistan since Aug 31. Three of the strikes occurred in North Waziristan, and two in South Waziristan. The US has stepped up its attacks against al Qaeda and the Taliban's networks inside Pakistan over the past year. There have been 13 confirmed cross-border attacks by the US in Pakistan this year. Five safe houses have been hit in North Waziristan, six have been hit in South Waziristan, and two have been targeted in Bajaur this year. The most controversial strike involved special operations teams inserted by helicopters in a village in South Waziristan just one mile from the Afghan border on Sept. 3."
From a 'war on terror' standpoint, this is GREAT news. This administration can't communicate or articulate (on anything) and likely has limitations on what can or should be said while a serious operation is in progress, but this information would indicate that a) we are getting specific intelligence, b) we are acting militarily on it, not limited by the border or politics, and c) we are taking these risks in hot pursuit of a successful outcome.
Killing or capturing bin Laden and his top liutenants would not be the end of our security problems, but it would be another important milestone, sending a signal to potential enemies and to our so-called allies about who is winning and who is losing in this costly effort.
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Tensions between the United States and Pakistan continue to mount. Although the U.S. Special Operations Command clearly has been conducting operations in Pakistan for years, the White House chose to make it known that the United States was prepared to conduct such operations without Pakistani permission. The head of the Pakistani military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, responded by saying, “No external force is allowed to conduct operations inside of Pakistan.” He said that he had told this directly to U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen. And, on Thursday, Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas took it a step further by saying that the army had been ordered to hit back in the face of any action by foreign forces on Pakistani territory.
The crisis with the United States comes at the worst time for the Pakistani military. The external crisis is unfolding amid a deteriorating political, economic and security situation. While Kayani and his generals appear to be willing to work with the new president, Asif Ali Zardari, and his governing Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the crisis with Washington can lead to civil-military tensions because of potential disagreements between the military and the government over how to deal with overt unilateral U.S. military action on Pakistani soil. Already there is a perception that Zardari and his PPP are more flexible on the issue. However, since the United States’ violation of Pakistani sovereignty is a politically sensitive issue, Kayani has moved to take the hard-line position. But this response should not be dismissed as merely internal Pakistani politics. There is a serious crisis going on in U.S.-Pakistani relations.
The United States has long been suspicious of the commitment of the Pakistani military, and particularly its Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), to the fight against al Qaeda. In fact, there were elements in the ISI who did not want to see former President Pervez Musharraf align with the Americans after 9/11. And there has long been suspicion among the Americans that not only wasn’t the Pakistani army doing all it could, but that some elements might be passing information about U.S. operations to al Qaeda, allowing the militants to escape.
When he spoke of unilateral action in Pakistan, U.S. President George W. Bush was saying that he was not comfortable with joint operations under these circumstances. From the point of view of the U.S. military, this has been a long time coming. Indeed, there undoubtedly have been operations in Pakistan against al Qaeda that were unilateral, but this is extending it from operations against al Qaeda to the Taliban.
The Taliban are a military organization, operating as guerrillas. They maintain base camps in Pakistan that are not detected and destroyed by the Pakistanis. In the past, their level of activity was insufficient to warrant destabilizing American relations with Pakistan. That is no longer the case. The Taliban have grown much stronger, and U.S. and NATO forces are under pressure from them. Reinforcements are being sent to them. But the base camps and the lines of supply that go into Pakistan are the center of gravity of the Taliban. The United States is no longer in a position to ignore this. The Taliban are too strong.
Therefore, the United States and Pakistan are on a collision course. The Taliban have roots in Pakistan and sympathizers in the military. Attacking the Taliban’s bases and cutting off the flow of supplies is difficult politically for Pakistan. The United States, on the other hand, is not doing well in Afghanistan. It needs the Taliban in Pakistan to be destroyed, and it is saying that if the Pakistanis don’t do it, the United States will have to — and this will take more than Special Operations forces to achieve.
This moment was bound to come. The United States could not manage Afghanistan so long as the Taliban had sanctuary in Pakistan. The Pakistanis were not going to fight a war in Pakistan to solve the American problem. So we are now down to the final crisis of the war that began seven years ago. Iraq is under control. Afghanistan is coming apart. The key to Afghanistan is Pakistan. Pakistan is unable, by itself, to deal with the Taliban. The United States has little choice but to abandon Afghanistan or go into Pakistan.
Thus the crisis.
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Jack Wheeler:
Over three years ago (April 2005) in Bye Bye Bolivia, you learned that under Evo Morales, Bolivia would someday break apart. Ever since, Evo's puppet master Hugo Chavez has desperately tried to prevent this. Now, this week, the moment of dissolution seems to have arrived.
With the lowland provinces of the "Media Luna" in outright rebellion, Morales has been unable to trust his military enough to order it to crush the rebels. The New York Times is reporting that Chavez is publicly ridiculing the Bolivian military and threatening to invade the country with Venezuelan soldiers.
One or another, Morales or the country itself as an intact nation will not be around for much longer.
***
Speaking of nations that may not be around brings up Pakistan. It's so upset over the US sending real live soldiers based in Afghanistan across its border to kill Taliban terrorists trying to kill them that the whole country is having a temper tantrum over the violation of its sacred "sovereignty."
The reason for the tantrum is that the sovereignty they demand the US "respect" doesn't exist.
I've crossed from Pakistan into Afghanistan - on foot, on horseback, by truck, even in a raft across the Kabul River - and vice versa many times. I have seen with my own eyes: there is no border. Pakistan has never exercised anything approaching sovereign authority over its border with Afghanistan.
That 1600-mile border was drawn by a British civil servant, Sir Mortimer Durand (1850-1924), in 1893 in his capacity as Foreign Secretary of British India. The government of Afghanistan has never recognized the "Durand Line" as a legitimate border - since it divides the Pushtun people (who make up the majority of Afghans) in two.
Further, the Durand Line Agreement - which the Brits claimed Afghan King Abdur Rahman Khan signed, but only in English which he didn't speak or read - was valid for 100 years and expired in 1993. No subsequent Afghan government has renewed the Durand Agreement.
Thus the Afghan-Pakistan border does not exist either legally or actual reality.
The Pakistan "government-within-a-government," the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency or ISI, is conducting a proxy war against the United States and the government of Afghanistan via the Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists. The US, NATO, and Afghan military forces have every right to take whatever measures are necessary to shut this war down in territory the Paks have no legal right to nor control.
Pakistan is rapidly becoming a failed state - so failed that there is an increasing chance it may break apart into its constituents: Baluchistan, the Sindh, Punjab, and "Pushtunistan" which may merge with Afghanistan. India and the US better have a well-thought out and well-practiced plan to seize control of Pak nukes if necessary.
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Geopolitical Diary: A Turning Point in Pakistan's Attitude Toward Jihadist War?
September 22, 2008
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Sunday that the Prime Minister House in Islamabad was the original target of the Sept. 20 suicide bombing at the Marriott hotel in the Pakistani capital but that militants could not attack the house due to tight security.
Whether or not Gilani is correct, the Marriott attack — considered by many Pakistanis as the worst terrorist attack in the history of the country — hit close to home for the Pakistani government. At the time of the bombing, the who’s who of Pakistan’s top civil and military leadership — including Gilani, army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and President Asif Ali Zardari — were at a dinner gathering at the Prime Minister House, located about half a mile from the Marriott. When the blast occurred, there was a large commotion at the Prime Minister House as officials scurried to make sure the president was protected.
The Marriott bombing was a major wake-up call for the Pakistani government, which until now has waffled on its handling of Islamist militants operating in the country. After such a dramatic attack so close to so many high-ranking government officials, Zardari announced that his government will now be going on the offensive against the militants, much like U.S. President George W. Bush did after the Sept. 11 attacks. Zardari is a controversial figure among the public as well as the military because of past corruption charges, and his bad reputation is likely to get in the way of his attempts to get tough with jihadists.
But he may have help, in that this latest bombing has also had an impact on public perceptions, which have thus far been against fighting what is seen as an American war that has destabilized the country. The attack is getting a lot of play in the media, and as more Pakistanis see the magnitude of the damage, popular perceptions are undergoing a shift. We are hearing of a move to organize local forces in the Pashtun areas to counter the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies.
The biggest problem facing the United States since the beginning of the war against militants has been Pakistan’s reluctance to aggressively pursue the jihadists. A lot of this has been because Islamabad does not want to see the complete neutralization of the Afghan Taliban — a key asset for Pakistan in its attempt to re-establish influence in Afghanistan. Even after the rise of the Pakistani Taliban, which has been waging war against Islamabad, the policy has been to distinguish between rogue Taliban and those still under control.
This attitude, along with the view within Washington that Islamabad was unwilling to seriously deliver on its commitments as an ally in the jihadist war, were key factors that led to Washington engaging in unilateral actions on Pakistani soil. The destruction of the Marriott hotel could be a turning point in terms of the Pakistanis mustering up the political will for decisive action against jihadist forces. A behavioral shift in Islamabad could offset recent frictions with Washington.
The extent to which Pakistan will get tough on the jihadists, however, remains to be seen. What is clear though is that the destruction of the Marriott has demonstrated that Islamabad can no longer afford to remain on the defensive.
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Pakistan and Afghanistan
Unite Against Terrorism
By HUSAIN HAQQANI and SAID T. JAWAD
President Hamid Karzai and the new democratically elected president of Pakistan, Mr. Asif Ali Zardari, are firmly committed to fighting terrorism in a united front, as common allies of the United States and victims of terrorism. As part of this struggle, we need to find new ways to deny terrorists the opportunity to capitalize on abject poverty that engulfs the tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This is crucial: People who are well fed are not desperate. People who have confidence in public education do not turn toward political madrassas to educate their children. People who have good jobs do not shelter terrorists. In other words, prosperity is one of the most important predictors of political stability, which in turn is the single most critical element in the containment of fanaticism and terrorism.
One innovative idea now before the U.S. Congress does exactly that -- the creation of Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZ) in Afghanistan and Pakistan's border region with Afghanistan, including the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The legislation, introduced on a bipartisan basis by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) would allow the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan to produce and export a wide range of textiles, handicrafts, carpets, gemstones and other products to the U.S. duty free. This concept is consistent with similar, successful programs for Jordan, Egypt and some other countries.
The list of duty-free goods has been crafted to be attractive to investors but tightly defined to avoid impact on U.S. domestic production. The rights of laborers will be protected; and the zones will offer legitimate, sustained income to local populations, providing alternatives to joining and supporting terrorists and extremists.
These zones would also draw Pakistan and Afghanistan's economies closer together, increasing cooperation and integration. Trade between our two countries has increased dramatically in recent years, with Pakistani exports to Afghanistan jumping from $25 million to $1.2 billion in the last six years. Further cooperation would only increase trade and expand joint efforts on matters of mutual concern -- terrorism chief among them.
The ROZ concept is enthusiastically supported by the Bush administration. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said that "these programs will boost sustainable economic development for citizens in impoverished areas at the epicenter of the war on terror and drugs."
Sens. Joe Biden (D., Del.) and Richard Lugar (R., Ind.), the chairman and the Ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have made enhanced trade and economic development a priority for building a prosperous, stable and democratic Central and South Asia. This is an idea whose time truly has come.
We, the ambassadors of Pakistan and Afghanistan, urge Congress to move expeditiously to enact ROZ legislation. It will constitute a much-needed affirmation to the people of both our countries that America is a dependable ally, and that it understands that more than military action alone is needed in the war against terrorists.
Reconstruction Opportunity Zones are an essential part of a broader, realistic, multifaceted policy that will choke off the oxygen of terrorism. As a brave leader committed to fighting terrorism, the late Benazir Bhutto wrote at the end of her posthumously published book, "Reconciliation": "Extremism thrives under dictatorship and is fueled by poverty, ignorance and hopelessness. The extremist threat within the Islamic world and between the Islamic world and the West can be solved, but it will require addressing all the factors that breed it."
For the United States, this is a critical moment -- a moment that could very well determine the long-term success of the civilized world's containment of fanaticism and terrorism. Creative policies such as ROZ now and in the future can solve it.
Mr. Haqqani is Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. Mr. Jawad is Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S.
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http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/25/is_afgh...tan_becoming_a_narc/
Is Afghanistan becoming a narco-terrorist state?
By Amitai Etzioni - September 25, 2008, 9:32AM
In his response to my original post in this series, Stephen Schwartz objects to my application of the term "narco-terrorism state" to Afghanistan. He claims that I either "misuse the term" or else "libel the government of Hamid Karzai." I let the facts speak for themselves.
Afghanistan now supplies 93% of the world's heroin. The drug trade now amounts to about one half of Afghanistan's GDP--some $4 billion a year. This, after dramatic increases in production in 2006 and 2007.
A considerable chunk of this drug money is being funneled into the very groups that continue to wage an insurgency against the U.S. and Afghan national forces. In a July 2008 report, former U.S. Drug Czar and Retired Four-Star General Barry McCaffrey finds that drug production and export in Afghanistan has become the main source of funding for Taliban and al Qaeda. McCaffrey refers to Afghanistan as a "narco-state" in the report and calls on the international community to either eradicate the drug crop or risk losing the battle against insurgents.
Thomas Schewich, who served as the State Department's top counternarcotics official, shows that the lack of an effective drug-eradication policy which has allowed production and profits to soar over the last several years is not a sign of incompetence, but rather the product of a corrupt Afghani government with close ties to the drug trade. In his July 27, 2008 New York Times Magazine article, Schewich shows how the influence of the drug trade has infiltrated all levels of the Afghani government, all the way up to President Hamid Karzai.
Karzai's "roots and power base" are in wealthier areas of the Pashtun south, Schewich explains, where much of the opium is produced. A September 2007 Kabul Weekly article emphasizes this point: "More than 95 percent of the residents of...the poppy growing provinces--voted for President Karzai." As a result, Karzai is bound to serve the interests of the drug-trade, or else risk getting voted out of power.
As Schewich shows, Karzai has been "playing us like a fiddle" by preaching anti-drug messages on the one hand, but winking and serving the interests of his drug-dependent constituency. For instance, Schewich explains Karzai's successful opposition to a proposed comprehensive aerial crop-eradication program in a September 2007 speech:
"[Karzai] made antidrug statements at the beginning of the speech, but then lashed out at the international community for wanting to spray his people's crops...He got a wild ovation. Not surprising since so many in the room were closely tied to the narcotics trade. Sure, Karzai had Taliban enemies who profited from drugs, but he had even more supporters who did."
Karzai's loyalty to the drug-world is also on display in his record of selecting numerous known drug traffickers for government positions. To head his anticorruption commission, for instance, Karzai appointed a convicted heroin dealer, Izzatulla Wasifi.
The drug trade in Afghanistan is both fuelling the insurgency and corrupting the government--both on a very large scale. If that's not a "narco-terrorist state," what is?
(More to come about the other, equally fallacious, arguments Mr. Schwartz casts about. As to other comments I received, I will answer all those who will own up to their statements and stop hiding behind their aliases.)
I am indebted to Alex Platt for helping to prepare this statement.
Amitai Etzioni is Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University and author of Security First (Yale 2007) www.securityfirstbook.com
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Army Times
October 6, 2008
Pg. 10
U.S. Stops Spec Ops Raids Into Pakistani Tribal Areas
By Sean D. Naylor
U.S. special operations forces have paused ground operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas, but military and civilian government officials differ over why the cross-border raids have been halted.
The issue of U.S. raids into the tribal areas was thrust into the international spotlight by a Sept. 3 raid in Angor Adda, in the South Waziristan tribal agency, by Navy SEALs working for a Joint Special Operations Command task force.
“We have shown a willingness starting this year to pursue those kinds of missions,” a Pentagon official said. However, he said, after temporarily granting JSOC more latitude to do cross-border missions, U.S. leaders had decided to restrain the command, at least as far as cross-border missions with ground troops are concerned, to allow Pakistani forces to press attacks on militants in the tribal areas.
“We are now working with the Pakistanis to make sure that those types of ground-type insertions do not happen, at least for a period of time to give them an opportunity to do what they claim they are desiring to do,” the Pentagon official said. The pause did not apply to airstrikes from unmanned aerial vehicles at targets inside tribal areas.
Although JSOC is the organization tasked, along with the Central Intelligence Agency, with finding and killing or capturing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Sept. 3 raid was not aimed at “a huge type of target,” the Pentagon official said. “There were just consistent problems in that area that had come to a point where there was significant evidence that there was complicity on the part of the [Pakistani military’s] Frontier Corps and others in allowing repetitive raids and activities to go on. And there was a firm desire to, one, send a message, and two, also establish any intelligence audit that could be established that would be useful to respond to a frequent question that we get from the other side of the border, which is, ‘Well, show us and tell us where the problem is, then we’ll deal with it.’”
But a U.S. government official closely involved with policy in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region said the military had underestimated the Pakistani response and was reconsidering its options.
The official’s comments were echoed by a field grade special operations officer with Afghanistan experience.
The Sept. 3 raid “was an opportunity to see how the new Pakistani government reacted,” the officer said. “If they didn’t do anything, they were just kind of fairly passive, like [former Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf was, ... then we felt like, OK, we can slowly up the ante, we can do maybe some more of these ops. But the backlash that happened, and especially the backlash in the diplomatic channels, was pretty severe.”
The raid represented “a strategic miscalculation,” the U.S. government source said. “We did not fully appreciate the vehemence of the Pakistani response,” which included the Pakistan government’s implication that it was willing to cut the coalition’s supply lines through Pakistan.
The military’s comments about the Sept. 3 raid sending a message represented a smokescreen, said the government official, who added that the mission “was meant to be the beginning of a campaign.”
“Once the Pakistanis started talking about closing down our supply routes, and actually demonstrated they could do it, once they started talking about shooting American helicopters, we obviously had to take seriously that maybe this [approach] was not going to be good enough,” the government official said. “We can’t sustain ourselves in Afghanistan without the Pakistani supply routes. At the end of the day, we had to not let our tactics get in the way of our strategy.”
However, a Washington source in government said, “I don’t think there’s been another strategic decision to back off.” Instead, JSOC would “go about it a different way.”
U.S. Central Command spokesman Rear Adm. Greg Smith declined to comment for this story.
Under questioning on Capitol Hill Sept. 23, Defense Secretary Robert Gates did not deny that U.S. forces had made cross-border strikes. “We will do what is necessary to protect our troops,” he said, acknowledging the Pentagon had been granted “authorities” for such action.
Past FATA raids
The Sept. 3 raid was not the first time JSOC forces, the Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta and the Navy’s Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DevGru, also known as SEAL Team 6, have launched into the tribal areas.
In the past, small JSOC elements have operated with the Pakistani Special Services Group in the tribal areas, and the special operations officer with Afghanistan experience said he was aware of “two or three” cross-border operations similar to the Angor Adda raid. “They have happened, but it was by no means a common occurrence,” he said.
However, the government official closely involved with Afghanistan-Pakistan policy said, JSOC “has been pushing hard for several years” to step up their raids into the tribal areas. JSOC’s argument has been “Give us greater latitude; we’ve got to hit where their sanctuaries are,” the official said.
“In the wake of the increased Taliban attacks we’ve seen over the last several months and the sense of frustration that we haven’t been more successful, their point of view has finally gained traction,” the government official said.
Two government sources identified the Taliban’s July 13 attack on a U.S. outpost in the Korengal valley as a turning point in the debate.
“Clearly, we saw what happened in the Korengal valley as a watershed moment,” said the government official closely involved with policy in the region.
The Sept. 3 raid into Pakistan is part of a heightened operational tempo for JSOC forces based in Afghanistan, several sources said.
JSOC has expanded its target list from the original so-called “big three” of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar to a broader list that includes figures in the Taliban-allied network of Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami group (sometimes referred to as HiG by the U.S. military).
The U.S. government official involved with policy in the area described JSOC’s targets as fitting into two categories: the “big guys” with whom the U.S. has “unfinished business,” and “those people that threaten us operationally and tactically on the ground right now.”
Several sources said the Sept. 3 raid appeared to have been aimed at the Haqqani network, along with some of its Uzbek allies.
JSOC is “targeting a range of actors, but one of the big ones is Haqqani,” said a civilian expert on Afghanistan, adding that targeting the Haqqani network represented “payback” for its alleged involvement in attacks on the Indian embassy, the Serena hotel in Kabul and an assassination attempt against Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The U.S. government official closely involved with the region’s policy agreed that U.S. forces were targeting Haqqani as “payback,” but also because the network — mostly controlled by Haqqani’s son, Sirajuddin — “is seen as ... the low-hanging fruit,” because its bases in Waziristan are more easily accessible than the terrain of the Bajaur tribal agency, where Hekmatyar’s fighters operate.
“None of the JSOC activity has been going on in the areas around the sanctuary for Mullah Omar’s Taliban,” which is located in and around the Pakistani city of Quetta, the civilian expert on Afghanistan said. “It’s all happening in the tribal areas.”
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Taliban's yearly dope take is put at $100M
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Thursday, October 2nd 2008, 12:04 AM
WASHINGTON - The resurgent Taliban get a yearly injection of $100 million from drug trafficking, the top U.S. Army general in Afghanistan said Wednesday.
"That's a conservative estimate," added Gen. David McKiernan, who also commands NATO troops.
McKiernan also bluntly stated that America's focus on Iraq means victory in Afghanistan is too far off to predict.
"Obviously our national priority has been Iraq," McKiernan said. "The consequence of not placing more force capability in Afghanistan means it will take longer to win [and] at a higher price."
With so many military resources diverted to Iraq, McKiernan said, there are too few available helicopters to supply and transport troops in Afghanistan.
"We don't have enough of them," he admitted.
McKiernan has asked for three additional combat brigades - 6,000 to 10,000 troops - to battle an influx of Arab and other foreign fighters.
President Bush has announced that a Marine battalion that was slated to go to Iraq in November would go to Afghanistan instead, and an Army combat brigade wouldfollow.
The general, in a news conference before meeting with Bush, insisted a "surge" of forces isn't needed.
McKiernan questioned the commitment of a number of European allies. "Some come to conduct war, some come to summer camp," he said.
Turning the fight over to fledgling Afghan forces won't happen "anytime soon," he predicted.
Afghanistan's thriving Islamist insurgency has used its eye-popping opium profits to fuel its escalating war against the elected government in Kabul and to oppose U.S. and NATO allies.
jmeek@nydailynews.com
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Can we get a clear answer from anyone anymore as to how to deal with our enemies?
Is Petraeus "Beyond Naive"?
He thinks we should negotiate with our enemies—just like Obama.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, Oct. 10, 2008, at 11:56 AM ET
If Gov. Sarah Palin ever becomes president, will she tell Gen. David Petraeus that he's "beyond naive" and "dangerous"?
That, you may recall, was how she characterized Sen. Barack Obama's advocacy of talking to our enemies "without preconditions."
Yet look at what Petraeus—not just the architect of the Iraqi counterinsurgency strategy but also Sen. John McCain's demigod—said on Oct. 8, toward the end of an hourlong address to the neocon elite at the Heritage Foundation.
Asked about a British officer's recent statement that at some point, we'll have to strike a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, Petraeus said, matter-of-factly, "You have to talk to enemies."
He added that the British know this especially well, as they've "sat down with thugs throughout their history, including us, I suspect."
Petraeus quickly added that, of course, you have to go into the talks with an agenda, and you have to know what your objectives are. But his point and these particular caveats are consistent with the distinction that Obama has repeatedly made between "preparations" and "preconditions"—the former being common sense and the latter being an insistence that the other side satisfy our demands before we so much as sit down with them (a position that even President Bush, its most dogmatic advocate, has recently begun to reconsider, especially in North Korea).
Palin's condemnation of Obama was no freelance swipe. McCain, too, has shaken his head in grave condescension and muttered that the junior senator from Illinois simply doesn't understand the world. Would he dare say the same of Petraeus?
In Iraq, the general recalled in his Heritage speech, "we sat down with some of those who were shooting at us"—a painful task but "an explicit part of our campaign." These talks formed the basis for the Anbar Awakening—in which Sunni insurgents allied themselves with U.S. forces to beat back the common foe of al-Qaida in Iraq—and for the tactical success of the "surge" itself.
Petraeus, the former commander of multinational forces in Iraq and soon the chief of U.S. Central Command, added that he didn't know how much of his Iraq strategy would work in Afghanistan. Some of its concepts are "transplantable," he said, while "others perhaps are not." (Here, too, the general contradicted McCain, who has said in two debates that Petraeus will win in Afghanistan by replicating his Iraq strategy.) However, one concept that Petraeus said he will try to transplant is precisely this idea of talking with those enemies who might share, or be persuaded to share, some of our strategic goals. "This is how you end these kinds of conflicts," he said at the Heritage Foundation. There is "no alternative to reconciliation."
Some insurgents, of course, are irreconcilable—al-Qaida, for instance, and the more militant Taliban fighters. If we're at war with them, they must be killed and defeated; any other option is a pipe dream. But one aspect of counterinsurgency involves identifying and co-opting those insurgents who are not so hard-line or who might be weary of fighting or leery of their more ideological comrades. Petraeus noted that Afghan President Hamad Karzai is already doing this, reaching out to certain Taliban factions, using the Saudis as intermediaries.
Will this work? Is there any basis for a "Pashtun Awakening" in Afghanistan to match the Sunni alliance-of-convenience in Iraq? Do the Taliban factions break down along tribal lines, whose fissures might be exploited? Some Afghanistan-watchers have their doubts.
Yet one implication of Petraeus' remarks is that if there are no such openings for maneuver, then this war—which, our senior military leaders say, is going badly and getting worse—may be hopeless. In any case, the strategic goal—to keep Afghanistan from once again becoming a base for international terrorists—will probably require broader, regional cooperation to beat down al-Qaida in neighboring Pakistan. It's the jihadis in northwestern Pakistan who are keeping the Taliban going in Afghanistan. And compared with the dangers of an unstable Pakistan, Afghanistan is a sideshow.
The point here, though, is that according to the soldier-strategist whom John McCain admires most, talking to at least some enemies is a necessary ingredient of success.
A Republican partisan might note that the Taliban in Afghanistan are not the same as the mullahs of Iran. That's true. But from the McCain-Palin point of view, the Taliban are worse. They're killing American soldiers now, and they're trying to recapture an unstable sovereign state by force. It would be more repugnant to engage in face-to-face talks with them than with most other bad guys in the world. Yet if Petraeus is right—if we're going to have to do this with the Taliban—then why is it naive and dangerous to do the same with the leadership of Iran?
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2202046/
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Off the top of my head, it occurs to me to note that we may be losing in Afg. As I have opined here several times recently we have no coherent strategy that I can discern. Thus negotiating with them arguably is a sign of defeat-- as it arguably would be with Iran. Please note that I personally have not taken a position here.
Here is Stratfor's take on things:
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U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said on Thursday that the United States would be prepared for a reconciliation with the Taliban if the Afghan government chose to pursue talks to end the war. He made the statement at a NATO conference in Budapest. According to Gates, “There has to be ultimately, and I’ll underscore ultimately, reconciliation as part of the political outcome to this. That’s ultimately the exit strategy for all of us.” Gates made it clear that reconciling with the Taliban does not mean reconciling with al Qaeda, which is something that the United States would never do.
The United States thus has taken the first critical step in moving toward a political resolution to the Afghan war. By distinguishing the Taliban from al Qaeda, Gates is distinguishing between domestic Afghan forces who might share values with al Qaeda, but who did not participate in the 9/11 attacks. This is not only an important distinction, it is a vital one. The Taliban organization was allied with al Qaeda but distinct from it: One was an Afghan movement, the other an internationalist movement. Now it has to be understood that the Taliban gave al Qaeda sanctuary and enabled it to launch its global operations from Afghanistan. However, the Taliban and al Qaeda are technically different organizations, and the Taliban were not directly involved in the 9/11 operation.
This is an important distinction for the United States to make in order to justify a necessary reversal in its policy in Afghanistan. The United States does not have the force to defeat the Taliban, nor is the future makeup of the Afghan government a matter of fundamental national interest for the United States. What is important is that the Taliban movement not enable further attacks by al Qaeda. If it were to agree to that, the United States could secure its interests in Afghanistan and leave, while allowing the Afghan government to make what deal it can make with the Taliban.
There are two problems with the idea. First, why should the United States trust the Taliban to keep their distance from al Qaeda? Second, why should the Taliban agree to any deal with the United States? The United States is not going to defeat them militarily, and from their point of view, time is on their side, since the Americans can’t remain in Afghanistan permanently. These would seem to kill any chance for the deal to get off the ground.
However, there is a key element to consider. The Taliban movement is not a homogenous organization. It has many elements, and some are more rigidly committed to the jihadist cause than others. Some might be very interested in the possibilities that could open up to them as major elements of an Afghan government, controlling important regions for their own use. Certainly, there are elements in the Taliban group that would reject any reconciliation, but the members of the group are sufficiently divided that it might be possible to split the organization and turn factions against each other. There might be factions that have no use for al Qaeda, and they might well be interested in the benefits of reconciliation.
This is, of course, the essence of U.S. Gen. David Petraeus’ strategy in Iraq. First, make a small increase in forces and use that as a psychological tool to demonstrate U.S. commitment to the country. Then enter into relations with the most hardened enemies of the United States — the Sunni insurgents — who then turn on the foreign jihadists calling themselves al Qaeda. At the same time, introduce them into the Baghdad government and slowly begin tiptoeing to the exits.
So, in Afghanistan, we have discussions of increased forces, coupled with indications of a willingness to reconcile with the Taliban. This splits the factions — and the faction wanting a deal turns on the faction opposing it. The former enters into Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government, and the United States heads for the exits. And Karzai is left trying to figure out what happened to him.
The real question is whether the United States has enough credibility to attract any faction and whether the faction it attracts is stronger than the faction it doesn’t. The problem is that the Americans have no way to defeat the Taliban with available forces — and the Taliban knows it. However, the United States might be able to shift expectations by increasing forces and massively increasing air operations. The pain the American forces inflict on some factions of the Taliban might be enough to persuade them to split.
The primary virtue of this strategy is that it is the only strategy that has the potential of working. The other option is an extended war without a clear and attainable end. It is interesting that Gates made his statement about reconciliation with the Taliban while U.S. presidential candidates Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain have spoken of their commitment to fight this war in Afghanistan. Since the ground truth is the same for them as for the Bush administration, Gates just made either of their lives easier by opening the door to this strategy. Obama or McCain will be able to claim that he was merely following established policy when he sits down with the Taliban. Then there is also a chance that some in the Taliban would like to make a deal with an administration looking for a legacy, rather than a new one that is unpredictable.
Gates’ statement was a major event, but not necessarily a promising one.
Tell Stratfor What You Think
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This also seems significant to me and seeks address a point I have been making-- of course its significance it could turn out to be that it is meaningless or counterproductive :roll: :
NATO Agrees to Take Aim at Afghan Drug Trade
By JUDY DEMPSEY and JOHN F. BURNS
Published: October 10, 2008
NY Times
BUDAPEST — NATO defense ministers agreed Friday to allow troops operating in Afghanistan to attack drug lords and their networks supporting the escalating insurgency in the country.
The United States has identified opium trafficking in Afghanistan as a primary target in the battle against the Taliban, but many poor farmers who toil in the poppy fields, above, depend on it.
Related
Times Topics: Afghanistan
The agreement came after strong pressure from the United States, which has identified opium trafficking in Afghanistan — the source of more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin supplies — as a primary target in the stepped-up battle against the Taliban insurgency that American commanders have begun mapping out in recent weeks.
But the accord also accommodates objections from some of the 26 NATO nations that contribute troops to the 50,000-strong NATO force. Attacks on drug “facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency” are to occur only if the NATO and Afghan troops involved have the authorization of their own governments, a provision that will allow dissenting nations to opt out of counternarcotics strikes.
The compromise appeared to satisfy the two American officials who pushed the case for the new policy at a meeting here, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Gen. John Craddock, the supreme NATO commander. Afterward, Mr. Gates said that the accord would allow “some to do things that others did not want to do,” and added, “It’s better than nothing.”
On the drug policy, the United States once again ran into a problem that has beset the Afghan war: the widely-differing levels of commitment by its NATO partners, some of whom have committed troops to the effort, but have insisted that they remain in areas of Afghanistan where insurgent threats are low. Reluctance to widening the NATO mandate to include attacks on drug networks has come from Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain, among other nations.
Their fear has been that attacks on drug lords, laboratories and supply networks will further alienate ordinary Afghans who have grown wary or hostile toward NATO troops, undercutting efforts to curb the insurgency and increasing threats to NATO troops.
The drug trade is estimated to account for about half of Afghanistan’s meager economy, and some of the nation’s poorest people, including farmers who toil in the poppy fields, are dependent on incomes that flow directly or indirectly from narcotics. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in a recent survey on the 2008 opium yield in Afghanistan, estimated that the average income for the 500,000 families involved in the opium harvest amounted to nearly $2,000.
There have also been concerns that attacks on drug networks will depend heavily on intelligence supplied by Afghans, which has often proved unreliable, contributing to the deaths of civilians in attacks. Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, under pressure from NATO members to rid his government of the corruption and incompetence they say are hampering the war effort, has been increasingly shrill in recent months in his criticism of the civilian toll taken by NATO military action, particularly American airstrikes.
Mr. Karzai has also opposed the forceful eradication of poppy crops, something that did not appear to be sanctioned by the new NATO mandate. Mr. Karzai has argued that other measures, including crop substitution and public education programs, along with foreign aid that provides jobs, are the most effective ways of cutting opium production without the violence likely to be provoked by crop eradication.
But American commanders have concluded that gaining the upper hand in the fight against the resurgent Taliban will require depriving the insurgents of income from the drug trade, which the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, estimated at a Washington briefing last week to be a minimum of $100 million.
Despite the misgivings among some NATO allies, the American push for a NATO mandate that includes attacks on drug networks fueling the insurgency has been backed by the Afghan government, which reiterated the sentiment at the Budapest meeting.
The need for more aggressive action against the drug lords has also been pressed by the United Nations drug agency. In its August report, authored by its executive director, Antonio Maria Costa of Italy, it noted the “inextricable link between drugs and conflict,” and without referring to or sanctioning military action, said that something needed to be done.
Beyond that, the American commanders have been supported by Britain, whose 8,000 troops in Afghanistan are second only in numbers, among NATO nations, to the 33,000 American troops. British support is particularly significant, since most of the British troops are concentrated in Helmand Province in the southwest, the heartland of the opium trade and one of the most intensive battlefields of the insurgency. United Nations figures estimate that Helmand alone accounts for more than 50 percent of the country’s opium production.
According to the recent United Nations survey, 98 percent of Afghanistan’s opium comes from seven provinces in the southwest, with no opium at all produced in half of the country’s 34 provinces. The bulk of the NATO troops operating in the southwest come from the United States, Britain, Canada and Denmark, and it is those nations that are likely to be most affected by the new NATO mandate.
Together with the United States, Britain and Canada have already taken the heaviest casualties among the NATO nations fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, with NATO troops who have died in the seven-year war now approaching 1,000, including more than 600 Americans.
Judy Dempsey reported from Budapest, and John F. Burns from Kabul, Afghanistan
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Official: More Than 100 Taliban Militants Killed in Afghanistan Clashes
Sunday , October 12, 2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan —
Taliban militants launched a surprise attack on a key southern Afghan town, sparking a battle that killed some 60 insurgents, an Afghan official said Sunday. A second clash in the same region killed another 40 militants.
Taliban fighters used rockets and other heavy weapons to attack Afghan forces on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, said Daud Ahmadi, the spokesman for Helmand's governor.
Militants attacked the city from three sides starting just after midnight and were pushed back only after a battle that involved airstrikes, Ahmadi said. Rockets landed in different parts of the city but there were no civilian casualties, he said.
Authorities recovered the bodies of 41 Taliban fighters on the city's outskirts, from where the attack was launched, he said. He estimated the bodies of another 20 fighters were taken from the battle site by the militants, citing intelligence reports.
British forces are responsible for protecting the area around Lashkar Gah.
In a second battle in Helmand province, Afghan and international troops retook the Nad Ali district center — which had been held by militants — during a three-day fight, Ahmadi said. That battle, which also involved airstrikes, ended Saturday, Ahmadi said.
Afghan police and soldiers were now in control of the district center. There were no casualties among Afghan or NATO troops, Ahmadi said.
Ahmadi's death tolls could not be verified independently. Journalists are not able to travel to remote and dangerous battle sites. Afghan officials have been known to exaggerate death tolls in the past.
The NATO-led force said it was aware of fighting in Helmand but could not provide any information.
Helmand province is the largest drug producing area in the world and the region alone accounts for more than half of Afghanistan's production of opium poppies. More than 90 percent of the world's opium is produced in Afghanistan and up to $100 million of the trade's profits are used to finance the Taliban insurgency.
Insurgency related violence has killed more than 4,700 people — mostly militants — this year, according to an Associated Press count of figures from Western and Afghan officials.
A roadside bomb, meanwhile, struck a civilian vehicle traveling in the Shamulzai district of Zabul province on Sunday, killing five people, said Ghulab Shah Alikheil, a provincial official.
Alikheil blamed Taliban militants for planting the bomb.
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London Sunday Times
October 12, 2008
Taliban Leader Killed By SAS Was Pakistan Officer
By Christina Lamb, in Kabul
British officials covered up evidence that a Taliban commander killed by special forces in Helmand last year was in fact a Pakistani military officer, according to highly placed Afghan officials.
The commander, targeted in a compound in the Sangin valley, was one of six killed in the past year by SAS and SBS forces. When the British soldiers entered the compound they discovered a Pakistani military ID on the body.
It was the first physical evidence of covert Pakistani military operations against British forces in Afghanistan even though Islamabad insists it is a close ally in the war against terror.
Britain’s refusal to make the incident public led to a row with the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who has long accused London of viewing Afghanistan through the eyes of Pakistani military intelligence, which is widely believed to have been helping the Taliban.
“He feels he has been telling everyone about Pakistan for the past six years and here was the evidence, yet London refused to release it, because they care more about their relations with Islamabad than Kabul,” said a source close to the president. “He knows Britain is worried about inflaming its large Pakistani population, but that is no excuse.”
So furious was Karzai that he threatened to expel British diplomats. When some months later he was informed by the governor of Helmand that British officials were secretly negotiating with the Taliban, he expelled two men and accused Britain of wanting to set up a training camp for former Taliban fighters.
Karzai will visit London next month for talks with Gordon Brown in an attempt to repair the strained relations between the two countries.
“He is very sad about the breakdown of relations with Britain,” said the source. “He loves British culture and poetry, had a British education [at a school in India], likes tea in the afternoon and thinks Gordon Brown is a very decent man, not a cheat.”
British officials in Kabul refused to comment on the allegation that they had covered up the discovery of a Pakistani soldier. They insisted Karzai’s government had been informed of the negotiations with the Taliban, adding that “the camp was just a place for them to be reintegrated, learn about hygiene and things”.
During the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, officers from Pakistani military intelligence regularly accompanied Afghan mujaheddin inside Afghanistan and directed operations.
The Afghan claims of Pakistani involvement in Helmand were backed by a senior United Nations official who said he had been told by his superiors to keep quiet after Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN apparently threatened to stop contributing forces to peacekeeping missions. Pakistan is the UN’s biggest supplier of peacekeeping troops.
The coalition’s refusal to confront Pakistan changed after the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul last July, when 41 people were killed. According to both British and US intelligence, phone intercepts led directly back to an Afghan cell of Pakistan’s military intelligence.
The past month has seen US forces carry out bombings and a ground raid on Pakistani territory. Claims of Pakistan’s involvement were rejected by Asif Durrani, the country’s chargé d’affaires in Kabul. “Afghanistan wants to blame someone else for its problems and Pakistan is just the whipping boy,” he said.
However, repeated accusations from Karzai about Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban have been backed by a senior US marine officer.
Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Nash, who commanded an embedded training team in eastern Afghanistan from June 2007 to March this year, told the Army Times that Pakistani forces flew repeated helicopter missions into Afghanistan to resupply a Taliban base camp during a fierce battle in June last year. Nash said: “We were on the receiving end of Pakistani military D-30 [a howitzer]. On numerous occasions Afghan border police checkpoints and observation posts were attacked by Pakistani military forces.”
Comments by Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith in The Sunday Times last week that a decisive military victory against the Taliban was not possible and negotiations should be opened have received widespread backing.
General Jean-Louis Georgelin, France’s military chief, said: “There is no military solution to the Afghan crisis and I totally share this feeling.”
Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, who initially dismissed the brigadier’s comments as “defeatist”, said on Friday that the US was now prepared to back talks with the Taliban.
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AFGHAN DRUG KINGPIN CHARGED WITH FINANCING
TALIBAN TERRORIST INSURGENCY
(Washington, DC)-MICHAEL J. GARCIA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and MICHELE M. LEONHART, Acting Administrator of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”), announced today the arrest of HAJI JUMA KHAN, a/k/a “Abdullah,” a/k/a “Haji Juma Khan Mohammadhasni,” an Afghan drug trafficker charged with conspiracy to distribute narcotics with intent to support a terrorist organization. KHAN is among the first defendants to be prosecuted under the 2006 federal narco-terrorism statute.
According to the Indictment unsealed today in Manhattan federal court:
Since at least 1999, KHAN led an international opium, morphine and heroin trafficking organization (the “Khan Organization”) based principally in the Helmand and Kandahar provinces of southern Afghanistan. The Khan Organization arranged to sell morphine base, an opium derivative that can be processed into heroin, in quantities as large as 40 tons – enough to supply the entire United States heroin market for more than
two years. According to the Indictment, the Khan Organization also operated labs in Afghanistan that produced refined heroin and sold the drug in quantities of as much as 100 kilograms, or 220 pounds, and more.
KHAN has been closely aligned with the Taliban, which was designated by the President of the United States as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Group in 2002. The Taliban’s totalitarian government controlled Afghanistan from the mid-1990s until 2001, when it was removed from power by the United States and allied military forces. Since the United States’ military intervention, the Taliban has operated an insurgency aimed at re-establishing its control of Afghanistan and forcibly expelling the United States and its allies through terrorist tactics such as suicide bombings, improvised explosive
devices, shootings and kidnappings, which target American soldiers, Afghan political leaders, security contractors and civilians. The Taliban has publicly claimed credit for terrorist attacks, including a January 14, 2008 attack on civilians and employees at the Serena Hotel in Kabul, in which an American citizen was murdered.
The Taliban’s terrorist insurgency has been funded in part by drug traffickers who provide financing to the Taliban in exchange for protection for their drug routes, production labs, and opium poppy fields. KHAN has supported the Taliban’s efforts to forcibly remove the United States and its allies from Afghanistan by providing financial support in the form of drug proceeds.
“Proceeds from HAJI JUMA KHAN's global drug trafficking organization funded the terrorist activities of the Taliban,” said DEA Acting Administrator MICHELE M. LEONHART. “His arrest disrupts a significant line of credit to the Taliban and will shake the foundation of his drug network that has moved massive quantities of heroin to worldwide drug markets.”
Mr. GARCIA said: “The arrest of HAJI JUMA KHAN is another significant step in the continuing effort to combat terrorism by stopping the flow of narcotics proceeds that help fund the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.”
Mr. GARCIA praised the investigative work of the DEA, with the assistance of the British Serious Organised Crime Agency, and thanked the Turkish National Police and the Turkish Jandarma for their role in the case. He also thanked United States and international INTERPOL authorities for their support.
KHAN will be presented this afternoon before United States Magistrate Judge RONALD L. ELLIS for initial appearance and arraignment. United States District Judge NAOMI REICE BUCHWALD will preside over future proceedings in this case; a conference is scheduled before Judge BUCHWALD for October 28, 2008, at 2:30 p.m.
If convicted, KHAN, 54, faces a maximum sentence of life and a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. The prosecution is being handled by the Office’s International Narcotics Trafficking Unit. Assistant United States Attorneys MARSHALL A. CAMP and EUGENE INGOGLIA are in charge of the prosecution.
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Even though I support his efforts on a monthly basis, its been too long since I checked in with Michael Yon.
There are several fine entries at http://www.michaelyon-online.com/
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Friend and foe in Afg:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/world/asia/04military.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,451941,00.html
Taliban Blamed for Acid Attack on Afghan Schoolgirls
Friday, November 14, 2008
Nov. 14: Shamsia Husainai, 17, rests on a hospital bed in Kabul after an acid attack on her Wednesday in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — No students showed up at Mirwais Mena girls' school in the Taliban's spiritual birthplace the morning after it happened.
A day earlier, men on motorcycles attacked 15 girls and teachers with acid. The men squirted the acid from water bottles onto three groups of students and teachers walking to school Wednesday, principal Mehmood Qaderi said. Some of the girls have burns only on their school uniforms but others will have scars on their faces. One teenager still cannot open her eyes after being hit in the face with acid.
"Today the school is open, but there are no girls," Qaderi said Thursday. "Yesterday, all of the classes were full." His school has 1,500 students.
Afghanistan's government condemned the attack as "un-Islamic" and blamed it on the "country's enemies," a typical reference to Taliban militants. Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, denied the insurgents were involved.
Girls were banned from schools under the rule of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamist regime that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Women were only allowed to leave the house wearing a body-hiding burqa and accompanied by a male family member.
Qaderi said he believes there were multiple teams of assailants because the attacks took place at the same time in different neighborhoods. Provincial Police Chief Mati Ullah Khan said three people have been arrested. He would not provide further details because the investigation was not completed.
The country has made a major push to improve access to education for girls since the Taliban ouster. Fewer than 1 million Afghan children — mostly all boys — attended school under Taliban rule. Roughly 6 million Afghan children, including 2 million girls, attend school today.
But many conservative families still keep their girls at home and the acid attacks are a reminder that old biases remain.
"They don't want us go to school. They don't like education," said Susan Ibrahimi, who started teaching at Mirwais Mena four months ago. She and her mother, also a teacher at the school, were wearing burqas on their walk to work when the motorbike stopped next to them.
"They didn't say anything. They just stopped the motorbike and one of the guys threw acid on us and they went away," Ibrahimi said in a telephone interview.
The acid ate through the cloth covering Ibrahimi's face and left burns down her left cheek. The acid also burned her mother's hand.
"I am worried that I will have scars on my face," said Ibrahimi, who is 19 years old and not married.
Fifteen people were hit with acid in all, including four teachers, Qaderi said. Ibrahimi said it was the Taliban that attacked her but then explained that she used the term to refer to anyone who was against education for women.
The United Nations called the attack "a hideous crime."
First lady Laura Bush on Thursday decried the attack as cowardly, saying in a statement the "shameful acts are condemned by honorable people in the United States and around the world."
The attacks are "contrary to previous assurances Afghans have been given that there would not be further attacks against schools or students," the U.N. said in a statement.
Arsonists have repeatedly attacked girls' schools and gunmen killed two students walking outside a girls' school in central Logar province last year. UNICEF says there were 236 school-related attacks in Afghanistan in 2007. The Afghan government has also accused the Taliban of attacking schools in an attempt to force teenage boys into the Islamic militia.
In Wednesday's attack, three young women were hospitalized for burns. Two were released Thursday morning, but 17-year-old Shamsia Husainai was still lying on a hospital bed unable to open her eyes. Her brother Masood Morbi said her body shook about every 10 seconds. She could talk, but her brother said her words were mangled. Her face was covered with a cream to treat her burns. The doctors were giving her pills to blunt the pain.
Husainai's younger sister told The Associated Press on Wednesday that they had been walking on the street with a group of friends, all of whom were wearing a typical Afghan school uniform of black pants, white shirt, black coat and white headscarf.
Fourteen-year-old Atifa Bibi was also badly burned on her face but she was released from the hospital late Wednesday.
Qaderi, the principal, said no one in the school had reported any direct threats but one of the teachers attacked Wednesday had reported an incident two days ago in which two men threatened her.
"She told me when she was walking two men said to her, 'Oh, you are putting on makeup and going to the school. Okay, we will see you.'"
Husainai and Bibi's aunt, Bibi Meryam, said no one had threatened them but they would consider keeping the girls at home until it felt safer. A handful of teachers showed up Thursday, but Qaderi said the only students who tried to attend were about 20 primary school students who arrived late in the afternoon and were sent home because the school had already decided not to hold classes.
Ibrahimi, the young teacher who was burned, said she and her mother stayed home.
"Yesterday we didn't go to school. Today we didn't go to school. I don't know about the future," she said.
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Acid to the face of improperly garbed or less than submissive women, is popular around the islamic world.
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Wait a second, it happened in Afghanistan, so we have to be culturally sensitive. Missives about the oppression of women are only appropriate when they focus on instances of sexism occurring in Western democracies. At least I think thats the current standard, though I confess I get confused when calculating which situational ethic trumps what heinous act.
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BBG,
Please provide proof or delete your comment. This horrific attack was condemned all over the feminist blogosphere
edited to add
Here are two examples
http://feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=11383
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/11/14/schoolgirls/index.html
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There are plenty of instances where folks claiming all sorts of PC bona fides stand with thugs who have committed numerous atrocities. The left's love affair with Castro is a case in point, as is its pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel stance. Just about any time any organ of the UN convenes sundry plutocrats, autocrats, kleptocrats, and their attendants spout some anti-Western democratic snivel from their perch atop a downtrodden populace, with rare objection from the left side of the aisle.
My comment was a parody of conversations I've witnessed on many occasions where sweetness and light types have had to invoke situational algebra to figure out how to respond when someone they stand in solidarity with behaves in a manner that would earn a white, male, Republican an excoriation in no uncertain terms. If you have not witnessed the same I would question your veracity and hope that the horror you espouse when the extreme is lampooned informs your thinking in less stark instances.
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I definitely agree that moral relativity is wrong,Castro is horrible, and some on the left and are wrong on Israel.
However the example you used is false. You could have made your point in many different ways. Why choose this story --your original accusation is false. Feminists in this country do stand up for the rights of women all over the world. This case in particular I read in several places before I read it here.
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Since I started my study of islam, on 9/12/01, I've read of many instances of "acid to the face" throught the muslim world. During that time, I've seen lots of apologetics for islamic terror and abuse from the left under the guise of multiculturalism and very little, if any condemnation from feminists for the "rape culture" inherent in islam.
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I understand Rachel's point to be that IN THIS CASE there was general condemnation and I uinderstand BBG's point to apply in general.
The following is a few years old (I originally posted in on the DBMAA forum in Jan '03), but addresses the issues involved:
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Why Feminism Is AWOL on Islam
Kay S. Hymowitz
U.S. feminists should be protesting the brutal oppression of Middle Eastern women. But doing so would reveal how little they have to complain about at home.
Argue all you want with many feminist policies, but few quarrel with feminism?s core moral insight, which changed the lives (and minds) of women forever: that women are due the same rights and dignity as men. So, as news of the appalling miseries of women in the Islamic world has piled up, where are the feminists? Where?s the outrage? For a brief moment after September 11, when pictures of those blue alien-creaturely shapes in Afghanistan filled the papers, it seemed as if feminists were going to have their moment. And in fact the Feminist Majority, to its credit, had been publicizing since the mid-90s how Afghan girls were barred from school, how women were stoned for adultery or beaten for showing an ankle or wearing high-heeled shoes, how they were prohibited from leaving the house unless accompanied by a male relative, how they were denied medical help because the only doctors around were male.
But the rest is feminist silence. You haven?t heard a peep from feminists as it has grown clear that the Taliban were exceptional not in their extreme views about women but in their success at embodying those views in law and practice. In the United Arab Emirates, husbands have the right to beat their wives in order to discipline them??provided that the beating is not so severe as to damage her bones or deform her body,? in the words of the Gulf News. In Saudi Arabia, women cannot vote, drive, or show their faces or talk with male non-relatives in public. (Evidently they can?t talk to men over the airwaves either; when Prince Abdullah went to President Bush?s ranch in Crawford last April, he insisted that no female air-traffic controllers handle his flight.) Yes, Saudi girls can go to school, and many even attend the university; but at the university, women must sit in segregated rooms and watch their professors on closed-circuit televisions. If they have a question, they push a button on their desk, which turns on a light at the professor?s lectern, from which he can answer the female without being in her dangerous presence. And in Saudi Arabia, education can be harmful to female health. Last spring in Mecca, members of the mutaween, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue, pushed fleeing students back into their burning school because they were not properly covered in abaya. Fifteen girls died.
You didn?t hear much from feminists when in the northern Nigerian province of Katsina a Muslim court sentenced a woman to death by stoning for having a child outside of marriage. The case might not have earned much attention?stonings are common in parts of the Muslim world?except that the young woman, who had been married off at 14 to a husband who ultimately divorced her when she lost her virginal allure, was still nursing a baby at the time of sentencing. During her trial she had no lawyer, although the court did see fit to delay her execution until she weans her infant.
You didn?t hear much from feminists as it emerged that honor killings by relatives, often either ignored or only lightly punished by authorities, are also commonplace in the Muslim world. In September, Reuters reported the story of an Iranian man, ?defending my honor, family, and dignity,? who cut off his seven-year-old daughter?s head after suspecting she had been raped by her uncle. The postmortem showed the girl to be a virgin. In another family mix-up, a Yemeni man shot his daughter to death on her wedding night when her husband claimed she was not a virgin. After a medical exam revealed that the husband was mistaken, officials concluded he was simply trying to protect himself from embarrassment about his own impotence. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, every day two women are slain by male relatives seeking to avenge the family honor.
The savagery of some of these murders is worth a moment?s pause. In 2000, two Punjabi sisters, 20 and 21 years old, had their throats slit by their brother and cousin because the girls were seen talking to two boys to whom they were not related. In one especially notorious case, an Egyptian woman named Nora Marzouk Ahmed fell in love and eloped. When she went to make amends with her father, he cut off her head and paraded it down the street. Several years back, according to the Washington Post, the husband of Zahida Perveen, a 32-year-old pregnant Pakistani, gouged out her eyes and sliced off her earlobe and nose because he suspected her of having an affair.
In a related example widely covered last summer, a teenage girl in the Punjab was sentenced by a tribal council to rape by a gang that included one of the councilmen. After the hour-and-a-half ordeal, the girl was forced to walk home naked in front of scores of onlookers. She had been punished because her 11-year-old brother had compromised another girl by being been seen alone with her. But that charge turned out to be a ruse: it seems that three men of a neighboring tribe had sodomized the boy and accused him of illicit relations?an accusation leading to his sister?s barbaric punishment?as a way of covering up their crime.
Nor is such brutality limited to backward, out-of-the-way villages. Muddassir Rizvi, a Pakistani journalist, says that, though always common in rural areas, in recent years honor killings have become more prevalent in cities ?among educated and liberal families.? In relatively modern Jordan, honor killings were all but exempt from punishment until the penal code was modified last year; unfortunately, a young Palestinian living in Jordan, who had recently stabbed his 19-year-old sister 40 times ?to cleanse the family honor,? and another man from near Amman, who ran over his 23-year-old sister with his truck because of her ?immoral behavior,? had not yet changed their ways. British psychiatrist Anthony Daniels reports that British Muslim men frequently spirit their young daughters back to their native Pakistan and force the girls to marry. Such fathers have been known to kill daughters who resist. In Sweden, in one highly publicized case, Fadima Sahindal, an assimilated 26-year-old of Kurdish origin, was murdered by her father after she began living with her Swedish boyfriend. ?The whore is dead,? the family announced.
As you look at this inventory of brutality, the question bears repeating: Where are the demonstrations, the articles, the petitions, the resolutions, the vindications of the rights of Islamic women by American feminists? The weird fact is that, even after the excesses of the Taliban did more to forge an American consensus about women?s rights than 30 years of speeches by Gloria Steinem, feminists refused to touch this subject. They have averted their eyes from the harsh, blatant oppression of millions of women, even while they have continued to stare into the Western patriarchal abyss, indignant over female executives who cannot join an exclusive golf club and college women who do not have their own lacrosse teams.
But look more deeply into the matter, and you realize that the sound of feminist silence about the savage fundamentalist Muslim oppression of women has its own perverse logic. The silence is a direct outgrowth of the way feminist theory has developed in recent years. Now mired in self-righteous sentimentalism, multicultural nonjudgmentalism, and internationalist utopianism, feminism has lost the language to make the universalist moral claims of equal dignity and individual freedom that once rendered it so compelling. No wonder that most Americans, trying to deal with the realities of a post-9/11 world, are paying feminists no mind.
To understand the current sisterly silence about the sort of tyranny that the women?s movement came into existence to attack, it is helpful to think of feminisms plural rather than singular. Though not entirely discrete philosophies, each of three different feminisms has its own distinct reasons for causing activists to ?lose their voice? in the face of women?s oppression.
The first variety?radical feminism (or gender feminism, in Christina Hoff Sommers?s term)?starts with the insight that men are, not to put too fine a point upon it, brutes. Radical feminists do not simply subscribe to the reasonable-enough notion that men are naturally more prone to aggression than women. They believe that maleness is a kind of original sin. Masculinity explains child abuse, marital strife, high defense spending, every war from Troy to Afghanistan, as well as Hitler, Franco, and Pinochet. As Gloria Steinem informed the audience at a Florida fundraiser last March: ?The cult of masculinity is the basis for every violent, fascist regime.?
Gender feminists are little interested in fine distinctions between radical Muslim men who slam commercial airliners into office buildings and soldiers who want to stop radical Muslim men from slamming commercial airliners into office buildings. They are both examples of generic male violence?and specifically, male violence against women. ?Terrorism is on a continuum that starts with violence within the family, battery against women, violence against women in the society, all the way up to organized militaries that are supported by taxpayer money,? according to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, who teaches ?The Sexuality of Terrorism? at California State University in Hayward. Violence is so intertwined with male sexuality that, she tells us, military pilots watch porn movies before they go out on sorties. The war in Afghanistan could not possibly offer a chance to liberate women from their oppressors, since it would simply expose women to yet another set of oppressors, in the gender feminists? view. As Sharon Lerner asserted bizarrely in the Village Voice, feminists? ?discomfort? with the Afghanistan bombing was ?deepened by the knowledge that more women than men die as a result of most wars.?
If guys are brutes, girls are their opposite: peace-loving, tolerant, conciliatory, and reasonable??Antiwar and Pro-Feminist,? as the popular peace-rally sign goes. Feminists long ago banished tough-as-nails women like Margaret Thatcher and Jeanne Kirkpatrick (and these days, one would guess, even the fetching Condoleezza Rice) to the ranks of the imperfectly female. Real women, they believe, would never justify war. ?Most women, Western and Muslim, are opposed to war regardless of its reasons and objectives,? wrote the Jordanian feminist Fadia Faqir on OpenDemocracy.net. ?They are concerned with emancipation, freedom (personal and civic), human rights, power sharing, integrity, dignity, equality, autonomy, power-sharing [sic], liberation, and pluralism.?
Sara Ruddick, author of Maternal Thinking, is perhaps one of the most influential spokeswomen for the position that women are instinctually peaceful. According to Ruddick (who clearly didn?t have Joan Crawford in mind), that?s because a good deal of mothering is naturally governed by the Gandhian principles of nonviolence such as ?renunciation,? ?resistance to injustice,? and ?reconciliation.? The novelist Barbara Kingsolver was one of the first to demonstrate the subtleties of such universal maternal thinking after the United States invaded Afghanistan. ?I feel like I?m standing on a playground where the little boys are all screaming ?He started it!? and throwing rocks,? she wrote in the Los Angeles Times. ?I keep looking for somebody?s mother to come on the scene saying, ?Boys! Boys!? ?
Gender feminism?s tendency to reduce foreign affairs to a Lifetime Channel movie may make it seem too silly to bear mentioning, but its kitschy naivet? hasn?t stopped it from being widespread among elites. You see it in widely read writers like Kingsolver, Maureen Dowd, and Alice Walker. It turns up in our most elite institutions. Swanee Hunt, head of the Women in Public Policy Program at Harvard?s Kennedy School of Government wrote, with Cristina Posa in Foreign Policy: ?The key reason behind women?s marginalization may be that everyone recognizes just how good women are at forging peace.? Even female elected officials are on board. ?The women of all these countries should go on strike, they should all sit down and refuse to do anything until their men agree to talk peace,? urged Ohio representative Marcy Kaptur to the Arab News last spring, echoing an idea that Aristophanes, a dead white male, proposed as a joke 2,400 years ago. And President Clinton is an advocate of maternal thinking, too. ?If we?d had women at Camp David,? he said in July 2000, ?we?d have an agreement.?
Major foundations too seem to take gender feminism seriously enough to promote it as an answer to world problems. Last December, the Ford Foundation and the Soros Open Society Foundation helped fund the Afghan Women?s Summit in Brussels to develop ideas for a new government in Afghanistan. As Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler described it on her website, the summit was made up of ?meetings and meals, canvassing, workshops, tears, and dancing.? ?Defense was mentioned nowhere in the document,? Ensler wrote proudly of the summit?s concluding proclamation?despite the continuing threat in Afghanistan of warlords, bandits, and lingering al-Qaida operatives. ?uilding weapons or instruments of retaliation was not called for in any category,? Ensler cooed. ?Instead [the women] wanted education, health care, and the protection of refugees, culture, and human rights.?
Too busy celebrating their own virtue and contemplating their own victimhood, gender feminists cannot address the suffering of their Muslim sisters realistically, as light years worse than their own petulant grievances. They are too intent on hating war to ask if unleashing its horrors might be worth it to overturn a brutal tyranny that, among its manifold inhumanities, treats women like animals. After all, hating war and machismo is evidence of the moral superiority that comes with being born female.
Yet the gender feminist idea of superior feminine virtue is becoming an increasingly tough sell for anyone actually keeping up with world events. Kipling once wrote of the fierceness of Afghan women: ?When you?re wounded and left on the Afghan plains/And the women come out to cut up your remains/Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains.? Now it?s clearer than ever that the dream of worldwide sisterhood is no more realistic than worldwide brotherhood; culture trumps gender any day. Mothers all over the Muslim world are naming their babies Usama or praising Allah for their sons? efforts to kill crusading infidels. Last February, 28-year-old Wafa Idris became the first female Palestinian suicide bomber to strike in Israel, killing an elderly man and wounding scores of women and children. And in April, Israeli soldiers discovered under the maternity clothes of 26-year-old Shifa Adnan Kodsi a bomb rather than a baby. Maternal thinking, indeed.
The second variety of feminism, seemingly more sophisticated and especially prevalent on college campuses, is multiculturalism and its twin, postcolonialism. The postcolonial feminist has even more reason to shy away from the predicament of women under radical Islam than her maternally thinking sister. She believes that the Western world is so sullied by its legacy of imperialism that no Westerner, man or woman, can utter a word of judgment against former colonial peoples. Worse, she is not so sure that radical Islam isn?t an authentic, indigenous?and therefore appropriate?expression of Arab and Middle Eastern identity.
The postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault, one of the intellectual godfathers of multiculturalism and postcolonialism, first set the tone in 1978 when an Italian newspaper sent him to Teheran to cover the Iranian revolution. As his biographer James Miller tells it, Foucault looked in the face of Islamic fundamentalism and saw . . . an awe-inspiring revolt against ?global hegemony.? He was mesmerized by this new form of ?political spirituality? that, in a phrase whose dark prescience he could not have grasped, portended the ?transfiguration of the world.? Even after the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power and reintroduced polygamy and divorce on the husband?s demand with automatic custody to fathers, reduced the official female age of marriage from 18 to 13, fired all female judges, and ordered compulsory veiling, whose transgression was to be punished by public flogging, Foucault saw no reason to temper his enthusiasm. What was a small matter like women?s basic rights, when a struggle against ?the planetary system? was at hand?
Postcolonialists, then, have their own binary system, somewhat at odds with gender feminism?not to mention with women?s rights. It is not men who are the sinners; it is the West. It is not women who are victimized innocents; it is the people who suffered under Western colonialism, or the descendants of those people, to be more exact. Caught between the rock of patriarchy and the hard place of imperialism, the postcolonial feminist scholar gingerly tiptoes her way around the subject of Islamic fundamentalism and does the only thing she can do: she focuses her ire on Western men.
To this end, the postcolonialist eagerly dips into the inkwell of gender feminism. She ties colonialist exploitation and domination to maleness; she might refer to Israel?s ?masculinist military culture??Israel being white and Western?though she would never dream of pointing out the ?masculinist military culture? of the jihadi. And she expends a good deal of energy condemning Western men for wanting to improve the lives of Eastern women. At the turn of the twentieth century Lord Cromer, the British vice consul of Egypt and a pet target of postcolonial feminists, argued that the ?degradation? of women under Islam had a harmful effect on society. Rubbish, according to the postcolonialist feminist. His words are simply part of ?the Western narrative of the quintessential otherness and inferiority of Islam,? as Harvard professor Leila Ahmed puts it in Women and Gender in Islam. The same goes for American concern about Afghan women; it is merely a ?device for ranking the ?other? men as inferior or as ?uncivilized,? ? according to Nira Yuval-Davis, professor of gender and ethnic studies at the University of Greenwich, England. These are all examples of what renowned Columbia professor Gayatri Spivak called ?white men saving brown women from brown men.?
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Spivak?s phrase, a great favorite on campus, points to the postcolonial notion that brown men, having been victimized by the West, can never be oppressors in their own right. If they give the appearance of treating women badly, the oppression they have suffered at the hands of Western colonial masters is to blame. In fact, the worse they treat women, the more they are expressing their own justifiable outrage. ?When men are traumatized [by colonial rule], they tend to traumatize their own women,? Miriam Cooke, a Duke professor and head of the Association for Middle East Women?s Studies, told me. And today, Cooke asserts, brown men are subjected to a new form of imperialism. ?Now there is a return of colonialism that we saw in the nineteenth century in the context of globalization,? she says. ?What is driving Islamist men is globalization.?
It would be difficult to exaggerate the through-the-looking-glass quality of postcolonialist theory when it comes to the subject of women. Female suicide bombers are a good thing, because they are strong women demonstrating ?agency? against colonial powers. Polygamy too must be shown due consideration. ?Polygamy can be liberating and empowering,? Cooke answered sunnily when I asked her about it. ?Our norm is the Western, heterosexual, single couple. If we can imagine different forms that would allow us to be something other than a heterosexual couple, we might imagine polygamy working,? she explained murkily. Some women, she continued, are relieved when their husbands take a new wife: they won?t have to service him so often. Or they might find they now have the freedom to take a lover. But, I ask, wouldn?t that be dangerous in places where adulteresses can be stoned to death? At any rate, how common is that? ?I don?t know,? Cooke answers, ?I?m interested in discourse.? The irony couldn?t be darker: the very people protesting the imperialist exploitation of the ?Other? endorse that Other?s repressive customs as a means of promoting their own uniquely Western agenda?subverting the heterosexual patriarchy.
The final category in the feminist taxonomy, which might be called the world-government utopian strain, is in many respects closest to classical liberal feminism. Dedicated to full female dignity and equality, it generally eschews both the biological determinism of the gender feminist and the cultural relativism of the multiculti postcolonialist. Stanford political science professor Susan Moller Okin, an influential, subtle, and intelligent spokeswoman for this approach, created a stir among feminists in 1997 when she forthrightly attacked multiculturalists for valuing ?group rights for minority cultures? over the well-being of individual women. Okin admirably minced no words attacking arranged marriage, female circumcision, and polygamy, which she believed women experienced as a ?barely tolerable institution.? Some women, she went so far as to declare, ?might be better off if the culture into which they were born were either to become extinct . . . or preferably, to be encouraged to alter itself so as to reinforce the equality of women.?
But though Okin is less shy than other feminists about discussing the plight of women under Islamic fundamentalism, the typical U.N. utopian has her own reasons for keeping quiet as that plight fills Western headlines. For one thing, the utopian is also a bean-counting absolutist, seeking a pure, numerical equality between men and women in all departments of life. She greets Western, and particularly American, claims to have achieved freedom for women with skepticism. The motto of the 2002 International Women?s Day??Afghanistan Is Everywhere??was in part a reproach to the West about its superior airs. Women in Afghanistan might have to wear burqas, but don?t women in the West parade around in bikinis? ?It?s equally disrespectful and abusive to have women prancing around a stage in bathing suits for cash or walking the streets shrouded in burqas in order to survive,? columnist Jill Nelson wrote on the MSNBC website about the murderously fanatical riots that attended the Miss World pageant in Nigeria.
As Nelson?s statement hints, the utopian is less interested in freeing women to make their own choices than in engineering and imposing her own elite vision of a perfect society. Indeed, she is under no illusions that, left to their own democratic devices, women would freely choose the utopia she has in mind. She would not be surprised by recent Pakistani elections, where a number of the women who won parliamentary seats were Islamist. But it doesn?t really matter what women want. The universalist has a comprehensive vision of ?women?s human rights,? meaning not simply women?s civil and political rights but ?economic rights? and ?socioeconomic justice.? Cynical about free markets and globalization, the U.N. utopian is also unimpressed by the liberal democratic nation-state ?as an emancipatory institution,? in the dismissive words of J. Ann Tickner, director for international studies at the University of Southern California. Such nation-states are ?unresponsive to the needs of [their] most vulnerable members? and seeped in ?nationalist ideologies? as well as in patriarchal assumptions about autonomy. In fact, like the (usually) unacknowledged socialist that she is, the U.N. utopian eagerly awaits the withering of the nation-state, a political arrangement that she sees as tied to imperialism, war, and masculinity. During war, in particular, nations ?depend on ideas about masculinized dignity and feminized sacrifice to sustain the sense of autonomous nationhood,? writes Cynthia Enloe, professor of government at Clark University.
Having rejected the patriarchal liberal nation-state, with all the democratic machinery of self-government that goes along with it, the utopian concludes that there is only one way to achieve her goals: to impose them through international government. Utopian feminists fill the halls of the United Nations, where they examine everything through the lens of the ?gender perspective? in study after unreadable study. (My personal favorites: ?Gender Perspectives on Landmines? and ?Gender Perspectives on Weapons of Mass Destruction,? whose conclusion is that landmines and WMDs are bad for women.)
The 1979 U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), perhaps the first and most important document of feminist utopianism, gives the best sense of the sweeping nature of the movement?s ambitions. CEDAW demands many measures that anyone committed to democratic liberal values would applaud, including women?s right to vote and protection against honor killings and forced marriage. Would that the document stopped there. Instead it sets out to impose a utopian order that would erase all distinctions between men and women, a kind of revolution of the sexes from above, requiring nations to ?take all appropriate measures to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women? and to eliminate ?stereotyped roles? to accomplish this legislative abolition of biology. The document calls for paid maternity leave, nonsexist school curricula, and government-supported child care. The treaty?s 23-member enforcement committee hectors nations that do not adequately grasp that, as Enloe puts it, ?the personal is international.? The committee has cited Belarus for celebrating Mother?s Day, China for failing to legalize prostitution, and Libya for not interpreting the Qur?an in accordance with ?committee guidelines.?
Confusing ?women?s participation? with self-determination, and numerical equivalence with equality, CEDAW utopians try to orchestrate their perfect society through quotas and affirmative-action plans. Their bean-counting mentality cares about whether women participate equally, without asking what it is that they are participating in or whether their participation is anything more than ceremonial. Thus at the recent Women?s Summit in Jordan, Rima Khalaf suggested that governments be required to use quotas in elections ?to leapfrog women to power.? Khalaf, like so many illiberal feminist utopians, has no hesitation in forcing society to be free. As is often the case when elites decide they have discovered the route to human perfection, the utopian urge is not simply antidemocratic but verges on the totalitarian.
That this combination of sentimental victimhood, postcolonial relativism, and utopian overreaching has caused feminism to suffer so profound a loss of moral and political imagination that it cannot speak against the brutalization of Islamic women is an incalculable loss to women and to men. The great contribution of Western feminism was to expand the definition of human dignity and freedom. It insisted that all human beings were worthy of liberty. Feminists now have the opportunity to make that claim on behalf of women who in their oppression have not so much as imagined that its promise could include them, too. At its best, feminism has stood for a rich idea of personal choice in shaping a meaningful life, one that respects not only the woman who wants to crash through glass ceilings but also the one who wants to stay home with her children and bake cookies or to wear a veil and fast on Ramadan. Why shouldn?t feminists want to shout out their own profound discovery for the world to hear?
Perhaps, finally, because to do so would be to acknowledge the freedom they themselves enjoy, thanks to Western ideals and institutions. Not only would such an admission force them to give up their own simmering resentments; it would be bad for business.
The truth is that the free institutions?an independent judiciary, a free press, open elections?that protect the rights of women are the same ones that protect the rights of men. The separation of church and state that would allow women to escape the burqa would also free men from having their hands amputated for theft. The education system that would teach girls to read would also empower millions of illiterate boys. The capitalist economies that bring clean water, cheap clothes, and washing machines that change the lives of women are the same ones that lead to healthier, freer men. In other words, to address the problems of Muslim women honestly, feminists would have to recognize that free men and women need the same things?and that those are things that they themselves already have. And recognizing that would mean an end to feminism as we know it.
There are signs that, outside the academy, middlebrow literary circles, and the United Nations, feminism has indeed met its Waterloo. Most Americans seem to realize that September 11 turned self-indulgent sentimental illusions, including those about the sexes, into an unaffordable luxury. Consider, for instance, women?s attitudes toward war, a topic on which politicians have learned to take for granted a gender gap. But according to the Pew Research Center, in January 2002, 57 percent of women versus 46 percent of men cited national security as the country?s top priority. There has been a ?seismic gender shift on matters of war,? according to pollster Kellyanne Conway. In 1991, 45 percent of U.S. women supported the use of ground troops in the Gulf War, a substantially smaller number than the 67 percent of men. But as of November, a CNN survey found women were more likely than men to support the use of ground troops against Iraq, 58 percent to 56 percent. The numbers for younger women were especially dramatic. Sixty-five percent of women between 18 and 49 support ground troops, as opposed to 48 percent of women 50 and over. Women are also changing their attitudes toward military spending: before September 11, only 24 percent of women supported increased funds; after the attacks, that number climbed to 47 percent. An evolutionary psychologist might speculate that, if females tend to be less aggressively territorial than males, there?s little to compare to the ferocity of the lioness when she believes her young are threatened.
Even among some who consider themselves feminists, there is some grudging recognition that Western, and specifically American, men are sometimes a force for the good. The Feminist Majority is sending around urgent messages asking for President Bush to increase American security forces in Afghanistan. The influential left-wing British columnist Polly Toynbee, who just 18 months ago coined the phrase ?America the Horrible,? went to Afghanistan to figure out whether the war ?was worth it.? Her answer was not what she might have expected. Though she found nine out of ten women still wearing burqas, partly out of fear of lingering fundamentalist hostility, she was convinced their lives had greatly improved. Women say they can go out alone now.
As we sink more deeply into what is likely to be a protracted struggle with radical Islam, American feminists have a moral responsibility to give up their resentments and speak up for women who actually need their support. Feminists have the moral authority to say that their call for the rights of women is a universal demand?that the rights of women are the Rights of Man.
Feminism Behind the Veil
Feminists in the West may fiddle while Muslim women are burning, but in the Muslim world itself there is a burgeoning movement to address the miserable predicament of the second sex?without simply adopting a philosophy whose higher cultural products include Sex and the City, Rosie O?Donnell, and the power-suited female executive.
The most impressive signs of an indigenous female revolt against the fundamentalist order are in Iran. Over the past ten years or so, Iran has seen the publication of a slew of serious journals dedicated to the social and political predicament of Islamic women, the most well known being the Teheran-based Zonan and Zan, published by Faezah Hashemi, a well-known member of parliament and the daughter of former president Rafsanjani. Believing that Western feminism has promoted hostility between the sexes, confused sex roles, and the sexual objectification of women, a number of writers have proposed an Islamic-style feminism that would stress ?gender complementarity? rather than equality and that would pay full respect to housewifery and motherhood while also giving women access to education and jobs.
Attacking from the religious front, a number of ?Islamic feminists? are challenging the reigning fundamentalist reading of the Qur?an. These scholars insist that the founding principles of Islam, which they believe were long ago corrupted by pre-Islamic Arab, Persian, and North African customs, are if anything more egalitarian than those of Western religions; the Qur?an explicitly describes women as the moral and spiritual equals of men and allows them to inherit and pass down property. The power of misogynistic mullahs has grown in recent decades, feminists continue, because Muslim men have felt threatened by modernity?s challenge to traditional arrangements between the sexes.
What makes Islamic feminism really worth watching is that it has the potential to play a profoundly important role in the future of the Islamic world?and not just because it could improve the lot of women. By insisting that it is true to Islam?in fact, truer than the creed espoused by the entrenched religious elite?Islamic feminism can affirm the dignity of Islam while at the same time bringing it more in line with modernity. In doing this, feminists can help lay the philosophical groundwork for democracy. In the West, feminism lagged behind religious reformation and political democratization by centuries; in the East, feminism could help lead the charge.
At the same time, though, the issue of women?s rights highlights two reasons for caution about the Islamic future. For one thing, no matter how much feminists might wish otherwise, polygamy and male domination of the family are not merely a fact of local traditions; they are written into the Qur?an itself. This in and of itself would not prove to be such an impediment?the Old Testament is filled with laws antithetical to women?s equality?except for the second problem: more than other religions, Islam is unfriendly to the notion of the separation of church and state. If history is any guide, there?s the rub. The ultimate guarantor of the rights of all citizens, whether Islamic or not, can only be a fully secular state
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Feminists in this country do stand up for the rights of women all over the world.
Uhm, yeah, right. Just like all of them did when Palin was nominated. Duck over to the Daily Kos or the Democratic Underground some day if you want a full dose of situational ethics on full display. Whether it's support of petty dictators like Hugo Chavez, apologists for home grown terrorists like Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn, or boneheads who think our dead troops got their just desserts, there are a lot of folks on the left who have a very hard time defining a standard and then applying it consistently, which is the reason I no longer count myself among their ranks.
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I disagree strongly that war is always wrong , and that violence is never the answer. It is true that feminism and the peace movement often gone hand in hand historically. It may be true that war was the best thing that ever happened to Afghanistan women recently but case in point it certainly didn't t solve all their problems and won't.
However it is wrong to say that the Feminist movements doesn't care what happens to women in other countries.
There are regular articles and petitions about women in the Middle East. They and I do care.
See examples here
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=490.msg20309#msg20309
I have a right to care about what happens in the Country. American women do have it better than in any other country because people in general in America have it better in any other country. It doesn't mean that it selfish to want things to improve.
Between 1-4 and 1-6 women in America are victims of attempted sexual assault or sexual violence.
http://www.rainn.org/statistics
Rape is not just a problem in the Middle East.
I think you would have some problems with below arguments if they were made about free speech which I think is very important.
How can you complain about free speech when we have so much better than in China. Also how can you worry about free speech when there is hunger in the world. Isn't keeping people from starving to death more important than whether or not you have free speech. Really you have nothing to complain about relatively
I honestly don't know what feminist blogs were saying about the Middle East after 2001. I was not reading them then. If you are going to criticize the Feminist movement for their behavior NOW I request you that you use recent relevant examples. That seems to be standard expected behavior for all other topics.
Marc the article you posted spent about half its time criticizing feminist moments that are not mainstream. I don't think women or men are better and I happen to like the Western democracies a lot better than non- democracies.
My understanding of feminism is that it treating women equally makes the world better for everyone not just woman.
I don't like Daily Kos and I will never willing visit that site. There is a reason there is a separate feminist movement from the rest of the left.
Sarah Palin sexism watch
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah-palin-sexism-watch-18.html
http://www.feministing.com/archives/011763.html
There are many other examples. I had posted a couple myself
Both the right and left have hypocrites and extremists and those who use situational ethics. I have many problems with both the far right and the far left. I am a democrat because of their ideas not because I believe democrats are better people.
P.S-- My time is very limited lately since I have been working a lot more because of recent layoffs at my job. It is quite possible that I will be starting conversations and not finishing them until much later. I apologize in advance.
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Good Morning Rachel:
I posted the article because a) it was on point, and b) I had it at hand. :-) Agreed I should have put in a brief introduction/description to it (just like I so often tell GM :oops: :lol: )
Sorry to hear about pressures at work. May I ask here what it is that you do?
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I have voiced my concerns over what I perceive as an absence of a coherent strategy for Afg-Pak. Here's one POV:
==============n't Negotiate With the Taliban
Afghanistan is making progress despite its president.By ANN MARLOWEArticle
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Khost Province, Afghanistan
The British have been muttering in recent weeks about talking with the Taliban to end the Afghan insurgency. And Afghan President Hamid Karzai has recently offered amnesty to Taliban leader Mullah Omar if he would return to Afghanistan for peace talks. Mr. Karzai said that if foreign nations disapproved they could either withdraw their troops or remove him (the latter being the best suggestion he has had in a long time). So the terrible idea of talks with the Taliban has penetrated American military and political circles, part of a new pessimism that threatens to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
"The security situation is better than it was when the 82nd Airborne left in April. I am satisfied." So says Haji Doulat, the 63-year-old subgovernor of Mandozai, one of the 12 districts of Khost Province. He has worked hard with American troops to develop this rural farming community of 120,000.
Khost is one of the frontline provinces in the war on terror. It shares a 112 mile border with some of the most lawless areas of Pakistan. And its Zadran tribe counts as a member the insurgent leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, who regularly stages attacks on Coalition forces from across the border. The first two girls admitted to Khost's university this fall are so fearful of reprisals that they study at home and go to the campus only for exams. But Khost is also one of the places where we are winning the war against the Taliban, if slowly and expensively.
Since 2007, the U.S. commanders in Khost have dispersed their fighters among the province's districts to live in force-protection facilities alongside the subgovernors like Mr. Doulat and the Afghan National Police. These troops and the Khost Provincial Reconstruction Team, a civil-military partnership, use their Commander's Emergency Response Program Funds to improve Afghans' lives.
In 2002, there were 13 schools in this province of a million people. Now there are 205, of which 53 were built by the U.S. and 30 by other donors including NGOs, the World Bank and foreign governments. U.S. troops are building 25 more now. Before the invasion not a single girl went to school in all of Khost Province. In 2002 approximately 3,000 attended school. This year, 8,000 girls in Mandozai District alone were in school, and 50,047 attended in all of Khost.
The economy in Mandozai, as in other districts of Khost, has boomed thanks to the hardtop roads financed by the U.S. This week, Mr. Doulat sent men to take a first-ever survey of all the shops in his district with a view of increasing tax rolls and jumpstarting a small bazaar area. There were 61 shops in one half of Mandozai, most with more than 50,000 afghanis ($1,000) in capital. At the beginning of 2007, there were only about 15 shops in all of Mandozai bazaar. (There are 11,300 shops in the city of Khost, the provincial capital, with 2,000 added in the past year, according to Kiramert Khan, the head of the shopkeepers' union.)
Good governance is an essential part of progress. Mr. Doulat is considered the best of Khost's subgovernors by U.S. commanders. On a national level, much that's gone wrong is the fault of Mr. Karzai's wavering and often incompetent government.
This is why Mr. Karzai has been calling for talks with the Taliban and the ruthless war criminal Gulbuddin Hekmatyar -- who in his Kabul University days splashed acid on the faces of unveiled female students -- for a couple of years now. Exaggerating the potency of the insurgents is a way of excusing his own failures. It may also help him retain the support of hard-line Pashtun nationalists, nearly his only constituency now.
American commanders have nothing to cover up. In the 14 eastern provinces they command, progress is obvious. But talking with the Taliban will send the wrong message to everyone, from the feckless Mr. Karzai to energetic, courageous Afghans like Mr. Doulat to the little girls going to school for the first time.
– Robert C. Pozen and Yaneer Bar-YamAhmad Nadar Nadary, commissioner of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, is about to publish a 30-page report on Taliban atrocities, including about 700 Afghan civilians murdered between June 2007 and July 2008. (Look for it on www.aihrc.org.af.) One recent attack came on Oct. 30, when the Taliban attacked Afghanistan's Ministry of Culture. Three insurgents murdered a policeman and four civilians. The people who commit such killings are criminals who should be punished.
Apart from the ethics of talking with the Taliban, it would also be a fool's errand. If they weren't losing, they would have no interest in dialogue. Those who've been killing their own countrymen for the past few years aren't interested in the democratic process. Any Taliban who is interested is already in the government. (About 30%-40% of Afghan Parliament's Lower House are religious fundamentalists.)
Victory in Afghanistan -- defined as the time when we can pack up and leave Afghans to govern and defend their own country -- will come. It will take patience, however. After meeting with Mr. Doulat, I visited a girls' school in neighboring Tani District and stepped into a first-grade class with about 20 girls. None of them had a mother who was literate. They were being taught by an ancient, bearded, good-hearted man. I asked him who the top girl in the class was, and he pulled skinny, seven-year-old Meena to her feet. Her father is a laborer, and her clothes were ragged. If her illiterate parents have enough faith in the future that they send her to school, against cultural norms, we must not betray them or her.
An Afghanistan that officially acknowledges Taliban ideology by talking to Taliban leaders about their grievances and concerns offers nothing for its Meenas.
Ms. Marlowe is a New York-based writer who travels frequently to Afghanistan.
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And here is a hero of mine, Michael Yon:
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/
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Afghanistan: The Search for Safer Supply Routes
Stratfor Today » November 19, 2008 | 2324 GMT
TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images
Pakistani paramilitary soldiers leading supplies for NATO and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan at the Pakistani border town of JamrudSummary
The United States is considering Central Asia as an alternate route for ferrying supplies to Western forces in Afghanistan. However, considerable logistical and geopolitical issues require the United States to continue depending on Pakistan despite the deteriorating conditions in that country.
Analysis
An uptick in attacks by Pakistani Taliban fighters on convoys ferrying supplies through Pakistan to U.S./NATO forces in Afghanistan has forced the United States to explore alternative routes from Central Asia into landlocked Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported Nov 19. According to the report, which cites an Oct. 31 Pentagon document, Washington has already begun negotiations with countries along what the Pentagon has called a new northern route. An agreement with Georgia has been reached, and talks are ongoing with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The U.S. Transportation Command, however, said it does not expect transit agreements with Uzbekistan or Iran, and is seeking contractors that could handle as many as 50,000 rail containers per year through a Europe-Caucasus route and/or through Central Asia.
Though the deteriorating political, economic and security situation in Pakistan is making it harder for the United States and its NATO allies to move food, ammunition, fuel and other supplies through the country, the alternatives are no less problematic. Thus, for the foreseeable future, Pakistan will remain the land corridor through which Western forces will continue receiving their supplies, and Washington will pressure Pakistan to improve the security of these shipments.
Related Links
Afghanistan: The Russian Monkey Wrench
Afghanistan, Pakistan: The Battlespace of the Border
There are good reasons why some three-quarters of U.S./NATO supplies goes through Pakistan. It is the shortest overland route to places like Kabul and Kandahar; supplies are shipped from U.S. and European ports to Karachi, then transported via road through two routes — one going through the southwestern Pakistani border town of Chaman into the Kandahar region, and the other going through Torkham in northwestern Pakistan and over the Khyber Pass. In using Pakistan as a supply route, Washington has the ease of dealing with a single government with whom it has had a working (albeit troubled) relationship since the mission in Afghanistan began in late 2001.
Additionally, refineries in Pakistan provide the vast majority of fuels for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Two other refineries (one in Baku, Azerbaijan, across the Caspian Sea, and one in Turkmenistan) provide most of the rest. It could be difficult to move away from the Pakistani refineries, and especially so to find spare capacity elsewhere; the U.S. and NATO forces consume on the order of 75 million gallons of various fuels annually — most of it aviation fuel refined in Pakistan.
For the longest time, there were hardly any security issues threatening the logistical supply chain running through Pakistan. The military regime headed by former President Pervez Musharraf was firmly entrenched in Islamabad and extended considerable facilities to Washington and NATO. More importantly, there was no Pakistani Taliban insurgency. (It did not appear until late 2006 or early 2007.)
Musharraf’s complex relationship with Washington on one hand and the Taliban on the other, however, weakened his hold on power. Even before he was forced out of office, Pakistan had come under the grip of a fierce jihadist insurgency. While the focus of this insurgency has been Pakistani security targets, there have been many attacks on trucks carrying shipments meant for U.S./NATO forces in Afghanistan, which is why the U.S. Defense Department is looking into northerly routes in order to decrease dependency on Pakistan as a transit state.
(click map to enlarge)
But the option under consideration has its own set of problems in that it is a much longer, more expensive and politically complex route. Goods would have to be shipped from U.S. and European ports through the Black Sea to Georgia. From there, the containers would have to be put on rail to Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea ports, where they would have to be loaded onto ships to Turkmenistan and then travel by road either directly to Afghanistan or via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Even if the United States and its NATO allies were willing to incur the physical hassle of shipping supplies through the above route — which would add one ship reloading and two countries, at minimum, to the supply chain — there is the huge issue of dependency on Russia. This is the Kremlin’s near abroad, and Moscow will want to exact a significant price to guarantee the route’s security. At a time when Russia is trying to re-emerge as the United States’ main global rival, this becomes a huge issue for Washington.
Furthermore, in the aftermath of its military intervention in Georgia, Russia made some subtle insinuations about threatening NATO supply lines going to Afghanistan. The Uzbek and Turkmen governments also are very wary of the threat of U.S.-engineered color revolutions.
The “best” alternative, logistically speaking, would be using Iran as a transit state. Given what is happening in terms of Iraq and both the current and incoming U.S. administrations’ efforts to engage Iran diplomatically, this is not beyond the pale if the political issues can be sorted out. Supplies could be offloaded from ships docking at the Chahbahar port in the Persian Gulf and then sent by road to the southwestern Afghan town of Zaranj, which is connected to the main Afghan highway by a road recently completed by the Indian army’s engineer corps.
The Iranians, given their massive interests in Afghanistan, would be more than willing to provide this assistance. Iran has a long border with Afghanistan and has deep ethnic, linguistic and sectarian ties to the country. Furthermore, after securing Iraq, Tehran does not want its regional archrival, Saudi Arabia, to use Afghanistan as a tool against it.
But this depends on how fast the United States and Iran can put three decades of hostility behind them. Given that the two sides cooperated significantly in the move to oust the Taliban from power following the 9/11 attacks, this is quite feasible. However, like the Russians, the Iranians would want to exact a price for providing security for the convoys. More importantly, it would take time to build the trust for such an option to be pursued. The U.S. military is not about to link its operational capabilities to the goodwill of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, even if the two sides were to find a way to bury the hatchet. Also, the United States would be concerned that Iran could use the supply line as leverage in future talks.
Between the huge actual and political costs associated with the Central Asian route and the political hurdles of using Iran as a transit state, the United States and NATO will likely continue to work with Pakistan, despite its problems. But the fact that the United States was willing to take a concerted look at alternative routes raises questions about how bad the Pentagon feels the Pakistani routes have become — and how bad they are expected to get.
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United States: Pushing Deeper into Pakistan
Stratfor Today » November 19, 2008 | 2310 GMT
Ethan Miller/Getty Images
A U.S. Air Force UAV in August 2007 at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nev.Summary
A U.S. missile strike in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) on Nov. 19 killed five al Qaeda members, including Abdullah Azzam al-Saudi, thought to have been a high-ranking member of the group. Until now, all reported missile strikes by U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles in Pakistan had been in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Hitting targets in NWFP will test the boundaries on how far the United States will go in its war against al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Analysis
In the early hours of Nov. 19, two missiles suspected to have been launched from a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hit a house in the Pakistani village of Hindi Khel, about 8 miles west of Bannu city in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). In the house was Abdullah Azzam al-Saudi, a high-ranking al Qaeda leader who, according to U.S. security officials, was closely linked to deputy al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and acted as a liaison to the Taliban. Al-Saudi was killed in the strike, along with four or five other foreign militants. Seven civilians in the vicinity were injured.
UAV-launched missile strikes have become quite common in Pakistan along the Afghan border. Strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), especially in North and South Waziristan, have been occurring once or twice a week since September and have become so routine that Stratfor no longer issues situation reports when they occur. That this strike hit some 3 miles over the FATA and NWFP border border in NWFP — an area that had been immune from U.S. strikes — suggests the United States is pushing the envelope in its hunt for al Qaeda prime and in its effort to undermine the Taliban’s war-making capabilities in Afghanistan.
Pakistani opposition to U.S. attacks in the FATA has been vocal, with politicians in Islamabad demanding an end to airstrikes on their territory. But there has been no serious retaliation by the Pakistanis and the strikes continue. There has also been a certain logic to the FATA focus. The United States contends that the tribal areas actually are not part of sovereign Pakistan since they are partially autonomous and ruled by local governments; moreover, by cutting deals with militants, Islamabad has relinquished its writ over the area. Furthermore, al Qaeda and the Taliban use the FATA as a launchpad for attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, giving the United States all the more reason to carry out strikes there. There are even reports of an understanding between Washington and Islamabad in which the latter has agreed to U.S. strikes in Pakistan’s tribal badlands.
But the NWFP is another story. It is a full-fledged province of Pakistan where the governing party (the Awami National Party, or ANP) has cooperated in opposing Islamist militants. However, the NWFP (not the FATA) is where the primary leaders of al Qaeda are most likely hiding. Hard by the border, the FATA is too close to Afghanistan and al Qaeda’s U.S. and NATO enemies for it to be such a sanctuary, while the NWFP is farther away and somewhat buffered by the FATA. The death of al-Saudi, who was an important link between al Qaeda and the Taliban, further suggests that the apex leadership of al Qaeda is likely hiding in NWFP.
The U.S. strategy may be to slowly creep closer and closer to al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries until UAV airstrikes in NWFP’s target-rich environment seem just as routine as those in the FATA. Meanwhile, the United States will have a good chance to weigh the range of responses from its allies on this latest escalation during a meeting of NATO defense chiefs that began Nov. 19 in Brussels. Pakistani Gen. Ashfaq Kayani will be in attendance.
We are also likely to see additional attacks in NWFP districts located along the north-south expanse of the FATA. These districts have seen considerable Taliban activity over the past year or so while Islamabad’s writ in the area has diminished. Indeed, this “Talibanization” has spread further east into settled areas such as Peshawar, the NWFP capital. A more aggressive U.S. campaign in these areas will incite increasing public outrage and make Islamabad’s job of maintaining stability that much more difficult. Ultimately, the United States is much more capable of going after Islamist militants in Pakistan’s border region than the Pakistani army is — a fact not lost on Islamabad.
The United States is currently in political flux as President George W. Bush closes out his administration and President-elect Barack Obama readies his. Unable to craft and implement a comprehensive strategy to play out the end game against al Qaeda and the Taliban, the Bush administration has used an interim strategy of increased UAV strikes while a conclusive strategy awaits an Obama administration.
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US missiles striking terror into Pakistani militants
How the British Islamist Rashid Rauf may have been caught up in the US campaign to tackle terrorists in Pakistan
Jason Burke in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Saturday November 22 2008 12.09 GMT
United States forces are believed to have carried out about 20 missile attacks since August in north-west Pakistan, a sharp rise that reflects Washington's frustration at Islamabad's efforts to tackle militants on its own soil.
Though the attacks have killed a number of high-profile militant leaders, civilian casualties and wounded national pride has led to outrage in Pakistan. The Pakistani government has been forced to repeatedly deny reports that a secret pact has been agreed with the US to allow the missile attacks from Afghanistan territory to go ahead.
Pakistani government officials and military officers last week denied the existence of a "secret list" of 20 individuals against whom missile strikes had been sanctioned by Islamabad without prior consultation. They repeatedly told the Observer that the strikes were causing problems by angering local people. "One strike and you have a whole village radicalised," said Shafir Ullah Nasir, the political agent in the Bajaur tribal agency where fighting has raged for months.
Pakistan's new civilian president, Asif Ali Zardari, has urged Washington to share intelligence and equip Pakistani forces so they can pursue militants on their own side of the border.
Intelligence officials in Islamabad have told the Observer that the strikes have demoralised militants, forcing many to sleep in different locations every night or even sleep under trees for cover rather than risk staying in a house. The heightened rate of attrition among the militants has sparked a hunt for a suspected spy within their ranks, diverting attention and resources from offensive actions, the officials said.
Pakistan has played a key role in the evolution of the terrorist threat in the UK. Many major bomb plots in Britain have involved British or dual-nationality citizens who have travelled to Pakistan for training or strategic advice from the hardcore al-Qaida leadership who have regrouped in the lawless tribal zones along the Afghan frontier in recent years.
Several dozen British citizens who are known to the UK government make their way to the frontier region each year, with Pakistani militant groups often acting as intermediaries. Intelligence officials suspect there are others who they have been unable to identify.
Some go on to fight in Afghanistan, others return to the UK. Britain's MI6 overseas intelligence agents work closely with their American counterparts to track individuals who they believe pose a "material" threat to the UK. Rashid Rauf would have fallen squarely into this category.
As MI6 has neither the capability nor the legal right to undertake lethal operations in Pakistan, intelligence is passed to the Americans who run a fleet of drones fitted with Hellfire missiles powerful enough to destroy a mud-walled home and burn everyone inside. Rauf may well have fallen into the latter category too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...-pakistan-rauf
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US kills alleged transatlantic airline plot leader, reports say
British Islamist Rashid Rauf said to have been killed by missile attack in north-west Pakistan
Jason Burke in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Saturday November 22 2008 12.43 GMT
A British man suspected of close links with al-Qaida leaders and involvement in a plot to blow up transatlantic airplanes has reportedly been killed by a United States missile strike in the volatile border regions of Pakistan.
Rashid Rauf, originally from Birmingham, was said to have died along with at least four other militants with links to al-Qaida in an attack in the restive North Waziristan tribal agency, a key base for hardline extremists, according to local television stations and intelligence officials.
Pakistani intelligence sources in Islamabad said they had intercepted communications between militants after the strike indicating that Rauf was among those killed, but cautioned that no direct evidence of his death had yet been found. Investigations were still continuing, officials said.
A spokesman for the Foreign Office said it was investigating the reports.
Rauf, who is 27 and holds both British and Pakistani citizenship, is wanted by West Midlands police in relation to the 2002 murder of his uncle and has been named as a "key person" in the so-called "airlines plot" of 2006. Rauf was arrested in Pakistan that year after an apparent tip-off from British anti-terrorism officers, days before a series of raids in the UK in which 23 were arrested. After the operation hand baggage restrictions on flights were tightened.
Eight men went on trial earlier this year accused of conspiring to smuggle home-made liquid bombs on board a series of transatlantic passenger flights. Three were found guilty of conspiracy to murder but face retrial next year on a more serious charge alongside four other defendants on whom the jury did not return verdicts. One of the defendants was acquitted.
Aftab Sherpao, the Pakistani interior minister at the time, told the Observer earlier this week that Rauf was considered the mastermind of the plot and was linked to al-Qaida.
Rauf, however, escaped from police custody outside a court in Rawalpindi last December following an extradition hearing. Officers had removed his handcuffs to allow him to wash before prayers.
He married a relative of one of Pakistan's notorious militants, Azhar Masood Azhar, the head of Jaish-e-Mohammad.
Rauf's lawyer said that the suspected militant's family in Pakistan, who live in the eastern city of Bahawalpur, had no news. "They have no information," Hasmat Habib told the Observer. "He was an innocent man a god-fearing, devout polite man and this is an extra-judicial killing."
Today's missile strike, shortly before dawn, is thought to have killed several foreigners. At least one is believed to have been Egyptian, named as Abu Zubair al-Masri.
A Taliban spokesman said all those killed were civilians, and that three children were injured.
"None was a foreigner," Ahmedullah Ahmedi said in a statement delivered to reporters in Miran Shah, the region's main town.
But officials said the attack targeted a house in the village of Ali Khel, close to the small town of Miram Shah. The house belonged to Khaliq Noor, a leader of the coalition of local extremist groups known as the Pakistan Taliban, and he regularly sheltered foreign fighters, officials said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...ne-rashid-rauf
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German soldiers deemed 'too fat to fight'
Thomas Coghlan in Kabul
First they were accused of not wanting to fight. Then they were blamed for failing in their main mission to train the Afghan police.
Now Germany’s battered military reputation has received a further humiliating blow. According to official reports the 3,500 troops in northern Afghanistan drink too much and are too fat to fight.
A German parliamentary report has revealed that in 2007 German forces in Afghanistan consumed about 1.7 million pints of beer and 90,000 bottles of wine. During the first six months of this year 896,000 pints of beer were shipped to German forces in Afghanistan. British and US bases in the country enforce a strict ban on alcohol.
The physical condition of the soldiers was already in question after a German armed forces report found that 40 per cent of its soldiers aged 18-29 were overweight, compared to 35 per cent of the civilian population of the same age.
The report, published in March, concluded that the Bundeswehr lived on beer and sausages while shunning fruit and vegetables. It said that an overdeveloped bureaucracy was also contributing to a “passive lifestyle” on the part of the soldiers.
Reinhold Robbe, the parliamentary commissioner for the German armed forces, concluded: “Plainly put, the soldiers are too fat, exercise too little and take little care of their diet.”
“Yes, it is true, the German soldiers in Kunduz are allowed to drink two cans of beer per day,” Lieutenant-Colonel Rainer Zaude, a spokesman for the forces, confirmed.
Even more damning is the allegation from a senior officer that Germany is failing in its main mission to train the Afghan police. General Hans-Christoph Ammon, the commander of the special commando unit, the KSK, described the efforts as “a miserable failure”.
The Government is also reported to have banned any reference to Krieg (war), in press statements on Afghanistan. Caveats imposed by the German Government limit the forces to operations in the relatively passive north.
Twenty-eight German soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001, including two in a suicide bomb attack in Kunduz province last month.
The Germans in Afghanistan
German Tornado aircraft are limited to unarmed reconaissance. German Medevac helicopters have to be back at base by dusk.
German forces limited to the northern areas of the country where there is a lower level of fighting (though the level of fighting there is now beginning to change)
US forces have been very frustrated by the caution of German rules of engagement - German troops operating alongside US forces have refused to open fire on occasion for fear of causing civilian casualties.
A trial is currently underway in the German courts following an incident in which German soldiers opened fire on a car that approached a checkpoint believing it contained a suicide bomb - several civilians died in the incident.
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AP: Officers outgunned and underfinanced compared with insurgents
The Associated Press
updated 4:06 p.m. MT, Thurs., Dec. 4, 2008
BADABER, Pakistan - Brothers Mushtaq and Ishaq Ali left the police force a month ago, terrified of dying as their colleagues had — beheaded by militants on a rutted village road before a shocked crowd. They went straight to the local Urdu-language newspaper to announce their resignation. They were too poor to pay for a personal ad, so the editor of The Daily Moon, Rasheed Iqbal, published a news story instead. He has run dozens like it.
"They just want to get the word out to the Taliban that they are not with the police anymore so they won't kill them," said Iqbal. "They know that no one can protect them, and especially not their fellow policemen."
Outgunned and out-financed, police in volatile northwestern Pakistan are fighting a losing battle against insurgents, dozens of interviews by The Associated Press show. They are dying in large numbers, and many survivors are leaving the force. The number of terrorist attacks against police has gone up from 113 in 2005 to 1,820 last year, according to National Police Bureau. The death toll for policemen in that time increased from nine to 575. In the northwestern area alone, 127 policemen have died so far this year in suicide bombings and assassinations, and another 260 have been wounded.
The crisis means the police cannot do the nuts-and-bolts work needed to stave off an insurgency fueled by the Taliban and al-Qaida. While the military can pound mountain hideouts, analysts and local officials say it is the police who should hunt down insurgents, win over the people and restore order.
"The only way to save Pakistan is to think of extremism and insurgency in North West Frontier Province as a law-enforcement issue," said Hassan Abbas, a South Asia expert at Harvard University's Belfer Center Project for Science. "Rather than buying more F-16s, Pakistan should invest in modernizing its police."
Bombings, beheadings commonplace
In the Swat Valley, militants have turned a once-idyllic mountain getaway into a nightmare of bombings and beheadings despite a six-month military operation to root them out. About 300 policemen have fled the force already. On a recent evening in Mardan, Akhtar Ali Shah had just slipped out of his deputy police inspector's uniform to head home. In an escort vehicle, a half-dozen of his guards had inched outside the giant white gates of the police station for a routine security check.
The bomb exploded minutes later. Through a cloud of dust and dirt, Shah saw five of his six guards lying dead near the blood-smeared gate. The head of the suicide bomber rested nearby.
"We are the ones who are getting killed by the terrorists that we are facing," Shah said later.
Al-Qaida-linked militants ferry truckloads of explosives from the tribal regions through Mardan to targets deep within Pakistan, often slipping past scores of police checkpoints. But Shah said his men lack the technical expertise, training or equipment to hunt down big-name terrorists or even identify would-be suicide bombers. His voice laced with frustration, Shah held up his small black cell phone.
"These people are among us. Look here: Our technical capabilities are so weak that we don't even have the ability to listen or to trace these phone calls," he said. "How are we supposed to know who it is that is coming here to kill us and when?"
Surviving on $80 a month
Most of Pakistan's 383,000 police are poorly paid constables. Malik Naveed Khan, who heads the force of 55,000 in the North West Frontier Province, said he has one policeman for every 364 miles of some of the most dangerous terrain in the world.
"Insurgents can see when I go someplace and wait for me to return and kill me," he said. "It isn't my own death that I fear, but every time there is an attack, it demoralizes the whole police force."
Khan said his men fight with World War II-vintage, single-shot weapons against the rapid-fire Kalashnikov rifles carried by the militants. The police go out on patrol without bulletproof vests or helmets. And of Khan's 18 armored personnel carriers, six are 1960s-era Soviet models that break down so often he now sends a mechanic along with the police.
A Pakistani constable makes about $80 a month, compared with about $170 for a Taliban foot soldier, Khan said. Even in death, militants do better than the Pakistani police. Militant groups pay more than $20,000 to the families of suicide bombers, compared with $6,000 given to a policeman's survivor, Khan said.
"Where is their money coming from?" he asked.
He said he believes a lot of it comes from the flourishing opium trade next door in Afghanistan, donations from devout Muslims and extortion of wealthy Muslims in the Middle East.
Lack of money, resources
Most police stations in Pakistan don't even have cameras to photograph the crime scene or criminals. There were two functioning forensic laboratories in Pakistan in 2001, and since then four more have been approved — a start, but far short of the 50 or so police say they need. Khan said Pakistani police also lack enough explosives-sniffing dogs to check the truckloads coming from the tribal region. The Pakistani government recognizes the need to train, develop and equip local police, said Sherry Rahman, information minister. But she added that Pakistan has little money for such investment and needs help from the international community.
Most U.S. aid to Pakistan goes to the military, not the police. Washington gave $731 million for military spending last year and $862 million the year before, according to a September report issued by the Pakistan Policy Working Group, an independent, nonpartisan group. By contrast, the U.S. gave $4.9 million for law enforcement and the judicial system last year. The crisis among the police is also hobbling the courts, said Imtiaz, a deputy jail superintendent who wanted to use only one name because he feared reprisals from militants and his bosses. Interviewed at a central jail in northwest Pakistan, the jailer said he has been threatened repeatedly by militants who found his phone number. Late-night calls warn him to treat jailed insurgents with a kind hand. He told of an insurgent caught by police and imprisoned for an attack on a girls' school. At the only anti-terrorist court in town, the judge — who had also been threatened — heard the case, listened to the militant's confession and then acquitted him, Imtiaz said.
"No one believes the police can protect them," Imtiaz said with a laugh. "I am part of the police, and I know they can't protect me."
Fighting back
The police are trying to fight back with citizen councils and the beginnings of an elite force of 7,500 men who will be given good salaries and trained in investigative skills, profiling and weaponry training, said Khan, the provincial police chief. The first 2,000 men are being trained. About a half-dozen civilian forces, fashioned along the lines of Iraq's Awakening Councils, have also been enticed into taking up arms against the militants in return for more development. Some of the councils, which call themselves Peace Committees, number more than 300 villagers.
"The people of this area have learned as children how to fire a rifle, how to handle a gun," Khan said. "Everyone has a gun, whether licensed or unlicensed. They don't need to be shown how to use them."
In Badaber, a dusty village barely six miles from the provincial capital of Peshawar, a civilian force patrols the streets at night. Abdul Hafeez, who runs a gas station in Badaber, said even government or army trucks must now get permission from villagers blocking the road to pass at night.
The job of the patrols, he said, is to keep out the militants, the military — and the police. Hafeez said he had told the police a day in advance about rumors that militants were planning to blow up an electrical tower in Badaber. The next day, they did. The police did nothing.
"No, no, no — no one will go to the police," he said. "The police can't do anything. They can't stop these Taliban even when they know they are going to attack."
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28057057/
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KABUL, Afghanistan — Most of the additional American troops arriving in Afghanistan early next year will be deployed near the capital, Kabul, American military commanders here say, in a measure of how precarious the war effort has become.
It will be the first time that American or coalition forces have been deployed in large numbers on the southern flank of the city, a decision that reflects the rising concerns among military officers, diplomats and government officials about the increasing vulnerability of the capital and the surrounding area. It also underscores the difficult choices confronting American military commanders as they try to apportion a limited number of forces not only within Afghanistan, but also between Afghanistan and Iraq.
For the incoming Obama administration, a first priority will be to weigh which is the greater risk: drawing down American forces too quickly in Iraq, potentially jeopardizing the gains there; or not building up troops quickly enough in Afghanistan, where the war effort hangs in the balance as security worsens.
The new Army brigade, the Third Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, N.Y., is scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan in January and will consist of 3,500 to 4,000 soldiers. The “vast majority” of them will be sent to Logar and Wardak Provinces, adjacent to Kabul, said Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, a spokeswoman for the American units in eastern Afghanistan. A battalion of at least several hundred soldiers from that brigade will go to the border region in the east, where American forces have been locked in some of the fiercest fighting this year.
In all, the Pentagon is planning to add more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan in response to a request from Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top commander in Afghanistan. Those troops are expected to be sent to violent areas in the south. But they are expected to be deployed over 12 to 18 months. Nearly all would be diverted from Iraq, officials say.
The plan for the incoming brigade, then, means that for the time being fewer reinforcements — or none at all — will be immediately available for the parts of Afghanistan where the insurgency is most intense.
It also means that most of the newly arriving troops will not be deployed with the main goal of curbing the cross-border flow of insurgents from their rear bases in Pakistan, something American commanders would like and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has recommended. In recent months, amid a series of American military operations that caused civilian casualties, Mr. Karzai has repeatedly said that the fight against the insurgents should not be waged “in the villages” of Afghanistan but rather in the rugged borderlands to the east and south.
In an interview, the president’s spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said there was no conflict between the January deployment and Mr. Karzai’s declarations. While Mr. Karzai had requested a focus on border areas, the spokesman said, additional reinforcements were also needed throughout the country, including in Wardak and Logar.
There are about 62,000 international troops currently in Afghanistan, including about 32,000 Americans, a military spokesman said, but they are spread thinly throughout the country, which is nearly the size of Texas. American commanders say they desperately need more. Military officials say that if General McKiernan’s requests are met, deployments in the next year and a half or so will include four combat brigades, an aviation brigade equipped with attack and troop-carrying helicopters, reconnaissance units, support troops and trainers for the Afghan Army and the police, raising American force levels to about 58,000.
The United States and NATO forces are hoping to expand the Afghan Army to 134,000 from nearly 70,000 over the next four or five years. Col. Gregory S. Julian, a top military spokesman, said that for security reasons he could not say where exactly those troops would go, but NATO’s southern command in Afghanistan includes Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan and Zabul Provinces.
Of immediate concern, American and NATO commanders say, is the need to safeguard the capital, to hit new Taliban strongholds in Wardak and Logar, and to provide enough security in those provinces for development programs, which are essential to maintaining the support of Afghan villagers.
Unlike in previous winters, when there was a lull in fighting as many Taliban fighters returned to Pakistan, American commanders expect more Taliban fighters to remain in Afghanistan and continue the fight. If so, the change would seem to reflect an effort by the emboldened insurgency to maintain its momentum and hold newly gained territory.
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Wardak and Logar had been relatively secure until late last year. But by most accounts, Taliban activity has soared in the two provinces in the past year, as the insurgents have stepped up attacks against Afghan and foreign forces, sometimes even controlling parts of major roads connecting Kabul to the east and south.
The number of attacks in Wardak by the Taliban and other insurgent groups has increased about 58 percent since last year, and in Logar about 41 percent, according to statistics collated by Sami Kovanen, a security analyst in Kabul.
Insurgents now have significant influence, if not control, in much of the two provinces, said Mr. Kovanen, who draws his information from a wide range of government, nongovernment and private sources.
The American military command said it had incomplete statistics for the level of violence in those provinces. “Frankly, in Wardak and Logar, we don’t know what we don’t know,” Colonel Nielson-Green said in an e-mail message. “There are few of our forces present in those areas, hence the reason for the incoming brigade there.”
“I suspect that violence will increase as we place this unit but will go down over time,” she added, “because we assess that there are considerable enemy support areas in both provinces and we will be going after them.”
In June, three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were killed in an ambush when their vehicles were hit by mines and rocket-propelled grenades as they drove through Wardak Province.
In August, three Western women and an Afghan driver, all working for the International Rescue Committee, a relief group based in New York, were killed in Logar. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
The next month, the governor of Logar Province and three of his guards were killed in the explosion of a mine buried in a road.
American and NATO military commanders eventually hope to turn over the country’s security to Afghan forces, but the Afghan police and military are nowhere near ready to assume that responsibility, officials say.
The Afghan government has already begun to work with local and provincial elected officials to extend the influence of the central government in the region, improve public services and gain the support of residents. But the government’s efforts have been continually hampered by criminal gangs and insurgent groups.
Sediqa Mubariz, a member of Parliament from Wardak, said in an interview that she would welcome any additional American troops in her province.
Ms. Mubariz said security had been so poor that since last year she had not been able to travel from Kabul to her home district in Wardak, only 50 miles away.
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Geopolitical Diary: The Afghanistan Surge and Pakistan's Role
December 9, 2008
Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar remained defiant as ever Monday, declaring in a message posted on an Islamist radical Web site that a planned surge of foreign troops to Afghanistan would result only in more targets for Taliban fighters. He also refused to negotiate with Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul so long as foreign soldiers remain in Afghanistan.
Though such a statement is not exactly surprising, coming from a hardliner like Mullah Omar, even his more moderate colleagues are not feeling compelled to entertain negotiations with the government at the moment. Despite U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s statements about a “soft surge” strategy analogous to a model used in Iraq — a surge that could total 20,000 U.S. troops, on top of more than 60,000 U.S. and NATO forces already present — the Taliban movement is not quaking in its boots.
No one is suggesting a cut-and-paste application of the Iraq strategy, but the underpinning is the same: A significant influx of combat forces to turn the tide of the conflict and change regional perceptions.
In the Iraq experience, it is not that the 30,000 extra troops altered the balance of power — far from it. It was the arrival of those troops in context that was significant. U.S. President George W. Bush committed the forces immediately after his party lost the 2006 congressional elections and thus control over both houses of Congress. The obvious decision would have been to throw in the towel and begin a withdrawal from Iraq. Instead, Bush surged forces. The general feeling in the region — and particularly in Iran — was shocked confusion. For if the Americans were willing to double down after a bad election result, what would it take for them to back off? The result was a shift in calculus in Tehran and among Iraq’s sectarian groups that led to negotiations, a significant reduction in violence and ultimately the Status of Forces Agreement, which defines terms of the U.S. military presence in Iraq for the next three years.
The U.S. hope now is that the architect and implementer of the Iraq surge strategy, Gen. David Petraeus, can translate the Iraq success to the Afghan theater, largely using forces that are being freed up from Iraq. Just as the surge into Iraq caused the Iranians to wonder if the Americans had lost their minds, the logic goes, a surge into Afghanistan might cause the Pakistanis to shift their position. Specifically, the Americans want the Pakistanis to take a much firmer line against militant Islamists in the region bordering Afghanistan.
However, a direct Iraq-to-Afghanistan comparison is impossible because the war theaters are quite different — perhaps too different to make the surge strategy applicable.
First and most critically, there is no single government in Pakistan. In fact, many of the factions in Pakistan fully side with the radical Islamists that the United States wants to target in the border region. And as the last couple of weeks have illustrated, there are sound reasons to doubt that Pakistan’s government would be able to effect a difference in the security situation, even if it does possess the will to crack down on the Islamist rogues that are causing trouble.
Second, there is a belief within the Pakistani government — among those who are making at least some efforts to help out the war effort — that the Americans surely will not take any steps that would threaten the coherence of the Pakistani state itself. To do so would, in their eyes, destroy Pakistan and release what pressure that has been brought to bear on the militants in the first place. The key bluff (assuming it is a bluff) of an Afghan surge would be for the Americans to convince this faction that, no, Washington is less concerned with the fragility of the Pakistani state than with eradicating Islamist militants, so Islamabad had better step up.
Third, even if the bluff works, there is always the concern that India will be compelled to take military action against Pakistan itself — with or without U.S. consent — in retribution for the Mumbai attacks, and in hopes of keeping such an attack from occurring again. In other words, if the Pakistanis become all the more concerned about rival India to the east, they will have even less incentive to worry about problems on their western border with Afghanistan. In fact, Pakistan could grow even more reliant on Islamist militant irregulars to use against India as tensions escalate.
It is an imperfect comparison, and applying the surge strategy to Afghanistan is probably a long shot at best. But right now it is the only page in the game book that appears to have some relevance.
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December 16, 2008
US accuses Britain over military failings in Afghanistan
Allegations that British troops in Helmand are snide, underequipped and often need rescuing have soured relations
Tom Baldwin in Washington and Michael Evans, Defence Editor
The performance of Britain’s overstretched military in Afghanistan is coming under sustained criticism from the Pentagon and US analysts even as Gordon Brown ponders whether to send in further reinforcements.
Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary who has been asked to remain in his job under Barack Obama, is understood to have expressed strong reservations about counterinsurgency operations in British-controlled Helmand province.
He has already announced plans for a surge of 20,000 US troops into Afghanistan but Mr Brown, who was given a bleak progress report when he visited Afghanistan at the weekend, is said to be reluctant about committing another 2,000 British troops on top of the 8,400 already there.
A total of 132 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2001 and the Government is worried about public opinion turning against the campaign. British officials are concerned that the US may take over control of Helmand – where Mr Gates plans to deploy an extra 5,000 troops – if Mr Brown fails to support the surge. The Americans have grievances over Britain’s lack of equipment, including helicopters, which has left troops unable to perform the same tasks as US counterparts and led to more cautious tactics. There is also grumbling about the regularity with which US airstrikes are called to rescue British troops.
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General James Jones, who has been picked at Mr Obama’s National Security Adviser, co-chaired a bipartisan panel this year which cautioned that Afghanistan was close to becoming a failed state and called for better coordination among Nato forces.
It is understood that there has been “tension and resentment” over the air of superiority adopted by British commanders such as Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who suggested that his American counterparts needed to take lessons from Britain’s experience in Northern Ireland and Malaya.
David Kilcullen, an adviser to the US State Department, told a recent seminar that there had been “lots of fairly snide criticism” from the British whose attitude had been: “Look at us, we’re on the street in our soft caps and everyone loves us.”
He added that such claims had been undercut by the performance since then. “It would be fair to say that in 2006 the British Army was defeated in the field in southern Iraq.” At the same event, Daniel Marston, an American consultant who until recently was a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and has been embedded with troops in Afghanistan, said that Britain was being forced to learn some humility after being “embarrassed by their performance”.
Mr Brown hinted at some of his doubts when he told reporters in Kabul: “We are the second largest force in Afghanistan and we will expect as part of the burden-sharing that other countries will do more.” Senior diplomatic sources say there is also frustration in Britain’s military over the lack of a coherent mission statement for the Nato forces in Afghanistan. This has led to problems with US forces sometimes wrecking carefully nurtured community relations in their pursuit of al-Qaeda.
Carter Malkesian, an expert at the Centre of Naval Analysis, said: “Among those in the Department of Defence who are paying attention to these operations, Britain’s reputation has probably fallen. But they still recognise that the British Army, among all the allies, are those that fight the most and fight the best.”
A British officer in Afghanistan expressed surprise at the criticism from the US. “They have few enough allies who will actually do any fighting,” he told The Times.
“It may be that our lay-down is presented as one brigade – when in fact it is far larger – and those away from the coal face simply do not realise the scale of what we do.”
A senior British defence source said: “We are punching above our weight in Afghanistan and are the second biggest contributor of all the Nato allies, so for anyone to single us out for criticism is plainly wrong and unfair.”
Yesterday it emerged that the Ministry of Defence expects its budget for Afghanistan to rise by more than 50 per cent next year from £1.51 billion in the financial year to £2.32 billion.
— A soldier with 29 Commando Royal Artillery became the 133rd British serviceman to die in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001, the Ministry of Defence said. The soldier was at a Forward Operating Base in the Gereshk area of Helmand province when he was wounded by enemy fire. He was taken by helicopter to the military hospital at Kandahar but died later of his wounds. His family has been informed. The death comes three days after four Royal Marines died in two separate explosions in the Sangin area of Helmand. Three were killed by a 13-year-old suspected suicide bomber.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5349036.ece
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Interesting BBG. I wonder what Michael Yon is saying about all this?
Anyway, in a totall different vein, here's this from the WSJ:
Every visitor to Pakistan has seen them: 20-foot tall roadside replicas of a remote mountain where, a decade ago, Pakistan conducted its first overt nuclear tests. This is what the country's leaders -- military, secular, Islamist -- consider their greatest achievement.
AP
A model of Chaghi mountain, the site of Pakistan's nuclear test.
So here's a modest proposal: Let's buy their arsenal.
A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear program (and midwife to a few others), likes to point out what a feat it was that a country "where we can't even make a bicycle chain" could succeed at such an immense technological task. He exaggerates somewhat: Pakistan got its bomb largely through a combination of industrial theft, systematic violation of Western export controls, and a blueprint of a weapon courtesy of Beijing.
Still, give Mr. Khan this: Thanks partly to his efforts, a country that has impoverished the great mass of its own people, corruptly enriched a tiny handful of elites, served as a base of terrorism against its neighbors, lost control of its intelligence services, radicalized untold numbers of Muslims in its madrassas, handed the presidency to a man known as Mr. 10%, and proliferated nuclear technology to Libya and Iran (among others) has, nevertheless, made itself a power to be reckoned with. Congratulations.
But if Pakistanis thought a bomb would be a net national asset, they miscalculated. Yes, Islamabad gained parity with its adversaries in New Delhi, gained prestige in the Muslim world, and gained a day of national pride, celebrated every May 28.
What Pakistan didn't gain was greater security. "The most significant reality was that the bomb promoted a culture of violence which . . . acquired the form of a monster with innumerable heads of terror," wrote Pakistani nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy earlier this year. "Because of this bomb, we can definitely destroy India and be destroyed in its response. But its function is limited to this."
In 2007, some 1,500 Pakistani civilians were killed in terrorist attacks. None of those attacks were perpetrated by India or any other country against which Pakistan's warheads could be targeted, unless it aimed at itself. But Pakistan's nuclear arsenal has made it an inviting target for the jihadists who blew up Islamabad's Marriott hotel in September and would gladly blow up the rest of the capital as a prelude to taking it over.
The day that happens may not be so very far off. President Asif Ali Zardari was recently in the U.S. asking for $100 billion to stave off economic collapse. So far, the international community has ponied up about $15 billion. That puts Mr. Zardari $85 billion shy of his fund-raising target. Meantime, the average Taliban foot soldier brings home monthly wages that are 30% higher than uniformed Pakistani security personnel.
Preventing the disintegration of Pakistan, perhaps in the wake of a war with India (how much restraint will New Delhi show after the next Mumbai-style atrocity?), will be the Obama administration's most urgent foreign-policy challenge. Since Mr. Obama has already committed a trillion or so in new domestic spending, what's $100 billion in the cause of saving the world?
Today in Opinion Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Barack Obama-sanCondi's Korean FailureThe Sole of Liberation
TODAY'S COLUMNISTS
Global View: Let's Buy Pakistan's Nukes
– Bret StephensMain Street: Gitmo Lawyers Are the Latest in Radical Chic
– William McGurn
COMMENTARY
The Return of Realpolitik in Arabia
– Fouad AjamiThe Lessons From 30 Years of Chinese Reform
– Hugo RestallHow Blackwater Serves America
– Erik D. PrinceBankruptcy Is the Perfect Remedy for Detroit
– Todd J. ZywickiThis is the deal I have in mind. The government of Pakistan would verifiably eliminate its entire nuclear stockpile and the industrial base that sustains it. In exchange, the U.S. and other Western donors would agree to a $100 billion economic package, administered by an independent authority and disbursed over 10 years, on condition that Pakistan remain a democratic and secular state (no military rulers; no Sharia law). It would supplement that package with military aid similar to what the U.S. provides Israel: F-35 fighters, M-1 tanks, Apache helicopters. The U.S. would also extend its nuclear umbrella to Pakistan, just as Hillary Clinton now proposes to do for Israel.
A pipe dream? Not necessarily. People forget that the world has subtracted more nuclear powers over the past two decades than it has added: Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine and South Africa all voluntarily relinquished their stockpiles in the 1990s. Libya did away with its program in 2003 when Moammar Gadhafi concluded that a bomb would be a net liability, and that he had more to gain by coming to terms with the West.
There's no compelling reason Mr. Zardari and his military brass shouldn't reach the same conclusion, assuming excellent terms and desperate circumstances. Sure, a large segment of Pakistanis will never agree. Others, who have subsisted on a diet of leaves and grass so Pakistan could have its bomb, might take a more pragmatic view.
The tragedy of Pakistan is that it remains a country that can't do the basics, like make a bicycle chain. If what its leaders want is prestige, prosperity and lasting security, they could start by creating an economy that can make one -- while unlearning how to make the bomb.
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Geopolitical Diary: The Afghanistan Surge
December 22, 2008
U.S. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Kabul on Saturday that the United States will send an additional 20,000 to 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in the first half of 2009. The plan is in line with President-elect Barack Obama’s statements during the presidential campaign and therefore is likely to come about. The United States currently has about 31,000 troops in Afghanistan, while other NATO countries have about 17,000 troops. Thus, the deployment will roughly double U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
The first issue is the military purpose of the buildup. Doubling the force will put a total of about 60,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan — 77,000 troops including the NATO contribution. That should be enough to secure the urban areas, but it is still far short of the force that would be needed to seal the border with Pakistan. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine a force large enough to achieve that mission.
The United States cannot win a defensive war in Afghanistan. In a defensive war, the assumption is that the enemy will run out of either troops or the willingness to lose soldiers before the United States does. That does not strike us as a reasonable scenario. Therefore, if this is a military move, we must assume that the purpose is to create an offensive opportunity. The targets are the remnants of al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden in northwestern Pakistan, and the intention is to keep al Qaeda’s core from rebuilding its capability. Obama said during the campaign that he intended to target al Qaeda and bin Laden, but it is difficult to imagine how a conventional force of this size would be effective in a mission better left to special operations troops. And it is not clear how the capture of al Qaeda leaders would secure Afghanistan against the Taliban.
The other option is to use the forces to strike at Taliban bases inside Pakistan in order to disrupt their lines of supply and communications. That would be effective, but it is hard to imagine a force of 60,000 both securing vulnerable urban areas in Afghanistan and conducting substantive offensive operations into Pakistan. Undoubtedly, Obama will be asking NATO to increase its manpower in Afghanistan. Some NATO members could halt withdrawals already scheduled or even send more troops (though U.S. Army Gen. John Craddock at NATO headquarters has acknowledged that Washington’s NATO allies will not provide any major troop increases). But the size of the force needed to conduct sustained operations against the Taliban in Pakistan would be enormously larger than anything conceived or conceivable, and the willingness and ability of the Pakistanis to carry out the mission themselves simply isn’t there.
What is being proposed is a force that can shore up Afghanistan, but which is not sufficiently larger than the current force to seriously threaten the Taliban. We must always remember that the Soviets — with 130,000 troops, a border with Afghanistan and highly liberal rules of engagement — could not achieve a decisive military victory in almost 10 years. Sixty thousand troops dependent on a line of supply that stretches through Pakistan and back to the United States are unlikely to succeed.
Mullen and Obama certainly know this. So does Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the surge in Iraq. It would seem to us that the plan is to re-create that surge. The key to Iraq was not that the 30,000 troops sent there made a qualitative difference militarily, but that they helped to create a psychological perception — demonstrating that the United States was not about to withdraw. That allowed talks to open between the United States and the Sunni insurgents previously vilified by the Americans, which set in motion the political process under way in Baghdad.
The question is whether what worked in Iraq will work in Afghanistan. The political dynamics of Iraq left the Sunnis in fear of isolation, should the Americans reach an agreement with the Shia. The Taliban are not concerned about being isolated. They emerged as the victors in the civil war of the 1990s, and they are confident they can do so again. Furthermore, the sectarian divide that is inherent to Iraq isn’t present in Afghanistan, where the insurgency is far less fragmented. The Taliban are also aware of the other pressures the United States is facing and are doubtful that Obama is inclined to allow the conflict in Afghanistan to continue interminably. Their view is that time is on their side.
Now if Petraeus can split the Taliban, that would be another story. And that could be the intention behind this deployment. How it would work is unclear, but what is clear is that barring a dramatic change in Pakistani policy (which is not out of the question but is highly unlikely), splitting the Taliban and negotiating with some factions is the key. The success of that strategy is in the hands of the Taliban; Mullah Mohammed Omar reportedly has named seven conditions for ending the insurgency. The surge is intended to increase American control over the process. It is unclear why the United States thinks this will happen — it is not impossible, but it is unclear.
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It being the NYT the enemy's indignation at UAV attacks goes unquestioned even as they deliberately target civilians and throw acid at little girls for attending school. :roll:
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — This frontier city boasts a major air base and Pakistani Army and paramilitary garrisons. But the 200 Taliban guerrillas were in no rush as they methodically ransacked depots with NATO supplies here two weeks ago.
An important NATO supply line goes over Khyber Pass.
The militants began by blocking off a long stretch of the main road, giving them plenty of time to burn everything inside, said one guard, Haroon Khan, who was standing next to a row of charred trucks.
After assuring the overmatched guards they would not be killed — if they agreed never to work there again — the militants shouted “God is great” through bullhorns. They then grabbed jerrycans and made several trips to a nearby gas station for fuel, which they dumped on the cargo trucks and Humvees before setting them ablaze.
The attack provided the latest evidence of how extensively militants now rule the critical region east of the Khyber Pass, the narrow cut through the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that has been a strategic trade and military gateway since the time of Alexander the Great.
The area encompasses what is officially known as the Khyber Agency, which is adjacent to Peshawar and is one of a handful of lawless tribal districts on the border. But security in Khyber has deteriorated further in recent months with the emergence of a brash young Taliban commander who calls news conferences to thumb his nose at NATO forces, as well as with public fury over deadly missile attacks by American remotely piloted aircraft.
Khyber’s downward spiral is jeopardizing NATO’s most important supply line, sending American military officials scrambling to find alternative routes into Afghanistan through Russia and Central Asia. Three-quarters of troop supplies enter from Pakistan, most of the goods ferried from Karachi to Peshawar and then 40 miles west through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.
A half-dozen raids on depots with NATO supplies here have already destroyed 300 cargo trucks and Humvees this month. American officials insist that troop provisions have not suffered, but with predictions that the American deployment in Afghanistan could double next year, to 60,000 soldiers, the pressure to secure safer transportation is even more intense.
For NATO the most serious problem is not even the depots in Peshawar but the safety of the road that winds west to the 3,500-foot Khyber Pass. The route used to be relatively secure: Afridi tribesman were paid by the government to safeguard it, and they were subject to severe penalties and collective tribal punishment for crimes against travelers.
But now the road is a death trap, truckers and some security officials say, with routine attacks like one on Sunday that burned a fuel tanker and another last Friday that killed three drivers returning from Afghanistan.
“The road is so unsafe that even the locals are reluctant to go back to their villages from Peshawar,” said Gul Naseem, who lives in Landi Kotal, near the border.
The largest truckers’ association here has gone on strike to protest the lack of security, saying that the job action has sidelined 60 percent of the trucks that normally haul military goods. An American official denied that the drop-off had been that severe.
“Not a single day passes when something doesn’t happen,” said Shakir Afridi, leader of the truckers’ group, the Khyber Transport Association. He said at least 25 trucks and six oil tankers were destroyed this month. “Attacks have become a daily affair,” he said.
There are new efforts to deter Taliban raids, including convoy escorts by a Pakistani paramilitary group, the Frontier Corps. But now militants are attacking empty — and unguarded — trucks returning to Pakistan. The road from Peshawar to the border has become far more perilous than the route on the other side in Afghanistan, truckers say.
“Our lives are in danger and nobody cares,” said Shah Mahmood Afridi, a driver who was in the returning convoy attacked on Friday. “They fired at the trucks and killed three men inside. There is no security provided when we are empty.”
Escalating violence on the Khyber road has paralleled the rise of Hakimullah Mehsud, a young Taliban commander and lieutenant of Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the main Pakistani Taliban faction.
Earlier this year, Hakimullah Mehsud’s forces took control of Orakzai Agency and instituted the strict Islamic laws known as Shariah. At a news conference there one month ago, Hakimullah Mehsud declared his intention to intensify attacks on NATO supply convoys. Some security officials say they believe that he was behind the assassination in August of a rival militant leader, Hajji Namdar, in Khyber.
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At the same time, another powerful Khyber warlord, Mangal Bagh, who officials say has not been attacking the convoys, has seen the geographic range of his influence narrow somewhat, easing the path for Mr. Mehsud’s authority to expand inside some parts of Khyber. “I have no love for Mangal Bagh, but the fact remains that Mangal Bagh does not do these attacks,” said Tariq Hayat, the Khyber political agent, the top government official in the region.
Pakistani employees two weeks ago inspected trucks burned by Taliban guerrillas at a depot with NATO supplies in Peshawar.
Increased missile attacks by remotely piloted American aircraft — like one that killed seven people in the South Waziristan Agency on Monday — have enraged residents in Khyber and other tribal areas near the border, increasing sympathy for attacks on convoys. Mr. Afridi, of the truckers’ association, condemns the strikes and blames them for increased assaults on his drivers. “We are a tribal people, and if the Americans hit innocent people in Waziristan, we also feel the pain,” he said.
Raising the prospect of an even wider threat to the convoys, an influential Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, staged a rally last week in Peshawar, turning out thousands to condemn the missile strikes. The marchers demanded that Pakistan end the NATO convoys, and they vowed to cut the supply lines themselves.
Taliban militants have also moved into Khyber after Pakistani military campaigns in nearby areas like Bajaur Agency. Their migration is reminiscent of a tactic that bedeviled the American military in Iraq for years — dubbed “whack a mole” by combat officers — in which guerrillas eluded large American combat operations and moved to take up positions in areas with understaffed troop contingents.
All those factors have been amplified, in the view of some officials, by the torpor of the Pakistani government. Mahmood Shah, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier who until 2006 was in charge of security in the western tribal regions, said the government had the manpower to drive militants out of Khyber but had mounted only a weak response.
He recounted a recent conversation with a senior Pakistani government official. “You have the chance to wake up,” he said he told the official. “But if you don’t wake up now, there is a good chance you won’t wake up at all.”
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#1 Today, 05:11 PM
Little Teapot
Member Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Texas
Posts: 51
Viagra Helps CIA Win Friends in Afghanistan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Washington Post
By Joby Warrick
updated 6:01 a.m. ET Dec. 26, 2008
The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.
Four blue pills. Viagra.
"Take one of these. You'll love it," the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.
The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills. For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won. While the CIA has a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency has prompted the use of novel incentives and creative bargaining to gain support in some of the country's roughest neighborhoods, according to officials directly involved in such operations.
'Whatever it takes'
In their efforts to win over notoriously fickle warlords and chieftains, the officials say, the agency's operatives have used a variety of personal services. These include pocketknives and tools, medicine or surgeries for ailing family members, toys and school equipment, tooth extractions, travel visas, and, occasionally, pharmaceutical enhancements for aging patriarchs with slumping libidos, the officials said.
"Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people — whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra," said one longtime agency operative and veteran of several Afghanistan tours. Like other field officers interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity when describing tactics and operations that are largely classified.
Officials say these inducements are necessary in Afghanistan, a country where warlords and tribal leaders expect to be paid for their cooperation, and where, for some, switching sides can be as easy as changing tunics. If the Americans don't offer incentives, there are others who will, including Taliban commanders, drug dealers and even Iranian agents in the region.
The usual bribes of choice — cash and weapons — aren't always the best options, Afghanistan veterans say. Guns too often fall into the wrong hands, they say, and showy gifts such as money, jewelry and cars tend to draw unwanted attention.
"If you give an asset $1,000, he'll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone," said Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan and now chief executive of SCG International, a private security and intelligence company. "Even if he doesn't get killed, he becomes ineffective as an informant because everyone knows where he got it."
The key, Smith said, is to find a way to meet the informant's personal needs in a way that keeps him firmly on your side but leaves little or no visible trace.
"You're trying to bridge a gap between people living in the 18th century and people coming in from the 21st century," Smith said, "so you look for those common things in the form of material aid that motivate people everywhere."
Sex as a motivator
Among the world's intelligence agencies, there's a long tradition of using sex as a motivator. Robert Baer, a retired CIA officer and author of several books on intelligence, noted that the Soviet spy service was notorious for using attractive women as bait when seeking to turn foreign diplomats into informants.
"The KGB has always used 'honey traps,' and it works," Baer said. For American officers, a more common practice was to offer medical care for potential informants and their loved ones, he said. "I remember one guy we offered an option on a heart bypass," Baer said.
For some U.S. operatives in Afghanistan, Western drugs such as Viagra were just part of a long list of enticements available for use in special cases. Two veteran officers familiar with such practices said Viagra was offered rarely, and only to older tribal officials for whom the drug would hold special appeal. While such sexual performance drugs are generally unavailable in the remote areas where the agency's teams operated, they have been sold in some Kabul street markets since at least 2003 and were known by reputation elsewhere.
"You didn't hand it out to younger guys, but it could be a silver bullet to make connections to the older ones," said one retired operative familiar with the drug's use in Afghanistan. Afghan tribal leaders often had four wives — the maximum number allowed by the Koran — and aging village patriarchs were easily sold on the utility of a pill that could "put them back in an authoritative position," the official said.
Both officials who described the use of Viagra declined to discuss details such as dates and locations, citing both safety and classification concerns.
'Think out of the box'
The CIA declined to comment on methods used in clandestine operations. One senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the agency's work in Afghanistan said the clandestine teams were trained to be "resourceful and agile" and to use tactics "consistent with the laws of our country."
"They learn the landscape, get to know the players, and adjust to the operating environment, no matter where it is," the official said. "They think out of the box, take risks, and do what's necessary to get the job done."
Not everyone in Afghanistan's hinterlands had heard of the drug, leading to some awkward encounters when Americans delicately attempted to explain its effects, taking care not to offend their hosts' religious sensitivities.
Such was the case with the 60-year-old chieftain who received the four pills from a U.S. operative. According to the retired operative who was there, the man was a clan leader in southern Afghanistan who had been wary of Americans — neither supportive nor actively opposed. The man had extensive knowledge of the region and his village controlled key passages through the area. U.S. forces needed his cooperation and worked hard to win it, the retired operative said.
After a long conversation through an interpreter, the retired operator began to probe for ways to win the man's loyalty. A discussion of the man's family and many wives provided inspiration. Once it was established that the man was in good health, the pills were offered and accepted. Four days later, when the Americans returned, the gift had worked its magic, the operative recalled.
"He came up to us beaming," the official said. "He said, 'You are a great man.' And after that we could do whatever we wanted in his area."
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblog...ren_caught.asp
"Watch the video, you will see the suicide bomber weaving through the barriers designed to slow down vehicles. The school children are walking against the wall on the right, and are in clear view. The suicide bomber clearly had a view of the children - he was moving slowly enough. Yet he detonated his bomb just as the line of children passed by his car. "
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Pakistan: The Khyber Pass and Western Logistics in Afghanistan
Stratfor Today » December 30, 2008 | 1811 GMT
TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images
A truck with supplies for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan transiting the Khyber PassSummary
A Pakistani security operation that began early Dec. 30 has temporarily closed the Khyber Pass to truck convoys supplying U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Though necessary, the operation is unlikely to address the larger issues of border and internal security meaningfully — especially while Indo-Pakistani tensions remain high.
Analysis
Related Links
Countries in Crisis: Pakistan
Part 1: The Perils of Using Islamism to Protect the Core
Part 2: A Crisis in Indian-Pakistani Relations
Part 3: Making It on Its Own
The Geopolitics of India: A Shifting, Self-Contained World
Related Special Topic Pages
Militant Attacks In Mumbai and Their Consequences
Pakistani Democracy and the Army
Pakistani security forces began an operation before dawn Dec. 30 to root out militants and Taliban fighters in and around Khyber Agency who have raided NATO supply convoys and supply depots and begun operating in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Just Dec. 29, these militants attacked tanker trucks bound for Afghanistan with rocket fire. As part of the Pakistani government operation, the critical Torkham crossing through the Khyber Pass has been temporarily closed to convoys carrying fuel and supplies for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
This is not the first time that the Khyber Pass has been temporarily shut down. It was closed for two days in early September in protest of U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle strikes inside Pakistan. It also was closed for one day during a November security operation; when it reopened Nov. 17, paramilitary escorts from Pakistan’s Frontier Corps accompanied convoy traffic.
Ultimately, the November operation and the subsequent escorts have not done much to stem the rise in attacks — and little indicates that the new operation will be any more effective. While Islamabad has massed security forces in the area and reinforced them with armor and attack helicopters, overall it is drawing military units and personnel away from the Afghan border to reinforce the Indian border while tensions with New Delhi remain high. Already, some 20,000 Pakistani troops have been shifted to the Indian border.
While the government could make temporary security gains in Khyber Agency, an isolated operation there is hardly going to address the issues and problems underlying border security.
Of course, logistical disruptions are nothing new to Afghanistan. The geographically isolated country has long presented challenges for supply because it is so far from the sea and lacks transit infrastructure and links. The United States and NATO have long maintained stocks to deal with such interruptions, and those stockpiles recently have been increased. Statements from Western forces in Afghanistan suggest that there are at least several weeks’ worth of supplies on hand in country.
And though the United States and NATO have searched for alternative routes, there simply are few other options. Given that the United States and NATO are looking to pour additional forces into Afghanistan, this logistical burden will only get heavier.
At present, more than 300 container and tanker trucks combined generally cross into Afghanistan each day at two crossings. One is Torkham; the other is the Chamman crossing, which connects the Pakistani province of Balochistan with Afghanistan’s Kandahar province. The latter crossing remains open, though Kandahar remains an area of high Taliban activity. This is especially true of the Kandahar-Kabul province corridor, which trucks that otherwise would have used the Khyber Pass probably will use. More than 70 percent of the supplies used by U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan arrive via these two crossings.
Meanwhile, Pakistan is mired in a deep crisis with India just as the United States is looking to ratchet up pressure on Islamabad to tackle militants on the Afghan border. While the actions Washington and New Delhi are pressuring Islamabad to take — namely, rooting out corruption in the Inter-Services Intelligence agency and establishing its writ throughout its territory — are not contradictory, they mainly require military campaigns in different parts of Pakistan. Islamabad simply lacks the capacity to carry them all out, especially while Pakistan remains deeply insecure about India’s intentions and keeps the bulk of its frontline military forces parked on the Indian border.
And while the logistical problem the United States and NATO face in Pakistan is nothing new, given these new tensions, it is especially important for Islamabad to remind Washington of its importance. (Mechanisms in place for the coordination of military activity along the Afghan-Pakistani border make it very likely that the United States was forewarned about the closure and the security operation.) Pakistan thus might have carried out the closure for two reasons. First, it might have sought to remind the United States of just how critical Pakistan’s territory and cooperation are to the new U.S. focus on the Afghan campaign. Second, it might be trying to show that it is doing enough to establish and maintain security on the Afghan border to prevent Washington from writing Pakistan off as a lost cause.
During this particularly critical moment in the crisis with India, as New Delhi contemplates military action against Pakistan, Islamabad needs the United States to continue to act to restrain Indian military action rather than to take India’s side. And whether or not the Khyber closure will last for only a day or two as before, the closure serves as a reminder of the deep logistical challenges for Western forces in Afghanistan that lie ahead.
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Part 1: The Perils of Using Islamism to Protect the Core
December 17, 2008 | 1203 GMT
Summary
The fundamental challenge to Pakistan’s survival is twofold. First, the only route of expansion that makes any sense is along the Indus River Valley, the country’s fertile heartland, but that path takes Pakistan into India’s front yard. Second, Pakistan also has an insurmountable internal problem: In its efforts to secure buffers, it is forced to include various ethnic groups that, because of mountainous terrain, are impossible to assimilate. When the government used religion as a tool to unify the buffer regions with the Indus Valley core, it did not anticipate that the strategy would threaten the state’s survival.
Analysis
Related Special Topic Pages
Countries In Crisis
Pakistani Democracy and the Army
Related Link
The Geopolitics of India: A Shifting, Self-Contained World
Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a series on Pakistan.
While Pakistan’s boundaries encompass a large swath of land stretching from the peaks of the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea, the writ of the Pakistani state stops short of the country’s mountainous northwestern frontier. The strip of arable land that hugs the Indus River in Punjab province is the Pakistani heartland, where the bulk of the country’s population, industry and resources are concentrated. For Pakistan to survive as a modern nation-state, it must protect this core at all costs.
But even in the best of circumstances, defending the Pakistani core and maintaining the integrity of the state are extraordinarily difficult tasks, mainly because of geography.
The headwaters of the Indus River system are not even in Pakistan — the system actually begins in Indian-administered Kashmir. While Kashmir has been the focus of Indo-Pakistani military action in modern times, the area where Pakistan faces its most severe security challenge is the saddle of land between the Indus and the broader, more fertile and more populated Ganges River basin. The one direction in which it makes sense to extend Pakistani civilization as geography would allow takes Pakistan into direct and daily conflict with a much larger civilization: India. Put simply, geography dictates that Pakistan either be absorbed into India or fight a losing battle against Indian influence.
Controlling the Buffers
Pakistan must protect its core by imposing some semblance of control over its hinterlands, mainly in the north and west, where the landscape is more conducive to fragmenting the population than defending the country. The arid, broken highlands of the Baluchistan plateau eventually leak into Iran to the southwest. To the north, in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), the Federally Administered Northern Area (FANA) and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), the terrain becomes more and more mountainous. But terrain in these regions still does not create a firm enough barrier to completely block invasion. To the southwest, a veritable Baluch thoroughfare parallels the Arabian Sea coast and crosses the Iranian-Pakistani border. To the northwest, the Pashtun-populated mountains are not so rugged that armies cannot march through them, as Alexander the Great, the Aryans and the Turks historically proved.
To control all these buffer regions, the Pakistani state must absorb masses of other peoples who do not conform to the norms of the Indus core. Russia faces a similar challenge; its lack of geographic insulation from its neighbors forces it to expand to establish a buffer. But in Pakistan, the complications are far worse. Russia’s buffers are primarily flat, which facilitates the assimilation of conquered peoples. Pakistan’s buffers are broken and mountainous, which reinforces ethnic divisions among the regions’ inhabitants — core Punjabis and Sindhis in the Indus Valley, Baluch to the west and Pashtuns to the north. And the Baluch and Pashtuns are spread out over far more territory than what comprises the Punjab-Sindh core.
Thus, while Pakistan has relatively definable boundaries, it lacks the ethnic and social cohesion of a strong nation-state. Three of the four major Pakistani ethnic groups — Punjabis, Pashtuns and Baluch — are not entirely in Pakistan. India has an entire state called Punjab, 42 percent of Afghanistan is Pashtun, and Iran has a significant Baluch minority in its Sistan-Baluchistan province.
Thus, the challenge to Pakistan’s survival is twofold. First, the only route of expansion that makes any sense is along the fertile Indus River Valley, but that takes Pakistan into India’s front yard. The converse is also true: India’s logical route of expansion through Punjab takes it directly into Pakistan’s core. Second, Pakistan faces an insurmountable internal problem. In its efforts to secure buffers, it is forced to include groups that, because of mountainous terrain, are impossible to assimilate.
The first challenge is one that has received little media attention of late but remains the issue for long-term Pakistani survival. The second challenge is the core of Pakistan’s “current” problems: The central government in Islamabad simply cannot assert its writ into the outer regions, particularly in the Pashtun northwest, as well as it can at its core.
The Indus core could be ruled by a democracy — it is geographically, economically and culturally cohesive — but Pakistan as a whole cannot be democratically ruled from the Indus core and remain a stable nation-state. The only type of government that can realistically attempt to subjugate the minorities in the outer regions, who make up more than 40 percent of Pakistan’s population, is a harsh one (i.e., a military government). It is no wonder, then, that the parliamentary system Pakistan inherited from its days of British rule broke down within four years of independence, which was gained in 1947 when Great Britain split British India into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. After the 1948 death of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, British-trained civilian bureaucrats ran the country with the help of the army until 1958, when the army booted out the bureaucrats and took over. Since then there have been four military coups, and the army has ruled the country for 33 of its 61 years in existence.
While Pakistani politics is rarely if ever discussed in this context, the country’s military leadership implicitly understands the dilemma of holding onto the buffer regions to the north and west. Long before military leader Gen. Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988) began Islamizing the state, the army’s central command sought to counter the secular, left-wing, ethno-nationalist tendencies of the minority provinces by promoting an Islamic identity, particularly in the Pashtun belt. At first, the idea was to strengthen the religious underpinning of the republic in order to meld the outlands more closely with the core. Later, in the wake of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan (1978-1989), Pakistan’s army began using radical Islamism as an arm of foreign policy. Islamist militant groups, trained or otherwise aided by the government, were formed to push Islamabad’s influence into both Afghanistan and Indian-administered Kashmir.
As Pakistan would eventually realize, however, the strategy of promoting an Islamic identity to maintain domestic cohesion while using radical Islamism as an instrument of foreign policy would do far more harm than good.
Militant Proxies
Pakistan’s Islamization policy culminated in the 1980s, when Pakistani, U.S. and Saudi intelligence services collaborated to drive Soviet troops out of Afghanistan by arming, funding and training mostly Pashtun Afghan fighters. When the Soviets withdrew in 1989, Pakistan was eager to forge a post-communist Islamist republic in Afghanistan — one that would be loyal to Islamabad and hostile to New Delhi. To that end, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency threw most of its support behind Islamist rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of Hizb i-Islami.
But things did not quite go as planned. When the Marxist regime in Kabul finally fell in 1992, a major intra-Islamist power struggle ensued, and Hekmatyar lost much of his influence. Amid the chaos, a small group of madrassah teachers and students who had fought against the Soviets rose above the factions and consolidated control over Afghanistan’s Kandahar region in 1994. The ISI became so impressed by this Taliban movement that it dropped Hekmatyar and joined with the Saudis in ensuring that the Taliban would emerge as the vanguard of the Pashtuns and the rulers of Kabul.
The ISI was not the only one competing for the Taliban’s attention. A small group of Arabs led by Osama bin Laden reopened shop in Afghanistan in 1996, looking to use a Taliban-run government in Afghanistan as a launchpad for reviving the caliphate. Ultimately, this would involve overthrowing all secular governments in the Muslim world (including the one sitting in Islamabad.) The secular, military-run government in Pakistan, on the other hand, was looking to use its influence on the Taliban government to wrest control of Kashmir from India. While Pakistan’s ISI occasionally collaborated with al Qaeda in Afghanistan on matters of convenience, its goals were still ultimately incompatible with those of bin Laden. Pakistan was growing weary of al Qaeda’s presence on its western border, but soon became preoccupied with an opportunity developing to the east.
The Pakistani military saw an indigenous Muslim uprising in Indian-administered Kashmir in 1989 as a way to revive its claims over Muslim-majority Kashmir. It did not take long before the military began developing small guerrilla armies of Kashmiri Islamist irregulars for operations against India. When he was a two-star general and the army’s director-general of military operations, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf played a leading role in refining the plan, which became fully operational in the 1999 Kargil War. Pakistan’s war strategy was to infiltrate Kashmiri Islamist guerrillas across the Line of Control (LoC) while Pakistani forces occupied high-altitude positions on Kargil Mountain. When India became aware of the infiltration, it sought to dislodge the guerrillas, at which point Pakistani artillery opened up on Indian troops positioned at lower-altitude base camps. While the Pakistani plan was initially successful, Indian forces soon regained the upper hand and U.S. pressure helped force a Pakistani retreat.
But the defeat at Kargil did not stop Pakistan from pursuing its Islamist militant proxy project in Kashmir. Groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Al Badr spread their offices and training camps throughout Pakistani-occupied Kashmir under the guidance of the ISI. Whenever Islamabad felt compelled to turn up the heat on New Delhi, these militants would carry out operations against Indian targets, mostly in the Kashmir region.
India, meanwhile, would return the pressure on Islamabad by supporting Baluchi rebels in western Pakistan and providing covert support to the ethnic Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, the Taliban’s main rival in Afghanistan. While Pakistan grew more and more distracted by supporting its Islamist proxies in Kashmir, the Taliban grew more attached to al Qaeda, which provided fighters to help the Taliban against the Northern Alliance as well as funding when the Taliban were crippled by an international embargo. As a result, al Qaeda extended its influence over the Taliban government, which gave al Qaeda free rein to plan and stage the deadliest terrorist attack to date against the West.
The Post 9/11 Environment
On Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were attacked, the United States put Pakistan in a chokehold: Cooperate immediately in toppling the Taliban regime, which Pakistan had nurtured for years, or face destruction. Musharraf tried to buy some time by reaching out to Taliban leaders like Mullah Omar to give up bin Laden, but the Taliban chief refused, making it clear that Pakistan had lost against al Qaeda in the battle for influence over the Taliban.
Just a few months after the 9/11 attacks, in December 2001, Kashmiri Islamist militants launched a major attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi. Still reeling from the pressure it was receiving from the United States, Islamabad was now faced with the wrath of India. Both dealing with an Islamist militant threat, New Delhi and Washington tag-teamed Islamabad and tried to get it to cut its losses and dismantle its Islamist militant proxies.
To fend off some of the pressure, the Musharraf government banned LeT and JeM, two key Kashmiri Islamist groups fostered by the ISI and with close ties to al Qaeda. India was unsatisfied with the ban, which was mostly for show, and proceeded to mass a large military force along the LoC in Kashmir. The Pakistanis responded with their own deployment, and the two countries stood at the brink of nuclear war. U.S. intervention allowed India and Pakistan to step back from the precipice. In the process, Washington extracted concessions from Islamabad on the counterterrorism front, and official Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban withered within days.
The Devolution of the ISI
The post 9/11 shake-up ignited a major crisis in the Pakistani military establishment. On one hand, the military was under extreme pressure to stamp out the jihadists along its western border. On the other hand, the military was fearful of U.S. and Indian interests aligning against Pakistan. Islamabad’s primary means of keeping Washington as an ally was its connection to the jihadist insurgency in Afghanistan. So Islamabad played a double game, offering piecemeal cooperation to the United States while maintaining ties with its Islamist militant proxies in Afghanistan.
Related Links
Pakistan: Islamists and the Benefit of Indo-Pakistani Conflict
Pakistan: Anatomy of the ISI
The Jihadist Insurgency in Pakistan
Pakistan and Its Army
But the ISI’s grip over these proxies was already loosening. In the run-up to 9/11, al Qaeda not only had close ties to the Taliban regime, but also had reached out to ISI handlers whose job it was to maintain links with the array of Islamist militant proxies supported by Islamabad. Many of the intelligence operatives who had embraced the Islamist ideology were working to sabotage Islamabad’s new alliance with Washington, which threatened to destroy the Islamist militant universe they had created. While the ISI leadership was busy trying to adjust to the post-9/11 operating environment, others within the middle and junior ranks of the agency started to engage in activities not necessarily sanctioned by their leadership.
As the influence of the Pakistani state declined, al Qaeda’s influence rose. By the end of 2003, Musharraf had become the target of at least three al Qaeda assassination attempts. In the spring of 2004, Musharraf — again under pressure from the United States — was forced to send troops into the tribal badlands for the first time in the history of the country. Pakistani military operations to root out foreign fighters ended up killing thousands in the Pashtun areas, creating massive resentment against the central government.
In October 2006, when a deadly U.S. Predator strike hit a madrassah in Bajaur agency, killing 82 people, the stage was set for a jihadist insurgency to move into Pakistan proper. The Pakistani Taliban linked up with al Qaeda to carry out scores of suicide attacks, most against military targets and all aiming to break Islamabad’s resolve to combat the insurgency. A major political debacle threw Islamabad off course in March 2007, when Musharraf’s government was hit by a pro-democracy movement after he dismissed the country’s chief justice. Four months later, a raid on Islamabad’s Red Mosque, which Islamist militants had occupied, threw more fuel onto the insurgent fires, igniting suicide attacks in major Pakistani cities like Karachi and Islamabad, while the writ of the state continued to erode in the NWFP and FATA.
Musharraf was forced to step down as army chief in November 2007 and as president in August 2008, ushering in an incoherent civilian government. In December 2007, the world got a good glimpse of just how dangerous the murky ISI-jihadist nexus had become when the political chaos in Islamabad was exploited with a bold suicide attack that killed Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Historically, the Pakistani military had been relied on to step in and restore order in such a crisis, but the military itself was coming undone as the split widened between those willing and those unwilling to work with the jihadists. Now, in the final days of 2008, the jihadist insurgency is raging on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, with the country’s only guarantor against collapse — the military — in disarray.
Kashmiri Groups Cut Loose
India has watched warily as Pakistan’s jihadist problems have intensified over the past several years. Of utmost concern to New Delhi have been the scores of Kashmiri Islamist militants who had been operating on the ISI’s payroll — and who had a score to settle with India. As Pakistan became more and more distracted with battling jihadists within its own borders, the Kashmiri Islamist militant groups began loosening their bonds with the Pakistani state. Groups such as LeT and JeM, who had been banned and forced underground following the 2001 Indian parliament attack, started spreading their tentacles into major Indian cities. These groups retained links to the ISI, but the Pakistani military had bigger issues to deal with and needed to distance itself from the Kashmiri Islamists. If these groups were to continue to carry out operations, Pakistan needed some plausible deniability.
Over the past several years, Kashmiri Islamist militant groups have carried out sporadic attacks throughout India. The attacks have involved commercial-grade explosives rather than the military-grade RDX that is traditionally used in Pakistani-sponsored attacks, another sign that the groups are distancing themselves from Pakistan. The attacks, mostly against crowded transportation hubs, religious sites (both Hindu and Muslim) and marketplaces, were designed to ignite riots between Hindus and Muslims that would compel the Indian government to crack down and revive the Kashmir cause.
However, India’s Hindu nationalist and largely moderate Muslim communities failed to take the bait. It was only a matter of time before these militant groups began seeking out more strategic targets that would affect India’s economic lifelines and ignite a crisis between India and Pakistan. As these groups became increasingly autonomous, they also started linking up with members of al Qaeda’s transnational jihadist movement, who had a keen interest in stirring up conflict between India and Pakistan to divert the attention of Pakistani forces to the east.
By November 2008, this confluence of forces — Pakistan’s raging jihadist insurgency, the devolution of the ISI and the increasing autonomy of the Kashmiri groups — created the conditions for one of the largest militant attacks in history to hit Mumbai, highlighting the extent to which Pakistan has lost control over its Islamist militant proxy project.
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Second post of AM
Part 3: Making It on Its Own
December 19, 2008 | 1218 GMT
Summary
Constrained by its geography since its inception in 1947, Pakistan has found it virtually impossible to develop a strong economy, so it has had to think outside the box. One effective strategy has been to leverage the political and security aspects of its geography, posed by the confluence of countries and cultures in the region. This mix of Iran, India, Afghanistan, Shiite Islam, Sunni Islam and Hinduism has meant that powers beyond Pakistan’s immediate frontiers have had a vested interest in its survival. But this could be changing as the world moves away from Pakistan and as it moves closer to its day of reckoning as a functioning nation-state.
Analysis
Related Special Topic Page
Countries In Crisis
Related Links
Part 1: The Perils of Using Islamism to Protect the Core
Part 2: A Crisis in Indian-Pakistani Relations
The Geopolitics of India: A Shifting, Self-Contained World
Editor’s Note: This is the third part of a series on Pakistan.
Very few developing states boast strong economies. Even those that do, such as Brazil, suffer from a host of problems, including insufficient infrastructure and technical personnel, high levels of corruption, shallow local capital markets, currency risk and overdependence on commodities. Pakistan suffers from all of these ailments — and more, as we have discussed in earlier installments of this series.
As we look at the economic factors contributing to Pakistan’s problems, we will first evaluate the Pakistani economy on its merits (or lack thereof). Then we will explain how things are just about as good as they can possibly get.
Security, Debt and Deficit
Pakistan historically has been an economically weak, mismanaged and corrupt state. The Pakistani military elite, deeply entrenched in the economy, holds much of the country’s wealth as well as a number of key assets in the corporate and real estate sectors. The agricultural industry remains the country’s economic backbone, employing some 44 percent of the population, yet accounting for only 21 percent of Pakistan’s gross domestic product (GDP). The remainder of the GDP comes from services (53 percent) and industry (27 percent).
Pakistan’s most fundamental economic problem is that it has very few natural resources to tap in the first place. And it is not necessarily a matter of lacking the resources; security issues in the country’s northwest have long constrained even basic exploration in much of the country, going back to times that predate the British colonial experience. In order to industrialize, therefore, Pakistan has been forced to import whatever materials it needs without first being able to establish a source of income. The unavoidable results are high debt and a sustained, massive trade deficit. As of 2008, the country’s national debt was more than 60 percent of GDP, and the trade deficit about 9.3 percent of GDP.
Even agriculture, the cash cow of many developed states, is a bit of a no-go for the Pakistanis. The Indus River Valley might be productive — indeed, Pakistan has leveraged it to become the 11th-largest producer of wheat — but the country remains a net importer of foodstuffs largely due to the a burgeoning population of 168 million. Though Pakistan is the fifth-largest exporter of rice and 14th-largest exporter of cotton, floods and pest pressure over the past year have hit rice and cotton production hard, with the growth rate last reported by the agricultural sector (for fiscal year 2008) at a dismal 1.5 percent.
Related Links
Pakistan: Grabbing the IMF Lifeline
Pakistan: Biting the IMF Bullet
Pakistan: IMF the Only Option
Pakistan: Flirting With Bankruptcy
The bulk of Pakistan’s exports come from low-value-added products such as textiles and chemicals, but the relative income from such sources has been declining for three decades and is somewhat in danger of disappearing altogether. Pakistan used to enjoy access to the broad Commonwealth market, but starting in 1973, when the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community (EEC, a predecessor to the European Union), that market evaporated, forcing Pakistan to compete internationally on its own merits. And now that textiles are subject to the full/normal trading rules of the World Trade Organization, Pakistan lacks much of a competitive advantage. China, Bangladesh and India can regularly produce textiles at lower cost. In fact, the only true growth industry in Pakistan is its near-monopoly on fuel supply to NATO forces in Afghanistan. Aside from refining, nearly all of Pakistan’s economic sectors face massive challenges at best, and are flirting with collapse at worst.
The net result is not only a low level of development (with the notable exception of Karachi, the center for Pakistan’s international trade, and Lahore, the country’s agricultural capital), but also a chronic lack of capital to invest in the sorts of projects, such as infrastructure, education and finance, that could enable Pakistan to make true economic progress. Pakistan’s only substantial source of capital comes from abroad, and access to that capital is dependent upon factors such as currency rates, the global economic situation and the price of oil — factors that remain firmly beyond Islamabad’s influence.
And the need for new sources of capital is now greater than ever. In recent years, Pakistan has witnessed a collapse of its infrastructure, with power outages of up to six hours a day across the country. The 2008 spikes in energy and food prices almost bankrupted the state. In the year to date, Pakistan’s food bill has jumped by 46 percent over 2007 figures, and its oil bill by 56 percent. Simultaneously, the deteriorating security environment has manifested itself in major cities in the form of suicide bombings — Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi have not proved immune — and has done an excellent job of chasing away foreign and even domestic investors. Foreign direct investment (FDI) per capita in Pakistan has plunged to a barely noticeable US$32 per year. (By comparison, sub-Saharan Africa’s per capita FDI is US$50 per year.)
Pakistan is holding the line only by spending money that it does not have to spare. What social stability that remains can largely be credited to food and energy subsidies, which have contributed to an annual inflation rate of more than 25 percent. The costs of those subsidies, along with ongoing military deployments, have landed the budget in deficit to the tune of 7.4 percent of GDP, among the world’s highest. Recent spending has reduced Pakistan’s foreign currency reserves by 75 percent in the course of one year to US$3.45 billion. This is only enough to cover one month of imports, bringing the country dangerously close to defaulting on its debts. Though it has seen some respite in the form of sharply declining oil prices, Pakistan’s ability to finance the debt through bond issues has effectively ended; during a credit crisis, few investors want to lend to well-managed countries, much less a badly run country like Pakistan.
The Economic Limits of Geography
What truly sets Pakistan apart from other countries in terms of economic performance is a geography that greatly curtails its economic opportunities. Of Pakistan’s cities, only Karachi remains globally competitive by most measures. Karachi is the country’s only real port and has easy access to major trade lanes. Moving north along the Indus Valley, one becomes tightly hemmed in by marshes and deserts to the east and arid highlands to the west. The result is that Karachi functions as a city-state unto itself, with the bulk of Pakistan’s population found much farther upstream, where the Indus Valley widens.
The upper Indus is where the country’s best infrastructure is located and where any deep, integrated development might take place. But such development is impossible for three reasons. First, the region’s high population has required extensive irrigation, which has drawn down the Indus’ water level, making it unnavigable by any but the smallest of ships. The upper Indus region is, in effect, cut off from Karachi except by far more expensive rail or road transport. Second, the upper Indus’ natural market and trading partner is none other than India. Indian-Pakistani hostility denies the region the chance for progress. Finally, what water the Indus does have is not under Pakistan’s control; the headwaters of not just the Indus but nearly all of its major tributaries lie not in Pakistan, but in Indian-controlled territory. India is damming up those rivers, both to generate electricity and to further tilt the balance of power away from Pakistan.
The remainder of Pakistan’s population is split off (or perhaps more accurately, sequestered) into the mountainous region of the North-West Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a region that is simply too remote to justify developing under normal circumstances. With the notable exception of Karachi, economic development in Pakistan is virtually impossible without the country somehow getting past its conflict with India.
Thus, the question must be asked: How is Pakistan able to survive? Economic development has been nearly impossible since partition from India, and certainly since the United Kingdom joined the EEC. The answer, put simply, is that Islamabad has been very creative. What Pakistan has succeeded in doing is leveraging the political and security aspects of its geography in order to keep its system going. Just as geography has been Pakistan’s curse, to a great degree it also has become its lifeline. Pakistan sits at the intersection of many regions, countries and cultures, including Iran, India, Afghanistan, Shiite Islam, Sunni Islam and Hinduism. This mix makes ruling Pakistan a major headache on the best of days, but it also means that powers beyond Pakistan’s immediate frontiers have a vested interest in seeing Pakistan not fail.
British diplomatic and economic support has maintained the Pakistani-Indian balance of power. All manner of Chinese support, including the sharing of nuclear technology, has strengthened Pakistan against a far superior India. Economic and energy support from Arabs of the Persian Gulf has lent strength to Pakistan when it seemed that India would overwhelm it. And support from the United States, which proved critical in backing the Pakistanis against the Soviet-leaning Indians during the Cold War, continues today in exchange for Pakistan’s support in the war against militant Islamism.
Islamabad’s success in leveraging its geography means that the country has not had to succeed economically on its merits for decades. Put another way, Pakistan has leveraged its geopolitical position not only to push for softer security policies from the United States or India, but also to pay the bills.
This has certainly been replicated in current times. None other than U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus was reported to have personally intervened with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to ensure that Pakistan received a US$7.6 billion loan in November, a loan for which Pakistan certainly did not qualify. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates chipped in another US$2 billion in credit, while China contributed US$500 million and the Asian Development Bank provided another US$300 million — all in the past few weeks.
While these funds certainly will delay Pakistan’s day of reckoning, they are unlikely to prevent it. Pakistan’s economy is flirting with becoming nonfunctional, and it cannot operate in the black any more. Doing that would at a minimum require slashing military and subsidy expenditures, an impossible move for a socially seething country operating on a war footing (and, incidentally, a move the IMF loan supposedly will require).
But the real danger is that the world is shifting away from Pakistan, and with that shift, Pakistan’s ability to leverage its geography diminishes. The United States views Pakistan to be as much part of the problem of the Afghan insurgency as it is part of the solution. Oil prices have dropped by US$100 a barrel in less than five months, drastically limiting the Gulf Arabs’ ability to dole out cash. China has many concerns, and fighting Islamist extremism that has leaked into its own western provinces is something Beijing is now weighing against its commitment to Pakistan. The result might not prove to be a total cutoff of funds, but a slackening of support certainly seems to be in the offing. And without such outside support, Pakistan will have to make it or break it on its own — something it has never proved capable of doing.
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Bribes Corrode Afghans’ Trust in Government
By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: January 1, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan — When it comes to governing this violent, fractious land, everything, it seems, has its price.
The mansions of Afghan officials in the Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul are a curiosity not only for their size, but also because government salaries are not very big.
Want to be a provincial police chief? It will cost you $100,000.
Want to drive a convoy of trucks loaded with fuel across the country? Be prepared to pay $6,000 per truck, so the police will not tip off the Taliban.
Need to settle a lawsuit over the ownership of your house? About $25,000, depending on the judge.
“It is very shameful, but probably I will pay the bribe,” Mohammed Naim, a young English teacher, said as he stood in front of the Secondary Courthouse in Kabul. His brother had been arrested a week before, and the police were demanding $4,000 for his release. “Everything is possible in this country now. Everything.”
Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.
A raft of investigations has concluded that people at the highest levels of the Karzai administration, including President Karzai’s own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, are cooperating in the country’s opium trade, now the world’s largest. In the streets and government offices, hardly a public transaction seems to unfold here that does not carry with it the requirement of a bribe, a gift, or, in case you are a beggar, “harchee” — whatever you have in your pocket.
The corruption, publicly acknowledged by President Karzai, is contributing to the collapse of public confidence in his government and to the resurgence of the Taliban, whose fighters have moved to the outskirts of Kabul, the capital.
“All the politicians in this country have acquired everything — money, lots of money,” President Karzai said in a speech at a rural development conference here in November. “God knows, it is beyond the limit. The banks of the world are full of the money of our statesmen.”
The decay of the Afghan government presents President-elect Barack Obama with perhaps his most underappreciated challenge as he tries to reverse the course of the war here. Mr. Obama may be required to save the Afghan government not only from the Taliban insurgency — committing thousands of additional American soldiers to do so — but also from itself.
“This government has lost the capacity to govern because a shadow government has taken over,” said Ashraf Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister. He quit that job in 2004, he said, because the state had been taken over by drug traffickers. “The narco-mafia state is now completely consolidated,” he said.
On the streets here, tales of corruption are as easy to find as kebab stands. Everything seems to be for sale: public offices, access to government services, even a person’s freedom. The examples mentioned above — $25,000 to settle a lawsuit, $6,000 to bribe the police, $100,000 to secure a job as a provincial police chief — were offered by people who experienced them directly or witnessed the transaction.
People pay bribes for large things, and for small things, too: to get electricity for their homes, to get out of jail, even to enter the airport.
Governments in developing countries are often riddled with corruption. But Afghans say the corruption they see now has no precedent, in either its brazenness or in its scale. Transparency International, a German organization that gauges honesty in government, ranked Afghanistan 117 out of 180 countries in 2005. This year, it fell to 176.
“Every man in the government is his own king,” said Abdul Ghafar, a truck driver. Mr. Ghafar said he routinely paid bribes to the police who threatened to hinder his passage through Kabul, sometimes several in a day.
Nowhere is the scent of corruption so strong as in the Kabul neighborhood of Sherpur. Before 2001, it was a vacant patch of hillside that overlooked the stately neighborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan. Today it is the wealthiest enclave in the country, with gaudy, grandiose mansions that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Afghans refer to them as “poppy houses.” Sherpur itself is often jokingly referred to as “Char-pur,” which literally means “City of Loot.”
Yet what is perhaps most remarkable about Sherpur is that many of the homeowners are government officials, whose annual salaries would not otherwise enable them to live here for more than a few days.
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One of the mansions — three stories, several bedrooms, sweeping balconies — is owned by Abdul Jabbar Sabit, a former attorney general who made a name for himself by declaring a “jihad” against corruption.
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Danfung Dennis for The New York Times
Farooq Farani has been trying to resolve a property dispute. An Afghan judge wants $25,000, but Mr. Farani has refused.
After he was fired earlier this year by President Karzai, a video began circulating around town showing Mr. Sabit dancing giddily around a room and slurring his words, apparently drunk. Mr. Sabit now lives in Canada, but his house is available to rent for $5,000 a month.
An even grander mansion — ornate faux Greek columns, a towering fountain — is owned by Kabul’s police chief, Mohammed Ayob Salangi. It can be had for $11,000 a month. Mr. Salangi’s salary is unknown; that of Mr. Karzai, the president, is about $600 a month.
Mr. Ghani, the former finance minister, said the plots of land on which the mansions of Sherpur stand were doled out early in the Karzai administration for prices that were a tiny fraction of what they were worth. (Mr. Ghani said he was offered a plot, too, and refused to accept it.)
“The money for these houses was illegal, I think,” said Mohammed Yosin Usmani, director general of a newly created anticorruption unit.
Often, the corruption here is blatant. On any morning, you can stand on the steps of the Secondary Courthouse in downtown Kabul and listen to the Afghans as they step outside.
One of them was Farooq Farani, who has been coming to the court for seven years, trying to resolve a property dispute. His predicament is a common one here: He fled the country in 1990, as the civil war began, and returned after the fall of the Taliban, only to find a stranger occupying his home.
Yet seven years later, the title to Mr. Farani’s house is still up for grabs. Mr. Farani said he had refused to pay the bribes demanded by the judge in the case, who in turn had refused to settle his case.
“You are approached indirectly, by intermediaries — this is how it works,” said Mr. Farani, who spent his exile in Wiesbaden, Germany. “My house is worth about $50,000, and I’ve been told that I can have the title if I pay $25,000 — half the value of the home.”
Tales like Mr. Farani’s abound here, so much so that it makes one wonder if an honest man can ever make a difference.
Amin Farhang, the minister of commerce, was voted out of Mr. Karzai’s cabinet by Parliament earlier last month for failing to bring down the price of oil in Afghanistan as the price declined in international markets. In a long talk in the sitting room of his home, Mr. Farhang recounted a two-year struggle to fire the man in charge of giving out licenses for new businesses.
The man, Mr. Farhang said, would grant a license only in exchange for a hefty bribe. But Mr. Farhang found that he was unable to fire the man, who, he said, simply bribed other members of the government to reinstate him.
“In a job like this, a man can make 10 or 12 times his salary,” Mr. Farhang said. “People do anything to hang on to them.”
Many Afghans, including Mr. Ghani, the former finance minister, place responsibility for the collapse of the state on Mr. Karzai, who, they say, has failed repeatedly to confront the powerful figures who are behind much of the corruption. In his stint as finance minister, Mr. Ghani said, two moments crystallized his disgust and finally prompted him to quit.
The first, Mr. Ghani said, was his attempt to impose order on Kabul’s chaotic system of private property rights. The Afghan government had accumulated vast amounts of land during the period of Communist rule in the 1970s and 1980s. And since 2001, the government has given much of it away — often, Mr. Ghani said, to shady developers at extremely low prices.
Much of that land has been sold and developed, rendering much of Kabul’s property in the hands of unknown owners. Many of the developers who were given free land, Mr. Ghani said, were also involved in drug trafficking.
When he proposed drawing up a set of regulations to govern private property, Mr. Ghani said, he was told by President Karzai to stop.
“ ‘Just back off,” he told me,’ ” Mr. Ghani said. “He said that politically it wasn’t feasible.”
A similar effort to impose regulations at the Ministry of Aviation, which Mr. Ghani described as rife with corruption, was met with a similar response by President Karzai, he said.
“Morally the question was, am I becoming the fig leaf to legitimate a system that was deeply corrupt? Or was I there to serve the people?” Mr. Ghani said. “I resigned.”
Mr. Ghani, who then became chancellor of Kabul University, is today contemplating a run for the presidency.
Asked about Mr. Ghani’s account on Thursday, Humayun Hamidzada, a spokesman for Mr. Karzai, said he could not immediately comment. The corruption may be endemic here, but if there is any hope in the future, it would seem to lie in the revulsion of average Afghans like Mr. Farani, who, after seven years, is still refusing to pay.
“I won’t do it,” Mr. Farani said outside the courthouse. “It’s a matter of principle. Never. But, I don’t have my house, either, and I don’t know that I ever will.”
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Afghanistan's Drug Problem
by Ted Galen Carpenter
Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign-policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books on international affairs, including Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America (2008). He is also a contributing editor to The National Interest.
Added to cato.org on December 5, 2008
This article appeared in the National Interest (Online) on December 5, 2008
General James Jones, President-elect Obama's choice as national-security adviser, said earlier this week that a more "comprehensive" strategy was needed to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Part of his comprehensive approach would be to intensify the campaign against the illegal drug trade. That would be a disastrous mistake. The opium trade is such a huge part of Afghanistan's economy, that efforts to eradicate it would alienate millions of Afghans and play into the hands of the terrorists.
Under pressure from Washington, President Hamid Karzai has already called on the Afghan people to wage war against narcotics with the same determination and ferocity that they resisted the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Given the economic and social realities in Afghanistan, that is an unrealistic and potentially very dangerous objective.
Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign-policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books on international affairs, including Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America (2008). He is also a contributing editor to The National Interest.
Despite the comments of General Jones, there has long been skepticism in U.S. and NATO military circles about the wisdom of pursuing a vigorous war on drugs in Afghanistan. Commanders correctly believe that such an effort complicates their primary mission: eradicating al-Qaeda and Taliban forces.
There is little doubt that al-Qaeda and other anti-government elements profit from the drug trade. What drug warriors refuse to acknowledge is that the connection between drug trafficking and terrorism is a direct result of making drugs illegal, thereby creating an enormous black-market premium. Not surprisingly, terrorist groups in Afghanistan and other countries are quick to exploit such a vast source of potential funding. Absent a worldwide prohibitionist policy, the profit margins in drug trafficking would be a tiny fraction of their current levels, and terrorist groups would have to seek other sources of revenue.
In any case, the United States faces a dilemma if it conducts a vigorous drug-eradication campaign in Afghanistan in an effort to dry up the funds flowing to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Those are not the only factions involved in drug trafficking. Evidence has emerged that officials in Karzai's government, perhaps even the president's brother, are also recipients of largesse from the narcotics trade. Even more important, many of Karzai's political allies are warlords who control the drug commerce in their respective regions. They use the resulting revenues to pay the militias that keep them in power in their fiefdoms and give them national political clout. Some of these individuals backed the Taliban when that faction was in power, switching sides only when the United States launched its military offensive in Afghanistan in October 2001. Antidrug campaigns might cause them to change their allegiance yet again.
In addition to the need to placate cooperative warlords, the U.S.-led coalition relies on poppy growers as spies for information on movements of Taliban and al-Qaeda units. Disrupting the opium crop alienates those vital sources of information.
Washington’s pressure on Karzai is myopic.
The drug trade is a crucial part of Afghanistan's economy. Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's opium supply, and opium poppies are now grown in most provinces. The trade is roughly one-third of the country's entire gross domestic product. According to the United Nations, some five hundred nine thousand Afghan families are involved in opium poppy cultivation. Even measured on a nuclear-family basis, that translates into about 14 percent of Afghanistan's population. Given the role of extended families and clans in Afghan society, the number of people affected is much greater than that. Indeed, it is likely that at least 35 percent of the population is involved directly or indirectly in the drug trade. For many of those people, opium poppy crops and other aspects of drug commerce are the difference between modest prosperity (by Afghan standards) and destitution. They do not look kindly on efforts to destroy their livelihood.
Despite those daunting economic factors, the Bush administration has put increased pressure on the Karzai government to crack down on the drug trade, and the incoming Obama administration apparently intends to continue that strategy. The Afghan regime is responding cautiously, trying to convince Washington that it is serious about dealing with the problem without launching a full-blown antidrug crusade that will alienate large segments of the population. It has tried to achieve that balance by focusing on high-profile raids against drug-processing labs—mostly those that are not controlled by warlords friendly to the Kabul government. Afghan officials have been especially adamant in opposing the aerial spraying of poppy fields—a strategy that Washington has successfully pushed allied governments in Colombia and other South American drug-source countries to do.
Washington's pressure on Karzai is myopic. The Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies are rapidly regaining strength, especially in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, perhaps not coincidentally the areas of the most vigorous antidrug campaigns. If zealous American drug warriors alienate hundreds of thousands of Afghan farmers, the Karzai government's hold on power could become even more precarious. Washington would then face the unpalatable choice of risking the reemergence of chaos in Afghanistan, including the prospect that radical Islamists might regain power, or sending more U.S. troops to stabilize the situation beyond the reinforcements already contemplated for 2009.
U.S. officials need to keep their priorities straight. Our mortal enemy is al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime that made Afghanistan into a sanctuary for that terrorist organization. The drug war is a dangerous distraction in the campaign to destroy those forces. Recognizing that security considerations sometimes trump other objectives would hardly be an unprecedented move by Washington. U.S. agencies quietly ignored drug-trafficking activities of anticommunist factions in Central America during the 1980s when the primary goal was to keep those countries out of the Soviet orbit. In the early 1990s, the United States also eased its pressure on Peru's government regarding the drug-eradication issue when President Alberto Fujimori concluded that a higher priority had to be given to winning coca farmers away from the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement.
The Obama administration should adopt a similar pragmatic policy in Afghanistan and look the other way regarding the drug-trafficking activities of friendly warlords. And above all, the U.S. military must not become the enemy of Afghan farmers whose livelihood depends on opium-poppy cultivation. True, some of the funds from the drug trade will find their way into the coffers of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. That is an inevitable side effect of a global prohibitionist policy that creates such an enormous profit from illegal drugs. But alienating pro-Western Afghan factions in an effort to disrupt the flow of revenue to the Islamic radicals is too high a price to pay. General Jones should reconsider his views.
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.
As War Enters Classrooms, Fear Grips Afghans (July 10, 2007)
“Are you going to school?”
Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.
But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.
Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well — about 1,300 in all.
“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”
In the five years since the Mirwais School for Girls was built here by the Japanese government, it appears to have set off something of a social revolution. Even as the Taliban tighten their noose around Kandahar, the girls flock to the school each morning. Many of them walk more than two miles from their mud-brick houses up in the hills.
The girls burst through the school’s walled compound, many of them flinging off head-to-toe garments, bounding, cheering and laughing in ways that are inconceivable outside — for girls and women of any age. Mirwais has no regular electricity, no running water, no paved streets. Women are rarely seen, and only then while clad in burqas that make their bodies shapeless and their faces invisible.
And so it was especially chilling on Nov. 12, when three pairs of men on motorcycles began circling the school. One of the teams used a spray bottle, another a squirt gun, another a jar. They hit 11 girls and 4 teachers in all; 6 went to the hospital. Shamsia fared the worst.
The attacks appeared to be the work of the Taliban, the fundamentalist movement that is battling the government and the American-led coalition. Banning girls from school was one of the most notorious symbols of the Taliban’s rule before they were ousted from power in November 2001.
Building new schools and ensuring that children — and especially girls — attend has been one of the main objectives of the government and the nations that have contributed to Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Some of the students at the Mirwais school are in their late teens and early 20s, attending school for the first time. Yet at the same time, in the guerrilla war that has unfolded across southern and eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban have made schools one of their special targets.
But exactly who was behind the acid attack is a mystery. The Taliban denied any part in it. The police arrested eight men and, shortly after that, the Ministry of Interior released a video showing two men confessing. One of them said he had been paid by an officer with the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani intelligence agency, to carry out the attack.
But at a news conference last week, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, said there was no such Pakistani involvement.
One thing is certain: in the months before the attack, the Taliban had moved into the Mirwais area and the rest of Kandahar’s outskirts. As they did, posters began appearing in local mosques.
“Don’t Let Your Daughters Go to School,” one of them said.
In the days after the attack, the Mirwais School for Girls stood empty; none of the parents would let their daughters venture outside. That is when the headmaster, Mahmood Qadari, got to work.
After four days of staring at empty classrooms, Mr. Qadari called a meeting of the parents. Hundreds came to the school — fathers and mothers — and Mr. Qadari implored them to let their daughters return. After two weeks, a few returned.
So, Mr. Qadari, whose three daughters live abroad, including one in Virginia, enlisted the support of the local government. The governor promised more police officers, a footbridge across a busy nearby road and, most important, a bus. Mr. Qadari called another meeting and told the parents that there was no longer any reason to hold their daughters back.
“I told them, if you don’t send your daughters to school, then the enemy wins,” Mr. Qadari said. “I told them not to give in to darkness. Education is the way to improve our society.”
The adults of Mirwais did not need much persuading. Neither the bus nor the police nor the bridge has materialized, but the girls started showing up anyway. Only a couple of dozen girls regularly miss school now; three of them are girls who had been injured in the attack.
“I don’t want the girls sitting around and wasting their lives,” said Ghulam Sekhi, an uncle of Shamsia and her sister, Atifa, age 14, who was also burned.
For all the uncertainty outside its walls, the Mirwais school brims with life. Its 40 classrooms are so full that classes are held in four tents, donated by Unicef, in the courtyard. The Afghan Ministry of Education is building a permanent building as well.
The past several days at the school have been given over to examinations. In one classroom, a geography class, a teacher posed a series of questions while her students listened and wrote their answers on paper.
“What is the capital of Brazil?” the teacher, named Arja, asked, walking back and forth.
“Now, what are its major cities?”
“By how many times is America larger than Afghanistan?”
At a desk in the front row, Shamsia, the girl with the burned face, pondered the questions while cupping a hand over her largest scar. She squinted down at the paper, rubbed her eyes, wrote something down.
Doctors have told Shamsia that her face may need plastic surgery if there is to be any chance of the scars disappearing. It is a distant dream: Shamsia’s village does not even have regular electricity, and her father is disabled.
After class, Shamsia blended in with the other girls, standing around, laughing and joking. She seemed un-self-conscious about her disfigurement, until she began to recount her ordeal.
“The people who did this,” she said, “do not feel the pain of others.”
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U.S. Marines Find Iraq Tactics Don't Work In Afghanistan
By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers
DELARAM, Afghanistan — On a sunset patrol here in late December, U.S. Marines spotted a Taliban unit trying to steal Afghan police vehicles at a checkpoint. In a flash, the Marines turned to pursue, driving off the main road and toward the gunfire coming from the mountain a half mile away.
But their six-ton vehicles were no match for the Taliban pickups. The mine-resistant vehicles and heavily armored Humvees bucked and swerved as drivers tried to maneuver them across fields that the Taliban vehicles raced across. The Afghan police trailed behind in unarmored pick-up trucks, impatient about their allies' weighty pace.
The Marines, weighted down with 60 pounds of body armor each, struggled to climb up Saradaka Mountain. Once at the top, it was clear to everyone that the Taliban would get away. Second Lt. Phil Gilreath, 23, of Kingwood, La., called off the mission.
"It would be a ghost chase, and we would run the risk of the vehicles breaking down again," Gilreath said. The Marines spent the next hour trying to find their way back to the paved road.
The men of the 3rd Batallion, 8th Marine Regiment, based at Camp Lejeune, are discovering in their first two months in Afghanistan that the tactics they learned in nearly six years of combat in Iraq are of little value here — and may even inhibit their ability to fight their Taliban foes.
Their MRAP mine-resistant vehicles, which cost $1 million each, were specially developed to combat the terrible effects of roadside bombs, the single biggest killer of Americans in Iraq. But Iraq is a country of highways and paved roads, and the heavily armored vehicles are cumbersome on Afghanistan's unpaved roads and rough terrain where roadside bombs are much less of a threat.
Body armor is critical to warding off snipers in Iraq, where Sunni Muslim insurgents once made video of American soldiers falling to well-placed sniper shots a staple of recruiting efforts. But the added weight makes Marines awkward and slow when they have to dismount to chase after Taliban gunmen in Afghanistan's rough terrain.
Even the Humvees, finally carrying heavy armor after years of complaints that they did little to mitigate the impact of roadside explosives in Iraq, are proving a liability. Marines say the heavy armor added for protection in Iraq is too rough on the vehicles' transmissions in Afghanistan's much hillier terrain, and the vehicles frequently break down — so often in fact that before every patrol Marine units here designate one Humvee as the tow vehicle.
The Marines have found other differences:
*In Iraq, American forces could win over remote farmlands by swaying urban centers. In Afghanistan, there's little connection between the farmlands and the mudhut villages that pass for towns.
*In Iraq, armored vehicles could travel on both the roads and the desert. Here, the paved roads are mostly for outsiders - travelers, truckers and foreign troops; to reach the populace, American forces must find unmapped caravan routes that run through treacherous terrain, routes not designed for their modern military vehicles.
*In Iraq, a half-hour firefight was considered a long engagement; here, Marines have fought battles that have lasted as long as eight hours against an enemy whose attacking forces have grown from platoon-size to company-size.
U.S. military leaders recognize that they need to make adjustments. During a Christmas Eve visit here, Marine Commandant Gen. James T. Conway told the troops that the Defense Department is studying how to reconfigure the bottom of its MRAPs to handle Afghanistan's rougher terrain. And Col. Duffy White, the commander of the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force, said he anticipates that Marines will be wearing less armor by spring, when fighting season begins again.
The next Marine battalion arriving here will need more troops and more helicopters. And because of terrain, patrols will change.
"Hopefully we have not become wedded to the vehicles," White said, a reference to the MRAPs, which currently are required for every patrol. "We have to set the standard operation procedure for how to do this. This not Iraq."
Just how quickly the U.S. military can shift its weapons, tactics and mindset to Afghanistan after nearly seven years of training almost exclusively for Iraq is a major question as President-elect Barack Obama takes office promising to transfer combat units out of Iraq and into Afghanistan.
Students of the Iraq war know that change came slowly and only after years of casualties made worse by inadequate equipment.
As in Iraq, where the U.S. didn't increase the number of troops, despite the growing insurgency and violence until 2007, U.S. forces Afghanistan fear they are undermanned, despite the Pentagon's plan to double the U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 60,000.
The 3,000 troops here are in charge of an area with few city centers that is roughly the size of Vermont. In Washir, the neighboring district, the Taliban operates freely because there are not enough troops.
"They tell me that Afghanistan is Iraq on steroids," said Gilreath, who is on his first deployment and hasn't served in Iraq.
But 40 percent of the 3-8 has served previously in Iraq's Anbar province. Indeed, the 3-8 was originally scheduled to deploy to the Iraqi/Syrian border and learned just two months before it shipped out that it was headed to Afghanistan instead. By then they had finished most of their training, all of it geared toward Iraq.
So they are learning on the ground.
At times, Afghanistan can feel deceptively like Iraq, they say. During a patrol that found the Marines surrounded by poppy fields, they spotted two men on a motorcycle trailing them. It was the only other vehicle on an otherwise unused paved road.
"You see that. They're watching us," Gilreath radioed to his fellow Marines.
In Iraq, such trailing often meant an attack was imminent. But not here. Marines said it could be months before the Taliban turns that information into an attack.
"The lack of attacks has me asking: Are we doing something right or wrong?" asked company commander Capt. Sven Gosnell, 36, of Torrance, Calif., an Iraqi veteran.
When the Taliban does take on the Marines, it's a different kind of fight, Marines said. For one, the Taliban'll wait until they're ready, not just when an opportunity appears. They'll clear the area of women and children, not use them as shields. And when the attack comes, it's often a full-scale attack, with flanks, trenches and a plan, said one Marine captain and Iraq veteran who asked not to be identified because he wasn't sure he was allowed to discuss tactics.
Afghans "are willing to fight to the death. They recover their wounded, just like we do," said the captain. "When I am fighting here, I am fighting a professional army. If direct fighting does not work, they will go to an IED. They plan their ammunition around poppy season. To fight them, you are pulling every play out of the playbook."
U.S. troops also are frustrated by the different rules of engagement they must operate under in Afghanistan. Until Jan. 1, U.S. forces in Iraq operated under their own rules of engagement. If they saw something suspicious, they could kick down a door, search a home or detain a suspicious person.
But in Afghanistan, they operate under the rules of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, of which U.S. troops are part. Under those regulations, only Afghans can search buildings and detain people.
Gilreath felt that frustration shortly after he spotted the trailing motorcycle. Radio chatter mentioned a local bomb-making factory, though it didn't say where. Gilreath decided to investigate two nearby homes. Trailing behind was one Afghan police truck, the only one available that day.
The Marines secured the perimeter and the handful of Afghan police officers searched one clay structure, then the other. But they moved slowly. Some Marines started peeking the windows, doing their best to honor ISAF rules and still satisfy their urge to search.
As the burka-clad women huddled with their children outside, and the men tried to assure the Marines they were law abiding, a single Afghan man began walking off through a nearby field. There weren't enough Afghan police to both search the homes and stop the man.
"We just need more everything," Gilreath said afterward.
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3rd post of the AM
Geopolitical Diary: The Pakistan Problem
January 14, 2009 | 0256 GMT
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Gen. David Petraeus traveled Tuesday to Astana, Kazakhstan, where he was set to meet with President Nursultan Nazarbayev. That visit was to be followed by a one-day trip to Kyrgyzstan on Jan. 17, according to unconfirmed media reports.
Petraeus’ tour through Central Asia is centered around the problem of Afghanistan, which in turn centers on Pakistan. The CENTCOM commander and his closest advisers are in the process of revising campaign strategies in Afghanistan, where the Taliban- and al Qaeda-led insurgency is intensifying and spreading deeper into neighboring Pakistan. The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan will be strengthened by up to 32,000 troops in 2009 – bringing the total force of uniformed U.S. and NATO forces above 90,000, supposedly by this summer. However, this is no more sufficient to establish a military reality on the ground any more than was the surge in Iraq (the Soviets, after all, sustained some 118,000 troops in Afghanistan during the height of their invasion). If the United States is really to turn the tide against the insurgency, it must do something about Pakistan.
But what, exactly, is the problem of Pakistan? There are numerous issues. First, al Qaeda and Taliban forces operate on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. While Afghanistan provides fertile ground for an insurgency, Pakistan — a nuclear-armed state with a strong radical Islamist current — presents an even more tantalizing opportunity for jihadists committed to reviving the Caliphate.
Pakistan’s military establishment is the dominant force and guarantor of stability in the country. As long as the military holds together, Pakistan will not devolve into a failed state that can be overrun by jihadists. The Pakistani military still has a fairly solid grip on Pakistan’s core, in the Punjabi heartland, but is losing control of its periphery in the northwestern tribal areas. And that is where things get exceedingly complicated for the United States.
The United States needs Pakistan – despite its complicity in the jihadist insurgency — in order to fight the war in Afghanistan. Geographically, Pakistan provides the shortest and least complex connection to the open ocean, from which all U.S. supplies not flown directly into Afghanistan are delivered. Those supplies include fuel, much of which is refined in Pakistan itself. As of late, however, Pakistan has become an increasingly unreliable supply route for the Americans and NATO. Not only has the Taliban targeted NATO convoys within Pakistani territory (perhaps with the aid of some elements of the Pakistani intelligence apparatus), but the United States is losing patience with the way Islamabad manages its insurgency.
The Pakistanis are dealing with the fact that segments of the military establishment itself are the fuel for the insurgent fire. In order to retain control, the military has adopted a complex strategy that distinguishes between “good Taliban” and “bad Taliban” — using the good guys to box in the bad guys and attempting to keep the insurgents’ focus across the border, in Afghanistan. After all, without an insurgency for the United States to contend with, Pakistan’s utility to the United States as a tactical ally diminishes. And with the United States set on developing a long-term, strategic partnership with India, the Pakistani regime must do whatever it takes to maintain its ties with Washington.
Islamabad’s method of managing the jihadist insurgency obviously does not align with U.S. interests. So rather than contending with the same Pakistani headache, Petraeus and his team are now trying to expand their options and essentially deprive Pakistan of much of its leverage in the jihadist quagmire.
That involves developing alternative supply routes to support the war effort in Afghanistan. The alternatives at this point involve Russia in one way or another. The Caspian Sea cannot easily or quickly accommodate a meaningful expansion of sea transport. Therefore, any logistics traffic will have to be pushed north, into Russia’s sphere of influence — where the supply route will have to connect through Kazakhstan with roads in either Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan. In Kyrgyzstan, the United States needs to ensure it can continue to rely on the government for permission to use an air base it already has at Manas. While the technical details are manageable, the “Russian” supply route is still in many ways a logistical nightmare for the United States.
There are more than logistics for the United States to worry about. Russia is on a resurgent path and is taking full advantage of the fact that the United States has been bogged down for years in a jihadist war. Russia needs to ensure its long-term survival. To do that, it must re-establish its influence in the former Soviet sphere, beginning with Georgia (with which Russia recently fought a brief war; it is now building more military bases in the disputed South Ossetia region) and then Ukraine (which is now at the center of a natural gas crisis, designed to reshape the government into a pro-Russian regime). Next, Russia likely will turn its attention to the Baltic states and Poland. Russia wants the United States to stay out of its way, and will use any leverage it has over the war in Afghanistan to clear its path.
So far, it appears that CENTCOM is willing to incur these risks. The Pentagon is working on the alternate logistics plan, with deliberate leaks that are making Pakistan more nervous by the day. Petraeus and his team are on a mission to fix a broken war in Afghanistan, even if that involves bringing Moscow into the loop. Whether this plan bears fruit, however, will depend on how far the White House intends to go with the Russians.
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I have been harping for some time now on our apparent lack of a coherent strategy in Afg-Pak. As the previous post of Stratfor informs, we face ugly choices.
So, my fellow armchair generals, what should President Obama, what should America do?
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This is from the hip so.......Moving the supply routes through Russia is not the answer. Putin is not a trustworthy ally and it did not work for the Russians. There are 2 choices both bad. 1) Pull out of the region and let things fester, while keeping an eye on things (leaving assets in country to spy can not be understated!), then go back in and take out the leadership and when you do go with our whole army and fight in the whole region including the tribal areas of Pak. 2) Why wait? Start by removing the border issue and fight in the tribal regions of Pak. We need to take the gloves off the CIA and allow them to "suppress" the enemy even if it is a operative in the Pak intelligence. One action we could take is to bribe the Pak military to aid us while we remove any who oppose us through politics and or any means we have available. This would fall under the heading of taking the gloves off. Make them an offer they can't refuse. Of coarse for that to work you have to be willing to fallow through. My great grandfather used to say, "bluff till you can't bluff no more then do everything you said you would!"
So I realize the political implications but what do you want from an armchair general? :evil: :-D
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Few good choices here and there is already a long history of Western powers being sucked into futile Afghan efforts. China and Russia both have a vested interest in countering American influence, getting the US sucked into a futile effort likely serves their interests and allows them to measure a wet behind the ears president, said president is already making it clear he wants to abandon the strategic victory in Iraq and instead focus on playing whack a mole with Bin Laden in the Afghan/Pakistan mountains. NATO is proving fairly useless and their constituent nations are already mewling about withdrawal so, combined with the logistics problems it's pretty hard to imagine a good outcome emerging.
If it were up to me I'd advocate a low intensity conflict model similar to the one used by the Brits in Malaysia. Problem is that would take a decade or two to succeed and I don't think the MSM or the American public has the background to understand or the patience to wait as that sort of plan is carried out.
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Good start. Still, the question remains: WHAT ARE WE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH?
I submit that it is to have a situation where they no longer use Afg-Pak as launch pads for attacks on America. I submit that we need to make this clear-- I bet the people there don't know any better why we are there than apparently we do. Something along the lines of "We helped you drive out the Russians, and then leave you alone. You repay us by hosting attacks on our homeland. You FCUKERS!!! Knock it off or we will get primeval with your butts!"
I note that no one has yet addressed my questions about our incoherence with regard to the opium trade. My thought is that the War on Drugs is fundamentally an error and that we to to end it. This will take profits out of opium trade that supports the Taliban/AQ , , , AND address the gathering crisis/disaster in Mexico.
Here's this from a friend in India:
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Some interesting video...see part 3, These videos show that the Pak army is afraid to take on the Taliban (video 3 with retreating tanks!, no motivation to fight the Taliban). When they kill or capture "Taliban", its usually civilians, e.g. the last video shows that they arrested civilians (based on the conversation shown). Any money offered to Pak to take on the Taliban/AQ is going to go down the drain....Yash
Pakistan's War: On the Front Line
Part 1 http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=kQB-IgktV ... re=channel
Part 2 http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=u43ngbDH6 ... re=channel
Part 3 http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=2WmQTxwXr ... re=channel
Part 4 http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=6k3XGlO7rWI
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I note that no one has yet addressed my questions about our incoherence with regard to the opium trade. My thought is that the War on Drugs is fundamentally an error and that we to to end it. This will take profits out of opium trade that supports the Taliban/AQ , , , AND address the gathering crisis/disaster in Mexico.
The drug war is the gift that keeps on giving . . . to our enemies. Nothing does a better job of swaying hearts and minds the Taliban's way than this attack on subsistence farmers' one cash crop. If the US was to buy up the opium stock and burn it we'd be better off in the long run.
About the only argument I have against bailing is that I think it serves our long term interests to help establish prosperous, moderate Muslim states. That end is in sight in Iraq though a cut and run seems to be looming. If our current presence in Afghanistan can be parlayed that directions I'd say it's worth doing. But if devolution into some NATO clusterfornication is all that's likely, then it's time to disengage.
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"coherent strategy in Afg-Pak...fellow armchair generals, what should President Obama, what should America do?"
No small question - you have 32 million people in Afghan and 172 million in Pakistan, the 6th largest country in the world, almost all with nothing going on from a civilized-world point of view.
Afghan: I favor the Guinness "low intensity conflict", conducted by NATO or whoever defines the allies of the fight, with American special forces overlaying the conflict to take out major security threats. The circumstances are different from the insurgency of Iraq but many of the lessons learned should apply. One difference is that I think there is no hurry to succeed or to get out. Afghan is not a country but a territory waiting for the next bad actors to step in. Two of the things accomplished upon the original liberation were giving people including women the right to vote and also the right including women to be educated. Forget 10-20 years, I would say 20-50 years to turn this into something other than a wasteland and breeding ground for drugs or terror.
I don't have an answer for the opium trade. I don't think legalization is realistic and prosecuting a war on drugs while we partner with the cultivators makes no sense. Just like the third world of America's inner city streets, drug lording is the easiest and quickest path that they see, but no real wealth is created.
Pakistan: Looks to me like the cat and mouse game of crossing the border with special ops should continue or else we allow the terror organizations to win. I was hopeful with reports of raids last Sept. the symbolic prize of OBL's head would be ours. No such luck. OBL remains only in occasional media release. Maybe Obama's people can outsmart him and track him through this channel. More important is to track and destroy all groups as they form and before they act. I am not optimistic.
We certainly do not want to be in the business of nation building or trying to govern Pakistan. That would make Iraq look like schoolyard play. Maybe Obama's Indonesia is a model for Pakistan. A little more stable but not much to aspire to.
One reason terror organizations fester and have success recruiting is because nothing else is going on economically. As one looks at the Pak map with borders to Iran and Aghan, it is hard to imagine economic progress in Pakistan in a global economy that doesn't involve peace, trade and commerce with India.
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Every night around 8 o’clock, the terrified residents of Swat, a lush and picturesque valley a hundred miles from three of Pakistan’s most important cities, crowd around their radios. They know that failure to listen and learn might lead to a lashing — or a beheading.
Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed “un-Islamic” activities in Swat, like selling DVDs, watching cable television, singing and dancing, criticizing the Taliban, shaving beards and allowing girls to attend school. He also reveals names of people the Taliban have recently killed for violating their decrees — and those they plan to kill.
“They control everything through the radio,” said one Swat resident, who declined to give his name for fear the Taliban might kill him. “Everyone waits for the broadcast.”
International attention remains fixed on the Taliban’s hold on Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal areas, from where they launch attacks on American forces in Afghanistan. But for Pakistan, the loss of the Swat Valley could prove just as devastating.
Unlike the fringe tribal areas, Swat, a Delaware-size chunk of territory with 1.3 million residents and a rich cultural history, is part of Pakistan proper, within reach of Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the capital.
After more than a year of fighting, virtually all of it is now under Taliban control, marking the militants’ farthest advance eastward into Pakistan’s so-called settled areas, residents and government officials from the region say.
With the increasing consolidation of their power, the Taliban have taken a sizable bite out of the nation. And they are enforcing a strict interpretation of Islam with cruelty, bringing public beheadings, assassinations, social and cultural repression and persecution of women to what was once an independent, relatively secular region, dotted with ski resorts and fruit orchards and known for its dancing girls.
Last year, 70 police officers were beheaded, shot or otherwise slain in Swat, and 150 wounded, said Malik Naveed Khan, the police inspector general for the North-West Frontier Province.
The police have become so afraid that many officers have put advertisements in newspapers renouncing their jobs so the Taliban will not kill them.
One who stayed on the job was Farooq Khan, a midlevel officer in Mingora, the valley’s largest city, where decapitated bodies of policemen and other victims routinely surface. Last month, he was shopping there when two men on a motorcycle sprayed him with gunfire, killing him in broad daylight.
“He always said, ‘I have to stay here and defend our home,’ ” recalled his brother, Wajid Ali Khan, a Swat native and the province’s minister for environment, as he passed around a cellphone with Farooq’s picture.
In the view of analysts, the growing nightmare in Swat is a capsule of the country’s problems: an ineffectual and unresponsive civilian government, coupled with military and security forces that, in the view of furious residents, have willingly allowed the militants to spread terror deep into Pakistan.
The crisis has become a critical test for the government of the civilian president, Asif Ali Zardari, and for a security apparatus whose loyalties, many Pakistanis say, remain in question.
Seeking to deflect blame, Mr. Zardari’s government recently criticized “earlier halfhearted attempts at rooting out extremists from the area” and vowed to fight militants “who are ruthlessly murdering and maiming our citizens.”
But as pressure grows, he has also said in recent days that the government would be willing to talk with militants who accept its authority. Such negotiations would carry serious risks: security officials say a brief peace deal in Swat last spring was a spectacular failure that allowed militants to tighten their hold and take revenge on people who had supported the military.
Without more forceful and concerted action by the government, some warn, the Taliban threat in Pakistan is bound to spread.
“The crux of the problem is the government appears divided about what to do,” said Mahmood Shah, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier who until 2006 was in charge of security in the western tribal areas. “This disconnect among the political leadership has emboldened the militants.”
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From 2,000 to 4,000 Taliban fighters now roam the Swat Valley, according to interviews with a half-dozen senior Pakistani government, military and political officials involved in the fight. By contrast, the Pakistani military has four brigades with 12,000 to 15,000 men in Swat, officials say.
The Taliban are thought to be responsible for the killing of a popular Swat Valley dancing girl, Shabana, whose body, above, was found Jan. 2 in Mingora. The Taliban have made gains in the strategic region, in part by meting out harsh punishments.
But the soldiers largely stay inside their camps, unwilling to patrol or exert any large presence that might provoke — or discourage — the militants, Swat residents and political leaders say. The military also has not raided a small village that locals say is widely known as the Taliban’s headquarters in Swat.
Nor have troops destroyed mobile radio transmitters mounted on motorcycles or pickup trucks that Shah Doran and the leader of the Taliban in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, have expertly used to terrify residents.
Being named in one of the nightly broadcasts often leaves just two options: fleeing Swat, or turning up headless and dumped in a village square.
When the army does act, its near-total lack of preparedness to fight a counterinsurgency reveals itself. Its usual tactic is to lob artillery shells into a general area, and the results have seemed to hurt civilians more than the militants, residents say.
In some parts of Pakistan, civilian militias have risen to fight the Taliban. But in Swat, the Taliban’s gains amid a large army presence has convinced many that the military must be conspiring with the Taliban.
“It’s very mysterious how they get so much weapons and support,” while nearby districts are comparatively calm, said Muzaffar ul-Mulk Khan, a member of Parliament from Swat, who said his home near Mingora was recently destroyed by the Taliban.
“We are bewildered by the military. They patrol only in Mingora. In the rest of Swat they sit in their bases. And the militants can kill at will anywhere in Mingora,” he said.
“Nothing is being done by the government," Mr. Khan added.
Accusations that the military lacks the will to fight in Swat are “very unfair and unjustified,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the chief military spokesman, who said 180 army soldiers and officers had been killed in Swat in the past 14 months.
“They do reach out, and they do patrol,” he said.
Military officials also say they are trying to step up activity in Swat. This weekend, soldiers were deployed to protect a handful of educational buildings in Mingora, amid a wave of school bombings.
General Abbas said the military did not have the means to block Taliban radio transmissions across such a wide area, but he disputed the view that Mingora had fallen to the militants.
“Just because they come out at night and throw down four or five bodies in the square does not mean that militants control anything,” he said.
Few officials would dispute that one of the Pakistani military’s biggest mistakes in Swat was its failure to protect Pir Samiullah, a local leader whose 500 followers fought the Taliban in the village of Mandal Dag. After the Taliban killed him in a firefight last month, the militants demanded that his followers reveal his gravesite — and then started beheading people until they got the information, one Mandal Dag villager said.
“They dug him up and hung his body in the square,” the villager said, and then they took the body to a secret location. The desecration was intended to show what would happen to anyone who defied the Taliban’s rule, but it also made painfully clear to Swat residents that the Pakistani government could not be trusted to defend those who rose up against the militants.
“He should have been given more protection,” said one Pakistani security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject. “He should have been made a symbol of resistance.”
Gruesome displays like the defilement of Pir Samiullah’s remains are an effective tactic for the Taliban, who have shown cruel efficiency in following through on their threats.
Recently, Shah Doran broadcast word that the Taliban intended to kill a police officer who he said had killed three people.
“We have sent people, and tomorrow you will have good news,” he said on his nightly broadcast, according to a resident of Matta, a Taliban stronghold. The next day the decapitated body of the policeman was found in a nearby village.
Even in Mingora, a town grown hardened to violence, residents were shocked early this month to find the bullet-ridden body of one of the city’s most famous dancing girls splayed on the main square.
Known as Shabana, the woman was visited at night by a group of men who claimed to want to hire her for a party. They shot her to death and dragged her body more than a quarter-mile to the central square, leaving it as a warning for anyone who would flout Taliban decrees.
The leader of the militants in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, gained prominence from making radio broadcasts and running an Islamic school, becoming popular among otherwise isolated homemakers and inspiring them to sell their jewelry to finance his operation. He also drew support from his marriage to the daughter of Sufi Mohammed, a powerful religious leader in Swat until 2001 who later disowned his son-in-law.
Even though Swat does not border Afghanistan or any of Pakistan’s seven lawless federal tribal areas, Maulana Fazlullah eventually allied with Taliban militants who dominate regions along the Afghan frontier.
His fighters now roam the valley with sniper rifles, Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortar tubes and, according to some officials, night-vision goggles and flak vests.
His latest tactic is a ban on girls’ attending school in Swat, which will be tested in February when private schools are scheduled to reopen after winter recess. The Taliban have already destroyed 169 girls’ schools in Swat, government officials say, and they expect most private schools to stay closed rather than risk retaliation.
“The local population is totally fed up, and if they had the chance they would lynch each and every Talib,” said Mr. Naveed Khan, the police official. “But the Taliban are so cruel and violent, no one will oppose them. If this is not stopped, it will spill into other areas of Pakistan.”
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"Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed “un-Islamic” activities in Swat, like selling DVDs, watching cable television, singing and dancing, criticizing the Taliban, shaving beards and allowing girls to attend school. He also reveals names of people the Taliban have recently killed for violating their decrees — and those they plan to kill."
- If true, I can't imagine anyone still thinking this movement is less dangerous than Hitler-Nazi-ism was.
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So, what are we to do?
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NY Times, so caveat lector
MEHTARLAM, Afghanistan — The American military declared the nighttime raid this month a success, saying it killed 32 people, all Taliban insurgents — the fruit of an emphasis on intelligence-driven use of Special Operations forces.
But the two young men who lay wincing in a hospital ward here told a different story a few days later, one backed up by the pro-American provincial governor and a central government delegation.
They agreed that 13 civilians had been killed and 9 wounded when American commandos broke down doors and unleashed dogs without warning on Jan. 7 in the hunt for a known insurgent in Masamut, in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan. The residents were so enraged that they threatened to march on the American military base here.
The conflicting accounts underscore a dangerous rift that has grown between Afghans and the United States forces trying to roll back widening Taliban control of the countryside.
With every case of civilian casualties or mistaken killings, the anger that Afghans feel toward the government and foreign forces deepens and makes residents less likely to help American forces, Afghan officials warn. Meanwhile, American forces are reluctant to share information about future military raids with local officials, fearing that it will be passed on to the Taliban.
Added to all that is a complication for American forces here: many villagers are armed, in the absence of an effective local police force.
Into that increasingly complex environment, the Obama administration is preparing to send as many as 30,000 more troops this year. As the plan moves forward, Afghan officials and some Western coalition partners are voicing concern that the additional troops will only increase the levels of violence and civilian casualties, after a year in which as many as 4,000 Afghan civilians were killed.
The outrage over civilian deaths swelled again over the weekend. Hundreds of angry villagers demonstrated here in Mehtarlam, the capital of Laghman Province, on Sunday after an American raid on a village in the province on Friday night. The raid killed at least 16 villagers, including 2 women and 3 children, according to a statement from President Hamid Karzai.
The president condemned the raid, saying it had not been coordinated with Afghan officials, and called for such raids to stop. The United States military said that 15 armed militants, including a woman, had been killed.
In a sign of how serious the episode was, an American military spokesman, Col. Greg Julian, said the military would send an investigation team to the area, The Associated Press reported.
Raids like the ones in Laghman Province by United States Special Operations forces, on Jan. 7 and on Friday, have been a special focus of complaint for several years.
Provincial governors say the tactics used, and the lack of coordination with Afghan and other American and NATO forces, alienate villagers and cause unneeded casualties among civilians. The raids are undoing much of the good work done by other American and international troops and reconstruction teams, they say.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission warned that the lack of accountability of those conducting such raids, and the lack of redress for civilian victims, was stoking resentment. “The degree of backlash and community outrage that they provoke suggests they may often not be an advisable tactic within the Afghan context,” the commission concluded in a report in December.
Mr. Karzai said in an address at the opening of Parliament on Tuesday that he had once more sent written requests to United States forces and to NATO to end civilian casualties.
Afghans would never complain about casualties among their security forces, but they would never accept the suffering of civilians, he said, to a great shout of support from the chamber. The speaker of the Senate, Sebaghatullah Mojadeddi, followed with a warning that if more care was not taken, the nation could rise up against the foreign troop presence here.
A number of different American units, Special Forces and others, have been conducting counterterrorism operations around the country for the past seven years, operating out of the Bagram and Kandahar airfields, and several small Special Forces bases. They do not operate under NATO command and usually do not coordinate their operations with Afghan forces, since they argue that the element of surprise is critical.
Military spokesmen often release results of raids but do not identify the forces involved. Philip Alston, a United Nations special rapporteur, or investigator, complained last year that despite high-level meetings with the military, he had been unable to identify some of the groups conducting the raids or to establish the chain of command under which they operated.
Afghan officials and others suspect some of the raids may also be carried out by the C.I.A.
The raid in Masamut on the night of Jan. 7 was typical of many conducted in Afghanistan. United States Special Operations forces entered the village under cover of darkness looking for a known Taliban insurgent, Gul Pacha, who was killed in the raid, along with a visitor to his home, another Taliban member, Bahadur Khan.
According to several villagers, the nighttime raid stirred alarm and confusion as people were roused from their sleep.
One of the first to be shot and killed was a man called Qasem, a member of the Afghan Border Police who was at home on leave. His brother, Wazarat Khan, said Qasem was killed as soon as he looked out his front door.
“We did not think they were Americans; we thought they were thieves,” he said. “They killed my brother right in the doorway.”
One of the men in the hospital, Abdul Manan, 25, who had a bullet wound in the shoulder, said he woke up when he heard a female neighbor calling for help and heard three shots.
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He said he came out of his house and saw soldiers wearing headlamps. “I thought they were smoking cigarettes,” he said. “They said something in English that I did not understand, and then they shot me.”
Another man, Darwaish Muhammad, 18, hospitalized with shrapnel wounds, said he was awakened by the mother of a neighbor, Shahpur Khan, calling for help. He had been shot.
Mr. Muhammad said he and two others rushed to help carry the woman’s son on a rope bed down a slope outside the village to get help. They were 10 minutes from the village when a helicopter fired a rocket at them, killing the wounded man and two of the bearers. He and the mother were badly wounded, he said.
A United States military spokesman, Col. Jerry O’Hara, confirmed that United States air support forces had fired on a group of five carrying a wounded person outside the village. He said all five had been killed and all were militants. That some of the villagers survived may explain some of the discrepancy of the death toll.
Colonel O’Hara added that care had been taken not to use air power inside the village, to avoid civilian casualties. He dismissed the villagers’ accounts that they had mistaken the soldiers for thieves. “I am not buying that,” he said. “These people were acting as sentries.”
In a statement, Colonel O’Hara said, “Coalition forces exercised great restraint and prevented any civilian casualties at the same time the enemy placed the whole village in harm’s way by operating the way they do.”
In an interview, he also expressed frustration that four years after his earlier tour in Afghanistan, people still were not coming forward with information against Taliban members. “Until there is active involvement amongst Afghan civilians to turn in or give a tip on people with explosives, you are not going to get on the road to peace,” he said.
Yet, after seven years of war, Afghans say that villagers are less and less inclined to side with a foreign army that still conducts house searches and bombardments.
The villagers of Masamut readily acknowledged that Mr. Pacha had been a member of the Taliban. They had even nicknamed him “Al Qaeda.” But they criticized the United States forces for killing his elderly father and two sons along with him, and for the shooting of the other villagers.
“The government should have informed us not to come outside while they surrounded the house of Gul Pacha,” said Mawla Dad, 35, whose brother, nephew and cousin, an off-duty policeman, were all killed.
The governor of Laghman Province, Lutfullah Mashal, acknowledged that some of the villagers were armed. But he explained that because there was no police force to speak of in rural areas, villages kept security through a kind of neighborhood watch. “Whoever came out with a weapon, he was shot because the American forces have night-vision devices,” the governor said.
Villagers of Masamut, and local officials who visited the village afterward, protested the tactics used in the raid to United States military officials. The governor also complained that the raid had been conducted without coordination with Afghan forces or even with other American forces based in the province.
The raid undermined the government, Mr. Mashal said, and the tactics violated Afghan customs and whipped up a religious hatred, which was very damaging for both the government and the international forces.
“The people are angry with us,” he said. “Unless the international community, and especially military forces, coordinate with us, we are not going to win this war, because to win the war is to win the hearts and minds of the people, and then you can beat the enemy.”
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second post:
KABUL, Afghanistan — It looked like an ordinary neighborhood playground: six children tumbling off their skateboards to the tune of laughter. But only hours before, just 20 yards away, the body of a suicide car bomber was sprawled beside a glistening pool of blood.
Oliver Percovich’s current skateboard park is a decrepit concrete fountain. His Skateistan school will be eight miles away.
Afghan youth have learned to recover almost instantly from such routine violence. One person determined to inject some normalcy into their lives is Oliver Percovich. A 34-year-old from Melbourne, Australia, he plans to open this country’s first skateboarding school, Skateistan, this spring. He sees sport as a way to woo students into after-school activities like English and computer classes, which are otherwise reserved for the elite.
“Teenagers are trying to dissociate from old mentalities, and I’m their servant,” Percovich said. “If they weren’t interested, I would’ve left a long time ago.”
Now, when he pulls his motorcycle into a residential courtyard here, a dozen youngsters pounce before it comes to a stop, yanking six chipped skateboards with fading paint off the back. The children, most participating in a sport for the first time in their war-hardened lives, do not want to waste any time.
Their skateboard park is a decrepit Soviet-style concrete fountain with deep fissures. The tangle of novice skaters resembles bumper cars more than X Games.
But Percovich has raised the money needed to build an 8,600-square-foot bubble to house the nonprofit Skateistan complex, and the Kabul Parks Authority has tentatively donated land. He is still waiting for official permission to begin the project. And since a spate of kidnappings and the car bombing in late November, he has reduced his daily sessions at the fountain to once or twice a week.
Among those who look forward to his visits is Maro, an elfin 9-year-old girl who was terrified of skateboarding at first.
“It gives me courage, and once I start skating, I completely forget about my fears,” she said.
All the children spoke through an interpreter.
Maro’s glittery Mickey Mouse shirt indicated middle-class status. She stood out from the street children in muddied clothes who shared the skate space. Because the sport is so new and unusual here, Percovich said, it may help mend the nation’s deep social and ethnic divisions.
But for Hadisa, a 10-year-old girl from a conservative family, skateboarding has not been accepted. She said two older brothers beat her with wires for skating with poorer children in September. Several friends said they had seen blood flowing from her leg.
“I’m not upset with my brothers for beating me,” Hadisa whispered on a recent day when she did not skate because her oldest brother was nearby. “They have the right.”
But some girls cannot skate enough because their window for participation is short. When Afghan girls reach puberty, they must be veiled and can no longer associate with men outside the family. Percovich said his indoor skate park could be part of the solution, with boys and girls in separate classes.
“If my family doesn’t let me skate when I grow up, and they tell me I need to be at home, then I have to respect my family,” Maro said. “And I won’t be able to skate.”
Maro’s grandfather, Abdul Hai Muram, a retired political commentator, stroked her ponytail as he considered her future. He said he wanted her to be able to play outside when she turned 15 but worried about society’s reaction.
“Families are still careful and thoughtful about letting their daughters out,” Muram, 65, said. “We’re entitled to be very strict and afraid because negative consequences from the Taliban time are still out there, and men do whatever they want to women.”
He added, “It may take 10 years for things to be normal for women.”
Perhaps no one is more excited for the skateboard park than Mirwais, a 16-year-old boy who can do an ollie, an aerial trick that is the foundation for more advanced moves. Mirwais, who dropped out of school after second grade, first noticed the skate sessions from an adjacent parking lot, where he washed cars for $4 a day to support his family of eight. Percovich said Mirwais was often high from sniffing glue.
Now Mirwais looks more tidy and earns $8 a day working for the Skateistan project, repairing boards, running errands and assisting at the informal skate sessions.
“I want to improve as much as I can, and continue to support my family with skating,” he said. “It’s my future.”
Still, many middle- and upper-class youngsters complain that Mirwais ridicules them using foul language, evidence of the challenge with mixing social classes and ethnic groups here.
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But Percovich is determined to overcome the obstacles. He arrived here rather impulsively in early 2007 because his girlfriend at the time had taken a job in Kabul. He gave up his bakery business, stuffed some clothes — and his skateboards — into a bag and left Australia.
“It gives me courage, and once I start skating, I completely forget about my fears,” one girl said.
Unable to find work, Percovich did what he has done since he was 6. He rode his skateboard, undaunted by the military convoys, pushcarts, donkeys, a suffocating film of dust and occasional car bombings.
“Whenever I turned up, kids gathered around and asked, ‘What is that?’ ” he said, referring to his skateboard. “They’d ask to have a go, and I realized quite fast it’s an excellent way to interact with youth.”
Afghanistan has the highest proportion of school-age children in the world, 1 in 5, according to the United Nations. For a vast majority of these seven million youngsters, sports are virtually nonexistent.
Most public schools, stretched to provide basic materials like desks, do not have playgrounds. Boys play pickup soccer or volleyball games on dusty fields. But sports are an afterthought for most girls, who are discouraged from public gatherings.
About 20 embassies and nongovernmental organizations rejected Percovich’s financing proposal for a skateboarding school. After breaking up with his girlfriend, he said, he was down to $1,500 and had maxed out his credit card to pay the rent.
“I was banging my head against the wall, saying, ‘What am I doing with no money?’ ” Percovich said. “But in the afternoon, I was laughing and skating with kids running toward me saying, ‘Oli, Oli, Oli.’ ”
Even his successes have been somewhat frustrating. Last March, an Australian retailer donated 30 skate sets — including boards, shoes and body pads — but Percovich could not afford the $5,000 for shipping. The equipment remains in Melbourne.
Percovich’s break came last October, when the Canadian, Norwegian and German governments pledged a combined $120,000. The Kabul Parks Authority chose a site in a poor area of the city, about eight miles from the fountain.
Andreas Schüetzenberger, whose German company, IOU Ramps, has built 300 skate ramps in places like Israel and Mongolia, plans to install the platforms at no cost once Skateistan is built.
Percovich also recruited Titus Dittman, who delivered one ton of secondhand skate equipment this month. In 1982, Dittman transformed a parking lot in Germany into one of the world’s most well-known cult skate scenes, Monster Mastership, which has since become the World Skateboarding Championships.
The goals for Skateistan are a bit more grounded.
“Afghan kids are the same as kids all over the world,” Percovich said. “They just haven’t been given the same opportunities. They need a positive environment to do positive things for Afghanistan and for themselves.”
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At last a serious effort at answering my question!!! No surprise that it comes from Stratfor.
Comments?
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Strategic Divergence: The War Against the Taliban and the War Against Al Qaeda
January 26, 2009
By George Friedman
Related Special Topic Page
The Devolution of Al Qaeda
Washington’s attention is now zeroing in on Afghanistan. There is talk of doubling U.S. forces there, and preparations are being made for another supply line into Afghanistan — this one running through the former Soviet Union — as an alternative or a supplement to the current Pakistani route. To free up more resources for Afghanistan, the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq probably will be accelerated. And there is discussion about whether the Karzai government serves the purposes of the war in Afghanistan. In short, U.S. President Barack Obama’s campaign promise to focus on Afghanistan seems to be taking shape.
We have discussed many aspects of the Afghan war in the past; it is now time to focus on the central issue. What are the strategic goals of the United States in Afghanistan? What resources will be devoted to this mission? What are the intentions and capabilities of the Taliban and others fighting the United States and its NATO allies? Most important, what is the relationship between the war against the Taliban and the war against al Qaeda? If the United States encounters difficulties in the war against the Taliban, will it still be able to contain not only al Qaeda but other terrorist groups? Does the United States need to succeed against the Taliban to be successful against transnational Islamist terrorists? And assuming that U.S. forces are built up in Afghanistan and that the supply problem through Pakistan is solved, are the defeat of Taliban and the disruption of al Qaeda likely?
Al Qaeda and U.S. Goals Post-9/11
The overarching goal of the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, has been to prevent further attacks by al Qaeda in the United States. Washington has used two means toward this end. One was defensive, aimed at increasing the difficulty of al Qaeda operatives to penetrate and operate within the United States. The second was to attack and destroy al Qaeda prime, the group around Osama bin Laden that organized and executed 9/11 and other attacks in Europe. It is this group — not other groups that call themselves al Qaeda but only are able to operate in the countries where they were formed — that was the target of the United States, because this was the group that had demonstrated the ability to launch intercontinental strikes.
Al Qaeda prime had its main headquarters in Afghanistan. It was not an Afghan group, but one drawn from multiple Islamic countries. It was in alliance with an Afghan group, the Taliban. The Taliban had won a civil war in Afghanistan, creating a coalition of support among tribes that had given the group control, direct or indirect, over most of the country. It is important to remember that al Qaeda was separate from the Taliban; the former was a multinational force, while the Taliban were an internal Afghan political power.
The United States has two strategic goals in Afghanistan. The first is to destroy the remnants of al Qaeda prime — the central command of al Qaeda — in Afghanistan. The second is to use Afghanistan as a base for destroying al Qaeda in Pakistan and to prevent the return of al Qaeda to Afghanistan.
To achieve these goals, Washington has sought to make Afghanistan inhospitable to al Qaeda. The United States forced the Taliban from Afghanistan’s main cities and into the countryside, and established a new, anti-Taliban government in Kabul under President Hamid Karzai. Washington intended to deny al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan by unseating the Taliban government, creating a new pro-American government and then using Afghanistan as a base against al Qaeda in Pakistan.
The United States succeeded in forcing the Taliban from power in the sense that in giving up the cities, the Taliban lost formal control of the country. To be more precise, early in the U.S. attack in 2001, the Taliban realized that the massed defense of Afghan cities was impossible in the face of American air power. The ability of U.S. B-52s to devastate any concentration of forces meant that the Taliban could not defend the cities, but had to withdraw, disperse and reform its units for combat on more favorable terms.
At this point, we must separate the fates of al Qaeda and the Taliban. During the Taliban retreat, al Qaeda had to retreat as well. Since the United States lacked sufficient force to destroy al Qaeda at Tora Bora, al Qaeda was able to retreat into northwestern Pakistan. There, it enjoys the advantages of terrain, superior tactical intelligence and support networks.
Even so, in nearly eight years of war, U.S. intelligence and special operations forces have maintained pressure on al Qaeda in Pakistan. The United States has imposed attrition on al Qaeda, disrupting its command, control and communications and isolating it. In the process, the United States used one of al Qaeda’s operational principles against it. To avoid penetration by hostile intelligence services, al Qaeda has not recruited new cadres for its primary unit. This makes it very difficult to develop intelligence on al Qaeda, but it also makes it impossible for al Qaeda to replace its losses. Thus, in a long war of attrition, every loss imposed on al Qaeda has been irreplaceable, and over time, al Qaeda prime declined dramatically in effectiveness — meaning it has been years since it has carried out an effective operation.
The situation was very different with the Taliban. The Taliban, it is essential to recall, won the Afghan civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal despite Russian and Iranian support for its opponents. That means the Taliban have a great deal of support and a strong infrastructure, and, above all, they are resilient. After the group withdrew from Afghanistan’s cities and lost formal power post-9/11, it still retained a great deal of informal influence — if not control — over large regions of Afghanistan and in areas across the border in Pakistan. Over the years since the U.S. invasion, the Taliban have regrouped, rearmed and increased their operations in Afghanistan. And the conflict with the Taliban has now become a conventional guerrilla war.
The Taliban and the Guerrilla Warfare Challenge
The Taliban have forged relationships among many Afghan (and Pakistani) tribes. These tribes have been alienated by Karzai and the Americans, and far more important, they do not perceive the Americans and Karzai as potential winners in the Afghan conflict. They recall the Russian and British defeats. The tribes have long memories, and they know that foreigners don’t stay very long. Betting on the United States and Karzai — when the United States has sent only 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, and is struggling with the idea of sending another 30,000 troops — does not strike them as prudent. The United States is behaving like a power not planning to win; and, in any event, they would not be much impressed if the Americans were planning to win.
The tribes therefore do not want to get on the wrong side of the Taliban. That means they aid and shelter Taliban forces, and provide them intelligence on enemy movement and intentions. With its base camps and supply lines running from Pakistan, the Taliban are thus in a position to recruit, train and arm an increasingly large force.
The Taliban have the classic advantage of guerrillas operating in known terrain with a network of supporters: superior intelligence. They know where the Americans are, what the Americans are doing and when the Americans are going to strike. The Taliban declines combat on unfavorable terms and strikes when the Americans are weakest. The Americans, on the other hand, have the classic problem of counterinsurgency: They enjoy superior force and firepower, and can defeat anyone they can locate and pin down, but they lack intelligence. As much as technical intelligence from unmanned aerial vehicles and satellites is useful, human intelligence is the only effective long-term solution to defeating an insurgency. In this, the Taliban have the advantage: They have been there longer, they are in more places and they are not going anywhere.
There is no conceivable force the United States can deploy to pacify Afghanistan. A possible alternative is moving into Pakistan to cut the supply lines and destroy the Taliban’s base camps. The problem is that if the Americans lack the troops to successfully operate in Afghanistan, it is even less likely they have the troops to operate in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The United States could use the Korean War example, taking responsibility for cutting the Taliban off from supplies and reinforcements from Pakistan, but that assumes that the Afghan government has an effective force motivated to engage and defeat the Taliban. The Afghan government doesn’t.
The obvious American solution — or at least the best available solution — is to retreat to strategic Afghan points and cities and protect the Karzai regime. The problem here is that in Afghanistan, holding the cities doesn’t give the key to the country; rather, holding the countryside gives the key to the cities. Moreover, a purely defensive posture opens the United States up to the Dien Bien Phu/Khe Sanh counterstrategy, in which guerrillas shift to positional warfare, isolate a base and try to overrun in it.
A purely defensive posture could create a stalemate, but nothing more. That stalemate could create the foundations for political negotiations, but if there is no threat to the enemy, the enemy has little reason to negotiate. Therefore, there must be strikes against Taliban concentrations. The problem is that the Taliban know that concentration is suicide, and so they work to deny the Americans valuable targets. The United States can exhaust itself attacking minor targets based on poor intelligence. It won’t get anywhere.
U.S. Strategy in Light of al Qaeda’s Diminution
From the beginning, the Karzai government has failed to take control of the countryside. Therefore, al Qaeda has had the option to redeploy into Afghanistan if it chose. It didn’t because it is risk-averse. That may seem like a strange thing to say about a group that flies planes into buildings, but what it means is that the group’s members are relatively few, so al Qaeda cannot risk operational failures. It thus keeps its powder dry and stays in hiding.
This then frames the U.S. strategic question. The United States has no intrinsic interest in the nature of the Afghan government. The United States is interested in making certain the Taliban do not provide sanctuary to al Qaeda prime. But it is not clear that al Qaeda prime is operational anymore. Some members remain, putting out videos now and then and trying to appear fearsome, but it would seem that U.S. operations have crippled al Qaeda.
So if the primary reason for fighting the Taliban is to keep al Qaeda prime from having a base of operations in Afghanistan, that reason might be moot now as al Qaeda appears to be wrecked. This is not to say that another Islamist terrorist group could not arise and develop the sophisticated methods and training of al Qaeda prime. But such a group could deploy many places, and in any case, obtaining the needed skills in moving money, holding covert meetings and the like is much harder than it looks — and with many intelligence services, including those in the Islamic world, on the lookout for this, recruitment would be hard.
It is therefore no longer clear that resisting the Taliban is essential for blocking al Qaeda: al Qaeda may simply no longer be there. (At this point, the burden of proof is on those who think al Qaeda remains operational.)
Two things emerge from this. First, the search for al Qaeda and other Islamist groups is an intelligence matter best left to the covert capabilities of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations Command. Defeating al Qaeda does not require tens of thousands of troops — it requires excellent intelligence and a special operations capability. That is true whether al Qaeda is in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Intelligence, covert forces and airstrikes are what is needed in this fight, and of the three, intelligence is the key.
Second, the current strategy in Afghanistan cannot secure Afghanistan, nor does it materially contribute to shutting down al Qaeda. Trying to hold some cities and strategic points with the number of troops currently under consideration is not an effective strategy to this end; the United States is already ceding large areas of Afghanistan to the Taliban that could serve as sanctuary for al Qaeda. Protecting the Karzai government and key cities is therefore not significantly contributing to the al Qaeda-suppression strategy.
In sum, the United States does not control enough of Afghanistan to deny al Qaeda sanctuary, can’t control the border with Pakistan and lacks effective intelligence and troops for defeating the Taliban.
Logic argues, therefore, for the creation of a political process for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan coupled with a recommitment to intelligence operations against al Qaeda. Ultimately, the United States must protect itself from radical Islamists, but cannot create a united, pro-American Afghanistan. That would not happen even if the United States sent 500,000 troops there, which it doesn’t have anyway.
A Tale of Two Surges
The U.S. strategy now appears to involve trying a surge, or sending in more troops and negotiating with the Taliban, mirroring the strategy used in Iraq. But the problem with that strategy is that the Taliban don’t seem inclined to make concessions to the United States. The Taliban don’t think the United States can win, and they know the United States won’t stay. The Petraeus strategy is to inflict enough pain on the Taliban to cause them to rethink their position, which worked in Iraq. But it did not work in Vietnam. So long as the Taliban have resources flowing and can survive American attacks, they will calculate that they can outlast the Americans. This has been Afghan strategy for centuries, and it worked against the British and Russians.
If it works against the Americans, too, splitting the al Qaeda strategy from the Taliban strategy will be the inevitable outcome for the United States. In that case, the CIA will become the critical war fighter in the theater, while conventional forces will be withdrawn. It follows that Obama will need to think carefully about his approach to intelligence.
This is not an argument that al Qaeda is no longer a threat, although the threat appears diminished. Nor is it an argument that dealing with terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not a priority. Instead, it is an argument that the defeat of the Taliban under rationally anticipated circumstances is unlikely and that a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan will be much more difficult and unlikely than the settlement was in Iraq — but that even so, a robust effort against Islamist terror groups must continue regardless of the outcome of the war with the Taliban.
Therefore, we expect that the United States will separate the two conflicts in response to these realities. This will mean that containing terrorists will not be dependent on defeating or holding out against the Taliban, holding Afghanistan’s cities, or preserving the Karzai regime. We expect the United States to surge troops into Afghanistan, but in due course, the counterterrorist portion will diverge from the counter-Taliban portion. The counterterrorist portion will be maintained as an intense covert operation, while the overt operation will wind down over time. The Taliban ruling Afghanistan is not a threat to the United States, so long as intense counterterrorist operations continue there.
The cost of failure in Afghanistan is simply too high and the connection to counterterrorist activities too tenuous for the two strategies to be linked. And since the counterterror war is already distinct from conventional operations in much of Afghanistan and Pakistan, our forecast is not really that radical.
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I think India pushing into Pakistan is the game changer.
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Care to expound on that further? Perhaps in the India-Pak thread?
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I have several questions. What is the tribal make up of Afghanistan? What are we doing to win over the tribes to our side? It seems to me when dealing with a tribal society one must win over the tribes. Don't these tribes cross over borders? Could not this be the key to the region? Ignore countries and borders and work on a tribal level. Hold the tribal leaders responsible for the actions of their tribes.
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What does "holding them responsible" mean? Punishing them if someone in their tribe does something? How do you think that will play?
What do you suggest we do about the drug trade? Annoy all the people for whom it is the most profitable option by far and let the Taliban et al benefit too? Or?
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By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A contingent of Army Rangers was moving toward a target in late October when it came under fire from machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Fearful the team would be wiped out, U.S. officers called in air strikes. When the dust settled, 22 Afghans lay dead and six American soldiers were wounded.
Just who these dead Afghans were is still unclear. Afghan and some U.S. officials say they were hired by an Afghan road-construction firm to protect nearby workers. The security company confirms their employment. But other U.S. military officials say the Afghans were militants who targeted American troops.
Armed private security companies are proliferating in Afghanistan -- hired in many cases to protect Afghan companies doing work for the U.S. And for the American forces who regularly encounter these armed men, it is perilously hard to discern their identities and their loyalties. Some of these guards may be linked to the militant leaders or drug traffickers who regularly battle U.S. troops.
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Reuters
The aftermath of a firefight in November in which U.S. forces killed more than a dozen Afghan men said to be guards for a road-building project.
U.S. commanders and Afghan officials say there have been at least three significant firefights between American forces and Afghan guards in recent months, and a host of other violent incidents.
In Iraq, private security companies hired by the U.S. government, such as Blackwater Worldwide, also have been involved in violent incidents that have stirred controversy. But the situation in Afghanistan, in some ways, is more confusing and dangerous. Private security forces there don't work for the U.S. government, but for Afghan and foreign companies. And they employ native Afghans, not Westerners.
Last year was the bloodiest year yet for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, as well as for Afghan personnel and civilians. In recent months, militants from the Taliban and other extremist groups have launched a campaign to kill Afghans who work on U.S.-funded road and construction projects across the country. Those attacks have led many Afghan contractors to hire security firms or individual guards. Kidnapping rings that target wealthy Afghans inside major cities like Kabul also have contributed to the security industry's rapid growth.
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Reuters
U.S. soldiers search an Afghan security guard whose firm escorts truck convoys, after they found illegal weapons in his vehicle last year.
President Barack Obama has characterized Afghanistan as a higher priority than Iraq. U.S. commanders are finalizing plans to deploy 30,000 additional troops to the nation by the summer, which would double the size of the American military presence.
American commanders acknowledge that security in much of the country remains poor, and that many construction projects would come to a halt without private security personnel. Most of the guards are legitimately trying to protect their employers, U.S. officials say.
"We authorize these guys to carry weapons in areas that need more security," says Capt. Mark Davis, an American commander in eastern Afghanistan. "But the risk is that you're allowing more people to walk around with guns who aren't part of the government and don't answer to it."
U.S. and Afghan officials believe some guards take orders from the Taliban or drug gangs. The officials also worry that the legitimate guards lack proper training or oversight, raising the chances of an accidental and potentially deadly run-in with U.S. or Afghan forces.
"Private security companies are a new experience for Afghanistan, and they pose a huge threat to our country," said Lt. Gen. Abdul Manan Farahie, an Afghan Interior Ministry official charged with overseeing the companies, in a recent interview in his office in Kabul. "They recruit former fighters who answer to the Taliban, and they recruit criminals."
Late last year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed regulations requiring security companies to register with the government. Gen. Farahie said he had already registered 39, far more than he had expected. One of the biggest firms, which has an array of lucrative government contracts, is owned by a cousin of Mr. Karzai, according to the government office that licenses the firms.
Gen. Farahie estimates the companies employ at least 20,000 Afghans, while thousands of other Afghans work freelance security jobs. He said many of the guards have more powerful weapons than the national police and army, including rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. By comparison, in Iraq, there were roughly 40,000 private security personnel at the peak.
By law, the guards are supposed to carry nothing more powerful than AK-47 assault weapons, but the government is ill equipped to take away the heavier weaponry. "For security reasons, we can't collect all of their weapons," said Gen. Farahie. "We're not strong enough."
Private security is one of the few growth industries in Afghanistan, and it doesn't require workers to be literate or formally educated. Guards say they receive about $75 to $150 a month, a decent wage in a country with an unemployment rate of more than 50%. Security teams are usually hired locally. That means that any guards killed by U.S. forces tend to have many friends and relatives in the surrounding areas, which can exacerbate already high tensions.
In early November, a team of Navy Seals tracking a senior commander from an extremist group led by warlord and Taliban ally Jalaluddin Haqqani found itself in a firefight with a group of 15 armed men. The men were guarding a trio of sport-utility vehicles carrying the commander and his associates, according to U.S. officials.
During the battle, near Khost, one of the trucks exploded. The force of the blast led U.S. officials to conclude it was carrying explosives. All 15 of the fighters, including the main target, were killed.
Businessman Mohammad Arif said recently that the dead men were guards hired by his company, Rahim Road Building Construction Co., to protect a road crew, and that they weren't guarding an extremist commander. When the guards first saw the approaching U.S. helicopters, he said, they felt a sense of relief.
"We were happy at first that these helicopters came for our security," Mr. Arif said. The guards didn't shoot, he said, and the explosion was caused by U.S. weaponry. In the aftermath, he said, he briefly had trouble finding men willing to work as guards.
"At first, most people didn't want to work with security companies because it is too risky," he said. "But eventually they came back."
U.S. officials say surveillance footage from unmanned aerial drones supports their version of events.
In late December, an Afghan road-construction company that had hired local men to protect its workers said two guards were killed by a U.S. artillery shell in Seray, in eastern Afghanistan. The U.S. military says it's investigating the incident, which it believes might have been caused by an errant U.S. shell.
The deadliest known skirmish came in October. It began when a contingent of Army Rangers was moving toward a target near the town of Qarabagh, in the eastern province of Ghazni.
U.S. officials familiar with the incident say the troops came under machine-gun and rocket-propelled-grenade fire from four separate locations. Pinned down, the Rangers returned fire and called in air strikes.
A senior U.S. commander who monitored the firefight while it was happening says it was one of the only times in his career when he "worried about losing all or most of the force."
Shortly after sunrise, reinforcements from the 101st Airborne Division pushed into the area to assist the Rangers and help evacuate the wounded Americans. Those forces also came under fire, and a second firefight erupted. When the shooting stopped, 22 Afghans were dead, and six Americans, most of them Rangers, were wounded, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.
Maj. Pat Seiber, a spokesman for the 101st Airborne troops who took part in the second firefight, says U.S. soldiers found identification badges on some of the dead Afghans.
"From what we can tell, the badges were from a legitimate security company," he says. "What we don't know is whether or not the people with the badges were legitimate employees of the company."
Three officers from the military's Special Operations Command, which oversees elite units such as the Rangers, Delta Force and the Seals, disputed the notion that the dead Afghans were legitimate security personnel.
"Why they were awake at 0200 local, and firing accurately (on a moonless night) at a patrol, and their compound looked like an armed fortress -- all unanswered questions," a senior commander with U.S. Special Operations Command said via email. "The circumstances ... did not point to any actions in good faith."
Officials from the Afghan government and the company that hired the guards, Marouf Sharif Construction, blame the U.S. for the deaths of the Afghans. Abdul Latif Adil, an executive with Marouf Sharif, said the firm hired 40 guards to protect workers paving an 11-mile stretch of highway.
The governor of Ghazni and the provincial police chief both said in interviews that they knew about the guards and had given them permission to possess AK-47s while on duty. The two officials and the construction-company executive said that the American troops fired first, and that the Afghans were doing their jobs when they shot back.
"Our guards didn't fire on the U.S. forces in the beginning," Mr. Adil said. "We didn't start anything. It was all a horrible mistake."
The identities of the dead men are in dispute even within the U.S. military. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, said they appeared to be legitimate guards.
"The fog of war certainly played a major role," he said in an interview. "The security companies use the same weapons and ammo as the insurgents, so it makes it extraordinarily hard to tell the difference."
In the aftermath of the incident, U.S. forces helped transport the bodies of the slain guards back to their families for burial, Gen. Schloesser said.
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Anyone else find Obamas comments funny on the US now working to international law, mean while he has UAV's shooting up Pakistani villages???? Not sure what brain trust advised him to up the rhetoric against Pakistan, unless their goal is to destabilize a nuclear power. The govt their is barely holding power as it is, and the general population already hates the west.
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Huss:
Please email me at Craftydog@dogbrothers.com
There is a long Indian intel piece I'd like to send you.
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I do business with Indians on a daily basis. Most of them would be more then hapy to nuke pakistan into an unpleasent memory. They are always quick to remind me that the brits forced the Indians to give up their land to make a home land for the muslims of that region. Kasmir should be a non issue. Pakistan did not exist prior to the 1940's, just another festering wound created by tampering westerners.
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Did anyone not Sec Def Gates's comments on Afg yesterday? It read to me like he has been reading Stratfor.
Any comments?
Also note the following from today's NY Slimes-- are BO's anonymous aides saying the same thing as Sec Def? Are they channeling our Freki (or did he read this article before posting? :lol: )
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Aides Say Obama’s Afghan Aims Elevate War
HELENE COOPER and THOM SHANKER
Published: January 27, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama intends to adopt a tougher line toward Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, as part of a new American approach to Afghanistan that will put more emphasis on waging war than on development, senior administration officials said Tuesday.
American soldiers conducted an operation along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan last month. The Obama administration says it plans to send more troops to fight in Afghanistan this year.
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan can expect a tougher line from the Obama administration, American officials said.
Mr. Karzai is now seen as a potential impediment to American goals in Afghanistan, the officials said, because corruption has become rampant in his government, contributing to a flourishing drug trade and the resurgence of the Taliban.
"The president has recently asked for a comprehensive review of Afghanistan policy, and no final decisions have been made," Michael A. Hammer, spokesman for the National Security Council, said Wednesday.
Among those pressing for Mr. Karzai to do more, the officials said, are Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The officials portrayed the approach as a departure from that of President Bush, who held videoconferences with Mr. Karzai every two weeks and sought to emphasize the American role in rebuilding Afghanistan and its civil institutions.
They said that the Obama administration would work with provincial leaders as an alternative to the central government, and that it would leave economic development and nation-building increasingly to European allies, so that American forces could focus on the fight against insurgents.
“If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who served under Mr. Bush and is staying on under Mr. Obama, told Congress on Tuesday. He said there was not enough “time, patience or money” to pursue overly ambitious goals in Afghanistan, and he called the war there “our greatest military challenge.”
Mr. Gates said last week that previous American goals for Afghanistan had been “too broad and too far into the future,” language that differed from Mr. Bush’s policies.
NATO has not met its pledges for combat troops, transport helicopters, military trainers and other support personnel in Afghanistan, and Mr. Gates has openly criticized the United States’ NATO allies for not fulfilling their promises.
Mr. Holbrooke is preparing to travel to the region, and administration officials said he would ask more of Mr. Karzai, particularly on fighting corruption, aides said, as part of what they described as a “more for more” approach.
Mr. Karzai is facing re-election this year, and it is not clear whether Mr. Obama and his aides intend to support his candidacy. The administration will be watching, aides said, to see if Mr. Karzai responds to demands from the United States and its NATO allies that he arrest associates, including his half-brother, whom Western officials have accused of smuggling drugs in Kandahar.
Shortly before taking office as vice president last week, Mr. Biden traveled to Afghanistan in his role as the departing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He met with Mr. Karzai and warned him that the Obama administration would expect more of him than Mr. Bush did, administration officials said. He told Mr. Karzai that Mr. Obama would be discontinuing the video calls that Mr. Karzai enjoyed with Mr. Bush, said a senior official, who added that Mr. Obama expected Mr. Karzai to do more to crack down on corruption.
After his return from Afghanistan, Mr. Biden, who has had a contentious relationship with Mr. Karzai, described the situation there as “a real mess.”
An election is scheduled to be held no later than the fall, under Afghanistan’s Constitution. Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American who is a former United States ambassador to the United Nations and is viewed as a possible challenger to Mr. Karzai, warned that the Obama administration must tread carefully as it recalibrated its Afghanistan policy.
“If it looks like we’re abandoning the central government and focusing just on the local areas, we will run afoul of Afghan politics,” Mr. Khalilzad said. “Some will regard it as an effort to break up the Afghan state, which would be regarded as hostile policy.”
Mr. Obama is preparing to increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan over the next two years, perhaps to more than 60,000 from about 34,000 now. But Mr. Gates indicated Tuesday that the administration would move slowly, at least for now. He outlined plans for an increase of about 12,000 troops by midsummer but cautioned that any decision on more troops beyond that might have to wait until late 2009, given the need for barracks and other infrastructure.
With the forces of the Taliban and Al Qaeda mounting more aggressive operations in eastern and southern Afghanistan, administration officials said they saw little option but to focus on the military campaign. They said Europeans would be asked to pick up more of the work on reconstruction, police training and cooperation with the Afghan government. They also said much of the international effort might shift to helping local governments and institutions, and away from the government in Kabul.
“It’s not about dumping reconstruction at all,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic delicacy of the subject. “What we’re trying to do is to focus on the Al Qaeda problem. That has to be our first priority.”
Mr. Gates said Tuesday that under the redefined Afghan strategy, it would be vital for NATO allies to “provide more civilian support.” In particular, he said, the allies should be more responsible for building civil society institutions in Afghanistan, a task that had been falling to American forces. He also demanded that allies “step up to the plate” and defray costs of expanding the Afghan Army, an emerging power center, whose leaders could emerge as rivals to Mr. Karzai.
Mr. Gates added that the United States should focus on limited goals. “My own personal view is that our primary goal is to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists to attack the United States and our allies, and whatever else we need to do flows from that objective,” he said.
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As to solutions: One novel idea on opium-and-corruption comes from James Nathan, a political science professor at Auburn University in Alabama and former State Department official. He argues in a forthcoming paper that the most efficient way to tackle the problem would be for the United States or NATO to buy up the entire Afghan opium crop.
"Purchasing the whole crop would take it away from the traffickers without cutting more than half the economy of Afghanistan," Nathan said in an interview. "Such a purchase would directly confront Afghanistan's most corrosive corruption. It would end the Taliban's money stream."
And the cost? By Nathan's reckoning, between $2 billion and $2.5 billion a year, no pocket change but not a large sum compared with the around $200 billion the U.S. taxpayer has already paid for the war in Afghanistan. The idea may sound startling, but its logic is not far from the farm subsidies paid to U.S. and European farmers.
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I have heard of this solution before. I have not formed an opinion on it yet. The question I am considering when I think of this solution is: Does buying the crop amount to a form of blackmail? If so do you want to set this type of precedent for other terrorist or criminals to use to get money out of us?
What do you think?
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Stratfor:
NATO Members Free To Seek Iranian Supply Route
February 3, 2009 | 0255 GMT
Gen. John Craddock, NATO’s senior military commander, announced late Feb. 2 that the alliance would not oppose individual member nations reaching bilateral deals with Iran for the transit of supplies to Afghanistan. This development follows statements by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Jan. 26, encouraging member states to engage Tehran over the campaign in Afghanistan. These are not small or off-the-cuff statements, and they signal a significant development in the West’s relationship with Iran.
Though it might be too soon for the United States to choose this route to supply its troops in Afghanistan, several European nations could seize the opportunity to end their reliance on vulnerable supply lines through Pakistan. In truth, everyone is looking for the elusive alternative. But some will be more prepared to strike deals with Tehran than others.
No deals have been inked yet, but NATO officials would not make these public announcements out of the blue. Craddock’s statement itself suggests that at least a few member states contributing to the Afghan campaign have been pushing for this green light for some time. By implication, some arrangements between Tehran and select European capitals are likely to follow in short order.
More important, NATO’s recent signals are an enormous development amid the ongoing negotiations between Washington and Moscow over a potential Central Asian supply route. Pakistan has always been the United States’ shortest, most direct route to Afghanistan — precisely because the prospect of cooperation with Iran, after the Bush administration labeled it a member of the Axis of Evil, was politically absurd. But despite the fact that supplies shipped through Iran would traverse more territory in Afghanistan proper (some of it host to a heavy Taliban presence), an Iranian route still makes for an exceptionally competitive alternative — especially in comparison to the long, drawn-out and politically treacherous Central Asian routes under consideration. Supplies would be offloaded at the Iranian port of Chah Bahar on the Arabian Sea and transported by truck directly to Afghan territory.
Simply by raising the prospect of Iran as a viable alternative, Washington’s hand in negotiating other routes becomes stronger.
For Tehran, this is an enormous opportunity to engage directly with the Western world in an area of mutual interest. Iran — a Persian and Shiite power — is enormously threatened by the empowerment of hard-line Sunni extremists across its eastern frontier. (Following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, there were even some backchannel discussions between Washington and Tehran over Iranian support for the planned U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.)
If a number of NATO allies — with Germany among the likely inaugural candidates — choose to sustain their national efforts in Afghanistan via the short, accessible route through Iran, the opportunities for wider political rapprochement also expand. Of course, it will not be all smooth sailing. Tehran will be looking to extract significant concessions in exchange for such significant and overt assistance.
From a military perspective, if the United States can lock down the tortuous Central Asian route as well, NATO suddenly would have three independent supply lines to some of the most inaccessible territory on Earth. That would prevent any one route from being too heavily leveraged against the United States, thereby weakening both Islamabad’s and Moscow’s negotiating positions in relation to Washington.
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Bringing GM's post from the Cognitive Dissonance thread to here. My comments come at the end:
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http://www.douglasfarah.com/article/447/understanding-the-islamist-agenda-and-negotiations.com
Feb 2, 15:42
Understanding the Islamist Agenda and Negotiations
There are many good reasons for wanting to talk directly to one’s enemies, particularly states that pose a direct threat to one’s security. The Obama administration, facing a host of domestic problems and inheriting the ineffective policies of the previous administration in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, has incentives to want to get the Iran issue contained, at a minimum.
The same can be said for the Afghanistan crisis, which is lurching from bad to worse. The Taliban, flush with opium money, is making inroads while the corrupt and ineffective government fiddles, and Kabul is close to burning.
But one has to be clear that the other side wants some sort of serious back and forth. This is what is missing in both cases.
One must start from a recognition of what it is Iran wants: the abolition of Israel, the unimpeded sponsorship of armed non-state actors (Hezbollah and Hamas, with the dalliance with al Qaeda when convenient), and imposition of a global theocracy. None of these issues is negotiable.
From this Wall Street Journal piece, it is quite clear that Iran sees nothing to be gained by talks, and much to be gained by trying to humiliate the incoming administration. Perhaps they are simply recognizing the reality that their basic goals leave little room for substantive negotiations.
It seems to me that Fareed Zakaria makes serious mistake in his assessment of Afghanistan policy in calling for talks with the Taliban.
This is largely for the same reason: the lack of a understanding of what the Taliban want and what they are.
Like the Iranians (yes, the Taliban is Sunni and wahhabist, and yes the Iranians are Shi’ite and they have much disdain for each other on many issues) the Taliban has as its bottom line the establishment of a global Islamist caliphate that starts in Afghanistan and from there, the world.
The differences with al Qaeda are cultural clashes and discomfort with the way the Arab forces treat the Taliban, but not over fundamental beliefs, tactics or strategy. A world under Sharia law, as understood by both groups, is a divine mandate and therefore not negotiable.
Zakaria writes that:
The United States is properly and unalterably
opposed to al-Qaeda. We have significant differences with the Taliban on many issues—democracy and the treatment of women being the most serious. But we do not wage war on other Islamist groups with which we similarly disagree (the Saudi monarchy, for example). Were elements of the Taliban to abandon al-Qaeda, we would not have a pressing national security interest in waging war against them.
That is simply not true. As he notes later, al Qaeda (the old guard, perhaps less relevant than ever) is essentially a parasite, living off host groups and nations. But in the case of the Taliban, the host has welcomed the parasite, fed it, clothed it, protected it and embraced it.
The idea that the Taliban would, in a verifiable way, renounce and cut ties to al Qaeda, is simply not realistic. The idea that we should stand by and deal with-and likely assure the ascent to power of-a group whose basic philosophy is to return everything they can back to the Middle Ages is an abandonment of everything we claim to stand for. The fact that we tolerate Saudi Arabia’s abysmal behavior is no reason to watch another country fall under the worst kind of enslavement and barbarism.
Finally, the line about having no pressing national security interest in the Taliban repeats exactly the misguided analysis that led the Taliban to facilitate the execution of the 9/11 attacks. Every major attack (1998 East Africa bombings, USS Cole, 9/11) were carried out by non-state actors (al Qaeda) operating from a “failed” state or sympathetic state (Taliban and Sudan).
Dialogue is a useful, vital tool in international relations. But it is only useful when the bottom lines of both sides are understood and the areas of overlap can be discussed. Otherwise, it is a waste of precious time and resources.
Posted on: February 03, 2009, 08:50:25 PMPosted by: G M
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Tom Daschle Withdraws: Another Ethics Casualty for Obama
Posted By Jennifer Rubin On February 3, 2009 @ 10:53 am In . Feature 01, Money, Politics, US News | 73 Comments
How quickly they fall. Tom Daschle, who just yesterday had the full backing of President Barack Obama, has announced he is withdrawing his name from consideration as Health and Human Services secretary. For both Daschle and Obama, it has been a rough ride, calling into question the latter’s judgment and skill as a chief executive.
President Barack Obama rode into Washington on a veritable cloud of goodwill and sky-high expectations. The mainstream media had swooned over his transition with some justification. They had swooned over his inaugural speech with far less. But hopes, even among conservatives, were high for a break from business as usual, a degree of bipartisan pragmatism and a can-do approach to solving the nation’s economic problems. But in a mere two weeks, the thrill is gone and nagging questions have begun.
Most glaringly, we have been treated to a raft of embarrassing personnel issues. Tim Geithner made it through the confirmation hearing but Bill Richardson did not; nor did the “[1] chief performance officer” who could not perform the task of paying all her own taxes. Then Tom Daschle, who just yesterday garnered the support of President Obama and Democrats in the Senate, has now announced he is backing out. This followed a storm of criticism from not just conservatives who are aghast at the tax cheats and revolving-door-ism. [2] Marie Cocco summed up:
No need to fumble for words that sum up the stew of hypocrisy, arrogance, and insiderism that is the unfolding saga of Tom Daschle. This is the audacity of audacity. … The rationale for confirming Geithner was that he is a financial wizard — one of a handful of people, it was argued, with the experience and intellect necessary to manage the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression. But surely there is more than one Democrat capable of managing the Department of Health and Human Services. And undoubtedly there is more than one — there are perhaps, hundreds — as committed to the cause of revamping the health care system. Daschle isn’t indispensable. But he is indefensible.
And [3] Richard Cohen was no less critical:
Taken individually, the tax problems of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the health and human services secretary-designate, Tom Daschle, don’t amount to much. Together, though, they amount to a message: If you are beloved by this administration, you don’t necessarily have to play by the rules. Both Geithner and Daschle are good men, but their appointments send the message that Washington’s new broom sweeps a bit like the old one.
The Daschle debacle is not the only problem bedeviling the Obama team. This follows a slew of ethics waivers which has made the so-called ethics rules (prohibiting ex-lobbyists from working on issues for which they previously lobbied) into Swiss cheese. The [4] good-government types are fuming. And even the MSM has noticed the pattern, which includes an ethics waiver for William Lynn, a former lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon who has been nominated for the Pentagon’s number two job.
[5] TIME magazine explains:
But the controversy over the waivers, which have been criticized by both Democratic and Republican senators, is just one of the perception problems dogging Obama’s new ethics policy. Another issue stems from the people nominated to the administration who have worked in the lobbying business but are not technically lobbyists — people, in other words, like Tom Daschle, or former Senator George Mitchell, the new Middle East peace envoy who had previously served as the chairman of a law firm that has done lobbying and legal work for many clients in the region, including the leader of Dubai.
In short, we are back to the very same Washington, D.C., brew of sleaze, double standards, ethical lapses, and hypocrisy. That it comes from an administration which ran on such a sanctimonious platform only makes it that much more disappointing and indeed infuriating.
But that’s not all. Aside from the ethics issues, the number one priority, the Obama stimulus plan, has run aground. The administration’s stimulus bill has become the subject of widespread criticism from [6] conservatives and [7] mainstream outlets alike for its porked-up spending plans and insufficient attention to fulfill the president’s directives for a temporary and targeted response to the recession. What was supposed to garner bipartisan support has instead invigorated the Republican opposition. As ABC’s [8] The Note summed up: “Team Obama lost the early battle to define the bill — which has become a pork-stuffed monstrosity, instead of economic salvation wrapped in legislation.”
On foreign policy the record is more mixed. The president’s declaration that he will close Guantanamo, as soon as he has figured out what to do with the prisoners, brought conservative criticism and has proven to be [9] unpopular with voters who, come to think of it, don’t like the idea of moving dangerous terrorists to their neighborhoods or releasing them to the battlefield. And liberals are miffed that the Bush-era terrorist [10] rendition program has been retained or indeed expanded. President Obama’s apologetic interview with Al-Arabyia was panned by conservatives and lauded by liberals (but, tellingly, was not echoed by his new secretary of state and was greeted with contempt by Ahmadinejad.)
It is fair to ask: what’s wrong? Several things, it appears, are at work here.
First, the Obama team certainly does not place ethical standards or the appearance of ethical standards above other concerns (e.g., avoiding embarrassment or getting a key player). Now this should come as no surprise from the team which promised to work within the public campaign financing rules and then decided it was better not to. In the course of the campaign, however, against the dreaded Republicans this passed muster. In the glare of the White House press corps lights when expectations are higher, it induces biting criticism and even anger.
Second, Obama has never been an expert legislator and has, it seems, lost control of his own stimulus bill. By deferring to the House Democrats he lost the policy and political high ground. Now an astounding [11] 54% of Americans either want a major reworking of the bill or to block it entirely. The president and his advisors seem to have mistaken his own personal popularity with both the public’s and the Republicans’ willingness to accept anything he and the Democrats could dream up.
And finally, the Republicans have played their cards well on the stimulus — speaking in respectful tones about the president, displaying heretofore unheard of unity, and hammering at the excessive and unwise aspects of the stimulus bill. By holding their ground, they have forced Obama into a tight corner. He must now either revise the bill or pass it on his own. And by standing on principle, they have denied the president the chance to do what he has done successfully throughout his career; namely, to claim the mantle of bipartisanship while advocating a far-left agenda.
Now, President Obama’s approval numbers are still high, but they are [12] floating steadily back to earth. This is the messy business of governing — when rhetoric comes up against reality and the sky-high expectations of supporters are ratcheted down, bit by bit.
It was never realistic to expect President Obama would reinvent politics, but it would have been nice had he not sacrificed his principles quite so quickly. It has not earned him any brownie points. Instead, conservatives are revived, liberals are dismayed, and the general public is left wondering: Didn’t we vote for something better than this?
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/tom-daschle-another-ethics-casualty-for-obama/
URLs in this post:
[1] chief performance officer: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/02/03/1778480.aspx
[2] Marie Cocco: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/daschle_is_indefensible.html
[3] Richard Cohen: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/02/AR2009020202054.html
[4] good-government types: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/23/william-lynn-obamas-first_n_160512.html
[5] TIME magazine: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1876550,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
[6] conservatives: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/100dyjdy.asp
[7] mainstream: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/31/AR2009013101535.html
[8] The Note: http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/02/the-note-2309-s.html
[9] unpopular: http://www.gallup.com/poll/114091/Americans-Approve-Obama-Actions-Date.aspx
[10] rendition program: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/52402
[11] 54%: http://www.gallup.com/poll/114097/Americans-Support-Stimulus-Major-Changes.aspx
[12] floating steadily back: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls
======================
GM:
So what does Farah/do you propose? THAT is the question! For many months now I have been questioning the coherence of our strategy for Afg-Pak. I am not alone in this. Indendent reporter Michael Yon (whom I respect so highly that I donate to him on a monthly basis) says a clusterfcuk comes. Sec Def Gates, not a weenie, says similar things. WHAT ARE WE TO DO? WHAT IS THE STRATEGY? What does success in Afg look like?
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Second post of the AM:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090203/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_afghanistan
Pentagon study: US should pare Afghanistan goals
By ROBERT BURNS and PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writers
29 mins ago
WASHINGTON – A classified Pentagon report urges President Barack Obama to shift U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, de-emphasizing democracy-building and concentrating more on targeting Taliban and al-Qaida sanctuaries inside Pakistan with the aid of Pakistani military forces.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has seen the report prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but it has not yet been presented to the White House, officials said Tuesday. The recommendations are one element of a broad policy reassessment under way along with recommendations to be considered by the White House from the commander of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, and other military leaders.
A senior defense official said Tuesday that it will likely take several weeks before the Obama administration rolls out its long-term strategy for Afghanistan.
The Joint Chiefs' plan reflects growing worries that the U.S. military was taking on more than it could handle in Afghanistan by pursuing the Bush administration's broad goal of nurturing a thriving democratic government.
Instead, the plan calls for a more narrowly focused effort to root out militant strongholds along the Pakistani border and inside the neighboring country, according to officials who confirmed the essence of the report. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plan publicly.
The recommendations are broadly cast and provide limited detail, meant to help develop the overarching strategy for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region rather than propose a detailed military action plan.
During a press conference Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs noted ongoing reviews of Afghan policy, but did not say when they would be made public. Obama intends, he said, to "evaluate the current direction of our policy and make some corrections as he goes forward."
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not comment Tuesday on the details of the Joint Chiefs' report, but acknowledged that the U.S. relationship with Pakistan is a critical component for success in Afghanistan.
"When you talk about Afghanistan, you can't help but also recognize the fact that the border region with Pakistan is obviously a contributing factor to the stability and security of Afghanistan, and the work that Pakistan is doing to try to reduce and eliminate those safe havens, and the ability for people to move across that border that are engaged in hostile intentions," Whitman said.
Part of the recommended approach is to search for ways to work more intensively and effectively with the Pakistanis to root out extremist elements in the border area, the senior defense official said.
The heightened emphasis on Pakistan reflects a realization that the root of the problem lies in the militant havens inside its border — a concern outlined last week to Congress in grim testimony by Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen.
But the report does not imply more incursions by U.S. combat forces inside Pakistan or accelerating other forms of U.S. military involvement, the senior defense official emphasized. Pakistani officials have repeatedly raised alarms after a surge of U.S. Hellfire missile strikes from drone predators in recent months, and renewed those complaints after a new strike killed 19 people inside Pakistan days after Obama took office.
"The bottom line is we have to look at what the art of the possible is there," said a U.S. military official who has operated in Afghanistan. The official, who has not seen the Joint Chiefs' report, said the challenge is to craft a strategy that achieves U.S. goals of stabilizing the region and constraining al-Qaida, but also takes into account the powerful tribes that resist a strong central government and the ties among ethnic Pashtuns on either side of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The Joint Chiefs' report advises a greater emphasis on U.S. military training of Pakistani forces for counter-terror work.
Pakistan's government is well aware of growing U.S. interest in collaborating to improve its military's muscle against al-Qaida and Taliban elements in the border areas. The topic has been broached repeatedly by senior U.S. officials, including Mullen.
The training efforts also would expand and develop the Afghan army and police force, while at the same time work to improve Afghan governance.
The report also stresses that Afghan strategy must be driven by what the Afghans want, and that the U.S. cannot impose its own goals on the Afghanistan government.
During discussions about a new Afghanistan strategy, military leaders expressed worries that the U.S. ambitions in Afghanistan — to stabilize the country and begin to build a democracy there — were beyond its ability.
And as they tried to balance military demands in both Iraq and Afghanistan, some increasingly questioned why the U.S. continued to maintain a war-fighting force in Iraq, even though the mission there has shifted to a more support role. Those fighting forces, they argued, were needed more urgently in Afghanistan.
Military leaders have been signaling for weeks that the focus of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan would change.
Gates told armed services committees in Congress last week that the U.S. should keep its sights on one thing: preventing Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists who would harm the U.S. or its allies. He bluntly added that the military could not root out terrorists while also propping up Afghanistan's fledgling democracy.
"Afghanistan is the fourth or fifth poorest country in the world, and if we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose," Gates said, a mythology reference to heaven.
Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that he was briefed last week on the military's proposed new Afghan strategy, which he called evolving but headed in the right direction.
"There will be no Anbar awakening," McCain, R-Ariz., told The Associated Press, referring to the tribal uprising against al-Qaida in Iraq's Anbar province that triggered a turnaround in that conflict. "It will be long, hard and difficult."
The Joint Chiefs report's overall conclusions were first reported Saturday by The Associated Press. Politico reported additional details of the report Tuesday.
The U.S. is considering doubling its troop presence in Afghanistan this year to roughly 60,000, in response to growing strength by the Islamic militant Taliban, fed by safe havens they and al-Qaida have developed in an increasingly unstable Pakistan.
Obama is expected to announce soon his decision on a request for additional forces from the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan. Several officials said they believe the president will approve sending three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, totaling roughly 14,000 troops.
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Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Anne Gearan, Pamela Hess, Lara Jakes and Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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French soldiers soluting during a 2006 ceremony.
Domestic distractions allow Sarkozy room to maneuver as he boosts France's presence in Afghanistan despite public skepticism, but funding and resource questions may determine the end game, Thomas Withington writes for ISN Security Watch.
By Thomas Withington for ISN Security Watch
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?ots591=4888CAA0-B3DB-1461-98B9-E20E7B9C13D4&lng=en&id=96200
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France continues to increase its military presence in Afghanistan as part of Paris' contribution to the continuing NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission.
Reports in early February spoke of additional unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) being deployed to Bagram Air Base north of Kabul to support French Sperwer drones already in theatre. These pilotless aircraft will provide 24-hour reconnaissance and surveillance pictures to French troops on the ground.
The country's presence is also being beefed-up with the possible arrival of advanced Eurocopter EC-665 Tigre attack helicopters this summer, while Armée de l'Air (French Air Force) Dassault Mirage-2000D combat aircraft are being redeployed from Dushanbe in Tajikistan to Kandahar, southwest Afghanistan. This will shorten their flying time to possible trouble spots in the south of the country.
The increase in France's presence in Afghanistan follows the ambush of troops from the Armée de Terre (French Army) 8e Régiment Parachutiste d'Infanterie de Marine (8th Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment) in Sarobi province, north of Kabul last August, which left 10 troops dead and another 21 injured. This was the largest wartime loss of life for the French armed forces since 23 October 1983 when 58 troops were killed during a bomb attack on their barracks in Beirut. New BAE Systems RG-31 Nyala mine-protected vehicles are also on the way from the US to protect French troops from attack by mines and improvised explosive devices.
Hot on the heels of the attack, the Assemblée nationale (lower house of the French Parliament) voted 340 to 210 in September last year to continue the country's Afghan deployment, and also to authorize an extra 700 troops (to supplement the circa 2,500 soldiers France currently has in Afghanistan) along with additional attack helicopters, UAVs, artillery and logistical support.
Where 'freedom is being decided'
The intensification of France's involvement in Afghanistan follows a statement by President Nicolas Sarkozy in which he explained the country's motivations for remaining in Afghanistan, despite the misgivings of French popular opinion: "Why are we there? Because it is where a large part of the world's freedom is being decided. This is the place where terrorism is being fought. We are not there to fight against the Afghans but with them, not to leave them on their own to fight the dark forces of barbarity."
On the ground, French strategy follows a twin track, according to François Géré, president of the l'Institut Français d'Analyse Stratégique (French Institute for Strategic Analysis) in Paris.
"French troops continue to train and form the Afghan security forces as well as the army, and continue to help the population to protect itself in de-mining. We continue to have medical teams who are bringing healthcare to the population. On the other hand, the increase in French troops is aimed at becoming more offensive with the real commitment to engage the adversary where necessary. Not to avoid the fight," he told ISN Security Watch.
Despite the commitment of the French government to the Afghan operation, the intensification of France's effort is being performed against a backdrop of cutbacks for the country's armed forces. Last year's Livre Blanc (white paper) recommended the disbandment of 20 of the French Army's regiments and battalions. Although these reductions are not being drawn from front-line infantry units - instead being taken from support units such as logistics and engineer personnel, and signalers - the loss of these units could cause problems in terms of supporting a military operation being performed 5,579 kilometers from Paris. The cost of France's involvement in 2008 was reported at around €250 million (US$319 million), almost a 50 percent increase on the cost of the operation for 2007.
Room to maneuver
In the wake of last August's ambush, French opposition to the country's continued involvement in Afghanistan was reported to run at around 55 percent. That said, Gérè believes that Sarkozy and his government "face no significant and well-articulated political position" in opposition to its involvement in Afghanistan.
This has given Sarkozy considerable political room to maneuver in terms of increasing France's commitment in the country - a fact underlined by last September's vote in favor of continuing the French Afghan deployment. However, this political space may not be permanent.
"If we were to suffer additional significant casualties, the government would have to reconsider its position," Géré noted. "I'm not saying that the French government would decide to withdraw," he added.
In fact, some of the blame for the lack of French public support may lie at the administration's door: "The French government has not articulated very well the reasons why we are in Afghanistan and that is the reason why the [skeptical] public is in the majority."
Despite public opposition to the Afghan operation, the government may also be able to benefit from a degree of popular distraction. A general strike on 29 January in which between one and 2.5 million French workers may have taken to the streets to air a host of grievances ranging from disquiet over proposed education reforms to the government's handling of the economic crisis, has kept domestic issues firmly at the top of the political agenda for the time being.
"French people are much more concerned by unemployment and the credit crisis rather than Afghanistan," Géré said. However, we need to take into consideration that if the financial crisis in France aggravates, there could be questions about why we are spending money in Afghanistan."
Playing both sides
Following the inauguration of US President Barack Obama in January, France, along with several NATO members, may soon find themselves under increasing US pressure to pledge more troops to Afghanistan as the new administration embarks on a "surge" against the Taliban in the lead up to the presidential elections in the country in mid-August.
However, Obama and his colleagues may face disappointment in Paris. On 21 January, French Defense Minister Hervé Morin ruled out enlarging the country's military footprint in Afghanistan: "We have made the necessary effort. Considering additional reinforcements is out of the question for now."
Morin, however, also took the opportunity to reiterate France's reasons for its continued presence in Afghanistan, saying that the operation was "indispensable for the Afghans, who have the right to finally know peace. Indispensable for the French themselves because their security hangs in a great part on that region, one of the most instable in the world."
It is possible that Morin chose to tread a careful line in his interview with the Europe 1 radio station; on one hand reiterating his government's commitment to Afghanistan and the ISAF mission in general, while also reassuring skeptical parts of the French population that, even in light of a new US administration pledging a firmer effort in the country, France would not be increasing its commitment beyond the troop and equipment increases promised in September.
The end game
Moreover, there could also be financial motivations for the French government refusing to pledge anything more than what has already been promised. France's GDP is predicted to decline from 0.9 percent for 2008 to -1.2 percent for 2009, according to figures from the Economist Intelligence Unit. The government may be choosing to husband its cash flow as much as possible.
"If we increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, we will obviously need extra money to pay for them," Géré argued.
The only way such a move could be done without significantly increasing costs would be to redeploy some of the circa 2,000 French troops operating with the EU Peacekeeping Force (EUFOR) in Chad in support of the UN/AU peacekeeping efforts in West Darfur, Sudan.
Reducing the numbers of French troops in the EUFOR mission could send a message to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan that France no longer places as much importance on this mission as it does on the Afghan operation. This could encourage the Sudanese government, armed forces and proxy janjaweed militias to increase their violence in the troubled West Darfur province while EUFOR attempts to redress the loss of French troops with fresh soldiers from other European nations.
A French reduction of its EUFOR presence could also send the wrong message as regards Paris' commitment to European security and defense policy.
Finally, Sarkozy and his colleagues would find that any increase in France's troop numbers in Afghanistan "would be very difficult to do without a debate in Parliament," said Géré.
The president may want to avoid such a move in the current turbulent economic environment, lest it gives opposition parliamentarians the opportunity to ask why money is being found for an increased Afghan commitment while the French economy remains in the doldrums.
France's Afghanistan endgame may not be as far away as the country's population might think. The current global financial crisis and France's economic woes could have a decisive effect on the Sarkozy government's desire and ability to keep French boots on the ground.
"My sense is that for financial reasons, we have no alternative but to stay for a maximum of two years and to transfer the responsibility for security to the Afghan government," noted Géré.
Furthermore, pulling French troops out by 2012 could have the accompanying benefit of avoiding some of the problems that might be caused by the cutbacks of support personnel recommended by last year's white paper.
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Thomas Withington is an independent defense consultant, writer and analyst based in Toulouse, France. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Defence Studies, King's College, London and an Associate Member of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
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By JOSEPH LIEBERMAN
Although President Barack Obama and all of us in Congress are understandably focused on the economic crisis, we also face multiple crises in the rest of the world -- beginning with the war in Afghanistan. Security there has been deteriorating as the insurgents have grown in strength, size and sophistication, expanding their influence over an increasing swath of territory.
Reversing the downward spiral will not be easy. But as Gen. David Petraeus once said of another war, "Hard is not hopeless." And we possess considerable strengths in this fight.
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The biggest strength is the American military, which through the crucible of Iraq has transformed itself into the most effective counterinsurgency force in history. Although Iraq and Afghanistan are very different, many of the guiding principles of counterinsurgency do apply to both theaters -- most importantly, the need to provide security for the population. Moreover, our troops will be redeploying from Iraq to Afghanistan with the momentum, experience and morale that comes with success.
We also have an ally in the Afghan people -- a proud people with a proud history. Although their frustration with our coalition is growing, Afghans are not eager to return to the tyranny and poverty of the Taliban. That is why the insurgents have not won their support and must resort to self-defeating tactics of cruelty and coercion.
The other critical strength, and reason for hope, is the broad support for success in Afghanistan in the new administration and Congress. Mr. Obama has made clear this is a war he intends to win. He has pledged to deploy more troops and appointed one of our most talented diplomats, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The combination of Mr. Holbrooke and Gen. Petraeus led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is not a team to bet against.
That, then, is the good news. The bad news is that, even if we do everything right, conditions are likely to get worse before they get better, and the path ahead will still be long, costly and hard. The president's pledge to send more troops to Afghanistan is absolutely necessary and right -- but turning the tide will take more than additional troops. In fact, we must match the coming surge in troop strength with at least five other "surges" equally important to success.
- First and most importantly, we need a surge in the strategic coherence of the war effort. As we learned in Iraq, success in counterinsurgency requires integrating military and civilian operations into a seamless and unified strategy. In Afghanistan, we do not have in place a nationwide, civil-military campaign plan to defeat the insurgency.
This is an unacceptable failure. It is also the predictable product of a balkanized military command structure, in which different countries are left to pursue different strategies in different places. The international civilian effort in Afghanistan is even more disorganized, as well as unsynchronized with the military.
Unquestionably, it is a good thing so many countries are contributing to the fight in Afghanistan, and we owe a great debt of gratitude to our allies for their sacrifices. But we also owe them success, and that demands an integrated campaign plan and stronger American leadership.
- Second, we need a surge in civilian capacity. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul needs to be transformed and expanded, with the necessary resources and the explicit direction to work side by side with the military at every level. In particular, the civilian presence must be ramped up outside our embassy -- at the provincial, district and village levels, embedding nonmilitary experts with new military units as they move in.
- Third, we need to help surge the Afghan war effort. This means expanding the Afghan army to 200,000 or more, and ensuring they are properly equipped, paid and mentored.
The U.S. needs to take tough action to combat the pervasive corruption that is destroying the Afghan government and fueling the insurgency. This requires a systemic response, not just threatening specific leaders on an ad hoc basis. Specifically, we must invest comprehensively in Afghan institutions, both from top-down and bottom-up.
In doing so, the U.S. should embrace a policy of "more for more" -- specifically, by offering the Afghan government a large-scale, 10-year package of governance and development aid in exchange for specific benchmarks on performance and progress.
- Fourth, we need a surge in our regional strategy. As many have observed, almost all of Afghanistan's neighbors are active in some way inside that country. Some of this activity is positive -- for instance, aid and investment -- but much of it is malign, providing support to insurgent groups. We must help "harden" Afghanistan by strengthening its institutions at both the national and local levels, empowering Afghans to stop their neighbors from using their country as a geopolitical chessboard.
The U.S. can help by beginning to explore the possibility of a bilateral defense pact with Kabul, which would include explicit security guarantees.
Some neighbors are hedging their bets today because they fear what happens "the day after" America grows tired and disengages from the region, as we did once before, after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Nothing will discourage this destabilizing behavior better than a long-term American commitment to Afghanistan.
- Fifth, success in Afghanistan requires a sustained surge of American political commitment to the mission. Fortunately, and unlike Iraq, the Afghan war still commands bipartisan support in Congress and among the American people. But as more troops are deployed to Afghanistan and casualties rise, this consensus will be tested.
Indeed, there are already whispers on both the left and the right that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, that we should abandon any hope of nation-building there, additional forces sent there will only get bogged down in a quagmire.
Why are these whisperings wrong? Why is this war necessary?
The most direct answer is that Afghanistan is where the attacks of 9/11 were plotted, where al Qaeda made its sanctuary under the Taliban, and where they will do so again if given the chance. We have a vital national interest in preventing that from happening.
It is also important to recognize that, although we face many problems in Afghanistan today, none are because we have made it possible for five million Afghan children -- girls and boys -- to go to school; or because child mortality has dropped 25% since we overthrew the Taliban in 2001; or because Afghan men and women have been able to vote in their first free and fair elections in history.
On the contrary, the reason we have not lost in Afghanistan -- despite our missteps -- is because America still inspires hope of a better life for millions of ordinary Afghans and has worked mightily to deliver it. And the reason we can defeat the extremists is because they do not.
This, ultimately, is how the war on terror will end: not when we capture or kill Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar -- though we must do that too -- but when we have empowered and expanded the mainstream Muslim majority to stand up and defeat the extremist minority.
That is the opportunity we have in Afghanistan today: to make that country into a quagmire, not for America but for al Qaeda, the Taliban and their fellow Islamist extremists, and into a graveyard in which their dreams of an Islamist empire are finally buried.
Mr. Lieberman is an Independent Democratic senator from Connecticut. This op-ed is adapted from a speech he delivered last week at the Brookings Institution.
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Richard Holbrooke is about to visit Pakistan for the first time as President Obama's envoy to the region, and Islamabad has just laid out the welcome mat: A court released nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan from house arrest.
Khush amdid means welcome in the Urdu language, but the exact translation of Mr. Khan's release can't be printed in a family newspaper. Mr. Holbrooke will understand, having issued more than one such unprintable message himself over his long diplomatic career. Islamabad is telling the new U.S. government that it won't simply be able to dictate terms of cooperation in fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda. Like nearly everyone else around the world these days (see here), the Pakistanis are looking to see how far they can push Mr. Obama before he pushes back.
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The timing of Pakistan's snub is especially pointed given that Mr. Obama's Secretary of State is Hillary Clinton, and Mr. Khan's proliferation salad days came when her husband was President. Before his network was rolled up in the wake of the 2003 Iraq invasion, Mr. Khan spread nuclear know-how to Libya, North Korea, Iran, and who knows where else.
Despite his popularity in Pakistan, Mr. Khan was placed under house arrest by former President Pervez Musharraf after the Bush Administration presented the evidence of Mr. Khan's global WMD sales. But the U.S. has never been allowed to interrogate him. With the cowboys George W. Bush and Dick Cheney safely out of power, the new government of Asif Ali Zardari must figure it's a good time to placate Pakistani opinion and risk upsetting the Yanks.
If a nuclear weapon ever does incinerate a U.S. city, Mr. Khan will be as responsible as anyone. Mr. Obama has said he'll focus on fighting the spread of WMD, but the world's proliferators will interpret Mr. Khan's release as evidence that you can sell anything and get away with it.
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February 09, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
Planning Victory in Afghanistan
Nine principles the Obama administration should follow.
By Frederick W. Kagan
President Obama has said many times that America must succeed in Afghanistan. He is right, and he deserves our full support in that effort.
Afghanistan is in many respects harder to understand than Iraq was. Even with a good strategy and sufficient resources, success will almost certainly come much more slowly. But as a great man said two years ago, hard is not hopeless.
The keys to finding the right approach lie in nine fundamental principles.
1. UNDERSTAND WHY WE’RE THERE
Afghanistan is not now a sanctuary for al-Qaeda, but it would likely become one again if we abandoned it. Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban government we removed in 2001, is alive and well in Pakistan. He maintains contacts with Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the other key al-Qaeda leaders, who are also based in Pakistan (although in a different area). Mullah Omar supports Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan from his Pakistani havens, while al-Qaeda and its affiliates support insurgents in eastern Afghanistan. Allowing Afghanistan to fail would mean allowing these determined enemies of the United States to regain the freedom they had before 9/11.
Pakistan itself is another reason Afghanistan is vitally important to America. It’s a country with 170 million people, nuclear weapons, and numerous terrorist groups. As long as Afghanistan is unstable, Pakistan will be unable to bring order to its own tribal areas, where many terrorist sanctuaries persist. It will also be distracted from addressing the more fundamental problems of Islamic radicalism that threaten its very survival as a state. Further, Afghan instability makes the U.S. dependent on Pakistan logistically—there is no way to replace completely the land route from Karachi with another route through Central Asia. This dependence in turn reduces our ability to influence Islamabad on other matters of great importance, such as stabilizing civilian rule in Pakistan and stopping support for terrorist groups like the one that attacked Bombay.
2. KNOW WHAT WE HAVE TO ACHIEVE
Success in Afghanistan does not require creating a paradise in one of the poorest countries on earth, but we cannot define victory down. Preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists again, helping Pakistan fight its own terrorist problems, and liberating ourselves from dependence on Pakistan will require building an Afghan state with a representative government.
Afghanistan has a longer tradition of such political organization than Iraq has. It has been independent since 1747, and had a functioning constitutional and parliamentary monarchy in the middle of the 20th century. Centrifugal forces in Afghanistan have always been powerful, making the prospects for a strong centralized government in Kabul poor, but the country is neither ungovernable nor artificial. It cannot be stable at this point in history, however, without a representative system. Its multiethnic makeup and decades of internal war mean that any attempt to impose a strongman or to break the country up into effectively independent, warlord-ruled fiefdoms will lead to perpetual violence.
3. UNDERSTAND OUR ENEMIES AND FRIENDS
There is no such thing as “the Taliban” today. Many different groups with different leaders and aims call themselves “Taliban,” and many more are called “Taliban” by their enemies. In addition to Mullah Omar’s Taliban based in Pakistan and indigenous Taliban forces in Afghanistan, there is an indigenous Pakistani Taliban controlled by Baitullah Mehsud (this group is thought to have been responsible for assassinating Benazir Bhutto). Both are linked with al-Qaeda, and both are dangerous and determined. In other areas, however, “Taliban” groups are primarily disaffected tribesmen who find it more convenient to get help from the Taliban than from other sources.
In general terms, any group that calls itself “Taliban” is identifying itself as against the government in Kabul, the U.S., and U.S. allies. Our job is to understand which groups are truly dangerous, which are irreconcilable with our goals for Afghanistan—and which can be fractured or persuaded to rejoin the Afghan polity. We can’t fight them all, and we can’t negotiate with them all. Dropping the term “Taliban” and referring to specific groups instead would be a good way to start understanding who is really causing problems.
Recognizing the limitations of the current government is a good next step. That government is ineffective and deeply corrupt. Provincial governors and district leaders were not elected, but appointed by Pres. Hamid Karzai, often with an eye toward marginalizing potential rivals and consolidating his power. Karzai’s popularity is dwindling, and the postponement of Afghanistan’s presidential elections from May to August allows his opponents to paint him as illegitimate. It is possible that even if Karzai wins the August election, many Afghans will continue to view him as illegitimate.
The U.S. cannot, however, turn away from the central government and seek solutions only at the local level. For one thing, important local leaders are Karzai’s appointees. For another, building local solutions that do not connect with the central government is the path toward renewed warlordism and instability. The key, therefore, is to develop local solutions that are connected to the central government but not necessarily completely controlled by it.
Local governments—possibly at the level of individual villages—will have to play a role in selecting individuals to help maintain security once it has been established. Afghan villages often have representative bodies, or at least local elders who can identify needs and priorities while balancing tribal concerns. Local and provincial governments connected to Kabul will have to provide weapons and compensation to local security forces and will therefore acquire a certain limited control over them.
Similar approaches are likely to be required on the economic front—local groups and leaders, in some cases supported initially with funding from the U.S. Commander’s Emergency Response Program, can get economic projects going, but they will have to connect those projects to central-government representatives for long-term funding and integration into regional and national economic systems. The bottom line is that we must work hard to develop local solutions to local problems, but always with the goal of integrating those solutions into a loose but real central support-and-control system.
4. COMMIT TO THE EFFORT
The consistent unwillingness of the U.S. government to commit to the success of its endeavors in Afghanistan (and Iraq) over the long term is a serious obstacle to progress. The Pakistani leadership appears convinced that America will abandon its efforts in South Asia sooner rather than later, and this conviction fuels Pakistan’s determination to retain support for (and therefore control of) Afghan Taliban groups based in its territory. It also contributes to instability within Pakistan, because Pakistani leaders are tentative about committing to the fight against their internal foes as long as they are unsure of our determination to do our part.
At the local level within Afghanistan, people who are not convinced that coalition forces will stay to support them if they oppose the terrorists are unlikely to risk retaliation by committing to us. When U.S. forces moved into insurgent strongholds in Iraq in 2007, the first thing they were asked was: “Are you going to stay this time?” When the answer was yes (and we proved it by really staying and living among them), the floodgates of local opposition to the insurgents opened. The people of Afghanistan need the same reassurance. Until it is widely believe that the U.S. will remain in the fight until the insurgency is defeated, doubt about our commitment will continue to fuel the insurgency. If we are going to fight this war, as our interests require, we must make it clear that we will do what it takes to win.
Our history is very much against us in this effort. Islamists point to our retreat following the Marine-barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983, the “Blackhawk Down” incident in 1993, our abandonment of Afghanistan following the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1989, and our abandonment of Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis to Saddam Hussein’s retribution in 1991 and 1992. At the end of 2006, our enemies in Iraq were already declaring victory, convinced that the pattern would repeat itself. The question they are now asking is: Was the surge an aberration in U.S. policy or a new pattern?
Our friends have the same question. We are asking them to put their lives on the line in support of shared goals, and they need to know we will stand by them. More rides on the outcome of our effort in Afghanistan than the particular interests we have there. American security would benefit greatly if we changed the global perception that the U.S. does not have the stomach to finish what it starts.
5. LEARN AND ADAPT THE RIGHT LESSONS
We cannot dismiss our extensive and painful experiences in Iraq, but we must recognize the differences between that country and Afghanistan.
Perhaps the most important lesson of Iraq that is transportable to Afghanistan is this: It is impossible to conduct effective counterterrorism operations (i.e., targeting terrorist networks with precise attacks on key leadership nodes) in a fragile state without conducting effective counterinsurgency operations (i.e., protecting the population and using economic and political programs to build support for the government and resistance to insurgents and terrorists). We will never have a better scenario in which to test the limitations of the counterterrorism model than we had in Iraq in 2006. U.S. Special Forces teams had complete freedom to act against al-Qaeda in Iraq, supported by around 150,000 regular U.S. troops, Iraqi military and police forces of several hundred thousand, and liberal airpower. We killed scores of key terrorist leaders, including the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, in June 2006. But terrorist strength, violence, and control only increased over the course of that year. It was not until units already on the ground applied a new approach—a counterinsurgency approach—and received reinforcements that we were able to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq (even without killing its new leader).
In Afghanistan, we have nothing like the freedom of movement we had in Iraq in 2006, and nothing like the force levels. We have, furthermore, been targeting leadership nodes within terrorist networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan for seven years now, yet the groups are not defeated. Absent a counterinsurgency and nation-building strategy that leads the population to reject the terrorists, killing bad guys will not defeat well-organized and determined terrorist networks.
Enthusiasm has been growing for some time over the idea of generating “awakenings” in Afghanistan similar to the Anbar Awakening that helped turn the tide in Iraq in 2007. Conceptually, this enthusiasm is sound. As noted above, success will require developing local solutions that are integrated in some way with the central government—the most abstract rendering of the “awakening” phenomenon in Iraq.
But we must be very careful about trying to apply Iraq “lessons” of greater specificity. For one thing, what happened in Iraq was not a single phenomenon. The Sunni-Arab rejection of al-Qaeda and turn to the coalition consisted of myriad local developments rather than being a coordinated movement. The coalition response to and support of those local developments was coordinated—we coined the term “Sons of Iraq” and treated SOIs as though they were a coherent group for certain funding and bureaucratic purposes—but each group remained independent. The SOIs never developed a corporate identity, and the local movements transformed their local political contexts rather than evolving into a country-wide movement.
The same will be true in Afghanistan. Local groups in Konar will not identify with local groups in Helmand, nor should they. There is no “Sons of Afghanistan” program that can be centrally defined and directed during its formation. As in Iraq, we must allow and encourage local movements to grow organically—in accordance with local conditions and traditions, but moderated by Afghan and coalition forces that understand the local area. It should go without saying that any effort to develop local security forces in areas that have not been cleared of insurgents will fail, either exposing the locals to vicious retribution or helping the insurgents co-opt new fighters.
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6. CONSIDER THE HUMAN TERRAIN
Pashtuns are not Arabs. They have different traditions, different tribal structures, different ways of resolving differences. One of the most important (and least remarked-upon) differences is that Iraqis fight in their cities and villages while Pashtuns, on the whole, do not.
Saddam Hussein planned his defenses against U.S. attack with the intention of drawing us into urban fights he thought we would fear. Indigenous Iraqi insurgents dug into villages and cities and blended into the population. So did the external terror groups.
Coalition forces fought their way through Iraqi cities and villages, sometimes doing fearful damage to the cities and local populations. We devastated Fallujah and Ramadi, for example. But local grievances did not focus on the collateral damage. Considering the scale of the destruction, Iraqi complaints about it were very mild. In 2007, victorious coalition troops who had fought their way through insurgent and terrorist sanctuaries in Baghdad were more popular at the end of the fight than at the beginning. Iraqis generally recognize that their wars are fought in their cities, horrible though that is, so they have a fairly high tolerance for collateral damage and even for the presence of foreign forces in their urban areas and villages. They are generally more interested in who is going to win.
Pashtuns don’t work that way. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan at the end of 1979 and quickly occupied all of the major urban areas. The insurgents, for the most part, did not contest that occupation. They focused instead on cutting off communications between the cities, on ambushing Soviet troops moving outside urban areas and villages, and on attacking isolated Soviet outposts. The Soviets did not know how to respond—they had no context for thinking about a rural insurgency. They had fought the Second World War city by city, and had suppressed rebellions in their Eastern European satellites by fighting through their capitals. They tried to subdue the Pashtuns with ferocious and indiscriminate bombing of Afghan villages, generating 5 million refugees and strengthening the resistance rather than breaking it.
Today’s situation is similar. The major urban centers are not insurgent sanctuaries, and most insurgent attacks occur not only beyond the city limits but outside of the villages as well. American troops accustomed to setting up positions within Iraqi cities and towns may find that the same procedures in Afghanistan incense the population rather than reassure it. That does not mean the problem lies with our overall “footprint” in Afghanistan, but rather that we should rethink where to put our feet. We must also remember that Afghan tolerance for attacks within villages and cities is much lower than Iraqi tolerance, which is why complaints about collateral damage in Afghanistan are much louder than Iraqi complaints were, even though the damage is milder.
Understanding this principle is vital, because if we misinterpret the nature of the “footprint” problem we might come to the erroneous conclusion that success requires fewer forces rather than more—or, as some senior leaders are increasingly suggesting, that our presence is the problem. In fact, to solve the problems in Afghanistan we must have a deep understanding of local dynamics in many different areas. In the current security environment, only American and allied military forces can understand those dynamics, and they can do so only by living among the people in a way that is mutually acceptable to our forces and the Afghans. Pulling back to bases may reduce local resentment of us, but it will also deprive us of any ability to interact with Afghans and their leaders at the level necessary for success. As General Petraeus is fond of saying, you can’t kill your way out of an insurgency. Neither can you defeat one long-distance. Success in Iraq required finding the right way to deploy American forces among the Iraqi population. Success in Afghanistan will require finding the right way for Afghanistan, which will almost certainly be different from the right way in Iraq.
7. UNDERSTAND WHAT WE MUST DO, CAN DO, AND CAN’T DO
The Afghan National Army consists of perhaps 70,000 troops (on paper). This number will rise gradually to 134,000—itself an arbitrary sum, based on assumptions about what the fifth-poorest country in the world can afford to pay for an army that is certainly too small to establish and maintain security. The Afghan National Police are ineffective when not actively part of the problem. Afghanistan is significantly larger than Iraq, its terrain is far more daunting, and its population is greater. The Iraqi Security Forces that defeated the insurgency (with our help) in 2007 and 2008 numbered over 500,000 by the end. There is simply no way that Afghan Security Forces can defeat the insurgents on their own, with or without large numbers of coalition advisers.
Breaking the insurgency will have to be a real team effort. Coalition units must partner with Afghan army units to clear critical areas, and then work with local leaders to develop local security solutions that smaller numbers of residual U.S. and Afghan troops can support while other areas are cleared.
It is better, in general, for Afghans to take the lead in moving into or through Afghan towns, but this is not always as desirable as we might think. In many regions, Afghan villagers are highly localized. Iraqis were accustomed to traveling across their country, maintained active links with and made frequent visits to relatives in various regions, and were willing to see the Iraqi army as their army even when its units were drawn from other parts of the country. Many rural Afghans are not nearly as mobile, particularly after decades of fighting in which the insurgents worked studiously to disrupt communications. In some areas, any outside forces—even Afghan forces—are seen simply as outsiders.
We can observe this phenomenon clearly in Pakistan today, as Pakistani soldiers (largely Punjabis) move into Pashtun areas and are attacked as foreigners. It is not remotely in our interest to generate a similar situation in Afghanistan. We must also remember an important lesson from our efforts to transition security responsibilities prematurely in Iraq in 2005 and 2006: It does not matter much if the local population resents us; it does matter if they resent and mistrust their own security forces. Some counterinsurgency operations are better conducted by outside forces simply because the resentment they generate will leave with them rather than stick to the indigenous government.
8. HAVE A GOOD PLAN
Adding more troops to a failing strategy rarely works. Current military and political leaders recognize this, which is why reviews are underway in CENTCOM, the Joint Staff, and the White House to develop a new strategy for Afghanistan. At the end of the day, however, the detailed campaign plan for implementing a new strategy has to come from the commander in the theater. That commander, Gen. David McKiernan, suffers from a number of significant handicaps that Generals Petraeus and Odierno did not face in Iraq in 2007.
Developing a detailed campaign plan requires a large military staff. Coordinating the use of force with political, economic, and social projects also requires a large staff, on both the military side and the civilian side. In Iraq in 2007, General Petraeus had a large staff (Multinational Force–Iraq). He had a terrific civilian partner in Amb. Ryan Crocker, who headed the largest U.S. embassy in the world and had the power to coordinate most of the non-military efforts in Iraq. Petraeus also had the support of Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno and the large and excellent staff of the III Corps. Odierno and his staff did most of the work developing the military plans to defeat the insurgents, working through five division-level (two-star) commands and as many as 22 combat brigades. Every part of that command structure was necessary to understanding the problem and developing plans to respond to it that were truly integrated at every level.
General McKiernan has no such resources. His staff is too small and is a hodgepodge of U.S. and allied officers whose main function, when the staff was formed, was the coordination of an allied reconstruction effort. The much larger number of allies in Afghanistan, and the fact that NATO took control of the operation in 2006, places an enormous burden on McKiernan and his staff that Petraeus did not face. There is no corps headquarters in Afghanistan, moreover—no equivalent to Odierno’s III Corps and the staff that actually developed the war plan in Iraq. There are five subordinate headquarters (regional commands), but some have few troops and only one has the resources that the five division staffs in Iraq provided. Current plans may put as many as six U.S. brigades on the ground by the end of this year. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan has nothing like the authority that Ambassador Crocker had; on the contrary, the proliferation of allies and international aid efforts has frustrated attempts to unite them in a coherent civil-military campaign plan.
The situation in Afghanistan requires a significant augmentation of McKiernan’s staff: the addition of a corps headquarters under him and at least one division headquarters in the south. It also requires a body that can coordinate international efforts and mesh them with military planning, either through the U.S. mission in Afghanistan or through the U.N.’s special envoy. Without such an increase in headquarters and planning capabilities, even the best work by our commanders can mitigate only a portion of the problems. The solutions that emerge will likely be suboptimal.
Before it departed, the Bush administration decided to send reinforcements to Afghanistan, and the new administration has supported that decision. Rightly so—Afghanistan needs more U.S. troops. But until a thorough and detailed joint campaign plan has been developed in the theater—with buy-in from the overall military commander, our allies, and the civilian organizations that will have to help execute it—it will not be possible to know exactly how many troops are needed, what exactly they should be doing, or what resources they will require. Developing such a plan and evaluating the resource requirements should be an urgent priority—more urgent even than getting more troops into the theater.
Developing a coherent plan for the entire country requires the involvement of our many allies. That involvement, in turn, requires coming to a common understanding of the situation, the tasks to be performed, and the challenges we face. When Afghanistan became a NATO mission, the presumption was that it was primarily a nation-building exercise. Many allied countries committed troops without intending to participate in counterinsurgency efforts. Although it is natural to complain about the national caveats that restrict some (but by no means all) allied troops from leaving their bases or fighting, we must recognize that many of our allies never signed up for this kind of war. They have therefore been reluctant to admit that we now face a full-fledged insurgency. The Obama administration and its newly appointed envoy, Amb. Richard Holbrooke, have a real opportunity for constructive diplomatic engagement here. It should be their priority to help our allies accept the reality in Afghanistan, at the same time making it clear that we do not expect them to engage in combat operations they never intended to undertake. As in Iraq, we should accept whatever contributions they are willing and able to make, but avoid allowing tensions over those contributions to distort the overall understanding of the fight.
9. PRIORITIZE EFFORTS
While the situation in Afghanistan is indeed deteriorating, it would be wrong to rush forces out of Iraq this year in response. Most important, as detailed above, we have not yet established the conditions in Afghanistan that would allow a surge to be decisive. Also, the theater cannot absorb too many reinforcements too quickly. The surge in Iraq brought U.S. troop levels up to something over 160,000 soldiers—about the same number we had had there at the end of 2005. By contrast, coalition force levels in Afghanistan are already at their highest levels. The logistical base that supports them is very sparse. In Iraq there was enough reserve logistical and infrastructure capacity to integrate five additional brigades and two battalions in the space of six months. Because similar resources are lacking, it would be much harder to accomplish such a feat in Afghanistan at this point.
It would also be wrong from the standpoint of U.S. global interests and grand strategy. The dramatic improvement in the situation in Iraq has already increased our options and flexibility—forces are moving from Iraq to Afghanistan this year without imposing unacceptable risks on our position in Iraq. General Odierno has identified 2009 as a critical year for Iraq, starting with the successful Iraqi provincial elections that just occurred and ending with the election of a new central government.
Maintaining American presence in Iraq in support of this effort is essential. Every estimate suggests that, if we maintain such a presence this year, the requirement for continued U.S. forces in Iraq after 2009 will drop dramatically. We can surge troops into Afghanistan, in other words, in 2010 without compromising success in Iraq, and after we have developed the command and logistical structures—and, above all, the plan-to support them in Afghanistan. Therefore, sound grand strategy means using 2009 to set the conditions for decisive operations in Afghanistan while ensuring that Iraq remains stable enough to permit dramatic force reductions.
The key problem with this approach is that Afghanistan must elect a new president this year, and many areas of the country are not secure enough for a legitimate election. Unfortunately, there is not much we can do to address this problem through troop redeployments. Two additional combat brigades are already on the way and will arrive in time to make a difference. Redirecting other combat brigades now meant for deployment to Iraq requires a good six months of advanced warning—among other things, the troops have to train for an entirely different climate, culture, and situation. Any additional brigades would therefore be arriving shortly before the elections. Considering that it takes a unit anywhere from 30 to 60 days on the ground to get deployed and gain enough situational awareness to develop reasonable plans and methods, it is already too late to get more troops to Afghanistan (at least in any prepared and orderly fashion) in time to make much of a difference to the elections.
The theater commander might be able to mitigate the problem to some extent by committing the theater reserve to help; our European allies might be able to help a little with a mini-surge of their own. But rushing out of Iraq now is far more likely to ensure that we are distracted by problems in Mesopotamia in 2010 than to turn the tide in South Asia.
PROLEGOMENON TO A PLAN FOR WINNING IN AFGHANISTAN
This essay does not provide a plan or a strategy for success in Afghanistan. It provides, rather, a set of guidelines for thinking about how to develop one, and for evaluating plans articulated by the administration, its generals, and outsiders. Ultimately, a plan for winning in Afghanistan has to be developed in Afghanistan, just as the plan for winning in Iraq was developed in Iraq. It is a truism that any plan must involve not only the U.S. and allied militaries, but all relevant civilian and international agencies, and must deeply involve the Afghans themselves at every level. Our military and civilian leaders understand that truism. We have failed to date in accomplishing the objective not because we haven’t known that we must, but because it is very hard to do.
But hard is not hopeless in Afghanistan any more than it was in Iraq. The stakes are high, as they always are when America puts its brave young men and women in harm’s way. President Obama has an opportunity in the difficult challenge he faces. So far, he appears determined to try to do the right thing. He deserves the active support and encouragement of every American in that attempt.
— Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGZhOTRhMjRiYjE3ZGZlMTY1ZTA2MmM5YjY1ZTVlMzA=
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A pleasure to see a serious effort at answering my questions!
I'm on the road at the moment so a long thoughtful post is not possible at the moment, so I simply begin the conversation about this piece by noting my doubts about his perceptions of Pakistan. Is Pak's IS part of the problem? Are young officers in the army part of the problem?
Any comments on this piece?
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Its the NYT, so caveat lector:
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WASHINGTON — Even as C.I.A. drone aircraft pound Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal region, there is growing concern among American military and intelligence officials about different militants’ havens in Pakistan that they fear could thwart American military efforts in Afghanistan this year.
American officials are increasingly focusing on the Pakistani city of Quetta, where Taliban leaders are believed to play a significant role in stirring violence in southern Afghanistan.
The Taliban operations in Quetta are different from operations in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan that have until now been the main setting for American unease. But as the United States prepares to pour as many as 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, military and intelligence officials say the effort could be futile unless there is a concerted effort to kill or capture Taliban leaders in Quetta and cut the group’s supply lines into Afghanistan.
From Quetta, Taliban leaders including Mullah Muhammad Omar, a reclusive, one-eyed cleric, guide commanders in southern Afghanistan, raise money from wealthy Persian Gulf donors and deliver guns and fresh fighters to the battlefield, according to Obama administration and military officials.
“When their leadership is where you cannot get to them, it becomes difficult,” said Gen. Dan K. McNeill, who until June was the senior American commander in Afghanistan and recently retired. “You are restrained from doing what you want to do.”
The Taliban leaders have operated from Quetta for several years, but the increasing violence in southern Afghanistan suggests that the flow of arms, fighters and money there from the Pakistani sanctuary may be increasing.
Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, abuts the provinces in southern Afghanistan where the war’s fiercest fighting has occurred. American intelligence officials said that the dozen or so militants who were thought to make up the Taliban leadership in the area were believed to be hiding either in sprawling Afghan refugee camps near Quetta or in some of the city’s Afghan neighborhoods.
American and other Western officials have long said they suspect that Pakistani security services do little to address the presence of senior Taliban commanders in Quetta. Many of the officials would speak only on condition of anonymity because of the delicate intelligence and diplomatic issues involved.
One former intelligence official with years of experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan likened the situation to America’s difficulties during the Vietnam War, when Vietnamese guerrillas used a haven in Cambodia to bring in fresh troops and weapons.
For the past year, the top American goal in Pakistan has been to press the national government in Islamabad for help elsewhere, in killing and capturing Qaeda fighters in the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan, who intelligence analysts say pose a direct threat to the United States.
But NATO generals and diplomats have long complained that the command and control of Taliban fighters, distinct from Qaeda insurgents, trace back to southern Pakistan, and that Pakistani security services ignore the threat. Pakistani officials have said they lack good intelligence about the specific locations of Taliban leaders, assertions that some American intelligence operatives greet with some skepticism.
“We’ve made progress going into the tribal areas and North-West Frontier Province against Al Qaeda, but we have not had a counterpart war against the Quetta shura,” said a senior Obama administration official, using the term for the Taliban’s ruling council. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said the Obama administration will adopt a tough love approach to Pakistan: threatening to cut off military aid to Islamabad unless it carries out a crackdown on militants operating throughout the country.
“Pakistan will act against any individuals involved with Al Qaeda or the Taliban about whom we have actionable intelligence,” Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, said in an interview. “The problem is we do not always get actionable intelligence in Quetta in particular. It’s a very messy area.”
Some current and former American intelligence officials are sympathetic to difficulties that the government in Islamabad faces in rounding up Taliban leaders. Baluchistan has long been an area hostile to government control, and even Pakistani spies have difficulty building a network of sources there, they said.
Last week, gunmen in Quetta kidnapped an American working for the United Nations in the city and killed his driver, leading Pakistani security officials to lock down transit routes in and out of the city.
Aides to Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American military commander in the region, said the issue of crippling the Taliban leadership was getting more attention from their bosses. Mr. Holbrooke is paying his first visit to the region this week in his new job.
The influence of the Taliban leadership over operations on the ground in Afghanistan is a matter of some debate among American commanders and intelligence analysts.
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“The Quetta shura is extremely important,” said Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, a retired former commander of American forces in Afghanistan who is advising General Petraeus on a strategic review of his region, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. “They are the intellectual and ideological underpinnings of the Taliban insurgency.”
But Gen. David D. McKiernan, currently the top military commander in Afghanistan, said in a speech in Washington in November that any assessment that said the Quetta shura’s dictates were closely followed by field commanders “gives the Taliban far too much credit for coherency at the operational and strategic level.”
“They don’t have that,” the general added.
That may be true, intelligence analysts say, but few disagree that weakening the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, coupled with achieving battlefield gains with the larger American-led force on the ground in southern Afghanistan, could begin to reverse the adverse momentum in the war.
“It would remove the ideological standard-bearer, which also provides links to external financing in the gulf,” a senior administration official said. “It wouldn’t erase the rural-based insurgency and narcotics trade in Afghanistan, but the notion is, if you can disrupt them at the top levels, it will have an impact at the bottom, down in the provinces.”
Even more intriguing, American officials say, is this prospect: diminishing the Taliban leadership in Quetta and weakening its influence over Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan might open the way to engage more moderate Taliban politically.
“The challenge has always been to exploit some cleavages between the top leadership, which we’ve ruled out of bounds in terms of reconciliation, and the layers one or two layers beneath them,” said Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former South Asia specialist for the State Department.
In recent years, there have been some significant successes in the hunt for Taliban leaders. Pakistani operatives tracked Mullah Dadullah, a senior aide to Mullah Omar, as he crossed the Afghan border in May 2007, and he was later killed by American and Afghan troops.
Yet most of the arrests in Pakistan have coincided with visits by senior American officials.
The arrest of Mullah Obeidullah, the former Taliban defense minister, in Quetta in February 2007 coincided with the visit of Vice President Dick Cheney to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is unclear whether Mullah Obeidullah is still in Pakistani custody or was secretly released as part of a prisoner exchange to free Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, who was kidnapped last February and released three months later.
Mullah Rahim, the Taliban’s top commander in Helmand Province, was arrested in Quetta last summer two weeks after Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a top C.I.A. officer visited Islamabad to confront Pakistani leaders with evidence of ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas. But an American intelligence official said last week that Mullah Rahim was no longer in custody.
“The dilemma at the moment,” said Seth Jones, a terrorism analyst at the RAND Corporation, “is that some elements of the Pakistani government continue to support the Taliban as a proxy organization in Afghanistan.”
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Monday, February 09, 2009
On Afghanistan and Lieberman@Brookings [NRO Staff]
General Petraeus in Munich:
Afghanistan has been a very tough endeavor. Certainly, there have been important achievements there over the past seven years – agreement on a constitution, elections, and establishment of a government; increased access to education, health care, media, and telecommunications; construction of a significant number of infrastructure projects; development of the Afghan National Army; and others.
But in recent years the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda has led to an increase in violence, especially in the southern and eastern parts of the country. Numerous other challenges have emerged as well, among them: difficulties in the development of governmental institutions that achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people; corruption; expansion – until last year – of poppy production and the illegal narcotics industry; and difficulties in the establishment of the Afghan police.
In fact, there has been nothing easy about Afghanistan. And, as Senator Lieberman observed in a recent speech to the Brookings Institution, “Reversing Afghanistan’s slide into insecurity will not come quickly, easily, or cheaply.” Similarly, Secretary Gates told Congress, “This will undoubtedly be a long and difficult fight.” I agree. In fact, I think it is important to be clear eyed about the challenges that lie ahead, while also remembering the importance of our objectives in Afghanistan and the importance of the opportunity that exists if we all intensify our efforts and work together to achieve those objectives.
Many observers have noted that there are no purely military solutions in Afghanistan. That is correct. Nonetheless, military action, while not sufficient by itself, is absolutely necessary, for security provides the essential foundation for the achievement of progress in all the other so-called lines of operation – recognizing, of course, that progress in other areas made possible by security improvements typically contributes to further progress in the security arena – creating an upward spiral in which improvements in one area reinforce progress in another.
Arresting and then reversing the downward spiral in security in Afghanistan thus will require not just additional military forces, but also more civilian contributions, greater unity of effort between civilian and military elements and with our Afghan partners, and a comprehensive approach, as well as sustained commitment and a strategy that addresses the situations in neighboring countries.
This morning, I’d like to describe in very general terms the resource requirements that are under discussion in Washington and various other national capitals. Then I’ll describe briefly a few of the ideas that helped us in Iraq and that, properly adapted for Afghanistan, can help guide GEN McKiernan and ISAF.
THE NEED FOR MORE FORCES, ENABLERS, AND TRAINERS
In recent months, our President and many others have highlighted the need for additional forces in Afghanistan to reverse the downward spiral in security, help Afghan forces provide security for the elections on August 20th, and enable progress in the tasks essential to achievement of our objectives. Indeed, as has been announced in recent months, more US forces are entering operations in as part of ISAF in Afghanistan now, more have been ordered to deploy, and the deployment of others is under consideration. Beyond that, the number of Afghan soldiers to be trained and equipped has been increased, and many of the other troop contributing nations will deploy additional forces, as well, with a number of commitments under discussion. And I would be remiss if I did not ask individual countries to examine what forces and other contributions they can provide as ISAF intensifies its efforts in preparation for the elections in August.
It is, of course not just additional combat forces that are required. ISAF also needs more so-called enablers to support the effort in Afghanistan – more intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms and the connectivity to exploit the capabilities they bring; more military police, engineers, and logistics elements; additional special operations forces and civil affairs units; more lift and attack helicopters and fixed wing aircraft; additional air medevac assets; increases in information operations capabilities; and so on. Also required are more Embedded Training Teams, Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams, and Police Mentoring Teams, all elements that are essential to building capable Afghan National Security Forces. And I applaud the German Defense Minister’s announcement of additional police and army training teams this morning. As with combat forces, some additional enabler elements are already flowing to Afghanistan, commitments have been made to provide others, and others are under discussion as well.
As Senator Lieberman highlighted in his Brookings speech, a surge in civilian capacity is needed to match the increase in military forces in order to field adequate numbers of provincial reconstruction teams and other civilian elements – teams and personnel that are essential to help our Afghan partners expand their capabilities in key governmental areas, to support basic economic development, and to assist in the development of various important aspects of the rule of law, including initiatives to support the development of police and various judicial initiatives.
It is also essential, of course, that sufficient financial resources be provided for the effort in Afghanistan. It is hugely important that nations deliver on pledges of economic development assistance, that the Afghan National Army and Law and Order Trust Funds be fully financed, that support be maintained for the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund, and that resources continue to be provided for the projects conducted by our military units and PRTs at local levels. And, I applaud the German Defense Minister’s announcement of additional development aid this morning, too.
Of course, just more troops, civilians, dollars and Euros won’t be enough. As students of history, we’re keenly aware that Afghanistan has, over the years, been known as the graveyard of empires. It is, after all, a country that has never taken kindly to outsiders bent on conquering it. We cannot take that history lightly. And our awareness of it should caution us to recognize that, while additional forces are essential, their effectiveness will depend on how they are employed, as that, in turn, will determine how they are seen by the Afghan population.
COUNTERINSURGENCY FOR AFGHANISTAN
What I’d like to discuss next, then, are some of the concepts that our commanders have in mind as plans are refined to employ additional forces. I base this on discussions with GEN McKiernan and others who have served in Afghanistan, as well as on lessons learned in recent years. I do so with awareness that a number of the elements on the ground are operating along the lines of these ideas – and that their ability to do so will be enhanced by the increased density on the ground of ISAF and Afghan forces as additional elements deploy to the most challenging areas. Counterinsurgency operations are, after all, troop intensive. Finally, I want to underscore the fact that commanders on the ground will, as always, operationalize the so-called big ideas in ways that are appropriate for their specific situations on the ground. So here are some of those ideas:
First and foremost, our forces and those of our Afghan partners have to strive to secure and serve the population. We have to recognize that the Afghan people are the decisive “terrain.” And together with our Afghan partners, we have to work to provide the people security, to give them respect, to gain their support, and to facilitate the provision of basic services, the development of the Afghan Security Forces in the area, the promotion of local economic development, and the establishment of governance that includes links to the traditional leaders in society and is viewed as legitimate in the eyes of the people.
Securing and serving the people requires that our forces be good neighbors. While it may be less culturally acceptable to live among the people in certain parts of Afghanistan than it was in Iraq, it is necessary to locate Afghan and ISAF forces where they can establish a persistent security presence. You can’t commute to work in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations. Positioning outposts and patrol bases, then, requires careful thought, consultation with local leaders, and the establishment of good local relationships to be effective.
Positioning near those we and our Afghan partners are helping to secure also enables us to understand the neighborhood. A nuanced appreciation of the local situation is essential. Leaders and troopers have to understand the tribal structures, the power brokers, the good guys and the bad guys, local cultures and history, and how systems are supposed to work and do work. This requires listening and being respectful of local elders and mullahs, and farmers and shopkeepers – and it also requires, of course, many cups of tea.
It is also essential that we achieve unity of effort, that we coordinate and synchronize the actions of all ISAF and Afghan forces — and those of our Pakistani partners across the border — and that we do the same with the actions of our embassy and international partners, our Afghan counterparts, local governmental leaders, and international and non-governmental organizations. Working to a common purpose is essential in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations.
We also, in support of and in coordination with our Afghan partners, need to help promote local reconciliation, although this has to be done very carefully and in accordance with the principles established in the Afghan Constitution. In concert with and in support of our Afghan partners, we need to identify and separate the “irreconcilables” from the “reconcilables, striving to create the conditions that can make the reconcilables part of the solution, even as we kill, capture, or drive out the irreconcilables. In fact, programs already exist in this area and careful application of them will be essential in the effort to fracture and break off elements of the insurgency in order to get various groups to put down their weapons and support the legitimate constitution of Afghanistan.
Having said that, we must pursue the enemy relentlessly and tenaciously. True irreconcilables, again, must be killed, captured, or driven out of the area. And we cannot shrink from that any more than we can shrink from being willing to support Afghan reconciliation with those elements that show a willingness to reject the insurgents and help Afghan and ISAF forces.
To ensure that the gains achieved endure, ISAF and Afghan forces have to hold areas that have been cleared. Once we fight to clear and secure an area, we must ensure that it is retained. The people – and local security forces – need to know that we will not abandon them. Additionally, we should look for ways to give local citizens a stake in the success of the local security effort and in the success of the new Afghanistan more broadly as well. To this end, a reformed, capable Afghan National Police force – with the necessary support from the international community and the alliance – is imperative to ensuring the ability to protect the population. And the new Afghan Population Protection Program announced by MOI Atmar holds considerable promise and deserves our support as well.
On a related note, to help increase the legitimacy of the Afghan government, we need to help our Afghan partners give the people a reason to support the government and their local authorities. This includes helping enable Afghan solutions to Afghan problems. And on a related note, given the importance of Afghan solutions and governance being viewed as legitimate by the people and in view of allegations of corruption, such efforts likely should feature support for what might be called an “Afghan accountability offensive” as well. That will be an important effort.
In all that we do as we perform various missions, we need to live our values. While our forces should not hesitate to engage and destroy an enemy, our troopers must also stay true to the values we hold dear. This is, after all, an important element that distinguishes us from the enemy, and it manifests itself in many ways, including making determined efforts to reduce to the absolute minimum civilian casualties – an effort furthered significantly by the tactical direction and partnering initiatives developed by GEN McKiernan with our Afghan counterparts.
We also must strive to be first with the truth. We need to beat the insurgents and extremists to the headlines and to pre-empt rumors. We can do that by getting accurate information to the chain of command, to our Afghan partners, and to the press as soon as is possible. Integrity is critical to this fight. Thus, when situations are bad, we should freely acknowledge that fact and avoid temptations to spin. Rather, we should describe the setbacks and failures we suffer and then state what we’ve learned from them and how we’ll adjust to reduce the chances of similar events in the future.
Finally, we always must strive to learn and adapt. The situation in Afghanistan has changed significantly in the past several years and it continues to evolve. This makes it incumbent on us to assess the situation continually and to adjust our plans, operations, and tactics as required. We should share good ideas and best practices, but we also should never forget that what works in an area today may not work there tomorrow, and that what works in one area may not work in another.
IT WILL GET HARDER BEFORE IT GETS EASIER
In conclusion, allow me to reiterate the key points I’ve sought to make. We have a hugely important interest in ensuring that Afghanistan does not once again become a sanctuary for trans-national terrorists. Achieving that core objective, in turn, requires the accomplishment of several other significant tasks. Although there have been impressive achievements in Afghanistan since 2001, the security situation has deteriorated markedly in certain areas in the past two years. Reversing that trend is necessary to improve security for the population, to permit the conduct of free and fair elections in August, and to enable progress in other important areas. Achieving security improvements will require more ISAF and Afghan security forces of all types – combat, combat support, logistics, trainers and advisors, special operations, and so on. Some additional forces are already deploying, further increases have been ordered or pledged, and more are under discussion. To be effective, the additional military forces will need to be employed in accordance with counterinsurgency concepts applied by leaders who have a nuanced understanding of their areas of operation. And to complement and capitalize on the increased military resources, more civilian assets, adequate financial resources, close civil-military cooperation, and a comprehensive approach that encompasses regional states will be necessary. None of this will be easy. Indeed, as Vice President Biden observed recently, Afghanistan likely will get harder before it gets easier. And sustained progress will require sustained commitment. But, again, our objectives are of enormous importance, a significant opportunity is at hand, and we all need to summon the will and the resources necessary to make the most of it. Thank you very much.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGY5YjQxZGFmYjgxNzJmYjExMjRiYThiYmM2YmFlYTQ=
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I have no idea whether whether this writer's suggestions are any good. I post them because they assay making specific suggestions.
Catching my eye was the datum about a 5% casualty rate for the police.
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By ANN MARLOWE
The Taliban's synchronized suicide bombings on government buildings in Kabul this week will no doubt intensify President Barack Obama's desire to bring security to Afghanistan. On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama pledged to make the country the centerpiece of his foreign policy, calling for an Iraq-like surge of thousands of troops. Recently, he and Vice-President Joe Biden have also made it clear that they've lost patience with President Hamid Karzai's weak leadership and his toleration of corruption.
But the surge that Afghanistan needs isn't in U.S. troops, it's in strengthening governance and Afghan security forces. Without improvements in these areas, no president and no amount of troops can stabilize Afghanistan.
Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke, currently in the region, should make it clear to the Afghan people, if necessary through a blunt announcement, that the U.S. prefers Mr. Karzai not seek another term. Mr. Holbrooke should also meet immediately with the Afghan Parliament to discuss what can be done to improve governance, and to discuss possible changes to the disastrous 2004 Afghan constitution.
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There are three big structural problems enshrined in that document. First, the 34 provincial governors are not elected, but appointed and removed at will by the president. Second, members of parliament are elected on a provincial rather than on a district basis. And third, provincial councils are elected on a provincial rather than on a district basis and have no official policy role. Another issue is the absence of political parties.
Mr. Karzai's shuffling of notables from one governorship to another has been reactive, removing governors who either threaten him, criticize him, or are so incompetent that the American military has complained about them. He has swapped some provinces' governors twice in a year; Ghazni had four in 2008. The current system treats Afghan citizens like subjects, forced to suffer whatever their appointed local despot decides. Is it surprising that most Afghans don't stand up to the Taliban?
The system of parliamentary elections also disservices Afghans, since some provinces are the size of European countries and vary considerably in terrain, economy and ethnic composition. Under the current electoral system, the top vote-getters represent a province, but may come from only one district of a province, usually the richest and most populous, and from one tribe or ethnic group. (Imagine the members of the House of Representatives from California all hailing from Los Angeles or San Francisco and all being white men.)
Since provincial councils are also elected province-wide, Afghan citizens can't hold their representative accountable for local conditions, and representatives don't have ties to specific constituencies. (Imagine the entire New York State Assembly coming from Brooklyn.) Worse, these representatives, despite being closest to the people, serve nothing but an advisory role, and it's mainly the American military that listens to them at all.
Mr. Karzai lobbied the United Nations hard to discourage the formation of political parties, and he got his wish. This is the major reason why the country is in the laughable situation of having no declared opposition candidates for a (late) presidential election slated for August. Without parties, power aligns along traditional tribal and ethnic lines, and provides ample opportunity for drug gangs and foreign governments to buy politicians. Any Afghan MP will tell you that the Pakistanis, Iranians and Russians buy MPs.
In terms of security, the U.S. must throw additional support behind Afghan security forces, particularly those who fight the insurgency on the most grass-roots level, the Afghan National Police (ANP). We've poured a lot of money into the ANP since we took over training from our NATO allies -- the current annual budget is around $800 million -- but we should be spending more. It's more effective, and cheaper, than anything we can do with our troops in many areas.
At present, Afghanistan only has a fraction of the number of police it needs. Some 77,000 cops serve a nation of 32 million people, most of them in villages scattered across one of the most mountainous countries in the world. In the east and south, they are under attack from insurgents wielding automatic weapons and planting improvised explosive devices.
This already small force is being eroded by a shocking combat death rate and resulting high attrition. Last year 1,215 out of 77,000 police were slain by insurgents, and an additional 2,600 police were wounded or missing in action. This amounts to one out of 20 cops killed or wounded in 2008.
The numbers are worse when viewed on a local level, because most of the deaths are occurring in a handful of frontline provinces where Afghan police are consequently quitting in droves. Last year, police pay was raised to $180 a month for the lowest-tier job in the most dangerous provinces, but this is still less than private security firms offer for safer work.
With increased American support, the ANP can become a success story like the Afghan National Army. A widely respected institution, the army is modernizing rapidly, with 41 of its 69 battalions "capable of independent planning, execution, and sustainment of counterinsurgency operations," according to American military trainers. Increasing the size of the army is a good idea. So is paying current soldiers enough so they remain in the army.
The Taliban's increasing boldness and the incompetent presidency of Hamid Karzai are symptoms of deeper problems: illiteracy, a nonexistent civil society, undeveloped national institutions, and pervasive corruption. Reversing these trends will take years. But within the term of Mr. Obama's presidency, there's much that can be done to restore Afghanistan to order.
Ms. Marlowe is a New York-based writer who travels frequently to Afghanistan.
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The following is posted here with permission. It is from one of our brave soldiers currently in Afg who has just joined the DBMAA. I asked him what he thought of the Afg-Pak and related threads here on this forum. With identifying info deleted, here is his response:
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Sir, I was actually reading the Afg-Pak thread before my meeting, I came back when I finished and got your e-mail.
Great stuff on there! My personal opinion is that most Americans are weak willed (he is saying this in agreement with something I said, without my opening the subject I doubt he would have said anything-- Marc) because they have never really had to pay attention to what was going on in the world. If some one doesn't want to hear about the war or anything else that they may view as a negative, they simply have to change the channel (plenty of other "reality" on these days), go to a different webpage or find any other thing to divert their attention. A lot of people may just not care and figure that someone else will take care of the problem while those of us that do care and are trying to take care of the problem, either can't take care of the problem or our impact is minimal because so many just don't care. Just one man's opinion.
I'm a ___________________ so we REALLY have to pay attention to what's going on around here and take into account all of the factors influencing what's going on (the "why" of it all), or we have a better chance of getting blown up when we roll out.
What me and my team do: " , , , No war can truly be "won" without the support of the populace and we can't gain the
support of the people by blowing their property up. Even commie Chairman Mao understood this concept ("The richest source of power to wage war lies in the masses of the people."). Today's military strategy seems to be the polar opposite of the "bomb the living piss out of 'em" carpet bombing strategy of WW2.
Ms. Ann Marlowe's piece on the last post of the Afg-Pak thread was pretty good. I think she pretty much hit the nail on the head on most points. I do disagree with her opinion that we don't need more U.S. troops here. We can't strengthen governance without security and whatever system of government ends up in place will not be self sustaining without the support
of a competent, well trained and legitimate ASF (Afghan Security Force). ASF will be unable to attain that level of competency and training without security, i.e. more U.S. troops. But she is correct when she said "Without improvements in these areas, no president and no amount of troops can stabilize Afghanistan.". There are so many things contributing to the instability in this region and so little is being done about it. ANA, ANP, and ASF receive low pay and sometimes go for months without pay at all.
The ANP roll out in unarmored pick-up trucks and minimal if any body armor. I think that's a big part of the reason for the high rate of casualties among them. The TB are a bunch of bitches and avoid direct action and instead opt to employ the IED. Most IEDs can probably vaporize a pick-up truck and whoever is in it. U.S. forces roll in heavy armored vehicles and we wear so much body armor that we can probably survive ground zero of a nuclear blast.
Incompetent and corrupt political leaders (hmmm... sounds familiar). A serious lack of checks and balances in the existing government structure (I do consider political parties one form of it).
Ok. Enough rambling for now. I will definitely be posting on the forum as time permits. A helluva lot of good stuff on there.
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Good post :-)
Really the only people who know what's good for Afghanistan are Afghans. However, in a country messed up by 30 or so years of war it will be quite difficult to implement positive change. The corruption so readily apparent to us has been the normal way of dealing with things for 30 years. With an unemployment rate of 40% and 53% of the population living below the poverty line (<$1.00 a day according to the World Bank), how would you take care of your family? I don't know, but I'd like to be able to provide a little more for my family than what I can get them for a dollar a day. If I had to live on a dollar a day, hell yeah I would do something that might be wrong or unlawful in order to take care of my family and make sure they are provided for. I might even say to myself "Damn... I can't find a job. I could join the army, but the pay is crap and that's if I even get paid at all. But these guys over here, what do they call themselves... Students? (Taliban is Pashto for students). yeah, the students said that they would take care of me. The Students pay well and all I would have to do is just bury a bomb on the roadside and push a button when infidels drive by. Also, if I die while I'm working for the Students, my family will be paid very well and I get 72 virgins". That's what's happening in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan and its people have so much potential but they're going to need A LOT of guidance and help from others if they are going to progress as a nation. That guidance and help will have to be in the form of U.S. and Coalition forces to train and help with security issues, political gurus to iron out a hell of a lot of wrinkles in that mess of a government (can't just throw away the shirt), and once those two things are good to go, infrastructure and economy will hopefully follow resulting in an independent Afghanistan able to provide for the welfare of its people. After that, hopefully no U.S. servicemember will have to worry about going back and possibly not making the return trip home.
"Somewhere a true believer is training to kill you. He trains with minimal food and water, in austere conditions, day and night. The only thing clean on him is his weapon, and he made his web gear. He doesn't worry about what workout to do; his ruck weighs what it weighs, and he runs until the enemy stops chasing him. The true believer is not concerned about how "hard it is"; he knows either he wins or he dies. He doesn't go home at 1700; he is home. He knows only the cause. Now, who wants to quit?" ---Unknown, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
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Delighted to have you with us JKrenz and look forward to more posts from you.
The following was sent to me as an example that the enemy does knife training, but the interview with John Boltono focuses more on the possible collapse of Pak.
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=3610893&maven_referralPlaylistId=&sRevUrl=http://www.foxnews.com/
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and this just in
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/16/pakistan.taliban.sharia.law/index.html
How on earth can we succeed in Afg if this is happening in Pakistan?!? JKrenz, would love to get your input on this?
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Pak govt agrees to Taliban Sharia in major region
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistani government officials announced Monday an agreement with the Taliban to allow strict Islamic law, or sharia, to be implemented in parts of North West Frontier Province.
Delegation members of pro-Taliban leader Soofi Mohammad at a meeting in Peshawar Monday.
It marks a major concession by the Pakistani government in its attempt to hold off Taliban militants who have terrorized the region with beheadings, kidnappings, and the destruction of girls' schools.
The government will recognize sharia for the entire Malakand Division, which includes the Swat district -- a two-hour drive from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad -- the chief minister of North West Frontier Province Amir Haider Hoti announced Monday in a news conference. Islamic law is already being practiced in the area, where the Taliban have control.
Hoti said the people of the region want sharia which will fill the "vacuum" left by a lack of access to Pakistan's judicial system. He said he hoped it would bring peace to the region, where Pakistani forces have battled militants aligned with the Taliban.
"Those who chose to take the path of violence because of this decision, I appeal to all of them to work for the sake of peace now," Hoti said.
"There is no accounting for the sacrifice of all the people of Swat and the Malakand division. How many children have been orphaned? How many parents have lost their children? How many young people have been martyred? In my mind, I don't think that anyone can take this any more."
He also stressed that the recognition of Islamic law in the region "isn't something that hasn't happened before." He said previous agreements have been made regarding sharia, but were never implemented. He also said that the Islamic law will not go against basic civil liberties, although he did not explain how the government would make sure that provision would be upheld.
Sharia is defined as Islamic law but is interpreted with wide differences depending on the various sects of both Sunni and Shia Islam.
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So far, the Pakistani Taliban's interpretation of sharia has included banning girls from school, forcing women inside and outlawing forms of entertainment.
The agreement comes amid negotiations between Pakistani provincial officials and Taliban representatives, led by Sufi Mohammed. The Taliban on Sunday declared a 10-day cease-fire in Swat Valley, which Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said was a gesture of good will towards the government.
The Taliban's control of Swat is believed to be the deepest advance by militants into Pakistan's settled areas -- meaning areas outside its federally administered tribal region along the border with Afghanistan.
The negotiations in North West Frontier Province are the latest attempt by Pakistan's civilian government -- which took power last year -- to achieve peace through diplomacy in areas where Taliban and al Qaeda leaders are believed to have free rein.
But analysts as well as critics within the establishment have warned that Pakistan's previous dealings with the Taliban have only given the fundamentalist Islamic militia time to regroup and gain more ground.
Khadim Hussain, a professor Bahria University in Islamabad who studies Pakistani politics, said the government has effectively surrendered the areas to the Taliban, thereby setting the stage for two contradictory, parallel states in North West Frontier Province.
"If you leave them like that and you give ... a semblance of peace in a particular area, what does that mean?" Hussain said. "It means you're capitulating. It means you're surrendering the state to them. It means your submitting the state authority to them because they are running a parallel state."
He said the government's decision amounts to a marriage of convenience made under duress.
Swat has been overrun by forces loyal to Maulana Fazlullah's banned hardline Islamic group, Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM) which has allied itself with Taliban fighters. TNSM was once led by Sufi Mohammed, Fazlullah's father-in-law who is leading the latest negotiations. Sufi Mohammed was released from jail last year by Pakistani authorities after he agreed to cooperate with the government. He was jailed in 2002 after recruiting thousands of fighters to battle U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Fazlullah took over TNSM during Sufi Mohammed's jail stint and vowed to continue his fight to impose fundamentalist Islamic law in the region.
Last May, Pakistan's government announced it reached a peace deal with militants in Swat Valley. In the months that have followed, the Taliban have seized control of the region and carried out a violent campaign against government officials, including local politicians. The head of the Awami National Party -- which represents the region -- was forced to flee to Islamabad amid death threats from the Taliban.
Pakistan is under enormous pressure to control the militants within its borders, blamed for launching attacks in neighboring Afghanistan where U.S. and NATO forces are fighting militants.
The deal with the Taliban comes on the heels of a visit by U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke, who is now meeting with leaders in neighboring India. He said he is awaiting more details of Monday's agreement, but said it underlines the challenge of dealing with the rise of the Taliban.
The United States -- using unmanned drones -- has carried out several airstrikes inside Pakistan on suspected militant targets, including one on Monday that killed at least 15 people, Pakistani sources said. Such airstrikes, which sometimes result in civilian casualties, have aggravated tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan.
Pakistan's military operation in the region is unpopular among Pakistanis, but efforts to deal diplomatically with militants have not worked in the past.
Pakistan's previous leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, reached a cease-fire deal with militants in South Waziristan in 2006 which was widely blamed for giving al Qaeda and Taliban a stronger foothold in the
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An 11 minute clip worth your time:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/feb/13/us-military-afghanistan-outpost
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Please note the previous entry!
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This is the most detailed article (2005) I have read about the status of pak nukes...very interesting. The original report by Durrani is googleable.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GD06Df04.html
Guarding Pakistan's nuclear estate
By Kaushik Kapisthalam
Even as media and public attention in the United States and South Asia has focused on the issue of nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets going to Pakistan, there has been a series of interesting developments within the US regarding policy toward Pakistan's nuclear program.
Public nonchalance
Publicly, Bush administration officials have been remarkably guarded, and even nonchalant, about Pakistan's leaky nuclear program, even as one revelation after another came out regarding nuclear proliferation from Pakistan to Iran, Libya, North Korea and other unnamed countries. After exerting pressure behind the scenes on Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, the US has quietly accepted his explanation that all proliferation acts were the responsibility of one man, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, and lent its blessings to Khan being pardoned and kept under house arrest in Pakistan.
The official Washington spin is that the administration of President George W Bush has persuaded Pakistan to end its nuclear trade once and for all and that it is better to move forward than dwell on the past.
Despite this public posture, many experts and former government officials in Washington and elsewhere are not so sanguine. Virtually every report on nuclear security from major US and Western think-tanks, such as the Carnegie Endowment, the Monterrey Institute and the Cato Institute, consistently raise the issue of the leaky nature of Pakistan's nuclear assets. The Congressional Research Service, the advisory arm of the US Congress, has issued numerous reports on Pakistan's nuclear program highlighting the need to do something. However, until recently, Bush administration officials had in effect stonewalled on this issue and avoided talking about it on or off the record, other than a few cryptic remarks on occasion.
That has slowly begun to change.
The curtain lifts?
In testimony to the Senate on March 17, Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, who is the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, spoke at length about the fragility of Pakistan. After the usual platitudes about Musharraf's virtues, Jacoby noted in his submitted statement, "Our assessment remains unchanged from last year. If Musharraf were assassinated or otherwise replaced, Pakistan's new leader would be less pro-US. We are concerned that extremist Islamic politicians would gain greater influence."
Interestingly, it was former presidential candidate Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts who was one of the first to talk about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal openly. In a January 2004 debate with other contenders from his Democratic Party, Kerry said that if he were elected president, he would get tough with Pakistan on nuclear safety, noting that past Pakistani leaders had lied to him and the US quite blatantly on the nuclear issue. Kerry added that failing to protect Pakistan's nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands was "one of the most glaring weaknesses in this [Bush] administration's entire foreign policy". More curious, Kerry said the US should work with India to make a plan for taking out Pakistan's nukes in case of an emergency. Another Democratic senator, Barack Obama of Illinois, went a step further and said the US should launch surgical strikes on Pakistan in a nuclear leak eventuality.
After the re-election of Bush, it was Kerry who once again raised the issue. During the Senate hearing to confirm Bush's appointment of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, Kerry had a fiery exchange with Rice, which needs to be quoted in full for readers to appreciate its significance.
Kerry: And what about any initiatives or discussions with President Musharraf and the Indians with respect to fail-safe procedures in the event - I mean, there have been two attempts on President Musharraf's life. If you were to have a successful coup in Pakistan, you could have, conceivably, nuclear weapons in the hand of a radical Islamic state automatically, overnight. And to the best of my knowledge, in all of the inquiries that I've made in the course of the last years, there is now no failsafe procedure in place to guarantee against that weaponry falling into the wrong hands.
Rice: Senator, we have noted this problem, and we are prepared to try to deal with it. I would prefer not in open session to talk about this particular issue.
Kerry:Okay. Well, I raise it again. I must say that in my private briefings as the nominee I found the answers highly unsatisfactory. And so, I press on you the notion that, without saying more, that we need to pay attention to that.
Rice: We're very aware of the problem, Senator, and we have had some discussions. But I really would prefer not to discuss that.
In essence, Kerry noted that as a presidential candidate, the US "secret plan" for Pakistan's nukes as conveyed to him was unsatisfactory. But Rice hinted that while the plan might not be perfect, the administration was working on it. There are some signs that this may already be happening.
Follow the money
In Washington it is said that all plans stay on paper until Congress appropriates funds for them. There are a variety of agencies and bureaus in the US government that deal with various aspects of the nuclear cycle. One such agency is the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
The official budget presented by the NRC for the upcoming 2006 fiscal year includes US$800,000 for "initiatives supporting nuclear safety cooperation with India and Pakistan". One Washington insider noted that while the NRC's cooperation with India was in the realm of providing advice on emergency procedures, fire safety issues and the safety of ageing plants, as well as collaborative nuclear research, the initiatives with Pakistan were likely focused on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and its safety.
"American non-proliferation laws and international treaty commitments may severely restrict direct assistance to the safety of Pakistan's warheads and fissile material, you can wager good money that the Bush administration is not going to let global treaties to compromise American security interests," noted the insider.
The source insisted that it is highly likely that such cooperation is already under way behind the covers, but the NRC budgeting makes it possible on a larger scale with congressional oversight. One possible option is the provision of Permissive Action Links (PALs). A PAL is basically a box with sophisticated cryptography electronics inside that prevents unauthorized access to a nuclear weapon by disarming or disabling the triggering mechanism if the wrong code is entered or if the box is tampered with in any manner. PAL locks could make a nuclear warhead unusable in the wrong hands.
Interestingly, after the two successive assassination attempts on Musharraf in December 2003, NBC News reported that the US had installed PAL locks on Pakistani nuclear warheads. The report quoted former US ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley confirming the cooperation behind the scenes. About this time Bush was asked in a press conference whether Pakistan's nukes were secure. Bush replied, "Yes, they are secure," and changed the subject immediately.
However, not everyone agrees that providing PAL locks to Pakistan is a wise choice. Leonard Weiss, a prominent non-proliferation expert and former Senate staffer who helped author many US non-proliferation laws, feels that it is a "hoary idea" and compared it to "providing clean needles to drug addicts, thereby making proliferators seem like helpless victims of uncontrollable physiological appetites". He cautions that PALs may make it easier for a Pakistani leader to consider using a nuclear weapon. Despite this, the Washington insider tells Asia Times Online that PALs and other safety devices are likely to be in the cards for guarding Pakistan's nuclear weapons, if they are not in place already.
Damage control
It is a known fact that foreign governments use seminars and sponsored studies by private and quasi-government think-tanks to explain or elaborate on their country's policies. In recent months, many serving and retired Pakistani military officials and diplomats have launched a seemingly coordinated campaign in the US and Western strategic-policy circles. The goal of this campaign seems to be to reassure the power brokers and academics who often go on to become key players in the US and Western governments that Pakistan's nuclear estate is safe and that Pakistan will take its nuclear non-proliferation commitments seriously, after the Khan scandal.
One such effort was by retired Pakistani army Major-General Mahmud Ali Durrani at the Sandia Labs in New Mexico. It is to be noted that Sandia Labs is owned by defense contractor Lockheed Martin and is affiliated with the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. Durrani states in his report titled "Pakistan's Strategic Thinking and the Role of Nuclear Weapons" that he was able to tour many sensitive Pakistani nuclear facilities and found the safety procedures to be credible, though there was room for improvement in certain security aspects.
But not everyone who read the Durrani study was convinced. One former US security official, who did not want to be identified, told Asia Times Online that he had more questions about Pakistan's nuclear safety procedures after reading the Durrani report than before. He noted that Durrani highlighted the claim that Pakistan has a "three-man rule" for nuclear-weapon safety that it claims is superior to the "two-man rule" in practice in the US. What that means in essence is that three people are supposed to enter codes before a nuclear weapon can be deployed, but he pointed out that the three people can sometimes be at a lower level in the military hierarchy, such as the base commander and unit commander. He wondered whether that was really a safe procedure, given that Pakistan has already acknowledged that al-Qaeda has penetrated lower levels of the military forces.
The expert also highlighted that the Durrani report's stated exception to the "three-man rule" is in the case of a Pakistani air force pilot who can solely be given the full weapon-arming code in certain situations. "This is not comforting to anyone [who] does not know what those 'special situations' are and what if any fail-safes are there to prevent a rogue pilot from taking off with a nuclear weapon," the expert cautioned. It is to be noted that the Durrani report includes a sobering note about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear installations, while dismissing the possibility of Islamist radicals being on the inside. "There is an urgent need to improve the technical skills of personnel charged with the security of [Pakistan's] nuclear installations and develop an institutional security culture," the report warns. Coming from a Pakistani insider, this must be alarming to some within the US government, the expert surmised.
Making the plan
Soon after September 11, 2001, American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker magazine of a supposed secret US-Israeli plan to take control of Pakistan's nuclear facilities in the case of an Islamist coup there. In a book by Washington Post's Bob Woodward, President Bush is quoted as telling Musharraf that "Seymour Hersh is a liar" after the Hersh story came out. Whether the US had a secret plan for Pakistan's nukes in 2001 or not, there is evidence that the US government and Congress are beginning to accept the reality that a US military action plan is needed to prepare for taking over and managing a state-failure situation in a country that possesses mass-destruction weapons.
In a public hearing in March conducted by the US Senate's Armed Services Committee on plans for the US Army's transformation, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut raised the question of whether the US military was ready for a "contingency" situation in Pakistan or Iran. In response, General Richard A Cody, the US Army's vice chief of staff, said that such questions were the ones US Army leaders "grapple with every day", without going into details. The timeframe for these plans mentioned a requirement to be ready by as early as 2007.
The US Military Force Structure Review Act of 1996 directed the secretary of defense to conduct a Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) of the strategy, force structure, force modernization plans, infrastructure and other elements of the defense program and policies with an intent of establishing a revised defense program. It is therefore interesting to note that the next QDR, planned to be released this autumn, reportedly includes plans for scenarios such as a rogue commander getting hold of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. "The more the scenarios hit a nerve ... the more I know I am onto something," a Pentagon official working on the QDR 2005 was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal recently.
The significance of these hearings and the QDR plans is that the normally secretive US Defense Department does not make its ideas public for the purposes of public relations. These plans are made public to pressure Congress into releasing massive funds to the US military to be able to realize the plans. They also signify that the US considers the eventualities being planned for in the QDR to be realistic enough to happen in the next four years. Previous QDRs had plans for a conventional combat operation against the likes of Iraq. It may very well turn out that the US State Department, always sensitive to Pakistan's concerns, steps in to force the Pentagon to omit any references to Pakistan in the public QDR version, but if the Pentagon wants debate on the matter, a well-timed leak could do the trick.
Islamabad must be watching these developments with a wary eye, but any protestations it might choose to express are unlikely to deter the US from making plans to slowly yet deliberately cast a net around Pakistan's nuclear estate.
Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance defense and strategic affairs analyst based in the United States. He can be reached at contact@kapisthalam.com.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)
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The regents are on the ground and commanders are crafting new battle plans: President Obama is girding for a war surge in Afghanistan. Let's hope he's willing to see it through when his most stalwart supporters start to doubt the effort and rue the cost.
APAs a statement of principle, the new Administration's preoccupation with Afghanistan signals a welcome commitment to what has been known by that out-of-favor phrase "global war on terror." The Taliban claimed responsibility last week for coordinated suicide attacks in Kabul, which killed 28 people and reinforced perceptions that security is eroding. America's recent success in Iraq showed that the key to victory lies in shifting those perceptions. That means improving security.
More U.S. troops will likely be needed, and Central Command General David Petraeus is undertaking a review of goals and the resources to meet them. Mr. Obama has talked about doubling forces by another 30,000, and we hope he's willing to give his Afghan commander, General David McKiernan, the number he needs to clear and hold areas and protect the population. However, size of force matters less than having the proper counterinsurgency strategy for a conflict that is different than Iraq.
Among other useful things, Mr. Obama's surge may help to educate his friends on the political left about Islamist terror. The National Security Network, an outfit that never missed an opportunity to bash President Bush, has quickly come into line behind the new President. The group says Mr. Obama's strategy must be focused "first and foremost on preventing the Afghanistan-Pakistan region from becoming a staging ground for terrorist attacks against the U.S. and other nations or a source for instability that could throw Pakistan into chaos."
Sounds good to us -- and sounds a lot like the Bush strategy. America's goal isn't to turn a backward Central Asian country into the next Switzerland, but to keep al Qaeda and its Taliban allies from using it as a safe haven. Toward that end, the U.S. and its allies can help build Afghanistan's institutions and army and help a weak Pakistan government flush out the terrorists in its wild west.
No doubt the strategy can be tweaked. That started well before Mr. Obama's election, as America took back ownership of the Afghan mission from an unwieldy NATO command. Though Britain and Canada pull their weight, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has learned that Americans can't count on Europe to fill the troop and equipment gaps, so the U.S. did.
Also like the Bush Administration, Team Obama recognizes the Pakistan dimension to the Afghan problem -- even calling the place "Afpak." The Taliban came back in the past three years only after finding sanctuary around Quetta, in southern Pakistan, and in the country's northwest tribal regions. The U.S. has also won Islamabad's sotto voce cooperation to strike terror leaders, though more should be done around Quetta.
Mr. Obama's special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, has been in Afpak for a week's fact-finding. Before arriving, he said, "In my view it's going to be much tougher than Iraq." Even by Holbrookeian standards, that's hyperbole. The government in Kabul isn't in danger of collapsing, the Taliban isn't popular where it has ruled, and the insurgents are no match for the U.S.-led force on the battlefield.
Ultimately, as in Iraq, the Afghans will need to stand up more for themselves. That may take a while. But start with expanding the increasingly able Afghan army, a bright spot. The force of 80,000 is too small for a country the size of Texas and bordered by enemies. The police are a shambles, alas. Corruption, narco-trafficking, a weak central government: Afghanistan shares vices with other Western protectorates like Bosnia, and could improve on all counts.
However, notwithstanding President Obama's swipe last Monday that "the national government seems very detached from what's going on in the surrounding community," the rulers in Kabul are legitimate. Hamid Karzai has tolerated too much corruption, but any change of leadership should come from an Afghan challenge, not a U.S. desire to play kingmaker. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden -- who stormed out of a meeting with Mr. Karzai last year -- need to avoid JFK's mistake of toppling South Vietnam ally Ngo Dinh Diem.
The Obama team wants to play up Afghanistan's troubles so it can look good by comparison a year from now. But soon enough Mr. Obama will own those troubles, and talking down Afghanistan carries risks. Our allies and the American people may come to doubt that the conflict is winnable, or worth the cost.
Already, canaries on the left are asking a la columnist Richard Reeves, "Why are we in Afghanistan?" The President's friends at Newsweek are helpfully referring to "Obama's Vietnam." Mr. Obama may find himself relying on some surprising people for wartime support -- to wit, Bush Republicans and neocons.
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second post of the morning:
Last June, Bakht Bilind Khan, who was living in the Bronx and working at a fast-food restaurant, returned to his village in the volatile Swat Valley of northern Pakistan to visit his wife and seven children for the first time in three years.
Until recently, the Swat Valley was popular as a vacation site.
But at a dinner celebration with his family, his homecoming suddenly turned dark: several heavily armed Taliban fighters wearing masks appeared at the door of their house, accused Mr. Khan of being an American spy and kidnapped him.
During two weeks of captivity in a nearby mountain range, Mr. Khan says, he was interrogated repeatedly about his wealth, property and “mission” in the United States. He was released in exchange for an $8,000 ransom. His family, threatened with death if they did not leave the region, is now hiding elsewhere in Pakistan.
“Our Swat, our paradise, is burning now,” said Mr. Khan, 55, who returned to the United States and is working at a fast-food restaurant in Albany, trying to reimburse the friends and relatives who paid his ransom.
Pakistani immigrants from the Swat Valley, where the Taliban have been battling Pakistani security forces since 2007, say some of their families are being singled out for threats, kidnapping and even murder by Taliban forces, who view them as potential American collaborators and lucrative sources of ransom. Some immigrants also say they, too, have been threatened in the United States by the Taliban or its sympathizers, and some immigrants say they have been attacked or kidnapped when they have returned home.
The threats have brought an added dimension of suffering for the immigrants, who say fresh reports of hardship arrive here every day, sometimes several times a day, and spread quickly among the several thousand Swati immigrants in the New York region: families driven from their villages, houses being destroyed, relatives disappearing. The fate of the valley dominates conversation among the exiles.
“It’s 24/7,” said Zakrya Khan, 30, the owner of two gyro restaurants in New York whose staff of 15 is almost entirely Swati. “This is their only concern now.”
Though every community of exiles from a conflict-ridden country suffers when relatives who remain behind are caught in the fight, the immigrants from Swat also bear the burden of believing that their presence in America is endangering their relatives back home, where the Taliban have imposed their authority over vast swaths of the region, about 100 miles northwest of Islamabad.
More than that, Swati immigrants say they have been left with the sense that the more they try to help their families back home, the more harm they may do, an excruciating dilemma that has filled many with a combination of helplessness, fear, sadness and guilt.
If they speak out, they fear, it could lead to retribution for them or their relatives in Pakistan. Some exiles who have participated in anti-Taliban political demonstrations here or agitated in support of Swat residents say that they and their families have come under pressure as a result of these activities.
And few dare leave the United States for fear of losing the single largest income stream their families have.
“To go to their rescue would actually make the situation worse,” said Mr. Khan, the restaurant owner. “We are the only source of income for these people. If we leave the United States, they’ll have no one supporting them.”
The Pakistan government announced Monday that it had struck a tentative deal with the Taliban amid a 10-day ceasefire to establish Islamic law in the region and suspend military operations there. But some Swati immigrants said they were skeptical the deal would hold — two other accords in the last six months failed — and they were bracing for a resumption of violence.
Iqbal Ali Khan, 50, the general secretary of the American chapter of the Awami National Party, a dominant secular political party in Swat, said he had received three threatening phone calls in the past two months. The callers, who did not identify themselves, told Mr. Khan he was “too active” and ordered him to bring $1 million with him on his next trip to Pakistan.
“Or you know what will happen,” one caller said, according to Mr. Khan, who is also the owner of a limousine company based in Queens. “We know your family.”
The most recent call came last Tuesday. “You’re still active,” Mr. Khan quoted the caller as saying. “This is the last warning.”
On Wednesday, he received a dire call from his brother, who at that very moment was hiding in a forest on the outskirts of the valley’s largest city, Mingora, with their 97-year-old father.
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The elder Mr. Khan had received a letter from the Taliban earlier in the day warning him that he would be kidnapped unless he handed over $200,000. The note specifically instructed the father to get the money from his son in the United States.
Iqbal Ali Khan, the general secretary of the American chapter of the Awami National Party, a dominant secular political party in Swat, says he has been receiving threatening telephone calls.
“My 97-year-old father is on the run,” exclaimed the younger Mr. Khan, his voice choking up in sadness. “Tragedy! Tragedy!”
Before the start of the Taliban’s incursion into the region in 2007, Swat was treasured as a vacation spot, particularly among Pashtuns, the ethnic group that dominates the region. Known as “the Switzerland of Pakistan,” it has snowy peaks, fruit orchards, lakes and flower-covered meadows.
But the tourism industry has evaporated amid the Taliban’s uprising, and by some estimates, hundreds of thousands of residents have abandoned their homes, fleeing for Mingora or other regions of Pakistan. Immigrants have been coming from the Swat Valley for years, well before it became a front in the war between the Taliban and Pakistani government troops. There are an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people from the Swat Valley in the United States, about half of whom live in the New York metropolitan region, said Taj Akbar Khan, president of the Khyber Society USA, a Pakistani charitable and cultural organization. In New York, Swatis generally live within the larger Pakistani population, which is concentrated in Coney Island, Brooklyn, and Astoria, Queens, among other neighborhoods.
Many Swatis here suspect that the Taliban have spies among them; that insecurity mirrors the rampant mistrust in the valley, where many residents fear the Pakistani security forces almost as much as the Taliban and do not know whom to trust.
Perhaps with the help of stateside sympathizers, the Taliban have been adept at tracking the flow of money from the United states, and have turned increasingly to kidnapping recipients of the money with the goal of securing hefty ransoms, the exiles say.
Ajab, the owner of a fried chicken shop in Paterson, N.J., said the Taliban kidnapped a brother-in-law last year near the family’s village in the Swat Valley.
During 75 days of captivity, the Taliban fighters told the brother-in-law that one of the reasons they had kidnapped him was that he had relatives in the United States, including Ajab. The fighters released him after the family paid a $20,000 ransom.
“We are sad that because of us, our relatives are getting into trouble,” said Ajab, 51, who spoke only on the condition that his last name not be published, to protect his family’s identity.
Not all of the violence visited upon the families of exiles has been due to the exiles’ presence here. But the difficulty of watching it at such a remove has been no less agonizing.
Leaving behind his family in Swat, Jihanzada came to the United States in 2001 to earn money to build his dream house back home and to pay for the future weddings of his five children. He worked numerous menial jobs in Boston and New York.
“Everything I earned I sent back home,” he said in an interview last week at a fast-food restaurant in Brooklyn where he works.
He, too, spoke on the condition that he not be fully identified for fear of alerting the Taliban to his presence in the United States. “If they knew I was here, they would definitely harm my family,” he said. “If they got information that I talked to you, they can come and target me.”
The house was completed early last year; Jihanzada still has not seen it: he has not returned to Pakistan since he left eight years ago.
But during fighting last summer between the Taliban and the Pakistani security forces, a bomb dropped by Pakistani military aircraft demolished the house. Jihanzada’s family had evacuated before the fighting began and are now living in Mingora. His eldest daughter’s wedding, scheduled for next month, was postponed.
Jihanzada, who said he could not return to Pakistan because he had an asylum petition pending, received photographs of the destruction soon after the attack. Asked how he felt when he first saw the photographs, he dropped his head, concealing his face behind the brim of his brown restaurant cap and trying to stem a surge of sadness. He stayed like that for a full minute, saying nothing.
Finally, he continued: “This is every Pashtun’s dream: You earn, you build a home, your children grow up in it and when you get old you go and sit at home and enjoy life. I’m sad because my struggles start again.”
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The government announced Monday that it would accept a system of Islamic law in the Swat valley and agreed to a truce, effectively conceding the area as a Taliban sanctuary and suspending a faltering effort by the army to crush the insurgents.
Pakistanis in Miran Shah, near the Afghan border, on Sunday at funerals of people described as victims of a United States missile attack on a Taliban compound.
The concessions to the militants, who now control about 70 percent of the region just 100 miles from the capital, were criticized by Pakistani analysts as a capitulation by a government desperate to stop Taliban abuses and a military embarrassed at losing ground after more than a year of intermittent fighting. About 3,000 Taliban militants have kept 12,000 government troops at bay and terrorized the local population with floggings and the burning of schools.
The accord came less than a week before the first official visit to Washington of the Pakistani army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to meet Obama administration officials and discuss how Pakistan could improve its tactics against what the American military is now calling an industrial-strength insurgency there of Al Qaeda and the Taliban militants.
The militants have also made deep gains in neighboring Afghanistan, where the United States is sending more troops.
Pakistani government officials insisted the truce with the Taliban and the switch to the Shariah, the Islamic legal code, were consistent with the Constitution and presented no threat to the integrity of the nation.
But the truce offered by the Taliban, and accepted by the authorities, rebuffed American demands for the Pakistani civilian and military authorities to stick with the fight against the militants, not make deals with them.
Under the terms of the accord, the chief minister of the province, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, said that Pakistani troops would now go on “reactive mode” and fight only in retaliation for an attack.
Announced by the government of the North-West Frontier Province after consultation with President Asif Ali Zardari, the pact echoed previous government accords with the militants across Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas in North and South Waziristan.
Those regions have since become a mini-state for Qaeda and Taliban militants, who are now the focus of missile strikes by remotely piloted American aircraft. On Monday, what was thought to be a drone strike in Kurram, a separate area close to the Afghan border, killed 31 people, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
Analysts are now suggesting that the drone strikes may be pushing the Taliban, and even some Qaeda elements, out of the tribal belt and into Swat, making the valley more important to the Taliban.
Speaking in India on the last leg of his trip to Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, the Obama administration’s special envoy to the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, did not address the truce directly but said the turmoil in Swat served as a reminder that the United States, Pakistan and India faced an “enemy which poses direct threats to our leadership, our capitals, and our people.”
Pakistani legal experts and other analysts warned that the decision by the authorities would embolden militants in other parts of the country.
“This means you have surrendered to a handful of extremists,” said Athar Minallah, a leader of a lawyers’ movement that has campaigned for an independent judiciary. “The state is under attack; instead of dealing with them as aggressors, the government has abdicated.”
Shuja Nawaz, the author of “Crossed Swords,” a book on the Pakistani military, said that with the accord, “the government is ceding a great deal of space” to the militants.
But some Pakistani officials have recently argued that a truce was necessary in Swat because the army was unable to fight a guerrilla insurgency and civilians were suffering in the conflict.
A former interior minister, Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, told the parliamentary committee on national security this month that Shariah ordinances should be introduced to “calm the situation.”
Sherry Rehman, the government information minister, said the deal should not be seen as a concession. “It is in no way a sign of the state’s weakness,” she said. “The public will of the population of the Swat region is at the center of all efforts, and it should be taken into account while debating the merits of this agreement.”
In legislative elections a year ago, the people of Swat, a region that is about the size of Delaware and has 1.3 million residents, voted overwhelmingly for the secular Awami National Party. Since then, the Taliban have singled out elected politicians with suicide bomb attacks and chased virtually all of them from the valley. Several hundred thousand residents have also fled the fighting.
Many of the poor who have stayed in Swat, which until the late 1960s was ruled by a prince, were calling for the Shariah courts as a way of achieving quick justice and dispensing with the long delays and corruption of the civil courts. The authorities in the North-West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, argued that the Shariah courts were not the same as strict Islamic law. The new laws, for instance, would not ban education of females or impose other strict tenets espoused by the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The new accord, they said, would simply activate laws already agreed to by Benazir Bhutto in the early 1990s when she was prime minister. Similarly, the principle of Shariah courts in Swat was also agreed to by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999. In both cases, the courts, though approved, were never put in place.
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Pakistan Makes a Taliban Truce, Creating a Haven
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A Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official did not have permission to speak publicly, said that the government’s acceptance of the courts was an attempt to blunt efforts of the Taliban to woo Swat residents frustrated by the ineffective judiciary.
“The Taliban was trying to take advantage of the local movement and desire for a judicial system,” the official said. The official insisted that the Obama administration, informed of the accord, “showed understanding of our strategy.”
On Monday, a White House spokesman, Tommy Vietor, said only, “We have seen the press reports and are in touch with the government of Pakistan about the ongoing situation in Swat.”
Provincial officials said the accord in Swat was struck with Maulana Sufi Muhammad. He is the father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, a deputy to Baitullah Mehsud, who is the head of the umbrella group for the Taliban in Pakistan.
Mr. Muhammad is often described as more benign than his son-in-law, but the ranks of their followers and their lines of authority are fluid and overlapping.
In 2001, he took thousands of young men across the border into Afghanistan to fight jihad against the Americans. After his return he was imprisoned by Pakistani authorities.
He was released last April after agreeing to denounce violence and work to bring peace to the area.
Despite the insistence that the new legal system in Swat was consistent with existing civil law, some feared that the accord was an ominous sign of the power of the militants to spread into the heartland of Pakistan, including the most populous and wealthiest province, the Punjab.
“The hardest task for the government will be to protect the Punjab against inroads by militants,” wrote I. A. Rehman, a member of the Human Rights Commission, in the daily newspaper, Dawn.
“Already, religious extremists have strong bases across the province and sympathizers in all arenas: political parties, services, the judiciary, the middle class, and even the media,” he wrote. “For its part, the government is handicapped because of its failure to offer good governance, guarantee livelihoods, and restore people’s faith in the frayed judicial system
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I am by no means an expert on the subject but I will offer my point of view based upon my limited experience. I do think that sharia is just as complex as other legal systems but it hasn't evolved as most other forms of law have evolved to fit in with the modern world. Punishments are overly brutal and sharia has remained virtually unchanged since its inception.
a brief overview of sharia law from the Council on Foreign Relations website...
http://www.cfr.org/publication/8034/
and I hate to do it, but it is actually a very in depth explanation and although the validity of legal scholar John Makdisi's claim that English law, the predecessor of American law, has roots in medieval Islamic law thanks to the Normans is questionable, anything is possible. The Normans did play a role in the crusades and occupied Muslim lands for a brief period of time. But yeah... Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia
For sharia law to be accepted by the rest of the world, many compromises will have to be made by the ones who uphold the law in that part of the world. Shuria has strong roots in The Qur'an, Sunnah, and hadith and since the words and deeds of the prophet Mohammed are absolutely infallible, these compromises may never be accepted among hard line Muslims.
Another issue with sharia is that there is no rock solid, in black and white, this is the way it is and is going to be when someone f----s up "Sharia Law Book" in existence which states clearly the crimes and punishments in Islam. There is only the Qur'an and the wide open interpretation of the words of the prophet by the mullah or whoever is relied upon to enact Islamic law against an offender. Now, personal opinion, if that dude is having a bad day or doesn't like you for some reason or has any ulterior motives whatsoever, he can pretty much do what he wants and it kinda gives him some power. The Ottoman Empire apparently codified sharia and that pretty much replaced the legal scholars and jurists who upheld the law. Still it would need to be toned down quite a bit.
Or if the IMPOSSIBLE were to happen in that region.... SEPARATION of MOSQUE AND STATE and the conversion or destruction of Muslim extremists in that part of the world, the code of honor of the Pashtun could serve as a foundation for a form of law a little more lenient than sharia.
Here's an overview of Pashtunwali from www.Afghanland.com
Pashtunwalai, literally means the way of the Pashtuns, it’s the rules and regulations and laws of the Pashtun tribes which protected the world’s biggest tribal society. These rules are responsible for the survival of the Pashtun tribes for over 2000 years. Some of the rules go back to the days of Adam and eve and are still puritan today
NANEWATEI: Under Nanewatei a penitent enemy is forgiven and the feuding factions resume peaceful and friendly relations. Thus it creates a congenial atmosphere for peaceful co-existence and mutual understanding through eventual reconciliation.
TEEGA OR KANRAY: Teega or Kanray is cessation of bloodshed between contending parties. Teega (putting down of a stone) in other words means a temporary truce declared by a Jirga. The word stone is used figuratively as actually no stone is put at the time of the cessation of hostilities. Once the truce is enforced, no party dares violate it for fear of punitive measures.
BADAL: (Eye for an Eye) Self-respect and sensitivity to insult is another essential trait of Pashtun character. The poorest among them has his own sense of dignity and honor and he vehemently refuses to submit to any insult. In fact every Pashtun considers himself equal if not better than his fellow tribesmen and an insult is, therefore, taken as scurrilous reflection on his character. An insult is sure to evoke insult and murder is likely to lead to a murder.
JirgaMELMASTIA: Pashtun have been described as one of the most hospitable peoples of the world. They consider Melmastia or generous hospitality as one of the finest virtues and greet their guest warmly with a broad smile on their faces. A Pashtun feels delighted to receive a guest regardless of his past relations or acquaintance and prepares a delicious meal for him and offers up to their ability the finest meals available to them.
TOR: Pashtuns are sensitive about the honor of their women folk and slight touching of the women is at times considered a serious and an intolerable offence. The cases of adultery and illicit relations are put down with iron hand in and no quarter is given to culprits either male or female. Casting of an evil eye on woman is tantamount to imperil one's life. Both sexes, therefore, scrupulously avoid indulgence in immoral practices.
GHUNDI: Ghundi is a classic case of balance of power in tribal areas. It is derived from Pashto word Ghund, meaning a political party but it is used for an alliance. As modern states enter into bilateral agreements for promotion of trade, cultivation of friendly relations and mutual defense, similarly various sections of a tribe align themselves in blocs or Ghunds to safeguard their common interests. Ghundi is entered into defeat the aggressive and nefarious designs of a hostile neighbor. In tribal fighting the Ghundi members espouse their mutual interests against their common enemy and act as a corporate body with all the resources at their command.
LOKHAY WARKAWAL: Lokhay Warkawal literally means `giving of a pot' but it implies the protection of an individual or a tribe. A weaker tribe to a stronger one with the object of ensuring its safety and security generally gives Lokhay. It is accepted in the form of a sacrificial animal such as a goat or a sheep. When a tribe accepts a Lokhay from another tribe, it undertakes the responsibility of safeguarding the latter's interests against its enemies and protects it at all costs.
Afghan Lashkar Lead by Wazir Akbar KhanLASHKAR: Lashkar is an armed party, which goes out from a village or tribe for warlike purposes. The Lashkar may consist of a hundred to several thousand men. The Lashkar assembled for Jihad (Holy Struggle) is usually very large. The decisions of a Jirga, if violated by a party, are enforced through a tribal Lashkar. The Lashkar thus performs the functions of police in the event of a breach of tribal law.
CHIGHA: Chigha means a pursuit party. The Chigha party is formed or taken out in case armed bandits with the object of lifting cattle, looting property or abducting an inmate of the village, raid a village. Composed of armed persons, the Chigha party goes in pursuit of the raiders to affect the release of the cattle etc or recover the stolen property.
TARR: A mutual accord between two tribes or villagers themselves with regard to a certain matter is called Tarr. For instance, after sowing wheat or any other crop, the people of the village agree not to let loose their cattle to graze in the fields and thus damage the crop. The man whose cattle are found grazing in the fields in violation of this agreement has no right to claim compensation for an injury caused to his cattle by the owner of the field.
MLA TARR: Mla Tarr, which literally means `girding up of loins' denotes two things. Firstly it is used for all such members of a family who are capable of carrying and using firearms. Secondly, it means espousing the cause of a man against his enemies and providing him with an armed party. The tribesmen resort to Mla Tarr when a person belonging to their village or tribe is attacked, mal-treated or disgraced by their enemies.
BADRAGHA: An armed party escorting a fugitive or a visitor to his destination is called Badragha. Badragha is a guarantee for the safety of a man who is either hotly pursued by his enemies or there is an apprehension of his being killed on his way home. An armed party accompanies such a man as Badragha or `escort' to ensure his safe return to the place of his abode. Badragha is never attacked by the second party because of fear of reprisals and the blood feud that is sure to follow if an attack is made on it. The Badragha convoy can be depended upon only within its own geographical limits; beyond it, the people of other tribes take the charge to convoy the traveler.
Treaty of GandomakBILGA: The word Bilga is used for stolen property. A man is held responsible for theft or burglary if any of the stolen articles are recovered from his house. In such a case he is obliged to make good the loss sustained by the afflicted person. He, however, stands absolved of Bilga if he discloses the source or the persons from whom he had purchased the stolen articles.
BOTA: Bota means carrying away. It is a sort of retaliatory action against an aggressor. For instance, if a creditor fails to recover his debt from the debtor, he resorts to Bota by seizing his cattle or one of his kith and kin. The creditor keeps them as hostages till his dues are fully realized or the debtor has furnished a security to make payment within a specified period to the creditor.
BARAMTA: Baramta like Bota is resorted to when the grievances of a party are not redressed or a debtor adopts delaying tactics in respect of payment of a debt to the creditor. The word Baramta is derived from Persian word Baramad, which means recovery or restitution of property etc. Under Baramta hostages are held to ransom till the accused returns the claimed property. The Pashtuns consider it an act against their sense of honor and contrary to the principles of Pashtunwali to lay their hands on dependent classes such as blacksmiths, tailors, barbers and butchers etc belonging to the debtor's village.
BALANDRA OR ASHAR: Balandra or Ashar can be best described as a village aid program under which a particular task is accomplished on the basis of mutual cooperation and assistance. At the time of sowing or harvesting, the villagers lend a helping hand to the man who seeks their help. They take out their pair of bullocks to plough his fields at sowing time and assist him in reaping his crops at the time of harvest. The man, thus obliged, by the fellow villagers holds a feast in their honor in the evening.
MEERATA: Meerata means complete annihilation of the male members of a family by brutal assassination. This is not a custom but a criminal act. Under Meerata, the stronger member of family used to assassinate their weak but near relatives with the sole object of removing them from the line of inheritance and gaining forcible possession of their lands, houses and other property. The tribal law seriously views this kind of cold-blooded murder and persons responsible for such an inhumane and ghastly act cannot escape the wrath of Pashtuns. The Jirga immediately assembles to take suitable action against the culprits. The penalty is usually in the form of setting on fire their houses and other property and expulsion of the culprits from their area.
SAZ: The word Saz is used for blood money or compensation in lieu of killing. Under the custom of Saz a person who feels penitent after committing a deliberate murder, approaches the deceased's family through a Jirga and offers to make payment of blood money to end enmity between them. All hostilities come to an end between the parties after acceptance of Saz. Sometimes the payment of compensation takes the form of giving a girl in marriage to the aggrieved party. It is also called Swarah, which binds together the two parties in blood relations and thus helps in eradicating ill will and feelings of enmity.
ITBAR: Itbar, which means trust, or guaranteed assurance or is the arch of society, which is governed by un-written laws or conventions. All business including contracts relating to sale and mortgage or disposal of property, is transacted on the basis of trust or Itbar. Such transactions are verbal and are entered into in the presence of the village elders or a few witnesses. The violation of Itbar is considered to be dishonorable act, un-becoming of gentleman and contrary to the norms of Pashtunwali.
HAMSAYA: The word Hamsaya stands for a neighbor but in Pashto it applies to a man who abandons his home either due to poverty or blood feud and seeks protection of an elder of another village. In this way the latter becomes his client or vassal. It is, therefore, incumbent upon the protector to save his Hamsaya from insult or injury from any source.
Or maybe a blend of Pashtunwali and sharia.
The fact of the matter is that we cannot and are never going to change the culture, the people or their way of thinking. We can only try to bring out the best in them and nurture that as an international community. Then, you might have peace and stability over there.
However, giving the Taliban the right to anything at all is the wrong answer :x. "...the recognition of Islamic law in the region "isn't something that hasn't happened before." No shiite, but for the Pakistani govt to allow those fahk-heads to have any right to anything is the beginning of the end for Pakistan. If it keeps up the TB will eventually have access to nuke to use against whoever they perceive as an "infidel"
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It's a good start of a good old-fashioned ass-whoopin' for the TB
From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090216/ap_on_re_as/as_afghan_surge_begins
Obama to decide soon on more troops for Afghan war AFP/File – US Army soliders set out on a patrol in Paktika province, along the Afghan-Pakistan border, in 2008. …
LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Close to 3,000 American soldiers who recently arrived in Afghanistan to secure two violent provinces near Kabul have begun operations in the field and already are seeing combat, the unit's spokesman said Monday.
The new troops are the first wave of an expected surge of reinforcements this year. The process began to take shape under President George Bush but has been given impetus by President Barack Obama's call for an increased focus on Afghanistan.
U.S. commanders have been contemplating sending up to 30,000 more soldiers to bolster the 33,000 already here, but the new administration is expected to initially approve only a portion of that amount. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday the president would decide soon.
The new unit — the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division — moved into Logar and Wardak provinces last month, and the soldiers from Fort Drum, N.Y., are now stationed in combat outposts throughout the provinces.
Militants have attacked several patrols with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, including one ambush by 30 insurgents, Lt. Col. Steve Osterhozer, the brigade spokesman, said.
Several roadside bombs also have exploded next to the unit's MRAPs — mine-resistance patrol vehicles — but caused no casualties, he said.
"In every case our vehicles returned with overwhelming fire," Ostehozer said. "We have not suffered anything more than a few bruises, while several insurgents have been killed."
Commanders are in the planning stages of larger scale operations expected to be launched in the coming weeks.
Militant activity has spiked in Logar and Wardak over the last year as the resurgent Taliban has spread north toward Kabul from its traditional southern power base. Residents say insurgents roam wide swaths of Wardak, a mountainous province whose capital is about 35 miles from Kabul.
The region has been covered in snow recently, but Col. David B. Haight, commander of the 3rd Brigade, said last week that he expects contact with insurgents to increase soon.
"The weather has made it so the enemy activity is somewhat decreased right now, and I expect it to increase in the next two to three months," Haight said at a news conference.
Haight said he believes the increase of militant activity in the two provinces is not ideologically based but stems from poor Afghans being enticed into fighting by their need for money. Quoting the governor of Logar, the colonel called it an "economic war."
Afghan officials "don't believe it's hardcore al-Qaida operatives that you're never going to convert anyway," Haight said. "They believe that it's the guys who say, 'Hey you want $100 to shoot an RPG at a Humvee when it goes by,' and the guy says, 'Yeah I'll do that, because I've got to feed my family.'"
Still, Haight said there are hardcore fighters in the region, some of them allied with Jalaludin Haqqani and his son Siraj, a fighting family with a long history in Afghanistan. The two militant leaders are believed to be in Pakistan.
Logar Gov. Atiqullah Ludin said at a news conference alongside Haight that U.S. troops will need to improve both security and the economic situation.
"There is a gap between the people and the government," Ludin said. "Assistance in Logar is very weak, and the life of the common man has not improved."
Ludin also urged that U.S. forces be careful and not act on bad intelligence to launch night raids on Afghans who turn out to be innocent.
It is a common complaint from Afghan leaders. President Hamid Karzai has long pleaded with U.S. forces not to kill innocent Afghans during military operations and says he hopes to see night raids curtailed.
Pointing to the value of such operations, the U.S. military said Monday that a raid in northwest Badghis province killed a feared militant leader named Ghulam Dastagir and eight other fighters.
Other raids, though, have killed innocent Afghans who were only defending their village against a nighttime incursion by forces they didn't know, officials say.
"We need to step back and look at those carefully, because the danger they carry is exponential," Ludin said.
Haight cautioned last week that civilian casualties could increase with the presence of his 2,700 soldiers.
"We understand the probability of increased civilian casualties is there because of increased U.S. forces," said the colonel, who has also commanded Special Operations task forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Our plan is to do no operations without ANA (Afghan army) and ANP (Afghan police), to help us be more precise."
The U.S. military and Afghan Defense Ministry announced last week that Afghan officers and soldiers would take on a greater role in military operations, including in specialized night raids, with the aim of decreasing civilian deaths.
The presence of U.S. troops in Wardak and Logar is the first time such a large contingent of American power has been so close to Kabul, fueling concerns that militants could be massing for a push at the capital. Haight dismissed those fears.
"Our provinces butt up against the southern boundary of Kabul and therefore there is the perception that Kabul could be surrounded," Haight said. "But the enemy cannot threaten Kabul. He's not big enough, he's not strong enough, he doesn't have the technology. He can conduct attacks but he can't completely disrupt the governance in Kabul."
More to follow...
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Woof JKrenz:
We are very glad to have you here with us. Thank you.
Question: The article mentions the money paid to shoot an RPG at a HumVee of ours. From where does this money come? Is is not the opium trade? And do we not fear to take on the opium trade because some huge % of all economic activity there is based upon the opium trade? How can success be built from this dynamic?
Thank you,
Marc
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Yes sir, it's no big secret, :wink: that's a BIG part of where the TB gets the money they need to continue their "jihad". Opium accounted for an estimated 25% of Afghanistan's overall GDP in 2008 or the equivalent of 33% of licit GDP. Overall gross profits for the Afghan drug traffickers was estimated to be about 2.7 billion dollars. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime 2008 Opium Survey for Afghanistan is right here:
http://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan_Opium_Survey_2008.pdf
And also take a look here to get an idea of Afghanistan's economy:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html
then compare the numbers to other neighboring countries to kinda put things into perspective.
I honestly don't know why we don't just wipe out the entire poppy crop. No poppy=no money for the TB. Without money to fund the "jihad" and pay their "fighters", they'll fizzle away. The only reason I think dudes "fight" for the TB is because they have to feed their families. Just like a lot of people in the world, Afghans believe in money. If the TB has no money to pay, then the "believers" quit believing. Does that make sense? Now if the "fighters" quit "fighting", they'll most likely end up going back to the fields or being a productive member of Afghan society somehow. All that would be left is the true believers hardcore TB.
Success cannot be built in Afghanistan until the main underlying cause of instability is taken care of. First and foremost, Afghanistan needs to be rid of the Taliban once and for all. All they really do is cause the people to live in fear. I hope the people get sick of them and just start running them out of villages all over Afghanistan. After that, people hopefully wont have to live in a country that the rest of the world has to worry about. I also think that once things do start getting better for them that they will start taking pride in their country. Who knows...
Opium cultivation is on the decline since last year but in the few years before that it was on the rise. Hopefully it stays on the decline.
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Thank you. I hope to have time to continue our conversation in a few hours. Right now I simply do a drive-by paste of a post on matters only distantly related to what we were discussing, but nonetheless I hope you find it of interest.
Pakistan: Negotiating Away the Writ of the State
Stratfor Today » February 17, 2009 | 1515 GMT
TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images
A delegation from an Islamist militant movement leaves after talks with Pakistani officials in PeshawarSummary
Provincial authorities in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province announced Feb. 16 that they will implement a new Shariah-based regulation as part of a deal with Pashtun jihadist forces in the Swat region to end the insurgency there. This move likely will not achieve the authorities’ desired results, due to disagreements among Pakistan’s various stakeholders regarding this initiative and the Taliban’s drive to expand their sphere of operations in Pakistan. Not only will the process further erode the writ of the Pakistani state it will also undermine U.S. interests in neighboring Afghanistan.
Analysis
The provincial government of the left-leaning secular Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) announced Feb. 16 that it reached an agreement with Maulana Sufi Muhammad, the founder of the Islamist militant group Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM), or Movement for the Enforcement of Shariah, to end the jihadist insurgency in the area. In exchange for peace, the government has agreed to implement Shariah-based regulations in a wide area of the province formerly known as the Malakand Division and is centered around the restive Swat region. Militants in the Swat region called a 10-day cease-fire the night before talks with the government, and in another gesture of goodwill released a Chinese engineer on Feb. 14, kidnapped five months earlier. Maulana Sufi is now expected to convene a meeting of the TNSM’s leadership council to get the movement to agree to end the fighting.
The TNSM is one of the two largest Pashtun jihadist groups in Pakistan that fall under the Taliban umbrella and have ties to al Qaeda. The Feb. 16 deal is the latest in a string of peace initiatives attempted over the past several months to contain the insurgency, given Pakistan’s inability to use force to settle the issue.
Getting the militants to end the fighting is not the only complication in carrying out this preliminary peace deal (which has no set time frame). There are disagreements within the government at various levels about the idea of bending to the Taliban’s demands. While NWFP Chief Minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti has called for support for his government’s move to implement the Shariah-based laws — the Nizam-i-Adl (Justice System) Regulations-2009 — and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has expressed for the negotiated settlement, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said he would not endorse the new deal unless it was clear that the insurgency had been brought to an end.
Furthermore, there are growing rifts between the prime minister and president (both from the ruling Pakistan People’s Party), with the army reportedly backing Gilani to contain Zardari. But even before the central government makes a decision on the peace deal, the provincial government must craft the new legislation. This presents another world of problems, since there are already several existing Shariah laws on the books as a result of several decades’ worth of attempts to deal with the problem of a non-functioning legal and judicial system. The TNSM’s rise was due largely in part to its ability to exploit the chaotic situation with law and order in the area and the ultraconservative religious local culture.
Assuming that the negotiated area does get a new set of religious laws — which is not likely — the move will not lead to the containment of the jihadist insurgency. If anything, the government’s weak negotiating position will only consolidate the Taliban’s influence in the region — not only in Swat, but in the area covered by the deal, including at least the districts of Malakand, Dir, Swat, Shangla and Buner. This is not the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) — the historically autonomous small region straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border — but Pakistan proper, and these districts form a major sub-set of the northern part of the NWFP. This indicates just how far things have deteriorated.
With the NWFP’s southern districts along the tribal badlands also experiencing a creeping Talibanization, a Pakistani Taliban stronghold in the north could very well translate into the province falling to the Taliban in the not too distant future. Put differently, the FATA, NWFP and even the northwestern part of Balochistan (the southwestern province’s Pashtun corridor) could exhibit Afghanistan-like conditions where Pakistani security forces would have to struggle harder to impose the waning writ of the state.
Clearly, this potential scenario has massive implications for the new U.S. strategy for Afghanistan. Washington, already alarmed at Pakistan’s inability and/or unwillingness to contain the jihadist threat, has intensified its unilateral air strikes inside Pakistan’s tribal belt. The largest such attacks took place Feb. 14, and one occurred Feb. 16 in Kurram agency — an area where U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle attacks have not happened before. Should the situation continue to deteriorate as a result of this peacemaking, U.S. forces could be forced to strike deeper into Pakistan proper in the NWFP and Balochistan provinces where both al Qaeda and Taliban high-value targets are likely located. Furthermore, the Feb. 16 deal raises more doubts about the viability of the NATO supply route that runs from Peshawar to the Khyber Pass.
More importantly, this peace deal offers the Obama administration a glimpse of what to expect as it moves toward a political settlement with Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Should the deal with the militants in Pakistan lead to the establishment of a Taliban “emirate” of sorts centered in Swat, it will only further embolden the Afghan Taliban as they push for a comeback. And a return of the Taliban to the corridors of power in Afghanistan could prove detrimental to the security of Pakistan.
This is ironic considering that the Pakistani state supports the return of a Taliban-dominated regime in Kabul. In the past, such a regime served Pakistani national security interests . But with the Talibanization of the Pakistani northwest — especially in the last two years — the Pakistanis have lost control of their own territory and are not in a position to regain influence in Afghanistan. Therefore, if the United States allows Pakistan to become involved in Washington’s negotiations with the Taliban, Islamabad will not be seizing an opportunity to project power beyond its borders; rather, it will be looking to protect itself from a threat that is both internal and external.
Between the Pakistanis playing defense and the United States struggling to craft a strategy for Afghanistan, the outlook is very bleak for Southwest Asia.
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Has anyone ever heard the old saying that goes something like "If one is building a house by the side of the road and if he takes advice of everyone who passes by, the house will never be finished".
That's Afghanistan.
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Fair enough :-)
Returning to the discussion of the opium drug trade:
Like you, I have often wondered why we simply don't burn the fields. As best as I can tell it is because we fear a massive response of anger on the part of all those who benefit from it. Yet the opium trade finances the war against us, even as apparently it finances major corrupt chunks of the central government.
The cognitive dissonance of all this is perhaps the single hardest thing for me to get my mind around.
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Stratfor
Summary
With the spring thaw fast approaching in Afghanistan, the White House and the Pentagon are trying to finalize a new strategy for the Afghan war. Meanwhile, logistical links to the isolated country are becoming more vulnerable, and Taliban attacks are on the rise in critical areas such as Kabul, the capital. As Washington continues to grapple with the complex challenges and objectives of its mission in Afghanistan, the clock is ticking for making much of an operational impact in 2009.
Analysis
Reports emerged Feb. 17 that U.S. President Barack Obama will soon make an announcement authorizing the deployment of 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. There are roughly 60,000 U.S. and NATO troops there now (split about evenly). Nearly 3,000 soldiers of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team (BCT) of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division — the first additional unit to arrive as part of the surge strategy — landed in January. An additional 17,000 troops (first 8,000 Marines, followed by 9,000 soldiers) would bring the total to about 50,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Taking into account NATO forces, this would still be almost 30,000 shy of the peak Soviet military presence that failed to subdue U.S.-backed Islamist rebels in the country in the 1980s.
The 3rd BCT is already engaged in combat outside Kabul, and this fighting will only escalate as the weather improves. Beginning in March, the spring thaw in Afghanistan traditionally marks the beginning of campaign season as insurgents become more mobile. Attacks in Kabul and on supply routes in Pakistan already have increased, and Washington is trying to lock down alternative supply routes (part of broader negotiations with Russia) as U.S. and NATO forces face an entrenched insurgency that has extensive tribal contacts, support and refuge on the Pakistani side of the border.
(click image to enlarge)
Any surge in U.S./NATO troops and any increase in operational tempo will require a significant expansion of supporting infrastructure and supplies. As a proportion of forces already in country, the most aggressive proposed surge into Afghanistan would be much larger than the surge into Iraq. This means that existing infrastructure and supply lines will be even more heavily taxed than the ones in Iraq, even as these supply lines grow increasingly vulnerable and negotiations on alternatives continue to drag on. (Indeed, last week Bishkek threatened to close the heavily utilized air base at Manas in Kyrgyzstan.) The surge into Afghanistan has been anticipated, preparations are under way and the Pakistani supply lines remain open — if increasingly tenuous. But March is fast approaching.
The Iraq surge provides an increasingly stark contrast to the proposed surge in Afghanistan (which, granted, will not simply be a cut-and-paste repeat of the Iraq strategy). Although the surge in Iraq was controversial, then-President George W. Bush was able to work from an already-defined strategy to move in decisive reinforcements over the course of five months. By this time in 2007, the second of five BCTs had already arrived in country. Commanders had a clear sense of the mission, the additional forces they would receive and the timetable on which they would arrive. Supply lines were short and secure.
Related Links
Afghanistan, Pakistan: The Battlespace of the Border
Pakistan: The Khyber Pass and Western Logistics in Afghanistan
Strategic Divergence: The War Against the Taliban and the War Against Al Qaeda
Countries in Crisis: Pakistan
Part 1: The Perils of Using Islamism to Protect the Core
Part 2: A Crisis in Indian-Pakistani Relations
Part 3: Making It on Its Own
But in Afghanistan, seasonal changes are far more extreme than those in Iraq, and they are compounded by high altitudes and rugged terrain. Hence, operational timing in Afghanistan is much more critical. Ideally, had there not been a U.S. presidential transition over the last few months, and had the Army deployment rotation schedule not been still reeling from the Iraq surge, a surge to Afghanistan would already be in place, with fresh forces taking advantage of the winter lull to establish security around the capital and, as spring took hold, to begin securing surrounding territory. Positioning forces before campaign season would maximize the time available to succeed before the next Afghan winter rolled around.
The reality is that the strategy and force structure of a surge in Afghanistan have continued to be formulated even after the surge began, and deployment of the additional 17,000 troops reportedly would not be complete until late summer (in time for Afghan elections in August).
In Iraq, history may well decide that the stars finally aligned for an effective surge of U.S. military force, which could be credited with breaking the cycle of violence long enough to allow for political accommodation. It is not at all clear how the stars will align in the Afghan theater, which is beset by cross-border issues with Pakistan, and where governments in Kabul and Islamabad are wracked with infighting and myriad other internal problems. Indeed, the deteriorating conditions in both countries are inextricably linked, and any security gains and tactical victories made thanks to more U.S. boots on the ground in Afghanistan might make little difference.
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Returning to the discussion of the opium drug trade:
Like you, I have often wondered why we simply don't burn the fields. As best as I can tell it is because we fear a massive response of anger on the part of all those who benefit from it. Yet the opium trade finances the war against us, even as apparently it finances major corrupt chunks of the central government.
The cognitive dissonance of all this is perhaps the single hardest thing for me to get my mind around.
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As I understand our current efforts, we are trying to destroy the crops as best we can. The scale of the crops and the profitability of opiates tharwts our best attempts thus far.
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I don't understand. There no jungle canopy in Afg, the crops are in plain sight. My understanding (you have PM) is that we are not fully trying because we fear the anger of all the people who make money from it.
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The Taliban get their first wish
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Many Muslims believe that ancient Khorasan - which covers parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan - is the promised land from where they will secure the first victory in the end-of-time battle in which the final round, according to their beliefs, will be fought in Bilad-i-Sham (Palestine-Lebanon-Syria).
The geographical borders of Bilad-i-Sham-Khorasan extend from Samarkand in Uzbekistan to the small Malakand division in the northern fringe of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) that includes the militant-dominated Swat Valley.
On Monday, at a time when United States Central Command chief General David Petraeus was trying to set up a supply route for troops in Afghanistan through Uzbekistan, in this extreme corner of the promised land of Khorasan - Malakand division - militants had every reason to celebrate.
Asif Ali Zardari, the strongly American-backed Pakistani president, and the provincial government of NWFP gave in to the demands of militants and announced a ceasefire, lifted a two-year-old curfew and announced the implementation of Islamic sharia law.
"All un-Islamic laws in the Malakand division of Swat, which is geographically one third of the whole [NWFP] province, have been abolished," the chief minister of NWFP, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, told the media after reaching an agreement with the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi, which is headed by Sufi Mohammad, the symbol of the sharia movement in Malakand division. The Islamic judicial system will be enforced by Islamic judges - qazi.
The accord is a significant victory for the Pakistan Taliban and could end two years of strife in the region which has seen militants pitted against Pakistani security forces.
The peace agreement will be complemented by a compensation package for the families of those killed and injured in the military operations. "[Families] of those who were killed will get 300,000 rupees [US$3,760] and those who were wounded will get 100,000 rupees," Hoti said. "The entire deal, Islamic laws and other packages related to the deal were completely approved by the president of Pakistan," he said.
"We have established a task force which will monitor the implementation of Islamic law, but enforcement will be bound by peace and the writ of the state," said Hoti. "The security forces now [after the signing of the agreement] will be in reactive rather than proactive mode. They will only retaliate if somebody tries to challenge the writ of the state," Hoti said.
The army's Inter-Services Public Relations confirmed that the curfew has been lifted, after two years, in Swat Valley. Militants have also announced a ceasefire for 10 days which is likely to extend for an indefinite period.
The developments in Malakand division coincide with the arrival in Afghanistan of close to 3,000 American soldiers as part of an extra 30,000 to boost the already 30,000 US troops in the country. The new contingent will be deployed in Logar province to secure violent provinces near the capital Kabul. Petraeus must now be thinking of how many more troops he will need to confront the additional Taliban fighters that will come from Malakand.
Taliban's victory: A curtain raiser to the spring battle
A key factor in the Taliban's revival after being driven from power by US-led forces in 2001 was that from 2004 they established a strong network in Pakistan that was coordinated by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.
A focal point of this was the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, which was stormed in July 2007 by Pakistani security forces to clear it of militants. The network extended into the Swat Valley, streamed into Bajaur Agency and Mohmand Agency from where militants fed the Afghan insurgency in Kunar and Nooristan provinces.
Other flows of militants into South Waziristan and North Waziristan, Kurram Agency and Khyber Agency respectively fed the Afghan insurgency in the provinces of Paktia, Paktika, Khost and Nangarhar provinces.
By this time, Western intelligence had realized that these developments in Pakistan were a major factor behind the "fireworks" in Afghanistan, and Islamabad was told as much. The Pakistanis were also warned that the militants could also launch a revolution in Pakistan. This was a major turning point in the "war on terror" in the South Asian theater.
For the first time, Islamabad felt a chill up its spine and viewed the situation from a different perspective - not as an American war in which its participation was drawn out of compulsion, but as a war necessary to maintain the status quo of its own system. This system was a blend of the country's deep relationship with the US and the perpetuation of the military oligarchy, combined with a particular brand of Islam that could co-exist with this setup.
The attack on the Lal Masjid was the first shot fired in this battle, and its reverberations soon spread to the Swat Valley, South Waziristan and then Bajaur Agency, in effect turning the whole of NWFP into a war theater. A series of military operations in the tribal areas drove the militants from stand-alone sanctuaries into population centers.
In Malakand, which includes the Swat area, the militants are a part of the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban and the vanguard of the Taliban's cause in the region against Western occupation forces in Afghanistan and their ally - Pakistan. They have established their own writ with a parallel system that includes courts, police and even a electric power-distribution network and road construction, and all this is now official in the eyes of Islamabad.
All intelligence indicated that further concentration on military operations in Swat could lead to an expansion of the war theater into Pakistan's non-Pashtun cities, such as Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. The security forces were already stretched and even faced rebellions.
These combined factors culminated in Monday's peace agreement, which is a major defeat for Washington as well as Pakistan, and it could also lead to a major setback for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Afghanistan come spring when hordes of better-trained fighters from Swat pour into Afghanistan.
The Taliban defeat American interests
To tame the militancy, Washington and London devised a plan in 2007, one aspect of which was for the military to take on the militants. At the same time, Pakistan was to move from a military dictatorship under president general Pervez Musharraf to a political government.
This happened in the beginning of last year with the formation of a democratically elected coalition government of secular and liberal parties involving among others the Pakistan People's Party, the Muttehida Quami Movement, the Pashtun sub-nationalist Awami National Party (ANP), the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam and the Pakistan Muslim League-Qaid-i-Azam. It was envisaged that these parties would fully back the US's "war on terror".
Earlier, Washington had brokered a deal between former premier Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf, who was also chief of army staff, under which a National Reconciliation Ordinance was enacted to have all corruption cases against Bhutto and her spouse Asif Ali Zardari dropped. Under this arrangement, later, NWFP was handed over to the ANP, recognized as the most genuine secular political party.
The militants were onto the game. The first shot was the assassination of Bhutto by al-Qaeda in December 2007, which practically turned the whole American plan on its head and created a situation in which Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, an anti-Musharraf party, secured an unprecedented number of seats in parliament, leaving no option but for Musharraf, the most important American ally, to resign. But in time, the secular and liberal political parties in the capital became hostage to the militants.
Another setback for the pro-American forces was the brazen militant attack late last year on Asfandyar Wali, the leader of the ANP, at his home about 20 kilometers from the NWFP capital, Peshawar. He then fled first to Islamabad and later to Europe. Asfandyar had been groomed by the US through many visits to the US.
Asfandyar's departure resulted in half the leadership of the ANP, including the head of their foreign relations committee, Dr Himayun Khan, resigning. Their departure was hastened by dire threats from the Taliban. It was only a matter of time before the ANP's influence in NWFP was severely eroded. Ironically, the ANP, which sided with the Soviets against the Islamic Afghan resistance in the 1980s and put up fierce resistance to the enactment of Islamic laws in the country, has now become the main engine for the enforcement of sharia in NWFP where it technically rules.
On Tuesday, while Asfandyar has chosen to remain silent, his nephew and the chief minister of the province, Hoti, warned the federal government that any obstruction of the deal with the militants would be unacceptable.
Meanwhile, all schools in Swat, including girls' schools, were opened on Tuesday and thousands of people flocked to a cricket stadium to greet Sufi Mohammad, who will soon travel to Matta, a sub-district of Swat, to visit his son-in-law Mullah Fazlullah to try to persuade him to end the insurgency. For the first time in many months, all members of the provincial and federal parliament will visit the Swat Valley.
Pakistan's failure: How it tackled the militancy
During Musharraf's eight years in power, Pakistan was on board with both the US and Saudi Arabia over the "war on terror". This ensured that Pakistan received a steady supply of all sorts of resources, including deferment on oil payments from Saudi Arabia and special aid packages when Pakistan was badly hit by an earthquake in 2005. Washington mostly looked after Pakistan's military aid packages and reimbursement of expenses incurred in the "war on terror".
A few steps taken by Zardari, however, crumbled the setup like a house of cards. Immediately after taking over as president last September, in a very high-handed manner, Pakistan withdrew the hunting privileges of two Saudi princes located in the district of Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Punjab. To add salt to the wound, the facility was given to a rival sheikh from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The action was taken at a time when Pakistan badly needed Saudi oil on deferred terms due to soaring prices, and the UAE was in no position to fill the gap. Islamabad now enjoys very good relations with the UAE - which is unable to help Pakistan - due to the family friendship between the Bhutto family and the UAE's rulers. But Pakistan's relations with Saudi Arabia and its two major allies - Qatar and Bahrain - are at an all-time low because of the insult to the Saudi royal family. (The issue of Zardari's Shi'ite background is a secondary factor.)
Asia Times Online has learned that the newly installed US envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, was impressed in recent talks with the government to learn that chief of army staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani works fully in coordination with the political government and does not intervene in its affairs. The Swat operation is an example: the military immediately stopped action when the government announced the peace deal with the militants. All the same, the Pentagon will be waiting to receive Kiani in Washington soon to discuss why the Pakistan army failed in Swat.
However, Holbrooke was apparently concerned when he interacted with Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani and members of the cabinet. Gillani expressed his fears that the poor economic situation in Pakistan could hamper its efforts in the "war on terror". Holbrooke is said to have asked the premier how much money he would need to revive the economy. "As much as we can get," the premier replied, without giving specifics.
The dynamics of the region have changed once again. Nizam-i-Adal Regulation 2009, which proclaims the enforcement of sharia law in Malakand division, is indeed a written document of Pakistan's defeat in the American-inspired war in NWFP.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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http://www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2008/vol1/html/100779.htm
Southwest Asia
International Narcotics Control Strategy Report
Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs
March 2008
Afghanistan
I. Summary
Narcotics production in Afghanistan hit historic highs in 2007 for the second straight year. Afghanistan grew 93 percent of the world’s opium poppy, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Opium poppy cultivation expanded from 165,000 ha in 2006 to 193,000 ha in 2007, an increase of 17 percent in land under cultivation. Favorable weather conditions and expanded planting in more fertile agricultural areas also boosted Afghanistan’s yield per hectare. UNODC estimates that Afghanistan produced 8,200 MT of opium in 2007, an increase of 2,556 MT over the 5,644 MT produced in 2006. In 2007, opium production was 34 percent above 2006 levels and nearly double the amount produced in 2005. The export value of this year’s illicit opium harvest, $4 billion, made up more than a third of Afghanistan’s combined total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $11.5 billion.
Afghanistan’s drug trade is undercutting efforts to establish a stable democracy with a licit economic free market in the country. The narcotics trade has strong links with the anti-government insurgency, most commonly associated with the Taliban. Narcotics traffickers provide revenue and arms to the Taliban, while the Taliban provides protection to growers and traffickers and keeps the government from interfering with their activities. During recent years, poppy production has soared in provinces where the Taliban is most active. Five relatively higher-income, agriculturally rich provinces along the Pakistan border accounted for 70 percent of Afghanistan’s 2007 poppy production, with Helmand Province alone accounting for 50 percent. At the same time, poppy cultivation declined in many of the poorer, but more secure northern and central provinces, with 13 provinces poppy-free in 2007, compared with only six provinces so designated in 2006. These statistics address the misconception that most farmers grow poppy because they have no economic alternative; poppy is flourishing in the areas with the richest land and best developed agricultural marketing and distribution networks. Nationwide, UNODC estimates that approximately 14.3 percent of Afghans were involved in poppy cultivation in 2007, up from 12.6 percent in 2006.
For the most part, farmers choose to plant opium poppy because it is a profitable, hardy, and low-risk crop. Credit is available, abundant manual labor makes harvesting cheap, and it is easy to market. Economic assistance alone will not overcome the overall narcotics problem in Afghanistan. Some provincial governors have reduced or eliminated cultivation through determined campaigns of persuasion, law enforcement, and eradication. Alternative development opportunities can yield acceptable incomes, but must also be backed by measures to increase risk to those who plant poppy. This risk should fall heaviest on those who plant the most.
The Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GOIRA) is working cooperatively with the international community to implement its current counternarcotics strategy more effectively. Eliminating narcotics cultivation and trafficking in Afghanistan will require a long-term national and international commitment. The Afghan government must take decisive action against poppy cultivation soon to turn back the drug threat before its further growth and consolidation make it even more difficult to defeat. During 2007, President Karzai weighed the possibility of limited aerial spray eradication of opium poppy, but ultimately declined to approve the program.
II. Status of Country
During 2007, Afghanistan increased its position as the world’s largest heroin producing and trafficking country, with 93 percent of world cultivation. Afghanistan is involved in the full narcotics production cycle, from cultivation to finished heroin, with drug traffickers trading in all forms of opiates, including unrefined opium, semi-refined morphine base, and refined heroin. Terrorist violence such as roadside bombs, suicide bombings, and attacks on police rose across the country during 2007. Still, the overall Afghan economy continued its brisk growth rate of more than 10 percent annually over the last five years. Improvements to Afghanistan’s infrastructure since 2002 have created more economic alternatives and enhanced the Afghan government’s ability to combat drug trafficking in some parts of the country, even though improvements such as roads and modern communications can also be exploited by narcotics traffickers. Increased insecurity in Afghanistan’s south, where most poppy was grown, impeded the extension there of governance and law enforcement. Narcotics traffickers also exploited government weakness and corruption. Large parts of Afghanistan’s best agricultural lands in Nangarhar, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Nimruz, Farah, and Helmand provinces suffered from Taliban activity.
III. Country Actions Against Drugs in 2007
Policy Initiatives. In January 2006, the Afghan government inaugurated an eight-pillar National Drug Control Strategy (NDCS) calling for coordinated action in the areas of Public Information, Alternative Livelihoods, Law Enforcement, Criminal Justice, Eradication, Institutional Development, Regional Cooperation, and Demand Reduction. The NDCS approach is similar to U.S. and UK counternarcotics strategies for Afghanistan. While the NDCS is generally viewed as a sound strategy, the Afghan government failed in 2006 and 2007 to implement it in ways that could stop the growth of the country’s narcotics problem. The Ministry of Counter Narcotics, charged with directing implementation of the NDCS, was unable to effectively influence other government agencies. Counter Narcotics Minister, Habibullah Qaderi, resigned in July 2007 for personal reasons; the delay in appointing a successor struck some observers as indicative of the Afghan government’s lack of commitment to the fight against narcotics.
Following UNODC’s announcement of poppy cultivation figures in August 2007, President Karzai convened the second annual national counternarcotics conference. This meeting brought together representatives from key Afghan government Ministries, governors from the 17 largest poppy producing provinces, tribal elders, police chiefs, religious leaders, and members of the international community. Afterward, the Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MCN) held a pre-planting season planning session for the 17 governors in attendance. The Afghan government instructed provincial and district leaders to launch pre-planting information campaigns to reduce poppy cultivation. The response from governors was uneven. Some governors (notably those in Balkh, Nangarhar, and Badakhshan) developed vigorous anti-poppy campaigns, while others did little to discourage poppy cultivation. The acting Minister of Counter Narcotics led government delegations to key narcotics-producing provinces to hold anti-narcotics shuras or community councils.
In mid 2007, the Afghan government’s Policy Advisory Group (PAG) added counternarcotics as one of its key policy pillars. The PAG was formed in late 2006 by the Afghan Government, in cooperation with the U.S., UK, Canada, the Netherlands, NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), to deal with critical issues in the unstable southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Farah, Zabol, Nimroz, and Uruzgan. In October 2007, the Afghan government agreed in the PAG to a 50,000 hectare national eradication target for 2008, 25 percent of the expected crop. The Afghan government also agreed to arrest high-level traffickers and provide one to two battalions (140-280 personnel) of Afghan National Army forces as protection for police eradication operations. Concerned that his forces would be stretched too thin, the Minister of Defense raised objections to their deployment to provide force protection to poppy eradicators. To date, the situation remains unresolved.
In November 2007, President Karzai issued an edict announcing the 2008 terms of the Good Performers Initiative (GPI), a U.S.-UK-funded initiative started in 2006 to reward provinces for successful counternarcotics performance. On the basis of UNODC poppy cultivation estimates to be released in August 2008, GPI will fund development projects proposed by governors of poppy-free provinces, provinces that reduce their poppy crop by more than 10 percent, and provinces that make a good faith effort to reduce poppy but fail to meet other GPI criteria. To date, the U.S. government has agreed to contribute $35 million to the GPI, while the UK has promised $6.5 million.
The Counter Narcotics Trust Fund (CNTF), in which some GPI funds are deposited, frustrated governors with delays in approving and implementing 2007 GPI projects. As of November 2007, CNTF had disbursed just $4.1 million of $10 million deposited a year earlier for GPI projects. Under U.S. and UK pressure, CNTF undertook to reform its grant-administration procedure in the fall of 2007. In order to promote faster disbursal of smaller GPI grants and provide additional incentives to governors, the U.S. Embassy is establishing a process by which it can directly disburse up to $50,000 for 2008 GPI projects.
The U.S.-funded Afghan government Poppy Elimination Program (PEP) developed and disseminated counternarcotics information to farmers and the general public in seven major poppy-growing provinces. In addition to organizing local shuras during pre-planting season, the provincial PEP teams worked to build public support for eradication activities undertaken by authorities.
Justice Reform. The Afghan government’s Criminal Justice Task Force (CJTF), with assistance from the U.S., UK and other donors, uses modern investigative techniques to investigate and prosecute narcotics traffickers under the December 2005 Counter Narcotics Law. Narcotics cases are tried before the Counter Narcotics Tribunal (CNT), which has exclusive national jurisdiction over mid- and high-level narcotics cases in Afghanistan. Under the new law, all drug cases that reach certain thresholds must be prosecuted by the CJTF before the CNT. The thresholds are possession of two kg of heroin, ten kg of opium, and 50 kg of hashish. Secure facilities, including offices, courtrooms, and a detention facility, for the CJTF and CNT will be opened at the Counternarcotics Justice Center (CNJC), constructed by the U.S. government in early 2008.
The Afghan government, with assistance from the U.S. and UNODC, refurbished a section of the Pol-i-Charkhi prison to house 100 maximum-security narcotics convicts. This prison is Afghanistan’s largest and is the site of frequent disturbances and unrest due to poor conditions, poor prison management, and lack of resources. Through the Corrections System Support Program (CSSP), the United States is helping to improve the corrections system with training, capacity-building, and infrastructure. The CSSP works closely with the U.S.-funded Justice Sector Support Program (JSSP), which has over 60 U.S. and Afghan justice advisors in Kabul and four provinces providing training, mentoring, and capacity-building for Afghanistan’s criminal justice system.
Law Enforcement Efforts. Eradication efforts, though stronger in 2007 than 2006, failed to keep pace with expanded poppy cultivation. Without an aerial eradication program, poppy reduction was limited to labor-intensive manual eradication efforts in medium to high threat areas. According to UNODC estimates, 19,047 ha were eradicated in 2007 compared to 15,300 ha in 2006. Governor-led eradication (GLE) accounted for 15,898 ha, and the Poppy Eradication Force (PEF), a U.S.-supported, centrally-deployed police unit specifically trained and equipped for eradication activities, eradicated another 3,149 ha of poppy in Helmand, Uruzgan, and Takhar provinces. The percent of the poppy crop eradicated increased from 8.9 percent of planted poppy in 2006 to 9.9 percent in 2007. For the most part, both GLE and PEF eradication were arranged through negotiations with poppy-growing communities, a practice that reduced eradication’s deterrent effect. Even so, violent resistance to manual ground-based eradication increased in 2007, resulting in 17 fatalities.
Narcotics law enforcement was hampered by corruption and incompetence within the justice system as well as the absence of governance in large sections of the country. Although narcotics make up one-third of Afghanistan’s GDP, no major drug traffickers have been arrested and convicted in Afghanistan since 2006. In addition, too few high-level drug traffickers served terms in Afghanistan’s prisons during 2007. However, from January to October 2007, the CJTF prosecuted 409 lower-level cases.
In 2003, the Ministry of Interior (MOI) established the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan (CNPA), comprised of investigation, intelligence, and interdiction units. At the end of 2006, the CNPA had approximately 1,500 of its 2,900 authorized staff, including the 500-member PEF. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) works closely with the CNPA to offer training, mentoring, and investigative assistance in order to develop MOI capacity.
The DEA operates permanently assigned personnel and the Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Teams (FAST) in Afghanistan. The FAST teams, which consist of eight special agents, one intelligence analyst, and one supervisor, operate in Afghanistan on 120-day rotations and deploy around the country with the Afghan National Interdiction Unit (NIU). During 2007, FAST and the NIU deployed to Herat, Farah, Helmand, Kandahar, Kunduz, and Nangarhar Provinces to conduct operations.
From September 2006 through September 2007, the CNPA reported the following seizures: 4,249 kg of heroin, 617 kg of morphine base, 39,304 kg of opium, and 71,078 kg of hashish. During the same period, the CNPA also destroyed 50 drug labs. The CNPA seized 37,509 kg of solid precursor chemicals and 33,008 liters of liquid precursors. The CNPA also reported 760 arrests for trafficking under the provisions of the Afghan Counter Narcotics law where possession of 2 kg of heroin (or morphine base), 10 kg of opium, or 50 kg of hashish mandates automatic jurisdiction for the CNT.
During 2007, the Afghan government, with DEA support, created two vetted units, the Sensitive Investigative Unit (SIU) and the Technical Investigative Unit (TIU), to investigate high-value targets. They will gather evidence through means authorized under Afghanistan’s Counter Narcotics Law and approved through the Afghan legal system. Personnel in these units were recruited from a wide variety of Afghan law enforcement agencies and had to pass rigorous examinations. The SIU was fully functional by the end of 2007, while the TIU will begin its work in 2008.
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The SIU and TIU will carry on their work in a secure facility within the new National Interdiction Unit (NIU) base that opened in 2007. The Afghan government established the NIU in 2004 with DEA assistance. The NIU currently consists of 181 members, with an authorized strength 216. NIU officers receive a substantial amount of tactical training. The aim of this program is to have SIU and TIU investigations culminate in the issuance of arrest and search warrants executed by the NIU. The investigations conducted by the SIU and NIU with DEA assistance will be prosecuted at the Counter Narcotics Tribunal through the Criminal Justice Task Force (CJTF), which consists of Afghan prosecutors and investigators mentored by experienced Assistant U.S. Attorneys and U.S. Department of Justice Senior Trial Attorneys. The CJTF mentors have also been working with the Afghan authorities to create a formal legal process to gain authority for controlled deliveries of narcotics to trafficking suspects.
Haji Baz Mohammad, a major Afghan trafficker, was extradited to the United States in October 2005. In July 2006, he pled guilty to conspiracy to import heroin into the U.S. and in October 2007 was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for running an international narcotics-trafficking organization that imported millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs into the United States. Similar to the indictment of Haji Bashir Noorzai, an Afghan drug kingpin who was indicted and then arrested in the United States in 2005, Baz Mohammad’s indictment also alleged that he was closely aligned with the Taliban.
During 2007, two drug traffickers with links to the insurgency volunteered to be transported from Afghanistan to stand trial in the United States. The first, Mohammad Essa, was a key heroin distributor for the Haji Baz Mohammad network in the United States. Essa had fled the United States when Baz Mohammad was sent to stand trial in New York. In December 2006, he was apprehended in Kandahar Province by the U.S. military, during a battle with insurgents, and he was voluntarily transferred to the United States in April 2007. The second was Khan Mohammad, who was a supporter of the insurgency and arrested in Nangarhar Province in October 2006. He was indicted for selling opium and heroin to CNPA/NIU informants, knowing that the drugs were destined for the United States. He agreed to return to the United States for trial and was transferred to U.S. authorities in November 2007 and will stand trial in Washington, D.C.
Corruption. Although the illicit production or distribution of narcotic or psychotropic drugs and other controlled substances and the laundering of proceeds from illegal drug transactions are illegal, many Afghan government officials are believed to profit from the drug trade. Narcotics-related corruption is particularly pervasive at the provincial and district levels of government. Corrupt practices range from facilitating drug activities to benefiting from revenue streams that the drug trade produces.
On June 28, 2007, five Afghan Border Police officers were arrested while transporting 123.5 kg of heroin from Nangarhar to Takhar Province. The heroin was seized outside Kabul. At the time, the officers were transporting the heroin in a Border Police truck. The officers worked for Border Police Commander Haji Zahir, also alleged to be a drug trafficker. Defendants in the case included his personal body guard and his nephew, who acts as his personal secretary. Though this seizure did not result in Zahir’s arrest, he was suspended from his position as commander in Takhar Province. The investigation into his involvement with this shipment continues.
Since Attorney General Sabit’s appointment in September 2006, he has become an anti-corruption activist, dismissing prosecutors across the country for corruption and pursuing corruption investigations against politically sensitive targets. A new reform-oriented Supreme Court Justice, Abdul Salam Azimi, was also appointed by President Karzai in August 2006. Azimi was asked by President Karzai to lead a completely Afghan-driven interagency commission to develop a government-wide anti-corruption strategy, the report of which is expected to be released in 2008.
Agreements and Treaties. Afghanistan is a party to the 1988 UN Drug Convention, the 1971 UN Convention, and the 1961 UN Single Convention on Psychotropic Substances. Afghanistan is also a party to the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime. Afghanistan has signed, but has not yet ratified, the UN Convention Against Corruption. The Afghan government has no formal extradition or legal assistance arrangements with the United States, but American mentors are working with the Criminal Justice Task Force to help draft such a law. The 2005 Afghan Counter Narcotics law, however, allows the extradition of drug offenders under the 1988 UN Drug Convention. Haji Baz Muhammad, mentioned above, was extradited to the United States under the authority of the 1988 UN Drug Convention in October 2005. In 2006, however, a similar effort to extradite Misri Khan, a major trafficker, and his associates met with a request from President Karzai that the defendants first stand trial at Afghanistan’s Counter Narcotics Tribunal, which subsequently sentenced the defendants to 17 years in prison. The defendants are still incarcerated in Afghanistan as of December 2007.
Illicit Cultivation/Production. Based on UNODC data, the number of hectares under poppy cultivation in Afghanistan increased 17 percent, from 165,000 ha in 2006 to 193,000 in 2007. Resulting opium production reached a record 8,200 MT. The opium yield per hectare was the highest in five years, increasing from 37 kg/ha in 2006 to 42.5 kg/ha in 2007. UNODC attributed the high yield to ideal weather conditions, even though floods in Uruzgan moderated intensive poppy cultivation in that province. The number of people involved in opium cultivation increased in 2007 from 2.9 million to 3.3 million. According to UNODC estimates, 14.3 percent of Afghans were involved in opium cultivation during 2007. Considered in terms of its estimated $4 billion illicit export value, opium represented about one-third of Afghanistan’s total GDP (licit and illicit). On the other hand, the portion of narcotics money actually received by farmers was a small share of the whole: opium poppy’s $1 billion farm-gate value accounted for only 11 percent of total licit and illicit GDP.
Poppy is a hardy, low risk crop. High profits, access to land and credit, and trafficker-facilitated access to illicit markets outside of Afghanistan make poppy immensely attractive to farmers in Afghanistan’s circumstances. However, the reduction of poppy cultivation in the poorer northern and central provinces and the explosion of poppy cultivation in agriculturally rich areas such as Helmand, Kandahar, and Nangarhar, where poppy has displaced wheat and other legitimate crops, disproves the notion that most farmers grow poppy because they have no viable alternatives. In its 2007 Opium Survey for Afghanistan, UNODC stated “opium cultivation is no longer associated with poverty and is closely linked to the insurgency.”
Thirteen of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces were poppy-free in 2007. This compares favorably to the six provinces that were declared poppy free in 2006. In Badakhshan, according to UNODC, the governor combined persuasion and eradication to slash cultivation from 13,056 ha in 2006 to 3,642 ha in 2007. Governor-led eradication cut opium production in Balkh from 10,037 ha in 2006 to zero in 2007. Many farmers in Balkh province reverted to planting marijuana, a traditional crop in Balkh. UNODC estimated that 70,000 ha of marijuana were cultivated country-wide in 2007, an increase of 20,000 ha over 2006.
The eastern province of Nangarhar demonstrated the historic volatility of Afghan poppy cultivation with a 285 percent jump in area planted in 2007 to 18,739 ha, placing the province second to Helmand in total cultivation. Nangarhar farmers had previously responded to a strong anti-narcotics campaign by the governor by virtually ceasing to grow poppy altogether in 2005. This fluctuating trend continued in fall and winter 2007, when the new governor, Gul Agha Sherzai, pursued his own pre-planting and eradication campaign, which is anticipated to cause a substantial drop in cultivation in 2008.
Afghanistan’s poppy free provinces are in the relatively secure central and northern parts of the country, while poppy cultivation has exploded where the insurgency is strong, particularly in the south and southwest. The United States, UK, UNODC, ISAF and other major international stakeholders now acknowledge that a symbiotic relationship exists between the insurgency and narcotics trafficking in Afghanistan. The Taliban taxes poppy farmers to fund the insurgency. Traffickers provide weapons, funding, and personnel to the insurgency in exchange for the protection of drug trade routes, poppy fields, and members of their organizations. For their part, narcotics traffickers thrive in the insecurity and absence of governance in areas where the Taliban is active. The nexus between militants and narcotics trafficking was vividly illustrated when the Taliban gained control in February 2007 of the Musa Qala district in northern Helmand. When Afghan and coalition troops retook the district nine months later, they found that Taliban governance had deliberately sheltered a flourishing narcotics industry. The full production cycle, from raw opium to finished heroin, was traded in Musa Qala’s open narcotics markets, benefiting local traffickers and Taliban tax-collectors alike.
The southern province of Helmand province was in a class of its own in 2007, growing 53 percent of Afghanistan’s poppy crop with 102,770 ha under cultivation. Helmand’s 2007 poppy crop increased 48 percent over 2006. Poppy cultivation has quadrupled in Helmand since 2005 and has almost entirely taken over a once prosperous agricultural region growing legal crops. Helmand opium production is organized on a large scale, employing thousands of seasonal migrant laborers and supporting cultivation with systems of credit and distribution. Massive amounts of development assistance to Helmand have not held back the explosion of poppy cultivation and trafficking there. As the recipient of $270 million in FY2007 alone, if Helmand were an independent country, it would be the sixth largest recipient of bilateral USAID development assistance in the world.
Drug Flow/Transit. Drug traffickers and financiers lend money to Afghan farmers in order to promote drug cultivation in the country. Traffickers buy the farmers’ crops at previously set prices or accept repayment of loans with deliveries of raw opium. In many provinces, opium markets exist under the control of regional warlords who also control the illicit arms trade and other criminal activities, including trafficking in persons. Traders sell to the highest bidder in these markets with little fear of legal consequences, and gangsters and insurgent groups tax the trade.
Drug labs operating within Afghanistan process an increasingly large portion of the country’s raw opium into heroin and morphine base. This process reduces the bulk of raw opium about one-tenth, which facilitates its movement to markets in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East with transit routes through Iran, Pakistan, and Central Asia. Opiates are transported to Turkey, Russia, and the rest of Europe by organized criminal groups that are often organized along regional and ethnic kinship lines. Pakistani nationals play a prominent role in all aspects of the drug trade along the Afghan/Pakistan border.
Precursor chemicals used in heroin production must be imported into Afghanistan. Limited police and administrative capacity hampered efforts to interdict precursor substances and processing equipment. Afghan law requires the tracking of precursor substances, but the MCN has failed to create an active registry to record data. Progress in this regard requires the establishment of new laws, a system for distinguishing between licit and potentially illicit uses of dual-use chemicals, and a specialized police force to enforce the new system. UNODC has established a five-man unit at CNPA that is charged with tracking precursor chemicals.
Domestic Programs/Demand Reduction. The Afghan government acknowledges a growing domestic drug abuse problem, particularly opium and increasingly heroin. In 2005, Afghanistan’s first nationwide survey on drug use was conducted in cooperation with UNODC. This survey estimated that Afghanistan had 920,000 drug users, including 150,000 users of opium and 50,000 heroin addicts, with 7,000 intravenous users.
The NDCS includes rehabilitation and demand reduction programs for drug abusers. Given Afghanistan’s shortage of general medical services, however, the government can only devote minimal resources to these programs. To address demand reduction needs, the UK and Germany have funded specific demand reduction and rehabilitation programs. For its part, the United States is funding five, 20-bed residential drug treatment centers in Afghanistan, including the only residential facility in the country dedicated to serving female addicts. In 2007, the United States also supported 26 mosque-based drug education programs, five drug prevention/life skills pilot programs in Afghan schools, drug prevention public awareness programs, and a research study on the effects of second-hand opium smoke.
IV. U.S. Policy Initiatives and Programs
Bilateral Cooperation/The Road Ahead. In 2007, the United States enhanced its five pillar Afghanistan counternarcotics strategy, which calls for decisive action in the near term and identifies a more extensive array of tactics in all sectors, including:
Use public information campaigns to win support for the Afghan government’s counternarcotics program. The U.S. Embassy will increase support for radio, print media, and person-to-person outreach campaigns. Particular emphasis will be placed on grassroots, person-to-person community outreach activities through the Multiplying Messengers and PEP programs, which engage local community, religious, and tribal leaders on counternarcotics issues.
Attack the problem at the provincial level. The U.S. expanded the Good Performer’s Initiative in 2007 to provide greater incentives to governors, including those who succeed in keeping their provinces poppy-free. Provincial counternarcotics planning will be integrated with military planning at local commands in key provinces such as Helmand and Nangarhar.
Engage in a stronger eradication campaign. Until such time as the Government of Afghanistan approves more efficient and safe methods of eradication, the United States will continue to support the centrally-led PEF program, which conducts non-negotiated eradication to increase the impact of eradication by targeting large landowners and by encouraging governors to eradicate where it will have the greatest deterrent impact.
Develop alternative sources of income to poppy in rural areas. USAID continued its comprehensive Alternative Development Program (AD), which is providing $228,950,000 for AD projects in the major opium cultivation areas of Afghanistan. Starting in late 2006, USAID implemented a rural finance program that provides credit to farmers and small- and medium-sized enterprises in areas where financial services were previously unavailable.
Accelerate narcotics-related investigations, arrests, prosecutions, and incarcerations. In keeping with the overall justice sector strategy pursued jointly by Afghanistan, the United States, and international partners, the United States will expand its training efforts in Afghanistan for provincial and district-level prosecutors during 2008.
Destroy drug labs and stockpiles. The NIU and the U.K.-sponsored Afghan Special Narcotics Force (ASNF), in cooperation with the DEA, will target drug labs and seize drug stockpiles.
Dismantle drug trafficking/refining networks. DEA will work closely with the CNPA, NIU, and ASNF in pursuing criminal investigations and disrupting the narcotics trade.
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GM: Any chance you could be persuaded to give a summary of all that, including your interpretation of the meaning of what was said there? :-)
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Pakistan: Negotiating Away the Writ of the State
Stratfor Today » February 17, 2009 | 1515 GMT
TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images
A delegation from an Islamist militant movement leaves after talks with
Pakistani officials in Peshawar
Summary
Provincial authorities in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province announced
Feb. 16 that they will implement a new Shariah-based regulation as part of a
deal with Pashtun jihadist forces in the Swat region to end the insurgency
there. This move likely will not achieve the authorities' desired results,
due to disagreements among Pakistan's various stakeholders regarding this
initiative and the Taliban's drive to expand their sphere of operations in
Pakistan. Not only will the process further erode the writ of the Pakistani
state it will also undermine U.S. interests in neighboring Afghanistan.
Analysis
The provincial government of the left-leaning secular Pashtun nationalist
Awami National Party in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP)
announced Feb. 16 that it reached an agreement with Maulana Sufi Muhammad,
the founder of the Islamist militant group
Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM), or Movement for the Enforcement
of Shariah, to end the jihadist insurgency in the area. In exchange for
peace, the government has agreed to implement Shariah-based regulations in a
wide area of the province formerly known as the Malakand Division and is
centered around the restive Swat region. Militants in the Swat region called
a 10-day cease-fire the night before talks with the government, and in
another gesture of goodwill released a Chinese engineer on Feb. 14,
kidnapped five months earlier. Maulana Sufi is now expected to convene a
meeting of the TNSM's leadership council to get the movement to agree to end
the fighting.
The TNSM is one of the two largest Pashtun jihadist groups in Pakistan that
fall under the Taliban umbrella and have ties to al Qaeda. The Feb. 16 deal
is the latest in a string of peace initiatives attempted over the past
several months to contain the insurgency, given Pakistan's inability to use
force to settle the issue.
Getting the militants to end the fighting is not the only complication in
carrying out this preliminary peace deal (which has no set time frame).
There are disagreements within the government at various levels about the
idea of bending to the Taliban's demands. While NWFP Chief Minister Amir
Haider Khan Hoti has called for support for his government's move to
implement the Shariah-based laws - the Nizam-i-Adl (Justice System)
Regulations-2009 - and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has
expressed for the negotiated settlement, Pakistani President Asif Ali
Zardari said he would not endorse the new deal unless it was clear that the
insurgency had been brought to an end.
Furthermore, there are growing rifts between the prime minister and
president (both from the ruling Pakistan People's Party), with the army
reportedly backing Gilani to contain Zardari. But even before the central
government makes a decision on the peace deal, the provincial government
must craft the new legislation. This presents another world of problems,
since there are already several existing Shariah laws on the books as a
result of several decades' worth of attempts to deal with the problem of a
non-functioning legal and judicial system. The TNSM's rise was due largely
in part to its ability to exploit the chaotic situation with law and order
in the area and the ultraconservative religious local culture.
(click image to enlarge)
Assuming that the negotiated area does get a new set of religious laws -
which is not likely - the move will not lead to the containment of the
jihadist insurgency. If anything, the government's weak negotiating position
will only consolidate the Taliban's influence in the region - not only in
Swat, but in the area covered by the deal, including at least the districts
of Malakand, Dir, Swat, Shangla and Buner. This is not the Federally
Administered Tribal Area (FATA) - the historically autonomous small region
straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border - but Pakistan proper, and these
districts form a major sub-set of the northern part of the NWFP. This
indicates just how far things have deteriorated.
With the NWFP's southern districts along the tribal badlands also
experiencing a creeping Talibanization, a Pakistani Taliban stronghold in
the north could very well translate into the province falling to the Taliban
in the not too distant future. Put differently, the FATA, NWFP and even the
northwestern part of Balochistan (the southwestern province's Pashtun
corridor) could exhibit Afghanistan-like conditions where Pakistani security
forces would have to struggle harder to impose the waning writ of the state.
Clearly, this potential scenario has massive implications for the new U.S.
strategy for Afghanistan. Washington, already alarmed at Pakistan's
inability and/or unwillingness to contain the jihadist threat, has
intensified its unilateral air strikes inside Pakistan's tribal belt. The
largest such attacks took place Feb. 14, and one occurred Feb. 16 in Kurram
agency - an area where U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle attacks have not
happened before. Should the situation continue to deteriorate as a result of
this peacemaking, U.S. forces could be forced to strike deeper into Pakistan
proper in the NWFP and Balochistan provinces where both al Qaeda and Taliban
high-value targets are likely located. Furthermore, the Feb. 16 deal raises
more doubts about the viability of the NATO supply route that runs from
Peshawar to the Khyber Pass.
More importantly, this peace deal offers the Obama administration a glimpse
of what to expect as it moves toward a political settlement with Taliban
forces in Afghanistan. Should the deal with the militants in Pakistan lead
to the establishment of a Taliban "emirate" of sorts centered in Swat, it
will only further embolden the Afghan Taliban as they push for a comeback.
And a return of the Taliban to the corridors of power in Afghanistan could
prove detrimental to the security of Pakistan.
This is ironic considering that the Pakistani state supports the return of a
Taliban-dominated regime in Kabul. In the past, such a regime served
Pakistani national security interests . But with the Talibanization of the
Pakistani northwest - especially in the last two years - the Pakistanis have
lost control of their own territory and are not in a position to regain
influence in Afghanistan. Therefore, if the United States allows Pakistan to
become involved in Washington's negotiations with the Taliban, Islamabad
will not be seizing an opportunity to project power beyond its borders;
rather, it will be looking to protect itself from a threat that is both
internal and external.
Between the Pakistanis playing defense and the United States struggling to
craft a strategy for Afghanistan, the outlook is very bleak for Southwest
Asia.
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Second post of the AM:
I've yet to hear what seems to be a coherent suggestion to Afpakia, though I am willing to consider outside the box variables which result in the collapse of Pakistan as such, but I gotta say this RP piece has its appeal.
====================
PAKISTAN'S US POWS
By RALPH PETERS , NY Post
February 17, 2009 --
THE 36,000 US troops in Afghanistan are prisoners of war. They're still armed and fighting. But their fate lies in Pakistan's hands, not ours.
It's time to rethink our nonstrategy in Kabul. We got our initial actions right in the autumn of 2001, slaughtering terrorists, toppling the Taliban and empowering would-be allies. But we've been getting it wrong every year since.
We're now on the verge of doubling our troop commitment to a mismanaged war that lacks sane goals and teeters toward inanity. And we're putting our troops at the mercy of one of the world's most-corrupt states - Pakistan - which has cut a deal with extremists to enforce Sharia law a short drive from the capital.
After taking apart al Qaeda's base network and punishing the Taliban, we should have left the smoking ruins. This should have been a classic punitive expedition: We're not obliged to rehabilitate foreign murderers.
As for those who exclaim that "We would have had to go back!" - well, so what? Had we needed to hammer Afghanistan again in 2007 or 2008, that still would've been cheaper in blood (ours and the Afghans') and treasure than trying to build a "rule of law" state where no real state ever existed.
Staying left us with criminally vulnerable logistics - ever the bane of campaigns in the region. The Brits and the Soviets both learned the hard way that superior fighting skills don't suffice in Afghanistan: You need dependable, redundant supply lines.
But we rely on a long, imperiled land route through Pakistan for up to 80 percent of our supplies - a route that Pakistan can close at any time.
And the Pakistanis have closed it, just to make a point.
I'm convinced that the recent flurry of successful attacks on supply yards in Peshawar and along the Khyber Pass route were tacitly - if not actively - approved by the Pakistani intelligence service (the ISI) and the military.
Previous attacks were rare and unsuccessful. Suddenly, in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, our trucks were burning. The Pakistanis were making the point that we're at their mercy: They wanted us to rein in a (rightly) outraged India.
They also want the new US administration to multiply foreign-aid bribes. (There isn't enough cash left in the country for Pakistan's elite to steal.)
Our response? We're paying up. Plus, dumber than dirt, we're turning to the Russians for an alternate supply line - after they bullied the Kyrgyz government into ending our access to a vital airbase north of the Afghan border.
But the central problem is the blind-alley mission. We kidded ourselves that we could conjure up a functioning rule-of-law state in the obstinately lawless territory known as Afghanistan, whose various ethnic groups hate each other unto death.
Instead of setting a realistic goal - mortally punishing our enemies - we decided to create a model democracy in a territory that hasn't reached the sophistication of medieval Europe.
And our own politics only complicate the mess. Since Iraq was "Bush's war," the American left rejected it out of hand. For Democrats seeking to prove they're tough on terror, Afghanistan became the "good war" by default.
Yet partial success in Iraq could spark positive change across the Middle East. Success in Afghanistan - whatever that is - changes nothing. Iraq is the old, evocative heart of Arab civilization. Afghanistan is history's black hole.
But President Obama has made Afghanistan his baby to show that he's strong on security.
What's the end-state, Mr. President? How do we get there? How do you solve the greater Pakistan problem?
By sending another 30,000 US hostages in uniform? De- fine the mission - what, specifically, are they sup- posed to accomplish?
God knows, every decent American should want this ragamuffin surge to succeed - but it's the military equivalent of the financial bailout package: Just throw more resources at a problem and hope something works.
Personally, I'm sick of seeing our troops used as a substitute for intelligent policies - while every wonk in Washington drones on about there being no military solution to war, for God's sake.
No military solution? Great. Bring the troops home and deploy more diplomats, contractors and accountants. See how long they survive.
It's grimly entertaining to observe how American leftists, who shrieked that we should "support the troops, bring them home" while Iraq was all the rage, won't say "Boo!" about Obama's war of choice. (They're still not enlisting, either.)
Our botched deployment to Afghanistan as warriors who morphed into squatters defies military logic, history and common sense. The Brits learned - finally - that you deal with Afghan problems by occasionally hammering Afghans, then leaving them to sort out their own mess. You kill the guilty and leave.
Not us. We're going to build Disneyworld on the Kabul River.
Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of "Looking for Trouble."
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Crafty,
Mostly this appears to be boilerplate drug eradication procedure.
This caught my attention:
During 2007, President Karzai weighed the possibility of limited aerial spray eradication of opium poppy, but ultimately declined to approve the program.
My jaded, cynical nature makes me wonder who got paid and how much for this policy decision. It is my understanding that opium poppies grow like weeds in Afghanistan, requiring very little in the way of cultivation.
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"Mostly this appears to be boilerplate drug eradication procedure."
Exactly what my doggy nose was telling me; hence my request for a summary :lol:
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This is a few days old
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...,1099409.story
Quote:
Predator drones flown from base in Pakistan, U.S. lawmaker says
Sen. Feinstein's surprise disclosure likely to complicate joint campaign against Taliban militants
Greg Miller | Washington Bureau
7:06 PM CST, February 12, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. - A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an airbase inside that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counterterrorism collaboration with the United States.
The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.
At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise at Pakistani opposition to the ongoing campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan's northwest border.
"As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base," she said of the planes.
The basing of the pilotless aircraft in Pakistan suggests a much deeper relationship with the United States on counterterrorism matters than has been publicly acknowledged. Such an arrangement would be at odds with protests lodged by officials in Islamabad and could inflame anti-American sentiment in the country.
The CIA declined to comment, but former U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, confirmed that Feinstein's account was accurate.
Phil LaVelle, a spokesman for Feinstein, said her comment was based solely on previous news reports that Predators were operated from bases near Islamabad.
"We strongly object to Sen. Feinstein's remarks being characterized as anything other than a reference" to a article that appeared last March in the Washington Post, LaVelle said. Feinstein did not refer to newspaper accounts during the hearing.
Many in counterterrorism experts have assumed that the aircraft were operated from U.S. military installations in Afghanistan, and remotely piloted from locations in the United States. Experts said the disclosure could create political problems for the fledgling government in Islamabad.
"If accurate, what this says is that Pakistani involvement, or at least acquiescence, has been much more extensive than has previously been known," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "It puts the Pakistani government in a far more difficult position [in terms of] its credibility with its own people. Unfortunately it also has the potential to threaten Pakistani-American relations."
Feinstein's disclosure came during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair on the nation's security threats. Blair did not respond directly to Feinstein's remark, except to say that Pakistan is "sorting out" its cooperation with the United States.
Pakistani officials have long denied that they ever granted the United States permission to fly the Predator planes over Pakistani territory, let alone to operate the aircraft from within the country.
The new civilian leadership has gone to significant lengths to distance itself from the Predator strikes, which are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, in part because they are widely reported to kill civilians as well as militants.
The Pakistani government regularly lodges diplomatic protests against the strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, and officials said the subject was raised with Richard C. Holbrooke, a newly appointed U.S. envoy to the region, who completed his first visit to the country on Thursday.
Nevertheless, most Pakistanis believe the civilian leadership has continued former President Pervez Musharraf's policy giving the United States tacit permission to carry out the strikes.
The CIA has been working to step up its presence in Pakistan in recent years. The CIA has deployed as many as 200 people to Pakistan, one of its largest overseas operations outside of Iraq, current and former agency officials have estimated. That contingent works alongside other U.S. operatives who specialize in electronic communications and spy satellites.
The use of Predator planes armed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles has emerged as perhaps the important U.S. tool in its ongoing efforts to attack Al Qaeda in its sanctuary in Pakistan's tribal belt. Last month, a New Year's Day strike killed two senior Al Qaeda operatives who were suspected of involvement in the bombing of Islamabad's Marriott They were among at least eight senior Al Qaeda figures reportedly killed in Predator strikes over the past seven months as part of a stepped-up missile campaign that U.S. intelligence officials have characterized as major success against Al Qaeda.
In his prepared testimony Thursday, Blair said that Al Qaeda has "lost significant parts of its command structure since 2008 in a succession of blows as damaging to the group as any since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001."
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Just found these two links on Afghasnistan through an Executive Protection blog. Mostly observations on security and military embeds.
Good reads from not the usual blogging suspects:
http://www.battlefieldtourist.com/content/ (http://www.battlefieldtourist.com/content/)
http://blog.freerangeinternational.com/ (http://blog.freerangeinternational.com/)
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:? :? :?...absolutely mind boggling...
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MINGORA, Pakistan, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Taliban fighters have agreed to a "permanent ceasefire" in Pakistan's northwestern valley of Swat, a senior government official said on Saturday.
On Friday, the militants' commander Maulana Fazlullah met his father-in-law, radical cleric Maulana Sufi Mohammad who was freed by the government to negotiate peace.
"They have made a commitment that they will observe a permanent ceasefire and we'll do the same," Syed Mohammad Javed, the commissioner of Malakand, a region of Northwest Frontier Province, told reporters after meeting elders. (Reporting by Junaid Khan; Writing by Kamran Haider)
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Somebody is getting paid, Somebody is scared, or the TB is finally coming around and ready to shape up :-P
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Who can tell me what "hudna" means?
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hudna = quiet or truce
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A truce, until muslims are strong enough to defeat those they made a truce with. Then the truce is ended.
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This sums it up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudna
and according to this site, it's "a tactical cease-fire that allows the Arabs to rebuild their terrorist infrastructure in order to be more effective when the "cease-fire" is called off."
http://www.omdurman.org/hudna.html
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In islam, there is no concept of "let's live in peace with non-muslims forever". There is only "Smite unbelivers until they submit" or make a hudna until you can "smite the unbelivers until they submit".
“I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them.” Qur'an 8:12.
“But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem.” Qur'an 9:5.
“And an announcement from Allah and His Messenger, to the people (assembled) on the day of the Great Pilgrimage- that Allah and His Messenger dissolve (treaty) obligations with the Pagans....grievous penalty to those who reject Faith.” Qur'an 9:3.
“Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame....” Qur'an 9:14.
“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” Qur'an 9:29.
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It's not too hard to understand the religious fervor that comes from this region when an estimated 11 million Afghans over the age of 15 can't read or write. In rural areas, where three-fourths of all Afghans live, 90 percent of the women and over 60 percent of the men are illiterate and the only book available is the Qur'an. Afghans are simple thinking people due to the fact that there is little exposure to outside influences. Free thinking is not encouraged. The word of the prophet is truth because it has been truth handed down from one generation to the next for 1500 years. Their faith is the only thing these people are sure of. Give them about 500 more years in this part of the world and I'm sure they'll be ok.
Sounds like Europe around 1100 about when the crusades kicked off. The crusades lasted a couple of hundred years. The inquisitions began around 1200. The Spanish inquisition kicked off in the late 1400s and didn't really end until the 1800s. The bible was probably the only book around for a lot of people then. Look at all the madness caused by the Christians back then.
Illiteracy is a MoFo.
The only "People of the Book" that don't act crazy and start trouble are the Jews. Look at the Israelis, they never really start a fight, but they sure as hell can finish them.
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Keep in mind that the crusades only kicked off after about 300 years of jihad being waged against europe.
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Woof,
Pakistan is a powder keg. The new government is not only unable to deal with the tribal regions, it's also beginning to lose control over the numerous radical groups that seem to be growing in power. The Mumbai attacks has brought them to light and the country is just now recognising how dangerous they've become.
I think for right now the U.S. should continue to show restraint on going into Pakistan. We can put more effort on controlling the border and intercepting Taliban coming into Afghanistan and cutting into the drug trade without pushing Pakistan into a civil war and possibly having more hostilities with India. I know our military is ten feet tall and bullet proof but those mountains take away many of our advantages as well. We might do better than the Russians did but we won't go unscathed if we put boots on the ground there.
On top of that if there's going to be a nuclear war in my lifetime; I would put money on this being the place where it starts.
P.C.
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Cool deal G M :-D you taught me something new today.
So they dealt the first blow and they're still sore about how the crusaders invaded the holy land...
I went ahead and did a search on pre-crusade jihad and came across this site: http://www.historyofjihad.com/sitemap.html
And a little thing I found interesting from the above site
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"The Hudna (Temporary Peace Treaty) of Hudaibiya demonstrates in a very telling way, the evil genius that Mohammad was. And this character of his has been filtered down to the last Muslim, who uses it to cheat and trick non-Muslims in every small thing in day-to-day life in a practice popularly known among the Muslims as Taquiyya (also spelt as Taqiyya or Taqiya) which means deception.
Pervez Musharraf the President of Pakistan, referred to this Hudna (Temporary Peace Treaty) of Hudaibiya (and to the double-crossing that exists in it), when he announced after 9/11 that he was making a pact with America to fight the Taliban who then ruled Afghanistan and whose guest was that, horror of all horrors, Osama Bin Laden."
===================================
Pakistan made the pact just to dupe U.S. And now they're getting ready to something stupid with the TB. They've got nukes too. They could team up with Iran and nuke Afghanistan from each side but they're probably waiting for America to get out of Iraq so Iran doesn't have to worry about that side of the border and before you know it we'll have the United Islamic States of Ahmadinejad.
I'm sure the scenarios are endless.....
Has that been talked about in the WW3 thread yet? I haven't had a chance to read that much of it yet.
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Sounds like they know how to fight drugs in Thailand too. :-D
From BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7899748.stm
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Secret of Thai success in opium war
The Thailand army have helped wipe out the drug trade
By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, northern Thailand
High up in the beautiful mountains where Thailand, Burma and Laos meet, the landscape has been transformed in the years since the "Golden Triangle" produced practically all the world's opium.
Afghanistan gradually took over the dubious mantle in the late 1990s and is now responsible for 90% of the world's heroin.
It is a figure which has gone up, rather than down since Britain and the rest of the international community took responsibility for reducing the illicit harvest.
Over the same timescale, the Golden Triangle has seen its opium crop plummet to just a fraction of world supply.
Opium field from the air
Opium growing plots in the jungle are easy to spot from the air
One of the men who shares responsibility for the success story is now urging Afghanistan's Western backers to listen to him.
"Our thinking is opium, the people involved in opium, that 99% of it is driven by poverty and lack of opportunity - this is the cause," says MR Disnadda Diskul, secretary-general of the Mah Fah Luang Foundation.
The "MR" preceding his name indicates he is a descendant of the revered Thai royal family and has devoted the last two decades to helping a royal project bring an end to Thailand's deadly harvest.
In one area at least, that has been done through a combination of textiles, paper, coffee beans and macadamia nuts as money-making alternatives.
Heavy-handed military
Just below the ridge that separates Thailand and Burma, the mountain slopes steeply down into the valley and clinging to its sides are row after row of coffee bushes.
You can hear the women giggling and gossiping as they pluck the red-ripe coffee beans from their stalks and drop them into small wicker baskets hanging round their necks, but the vegetation is so lush that you can't see them.
Life in a mountain village in the Golden Triangle
Surveying the scene from the path is Wattana Chuenwirasup, who now grows coffee where he once grew opium and trafficked it to dealers.
Sweeping his hand across the landscape he shows me where his poppies once flourished, circling 360 degrees from the edge of the hill tribe village.
"There were no choices then but opium and rice," he said. "It was dangerous when the government started to crack down on growing opium and there was a good opportunity."
His is the story of Thailand's success - a combination of sometimes heavy-handed military force and years of persuading people to grow something other than opium.
The Thai authorities say only 280 hectares of poppies were grown last year, and most of them were eradicated.
They may be remote, but fields in jungle clearings are relatively easy to spot from satellite images and aerial photographs, and heavily armed troops simply follow the maps and destroy the crops.
There is little resistance from local people. There is never any proof of who is growing the opium poppies, so although the fields are beaten down with sticks and irrigation pipes, there are no arrests.
Key to success
It is a lot more dangerous being part of an Afghan eradication force - they are regularly attacked and destroy just a fraction of the overall crop each year.
Members of the Thai eradication force
The eradication team beats down fields with sticks and irrigation pipes
Disnadda Diskul from the Mah Fah Luang Foundation is advising the Afghan government on the way forward, but says there is too much emphasis on getting rid of the poppies and that more should be done to give people other options.
"I look at the British approach and they do try hard, but I don't think they are doing it the right way because they spend so much money. The Americans also spend billions and billions of dollars and what do they get out of it? Nothing.
"At the moment they are pouring the money into Afghanistan but they are giving fish to the poor, but not giving them a fishing rod and teaching them how to fish, or to look after the ocean," he says.
"That's the difference between the Thai way and what they are doing in Afghanistan. The donor countries are using all their money for infrastructure - not into the mouths and stomachs of the people."
He points out establishing what people can produce and then identifying a market and joining them up is the key to the project's success.
Strong determination
The British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, who has been in Afghanistan this week, insists they are on the right track with more Afghan provinces becoming opium free and the overall harvest being reduced a little last year.
"I don't know which programme the Thai representative is talking about because we don't do grand infrastructure projects," he said.
"We build alternative livelihoods for farmers from the bottom up, through projects such as the wheat distribution programme in Helmand.
"We are not interested in great projects - we are interested in steps forward for ordinary people.
"I think when you see the numbers coming out this year about poppy cultivation you will see them going down because security is getting better and because alternatives for farmers in the legal economy are getting better too."
It has taken many years for the villagers in northern Thailand to be weaned off opium, both through the new opportunities given to them and the sometimes very heavy hand of a country with a strong military, and a determination to tackle the problem.
That is still a long way off in Afghanistan, especially with war still raging in the south.
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That is a very interesting article. I did not know about the end of the Golden Triangle and what brought it about.
How do you see these lessons being applied in Afg?
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I had no idea either. Interesting.
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Secret U.S. Unit Trains Commandos in Pakistan
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February 23, 2009
Secret U.S. Unit Trains Commandos in Pakistan
By ERIC SCHMITT and JANE PERLEZ
BARA, Pakistan
More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.
The Americans are mostly Army Special Forces soldiers who are training Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops, providing them with intelligence and advising on combat tactics, the officials said. They do not conduct combat operations, the officials added.
They make up a secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command. It started last summer, with the support of Pakistan’s government and military, in an effort to root out Qaeda and Taliban operations that threaten American troops in Afghanistan and are increasingly destabilizing Pakistan. It is a much larger and more ambitious effort than either country has acknowledged.
Pakistani officials have vigorously protested American missile strikes in the tribal areas as a violation of sovereignty and have resisted efforts by Washington to put more troops on Pakistani soil. President Asif Ali Zardari, who leads a weak civilian government, is trying to cope with soaring anti-Americanism among Pakistanis and a belief that he is too close to Washington.
Despite the political hazards for Islamabad, the American effort is beginning to pay dividends.
A new Pakistani commando unit within the Frontier Corps paramilitary force has used information from the Central Intelligence Agency and other sources to kill or capture as many as 60 militants in the past seven months, including at least five high-ranking commanders, a senior Pakistani military official said.
Four weeks ago, the commandos captured a Saudi militant linked to Al Qaeda here in this town in the Khyber Agency, one of the tribal areas that run along the border with Afghanistan.
Yet the main commanders of the Pakistani Taliban, including its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, and its leader in the Swat region, Maulana Fazlullah, remain at large. And senior American military officials remain frustrated that they have been unable to persuade the chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to embrace serious counterinsurgency training for the army itself.
General Kayani, who is visiting Washington this week as a White House review on policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan gets under way, will almost certainly be asked how the Pakistani military can do more to eliminate Al Qaeda and the Taliban from the tribal areas.
The American officials acknowledge that at the very moment when Washington most needs Pakistan’s help, the greater tensions between Pakistan and India since the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November have made the Pakistani Army less willing to shift its attention to the Qaeda and Taliban threat.
Officials from both Pakistan and the United States agreed to disclose some details about the American military advisers and the enhanced intelligence sharing to help dispel impressions that the missile strikes were thwarting broader efforts to combat a common enemy. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the increasingly powerful anti-American segment of the Pakistani population.
The Pentagon had previously said about two dozen American trainers conducted training in Pakistan late last year. More than half the members of the new task force are Special Forces advisers; the rest are combat medics, communications experts and other specialists. Both sides are encouraged by the new collaboration between the American and Pakistani military and intelligence agencies against the militants.
“The intelligence sharing has really improved in the past few months,” said Talat Masood, a retired army general and a military analyst. “Both sides realize it’s in their common interest.”
Intelligence from Pakistani informants has been used to bolster the accuracy of missile strikes from remotely piloted Predator and Reaper aircraft against the militants in the tribal areas, officials from both countries say.
More than 30 attacks by the aircraft have been conducted since last August, most of them after President Zardari took office in September. A senior American military official said that 9 of 20 senior Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Pakistan had been killed by those strikes.
In addition, a small team of Pakistani air defense controllers working in the United States Embassy in Islamabad ensures that Pakistani F-16 fighter-bombers conducting missions against militants in the tribal areas do not mistakenly hit remotely piloted American aircraft flying in the same area or a small number of C.I.A. operatives on the ground, a second senior Pakistani officer said.
The newly minted 400-man Pakistani paramilitary commando unit is a good example of the new cooperation. As part of the Frontier Corps, which operates in the tribal areas, the new Pakistani commandos fall under a chain of command separate from the 500,000-member army, which is primarily trained to fight Pakistan’s archenemy, India.
The commandos are selected from the overall ranks of the Frontier Corps and receive seven months of intensive training from Pakistani and American Special Forces.
The C.I.A. helped the commandos track the Saudi militant linked to Al Qaeda, Zabi al-Taifi, for more than a week before the Pakistani forces surrounded his safe house in the Khyber Agency. The Pakistanis seized him, along with seven Pakistani and Afghan insurgents, in a dawn raid on Jan. 22, with a remotely piloted C.I.A. plane hovering overhead and personnel from the C.I.A. and Pakistan’s main spy service closely monitoring the mission, a senior Pakistani officer involved in the operation said.
Still, there are tensions between the sides. Pakistani F-16’s conduct about a half-dozen combat missions a day against militants, but Pakistani officers say they could do more if the Pentagon helped upgrade the jets to fight at night and provided satellite-guided bombs and updated satellite imagery.
General Kayani was expected to take a long shopping list for more transport and combat helicopters to Washington. The question of more F-16’s — which many in Congress assert are intended for the Indian front — will also come up, Pakistani officials said.
The United States missile strikes, which have resulted in civilian casualties, have stirred heated debate among senior Pakistani government and military officials, despite the government’s private support for the attacks.
One American official described General Kayani, who is known to be sensitive about the necessity of public support for the army, as very concerned that the American strikes had undermined the army’s authority.
“These strikes are counterproductive,” Owais Ahmed Ghani, the governor of North-West Frontier Province, said in an interview in his office in Peshawar. “This is looking for a quick fix, when all it will do is attract more jihadis.”
Pakistani Army officers say the American strikes draw retaliation against Pakistani troops in the tribal areas, whose convoys and bases are bombed or attacked with rockets after each United States missile strike.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/wo...terror.html?hp
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090222/...as/as_pakistan
Pakistan to arm village militias
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ISLAMABAD – Authorities in a Pakistani border province plan to arm villagers with 30,000 rifles and set up an elite police unit to protect a region increasingly besieged by Taliban and al-Qaida militants, an official said Sunday.
Stiffer action in the North West Frontier Province could help offset American concern that a peace deal being negotiated in the Swat valley, a Taliban stronghold in the province, could create a haven for Islamist insurgents only 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the Pakistani capital.
Village militias backed by the United States have been credited with reducing violence in Iraq. Washington is paying for a similar initiative in Afghanistan.
The United States is already spending millions of dollars to train and equip Pakistani forces in the rugged region near the Afghan border but there was no sign it was involved in the militia plan. A U.S. Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Saturday he will try to "remove the apprehensions of the world community" about the Swat deal when he meets U.S. officials in Washington next week, state-run media reported.
But it was unclear if Sunday's announcement had the backing of national leaders or the powerful army — or if handing out more guns in an already heavily armed society was wise.
Mahmood Shah, a former head of security for Pakistan's tribal regions, said arming civilians could trigger civil war in the northwest, where tribal and political tension is at fever pitch.
Shah said authorities should focus on bolstering existing security forces.
"This is Pakistan, not Iraq or Afghanistan. There is complete anarchy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that is not the case here," he said. "It is not going to help."
Haider Khan Hoti, chief minister of the provincial government, said authorities would distribute the guns only among "peaceful groups and individuals" so they could help police to guard their villages.
Officials would consult with local police chiefs before handing out the arms and would take them back if they were not used against "terrorists and troublemakers," Hoti's office said in a written statement.
Hoti said the guns were on hand, having been seized from "terrorists and anti-state elements." He said the province would meet the $40 million bill for the elite provincial police unit of 2,500 officers.
"The purpose of setting up this force is to combat terrorism and extremism effectively," he said.
The militia plan raises doubts about the coherence of Pakistani efforts to counter Taliban groups who have seized growing pockets of the northwest, forged links with al-Qaida and carried out a blur of suicide bombings.
Pakistani officials have encouraged residents to establish militias in the semiautonomous tribal areas sandwiched between North West Frontier Province and the Afghan border.
The pro-Western central government says it will come down hard on groups who refuse to renounce violence and stop supporting cross-border terrorism in return for reconciliation. Federal officials insisted they have not handed out any weapons in the tribal areas, and appeared to be caught off guard by Sunday's announcement.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said it had not been consulted about giving weapons to village militias. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, supposedly in charge of national law and order issues, also was unaware of the plan. The provincial government did not say when the weapons would be handed out, or if villagers would be armed in the Swat valley, where security forces and Taliban militants are observing a week-old cease-fire while seeking a peace accord.
Earlier Sunday, Taliban gunmen abducted a senior government official and six of his security guards in Swat, demonstrating their unbroken hold in the valley, where they have defied an army offensive, beheaded political opponents and torched some 200 girls' schools. A Taliban spokesman said the official, Khushal Khan, would be freed "soon," but that his abduction was a warning to the provincial authorities, who he alleged had arrested two Taliban members in violation of the cease-fire.
"We wanted to show the government that we can also taken action against it," spokesman Muslim Khan said.
He declined to comment on the village militia plan.
The provincial government has sent a hard-line cleric to try to persuade the Swat Taliban to renounce violence in return for the introduction of elements of Islamic law.
Officials say the legal concessions meet long-standing demands for speedy justice in Swat and fall far short of the harsh version of Islamic law favored by Taliban militants.
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The same anti drug stuff that Thailand has been doing for years with an apparently good deal of success has already been going on in Afghanistan for a while but is still in the beginning stages. The Thai government also has a strong military to back it up. Afghanistan doesn't, so it's going to take a while before "alternative" crops are the "normal" thing around here. We can't change much of anything and hope to make an impact without security and we'll have to be in Afghanistan for a while to provide that security so the Afghan people can get back on their feet and take care of themselves. Too many American, Australian, British, Canadian, French, German, Danish and other Coalition Forces soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen have made the ultimate sacrifice not for just for their respective countries, but for Afghanistan as well. Many of them died right alongside the Afghan soldiers, police, and security forces personnel who also fell in the line of duty because they wanted to see Afghanistan become a better place.
Any quick fix we try to is just going to be a short term fix. We need to be patient in order to implement programs like the one that Thailand has as an answer to their drug problem. The only way to win a war against America or any Western Nation is to stretch it out until the public gets tired and say "hell with it" or bored with it, and the bad guys know it.
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Jkrenz:
I see that our generals have asked for 34,000 or so additional troops and that President Barack Carter Obama is giving them 17,000 and today the NY Slimes reports that he will be looking to pay for the stimulus by cutting costs in Iraq and Afg.
What do you make of this?
==============================
WSJ
Last year, Pakistanis in the northern Malakand district voted overwhelmingly for the country's secular parties, including the Pakistan People's Party of President Asif Ali Zardari. Last week, Mr. Zardari repaid the favor by agreeing to the imposition of Shariah law in the area and suspending military operations against an encroaching Taliban.
We would call this terrifying, but that may understate matters for the people of the region. For several years, the Taliban and its allies have sought to gain control of the district, particularly its scenic Swat valley, once a popular tourist destination. Gaining control, Taliban-style, meant fighting the Pakistani military to a standstill. It also meant blowing up 180 girls schools and publicly beheading locals who offended them, including barbers who dared trim customer beards.
The deal was struck with longtime insurgent leader Sufi Mohammed, who has been fighting to impose Shariah law for 40 years. Sufi Mohammed is said to be at loggerheads with his even more radical son-in-law, the Taliban-connected Maulana Fazlullah, and the government hopes that the concession of Shariah law could marginalize Fazlullah while the Pakistan Army girds for more fighting in the spring. The Pakistan government portrays the deal as little more than a tactical concession and, according to Information Minister Sherry Rahman, is "in no way a sign of the state's weakness."
Yet no sooner was the deal signed than a Pakistani journalist was murdered while covering a "peace march" organized by Sufi Mohammed -- the 20th journalist killed around Swat in two years. Fazlullah has also refused to honor the government's cease-fire beyond a 10-day period that expires later this week. Local residents who had reluctantly acquiesced in hopes of gaining some kind of peace may soon find themselves living with Shariah, without peace.
This cease-fire smacks of a similar deal the previous government of Pervez Musharraf arranged in Pakistan's tribal areas in 2006. That deal created a Taliban sanctuary and led to sharp increases in terrorist attacks, both in Afghanistan and the Pakistan heartland. Sufi Mohammed has signed three previous pacts with various Pakistani governments extending the writ of Islamic law. None mollified the extremists; each invited the next round of violent demands.
"Now that the Taliban have pressured the Frontier's provincial government and Islamabad into acquiescence in one part of the country, what is to stop them from replicating their designs elsewhere?" asks Murtaza Razvi, an editor with the Dawn newspaper. Good question. It doesn't induce confidence that the government capitulated even when it was fielding 10,000 troops against a Taliban force estimated at 2,000. If Pakistan's military can't defeat a militia 100 miles from Islamabad, its reputation as the country's one competent institution and guarantor of security will fast evaporate.
Mr. Zardari's government has heretofore shown a willingness to fight the Taliban and has taken an openly pro-American line since gaining power last year. It has also allowed the CIA's Predator strikes, which have reportedly killed 11 top al Qaeda leaders. Pakistanis have also consistently repudiated Islamists at the ballot box.
This makes it all the more crucial that Mr. Zardari not squander this public support by backing down against Islamist terrorism. The longer the Swat cease-fire lasts, the more likely the region will become another safe haven for extremists inside Pakistan -- and an existential threat to Mr. Zardari's government and moderate Pakistani Muslims.
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Lets see if Tom Hanks makes a movie based on "Bamas war". Ayers (I wonder if he will picket the WH now):
Ayers to Alan Colmes: Obama Making 'Colossal Mistake' sending additional troops to Afghanistan
Mon Feb 23 2009 14:00:00 ET
In an exclusive interview airing tonight on Hannity at 9:00pm ET on FOX News Channel, Bill Ayers spoke with Alan Colmes on a wide range of issues including his past with the Weather Underground and President Obama.Ê
Ayers on President Obama sending 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan:
"It's a mistake. It's a colossal mistake. And, you know, we've seen this happen before, Alan. We've seen a hopeful presidency, Lyndon Johnson's presidency, burn up in the furnace of war."
"I fear that this brilliant young man, this hopeful new administration, could easily burn their prospect of a great presidency in the war in Afghanistan or elsewhere."
On setting bombs as part of the Weather Underground:
"I don't regret anything I did it to oppose the war. It was -- I did it to oppose the war. I don't regret it."
"I don't look back on those things and regret them, but I'm willing to rethink them. And there are many things which I'm going to rethink."
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34,000 troops would be nice, but 17,000 is a good start. I'm not too sure Guro Crafty, but it's going to be hard to make budget cuts with 17,000 additional pairs of boots on the ground. I don't think that the men and women serving in the armed forces over here will be taking any pay cuts. I think most of the cuts will come as we start slowly pulling out of Iraq and transfer more responsibility to the government of Iraq. I think that the first thing that needs to be looked at is all of the civilian companies that are getting paid a lot of money to be over here. Some employees of these companies are making $250k a year. And the first $84k is tax free. Another thing to look at is spending on equipment. I have been issued a lot of crap that I will never use like crazy snow suits, a few camelbacks, and the ACUs, :roll:, which nearly all soldiers will agree was THE worst uniform choice ever made by any branch of any armed forces worldwide. But hey, they're digital and modern and expensive. Don't get me wrong though, soldiers deserve to have the best equipment possible and we have gotten a few things worthwhile. Body armor being one that has saved more than a few lives as well as improvements to the protective capabilities of our vehicles. Now that's taxpayer money well spent.
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You gotta love the Marines :-D
http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/We-will-not--take.5012425.jp
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We will not take British orders, say US marines in Helmand
Published Date: 25 February 2009
By Jerome Starkey in Kandahar
US MARINES deploying to Afghanistan's violent Helmand province this summer have refused to take orders from the British headquarters in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.
Instead they will report directly to a regional headquarters in Kandahar, a Nato general said yesterday, effectively sidelining Britain's Taskforce Helmand.
Senior Nato officials have confirmed US plans to double the number of troops in Helmand, where the Taleban-led insurgency is fiercest.
More than a quarter of the 17,000 extra US troops, pledged by Barack Obama, the US president, will be deployed in the poppy-rich province, where Britain is nominally in charge.
It means American troops will outnumber the British-led force in Helmand. But unlike the Danish troops fighting alongside UK forces, they will not be under British command.
The snub comes after months of discontent in Nato's Kabul headquarters, which culminated in generals questioning whether Britain had any long-term plan.
UK commanders have been accused of treading water as the insurgency gained ground.
Major-General Mart de Kruif, Nato's commander in southern Afghanistan, said: "The insurgents see Helmand as their heartland, and from a military point of view central Helmand is their top priority.
"From a security point of view you just need to have more boots on the ground to deliver security 24/7 to the people."
He said the Americans would probably take over huge parts of the province, slashing the remit of Britain's overstretched force.
Nato's top general in Afghanistan, David McKiernan, said in December that troops were locked in a stalemate.
Although Britain has more than 8,000 troops in Afghanistan, there are only around 4,500 in Helmand, where the Taleban are fighting hardest.
Only a small fraction of them are front-line fighting troops, the rest are in support.
"I think we'll see the number of troops at least double," Maj-Gen de Kruif added.
Violence has soared in Helmand since the UK troops took charge of "peacekeeping" there in 2006. The province produces almost half Afghanistan's illegal poppy crop, most of it beyond the lasting reach of UK forces.
Although UK troops win every battle, they are unable to hold ground once they win and the insurgents re-infiltrate as soon as they leave.
There is already a 2,000-man US task force based at Camp Bastion in Helmand, which reports directly to Kandahar. Most of their troops are stationed in neighbouring Farah province.
They also have a 30-man mentoring team in Musa Qala, alongside the British garrison, and a company in Now Zad, which the US marines call an "Alamo".
The town has been abandoned and the soldiers come under almost constant attack whenever they leave their base.
Maj-Gen de Kruif said Britain's lead role would be confined to reconstruction.
US troops have been wary of accepting UK command after Nato's International Security Assistance Force was led by General David Richards in 2006. He oversaw a botched deal which effectively handed the town of Musa Qala back to the Taleban, and his interpreter was arrested on charges of spying for Iran.
Most incoming US marines are expected to deploy in southern Helmand, around Garmsir, to control Taleban infiltration routes in and out of Pakistan.
Unlike mountainous eastern Afghanistan, southern Helmand is mostly desert. The marines in Farah are already protecting Helmand's north-western flank, while troops from the US army's 2nd Infantry have set up in Maiwand, west of Helmand, in Kandar province – controlling the main road in and out of the province.
"It looks as though the Americans are trying to hem in Helmand," an analyst in Kabul said. "Fighters will find ways around, but the bulk of the drugs have to go on the roads. If the Americans can control them they might hurt the insurgents' purse."
• Four US special forces soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were killed in Helmand yesterday when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.
It was the deadliest attack on international forces this year. The soldiers were believed to have been patrolling Garmsir, doing reconnaissance before more US marines arrive.
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February 27, 2009
PAKISTAN'S bloodied Northwest Frontier Province is getting a new name: Pakhtunkhwa, or "Land of the Pashtun" tribesmen. A key demand of Taliban radicals, the new title isn't an end, but a beginning.
Obsessed with the "integrity" of dysfunctional, artificial borders, US policy-makers struggle to come to grips with the Taliban, an overwhelmingly Pashtun organization. For its part, the Taliban functions as the shadow government of a ghost state sprawling across huge stretches of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakhtunkhwa already exists in fact, if not in the UN General Assembly. The writs of the governments in Islamabad and Kabul run up to the international border on our maps, but not in reality. We play along with the fantasy.
Census numbers are flimsy, but up to 42 million Pashtuns (or Pakhtuns or Pathans) live in the region, with perhaps 13 million in Afghanistan and double that number in Pakistan. That would make Greater Pakhtunkhwa a middle-weight nation, population-wise.
United by old blood and various dialects of Pashto, the Pashtuns are a collection of five-dozen major tribes that long have functioned as a primitive state, governed by tribal councils amid hundreds of sub-tribes. Although briefly united at a few junctures in history, their primary goal has been the defense of local territory against outsiders, not central administration.
Now the Pashtuns, as manifested by the Taliban, seek an authentic state governed by Sharia law. It isn't good news for us, for women, or for the feeble states of Afghanistan and Pakistan. But how much of our blood and treasure is it worth to keep those wretched states on life support, while denying the vigor of a ghost state fighting to become flesh?
A Pakhtunkhwa that includes all of the Pashtuns would be culturally abhorrent. But it may be inevitable. Are we fighting forces our measures can't defeat?
Nor is the ghost-state problem limited to our confused efforts in Afghanistan. The 6 million Kurds in northern Iraq are ethnically, linguistically and culturally different from the oppressive Arab majority to the south. Iraq's Kurds are also the most-advanced Middle Eastern population outside of Israel (and the most pro-American).
Well, the ghost nation of Kurdistan isn't just three Iraqi provinces, but a broader Kurdish state struggling to be born. Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria and the southern Caucasus hold 30 million Kurds between them, nearly all subject to Jim Crow laws and worse.
The Kurds are struggling for freedom. We find them an inconvenience.
But "inconveniences" don't go away just because we ignore them. Consider yet another ghost state where US troops have engaged: Greater Albania.
Again, census numbers are sticky, but Albania itself has a population of 3 million to 4 million, with another 1½ million ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and a half-million more in Macedonia and Montenegro.
How much effort should we expend to prevent the natural emergence of Greater Albania? Doesn't self-determination count in the clinch? (As for a "Muslim menace," a third of Albania's inhabitants are Christians. In the Balkans, organized crime's a far greater threat than Islam.)
Of course, a ghost state of a different sort exists on our Southwest border and in northern Mexico. But, apart from a few rabid activists in La Raza, that's one ghost state that doesn't seek a real state. The difference? Individual rights and fair opportunities, guaranteed by the rule of law (on our side of the border).
Contrary to racist myths, few Latinos want to return our Southwest to the Mexico they fled. Nobody's going to vote for death squads, corruption, poverty and a narco-state. While we need to fully control our border and boot out convicted criminals immediately, self-interest and economics will handle the rest.
Yet, we do need to recognize that the age of European Imperialism, to which we were an adjunct, left a legacy of international borders that range from the awkward to the impossible - and no state wants to give up an inch of territory, even when its efforts to control separatists appear suicidal.
We don't need to play along, though, except when it's clearly in our national interest. The question before us is blunt: Should our soldiers die to preserve the disastrous borders Europeans left behind?
Should Free Kurdistan, or Greater Albania, or even a full-fledged Pakhtunkhwa be opposed simply because their emergence would mean shifting desks in the State Department? Can our policy-makers even tell the difference between the expedient and the inevitable?
The borders Europe left behind are prisons. How long will we be the guards up on the walls?
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March 2, 2009
Opposition figures and contenders for the Afghan presidency criticized Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday for his decision to hold an early presidential vote. A day earlier, the Afghan leader issued a decree ordering that elections be held in April as opposed to the already-set date of Aug. 20. Afghanistan’s election commission and the United States are both emphasizing the need for elections to be held in late summer as opposed to early spring.
Even in a “normal” country, elections require some preparation time. And in Afghanistan, even the routine preparations associated with organizing polls require a considerable effort. But most important is the need for enhanced security, given the country’s raging Taliban insurgency. An 8,000-strong U.S. Marine expeditionary brigade — the next major ground combat formation scheduled to deploy as part of the Obama administration’s announced plans to send 17,000 additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan — will not arrive until late spring. Whether they can be in position in time for the April election is unclear, but the full 17,000-strong force was intended to be in place ahead of the August elections.
Even with sufficient preparation time and additional Western forces to beef up security, holding an election in Afghanistan will be a herculean task. Much of the discussion and debate regarding this issue focuses on the reasons and the problems associated with Karzai’s move to hold early elections. But there is an even bigger problem brewing in Afghanistan, and the controversy over the election date is but a symptom of that. At a time when the Obama administration is trying to get a grasp of the ground realities in Afghanistan and the wider region in order to craft a strategy to deal with the Taliban and al Qaeda, the challenges Karzai faces are unraveling Afghanistan’s existing political structure.
The Karzai government, with all its shortcomings, has been the foundation of U.S.-led Western efforts to forge a post-Taliban republic. The events of the last seven years — particularly the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Talibanization of Pakistan — have demonstrated that those efforts have floundered. We are at a point where there are international efforts under way exploring the potential for some form of a political settlement with the Pashtun jihadists. The growing domestic and international opposition to Karzai pushes the United States and its allies further into a weak operating position.
Stratfor is of the view that, in the long run, personalities and groups matter very little, but in the short term, they play a pivotal role; this is the case with Karzai. Despite being a weak president, he has been Afghanistan’s only president since the U.S. invasion of the country in late 2001 (first as an interim president, then as an elected president after the vote in 2004). A compromise president, Karzai was able to maintain a delicate balance of sorts between the various factions within the country.
The hope has been that the existing system would hold while efforts are made to tweak it for the purposes of a future power-sharing agreement. But Karzai’s troubles indicate that the system needs to be salvaged, even before there are any moves toward dealing with the jihadist rebels. Any change to the status quo — such as another candidate replacing Karzai as president — could further destabilize the country, especially at such a crucial juncture.
As it is, Afghanistan represents a quagmire for Washington. The uncertainty surrounding Karzai’s future and the political storm gathering next door in Pakistan, where the federal government moved against the government of the country’s largest province, shows that the regional situation is deteriorating faster than the United States can work to contain matters.
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NATO: Might Ask China For Support With Afghanistan
March 2, 2009 | 2017 GMT
NATO might ask China to give support for the war in Afghanistan, possibly by opening an alternate supply route to the country through western China, The Associated Press reported March 2, citing an unnamed senior U.S. official. The option is still being considered, and NATO has not decided whether to ask China for help, the official said. He made the statement ahead of a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting set for March 5 in Brussels.
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"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." -Sun Tzu
We all watch or read the news but do we know what information the other side is putting out there?
Al Jazeera isn't bad at all compared to these sites.
http://www.jihadunspun.com/index.php
http://www.thabaat.net
...and my personal favorite...
http://www.theunjustmedia.com/Afghanistan/Mujahideen%20operations/march09/03-03-09.htm
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This page is updated throughout the day as new operations are reported.
03-03-2009
Mujahideen operations against the enemies of Islam terrorists in Afghanistan are reported to Theunjustmedia.com by the official Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan spokesmen Qari Muhammad Yousuf and Zabihullah Mujahid by e-mails.
In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful
All Praise and thanks are due to Allah, the Lord of all that exists and may peace and prayers be upon the Messenger of Allah, his family, companions in entirety
In Heavy fighting enemy attack defeated 5 invader terrorists killed and 1 tank destroyed in Helmand Monday afternoon 02-03-2009, a battle took place between Mujahideen and the invader forces in Shorkey area in Grishk district of Helmand province, the fighting started when enemy forces entered an area which is controlled by the Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Mujahideen first detonated a remote controlled landmine, which killed five invader terrorists and destroyed a tank, soon after heavy fighting started which continued for two hours at the end the enemy was defeated, later the enemy bombardment the area in which three civilians were martyred and one was wounded. Reported by Qari Muhammad Yousuf
Mortars fired at British and Dutch invaders base in Helmand Monday afternoon 2-03-2009, Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan fired mortars shells at British invaders base in Shen area of Nadali district of Helmand province, where a large number of British and Dutch invaders terrorists live, in attack the base was damaged and the enemy received heavy casualties. Reported by Qari Muhammad Yousuf
25 Mortars fired at Sabri district headquarter and American compound in Khost Monday night 2-03-2009, Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan fired 25 mortars shells at an American invaders compound and Sabri district headquarter in center of same district of Khost province, in the attack the compound and district headquarter were damaged, however enemy casualties were not reported. Reported by Zabihullah Mujahid
Police headquarter blown up in Kabul Monday night 02-03-2009, Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with a remote controlled landmine blew up the headquarter of 7th police station in west of Kabul city, in the explosion few puppet terrorists were killed or wounded. Reported by Zabihullah Mujahid
O Allah, make them and their weaponry a booty for the Mujahideen
O Allah, you are our support and you are our only Victor; by your order we attack; by your order we retreat and by your order we fight
O Allah, the sky is yours; the earth is yours; the sea is yours, so whatever forces they have in the sky, drop them. Destroy all their forces in earth and sink all their forces in sea
O Allah, deal with them for verily they can never disable you
O Allah, retaliate upon them, afflict them like you did to Pharaoh and his nation
O Allah afflict their country with floods, make them in need of money and food and persons
O Allah defeat them, destroy them O the All-Strong, the All-Mighty
Allahu Akbar
"Honor, Power and Glory belong to Allah, His Messenger and the believers, but the hypocrites know not"
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Gotta love the press...
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INTERVIEW-Ghani says Afghanistan must take its "second chance"
03 Mar 2009 09:14:07 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Simon Denyer
KABUL, March 3 (Reuters) - Afghanistan needs to clean up its act if it is to take its "second chance" after this year's election, but foreign aid also has to be much more effective and accountable, said presidential contender Ashraf Ghani.
"The current world financial crisis is going to put severe constraints on the availability of aid, and Afghanistan will have to compete and make its case," former finance minister, World Bank and U.N. official Ghani told Reuters in an interview.
"We failed at the first chance," he said, referring to efforts to build a stable and prosperous nation after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. "This time we need to get it right."
Ghani, a 59-year-old senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and author of a book on fixing failed states, said time was running out. "Two years from now, we need to be in a position to show the world positive momentum," he said.
"The politics of your countries is not going to support the current image of misgovernance, misrule and corruption in our country," he said. "Why would they support massive expansions here on infrastructure or education, when they themselves are going to be under severe constraints to cut services?"
Global attention has turned back to Afghanistan after U.S. President Barack Obama vowed to send in 17,000 more troops and make stabilisation of the country and the war on Islamist militants there a top foreign policy priority.
Many Afghans argue more U.S. troops, widely blamed for mounting civilian casualties, will only make matters worse.
Ghani said the troop deployment was "necessary but not sufficient" to combat a menacing Taliban insurgency, but questioned the balance between military and economic assistance.
He echoed U.S. General David Petraeus in Iraq, who said an effective counterinsurgency strategy had to be 20 percent military and 80 percent political and economic.
"NATO's monthly expenditure is $20 billion, and is estimated to rise to $22 billion," Ghani said. "$22 billion spent educating the Afghan people would change five generations."
FAILURE OF THE AID EFFORT
But it is not just about money. Ghani said the aid effort was "dysfunctional" and lacked accountability, with much of the money ending up in the hands of foreign experts and contractors.
In 2002, donors gave the U.N. $1.6 billion to rebuild Afghanistan from the ruins of war, Ghani said, accusing the U.N. of using much of the money raised to solve its own funding crisis and of never accounting to Afghanistan how it was spent.
The U.S. government's aid arm, USAID, did not have a single strategy paper for Afghanistan until 2006, he said, and ended up managing a "totally broken" system.
"Illustration: the head of USAID came and said you really need schools, the president really needs schools, 400 schools are going to be built before the presidential election (in 2004). They built eight, and the roof of four of them collapsed."
USAID's work was subcontrated out up to six times to tens of thousands of contractors, he said.
"This became a bonanza for contractors," Ghani said. "The poor Afghan contractor who is doing all the work is getting paid 10 percent or maximally 30 percent of the money. Everything else goes to people who are managers.
"To sum up: we have a dysfunctional international system faced and combined with a dysfunctional Afghan system where corruption became the norm. Now there are accusations of mutual corruption and mutual incompetence reinforcing each other."
Ghani says the election must not just be about changing an individual at the top, but a fundamental restructuring of the regime of President Hamid Karzai.
A formidable intellectual who was even been touted as a potential U.N. Secretary-General, Ghani is seen as an outside contender who lacks the support and clout to become president.
He admits his term as finance minister did not make him any more popular at home.
Ashraf Ghani
Ashraf Ghani, who holds a PhD degree in Anthropology from Colombia University in New York, is an Afghan-American intellectual who served briefly as Hamid Karzai's chief advisor in his interim administration and eventually was chosen as Afghanistan's finance minister from 2002 - 2004, during Hamid Karzai's transitional administration. Before joining the Afghan government, Ghani held positions with the United Nations and the World Bank, and helped prepare the Bonn Agreement.
Because of his success at carrying out a series of important reforms as finance minister, he was voted as the best finance minister of Asia in 2003 by Emerging Markets. Ghani is a strong advocate of foreign investment in Afghanistan, and even today works towards having Afghanistan be seen as a great opportunity for investment, not a charity.
When Afghanistan's new constitution was put it place, it required that the president's cabinet members must have only Afghan citizenship and so dual citizenships were not allowed. Not wanting to give up his American citizenship, Ghani declined to remain as finance minister and instead asked to be appointed as Chancellor of Kabul University. He later resigned from his position as Kabul University Chancellor and in 2005 co-founded and is currently chairman of the Institute for State Effectiveness (ISE). On their website, it states that the ISE "uses a citizen-centered perspective to rethink the fundamentals of the relationship between citizens, the state and the market in the context of globalization."
Ashraf Ghani wrote a book titled The Framework: Fixing Failed States, with Clare Lockhart (also from the the Institute for State Effectiveness), and was published in May 2008 by Oxford University Press.
Ghani was born in 1949 in the province of Logar.
by Abdullah Qazi / October 15, 2008
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ditor’s Note: This is the sixth piece in a series that explores how key countries in various regions have interacted with the United States in the past, and how their relationships with Washington will likely be defined during the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.
South Asia is the initial foreign policy focal point of Barack Obama’s presidency. From an intractable and war-torn Afghanistan to a deeply conflicted Pakistan to a self-enclosed and mistrustful India, this is not a region in which the United States is comfortable operating. Nevertheless, South Asia in many ways will determine the success or failure of Obama’s foreign policy record.
An ‘Unwinnable’ War?
The most critical test will take place in Afghanistan, where an already-raging jihadist insurgency — consisting of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda and various other radical Islamist groups — is intensifying. These jihadist fighters have used the time that the United States has spent absorbed in the war in Iraq to hone their skills on the battlefield and develop a more centralized command structure that has enabled them to hold large swaths of territory and launch complex and coordinated attacks against primarily Afghan and coalition targets.
Senior U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan, who have been watching the security situation degrade by the day, have requested that Obama approve an initial counterinsurgency plan to pour more troops into Afghanistan. The idea would be to get more boots on the ground in and around Kabul, push back the Taliban and devote more resources to nation-building operations. But while this surge strategy seems to have worked in Iraq, it is fundamentally flawed when applied in a country as large, complex and insular as Afghanistan.
Click map to enlarge
Landlocked by Iran, Central Asia and Pakistan, Afghanistan is destined to be poor and insulated. As a largely arid, resource-deficient no-man’s-land, the country lacks strategic value in and of itself and historically has served as a thoroughfare for invaders descending from the Central Asian steppes in search of the Indian subcontinent. Afghanistan stands out among the world’s countries in that it has no core region that defines itself as the Indus River Valley does for Pakistan or as the Zagros Mountains do for Iran. The region’s central mountain knot keeps most of its various ethnicities perched on the edges of the knot where water is available, but there are no meaningful barriers that separate them from each other. The result is a hodgepodge of ethnic groups and tribes constantly competing for dominance, endlessly able to dislodge their neighbors and yet lacking the natural barriers that could give them real security in the long run. Any outsider, therefore, will find Afghanistan easy to conquer — as did the Russians in 1979 and the Americans in 2001 — but impossible to hold. Representing a battered mix of ethnicities, the Afghan people have been hardened by wars of their own making and those brought to them by outsiders. Territory changes hands often, and the people pledge their loyalties accordingly.
Afghanistan’s geographic features essentially deny the United States a successful military strategy. When the United States fights wars in Eurasia, it already expects to deal with critical disadvantages, such as having its forces far outnumbered and having to maintain long and vulnerable supply lines. From almost its very beginning, the United States has conducted expeditionary military operations overseas; since World War II, it has come to rely on its global maritime dominance and technological edge to impose its influence far beyond U.S. coastlines. In the present case of Afghanistan, however, all the strengths that the United States typically brings to a military operation are more or less nullified. With no real power base, the United States is fighting a stateless entity in a landlocked country with a scattered population. Such a dynamic prevents the United States from utilizing its naval prowess and complicates the use of advanced weapons systems, particularly when used against a guerrilla enemy dispersed throughout the countryside. The only way to fight in Afghanistan is to use brute force and significant numbers of boots on the ground in a war of occupation — precisely the sort of war that lies outside the U.S. comfort zone.
Click map to enlarge
In other words, Afghanistan’s geography in many ways denies the United States any good policy options. Afghanistan historically has been a country exceedingly difficult for an outside power to pacify. At the very best, the United States can hope for a loose and shifting confederation of Afghan tribes and ethnic groups to try and govern the country and prevent transnational jihadist forces from taking root again. But for that strategy to work, the United States would first need to devote an immense amount of time and resources to long-term counterinsurgency and nation-building in a region extremely resistant to the sort of stability required for nation-building. Without the 9/11 connection, Afghanistan would continue to sit very low on the totem pole of U.S. strategic interests.
The Neighborhood Powder Keg
Compounding matters is the situation next door in Pakistan. Pakistan has reached a point where it has become both a facilitator and a victim of the jihadist insurgency that has seeped across the Afghan border and broken Islamabad’s writ over the country’s northwestern region. The root of this contradiction is steeped in Pakistan’s geopolitical dilemma.
The Pakistani core lies along the Indus River Valley in Punjab and Sindh provinces, where the agricultural heartland, political epicenter and military corps commands are dominated by the country’s Punjabi majority. The relatively narrow width of the Indus River Valley core denies Pakistan any real strategic depth against external threats, making it a geopolitical imperative for Pakistan to incorporate the ethnically disparate borderlands to the Baloch-dominated west and Pashtun-dominated northwest as strategic buffers. The mountainous Pashtun corridor to the north is inhabited by conservative tribal peoples who have more in common with their Pashtun brethren across the Afghan border than with the Indic peoples of the Pakistani core. The only way for Pakistan to maintain territorial integrity is to maintain an overwhelmingly powerful military that can impose its writ on the Pakistani periphery.
The military has long used the Islamic religious identity of the majority of the country and the ideology of Islamism as a state tool to assimilate the northwest Pashtun and as a foreign policy tool to spread influence into Afghanistan (thereby extending the Pakistani buffer) and to contain India, its rival to the east, through the use of Islamist militant proxies. The strategy worked for decades until a jihadist movement took root among the Pashtuns and Islamabad’s militant proxies broke free of Islamabad’s grip.
The situation has now deteriorated to the point where even the Pakistanis are acknowledging their dilemma. They have little choice but to take action against rogue Islamists within both the military-intelligence apparatus and the insurgent camp in order to fend off external pressure and hold onto their northwestern buffer.
But Pakistan continues to search for a middle ground. Unwilling to see the domestic backlash that would result from cutting ties to its former militant proxies, Islamabad wants to reach an understanding with certain Islamist militants and sympathizers within the military and among the Pakistani Taliban and Kashmiri Islamists to halt attacks at least inside Pakistan. The Pakistanis are also pursuing a complex strategy to sow divisions within Pakistan’s northwest tribal network in an attempt to corner tribes that harbor al Qaeda and other foreign militants. The problem with these middle-ground strategies is that making deals with the Pakistani Taliban and the tribes that support them only emboldens the militants and usually entails a private understanding to redirect the insurgent focus across the border into Afghanistan, where it becomes Kabul’s and Washington’s problem.
This is where Pakistan becomes a royal headache for the United States. Pakistan is a supply chain not only for the jihadists, but also for U.S. and NATO troops fighting the war in Afghanistan. The United States is tied to Pakistan in two fundamental ways: While U.S. and NATO forces must rely on increasingly unreliable Pakistani supply routes to fight the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan — fearful that the United States and India will establish a long-term strategic partnership — has the incentive to keep the jihadist insurgency boiling (preferably in Afghanistan) in order to keep the Americans committed to an alliance with Islamabad, however complex that alliance might be.
Moving forward, U.S. strategy for Pakistan will be aimed toward cutting those links, beginning with the supply-route issue. The United States is trying to develop alternate routes through Central Asia (which would come at a high political and logistical price) to supply the war in Afghanistan from the north. Less reliance on Pakistan means less leverage for Islamabad over Washington when the United States applies more pressure on Pakistan to take risks and “do more” at home in battling the insurgency. That said, Washington will not be able to ignore the fact that Pakistan is currently in a very fragile state — politically, economically and militarily. This makes any U.S. action in Pakistan, including airstrikes against high-value targets, all the more precarious as Islamabad tries to hold the country together.
The more destabilized Pakistan becomes, the more nervous India will become; the November 2008 Mumbai attacks illustrated the extent to which Islamabad’s grip had loosened over its militant proxies. India took no retaliatory military action in response to the attacks for fear of destabilizing Pakistan further and giving the Islamist militant forces already operating in Pakistan an excuse to redirect their focus on India. But India also has to contend with the reality that a number of jihadist forces in Pakistan have a strong interest in forcing Pakistan and India into conflict, which would divert Pakistani military attention to the east and give the Taliban and al Qaeda more breathing room.
It follows, then, that the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks would at least attempt follow-on attacks in India to push the South Asian rivals into conflict. If and when a large-scale attack occurs, Indian military restraint cannot be assured, especially in the event that a more hard-line Hindu nationalist government comes to power in upcoming Indian elections. In such a scenario, the United States will have to once again devote its efforts toward preventing India and Pakistan from coming to blows and from detracting even further from U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan.
A Lack of Good Policy Options
The enormous complexity surrounding the war in Afghanistan does not allow for many good U.S. policy options, but there are essentially four proposals, not all mutually exclusive and each with its pros and cons, sitting before the president.
First, do not attempt nation-building in Afghanistan, where there are little to no strategic resources or institutions to build from. Instead of bringing a large number of combat troops into the country, which would absorb much of the U.S. military’s capabilities, rely primarily on U.S. intelligence capabilities to narrow the warfighting focus just to al Qaeda, in an effort to prevent the country from redeveloping into a jihadist base of operations capable of launching transcontinental attacks against the West. In other words, return to the original objectives and methods of the war.
Narrowing the U.S. effort to fighting al Qaeda would free up the U.S. military for other pressing issues, particularly a resurgent Russia. On the other hand, eliminating the nation-building component would leave Afghanistan in the same hazardous condition that allowed the development of al Qaeda in the first place.
Second, instead of nation-building, focus on rebuilding the traditional, decentralized tribal structures that historically have ruled Afghanistan and have been strained by years of civil war. Put the onus on the Afghans to battle radicalization and to make the country inhospitable to foreign jihadist fighters.
Relying on local tribal structures to strengthen law and order in the country is far more attainable than attempting to implement an alien democratic structure at the center in a country like Afghanistan. However, this policy still has to contend with the fact that many tribal structures have broken down from years of civil war and rule by the Taliban, that Islamist radicalization has spread far and wide throughout the country and that, in some cases, the Taliban have done better in providing for the population than the largely corrupt Afghan government. Any “success” using this strategy would generate a “solution” as transitory as any Afghan “government” to date.
Third, do not attempt nation-building, but instead try to defang radical groups by reconciling with more moderate Taliban who can be integrated into the political process.
Politically co-opting segments of the Taliban could well divide the insurgency, much as the United States did with Sunni nationalists in Iraq, who turned their backs to al Qaeda after a major troop surge. However, the United States must first regain the upper hand in the fight and commit enough resources to the war to make it worthwhile for those who are reconcilable who can actually be identified to risk their safety in switching sides. The idea of reconciliation is critical in any counterinsurgency campaign but is often doomed to failure if approached too early in the process.
Fourth, subscribe to the belief that any policy that abandons some notion of nation-building will allow for the re-establishment of an al Qaeda base to threaten Western interests. Commit to Afghanistan for the medium to long term, and devote enough time and resources to build a strong enough state structure at the center that would be capable of providing for the Afghan people and of containing irreconcilable jihadist forces.
A long-term commitment to Afghanistan may have the best chance of making the country inhospitable to jihadist forces, but given the number of competing high-priority issues threatening U.S. security right now, the United States likely will not be able to devote the amount of resources needed to pull off such a strategy — especially in a country that has never been pacified by a foreign occupier.
The Power of Perception … and Exhaustion
While there are options on the table for Obama to consider in prosecuting the war in Afghanistan, he does not have a lot of time to mull over those options. This is a war where the power of perception will play a key role if the United States hopes to divide the insurgency in any meaningful way. Thus far, the United States has not demonstrated that it is willing or even able to devote enough resources to decisively win the war. Senior U.S. military commanders have requested up to 32,000 additional U.S. troops (which would bring total U.S. and NATO force strength to more than 100,000) to help beef up their force structure in Kabul and to push back into Taliban-held territory. But with competing interests in Iraq, where senior U.S. military commanders want to consolidate the security gains made there by avoiding too hasty a withdrawal, only 17,000 additional troops have been approved for deployment to Afghanistan thus far. That troop surge of 17,000 will be spread out over the next six months, allowing the Taliban to consolidate their power in the spring and summer — the traditional fighting season — while the United States tries to get a relatively small number of additional troops into theater.
In Iraq, where the ground realities are vastly different from those in Afghanistan, the United States was able to add more muscle to the counterinsurgency effort, lock down security and — just as importantly — deliver a psychological message to Iraqi Sunni insurgents that the United States would be their security guarantor against Iranian and Iraqi Shiite rivals and an al Qaeda force that had alienated the local population. In Afghanistan, a troop surge of 17,000 or even 32,000 troops will likely lack the psychological impact to convince the Taliban that the United States can still fight this war and win. The Taliban see a resumption of political power as a strategic goal, but they do not face a significant internal threat that would compel them to deal with the United States. STRATFOR sources have said that the Taliban leadership often tells its fighters that their job is not necessarily to win battles, but to make it as painful as possible for Western forces to stay any longer. The insurgent strategy is simple yet effective: Outlast the enemy through the power of exhaustion. This strategy has been successfully applied before in a war against the United States (witness Vietnam), and it can be successfully applied again, given the U.S. penchant for concerted military power and quick victories.
The United States can try to battle the Taliban for some time, but insurgencies have long lives and a military stalemate in Afghanistan is a far more likely outcome. When that realization is reached, the United States may have to settle on a strategy that focuses much less on troop strength than on special operations against al Qaeda. This was the strategy that the United States embarked upon in Afghanistan in October 2001, and it is likely the strategy to which it eventually will have to return.
A little more than a year ago, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee, “In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.” That statement describes a clear gap in priorities for the United States in fighting these two wars. Now, with the spotlight on Afghanistan, the Obama administration will have to decide just how much it is willing to commit to a war in a country that has a historical record of outlasting foreign occupiers. Afghanistan may be a pressing issue for the United States, but it is also competing with a larger and arguably more strategic threat that will impact U.S. national security beyond the life of the U.S.-jihadist war — the Russian resurgence.
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Afghanistan: The Difficulties of the Wakhan Corridor
STRATFOR Today » March 10, 2009 | 2104 GMT
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Afghan children in a makeshift classroom in a village in the Wakhan CorridorSummary
The Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip of land connecting Afghanistan directly to China, appears on a map to be an attractive alternative supply route for U.S. and NATO military efforts in Afghanistan. However, the corridor is problematic from both a geographic and an infrastructural standpoint, and China has qualms about getting involved in the Afghan conflict there.
Analysis
Related Links
The Geopolitics of China: A Great Power Enclosed
U.S., Afghanistan: Challenges to a Troop Surge
Afghanistan, Pakistan: The Battlespace of the Border
Afghanistan: Hurry Up and Wait
The United States and NATO reportedly have been discussing logistical alternatives for the Afghan campaign with China in yet another effort to secure alternative and supplemental supply routes because of the deteriorating situation in Pakistan. Washington and its NATO allies have been working on similar arrangements with the Russians and Central Asian states and are even discussing such a route with the Iranians. Though conceptually attractive, the Chinese proposition for an alternate route is particularly problematic.
The United States has been searching for alternative and supplemental supply routes to support the Afghan campaign since the true depth of Pakistan’s crisis began to become clear. This led Washington straight into Russian territory — an area where the White House already has enough problems. Thus, a supplemental Chinese route is attractive, as it theoretically could take away some of Moscow’s leverage at the negotiating table.
(click image to enlarge)
The Wakhan Corridor looks attractive on a map because it slips cleanly between the Pakistani problem and the Russian problem. Demarcated by the British at the end of the 19th century, the river valley that runs the length of the corridor supposedly was once a trade route for caravans carrying trade goods between East and Central Asia.
Shaped a bit like an arched finger, the Wakhan Corridor is an extension of Afghanistan’s Tajik-dominated Badakhshan province. The corridor’s main borders touch Tajikistan to the north and Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered Northern Areas to the south. The corridor has a tiny frontier that runs along China’s Muslim province of Xinjiang to the east.
The Taliban — even in their heyday prior to 9/11 — did not get that far north because of the heavily Tajik-populated area that stood between their forces and the Wakhan Corridor. Furthermore, the Pakistani regions of Chitral and Gilgit serve as buffers between Wakhan and the Pakistani Talibanized areas in the tribal belt and the NWFP, which might help insulate the route from fighting in Pakistan to some degree. Though the terrain is well-suited to guerrilla fighting and the long route would be vulnerable to ambushes from the mountains, the ethnic Tajik makeup of the region significantly undercuts the likelihood of ambushes. In fact, the locals would be happy to have NATO sending supplies through their territory, because it would help contain their Taliban enemies.
But the mountains surrounding Wakhan are some of the highest and most rugged in the world; the territory makes the rest of Afghanistan look easily accessible by comparison. The route is closed nearly half the year due to weather, and the roads in the valley are rough, unimproved and usually single-lane dirt roads. Though a few bridges exist, it is not clear whether they can bear heavy loads, and the area is isolated from Afghanistan’s road network — as notoriously poor as it is — which is not accessible until Eshkashem. It is some 30 miles from the border to more established Chinese roads, and China’s rail and road infrastructure does not even connect directly with the narrow border. However, any other route through the corridor would require U.S. and NATO supplies to travel through Central Asian territory, which is heavily influenced by Moscow — thus negating the benefits of the Chinese alternative.
Basically, a massive and time-consuming infrastructure investment would be necessary on both sides of the border to make the Wakhan Corridor serve as a meaningful logistical link to Afghanistan for the shipment of supplies for the U.S. and NATO efforts there. Even if the Chinese could be convinced to acquiesce, the endeavor would take years to complete and have a high cost — exactly what logistics officers seek to avoid. And then there is the remainder of the long, tortuous route between China’s coastal seaports and its far west to consider.
But the Afghan campaign is popular with neither the Chinese public nor the central government. This sentiment has more to do with Beijing’s discomfort with a U.S. invasion of any other country and with China’s sensitivity about geographic security than with any detail of the Afghan campaign itself. Although Beijing is looking to get more actively involved in international efforts, the Afghan campaign is particularly problematic, as it could unnecessarily aggravate the Muslim minority population in northwestern China. Also, any infrastructural improvements might ease the transit of Islamist fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan into Chinese territory — and China already has its hands full with internal security concerns. Finally, given the recent rise in tensions on the high seas in East Asia, movement on the logistical issue is looking even more problematic.
Though discussions clearly are taking place, it is not surprising that China has politely rebuffed the logistical feelers so far. They hardly need to offer any other justification, but since they have been asked, the Chinese have brought broader and longer-term issues to the table — suggesting, for instance, that far more significant concessions (like on the current Western ban on arms sales to China) will be necessary for any meaningful movement on the issue. But while there are areas where China might be willing to cooperate, the bottom line on the logistical issue is geographic reality — a reality that only a significant investment in infrastructure and time can change.
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The Guardian (UK)
March 6, 2009
Pg. 17
Intelligence Failures Crippling Fight Against Insurgents In Afghanistan, Says Report
Leaked analysis condemns US for lack of co-operation
By Peter Beaumont
A highly critical analysis of the US-led coalition's counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan has raised serious questions about combat operations in both countries - and the intelligence underpinning them.
The confidential document presents a bleak picture of a counterinsurgency effort undermined by intelligence failures that at times border on the absurd.
Based on scores of interviews with British, US, Canadian and Dutch military, intelligence and diplomatic officials - and marked for "official use only" - the book-length report is damning of a US military often unwilling to share intelligence among its military allies. It depicts commanders in the field being overwhelmed by information on hundreds of contradictory databases, and sometimes resistant to intelligence generated by its own agents in the CIA.
Counterinsurgency efforts are also shown as being at the mercy of local contacts peddling identical "junk" tips around various intelligence officials, with the effectiveness of the intelligence effort being quantified by some senior officers solely in terms of the amount of "tip money" disbursed to sources.
The report describes a rigid reliance on economic, military and political progress indicators regarded by the authors and interviewees as too often lacking in real meaning.
Its sources complain of commanders who have slipped into relying on "the fallacy of body counts", discredited after the war in Vietnam as a measure of success.
The report, prepared by the RAND national defence research institute for US Joint Forces Command in November and leaked to the Wikileaks website, reveals the case of Dutch F-16 pilots in Afghanistan who were ordered by the US to bomb targets, only to be refused access to American "battle damage assessments" showing what they had hit, on the grounds that the Dutch were not "security cleared" to view them.
Another interviewee describes how coalition forces at Camp Holland near Tarin Kowt in southern Afghanistan maintained 13 different intelligence sections, including US, Dutch, UAE, and Australian, all operating with minimal co-operation.
"It would have been helpful (for us to have) combined them; then we would have known everything," complained Lt Neils Verhoef, one of those interviewed for the report. "One section knew the location of an IED (improvised explosive device) factory, and we drove by it for three months."
The unflattering document will make grim reading for President Barack Obama as he grapples with the worsening crisis in Afghanistan, confronted by an increasingly emboldened Taliban and its allies. With counterinsurgency tactics now placed at the centre of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the RAND report suggests that many of the national armed forces involved lack skills to operate effectively.
It calls for a substantial overhaul of how military intelligence is gathered, organised and acted on. Quoting senior officers, it questions many everyday operations - from weapons searches to the killing or arrest of wanted individuals - suggesting that they "alienate" the local population for little measurable gain.
Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely, former the senior British military representative in Iraq, said: "There were some operations taking place in Iraq where the success of the operation . . . was judged solely against whether tactical success had been achieved; tactical success in terms of attrition of enemy forces, numbers killed or captured, numbers of weapons seized, amounts of explosives captured, extent of area controlled. By these criteria . . . a given operation would be judged a success, regardless of the fact that it had seriously alienated the local population, and the fact that, within a few months, other insurgents had re-infiltrated and regained control."
An anonymous source quoted in the report stated that "operational commanders" continued to "indulge in the fallacy of body counts, and a month in which more Taliban are killed than in the previous month" was seen as progress. He added: "This is actually more likely to reflect the fact that there are more enemy on the battlefield than there were before."
Despite the huge emphasis on counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last two years, the report's authors, Russell Glenn and Jamie Gayton, find it necessary to remind military readers of the importance of the civilian population in their efforts, not least in protecting civilians "against attack by both the enemy and your own forces".
"Those interviewed in support of this research," they wrote, "noted with no little frustration that coalition forces themselves too frequently neglect to treat local community members properly."
Perhaps most damning of all, however, is the suggestion from several of those interviewed that often they felt that an overall strategy for what they were supposed to be doing was entirely lacking.
One of those interviewed was Brigadier General Theo Vleugels, who described his 2006 command experience in southern Afghanistan in terms worthy of a passage from Joseph Heller's Catch 22. "We didn't have a campaign plan when we started, but we later got one from my higher headquarters that was close to ours, which is not surprising as they told us to do what we told them we would do."
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Can We Defeat the Taliban?
http://www.aina.org/news/20090312085918.htm
- David Kilcullen, National Review (Accidental Guerrilla book excerpt)
-David Kilcullen, senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, explains in this exclusive book excerpt from The Accidental Guerilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One.
On the basis of my field experience in 2005--08 in Iraq, Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, I assess the current generation of Taliban fighters, within the broader Taliban confederation (which loosely combines old Taliban cadres with Pashtun nationalists, tribal fighters, and religious extremists), as the most tactically competent enemy we currently face in any theater. This judgment draws on four factors: organizational structure, motivation, combat skills, and equipment.
Taliban organizational structure varies between districts, but most show some variation of the generic pattern of a local clandestine network structure, a main force of full-time guerrillas who travel from valley to valley, and a part-time network of villagers who cooperate with the main force when it is in their area. In districts close to the Pakistan border, young men graduating from Pakistani madrassas also swarm across the frontier to join the main force when it engages in major combat -- as happened during the September 2006 fighting in Kandahar Province, and again in the 2007 and 2008 fighting seasons.
These multifaceted motivations provide Taliban fighters with a strong but elastic discipline. Although opportunities may arise for us to "divide and conquer" elements of the enemy, in practice local ties tend to far outweigh government influence. Thus we need to induce local tribal and community leaders who have the respect and tribal loyalty of part-time elements to wean them away from loyalty to the main-force Taliban. Appealing to the self-interest of local clandestine cell leaders may also help isolate them from the influence of senior Taliban leaders who are currently safe in Pakistan.
Clearly, the weakest motivational links within the Taliban confederation are those that are based on the "accidental guerrilla" syndrome and that draw local part-time fighters to fight alongside the main force when it is in their area. Local security measures such as neighborhood-watch groups and auxiliary police units, creation of alternative organizations and life pathways (including jobs and social networks) for young men, protection from Taliban intimidation, and alternative economic activities are potential approaches to detaching these individuals from main-force influence. The main force itself is highly cohesive in most districts and relatively invulnerable to direct penetration or infiltration. But the habit of recruiting part-time local fighters to join the main force, including forced recruitment, might expose the main force to indirect infiltration.
TALIBAN STRENGTHS
In terms of combat skills, reporting from units in the field, as well as my participant observations, suggest extremely high competence in some areas but some equally significant lapses in others. Key areas of skill include ambushing, use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), sniping, field defenses, and reconnaissance. Weaknesses include a tendency to operate in a set routine, lack of communications security, poor indirect-fire skills, dispersed tactical movement, and sloppiness in the security of cross-border infiltration.
Insurgent groups have mounted ambushes incorporating up to several hundred fighters using coordinated mortar, rocket, and sniper fire to engage coalition troops in the killing area. Tactics include the use of L-shaped or T-shaped layouts to catch troops in crossfire. They have shown good fire discipline, marksmanship, and tactical control during these activities. Though in many cases they have suffered significant casualties, they have shown an aggressive spirit and a marked willingness to accept severe losses in order to press home an attack.
Careful mine placement, good camouflage, employment of unexploded or modified ordnance, use of decoy and secondary devices, baited attacks (to draw first responders or military and police columns into a trap), and use of covering observation, sniper posts, and ambushes are all features of insurgent IED technique, which has shown substantial improvement (especially in the south) over the past several years, including an extremely significant rise in the prevalence of Iraq-style suicide attacks using car bombs, bomb vests, or limpet mines. Although IED attacks are still less intensive than in Iraq before the surge, in most cases this is probably explained by lower population density and scarcity of military-grade ordnance rather than lack of skill. In any case, since the success of the surge in reducing violence in Iraq in 2007--08, Afghanistan has overtaken Iraq as the main source of coalition casualties from IEDs.
Proficient use of snipers, operating in pairs and coordinating their activities by radio (both among pairs and with maneuver forces) are a key feature of improved insurgent tactical proficiency since 2005. Camouflage, stalking, use of high-powered optics, and coordinated engagement are all signs of increasing professionalism by enemy snipers, who have graduated from the category of "marksmen" to become true sniper pairs in the professional military sense. This bespeaks at least some training by professionally qualified military snipers, or by foreign fighters (such as Chechens) with previous operational sniping experience. It also shows an emphasis on training and preparation that was absent from some of the ad hoc Taliban efforts of previous years.
The field defenses of Pashmul and Panjwai during Operation Medusa in 2006, in an area of fertile farmland, small fields, orchards, and hedgerows that the Soviets called the "green belt" and where they took many casualties, showed intensive preparation and skill. Equally professional field defenses have been encountered in several subsequent operations. Good use of terrain, pre-registration of killing areas and firing points (a technique by which mortar and heavy-weapons crews walk the ground before a battle and adjust their aim points for maximum effectiveness), and the use of bunkers, crawl trenches, tunnels, caches, and obstacle plans highlight this tactical proficiency. During the 2006 fighting, because a large number of fighters were inexperienced Pakistani madrassa graduates, dozens were killed every day by Coalition airpower on the approaches to the battle. But once dug into their defensive zones, these fighters proved extremely difficult to extract.
Finally, in terms of strengths, the insurgents have shown great skill in scouting and intelligence collection, using local villagers and clandestine cadres for close-target reconnaissance and conducting stand-off observation from dominating hills, and by means of night and day movement in mountainous and vegetated areas (particularly in the eastern hills and the "green belt" in the Helmand and Arghandab river valleys). Some insurgents have also been very effective in using local informants and illegal vehicle checkpoints to gain and exploit information about the population.
WEAK SPOTS
Insurgent tactical weaknesses include the tendency to follow set routines. Because some senior leaders have been operating in the same areas for many years, and because the terrain limits maneuver options (most valleys have only one route in and out, for example), some insurgent groups have begun to set patterns and operate in a routine and repetitive fashion. This creates exploitable vulnerabilities. For instance, local guerrillas typically wait for a Coalition convoy to enter a valley and then seek to ambush it on its way out at a series of "traditional" attack points. This tendency, also noted by observers of mujahidin operating against the Soviets in the 1980s, appears to be widespread and could be exploited by working with local partners ahead of an operation to identify the traditional ambush sites in a given valley and then sending a force into the valley, waiting until enemy fighters move into ambush sites, and engaging these positions with air and indirect fire. Similarly, despite some proficiency in the use of rockets and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) in a semi-indirect fire mode, insurgent skills in mortar work seem less developed than in other areas. In some districts (particularly those along the Pakistan border) their proficiency is better, but in general this is one area where they still have room to improve. Because mortar work is a fairly technical skill, future improvements in this area might signal a higher level of assistance from sponsors located in Pakistan.
There have been several recent instances of insurgents' massing in large numbers (up to 250 fighters) in the open, often at night, only to be engaged by indirect fire or airpower and suffer significant losses. Again, during the September 2006 fighting around Pashmul, the insurgents lost hundreds of fighters who were moving openly in pickup trucks toward the scene of the fighting, while in autumn 2008 there were several coordinated large-scale attacks on British bases and population centers in Helmand Province. Such engagements typically kill young, inexperienced guerrillas rather than older cadres who tend to hang back in the fighting, directing the fanatical young fighters while not exposing themselves to risk.
A final key weakness is in cross-border movement, where infiltrators have typically taken little trouble to disguise their movement or activity, in some cases infiltrating in broad daylight under the noses of Pakistan army checkpoints, or even with direct assistance from Pakistani Frontier Corps troops. If we could convince the Pakistani government to actually take action against infiltrators, we could exploit this lack of skill in cross-border movement so as to ambush infiltration parties or deny specific routes, channeling the enemy into locations where we could engage them using airpower and indirect fire without significant risk to the local civilian population.
Finally, insurgent equipment has improved substantially. By 2005 and 2006, small arms and RPGs being carried by the Taliban were generally of much better quality than Afghan National Army (ANA) or Afghan National Police (ANP) weapons, though government weapons have improved in quality since that time. Other insurgent weapons capabilities (especially rockets and IEDs) continue to improve in sophistication. Handheld radios, satellite phones, and cell phones have become common. Some infiltrators wear camouflage uniforms, and some even have rudimentary badges of rank. Vehicles are of better standard than most ANP or government vehicles, and the supplying of food, water, and ammunition is very effective. But the Taliban still tends to travel more lightly, with far less reliance on the road network or logistic resupply, than the ANA/ANP or the Coalition, giving the enemy greater tactical mobility in rural parts of the country, especially where a measure of popular support exists for their agenda.
By David Kilcullen
National Review Online
This message has been edited. Last edited by: xmikex, March 13, 2009 04:23 PM
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Sounds like a good read. One things for sure though, "defeat" in this situation doesn't mean Mullah Omar and and his boys coming out with their hands up waving the flag of surrender. And it's definitely not a war that can be won through force on force kinetic operations. The Taliban is like a hydra. You can cut off as many heads as you want but the heads always seems to grow back.
Personal opinion, here's a great article from the British news...
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Only a surge in fudging will tame Afghanistan
From The Sunday Times
March 15, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5908526.ece
John Witherow
Twenty years ago I watched the Russians pull out of Afghanistan. They were a defeated, tetchy army whose soldiers were prone to shoot at journalists if they got too close. One Frenchman got a bullet in his backside for not backing off fast enough. The Russians believed the Americans had played a crucial part in their defeat by supplying the mujaheddin with weapons, especially surface-to-air missiles (think Charlie Wilson’s War). The Russian retreat, of course, soon got caught up in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Now the Russians are watching American, British and Nato forces embroiled in the same country with many of the same problems and are wishing us no good at all. They believe the West is making the same mistakes and that Afghanistan is an ungovernable, godforsaken place best left to its own devices. After I made another visit there last week, I think they may have a point.
The complexity of what Nato is trying to achieve struck home in the British hospital in Bastion, the giant military camp plonked in the middle of the desert in Helmand province. There are only four intensive care beds because serious British casualties are flown immediately to Selly Oak in Birmingham.
In one bed was a small boy of maybe eight years old. He had been blown up that morning by a Taliban improvised explosive device, or IED. He was heavily sedated and barely alive. Seven people had died in the explosion, including members of his family and perhaps his parents. When he finally awoke he would in all probability be an orphan. The doctors thought he would wake up “because their kids are tougher than our kids”. Why the Taliban should kill fellow Afghans was unclear. Presumably it was a mistake and the roadside bomb had been intended to blow up yet more Brits. Of the 150 British soldiers who have died in Afghanistan since 2002, more than 50 were killed by IEDs.
The only other patient in the room was a plump, middle-aged man lying almost unconscious on his back. He had been shot through the stomach by a British soldier. Doctors said he had been riding his motorbike towards a checkpoint and had refused to stop, despite warnings. Was he a suicide bomber or just a gormless biker? His motorbike passenger had driven off, so there was no sign of explosives. Medical staff thought he was not an Afghan and a nurse was talking to him loudly in English to see if he understood. He just groaned. Last year they discovered they were treating a Mancunian who had been fighting alongside the Taliban, so perhaps this tubby little chap was from Luton or Beeston.
These two random casualties of a war being fought in the poppy fields and mud villages of Helmand show what the West is up against. The Taliban may be a ragtag militia of indeterminate leadership, but they are heir to the mujaheddin who had seen off the Russian army. This lot have already won one civil war and plan to defeat Nato and its makeshift alliance of 41 nations (hilariously, Austria has two military representatives in Afghanistan and is thus part of the alliance). However much the British and Americans may outgun them when it comes to a firefight, it would be a fool who bet against an Afghan fighter.
Also present in the hospital was Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff. A tough, no-nonsense air chief marshal, he has been visiting Afghanistan every couple of months for years. He is a glass-half-full man, but then he has to be an optimist. He acknowledges the huge hurdles faced by British troops but believes the alliance is slowly making progress.
We went with him to one of the Royal Marines’ forward bases, which a while ago was coming under daily attack. With sandbags on the roof and a rickety ladder, it has an exotic Beau Geste feel. The attacks are less frequent now, despite evidence that the Taliban are consolidating and bringing in more experienced fighters.
Stirrup was able to parade down the local bazaar, where a number of stalls were open. A few months ago it had been deserted. The Afghans stood around with blank expressions, showing neither hostility nor friendliness, although the children pointed and laughed at the few women soldiers who were present. The fact that Sir Jock could even appear there seemed like progress, although he had the kind of armed protection that would not have disgraced Barack Obama.
Britain is placing a lot of weight on the still narrow shoulders of the Afghan army. While its soldiers are undoubtedly brave men, when they lined up to be greeted by Stirrup they bore a striking resemblance to Dad’s Army. Much Whitehall effort and money is going into the army and also the police, schools, hospitals, irrigation, roads and what is known as “good governance”. Whatever happens, Afghanistan is going to be a lot better off thanks to western aid. Whether that is enough to make the Afghans spurn the Taliban is one of the great unknowns. The Talibs have a well deserved reputation for brutality and anyone seen to be collaborating is going to be dealt with summarily.
The British await the influx of 17,000 US troops, many of whom will be fighting in Helmand. America believes that as in Iraq, where the “surge” of troops helped to pacify Baghdad and other cities, the extra numbers will make all the difference. They may be right, at least for a while. Although Iraq is significantly different, success has been achieved there by protecting the locals from rival factions. US troops no longer appear like Star Wars storm-troopers leaping out of vehicles and kicking in doors. In Afghanistan the aim will be to convince the population that Nato will be around for a long time to protect them until the Afghan army and police can take over.
The size of the US commitment to Afghanistan is probably its best chance of success. Bastion is about to be transformed by the Americans at a cost of half a billion dollars to become a vast military citadel in the desert, home to perhaps 30,000 people. They are going to build a runway that will be large enough to fly in 747s. The fact that President Obama is turning his gaze on the country means the United States is committed and thus determined not to back down.
Yet no one thinks this war can be won in the conventional sense. It can be contained, curtailed and temporarily suppressed, but never won. The Taliban can always slip across the border to their havens in Pakistan, where they have rich recruiting grounds among exiles and in the madrasahs.
That means a political settlement, which means talking to the Taliban. The idea has been to lure rogue elements away and isolate the leadership in Quetta, but that has failed. Now it looks as if David Miliband, our foreign secretary, and perhaps the US administration are beginning to accept that reconciliation means talking to Mullah Omar, the one-eyed zealot, and other hardline Taliban leaders. The mullah is not one to compromise; it was his regime that banned kites, chess, cosmetics (women with painted nails had their fingers cut off), laughing in public, toothbrushes (too modern) and anything else that was fun or smacked of the post-medieval world.
Nothing can be ruled out in the arcane politics of Afghanistan, but it seems far-fetched for the Taliban to sit down with the government of President Karzai in Kabul. More to the point, would that amount to victory for the West? The Taliban gave succour to Osama Bin Laden. Who is to say they won’t do so again? That would make the past seven years of British and western involvement largely pointless. Realists believe there is no clear-cut end to this war. The best to hope for is a complex fudge. I fear there will be many more years of young British soldiers putting their lives at risk.
John Witherow is the editor of The Sunday Times
Dominic Lawson writes this week in News Review
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Jkrenz:
Well, that was cheery, , , , here's some more sunshine:
Geopolitical Diary: The Reinstatement of Pakistan's Judiciary
March 16, 2009
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, in a speech to the nation early Monday local time, announced that his government would reinstate ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry after Gilani met with army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and President Asif Ali Zardari. Chaudhry will resume his duties as the country’s top judge on March 21. The last-minute development came as massive processions, headed by opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and the legal community, were en route to Islamabad. There, a sit-in had been planned for March 16 to demand the restoration of the judiciary and the provincial government in the country’s largest province, Punjab.
Chaudhry’s reinstatement by no means signals the end of the political and legal crisis that began when then-President Pervez Musharraf sacked Chaudhry a little more than two years ago, as many detailed issues have yet to be resolved. But this concession highlights a much more significant development in terms of the civil-military balance in Pakistan, which has been ruled by its army for 31 of its nearly 62 years in existence. That the powerful military establishment has played a key role in pushing the government toward a compromise of sorts — without tampering with the existing setup — underscores the relative rise of civilian forces and decline in the army’s ability to impose order single-handedly.
This major shift is clear to the United States, as senior U.S. officials — including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, special envoy Richard Holbrooke and U.S. Ambassador Anne Peterson — have participated in discussions with the government and the opposition in efforts to defuse the situation. In fact, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on Friday told PBS that Kayani was unlikely to opt for a military coup to resolve the crisis because “he is committed to a civilian government.”
Normally, such a shift would be seen as a move toward stability — but not in Pakistan, which is in the midst of a complex civil war. On one hand is the struggle between secular and Islamist forces, manifesting as a growing jihadist insurgency; on the other is a vibrant civil society movement demanding the establishment of the “rule of law” and an end to authoritarian rule. Pakistan’s security establishment is unable to deal with both at the same time and in fact needs public support to be able to deal with the jihadist challenge.
But Islamabad’s latest move to placate public sentiment will further complicate efforts by the Pakistani army and the United States to deal with the jihadist problem in southwest Asia. This is because those assuming the vanguard of the “rule of law” movement are largely right-wing political forces — either conservative nationalist powers such as Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League or Islamists such as Jamaat-i-Islami. These forces are either openly opposed to using force against jihadists operating in Pakistan or have an ambiguous stance on the jihadist threat, and they definitely lack a coherent policy on how to deal with the security threat from the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies.
Even the largely secular civil society movement, including the legal community, has viewed the conflict with the jihadists through nationalist lenses — as a U.S. war in which Pakistan was forced to participate. The disproportionate emphasis on the restoration of Pakistan’s ousted judges at a time when jihadists are slowly chipping away at the writ of the state underscores the low level of importance a significant cross-section of Pakistan’s political players have assigned to the jihadist threat. As a result, the political stakeholders in Pakistan who are responsible for dealing with the existential threat posed by the jihadists are preoccupied with other battles.
This will further undermine U.S. efforts to secure reliable partners in Islamabad in its efforts to craft a strategy for dealing with the jihadist threat in the region.
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Washington Post
March 15, 2009
Pg. 1
Troops Face New Tests In Afghanistan
Battalion's Experience Outlines Issues in South
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post Staff Writer
MAYWAND, Afghanistan -- Lt. Col. Daniel Hurlbut rolled into this dusty Taliban stronghold in September with a battalion of U.S. Army infantrymen and a detailed, year-long plan to combat the Taliban.
The first quarter was to be devoted to reconnaissance. The next three months would involve military operations to root out insurgents. By now, his unit should have been focusing on reconstruction and building up the local government.
But the battalion's efforts to pry information about the Taliban from the local population -- by conducting foot patrols, doling out money for mosques to buy new prayer rugs and offering agricultural assistance to subsistence farmers -- have been met with indifference, if not downright hostility.
"Nobody wants to tell us anything," Hurlbut said, sighing.
His initial plan, he has since concluded, was wildly optimistic.
"We're still in the first quarter," he said. "Our expectation for results is now a lot longer than we thought it would be."
U.S. commanders regard Hurlbut's battalion as a harbinger of the 17,000 additional Army and Marine troops that President Obama has ordered to southern Afghanistan this spring to augment NATO forces, which have been stretched thin by the Taliban's growing strength. As those troops flow into a series of new garrisons, they will confront a set of challenges that is very different from what the U.S. military has faced in Afghanistan thus far.
The southern part of the country is now regarded by U.S. and NATO commanders as the central front in the Afghan war. It encompasses the nation's second-largest city, Kandahar, and six provinces where the Taliban has built a significant degree of popular support, in part through intimidation but also by delivering Afghans a degree of security against criminals that the local police and international forces have been unable to provide.
While the Obama administration forges a new strategy in Washington to salvage an Afghan nation-building operation that is entering its eighth year, the perilous state of affairs in the south has already prompted commanders here to develop a new approach to fighting the insurgency. It may provide a preview of ways in which the overall international military effort in Afghanistan could be transformed over the coming months.
"If we're going to win, we have to fight this war differently," said U.S. Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, a deputy commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. "For too long, we've had an economy of force. We've had a stovepiped approach to combat and to development, too. All that has to change."
The new strategy here involves a major -- but controversial -- push to better coordinate the efforts of NATO troops deployed in the south, a new focus for counternarcotics operations and the allocation of more troops to train Afghan security forces. It also seeks to apply a fundamental tenet of the U.S. Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine: Deploy the troops to create zones of security around population centers instead of mounting in-and-out raids against the insurgents.
Unlike in eastern Afghanistan, where the U.S. military had been concentrating its troops since 2002, American units in the south will be forced to work far more closely with other NATO forces. The new U.S. troops will find themselves in a swath of the country that is the epicenter of opium poppy cultivation and where far fewer resources have been devoted to reconstruction and development. And they will be forced to deal with a deep-rooted, indigenous insurgency -- the Taliban got its start in the south -- that has mounted increasingly potent attacks on civilians and security forces.
What the new strategy does not seek to do, however, is to borrow a page from the U.S. playbook in Iraq by creating tribal militias to fend off the Taliban. Commanders here said that approach could create even more warlords and new intratribal feuds. And the commanders see little benefit from negotiations with the Taliban right now, despite Obama's support for such an overture.
Military officials regard the Taliban, composed largely of ethnic Pashtuns, as both too strong and too fragmented in the south to pursue an effective deal, although they remain open to the possibility in the east, where some tribal leaders who have supported the insurgency could be persuaded to switch sides.
Senior officials at the NATO regional headquarters in Kandahar see the insurgency in the south as made up of a core of die-hard Taliban operatives and a much larger group of young freelance fighters who are motivated more by money than religious zealotry. NATO troops, as well as U.S. Special Forces teams in the region, have been seeking to target the operatives, hoping to stem the flow of funds and munitions to the low-level fighters. The officials also believe that new economic development projects funded by international donors could help to lure some of the fighters to lay down their weapons.
But U.S. and NATO officials in the region are not certain how the Taliban will respond to the new American forces moving into the south. Some may hide or simply move to parts of the country with fewer international forces. Or they may choose to fight with roadside bombs and the occasional ambush. The result could be a significant increase in Taliban attacks -- and U.S. casualties -- this summer.
"With the new troops arriving, it will bring more people into contact with more Americans," said Philip Hatton, an adviser to Nicholson on stabilization issues. "What will the result of that be? We don't know."
Ending the Fractured Approach
When NATO forces were deployed to the south in 2006, the Canadians were assigned the province of Kandahar, the British got Helmand, and the Dutch were sent to Uruzgan. The three nations developed their own battle plans and agendas for development. They established provincial reconstruction teams that report to their capitals, not the NATO regional command at the Kandahar airport.
People at the regional command now joke that the three provinces should be renamed Canadahar, Helmandshire and Uruzdam.
"It's a totally dysfunctional way of fighting a war," said a U.S. officer in the south. "You've got each of these guys doing their own thing in their provinces with very little coordination."
The fractured approach is a result of demands imposed by NATO members as a condition of sending troops to Afghanistan. Each nation wanted its own chunk of the action so it could show off what it had accomplished. That model has been less problematic in the far north and west, where there has been less violence, and in the east, where the U.S. military has established its own command.
"The big question for NATO now isn't whether members are going to send more troops or what caveats will be placed on those troops, but whether the nations who have decided to stand up and fight will actually fight together," a senior U.S. military official said.
The task of trying to get everyone to collaborate has fallen to Nicholson, who is pushing the British, Canadians and Dutch to embrace a more integrated approach to war-fighting and development. "We need a coherent regional plan for victory," he said, "not a bunch of national plans for victory."
Instead of demanding that Britain, Canada and the Netherlands scuttle their individual plans, he is trying to compensate for the differences among the individual approaches by forming a regionwide development agenda. It calls for spending $700 million on road, electricity and water projects, several of which cross province borders. He plans to take the wish list to international donors in the next few months.
Although some British and Canadian officials grouse in private about what they view as Nicholson's efforts to wrest control over reconstruction planning, they also recognize that with the addition of 17,000 troops, the United States will have the largest military presence in the south and a corresponding ability to influence policy.
'Progress Here Has Been Slow'
When Hurlbut's battalion arrived in Maywand last fall, its first order of business was to encircle a swath of dusty plain with razor wire and erect an outpost. It began as a makeshift effort, with tents and wooden latrines and meals in a bag, but Forward Operating Base Ramrod has since assumed the trappings of modern military life: a gymnasium, an Internet room and a chow hall run by the defense contractor KBR.
Although this district 45 miles west of Kandahar had long been regarded by the NATO-led military command in Afghanistan as a key infiltration route for insurgents, there were too few international forces to maintain a permanent presence here. The Canadian army, which has been responsible for the area since early 2006, came every few months to clear out Taliban fighters, but the insurgents would invariably crop back up as soon as the troops left.
Hurlbut's soldiers are trying a different tack and employing a counterinsurgency technique that has been used in the Iraq war. They are staying in Maywand. Some bed down near the municipal building and the police headquarters. Another contingent patrols the highway. Still others walk through villages every day, trying to convince impoverished farmers that they should cast their lot not with the Taliban but with NATO forces and Afghanistan's fledgling national government.
The soldiers had hoped their presence in the district would be welcomed by residents, who keep telling the troops that what they want more than anything is security -- and they will side with whomever can provide it. But it hasn't worked yet.
"The local people are completely sitting on the fence, and they're content to stay on the fence," said Hurlbut, who commands the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment. "They don't really want to give us information."
After almost three years of seeing Canadian troops roll in and roll out, one officer said, "they don't yet believe us when we say we're here to stay."
Even the local officials are wary. The district governor, Hurlbut said, started becoming friendly with him only last month.
The Taliban, however, has taken the 2-2 Infantry's presence in the district seriously. Insurgents mined the roads with scores of improvised explosives devices, more than 150 of which have hit the battalion's patrols and convoys.
In some parts of Afghanistan, police regularly patrol roads and interdict people planting bombs. But in Maywand, the police spend more time in the district capital. Although they have been through a new U.S.-led training program and have been assigned a team of civilian and military mentors, the police officers generally cannot be bothered to walk the beat. And they have little interest in solving crimes. When a man came to police headquarters recently to complain that his motorcycle had been stolen, the police refused to act without a bribe.
"Fine," he said, according to soldiers who witnessed the encounter. "I'm going to the Taliban. At least they'll take me seriously."
Even efforts to hand out money here have not been without peril. Last month, Hurlbut said he sought to win over a local mullah by outfitting his mosque with new prayer rugs and a loudspeaker system. But after three weeks, the Taliban stole all of it.
"The progress here has been slow," Hurlbut said. "We shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking that everything will change when we get 17,000 additional troops in the south. They're going to be moving into places like this, where there haven't been any foreign forces for a long time. And they're going to discover that it's going to take a while to accomplish our goals."
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U.S. Weighs Taliban Strike Into Pakistan
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMy SpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: March 17, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama and his national security advisers are considering expanding the American covert war in Pakistan far beyond the unruly tribal areas to strike at a different center of Taliban power in Baluchistan, where top Taliban leaders are orchestrating attacks into southern Afghanistan.
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The New York Times
The Taliban have found a haven in and around Quetta.
According to senior administration officials, two of the high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area to include a major insurgent sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta.
Mullah Muhammad Omar, who led the Taliban government that was ousted in the American-led invasion in 2001, has operated with near impunity out of the region for years, along with many of his deputies.
The extensive missile strikes being carried out by Central Intelligence Agency-operated drones have until now been limited to the tribal areas, and have never been extended into Baluchistan, a sprawling province that is under the authority of the central government, and which abuts the parts of southern Afghanistan where recent fighting has been the fiercest. Fear remains within the American government that extending the raids would worsen tensions. Pakistan complains that the strikes violate its sovereignty.
But some American officials say the missile strikes in the tribal areas have forced some leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to flee south toward Quetta, making them more vulnerable. In separate reports, groups led by both Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in the region, and Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, a top White House official on Afghanistan, have recommended expanding American operations outside the tribal areas if Pakistan cannot root out the strengthening insurgency.
Many of Mr. Obama’s advisers are also urging him to sustain orders issued last summer by President George W. Bush to continue Predator drone attacks against a wider range of targets in the tribal areas. They also are recommending preserving the option to conduct cross-border ground actions, using C.I.A. and Special Operations commandos, as was done in September. Mr. Bush’s orders also named as targets a wide variety of insurgents seeking to topple Pakistan’s government. Mr. Obama has said little in public about how broadly he wants to pursue those groups.
A spokesman for the National Security Council, Mike Hammer, declined to provide details, saying, “We’re still working hard to finalize the review on Afghanistan and Pakistan that the president requested.”
No other officials would talk on the record about the issue, citing the administration’s continuing internal deliberations and the politically volatile nature of strikes into Pakistani territory.
“It is fair to say that there is wide agreement to sustain and continue these covert programs,” said one senior administration official. “One of the foundations on which the recommendations to the president will be based is that we’ve got to sustain the disruption of the safe havens.”
Mr. Obama’s top national security advisers, known as the Principals Committee, met Tuesday to begin debating all aspects of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. Senior administration officials say Mr. Obama has made no decisions, but is expected to do so in coming days after hearing the advice of that group.
Any expansion of the war is bound to upset those in Mr. Obama’s party who worry that he is sinking further into a lengthy conflict in Afghanistan, even while reducing forces in Iraq. It is possible that the decisions about covert actions will never be publicly announced.
Several administration and military officials stressed that they continued to prod the Pakistani military to take the lead in a more aggressive campaign to root out Taliban and Qaeda fighters who are attacking American forces in Afghanistan and increasingly destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan.
But with Pakistan consumed by political turmoil, fear of financial collapse and a spreading insurgency, American officials say they have few illusions that the United States will be able to rely on Pakistan’s own forces. However, each strike by Predators or ground forces reverberates in Pakistan, and Mr. Obama will be weighing that cost.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on “The Charlie Rose Show” on PBS last week that the White House strategy review addresses the “safe haven in Pakistan — making sure that Afghanistan doesn’t provide a capability in the long run or an environment in which Al Qaeda could return or the Taliban could return.” But another senior official cautioned that “with the targets now spreading, an expanding U.S. role inside Pakistan may be more than anyone there can stomach.”
As part of the same set of decisions, according to senior civilian and military officials familiar with the internal White House debate, Mr. Obama will have to choose from among a range of options for future American commitments to Afghanistan.
His core decision may be whether to scale back American ambitions there to simply assure it does not become a sanctuary for terrorists. “We are taking this back to a fundamental question,” a senior diplomat involved in the discussions said. “Can you ever get a central government in Afghanistan to a point where it can exercise control over the country? That was the problem Bush never really confronted.”
A second option, officials say, is to significantly boost the American commitment to train Afghan troops, with Americans taking on the Taliban with increasing help from the Afghan military. President Bush pursued versions of that strategy, but the training always took longer and proved less successful than plans called for.
A third option would involve devoting full American and NATO resources to a large-scale counterinsurgency effort. But Mr. Obama would be bound to face considerable opposition within NATO, whose leaders he will meet with early next month in Strasbourg, France. At the very time the United States is seeking to expand its presence in Afghanistan, many of the allies are scheduled to leave.
As for American strikes on militant havens inside Pakistan, administration officials say the Predator and Reaper attacks in the tribal areas have been effective at killing 9 of Al Qaeda’s top 20 leaders, and the aerial campaign was recently expanded to focus on the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, as well as his fighters and training camps. American intelligence officials say that many top Taliban commanders remain in hiding in and around Quetta, but some Afghan officials say that other senior Taliban leaders have fled to the Pakistani port city of Karachi.
Missile strikes or American commando raids in the city of Quetta or the teeming Afghan settlements and refugee camps around the city and near the Afghan border would carry high risks of civilian casualties, American officials acknowledge.
Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington, and Carlotta Gall from Islamabad, Pakistan.
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second post of the day
My friend writes "Actually, this report is inaccurate, the Taliban are already part of the security forces, this is the first official admission to formalize the arrangement...."
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/03/pakistan_proposes_in.php
Pakistan proposes integration of Taliban into security forces
By Bill RoggioMarch 14, 2009 10:58 PM
A senior official in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province wants the Taliban to integrate into the security forces in the region where the governemnt ceded to the Taliban's demands to implement sharia, or Islamic Law, and end military operations. The official also described the Swat Taliban leader as "good human being."
Syed Muhammad Javed, the Malakand Division Commissioner, has proposed the Taliban provide recruits for the police and the paramilitary Levies force. The Malakand Division is made up of the districts of Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, and Chitral.
"I have proposed the Taliban be adjusted in police or Levies force and have suggested this at several forums," Javed told Daily Times. He claimed the police force's "confidence is shaken" due to a Taliban campaign of assassination and intimidation.
The police have been hit so hard that the force has been rendered ineffective. The governemnt claimed 70 policemen, an estimated five percent of the force, have been killed since the fighting in Swat broke out in July 2007. More than 800 policemen, more than half of the force, have deserted their posts or taken extended leaves to avoid the Taliban attacks. Another 142 troops from the paramilitary Frontier Corps have been reported killed since August 2008.
During the fighting between the Swat Taliban and government forces, the Swat Taliban targeted police officers, tribal leaders, and politicians. Family members of government officials and tribal leaders were killed, and their homes were torched.
The military ceased operations in Swat in February 2009 after it failed to dislodge the Taliban. Sufi Mohammed, the father-in-law of Swat Taliban commander Mullah Fazlullah, brokered a peace agreement between the government and the Taliban. Under the agreement, the government has committed to implement sharia, end the military campaign, and release Taliban prisoners, while the Taliban agreed to end attacks. But the Taliban have violated the agreement several times when it kidnapped the district coordinating officer and his bodyguards, murdered two soldiers, and captured a Frontier Corps officer and several of his men.
Javed and the military have refused to respond to the Taliban infractions. Javeed even went out of his way to praise Mullah Fazlullah. He described Fazlullah as a "good human being," Daily Times reported.
Javed's proposal to integrate the Taliban into the security forces comes as the US Congress is debating a $20 billion aid package to Pakistan. Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar have proposed giving Pakistan a one-time $5 billion grant plus a 10 year aid package worth $15 billion. Some of this money is slated to improve the security forces in Paksitan's Northwest Frontier Province and the Taliban-controlled tribal agencies.
But Pakistan's history of appropriately spending US aid money is appalling. More than $3.8 billion of an estimated $5 billion of military aid given to Pakistan up until December 2007 is unaccounted for, and it has been reported that millions of dollars in US aid has gone to pay reparations to the Taliban in Swat.
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THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: March 18, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama and his advisers have decided to significantly expand Afghanistan’s security forces in the hope that a much larger professional army and national police force could fill a void left by the central government and do more to promote stability in the country, according to senior administration and Pentagon officials.
The Afghan Army and other security forces would be greatly expanded under a plan developed by President Obama and his advisers in the hope of stabilizing the nation.
A plan awaiting final approval by the president would set a goal of about 400,000 troops and national police officers, more than twice the forces’ current size, and more than three times the size that American officials believed would be adequate for Afghanistan in 2002, when the Taliban and Al Qaeda appeared to have been routed.
The officials said Mr. Obama was expected to approve a version of the plan in coming days as part of a broader Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. But even members of Mr. Obama’s national security team appeared taken aback by the cost projections of the program, which range from $10 billion to $20 billion over the next six or seven years.
By comparison, the annual budget for the entire Afghan government, which is largely provided by the United States and other international donors, is about $1.1 billion, which means the annual price of the program would be about twice the cost of operating the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Those figures include only the cost of training and establishing the forces, and officials are still trying to determine what the cost would be to sustain the security forces over the long term.
Administration officials also express concerns that an expanded Afghan Army could rival the corruption-plagued presidency of Mr. Karzai. The American commanders who have recommended the increase argued that any risk of creating a more powerful Afghan Army was outweighed by the greater risks posed by insurgent violence that could threaten the central government if left unchecked.
At present, the army fields more than 90,000 troops, and the Afghan National Police numbers about 80,000 officers. The relatively small size of the security forces has frustrated Afghan officials and American commanders who wanted to turn security over to legitimate Afghan security forces, and not local warlords, at a faster pace.
After resisting the idea for several years, the Bush administration last summer approved an increase that authorized the army to grow to 134,000 over the next three years, in a program that would cost about $12 billion.
The resistance had been a holdover from the early months after the rout of Taliban and Qaeda fighters in 2001, when it appeared that there was little domestic or external threat that required a larger security force.
The new proposal would authorize a doubling of the army, after the increase approved last summer, to about 260,000 soldiers. In addition, it would increase the number of police officers, commandos and border guards to bring the total size of the security forces to about 400,000. The officials who described the proposal spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss it publicly in advance of final approval by Mr. Obama.
Some European countries have proposed the creation of an Afghan National Army Trust Fund, which would seek donations from oil kingdoms along the Persian Gulf and other countries to pay for Afghanistan’s security forces.
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, which would have to approve new American spending, endorsed the goal of expanding Afghan security forces, and urged commanders to place Afghans on the front lines to block the border with Pakistan to insurgents and terrorists.
“The cost is relatively small compared to the cost of not doing it — of having Afghanistan either disintegrate, or fall into the hands of the Taliban, or look as though we are dominating it,” Mr. Levin said in an interview late on Tuesday.
Administration officials and military experts cited recent public opinion polls in Afghanistan showing that the Afghan Army had eclipsed the respect given the central government, which has had difficulty exerting legitimacy or control much beyond the capital.
“In the estimation of almost all outside observers, the Ministry of Defense and the Afghan National Army are two of the most highly functional and capable institutions in the country,” said Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, who is retired and commanded American and coalition forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005.
General Barno, currently the director of Near East and South Asian security studies at National Defense University, dismissed concerns that the army or the Ministry of Defense would challenge the authority of elected officials in Kabul.
“They are respectful of civil governance,” he said. “If the government of Afghanistan is going to effectively extend security and the rule of law, it has to have more army boots on the ground and police shoes on the ground.”
Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the Obama administration now appeared “willing to accept risks and accept downsides it might not otherwise” have considered had the security situation not deteriorated.
Military analysts cite other models in the Islamic world, like Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey, where the United States supports democratically elected civilian governments but raises no objection to the heavy influence wielded by military forces that remain at least as powerful as those governments.
Martin Strmecki, a member of the Defense Policy Board and a former top Pentagon adviser on Afghanistan, told a Senate committee last month that the Afghan Army should increase to 250,000 soldiers and the national police force should add more than 100,000 officers. Mr. Strmecki said that only when Afghan security forces reached those numbers would they achieve “the level necessary for success in counterinsurgency.”
Military officers also see an added benefit to expanding Afghanistan’s security forces, if its growing rosters can offer jobs to unemployed young men who now take up arms for the insurgency for money, and not ideology.
“We can try and outbid the Taliban for ‘day workers’ who are laying I.E.D.’s and do not care about politics,” Mr. Biddle said, referring to improvised explosive devices. “But if we don’t control that area, the Taliban can come in and cut off the hands of anybody who is taking money from us.”
C.I.A. Chief in Overseas Trip
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, is traveling to India and Pakistan this week to discuss the investigation into the Mumbai terrorist attacks, improved information-sharing to combat violent extremists and other intelligence issues, an American official said Wednesday.
Making his first overseas trip as C.I.A. director, Mr. Panetta was in India on Wednesday and was expected to travel to Pakistan and possibly another country in the following days, the official said.
David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
Correction: March 19, 2009
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By FOUAD AJAMI
We face today the oddest and most unexpected of spectacles: On its sixth anniversary, the Iraq war has been vindicated, while the war in Afghanistan looks like a hopeless undertaking in an impossible land.
This is not what the opponents of the Iraq war had foreseen. After all, Afghanistan was the good war of necessity whereas Iraq was the war of "choice" in the wrong place.
The Afghan struggle was in truth a rod to be held up in the face of the Bush administration's quest in Iraq. Some months ago, Democratic Party strategist Robert Shrum owned up to this fact. "I was part of the 2004 Kerry campaign which elevated the idea of Afghanistan as the 'right war' to conventional Democratic wisdom. This was accurate as criticism, but also reflexive and perhaps by now even misleading as policy."
Getty ImagesThe opponents of the American project in Iraq did not know much about Afghanistan. They despaired of Iraq's sectarianism and ethnic fragmentation, but those pale in comparison with the tribalism and ethnic complications of Afghanistan. If you had your fill with the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites of Iraq, welcome to the warring histories of the Pashtuns, the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, and the Hazara Shiites of Afghanistan.
In their disdain for that Iraq project, the Democrats and the liberal left had insisted that Iraq was an artificial state put together by colonial fiat, and that it was a fool's errand to try to make it whole and intact. Now in Afghanistan, we are in the quintessential world of banditry and tribalism, a political culture that has abhorred and resisted central authority.
Speak of colonial fiat: It was the Pax Britannica that drew the Durand Line of 1892 across the lands of the Pashtuns and marked out a meaningless border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It should have taken no great literacy in the theories and the history of "state-building" to foresee the favorable endowments of Iraq and the built-in disadvantages of Afghanistan.
Man battled the elements in Mesopotamia, and the desert and its ways of plunder and raiding pushed against urban life, but the land gave rise to powerful kingdoms: the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Sumerians, the Abbasids. In more modern times, oil and the central treasury knit the place together, often in terror, but kept it together nonetheless.
Contrast this with Afghanistan's impassable mountains and anarchic ways, and with the poppy cultivation and its culture of warlords and bandits. A Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad can dispense of oil largess and draw the provinces toward the capital; a Hamid Karzai in Kabul is what foreign donors and benefactors make of him and enable him to do.
The flattering cliché that Afghanistan is the "graveyard of empires" is a hollow boast. Empires that wandered there did so by default, for there never was anything in Afghanistan -- save for geography -- that outsiders coveted. It was the primitiveness of the place -- the landscape that evoked the imagined early centuries of Islam's beginnings -- and its age-old way of extracting booty from outsiders that had drawn the Arab jihadists, and their financiers and handlers, to Afghanistan.
Now the Democrats own this Afghan struggle. They have to explain and defend it in the midst of a mood of introversion in our national life. It is hard to sound the trumpet at a time of economic distress. Plainly, our country has been living on its nerves since 9/11. It had not willed an Islamic imperium, but it had gotten one. It was bequeathed this terrible duty by the upheaval in the lands of the Arab-Islamic world, and by the guile and cunning of a generation of jihadists and their enablers, who deflected the wrath of their people onto distant American power.
George W. Bush answered history's call -- as he saw fit. The country gave him its warrant and acceptance, and then withdrew it in the latter years of his presidency. Say what you will about his call to vigilance, he had a coherent worldview. He held the line when the world of Islam was truly in the wind and played upon by ruinous temptations. He took the war on terror into the heart of the Arab world. It was Arabs -- with oil money, and with the prestige that comes with their mastery of Arabic, the language of the Quran, among impressionable Pakistanis and Afghans -- who had made Afghanistan the menace it had become. Without Arab money and Arab doctrines of political Islam, the Taliban would have remained a breed of reactionary seminarians, a terror to their own people but of no concern beyond. It thus made perfect strategic sense to take the fight to the Arab heartland of Islam. Saddam Hussein had drawn the short straw.
President Barack Obama -- another "decider" with an expanded view of the presidency's power -- faces a wholly different challenge. It was the economic distress that delivered the state into his stewardship. A cerebral man, he has presented himself as a "realist" in foreign affairs. Not for him is the Bush "heat" about liberty in distant lands.
By the appearance of things, Mr. Obama is undecided about Afghanistan. He has neither embraced this war, nor ditched it. In a perfect world, that AfPak theater (Afghanistan/Pakistan) would hold still as the administration struggles with AIG, the crisis in Detroit, and the selling of the budget. But the world rarely obliges, and sooner or later the administration will have used up the luxury of indecision. It will not be easy for this president to summon this nation to a bigger endeavor in Afghanistan. Set aside his fear that his domestic agenda could be compromised by a bold undertaking far from home. The foreign world simply does not beckon this president.
In fairness to him, his hesitancy in the face of foreign challenges is a fair reflection of the country's fatigue with causes beyond its borders. He could link Afghanistan with 9/11 and with the wider war on terror, but he put forth the word that the vigilance and zeal of that struggle is best forgotten. By his admonition, we are not to speak of the global war on terror. The world is full of reconcilables and deal-makers, bazaaris one and all in Damascus and Tehran and Palestine. In the Obama worldview, it is now time for diplomatic accommodations.
The president is on the horns of a dilemma of his own making. In his determination to be the "un-Bush," he has declared his intention to repair what some have called "Brand America" and to pursue a nonideological foreign policy of multilateralism and moderation. His aloofness from what played out in Iraq is a hindrance to him when it comes to issuing any call to arms in Afghanistan.
He can't build on the Iraq victory, because he has never really embraced it. The occasional statement that we can win over the reconcilables and the tribes in Afghanistan the way we did in the Anbar is lame and unconvincing. The Anbar turned only when the Sunni insurgents had grown convinced that the Americans were there to stay, and that the alternative to accommodation with the Americans, and with the Baghdad government, is a sure and widespread Sunni defeat. The Taliban are nowhere near this reckoning. If anything, the uncertain mood in Washington counsels patience on their part, with the promise of waiting out the American presence.
Mr. Obama does not have to offer the Iraq campaign post facto vindication. But as he does battle in the same wider theatre of that Greater Middle East, he will have to draw the proper lessons of the Iraq campaign. This Afghan war can't be waged in stealth, and in silence. Half-measures will not do. This war will have to be explained -- or explained away. For it to have any chance, it will have to be claimed and owned up to even in the midst of our economic distress. It's odd that so articulate a president has not yet found the language with which to describe this war, and the American stakes in it.
Mr. Ajami is professor of Middle East Studies at The Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies and an adjunct senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
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Our Must-Win War
The 'Minimalist' Path Is Wrong for Afghanistan
U.S. soldiers on patrol this month outside Bagram, Afghanistan. (By Rafiq Maqbool -- Associated Press)
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By John McCain and Joseph Lieberman
Thursday, March 19, 2009; Page A15
Later this month, the Obama administration will unveil a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan. This comes as most important indicators in Afghanistan are pointing in the wrong direction. President Obama's decision last month to deploy an additional 17,000 U.S. troops was an important step in the right direction, but a comprehensive overhaul of our war plan is needed, and quickly.
This Story
Our Must-Win War
Civilians to Join Afghan Buildup
Getting It Right in Afghanistan
As the administration finalizes its policy review, we are troubled by calls in some quarters for the president to adopt a "minimalist" approach toward Afghanistan. Supporters of this course caution that the American people are tired of war and that an ambitious, long-term commitment to Afghanistan may be politically unfeasible. They warn that Afghanistan has always been a "graveyard of empires" and has never been governable. Instead, they suggest, we can protect our vital national interests in Afghanistan even while lowering our objectives and accepting more "realistic" goals there -- for instance, by scaling back our long-term commitment to helping the Afghan people build a better future in favor of a short-term focus on fighting terrorists.
The political allure of such a reductionist approach is obvious. But it is also dangerously and fundamentally wrong, and the president should unambiguously reject it. Let there be no doubt: The war in Afghanistan can be won. Success -- a stable, secure, self-governing Afghanistan that is not a terrorist sanctuary -- can be achieved. Just as in Iraq, there is no shortcut to success, no clever "middle way" that allows us to achieve more by doing less. A minimalist approach in Afghanistan is a recipe not for winning smarter but for losing slowly at tremendous cost in American lives, treasure and security.
Yes, our vital national interest in Afghanistan is to prevent it from once again becoming a haven for terrorists to plan attacks against America and U.S. allies. But achieving this narrow counterterrorism objective requires us to carry out a far broader set of tasks, the foremost of which are protecting the population, nurturing legitimate and effective governance, and fostering development. In short, we need a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency approach backed by greatly increased resources and an unambiguous U.S. political commitment to success in Afghanistan over the long haul.
A narrow, short-term focus on counterterrorism, by contrast, would repeat the mistakes made for years in Iraq before the troop surge, with the same catastrophic consequences. Before 2007 in Iraq, U.S. Special Forces had complete freedom of action to strike at terrorist leaders, backed by more than 120,000 conventional American forces and overwhelming air power. Although we succeeded in killing countless terrorists -- including the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- the insurgency continued to grow in strength and violence. It was not until we changed course and applied a new approach -- a counterinsurgency strategy focused on providing basic security for the people and improving their lives -- that the cycle of violence was at last broken.
Those who argue for simply conducting targeted counterterrorist strikes in Afghanistan also fail to grasp that by far the best way to generate the intelligence necessary for such strikes is from Afghan civilians, who will risk their lives to help us only if they believe we are committed to staying and protecting them from the insurgents and helping to improve their lives.
Loose rhetoric about a minimal commitment in Afghanistan is counterproductive for another reason: It exacerbates suspicions, already widespread in South Asia, that the United States will tire of this war and retreat. These doubts about our staying power deter ordinary Afghans from siding with our coalition against the insurgency. Also important is that these suspicions are a major reason some in Pakistan are reluctant to break decisively with insurgent groups, which, in a hedging strategy, they view as integral to positioning Pakistan for influence "the day after" the United States gives up and leaves Afghanistan. That is why it is so important for the president to reject the temptations of minimalism in Afghanistan and instead adopt a fully resourced, comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy, backed by an unambiguous American commitment to success over the long term. In doing so, he must invest the political capital to remind Americans why this fight is necessary for our national security, speak openly and frankly to our nation about the difficult path ahead, and -- most of all -- explain clearly to our fellow citizens why he is confident that we can prevail.
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama called Afghanistan "the war we must win." He was absolutely right. Now it is time to win it -- and we and many other members of both political parties stand ready to give him our full support in this crucial fight.
John McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona, was the 2008 Republican nominee for president. Joe Lieberman, an Independent Democratic senator from Connecticut, was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000.
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Geopolitical Diary: The Haqqani Network and Negotiations With Afghan Jihadists
March 20, 2009
A report in the Christian Science Monitor on Thursday said that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government has begun preliminary negotiations with a key jihadist faction, the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network. According to the report, Kabul’s emissaries met with representatives of Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, who have agreed in principle to steps toward an ultimate political settlement. The first stage of the roadmap entails a halt to U.S. military raids on the group’s facilities and the release of its prisoners — provided the group stops burning schools and targeting reconstruction teams. If these initial conditions are met, the next stages involve working on a new system of government for Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.
Though this development is in line with U.S. efforts to explore options for a political settlement in Afghanistan, it is strange in that the last time the Haqqani network made headlines, it was in September 2008 — when U.S. drones launched missiles at Haqqani’s residential compound in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Some two dozen members of his family were killed, although Haqqani and his sons survived the attack. The air strike occurred a little over two months after the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which senior U.S. military and intelligence officials believed was the work of the Haqqani network acting in concert with officials from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.
Therefore, before examining the pros and cons of negotiating with the Haqqani network, it is important to understand the network’s place in the jihadist landscape and its relationship with Pakistan’s security establishment. Although it is part of the Afghan Taliban movement, the Haqqani network has maintained distinct autonomy. It is closely allied with al Qaeda and is responsible for the bulk of suicide bombings in Afghanistan.
With its zone of operations in the eastern Afghan provinces along the border with Pakistan, Haqqani’s group wields disproportionate influence among Taliban forces on both sides of the Durand Line. Haqqani’s eldest son, Sirajuddin — who now runs the group because of his father’s advanced age — has been involved in persuading Pakistani Taliban forces to end their attacks inside Pakistan and focus on fighting Western forces in Afghanistan. At a time when Pakistan faces a growing Pashtun jihadist insurgency, the Haqqani network is one of the Taliban factions with which Islamabad retains considerable influence.
In other words, the Haqqani network is well positioned between al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Pakistan. This has implications for any move to negotiate with jihadist insurgents, especially since the U.S. objective is to drive a wedge between Afghan jihadists (the Taliban) and the transnational jihadists of al Qaeda. Haqqani is a critical player in the insurgency, and engaging him in negotiations could help to achieve that objective and undercut the insurgencies in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Conversely, al Qaeda’s leadership also could use its relationship with the Haqqani network, which dates back approximately 20 years, to counter the campaign against the transnational jihadists.
The case of the Haqqani network underscores the excruciatingly complex and difficult task that the Obama administration faces in its efforts to seek a negotiated settlement of the insurgency in Afghanistan.
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By YOCHI J. DREAZEN in Washington and MATTHEW ROSENBERG in Islamabad
The Obama administration's hopes of stabilizing Pakistan increasingly rest on the strong bond between military chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen and Gen. Ashfaq Kayani.
The two men spoke daily during the recent political crisis, in which growing opposition protests threatened to undermine the government until Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari -- also under pressure from Gen. Kayani and senior U.S. officials -- made significant concessions.
During the crisis. Gen. Kayani assured Adm. Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that he wasn't contemplating a military coup, according to U.S. officials. These officials said Adm. Mullen trusted the assurances -- but they acknowledged that some senior U.S. military officials harbor doubts about Gen. Kayani's capabilities and intentions.
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Associated Press
Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, right, greets a troop. He and Adm. Mike Mullen have developed a bond that U.S. officials say aids efforts to ensure Pakistan's stability and its support in fighting militants along the border with Afghanistan.
Gen. Kayani ultimately helped resolve the crisis by mediating between Mr. Zardari and his chief rival, Nawaz Sharif, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.
The relationship offers potential dividends for both countries. American officials want Islamabad to take stronger steps against the militants working to destabilize Pakistan and Afghanistan, and need Gen. Kayani's help as an ally in the fight, which they say he supports. Pakistan wants to continue receiving American financial aid and military assistance, which requires maintaining close ties with Adm. Mullen's Pentagon.
It is a relationship born of necessity. Mr. Zardari is also seen as committed to battling militants, but his government is fragile. Many Pentagon officials believe the government will fall within the next few months, although civilian U.S. officials say the president could hold on.
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Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
U.S. military chief Adm. Mike Mullen with troops.
As an ally, Gen. Kayani is "seen as the safer bet, because he'll probably be the last one standing," a senior U.S. military official said.
But the U.S. reliance on Gen. Kayani carries risks. During the Bush years, U.S. officials had a similarly warm relationship with Gen. Kayani's predecessor as army chief, Pervez Musharraf, and sent him more than $10 billion in American aid. In the end, Mr. Musharraf, who was also president, disappointed the U.S. by failing to order a broad crackdown on the Islamic extremists in his country.
"It's a complete replay of what took place with Musharraf," said C. Christine Fair, a senior political scientist with Rand Corp. and former United Nations political officer in Kabul. "We have a love affair with whichever chief of army staff is in office at any one time until they thoroughly disappoint."
In their public and private comments, U.S. and Pakistani officials say such concerns are unfounded.
"Gen. Kayani wants the system to work," Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in an interview, adding that the officer's outlook was "pro-democracy."
U.S. military and civilian policy makers say Gen. Kayani shares their belief that Islamic extremism poses a threat to Pakistan's survival and has taken steps that show he is serious about tackling the problem. In September, he replaced the head of Pakistan's intelligence service, which reports to him, and which U.S. officials say has long maintained ties to the Taliban. Pakistani officials say they only maintain contacts with some elements of the Taliban and no longer directly support the militants.
"He has done what he said he was going to do," Adm. Mullen told reporters earlier this year. "Gen. Kayani has not misled me at all."
In an interview, a senior Pentagon official praised Gen. Kayani for keeping tens of thousands of Pakistani troops deployed against Islamic militants in restive Bajaur province, instead of shifting them to the country's tense border with India.
Gen. Kayani is a chain smoker, while Adm. Mullen wakes up before 5 a.m. each day to work out before he arrives at the Pentagon. They also have professional differences: Gen. Kayani once ran Pakistan's main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence :-o :-o :-o while Adm. Mullen has spent his entire career in the regular military.
But they have forged strong ties since becoming their nations' top uniformed military officers in 2007.
"There's increasing confidence," said Talaat Masood, a Pakistani military analyst and retired general. "They trust each other in a way, even if they know are certain things that the Pakistan army will not do," he said -- specifically that Pakistan won't drastically reduce its troop strength along the border with India.
Since taking office, Gen. Kayani has cheered U.S. officials by putting experienced, nonideological officers in charge of two of Pakistan's most important security arms: the Inter-Services Intelligence and the 60,000-strong Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that is taking the lead in battling the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas.
More recently, Gen. Kayani played a crucial role in defusing last week's political crisis, which centered on Mr. Zardari's refusal to reinstate the former chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court.
Pakistani officials said that Gen. Kayani repeatedly met with Mr. Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani. "Initially, he confined himself to polite advice, but his tenor became firmer at the end. It was the Kayani model -- invisible, but around," said Jhangir Karamat, a retired chief of army staff.
—Zahid Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this article.
Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com and
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Afghanistan: The U.S. Between Iran and the Taliban
STRATFOR Today » March 21, 2009 | 1359 GMT
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki arrived March 20 in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif for a two-day visit. At a time when Washington is reaching out to Iran to assist in Afghanistan, Iran is demonstrating to the United States that it holds significant influence in Afghanistan. At the same time, Iran is not happy about U.S. efforts to engage “moderate” Taliban elements, and will instead be working to revive the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance — an endeavor that is likely to find support in Russia, Central Asia and India.
Analysis
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki arrived March 20 in the northwestern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif to meet with his Afghan and Tajik counterparts in a ceremony marking Nowruz — the Persian New Year celebrated by Iranians, Tajiks, Kurds, and Azeris. On the same day, U.S. President Barack Obama sent a message to Iran on the occasion of Nowruz as part of his administration’s efforts to engage Tehran diplomatically.
The Iranians have welcomed the “Happy Nowruz” message from Obama, but have reiterated their demand that the United States move beyond statements and take concrete steps to initiate the process of normalizing relations. Tehran knows that Washington is simultaneously trying to reach out to the clerical regime; it is also pursuing a diplomatic approach toward the Taliban, an enemy of Tehran that the Iranians nearly went to war with in 1998. From the Iranian point of view, this is the perfect time to demonstrate to the Americans that in addition to the Middle East, the Persian Islamist regime has great influence in South and Central Asia as well.
Intriguingly, the regional gathering is not being held in the Afghan capital, Kabul, but in Mazar-e-Sharif — a city with a Tajik majority in a predominantly Uzbek region, which is near the borders of the Central Asian states (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). It is also the same city where the Taliban murdered 10 diplomats and an Iranian journalist at the Iranian Consulate in August 1998 as part of a larger massacre of Shiite opponents in and around the town after the Taliban re-captured it from the Northern Alliance. Ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara and Turkmen in Afghanistan, along with their allies in Asghabat, Tashkent and Dushanbe all share Iran’s deep concern over the Taliban resurgence. These state and non-state actors, along with Russia, Iran and India, cooperated in supporting the Northern Alliance (a coalition of Afghan minorities) to counter the Taliban from 1994 to 2001 and then played an instrumental role in the fall of the Taliban regime in the aftermath of 9/11.
Tehran has strong influence among Afghanistan’s largest minority group, the Tajiks, because of ethno-linguistic ties. Similarly, it enjoys close relations with the Hazara, who are — like the Iranians — Shia. Given the way the Taliban routed the Northern Alliance in the 1990s, the Iranians understand that they will need to put together a more robust alliance comprising the Afghan minorities. The Uzbeks, however, are key in this regard because after the Tajiks, they are the next-largest ethnic group in the country. Moreover, the Uzbeks under the leadership of former military commander Gen. Abdul-Rashid Dostum played a key role in the ouster of the Marxist regime in 1992 after defecting to the Islamist rebel alliance.
Therefore, in addition to showing off their regional influence, the Iranians are likely attempting to revive the Northern Alliance. In April 2007, STRATFOR discussed the likelihood of the re-creation of the north-south divide in Afghanistan, pitting its Pashtun majority against the country’s minorities. By countering the rise of the Taliban, the Iranians would be offsetting the moves of their main regional rival, Saudi Arabia. Riyadh is interested in seeing the return of the Taliban as a means of checking Iran, which has created problems for Riyadh in the Arab world. Just as Iran has relied on its Arab Shiite allies and other radical forces in the Middle East to expand its influence, the Iranians have ample tools on their eastern front.
Iran is not the only power that has an interest in bolstering the Northern Alliance. The Russians also want to keep the Taliban contained, and would have an interest in undermining U.S. strategy in Afghanistan by reinforcing the Taliban’s biggest rivals. Iran will probably work through Russia to create a regional alliance against the Taliban, though Iran is aware that Moscow does not want Iran to expand its influence in Central Asia because the Russians see that region as their exclusive turf.
Additionally, Iran can rely on India to join this anti-Taliban regional alliance because of New Delhi’s interest in countering the Taliban’s main state-actor ally, Pakistan, and countering the Islamist militant threat that India faces from its western rival. The Indians have openly criticized U.S. efforts to seek out “moderate” Taliban and are bitter about the Obama administration’s soft approach toward Islamabad.
This emerging alignment of forces complicates an already complex and difficult situation that the United States faces in dealing with Taliban and their al Qaeda allies. Washington is struggling to deal with the spread of the jihadist insurgency from Afghanistan to Pakistan and now will have to balance between Iran and Saudi Arabia as it seeks to deal with the Taliban. A revitalization of an anti-Taliban alliance of state and non-state actors will create problems for the U.S. efforts to negotiate with the Taliban.
Such an anti-Taliban coalition also complicates U.S.-NATO efforts to reach out to the Central Asian republics and Russia in its search for alternative supply routes. Moscow and the Central Asian states are in favor, at the right price, of allowing the West to ship supplies through their territories to NATO forces in Afghanistan because they also want the Taliban in check. Washington’s moves to talk to the Taliban, however, are a cause of concern for the Kremlin and the countries of Central Asia, which is why they will be asking for a role in the U.S.-Iranian negotiations.
These complex dealings underscore the problems that the United States will be facing as it seeks simultaneously to negotiate with its two principal opponents in the Islamic world — Iran and the jihadists.
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Washington Post
March 22, 2009
Pg. 12
Pakistani Villagers Pay A Price For Defying Rebels
A Few Tribal Leaders Fight Religiously Cloaked Mayhem
By Pamela Constable, Washington Post Foreign Service
BAZITKHEL, Pakistan -- This tiny village in northwestern Pakistan has paid a high price for its defiance.
The health clinic lies in ruins, blasted to rubble by a car bomb that exploded outside three weeks ago. The mayor's compound next door is full of jagged holes. Five residents are dead, including a shopkeeper's small son and daughter. More than 20 were injured, including a young man whose right hand was severed.
But while most inhabitants of this violence-plagued region near the Afghan border have been cowed by the growing tide of Islamist and criminal violence, those in a handful of communities like Bazitkhel -- where tribal bonds are especially strong -- are determined to arm themselves and fight back.
Any vehicle that approaches Bazitkhel on the winding road from Peshawar, the provincial capital about 20 miles away, is quickly surrounded by men of all ages, each carrying a rifle and many loaded with grenade vests, ammo belts or military weapons. None wears a uniform or a badge.
"I am an educated and peaceful man. I would rather be carrying a book than a gun," said Hizar Amin Shah, 22, leaning on a rocket launcher. Shah said he spent the past decade studying and working in the capital, Islamabad, but has answered the call to return and defend his home. "These terrorists want to destroy the peace of Pakistan. It is up to us to finish them," he said.
The government of Pakistan, facing pressure from the West and increasing concern among its own citizens, has been struggling for months to contain an epidemic of religiously cloaked mayhem that is spreading from tribal havens along the Afghan border into the surrounding belt of "settled" areas that are theoretically protected by the state.
Authorities have tried various methods, first using the army to attempt to quash the rebels, and more recently negotiating truces with individual militia groups. Thousands of conflict-zone inhabitants, terrified by government bombing and insurgent brutality, have fled their homes. Few local officials dare visit their constituencies without military escorts.
A few tribal leaders, however, have refused to budge and are urging others to do the same. One of the first was Anwar Kamal Marwat, a former member of Parliament, who decided to organize a self-defense force in 2007 after Taliban militias began kidnapping and threatening people in his native Lakki Marwat district, demanding their support for a holy war.
"We are Muslims, and we know what holy war is. What they were doing was committing crimes," Marwat, 60, said last week in Peshawar. "They kept threatening us, but our tribe is very united and every village went on alert. We wanted to stop them before the cancer spread. It took many months, but now all their camps are gone, and they have not been back."
Marwat's success has been both an inspiration to other vulnerable communities and an embarrassment to the government, whose police are supposed to keep order and whose army is supposed to fight extremists.
One problem, according to experts and tribal leaders, is the divided loyalties and limited capacity of the security forces. Police are easily corrupted, tribal constabularies are ill-equipped and soldiers are often reluctant to shoot fellow Muslims. It is also widely believed here, though the government denies it, that Pakistani intelligence agencies covertly aid the insurgents in order to create trouble for next-door Afghanistan.
A second problem is that malefactors of all types benefit from a peculiar administrative arrangement, instituted by British colonial rulers, in which Pakistan's seven tribal zones are overseen by a federal agency and are off-limits to provincial or state security forces. As a result, they have become sanctuaries for both Islamist militias and criminal mafias, a distinction that local leaders said is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
"Some of the tribal agencies are totally controlled by the militants, and we are surrounded on three sides," said Afrasiab Khattak, a senior official in the party that rules North-West Frontier Province. Khattak has been a key promoter of the recent peace agreement with Taliban commanders in the Swat Valley, a tourist region in the province just outside the tribal belt.
The agreement has been criticized as creating a launching pad for a fundamentalist sweep through Pakistan. Last week, Islamic law courts began operating in Swat under the agreement, but Taliban commanders have not yet laid down their weapons. Still, Khattak said he believes the deal will hold.
"We have morally disarmed the militants in Swat. Now we have to create the conditions for physically disarming them," he said. "Swat is in a transition stage, and there is some confusion. The Taliban have no knowledge of law, and a few of them are addicted to violence, but 90 percent are behaving well."
But even in Peshawar, a city of several million, the chilling effects of Talibanization are everywhere. Half the movie theaters have shut down for lack of attendance at Bollywood action films deemed un-Islamic. Wedding parties have stopped hiring musicians, and only one craftsman who carves traditional instruments has remained in Dabgari Garden, a famous alley that once hummed with nightlife.
Gulzar Alam, an ethnic Pashto singer, has not performed at a single event since two gunmen ambushed him in a cemetery several months ago. As a further precaution, he has grown a beard and carries prayer beads.
"There is no more music in this city, not even in the public buses," Alam said, adding that most of his fellow entertainers have moved away or joined religious minstrel groups. The new provincial government hoped to spark a cultural revival, he added, "but now they've forgotten about it. The militancy problem has taken over everything."
In rural districts closer to the tribal zones, people are even more vulnerable to the predations of outlaw militias that roam freely just a few miles away. Bazitkhel, for example, is very near the Khyber Agency, a relatively prosperous tribal area that bustles with cross-border commerce but is also the stronghold of Mangal Bagh, a former bus driver who heads an Islamist militia-turned-criminal gang.
Leaders in Bazitkhel said most of their troubles originated with Bagh's followers, whom they allege enjoy the tacit acceptance of federal tribal officers. They said they had given authorities specific evidence about numerous attacks and their perpetrators, including cellphone records linking them to gang leaders in Khyber, but that nothing had come of it.
The village council head, Fahim ur Rahman, is now guarded around the clock by a small army of tribal members. He recounted half a dozen recent attacks and tribal retaliations, including a decisive battle last month in which hundreds of villagers encircled a group of militiamen in a three-hour gunfight, killing nine. Two weeks later came a message of gruesome revenge.
A pickup pulled into the village square in mid-afternoon and the driver walked into a shop, asking for cigarettes. The shopkeeper's children were outside munching on candy when the truck exploded, spraying deadly shrapnel in all directions. Two children died on the spot, and a third was rushed to a hospital in Peshawar with her stomach in shreds.
"These people call themselves Taliban, but they are nothing but criminals," Rahman said over rice and meat in his shrapnel-pocked compound. "We ask the security forces to crush them, but the police are afraid to take action, and other authorities protect them. If our tribe were not so united, we would have no hope of defending ourselves. We do not have permission to do this, but we have no choice."
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McClatchy Newspapers (mcclatchydc.com)
March 23, 2009
U.S. Troops Confront Disciplined, Wily, Mobile Afghan Insurgents
By Philip Smucker, McClatchy Newspapers
ASMAR, Afghanistan — When the young American lieutenant and his 14 soldiers glanced up at the rock face, they thought that the major who'd planned the mission must have been kidding.
Elijah Carlson, a strapping, blue-eyed Southern Californian and a self-proclaimed "gun nut," gripped the crumbling rock, tugged backward by 90-pounds of ammunition and gear. "If we fall back, we are dead!" he whispered to Lt. Jake Kerr, the platoon leader.
In seconds, a rock shot loose beneath one soldier's boot and dropped 20 feet onto another soldier below, sending him tumbling 15 feet to the base and cracking his bulletproof side plate.
What transpired over the next 16 hours was the kind of clash that's led Kerr's commanders in the Army's 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, N.Y., to conclude that there's no "victory" waiting around the next bend in Afghanistan, only a relentless struggle with a fleet-footed, clever enemy. For Kerr, a recent West Point graduate who specialized in counterinsurgency, it was the first face-off with an often-elusive opponent and a case study in the complex politics of rural Afghanistan.
Kunar, where Combat Company of the 1st Battalion of the 10th Mountain Division's 32nd Infantry Regiment is stationed, is one of the most violent provinces in Afghanistan. Asmar is just 10 miles from the border with Pakistan's Bajaur Tribal Agency, which has been a sanctuary for al Qaida and Afghan Taliban leaders.
The mission was to disrupt the men and weapons infiltrating from Pakistan and root out their staging bases in Afghanistan. The Americans had hoped first to confer with village elders, but after intelligence indicated that insurgents were in the area, they moved in with heavy machine guns.
Kerr's platoon moved for three hours in the darkness. Each time they thought they'd reached the peak, the land shot up farther. The unit came across enemy fighting positions, piled high with rocks and littered with food wrappers.
Afghan and American intelligence reports said these were "Bakt Ali's men," insurgents who lay claim to nearby villages in central Kunar. Ali is a senior Taliban guerrilla leader in Kunar who's thought to have direct ties to Abu Ikhlas al Masri, an Egyptian al Qaida leader in Pakistan. At each dug-in position, Kerr recorded the GPS coordinates of unmanned enemy positions, down to the 10th digit.
As dawn broke over the rocks, company commander Maj. Andy Knight, of Ann Arbor, Mich., set out on foot in the valley 700 feet below. Kerr would provide support from his eagles' nests as Knight attempted to clear two villages where, he said, residents had complained of insurgent intimidation. Accompanied by a reporter, Knight and a detachment of American and 14 Afghan soldiers stepped carefully along mud dikes, greeting Afghan children and their parents with a cordial "Sengay?" — "How are you?"
What Kerr, from Lake Placid, N.Y., heard from his perch above the valley was a surprise: Unseen men along the valley floor were shouting to one another like an oral tag team, passing the news that "the Americans have arrived."
Within minutes, three men, one in a white shalwar kamis — a loose pajama-like shirt and pants — another in a black one and a third in a brown shawl and gray pants, sprinted down the valley from the west with machine guns toward Knight's patrol, which was walking along a dry, rocky streambed about 1,000 feet away.
Kerr, 25, part of a new generation of American warriors schooled at West Point in the raw lessons of fighting counterinsurgencies in the Islamic world, spotted them instantly.
"They were running at Major Knight with AK-47s," Kerr said after the battle. "We opened up on them, and they began firing. But we had the three men outgunned, and they dove for cover in the streambed."
In the valley, the hiking party splashed through irrigation channels and dove for cover amid tall bushes that lined the stream. The chatter of machine guns fired from both sides echoed off the ridges and stone walls.
Knight, who played tight end on the Army football team, shot past in a blur to the front of the marching party. He didn't yet know that two of the insurgents had been hit. They were pulling themselves on their bellies through the rocks, desperate to reach a bend in the stream.
Within five minutes, two Apache attack helicopters buzzed the valley, scanning for enemy positions and listening to Kerr direct them to the target. "I was shooting tracers down at the two fighters crawling in the stream, and the other man in a brown shawl was shooting back," Kerr said.
Hidden behind a wooden shack, Knight's party could see the two Apaches sweep down, ripping up the stream bed. The insurgents had slipped just out of Kerr's sight, however, back up a bend in the stream and away from Knight's party. When the Apaches unleashed their Hellfire missiles, the men already had vanished.
"Dawg 1,6!" Knight snapped into his radio to Lt. David Poe, 24, of Buffalo, N.Y., a few hundred yards away, as he crouched in the rocks. "Are you near the woman in the green dress, tending to the animals? We are moving towards your location."
Almost all the males in the valley had gone missing, but Afghan women were trying to keep spooked cows and goats from fleeing. As Knight's party climbed into the rocks above the stream and dashed along the mountainside, a woman in a black shawl appeared, waving her arms and wailing, berating U.S. and Afghan forces as they passed. An Afghan soldier shouted back, incorrectly, "Back in your house, lady! They shot first!"
Knight stopped to catch his breath. "Do we have maps of these villages?" he demanded of Lt. Eric Forcey, 23, of Lynchburg, Va., who was at his side.
"No, sir," Forcey replied. "For all intents and purposes, they do not exist."
"I think they've existed for a long time, Forcey; the mapmakers just have not found them," the major replied.
"Yes, sir."
WIth "shhh-thwamps, shhh-thwamps," two more Hellfire missiles crashed into the rocks.
With constant translations of the enemy radio chatter in Pashtu, picked up through electronic eavesdropping, and the major's narration of the battle, events appeared to turn. "I think one of them is badly injured," Knight speculated. "They will have to make a decision to drag him out or leave him."
The U.S. forces, augmented by the 14 Afghans, were deliberate, at times cumbersome. From above, Kerr's men heard radio traffic indicating that the insurgents had slipped into a larger village farther up the ravine.
Enemy radio chatter also indicated that the helicopter strikes were landing just in front of the house from which Bakt Ali's men apparently were talking.
Still, this was a shell game with no certainty about the targets' whereabouts, and Knight — who spent a year in Kunar in 2006 and 2007 — knew it. He refused to order an airstrike on the suspected hideout.
Instead, he took Kerr's plea over the radio that, "We can own this valley, sir!" He ordered two Humvees to rush up the stream bed and take up "support-by-fire" positions in front of a group of wooden houses and dispatched Dawg Company's Poe to oversee a group of Afghan commandos, who'd search the village on foot.
The choppers returned from refueling. Once in the village, the Afghan soldiers went house to house, room by room. A cluster of women and children stood on a rooftop. "This is a virtual ghost town, sir," came Poe's report. An Afghan interpreter sniped: "It almost always ends this way."
Kerr and his men were tired and frustrated. No one had found the fugitives' "blood trails," which he'd hoped to follow.
As his men packed in their heavy weapons and began to pull back down the mountain, the insurgents' radio traffic intensified.
"We could hear them actually counting our numbers, and they were saying that they would hit us. A commander told them to wait until we were grouped." The insurgents apparently wanted to target only the departing forces and to avoid destroying the village.
Kerr's team hiked back down the ridgeline, descended about 1,000 feet into the riverbed, linked up with Knight's fighters in U.S. jeeps and reached for water bottles.
Suddenly, an Afghan interpreter, monitoring radio traffic, heard Bakt Ali's commander order the attack. Kerr dove for cover. The pavement exploded with rocket blasts and fire from massive PK machine guns. Carlson, 23, from Torrance, Calif., dropped to his knees, curling into a fetal position under a dirt ledge with his machine gun trained on the crest of the mountain he'd scaled earlier. One U.S. soldier was hit in the groin as he leapt for cover.
Kerr's platoon's work was about to pay dividends, however.
With a rush of satisfaction, Kerr reached into his pocket and pulled out the GPS coordinates of the enemy positions he'd scribbled down that morning. From six miles away at their base in Asmar, a 10th Mountain artillery battery unleashed a torrent of 105 mm howitzer shells onto the enemy positions. In the twilight, .50-caliber machine guns blazed.
The day was over. No one was going back to hunt for the living or the dead. The insurgents had lost fighters, but they'd proved to be a wily, disciplined and mobile force.
The U.S. and Afghan forces had had a reality check. If they didn't already know it, they now understood why they'd been unable to have a peaceful discussion with the village elders. Bakt Ali's forces owned the villages, and until last Thursday, they more or less controlled the entire ravine. It would take more than better maps for the Afghan army and its U.S. allies to wrest control of them.
Smucker is a McClatchy special correspondent.
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Woof,
Our troops need to be very careful of situations like the one above in the mountainous regions; one of these days the enemy is going to orchestrate a massacre on us.
P.C.
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Woof,
P.C. is correct. We don't need another Operation Anaconda. The mountains of Afghanistan are the primary reason why the Afghan people have never truly been beaten by outsiders. That Lt. definitely has his mind right for the type of situation him and his platoon have to face.
"At each dug-in position, Kerr recorded the GPS coordinates of unmanned enemy positions, down to the 10th digit." ...and later on in the fight... "With a rush of satisfaction, Kerr reached into his pocket and pulled out the GPS coordinates of the enemy positions he'd scribbled down that morning. From six miles away at their base in Asmar, a 10th Mountain artillery battery unleashed a torrent of 105 mm howitzer shells onto the enemy positions. In the twilight, .50-caliber machine guns blazed."
Beautiful.
The mountainous terrain is one thing and the human terrain is another but they're both the biggest obstacles that need to be overcome in Afghanistan. "Almost all the males in the valley had gone missing". Why? Most were probably fighting age males. What did the TB have to offer that The ANA/ANP didn't? Maybe it's a case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em". People will always fight for something and rarely for nothing. Why didn't they do what the villagers in Bazitkhel, Pakistan do and fight back?
The U.S. and Coalition forces can only do so much and it's sad but true but, a lot of soldiers don't really care what happens here as long as they make it home alive. Ultimately it's up to the Afghan people whether or not they live in a state of constant fear under the Taliban. Then again, that depends on who can provide them with their basic needs, the biggest one being security and not just through arms. Is it the ANA and ANP or the TB? The poppy fields are blooming in Helmand and eradication efforts are weak and ultimately ineffective.The TB buys every bit of the opium crop for the farmers. I don't think that the present government of Afghanistan will be subsidizing wheat anytime soon. A man has to feed his family.
There are so many issues that need to be addressed here and if too much focus is placed on one thing, others fall off the radar. Damn! I wish I could type faster.
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By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration will unveil a new Afghanistan strategy Friday that calls for devoting significant new resources to counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan and economic development in Pakistan, according to senior U.S. officials.
The administration now plans to send about 4,000 military trainers to Afghanistan -- in addition to the recently announced 17,000 additional troops -- and hundreds of diplomats and other civilian officials. The U.S. financial commitment to Afghanistan and Pakistan will grow by billions of dollars per year under the plan.
Aid will be tied for the first time to performance benchmarks, though administration officials declined to specify what they were or how they'd be measured.
The Pentagon also is considering a new U.S. military command in southern Afghanistan that would assume responsibility for the American troops deploying there. The area is currently commanded by European NATO generals, and a new U.S. command would signal increasing American control over the war effort.
The moves are part of a broad push to prevent the stalemated Afghan war from destabilizing both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since taking office in January, President Barack Obama has announced plans to wind down military operations in Iraq next year and shift more military resources to Afghanistan. The president was to outline his approach in a White House address Friday morning.
President Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan-Pakistan region means additional troops and civilian officials to counter narcotics trade in Southern Afghanistan and more financial aid for the economic development, says WSJ military correspondent Yochi Dreazen.
Senior U.S. officials have grown increasingly concerned about Afghanistan and Pakistan. The resurgent Taliban exert day-to-day control over many rural parts of Afghanistan and have pushed U.S. and Afghan military casualties to record highs. Militants in Pakistan have battled the Pakistani army to a draw in several regions of the country and carry out regular suicide bombings.
"There's a clear understanding that the status quo is not remotely sustainable in either country," said a U.S. official involved in the new approach.
The strategy will effectively focus U.S. efforts in Afghanistan on the narrow goal of defeating al Qaeda and its Taliban allies, a shift away from the Bush administration's broader nation-building efforts there.
Officials said the 4,000 American trainers, along with the additional diplomats and civilian officials, will be on the ground in Afghanistan by the fall.
The plan calls for expanded American diplomatic outreach inside and outside Afghanistan. U.S. officials will try to persuade moderate Taliban elements in Afghanistan to abandon violence and join the country's political process. American diplomats will also reach out to Tehran in the hope of winning Iranian assistance in stabilizing the country.
The new strategy is notable for the emphasis it places on Pakistan, which senior officials now see as critical to determining whether Afghanistan stabilizes or continues its downward spiral. The U.S. has given Pakistan more than $10 billion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the U.S., mostly in military assistance. As part of its new strategy, the Obama administration plans to instead give Pakistan at least $1.5 billion in economic development aid in each of the next five years.
The economic aid will be accompanied by additional American strikes on militant targets inside Pakistan. U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials are drawing up a fresh list of terrorist targets for Predator drone strikes.
The policy changes come less than a week before Mr. Obama travels to France for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit devoted heavily to Afghanistan. Administration officials say Mr. Obama has come to accept that NATO nations are unlikely to contribute more combat troops to Afghanistan because of domestic political opposition.
Instead, White House officials say Mr. Obama will ask European nations to provide more military and police trainers to Afghanistan, as well as additional economic assistance to Pakistan.
The U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan has been a source of increasing friction within the military alliance. In response, Pentagon officials are firming up plans to redraw the balance of power between the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan, according to three military officers familiar with the deliberations.
The idea getting the most support calls for a U.S. military command in southern Afghanistan, the officers said. It would be led by a two-star American general.
Most of the American reinforcements are being deployed to the south of the country, a Taliban stronghold that is one of the largest opium-producing regions in the world. U.S. and NATO officials believe that the drug trade provides the Taliban with billions of dollars each year.
The Obama administration hopes to undercut the Taliban by launching a new counter-narcotics offensive in the Helmand River Valley and other parts of southern Afghanistan. The mission will be the primary focus of the U.S. reinforcements.
Under one facet of the plan, U.S. or Afghan troops will first offer Afghan farmers free wheat seed to replace their crops that produce opium. If the farmers refuse, U.S. or Afghan personnel will burn their fields, and then again offer them free replacement seeds. A senior U.S. military official described the approach as a "carrot, stick, carrot" effort.
—Jonathan Weisman contributed to this article.
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A surprising article from a NYTimes columnist who usually is quite the useful idiot:
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Op-Ed Columnist
The Winnable War
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMy SpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy DAVID BROOKS
Published: March 26, 2009
Khyber Pass, Afghanistan
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I came to Afghanistan skeptical of American efforts to transform this country. Afghanistan is one of the poorest, least-educated and most-corrupt nations on earth. It is an infinitely complex and fractured society. It has powerful enemies in Pakistan, Iran and the drug networks working hard to foment chaos. The ground is littered with the ruins of great powers that tried to change this place.
Moreover, we simply do not know how to modernize nations. Western aid workers seem to spend most of their time drawing up flow charts for each other. They’re so worried about their inspectors general that they can’t really immerse themselves in the messy world of local reality. They insist on making most of the spending decisions themselves so the “recipients” of their largess end up passive, dependent and resentful.
Every element of my skepticism was reinforced during a six-day tour of the country. Yet the people who work here make an overwhelming case that Afghanistan can become a functional, terror-fighting society and that it is worth sending our sons and daughters into danger to achieve this.
In the first place, the Afghan people want what we want. They are, as Lord Byron put it, one of the few people in the region without an inferiority complex. They think they did us a big favor by destroying the Soviet Union and we repaid them with abandonment. They think we owe them all this.
That makes relations between Afghans and foreigners relatively straightforward. Most military leaders here prefer working with the Afghans to the Iraqis. The Afghans are warm and welcoming. They detest the insurgents and root for American success. “The Afghans have treated you as friends, allies and liberators from the very beginning,” says Afghanistan’s defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak.
Second, we’re already well through the screwing-up phase of our operation. At first, the Western nations underestimated the insurgency. They tried to centralize power in Kabul. They tried to fight a hodgepodge, multilateral war.
Those and other errors have been exposed, and coalition forces are learning. When you interview impressive leaders here, like Brig. Gen. John Nicholson of Regional Command South, Col. John Agoglia of the Counterinsurgency Training Center and Chris Alexander of the U.N., you see how relentless they are at criticizing their own operations. Thanks to people like that, the coalition will stumble toward success, having tried the alternatives.
Third, we’ve got our priorities right. Armies love killing bad guys. Aid agencies love building schools. But the most important part of any aid effort is governance and law and order. It’s reforming the police, improving the courts, training local civil servants and building prisons.
In Afghanistan, every Western agency is finally focused on this issue, from a Canadian reconstruction camp in Kandahar to the top U.S. general, David McKiernan.
Fourth, the quality of Afghan leadership is improving. This is a relative thing. President Hamid Karzai is detested by much of the U.S. military. Some provincial governors are drug dealers on the side. But as the U.N.’s Kai Eide told the Security Council, “The Afghan government is today better and more competent than ever before.” Reformers now lead the most important ministries and competent governors run key provinces.
Fifth, the U.S. is finally taking this war seriously. Up until now, insurgents have had free rein in vast areas of southern Afghanistan. The infusion of 17,000 more U.S. troops will change that. The Obama administration also promises a civilian surge to balance the military push.
Sixth, Pakistan is finally on the agenda. For the past few years, the U.S. has let Pakistan get away with murder. The insurgents train, organize and get support from there. “It’s very hard to deal with a cross-border insurgency on only one side of the border,” says Mr. Alexander of the U.N. The Obama strategic review recognizes this.
Finally, it is simply wrong to say that Afghanistan is a hopeless 14th-century basket case. This country had decent institutions before the Communist takeover. It hasn’t fallen into chaos, the way Iraq did, because it has a culture of communal discussion and a respect for village elders. The Afghans have embraced the democratic process with enthusiasm.
I finish this trip still skeptical but also infected by the optimism of the truly impressive people who are working here. And one other thing:
After the trauma in Iraq, it would have been easy for the U.S. to withdraw into exhaustion and realism. Instead, President Obama is doubling down on the very principles that some dismiss as neocon fantasy: the idea that this nation has the capacity to use military and civilian power to promote democracy, nurture civil society and rebuild failed states.
Foreign policy experts can promote one doctrine or another, but this energetic and ambitious response — amid economic crisis and war weariness — says something profound about America’s DNA.
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Third post of the day
WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to further bolster American forces in Afghanistan and for the first time set benchmarks for progress in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban there and in Pakistan, officials said Thursday.
In imposing conditions on the Afghans and Pakistanis, Mr. Obama is replicating a strategy used in Iraq two years ago both to justify a deeper American commitment and prod governments in the region to take more responsibility for quelling the insurgency and building lasting political institutions.
“The era of the blank check is over,” Mr. Obama told Congressional leaders at the White House, according to an account of the meeting provided on the condition of anonymity because it was a private session.
The new strategy, which Mr. Obama will formally announce Friday, will send 4,000 more troops to train Afghan security forces on top of the 17,000 extra combat troops that he already ordered to Afghanistan shortly after taking office, administration and Congressional officials said. But for now, Mr. Obama has decided not to send additional combat forces, they said, although military commanders at one point had requested a total of 30,000 more American troops.
Although the administration is still developing the specific benchmarks for Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said they would be the most explicit demands ever presented to the governments in Kabul and Islamabad. In effect, Mr. Obama would be insisting that two fractured countries plagued by ancient tribal rivalries and modern geopolitical hostility find ways to work together and transform their societies.
American officials have repeatedly said that Afghanistan has to make more progress in fighting corruption, curbing the drug trade and sharing power with the regions, while they have insisted that Pakistan do more to cut ties between parts of its government and the Taliban. Mr. Obama telephoned President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan on Thursday to share the main elements of the strategic review.
Setting benchmarks for Pakistan could be particularly difficult. For years, the United States has simply paid bills submitted by the Pakistani government for counterterrorism operations, even during truces when its military was not involved in counterterrorism. Pakistan has resisted linking its aid to specific performance criteria and officials acknowledged that developing those criteria could be problematic.
The key elements of Mr. Obama’s plan, with its more robust combat force, its emphasis on training, and its far-reaching goals, foreshadow an ambitious but risky and costly attempt to unify and stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Obama is unveiling his approach at a time when the conflict is worsening, the lives of the people are not visibly improving, and the intervention by American-led foreign powers is increasingly resented.
The goals that Mr. Obama has settled on may be elusive and, according to some critics, even naïve. Among other things, officials said he planned to recast the Afghan war as a regional issue involving not only Pakistan but also India, Russia, China, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the Central Asian states.
His plan envisions persuading Pakistan to stop focusing military resources on its longstanding enemy, India, so it can concentrate more on battling insurgents in its lawless tribal regions. That goal may be especially hard to achieve given more than a half century of enmity — including a nuclear arms race — between Pakistan and India.
All told, the 21,000 additional American troops that Mr. Obama will have authorized almost precisely matches the original number of additional troops that President George W. Bush sent to Iraq two years ago, bringing the overall American deployment in Afghanistan to about 60,000. But Mr. Obama avoids calling it a “surge” and resisted sending the full reinforcements initially sought by commanders.
Instead, Mr. Obama chose to re-evaluate troop levels at a series of specific moments over the next year, officials said. Approaching the issue in increments may be easier to explain to members of Mr. Obama’s own party who fear he is getting the country as entangled in Afghanistan as Mr. Bush did in Iraq.
The officials said Mr. Obama planned to frame the American commitment as a counterterrorism mission aimed at denying havens for Al Qaeda, with three main goals — training Afghan security forces, supporting the weak central government in Kabul and securing the population. While the new strategy will call for expanding Afghan security forces more rapidly, it will not explicitly endorse the request from American commanders to increase the national police and army to 400,000.
At the same time, Mr. Obama warned Congressional leaders that he would need more than the $50 billion in his budget plan for military operations and development efforts. Asked by lawmakers about the prospect of reconciliation with moderate members of the Taliban, officials said Mr. Obama replied that he wanted to sift out hard-core radicals from those who were fighting simply to earn money.
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, emerged from a briefing with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to declare that in his judgment the administration’s review “was right on track.” He said the new strategy would send a significant number of additional trainers to work with the Afghan National Army and police, part of an overall strategy to “transfer responsibilities to the Afghans, both militarily and in terms of economic development.”
Mr. Levin, who was part of a bipartisan group that pressed Mr. Bush to set benchmarks for Iraq two years ago, embraced the idea of doing the same again for Afghanistan. “There is a determination to set some benchmarks for Afghanistan, and that will be incredibly important,” Mr. Levin said. “We haven’t had them in Afghanistan.”
Republicans emerging from briefings at the White House and on Capitol Hill withheld comment. Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, said in a statement that he “had a constructive meeting at the White House” and that he would “reserve public comment until the president makes his formal announcement.”
Dennis C. Blair, the administration’s director of national intelligence, said the United States still lacked intelligence about the power structures inside the country and other basic information necessary for a counterinsurgency campaign. “We know a heck of a lot more about Iraq on a granular level than we know about Afghanistan,” he said.
Speaking with reporters, Mr. Blair estimated that up to three quarters of the Taliban’s rank and file in Afghanistan could be peeled away from the Taliban’s leadership, most of whom are hiding in sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan.
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US laying ground for troops in Pak?
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/03/white-house-won.html
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Second post of the day
Well, now that BO is president, the NYT prints things like this. Anyway, posted here as part of my ongoing search for a sense of our strategy in Afg.
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Graveyard Myths
PETER BERGEN
Published: March 28, 2009
AS President Obama orders an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, he faces growing skepticism over the United States’ prospects there. Critics of the troop buildup often point out that Afghanistan has long been the “graveyard of empires.” In 1842, the British lost a nasty war that ended when fierce tribesmen notoriously destroyed an army of thousands retreating from Kabul. And, of course, the Soviets spent almost a decade waging war in Afghanistan, only to give up ignominiously in 1989.
But in fact, these are only two isolated examples. Since Alexander the Great, plenty of conquerors have subdued Afghanistan. In the early 13th century, Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes ravaged the country’s two major cities. And in 1504, Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, easily took the throne in Kabul. Even the humiliation of 1842 did not last. Three and a half decades later, the British initiated a punitive invasion and ultimately won the second Anglo-Afghan war, which gave them the right to determine Afghanistan’s foreign policy.
The Soviet disaster of the 1980s, for its part, cannot be credited to the Afghans’ legendary fighting skills alone, as the mujahideen were kept afloat by billions of dollars worth of aid from the United States and Saudi Arabia and sophisticated American military hardware like anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, which ended the Soviets’ total air superiority.
In any case, today’s American-led intervention in Afghanistan can hardly be compared to the Soviet occupation. The Soviet Army employed a scorched-earth policy, killing more than a million Afghans, forcing some five million more to flee the country, and sowing land mines everywhere.
While the American military is killing too many Afghan civilians, in any given year the numbers are in the hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands. And even the most generous estimates of today’s Taliban insurgency suggest it is no more than 20,000 men. About 10 times as many Afghans fought against the Soviet occupation.
The Soviet experience in Afghanistan weighed heavily on the minds of Bush administration policymakers, who kept a “light footprint” lest Afghans rebuff American and allied soldiers as hated occupiers. But as it turned out, the Afghans were widely enthusiastic about being liberated from the Taliban. In an ABC/BBC poll conducted in 2005, a full four years after the fall of the Taliban, 8 in 10 Afghans expressed a favorable opinion of the United States — an extraordinary proportion in a Muslim nation — and the same number supported the American-led overthrow of the Taliban in their country.
And just last month, in a new poll by ABC and the BBC, 58 percent of Afghans named the Taliban as the greatest threat to their nation. Only 8 percent said it was the United States. And while only 47 percent of Afghans still had a favorable opinion of America, the Taliban fared far worse, with just 7 percent approval.
What Afghans want is for international forces to do what they should have been doing all along — provide them the security they need to get on with making a living. That means building up the Afghan Army and police, which are only about one-fourth the size of the security services in Iraq. This will not come cheap, but the cost of putting an Afghan soldier in the field is only one-seventieth that of sending an American. President Obama, who will travel to Europe for NATO’s 60th anniversary in early April, can ask those European countries that are reluctant to send additional troops to Afghanistan to instead contribute to a permanent fund to help pay for the expanded Afghan security services.
The United States should also focus on projects that will bring both security and economic benefits to Afghans. A key task is to secure the all-important road between Kabul and Kandahar, a once-pleasant freeway that has become a nightmarish gantlet of potential Taliban ambushes.
Afghanistan’s vast opium/heroin industry finances the Taliban and feeds rampant government corruption. The American Drug Enforcement Administration should make public the names of the top Afghan drug lords, including government officials, so that they can no longer act with impunity. And because Afghanistan’s court system is still incapable of handling major drug cases, Kabul should sign a treaty with Washington that would allow key heroin traffickers to be tried in the United States.
Measures like these would help return Afghanistan to something like the state it was before the Soviets invaded in 1979: a relatively peaceful country slowly building itself into something more than a purely agricultural economy.
Afghanistan is no longer the graveyard of any empire. Rather, it just might become the model of a somewhat stable Central Asian state.
Peter Bergen is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of “The Osama bin Laden I Know.”
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Third post of the day
President Obama unveiled his strategy for the war in Afghanistan yesterday, and there is much to like in it. Our main question -- and, we suspect, the world's -- is whether the new Commander in Chief is really prepared to devote the resources and political capital that his plan will need to succeed.
Such fortitude is essential because this new Afghan-Pakistan campaign will be both long and expensive. The President's claim yesterday that "the situation is increasingly perilous" overstates the immediate trouble; Afghanistan has nowhere near the level of violence that consumed Iraq in 2006 before President Bush's surge. But denying the "Afpak" border as a safe haven for al Qaeda and the worst Taliban elements will tax the patience of an already war-weary American public.
All the more so because Mr. Obama himself has spent so much time questioning America's antiterrorist mission abroad. While he tried, during the campaign, to distinguish Iraq (Bush's war) from Afghanistan (the good war), the truth is that they are both exercises in counterinsurgency and nation building. The irony is that both tasks are arguably easier in Iraq, because of its denser population and history of a stronger central government.
Mr. Obama barely mentioned foreign policy in his recent address to Congress. And with his vast domestic agenda, the temptation of political adviser David Axelrod will be to have Mr. Obama give this one speech and drop the subject. That is a good way to discover a year from now that he has opponents emerging on both his left and right in Congress.
The left is already restless, with Les Gelb now writing that "We can't defeat the Taliban" and we should thus gradually withdraw. That is the same Les Gelb who was Vice President Joe Biden's strategic partner in writing in 2006 that the surge was doomed and Iraq had to be partitioned. Mr. Biden was reportedly an internal skeptic about Mr. Obama's new strategy.
On the right, many Republicans will also begin to question the mission, much as Tom DeLay opposed Bill Clinton on the Balkans. Mr. Obama could help here if he could manage to bring himself to speak well of our success in Iraq. The Baghdad surge shows the U.S. can learn from its mistakes and prevail in a long counterinsurgency, and a President should celebrate that achievement.
Yet Mr. Obama kept falling back yesterday on his campaign trope that Afghanistan would be going well now if not for the detour in Iraq. It's more accurate to say that Afghanistan got markedly worse after Pakistan's government cut its 2006 deal in Waziristan that created a Taliban sanctuary. Mr. Obama is not going to sustain GOP support by continuing to campaign against George W. Bush.
For all of those political caveats, we believe the war is winnable. And Mr. Obama's strategy takes some important steps. The most significant is to reclaim the battle from NATO, which never really wanted the job. The U.S. will create a new command in Southern Afghanistan, where U.S. and Afghan troops will apply the lessons of Iraq. The irony here is that Mr. Obama is asserting U.S. primacy from the failing "multilateralism" of the Bush Administration, which made the mistake of assuming Europeans really believed in the fight. In the end, as usual, the 60,000 or so Yanks will have to do the bloodiest fighting and the Germans can man the supply lines out of harm's way.
Another step forward is the commitment of 4,000 more GIs to train and expand the Afghan army to 134,000 troops by 2011. We agree with strategists who say the ultimate goal should be 250,000 or more -- making the army a major employer and source of national unity. But Mr. Obama is right to say that Afghans will eventually have to learn to defend their own country.
Mr. Obama made much yesterday of an allegedly new willingness to engage elements of the Taliban. This is hardly as revolutionary as it sounds, since U.S. troops did something similar in Anbar Province in Iraq. It makes sense to try to peel away tribal chiefs and others who may be "Taliban" only because they are paid to be, or afraid not to be. But over time this will only work if the U.S. and Afghans can persuade these Taliban-for-hire that the allies can provide security against al Qaeda and the real Taliban.
Also mark us down as skeptics about his new call for "benchmarks" for the Pakistan and Afghanistan governments. As we learned in Iraq, benchmarks can measure the wrong things amid larger progress, and they also make it easier for Congress to find fault. No doubt both Kabul and Islamabad can do more as allies, but the best way to ensure that is with a broad, sustained U.S. commitment, not with what sound like orders from Washington.
Perhaps the best news in yesterday's speech is that Mr. Obama has now taken ownership of this war. One lesson he can learn from Iraq is that -- as hard as the fighting may get and as vociferous as the opposition at home may become -- Mr. Obama now has an obligation to stay the course until our soldiers can return home in victory and with honor.
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4th post of the day:
OK folks, I'd like to put it out there: What do we think of the President's plan? Do we support it?
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5th post of the day
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/mar/27/obama-afghanistan-military
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Woof Guro Crafty,
The most perfect battle plan in the world usually goes to crap once the first shot is fired in actual battle. Or so I've heard. Communism is a great idea in theory but, once you throw in the human factor, it isn't really all that great. It sounds like BO has a pretty good plan though and I think it's going to take a hell of a lot of hard work by all parties involved especially those with boots on the ground if it's going to work. Of course the human factor plays a huge role also. How are the potential Afghan soldiers and police going to be persuaded to become actual soldiers and police? How is it going to be sold to the Afghan people? My guess is through security which seems to be the underlying theme of the "new" strategy for the stabilization of Afghanistan.
Just a few things in no particular order...
"What Afghans want is for international forces to do what they should have been doing all along — provide them the security they need to get on with making a living." -I know they are not figuring this out just now.
"The key elements of Mr. Obama’s plan, with its more robust combat force" -This would definitely help until Afghan forces are strong enough to defend their homeland.
"The United States should also focus on projects that will bring both security and economic benefits to Afghans." -In that order. Can't have the latter without the former.
"Afghanistan’s vast opium/heroin industry finances the Taliban and feeds rampant government corruption." -Really??? Then find a more effective method of eradication than plowing up the poppy fields. It grows back in a week or two. And spraying herbicide might harm the environment.
"The most significant is to reclaim the battle from NATO, which never really wanted the job.... The irony here is that Mr. Obama is asserting U.S. primacy from the failing "multilateralism" of the Bush Administration, which made the mistake of assuming Europeans really believed in the fight. In the end, as usual, the 60,000 or so Yanks will have to do the bloodiest fighting and the Germans can man the supply lines out of harm's way." -So sad but so true.
"Afghanistan would be going well now if not for the detour in Iraq. It's more accurate to say that Afghanistan got markedly worse after Pakistan's government cut its 2006 deal in Waziristan that created a Taliban sanctuary." -I don't quite understand this one. We did shift a lot of focus from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003. And I think I remember something like "We got him" being said in December 2004. Where the hell is Bin Laden? Oh yeah, we were focused on Iraq.
Concerning the new plan,l I think this is what we should have been doing all along and I think it will work out in the long run as long as we don't try to implement another "new" strategy after we hit the first few bumps in the road.
The video is so true it's not even funny. Wow... Serious lack of discipline which I think is the oil that makes all the different parts of the military machine run smoothly...
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Woof Krenz et al:
My concern is two fold:
1) Can we do it? For the answer here, I look first and foremost to those there. In a closely related vein, do we have the will to do what it will take? Given that the CiC is giving less than half of what his generals are asking for, there is goodly reason to wonder.
2) Will we at home backstab the efforts in the field -- as we did with our efforts in Iraq? My doubts here begin with our Commander in Chief. Yes he said some right things the other day, but , , , what will he do when his supporters, who voted for him to bug out of Iraq NOW, abandon him over the hard times his announced path is sure to bring? Will he throw away the investment our troops make in blood, sweat, and tears as he would have done in Iraq?
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WSJ: Pakistan is the main issue
By GRAHAM ALLISON and JOHN DEUTCH
In announcing his new Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, President Barack Obama articulated "a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future."
This is a sound conception of both the threat and U.S. interests in the region. Mr. Obama took a giant step beyond the Bush administration's "Afghanistan policy" when he named the issue "AfPak" -- Afghanistan, Pakistan and their shared, Pashtun-populated border. But this is inverted. We suggest renaming the policy "PakAf," to emphasize that, from the perspective of U.S. interests and regional stability, the heart of the problem lies in Pakistan.
The fundamental question about Afghanistan is this: What vital national interest does the U.S. have there? President George W. Bush offered an ever-expanding answer to this question. As he once put it, America's goal is "a free and peaceful Afghanistan," where "reform and democracy" would serve as "the alternatives to fanaticism, resentment and terror."
In sharp contrast, during the presidential campaign Mr. Obama declared that America has one and only one vital national interest in Afghanistan: to ensure that it "cannot be used as a base to launch attacks against the United States." To which we would add the corollary: that developments in Afghanistan not undermine Pakistan's stability and assistance in eliminating al Qaeda.
Consider a hypothetical. Had the terrorist attacks of 9/11 been planned by al Qaeda from its current headquarters in ungoverned areas of Pakistan, is it conceivable that today the U.S. would find itself with 54,000 troops and $180 billion committed to transforming medieval Afghanistan into a stable, modern nation?
For Afghanistan to become a unitary state ruled from Kabul, and to develop into a modern, prosperous, poppy-free and democratic country would be a worthy and desirable outcome. But it is not vital for American interests.
After the U.S. and NATO exit Afghanistan and reduce their presence and financial assistance to levels comparable to current efforts in the Sudan, Somalia or Bangladesh, one should expect Afghanistan to return to conditions similar to those regions. Such conditions are miserable. They are deserving of American and international development and security assistance. But, as in those countries, it is unrealistic to expect anything more than a slow, difficult evolution towards modernity.
The problem in Pakistan is more pressing and direct. There, the U.S. does have larger vital national interests. Top among these is preventing Pakistan's arsenal of nuclear weapons and materials from falling into the hands of terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. This danger is not hypothetical -- the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, A.Q. Khan, is now known to have been the world's first nuclear black marketer, providing nuclear weapons technology and materials to Libya, North Korea and Iran.
Protecting Pakistan's nuclear arsenal requires preventing radical Islamic extremists from taking control of the country.
Furthermore, the U.S. rightly remains committed to preventing the next 9/11 attack by eliminating global terrorist threats such as al Qaeda. This means destroying their operating headquarters and training camps, from which they can plan more deadly 9/11s.
The counterterrorism strategy in Pakistan that has emerged since last summer offers our best hope for regional stability and success in dealing a decisive blow against al Qaeda and what Vice President Joe Biden calls "incorrigible" Taliban adherents. But implementing these operations requires light U.S. footprints backed by drones and other technology that allows missile attacks on identified targets. The problem is that the U.S. government no longer seems to be capable of conducting covert operations without having them reported in the press.
This will only turn Pakistani public opinion against the U.S. Many Pakistanis see covert actions carried out inside their country as America "invading an ally." This makes it difficult for Pakistani officials to support U.S. operations while sustaining widespread popular support.
As Mr. Biden has warned: "It is hard to imagine a greater nightmare for America than the world's second-largest Muslim nation becoming a failed state in fundamentalists' hands, with an arsenal of nuclear weapons and a population larger than Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea combined."
Avoiding this nightmare will require concentration on the essence of the challenge: Pakistan. On the peripheries, specifically Afghanistan, Mr. Obama should borrow a line from Andrew Jackson from the battle of New Orleans and order his administration to "elevate them guns a little lower."
Mr. Allison is director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and author of "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe" (Holt Paperbacks, 2005). Mr. Deutch is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Bill Clinton.
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Woof,
I think it very likely, if we over step in Pakistan that we will send a nation of over 170 million people with 100 nuclear weapons, into irretrievable chaos.
P.C.
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Geopolitical Diary: Obama's Afghanistan Strategy and the Reliability Question
March 30, 2009
U.S. President Barack Obama has revealed his new Afghanistan policy. Having already announced his plans to increase troop levels in Afghanistan by 17,000, he decided to send another 4,000 troops with the primary purpose of training Afghan forces. More interesting was the explicit recognition that success in Afghanistan requires success in Pakistan, and the decision to provide Pakistan with $1.5 billion per year for five years in non-military development aid in order to bolster its war effort.
Obviously, the two countries constitute a single theater of operations. And this is the fundamental problem. The troops now allocated to Afghanistan are insufficient by themselves to pacify Afghanistan against a determined and capable enemy like the Taliban. Pakistan is a country of more than 170 million people — the sixth most populous country in the world. There is no military solution to the Pakistani problem. And so long as Pakistan is the source of both supplies and sanctuary for the Taliban, there is no possible way for available forces to defeat the Taliban.
The root issue is reliability. The United States is going to help train Afghanistan’s military and police forces. There are two strategies here: train only forces from ethnic groups hostile to the predominantly Pashtun Taliban, or train an all-Afghan force. If you do the latter, the probability is that many of the recruits will be Taliban sympathizers. As we saw in Vietnam and many other wars, the construction of a military force is an opportunity for the enemy to infiltrate it. If, on the other hand, you recruit only forces hostile to Taliban, you are reaching into a minority pool that the Taliban already defeated in a civil war. Therefore, the key question is how reliable the force will be if you go for an inclusive force, or how capable it is of functioning without you if you do not.
The situation is compounded in Pakistan. It is not clear that the Pakistanis are incapable of shutting the Taliban down, but there is ample evidence that the Pakistanis do not want to shut them down. It is clear that elements in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and in the military in general are ideologically sympathetic to the Taliban. Those who are not sympathetic are not eager for a civil war between the Pakistani Taliban and the Pakistani military.
Therefore, the issue is whether the billions being offered the Pakistani government will buy the United States what it wants: cooperation against the Taliban. The Pakistanis might not reject the money, but it is not clear that they will act, or at least act effectively.
Put simply, the United States wants to create forces in both Afghanistan and Pakistan that are willing and able to engage the Taliban in both countries and shut them down. In both countries, the problem with the strategy is the reliability of the forces being generated, as well as their effectiveness. The United States is sending advisers to Afghanistan and money to Pakistan to influence the situation. Each might work, but it is far from certain that it will.
Even if the forces work, the conflict will not end. According to the Iraq model — and that is the model being attempted in Afghanistan — the end game is negotiation with the enemy and getting the enemy to join the coalition. The Sunni insurgents in Iraq were willing to negotiate and cooperate with the United States because they were on the ropes militarily, trapped between foreign jihadists and the Americans, and with dangerous Shiite militias — some of whom were backed by Iran — in the background. The Sunnis were in trouble and needed a friend, and the Americans presented themselves.
What the Americans are trying to do is to put at least some of the Taliban in the same box they put the Sunnis. For that to work, the Afghan-Pakistani strategy must be able to trap the Taliban and force them to the table. The question is whether the forces available and the money given to Pakistan are sufficient to trap the Taliban, or whether the Taliban’s ability to subvert the Afghan army and undermine the effectiveness of the Pakistani army will cause the plan to fail.
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The Idiot's Guide to Pakistan
By Nicholas Schmidle
Posted March 2009
Everyone in Washington is talking about Pakistan, but few understand it. Here’s how to dazzle the crowd at your next Georgetown cocktail party.
CHEAT SHEET:
Photo: TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images
After eight years of a White House that often seemed blinkered by the threats posed by Pakistan, the Obama administration seems to grasp the severity of the myriad crises affecting the South Asian state. The media has followed suit and increased its presence and reporting, a trend confirmed by CNN’s decision to set up a bureau in Islamabad last year.
And yet, the uptick in coverage hasn’t necessarily clarified the who’s-doing-what-to-whom confusion in Pakistan. Some commentators continue to confuse the tribal areas with the North-West Frontier Province. And the word lashkars is used to describe all kinds of otherwise cross-purposed groups, some fighting the Taliban, some fighting India, and some fighting Shiites.
I admit, it’s not easy. I lived in Pakistan throughout all of 2006 and 2007 and only came to understand, say, the tribal breakdown in South Waziristan during my final days. So to save you the trouble of having to live in Pakistan for two years to differentiate between the Wazirs and the Mehsuds, the Frontier Corps and the Rangers, I’ve written an “idiot’s guide” that will hopefully clear some things up.
Next: The Troubled Tribals >>
Nicholas Schmidle is a fellow at the New America Foundation and author of the forthcoming To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan (New York: Henry Holt, May 2009).
The Idiot's Guide to Pakistan
1. The Troubled Tribals
Bring up the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at a Washington cocktail party and you’re sure to impress. Tick off the name of a Taliban leader or two and make a reference to North Waziristan, and you might be on your way to a lucrative lecture tour. The problem, of course, is that no one knows if you’ll be speaking the truth or not. A map of the border region is crammed with the names of agencies, provinces, frontier regions, and districts, which are sometimes flip-flopped and misused. With only an unselfish interest in making you more-impressive cocktail party material (and thus, getting you booked with a lecture agent during these economic hard times), I want to straighten some things out.
First off, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas are not part of the North-West Frontier Province. The two are separate entities in almost every sense of the word. While the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) is, well, a province with an elected assembly, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are geographically separate areas governed through “political agents” who are appointed by the president and supported by the governor of NWFP (who is also a presidential appointee). Residents of NWFP technically live according to the laws drafted by the Parliament in Islamabad, while the only nontribal law applicable to residents of FATA is the Frontier Crimes Regulations, a colonial-era dictate sanctioning collective punishment for tribes and subtribes guilty of disrupting the peace.
Within FATA, there are seven “agencies” and six “frontier regions.” The agencies are Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan and South Waziristan; the somewhat more governed frontier regions (FRs) cling like barnacles to the eastern edge of FATA and include FR Peshawar, FR Kohat, FR Bannu, FR Lakki, FR Tank, and FR Dera Ismail Khan, each of them named after the “settled” districts they border.
All residents of FATA and the vast majority of those in NWFP are ethnically Pashtuns. Pashtuns also make up the majority in Baluchistan, the vast province bordering Iran and Afghanistan, which is named after the minority Baluch. Besides NWFP and Baluchistan, there are two other provinces in Pakistan; Punjab is populated mostly by ethnic Punjabis, and Sindh was historically dominated by Sindhis until millions of Muslims migrated from India at the time of Partition and settled in Sindhi cities such as Karachi and Hyderabad. Now, Sindh is composed of ethnic Sindhis and the descendents of these migrants, known as mohajirs.
Foreigners are prohibited from entering FATA without government permission. If you see a newspaper dateline from a town inside FATA, chances are that the Pakistani Army organized a field trip for reporters. Those traveling unaccompanied into, say, South Waziristan have either a death wish or a really good rapport with the Taliban, who effectively run North and South Waziristan and large portions of the other agencies and frontier regions. The recalcitrance of the tribesmen is hardly something new. In the words of Lord Curzon, the former viceroy of India: “No patchwork scheme -- and all our present recent schemes, blockade, allowances, etc., are mere patchwork -- will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steamroller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine.”
Next: A Taliban Who's Who >>
The Idiot's Guide to Pakistan
2. A Taliban Who’s Who
In December 2007, the smattering of bearded, black-turbaned, AK-47-toting gangs in FATA and NWFP announced that they would now answer to a single name, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban Movement. For decades, Pakistani jihadists have used such fancy names to declare splinter groups (many of which go unnoticed), but some analysts latched onto the TTP as gospel and postulated that, overnight, the Talibs had become disciplined and united. In the process, such analysts have overlooked important distinctions and divisions within the pro-Taliban groups operating in Pakistan.
Let’s start with a little history. In 1996, Mullah Mohammed Omar and his band of “Taliban” -- defined in Urdu, Pashto, and Arabic as “students” or “seekers” -- conquered Afghanistan. Five years later, the United States routed the Taliban government and the al Qaeda henchmen who had been operating under Mullah Omar’s protection. Many of them escaped into FATA, which is of course technically part of Pakistan but truthfully ruled by tribes whose loyalty, in this instance, fell with the Taliban and their foreign guests, al Qaeda. Before long, groups of men from FATA had begun banding together and crossing the border to fight against the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Pashtuns ignore the border separating Afghanistan and Pakistan, named the Durand Line after the Englishman who drew it in 1893; the Pashtun “nation” encompasses wherever Pashtuns may live. Fighting the Americans, therefore, was seen as self-defense, even for the residents of FATA. Meanwhile, al Qaeda was entrenching itself more and more in FATA. These largely Arab and Uzbek outsiders influenced a new Taliban mind-set, one far more aggressive toward the Pakistani military and disruptive toward the local, tribal traditions.
So, back to the cocktail party: Someone mentions Baitullah Mehsud, the man accused by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence of masterminding the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Although Mehsud is the nominal chief of the TTP, he has plenty of rivals, even in his native South Waziristan. Two major tribes populate South Waziristan: the Mehsuds and the Wazirs. The Wazirs dominate Wana, the main city in South Waziristan. But the ranking Taliban leader from the Wazirs, Maulvi Nazir, is a darling of Pakistan’s military establishment.
You’re probably scratching your head right now, a bit confused. You see, Nazir is only interested in fighting U.S., Afghan, and NATO forces across the border. He is not part of the TTP and has not been involved in the wave of violence sweeping Pakistan of late. Therefore, in the minds of Pakistani generals, he is a “good” Taliban versus Baitullah Mehsud, who is, in their mind, unequivocally “bad.” That’s just one example of Talibs living in Pakistan who do not necessarily come under the title “Pakistani Taliban” or the “Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan” moniker.
In Swat Valley, where Islamabad recently signed a peace treaty with the Taliban, the fissures among the militants are more generational. Swat, unlike South Waziristan, is part of NWFP and shares no border with Afghanistan. In the late 1980s, a group calling itself the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, TNSM or the Movement for the Establishment of the Law of Mohammed, launched a drive to impose Islamic law in Swat and its environs. They resorted to violence against the state in the 1990s on numerous occasions, including once taking over the local airport and blocking the main road connecting Pakistan to China.
After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the leader of TNSM, Sufi Mohammed, organized a group of madrasa students and led them across the border to combat the Americans. But only Sufi Mohammed returned. The legions who had followed him were “martyred,” or so he told their parents. Sufi Mohammed was thrown in jail by then president and Army chief Pervez Musharraf, and so he named his son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, to run TNSM in his stead. But Fazlullah had wider ambitions and assembled a several-hundred-man army vowing to fight the Pakistani government. The senior leadership of TNSM soon disowned Fazlullah, who happily embarked on his own and is now Mehsud’s deputy in the TTP. For the past year and a half, Fazlullah’s devotees have bombed, kidnapped, and assassinated anyone who’s dared to challenge their writ in Swat.
By 2008, Sufi Mohammed looked like a moderate in comparison to his son-in-law. So the Pakistani government asked him to mediate. Perhaps he could cool Fazlullah down. The recent treaty you’ve heard about in Swat is between the Pakistani government and Sufi Mohammed, who has pledged to bring Fazlullah on board. So far, the treaty has held, unless you count the soldiers who were killed by Fazlullah’s Talibs for not “informing the Taliban of their movements.”
Next: Kiss My Lashkar >>
The Idiot's Guide to Pakistan
3. Kiss My Lashkar
You might have heard the word lashkar of late and wondered what a science fiction character was doing in Pakistan. This past fall, two distinctly different stories featured lashkars carrying out two distinctly different missions. In one, Lashkar-e-Taiba was executing a murderous campaign of violence in Mumbai; in another, lashkars were fighting against the Taliban in FATA. In other words, one was having a terrible effect while the other seemed to be doing some good. (Oh yeah, in another, less read story, Lashkar-e-Janghvi was killing Shiites in the southwestern city of Quetta.) So what gives? What’s a lashkar?
In Arabic, the language of Islam, a lashkar describes an irregular tribal militia. Say you’re a tribesman in South Waziristan who has beef with a member of a rival tribe. You need a posse. So you raise a lashkar. When news broke in October that the Pakistani government was sending Chinese-made AK-47s to tribesmen willing to defy Taliban rule in FATA, the weapons were said to be sent to lashkars. That’s a lashkar in the traditional sense of the word.
But Pakistan’s jihadi groups, to glorify their agendas, have long used the word lashkar in their names. (Other common Arabic names for army include sipah and jaish.) Although Lashkar-e-Taiba is committed to fighting the Indians over Kashmir, Lashkar-e-Janghvi is bent on killing Shiites, and Jaish-e-Mohammed seems ready to attack anyone. The proliferation of these terrorist militias became so bad that in January 2002, Musharraf was obliged to declare, “Our army is the only sipah and lashkar in Pakistan.”
Next: Border Guards >>
The Idiot's Guide to Pakistan
4. Border Guards
If there was so much confusion over who was and wasn’t the real army in Pakistan that the Army chief had to intervene and clarify, perhaps someone from the Pakistani military should set the record straight on who’s fighting whom in FATA. This confusion came to a head last June, when a contingent of Pakistani forces, known as the Frontier Corps, was locked in a gun battle with U.S. soldiers across the border. The U.S. troops were pursuing Talibs attempting to retreat back across the border into Pakistan. The kerfuffle ended -- at least the armed one, the diplomatic one was just starting -- when a few bombs dropped by U.S. planes landed on the Frontier Corps outposts and killed 11 Pakistani border guards. So what’s the deal with the Frontier Corps? Whose side are they on anyway?
Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
The Frontier Corps (FC) are a paramilitary force composed of roughly 80,000 men tasked with border security, law enforcement, and increasingly, counterinsurgency in FATA, NWFP, and Baluchistan. (Rangers fill similar tasks in Punjab and Sindh, the provinces bordering India.) By almost any definition outlining the ideal counterinsurgent, the FC would be it: They are almost all Pashtuns, more familiar with the language, the people, the tribes, and the terrain than any regular Pakistani soldier or U.S. troop could ever be. But their biggest advantage also happens to be their biggest liability, because Pashtuns are renowned for their sense of community; asking one Pashtun to kill another, especially when it’s seen as being done at the bidding of an “outsider,” be it Punjabi or American, would be like your boss telling you to kill your cousin. Not gonna happen, right?
The Pakistani leadership, and before them, the British, weren’t blind to this issue. To try to limit potential conflicts of interest, they said that Wazirs wouldn’t serve in Waziri areas, Afridis (based in Khyber agency and FR Kohat) wouldn’t serve in Afridi areas, and so on. Questions over ethnic sympathies simply couldn’t be surmounted, but this way at least concerns over clan and family sympathies could.
In the past few years, Washington has realized the significance of the FC and tried to enhance its fighting capability. (Traditionally, an FC corpsman would sport a salwar-kameez -- the baggy trousers and tunic get-up -- leather sandals, and an AK-47.) But the problems of getting money to the right FC units have been numerous.
First off, the FC falls under the Interior Ministry, not the Defense Ministry, which overseas the half-million-member Army and has received the lion’s share of U.S. aid since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Defense Ministry’s dominance of the aid game means that the money Washington gives Islamabad to reimburse Pakistani security forces for operations against the Taliban and al Qaeda, money known as Coalition Support Funds, hardly, if ever, trickles down to the FC units manning a border post in South Waziristan who are, truly, on the “front lines” of the so-called war on terror.
Second, there is an issue of command structure because the FC is officered by regular Army colonels and generals. And finally, there is the problem that, owing to the widespread anger among Pashtuns toward the United States and the Pakistani establishment, no one can say whether the FC won’t simply hand over night-vision goggles and new weapons to the Taliban, especially when oversight by U.S. officials in FATA, parts of NWFP, and Baluchistan is so scarce.
Next: Finger on the Trigger >>
The Idiot's Guide to Pakistan
5. Finger on the Trigger
There is some leeway in the grooming standards and fitness levels expected by the Pakistani Army -- especially for officers. Mornings are for praying and sleeping; lunches are for buffets; and evenings are for gallons of tea. Not much time for exercise, is there? And mustaches? The thicker, the better. Beards? The longer, the better. Does that mean that the Pakistani Army is composed of Islamic fundamentalists salivating at the opportunity to fire some nukes? Yes and no.
Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
First a disclaimer: Most Pakistani soldiers consider India to be their mortal enemy and would like nothing more than to incinerate their neighbor. They get that from the grade-school textbooks. And they will usually frame the conflict between them and India as one between Islam and Hinduism. This ground has been pretty well covered by others who write about Pakistan.
But we should realize that anti-Indianism doesn’t translate to Talibanism, what with locking up womenfolk and caning criminals and all. Consider the serving chief of Army staff, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who is beardless, reportedly enjoys an occasional Scotch and a game of bridge, chain-smokes cigarettes through a long plastic tip, and is a favorite of the Americans. In other words, he’s not likely to declare himself “Commander of the Faithful” anytime soon.
But what about the ISI? We hear so much about the ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence, being manned by al Qaeda sympathizers, sponsoring regional terrorism, and forming the vanguard of Islamism in Pakistan. Aren’t they Islamist?
Let’s complicate matters before we take up this question. The ISI is the intelligence wing of the military. The Army, meanwhile, has its own intelligence wing, confusingly named Military Intelligence (MI). The Interior Ministry has its own: Special Branch. And so on and so forth; there are more intelligence wings in Pakistan than there are varieties of dal. And when Pakistanis on the street suspect that they’re involved in something nefarious, they simply refer to “the agencies.” That way, there’s no need to specify which agency was responsible because no one has any idea who is behind what, frankly.
Are people within the ISI any more Islamist than any of the others? I don’t see why they would be. The ISI draws from the ranks of the regular Army (in addition to some civilians), the same Army that is commanded by Sandhurst-educated, Johnnie Walker Black Label-loving Anglophiles. What makes the ISI different is not so much its personnel as its agenda, an agenda that might, on any given day, include ferrying money to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan or training Lashkar-e-Taiba fighters to wage jihad against India in Kashmir. These programs are considered to serve Pakistan’s national interests, not the religious preferences of its generals.
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t have any kind of soft corner for the agencies and certainly don’t want to seem an apologist for them. They kicked me out of the country once via deportation and chased me out another time by planting stories in the local press that I had been kidnapped. I feel no love for the ISI, MI, Special Branch, or any of their shady affiliates. But they’re not all the same. Keep that in mind at your next cocktail party. We should know what we’re talking about when we talk about Pakistan.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4782
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My head spins.
Good piece.
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By ABDULLAH GüL
International efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and improve the lives of the Afghan people have fallen short of their targets. There is daily violence in the country and expectations continue to outpace achieved results. It is time for a policy shift. It is time for increased involvement.
We must first accept that so far the international community has not achieved results that match the significant sum of funds it has spent. We must also realize that Afghanistan and its surrounding region cannot be a secondary source of concern. We need to understand that this region is the new "powder keg" of the world and that the stakes are as high as they can be.
Therefore, it is encouraging to know that President Barack Obama understands these facts and has reviewed the United States' Afghanistan policy.
Not everything has gone awry. This year, Afghanistan will hold presidential elections. Next year, it will hold parliamentary elections, completing a transition to democracy. The Afghan people now have a right to universal suffrage.
However, more must be done. The Afghan National Army is composed of tough fighters, but it needs better equipment and training. I saw this first hand on a visit to the country. I saw two units. One was composed of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops; the other was composed of Afghans. What struck me was that the international soldiers had much better equipment.
One Afghan commander summed it up for me this way: "If anyone has to die for Afghanistan, it must not be the children of foreign nations. It must be our sons, and they are ready to do so. But they must be given a fair chance to be able to fight for their country. They must be properly armed and trained."
But more troops and more money alone will not be enough. The Afghan government needs military force to operate from a position of strength. But real improvement requires embracing every Afghan ready to work through peaceful means for the good of their country.
Political, diplomatic, economic, and social efforts must be increased and focused on consolidating national unity to bring about tangible improvement to people's lives. To have peace, we must win over the people.
There is a role here for the international community in enabling Afghan officials working to meet the basic needs of their people. Health care and education must both be top priorities. The country's civil service needs work. Its judiciary and police forces need to be strengthened. The people must come to believe that change is underway that will create a sense of normalcy for them.
We are doing our part. One thing I noticed in Kabul was unpaved roads. Where cars and trucks should have been able to drive unimpeded, people slogged through knee-deep mud. To fix this, Turkey is paving more than 60 miles of roads inside Kabul.
There is one more area of struggle, and it is the most difficult one. Extremist ideology in the region must be confronted. Education is the long-term remedy. The Afghans' desire for education is strong. What's needed is an international fund to support education in Afghanistan.
Turkey, which has cultural bonds with Afghanistan, could take the lead in creating such a fund. We have seen firsthand how much can be achieved with perseverance and hard work that does not alienate the people. Today, Turkey is involved in building and operating girls' schools where once girls could not walk on the streets.
Turkey, with its limited resources, is doing what it can to support Afghanistan. Since 2002, Turkey has assumed command of the ISAF twice. Turkey has also provided training, equipment and support to the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police. To support Afghanistan, Turkey has launched its most comprehensive long-term assistance program in its history. And our commitment to reconstruction in Afghanistan is ongoing.
The international community cannot abandon the Afghan people at their time of difficulty. Rather than being mired in subjective discussions of hopelessness, we should draw the necessary lessons from the past and focus on helping the Afghan people build necessary institutions and find their own solutions to the problems they face.
Mr. Gül is the president of the Republic of Turkey.
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IMPLICATIONS OF THE MANAWAN ATTACK
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
On March 31, Baitullah Mehsud, commander of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP),
called The Associated Press and Reuters to claim responsibility for the March 29
attack against a Pakistani police academy in Manawan, which is near the eastern
Pakistani city of Lahore and the Indian border. The attack had been previously
claimed by a little-known group, Fedayeen al-Islam (FI), which also took
responsibility for the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September 2008.
Mehsud has also released an Urdu-language audio message claiming responsibility for
the Manawan attack as well as a failed March 23 attack on the headquarters of the
Police Special Branch in Islamabad. Mehsud, whom authorities claim was behind the
March 3 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, also warned that there
would be additional attacks all across the country in retaliation for U.S. drone
strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Area. He even threatened to launch
attacks in Washington, D.C.
It is not clear at this point if the two claims of responsibility for the Manawan
attack are indeed contradictory. If FI is an independent group, it is possible that
it was working with Mehsud in the assault on the police academy. However, it is also
quite possible that FI is either part of the larger TTP (which is an umbrella group
with many factions) or perhaps just a nom de guerre used by the TTP to claim certain
attacks. When a reporter asked about the FI claim, Mehsud refused to comment. Two
things can be ascertained from this: that Mehsud's organization has the ability to
conduct these attacks, and that a major jihadist figure like Mehsud has no real need
to claim the attacks of others to bolster his reputation. In fact, lying about such
a thing would hurt his well-established reputation.
It is a good bet, therefore, that the TTP was in fact involved in the Manawan
attack. The odds are even greater when one considers the intelligence reports from a
few days prior to the attack: that Mehsud had dispatched a group of 22 operatives
from his base in South Waziristan, through the town of Mianwali in southwestern
Punjab, to conduct attacks in Lahore and Rawalpindi. Pakistani authorities were
actively searching for those operatives when the attack occurred in Manawan.
While STRATFOR has already published a political assessment of the Manawan attack,
we believe it might also be interesting to look at the incident from a protective
intelligence standpoint and examine the tactical aspects of the operation in more
detail.
Sequence of Events
The attack on the police academy in Manawan happened at approximately 7:20 a.m. on
March 29 as more than 800 unarmed police cadets were on the parade field for their
regularly scheduled morning training. Witness reports suggest that there were 10
attackers who scaled the back wall of the academy and began to attack the cadets.
Part of the attack team reportedly was dressed in police uniforms, while the rest
reportedly wore shalwar kameez (traditional Pakistani dress). Several members of the
team also wore suicide belts, and at least some of them carried large duffle bags
(similar to those carried by the assailants in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks and
the March 3 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore). The gunmen reportedly
engaged the cadets with hand grenades and fire from assault rifles. As the gunmen
raked the parade ground, many of the cadets reportedly fled the compound or
barricaded themselves in various rooms inside the facility. Because the bulk of the
people at the academy were cadets and not trained police, they were not issued
firearms.
The armed guards at the academy were able to offer some resistance, but the attack
team was able to make its way across the parade ground and into the barracks, where
the attackers established defensive positions, apparently with the hope of
initiating a prolonged hostage situation. Reports are conflicting as to how many
hostages they were actually able to seize and control inside the barracks.
The Pakistani police and military responded aggressively to the attack. Within about
30 minutes, officers from the Elite Force -- a highly trained branch of the Punjab
Police responsible for counterterrorism -- reportedly had surrounded the barracks
building. By 9 a.m., paramilitary Pakistan Rangers and Pakistani army troops began
to arrive. Many of the wounded cadets were evacuated from the parade ground using
armored personnel carriers (APCs) to protect them from the attackers' fire. The
attackers apparently attempted to use grenades to attack the APCs, but were met with
heavy suppressive fire from the security forces. Pakistani forces also apparently
used tear gas against the attackers, as well as APCs and helicopter gunships.
Eventually, the Elite Force went room to room to clear the barracks building of
attackers. By 4 p.m., the siege had ended, with six of the attackers captured and
four killed. (Three of the four reportedly killed themselves using suicide belts.)
Despite initial reports of high casualties, it now appears that only eight police
officers or cadets were killed in the attack, with more than 90 others wounded.
While armed assaults against paramilitary forces, convoys and other targets are
common along the border with Afghanistan, this attack was only the second such
attack in Lahore. Terrorist attacks in Pakistan have more commonly been committed by
suicide bombers, and it appears that Mehsud's group may have embraced a change in
tactics, perhaps influenced by the success of Mumbai. (However, as we will discuss
below, this latest attack, like the attack on the cricket team, was far from a
spectacular success.)
Analysis
First, it must be recognized that jihadist attacks on police recruits are not
uncommon. We have seen attacks on police training and recruiting centers in Iraq and
Afghanistan, among other countries, and we have also seen them before in Pakistan.
On July 15, 2007, a suicide bomber attacked a police recruitment center in Dera
Ismail Khan, killing 26 people and wounding 35. The victims were at the center to
take medical and written tests for entering the police force.
A training center like the one in Manawan provides an unusually large concentration
of targets. The more than 800 cadets at the academy were a far larger group of
police than is normally found in the police stations scattered throughout the
country. The training center was also a far softer target than a traditional police
station, where all the officers are armed. From media reports, it appears that there
were only seven armed guards on duty at the academy at the time of the attack. The
instructors allegedly were armed only with lathis (long canes commonly used by
police in India and Pakistan). The academy's rigid training schedule also provided a
highly predictable target, as the attackers knew the cadets would be on the parade
field from 7-8 a.m. every day.
With so many potential targets on the parade field and in the barracks, and with so
many attackers, it is amazing that there were only eight people killed in this
attack (one-fourth the death toll of the April 2007 Virginia Tech shooting). This is
an indication that the Manawan attackers were not nearly as well trained in
marksmanship as the assault team that conducted the November Mumbai attacks, in
which 10 gunmen killed 173 people. The 10 heavily armed Manawan assailants did not
even succeed in killing one victim each in a situation akin to shooting fish in a
barrel.
From a military standpoint, such a formation of massed people in the open would have
been far more effectively targeted using mortars and crew-served machine guns, so it
can also be argued that the attack was poorly planned and the attackers improperly
equipped to inflict maximum casualties. Even so, it is quite amazing to us that
attackers armed with assault rifles and grenades did not kill one victim apiece.
Of course, one thing that helped contain the carnage was the response of Pakistani
security personnel and their efforts to evacuate the wounded under fire. While not
exactly practicing what are known in the United States as "active shooter
procedures", the Elite Force officers did quickly engage the attackers and pin them
down until more firepower could be brought to bear. The Elite Force also did a
fairly efficient job of clearing the barracks of attackers. The Pakistani response
ensured that the incident did not drag on like the Mumbai attacks did. The Elite
Force went in hard and fast, and seemingly with little regard for the hostages being
held, yet their decisive action proved to be very effective, and the result was that
a minimum number of hostages were killed.
There were some significant differences from the situation in Mumbai. First, there
was only one crime scene to deal with, and the Pakistani authorities could focus all
their attention and resources there. Second, the barracks building was far smaller
and simpler than the hotels occupied in the Mumbai attacks. Third, Manawan is far
smaller and more isolated than Mumbai, and it is easier to pin the attackers down in
a city of that size than in a larger, more densely populated city such as Mumbai.
Finally, there were no foreign citizens involved in the hostage situation, so the
Pakistani authorities did not have to worry about international sensibilities or
killing a foreign citizen with friendly fire. They were able to act aggressively and
not worry about distractions -- or the media circus that Mumbai became.
The Future
Perhaps the most important thing to watch going forward will be the response of the
Pakistani people to these attacks. In his claim of responsibility, Mehsud said the
Manawan attack was in direct response to the expanding U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle
(UAV) campaign in Pakistan. Mehsud threatened that there would be more militant
attacks in Pakistan and the United States if the UAV attacks did not stop. Clearly,
Mehsud is feeling the heat from these attacks, and although he claims he is ready to
be martyred, his bravado is belied by the fact that he is taking such extraordinary
measures to try to halt the UAV campaign. He obviously fears the UAV strikes, not
only for what they can do to him, but for what they can do to degrade his
organization.
When the Elite Force completed the clearing of the barracks, several officers came
out on the roof of the building, shouted "God is great" and fired celebratory shots
into the air (something that is anathema to Western police and military forces).
Many of the people gathered outside the academy joined in the shouting and loudly
cheered the Elite Force. This sentiment was widely echoed in the Pakistani media.
Although the Manawan attack was intended to demoralize Pakistani security forces, it
may have just the opposite effect. The bravery and dedication exhibited by the
Pakistani police and soldiers who responded to the attack may instead serve to steel
their will and instill professional pride. Mehsud's recent threats, along with the
militant attacks, may also work to alienate him from people who had been supportive
of -- or at least ambivalent toward -- him and the jihadists.
Up until 2003, the Saudi public, and many in the government, pretty much turned a
blind eye to the actions of jihadists in Saudi Arabia as long as the jihadists were
concentrating their attacks on targets outside the kingdom. But when the jihadists
declared war on the Saudi royal family and began to conduct attacks against targets
inside the kingdom that resulted in the deaths of ordinary Saudis, the tide of
public opinion turned against them and the Saudi government reacted aggressively,
smashing the jihadists. Similarly, it was the brutality of al Qaeda in Iraq that
helped turn many Iraqi Sunnis against the jihadists there. Indeed, an insurgency
cannot survive long without the support of the people. In the case of Pakistan, that
also goes for the support of Inter-Services Intelligence and the army. The TTP, al
Qaeda and their Kashmiri militant allies simply cannot sustain themselves without at
least the tacit support of Pakistan's intelligence apparatus and army. If these two
powerful establishments ever turn against them, the groups will be in serious peril.
Pakistan has long been able to control the TTP and al Qaeda more than it has. The
country has simply lacked the will, for a host of reasons. It will be interesting to
watch and see if Mehsud's campaign serves to give the Pakistani people, and the
authorities, the will they need to finally take more serious steps to tackle the
jihadist problem. Having long battled deep currents of jihadist thought within the
country, the Pakistani government continues to face serious challenges. But if the
tide of public support begins to turn against the jihadists, those challenges will
become far more manageable.
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By MATTHEW KAMINSKI
Islamabad, Pakistan
His face tense and unsmiling, a young man from a village in Pakistan's western tribal areas tells his story, mixing English, Pashto and Urdu. He is the only male in his clan to get an education, but can't find a job, and blames a corrupt national government. Americans are bombing his neighbors, he says, tempting him to join the Islamist militants in his area. Across the room, another Pakistani turns toward his hosts at the U.S. Embassy and says, "You are hated."
Ismael RoldanThe comments are addressed to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen and the new American special representative for the region, Richard Holbrooke. Seated alongside the highest-ranking U.S. military officer, Mr. Holbrooke asks a dozen or so men in the room about the presence of the Taliban in their villages. "We are all Taliban," comes a response. The others nod in accord. All are or were "religious students," or Taliban in Pashto. But the expression of solidarity with the various Pakistani and Afghan insurgents who go by the name is lost on no one.
After the meeting, Mr. Holbrooke looks shaken, out of character for a diplomatic operator who picked up the nickname "bulldozer" a decade ago in the Balkans. As he knows, these men who spoke so directly to him are the "friendly" types from the tribal areas -- literate, ambitious and willing to risk the ire of the Taliban fighters to meet him and Adm. Mullen at the embassy.
Their home regions of North and South Waziristan and the Khyber agency are familiar place names in this long war: as the world's sanctuary to al Qaeda's leadership, as the launching pad for attacks on Western forces across the border in Afghanistan, and as the source of the Islamist challenge to the civilian government atop this rickety nuclear-armed state.
The Obama administration recently unveiled a new strategy to enlarge America's military footprint in Afghanistan and press Pakistan to act against Taliban safe havens. Mr. Holbrooke and Admiral Mullen took the policy on a regional road show this week, and at every stop got a sobering earful. While Afghanistan's troubles are monumental, the nightmare scenarios start and end with Pakistan.
Mr. Holbrooke, who leads the diplomatic charge, acknowledges the hardest work will be here. His airplane reading is Dennis Kux's history of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship titled, "The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies." "Pakistan is at the center of our strategic concerns," he tells me Tuesday night, flying from Islamabad to India's capital, Delhi. "If Afghanistan had the best government on earth, a drug-free culture and no corruption it would still be unstable if the situation in Pakistan remained as today. That is an undisputable fact, and that is the core of the dilemma that the Western nations, the NATO alliance, face today."
Take the dilemma a logical step further, I suggest. The terrorists who threaten America are in Pakistan, but the U.S. fights the Afghan Taliban, who don't. "That's a fair point," says Mr. Holbrooke, "but the reason for fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan is clear: The Taliban are the frontrunners for al Qaeda. If they succeed in Afghanistan, without any shadow of a doubt, al Qaeda would move back into Afghanistan, set up a larger presence, recruit more people and pursue its objectives against the United States even more aggressively." Public support for the expanded U.S. Afghan mission hinges on making this case stick.
In a Hillary Clinton White House, Mr. Holbrooke would almost certainly be in charge at the State Department. In this administration, he serves Secretary Clinton and brings a familiar mix of enthusiasm and bluster, charming and bullying the world's difficult characters. In the previous decade, Mr. Holbrooke brokered the end of the Bosnian conflict, working then as now closely with the military. He went on to write a memoir titled "To End a War" and become something of a celebrity in the Balkans, even having a bar in Kosovo named after him. The 1995 Dayton peace talks "was 21 days and it was pass or fail," he says. "This is more complicated even than that."
The complications in Afghanistan start with an incubator state and mind-boggling corruption, from top to bottom. The past year saw a sharp spike in Afghan civilian as well as American casualties. A rural insurgency is fed by anger at the government and money from the Gulf states, as well as the booming poppy trade. The administration will send 17,000 additional combat troops to confront the Taliban, initially in the south. Mr. Obama also approved 4,000 military trainers, and plans are in the works to double the target size for the army and the police.
Mr. Holbrooke needs to walk a fine diplomatic line. On the one hand, he assures people who know their history that America won't pull the plug early on this project. At a meeting with Afghan female legislators who have most to fear from a Taliban comeback, he says, "President Obama has made a commitment. We will not abandon you." On the other hand, the U.S. must counter Taliban propaganda that America replaced Russia as the occupying force. With conservative Afghan religious leaders, Mr. Holbrooke shifts his emphasis: "We are not here as occupiers. We are here to help you. We will leave when you no longer need us."
Though Adm. Mullen provides the plane on this trip and holds the senior job, Mr. Holbrooke takes the lead in meetings. He moderates discussions like a big-band leader, improvising as necessary. "Good to have a force of nature on the case," notes a European diplomat watching one performance over dinner in Kabul. "You're reminded that half of diplomacy is theater." Holbrooke detractors tend to put the proportion higher.
America sits in the driver's seat in Afghanistan, but not Pakistan. Here it's far from clear who does.
Flying into Islamabad, Mr. Holbrooke and Adm. Mullen call on the civilian and military rulers to ask for action against the militants in the tribal areas. The Pakistanis press back. At a joint press conference, the foreign minister is prickly, denouncing strikes by unmanned U.S. Predators on Pakistani territory and noting an absence of "trust."
In private, American officials report no better progress. The Pakistanis say their terror problems are Afghanistan's fault. They resent American criticism of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the military's intelligence arm that nurtured Islamist groups for decades, and rule out the deployment of any American troops on their territory.
Talking to the Pakistani press, Mr. Holbrooke says, "We face a common threat, a common challenge." Pakistani civilians are concerned by the rising number of suicide bombings, now seen in once tranquil Islamabad and Lahore. Whether the army is as well is the question. The military struck a "peace" deal with the local Taliban in the Swat Valley. President Asif Ali Zardari didn't sign the accord, but the military went ahead to implement it, turning a former tourist destination in the mountains into a Taliban redoubt beyond the reach of the Pakistani state. The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan dates back to the previous regime's 2006 truce with the militants in Pakistani border areas.
Among Pakistani politicians, Mr. Zardari speaks most clearly about the threat emanating from the country's west, noting the assassination in late 2007 of his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. But he is politically weak, and sounds disinclined to push the military to wage war against the Pashtun tribes in the mountains.
"Holbrooke is a friend," Mr. Zardari tells me and a couple other journalists along for the ride on this listening tour. "But it's a long walk. And in that long walk I am losing the people of Pakistan."
Mr. Holbrooke says the Pakistani president "deserves credit for his personal courage" in holding the job. He welcomes the "statesmanlike" resolution of a recent political feud with rival Nawaz Sharif over the reinstatement of a supreme court judge. The fight could have resulted, he says, in "civil war on the one hand or assassinations on the other."
With politics a sideshow, many observers, including in American intelligence, think the Pakistani military and the ISI play a double game. They make the necessary pledges to secure billions in American aid while keeping ties to Islamists. The calculation, a Pakistani analyst notes, is America will leave sooner or later and the military needs to hedge its strategic bets.
"We are well aware of these accusations," says Mr. Holbrooke. "But our experience with [Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani does not support them. We deal with him with respect and with the assumption that he is a serious person doing the best he can under difficult circumstances."
As part of a "long-term commitment to Pakistan," the Obama administration wants to lock in billions in aid for the country. Military officials also say the scope of Predator strikes will be broadened, against Pakistani official objections, and efforts to get the adversarial Pakistani and Afghan intelligence services to cooperate will be intensified. Mr. Holbrooke insists the U.S. will respect Pakistan's "red lines" about American combat troops.
"Some people say to me, particularly after a few drinks, 'Why don't we go in there with our troops and just clean it up?'" he says. "First of all we can't without their permission, and that would not be a good idea. Secondly, cleaning them up in the mountains of Pakistan's tribal areas, as anyone can see from the search for al Qaeda in Afghanistan, is a daunting mission. It's the same kind of mountains. A few weeks ago I flew up through the deepest and remotest valleys imaginable. You could see tiny villages in the crevices in the mountains. You don't want American troops in there. So that option's gone."
Though only Pakistan and Afghanistan appear in his job title, Mr. Holbrooke isn't one to think small. He helped court the Europeans to chip in more troops and aid -- with no more success on the former than the Bush administration. He wants to press the Gulf states to cut the illicit flow of funding to the Taliban, involve India and reach out to the Chinese, who are close to the Pakistani military. Last month, at the donor's conference on Afghanistan at The Hague, he was the first American official to engage an Iranian official since 1979. After Iran downplayed the encounter, so does Mr. Holbrooke. "I'm very much in favor of giving Iran a place at the table if it wants it to discuss the future of Afghanistan," he says. "But they have not indicated whether they wish to participate or not."
Mr. Holbrooke's first posting was in Saigon in the 1960s. As Vietnam analogies for Afghanistan mushroom, particularly from inside his own Democratic Party, he doesn't dismiss them outright. But he makes a case for continued engagement with a view, perhaps, toward firming up support on the Hill and among the public for a war about to enter its eighth year. "There are a lot of structural similarities" with Vietnam, he says. "The sanctuary [in Pakistan]. They even have a parrot's peak in both countries, on the Pakistan-Afghan border just as there was in Cambodia. An issue of governance. The fact that the government was supporting a guerilla war. Counterinsurgency.
"But the fundamental difference is 9/11. The Vietcong and the north Vietnamese never posed a threat to the United States homeland. The people of 9/11 who were in that area still do and are still planning. That is why we're in the region with troops. That's the only justification for what we're doing. If the tribal areas of western Pakistan were not a sanctuary, I believe that Afghanistan could take care of itself within a relatively short period of time."
Mr. Kaminski is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
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http://www.watoday.com.au/world/west-warned-on-nuclear-terrorist-threat-from-pakistan-20090413-a4ac.html?page=-1
West warned on nuclear terrorist threat from Pakistan
Paul McGeough
April 11, 2009
The next few months will be crucial in defusing a global terrorist threat that would be even deadlier than the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, a leading Washington counter-terrorism expert warns.
David Kilcullen — a former Australian army lieutenant colonel who helped devise the US troop surge that revitalised the American campaign in Iraq — fears Pakistan is at risk of falling under al-Qaeda control.
If that were to happen, the terrorist group could end up controlling what Dr Kilcullen calls "Talibanistan". "Pakistan is what keeps me awake at night," said Dr Kilcullen, who was a specialist adviser for the Bush administration and is now a consultant to the Obama White House.
"Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al-Qaeda sitting in two-thirds of the country which the Government does not control."
Compounding that threat, the Pakistani security establishment ignored direction from the elected Government in Islamabad as waves of extremist violence spread across the whole country — not just in the tribal wilds of the Afghan border region.
"We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we're calling the war on terror now," Dr Kilcullen told The Age during an interview at his Washington office. Late last month, when US President Barack Obama unveiled his new policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, he warned that al-Qaeda would fill the vacuum if Afghanistan collapsed, and that the terror group was already rooted in Pakistan, plotting more attacks on the US.
As the US implements its new strategy in Central Asia, Dr Kilcullen warned that time was running out for international efforts to pull both countries back from the brink.
Special US Envoy Richard Holbrooke has been charged with trying to broker a regional agreement by reaching out to Iran, Russia and China. Dr Kilcullen spoke highly of Mr Holbrooke's talent as a diplomat: "This is exactly what he's good at and it could work.
"But will it? It requires regional architecture to give the Pakistani security establishment a sense of security, which might make them stop supporting the Taliban," he said.
"The best-case scenario is that the US can deal with Afghanistan, with President Obama giving leadership while the extra American troops succeed on the ground, at the same time as Mr Holbrooke seeks a regional security deal."
The worst case was that Washington would fail to stabilise Afghanistan, Pakistan would collapse and al-Qaeda would end up running what he called "Talibanistan".
"This is not acceptable; you can't have al-Qaeda in control of Pakistan's missiles," he said.
"It's too early to tell which way it will go. We'll start to know about July. That's the peak fighting season and the extra troops will have hit the ground, and it will be a month out from the Afghan presidential election."
Dr Kilcullen also cautioned Western governments against focusing too heavily on Afghanistan at the expense of the intensifying crisis in Pakistan, because "the Kabul tail was wagging the dog". Contrasting the challenges in the two countries, Dr Kilcullen described Afghanistan as a campaign to defend a reconstruction program.
"It's not really about al-Qaeda," he argued. "Afghanistan doesn't worry me. Pakistan does."
However, he was hesitant about the level of resources and likely impact of Washington's new drive to emulate the effectiveness of an Iraq-style "surge" by sending an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan.
"In Iraq, five brigades went into the centre of Baghdad in five months," he said.
"In Afghanistan, it will be two combat brigades (across the country) in 12 months. That will have much less of a punch effect than we had in Iraq.
"We can muddle through in Afghanistan. It is problematic and difficult, but we know what to do. What we don't know is if we have the time or if we can afford the cost of what needs to be done."
Dr Kilcullen said that a fault line had developed in the West's grasp of the situation on either side of the Durand Line, the long-disputed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"In Afghanistan, it's easy to understand, difficult to execute. But in Pakistan, it is very difficult to understand and it's extremely difficult for us to generate any leverage, because Pakistan does not want our help.
"In a sense there is no Pakistan; no single set of opinion. Pakistan has a military and intelligence establishment that refuses to follow the directions of its civilian leadership.
"They have a tradition of using regional extremist groups as unconventional counterweights against India's regional influence.
"The (Pakistani) military also has an almost pathological phobia by which it sees al-Qaeda as 'this little problem', as distinct from what they see as the main game opposing India.
"In terms of a substantial threat, Pakistan is the main problem we face today.
"We don't have a responsible actor to work through in Islamabad. My judgement, to use diplomatic speak, is that Pakistan has yet to demonstrate genuine commitment."
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Its the NYT, so be on the lookout for misleading and dishonest agendas:
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April 14, 2009
Militants Unite in Pakistan’s Populous Heart
By SABRINA TAVERNISE, RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ERIC SCHMITT
DERA GHAZI KHAN, Pakistan — Taliban insurgents are teaming up with local militant groups to make inroads in Punjab, the province that is home to more than half of Pakistanis, reinvigorating an alliance that Pakistani and American authorities say poses a serious risk to the stability of the country.
The deadly assault in March in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing last fall of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the national capital, were only the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign, they said.
Now police officials, local residents and analysts warn that if the government does not take decisive action, these dusty, impoverished fringes of Punjab could be the next areas facing the insurgency. American intelligence and counterterrorism officials also said they viewed the developments with alarm.
“I don’t think a lot of people understand the gravity of the issue,” said a senior police official in Punjab, who declined to be idenfitied because he was discussing threats to the state. “If you want to destabilize Pakistan, you have to destabilize Punjab.”
As American drone attacks disrupt strongholds of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, the insurgents are striking deeper into Pakistan — both in retaliation and in search of new havens.
Telltale signs of creeping militancy abound in a belt of towns and villages near here that a reporter visited last week. Militants have gained strength considerably in the district of Dera Ghazi Khan, which is a gateway both to Taliban-controlled areas and the heart of Punjab, the police and local residents say. Many were terrified.
Some villages, just north of here, are so deeply infiltrated by militants that they are already considered no-go zones by their neighbors.
In at least five towns in southern and western Punjab, including the midsize hub of Multan, barber shops, music stores and Internet cafes offensive to the militants’ strict interpretation of Islam have received threats. Traditional ceremonies that include drumming and dancing have been halted in some areas. Hard-line ideologues have addressed large crowds to push their idea of Islamic revolution. Sectarian attacks, dormant here since the 1990s, have erupted once again.
“It’s going from bad to worse,” said a senior police official in Dera Ghazi Khan. “They are now more active. These are the facts.”
American officials agreed. Bruce Riedel, who led the Obama administration’s recently completed strategy review of Pakistan and Afghanistan, said the Taliban now had “extensive links into the Punjab.”
“You are seeing more of a coalescence of these militant groups,” said Mr. Riedel, a former C.I.A. official. “Connections that have always existed are becoming tighter and more public than they have in the past.”
The Punjabi militant groups have had links with the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun tribesmen, since the 1980s. Some of the Punjabi groups are veterans of Pakistan’s state-sponsored insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir. Others made targets of Shiites.
Under pressure from the United States, former President Pervez Musharraf cut back state support for the Punjabi groups. They either went underground or migrated to the tribal areas, where they deepened their ties with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
At least 20 militants killed in American strikes in the tribal areas since last summer were Punjabi, according to people from the tribal areas and Pakistani officials. One Pakistani security official estimated that 5 percent to 10 percent of militants in the tribal regions could be Punjabi.
The alliance is based on more than shared ideology. “These are tactical alliances,” said a senior American counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss intelligence matters. The Pashtun Taliban and Arab militants, who are part of Al Qaeda, have money, sanctuary, training sites and suicide bombers. The Punjabi militants can provide logistical help in Punjabi cities, like Lahore, including handling bombers and target reconnaissance.
The cooperation between the groups intensified greatly after the government’s siege of Islamic hard-liners at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, in mid-2007, Pakistani and American security officials say. The siege has since become a rallying cry.
One such joint operation, an American security official said, was the Marriott bombing in Islamabad in September, which killed more than 50 people.
As this cooperation intensifies, places like Dera Ghazi Khan are particularly vulnerable. This frontier town is home to a combustible mix of worries: poverty, a growing phalanx of hard-line religious schools and a uranium processing plant that is a part of Pakistan’s nuclear program.
It is also strategically situated at the intersection of two main roads. One is a main artery into Pakistan’s heartland, in southern Punjab. The other connects Baluchistan Province in the west to the North-West Frontier Province, both Taliban strongholds.
“We are being cornered in a blind alley,” said Mohammed Ali, a local landlord. “We can’t breathe easily.”
Attacks intended to intimidate and sow sectarian strife are more common. The police point to a suicide bombing in Dera Ghazi Khan on Feb. 5. Two local Punjabis, with the help of Taliban backers, orchestrated the attack, which killed 29 people at a Shiite ceremony, the local police said.
The authorities arrested two men as masterminds on April 6: Qari Muhammad Ismail Gul, the leader of a local madrasa; and Ghulam Mustafa Kaisrani, a jihadi who posed as a salesman for a medical company.
They belonged to a banned Punjabi group called Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, but were tied through phone calls to two deputies of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, the police said.
“The phone numbers they call are in Waziristan,” said a police official, referring to the Taliban base in the tribal areas. “They are working together hand in glove.” One of the men had gone for training in Waziristan last summer, the police said. The operations are well-supported. Mr. Kaisrani had several bank transfers worth about $11 million from his Pakistani account, the authorities said.
Local crimes, including at least two recent bank robberies in Dera Ghazi Khan, were also traced to networks of Islamic militants, officials said.
“The money that’s coming in is huge,” said Zulfiqar Hameed, head of investigations for the Lahore Police Department. “When you go back through the chain of the transaction, you invariably find it’s been done for money.”
After the suicide attack here, the police confiscated a 20-minute inspirational video, titled “Revenge,” for the Red Mosque, which gave testimonials from suicide bombers in different cities and post-attack images.
Umme Hassan, the wife of a fiery preacher who was killed during the Red Mosque siege, now frequently travels to south Punjab, to rally the faithful. She has made 12 visits in the past several months before cheering crowds and showing emotional clips of the attack, said a Punjabi official who has been monitoring her visits.
“She claimed that they would bring Islamic revolution in three months,” said Umar Draz, who attended a rally in Muzzafargarh.
The situation in south and west Punjab is still far from that in the Swat Valley, a part of North-West Frontier Province that is now fully under Taliban control after the military agreed to a truce in February. But there are strong parallels.
The Taliban here exploit many of the same weaknesses that have allowed them to expand in other areas: an absent or intimidated police force; a lack of attention from national and provincial leaders; a population steadily cowed by threats, or won over by hard-line mullahs who usurp authority by playing on government neglect and poverty.
In Shadan Lund, a village just north of here, militants are openly demanding Islamic law, or Shariah, said Jan Sher, whose brother is a teacher there. “The situation is sharply going toward Swat,” Mr. Sher said. He and others said the single biggest obstacle to stopping the advance of militancy was the attitudes of Pakistanis themselves, whose fury at the United States has led to blind support for everyone who goes against it.
Shabaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab, said he was painfully aware of the problems of insurgent infiltration and was taking steps to restore people’s faith in government, including plans for new schools and hospitals. “Hearts and minds must be won,” he said in an interview Monday. “If this struggle fails, this country has no future.”
But people complain that landowners and local politicians have done nothing to stop the advance and, in some cases, even assist the militants by giving money to some of the religious schools.
“The government is useless,” said Mr. Ali, the local landlord. “They live happy, secure lives in Lahore. Their children study abroad. They only come here to contest elections.”
The police are left alone to stop the advance. But in Punjab, as in much of the rest of Pakistan, they are spread unevenly, with little presence in rural areas. Out of 160,000 police officers in Punjab, fewer than 60,000 are posted in rural areas, leaving frontier stations in districts virtually unprotected, police officials said.
Locals feel helpless. When a 15-year-old boy vanished from a madrasa in a village near here recently — his classmates said to go on jihad — his uncle could not afford to go look for him, let alone confront the powerful men who run the madrasa.
“We are simple people,” the man said. “What can we do?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/wo...punjab.html?hp
Go to the article for graphics and photos
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Pakistan: A Peace Deal Becomes Law
Stratfor Today » April 13, 2009 | 1936 GMT
CHAND KHAN/AFP/Getty Images
An armed Pakistani Taliban in Buner near the Swat valley on April 7, 2009Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on April 13 signed the Nizam-i-Adl (System of Justice) Regulation into law. Earlier in the day, Parliament overwhelmingly approved the regulation, which stems from a Feb. 17 agreement between the provincial government of the North-West Frontier Province and the jihadist movement in the Swat region that calls for a shariah-based legal system to be implemented in the area in exchange for an end to the insurgency. Islamabad had been hesitant to approve the deal between Peshawar and the Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM) — the jihadist group based in the greater Swat region — saying the central government wanted the TNSM militia to lay down its weapons before Islamabad endorsed the deal.
The Nizam-i-Adl Regulation becoming law without the militants laying down their arms is thus far the most significant example of the Pakistani state’s retreat in the face of a powerful jihadist insurgency. It underscores the extent to which the state has been weakened and the degree of incoherence within both the state and society regarding the jihadist threat and how to combat it. The expectation is that the deal will bring an end to the militancy in the greater Swat area, and that Talibanization can be confined to that region.
However, the TNSM has no intention of limiting its sphere of influence to the Swat region. Therefore, this development will only boost the confidence of the Taliban and their transnational allies in Pakistan and beyond. The Swat area effectively will become an emirate from which a wider Talibanization campaign can be launched. In many ways, this has already begun, with the Swat-based insurgents projecting power into adjoining districts such as Buner.
Not only will Pakistan see greater domestic turmoil as a result of the passage of this law, but the new regulation will further aggravate tensions between Islamabad and Washington, complicating Western efforts to combat the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. The United States may even move to expand its unilateral airstrikes and covert operations deeper into Pakistani territory.
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Geopolitical Diary: The Making of a Taliban Emirate in Pakistan
April 14, 2009
The legislative and executive branches of the Pakistani government on Monday approved a Feb. 17 peace agreement between the provincial government in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and a Taliban rebel group based in NWFP’s Swat district. The agreement allows for the enforcement of a legal system based on “Islamic” law in the greater Swat region, in exchange for an end to the Taliban insurgency. Arguing that legal systems will vary from area to area in keeping the local culture, the supporters of the move — both within the government and society — say that the agreement will lead to the end of violence. Given the jihadist agenda, it is unlikely that this will happen; rather, the state’s capitulation will only embolden the jihadists to pursue their goals with greater vigor.
Lacking any strategy to combat the spreading insurgency, the Pakistani state over the past couple of years has lost more and more ground to Pashtun jihadists in its northwest. But until now, there has been only a de facto evaporation of the writ of the state – a situation Islamabad viewed as temporary. The approval of the Sharia deal by an overwhelming majority in Parliament, however, and the president’s signature on the peace agreement represent an acknowledgment of defeat on the part of the state — a situation that is very difficult to reverse, especially for a country that is grappling with all sorts of domestic and international issues.
Allowing a special political and legal dispensation in a given part of its territory essentially amounts to recognizing the autonomy of the region in question. It should be noted that the Pakistani state has, since its inception, fiercely resisted the minority provinces’ demands for autonomy.
The recognition of what amounts to a Taliban emirate in a significant portion of the NWFP comes at a time when Balochistan, the large province in southwest Pakistan, is experiencing a fresh wave of violence — triggered by last week’s killing of three key separatist leaders, allegedly by the country’s security apparatus. Not only will legislating a Taliban-style legal system for the greater Swat region facilitate the Talibanization of significant parts of the country, it also will embolden Baloch separatism. In other words, the two provinces that border Afghanistan could spin out of control. An accelerating meltdown of Islamabad’s writ in its western periphery seriously undermines the Obama administration’s regional strategy concerning the Taliban and transnational jihadism.
Insurgencies in the Pashtun and Baloch areas threaten Western military supply routes running through the two provinces and make it increasingly difficult for U.S. and NATO forces to level the battlefield in Afghanistan. The situation on the Afghan-Pakistani border is becoming even more fluid, allowing Taliban insurgents on both sides to make gains in their respective theaters. Such a scenario has a direct bearing on the political component of the U.S. strategy, as it makes negotiations with pragmatic Taliban elements all the more elusive.
In fact, the negotiations between the Taliban in Pakistan’s Swat region and Islamabad set a bad precedent, undermining any U.S. efforts to reach out to pragmatic Taliban in Afghanistan. Seeing the success of their counterparts in Swat, the Afghan Taliban are likely to insist that they will negotiate with their fellow Afghans only after Western forces leave the country. This means that Western forces are looking at a long conflict — one in which the jihadists, and not the United States and NATO, will have the advantage called Pakistan.
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Its the NYTimes, so caveat lector:
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here.
Supporters of Islamic law on Thursday in the Swat Valley, a Pakistani region where the Taliban exploited class rifts to gain control.
The strategy cleared a path to power for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, where the government allowed Islamic law to be imposed this week, and it carries broad dangers for the rest of Pakistan, particularly the militants’ main goal, the populous heartland of Punjab Province.
In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power.
To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.
The approach allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people frustrated with lax and corrupt government even as the militants imposed a strict form of Islam through terror and intimidation.
“This was a bloody revolution in Swat,” said a senior Pakistani official who oversees Swat, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Taliban. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it sweeps the established order of Pakistan.”
The Taliban’s ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to the insurgency and is raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal.
Unlike India after independence in 1947, Pakistan maintained a narrow landed upper class that kept its vast holdings while its workers remained subservient, the officials and analysts said. Successive Pakistani governments have since failed to provide land reform and even the most basic forms of education and health care. Avenues to advancement for the vast majority of rural poor do not exist.
Analysts and other government officials warn that the strategy executed in Swat is easily transferable to Punjab, saying that the province, where militant groups are already showing strength, is ripe for the same social upheavals that have convulsed Swat and the tribal areas.
Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American lawyer and former classmate of President Obama’s, said, “The people of Pakistan are psychologically ready for a revolution.”
Sunni militancy is taking advantage of deep class divisions that have long festered in Pakistan, he said. “The militants, for their part, are promising more than just proscriptions on music and schooling,” he said. “They are also promising Islamic justice, effective government and economic redistribution.”
The Taliban strategy in Swat, an area of 1.3 million people with fertile orchards, vast plots of timber and valuable emerald mines, unfolded in stages over five years, analysts said.
The momentum of the insurgency built in the past two years, when the Taliban, reinforced by seasoned fighters from the tribal areas with links to Al Qaeda, fought the Pakistani Army to a standstill, said a Pakistani intelligence agent who works in the Swat region.
The insurgents struck at any competing point of power: landlords and elected leaders — who were usually the same people — and an underpaid and unmotivated police force, said Khadim Hussain, a linguistics and communications professor at Bahria University in Islamabad, the capital.
At the same time, the Taliban exploited the resentments of the landless tenants, particularly the fact that they had many unresolved cases against their bosses in a slow-moving and corrupt justice system, Mr. Hussain and residents who fled the area said.
Their grievances were stoked by a young militant, Maulana Fazlullah, who set up an FM radio station in 2004 to appeal to the disenfranchised. The broadcasts featured easy-to-understand examples using goats, cows, milk and grass. By 2006, Mr. Fazlullah had formed a ragtag force of landless peasants armed by the Taliban, said Mr. Hussain and former residents of Swat.
At first, the pressure on the landlords was subtle. One landowner was pressed to take his son out of an English-speaking school offensive to the Taliban. Others were forced to make donations to the Taliban.
Then, in late 2007, Shujaat Ali Khan, the richest of the landowners, his brothers and his son, Jamal Nasir, the mayor of Swat, became targets.
After Shujaat Ali Khan, a senior politician in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, narrowly missed being killed by a roadside bomb, he fled to London. A brother, Fateh Ali Mohammed, a former senator, left, too, and now lives in Islamabad. Mr. Nasir also fled
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Later, the Taliban published a “most wanted” list of 43 prominent names, said Muhammad Sher Khan, a landlord who is a politician with the Pakistan Peoples Party, and whose name was on the list. All those named were ordered to present themselves to the Taliban courts or risk being killed, he said. “When you know that they will hang and kill you, how will you dare go back there?” Mr. Khan, hiding in Punjab, said in a telephone interview. “Being on the list meant ‘Don’t come back to Swat.’ ”
One of the main enforcers of the new order was Ibn-e-Amin, a Taliban commander from the same area as the landowners, called Matta. The fact that Mr. Amin came from Matta, and knew who was who there, put even more pressure on the landowners, Mr. Hussain said.
According to Pakistani news reports, Mr. Amin was arrested in August 2004 on suspicion of having links to Al Qaeda and was released in November 2006. Another Pakistani intelligence agent said Mr. Amin often visited a madrasa in North Waziristan, the stronghold of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, where he apparently received guidance.
Each time the landlords fled, their tenants were rewarded. They were encouraged to cut down the orchard trees and sell the wood for their own profit, the former residents said. Or they were told to pay the rent to the Taliban instead of their now absentee bosses.
Two dormant emerald mines have reopened under Taliban control. The militants have announced that they will receive one-third of the revenues.
Since the Taliban fought the military to a truce in Swat in February, the militants have deepened their approach and made clear who is in charge.
When provincial bureaucrats visit Mingora, Swat’s capital, they must now follow the Taliban’s orders and sit on the floor, surrounded by Taliban bearing weapons, and in some cases wearing suicide bomber vests, the senior provincial official said.
In many areas of Swat the Taliban have demanded that each family give up one son for training as a Taliban fighter, said Mohammad Amad, executive director of a nongovernmental group, the Initiative for Development and Empowerment Axis.
A landlord who fled with his family last year said he received a chilling message last week. His tenants called him in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, to tell him his huge house was being demolished, he said in an interview here.
The most crushing news was about his finances. He had sold his fruit crop in advance, though at a quarter of last year’s price. But even that smaller yield would not be his, his tenants said, relaying the Taliban message. The buyer had been ordered to give the money to the Taliban instead.
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Turning Tables, U.S. Troops Ambush Taliban With Swift and Lethal Results
Published: April 16, 2009
NYT
KORANGAL OUTPOST, Afghanistan — Only the lead insurgents were disciplined as they walked along the ridge. They moved carefully, with weapons ready and at least five yards between each man, the soldiers who surprised them said.
Last week, members of Second Platoon, Company B, surprised a Taliban column and killed at least 13.
Behind them, a knot of Taliban fighters walked in a denser group, some with rifles slung on their shoulders — “pretty much exactly the way we tell soldiers not to do it,” said Specialist Robert Soto, the radio operator for the American patrol.
If these insurgents came close enough, the soldiers knew, the patrol could kill them in a batch.
Fight by fight, the infantryman’s war in Afghanistan is often waged on the Taliban’s terms. Insurgents ambush convoys and patrols from high ridges or long ranges and slip away as the Americans, weighed down by equipment, return fire and call for air and artillery support. Last week a patrol from the First Infantry Division reversed the routine.
An American platoon surprised an armed Taliban column on a forested ridgeline at night, and killed at least 13 insurgents, and perhaps many more, with rifles, machine guns, Claymore mines, hand grenades and a knife.
The one-sided fight, fought on the slopes of the same mountain where a Navy Seal patrol was surrounded in 2005 and a helicopter with reinforcements was shot down, does not change the war. It was one of hundreds of firefights that have occurred in the Korangal Valley, an isolated region where local insurgents and the Americans have been locked in a bitter stalemate for more than three years.
But as accounts of the fight have spread, the ambush, on Good Friday, has become an emotional rallying point for soldiers in Kunar Province, who have seen it as a both a validation of their equipment and training and a welcome bit of score-settling in an area that in recent years has claimed more American lives than any other.
The patrol, 30 soldiers from the First Battalion, 26th Infantry, had left this outpost before noon on April 10, and spent much of the day climbing a ridge on the opposite side of the Korangal River, according to interviews with more than half the participants.
Once the soldiers reached the ridge’s crest, almost 6,000 feet above sea level on the side of a peak called Sautalu Sar, they found fresh footprints on the trails, and parapets of rock from where Taliban fighters often fire rifles and rocket-propelled grenades down onto this outpost.
The platoon leader, Second Lt. Justin Smith, selected a spot where trails intersected, and the platoon dug shallow fighting holes before dark. Claymore antipersonnel mines were set among the trees nearby.
At sunset, Lieutenant Smith called for a period of absolute silence, which lasted into darkness. Then he ordered three scouts to sit in a listening post about 100 yards away, 10 feet off the trail.
The scouts set in. Less than a half-minute later, a column of Taliban fighters appeared, walking briskly their way.
Sgt. Zachary R. Reese, a sniper, whispered into his radio. “We have eight enemy personnel coming down on our position really fast,” he said. He could say no more; the Taliban fighters were a few feet away.
More appeared. Then more still. The sergeant counted 26 gunmen pass by.
The patrol, Second Platoon of Company B, was in a place where no Americans had spent a night for years, and it seemed that the Afghans did not expect danger.
The soldiers waited. The rules of the ambush were long ago drilled into them: no one can move, and no one can fire until the patrol leader gives the order. Then everyone must fire at once.
The third Taliban fighter in the column switched on a flashlight, the soldiers said, and quickly switched it off. About 50 yards separated the two sides, but Lieutenant Smith did not want to start shooting too soon, he said, “because if too many lived then we’d be up there fighting them all night.”
He let the Taliban column continue on. The soldiers trained their weapons’ infrared lasers, which are visible only with night-vision equipment, on the fighters as they drew closer. The lasers mark the path a bullet will fly.
The lead fighter had almost reached the platoon when Pvt. First Class Troy Pacini-Harvey, 19, his laser trained on the lead man’s forehead, moved his rifle’s selector lever from safe to semi-automatic. It made a barely audible click. The Taliban fighter froze. He was six feet away.
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Lieutenant Smith was new to the platoon. This was his fourth patrol. He was in a situation that every infantry lieutenant trains for, but almost no infantry lieutenant ever sees. “Fire,” he said, softly into the radio. “Fire. Fire. Fire.”
As accounts of the fight have spread, the ambush, on Good Friday, has become an emotional rallying point for soldiers in Kunar Province.
The platoon’s frontage exploded with noise and flashes of light as soldiers fired. Bullets struck all of the lead Taliban fighters, the soldiers said. The first Afghans fell where they were hit, not managing to fire a single shot.
Five Taliban fighters bolted to the soldiers’ left, unwittingly running squarely into the path of machine-gun bullets and the Claymore mines. For a moment, the soldiers heard rustling in the brush. They detonated their Claymores and threw hand grenades. The rustling stopped.
Two other Taliban fighters had dashed to the right, toward an almost sheer drop. One ran so wildly in the blackness that his momentum carried him off the cliff, several soldiers said.
Another stopped at the edge. Pvt. First Class Brad Larson, 19, had followed the man with his laser. “I took him out,” he said.
The scout at the listening post shot three of the fleeing fighters, and dropped two more with hand grenades. “We stopped what we could see,” Sergeant Reese said.
The shooting had lasted a few minutes. The hillside briefly fell quiet. The surviving Taliban fighters, some of whom had run back up the trail, began shouting in the darkness. “We could hear them calling out to one another,” Specialist Soto said.
Lieutenant Smith called the listening post back in. After two Apache attack helicopters showed up, an F-15 dropped a bomb on the Taliban’s escape route, about 600 yards up the trail. Then the lieutenant ordered teams to search the bodies they could find on the crest.
Sergeant Reese gave his rifle to another sniper to cover him while he tried to cut away a Taliban fighter’s ammunition pouches with a four-inch blade. The fighter had only been pretending to be dead, the soldiers said. He lunged for Sergeant Reese, who stabbed him in the left eye.
In all, the soldiers found eight bodies on the crest. They photographed them to try to identify them later, and collected their weapons, ammunition, radios and papers. Then the patrol swept down a gully where a pilot said he saw more insurgents hiding.
Four scouts, using night-vision gear, spotted five fighters crouching behind rocks, and killed them with rifle and machine-gun fire, the scouts said. The bodies were searched and photographed, too. The platoon began to hike back to the outpost, carrying the captured equipment.
Second Platoon, Company B has endured one of the most arduous assignments in Afghanistan. Eight of the platoon’s soldiers have been wounded in nine months of fighting in the valley, part of a bitter contest for control of a small and sparsely populated area.
Three others have been killed.
In a matter of minutes, the ambush changed the experience of the surviving soldiers’ tours. The degree of turnabout surprised even some the soldiers who participated.
“It’s the first time most of us have even seen the guys who were shooting at us,” said Sgt. Thomas Horvath, 21.
The next day, elders from the valley would ask permission to collect the villages’ dead. Company B’s commander, Capt. James C. Howell, would grant it.
But already, as the soldiers slid and climbed down the mountain, word of the insurgents’ defeat was traveling through Taliban networks.
Specialist Robert C. Oxman, 21, had put a dead fighter’s phone in his pocket. As the platoon descended, the phone rang and rang, apparently as other fighters called to find out what had happened on Sautalu Sar. By sunrise, it had been ringing for hours.
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Extremist tide rises in Pakistan
After deal in north, Islamists aim to install religious law nationwide
By Pamela Constable
The Washington Post
updated 12:49 a.m. ET, Mon., April 20, 2009
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A potentially troubling era dawned Sunday in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where a top Islamist militant leader, emboldened by a peace agreement with the federal government, laid out an ambitious plan to bring a "complete Islamic system" to the surrounding northwest region and the entire country.
Speaking to thousands of followers in an address aired live from Swat on national news channels, cleric Sufi Mohammed bluntly defied the constitution and federal judiciary, saying he would not allow any appeals to state courts under the system of sharia, or Islamic law, that will prevail there as a result of the peace accord signed by the president Tuesday.
"The Koran says that supporting an infidel system is a great sin," Mohammed said, referring to Pakistan's modern democratic institutions. He declared that in Swat, home to 1.5 million people, all "un-Islamic laws and customs will be abolished," and he suggested that the official imprimatur on the agreement would pave the way for sharia to be installed in other areas.
Mohammed's dramatic speech echoed a rousing sermon in Islamabad on Friday by another radical cleric, Maulana Abdul Aziz, who appeared at the Red Mosque in the capital after nearly two years in detention and urged several thousand chanting followers to launch a crusade for sharia nationwide.
Arc of radical Islam
Together, these rallying cries seemed to create an arc of radical religious energy between the turbulent, Taliban-plagued northwest region and the increasingly vulnerable federal capital, less than 100 miles to the east. They also appeared to pose a direct, unprecedented religious challenge to modern state authority in the Muslim nation of 176 million.
"The government made a big mistake to give these guys legal cover for their agenda. Now they are going to be battle-ready to struggle for the soul of Pakistan," said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of security studies at Quaid-i-Azam university here. He predicted a further surge in the suicide bombings that have recently become an almost daily occurrence across the country. Two recent bombings at security checkpoints in the northwest killed more than 40 people.
Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to the region, said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN that the decision by insurgents to keep fighting in spite of the peace deal should be a "wake-up call to everybody in Pakistan that you can't deal with these people by giving away territory as they creep closer and closer to the populated centers of the Punjab and Islamabad."
Also Sunday, a suspected U.S. missile strike killed three people at a Taliban compound in the South Waziristan tribal region; such attacks have become a powerful recruitment tool for extremist groups in Pakistan as anti-American sentiment builds.
‘We really had no other choice’
The government agreed to Mohammed's demands in an effort to halt violent intimidation by Taliban forces that the army was unable to quell despite months of operations in the former tourist haven. In recent interviews, Swati leaders and refugees described armed men in black turbans whipping suspected thieves on the spot, cutting off the ears and noses of village elders who opposed them, and selling videos of police beheadings.
"We really had no other choice. We had no power to crush the militants, and people were desperate for peace," said Jafar Shah, a Swati legislator. His Awami National Party, though historically secular, sponsored the sharia deal. "Now people are calling us Taliban without beards," he said ruefully, "but it was the only option available."
Provincial and federal officials also hoped their show of good faith would halt further insurgent inroads and buy time for foreign aid programs to shore up the impoverished northwest against the Islamists' message of swift justice and social equality.
Instead, the evidence suggests that the extremist forces have drawn the opposite lesson from their victory in Swat and are gearing up to carry their armed crusade for a punitive, misogynistic form of Islam into new areas. There have been numerous reports of Taliban fighters entering districts south and west of Swat, where they have brandished weapons, bombed and occupied buildings, arrested aid workers, and killed female activists.
"When we achieve our goals in one place, we need to struggle for it in other areas," Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan told Pakistani news services by telephone last week. "Sharia does not permit us to lay down our arms if the government continues anti-Muslim policies." The goal, he said, is to "enforce the rule of Allah on the land of Allah."
In the northwestern town of Mardan, insurgents attacked girls schools, forced CD shops to close, ordered barbers not to shave beards and bombed the office of a nonprofit aid agency, killing a female worker. Taliban commanders accused the agency of "propagating obscenity." Taliban fighters occupied the Buner district for several days, closed a religious shrine and burned DVDs in the streets. They then toured the region in a convoy of trucks, even entering a secured army area while displaying heavy weapons.
"The inescapable reality is that another domino has toppled and the Taliban are a step closer to Islamabad," the Pakistan-based News International newspaper warned last week after the Buner takeover. The paper compared Pakistan to Vietnam: a weak and corrupt state being "nibbled away" by determined insurgents: "The Taliban have the upper hand, and they know it."
Surprisingly, there has been little official or public protest against the creeping tide of Islamist extremism. Analysts said this is partly because of fear of retaliation and partly because of strong religious sentiments that make Pakistanis reluctant to criticize fellow Muslims.
Even in especially shocking cases, such as the public flogging of a Swati girl suspected of having an affair, the response from national leaders was a muddle of denial and obfuscation. Some said the incident, which surfaced last month on a videotape, had been staged to sabotage the peace deal. Others said it was a minor issue compared with U.S. cross-border missile strikes.
Raising alarm
A handful of influential Pakistanis have begun to raise the alarm, warning in newspaper columns or speeches that government and society need to confront the enemy within and acknowledge the difference between conventional sharia and the crude, brutally enforced Taliban version of an extremist Islamist state.
"In Swat they got their system imposed at gunpoint, and now they are ready to Taliban-ize the whole country," Altaf Hussain, the exiled head of the Muttahida Qaumi Majlis political party, said at a teleconference of Muslim clerics in Karachi on Sunday. Denouncing the insurgents' abusive and autocratic methods, he said, "We have to decide between our country and the Taliban."
Sharia in Pakistan, as in Afghanistan, exists in tandem with a modern legal code but does not supersede it. Sharia courts rule on certain religious and moral issues, while other cases are tried by regular courts. Mohammed, Aziz and other radicals espouse a more severe version like the one Taliban rulers imposed on Afghanistan in the 1990s, which segregates women and imposes harsh punishments.
Supporters of the Swat agreement pointed out that residents have been demanding sharia for years to replace the slow, corrupt justice system. But Swati leaders said that the local version of Islamic law was traditionally moderate and that in elections last year Swatis voted overwhelmingly for two secular parties.
Indeed, older natives of Swat like to recall earlier days when serenity and tolerance prevailed in the region of apple orchards, forested hills and glacial streams. Tourists from Japan and Europe came to explore ancient Buddhist ruins, while residents practiced a timeless mix of tribal customs and Islamic faith.
"There was something in the soil that made the people soft," said Asad Khan, a Swat native in his 40s who lives in the city of Peshawar. "Our culture was one of civilized hospitality. Everyone was a Muslim, but almost no one was a fundamentalist. The climate was not good for harsh people and ideas."
This week, after the peace accord was endorsed, officials and pro-government news media described the atmosphere in Swat as relieved and heading back to normalcy. But several people who visited the Swati capital of Mingora this week said they saw worried faces, no women in the markets, and clusters of black-turbaned men watching everyone closely.
"Things are confused and unclear. People have suffered a lot, and they are desperate for peace, but they don't know if it will last," said Afzal Khan Lala, a provincial legislator, reached by phone in Mingora. "If the Taliban are sincere, then peace should prevail. But if they have ulterior aims and seek supremacy over the state, I doubt peace will come to Swat."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30299557/
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Sent to me by someone who has seen and done interesting things in Afpakia:
----- Original Message -----
From: Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 5:30 PM
Subject: Fw: Buy your ammo now
Experts predict Pakistan's collapse
Kansas City Star
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY
17 April 2009
WASHINGTON
A growing number of U.S. intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials have concluded that there's little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists.
“It's a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution,” said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity.
Pakistan's fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al-Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan; and for the security of India, the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia, the U.S. and its allies.
“Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American Army, and the headquarters of al-Qaida sitting in two-thirds of the country which the government does not control,” said David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration.
“Pakistan isn't Afghanistan, a backward, isolated, landlocked place that outsiders get interested in about once a century,” agreed the U.S. intelligence official. “It's a developed state.”
He added: “The implications of this are disastrous for the U.S.”
The experts interviewed by McClatchy Newspapers said their views aren't a worst case scenario, but a realistic expectation based on the militants' gains and the failure of Pakistan's leadership to respond.
“The place is beyond redemption,” said a Pentagon adviser who asked not to be further identified. He continued: “If you look out 10 years, I think the government will be overrun by Islamic militants.”
That pessimistic view has been bolstered by Islamabad's surrender this week of areas outside the frontier tribal region to Pakistan's Taliban movement and by a growing militant infiltration into the rest of the nation.
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Geopolitical Diary: Taliban Problem Going Critical in Pakistan
April 22, 2009
A spokesman for Pakistan’s military said Tuesday that the peace agreement between the government and Islamist militants in the Swat region has given the Taliban an opportunity to regroup, after having been flushed out by army operations some months back. Elsewhere, the information ministers of both the federal government and North-West Frontier Province warned the Taliban group in Swat, the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-Muhammadi (TNSM), to uphold its end of the peace deal and disarm, or face government action.
These comments followed statements made during the weekend by TNSM leader Maulana Sufi Muhammad: He denounced Pakistan’s constitution, parliament and Supreme Court as un-Islamic and called for Sharia to be imposed throughout the country. In a related development, the rebellious imam of Islamabad’s Red Mosque, Maulana Abdul Aziz — who led a bloody rising in July 2007 — was released on bail. He told followers to be ready to make sacrifices to ensure that Islam is enforced through the entire country.
As expected, the Swat “Sharia for peace” deal appears to be falling apart — within a week of being ratified. The collapse is yet another manifestation of a weakened Pakistani state being manipulated by Taliban rebels. But a far important point is that the current situation is untenable.
Pakistani government leaders cannot remain on the path of negotiations while the Taliban are going for the jugular. The entire rationale behind the peace agreement was that the insurgency in Swat could be ended if Sharia was enforced in the restive area. The Taliban not only have shown that they are unwilling to disarm, but their ambitions are escalating from a local to a national level.
This leaves the government with two choices: Either continue down the current path — allowing the jihadists to advance their cause while trying to avoid confrontation — or draw the line. In either case, conflict would be inevitable.
The difference is one of time and location. The Pakistanis either can fight the jihadists now, seeking to limit the conflict to the Pashtun regions of the northwest, or wait to fight — while the jihadists move to strengthen their ability to strike in Punjab province, the heart of Pakistan. The state is being pushed toward taking action by both the deteriorating security situation at home and mounting pressure from the United States. But it is not clear whether there is sufficient political will in Islamabad to go on the offensive.
Much of this is because the state is caught between the contradictory needs to combat the “bad” Taliban (those that fight in Pakistan) while still maintaining influence over the “good” ones (those that fight in Afghanistan). This distinction itself is a problem: The jihadist landscape is far more complicated than such neat binary categorizations would seem to allow. The problems Islamabad faces in this regard offer a glimpse of what the Obama administration can expect in its efforts to distinguish between what Washington sees as Taliban it can deal with versus Taliban it cannot deal with.
Overall, Pakistan’s situation is far more dire than the situation the United States will face in Afghanistan as it increases troop commitments and seeks out pragmatic Taliban with whom to negotiate. For Islamabad, the war is hitting home now more than ever.
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Woof!
Now can anyone see why terrorists should not be negotiated with? Give 'em an inch and they take a mile. Pak needs to nip this one in the bud while they still have a chance otherwise they can look forward to ... well there's really nothing that I can think of unless a nuclear winter can be something to be looked forward to :|.
"Much of this is because the state is caught between the contradictory needs to combat the “bad” Taliban (those that fight in Pakistan) while still maintaining influence over the “good” ones (those that fight in Afghanistan)." They are considered "good" by certain people in Pakistan because they keep Afghanistan weak. Do you think Pak wants enemies on both sides? Well, I think their little plan backfired and now they have to deal with "the enemy within". I think that if it gets too bad in Pakistan that India will have no problem rolling through and I don't think many would mind it at all.
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JKrenz:
The possible reactions of the Indians to all this is a very interesting point.
Would it be to neutralize Pak nukes? How clear are they/we on where the nukes and nuke material is? How well protected is it? Or would the plan be to simply kick ass, take names, and then , , , what?
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Woof Guro Crafty,
Nobody knows for sure publicly but I would like to think that SOMEBODY knows. India's Intelligence Bureau, CIA, MI5, China's MSS... Somebody knows something about the nukes. As far as a plan? I don't mean to sound too cynical but everyday I spend over here (not sure about India), the less I think that the concept of a "plan" is something easily comprehended by folks in this part of the world unless they are directly benefited by it immediately and tangibly.
A couple of days old but interesting...
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India: The Missing Factor In Afghanistan, Pakistan
By John Tsucalas, For The Bulletin
Monday, April 20, 2009
Take a look at a map of the Indian Ocean, the great trade route for shipping oil not only to India and China, but also the Pacific Ocean. Let the eye move to the north to sight India in the approximate center of the landmass, then moving westward to, in order, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Then move eastward to encompass China and the South China Sea off its coast.
Beyond the importance of the area for shipping, especially oil, the area is captive to nuclear weapons either held or with nations aspiring to develop them. Among those who have such weapons within the region, count China, India and Pakistan; the aspiring ones are North Korea and Iran, assuming no recent, significant breakthrough by these two in the development of those weapons.
A closer look at the map shows that Iran has to go through some hoops to get oil to say China, a huge consumer as is India. Iran must exit the Persian Gulf, pass through the narrow Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf of Oman, then traverse the Arabian Sea into the Indian Ocean and turn eastwards through the tight Strait of Malacca, Indonesia, into the South China Sea.
This route can be easily bottled up by a well-built and diversified naval fleet, such as ours. Should we consider doing this? No, I wouldn’t advise it unless China started something, which it won’t. However, this explains importantly why China is developing a strong navy; when it comes to thirst for oil, it’s vulnerable.
As a bottom line, China and India are highly competitive with each other. However, India is too attentive to Pakistan to allow it to be embroiled in a conflict with China. On Pakistan’s eastern boundary, it and India have a common border. Indeed our envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, is looking to bring Pakistan and India into a combined effort to defeat jihadists in the area. While impracticable, it’s a creative idea because it could succeed in a dual way: lessen tensions between the two, while possibly sharpening our fighting capability against jihadists. NATO is worthless in the whole region.
However, the combination is unlikely to occur. The Pakistanis have not helped much in our fight to defeat jihadists; they are as terrible as NATO. Worse still, Pakistan has become a sanctuary for the Taliban and al-Qaida, especially the former. Moreover, the Taliban have successfully negotiated for the establishment of Muslim law (Shariah) in parts of Pakistan. I fear that there’s a fifth column at work in Pakistan, largely operating through the powerful spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, but in concert with the Taliban, itself a sort of fifth column. They hide among the civilian population, even dressing as that population does. Therefore, they are hard to identify to kill or capture. In connection with Shariah, President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto, signed approval of Shariah at the federal level, another nail in our coffin.
In August, Afghanistan will hold its presidential election. The incumbent president, Hamid Karzai, in the mold of Mr. Zardari, will be on the ballot; he is only good at verbally attacking us after aircraft of the United States Air Force (USAF) have inadvertently killed civilians while in air support of Special Forces. From carriers in the Indian Ocean, the Navy has joined the fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan, using the latest in the Hornet series, the Super Hornet, an all-purpose attack aircraft that, along with their pilots, have done an excellent job. Most of the aircraft used and missions done are notably by the F-16 Fighting Falcon, itself all-purpose, of USAF.
President Obama has announced his strategy for the area. It is a smart approach, seeing Afghanistan and Pakistan as one combined area. That is why Mr. Holbrooke is the envoy to both. Additionally, he sees the main thrust to be one of killing or capturing jihadists, meaning keep the pressure on both al-Qaida and the Taliban. He has continued assaults by drones on Pakistan. He is doing a sensible job.
Now to what we should ask of India: Attack Pakistan and remove it as a factor in the battle against jihadists! There is a risk, of course, of a nuclear exchange between the two countries, both possessing the weapons for it. It is easy to say that both should eschew the use of them. However, the losing side is too likely to use them, and to me, that’s Pakistan doing it first.
It’s looking promising, especially if we can convince India to join the battle.
John J. Tsucalas, former deputy auditor general of Pennsylvania, is a Philadelphia corporate consultant on finance. He can be reached at tsucalas@verizon.net.
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Forwarded to me by a MD friend in India:
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Some incisive comments about why the puki army wont fight the telebunnies.. from orbat.com
0230 GMT April 25, 2009
With Pakistan, there's the news...
Pakistan Army chief delivers stern warning to the militants that they will be severely dealt with unless they stop taking over more territory...Chief says Army rank and file have decided to do their duty...Taliban withdrawing from Buner...Army operation in Swat imminent in 48 hours...Chief says US pronouncements warning of collapse of Pakistan are to be condemned...a democratic nation of 170-million cannot be intimidated by a few insurgents...Army will be gloves off in dealing with rebels in Swat...Government says Buner is being dealt with, 250 troops have been sent to restore law and order...etc etc etc
Then there's the news
Non-resident Taliban are withdrawing from Buner; local Taliban will stay, and will not carry arms as Taliban has come to Buner "only to preach true Islam" and wish to harm no-one...non-resident Taliban have been responsible for looting some local houses...250 lightly armed police did try and enter Buner, but after one convoy was ambushed the police are withdrawing...locals says Taliban controls entire district, including government/administration builds, government officials have fled, women nowhere to be seen in the bazaars except a few fully covered...withdrawing Taliban are moving into Swabi District...etc etc etc
You've guessed it...
The first version is the Pakistan Government's official version, the second is the reality. How can the Pakistan Army, which has been sitting licking its wounds, and which did absolutely nothing as the Pakistan overran Buner, and taunted the army by staging a victory past right outside the Punjab Regimental Center in Mardan, now suddenly launch a major operation to clear Swat in 48 hours? Doesn't it take a couple of weeks at least to plan things in detail, make sure officers and men know what they're doing, arrange the logistics, etc etc.?
Could it be a co-inky-dinky that the army began issuing these stern warnings right after Massa Sam threatened the direst consequences if Pakistan did not move against the insurgents? PS: you didn't hear about the US threats to Pakistan because that's all "diplomacy" behind the scenes.
And having had its sorry rear whupped three times by the Taliban in Swat by the Taliban, how come the Army will eliminate the insurgents? And 'scuse us, are you going to drop nukes on the Taliban when you say you will be gloves off? Because, dear Army, you already have many times thrown everything you have against the Taliban to no avail: tank, artillery, helicopter gunships, and unrestricted air bombardment.
Now let's analyze the real news a bit...
So suppose its World War II, and the Allies are advancing up Italy, and several divisions are withdrawn. Do the Germans think the Allies are defeated and so they are withdrawing. No, dear boys and girls, those withdrawing divisions are going to a new invasion of Southern France, opening a new front against Germany. The Allies are so confident they're going to take Italy they decide to redeploy several divisions (was it seven divisions? memory is a bit foggy). As far as GHQ Berlin is concerned, this is Not Good News.
So look at this folks: just week before last, Taliban had not overrun Swabi District. It was contested territory. So if they are now "withdrawing" from Buner into Swabi, is it for the spring time blossoms and fresh air? Hardly. They're preparing to overrun Swabi District. This is Not Good News. as Bill Roggio has explained, once they take control of Swabi, Mardan, and Haripur Districts, it's the beginning of the end for Islamabad.
The situation is so serious, Pakistan Government is deploying Rangers to the hills outside Islamabad, and the Rangers HQ is issuing heroic statements such as: "To get to Islamabad they will have to get past us."
Problemo, dudes. Agreed the Rangers are not the Frontier Corps, but they are also lightly-armed paramilitary. They havent seen action for 37 years. They are also locally recruited, and where do people think the insurgents fighting India in Kashmir for the last 22 years come from? Surprise: they come from the Punjab. So if we say the Frontier Corps would not fight the insurgents in the NWFP because they were kin, why should Pakistan Rangers fight to defend Islamabad when they will also be fighting kin?
Not so fast, McGee you say, there's no such thing as the Punjab Taliban. Quite right, Meinherr. Punjab fundamentalist insurgent groups go by different names, and they've joined up with the Taliban. They want now to overthrow the Government of Pakistan as much as the Taliban do because they believe the GOP, under pressure from US, has abandoned the jihad against India; even though the Kashmir insurgency has restarted, these lads have bigger ambitions than just getting killed in Kashmir for the next 22 years.
And - surprise: the bulk of the Pakistan Army is Punjabi. a lot of hot air has been passed about the Pakistan Army not wanting to fight the Taliban because they are brothers. Hello, peeps. There's unlikely to be any village in Pakistan Punjab that doesn't have a significant number of men in the Army. Pakistan Army Punjabi, Sindhi, and Baluchi troops refused to fight the NWFP Taliban just as much as the NWFP troops. Why when upward of 70% of the Army is Punjabi, are these men now going to suddenly start fighting, particularly when their own brothers (literally) join in the attack on Islamabad?
Now to the nub of the matter
Every time we try and explain why Pakistan won't fight the Taliban regardless of what the US does, we get diverted by events. These darn insurgents don't have the decency to wait till Editor finishes his exposition before making their next advance. Bally unsporting. So we're going to summarize our argument in a few quick paras, and expound away another time.
First, Pakistan is not going to sacrifice its national security for the US, and its national security requires control of Afghanistan.
Second, every last person in Pakistan aside from a few bootlickers have had it to here with the Americans. Americans have beaten and cursed and spat on the Pakistani dog for so long, the dog is ready to fight back even if its knows it will be killed. There is a point beyond you cannot push a human being: he will not do your will, even if you shoot him. The Pakistanis are there.
Editor and others who know what's going in Pakistan can assure Washington: if the Army is required by its senior officers to take anything more than symbolic action against the Taliban, the senior officers will be killed. The senior officer have no intention of being killed, if only because they above all have had to smile and bow and scrape to the Americans.
But you are wrong, Editor, will say a dozen people who have just returned from their tenth trip to Pakistan. The government, bureaucracy, army, are all against the Taliban. They will fight.
Really? So when is it they will fight? They haven't so far, and pretty soon - months, likely, all of Pakistan west of the Indus will be Indian country. We can go only by Pakistan's deeds, not words, and its deeds show it has not fought. So where's the evidence they will fight?
Oh right, they SAY they will fight. So in eight years the Americans have not learned the Pakistanis are past masters of saying one thing and doing another? Every American who deals with the Pakistanis know this. If Head Office doesn't know it, then good luck America, you deserve to lose Pakistan.
The rank and file Pakistani soldier doesn't want to fight Taliban. He wants to kick American butt, all the way to Kabul and points west. Rank and file cannot go up against the Americans: the Americans will destroy the Pakistan military inside of two weeks. But they can kick away by continuing to back the Taliban.
Last, and perhaps most important, we're going to say something that is so obvious to anyone familiar with Pakistan, but that's so not obvious to the great majority of Americans: the army and the people of Pakistan no longer want to fight for Pakistan under the command of the current military and civil leadership.
For decades Pakistanis have chafed under the rule of the Brown Imperialists. They hate them, but saw no alternative, and saw no way of overthrowing their brown oppressors. All this business about Benazir the Great Democrat was just so much twaddle. Benazir was no different from anyone else who have ruled Pakistan in six decades. They have ALL been oppressors.
The Taliban, for the first time in Pakistan's history, are offering an alternative to the Brown Imperialists. They are offering Pakistanis a reason and a means to fight - not the Taliban, but the BI's. And guess who the Americans are allied and identified with?
Hint 1: Its not the people of Pakistan. Hint 2: Restudy Russia 1917, particularly the army. Hint 3: after that, study Iran 1979.
Is the Pakistan revolution going to happen tomorrow? Cant say. Will it happen day after? Still cant say. Is it never going to happen? Can say: it is going to happen.
As for Head Office, aka Toon Town, aka Washington, here's our solution to the problem: Pray, and pray hard. We got nothing to lose. Because its all lost already.
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Woof JKrenz:
Following up on your previous post concerning the matter of "plans":
First, I hope I do not grate on your nerves as a "nattering nabob of negatavism" (my fellow seniors may recognize an effort at humor here-- the quote is from disgraced VP under Richard Nixon Spiro Agnew). There you are, fighting to protect us and I keep whining "Where's the plan? WTF is the plan?"
You wrote:
"As far as a plan? I don't mean to sound too cynical but everyday I spend over here (not sure about India), the less I think that the concept of a "plan" is something easily comprehended by folks in this part of the world unless they are directly benefited by it immediately and tangibly."
No doubt this is true, but my concern is US. As events in Iraq showed us, having the right plan/strategy is essential. As events in Iraq showed, and show us right now, having a Commander in Chief with commitment to the cause is essential-- and lack of commitment is catastropic. I could be wrong, but IMHO right now we may be beginning to see the unraveling of everything we have fought for in Iraq because of the President's determination to bug out regardless of the consequences. In a larger sense I worry about his innate ability to commit to anything requiring force of arms when the going gets tough-- and General Petraeus has just said that Afpakia could easily be a worse situation than Iraq was. Do we the American people have what it takes to stay the course? Does our President?
But I am getting ahead of myself-- so allow me to return to the matter of "WTF is "The Plan"?"
One example of a plan would be what retired Col Ralph Peters has suggested-- working from memory it was something like this: Go in and kick ass, then leave while saying "Do something stupid again" and we'll be back even harder to kick your asses again.
Another example of a plan would be to seek to establish democracy and women's rights and defund the enemy by taking out the opium crops.
Another example would be to maintain a low grade war of indefinite duration keeping the AQ-Taliban distracted by by lobbing in Predators and the life.
Another example would be to take out Pakistan's nukes and come home.
These are all plans. WTF is the plan under President Obama?
As best as I can tell it is to:
1) Give less troops than required and lob predators until , , , what?
2) Not address the role of the opium trade in financing the enemy
3) Continue to maintain the fantasy of the Durand Line (i.e. that there is a border between Afg and Pak and not simply Pashtunstan)
4) Wonder WTF to do as Pak collapses.
5) Lack the will to go after Pak's nukes-- and certainly Secretary Clinton and his recent responses to North Korea's missile test bodes quite poorly here.
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Jkrenz may be busy with more pressing matters. Until he has time to join us once again and perhaps comment on my preceding post, here's this:
April 26, 2009
In Taliban’s Surge in Pakistan, a Pattern of Guile and Force
By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
Initially, Buner was a hard place for the Taliban to crack. When they attacked a police station in the valley district last year, the resistance was fearless. Local people picked up rifles, pistols and daggers, hunted down the militants and killed six of them.
But it was not to last. In short order this past week the Taliban captured Buner, a strategically vital district just 60 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. The militants flooded in by the hundreds, startling Pakistani and American officials with the speed of their advance.
The lesson of Buner, local politicians and residents say, is that the dynamic of the Taliban insurgency, as methodical and slow-building as it has been, can change suddenly, and the tactics used by the Taliban can be replicated elsewhere.
The Taliban took over Buner through both force and guile — awakening sleeping sympathizers, leveraging political allies, pretending at peace talks and then crushing what was left of their opponents, according to the politicians and the residents interviewed.
Though some of the militants have since pulled back, they still command the high points of Buner and have fanned out to districts even closer to the capital.
That Buner fell should be no surprise, local people say. Last fall, the inspector general of police in North-West Frontier Province, Malik Naveed Khan, complained that his officers were being attacked and killed by the hundreds.
Mr. Khan was so desperate — and had been so thoroughly abandoned by the military and the government — that he was relying on citizen posses like the one that stood up to the Taliban last August.
Today, the hopes that those civilian militias inspired are gone, brushed away by the realization that Pakistanis can do little to stem the Taliban advance if their government and military will not help them.
The people of Buner got nothing for their bravery. In December, the Taliban retaliated for the brazenness of the resistance in the district, sending a suicide bomber to disrupt voting during a by-election. More than 30 people were killed and scores were wounded.
Severe disenchantment toward the government rippled out of the suicide bombing for a very basic reason, said Amir Zeb Bacha, the director of the Pakistan International Human Rights Organization in Buner. “When we took the injured to the hospital there was no medicine,” he said.
The election was rescheduled but turned out to be a farce. Voters were too scared to show up, said Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, a former interior minister, who lives in the area and has twice escaped Taliban suicide bombers.
The peace deal the military struck with the Taliban in February in neighboring Swat further demoralized people in Buner. Residents and local officials said they asked themselves how they could continue to resist the Taliban when the military itself had abandoned the effort. The Taliban were emboldened by the deal: it called for the institution of Shariah, the strict legal code of Islam based on the Koran, throughout Malakand Agency, which includes Swat and Buner. It allowed the Taliban amnesty for their killings, floggings and destruction of girls schools in Swat.
Still, when the Taliban rolled into Buner from Swat through the town of Gokan on April 5, a well-to-do businessman, Fateh Mohammed, organized another posse of civilian fighters to take on the militants in the town of Sultanwas.
Five civilians and three policemen were killed, he said. Some newspaper reports said 17 Taliban were killed.
At that point, the chief government official in charge of Malakand, Mohammed Javed, proposed what he called peace talks. Mr. Javed, an experienced bureaucrat in the Pakistani civil service, was appointed in late February as the main government power broker in Malakand even though he was known to be sympathetic to the Taliban, a senior government official in North-West Frontier Province said. The government had been under pressure to bring calm to Swat and essentially capitulated to Taliban demands for Mr. Javed’s appointment, the official said.
In an apparent acknowledgment that Mr. Javed had been too sympathetic to the Taliban, the government announced Saturday that he had been replaced by Fazal Karim Khattack.
In what some residents in Swat and now in Buner say had been a pattern of favorable decisions led by Mr. Javed on behalf of the Taliban, the talks in Buner turned out to be a “betrayal,” said a former police officer from the area, who was afraid to be identified.
The talks gave the militants time to gather reinforcements from neighboring Swat, he said. And at the same time, the Taliban put such pressure on the members of Mr. Mohammed’s posse, or lashkar, that they disappeared or fled, Mr. Mohammed said.
“The police part of our lashkar left, and I was all alone,” he said. On the night of April 11, he fled, too, he said in a telephone conversation from Karachi, where he has gone to hide.
The militants at that point occupied his three gas stations, his flour mill and his 20-room house, he said. They had also commandeered more than 20 other houses in Sultanwas belonging to his relatives, he said.
In a show of who was in charge in Mr. Mohammed’s absence, the Taliban established a training camp in Sultanwas, said Mr. Bacha, the human rights officer.
To bolster their strength, and insinuate themselves in Buner, the Taliban also relied heavily on the adherents of a hard-line militant group, the Movement for the Implementation of the Shariah of Muhammad, which has agitated for Islamic law in Pakistan.
Their leader, Sufi Mohammed, comes from the region around Swat and Buner and has done the job of whipping up local support and intimidating Taliban opponents.
The group has called on graduates of a huge madrasa near the main town of Daggar in Buner to run local district governments, beckoning one from as far as the southern port of Karachi to run a municipality, said Khadim Hussain, a professor of linguistics and communication at Bahria University in Islamabad.
Estimates of the number of militants in Buner vary. Some local residents said they believed that there were about 3,000, including fighters trained for combat in Kashmir. District Police Officer Abdul Rashid, the chief of police in Buner, said in a telephone interview that there were only 200.
Whatever the number, early last week the Taliban showed their power by ordering the state courts shut. They announced that they would open Islamic courts, practicing Shariah, by the end of the month.
The militants have also placed a tax payable to the Taliban on all marble quarried at mines, said a senior police officer who worked in Buner.
At gas stations belonging to Mr. Mohammed, they pumped gas and drove off without paying, the officer said.
“No one dare ask them for payment,” he said.
The police were so intimidated they mostly stayed inside station houses, he said. “They are setting up a parallel government.”
With their success in Buner, the Taliban felt flush with success and increasingly confident that they could repeat the template, residents and analysts said. In the main prize, the richest and most populous province, Punjab, in eastern Pakistan, the Taliban are relying on the sleeper cells of other militant groups, including the many fighters who had been trained by the Pakistani military for combat in Kashmir, and now felt abandoned by the state, they said.
“We see coordination all over the country,” Mr. Hussain, the university professor, said. “The situation is very dangerous.”
It would not be difficult for the Taliban to seize Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, by shutting down the airport and blocking the two main thoroughfares from Islamabad, a Western official with long experience in the province said.
At midweek, a convoy of heavily armed Taliban vehicles was seen barreling along the four-lane motorway between Islamabad and Peshawar, according to Mr. Sherpao, the former minister of the interior.
Across North-West Frontier Province, the Taliban are rapidly consolidating power by activating cells that consisted of a potent mix of jihadist groups, he said.
In some places, the Taliban have entered mosques saying they had come only to preach, but in fact the strategy is to spread fear that pushes people into submission and demoralizes the police, he said.
Everywhere, they have preyed on the miseries of the poor, saying that Islamic courts would settle their complaints against the rich. “Every district is falling into their lap,” Mr. Sherpao said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/wo...6buner.html?hp
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Initially, Buner was a hard place for the Taliban to crack. When they attacked a police station in the valley district last year, the resistance was fearless. Local people picked up rifles, pistols and daggers, hunted down the militants and killed six of them.
But it was not to last. In short order this past week the Taliban captured Buner, a strategically vital district just 60 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. The militants flooded in by the hundreds, startling Pakistani and American officials with the speed of their advance.
The lesson of Buner, local politicians and residents say, is that the dynamic of the Taliban insurgency, as methodical and slow-building as it has been, can change suddenly, and the tactics used by the Taliban can be replicated elsewhere.
The Taliban took over Buner through both force and guile — awakening sleeping sympathizers, leveraging political allies, pretending at peace talks and then crushing what was left of their opponents, according to the politicians and the residents interviewed.
Though some of the militants have since pulled back, they still command the high points of Buner and have fanned out to districts even closer to the capital.
That Buner fell should be no surprise, local people say. Last fall, the inspector general of police in North-West Frontier Province, Malik Naveed Khan, complained that his officers were being attacked and killed by the hundreds.
Mr. Khan was so desperate — and had been so thoroughly abandoned by the military and the government — that he was relying on citizen posses like the one that stood up to the Taliban last August.
Today, the hopes that those civilian militias inspired are gone, brushed away by the realization that Pakistanis can do little to stem the Taliban advance if their government and military will not help them.
The people of Buner got nothing for their bravery. In December, the Taliban retaliated for the brazenness of the resistance in the district, sending a suicide bomber to disrupt voting during a by-election. More than 30 people were killed and scores were wounded.
Severe disenchantment toward the government rippled out of the suicide bombing for a very basic reason, said Amir Zeb Bacha, the director of the Pakistan International Human Rights Organization in Buner. “When we took the injured to the hospital there was no medicine,” he said.
The election was rescheduled but turned out to be a farce. Voters were too scared to show up, said Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, a former interior minister, who lives in the area and has twice escaped Taliban suicide bombers.
The peace deal the military struck with the Taliban in February in neighboring Swat further demoralized people in Buner. Residents and local officials said they asked themselves how they could continue to resist the Taliban when the military had abandoned the effort. The Taliban were emboldened by the deal: it called for the institution of Shariah, the strict legal code of Islam based on the Koran, throughout Malakand Agency, which includes Swat and Buner. It allowed the Taliban amnesty for their killings, floggings and destruction of girls schools in Swat.
Still, when the Taliban rolled into Buner from Swat through the town of Gokan on April 5, a well-to-do businessman, Fateh Mohammed, organized another posse of civilian fighters to take on the militants in the town of Sultanwas.
Five civilians and three policemen were killed, he said. Some newspaper reports said 17 Taliban were killed.
At that point, the chief government official in charge of Malakand, Mohammed Javed, proposed what he called peace talks. Mr. Javed, an experienced bureaucrat in the Pakistani civil service, was appointed in late February as the main government power broker in Malakand even though he was known to be sympathetic to the Taliban, a senior government official in North-West Frontier Province said. The government had been under pressure to bring calm to Swat and essentially capitulated to Taliban demands for Mr. Javed’s appointment, the official said.
In an apparent acknowledgment that Mr. Javed had been too sympathetic to the Taliban, the government announced Saturday that he had been replaced by Fazal Karim Khattack.
In what some residents in Swat and now in Buner say had been a pattern of favorable decisions led by Mr. Javed on behalf of the Taliban, the talks in Buner turned out to be a “betrayal,” said a former police officer from the area, who was afraid to be identified.
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(Page 2 of 2)
The talks gave the militants time to gather reinforcements from neighboring Swat, he said. And at the same time, the Taliban put such pressure on the members of Mr. Mohammed’s posse, or lashkar, that they disappeared or fled, Mr. Mohammed said.
Taliban militants in the main town of Daggar in the Buner District of Pakistan.
“The police part of our lashkar left, and I was all alone,” he said. On the night of April 11, he fled, too, he said in a telephone conversation from Karachi, where he has gone to hide.
The militants at that point occupied his three gas stations, his flour mill and his 20-room house, he said. They had also commandeered more than 20 other houses in Sultanwas belonging to his relatives, he said. In a show of who was in charge in Mr. Mohammed’s absence, the Taliban established a training camp in Sultanwas, said Mr. Bacha, the human rights officer.
To bolster their strength, and insinuate themselves in Buner, the Taliban also relied heavily on the adherents of a hard-line militant group, the Movement for the Implementation of the Shariah of Muhammad, which has agitated for Islamic law in Pakistan. Their leader, Sufi Mohammed, comes from the region around Swat and Buner and has whipped up local support and intimidated Taliban opponents.
The group has called on graduates of a huge madrasa near the main town of Daggar in Buner to run local district governments, beckoning one from as far as the southern port of Karachi to run a municipality, said Khadim Hussain, a professor of linguistics and communication at Bahria University in Islamabad.
Whatever the number, early last week the Taliban showed their power by ordering the state courts shut. They announced that they would open Islamic courts, practicing Shariah, by the end of the month.
The militants have also placed a tax payable to the Taliban on all marble quarried at mines, said a senior police officer who worked in Buner.
At gas stations belonging to Mr. Mohammed, they pumped gas and drove off without paying, the officer said.
“No one dare ask them for payment,” he said.
The police were so intimidated they mostly stayed inside station houses, he said. “They are setting up a parallel government.”
With their success in Buner, the Taliban felt flush with success and increasingly confident that they could repeat the template, residents and analysts said. In the main prize, the richest and most populous province, Punjab, in eastern Pakistan, the Taliban are relying on the sleeper cells of other militant groups, including the many fighters who had been trained by the Pakistani military for combat in Kashmir, and now felt abandoned by the state, they said.
It would not be difficult for the Taliban to seize Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, by shutting down the airport and blocking the two main thoroughfares from Islamabad, a Western official with long experience in the province said.
At midweek, a convoy of heavily armed Taliban vehicles was seen barreling along the four-lane motorway between Islamabad and Peshawar, according to Mr. Sherpao, the former minister of the interior. Across North-West Frontier Province, the Taliban are rapidly consolidating power by activating cells that consisted of a potent mix of jihadist groups, he said. In some places, the Taliban have entered mosques saying they had come only to preach, but in fact the strategy is to spread fear that pushes people into submission and demoralizes the police, he said.
Everywhere, they have preyed on the miseries of the poor, saying that Islamic courts would settle their complaints against the rich. “Every district is falling into their lap,” Mr. Sherpao said.
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U.S.-NATO: Facing the Reality of Risk in Pakistan
Stratfor Today » April 27, 2009 | 1119 GMT
Introduction
Pakistan is the primary channel through which U.S. and NATO supplies travel to support the war effort in Afghanistan. The reason for this is quite simple: Pakistan offers the shortest and most logistically viable overland supply routes for Western forces operating in landlocked Afghanistan. Once Pakistan found itself in the throes of an intensifying insurgency mid-2007, however, U.S. military strategists had to seriously consider whether the United States would be able to rely on Pakistan to keep these supply lines open, especially when military plans called for increasing the number of troops in theater.
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In late 2008, as Pakistan continued its downward spiral, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Gen. David Petraeus began touring Central Asian capitals in an attempt to stitch together supplemental supply lines into northern Afghanistan. Soon enough, Washington learned that it was fighting an uphill battle in trying to negotiate in Russian-dominated Central Asia without first reaching a broader understanding with Moscow. With U.S.-Russian negotiations now in flux and the so-called “northern distribution network” frozen, the United States has little choice but to face the reality in Pakistan.
This reality is rooted in the Pakistani Taliban’s desire to spread south beyond the Pashtun-dominated northwest tribal badlands (where attacks against the U.S.-NATO supply lines are already intensifying) into the Pakistani core in Punjab province. Punjab is Pakistan’s industrial heartland and home to more than half of the entire Pakistani population. If the Taliban manage to establish a foothold in Punjab, then the idea of a collapsing Pakistani state would actually become a realistic scenario. The key to preventing such a scenario is keeping the Pakistani military, the country’s most powerful institution, intact. However, splits within the military over how to handle the insurgency while preserving ties with militant proxies are threatening the military’s cohesion. Moreover, the threats to the supply lines go even further south than Punjab. The port of Karachi in Sindh province, where U.S.-NATO supplies are offloaded from ships, could be destabilized if the Taliban provoke local political forces.
In league with their jihadist brethren across the border in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban and their local affiliates are just as busy planning their next steps in the insurgency as the United States is in planning its counterinsurgency strategy. Afghanistan is a country that is not kind to outsiders, and the overwhelming opinion of the jihadist forces battling Western, Pakistani and Afghan troops in the region is that this is a war that can be won through the power of exhaustion. Key to this strategy will be an attempt to make the position of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan untenable by increasing risk to their supply lines in Pakistan.
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A Dearth of Security Options
As the pre-eminent global maritime power, the United States is able to sustain military operations far beyond its coastlines. Afghanistan, however, is a landlocked country whose inaccessibility prevents the U.S. military from utilizing its naval prowess. Instead, the United States and NATO must bring in troops, munitions and militarily sensitive materiel directly by air and rely on long, overland supply routes through Pakistan for non-lethal supplies such as food, building materials and fuel (most of which is refined in Pakistan). This logistical challenge is compounded by the fact that the overland supply routes run through a country that is trying to battle its own jihadist insurgency.
The deteriorating security situation in Pakistan now requires an effective force to protect the supply convoys. Though sending a couple of U.S.-NATO brigades into Pakistan would provide first-rate security for these convoys, such an option would be political dynamite in U.S.-Pakistani relations. Pakistan already has an extremely low tolerance for CIA activity and U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle attacks on its soil. The sight of Western forces operating openly in the country would be a red line that Islamabad simply could not cross. Even if this were an option, U.S.-NATO forces are already stretched to the limit in Afghanistan and there are no troops to spare to send into Pakistan — nor is there the desire on the part of the United States or NATO to insert their troops into such a dicey security situation.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David PetraeusEnlisting the Pakistani military would be another option, but the Pentagon has thus far resisted allowing the Pakistani military to take direct charge of protecting and transporting U.S.-NATO supplies through Pakistan into Afghanistan. The reasons for this are unclear, but they likely can be attributed (at least in part) to U.S. distrust for the Pakistani military-intelligence apparatus, which is heavily infiltrated by Islamist sympathizers who retain links to their militant Islamist proxies.
Instead, CENTCOM’s logistics team has given the security responsibility to private Pakistani security contractors. This is not unusual in recent U.S. military campaigns, which have come to rely on private contractors for many logistical and security functions, including local firms in countries linked to the military supply chain. In Pakistan, such contractors provide security escorts to Pakistani truck drivers who transport supplies from the port of Karachi through Pakistan via a northern route and a southern route into Afghanistan, where the supplies are then delivered to key logistical hubs. While this approach provided sufficient security in the early years of the Afghan campaign, it has recently become an issue because of increasingly aggressive attacks by Taliban and other militants in Pakistan.
STRATFOR is told that many within the Pakistani military have long resented the fact that Washington has not entrusted them with the responsibility to secure the routes. The reasons behind the Pakistani military’s complaints are twofold. First, the military feels that its authority is being undermined by the dealings between the U.S. military and local contractors. Even beyond these deals, the Pakistani military consistently expresses its frustration when it is not the chief interlocutor with the United States in Pakistan, and has done so as much when U.S. officials have met with local leaders in the country and with the civilian government in Islamabad.
Second, there is a deep financial interest on the part of the military, which does not want to miss out on the large profits reaped by private security contractors in protecting the supply routes. As a result, Pakistani security forces are believed to turn a blind eye and occasionally even facilitate attacks on U.S. and NATO convoys in Pakistan in order to pressure Washington into giving the contracts to the better-equipped Pakistani military. That said, it is unclear whether the Pakistani military could fulfill such a commitment since the military itself is already stretched thin between its operations along the Afghan-Pakistani border and its massive military focus on the eastern border with India.
Many of the private Pakistani security companies guarding the routes are owned by wealthy Pakistani civilians who have strong links to government and to retired military officials. The private Pakistani security firms currently guarding the routes include Ghazi Security, Ready Guard, Phoenix Security Agency and SE Security Agency. Most of the main offices of these companies are located in Islamabad, but these contractors have also hired smaller security agencies in Peshawar. The private companies that own terminals used for the northern and southern supply routes include al Faisal Terminal (whose owner has been kidnapped by militants and whose whereabouts are unknown), Bilal Terminal (owned by Shahid Ansari from Punjab), World Port Logistics (owned by Major Fakhar, a nephew of former Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf), Raziq International, Peace Line, Pak-Afghan and Waqar Terminal.
While the owners of these security firms make a handsome profit from the U.S.-NATO military contracts, the guards who actually drive and protect the trucks ferrying supplies make a meager salary, somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 rupees (under $65) per month. Not surprisingly, the security is shoddy, with three to five poorly trained and equipped guards usually spread throughout a convoy who are easily overrun by Taliban forces that frequently attack the convoys in hordes. Given their poor compensation, these security guards feel little compulsion to hold their positions and resist concerted assaults.
BANARAS KHAN/AFP/Getty Images
A Pakistani soldier stands guards on top of an armored personnel carrier on a street in Quetta on April 12The motivations for attacks against the supply infrastructure can vary. The Taliban and their jihadist affiliates are ideologically driven to target Western forces and increase the cost for them to remain in the region. There are also a number of criminally motivated fighters who adopt the Taliban label as a convenient cover but who are far more interested in making a profit. Both groups can benefit from racketeering enterprises that allow them to extort hefty protection fees from private security firms in return for the contractors’ physical safety.
One Pakistani truck driver relayed a story in which he was told by a suspected Taliban operative to leave his truck and come back in the morning to drive to Afghanistan. When the driver returned he found the truck on fire. Inadequate security allows for easy infiltration and manipulation by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which is already heavily penetrated by Islamist sympathizers. Drivers will often strike a deal with the militants allowing raids on the convoys in return for a cut of the proceeds once the goods are sold on the black market. One indication of just how porous U.S.-NATO security arrangements are in Pakistan is that the commander of the most active Taliban faction in Khyber agency, Mangal Bagh of Lashkar-e-Islam (LI), is allegedly a former transporter himself now using jihad as a cover for his criminal activities.
STRATFOR is not aware of any plans by the Pentagon to turn these security contracts over to the Pakistani military. It is even more unclear whether doing so would do much to improve the situation. If the U.S. military continues to rely on these contractors to guard the supply routes in the face of a growing Taliban threat, certain changes could be made to enhance the contractors’ capabilities. Already, U.S. logistics teams are revising the northern route by moving some of the supply depots farther south in Punjab where the security threat is lower (though the Taliban are attempting to expand their presence there). More funding could also be directed toward these security contractors to ensure that the guards protecting the convoys are properly trained and paid sufficiently to give them more of an incentive to resist Taliban attacks. Nonetheless, the current outsourcing to private Pakistani security firms is evidently fraught with complications that are unlikely to be resolved in the near term.
Karachi: The Starting Point
Both supply routes originate in Pakistan’s largest city and primary seaport, Karachi. The city is Pakistan’s financial hub and provides critical ocean access for U.S.-NATO logistics support in Afghanistan. If Karachi — a city already known to have a high incidence of violence — were to destabilize, the Western military supply chain could be threatened even before supplies embarked on the lengthy and volatile journey through the rest of Pakistan.
There are two inter-linking security risks in Karachi: the local ruling party — the Mutahiddah Qaumi Movement (MQM) — and the Islamist militancy. The MQM is a political movement representing the Muhajir ethnic community of Muslims who migrated to Pakistan from India. Since its rise in the 1980s, the party has demonstrated a proclivity for ethnic-driven violence through its armed cadres. While the MQM does not have a formal militia and is part of the Sindh provincial legislature as well as the national parliament, the party is very sensitive about any challenges to its power base in the metropolitan Karachi area and controls powerful organized crime groups in the city. On many occasions, clashes between MQM and other rival political forces have paralyzed the city.
STR/AFP/Getty Images
Armed Pakistani militantsIdeologically speaking, the MQM is secular and has been firmly opposed to Islamist groups since its inception. The party has been watching nervously as the Taliban have crept southward from their stronghold in the country’s northwest. In recent weeks, the MQM also has been the loudest political voice in the country sounding the alarm against the growing jihadist threat. The party is well aware that any jihadist strategy that aims to strike at Pakistan’s economic nerve center and the most critical node of the U.S.-NATO supply lines makes Karachi a prime target.
The MQM is particularly concerned that Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) will try to encroach on its turf in Karachi. While the Waziristan-based TTP itself has very little presence in Karachi, it does have a jihadist network in the city that could be utilized. Many Taliban members come from Pashtun tribes and derive much of their political support from Pashtun populations. Karachi has a Pashtun population of 3.5 million, making up some 30 percent of the city’s population. Moreover, Karachi police have reported that Taliban members are among the “several hundred thousand” tribesmen fleeing violence in the frontier regions who have settled on the outskirts of Karachi.
Jihadists have thus far demonstrated a limited ability to operate in the city. In 2002, jihadists kidnapped and killed U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl and attacked the U.S. Consulate. In a 2007 suicide attack on a vehicle belonging to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, jihadists killed a U.S. diplomat and injured 52 others on the eve of one of then-President George W. Bush’s rare trips to Pakistan. A host of Pakistani jihadist groups as well as “al Qaeda Prime” (its core leadership) have been active in the area, evidenced by the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, deputy coordinator of the 9/11 attacks, in Karachi in 2002.
Until now the MQM did not perceive the Taliban to be a direct threat to its hold over the city, but the MQM is now feeling vulnerable given the Taliban’s spread in the north. There has been a historic tension between the MQM and the significant Pashtun minority in Karachi. The MQM regards this minority with deep suspicion because it believes the Pashtuns could provide a safe haven for Pashtun jihadists seeking to extend their influence to the south.
In the wake of the “shariah for peace” agreement in the Swat district of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), tensions have risen between the MQM and the country’s largest Pashtun political group, the Awami National Party (ANP), which rules the NWFP and is the party chiefly responsible for negotiating the peace agreement with the Tehrik-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM), the jihadist group in the greater Swat region. MQM’s 19 members of parliament were the only ones who did not vote in favor of the Swat peace deal, which has amplified its concerns over the threat of Talibanization in Pakistan. In response, TNSM leader Maulana Sufi Muhammad has declared parliamentarians who oppose the Nizam-i-Adl Regulation non-Muslims. The MQM is also trying to mobilize religious groups that oppose the Sunni Islamic Deobandi movement, particularly Barelvis, against the Taliban.
With rising Muhajir-Pashtun ethnic tensions, the MQM-ANP spat and the MQM’s fear of a jihadist threat to its authority, conditions in Karachi are slowly building toward a confrontation. Should jihadists demonstrate a capability to step up operations in the city, the MQM will show little to no restraint in cracking down on the city’s Pashtun minority through its armed cadres, which would lead to wider-scale clashes between the MQM and the Pashtun community. There is a precedent for urban conflict in Karachi, and it could cause authorities to impose a citywide curfew that would disrupt operations at the port and impede supplies from making their way out of the city.
The situation described above is still a worst-case scenario. Since Karachi is the financial center of the country, the MQM-controlled local government, the federal government in Islamabad and the Rawalpindi-based military establishment all share an interest in preserving stability in this key city. It will also likely take some time before Pakistani jihadists are able to project power that far south. Even a few days or weeks of turmoil in Karachi, however, will threaten the country’s economy — which is already on the verge of bankruptcy — and further undercut the weakened state’s ability to address the growing insecurity. So far, the MQM has kept its hold over Karachi, but the Taliban already have their eyes on the city, and it would not take much to provoke the MQM into a confrontation that could threaten a crucial link in the U.S.-NATO supply chain.
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The Northern Route
The northern route through Pakistan, used for transporting the bulk of U.S.-NATO overland supplies to Afghanistan, travels through four provinces — Sindh, Punjab, the NWFP and the tribal badlands of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) — before it snakes its way through the Khyber Pass to reach the Torkham border crossing with Afghanistan.
Route Variations
Convoys generally travel on main north-south national highway N-5 or a combination of N-5 and N-55 from Karachi to Torkham, a distance that can range from approximately 1,325 kilometers to 1,820 kilometers. Most transporters say they prefer the combination of N-5 and N-55, which allows them to cut across Sindh by switching from N-5 to N-65 near Sukkur and then jumping onto N-55 at Shikarpur before heading into Punjab. A small percentage of trucks (some 5 percent) use a combination of national highways and what are called “motorways,” essentially expressways that allow for better security, have no traffic lights and avoid urban centers. These motorways also have fewer chokepoints and thus fewer opportunities for militant ambushes, but they also lack rest stops, which is why most convoys travel on the national highways.
Pakistani transporters tell STRATFOR that they typically decide on a day-to-day basis whether to go the longer N-5 route or the shorter N-55 route. If they feel the security situation is bad enough, they are far more likely to take the longer N-5 route to Peshawar, which reduces their risk because it goes through less volatile areas — essentially, less of the NWFP. With the Taliban rapidly taking over territory in the NWFP, trucks are likely to rely more heavily on N-5.
Sindh
Once the trucks leave Karachi, the stretch of road through Sindh province is the safest along the entire northern route. Most of Sindh, especially the rural areas, form the core support base of the secular Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which controls both the federal and the provincial governments. Outside of Karachi, there is virtually no serious militant Islamist presence in the province. However, small pockets of jihadists do pop up from time to time. In 2004, a top Pakistani militant leader, Amjad Farooqi of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), who worked closely with al Qaeda Prime operational commander Abu Faraj al-Libi and was responsible for assassination attempts on Musharraf, was killed in a shootout with police in the town of Nawabshah in central Sindh.
Punjab
Once out of Sindh and into Punjab province, the northern supply route enters the core of Pakistan, the political, industrial and agricultural heartland of the country where some 60 percent of the population is concentrated. The province is also the mainstay of the country’s powerful military establishment, with six of the army’s nine corps are headquartered in the key urban areas of Rawalpindi, Mangla, Lahore, Gujranwala, Bahawalpur and Multan.
This province has not yet witnessed jihadist attacks targeting the U.S.-NATO supply chain, but the jihadist threat in Punjab is slowly rising. Major jihadist figures have found a save haven in the province, evidenced by the fact that several top al Qaeda leaders, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were captured in various parts of Punjab, including Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Gujarat. Punjab also has witnessed a number of high-profile jihadist attacks in major cities, including suicide bombings in the capital, Islamabad, and its twin city Rawalpindi (where the military is headquartered) as well as manpower-heavy armed assaults in the provincial capital, Lahore, where teams of gunmen have assaulted both moving and stationary targets. The attacks have mostly targeted Pakistani security installations and have been conducted mainly by Pashtun jihadists in conjunction with Punjabi jihadist allies. The bulk of jihadist activity in the province takes place in the northern part of Punjab, closer to the NWFP border, where suicide bombings have been concentrated.
QAZI RAUF AFRIDI/AFP/Getty Images
Pakistani soldiers guard trucks carrying NATO supplies on a street in the Khyber tribal region near the Afghan border on Jan. 1The Punjabi jihadist phenomenon was born in the 1980s, when the military regime of Gen. Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq aggressively pursued a policy of Islamization to secure power and weaken his principal opponent, the PPP, whose government he had overthrown to come to power. It was during the Zia years that Pakistan, along with Saudi Arabia and the United States, was heavily involved in backing Islamist militias to fight the Marxist government and its allied Soviet troops Afghanistan, where many of the Punjab-based groups joined the Pashtun groups and had their first taste of battle. Later in the 1990s, many of these Punjabi groups, who followed an extremist Deobandi interpretation of Sunni Islam, were used by the security establishment to support the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and to aid the insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir. Sectarian groups like Sipah Sahaba Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) were also developed to help the regime keep the Shiite minority in Pakistan contained.
Pakistan’s Afghan and Kashmiri jihadist project suffered a major setback with the 9/11 attacks against the United States and the American response. Caught between contradictory objectives — the need to align itself with the United States and to preserve its Islamist militant assets — Pakistan eventually lost control of many of its former Islamist militant assets, who then started teaming up with al Qaeda-led transnational jihadists in the region.
Most alarming for Islamabad is the fact that these groups are now striking at the core of Pakistan in places like Lahore, where brazen assaults were launched on March 3 against a bus carrying the Sri Lankan national cricket team and on March 30 against a police academy. These attacks illustrated this trend of Pakistan’s militant proxies turning against their erstwhile patron — first in the Pashtun areas and now in Punjab. The Lahore attacks also both involved multi-man assault teams, a sign that the jihadists are able to use a large number of Islamist recruits from the province itself.
Though Pakistan came under massive pressure to crack down on these groups in the wake of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks in India, groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) have considerable influence in the Lahore region. Similarly, LeJ and JeM have growing pockets of support in various parts of Punjab, particularly in southern Seraiki-speaking districts such as Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan and Dera Ghazi Khan. One of the major causes of rising support for such jihadist groups in Punjab stems from a incident in 2007, when a clerical family hailing from the border region between Punjab and Balochistan led an uprising at Islamabad’s Red Mosque. The subsequent security operation to regain control of the mosque from the militants turned many locals against the military and into the arms of the Islamists.
While the major urban areas of Punjab have not been spared by jihadists, most jihadist activity in the province is concentrated closer to the provincial border with the NWFP. The route that travels along N-5 must pass through Wah, Kamra and Attock, the three main towns of northwestern Punjab. Each of these towns has been rocked by suicide attacks. Attock was the scene of a July 2004 assassination attempt against former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Kamra, home of the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, an aircraft servicing and manufacturing facility, was the scene of a December 2007 suicide attack targeting a school bus carrying children of air force personnel. In August 2008 in Wah, a pair of suicide bombers struck Pakistan’s main ordnance factory.
There are indications that such jihadist activity could creep further south into the heart of Punjab and potentially target the U.S.-NATO supply chain. The Taliban are growing bolder by the day now that they have made significant territorial gains in the greater Swat region in the NWFP further north. As the security situation in the NWFP and FATA deteriorates, U.S.-NATO supply depots and terminals are being moved further south to Punjab where they will be safer, or so it is thought. However, locals in the area are already protesting the relocation of these terminals because they know that they will run a greater chance of becoming Taliban targets the more closely attached they are to the U.S.-NATO supply chain. These people have good reason to be nervous. The jihadists are now openly declaring grander intentions of spreading beyond the Pashtun-dominated periphery into Punjab, Pakistan’s core. Though it would take some time to achieve this, these jihadist groups would have a strategic interest in carrying out attacks against Western supply lines in Punjab that could demonstrate the jihadist reach, aggravate already intense anti-U.S. sentiment and hamper U.S.-NATO logistics for the war in Afghanistan.
NWFP/FATA
The last leg of the northern supply line runs through the NWFP and the tribal badlands of the FATA. This is by far the most dangerous portion along the route and where Taliban activity is already reaching a crescendo.
Once in the NWFP the route goes through the district of Nowshehra before it reaches the provincial capital Peshawar and begins to hug Taliban territory. A variety of Taliban groups based in the FATA, many of whom are part of the TTP umbrella organization and/or the Mujahideen Shura Council, have taken over several districts in western NWFP and are now on Peshawar’s doorstep. There have been several attacks in Peshawar and further north in Charsaddah, where former Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao twice escaped assassination at the hands of suicide bombers, and east in Nowshehra, where an army base was targeted.
TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images
Pakistani paramilitary soldiers inspect seized ammunition on Jan. 2Though suicide attacks have occurred in these areas, the Pashtun jihadists are not in control of the territory in the NWFP that lies east of Peshawar. All attacks on the northern route have taken place to the west of Peshawar, on the stretch of N-5 between Peshawar and the Torkham border crossing, a distance of nearly 60 kilometers where jihadist activity is intensifying.
Once the transporters reach Peshawar, they hit what is called the “ring road” area, where 15 to 20 bus terminals are located for containers coming from Karachi to stop and then head toward Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass. The area where the bus terminals are situated is under the jurisdiction of Peshawar district, a settled and relatively calm area. But when the trucks travel east on the Peshawar-Torkham road toward Afghanistan, they enter a critical danger zone. Some Pakistani truckers have refused to drive this stretch between Peshawar and the Khyber Pass for fear of being attacked. Militants destroyed a key bridge in February on the Peshawar-Torkham road, where there are a dozen of other bridges that can be targeted in future attacks. The most recent and daring attack on highway N-5 between Peshawar and Torkham was the March 27 suicide bombing of a mosque during Friday prayers that killed dozens of local political and security officials.
For those convoys that make it out of the Peshawar terminal-depot hub, the next major stop is the Khyber Pass leading into Khyber agency, where the route travels along N-5 through Jamrud, Landikotal and Michni Post and then reaches the border with Afghanistan. The border area between Peshawar district and Khyber agency is called the Karkhano Market, which is essentially a massive black market for stolen goods run by smugglers, drug dealers and other organized-crime elements. Here one can find high quality merchandise at cheap prices, including stolen goods that were meant for U.S. and NATO forces. STRATFOR sources claim they have seen U.S.-NATO military uniforms and laptops going for $100 in the market.
Khyber agency (the most developed agency in the tribal belt) has been the scene of high-profile abductions, destroyed bridges and attacks against local political and security officials. Considering the frequency of the attacks, it appears that the militants can strike at the supply chain with impunity, and with likely encouragement from Pakistani security forces. This area is inhabited by four tribes — the Afridi, Shinwari, Mullagori and Shimani. But as is the case in other agencies of the FATA, the mullahs and militia commanders have usurped the tribal elders in Khyber agency. As many as three different Taliban groups in this area are battling Pakistani forces as well as each other.
Militiamen of the most active Taliban faction in Khyber agency, Mangal Bagh’s LI, heavily patrol the Bara area and have blown up several shrines, abducted local Christians and fought gunbattles with police. LI is not part of Baitullah Mehsud’s TTP umbrella group but maintains significant influence among the tribal maliks. Mehsud is allied with another faction called the Hakimullah Group, which rivals a third faction called Amr bil Maarouf wa Nahi Anil Munkar (“Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice”), whose leader, Haji Namdaar, was killed by Hakimullah militiamen.
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part three
Not all the Khyber agency militants are ideologically driven jihadists like Baitullah Mehsud of the TTP and Mullah Fazlullah of the TNSM. Some are organized-crime elements who lack religious training and have long been engaged in smuggling operations. When the Pakistani military entered the region to crack down on the insurgency, these criminal groups saw their illegal activities disrupted. To continue to earn a livelihood, many of these criminal elements were reborn as militants under the veil of jihad.
SHAHBAZ BUTT/AFP/Getty Images
Trucks remain at a standstill on a road after Islamic militants destroyed a bridge in Khyber district on Feb. 3, 2009LI commander Bagh (the alleged former convoy driver) is uneducated overall, and never received any kind of formal religious education. He became the leader of LI two years ago when he succeeded Deobandi cleric Mufti Munir Shakir. Bagh stays clear of targeting Pakistani military forces and says his objective is to clean up the area’s criminal elements and, like his counterparts in other parts of the Pashtun region, impose a Talibanesque interpretation of religious law. This tendency on the part of organized-crime elements in Pakistan to jump on the jihad bandwagon actually runs the risk of weakening the insurgency. Because criminal groups are not ideologically driven, it is easier for Pakistani forces and U.S. intelligence operatives to bribe them away from the insurgency.
The Southern Route
The southern route into Afghanistan is the shorter of the two U.S.-NATO supply routes. The entire route traverses the 813-kilometer-long national highway N-25, running north from the port of Karachi through Sindh and northwest into Balochistan before crossing into southern Afghanistan at the Chaman border crossing.
About 25 to 30 percent of the supplies going to U.S.-NATO forces operating in southern Afghanistan travel along this route. Though most of the southern route through Pakistan is relatively secure, the security risks rise dramatically once the trucks cross into Afghanistan on highway A-75, which runs through the heart of Taliban country in Kandahar province and surrounding areas.
Once out of Karachi, the route through Sindh is secure. Problems arise once the trucks hit Balochistan province, a resource-rich region where ethnic Baloch separatists have waged an insurgency for decades against Punjabi rule. The Baloch insurgency is directed against the Pakistani state and is led by three main groups: the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) and the People’s Liberation Army. The BLA is the most active of the three and focuses its attacks on Pakistani police and military personnel, natural gas pipelines and civil servants. The Pakistani military deals with the Baloch rebels with an iron fist, but the Baloch insurgency has been a long and insoluble one. (Balochistan enjoyed autonomy under the British, and when Pakistan was created it forcibly took over the province; successive Pakistani regimes have mishandled the issue.)
Once inside Balochistan, the supply route runs first into the major industrial town of Hub (also known as Hub Chowki) and then into the Baloch capital of Quetta. These are areas that have witnessed a number of Baloch separatist attacks in recent years, including the December 2004 bombing of a Pakistani military truck in Quetta (claimed by the BLA), the killing of three Chinese engineers working at Gwadar Port in May of the same year and, more recently, the abduction of the head of the U.N. refugee agency (an American citizen) in February 2009 from Quetta. Although the Baloch insurgency has been relatively calm over the past year, unrest reignited in the province in early April after the bodies of three top Baloch rebel leaders were discovered in the Turbat area near the Iranian border. The Baloch separatist groups claim that the rebel leaders died at the hands of Pakistani security forces.
The Baloch rebels have no direct quarrel with the United States or NATO member states and are far more interested in attacking Pakistani targets. But they have struck foreign interests before in Balochistan to pressure Islamabad in negotiations. Baloch rebels also demonstrated the ability to strike Western targets in Karachi when they bombed a KFC fast-food restaurant in November 2005. Although the separatists have yet to show any interest in attacking U.S.-NATO convoys running through the region, future attacks cannot be ruled out.
The main threat along this route comes from Islamist militants who are active in the final 150-kilometer stretch of the road between the Quetta region and the Chaman border crossing. This section of highway N-25 runs through what is known as the Pashtun corridor in northwest Balochistan, bordering South Waziristan agency on the southern tip of the FATA.
Although the supply route traversing this region has seen very few attacks, the situation could easily change. A number of jihadists who have sought sanctuary from the firefights farther north as well as Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar and his Quetta Shura (or leadership council) are believed to be hiding in the Quetta area. The Pashtun corridor also is the stronghold of Pakistan’s largest Islamist party, the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam. In addition, the al Qaeda-linked anti-Shiite group LeJ has been engaged in sectarian and other attacks in the region. Northwestern Balochistan also is a key launchpad for Taliban operations in southern Afghanistan and is the natural extension of Pakistani Taliban activity in the tribal belt. Although the Baloch separatists are firmly secular in their views, they have been energized by the rise of Islamist groups fighting the same enemy: the Pakistani state.
A Worrisome Outlook
The developing U.S. military strategy for Afghanistan suffers from a number of strategic flaws. Chief among them is the fact — and there is no getting around it — that Pakistan serves as the primary supply line for both the Western forces and the jihadist forces fighting each other in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s balancing act between the United States and its former Islamist militant proxies is becoming untenable as many of those proxies turn against the Pakistani state. And as stability deteriorates in Pakistan, the less reliable the landscape is for facilitating the overland shipment of military supplies into Afghanistan. The Russians, meanwhile, are not exactly eager to make life easier for the United States in Afghanistan by cooperating in any meaningful way on alternate supply routes through Central Asia.
Jihadist forces in Pakistan’s northwest have already picked up on the idea that the long U.S.-NATO supply route through northern Pakistan makes a strategic and vulnerable target in their campaign against the West. Attacks on supply convoys have thus far been concentrated in the volatile tribal badlands along the northwest frontier with Afghanistan. But the Pakistani Taliban are growing bolder by the day and are publicly announcing their intent to spread beyond the Pashtun areas and into the Pakistani core of Punjab. The Pakistani government and military, meanwhile, are strategically stymied. They cannot follow U.S. orders and turn every Pashtun into an enemy, and they cannot afford to see their country crushed under the weight of the jihadists. As a result, the jihadists gain strength while the writ of the Pakistani state erodes.
But the jihadists are not the only ones that CENTCOM should be worrying about as it analyzes its logistical challenges in Pakistan. Islamist sympathizers in Pakistan’s security apparatus and organized crime elements can take — and have taken — advantage of the shoddy security infrastructure in place to transport U.S.-NATO supplies through the country. In addition, there are secular political forces in play — from the MQM in Karachi to the Baloch rebels in Quetta — that could tip the balance in areas now considered relatively safe for transporting supplies to Afghanistan.
The United States is becoming increasing reliant on Pakistan, just as Pakistan is becoming increasingly unreliable. There are no quick fixes to the problem, but the first step in addressing it is to understand the wide array of threats currently engulfing the Pakistani state.
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Woof Guro Crafty,
"Where's the plan? WTF is the plan?"
I honestly couldn't tell you
"Do we the American people have what it takes to stay the course?"
No.
"Does our President?"
No Comment.
"WTF is "The Plan"?"
"One example of a plan would be what retired Col Ralph Peters has suggested-- working from memory it was something like this: Go in and kick ass, then leave while saying "Do something stupid again" and we'll be back even harder to kick your asses again."
Personally my all time favorite approach and the ideal approach to American foreign policy when people somewhere else act like idiots by flying planes into buildings and whatnot.
"Another example of a plan would be to seek to establish democracy and women's rights..."
probably not going to happen in this neck of the woods anytime soon.
"...and defund the enemy by taking out the opium crops."
Then what about the poor farmers that need to feed their families by growing poppy? If we piss them off by destroying their opium crop, they might go join the TB... Not so fast! They wont if the TB can't pay 'em. Sure, they might be pissed at first but I guess they'll have to cultivate some other type of crop. In reality they should be considered "enablers" or "auxilliary enemy forces" since they are in fact enabling the enemy to continue with their activities and they should be treated as the enemy.
"Another example would be to maintain a low grade war of indefinite duration keeping the AQ-Taliban distracted by by lobbing in Predators and the life."
So far it's not doing much
"Another example would be to take out Pakistan's nukes and come home."
Pakistan still has a "legitimate" government in place and is considered an "ally" to the U.S.
"As best as I can tell it is to:
1) Give less troops than required and lob predators until , , , what?
2) Not address the role of the opium trade in financing the enemy
3) Continue to maintain the fantasy of the Durand Line (i.e. that there is a border between Afg and Pak and not simply Pashtunstan)
4) Wonder WTF to do as Pak collapses.
5) Lack the will to go after Pak's nukes-- and certainly Secretary Clinton and his recent responses to North Korea's missile test bodes quite poorly here."
Maybe not the best courses of action to take but...
hell why not. Seems like were getting pretty good at all of that stuff :roll:
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Its the NYTimes. Caveat lector!
Looks like it could be a major development. Perfect timing in view of Krenz's point two above-- it would have been really nice if the President gave the generals the troops they tell him they need instead of half the number :x
=================
ZANGABAD, Afghanistan — American commanders are planning to cut off the Taliban’s main source of money, the country’s multimillion-dollar opium crop, by pouring thousands of troops into the three provinces that bankroll much of the group’s operations.
The plan to send 20,000 Marines and soldiers into Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul Provinces this summer promises weeks and perhaps months of heavy fighting, since American officers expect the Taliban to vigorously defend what makes up the economic engine for the insurgency. The additional troops, the centerpiece of President Obama’s effort to reverse the course of the seven-year war, will roughly double the number already in southern Afghanistan. The troops already fighting there are universally seen as overwhelmed. In many cases, the Americans will be pushing into areas where few or no troops have been before.
Through extortion and taxation, the Taliban are believed to reap as much as $300 million a year from Afghanistan’s opium trade, which now makes up 90 percent of the world’s total. That is enough, the Americans say, to sustain all of the Taliban’s military operations in southern Afghanistan for an entire year.
“Opium is their financial engine,” said Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, the deputy commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. “That is why we think he will fight for these areas.”
The Americans say that their main goal this summer will be to provide security for the Afghan population, and thereby isolate the insurgents.
But because the opium is tilled in heavily populated areas, and because the Taliban are spread among the people, the Americans say they will have to break the group’s hold on poppy cultivation to be successful.
No one here thinks that is going to be easy.
Only 10 minutes inside the tiny village of Zangabad, 20 miles southwest of Kandahar, a platoon of American soldiers stepped into a poppy field in full bloom on Monday. Taliban fighters opened fire from three sides.
“From the north!” one of the soldiers yelled, spinning and firing.
“West!” another screamed, turning and firing, too.
An hour passed and a thousand bullets whipped through the air. Ammunition was running low. The Taliban were circling.
Then the gunships arrived, swooping in, their bullet casings showering the ground beneath them, their rockets streaking and destroying. Behind a barrage of artillery, the soldiers shot their way out of Zangabad and moved into the cover of the vineyards.
“When are you going drop the bomb?” Capt. Chris Brawley said into his radio over the clatter of machine-gun fire. “I’m in a grape field.”
The bomb came, and after a time the shooting stopped.
The firefight offered a preview of the Americans’ summer in southern Afghanistan. By all accounts, it is going to be bloody.
Like the guerrillas they are, Taliban fighters often fade away when confronted by a conventional army. But in Afghanistan, as they did in Zangabad, the Taliban will probably stand and fight.
Among the ways the Taliban are believed to make money from the opium trade is by charging farmers for protection; if the Americans and British attack, the Taliban will be expected to make good on their side of that bargain.
Indeed, Taliban fighters have begun to fight any efforts by the Americans or the British to move into areas where poppy grows and opium is produced. Last month, a force of British marines moved into a district called Nad Ali in Helmand Province, the center of the country’s poppy cultivation. The Taliban were waiting. In a five-day battle, the British killed 120 Taliban fighters and wounded 150. Only one British soldier was wounded.
Many of the new American soldiers will fan out along southern Afghanistan’s largely unguarded 550-mile-long border with Pakistan. Among them will be soldiers deployed in the Stryker, a relatively quick, nimble armored vehicle that can roam across the vast areas that span the frontier.
All of the new troops are supposed to be in place by Aug. 20, in order to provide security for Afghanistan’s presidential election.
The presence of poppy and opium here has injected a huge measure of uncertainly into the war. Under NATO rules of engagement, American or other forces are prohibited from attacking targets or people related only to narcotics production. Those people are not considered combatants.
But American and other forces are allowed to attack drug smugglers or facilities that are assisting the Taliban. In an interview, General Nicholson said that opium production and the Taliban are so often intertwined that the rules do not usually inhibit American operations.
“We often come across a compound that has opium and I.E.D. materials side by side, and opium and explosive materials and weapons,” General Nicholson said, referring to improvised explosive devices. “It’s very common — more common than not.”
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But the prospect of heavy fighting in populated areas could further alienate the Afghan population. In the firefight in Zangabad, the Americans covered their exit with a barrage of 20 155 millimeter high-explosive artillery shells — necessary to shield them from the Taliban, but also enough to inflict serious damage on people and property. A local Afghan interviewed by telephone after the firefight said that four homes had been damaged by the artillery strikes.
Then there is the problem of weaning poppy farmers from poppy farming — a task that has proved intractable in many countries, like Colombia, where the American government has tried to curtail poppy production. It is by far the most lucrative crop an Afghan can farm. The opium trade now makes up nearly 60 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, American officials say. The country’s opium traffickers typically offer incentives that no Afghan government official can: they can guarantee a farmer a minimum price for the crop as well as taking it to market, despite the horrendous condition of most of Afghanistan’s roads.
“The people don’t like to cultivate poppy, but they are desperate,” Mohammed Ashraf Naseri, the governor of Zabul Province, told a group of visitors this month.
To offer an alternative to poppy farming, the American military is setting aside $250 million for agriculture projects like irrigation improvements and wheat cultivation. General Nicholson said that a $200 million plan for infrastructure improvements, much of it for roads to help get crops to market, was also being prepared. The vision, General Nicholson said, is to try to restore the agricultural economy that flourished in Afghanistan in the 1970s. That, more than military force, will defeat the Taliban, he said.
“There is a significant portion of the enemy that we believe we can peel off with incentives,” the general said. “We can hire away many of these young men.”
Even if the Americans are able to cut production, shortages could drive up prices and not make a significant dent in the Taliban’s profits.
The foray into Zangabad suggested the difficulties that lie ahead. The terrain is a guerrilla’s dream. In addition to acres of shoulder-high poppy plants, rows and rows of hard-packed mud walls, used to stand up grape vines, offer ideal places for ambushes and defense.
But the trickiest thing will be winning over the Afghans themselves. The Taliban are entrenched in the villages and river valleys of southern Afghanistan. The locals, caught between the foes, seem, at best, to be waiting to see who prevails.
On their way to Zangabad, the soldiers stopped in a wheat field to talk to a local farmer. His name was Ahmetullah. The Americans spoke through a Pashto interpreter.
“I’m very happy to see you,” the farmer told the Americans.
“Really?” one of the soldiers asked.
“Yes,” the farmer said.
The interpreter sighed, and spoke in English.
“He’s a liar.”
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Second post of AM
Pakistan’s Frontier Corps paramilitary unit and army sent troops, backed by fixed-wing aircraft, into Buner district in the North-West Frontier Province to flush out Taliban fighters, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas announced April 28. Abbas added that the army had completed another operation launched a day earlier in southern parts of the Dir district. Both these offensives come in the wake of the Taliban move to project power beyond Swat, especially into Buner, within days of the ratification of the Swat peace agreement.
Islamabad has oscillated between military operations and peace agreements with jihadist groups in the Pashtun northwest ever since the army first began operations in the Waziristan region in March 2004. Since then, the Talibanization has spread from the autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border deeper into the NWFP, with Swat becoming a major stronghold for Pakistani Taliban. After failing to defuse the insurgency in Swat with military operations, the state negotiated a “Shariah for peace” deal in hopes that it will help keep the Swat-based Taliban within the confines of the district.
(click image to enlarge)
Islamabad’s objective was bound to fail, however; not only do the Taliban have larger national and transnational ambitions, but the agreement itself was applicable to the greater Swat region, including the adjoining districts of Dir, Malakand, Buner,and Shangla. The vague nature of the implementation of the “Shariah” system in the area gave the Taliban the perfect opening to send militiamen into regions such as Dir and Buner.
Another problem with the deal is that it was made with the founder of the local Taliban group Tehrik-i-Nifaz Shariat-i-Muhammadi, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, who shares control of the Swat-based jihadists with his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah. There are other Taliban factions, such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban, in Swat. Furthermore, the Swat deal has encouraged the rise of other more localized Taliban commanders in the various parts of the greater Swat region who are not necessarily accountable to those with whom the NWFP provincial government cut a deal.
Meanwhile, there is a growing realization within the army and the government that while Islamabad lacks the capability and the comprehensive national strategy to deal with jihadists, the Taliban cannot be allowed to expand their operational sphere in the NWFP. Therefore, the short-term strategy is to keep the Pashtun jihadists boxed into Swat — hence the move to flush the Taliban out from those areas before they set up shop in the adjacent districts.
The problem is that this approach jeopardizes the peace agreement, which will widen the scope of the counter-insurgency offensive beyond Islamabad’s current wishes. Tactical-level operations devoid of any coherent strategic plan are unlikely to help in the long run, and Islamabad could soon find itself fighting jihadists for control of the province.
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Pakistan Strife Raises U.S. Doubts on Nuclear Arms
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 3, 2009
WASHINGTON — As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.
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Times Topics: Pakistan | TalibanThe officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.
But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital. The spread of the insurgency has left American officials less willing to accept blanket assurances from Pakistan that the weapons are safe.
Pakistani officials have continued to deflect American requests for more details about the location and security of the country’s nuclear sites, the officials said.
Some of the Pakistani reluctance, they said, stemmed from longstanding concern that the United States might be tempted to seize or destroy Pakistan’s arsenal if the insurgency appeared about to engulf areas near Pakistan’s nuclear sites. But they said the most senior American and Pakistani officials had not yet engaged on the issue, a process that may begin this week, with President Asif Ali Zardari scheduled to visit Mr. Obama in Washington on Wednesday.
“We are largely relying on assurances, the same assurances we have been hearing for years,” said one senior official who was involved in the dialogue with Pakistan during the Bush years, and remains involved today. “The worse things get, the more strongly they hew to the line, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got it under control.’ ”
In public, the administration has only hinted at those concerns, repeating the formulation that the Bush administration used: that it has faith in the Pakistani Army.
“I’m confident that we can make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday, “primarily, initially, because the Pakistani Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.” He added: “We’ve got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation.”
But that cooperation, according to officials who would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity surrounding the exchanges between Washington and Islamabad, has been sharply limited when the subject has turned to the vulnerabilities in the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure. The Obama administration inherited from President Bush a multiyear, $100 million secret American program to help Pakistan build stronger physical protections around some of those facilities, and to train Pakistanis in nuclear security.
But much of that effort has now petered out, and American officials have never been permitted to see how much of the money was spent, the facilities where the weapons are kept or even a tally of how many Pakistan has produced. The facility Pakistan was supposed to build to conduct its own training exercises is running years behind schedule.
Administration officials would not say if the subject would be raised during Mr. Zardari’s first meeting with Mr. Obama. But even if Mr. Obama raises the subject, it is not clear how fruitful the conversation might be.
Mr. Zardari heads the country’s National Command Authority, the mix of political, military and intelligence leaders responsible for its arsenal of 60 to 100 nuclear weapons. But in reality, his command and control over the weapons are considered tenuous at best; that power lies primarily in the hands of the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the former director of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s intelligence agency.
For years the Pakistanis have waved away the recurring American concerns, with the head of nuclear security for the country, Gen. Khalid Kidwai, dismissing them as “overblown rhetoric.”
Americans who are experts on the Pakistani system worry about what they do not know. “For years I was concerned about the weapons materials in Pakistan, the materials in the laboratories,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who ran the Energy Department’s intelligence unit until January, and before that was a senior C.I.A. officer sent to Pakistan to determine whether nuclear technology had been passed to Osama bin Laden.
“I’m still worried about that, but with what we’re seeing, I’m growing more concerned about something going missing in transport,” said Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, who is now at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Several current officials said that they were worried that insurgents could try to provoke an incident that would prompt Pakistan to move the weapons, and perhaps use an insider with knowledge of the transportation schedule for weapons or materials to tip them off. That concern appeared to be what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was hinting at in testimony 10 days ago before the House Appropriations Committee. Pakistan’s weapons, she noted, “are widely dispersed in the country.”
“There’s not a central location, as you know,” she added. “They’ve adopted a policy of dispersing their nuclear weapons and facilities.” She went on to describe a potential situation in which a confrontation with India could prompt a Pakistani response, though she did not go as far as saying that such a response could include moving weapons toward India — which American officials believed happened in 2002. Other experts note that even as Pakistan faces instability, it is producing more plutonium for new weapons, and building more production reactors.
David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security wrote in a recent report documenting the progress of those facilities, “In the current climate, with Pakistan’s leadership under duress from daily acts of violence by insurgent Taliban forces and organized political opposition, the security of any nuclear material produced in these reactors is in question.” The Pakistanis, not surprisingly, dismiss those fears as American and Indian paranoia, intended to dissuade them from nuclear modernization. But the government’s credibility is still colored by the fact that it used equal vehemence to denounce as fabrications the reports that Abdul Qadeer Khan, one of the architects of Pakistan’s race for the nuclear bomb, had sold nuclear technology on the black market.
In the end, those reports turned out to be true.
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Second post of the day
London Sunday Telegraph
May 3, 2009
Taliban Planning To Down British Chinook
By Thomas Harding and Ben Farmer
The Taliban is planning a "show stopper" attack to destroy a British Chinook helicopter, defence sources have disclosed.
Insurgents are actively seeking to bring down one of the eight Chinooks operating in Afghanistan, which routinely carry more than 40 armed troops, in the hope it will weaken Britain's resolve to continue the campaign in Helmand.
In the last fortnight coalition forces have destroyed four anti-aircraft guns mounted on trucks averting a potential disaster.
Intelligence sources suggest that the Taliban's surface-to-air missiles have been made redundant by sophisticated jamming systems fitted to every British aircraft.
The insurgents have now resorted to the tactic of using AAA (anti-aircraft artillery) that was highly successful during Soviet occupation and are actively seeking to buy the weapons.
Using a twin barrelled 14.5mm cannons mounted on the back of a truck the Taliban would easily be able to destroy one of the eight slow moving Chinook helicopters operating in Afghanistan.
An operational helicopter commander said "any British helicopter" would be a high priority target for them but "a Chinook would be a great coup, a bonanza".
"We have been extremely lucky so far with a mixture of tactics and a combination of good risk assessment," he added.
"But as something that keeps me awake at night the loss of a Chinook would be the most recurring nightmare."
Every Chinook flight is always escorted by Apache attack helicopters as a further layer of security.
Within the space of 12 hours local villager reported two ZPU-1s (anti-aircraft guns) mounted on the back of pick-ups trucks were destroyed by US aircraft in the Nad-e-Ali district close to the town of Lashkar Gah where the British brigade headquarters is based and is frequently visited by Chinooks, often carrying VIPs.
The weapons were loaded and ready to fire in an area which has been a focus of heavy fighting between British forces and the Taliban in recent months.
A few days later the deadly twin-barrelled ZPU-2 model appeared on April 25 and was destroyed followed a day later by another ZPU-2 towed by a tractor that was taken out by Hellfire missiles fired from a Reaper drone.
The Taliban almost had a "spectacular" success when they hit a British Chinook which was carrying Gulab Mangal, the governor of Helmand, with AAA hidden in a wadi dry river bed. The pilot, Flt Lt Alex Duncan was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for landing the aircraft safely after a round punched a large hole in a rotor and damaged the hydraulics.
As all four weapons were destroyed it has been difficult for forensic analysis to be carried out on their origins. But there is some intelligence that suggests the guns were of Chinese origin and might have been bought from arms dealers in Iran and slipped across established smuggling routes through its border into Afghanistan.
There is confirmed intelligence that Taliban have been in the market for AAA weapons for the last year and could have purchased the weapons from Hezbollah, Pakistan or even China. The insurgent's treasury has been substantially boosted by the opium trade that is said to raise £40 million for fighting.
"The destruction of this anti-aircraft weapon without a doubt saved the lives of Afghan and Coalition forces," said a US military spokesman.
Helicopters are critical in covering the vast distances in Helmand to deliver supplies, troops and medical evacuation.
Originally produced by the Soviet Union immediately after the Second World War, the single barrelled ZPU-1 and double barrelled ZPU-2 machine guns were feared by US helicopter pilots in the Vietnam War.
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Its the NYT, so caveat lector:
==========================
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — President Obama is pouring more than 20,000 new troops into Afghanistan this year for a fighting season that the United States military has called a make-or-break test of the allied campaign in Afghanistan.
But if Taliban strategists have their way, those forces will face a stiff challenge, not least because of one distinct Taliban advantage: the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan barely exists for the Taliban, who are counting on the fact that American forces cannot reach them in their sanctuaries in Pakistan.
One Pakistani logistics tactician for the Taliban, a 28-year-old from the country’s tribal areas, in interviews with The New York Times, described a Taliban strategy that relied on free movement over the border and in and around Pakistan, ready recruitment of Pakistani men and sustained cooperation of sympathetic Afghan villagers.
His account provided a keyhole view of the opponent the Americans and their NATO allies are up against, as well as the workings and ambitions of the Taliban as they prepared to meet the influx of American troops.
It also illustrated how the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella group of many brands of jihadist fighters backed by Al Qaeda, are spearheading wars on both sides of the border in what for them is a seamless conflict.
The tactician wears a thick but carefully shaped black beard and a well-trimmed shock of black hair, a look cultivated to allow him to move easily all over Pakistan. He spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by his fellow Taliban members.
But on an array of issues, discussed over six months of interviews with The Times, he showed himself to be knowledgeable of Taliban activities, and the information he provided matched up consistently with that of other sources.
He was well informed — and unconcerned, he said — of the plans of the head of the United States Central Command, Gen. David H. Petraeus, to replicate in Afghanistan some of the techniques he had used in Iraq to stop the Sunni tribes from fighting the Americans.
“I know of the Petraeus experiment there,” he said. “But we know our Afghans. They will take the money from Petraeus, but they will not be on his side. There are so many people working with the Afghans and the Americans who are on their payroll, but they inform us, sell us weapons.”
He acknowledged that the Americans would have far superior forces and power this year, but was confident that the Taliban could turn this advantage on its head. “The Americans cannot take control of the villages,” he said. “In order to expel us they will have to resort to aerial bombing, and then they will have more civilian casualties.”
The one thing that impressed him were the missile strikes by drones — virtually the only American military presence felt inside Pakistan. “The drones are very effective,” he said, acknowledging that they had thinned the top leadership of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the area. He said 29 of his friends had been killed in the strikes.
The drone attacks simply prompted Taliban fighters to spend more time in Afghanistan, or to move deeper into Pakistan, straddling both theaters of a widening conflict. The recruits were prepared to fight where they were needed, in either country, he said.
In the fighting now under way in Buner and Dir Districts, in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban are taking on the Pakistani Army in a battle that is the most obvious front of a long-haul strategy to destabilize and take over a nuclear-armed Pakistan.
In Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban are directly singling out the United States and NATO forces by sending guerrillas to assist their Afghan Taliban allies in ousting the foreigners from Afghanistan.
While to the Taliban those conflicts are one fluid and sprawling war, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan has long presented a firm barrier for the United States.
Although Pakistan is an official ally of the United States, the Pakistanis will not allow American troops to cross the border from Afghanistan. They will also not allow the troops to be present as a fighting force alongside the Pakistani military in the tribal areas that Al Qaeda and the Taliban use as a base.
The United States has helped Pakistan and Afghanistan recently open a series of joint posts to share intelligence and improve border monitoring. But those efforts are slight when compared with the demands of a 1,600-mile frontier of unforgiving terrain.
Despite years of demands by American and NATO commanders for Pakistan to control Taliban infiltration, the Taliban tactician said getting his fighters over the border was not a problem. The Pakistani paramilitary soldiers from the Frontier Corps who guard the border were too busy looking after their own survival, he said.
He has already begun moving 80 Taliban fighters in four groups stealthily into Afghanistan in the past month to meet the new American forces, he said.
The tactician says he embeds his men in what he described as friendly Afghan villages, where they will spend the next four to six months with the residents, who provide the weapons and succor for the missions against American and NATO soldiers.
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In March, he made a reconnaissance trip by motorcycle to Paktika Province in Afghanistan from Wana, the main city in South Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, to make sure the route was safe for his men. It was.
The main task for his first two groups of fighters will be to ambush convoys of NATO goods and soldiers on the Kandahar-Kabul highway, a major supply line for the allied war effort. “We want to inflict maximum trouble, to lower their morale, to destabilize,” he said.
His guerrillas, in their late teens to mid-20s, are handpicked for their endurance and commitment, he said. Some, like him, were trained by the Pakistani government as proxy fighters against India in Kashmir and have now joined the Qaeda and Taliban cause.
In a new twist, cameramen instructed to capture video of faltering American soldiers for propaganda DVDs are increasingly accompanying the guerrillas.
The tactician, a heavily built man who says he has put on weight in the past two years and is now too heavy and old to fight, said he was loyal to a commander named Mullah Mansoor.
In turn, Mr. Mansoor serves under the aegis of Siraj Haqqani, the son of a veteran Afghan mujahedeen leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani.
The tactician worked mostly from Wana, where he owns a small business and where, he acknowledged, the American drone strikes had disrupted life. The threat of the drones had ended the custom of gathering in groups of 10 to 20 men to discuss the issues of the day. “The gossip has finished,” he said.
The relationship between the Pakistani Taliban and Qaeda operatives, most of whom are Arabs, is respectful but distant, according to his descriptions.
The Arabs often go to the bazaar in Wana. But they bristle when asked questions, he said. “They never tell us their activities,” he said.
But the Taliban are willing providers for Al Qaeda. “When they need a suicide bomber, like blowing up a government building, we provide it,” he said.
There was respect for the scale of Al Qaeda’s ambitions. “They have a global agenda, they have a big design,” he said.
The Taliban goal was more narrow. “Capturing Afghanistan is not an Al Qaeda mission,” he said. “It’s a Taliban mission. We will be content in capturing Afghanistan and throwing the Americans out.”
The Pakistani Taliban will fight as long as it takes to defeat the Americans, he said. At the end of this fighting season, he said, “We will have a body count, and we will see who has broken whose back.”
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OTOH, here's this, which somehow the NYT missed :roll:
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I get back in August/September time. My next assignment is going to be at Camp
__________. Things are wild here. We got ambushed yesterday by about 40-60
Taliban. I was the lead vehicle and we saw guys running away, the gunner put the
.50 on them and then an RPG flew at us and then my gunner immediately opened up,
killing 4 right off the bat. The 2nd vehicle stopped in the kill zone because it
had been hit with several small arms, so I backed up and my gunner continued to
engage Taliban and vehicles, all three of our vehicles were stopped and engaging
the enemy for about 2-3 minutes while recieving fire. We finally got off the
objective and assessed our vehicles; our vehicles were several times, but no
injuries. We got back to our FOB and our Marine Special Forces guys told us that
had been told through a source of theirs that we had killed 15 Taliban and
destroyed two of their vehicles. Now, take in to consideration that we were only
9 Americans and 3 up armored HMMWVs. Now that's something to talk about.
I just wanted to share that war story with you, as it just happened yesterday.
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"President Obama is pouring more than 20,000 new troops into Afghanistan this year"
Just a note on political support for the wars, I notice most signs and stickers on liberal homes and cars that said "Stop the War" and "End the War" seem to be down. Turns out it was more about who they were protesting than what they were opposing.
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Indeed.
Now that its BO's war, I wonder if they will cheer this story, which the NYT happened to miss as well?
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I got back from my R&R leave about two weeks ago and have already been in two firefights with the Taliban. One of them was pretty funny. We were about to enter a narrow pass and decided to test fire our machine guns and automatic grenade launcher on a mountain side, and I'll be damned, but there was an ambush set there. Evidently, the Taliban thought we had seen them and
started to run off the hill. Well at that point it was just engaging the enemy from about 200 meters. Fun for us, not so much for them.
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WASHINGTON -- The Red Cross confirmed that "dozens" of Afghan civilians were killed in American airstrikes earlier this week, casting a pall over a high-profile summit between President Barack Obama and the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Red Cross said that women and children were among the dead in the western Afghan village of Granai. U.S. and Afghan forces in the area have been battling the Taliban militants who regularly ambush Afghan soldiers and police and execute local civilian officials.
American military officials in Kabul acknowledged that U.S. forces had been fighting in the village and said a joint U.S.-Afghan team traveled there Wednesday to begin investigating the incident.
In a statement, the Red Cross said that many of the dead civilians had been buried by the time its investigators made it to the village, making it impossible for the aid group to determine an exact casualty count.
"We know that those killed included an Afghan Red Crescent volunteer and 13 members of his family," the head of the Red Cross team in Kabul, Reto Stocker, said. "We are deeply concerned by these events."
More
Washington Asserts Loyalty to Pakistan's Zardari Collapse of Pakistan Truce Worsens Refugee Crisis Afghan officials in Kabul said the death toll was at least 90 and could ultimately exceed 100. If those estimates prove accurate, the airstrike would be one of the bloodiest incidents since the start of the war in 2001.
Reports of the high civilian death toll in Granai threatened to overshadow the summit meetings here. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in Washington for the meetings, said the deaths were "unjustifiable and unacceptable" and promised to push Mr. Obama to take concrete steps to reduce the numbers of civilian casualties from American military operations.
Capt. Elizabeth Matthias, a spokeswoman for the American command in Kabul, said the incident began Monday when Taliban militants publicly executed three local government officials.
She said that Afghan security forces traveled to the village to investigate the incident and apprehend those responsible, only to come under attack by well-armed fighters. Fearful of being overrun and wiped out by the militants, the Afghans radioed for help to nearby U.S. forces, she said.
Capt. Matthias said an American quick response force went to the area, but was also attacked by the Taliban. The American troops called in airstrikes on locations believed to house the fighters taking part in the hours-long gun battle, she said.
The joint American-Afghan team investigating the incident will remain in the area at least through Thursday, she said.
The mounting civilian death toll from American airstrikes has stirred public anger in Afghanistan and caused a rift between Afghan and American officials.
Last year, Afghan officials said 90 civilians died in a U.S. strike on the village of Azizabad. The U.S. command initially denied that any civilians died, and then later acknowledged that 33 Afghans had been killed. The United Nations confirmed the higher death toll, and Afghan officials accused the U.S. of a whitewash.
At meetings Wednesday with top Afghan and Pakistani officials, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed "my personal regret and certainly the sympathy of our administration" for the killing of any civilians in Afghanistan. Though she emphasized the U.S. still did not know all the circumstances, she vowed to conduct a joint investigation with the Afghan government of civilian deaths.
"Any loss of life, any loss of innocent life, is particularly painful," Ms. Clinton said, sitting between Mr. Karzai and Pakistani President Asef Ali Zardari. "I want to convey, to the people of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, that, you know, we will work very hard, with your governments and with your leaders, to avoid the loss of innocent civilian life. And we deeply, deeply regret that loss."
In Afghanistan Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived to talk to the troops, the Associated Press reported. Mr. Gates was scheduled to be in the country for two days. He planned to get a ground-level view of what U.S. troops need as they continue to push the Taliban south and try to stop extremists from crossing into the country over the Pakistan border.
"We have a new policy, a new strategy, a new ambassador, and we have a lot of new troops going into the area, and I just want to go out and see for myself how they're doing," Mr. Gates told reporters in Saudi Arabia Wednesday afternoon, shortly before flying to Afghanistan.
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I have no opinion on this, I offer it here simply as an interesting read.
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By BING WEST
Korengal Valley, Afghanistan
The only way to reach Viper Company of the 26th Regiment, First Infantry Division, is by helicopter. When I fly in, Capt. Jimmy Howell greets me. "I'm holding a shura [meeting of village elders]," he says. "We won't be shot at until they leave." The steep-sided Korengal Valley, 70 miles northeast of Kabul, is the scene of the war's fiercest fighting, claiming 57 American lives over the past three years.
Sure enough, an hour after the elders leave the shura, 30-millimeter shells strike the outpost. Cpl. Marc Madding, an Afghan army adviser, begins firing .50 caliber rounds at the enemy position, laughing as an Afghan soldier scurries from the latrine with shells bursting behind him. Capt. Howell adjusts mortar and artillery shells on the hillside, followed by an A-10 aircraft dropping 250-pound bombs. It's another afternoon in the Korengal, the hot spot in a district that's recorded some 1,990 similar engagements since mid-2005.
Overwhelming American firepower forced the wily fundamentalist insurgents to maintain a respectful distance. A few days earlier, an enemy unit had let down its guard and lost 15 combatants to a well-staged American ambush. Most of the fundamentalists killed were from villages that frequently receive food and medical aid from the U.S. Army outpost. The following day, an American soldier was killed outside a nearby village.
In what Rudyard Kipling called "the arithmetic of the frontier," fundamentalism and tribal hostility fuel persistent attacks, year after year, here in the Korengal. It's not well known stateside, but the Taliban are just one of many fundamentalist gangs waging war against our forces here. Like the U.S. Cavalry fighting the Apaches in the 19th century, it is problematical whether the Americans should push deeper into this treacherous valley or simply bottle up the local fighters.
Whatever the strategy in the Korengal, the broader war across eastern Afghanistan is showing signs of progress. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, commanding Joint Task Force 101, has deployed his forces in a 300-mile swath that runs from south of Kabul northeast to the Pakistan border. Partnered with Afghan units in over 100 patrol bases along the populated river valleys, JTF 101 has driven the fundamentalist fighters back into the hills and blocked the infiltration routes from Pakistan. The price for an AK-47 rifle smuggled in from Pakistan has doubled in the past four months. For Maj. Gen. Schloesser, the art of command hinges on applying sufficient power to prevent sanctuaries inside the remote valleys without diverting too much power from the populated areas. The restrained military goal is to control the majority of the population around Kabul and to the east, not to pacify the entire region.
The next challenge is to gain control over the southern portion of the country. In the next few months, 10,000 American soldiers and marines will join NATO forces down south. The steady gains by JTF 101 showed that enemy fighters are not fanatics determined to die. Similarly, by the fall the Taliban will be driven back from the populated areas in the south, as they have been in the east.
But as long as Pakistan is a sanctuary, U.S. forces here will be on the strategic defensive, no matter how skillful their military tactics. We can't stay forever. The basic question is: How to consolidate the battlefield gains? That depends upon how the mission is defined. President Barack Obama has avoided promising to build a vibrant democratic nation. "The achievable goal," he said recently, "is to make sure it [Afghanistan] is not a safe haven for terrorists." Such a minimalist policy can be achieved in one of two ways.
The first is to apply the classic counterinsurgency model: After the military push the enemy from a populated area, the police take over, while government appointees provide honest governance and basic services. This approach pursues the expensive nation-building that Mr. Obama has not endorsed. It requires thousands of additional police trainers and hundreds of civilian advisers in the districts. These advisers also serve as watchdogs against corruption, acting as a shadow government to restrain officials prone to skimming and payoffs. It's a sound approach that is slow and expensive.
The second option is to expand the role of the Afghan army to act as the facilitators and watchdogs of governance. Today, American commanders like Capt. Howell routinely participate in shuras or councils. They can gradually hand off such governance-related tasks to Afghan officers.
To do so requires funding a military pension plan conditioned upon retiring a generation of superannuated senior Afghan officers and promoting the younger generation. Afghan battalions would remain in set locales for years instead of rotating every few months as many now do. By homesteading, the Afghan army would develop sources to make arrests or deals beyond our ken. Unlike the police, they could ward off retaliatory attacks. In a de facto way, the military -- the most respected institution in Afghanistan -- would become the real backbone connecting the locals to the central government.
The new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan is retired Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who commanded the NATO force there a few years ago. While lacking presidential envoy Richard Holbrooke's flamboyance and adulatory press, Gen. Eikenberry doesn't ruffle feathers and understands the political-military dynamic. In 2004, for instance, he deftly removed control over the fledgling Iraqi army from the incompetent Coalition Provisional Authority. As our ambassador in Kabul, he can facilitate an expanded managerial role for the military in government activities while fostering the civilian political process.
If that sounds like double-talk, it is. An activist Afghan military is reminiscent of earlier eras of shadow military influence in Turkey (or in Pakistan, Jordan, Mexico, Argentina, etc.). During internal strife, however, many governments have expanded the powers of their military. It should not be the job of America to build a European-style democracy in Afghanistan. The Afghan military is more trustworthy than either the police or the civilian bureaucracy.
Capt. Howell of Viper Company has been called out of the Korengal for a few days to receive the U.S. Army's highest award for leadership. Then it's back into the fray. There's a price we must pay to ensure the Taliban don't reclaim Afghanistan. But let's not add to the cost by expanding our national objectives. We can't manage the skein of tribal loyalties and jealousies. The fastest way to reduce the size of our involvement is to build up the Afghan Army and quietly encourage it to play an active, expansionist role in governance.
Mr. West, a former combat marine and assistant secretary of defense, reports frequently from Iraq and Afghanistan. His third book on the Iraq war, "The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics and the Endgame in Iraq," was published last year by Random House.
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Second post of the day
FOR several years, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has been trying to negotiate and reconcile with supposedly moderate elements of the Taliban to end the insurgency. This approach has failed every time. Thus it is puzzling to many Afghans that President Obama has also been talking about negotiating with “moderates.” Let’s hope that when the two men met in Washington this week, along with President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, the idea of reaching out to the Islamic extremists was shelved once and for all.
After all, President Karzai’s efforts have simply revealed the weakness of the Afghan government and its international allies. Taliban spokesman have repeatedly demanded unacceptable conditions for talks, including the departure of all foreign forces from Afghanistan and the establishment of Shariah law.
Indeed, shortly after Mr. Obama raised the subject of reconciliation, the Taliban rejected his proposal, stating there were no extremists or moderate groups within their ranks. On this point at least, the Taliban are right. Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, put it very clearly: “The Taliban were united under the leadership of Mullah Muhammad Omar. All the fighters follow and obey orders of one central command. The existence of moderates and extremist elements within the rank and file of Taliban is wishful thinking of the West and the Afghan government.”
What can be the purpose of talks with the Taliban? These men deprive women of their rights, throw acid in the faces of schoolgirls, reject religious freedom and oppose constitutional democracy. They also threaten to kill any Afghans who have worked with Western militaries and nongovernmental groups or had other contact with foreigners.
Is it possible, as some have said, that the Taliban have mellowed since being toppled in 2001? Muhammad Ibrahim Hanafi, a top Taliban commander, answered that question in an interview in March with CNN: “Our law is still the same old law which was in place during our rule in Afghanistan.”
The more President Karzai and his Western allies talk about reconciliation, the farther their public support will plummet. I returned to Afghanistan in 2001 after more than two decades in America and founded a manufacturing company with the intention of using part of its profits to help young women get an education. In the early days, the discussions at our organization’s meetings were dominated by talk of building schools and other big plans. Lately, however, the main topic has been the future of us women in Afghanistan under another Taliban regime. We know that there is not, and will never be, any “moderate Taliban.” Extremists and ideologues do not compromise.
The atmosphere has been made worse by the president’s signing of a family law affecting Shiite Muslims that places restrictions on when a woman can leave her house and states the circumstances in which she is obliged to have sex with her husband. I was part of a group of civil-society representatives who recently met with President Karzai to express our concerns about the law; he replied that he hadn’t known the full details when he signed it and promised to “fight for us” to have it amended. We’ll see. But his later statement that “there are no reconciliation processes” going on with the Taliban, which seems at odds with the facts, did not inspire much hope.
The family law and other governmental efforts to appease religious extremists are having one effect that reminds me of the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of 1979: Afghanistan is being drained of the people who would be most effective at putting it back together. It seems as if every group of Afghans that attends training programs in the West now returns just a bit smaller. Last year, the accountant and the top administrator of my factory left for the Netherlands with their families. My new accountant recently went to Islamabad, Pakistan, to meet with German Embassy officials about a possible visa.
This is a far cry from the 1960s and ’70s, when many Afghans, including my father and five of my uncles, studied abroad on scholarships but returned to work in the government or to start businesses and create jobs. That sense of nationalism has disappeared; unless we rediscover it, Afghanistan will become a failed state.
The only “reconciliation” strategy that is going to work is one between the Kabul government and the Afghan people. The key is making changes at the community level. Many local mullahs and citizens who have tolerated the Taliban in the past are open to working with a government that can protect them and help them find livelihoods. The government and its allies can best weaken the insurgency by better protecting the population, organizing local citizens’ groups to cooperate on economic development, and hiring more people from every part of the country into the growing Afghan Army and police force.
This is the only way that the reconcilables will be separated from the irreconcilables. We need to understand where Afghanistan’s true moderates are to be found, and not look for them in leadership positions of one of the most repressive organizations on earth.
Hassina Sherjan is the president of Boumi, a manufacturer of decorative products for the home, and the director of Aid Afghanistan for Education, a nonprofit group.
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The Pakistani army are readying for an urban battle unprecedented in the short history of its battle against the Taliban
Sana al Haq in Mingora and Declan Walsh in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk
Saturday 9 May 2009 17.01 BST
The skiing season at Malam Jabba, Pakistan's only ski resort, is over. Yesterday the pistes echoed with the sound of explosions as fighter jets screamed overhead, part of the Pakistan military's intensifying campaign to dislodge the Taliban from the Swat Valley.
An hour's drive away in Mingora, the war-racked valley's main town, the Taliban and army are readying for an urban battle unprecedented in the short history of Pakistan's battle against the Taliban.
Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, today said the army was fighting for "the survival of the country", speaking after an emergency cabinet meeting.
The country's leaders, encouraged by the US, launched the full-scale offensive in Swat last week in order to halt the spread of Taliban control which had spread to districts within 60 miles of the capital. The battle has now been taken to the heart of the north-west region of the country which the Taliban has seized as its powerbase, and in particular to the beleaguered, frightened town of Mingora.
This once-bustling riverside community, nestled between orchards and rolling mountains, has become a hub of the dispossessed and the desperate. Since fighting erupted last Tuesday, following the collapse of a fragile peace deal, tens of thousands of frantic residents have fled, scrambling on to buses, cars and even rickshaws. They left behind a ghost city controlled by the Taliban, under siege from army mortar fire and helicopter gunship assaults, and tensed in the expectation of an army ground offensive that could lead to urban warfare reminiscent of Russian bids to clear Grozny, Chechnya, in 1999 and 2000.
At Mingora hospital yesterday embattled medics struggled to tend to dozens of residents injured by army shelling and stray gunfire. Riaz Khan, a 36-year-old teacher, his wife and two daughters occupied four of the beds, suffering shrapnel wounds to the arms and legs. His two other daughters were killed by an army mortar last week, he told an Associated Press reporter.
If, as expected, the army launches a major ground offensive to dislodge the Taliban, casualties are expected to rise on all sides. Yesterday the army said it had killed 55 fighters in clashes over the previous 24 hours. The Taliban have laid mines under bridges and along roads across the city. In some cases, wires trail from the bombs into houses where fighters, some fresh-faced teenagers, lie in wait.
Others have seized the tallest buildings, mounting rocket launchers on rooftops and taking cover behind water tanks. At the Continental Hotel, a former haunt of the local and foreign journalists, the rooms are occupied by fighters, the walls are pocked with bullet holes and many windows have shattered.
Education has always been a hot issue for the Taliban – last January they ordered the closure of all girls' schools – so it is perversely appropriate that the war is being fought between schools.On Thursday the Observer visited the Pamir building, which until recently housed the Educators School and College. It was filled with Taliban, their weapons trained on a contingent of soldiers located in a deserted school a few streets away.
The target is the last military bastion in the otherwise Taliban-controlled city, and the soldiers hunkered down inside also face fire from a second position: the Mullababa high school, on the far side of a desiccated riverbed. The army says that 15,000 members of the security forces are located in Swat, many under siege in two camps across the river Swat in Kanju village. One is located on the city golf course, where heavy artillery booms from the rutted greens; the other is inside an unused air strip that has been the target of several Taliban assaults.
The Taliban are bringing in fresh fighters, drawing others back from the Buner valley nearby, where they have been engaged in fierce combat for two weeks. To reach Mingora they pass along a mountain road that crosses the White Palace, a luxury hotel where the Queen stayed during a visit to Swat in 1961.
The army has scored some successes. Yesterday the body of Taliban commander Akbar Ali laid unclaimed in no man's land, a day after he was killed. An earlier rocket assault targeted Taliban fighters in a nearby emerald mine a few kilometres from the city. The mine was reopened a few months ago by Sirajuddin, a local commander with a scraggly gray beard whose previous job was as Taliban spokesman. He laid down strict rules – miners would pray at the appointed times, suffer the loss of an arm and a leg if they attempted to steal gemstones, and give one third of their takings to the Beit ul Mal, or Taliban treasury.
The mine provided rich, illicit pickings. One commander told the Observer he had sold half a million rupees worth of emeralds (£4,200) to a trader, one of about two dozen who came to the mine from Peshawar for a weekly auction. But the Taliban gravy train ground to a halt last Thursday when helicopter gunships pounded the mine, killing 35 militants, the army said.
On the plains to the south of the valley, in Mardan and Swabi districts, a humanitarian nightmare is brewing. More than 200,000 people have fled, another 300,000 are on the move or about to leave, according to the UN, adding to another 550,000 people displaced by earlier fighting in the tribal belt and Frontier province.
As aid workers rush to erect camps, supplies are limited and tempers quickly fray. Yesterday afternoon a riot briefly erupted in Sheikh Shahzad camp, near Mardan, as angry villagers looted UN supplies. Gilani appealed for international help with the ballooning humanitarian crisis that affects up to one million people, according to the UN. He promised the army would strive to end the crisis quickly – an outcome that appeared highly unlikely.
Not everyone has escaped. An unknown number of besieged residents remain trapped, unwilling or unable to leave their homes. Hunkered behind thin walls they survive with no electricity, dwindling water supplies and in fear of stray bombs and gunfire.
Those left behind fear what lies ahead. Reached by phone Khaista Bibi, 55, a resident, said she had hardly eaten in two days. "The situation seems impossible."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...an-swat-valley
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Mideast Stars and Stripes
May 10, 2009
Taliban Command Of Afghan Terrain Makes Fighting Conditions Difficult
By Drew Brown, Stars and Stripes
ZANGABAD, Afghanistan — Two companies of American soldiers accompanied Canadian forces on a recent four-day operation into Kandahar province’s Panjwayi district, where some of the sharpest fighting has occurred against the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan.
The American mission was to help secure a narrow dirt track that led to the village of Mushan, about 10 kilometers to the west, where the Canadians would tear down a small outpost that had been occupied since late 2006 by eight Canadian advisers and 60 Afghan soldiers.
According to U.S. and Canadian officers, the small force had not been able to do much to counter the Taliban in the area. The fort had been under frequent attack. So the troops would be pulled out as part of a new NATO strategy to reposition forces around Kandahar and other major population centers in southern Afghanistan.
By early afternoon on the third day, the mission was almost complete. The engineers had finished their work, and the armored column of more than 400 Canadians, 200 Americans and 100 Afghans was beginning to move out.
Then a Taliban bomb struck a Canadian tank, wounding two soldiers and putting the tank out of action.
There was no way for the rest of the convoy to move around the wreckage. The high-walled compounds and deeply trenched opium and wheat fields along the road gave almost no room to maneuver. With most of the column bottled up behind the disabled tank, the convoy was stalled for most of another day as recovery specialists worked to extract the vehicle.
"It’s amazing that 10 dudes with shovels can stop a whole battalion," said Capt. Chris Brawley, commander of Company A, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, commenting on how a single Taliban bomb had brought the convoy to a halt.
The column moved safely out of the area the next morning. Soldiers with Company A engaged in three firefights, but suffered no casualties. A soldier from Company D had been slightly injured in a blast, one of several bombs that had either exploded or been found along the route.
By any measure, the mission had been a success, but it bore out a fundamental challenge that U.S. and other NATO forces face in southern Afghanistan: While western troops have the technology, the Taliban own the terrain.
Although U.S. and NATO troops enjoy the edge over the Taliban in almost every respect — superior weapons, communications gear, tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and air support by fighters, bombers, helicopters and unmanned drones — those tactical advantages are often offset by terrain that favors guerrilla tactics and a lightly armed, highly maneuverable enemy.
"The fighting conditions here are amazingly difficult," said Brawley, 28, of Ellington, Mo. "The enemy pretty much has free rein down here, and there’s just endless places to hide."
Another complicating factor in the Mushan operation was that "there’s only one way in, and there’s one way out," said Brawley, allowing the Taliban to detonate bombs along the route that were probably buried weeks and months ago.
Panjwayi district lies about 40 kilometers southwest of the provincial capital of Kandahar and has long been considered a Taliban stronghold. During Operation Medusa in 2006, Canadian and other NATO forces fought one of the bloodiest battles so far of the eight-year-old Afghan war in Panjwayi and nearby Zhari district.
The area is heavily cultivated with wheat, grapes, opium, marijuana and other crops. The fields are partitioned by thick mud walls, and irrigation ditches crisscross the landscape like a maze. A group of soldiers on patrol in a grape field can suddenly drop six to 10 feet into a series of trenches in which an enemy can move undetected.
Rows of open slats in the two-story structures the soldiers refer to as "grape huts" offer the Taliban ready-made firing ports that they use to fire on NATO forces from concealed positions. The thick mud walls of the buildings can withstand multiple hits from all but the heaviest ordnance.
"[The enemy] definitely has the advantage down here," said Company A 1st Sgt. Christopher Kowalewski, 36, of Chicago. "[Despite] all of the technology that we have — all of our helicopters — he still has the advantage down here."
Soldiers from Company A engaged in three gunbattles with Taliban fighters over a two-day period during the Mushan operation. An estimated 10 fighters ambushed about 30 soldiers on the first day, keeping them pinned down for about two hours. The firefight ended only after American troops called for mortar and artillery fire, support from Kiowa helicopter gunships and, finally, an airstrike.
At one point, the Taliban were firing on the Americans from three sides. First Lt. Ashton Ballesteros, of 3 Delta platoon, said Canadian troops familiar with Taliban tactics in the area had told him the fighters typically "cloverleaf" around NATO forces during a fight, probing for weak spots.
"That’s exactly what they were trying to do to us," said Ballesteros, 24, of Grayson, Ga.
U.S. mortar teams fired more than 30 rounds of 60 mm high explosives and nearly 30 rounds of white-phosphorous smoke, according to Staff Sgt. Jason Calman, 27, of Las Vegas. Fire batteries at a nearby Canadian camp fired nearly 30 rounds of high-explosive 155 mm artillery rounds and another 18 rounds of white-phosphorous smoke. A NATO jet dropped a 500-pound bomb.
The soldiers used the smoke to cover their retreat. They made their way back to their patrol base through fields of wheat, opium and grapes, the latter with trenches that were deeper than the soldiers were tall.
"You could sit out an artillery barrage in this stuff and probably survive everything but a direct hit," one soldier said during a short rest break.
A second gunbattle broke out a couple of kilometers to the south when 2nd Platoon of Company A was ambushed by another group of Taliban fighters. The platoon was hit for a second time the next day not more than 100 meters from its patrol base.
An Afghan man with a child was spotted several times at various points during the second day’s action. The soldiers believed the man was acting as spotter for the Taliban and using the child as a shield.
"They know we’re not going to shoot him when he’s with a kid," said 1st Lt. Jared Wagner, 25, of Hillsborough, N.J. "It’s frustrating."
With so much Taliban activity around Zangabad and Mushan, Brawley predicted that NATO forces would have to "retake this whole area" at some point.
With Canadian forces scaling back their presence in Panjwayi and with more American forces coming into the south, that job will very likely fall to U.S. troops.
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The Strategic Debate Over Afghanistan
May 11, 2009
By George Friedman
After U.S. airstrikes killed scores of civilians in western Afghanistan this past week, White House National Security Adviser Gen. James L. Jones said the United States would continue with the airstrikes and would not tie the hands of U.S. generals fighting in Afghanistan. At the same time, U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus has cautioned against using tactics that undermine strategic U.S. goals in Afghanistan — raising the question of what exactly are the U.S. strategic goals in Afghanistan. A debate inside the U.S. camp has emerged over this very question, the outcome of which is likely to determine the future of the region.
On one side are President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a substantial amount of the U.S. Army leadership. On the other side are Petraeus — the architect of U.S. strategy in Iraq after 2006 — and his staff and supporters. An Army general — even one with four stars — is unlikely to overcome a president and a defense secretary; even the five-star Gen. Douglas MacArthur couldn’t pull that off. But the Afghan debate is important, and it provides us with a sense of future U.S. strategy in the region.
Petraeus and U.S. Strategy in Iraq
Petraeus took over effective command of coalition forces in Iraq in 2006. Two things framed his strategy. One was the Republican defeat in the 2006 midterm congressional elections, which many saw as a referendum on the Iraq war. The second was the report by the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan group of elder statesmen (including Gates) that recommended some fundamental changes in how the war was fought.
The expectation in November 2006 was that as U.S. President George W. Bush’s strategy had been repudiated, his only option was to begin withdrawing troops. Even if Bush didn’t begin this process, it was expected that his successor in two years certainly would have to do so. The situation was out of control, and U.S. forces did not seem able to assert control. The goals of the 2003 invasion, which were to create a pro-American regime in Baghdad, redefine the political order of Iraq and use Iraq as a base of operations against hostile regimes in the region, were unattainable. It did not seem possible to create any coherent regime in Baghdad at all, given that a complex civil war was under way that the United States did not seem able to contain.
Most important, groups in Iraq believed that the United States would be leaving. Therefore, political alliance with the United States made no sense, as U.S. guarantees would be made moot by withdrawal. The expectation of an American withdrawal sapped U.S. political influence, while the breadth of the civil war and its complexity exhausted the U.S. Army. Defeat had been psychologically locked in.
Bush’s decision to launch a surge of forces in Iraq was less a military event than a psychological one. Militarily, the quantity of forces to be inserted — some 30,000 on top of a force of 120,000 — did not change the basic metrics of war in a country of about 29 million. Moreover, the insertion of additional troops was far from a surge; they trickled in over many months. Psychologically, however, it was stunning. Rather than commence withdrawals as so many expected, the United States was actually increasing its forces. The issue was not whether the United States could defeat all of the insurgents and militias; that was not possible. The issue was that because the United States was not leaving, the United States was not irrelevant. If the United States was not irrelevant, then at least some American guarantees could have meaning. And that made the United States a political actor in Iraq.
Petraeus combined the redeployment of some troops with an active political program. At the heart of this program was reaching out to the Sunni insurgents, who had been among the most violent opponents of the United States during 2003-2006. The Sunni insurgents represented the traditional leadership of the mainstream Sunni tribes, clans and villages. The U.S. policy of stripping the Sunnis of all power in 2003 and apparently leaving a vacuum to be filled by the Shia had left the Sunnis in a desperate situation, and they had moved to resistance as guerrillas.
The Sunnis actually were trapped by three forces. First, there were the Americans, always pressing on the Sunnis even if they could not crush them. Second, there were the militias of the Shia, a group that the Sunni Saddam Hussein had repressed and that now was suspicious of all Sunnis. Third, there were the jihadists, a foreign legion of Sunni fighters drawn to Iraq under the banner of al Qaeda. In many ways, the jihadists posed the greatest threat to the mainstream Sunnis, since they wanted to seize leadership of the Sunni communities and radicalize them.
U.S. policy under former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had been unbending hostility to the Sunni insurgency. The policy under Gates and Petraeus after 2006 — and it must be understood that they developed this strategy jointly — was to offer the Sunnis a way out of their three-pronged trap. Because the United States would be staying in Iraq, it could offer the Sunnis protection against both the jihadists and the Shia. And because the surge convinced the Sunnis that the United States was not going to withdraw, they took the deal. Petraeus’ great achievement was presiding over the U.S.-Sunni negotiations and eventual understanding, and then using that to pressure the Shiite militias with the implicit threat of a U.S.-Sunni entente. The Shia subsequently and painfully shifted their position to accepting a coalition government, the mainstream Sunnis helped break the back of the jihadists and the civil war subsided, allowing the United States to stage a withdrawal under much more favorable circumstances.
This was a much better outcome than most would have thought possible in 2006. It was, however, an outcome that fell far short of American strategic goals of 2003. The current government in Baghdad is far from pro-American and is unlikely to be an ally of the United States; keeping it from becoming an Iranian tool would be the best outcome for the United States at this point. The United States certainly is not about to reshape Iraqi society, and Iraq is not likely to be a long-term base for U.S. offensive operations in the region.
Gates and Petraeus produced what was likely the best possible outcome under the circumstances. They created the framework for a U.S. withdrawal in a context other than a chaotic civil war, they created a coalition government, and they appear to have blocked Iranian influence in Iraq. But these achievements remain uncertain. The civil war could resume. The coalition government might collapse. The Iranians might become the dominant force in Baghdad. But these unknowns are enormously better than the outcomes expected in 2006. At the same time, snatching uncertainty from the jaws of defeat is not the same as victory.
Afghanistan and Lessons from Iraq
Petraeus is arguing that the strategy pursued in Iraq should be used as a blueprint in Afghanistan, and it appears that Obama and Gates have raised a number of important questions in response. Is the Iraqi solution really so desirable? If it is desirable, can it be replicated in Afghanistan? What level of U.S. commitment would be required in Afghanistan, and what would this cost in terms of vulnerabilities elsewhere in the world? And finally, what exactly is the U.S. goal in Afghanistan?
In Iraq, Gates and Petraeus sought to create a coalition government that, regardless of its nature, would facilitate a U.S. withdrawal. Obama and Gates have stated that the goal in Afghanistan is the defeat of al Qaeda and the denial of bases for the group in Afghanistan. This is a very different strategic goal than in Iraq, because this goal does not require a coalition government or a reconciliation of political elements. Rather, it requires an agreement with one entity: the Taliban. If the Taliban agree to block al Qaeda operations in Afghanistan, the United States will have achieved its goal. Therefore, the challenge in Afghanistan is using U.S. power to give the Taliban what they want — a return to power — in exchange for a settlement on the al Qaeda question.
In Iraq, the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds all held genuine political and military power. In Afghanistan, the Americans and the Taliban have this power, though many other players have derivative power from the United States. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is not Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; where al-Maliki had his own substantial political base, Karzai is someone the Americans invented to become a focus for power in the future. But the future has not come. The complexities of Iraq made a coalition government possible there, but in many ways, Afghanistan is both simpler and more complex. The country has a multiplicity of groups, but in the end only one insurgency that counts.
Petraeus argues that the U.S. strategic goal — blocking al Qaeda in Afghanistan — cannot be achieved simply through an agreement with the Taliban. In this view, the Taliban are not nearly as divided as some argue, and therefore their factions cannot be played against each other. Moreover, the Taliban cannot be trusted to keep their word even if they give it, which is not likely.
From Petraeus’ view, Gates and Obama are creating the situation that existed in pre-surge Iraq. Rather than stunning Afghanistan psychologically with the idea that the United States is staying, thereby causing all the parties to reconsider their positions, Obama and Gates have done the opposite. They have made it clear that Washington has placed severe limits on its willingness to invest in Afghanistan, and made it appear that the United States is overly eager to make a deal with the one group that does not need a deal: the Taliban.
Gates and Obama have pointed out that there is a factor in Afghanistan for which there was no parallel in Iraq — namely, Pakistan. While Iran was a factor in the Iraqi civil war, the Taliban are as much a Pakistani phenomenon as an Afghan one, and the Pakistanis are neither willing nor able to deny the Taliban sanctuary and lines of supply. So long as Pakistan is in the condition it is in — and Pakistan likely will stay that way for a long time — the Taliban have time on their side and no reason to split, and are likely to negotiate only on their terms.
There is also a military fear. Petraeus brought U.S. troops closer to the population in Iraq, and he is doing this in Afghanistan as well. U.S. forces in Afghanistan are deployed in firebases. These relatively isolated positions are vulnerable to massed Taliban forces. U.S. airpower can destroy these concentrations, so long as they are detected in time and attacked before they close in on the firebases. Ominously for the United States, the Taliban do not seem to have committed anywhere near the majority of their forces to the campaign.
This military concern is combined with real questions about the endgame. Gates and Obama are not convinced that the endgame in Iraq, perhaps the best outcome that was possible there, is actually all that desirable for Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, this outcome would leave the Taliban in power in the end. No amount of U.S. troops could match the Taliban’s superior intelligence capability, their knowledge of the countryside and their willingness to take casualties in pursuing their ends, and every Afghan security force would be filled with Taliban agents.
And there is a deeper issue yet that Gates has referred to: the Russian experience in Afghanistan. The Petraeus camp is vehement that there is no parallel between the Russian and American experience; in this view, the Russians tried to crush the insurgents, while the Americans are trying to win them over and end the insurgency by convincing the Taliban’s supporters and reaching a political accommodation with their leaders. Obama and Gates are less sanguine about the distinction — such distinctions were made in Vietnam in response to the question of why the United States would fare better in Southeast Asia than the French did. From the Obama and Gates point of view, a political settlement would call for either a constellation of forces in Afghanistan favoring some accommodation with the Americans, or sufficient American power to compel accommodation. But it is not clear to Obama and Gates that either could exist in Afghanistan.
Ultimately, Petraeus is charging that Obama and Gates are missing the chance to repeat what was done in Iraq, while Obama and Gates are afraid Petraeus is confusing success in Iraq with a universal counterinsurgency model. To put it differently, they feel that while Petraeus benefited from fortuitous circumstances in Iraq, he quickly could find himself hopelessly bogged down in Afghanistan. The Pentagon on May 11 announced that U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. David McKiernan would be replaced, less than a year after he took over, with Lt. Gen. Stan McChrystal. McKiernan’s removal could pave the way for a broader reshuffling of Afghan strategy by the Obama administration.
The most important issues concern the extent to which Obama wants to stake his presidency on Petraeus’ vision in Afghanistan, and how important Afghanistan is to U.S. grand strategy. Petraeus has conceded that al Qaeda is in Pakistan. Getting the group out of Pakistan requires surgical strikes. Occupation and regime change in Pakistan are way beyond American abilities. The question of what the United States expects to win in Afghanistan — assuming it can win anything there — remains.
In the end, there is never a debate between U.S. presidents and generals. Even MacArthur discovered that. It is becoming clear that Obama is not going to bet all in Afghanistan, and that he sees Afghanistan as not worth the fight. Petraeus is a soldier in a fight, and he wants to win. But in the end, as Clausewitz said, war is an extension of politics by other means. As such, generals tend to not get their way.
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McChrystal and Direct Action
Posted by Benjamin H. Friedman
Fred Kaplan and the New York Times say that the decision to replace General David McKiernan with Lt. General Stan McChrystal as the principle US commander in Afghanistan is another step in the COINification of the Pentagon under Robert Gates. They say we’ve replaced a conventional warfare guy with an unconventional warfare guy.
That’s too simple. McChrystal is known for his mastery of the sharp or kinetic end of the counterinsurgency mission. The command he headed from 2003 to 2008 – Joint Special Operations Command — is essentially the operational component of Special Operations Command, which has really become a fifth service. JSOC organizes special operations missions in war zones. According to many officers, JSOC has also become enraptured with direct action. That means using intelligence from various sources to plan raids, often kicking down doors in the dead of night, interrogating people to generate more intelligence, doing it again immediately, and eventually capturing or killing insurgent leaders with the intelligence gleaned.
Bob Woodward’s latest book argues that JSOC’s role in employing these tactics in Iraq was crucial to the supposed success of the surge. But some informed observers beg to differ, arguing that standard counterinsurgency tactics and the contributions of Iraqis themselves mattered far more. Some complain that JSOC’s aggressive tactics and limited coordination with those in the regular chain of command undermined pacification efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the (recently released!) book on the post Cold War evolution of the US military that I co-edited, Colin Jackson and Austin Long have a chapter discussing the politics of special operations command. They argue that the direct action theory of victory in counterinsurgency is a close relative to the air force’s theory of decapitation, which says you can defeat a nation by attacking its leaders from the air. They explain that direct action has long been the favored tactic of secret or “black” SOF organizations like Delta Force, but that the wars made it the dominant mission in SOCOM as a whole, crowding traditional “white” counterinsurgency missions like population protection, force training, and civil affairs. To them, that is a problem, because the direct action theory of victory is badly flawed. You can’t kill your way to victory in these sorts of wars, they argue. That’s particularly true in Afghanistan, I’d add, where distance and poor roads make the exploitation of intelligence far more time-consuming.
I don’t know to what extent McChrystal shares the black SOF worldview. He would probably say that direct action is just part of the toolkit. It is possible, however, that his appointment reflects a decision to downplay nation-building in Afghanistan and focus more on killing raids and training Afghan soldiers.
It is also interesting to speculate about what Michael Vickers (the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities) had to say about this. Vickers — a key advisor to Gates and a carry-over from the Bush administration — is said to be skeptical about troop surges in counterinsurgency, preferring to train local forces.
According to Greg Grant of DoD Buzz:
In a speech before a defense industry gathering last month, Vickers said he foresees a shift over time from the manpower intensive counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan to more “distributed operations across the world,” relying on close to 100 small teams of special operations forces to hunt down terrorist networks, part of a “global radical Islamist insurgency.”
I don’t like the across the world part, but if this appointment means more limited objectives in Afghanistan, it’s good news.
A final note on McChrystal: he reportedly runs many miles a day, sleeps only a few hours, and avoids eating until evening to avoid sluggishness. Apparently the iron-man thing goes over well with Rangers, but I think commanders, whose job is mostly thinking, should get a good night’s sleep and three square.
Benjamin H. Friedman • May 13, 2009 @ 8:40 am
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/05/13/mcchrystal-and-direct-action/
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(CNN) -- A Vietnam War veteran killed in an Iraq roadside bombing this week has become the oldest American service member to be killed in either Iraq or Afghan combat, the Pentagon has confirmed.
Maj. Steven Hutchison -- a 60-year-old soldier from Scottsdale, Arizona -- died Sunday in the southern Iraqi city of Basra after a bomb went off near his vehicle in the region.
Hutchison spanned two war eras. He enlisted in the Army at 19 and served in Vietnam, according to a news report on CNN affiliate KNXV-TV.
Hutchison wanted to serve again after the September 11 attacks, but his wife opposed that.
His wife died of breast cancer in 2006, and Hutchison was "devastated," his brother Richard Hutchison told KNXV.
Steve Hutchison jogged, got into great physical shape and returned to Army active duty at age 57 in Afghanistan and then Iraq.
He had been assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kansas.
"He's been a soldier his whole life," Richard Hutchison said
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As noted in the Nuclear War thread, it appears that our money is financing intensification of Pak's nuke program. Now, surprise!, it appears we are arming the Taliban. :cry: :cry: :cry: God bless our troops and keep them safe.
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KABUL — Insurgents in Afghanistan, fighting from some of the poorest and most remote regions on earth, have managed for years to maintain an intensive guerrilla war against materially superior American and Afghan forces.
Arms and ordnance collected from dead insurgents hint at one possible reason: Of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents’ corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges, or rounds, identical to ammunition the United States had provided to Afghan government forces, according to an examination of ammunition markings by The New York Times and interviews with American officers and arms dealers.
The presence of this ammunition among the dead in the Korangal Valley, an area of often fierce fighting near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, strongly suggests that munitions procured by the Pentagon have leaked from Afghan forces for use against American troops.
The scope of that diversion remains unknown, and the 30 magazines represented a single sampling of fewer than 1,000 cartridges. But military officials, arms analysts and dealers say it points to a worrisome possibility: With only spotty American and Afghan controls on the vast inventory of weapons and ammunition sent into Afghanistan during an eight-year conflict, poor discipline and outright corruption among Afghan forces may have helped insurgents stay supplied.
The United States has been criticized, as recently as February by the federal Government Accountability Office, for failing to account for thousands of rifles issued to Afghan security forces. Some of these weapons have been documented in insurgents’ hands, including weapons in a battle last year in which nine Americans died.
In response, the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, the American-led unit tasked with training and supplying Afghan forces, said it had made accountability of all Afghan police and military property a top priority, and taken steps to locate and log rifles issued even years ago. The Pentagon has created a database of small arms issued to Afghan units.
No similarly thorough accountability system exists for ammunition, which is harder to trace and more liquid than firearms, readily changing hands through corruption, illegal sales, theft, battlefield loss and other forms of diversion.
American forces do not examine all captured arms and munitions to trace how insurgents obtained them, or to determine whether the Afghan government, directly or indirectly, is a significant Taliban supplier, military officers said.
The reasons include limited resources and institutional memory of issued arms, as well as an absence of collaboration between field units that collect equipment and the investigators and supervisors in Kabul who could trace it.
In this case, the rifle magazines were captured last month by a platoon in Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry, which killed at least 13 insurgents in a nighttime ambush in eastern Afghanistan. The soldiers searched the insurgents’ remains and collected 10 rifles, a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher, 30 magazines and other equipment.
Access to Taliban equipment is unusual. But after the ambush, the company allowed the items to be examined by this reporter.
Photographs were taken of the weapons’ serial numbers and markings on the bottoms of the cartridge casings, known as headstamps, which can reveal where and when ammunition was manufactured. The headstamps were then compared with ammunition in government circulation, and with this reporter’s records of ammunition sampled in Afghan magazines and bunkers in multiple provinces in recent years.
The type of ammunition in question, 7.62x39 millimeter, colloquially known as “7.62 short,” is one of the world’s most abundant classes of military small-arms cartridges, and can come from dozens of potential suppliers.
It is used in Kalashnikov rifles and their knockoffs, and has been made in many countries, including Russia, China, Ukraine, North Korea, Cuba, India, Pakistan, the United States, the former Warsaw Pact nations and several countries in Africa. Several countries have multiple factories, each associated with distinct markings.
The examination of the Taliban’s cartridges found telling signs of diversion: 17 of the magazines contained ammunition bearing either of two stamps: the word “WOLF” in uppercase letters, or the lowercase arrangement “bxn.”
“WOLF” stamps mark ammunition from Wolf Performance Ammunition, a company in California that sells Russian-made cartridges to American gun owners. The company has also provided cartridges for Afghan soldiers and police officers, typically through middlemen. Its munitions can be found in Afghan government bunkers.
The “bxn” marking was formerly used at a Czech factory during the cold war. Since 2004, the Czech government has donated surplus ammunition and equipment to Afghanistan. A.E.Y. Inc., a former Pentagon supplier, also shipped surplus Czech ammunition to Afghanistan, according to the United States Army, including cartridges bearing “bxn” stamps.
Most of the Wolf and Czech ammunition in the Taliban magazines was in good condition and showed little weathering, denting, corrosion or soiling, suggesting it had been removed from packaging recently.
There is no evidence that Wolf, the Czech government or A.E.Y. knowingly shipped ammunition to Afghan insurgents. A.E.Y. was banned last year from doing business with the Pentagon, but its legal troubles stemmed from unrelated allegations of fraud.
Given the number of potential sources, the probability that the Taliban and the Pentagon were sharing identical supply sources was small.
Rather, the concentration of Taliban ammunition identical in markings and condition to that used by Afghan units indicated that the munitions had most likely slipped :roll: from state custody, said James Bevan, a researcher specializing in ammunition for the Small Arms Survey, an independent research group in Geneva.
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Mr. Bevan, who has documented ammunition diversion in Kenya, Uganda and Sudan, said one likely explanation was that interpreters, soldiers or police officers had sold ammunition for profit or passed it along for other reasons, including support for the insurgency. “Same story, different location,” he said.
The majority of cartridges in the remaining 13 Taliban magazines bore headstamps indicating they were made in Russia in the Soviet period. Several rounds had Chinese stamps and dates indicating manufacture in the 1960s and ’70s. A smaller number were Hungarian. Much of this other ammunition was in poor condition.
Hungarian and Chinese ammunition had also been provided to the Afghan government by A.E.Y., making it possible that several of the remaining magazines included American-procured rounds.
The American military did not dispute the possibility that theft or corruption could have steered Wolf and Czech ammunition to insurgents.
Capt. James C. Howell, who commands the company that captured the ammunition, said illicit diversion would be consistent with an enduring reputation of corruption in Afghan units, especially the police. “It’s not surprising,” he said.
But he added that in his experience this form of corruption was not the norm. Rather than deliberate diversion, he said, the more likely causes would be poor discipline and oversight in the Afghan national security forces, or A.N.S.F. “I think most A.N.S.F. don’t want their own stuff coming back at them,” he said.
Captured Taliban rifles provide a glimpse at arms diversion as well.
After the battle in the eastern village of Wanat last year, in which 9 Americans died and more than 20 were wounded, investigators found a large cache of AMD-65 assault rifles in the village’s police post, which was implicated in the attack, according to American officers. In all, the post had more than 70 assault rifles, but only 20 officers on its roster. Three AMD-65s were recovered near the battle as well.
The AMD-65, a distinctive Hungarian rifle, was rarely seen in Afghanistan until the United States issued it by the thousands to the Afghan police. They can now be found in Pakistani arms bazaars.
In the American ambush last month, all of the 10 captured rifles had factory stamps from China or Izhevsk, Russia. Those with date stamps had been manufactured in the 1960s and ’70s.
Photographs of the weapons and serial numbers were provided to Brig. Gen. Anthony R. Ierardi, the deputy commander of the transition command. Upon checking the Pentagon’s new database, the general said one of the Chinese rifles had been issued to an Afghan auxiliary police officer in 2007. How Taliban insurgents had acquired the rifle was not clear.
The auxiliary police, which augmented the Afghan Interior Ministry, were riddled with corruption and incompetence. They were disbanded last year.
Speaking about the captured Taliban ammunition, General Ierardi cautioned that the range of headstamps could indicate that insurgent use of American-procured munitions was not widespread. He noted that the captured ammunition sampling was small and that munitions might have leaked through less nefarious means.
“The mixed ammo could suggest battlefield losses; it could suggest captured ammo,” he said. He added, however, that he did not want to appear defensive and that accountability of Afghan arms and munitions was of “highest priority.”
“The emphasis from our perspective is on accountability of all logistics property,” he said. Leakage of Pentagon-supplied armaments to insurgents is an “absolutely worst-case scenario,” he said, adding, “We want to guard against the exact scenario you laid out.”
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Woof,
And who is paying the people that this ammo is issued to?
"American forces do not examine all captured arms and munitions to trace how insurgents obtained them, or to determine whether the Afghan government, directly or indirectly, is a significant Taliban supplier, military officers said."
Well no we don't examine it. We issue it out and every (captured) round we issue is accounted for,,, and the Afghan government is not exactly following the straight and narrow.
"The United States has been criticized, as recently as February by the federal Government Accountability Office, for failing to account for thousands of rifles issued to Afghan security forces. Some of these weapons have been documented in insurgents’ hands, including weapons in a battle last year in which nine Americans died."
Would you fight for free??? I don't. The TB pays pretty good money in this part of the world. The United States should be criticized. For half-assing this deal. We already kicked ass over here, but we're still here. Why? Because the government of the US of A (we the people) says that " we can't just kick someone's ass and leave". we have to "rebuild" and whatnot. And we are still trying to "rebuild" because in a land where EVERYTHING is left up to Allah and f@*k a spanking, just dip your unruly child in boiling water... yeah...
These people are almost a lost cause.
Jaded,
Johnny
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KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan commandos backed by coalition troops killed 60 militants in a four-day operation in southern Afghanistan and seized an unprecedented amount of narcotics, officials said Saturday.
The operation was in the city of Marjah in Helmand province, where soldiers have been targeting the city's Loy Cherah Bazaar. The bazaar is considered by the U.S. military as the southern region's "militant stronghold and narcotics processing hub."
Afghan and coalition forces launched coordinated air strikes against militant buildings used as drug-making facilities, a joint news release said.
The operation, which started earlier this week, seized about 92,271 kilograms of narcotics.
The haul included 16,850 kilograms of black tar opium, 201 kilograms of processed heroin and 75,000 kilograms of poppy seeds, the release said.
Heroin-processing materials such as ammonium chloride, activated charcoal and soda ash were also found, according to the release.
The combined forces also destroyed bomb-making material, including diesel fuel, improvised explosive device battery systems and homemade explosive materials set for detonation.
"The commandos and their coalition partners relentlessly penetrated an area militants and criminals considered a safe-haven, again proving they will not be denied access to any area in this country," said Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for the U.S. Forces-Afghanistan.
"The four-day operation severely disrupted one of the key militant and criminal operations, and narcotics hubs in southern Afghanistan," he said.
An unmanned craft was flying over the site to ensure militants do not claim false civilian casualties, according to the release.
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Good news! Well done!
Were you part of this operation?
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http://blog.gretchenpeters.org/
Looks interesting, at first glance.
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Agreed, I will be looking at it again.
The most recent post's premise about a building backlash seems to me a very promising development, as does the fact of a serious operation against the opium trade.
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Woof.
"Were you part of this operation?"
Almost, but not this time around :cry:. Something about how a CH-47 can only carry so much weight. The ODA that my team is attached to wasn't going to drop ammo or weapons for this one so they cut food and water from the load first to try and make weight. Then they cut my team, the PSYOP team and half the SOT-A team and still barely made the load limit.
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Pakistani army fights street by street to banish Taliban from Swat valley
Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Sana ul Haq in Barikot
guardian.co.uk
Sunday 24 May 2009 21.32 BST
Pakistani troops and Taliban fighters battled street by street through Mingora, the main town of the Swat valley, today as an army operation to sweep the militants from their mountain stronghold entered a critical phase.
Smoke rose from the city as the army reported early victories, saying it had captured seven major locations including Green Square, previously dubbed "slaughterhouse square" by locals after the Taliban started to dump the bodies of headless victims there.
Following on from more than two weeks of air and artillery strikes, it was the second day of a ground assault on the city, which the army warned could take weeks to complete. "Everyone is sniping one another," a spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, said on Saturday.
Fears grew for civilians trapped in the crossfire. Government officials estimate that between 10,000 and 20,000 people are still living in the hill town, which until recently had a population of about 200,000. With food and fuel rations dwindling, some have resorted to scavenging for food during lulls in fighting. Yesterday the army used FM radio to urge residents to report Taliban movements, even though phone lines to the city have been cut.
Last week, residents of some districts said the Taliban had said they would be killed if they obeyed army orders to flee.
The fight for Mingora has become a test of Pakistan's resolve and ability to roll back the Taliban advance across North-West Frontier province and the adjoining tribal belt that has worried western allies.
For three weeks the Taliban have been preparing for a battle in Mingora, setting up rooftop gun positions and laying landmines on roads and bridges. Until now the war against militancy has been largely limited to remote, mountainous areas.
Yesterday the army said it had captured Qamber, a hamlet at the entrance to Mingora and the home town of Shah Doran, a notorious Taliban commander. A Guardian reporter who visited Qamber last week saw Taliban fighters manning newly dug, heavily defended trenches in mountain slopes 50 metres above the main road.
Yesterday in Barikot, a town six miles to the south, a fleeing Qambar resident said he had seen a destroyed army tank after intense fighting.
So far, however, the casualties have been lighter than expected. The army said yesterday it had killed five militants and captured 14 in 24 hours in Mingora. It also reported the deaths of three soldiers.
Western diplomats in Islamabad believe that army casualty figures from Swat are considerably higher than reported.
The president, Asif Ali Zardari, has indicated the Swat campaign could be the start of a wider summer war against the Taliban in the province. A western official said a new offensive was expected to follow in South Waziristan, home of the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud.
Combat is already spreading across the province. Yesterday army helicopter gunships pounded militant targets in Orakzai tribal agency, west of Peshawar. Meanwhile in Charsadda, a district south of Swat where many people have fled, police announced the arrest of a Taliban commander and six militants.
In Mingora, it is unclear whether the Taliban will hold firm or flee into the hills. Mingora backs on to mountains that could provide an easy escape route and allow them to regroup for guerrilla attacks.
South of the city, along the river Swat, residents reported seeing Taliban fighters going back and forth across the river.
The army is under pressure for a quick resolution. More than two million people have been displaced over three weeks, placing an immense strain on the areas to which they have fled. While about 200,000 people are sheltering in organised camps, at least 1.7 million are squeezed into the homes of friends and relatives, as many as 100 people per house.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...kistan-taliban
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Many excellent fotos
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/afghanistans_korengal_valley.html
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I have consistently thought that one of the key points of the turnaround in Iraq was that AQ simply overdid it and turned people against them. See e.g. today's entry in the Iraq thread from Our Man in Iraq
Are we seeing the beginning of the same dynamic in Pak?
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In symbolic and strategic terms, the fall of Mingora on Saturday marks a potential turning point for Pakistan, and perhaps for the fight against al Qaeda. Three weeks after launching its counteroffensive against the Taliban, Pakistan's military took back the largest city in the Swat Valley and is now pushing further against Islamist insurgents in the unruly tribal regions of that nuclear-armed country.
Only weeks ago, the urgent question was whether Pakistan's government and military had the will to resist Taliban advances. Earlier this year, the army had ceded the scenic northwest region in an ill-thought "peace accord." But the Taliban got greedy, soon expanding from Swat into the neighboring Buner district 60 miles from the capital Islamabad, and imposing its brutal form of Shariah law. The global alarm bells that followed, particularly in Washington, embarrassed the military and government.
Pakistan's media and public are disenchanted with their leaders and have been prone to sympathize with the bearded anti-American fighters in the hills. But stories of Taliban beheadings and cellphone images of a public flogging of a teenage girl in Swat brought the insurgency distressingly close to home. So did a spate of suicide bombings in Islamabad and the cultural center of Lahore by followers of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. Pakistan authorities found themselves called to act by their own people -- and pressed usefully by the Obama Administration.
The success in clearing Buner and Swat, all of which should be in government control in days, shows the military can sustain this sort of campaign. Too often in the past, Pakistan attacks on the Taliban were brief and half-hearted, and the military soon returned its focus to the eastern border with India. This time the military didn't rely on aerial bombing and instead put commandos on the ground. Though impossible to verify, Pakistan claims more than 1,000 militants and 81 of its own soldiers have been killed since the fighting began in early May.
The cost has been high, with an estimated three million refugees having fled the frontier regions. The army also hasn't captured the senior Taliban leaders in Swat, and many of those refugees won't return until the government assures them that they can be protected. But the country seems to back the offensive. "The military feels it's in a much better position to finish the job because it has public support," General Athar Abbas, a military spokesman, said.
The even better news is that Pakistanis say the army won't stop at Swat. Next should come a push into lawless Waziristan and the other tribal regions that have become terrorist sanctuaries for al Qaeda and other groups. This will be harder than Swat, because Pakistan's government has never been able to establish its writ over those northwestern frontier regions. But now, with the Taliban retreating, is the time to press the advantage.
Blamed for the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and other terrorist attacks, Mehsud and other Pakistani Taliban are enemies of the democratic government. Washington will also want Pakistan to root out the Afghan Talibs who launch attacks against Afghanistan from camps in Waziristan and around the southwestern city of Quetta. That means turning against Pakistan's erstwhile allies such as Jalaluddin Haqqani, a prominent commander in the Afghan insurgency, and former Taliban leader Mullah Omar. As long as they have sanctuary in Pakistan, Afghanistan will never be peaceful.
This offensive may have spillover benefits for the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda. The Taliban's advance has created an informal buffer around al Qaeda's sanctuaries in the area, and its retreat could force some foreign jihadists to leave their safe havens. Uprooted and on the move, they are more vulnerable to intelligence intercepts and Predator strikes. The Obama Administration seems to have resisted panicky calls on Capitol Hill to stop the Predator strikes lest they inflame public opinion in Pakistan. Care about civilian casualties is important, but the Predators are the best weapon we have in the mountainous border regions.
The fight ahead is filled with potential detours in Pakistan, which has a weak civilian government, a fractious political class, and a military that worries more about India than its own insurgency. But the news of the last few weeks is that Pakistan's establishment and public have shown they are willing to fight back against radical Islamists who have targeted Pakistan as much as they have America. Now is the time for Congress to show its support by passing Mr. Obama's request for military and economic aid for our allies in Islamabad. (Have a care here-- a lot of this "aid" ends up elsewhere , , ,)
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Its the NY Slimes, so reports on subjects such as this one need to be read with care. Caveat lector!
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U.S. Report Finds Airstrike Errors in Afghan Deaths
ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
Published: June 2, 2009
WASHINGTON — A military investigation has concluded that American personnel made significant errors in carrying out some of the airstrikes in western Afghanistan on May 4 that killed dozens of Afghan civilians, according to a senior American military official.
The official said the civilian death toll would probably have been reduced if American air crews and forces on the ground had followed strict rules devised to prevent civilian casualties. Had the rules been followed, at least some of the strikes by American warplanes against half a dozen targets over seven hours would have been aborted.
The report represents the clearest American acknowledgment of fault in connection with the attacks. It will give new ammunition to critics, including many Afghans, who complain that American forces too often act indiscriminately in calling in airstrikes, jeopardizing the United States mission by turning the civilian population against American forces and their ally, the Afghan government.
Since the raid, American military commanders have promised to address the problem. On Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, nominated to be the American commander in Afghanistan, vowed that reducing civilian casualties was “essential to our credibility.”
Any American victory would be “hollow and unsustainable” if it led to popular resentment among Afghanistan’s citizens, General McChrystal told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a confirmation hearing.
According to the senior military official, the report on the May 4 raids found that one plane was cleared to attack Taliban fighters, but then had to circle back and did not reconfirm the target before dropping bombs, leaving open the possibility that the militants had fled the site or that civilians had entered the target area in the intervening few minutes.
In another case, a compound of buildings where militants were massing for a possible counterattack against American and Afghan troops was struck in violation of rules that required a more imminent threat to justify putting high-density village dwellings at risk, the official said.
“In several instances where there was a legitimate threat, the choice of how to deal with that threat did not comply with the standing rules of engagement,” said the military official, who provided a broad summary of the report’s initial findings on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry was not yet complete.
Before being chosen as the new commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal spent five years as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, overseeing commandos in Iraq and Afghanistan. Special Operations forces have been sharply criticized by Afghans for aggressive tactics that have contributed to civilian casualties.
During his testimony, General McChrystal said that strikes by warplanes and Special Operations ground units would remain an essential part of combat in Afghanistan. But he promised to make sure that these attacks were based on solid intelligence and that they were as precise as possible. American success in Afghanistan should be measured by “the number of Afghans shielded from violence,” not the number of enemy fighters killed, he said.
The inquiry into the May 4 strikes in the western province of Farah illustrated the difficult, split-second decisions facing young officers in the heat of combat as they balance using lethal force to protect their troops under fire with detailed rules restricting the use of firepower to prevent civilian deaths.
In the report, the investigating officer, Brig. Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III, analyzed each of the airstrikes carried out by three aircraft-carrier-based Navy F/A-18 strike aircraft and an Air Force B-1 bomber against targets in the village of Granai, in a battle that lasted more than seven hours.
In each case, the senior military official said, General Thomas determined that the targets that had been struck posed legitimate threats to Afghan or American forces, which included one group of Marines assigned to train the Afghans and another assigned to a Special Operations task force.
But in “several cases,” the official said, General Thomas determined either that the airstrikes had not been the appropriate response to the threat because of the potential risk to civilians, or that American forces had failed to follow their own tactical rules in conducting the bombing runs.
The Afghan government concluded that about 140 civilians had been killed in the attacks. An earlier American military inquiry said last month that 20 to 30 civilians had been killed. That inquiry also concluded that 60 to 65 Taliban militants had been killed in the fight. American military officials say their two investigations show that Taliban fighters had deliberately fired on American forces and aircraft from compounds and other places where they knew Afghan civilians had sought shelter, in order to draw an American response that would kill civilians, including women and children.
The firefight began, the military said, when Afghan soldiers and police officers went to several villages in response to reports that three Afghan government officials had been killed by the Taliban. The police were quickly overwhelmed and asked for backup from American forces.
American officials have said that a review of videos from aircraft weapon sights and exchanges between air crew members and a ground commander established that Taliban fighters had taken refuge in “buildings which were then targeted in the final strikes of the fight,” which went well into the night.
American troop levels in Afghanistan are expected to double, to about 68,000, under President Obama’s new Afghan strategy.
In his previous job as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, General McChrystal oversaw units assigned to capture or kill senior militants. In his appearance before Congress on Tuesday, he was questioned on reports of abuses of detainees held by his commandos.
Under questioning by Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is the committee chairman, General McChrystal said he was uncomfortable with some of the harsh techniques that were officially approved for interrogation. At the time, such approved techniques included stress positions, sleep deprivation and the use of attack dogs for intimidation.
He said that all reports of abuse during his command were investigated, and that all substantiated cases of abuse resulted in disciplinary action. And he pledged to “strictly enforce” American and international standards for the treatment of battlefield detainees if confirmed to the post in Afghanistan.
Under questioning, General McChrystal also acknowledged that the Army had “failed the family” in its mishandling of the friendly-fire death of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the professional football star who enlisted in the Army after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
A final review by a four-star Army general cleared General McChrystal of any wrongdoing, but punished a number of senior officers who were responsible for administrative mistakes in the days after Corporal Tillman’s death. Initially, Army officials said the corporal had been killed by an insurgent ambush, when in fact he had been shot by members of his own Ranger team.
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When the NYT reports good news, it is a man bites dog story :lol:
ABAD, Pakistan — A year ago, the Pakistani public was deeply divided over what to do about its spreading insurgency. Some saw the Taliban militants as fellow Muslims and native sons who simply wanted Islamic law, and many opposed direct military action against them.
Mardan, a town south of Swat, has absorbed many of the people churned up in the fighting. More Photos »
But history moves quickly in Pakistan, and after months of televised Taliban cruelties, broken promises and suicide attacks, there is a spreading sense — apparent in the news media, among politicians and the public — that many Pakistanis are finally turning against the Taliban.
The shift is still tentative and difficult to quantify. But it seems especially profound among the millions of Pakistanis directly threatened by the Taliban advance from the tribal areas into more settled parts of Pakistan, like the Swat Valley. Their anger at the Taliban now outweighs even their frustration with the military campaign that has crushed their houses and killed their relatives.
“It’s the Taliban that’s responsible for our misery,” said Fakir Muhammed, a refugee from Swat, who, like many who had experienced Taliban rule firsthand, welcomed the military campaign to push the insurgents out.
The growing support for the fight against the Taliban could be an important turning point for Pakistan, whose divisions about its Islamic militancy seemed at times to imperil the state itself.
But it is an opportunity that could just as quickly vanish, analysts and politicians warn, if Pakistan’s political leaders fail to kill or capture senior Taliban leaders, to help an estimated three million who have been displaced, or to create a functioning government in areas long ignored by the state. “This is a profound moment in our history,” said Javed Iqbal, the top bureaucrat in the North-West Frontier Province, the area of fighting. “My greatest fear is whether there is sufficient realization of this among people who make decisions.”
On Wednesday, in an audiotape, Osama bin Laden specifically cited the fighting in Swat and Pakistan’s tribal areas, blaming the Obama administration for the campaign and for sowing “new seeds to increase hatred and revenge on America.”
American officials are keenly aware of the potential of the refugee crisis to spawn militancy. Less than a quarter of the $543 million the United Nations has requested for refugees has arrived, according to Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry.
On Thursday, Richard C. Holbrooke, the American special envoy, visited refugee tents as part of a three-day trip to spread the message that the United States was trying to help. The Obama administration had requested an additional $200 million, he said, noting that it was providing more aid than all other countries combined.
Even so, anti-American feelings still run high in Pakistan. Many Pakistanis blame the United States and the war in Afghanistan for their current troubles.
Pakistanis have long supported the Taliban as allies to exert influence in neighboring Afghanistan. Unlike Afghans, they have never lived under Taliban rule, and have been slow to absorb its dangers.
But that is changing, as the experience of those Pakistanis who have now lived under the Taliban has left many disillusioned.
Over more than a year of fighting, the militants moved into Swat, by killing or driving out the wealthy and promising to improve the lives of the poor. Finally, the military agreed to a truce in February that all but ceded Swat to the Taliban and allowed the insurgents to impose Islamic law, or Shariah.
The prospect of Shariah was alluring, said Iftikhar Ehmad, who owns a cellphone shop in Mingora, the most populous city in Swat, because the court system in Swat was so corrupt and ineffective. But the Taliban’s Shariah was not the benign change people had hoped for. Once the Taliban took power, the insurgents seemed interested only in amassing more, and in April they pushed into Buner, a neighboring district 60 miles from Islamabad.
“It was not Shariah, it was something else,” Mr. Ehmad said, jabbing angrily at the air with his finger in the scorching tent camp in the town of Swabi. “It was scoundrel behavior.”
Daily life became degrading. A woman was lashed in public, and a video of her writhing in pain and begging for mercy stirred wide outrage. Taliban bosses ordered people to donate money. Cosmetics shops and girls’ schools were burned.
By the time the military entered Swat last month, local people began leading soldiers to tunnels with weapons and Taliban hiding places in hotels, the military said. “These people, six months back, weren’t willing to share anything,” said a military official who was involved in planning the campaign. “Gradually they’ve been coming out more and more into the open.”
There has also been a change in other parts of Pakistan, like Punjab, the most populous province, where people used to see the problem of militancy as remote, said Rasul Baksh Rais, a professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences. Now the province has become a target of suicide attacks, most recently last week in Lahore. Mr. Rais cited changes in news coverage of the military campaign and a strong stand by the political parties, even some of the religious ones, as evidence of the shift. “The tables are turned against the Taliban now,” he said. “They are marginalized.”
But the underlying causes that have allowed the Taliban to spread — poverty, barely functioning government, lack of upward mobility in society — remain. Mr. Iqbal is now working frantically to fill those gaps. New judges have recently been identified for Swat, he said, and about 3,000 new police officers will be selected this week.
The Pakistani military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss future operations, said troops would have to remain in Swat for at least six months. Support for the Taliban has not evaporated entirely.
Early this week, on a searing hot street in Mardan, a town south of Swat that has absorbed many of the people churned up in the fighting, a tall man with a long beard, Muhammed Tahir Ansari, grew angry when asked whether the refugees approved of the military operation. “It is illogical to think that people would be happy about this tense situation,” he said curtly.
He was from a charity run by Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the principal religious parties that tacitly support the Taliban, and was directing a frenzied effort to distribute water and hand-held fans.
The government, meanwhile, was nowhere in sight.
Irfan Ashraf contributed reporting from Swabi, Pakistan, and Mardan, Pakistan.
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second post of morning:
June 4, 2009
Al Jazeera on Wednesday broadcast an audio message from Osama bin Laden, in which he focused on the state of affairs in Pakistan. Although messages from bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders frequently have mentioned Pakistan, none has devoted so much attention as this one to events there. This is somewhat surprising, considering that jihadists have reached their highest levels of success over the past two years in Pakistan.
Bin Laden’s message arrives amid a serious campaign by Pakistani military forces to root out jihadist fighters in the northern Swat district. The fact that such military force is being applied shows how successfully Taliban fighters have entrenched themselves in Pakistan’s northwest — and also how serious the threat has become for Islamabad. Bin Laden’s message attempted to highlight that success in order to bolster support among Pakistanis for al Qaeda Prime’s message.
In the recording, bin Laden continued to criticize the intrusion of foreign forces, the blocking of the spread of Sharia and the plight of 3 million residents who have been affected by anti-jihadist military operations in the Swat region. He accused the United States, Israel and India of conspiring against Pakistan, and he claimed that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani are fighting against Islam instead of against Pakistan’s true enemies — namely, India. This statement plays on the fears of many Pakistanis, who view India as a much greater strategic threat than militant Islamists fighting from within the state — the same argument the Pakistani military makes to Washington about its reluctance to redeploying troops from the eastern border to deal more effectively with the jihadist threat in the west. By playing on this fear, bin Laden is trying to undermine the Pakistani government’s judgment and prevent greater military pressure from being applied against jihadists.
Bin Laden also compared the refugees affected by the Swat conflict to the Palestinian refugees and 9/11 operatives, who he said had been pushed into action by their oppression at the hands of Western forces and under Western-friendly regimes. This discussion underscored worries that some of the 3 million Swat refugees might go on to join jihadist groups and wage more attacks against the state. Finally, bin Laden portrayed the military operation in Swat as an effort to stamp out of Sharia law — a contentious issue for many conservative Pakistanis — and appeal to a broader audience of Muslim listeners who are not necessarily sympathetic to jihadist tactics.
The utility of bin Laden’s media campaign goes only so far. Bin Laden and the rest of al Qaeda’s apex leadership have been constrained chiefly to the role of an ideological force, relying on others to operate on the actual battlefield. This shift, from the physical to the ideological battlefield, came about mainly because al Qaeda was forced onto the defensive by ground and aerial strikes in Pakistan that have killed dozens of its operatives. Al Qaeda’s financial and communication networks have been severely affected during the U.S.-led war against jihadists, which in turn has greatly undermined the organization’s ability to operate effectively. Al Qaeda Prime has not demonstrated an ability to carry out attacks successfully beyond the South Asia region — and even there, it must depend on affiliates, such as the Pakistani Taliban faction led by Baitullah Mehsud and groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, to conduct operations.
The ability of the Pakistani Taliban and their jihadist allies to undermine the authority of the Pakistani state and foster anarchy in many parts of the country certainly works in al Qaeda’s favor, which benefits from Pakistan’s inability to control large swathes of territory. But while Pakistan has become the poster child for jihadist success, al Qaeda Prime’s role in that success has declined in recent years, as other groups have assumed the mantle of leadership in the jihadist movement.
Domestic groups that enjoy more local support than the largely foreign-born al Qaeda members have adopted the tactics and ideology of al Qaeda,. This has been a significant factor in their success. But bin Laden and al Qaeda Prime also have extremely limited capabilities: Many Pakistanis doubt the organization’s very existence, viewing it as a Western fabrication designed to undermine Islam in the region.
So, while bin Laden has released a message that attempts to cash in on the jihadist advances made in Pakistan in recent years, his group’s significance has declined significantly as other organizations have gained prominence. These other jihadist groups pose a significant threat to Pakistan — a country that is attractive in their eyes at least partly because of its nuclear arsenal. But al Qaeda must work through its local allies to undermine the Pakistani state, as it attempts to create anarchy on a regional level. The success of al Qaeda’s allies will be linked to the effectiveness of Pakistani security forces in maintaining security, while waging an offensive against Taliban forces in the Swat district and other areas that are largely under jihadist control.
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Third post of the morning
Summary
Pakistani forces are continuing to take out Taliban strongholds June 1 in the Swat region of northwestern Pakistan. With the Swat district headquarters, the city of Mingora, under control, the military is beginning to expand operations to other Taliban strongholds. The main question is whether the military will be able to consolidate the gains it has made against the militant Islamist fighters while carrying out increasingly difficult operations.
Analysis
Pakistani forces continued rooting out Taliban strongholds in the Swat region June 1, a day after the military announced it had successfully wrested control of Mingora, the district headquarters of Swat in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), from Taliban hands.
A relatively small number of Taliban forces had settled in inside Mingora to fight Pakistani forces. STRATFOR received reports early in the offensive that these militants were planting mines and explosives, digging trenches and stockpiling weapons and ammunition in preparation for the onslaught. But the militants who remained in Mingora were outnumbered and unable to withstand the military’s concerted conventional assault. The Taliban fighters who had fled Mingora were unable to rejoin, supply or otherwise support the militants still in Mingora, who ultimately were defeated by Pakistani forces.
When it became clear that Taliban reinforcements were cut off from Mingora, Taliban commanders began calling on their compatriots to focus their attention on attacks in other parts of Pakistan, particularly in urban areas of Punjab province. The May 27 bombing directed at the Inter-Services Intelligence agency headquarters in Lahore was partly indicative of this call to action, though local Taliban forces have long been attempting to escalate attacks in this critical province.
(click image to enlarge)
The Pakistani military’s focus on conventional warfare and severe inexperience in counterinsurgency have long contributed to its weakness against the jihadist insurgency. However, the military exhibited operational success when it cut off Taliban supply lines to Mingora by encircling the city from Lower Dir to the west, from Malakand district to the southwest, from Buner to the southeast and from Shangla to the east. This both narrowed the potential escape routes for the remaining fighters and prevented their compatriots from aiding the remaining resistance in the city. By isolating the remaining hard-line fighters, the military was able to bring overwhelming conventional firepower to bear. While the operation certainly was not without consequence, it was an important demonstration of strategy and might against entrenched Taliban forces in an urban area.
The Pakistani military has Mingora under control for now and is making efforts to clear surrounding towns, but the overall Swat offensive is clearly far from over. The operations under way aim to flush out remaining Taliban strongholds in Swat, while a number of Taliban are taking cover in the neighboring districts of Dir, Buner, Malakand and Shangla and have blended in with the refugees.
Pakistani forces have retained the initiative and are pushing outward into the more mountainous northern regions of Swat, where a number of Taliban are believed to be holed up. As of June 1, the military was conducting operations in the valley of Kalam, about 56 miles north of Mingora. The military also is moving into a Taliban stronghold called Charbagh, a town located about 12 miles north of Mingora. The military reportedly has set up checkpoints to surround Charbagh from the north and south in the towns of Khwazakhela and Manglawar, respectively. Military forces reportedly are also shelling Taliban positions in Kabal, west of Mingora, and lower Malam Jabba, located to Mingora’s east. However, it will become increasingly difficult for regular troops and special forces to move deeper into mountainous Taliban strongholds like Kalam, especially as they are also trying to hold their ground in villages that have already been cleared without increasing the number of deployments in the Swat region.
This is the largest military operation ever conducted in Swat, and public morale is high for now, but the Taliban are a patient, resilient force and are capable of regrouping and reclaiming lost territory. The Taliban have demonstrated this ability a number of times in Afghanistan, where they have drifted back into towns previously cleared by NATO troops. Moreover, while the Pakistani military has touted the killings of several midlevel commanders, the senior leadership of the Taliban in Swat remains at large.
There are no indications yet that Pakistan will divert more forces from its eastern border with India to reinforce operations in the northwest. This poses a considerable dilemma, as the military has a strategic interest in capitalizing on its current levels of public support to expand the offensive into far more challenging Taliban strongholds farther south in the tribal badlands of North and South Waziristan. Public support in the Swat area is indeed swinging toward the military for the time being. Locals say they are now able to speak openly against the Taliban, which they did not dare to do in previous months. The local populace also has renewed confidence in the military’s will and ability to stand up to the Taliban.
The big question that remains, then, is whether the military will be able to consolidate the security gains made thus far, develop efficient local security and governance to hold the territory against encroaching Taliban, and do the necessary developmental work to restore the livelihoods of some 3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) forced from their homes by the fighting. Many IDPs are living temporarily in schools and other government buildings or are staying with friends and relatives. Still, the lower-income families who have no choice but to live in very poorly equipped refugee camps that the military has set up are ideal targets for the Taliban’s recruitment efforts, which likely will intensify in the wake of the Swat offensive as the group attempts to replenish its ranks.
The military also knows it will become harder for its forces to remain in the Swat region in the long term. Public discontent over the military presence is likely to increase, and challenges elsewhere will demand the military’s attentions. Operations are under way to bring in local administrators and accelerate the training of local police forces to secure the villages that have been cleared of Taliban thus far, but these police units are already extremely demoralized, underequipped and underpaid, and they will continue to be the primary targets of Taliban forces seeking to retake the territory. Islamabad’s long-term commitment to fighting the deeper sources of public discontent will therefore be critical to Pakistan’s ability to halt the Talibanization process.
With much work to be done in Swat and surrounding areas in the near term, any talk of a similar large-scale offensive in South Waziristan should be met with skepticism. Military and government officials alike are issuing contradictory statements on how quickly the Swat offensive can be wrapped up so the military can shift its focus farther south to Waziristan. The Waziristan operation is still in the planning stages and, while some preliminary skirmishes are taking place in South Waziristan, no clear or unified decision appears to have been made on expanding the military offensive in a meaningful way beyond the Swat region.
Editor’s Note:This analysis originally said that Kabal is east of Mingora and Malam Jabba is west of Mingora. Kabal is west of Mingora, and Malam Jabba is to the east. The error has been corrected.
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U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Is Given More Leeway
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: June 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — The new American commander in Afghanistan has been given carte blanche to handpick a dream team of subordinates, including many Special Operations veterans, as he moves to carry out an ambitious new strategy that envisions stepped-up attacks on Taliban fighters and narcotics networks.
lThe extraordinary leeway granted the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, underscores a view within the administration that the war in Afghanistan has for too long been given low priority and needs to be the focus of a sustained, high-level effort.
General McChrystal is assembling a corps of 400 officers and soldiers who will rotate between the United States and Afghanistan for a minimum of three years. That kind of commitment to one theater of combat is unknown in the military today outside Special Operations, but reflects an approach being imported by General McChrystal, who spent five years in charge of secret commando teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With his promotion approved by the Senate late on Wednesday, General McChrystal and senior members of his command team were scheduled to fly from Washington within hours of the vote, stopping in two European capitals to confer with allies before landing in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
General McChrystal’s confirmation came only after the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, went to the floor to make an impassioned plea for Republicans to allow the action to proceed, fearing that political infighting would delay approval of the appointment. He told of a phone call on Wednesday from Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Mr. Reid said that Admiral Mullen had told him that there was a sense of urgency that General McChrystal be able to go to Afghanistan that very night. He said that according to Admiral Mullen, “McChrystal is literally waiting by an airplane” to go to Afghanistan as the new commander.
Almost a dozen senior military officers provided details about General McChrystal’s plans in interviews after his nomination. The officers insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the effort, and insisted that their comments not be used until the Senate vote, so as not to preempt lawmakers.
For the first time, the American commander in Afghanistan will have a three-star deputy. Picked for the job of running day-to-day combat operations was Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, who has commanded troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Generals McChrystal and Rodriguez have been colleagues and friends for more than 30 years, beginning when both were Ranger company commanders as young captains.
General McChrystal also has picked the senior intelligence adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, to join him in Kabul as director of intelligence there. In Washington, Brig. Gen. Scott Miller, a longtime Special Operations officer now assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff but who had served previously under General McChrystal, is now organizing a new Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell.
Admiral Mullen said that he personally told General McChrystal that “he could have his pick from the Joint Staff. His job, the mission he’s going to command, is that important. Afghanistan is the main effort right now.”
Just how this new team will grapple with the increasingly violent Taliban militancy in Afghanistan is unclear, although General McChrystal has said he will focus on classic counterinsurgency techniques, in particular protecting the population.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has asked General McChrystal to report back within 60 days of taking command with an assessment of the mission and plans for carrying out President Obama’s new strategy.
“Success will be difficult to define but will come in reduction in I.E.D.’s, reduction in poppy, more interdiction of Taliban crossing the border, some anticorruption arrests/exiles, and greater civilian effort possible as a result of a reduction in the threat,” said Maj. Gen. Peter Gilchrist, a retired British officer and a former deputy commander of allied forces in Afghanistan who praised General McChrystal’s appointment.
At the Pentagon, under General McChrystal’s direction, a large area of the Defense Department’s underground, round-the-clock emergency operations facility — called the National Military Command Center — has already been shifted to the Afghan war effort.
The makeover in the American military command is not the only major set of personnel changes in Afghanistan.
The Obama administration has surrounded the new United States ambassador to Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, a recently retired three-star Army general, with three former ambassadors to bolster diplomatic efforts in the country.
Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., a former ambassador to Egypt and the Philippines, has been tapped as General Eikenberry’s deputy. Earl Anthony Wayne, a former ambassador to Argentina, is heading up economic development initiatives in the embassy. Joseph A. Mussomeli, the former ambassador to Cambodia, will be an assistant ambassador in Kabul.
As director of intelligence on the Joint Staff, General Flynn holds a position, called the J-2, that has often been a springboard to a senior executive position across the alphabet soup of American intelligence agencies. But General Flynn, who was General McChrystal’s intelligence boss at the Joint Special Operations Command, has chosen to return to the combat zone.
In a sign of the importance being given to explaining the new strategy to Afghans, across the region and the world, General McChrystal will also be taking the first flag officer to serve as chief of public affairs and communications for the military in Afghanistan.
Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, who has served as director of communications and spokesman in Iraq during the troop increase under Gen. David H. Petraeus, had been scheduled to retire this summer. But officials said he received a personal request from Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to serve in the same capacity for General McChrystal.
David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting from New York, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Austin, Tex.
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By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is revamping its detention policies in Afghanistan, borrowing practices from Iraq that are designed to rehabilitate detainees by teaching them moderate Islam, literacy and vocational skills.
Senior U.S. military officials said the new approach is meant to separate extremist Afghan detainees from more moderate ones. Militant detainees will then be isolated, while the remainder will be given job training and courses in civics, mathematics, and other subjects. U.S. officials say they hope these detainees will eventually be freed.
"You can't lock guys up forever," said a U.S. military official in Afghanistan. "The idea is to change how they see the world and give them the tools that at least give them a chance at a decent life."
The new effort is being temporarily overseen by Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, a Marine who ran a similar effort in Iraq that led to the release of tens of thousands of detainees. It is the latest sign that the Obama administration's new commanders in Afghanistan aim to revitalize the war effort there with methods honed in Iraq.
The shift comes as the Pentagon restructures its management of the war effort and floods Afghanistan with 21,000 American reinforcements. Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates ousted the top American officer in Kabul, Gen. David McKiernan, and replaced him with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is set to assume command Saturday.
On Friday, Mr. Gates said Gen. McChrystal would work to minimize Afghan civilian casualties, a source of growing public anger within Afghanistan.
"Every civilian casualty -- however caused -- is a defeat for us and a setback for the Afghan government," he said during a stop in Brussels.
The new effort is based at the U.S. detention facility at Bagram Air Base, near Kabul. The facility is being renovated to create separate holding areas -- similar to conventional U.S. jails -- for detainees judged to be extremist. Construction is set to be finished this fall.
The remaining detainees will be allowed to take carpentry, sewing and classes in moderate Islamic thought, taught by Afghan contractors and clerics.
Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, alluded to the new approach in a speech in Washington Thursday. He said it reflected lessons learned in Iraq, where moderate and extremist detainees were for years held in the same facilities, giving militants ample opportunity to win over new recruits.
"We had created terrorist university," he said. "We had the baddest of the bad guys right in with the not-quite-so-bad guys, and they were recruiting al Qaeda in Iraq operatives."
Gen. Stone, a Marine reservist who has run software firms in civilian life, worked to change those dynamics in Iraq by separating out hard-core detainees, which he saw as a minority of the total population, and rehabilitating the remaining detainees.
"Make no mistake, detainees operation is certainly a battlefield," Gen. Stone wrote in a strategy document for Iraq. "It is the battlefield of the mind, and it is one of the most important fights in counterinsurgency."
Senior military officials said Gen. Stone and a small group of other military personnel from Task Force 134, which ran detainee operations in Iraq, will be at Bagram for several weeks conducting a broad review of American detainee operations.
As in Iraq, part of his work is designed to improve the public reputation of the detention facilities themselves. Army investigators found evidence that two Afghan detainees -- one a taxi driver arrested after driving near the base -- were beaten to death at Bagram in 2002 by U.S. personnel. The incidents were later featured in a documentary film, "Taxi to the Dark Side."
More recently, Bagram has been at the center of a legal battle over detainee rights. A U.S. district court judge ruled that non-Afghans seized overseas and then brought to Bagram had the right to challenge their detentions in American courts. The Obama administration is appealing the ruling.
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Perfectly reasonable policy to me- maybe we should be applying it more often domestically.
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The other Islamist threat in Pakistan
THE DANGER of an Islamist takeover of Pakistan is real. But it does not come from the Taliban guerrillas now battling the Pakistan Army in the Swat borderlands. It comes from a proliferating network of heavily armed Islamist militias in the Punjab heartland and major cities directed by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a close ally of Al Qaeda, which staged the terrorist attack last November in Mumbai, India.
Pakistan’s failure to crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba militias and the recent release of two of its leaders jailed after the Mumbai attack led to an angry exchange on Monday at a meeting in Russia between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari.
No new US aid commitments should be made to Islamabad until it takes decisive action to disarm Lashkar-e-Taiba in accordance with Article 256 of the Pakistan Constitution, which bars private militias. The administration wants to provide $3 billion in new military aid on top of the $10 billion already showered on Pakistan since 2001, together with a five-year, $7.5 billion program of economic aid. Surprisingly, while congressional leaders are seeking to attach a variety of conditions to the aid package, they have so far ignored the critical issue of the militias.
Disarming Lashkar-e-Taiba should be the top US priority in Pakistan because it would greatly reduce the possibility of a coup by Islamist sympathizers in the armed forces. The closet Islamists in the Army and the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) are not likely to risk a coup in Islamabad unless they can count on armed support from Lashkar-e-Taiba and its allies to help them consolidate their grip on the countryside.
Equally important, a strong US stand on Lashkar-e-Taiba is necessary to defuse India-Pakistan tensions that could lead to another war and to sustain the improvement now taking place in US relations with India, a rising power eight times larger than Pakistan.
New Delhi fears a repeat of the Mumbai massacre, in which 166 were killed, and views US readiness to pressure Islamabad on the militias as a litmus test of US friendship.
To be sure, the Pakistan government did make a show of cracking down on Lashkar-e-Taiba after the Mumbai tragedy. It banned it, placed two of its leaders under house arrest, and jailed and arrested six of its operatives on charges of “facilitating a terrorist act.’’ But the two leaders were released on June 2. The government stopped short of breaking up the militias and destroying the weapons stockpiles at their four training camps near Muridke and Muzaffarabad, and it has yet to prosecute the six prisoners or to arrest Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, identified by US and Indian intelligence sources as the ringleader of the Mumbai attack, who is still at large.
Under a new name, Jawad-ud-Dawa, Lashkar-e-Taiba has continued to operate its militias, its FM radio station, and hundreds of seminaries where jihadis are trained, in addition to its legitimate charities and educational institutions. When the UN designated Jawat-ud-Dawa as a terrorist group, the Pakistan government issued another ban and Jawat-ud-Dawa changed its name to the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation.
The “foundation’’ now has 2,000 members doing relief work in war-torn Swat with the approval of the Pakistan government, amid credible reports that it is using its humanitarian cover to recruit new members as it did after the 2002 Kashmir earthquake.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is on the Sunni side of the Sunni-Shia doctrinal divide in Islam and has its deepest roots in a 20,000-square-mile swath of southern Punjab between Jhang and Bahawalpur, where it champions the cause of landless Sunni peasants indentured to big Shia landowners.
“It is common knowledge that the local police are in their pocket in much of that area,’’ retired diplomat Tariq Fatemi, a former ambassador to Washington, told me recently.
Sunni extremist groups have been active in the Punjab since the creation of Pakistan and became the nucleus of Lashkar-e-Taiba when the ISI, with US funding, built up a jihadi movement to fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba and key allies such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi still get ISI support and have close ties with other intelligence agencies, but how much and how close remain uncertain.
Like Al Qaeda to Americans, Lashkar-e-Taiba is a powerful emotive symbol to the 1.2 billion people of India. Hindu nationalists use this symbolism to fan fears of another Mumbai and to step up demands for reprisals against Pakistan. Increasingly, they are criticizing the United States for giving Pakistan money and weaponry without monitoring whether they are being used to strengthen Pakistan forces on the Indian border.
Why, they ask, should the United States give another $10.5 billion in aid, on top of the $14 billion already provided since 2001, to a government in Islamabad that is unwilling or unable to disarm home-grown terrorists who threaten India?
Why, indeed.
Selig S. Harrison is author of “Pakistan, The State of the Union,’’ a report just published by the Center for International Policy, where he is director of the Asia program.
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http://pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=224172&Itemid=33
Best-selling Co-author of “Three Cups of Tea” and Noble Peace Prize Nominee to Hold Event on the U.S.S. Midway Museum-
Greg Mortenson, co-author of the New York Times best-selling book “Three Cups of Tea” and current Nobel Peace Prize nominee, will be in San Diego on Wednesday night, July 1st, to continue his bridge building efforts with the military community by addressing a largely military audience on the U.S.S. Midway Museum. The event will also be open to the general public with proceeds donated to the Central Asia Institute, Greg’s non-profit organization, with the mission to promote and support community-based education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
A former world-class mountain climber who has devoted the past 16 years to building schools in Central Asia, Mortenson has attracted the notice (and the readership) of both General David Petraeus and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
With the situation in both Afghanistan and Pakistan becoming more problematic, the military leadership is increasingly gravitating to Mortenson’s advice on how to build stronger relationships with tribal leaders and village elders – a key to winning the “hearts and minds” aspect of the conflict in the region.
Since 1993, Mortenson has built 78 schools, which are currently educating over 28,000 children with an emphasis on teaching girls. “If you educate a boy,” says Mortenson, “you educate an individual, but if you educate a girl, you educate a community.”
Mortenson has had more than his share of close calls while leading this unique effort. In 1996, he survived an eight-day kidnapping and in 2003, managed to escape a firefight between feuding Afghan warlords by hiding for eight hours under a pile of putrid animal hides. Readers of his best-selling book (122 weeks on the NYT best seller list, #1 for 41 weeks, translated into 29 languages, with a children and Young Readers edition available as well) gain an intimate look into his efforts and challenges and no doubt feel an admiration for his passion and persistence.
In the past two years, the Taliban have shut down 500 schools in Afghanistan and 175 in Pakistan, almost all of them schools for girls. But only one school built by Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute has been attacked. That school was reopened after two days via a counterattack by a warlord whose own daughters were attending students. The key difference has been in Mortenson’s approach to building and maintaining the schools – with a keen understanding and respect for local culture and authority.
“Education is a long-term solution to fanaticism,” says Colonel Christopher Kolenda, who commanded an Army brigade in a part of eastern Afghanistan where Mortenson founded two schools. “As Greg points out so well, ignorance breeds hatred and violence.”
Initially resistant to working with the military, despite being an Army veteran himself, Mortenson has rethought his approach. “I get criticism from the NGO community, who tell me I shouldn’t talk to the military at all,” he said. “But the military has a willingness to change and adapt that you don’t see in other parts of the government.”
Tickets for the event will be $25.00 purchased in advance at www.tix.com. Search on keyword “Mortenson” and click on the July 1 event. Active duty and retired military personnel can reserve Free tickets by e-mailing July1Midway@gmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it by June 24th (military ID will be required).
For more information, visit:
http://www.gregmortenson.com – Greg Mortenson
http://www.threecupsoftea.com - book
http://www.ikat.org - Central Asia Institute
Photo Editors:
Free editorial images available on. https://www.ikat.org/media-and-press/image-gallery/
Literary/Book Editors:
"Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace and Build Nations ... One School At A Time," by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin; ISBN: 0670034827/Viking/Hardcover/338 pages/$25.95.
Contact information:
Event contact: Gretchen Breuner, GJBB@COX.NET This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Press contact: Cynthia Guiang, CG Communications, 858-793-2471, Cynthia@cgcommunications.com This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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Even today the Pak army is focussing only on the "bad talibunnies". problem is that the "good talibs" from the puki perspective, are bad from the US perspective..so I can see no benefit from the continued drain of US money in Pukistan. Pak needs to focus on all Talibs. As a reminder the bad Talibs are anti-Pak and active inside Pak, the good Talibs (eg Haqqani group) are against the US and active in Afghanistan. From one of the blogs I frequent...
If Estimates of Taliban Forces Are Correct, Pakistan Cannot Win
For many years, each time the Pakistan Army has said it lacks the resources to fight the Taliban, at Orbat.com we've engaged in rude sniggering. The Pakistan Army has close to 30 division-equivalents worth of troops, 80% infantry. It is one of the largest armies in the world. Its men are long-service professionals - long service means 10, 15, and 20 years for the soldiers and NCOs. It is well-trained, reasonably well equipped by Third World standards and well led.
How then could Pakistan claim it cannot fight the Taliban?
Of course, it didn't/doesn't want to fight the Taliban because even today with the exception of Baitullah Mesud whom the Pakistan Army says it is hunting, the other three major commanders are pro-Government, as are a host of minor commanders.
But from www.longwarjournal.org June 17, 2009 we learn that this Mesud gentleman has 30,000 fighters under his command and another 20,000 in allied/associated groups. The three other major commanders have 50,000 fighters. AQ in Pakistan has 10,000. This makes 110,000 fighters, and it doesn't take too much math to calculate that at 600 fighters per Pakistan army battalion (rifle and weapons companies) the Pakistan army has 130,000 infantry to the Taliban's 100,000. Of course, that doesn't count the Pakistan Army's approximately 130 or so towed artillery battalions and the approximately 300 or so fighter aircraft in the Pakistan Air Force.
No one can argue that the Pakistan Army has firepower superiority. But the Taliban's forces, for all they operate in units as large as brigades, do not fight a conventional fight when facing the Pakistan Army. They are guerrillas, and while that firepower comes in handy if the Taliban commander makes a mistake, it is of basically no help except to make holes in the ground and kill civilians.
So Pakistan could send every single soldier it has facing India to the west, it is absolutely, completely, totally not in a position to fight the Taliban and win. Even the US, for all its phenomenal surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence, mobility, and firepower resources cannot win at such odds.
So - something we'd better get used to as a concept - even if Pakistan suddenly got religion and decided to go after the Taliban, it is not going to win. You are going to get one ghastly mess that will, within a year's of fighting, destroy what remains of Pakistan's economy and unity because all out wars inflict unbearable stress on any country, leave alone a 3rd world nation riven by ethnic divides on every side.
Now, Pakistan is not going to get religion. It's going after the Mesud because the US has given the 10-centimer diameter steel shaft and because it seems the Pakistan Army has decided to come down on the Government's side - at least for now. You must keep in mind the Army's leadership is totally opportunistic. At any rate, its not going to go after the other commanders because they are vital strategic assets against the US in Afghanistan and India.
The prospect of taking on the Mesud and his 50,000 own/allied fighters is bad enough, AQ will have to join in because the Pakistan Army is intruding into its safe havens. Now here's what's really scary: the Pakistanis are doing their level to keep the "good" Taliban out of this battle and perhaps even get some of them to help with eliminating Mesud. But, as Bill Roggio at LWJ says, basing his opinion on local information and media the good Taliban are tied by promises and ethnic loyalties to the Mesud fellow. The Pakistan army can say all it wants "we are only targeting an anti-Pakistan person", and it is true in the Frontier money does run thicker than blood, but if for no reason other than that the "good" Taliban have to wonder if Mesud is knocked out the Pakistan state is not going to go after them to bring them under control they way they were under control before the fall of Kabul in 1996.
So: to sum up. Mesud and AQ have 60,000 fighters which is way too many for the entire Pakistan Army to take on to begin with. The whole kit and kaboodle has 110,000 fighters. This is not a winning situation no matter which way anyone looks at it.
Here's more bad news: according to the Indians, Pakistan has deployed 22 brigades against the Taliban. That's almost a third of its infantry, and people, you have to realize that so far the Taliban haven't really put up up a fight. For all the drama the ISPR tries to keep going, if 390 Pakistan soldiers/Frontier Corps have been killed, that's 65 a week. That's not a war, its a bunch of skirmishes.
As someone who has closely studied the Pakistan Army for forty years, Editor can testify that by its lights, the Pakistan army is doing what it can.
Because - please don't forget - there's the equivalent of 40 powerful Indian divisions sitting to the East of the Kashmir Cease Fire Line and International Border, excluding the minimum defense against China and the 70,000 specialized CI troops - who are all regular soldiers, by the way, not paramilitary. You want paramilitary, India can deploy 500,000 against Pakistan if it needs to.
Beyond a point, if anyone thinks the US is going to be able to restrain India indefinitely so that Pakistan can shift all its infantry to the west is plain dreaming. Study the history of the subcontinent for just the last 1000 years and you will see this is just the right time for Delhi to start preparing to bring India's fractious and turbulent northwest under control. In case someone doesn't get it, India's northwest includes ALL of Pakistan.
The Pakistanis would have to be absolute lunatics to even think of moving many more troops to the west. Now if an Editor as an Indian citizen is saying that, think what the Pakistanis will say if the US wants them to move more troops. And that's if they want an all-out war with the Taliban that they cannot win. And they don not want such a war.
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My best guess is, we can slow the pace, but not the outcome (talibanization of Pak). What frustrates me is that we are not seeking genuine change from Pak, but are satisfied with cosmetic change to show the US populace that Obama is getting things done. So what exactly is being achieved in Pak. A few random thoughts.
1. IDP's (internally displaced people): About 2 million IDP's have been generated, their homes have been flattened by indiscriminate use of Pak fire power, more civilians have been killed than Taliban. It is guaranteed that these 2 million will form the seed for the next generation of talibunny recruits.
2. Many of the soldiers who fight the Taliban have their homes in the pashtoon areas. They do not appreciate seeing their homes blown up. If Pak instead utilises punjabi troops (pakjabi in Indian vernacular), then it generates a punjabi-pashtoon ethnic divide. Of note the army is considered to be mostly Punjabi. This is corroborated by reports in the media (India Today) that many are deserting their units.
3. The claimed victories in Swat, remain to be confirmed. They are fighting a guerilla force, who disappear into the mountains when the going gets tough. Its guaranteed that the Talibs will be back, once the army withdraws. I dont see the army maintaining a perpetual presence in NWFP.
4. The US is asking Pak to go after the "bad guys". This is against Pak national interest. Their military doctrine talks about strategic depth in Afganistan and the use of proxies to fight their wars with India. This is not going to happen, unless the US is willing to threaten break up of Pak.
5. Note the motto of the Pak army "Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabilillah", translated as "Faith, Piety and Fight in the path of God". The army is doing jihad, the talib's are doing jihad. So the question to the common abdul is, who is the purest of them all. Also of note "pakistan" means land of pure. In this contest of purity, the Talibs are considered purer. Is it then any wonder that the Pak army hesitates to fight the Taliban mano a mano, but rather just lobs bombs on them from a distance.
6. If we look at the madarassa curriculum, its full of hateful propaganda. Unless they can change the curriculum, there will be no shortage of little mujahids. There is no one in Pak who is powerful enough to do that.
7. Look at the internal contradictions in Pakistan, Balochistan is simmering, The NWFP/FATA appears lost.
We cannot win the AFPak war this way. We got out of Iraq with atleast a semblance of a draw or perhaps even a victory. The difference was that in Iraq, the US did the heavy lifting and the fighting. In the FakAp region, we are using the Pukes as our proxy. If history is any guide, the Pukes will take the money, and do the minimum necessary. They will never go for the kill. Why would they kill the golden goose ?. If they knock off the Talibs, who will pay them for holding a gun to their head ?.
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Afghan fight shows challenge for U.S. troops
Bloody summer in forecast as Washington tries to turn around the war
The Associated Press
updated 11:44 a.m. PT, Sun., June 21, 2009
NOW ZAD, Afghanistan - Missiles, machine guns and strafing runs from fighter jets destroyed much of a Taliban compound, but the insurgents had a final surprise for a pair of U.S. Marines who pushed into the smoldering building just before nightfall.
As the two men walked up an alley, the Taliban opened fire from less than 15 yards, sending bullets and tracer fire crackling inches past them. They fled under covering fire from their comrades, who hurled grenades at the enemy position before sprinting to their armored vehicles.
The assault capped a day of fighting Saturday in the poppy fields, orchards and walled compounds of southern Afghanistan between newly arrived U.S. Marines and well dug-in Taliban fighters. It was a foretaste of what will likely be a bloody summer as Washington tries to turn around a bogged-down, eight-year-old war with a surge of 21,000 troops.
"This was the first time we pushed this far. I guess they don't like us coming into their back door," said Staff Sgt. Luke Medlin, who was sweeping the alley for booby traps as Marine Gunner John Daly covered him from behind when the Taliban struck.
"And now they know we will be back," said Medlin, from Richmond, Ind.
Symbol of what went wrong
The fighting was on the outskirts of Now Zad, a town that in many ways symbolizes what went wrong in Afghanistan and the enormous challenges facing the United States. It is in Helmand province, a center of the insurgency and the opium poppy trade that helps fund it.
Like much of Afghanistan, Now Zad and the surrounding area were largely peaceful after the 2001 invasion. The United Nations and other Western-funded agencies sent staff to build wells and health clinics.
But in 2006 — with American attention focused on Iraq — the insurgency stepped up in the south. Almost all the city's 35,000 people fled, along with the aid workers.
British and Estonian troops, then garrisoned in Now Zad, were unable to defeat the insurgents. They were replaced last year by a small company of about 300 U.S. Marines, who live in a base in the center of the deserted town and on two hills overlooking it.
The Taliban hold much of the northern outskirts and the orchards beyond, where they have entrenched defensive positions, tunnels and bunkers.
The Marines outnumber the Taliban in the area by at least 3-to-1 and have vastly superior weapons but avoid offensive operations because they lack the manpower to hold territory once they take it. There are no Afghan police or troops here to help.
"We don't have the people to backfill us. Why clear something that we cannot hold?" said Lt. Col. Patrick Cashman, head of the battalion in charge of Now Zad and other districts in Helmand and Farah provinces, where some 10,000 Marines are slowly spreading out in the first wave of the troop surge.
'A bad situation'
Cashman said the Marines did not intend to allow the Taliban free rein in parts of Now Zad, but was unable to give any specific plans or time frame for addressing what he acknowledged is "a bad situation."
Saturday's mission was aimed at gathering intelligence and drawing a response from enemy positions close to a street called "Pakistani alley" because of one-time reports suggesting fighters from across the border had dug in there.
"We're bait," one Marine said as the convoy of five vehicles left the base at 8 a.m. and trundled north.
It quickly came across a roadside bomb — the kind which killed a member of the company on June 6 and has wounded at least seven others in the four weeks since the company has been stationed here. An engineer was dispatched and came back an hour later carrying the parts of the bomb — two 82mm mortar shells attached to a pressure plate.
Heading to inspect suspected tunnel
The vehicles were heading to inspect a suspected tunnel when the Taliban struck, firing mortars that landed close by. Machine gunners atop the vehicles and troops in an open-sided truck scanned the scene for plumes from weapons fire.
"We're taking fire from both sides here!" Lance Cpl. James Yon yelled.
"Hit 'em Yon!" came the call from below.
Hours of exchanges followed, with the Taliban opening fire with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, machine-gun fire and rockets from the orchards or inside walled compounds.
A mortar punctured the tire of a Humvee; a grenade swooshed just over a troop truck.
"That was close," Daly said. "If they were a better shot, we'd be canceling Christmas."
Each time the insurgents attacked, the Marines returned fire if they could spot their foes or radioed in coordinates for air strikes.
"Bombs are away," a voice crackled over the radio as Dutch fighter jets dropped laser-guided bombs on a compound, sending clouds of dust mushrooming into the air. The planes then strafed the position, leaving a line of fire and destruction 50 yards long. Other times mortar teams back at the base in Now Zad pummeled enemy positions.
Final close call
The Marines left their vehicles twice. Each time, they came under attack as they entered maze-like, high-walled compounds with ill-fitting, aging wooden doors and small windows, ideal for sniper positions.
In the late afternoon, U.S. forces fired two missiles from 55 miles away to hit a compound being used by the attackers. Minutes later, Marine Harrier jets strafed the compound, setting fire to a wheat field outside it but sparing a poppy patch — an irony not lost on the troops.
The Marines got their final close call as they assessed the compound for damage.
After blowing a hole through the wall, Medlin and Daly were met by a hail of bullets as they pressed up an alley.
"Gunner, are you good? You need to come back!" one Marine shouted into the gathering gloom. "I'll cover you!"
The two man leapt to safety. Daly sprained his ankle as he leapt from a wall, but that was the only Marine injury.
Twenty minutes after the troops withdrew, two Cobra helicopters fired a Hellfire missile that streaked at a 45-degree angle across the night sky into the building, then bombed and strafed it, igniting a blaze.
"Payback time," one Marine muttered in the dark of a truck; cheers erupted in another vehicle.
There were no confirmed Taliban casualties, but observers later spotted a funeral, and video images suggested others were killed in the aerial attacks.
Capt. Zachary Martin said such sustained contact sent the militants a message that they were not safe anywhere and bought the Marines — and the few civilians in the area — some "security space."
"We kicked the snot out of these guys," he told the Marines on their return to base, some 14 hours after they left.
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June 22, 2009
With a Plan and a Rope, Captives Escaped Taliban
By ADAM B. ELLICK
KABUL, Afghanistan
An Afghan journalist who was held captive by the Taliban for more than seven months along with a New York Times reporter revealed details on Sunday of a nighttime escape that included weeks of careful plotting, taking advantage of weary guards and dropping down a 20-foot wall with a rope.
The Afghan journalist, Tahir Ludin, 35, said in an interview that the escape early Saturday from the second floor of a Taliban compound in North Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, was a desperate attempt by two severely demoralized reporters who believed that the Taliban were not seriously negotiating and would hold them indefinitely.
Mr. Ludin and David Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at The Times, along with their driver, Asadullah Mangal, were abducted outside Kabul on Nov. 10 as Mr. Rohde traveled to interview a Taliban commander for a book he was writing about Afghanistan.
Mr. Ludin said that he and Mr. Rohde had been threatened with death by their captors. The past two to three months were so “hopeless,” Mr. Ludin said, that he considered committing suicide with a large knife. Mr. Rohde, who was reuniting with his family on Sunday, confirmed the accuracy of Mr. Ludin’s account but declined to comment further.
The three men were abducted on a road just a few minutes from where they planned to meet the Taliban commander, known as Abu Tayeb, in Logar Province, southeast of Kabul.
Mr. Ludin had previously escorted two other foreign journalists to safe interviews with the commander, and during those meetings the two established a degree of trust. Mr. Ludin said Mr. Tayeb had betrayed that trust by directly orchestrating the kidnapping.
The reporters and the driver were shuttled to various houses in Pakistan’s tribal areas while they were imprisoned, Mr. Ludin said.
As their captivity dragged on, he said, he and Mr. Rohde began plotting their escape by surveying the compound and its surroundings.
Once, Mr. Ludin said, he faked illness to visit a doctor outside the complex. Other times he asked his captors if he could watch local cricket matches — a sport he pretended to adore — so that he could study potential escape routes.
Still, it seemed impossible to escape from a town controlled by Taliban and foreign militants.
On Friday evening, in a planned bid to keep their captors awake as late as possible to ensure that the men would eventually sleep soundly, Mr. Ludin challenged the militants who slept beside them in the same room to a local board game.
When at last the games ended at midnight, the journalists waited for the militants to fall asleep.
At 1 a.m., Mr. Rohde woke Mr. Ludin and sneaked out of the room. Mr. Ludin recited several verses of the Koran and followed him. They made their way to the second floor, and Mr. Ludin got to the top of a five-foot-high wall.
When Mr. Ludin looked down, he said, he was greeted by an unnerving view: a 20-foot drop.
Mr. Rohde handed Mr. Ludin a rope that he had found two weeks earlier and had hidden from the guards. They fastened the rope to the wall, and Mr. Ludin lowered himself along the rope before unclenching his fists for good.
He crashed to the ground, leaving him with a sprained right foot and other injuries. He cut his foot, he said, pointing to his swollen and heavily bruised ankle and his bandaged big toe.
Mr. Rohde then lowered himself along the wall and jumped down without injury, Mr. Ludin said.
When asked why their captives did not hear the thump of their impact with the ground, Mr. Ludin said they waited to make the escape attempt on a night when the city had electrical power. At night, an old, noisy air-conditioner that ran masked the sound.
As the two men walked away, dogs barked at them from nearby compounds. At one point, barking stray dogs rushed at them in the darkness. To their surprise, no Taliban members emerged from nearby houses.
After 15 minutes, Mr. Ludin said, they arrived at a Pakistani militia post that he had spotted during one of his daytime trips outside the house. In the darkness, a half-dozen guards who suspected they were suicide bombers aimed rifles at them and shouted for them to raise their hands and not move.
“They said, ‘If you move, we are going to shoot you,’ ” he said.
Mr. Ludin said he was shivering in the darkness, and it took 15 minutes of anxious conversation to convince the guards that he had been kidnapped along with an American journalist — who hardly looked the part, with his long beard and Islamic attire.
The men were eventually allowed in the compound, ordered to take off their shirts, searched, blindfolded and taken to the base’s headquarters. After Pakistani officials confirmed their identities, they were treated well. Later that day, they were transferred to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, and to an American military base outside Kabul.
While telling his story, Mr. Ludin showed flashes of his exuberant personality, as when he waved his arms and proclaimed “the food was excellent,” or when he joked about the gray hairs he had grown since his abduction. He spoke with his seven children gathered around him.
But more often than not, Mr. Ludin spoke in a burst of sentences and alluded several times to being in a confused mental state. On three occasions, he mistakenly referred to a visiting journalist as “David.”
Mr. Ludin said the driver, Mr. Mangal, appeared to be overwhelmed by fear of his captors and had not participated in the planning or the escape.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/wo...2tahir.html?hp
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The Pakistani military is coming closer to launching a full-scale assault against Taliban militants in South Waziristan, one of the lawless tribal areas in Pakistan’s northwest where the Taliban are most deeply entrenched. The offensive will be Islamabad’s second attempt in recent months to strike at the roots of an insurgency that has advanced beyond the fringes of the country to threaten its very core.
The first attempt took place in Swat, a critical district that is too close to the capital for comfort. There, a failed cease-fire with the Taliban forced the government to rethink its policy of preferring compromise to confrontation. In April and May, Pakistani air and ground forces moved into the region, destroying some of the insurgency’s infrastructure and reclaiming urban areas. The operation was a dubious success: It displaced millions of people and stirred up local resentment that could feed into the insurgency, while requiring a long-term commitment from Pakistani troops.
Operation Salvation Path, as the developing assault in Waziristan is called, is Islamabad’s next step in taking the fight to the Taliban’s largest grouping. It is the logical continuation of the campaign, after having gained some momentum in Swat. But this time the challenge is far more formidable. Unlike Swat, North and South Waziristan historically were relatively autonomous regions, ruled by traditional tribal leaders. It was not until 2004 that the Pakistani state, goaded by the United States, even attempted to show force in the region. In Swat, militants were more local in their interests and emerged mostly because of a power vacuum that was waiting to be filled — whereas the Taliban commanders who established themselves in Waziristan took advantage of the region’s rugged terrain to hide out and plan attacks against high-level targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to train militants from around the world. The Taliban in Waziristan have withstood several attacks by the Pakistani army: Each time they have fought the army to a standstill, reinforcing their position. And while Swat is nestled within the North-West Frontier Province, giving the Pakistanis a better chance at entrapping the militants, Waziristan has a long, traversible boundary with Afghanistan that allows militants ample supply and escape routes.
The Pakistani army will confront these and a host of other obstacles as it attempts to subdue a large area with inadequate forces — while also trying to save face with the public as refugees spill out of Waziristan and collateral damage increases. The greater challenge is not winning the immediate battle, but consolidating gains and building institutions of governance and security that will last.
Waziristan’s location along the Afghan border calls attention to the fact that the ongoing offensive is not just an internal Pakistani issue, but a wider geopolitical one. The timing of the army offensives coincides with a broader shift in U.S. and NATO strategy against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The latest unit to deploy as part of the U.S. surge in Afghanistan will focus its efforts in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, far from North and South Waziristan. But the question is what will happen when Taliban militants from Waziristan are pushed into Afghanistan by the Pakistani assault from the east, leading U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan to step up operations. Will the parallel counterinsurgency campaigns force loosely affiliated elements of Taliban to coalesce into a coherent fighting force, or wedge them apart as each element focuses more intently on its own objectives and survival?
As Pakistani soldiers are preparing to move into Waziristan, U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones is planning a trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India this week. The United States is in an interesting position: Pakistan is finally doing what Washington has wanted it to do all along — spearheading attacks directly against Taliban positions on its side of the border, so as to deprive Taliban and al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan places of refuge and to secure supply lines essential to the U.S.-led effort. While the Pakistanis are acting out of fear for their own security, rather than out of sudden eagerness to earn their billions of dollars in U.S. assistance, their moves are nevertheless an indication of the fighting spirit Washington needs to see if its own plans are to have even a chance at success.
But the deeper worry for the United States is this: It is by no means a foregone conclusion — or even necessarily likely — that the Pakistani military will be able to succeed in the mission at hand. There are too many variables, boiling down to how much of a fight the militants put up and whether Islamabad will be capable of a sustained campaign that will carry a high rate of attrition and exact high political costs. And Washington knows that its own plans — which extend much farther than South Asia, and well beyond the next two years — will be affected by Islamabad’s performance now.
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Wow, finally a BHO policy I can get behind:
U.S. reverses Afghan drug policy
Sat Jun 27, 2009 10:06am EDT
By Phil Stewart and Daniel Flynn
TRIESTE, Italy (Reuters) - Washington is to dramatically overhaul its Afghan anti-drug strategy, phasing out opium poppy eradication, the U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan told allies on Saturday.
Richard Holbrooke, attending a G8 conference on stabilizing Afghanistan, also discussed efforts to support its August 20 election. Washington has nearly doubled its troops to combat a growing Taliban insurgency and provide security for the vote.
"The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work," Holbrooke told Reuters after a series of bilateral meetings in Italy.
"We are not going to support crop eradication. We're going to phase it out," he said. The emphasis would instead be on intercepting drugs and chemicals used to make them, and going after drug lords.
He said some crop eradication may still be allowed, but only in limited areas.
Afghanistan supplies more than 90 percent of the world's heroin.
Despite the millions of dollars spent on counter-narcotics efforts, drug production kept rising dramatically until last year -- U.N. figures indicate Afghanistan's opiate output has risen more than 40-fold since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Holbrooke told delegates the United States planned to cut back funding for eradication while allocating several hundred million dollars to support legal crop cultivation.
The head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime, told Reuters the old U.S. eradication strategy had been "a sad joke."
"Sad because many, many Afghan policemen and soldiers ... have been killed and only about 5,000 hectares were eradicated, about 3 percent of the volume," Antonio Maria Costa said.
Iran declined to attend the event but Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime, told Reuters it was strongly committed to a regional effort to tackle trafficking from Afghanistan and had begun joint counter-narcotics operations with Afghan and Pakistani authorities.
"This is very new, it has not happened in the past."
U.S. President Barack Obama has put Afghanistan and Pakistan at the center of his foreign agenda and launched a new strategy aimed at defeating al Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan.
The 45 nations and multilateral organizations at the conference issued a statement pledging to look at ways to boost humanitarian aid to Pakistan, where nearly 2 million people have been displaced by fighting.
Holbrooke said allies were not doing enough.
"The U.S. is by far the largest contributor (of aid) to the refugee relief crisis in Pakistan. I don't mind that ... But other countries are not doing the right amount in my view," he said, adding some foreign ministers had told him privately that their countries could do more.
CRUCIAL MOMENT
Afghanistan's upcoming vote is seen as a crucial moment for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and for Washington and delegates -- with Iranian post-election turmoil fresh in their minds -- stressed the importance of it being free, fair and credible.
Karzai called on the Taliban and their allies on Saturday to vote rather than attempt to disrupt the polls, a call applauded by Frattini, who said Arab League and Gulf countries were "particularly interested" in encouraging them to vote.
Holbrooke said senior members of the U.S. government were calling the vote "the most important event of the year."
"The fairness of those elections will determine the credibility and legitimacy of the government. We have just seen a spectacularly bad example just next door in Iran," he said.
"And in these situations, governance becomes more difficult. So, at the end of the process, we would like to see a government elected by its people in a way that is credible and viewed as legitimate by the people and the international community."
Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told Reuters that Kabul aimed for a free and fair election, but added: "We have to recognize the reality, and the reality of Afghanistan, regarding violence, regarding the weak state."
Holbrooke said it was too soon for Pakistan to declare victory in its Swat valley, where the army has driven back Taliban insurgents.
"The true test is when the refugees go back to Swat. Will they have security? Will they be protected?," he said.
"Will the army be able to keep the Taliban from coming back down over the hills? And the bill for reconstruction in Swat is going to be enormous -- over a billion dollars, maybe over 2 billion."
(Additional reporting by Adrian Croft; Writing by Phil Stewart; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSLR12716720090627?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true
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Well, if we are not going to decriminalize/legalize opium/heroin here, the logic eludes me.
To repeat a point I have raised here various times for quite some time now, if we are unwilling/unable to go after a/the primary source of money to the enemy, WTF are we doing? WTF is our strategy?!? These crops are in plain site in an arid climate (i.e. no coverage by a jungle canopy), so as best as I can tell BO's "new" policy has been our policy all along.
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I don't see how alienating Afghanis in the hinterlands serve our ends, and if the Taliban is no longer needed to protect and distribute a product it certainly doesn't serve their ends. I've said it before: it'd probably be cheaper to buy all the opium and burn it than to maintain the present course. Interdiction hasn't worked in Mexico with pot, didn't work in Columbia with cocaine, and continues to fail in Southeast Asia. Don't see how continuing on a failed course does any good, and if it means the US starts working toward decriminalization--as it appears it may be--I might have found a policy with which to agree with BHO on.
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Its the NY Times, so caveat lector:
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QASIM PULA, Pakistan — Islamist charities and the United States are competing for the allegiance of the two million people displaced by the fight against the Taliban in Swat and other parts of Pakistan — and so far, the Islamists are in the lead.
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Mehmood Hassa, president of Al-Khidmat Foundation, gave a speech to displaced people living with host families in Yar Hussain in Swabi District in June.
The New York Times
Two million people have been displaced by the fight against the Taliban in Swat and other parts of Pakistan.
Although the United States is the largest contributor to a United Nations relief effort, Pakistani authorities have refused to allow American officials or planes to deliver the aid in the camps for displaced people. The Pakistanis do not want to be associated with their unpopular ally.
Meanwhile, in the absence of effective aid from the government, hard-line Islamist charities are using the refugee crisis to push their anti-Western agenda and to sour public opinion against the war and the United States.
Last week, a crowd of men, the heads of households uprooted from Swat, gathered here in this village in northwestern Pakistan for handouts for their desperate families. But before they could even get a can of cooking oil, the aid director for a staunchly anti-Western Islamic charity took full advantage of having a captive audience, exhorting the men to jihad.
“The Western organizations have spent millions and billions on family planning to destroy the Muslim family system,” said the aid director, Mehmood ul-Hassan, who represented Al Khidmat, a powerful charity of the strongly anti-American political party Jamaat-e-Islami.
The Western effort had failed, he said, but Pakistanis should show their strength by joining the fight against the infidels.
The authorities’ insistence that the Americans remain nearly invisible reveals the deep strains that continue to underlie the American-Pakistani relationship, even as cooperation improves in the fight against the Taliban, and public support for the war grows in Pakistan.
Yet Islamist and jihadist groups openly work the camps.
“Because of the lack of international agencies, there is a vacuum filled by actors that are Islamist and more than that, jihadist,” said Kristele Younes, a senior advocate with Refugees International, a Washington group established in 1979.
One of the most prominent jihadist charity groups, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, had been barred from the camps, according to Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmad, the head of the Pakistani Army’s disaster management group. The group was designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations Security Council in December.
Nonetheless, it set up operations in Mardan under a new name, Falah-e-Insaniyat, according to Himayatullah Mayar, the mayor of Mardan. After the order to leave the area, Falah-e-Insaniyat went underground but still appeared to be operating to some extent, Mr. Mayar said.
Signs of the organizational strength and robust coffers of Islamist charities were easy to see around the camps, often in contrast to the lack of services offered by the government.
For example, Al Khidmat, Mr. Hassan’s group, arranged to bring in eye surgeons from Punjab to staff a free eye clinic for the displaced, offering cataract operations and eyeglasses.
“Government hospitals are nonexistent here, and we are able to treat not only the displaced but the whole community,” said one of the surgeons, Dr. Khalid Jamal.
Meanwhile, Mr. Hassan was busy checking new temporary schools, health clinics and four ambulances on 24-hour service that Al Khidmat had set up.
Every day, he said, he personally supervised the distribution of food at three different places — sometimes at a home, sometimes in a camp. So far, he said, he had covered 400 of 450 villages near the city of Swabi. Always, he said, before the food is distributed, he delivers his exhortation to jihad.
By contrast, although a substantial amount of American aid is getting through, it is not branded as American, and Pakistani authorities have insisted that it be delivered in a “subtle” manner, General Ahmad said.
The general said he had told American officials that there would be an “extremely negative” reaction if Americans were seen to be distributing aid, particularly if it was delivered by American military aircraft.
“I said they couldn’t fly in Chinooks, no way,” General Ahmad said, referring to American military helicopters. The United States, he said, was seen as “part of the problem.”
That is not what American officials had hoped for. At first, the exodus of people from Swat, many of whom had suffered from the brutality of the Taliban, seemed to present a chance for Washington to improve its image in Pakistan.
“There is an opportunity actually to provide services, much as we did with the earthquake relief, which had a profound impact on the perception of America,” Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who serves as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing attended by the Obama administration’s special envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, at the start of the exodus.
In an effort to highlight American concern for the refugees, Mr. Holbrooke visited the camps in June, sitting on the floor of a sweltering tent and talking to people about their plight. “President Obama has sent us to see how we can help you,” he said. One result of the trip was an effort to send Pakistani-American female doctors to assist women in the camps.
According to the State Department, the United States has pledged $110 million for food and logistical support. In late May, the Defense Department sent several flights to Islamabad carrying ready-to-eat meals, environmentally controlled tents and water trucks. But ideas of winning back popularity with a big show of airlifts of American assistance on the scale of American earthquake relief to Kashmir in 2005 were rebuffed, and not only by the Pakistanis.
American nongovernmental organizations in Pakistan discouraged high-profile deliveries of United States government aid because anti-American sentiment was too widespread and the security risk to Americans in the camps was too high, said the head of one of the groups, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. There were many Taliban in the displaced camps, and they believed the Pakistani military was fighting against them in Swat on orders from Washington, the official said.
The restrictions on American assistance are clear in the camps and in villages like this one deep in the countryside around Mardan and Swabi, where Pakistani families have opened their homes to large numbers of displaced people.
American officials and their consultants were barely able to move beyond the highly visible refugee camps set up along the main highway between Islamabad and Peshawar, said Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American businessman who has visited the area to help find ways to bring additional aid.
“They have been almost completely neutered,” he said.
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second post of morning
NY Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — Almost 4,000 United States Marines, backed by helicopter gunships, pushed into the volatile Helmand River valley in southwestern Afghanistan early Thursday morning to try to take back the region from Taliban fighters whose control of poppy harvests and opium smuggling in Helmand provides major financing for the Afghan insurgency.
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U.S. Marines waited for helicopter transport as part of an operation in Helmand Province on Thursday. More Photos »
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U.S. Increases Troops in Afghanistan
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Four thousand troops entered the Helmand River valley. More Photos >
The Marine Expeditionary Brigade leading the operation represents a large number of the 21,000 additional troops that President Obama ordered to Afghanistan earlier this year amid rising violence and the Taliban’s increasing domination in much of the country. The operation is described as the first major push in southern Afghanistan by the newly bolstered American force.
Helmand is one of the deadliest provinces in Afghanistan, where Taliban fighters have practiced sleek, hit-and-run guerrilla warfare against the British forces based there.
British troops in Helmand say they rarely get a clear shot at Taliban attackers, who ambush them with improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles. The explosive devices — some made with fertilizer distributed to Afghan farmers in an effort to wean them from opium production — are the most feared weapon. The Taliban favor ambushes in the morning and evening and do not often strike during the blazing afternoon heat.
In recent weeks some British troops have been setting up what are known as “blocking positions” on bridges over irrigation canals and at other locations, apparently to help stop the flow of insurgents during the main military operation and to establish greater security before the presidential election scheduled for August. The British forces, whose main base in Helmand is adjacent to the main Marine base, will continue to support the new operation.
The British have had too few troops to conduct full-scale counterinsurgency operations and have often relied on heavy aerial weapons, including bombs and helicopter gunships, to attack suspected fighters and their hideouts. The strategy has alienated much of the population because of the potential for civilian deaths.
Now, the Marines say their new mission, called Operation Khanjar, will include more troops and resources than ever before, as well as a commitment by the troops to live and patrol near population centers to ensure that residents are protected. More than 600 Afghan soldiers and police officers are also involved.
“What makes Operation Khanjar different from those that have occurred before is the massive size of the force introduced, the speed at which it will insert, and the fact that where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces,” the Marine commander in Helmand Province, Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, said in a statement released after the operation began.
The Marines will be pushing into areas where NATO and Afghan troops have not previously established a permanent presence. As part of the counterinsurgency strategy, the troops will meet with local leaders, help determine their needs and take a variety of actions to make towns and villages more secure, said Capt. Bill Pelletier, a spokesman for the Marines, according to The Associated Press.
“We do not want people of Helmand Province to see us as an enemy; we want to protect them from the enemy,” Captain Pelletier said, The A.P. reported.
The goal of the operation is to put pressure on the Taliban militants “and to show our commitment to the Afghan people that when we come in we are going to stay long enough to set up their own institutions,” he said.
The 21,000 additional American troops that Mr. Obama authorized after taking office in January almost precisely matches the original number of additional troops that President George W. Bush sent to Iraq two years ago. It will bring the overall American deployment in Afghanistan to more than 60,000 troops. But Mr. Obama avoided calling it a surge and resisted sending the full reinforcements initially sought by military commanders.
Instead, Mr. Obama chose to re-evaluate troop levels over the next year, officials said. The Obama administration has said that the additional American commitment has three main strategies for denying havens for the Taliban and Al Qaeda: training Afghan security forces, supporting the weak central Afghan government in Kabul and securing the population.
In late March, Mr. Obama warned Congressional leaders that he would need more than the $50 billion in his budget for military operations and development efforts.
Asked by lawmakers about the prospect of reconciliation with moderate members of the Taliban, officials said Mr. Obama replied that he wanted to sift out hard-core radicals from those who were fighting simply to earn money.
Eros Hoagland contributed reporting.
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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Moment in Afghanistan
Posted by Christopher Preble
In yesterday’s Washington Post, veteran newsman Bob Woodward recounts a recent meeting between National Security Advisor James Jones and a few dozen Marine officers in Afghanistan’s Helmand province under the command of Marine Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson.
The subject on everyone’s mind: force levels. Saying that he was “a little light,” Nicholson hinted that he could use more forces, probably thousands more. “We don’t have enough force to go everywhere,” Nicholson said.
Of course he doesn’t. One senior military commander confided, in Woodward’s telling, ”that there would need to be more than 100,000 troops to execute the counterinsurgency strategy of holding areas and towns after clearing out the Taliban insurgents. That is at least 32,000 more than the 68,000 currently authorized.”
So, Nicholson and other commanders were asking: Can we expect to receive additional troops in Afghanistan any time soon?
Jones’s answer: don’t bet on it.
The retired Marine Corps general reminded his audience in Helmand that Obama has approved two increases already. Going beyond merely an endorsement of the outgoing Bush admiministration’s decision to more than double the force in Afghanistan, Obama accepted the recommendation of his advisers to send an additional 17,000, and then shortly thereafter another 4,000.
Well, Jones went on, after all those additional troops,…if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have “a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment.” Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF — which in the military and elsewhere means “What the [expletive]?”
Nicholson and his colonels — all or nearly all veterans of Iraq – seemed to blanch at the unambiguous message that this might be all the troops they were going to get.
Nicholson and his Marines should be concerned. But so should all Americans. The men and women in our military have been given a mission that is highly dependent upon a very large number of troops, and they don’t have a very large number of troops. The clear, hold and build strategy is dangerous and difficult – even when you have the troop levels that the military’s doctrine recommends: 20 troops per 1,000 indigenous population. In a country the size of Afghanistan (with an estimated population of 33 million), that wouldn’t be 100,000 troops, that would be 660,000 troops.
Pacifying all of Afghanistan would be nearly impossible with one half that number of troops. It is foolhardy to even attempt such a mission with less than a sixth that many.
So, what gives? (Or, as the military folks might say, “Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot?”)
It is doubtful that anyone in the White House, the Pentagon, or on Capitol Hill honestly believes that 70,000 U.S. troops can turn Afghanistan into a central Asian version of Alabama – or even Algeria, for that matter. They might reasonably object that they aren’t trying to pacify the whole country, but rather the most restive provinces in the south and east. Perhaps barely 10 million people live there (which my calculator says would require a force of 200,000). Besides, they might go on, the 20 per 1,000 figure is just a guideline, just a rule-of-thumb. Some missions have succeeded with fewer than that ratio of troops, just as other missions have failed with troop ratios in excess of 20 : 1,000.
These seem to be nothing more than thin rationalizations. They reflect the fact that the American public would not support an open-ended mission in Afghanistan that would occupy essentially all of our Marine and Army personnel for many years. The “70,000 troops for who knows how long” is a political statement. They are pursuing a strategy shaped by focus groups and polls, rather than by doctrine and common sense.
No, that is not an argument for more troops. It is not an argument for ignoring public sentiment. It is an argument for a different mission.
The public’s growing ambivalence about the war in Afghanistan reflects a well-placed broader skepticism about population-centric counterinsurgency that are heavily dependent upon very large concentrations of troops staying in country for a very long period of time. Americans don’t support such missions, because the benefits don’t outweigh the costs. And they likely never will. They are equally skeptical of COIN’s intellectual cousin, ambitious nation-building projects.
And if I’m right, and if no one actually believes that killing suspected Taliban, destroying fields of poppies, building roads and bridges, establishing judicial standards and training Afghan police is actually going to work, then, well,….
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
The mission in Afghanistan, especially the troop increases, appear more and more as face-saving gestures. A show of wanting to do something, even if policymakers doubt that it will actually succeed. It is a delaying action, a postponing of the inevitable, a kicking the can down the road.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope that a miracle happens. I hope that the Taliban disappears. That Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Mohammed Omar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and every other bad guy I can name winds up dead on an Afghan battlefield. Tomorrow, preferably. I hope that all Afghans (girls and boys) get an education and earn a decent living. I hope that Hamid Karzai learns how to govern, Afghan judges learn how to judge, and that the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police quickly learn how to defend their own country.
In short, I hope that the people who are crafting our Afghan strategy know something that I don’t.
I fear, however, that the deaths and grievous injuries endured by our military personnel during this interim period, which may run for years or even decades, as we seek “peace with honor” or “a decent interval” (or pick your own favorite Vietnam cliche), will weigh heavily on the consciences of policy makers if, in the end, they have merely burdened these men and women with an impossible task.
Ask Robert McNamara how that feels.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/07/02/whiskey-tango-foxtrot-moment-in-afghanistan/
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My third post of the day:
Pakistan: Expanding the Waziristan Offensive
Stratfor Today » July 1, 2009 | 2112 GMT
ROSHAN KHAN/AFP/Getty Images
A Pakistani soldier at a checkpoint outside of Wana, South Waziristan on June 22Summary
The Pakistani military distributed pamphlets in the restive agency of North Waziristan urging locals to cooperate in the fight against Taliban militants. The move comes as the military seeks to launch a narrowly focused operation against the Pakistani Taliban network of Baitullah Mehsud rather than the broader jihadist movement operating within Pakistan’s borders. The Mehsud network, however, will do all they can to force the military to broaden its operation, thereby stretching it to the limit.
Analysis
Pakistani army helicopters dropped pamphlets July 1 in Miramshah, the capital of North Waziristan Agency, urging locals to fully cooperate with the military against local Taliban elements. The pamphlet stressed that the Pakistani army has no plans to expand its military offensive to North Waziristan, but that it does reserve the right to attack militants who target the army. The text added, “The army guarantees protection from internal and external enemies and its security is the security of Islamic Republic of Pakistan; therefore, you should support Pakistan Army.”
Pakistan has ample reason to be concerned about North Waziristan right now. The Pakistani army is still engaged in intensive cleanup operations in Swat and surrounding areas within the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik has formed a habit of making rather sensational claims that the Swat, Malakand, Mingora, Kalam and Buner areas have been cleared completely of Taliban as part of a wider propaganda effort by the state to bolster public support for military operations. But the reality on the ground is much more complex, and Pakistani troops currently have limited capacity to hold their ground in the NWFP and at the same time turn their attention to the next big offensive in the lawless tribal area of South Waziristan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
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South Waziristan is where top Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-i-Taliban network is based, along with a number of al Qaeda-linked jihadists. Afghan Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani also uses this area as a launchpad for attacks against U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in southern Afghanistan. In the Waziristan operation, named Operation Rah-i-Nijat (Salvation Path), Pakistan is primarily concerned with Mehsud and his Pakistani Taliban allies who have turned against the state and have demonstrated a capability to reach beyond the autonomous tribal areas to carry out spectacular suicide attacks in the heart of Pakistan, including the urban areas of Lahore.
Though the United States would prefer otherwise, the Pakistani army has no intentions of expanding its military offensive to the Haqqani network and other Afghan Taliban whose militant focus lies across the border in Afghanistan. The Pakistani military has long sought to distinguish between a “good” and “bad” Taliban to avoid having every Pashtun in its northwest become a potential enemy. As far as Islamabad is concerned, there are still Islamist militants operating in Pakistani borders who can be considered assets rather than enemies of the state.
Operation Rah-i-Nijat is thus designed to be extremely limited in scope. This is a significant contrast to the Swat operation in the NWFP, which borders the Punjabi heartland and is still formally integrated into Pakistan’s provincial structure. Whereas the Pakistani military now understands the need to flush the Taliban out of the NWFP, the autonomous tribal regions to the west pose a far greater challenge in terms of political, social and economic integration. Moreover, Pakistani Taliban have done their part to eliminate scores of pro-government tribal elders and chiefs whom Islamabad desperately needs to carry out these military operations and bar the Taliban from setting up parallel governments. In spite of these obstacles, the Pakistani military understands the need at the very least to target Mehsud’s network to protect the Pakistani core from the country’s largest and most capable Taliban grouping.
The Pakistani military is currently focused on the first phase of the operation, the intelligence war, against Mehsud in Waziristan. This involves Pakistani military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officers mapping out which tribal chiefs and elders it can count on to support a conventional assault in the region so the army can whittle down Mehsud’s base of operations and his escape routes. One such escape route would run through the mountains of North Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan’s restive Khost province, where the Pakistani army has much stronger relationships with tribal chieftains than it does in South Waziristan. As long as the Pakistani army can lock down support in North Waziristan, the more capable it will be in interdicting the flow of fleeing Taliban from the southern areas.
But major flaws in this strategy are already coming to light. Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur scrapped a peace deal June 30 signed in mid-February 2008 with the state. That peace deal had the approval of a grand jirga consisting of 286 tribal elders from the Dawar and Wazir subtribes of the Utmanzai tribe in North Waziristan, thus providing the Pakistani military with a tribal barrier to Taliban infiltration. Mehsud and his Taliban brethren, however, were two steps ahead of the army and appear to have succeeded in bringing Gul Bahadur back to their side. Three major attacks in the area — a massive kidnapping of more than 500 students from the Razmak Cadet college June 1, two ambushes on military convoys with improvised explosive devices on Miramshah-Mir Ali road June 26 and another major attack on a 250-member convoy in North Waziristan’s Madakhel area June 28 — all bear Gul Bahadur’s fingerprints. It thus comes as no surprise that the Taliban commander called off the peace deal June 30 to drive home the message to the Pakistani military that the military’s support network in North Waziristan is no longer intact.
Seeing its South Waziristan operation in danger, the Pakistani military has now gone into high gear to try and salvage public support in North Waziristan. The pamphlets are just one of several ways the army is trying to reassure locals that it has no intentions of expanding the offensive to their area and that they are better off remaining on the state’s side.
Speculation is already spreading that the army may have no choice but to expand the scope of the Waziristan operation to the north now that Gul Bahadur has drawn a line in the sand. Still, the Pakistani military would greatly prefer to keep North Waziristan out of artillery range. Expanding the operation to North Waziristan, Balochistan and Kurram agency — all areas where militants are likely to flee — will only stretch the military in multiple directions. And this is exactly what Mehsud’s network is aiming for.
From Mehsud’s point of view, having the government expand its operation not only will take some heat off of his own militant enclaves, it also could well turn tribal loyalties against the state. Moreover, stretching the military operation in the tribal belt also could compel battle-hardened Afghan Taliban hiding out in Pakistan to back up their Pakistani Taliban brethren once they see their own strongholds come under direct threat.
Between cleaning up in and around Swat and struggling to lay the groundwork for an offensive in Waziristan, the problems are mounting for the Pakistani military. Mehsud is clearly waging his own intelligence war to protect key escape routes, divert the military’s focus and transform the state’s allies into enemies. Meanwhile, Pakistani forces are up against the clock to knock the legs out from under Mehsud while public morale is still swinging in favor of the military. While this operation was designed to be narrow in scope, the Pakistani Taliban network has every intent of stretching the military to the limit.
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U.S.-Russian Summit: Building an Air Bridge to Afghanistan
Stratfor Today » July 7, 2009 | 1955 GMT
Summary
A formal agreement was signed July 6 in Moscow that will allow U.S. military transport flights to take a more direct route over Russian airspace to supply the U.S.-NATO war effort in Afghanistan. While it will shorten the supply line, however, the Russian concession will not widen it. Next will come negotiations over a potential Russian land route, which will entail even more political leverage from Moscow.
Analysis
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Related Links
Afghanistan, Pakistan: The Battlespace of the Border
Afghanistan: The Search for Safer Supply Routes
Pakistan: Trouble Along Another U.S.-NATO Supply Route
Pakistan: A Strike Against Supply Line Infrastructure
Special Report: U.S.-NATO, Facing the Reality of Risk in Pakistan (With STRATFOR Interactive map)
Afghanistan: The Russian Monkey Wrench
One tangible product of the U.S.-Russian summit is a deal signed July 6 that will permit some 4,500 flights per year by U.S. military aircraft through Russian airspace to supply the campaign in Afghanistan. Significantly, the deal includes flights transporting troops as well as military equipment and supplies (an existing agreement to use Turkmen airspace allows the transport of only non-lethal supplies such as food and spare parts, a common restriction).
The Russian agreement, signed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns, takes effect 60 days from the signing, will last for one year and can be renewed. Overflight fees will not be charged for the flights, which must not stop on Russian territory.
This is no small step for U.S. logistical efforts. Flights from the continental United States, roughly 12 per day, will now be able to fly over the North Pole and reach Afghanistan more quickly than flights going through Turkmen airspace. The Russian route shaves several thousand miles off the air bridge, and annual savings will amount to approximately $133 million. A more direct route is especially valuable as the United States moves more troops into Afghanistan. The total U.S. force in country is expected to double by the end of the year compared to 2008 levels, to some 68,000 troops.
But the U.S. air bridge to Afghanistan, whether it traverses Russian airspace or more circuitous routes, will not be able to accommodate much more traffic. The surge is straining already packed supply lines, not to mention the very vulnerable land routes through Pakistan. Most “lethal” military equipment and supplies (weapons, ammunition, etc.) and virtually all sensitive equipment must be flown in. And limited land routes will be even more strained when a new version of the “mine-resistant, ambush-protected” (MRAP) vehicle used in Iraq and now being modified with an all-terrain chassis is shipped to Afghanistan by sea and land (as it must be, though the first units may be delivered by air).
In other words, the Russian air-bridge concession will lessen the complications of supplying the Afghanistan campaign but it will not actually allow any additional volume, particularly as the surge progresses. Bulk fuel and food, for example, are simply consumed too fast on a daily basis to be supplied by air. Bringing in all of the various forms of fuel needed in Afghanistan on transport aircraft would require literally dozens of daily flights — so many that the major airfields in Afghanistan would likely lack the tarmac space necessary to receive and unload the shipments. As far as other consumables are concerned, some 90 container trucks carrying supplies for the campaign in Afghanistan currently cross the Afghan-Pakistani border each day.
The Kremlin has already agreed to allow the United States land access as well, but the details have yet to be worked out, and negotiations will take weeks, if not months, since routes would have to wind their way through long stretches of Central Asian as well as Russian territory.
Indeed, the land deal with Russia is the key, something the Kremlin knows all too well. As with the long-contentious (and resolved-for-now) issue of Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, Moscow can continue to manipulate negotiations by tugging on American vulnerabilities. Land route negotiations, in particular, could turn into a messy process that Moscow could politicize, making Russia even more of a key player in the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.
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Several Taliban training camps in the Pakistan hinterland were hit last week by missiles fired from American unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), or drones, reportedly killing some 20 terrorists. Remarkably, some people think these strikes are a bad idea.
To get a sense of what U.S. drone strikes have accomplished in the past two years, recall the political furor that followed a July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which found that al Qaeda had "protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland [i.e., U.S.] attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership. . . . As a result, we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment." The media declared we were losing the war.
Less than a year later, then-CIA director Michael Hayden offered a far more upbeat assessment to the Washington Post.
Associated Press
Supporters of Pakistani religious party Jamat-i-Islami rally in Lahore on July 3rd against reported U. S. drone strikes in Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghanistan border.
What changed? At least part of the answer is that the U.S. went from carrying out only a handful of drone attacks in 2007 to more than 30 in 2008. According to U.S. intelligence, among the "high-value targets" killed in these new strikes were al Qaeda spokesman Abu Layth al-Libi, weapons expert Abu Sulayman al Jazairi, chemical and biological expert Abu Khabab al-Masri, commander and logistician Abu Wafa al-Saudi, al Qaeda "Emir" Abu al-Hasan al Rimi, and, in November, Rashid Rauf. Rauf, who had escaped from a Pakistan jail the previous year, was a coordinator of the summer 2007 plot to blow up passenger planes over the Atlantic.
Is the world better off with these people dead? We think so. Then again, Lord Bingham, until recently Britain's senior law lord, has recently said UAV strikes may be "beyond the pale" and potentially on a par with cluster bombs and landmines. Australian counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen says "the Predator [drone] strikes have an entirely negative effect on Pakistani stability." He adds, "We should be cutting strikes back pretty substantially."
In both cases, the argument against drones rests on the belief that the attacks cause wide-scale casualties among noncombatants, thereby embittering local populations and losing hearts and minds. If you glean your information from wire reports -- which depend on stringers who are rarely eyewitnesses -- the argument seems almost plausible.
Yet anyone familiar with Predator technology knows how misleading those reports can be. Unlike fighter jets or cruise missiles, Predators can loiter over their targets for more than 20 hours, take photos in which men, women and children can be clearly distinguished (burqas can be visible from 20,000 feet) and deliver laser-guided munitions with low explosive yields. This minimizes the risks of the "collateral damage" that often comes from 500-pound bombs. Far from being "beyond the pale," drones have made war-fighting more humane.
A U.S. intelligence summary we've seen corrects the record of various media reports claiming high casualties from the Predator strikes. For example, on April 1 the BBC reported that "a missile fired by a suspected U.S. drone has killed at least 10 people in Pakistan." But the intelligence report says that half that number were killed, among them Abdullah Hamas al-Filistini, a top al Qaeda trainer, and that no women and children were present.
In each of the strikes in 2009 that are described by the intelligence summary, the report says no women or children were killed. Moreover, we know of planned drone attacks that were aborted when Predator cameras spied their presence. And an April 19 strike on a compound in South Waziristan did destroy a truck loaded with what the report estimates were more explosives than the truck that took out Islamabad's Marriott Hotel last September. That Islamabad attack killed 54 people and injured more than 260 others, mostly Pakistan civilians but also Americans.
Critics of the drone strikes ought to ask whether, based on this information, the April 19 strike was worth the bad publicity. We'd say yes. We'd also say that the Obama Administration -- which, to its credit, has stepped up the use of Predators -- should make public the kind of information we've seen. We understand there will always be issues concerning sources and methods. But critics of the drone attacks, especially Pakistani critics, have become increasingly vocal in their opposition. They deserve to know about the terrorist calamities they've been spared thanks to these unmanned flights over their territory.
We're delighted to see that Pakistan's military is finally taking the fight to the Taliban and al Qaeda after ill-conceived truces that were a source of the country's recent instability. When Pakistan's government can exercise sovereignty over all its territory, there will be no need for Predator strikes. In the meantime, unmanned bombs away.
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Marc: The Greg Mortenson book IMHO required reading for any serious student of the situation in Afg.
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Thomas Friedman
Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No.
AfghanistanI confess, I find it hard to come to Afghanistan and not ask: Why are we here? Who cares about the Taliban? Al Qaeda is gone. And if its leaders come back, well, that’s why God created cruise missiles.
But every time I start writing that column, something stills my hand. This week it was something very powerful. I watched Greg Mortenson, the famed author of “Three Cups of Tea,” open one of his schools for girls in this remote Afghan village in the Hindu Kush mountains. I must say, after witnessing the delight in the faces of those little Afghan girls crowded three to a desk waiting to learn, I found it very hard to write, “Let’s just get out of here.”
Indeed, Mortenson’s efforts remind us what the essence of the “war on terrorism” is about. It’s about the war of ideas within Islam — a war between religious zealots who glorify martyrdom and want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, with its women disempowered, and those who want to embrace modernity, open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men. America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were, in part, an effort to create the space for the Muslim progressives to fight and win so that the real engine of change, something that takes nine months and 21 years to produce — a new generation — can be educated and raised differently.
Which is why it was no accident that Adm. Mike Mullen, the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — spent half a day in order to reach Mortenson’s newest school and cut the ribbon. Getting there was fun. Our Chinook helicopter threaded its way between mountain peaks, from Kabul up through the Panjshir Valley, before landing in a cloud of dust at the village of Pushghar. Imagine if someone put a new, one-story school on the moon, and you’ll appreciate the rocky desolateness of this landscape.
But there, out front, was Mortenson, dressed in traditional Afghan garb. He was surrounded by bearded village elders and scores of young Afghan boys and girls, who were agog at the helicopter, and not quite believing that America’s “warrior chief” — as Admiral Mullen’s title was loosely translated into Urdu — was coming to open the new school.
While the admiral passed out notebooks, Mortenson told me why he has devoted his life to building 131 secular schools for girls in Pakistan and another 48 in Afghanistan: “The money is money well spent. These are secular schools that will bring a new generation of kids that will have a broader view of the world. We focus on areas where there is no education. Religious extremism flourishes in areas of isolation and conflict.
“When a girl gets educated here and then becomes a mother, she will be much less likely to let her son become a militant or insurgent,” he added. “And she will have fewer children. When a girl learns how to read and write, one of the first things she does is teach her own mother. The girls will bring home meat and veggies, wrapped in newspapers, and the mother will ask the girl to read the newspaper to her and the mothers will learn about politics and about women who are exploited.”
It is no accident, Mortenson noted, that since 2007, the Taliban and its allies have bombed, burned or shut down more than 640 schools in Afghanistan and 350 schools in Pakistan, of which about 80 percent are schools for girls. This valley, controlled by Tajik fighters, is secure, but down south in Helmand Province, where the worst fighting is today, the deputy minister of education said that Taliban extremists have shut 75 of the 228 schools in the last year. This is the real war of ideas. The Taliban want public mosques, not public schools. The Muslim militants recruit among the illiterate and impoverished in society, so the more of them the better, said Mortenson.
This new school teaches grades one through six. I asked some girls through an interpreter what they wanted to be when they grow up: “Teacher,” shouted one. “Doctor,” shouted another. Living here, those are the only two educated role models these girls encounter. Where were they going to school before Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute and the U.S. State Department joined with the village elders to get this secular public school built? “The mosque,” the girls said.
Mortenson said he was originally critical of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he’s changed his views: “The U.S. military has gone through a huge learning curve. They really get it. It’s all about building relationships from the ground up, listening more and serving the people of Afghanistan.”
So there you have it. In grand strategic terms, I still don’t know if this Afghan war makes sense anymore. I was dubious before I arrived, and I still am. But when you see two little Afghan girls crouched on the front steps of their new school, clutching tightly with both arms the notebooks handed to them by a U.S. admiral — as if they were their first dolls — it’s hard to say: “Let’s just walk away.” Not yet.
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The NYT is often a suspect source, particularly on issues such as this one. Caveat Lector
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BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — A sweeping United States military review calls for overhauling the troubled American-run prison here as well as the entire Afghan jail and judicial systems, a reaction to worries that abuses and militant recruiting within the prisons are helping to strengthen the Taliban.
In a further sign of high-level concern over detention practices, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent a confidential message last week to all of the military service chiefs and senior field commanders asking them to redouble their efforts to alert troops to the importance of treating detainees properly.
The prison at this air base north of Kabul has become an ominous symbol for Afghans — a place where harsh interrogation methods and sleep deprivation were used routinely in its early years, and where two Afghan detainees died in 2002 after being beaten by American soldiers and hung by their arms from the ceiling of isolation cells.
Bagram also became a holding site for terrorism suspects captured outside Afghanistan and Iraq.
But even as treatment at Bagram improved in recent years, conditions worsened in the larger Afghan-run prison network, which houses more than 15,000 detainees at three dozen overcrowded and often violent sites. The country’s deeply flawed judicial system affords prisoners virtually no legal protections, human rights advocates say.
“Throughout Afghanistan, Afghans are arbitrarily detained by police, prosecutors, judges and detention center officials with alarming regularity,” the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said in a report in January.
To help address these problems, Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone of the Marines, credited with successfully revamping American detention practices in Iraq, was assigned to review all detention issues in Afghanistan. General Stone’s report, which has not been made public but is circulating among senior American officials, recommends separating extremist militants from more moderate detainees instead of having them mixed together as they are now, according to two American officials who have read or been briefed on his report. Under the new approach, the United States would help build and finance a new Afghan-run prison for the hard-core extremists who are now using the poorly run Afghan corrections system as a camp to train petty thieves and other common criminals to be deadly militants, the American officials said. The remaining inmates would be taught vocational skills and offered other classes, and they would be taught about moderate Islam with the aim of reintegrating them into society, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the review’s findings had not been publicly disclosed. The review also presses for training new Afghan prison guards, prosecutors and judges.
The recommendations come as American officials express fears that the notoriously overcrowded Afghan-run prisons will be overwhelmed by waves of new prisoners captured in the American-led offensive in southern Afghanistan, where thousands of Marines are battling Taliban fighters.
President Obama signed an executive order in January to review policy options for detention, interrogation and rendition.
The Defense and Justice Departments are leading two government task forces studying those issues and are scheduled to deliver reports to the president on Tuesday. But administration officials said Sunday that the task forces — which are grappling with questions like whether terrorism suspects should be turned over to other countries and how to deal with detainees who are thought to be dangerous but who cannot be brought to trial — were likely to seek extensions on some contentious issues.
Last month The Wall Street Journal reported elements of General Stone’s review, but in recent days American military officials provided a more detailed description of the report’s scope, findings and recommendations. A spokesman for the Afghan Embassy in Washington, Martin Austermuhle, said he was unaware of the review, and did not know if the government in Kabul had been apprised of it.
Admiral Mullen felt compelled to issue his message last week after viewing photographs documenting abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan by American military personnel in the early years of the wars there, a senior military official said. Mr. Obama decided in May not to make the photographs public, warning that the images could ignite a deadly backlash against American troops. The admiral urged top American field commanders to step up their efforts to ensure that prisoners were treated properly both at the point of capture and in military prisons. He told the service chiefs to emphasize detainee treatment when preparing and training troops who deploy to the Middle East and Southwest Asia.
“It is essential to who we are as a fighting force that we get this right,” Admiral Mullen said in the message. “We are better than what I saw in those pictures.”
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American officials say many of the changes that General Stone’s review recommends for Bagram are already in the works as part of the scheduled opening this fall of a 40-acre replacement complex that officials say will accommodate about 600 detainees in a more modern and humane setting.
The problems at the existing American-run prison, the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, have been well documented. The prison is a converted aircraft hangar that still holds some of the decrepit aircraft-repair machinery left by the Soviet troops who occupied the country in the 1980s. Military personnel who know Bagram and the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, describe the Afghan site as tougher and more spartan. The prisoners have fewer privileges and virtually no access to lawyers or the judicial process. Many are still held communally in big cages.
In the past two weeks, prisoners have refused to leave their cells to protest their indefinite imprisonment.
In 2005, the Bush administration began trying to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan, mainly by transferring Bagram prisoners to an American-financed high-security prison outside of Kabul guarded by American-trained Afghan soldiers. But United States officials conceded that the new Afghan block, at Pul-i-Charkhi prison, could not absorb all the Bagram prisoners. It now holds about 4,300 detainees, including some 360 from Bagram or Guantánamo Bay, Afghan prison officials said.
Officials from the general directorate for prisons complained about the lack of detention space based on international standards in provinces of Afghanistan. They said most of those prisons were rented houses and not suitable for detention.
Gen. Safiullah Safi, commander of the Afghan National Army brigade responsible for the section of Pul-i-Charkhi that holds the transferred inmates from Bagram and Guantánamo Bay, said his part of the prison had maintained good order and followed Islamic cultural customs. But last December, detainees in the other blocks of the prison staged a revolt in an attempt to resist a security sweep for hidden weapons and cellphones. Eight inmates died.
“There’s a general concern that the Afghan national prisons need to be rehabilitated,” said Sahr MuhammedAlly, a senior associate for law and security at Human Rights First, an advocacy group that is to issue its own report on Bagram on Wednesday.
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HERAT, Afghanistan — When Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the main election challenger to President Hamid Karzai, arrived here to campaign last weekend, thousands of supporters choked the six-mile drive from the airport. Cars were plastered with his posters. Motorbikes flew blue banners. Young men wearing T-shirts emblazoned with his face leapt aboard his car to embrace him to ecstatic cheers.
Top, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the main challenger to President Hamid Karzai, arriving in Herat last Friday to campaign. Thousands turned out to greet him, in a sign of his growing support.
A presidential rival has support in Herat and in the north.
With only a month to go, Dr. Abdullah has started his campaign late, but in its first two weeks he has canvassed six provinces and drawn growing support and larger crowds than expected. Rapturous welcomes like this one have suddenly elevated him to the status of potential future president.
“I have no doubt that people want change,” Dr. Abdullah said in an interview after a tumultuous day campaigning in Herat, in western Afghanistan, adding that his momentum was just building. “Today they are hopeful that change can come.”
Mr. Karzai is still widely considered the front-runner in the campaign for the Aug. 20 presidential election. But Dr. Abdullah, who has the backing of the largest opposition group, the National Front, is the one candidate among the field of 41 who has a chance of forcing Mr. Karzai into a runoff, a contest between the top two vote-getters if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the votes in the first balloting.
Already well known among most Afghans, Dr. Abdullah, 48, an ophthalmologist, has a background that includes years of resistance to Soviet and Taliban rule as well as a crucial role in the formation of the new democratic government after the American intervention.
A dapper dresser, wearing traditional Afghan clothes under a variety of Western tailored jackets, he combines solidarity with the former resistance fighters with the moderation of the Afghan intellectual, giving him potentially broad appeal.
After serving as foreign minister in Mr. Karzai’s government for five years, he left in 2006 and has since become a strong critic of the president’s leadership. He refused an offer to become Mr. Karzai’s running mate, and he contends that the president practices a policy of divide and rule that has polarized the country.
Today, Dr. Abdullah, with a diplomat and a surgeon as his running mates, is seen as part of a younger generation of Afghans keen to move away from the nation’s reliance on warlords and older mujahedeen leaders and to clean up and recast the practice of governing.
To do that, he advocates the devolution of power from the strong presidency built up under Mr. Karzai to a parliamentary system that he says will be more representative. He is also calling for a system of electing officials for Afghanistan’s 34 provinces and nearly 400 districts as a way to build support for the government.
Those provincial governors are now appointed from Kabul, and many have been criticized for cronyism and corruption. Influential Shiite clerics here in Herat, who supported Mr. Karzai in the last election in 2004, are now so fed up with corrupt appointees that they have said they will back Dr. Abdullah this time.
Re-engaging the people is essential to reverse the lawlessness and insecurity that have reached a critical point in much of the country, Dr. Abdullah said. “They have managed to lose the people,” he said of the current government. “In fighting an insurgency, you lose the people and you lose the war.”
Before several thousand people in Herat’s sports stadium, he raised the biggest cheer with his promise to build up Afghan institutions so that foreign troops could go home soon.
He also promised to curb the rampant corruption and review foreign assistance programs to ensure that they focused on grass-roots development and addressed poverty and unemployment. In his public meetings, he emphasized support for the rights of women, the unemployed, the disabled and the victims of war.
He said he would work seriously toward reconciliation with the Taliban, calling the current process a “joke.” Yet in an interview he retained his longtime opposition to the Taliban leadership and said he doubted that the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, was ready to negotiate for peace.
This is only the second national presidential election in Afghanistan’s history, and political analysts warn that it is virtually impossible to predict how the election will go or to read voters’ intentions. Diplomats calculating the numbers of the various factions that have come out in support of Mr. Karzai say that he will just scrape back in, thanks largely to the support from the largest ethnic group, his fellow Pashtuns.
Yet two opinion polls conducted this year suggested that Mr. Karzai had lost considerable support since his 2004 victory with 55 percent of the vote. One of those polls, conducted in May by the International Republican Institute, a nonprofit pro-democracy group, showed that Mr. Karzai’s support was down to 31 percent. While only 7 percent said they would vote for Dr. Abdullah, the poll indicated that the election would have to go to a second round.
People interviewed in Herat also spoke of a shift in the public mood. “Karzai has governed for eight years and all the problems have increased, not decreased,” said Hosseini, 47, a farmer who uses one name and who traveled to the city to hear Dr. Abdullah speak.
Although Dr. Abdullah has significant support in the north and the large population centers, he will have difficulty campaigning in the south, where the insurgency makes movement virtually impossible.
And although he may tap into the desire for change after nearly eight years of Mr. Karzai’s rule, supporters and analysts say Mr. Karzai will still dominate in his Pashtun homeland in Kandahar, in the south.
Dr. Abdullah also claims heritage from Kandahar through his father, Ghulam Muhayuddine Khan, a Pashtun who was a senator in the 1970s. Yet he is far better known for his connection to the northern Panjshir Valley, through his mother and his close relationship with the famous resistance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, who fought both the Russian occupation and the Taliban.
Dr. Abdullah dismissed suggestions that he could not raise support in the Pashtun south and said that support for Mr. Karzai in the area had dropped drastically as security had worsened and more people had joined the insurgency. “Southern Afghanistan has nearly announced jihad against Karzai,” he said.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/27/britain-us-talks-taliban-afghanistan
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I found this piece by Stratfor particularly fascinating-- are we actually beginning to have the semblance of a strategy?
Geopolitical Diary: Denial of a Taliban Truce
July 28, 2009
An official spokesman for the Afghan Taliban movement has denied a claim by President Hamid Karzai that the Afghan government negotiated a truce with the insurgent movement in western Badghis province.
The denial on Monday came only hours after a presidential spokesman announced the truce: Siamak Herawi had claimed that 20 days of talks with local tribal elders had concluded on July 25 with the signing of a cease-fire agreement, which led to militants pulling out of three areas in Bala Murghab district and the withdrawal of Afghan National Army units from compounds captured from militants in the region. The subsequent Taliban denial was accompanied by violence: Two militants were killed and two police wounded during an insurgent ambush of a police patrol in Bala Murghab district.
The details suggest that the Karzai government might have reached some form of agreement with local Taliban leaders somewhere in Badghis province. If so, it would be the first such deal between Kabul and the Pashtun jihadists since the insurgency began in late 2001. Truces are indeed part of the overall U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, which is why Herawi described the alleged July 25 agreement as “a model that other provinces and areas are also trying to use.”
But even if an actual truce was achieved, it certainly didn’t last long, and it was reported to have been in effect in only one of seven districts in the province, which itself is a remote Taliban outpost on the border with Turkmenistan, in a region dominated by the Hazara and Aimak ethnic minorities. A backwater in the war, Badghis province has seen little in the way of Taliban activity compared to areas in southern, eastern and northern Afghanistan.
While there might have been a short-lived truce — and such deals are part of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan — a great many obstacles remain before Washington or Kabul will be able to engage in any meaningful dialogue with the Taliban.
Any truce in Bala Murghab district was likely the work of local insurgents who were promptly overruled by the central Taliban leadership, which is most concerned about insulating local Taliban elements from U.S. and NATO efforts to co-opt the insurgency.
This could be one reason why Mullah Mohammad Omar issued a Taliban code-of-conduct manual, as reported by Al Jazeera on Monday. The manual quotes Mullah Omar as forbidding the creation of new jihadist units, and it calls upon his commanders to disband unofficial factions that refuse to subordinate to the central Taliban leadership.
Mullah Omar is clearly trying to consolidate his hold over the various commanders across Afghanistan, who have enjoyed a great degree of autonomy in almost eight years of war. Along with the central shura, Mullah Omar has been in hiding for years. The Taliban, who have the upper hand in Afghanistan’s conflict, have no need at present to negotiate for a slice of the political pie: They can create a new one after, as they expect, they force Western troops out of Afghanistan. But at the same time, the Taliban realize that the United States and NATO are not about to leave the country as long as it remains a sanctuary for al Qaeda-led transnational jihadists who dream of striking at the West.
STRATFOR has learned that Mullah Omar is actually open to the idea of disassociating from al Qaeda as part of a negotiated settlement that would result in Western forces leaving Afghanistan. The collapse of the Badghis truce, if there was one, does not mean the Taliban are not interested in negotiations or cease-fires. They are — but only under certain circumstances. While the government in Kabul and its Western backers see cease-fire deals with local militants as a means of weakening the Taliban (by bypassing the central leadership), Mullah Omar wants any cease-fire talks to be held with the central leadership. He has outlined certain conditions that would make that possible.
These include the Taliban’s removal from the international terrorist list, the release of Taliban prisoners and the freedom of the Taliban to function as a legal political movement. The leaders want to be able to see progress on these demands before they move forward on other issues. For the United States, however, these are unacceptable demands, especially while the insurgents have the upper hand in the fighting and as the United States struggles to develop the intelligence needed to distinguish between reconcilable and irreconcilable elements among the Taliban.
Even the Taliban are not exactly in a condition to come quickly to the table. They have a host of internal issues that must be sorted out, including challenges from hard-line factions allied with al Qaeda — especially the one led by Haji Mansour Dadullah (brother of Mullah Dadullah, who was killed in a U.S. air strike). There is also the matter of dealing with Taliban factions across the border, whose war against the Pakistani state is seen by the Afghan Taliban as undermining the insurgency in Afghanistan.
The idea of a truce with the Taliban is not an improbable notion, but it is not likely to be meaningful if negotiated only on a local level. And given the problems facing both sides in the Afghan war, a real truce or even meaningful talks are unlikely anytime soon.
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By ASHRAF GHANI
Afghanistan’s upcoming presidential election represents a critical test for our young democracy. It is a referendum on the lawlessness of the current regime and the future stability of our country.
Over the past five years President Hamid Karzai has turned Afghanistan into one of the world’s most failed and corrupt states. Instead of leading our country toward democracy, he has formed alliances with criminals. He has appointed governors and police chiefs who openly flout the rule of law. And he has turned a blind eye to a multibillion-dollar drug trade that has crippled growth and enabled the insurgency to flourish.
To reverse the insurgency’s gains and begin to rebuild the country, we must elect a more capable and accountable government—one that creates jobs, builds houses, and delivers on basic services like education, electricity and water. This is why I’m running for president. I believe that clear vision, dedicated leadership, careful management, and the creation of an environment of trust are the best ways to restore peace and security to Afghanistan. Mr. Karzai’s government is fiercely divided along ethnic and tribal lines. We need a system based on merit, in which every Afghan could see himself as part of the government.
My vision of an inclusive, stable, and prosperous Afghanistan is based on my experience as finance minister from 2002-04 when I worked with other Afghans to achieve real reform. In just two years we completely modernized communications. Partnering with the minister of communications, I refused to offer sweetheart deals to private companies. Instead, we insisted that private telecoms gain access to the Afghan market by paying real taxes through a transparent process. The number of mobile phones in the country jumped to over a million at the end of 2005 from just 100 in July 2002. There are now 7.5 million phones, and private investment exceeds $1 billion. Private telecom is now the second-highest generator of revenue for the government.
We can follow the model of telecom reform to boost public revenue and create as many as one million new jobs in agriculture, construction, services, mining, communication and transportation industries. We can create model economic zones by targeting provinces with the best potential for growth and increasing budget authority on the local level. And we can use the wealth we generate to build one million new housing units for families. Both my employment and housing plans will focus specifically on creating economic opportunities for our youth, our poor and women. Currently marginalized, these three groups can bring economic growth to their communities.
Women’s rights have been grossly violated in Afghanistan during the past decades. In addition to promoting women-run industries like animal husbandry and food processing, I will fight for women’s property rights, increase female participation in government, and improve women’s access to essential reproductive health care by collaborating with successful midwife programs. Investing in women’s education is a fundamental building block for any developing society and needs to be a top priority. I intend to create a women’s-only university to meet the unique needs of female students for leadership and management skills.
My experience as chancellor of Kabul University from 2005-06 convinced me of the urgency of educational reform. The most talented among our youth are taught on the basis of obsolete curricula that were current thinking at the time of their grandparents. We need to update our national curriculum to reflect contemporary science, engineering, economics, arts and law. And we must aggressively recruit from poor and rural provinces.
More than half of Afghanistan’s 33 million people live in small towns and rural communities. Developing these areas presents a formidable challenge but holds enormous potential. In 2002 I designed the comprehensive Afghan National Development Framework. This included the National Solidarity Program, which allocates block grants to local communities. Today this program has reached more than 23,000 villages in 359 of Afghanistan’s 465 districts, enabling individuals to identify, plan, manage and monitor their own development projects. It promotes good governance, empowers rural Afghans, and supports even the poorest in the community. Today the success of the this model has been recognized globally, and it is being adopted by other developing countries around the world.
It is time to get Afghanistan back on the path to peace and development that we were on from 2002-05. The current crisis was not inevitable. Mr. Karzai abandoned his responsibility to the Afghan people.
Afghanistan’s painful quest for a national consensus has led to the realization that we must both build upon and overcome our past. As inheritors of the classic civilization of Islam, we must embrace the values of tolerance, accountability, transparency, justice, the rule of law, scientific inquiry, and active engagement with other civilizations. Simultaneously, we must overcome the divisions and factions that have brought death and destruction. We appreciate the assistance of our international partners but never forget that we are responsible for our future. This election is our chance to chart that future.
Mr. Ghani is a presidential candidate in Afghanistan.
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Mr. Ghani (previous post) sounds like a great candidate. Some polls have him running 3rd and potential spoiler rather than winner.
A UK General (below) says look for a 30-40 year involvement.
Mindful of Crafty's difficult questions about strategy and mission it occurs to me that maybe this conflict, best case, could be used to give a better name to the phenomema of 'mission creep' and 'nation building'. Bin Laden is supposedly gone and the Taliban hosted camps but didn't attack us.
This is a very poor place. Maybe our job if we have one is to lurk in the background, take out just the largest dangers and allow a better society to form over a couple of generations.
I like that Ghani is more interested in foreign investment than foreign aid.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6788043.ece
August 8, 2009
General Sir David Richards, who becomes Chief of the General Staff on August 28, said: “The Army’s role will evolve, but the whole process might take as long as 30 to 40 years.”
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Michael Yon, to whom I have given his own thread on this nearby, comes to a similar conclusion.
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If true, the news that a CIA drone killed Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud last week is a notable victory in the war on terror, both for Pakistan and the U.S. Previous reports of Mehsud’s demise were greatly exaggerated, but this time Pakistan and U.S. officials are speaking with higher confidence that they’ve got him. White House National Security Adviser Jim Jones said on Fox News Sunday that “all evidence that we have” suggests he is dead.
The fashionable view in anti-antiterror precincts is that terror leaders are like daisies—mow one down and another will pop up to take his place. But not all leaders are easily replaced, and the charismatic and daring Mehsud is probably one of them. He was by most accounts a key figure in uniting the dozen or so factions of the Taliban under his umbrella group Tehreek-e-Taliban.
He is believed to have masterminded a string of bomb attacks that killed hundreds of Pakistanis, including the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. His activities contributed significantly to the broader instability along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and put pressure on Pakistan’s democratically elected President Asif Ali Zardari. There’s a reason the U.S. had a $5 million bounty on his head.
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Associated Press
Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud
.Unconfirmed reports over the weekend suggested dissension in Taliban ranks as they choose a successor, including reports of a gun battle between rivals for the top job. If Mehsud is dead, now is the time for Pakistan to press the advantage in its own campaign in its frontier provinces before a new leader can establish control.
The attack also shows the continued utility of the U.S. drone campaign along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The CIA-controlled attacks are made with the (nonpublic) approval of Pakistan, but Pakistan leaders have complained that the U.S. cared only about pursuing Taliban who posed a threat to Afghanistan or the U.S. homeland. Mehsud focused his attacks on Pakistan itself. So the strike should underscore the U.S. argument that the Taliban pose as much a threat to Pakistan as they do to U.S. interests, while reassuring Pakistan officials that the U.S. is willing to use its assets to reduce the Taliban threat to Pakistan.
The strike also underscores that Pakistan has been an early Obama Administration foreign-policy success. Only three months ago, the Taliban were marching on Islamabad and U.S. officials were fretting about the lack of Pakistani will to resist Islamist extremism. But the U.S. worked behind the scenes to encourage a counterattack, Pakistan’s military has since retaken the Swat Valley in the north, and Mr. Zardari’s government has put aside some of its petty domestic squabbling to focus on the main enemy.
President Obama has also stepped up the pace of drone attacks, which are now thought to have killed more than a third of the top Taliban leaders. These columns reported a month ago on an intelligence report showing that the strikes are also carried out with little or no harm to civilians.
For cosmetic political reasons, the Obama Administration no longer wants to use the phrase “global war on terror.” Yet in Pakistan and Afghanistan it is fighting a more vigorous war on terrorists than did the previous Administration. Whatever you want to call it, the death of Baitullah Mehsud makes the world a safer place.
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Bodies pile up in Swat Valley as tribesmen turn tables on Taleban tormentors
Zahid Hussain Mingora
His hands tied behind his back, the body of a young bearded man lay in a pool of blood on a busy market road. Two bullets had pierced his skull, indicating that he was shot from close range.
Residents recognised him as Gul Khatab, a notorious Taleban commander. “People remember him for his brutality,” Mohammed Nasir, a trader, said.
Since the body was discovered in the main town of Pakistan’s Swat Valley, other corpses have appeared on the streets. All were killed in the same manner as the security forces cleared the area of Taleban fighters.
The people of Mingora have long been used to the sight of bullet-riddled bodies dumped on the streets. They used to be those of government officials, policemen or women killed by the Taleban who virtually controlled the Swat Valley. This summer the militants were driven out by the army after a month-long battle.
Now the pattern of death has been reversed. The Taleban are being hunted down by the security forces and families of the victims of their atrocities.
There have been reports of militants’ bodies being slung from electricity poles and bridges in other towns of Swat. Last week tribesmen killed two Taleban fighters in a village near Kalam and left their bodies hanging from an electricity pole for several days. Similar incidents were reported in Malakand, Batkhela and Thana. district of Swat Valley.In many cases notes were left on the bodies warning that this would be the fate of all enemies of the state and Swat.
Some of the notes urged people not to remove the bodies, borrowing from Taleban dictats at the height of their power. “It is like repaying the militants in the same coin,” Rahimullah Yousufzai, a local senior journalist said.
Senior army officials deny that troops were involved in the killings but analysts said that it could not happen without the army’s blessing. “There is an element of revenge for the soldiers who were brutally murdered and beheaded by Taleban,” an official said.
The militants used to make videos of the beheadings and distribute them to the media. One of the most brutal incidents happened a week before the army offensive in the valley, when militants captured and beheaded four officers of a commando unit.
Such actions by the insurgents enraged the troops. An officer confirmed that they would not take prisoners. Some officials argue that there was no choice but to eliminate the hardened militants as the judicial system was so weak that suspects often went free. Judges were often too terrified to convict.
Life is fast returning to normal in the valley after the two-month army operation that left 2,000 militants and more than 160 soldiers dead. Schools are open again and civilian administrators are back at work in most areas. Militants are holding on in some remote mountainous districts where their top leaders are believed to be hiding.
People in Mingora appear much more relaxed and optimistic about the future. “There is much more peace here now,” Mohammed Ishaq, a clothing merchant, said. “We hope Taleban would never come back.”
Residents have started co-operating with security agencies in tracking down militants, making it more difficult for them to blend in with the population.
“The security forces are tipped off immediately about the presence of militants in the neighbourhood,” Saeed Iqbal, a local journalist, said. Dozens of militants have been picked up by security agents in Mingora in recent weeks. Some would not return alive.
Security forces are blowing up the houses and properties of Taleban fighters and their leaders who have not been captured or killed. The authorities are arming tribal militias to fight the remaining Taleban. They are mostly led by influential landlords whose properties were taken over by the Taleban. They believe they could not live in peace if the Taleban were not completely eliminated.
In many cases the extended families have also suffered because of destruction of joint properties. In some cases the actions have forced militants to surrender. But some analysts contend that such actions close the door on militants to repent or surrender.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6788076.ece
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The excesses of Islamo-Fascism contain the seeds of its defeat. Good news there BBG.
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Geopolitical Diary: The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan's Disarray
August 10, 2009
Confusion continued Sunday over the power struggle within the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), triggered by the Aug. 5 killing of its founder and leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in a U.S. air strike. Wali-ur-Rehman, reportedly Mehsud’s most trusted confidant and member of the TTP leadership council, denied reports that either he or the group’s top operational commander, Hakeemullah, had been killed or that the leadership ever met to pick a new chief. A day earlier, there had been reports of an armed clash within the TTP — the largest Pakistani Taliban grouping — that had led to the death of either Wali-ur-Rehman or Hakeemullah, if not both.
Exactly what is happening within the TTP will not be apparent soon. The elimination of Mehsud, which closely followed the retaking of the Swat region from Taliban hands, does not mean that Pakistan has delivered a death blow to its jihadist rebels. However, Mehsud’s death does mark a major success for Islamabad as it deals with the largest threat to Pakistan’s security. It was under Mehsud’s leadership that the Pakistani Taliban movement evolved from a low-level militancy — located mainly in the Waziristan region — to a raging insurgency that engulfed not only the entire tribal belt and most of the North-West Frontier Province, but also leaped out into Pakistan’s core province of Punjab, with significant suicide bombings targeting the most sensitive security facilities.
Clearly, Islamabad might be able to regain control over Pakistan’s Taliban rebels in the wake of Mehsud’s death — a factor that impacts the broader campaign against Taliban forces in Afghanistan also. Prior to Mehsud’s death, the fears were that the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban actually posed a security threat to Pakistan, as it would exacerbate the insurgency on the Pakistani side of the border. But if the Pakistanis can get a handle on the Taliban forces on their own turf, they might be able to exert meaningful influence over their assets among the Afghan Taliban.
In short, Islamabad’s ability to distinguish between “good” and “bad” Taliban has improved. However, there remains a huge gap between what the Pakistani leadership considers “good” and “bad” Taliban and what Washington has been referring to as “reconcilable” and “irreconcilable” Taliban. Although both sides want to see the Afghan insurgency end in a negotiated settlement, U.S.-Pakistani intelligence and military cooperation has improved (as is evident from reports that it was a U.S. air strike that killed Mehsud), and U.S. officials currently are expressing considerable satisfaction with Pakistani efforts against Islamist militants operating within Pakistan, Islamabad cannot be expected to be completely forthcoming when it comes to helping Washington contain the Afghan Taliban.
More important, the current situation is not one in which meaningful negotiations can be expected. The Afghan Taliban have the upper hand in the war and therefore have no incentive to come to the table at this time. They also have their own internal issues to deal with, in terms of bringing all the factions together under a single umbrella. The United States, despite its efforts to identify and reach out to potentially reconcilable elements among the Afghan Taliban, does not want to negotiate from a position of relative weakness — hence its surge of forces in an attempt to level the battlefield.
Pakistan, likewise, needs time to consolidate the gains it has just made in its fight against the Pakistani Taliban and, in the process, regain its influence over the Afghan Taliban. Meanwhile, al Qaeda and its allies on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border who subscribe to the transnational agenda have yet to be dealt with. Herein lies a noteworthy convergence of interests among the United States, Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban: Each side needs to isolate al Qaeda. For the United States, success in the war in Afghanistan depends on making sure al Qaeda cannot use the country as a launch pad for attacks across the globe. For Islamabad, neutralizing al Qaeda’s presence within Pakistan’s borders is a prerequisite for completely regaining control over rogue militant groups and thus for ensuring security. Similarly, if the Afghan Taliban’s central leadership wants to consolidate control over the various insurgent factions and return to power, it needs to distance the Pashtun jihadist movement from al Qaeda.
The United States might not be able to cooperate with the Afghan Taliban against al Qaeda, but the Pakistanis can. Islamabad also has an interest in seeing the rogues among the Afghan Taliban eliminated. In other words, there is a potential for some level of U.S.-Pakistani military cooperation in rooting out those Afghan Taliban that both sides can agree are a threat.
Eventually, the success of the cooperation on the battlefield also could lead Washington and Islamabad to a common definition for “good/reconcilable” Taliban and “bad/irreconcilable” Taliban, opening a possibility of further cooperation in future negotiations. For now, however, the thing to watch for is the extent to which U.S.-Pakistani military cooperation against Pakistani Taliban can be reproduced in the context of the Afghan Taliban.
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/world/pakistan/Revealed-Jihadis-thrice-attacked-Pakistan-nuclear-sites/articleshow/4879235.cms
Jihadis thrice attacked Pakistan nuclear sites
Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN 11 August 2009, 08:35am IST
WASHINGTON: Pakistan's nuclear facilities have already been attacked at least thrice by its home-grown extremists and terrorists in little reported incidents over the last two years, even as the world remains divided over the safety and security of the nuclear weapons in the troubled country, according to western analysts. ( Watch )
The incidents, tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University in UK, include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan's nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan's main nuclear weapons assembly.
These attacks have occurred even as Pakistan has taken several steps to secure and fortify its nuclear weapons against potential attacks, particularly by the United States and India, says Gregory.
In fact, the attacks have received so little attention that Peter Bergen, the eminent terrorism expert who reviewed Gregory's paper first published in West Point's Counter Terrorism Center Sentinel, said "he (Gregory) points out something that was news to me (and shouldn't have been) which is that a series of attacks on Pakistan's nuclear weapons facilities have already happened."
Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are fully secured and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of the extremists or terrorists.
But Gregory, while detailing the steps Islamabad has taken to protect them against Indian and US attacks, asks if the geographical location of Pakistan's principle nuclear weapons infrastructure, which is mainly in areas dominated by al-Qaida and Taliban, makes it more vulnerable to internal attacks.
Gregory points out that when Pakistan was developing its nuclear weapons infrastructure in the 1970s and 1980s, its
principal concern was the risk that India would overrun its nuclear weapons facilities in an armored offensive if the
facilities were placed close to the long Pakistan-India border.
As a result, Pakistan, with a few exceptions, chose to locate much of its nuclear weapons infrastructure to the
north and west of the country and to the region around Islamabad and Rawalpindi - sites such as Wah, Fatehjang,
Golra Sharif, Kahuta, Sihala, Isa Khel Charma, Tarwanah, and Taxila. The concern, however, is that most of Pakistan's nuclear sites are close to or even within areas dominated by Pakistani Taliban militants and home to al-Qaida.
Detailing the actions taken by Islamabad to safeguard its nuclear assets from external attacks, Gregory writes that
Pakistan has established a "robust set of measures to assure the security of its nuclear weapons." These have
been based on copying US practices, procedures and technologies, and comprise: a) physical security; b)
personnel reliability programs; c) technical and procedural safeguards; and d) deception and secrecy.
In terms of physical security, Pakistan operates a layered concept of concentric tiers of armed forces personnel to
guard nuclear weapons facilities, the use of physical barriers and intrusion detectors to secure nuclear weapons
facilities, the physical separation of warhead cores from their detonation components, and the storage of the
components in protected underground sites.
With respect to personnel reliability, Gregory says the Pakistan Army conducts a tight selection process drawing
almost exclusively on officers from Punjab Province who are considered to have fewer links with religious extremism (now increasingly a questionable premise) or with the Pashtun areas of Pakistan from which groups such as the Pakistani Taliban mainly garner their support.
Pakistan operates an analog to the US Personnel Reliability Program (PRP) that screens individuals for Islamist sympathies, personality problems, drug use, inappropriate external affiliations, and sexual deviancy.
The army uses staff rotation and also operates a "two-person" rule under which no action, decision, or
activity involving a nuclear weapon can be undertaken by fewer than two persons. In total, between 8,000 and 10,000 individuals from the SPD's security division and from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Military Intelligence and Intelligence Bureau agencies are involved in the security clearance and monitoring of those with nuclear weapons duties.
Gregory says despite formal command authority structures that cede a role to Pakistan’s civilian leadership, in
practice the Pakistan Army has complete control over the country's nuclear weapons.
It imposes its executive authority over the weapons through the use of an authenticating code system down through the command chains that is deployment sites, aspects of the nuclear command and control arrangements, and many aspects of the arrangements for nuclear safety and security (such as the numbers of those removed under personnel reliability programs, the reasons for their removal, and how often authenticating and enabling (PAL-type) codes are changed).
In addition, Pakistan uses deception - such as dummy missiles - to complicate the calculus of adversaries and is
likely to have extended this practice to its nuclear weapons infrastructure.
Taken together, these measures provide confidence that the Pakistan Army can fully protect its nuclear weapons against the internal terrorist threat, against its main adversary India, and against the suggestion that its nuclear weapons could be either spirited out of the country by a third party (posited to be the United States) or destroyed in the event of a deteriorating situation or a state collapse in Pakistan, says Gregory.
However, at another point, he says "despite these elaborate safeguards, empirical evidence points to a clear
set of weaknesses and vulnerabilities in Pakistan's nuclear safety and security arrangements."
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Afghan law: Wife refusing sex? Deny her food
You might recall how just a few months ago fierce global condemnation pushed Afghan President Hamid Karzai to reconsider a law allowing Shia men to rape their wives. Remember how Karzai promised that the bill would be reviewed to ensure that it didn't violate women's rights, how he would send it to parliament before it was passed, how we heaved a collective sigh of relief? Well, you might as well hit rewind and pretend none of that ever happened: Human Rights Watch has discovered that a revised version of the law was quietly passed last month and, while those original controversial passages have been rewritten, they are no less disturbing. According to HRW:
The law gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands. It grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers. It requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying "blood money" to a girl who was injured when he raped her.
This law patently contradicts Afghanistan's constitutional guarantee of equal rights to both men and women -- but, no matter, Karzai is doing everything he can to secure the fundamentalist vote ahead of the August 20 presidential election. Brad Adams, HRW's Asia director, puts it best: "The rights of Afghan women" -- particularly those belonging to the Shiite minority -- "are being ripped up by powerful men who are using women as pawns in maneuvers to gain power."
― Tracy Clark-Flory
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/
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Can We Succeed in Afghanistan?
Your nation building is a war crime. Mine is a national-security necessity.
By Mona Charen
He was certainly brave, but was he crazy? That’s what I wondered when I picked up Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between, an account of the Scotsman’s 2002 solo walk across Afghanistan. That’s right, he walked. Many Afghans doubted he would survive the journey. Just weeks after the fall of the Taliban, in the dead of winter, in some of the most remote and difficult terrain in the inhabited world, he went from village to village on foot. Relying on the tradition of hospitality, Stewart found welcome, sustenance, and shelter (mostly, but not always) graciously offered by people who had very little to share.
Stewart, who is both a British Foreign Service officer (he served in southern Iraq after the Iraq War — the subject of another good book, The Prince of the Marshes) and a Harvard professor, relied upon his knowledge of Farsi and Urdu, his understanding of Afghan history and culture, and his own hardy constitution to get him through. For several years, Stewart lived in Kabul, where he established a charitable foundation seeking to promote local crafts. The portrayal of Afghanistan that resulted from his latest endeavor is illuminating and honest. He was unsparing about the deception and cruelty he witnessed (I recall in particular the vignette about local children throwing stones at a dog for fun), but also about the warmth and fellowship he encountered.
So when Stewart raises a yellow flag about our escalating commitment to Afghanistan, we should take notice.
The rationale that President Obama has offered for our ramped-up engagement in Afghanistan, Stewart argues in a piece for the London Review of Books, runs as follows: We cannot permit the Taliban to return to power or they will revive the alliance with al-Qaeda and will plot more catastrophic attacks on the United States. In order to defeat the Taliban, we must create a functioning state in the country, and in order to create a functioning state, we must defeat the Taliban. Obama seems keen to increase our role in Afghanistan to highlight the contrast with his predecessor. Bush, Obama ceaselessly repeats, fought “a war of choice,” whereas Obama will fight only “a war of necessity.”
Obama argues that Afghanistan represents such a war. But does it? In order to achieve the goal of a “stable” Afghanistan, President Obama has deployed (for starters) 17,000 more U.S. troops at a preliminary cost of $5.5 billion. His stated goals for this poor, decentralized, and shell-shocked nation match in ambition and grandiosity the claims that George W. Bush made for a revived Iraq — but with arguably less foundation. “There are no mass political parties in Afghanistan and the Kabul government lacks the base, strength or legitimacy of the Baghdad government,” Stewart writes. There is almost no economic activity in the nation aside from international aid and the drug trade. Stewart notes that while Afghanistan is not a hopeless case, it is not at all clear that it is “the most dangerous place on Earth” as advocates of a massively increased U.S. and British role argue. In fact, neighboring Pakistan, sheltering al-Qaeda (including, in all likelihood, Osama bin Laden), and possessing nuclear weapons, represents a far graver threat to our national security. Stewart believes that bin Laden operates out of Pakistan precisely because it is a more robust state than Afghanistan, and so restricts U.S. operations. Nor is it clear that Afghanistan poses more of a threat than, say, Somalia or Yemen. Obama promises a “comprehensive approach” that will “[promote] a more capable and accountable Afghan government . . . advance security, opportunity and justice . . . [and] develop an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs.”
This is more than we have the knowledge or ability to accomplish, Stewart argues. As for the necessity, he is unconvinced that the Taliban should loom so large as a threat to the West. He thinks it unlikely that the Taliban will regain control of the entire country (though they do control some provincial capitals). Unlike the situation in 1996, the Afghans now have experience of Taliban rule. “Millions of Afghans disliked their brutality, incompetence and primitive attitudes. The Hazara, Tajik and Uzbek populations are wealthier, more established and more powerful than they were in 1996 and would strongly resist any attempt by the Taliban to occupy their areas.” In any case, a more circumscribed foreign role should be sufficient to prevent the revival of terrorist training camps — as it has since 2001.
One might have thought, listening to the opponents of the Iraq War, that a certain modesty about nation building would be axiomatic among liberals. Instead, we are witnessing something else entirely — the approach is now brainlessly partisan. Your nation building is a war crime. My nation building is a national-security necessity. Stewart’s approach is refreshingly impartial and thought-provoking.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDllYzJmZDI1YmE1MmUwYTJlNjJjZWI5ZTUzOTM5MTY=
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In a related vein to BBG's post, here's this from Stratfor:
Thursday, August 20, 2009 STRATFOR.COM Diary Archives
Of Afghan Warlords and Polling Places
AFGHANISTAN’S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION will take place on Thursday — the second such vote since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001. Provincial council elections also will take place, but the main event is the presidential vote — in which incumbent Hamid Karzai faces stiffer competition than he experienced in the 2004 election. Though he is expected to win another term, he will have to go through a second round if he does not secure more than 50 percent of the votes outright.
The possibility of the second round, which would come on Oct. 1, stems from the strong challenge posed by Karzai’s former foreign minister, Tajik politician Abdullah Abdullah, who the polls say could win around 25 percent of the vote. Abdullah has been able to attract considerable support by promising development in Afghanistan; he is also promoting the fact that he is half Pashtun in an effort to cross ethnic lines. But there is no way around Afghanistan’s hard-core geopolitical reality — in which power is a function of ethno-regional warlordism.
Despite being Pashtun from his father’s side, Abdullah’s Tajik political identity places significant obstacles in his path as he seeks to make inroads into the Pashtun community. His efforts to put some distance between himself and his past association with the warlords of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance actually have cost him support within his own Tajik constituency. On the other hand, despite Karzai’s initial rise as a leader trying to move the country away from its Taliban and warlord past, the incumbent president in the last seven years has learned that in order to maintain one’s position in Kabul, it is necessary to balance with the regions through deals with strongmen there.
“Political parties have not supplanted ethnic- and tribal-based warlordism. On the contrary, warlordism determines electoral outcomes.”
This is why, despite the growing opposition within his own Pashtun community (especially from the Taliban) and from across the country, Karzai has been able to limit the degree to which his position has weakened. Karzai remains an ineffective ruler, but he is a survivor — and he has been able to survive because of his ability to perfect the art of wheeling and dealing with warlords. His co-opting of top Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek warlords Muhammad Qasim Fahim, Karim Khalili and Abdul Rashid Dostum likely will allow him to secure re-election.
What we have here is a clear indication that the underlying geopolitical nature of Afghanistan has not been altered by attempts to steer the country toward democratic politics. Political parties have not supplanted ethnic- and tribal-based warlordism. On the contrary, warlordism determines electoral outcomes.
Consequently, from the United States’ point of view, the outcome of Thursday’s election is not critical. Regardless of outcome, it will not solve the core issue facing Afghanistan: the intensifying Taliban insurgency, which is a far greater challenge than that posed by warlordism. As far as Washington is concerned, Thursday’s election must be gotten through so that the fragile status quo is maintained and all parties concerned can get back to the business of dealing with the threat posed by the Pashtun jihadists. Dealing with the Taliban obviously entails a military component, but the Obama administration has openly acknowledged that, ultimately, if there is to be a solution to the Taliban insurgency, it will involve a political settlement.
Given the objectives of the Taliban, any political settlement would not come in the form of a democratic framework, and especially not Western-style democracy. Ironically, it is the politics of warlordism that could provide a framework for calming down the insurgency. A wedge will not be driven between pragmatic Taliban elements and the more hard-line ideological types because the pragmatists play by the rules of a Western-style political system; rather it would materialize as deals are cut with various Taliban commanders who would be willing to lay down arms in exchange for recognition of their domains of power.
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Following up to difficult questions asked by Crafty about what we should be doing in Afghanistan. Personally I don't know the answers but I am amazed by the silence of the left. My liberal friends still have 'not one drop' bumper stickers from their opposition to Bush in Iraq as they blindly support Obama's current escalation. And I am still worn out by the phony debates of the Iraq operation but the questions today about Afghanistan are important.
Here is George Will, who I find to be a very independent thinker and sometimes I agree with him, writing persuasively about how we should be downsizing and moving back in Afghanistan.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/09/01/in_afghanistan_knowing_when_to_stop_98109.html
September 1, 2009
Afghanistan: Time to Stop Nation-Building
By George Will
WASHINGTON -- "Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a (mine's) pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning."
"I'm sorry about the drama," writes Allen, an enthusiastic infantryman willing to die "so that each of you may grow old." He says: "I put everything in God's hands." And: "Semper Fi!"
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Allen and others of America's finest are also in Washington's hands. This city should keep faith with them by rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan, where, says the Dutch commander of coalition forces in a southern province, walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament."
U.S. strategy -- protecting the population -- is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about "deteriorating" (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions. The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined U.S. involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often risible.
U.S. strategy is "clear, hold and build." Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that U.S. forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.
Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country -- "control" is an elastic concept -- and "'our' Afghans may prove no more viable than were 'our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime." Just 4,000 Marines are contesting control of Helmand province, which is the size of West Virginia. The New York Times reports a Helmand official saying he has only "police officers who steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for 'vacation.'"
Afghanistan's $23 billion GDP is the size of Boise's. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches, not very helpfully, that development depends on security, and that security depends on development. Three-quarters of Afghanistan's poppy production for opium comes from Helmand. In what should be called Operation Sisyphus, U.S. officials are urging farmers to grow other crops. Endive, perhaps?
Even though violence exploded across Iraq after, and partly because of, three elections, Afghanistan's recent elections were called "crucial." To what? They came, they went, they altered no fundamentals, all of which militate against American "success," whatever that might mean. Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one. U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry hopes for a "renewal of trust" of the Afghan people in the government, but The Economist describes President Hamid Karzai's government -- his vice presidential running mate is a drug trafficker -- as so "inept, corrupt and predatory" that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, "who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai's lot."
Adm. Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan's "culture of poverty." But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local government services might entice many "accidental guerrillas" to leave the Taliban. But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent re-establishment of al-Qaeda bases -- evidently there are none now -- must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?
U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000 to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.
So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.
Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen's, is squandered.
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By MICHAEL O'HANLON AND BRUCE RIEDEL
The national mood on the Afghanistan war has soured fast, and it's not hard to see why. American combat deaths have exceeded 100 for the summer, the recent Afghan election was tainted by accusations of intimidation and fraud, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen says the security environment there is "deteriorating."
Meanwhile, congressional leaders worry about the war's impact on the health-care debate and the Obama presidency more generally. Antiwar groups are starting to talk about "another Vietnam." Opposition is mounting to the current policy—to say nothing of possible requests for additional troops from the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
The questions and concerns being raised are legitimate. Clearly, the mission has not been going well. Problems with our basic strategy, especially on the economic and development side, still need immediate attention. Moreover, our Afghan friends have a crucial role to play in both security and development, and if they fail to do so the overall warfighting and state-building effort will not succeed.
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Children reach for candy from U.S. Marines on patrol near Bakwa in southwestern Afghanistan.
.However, it is important to remember our assets, and not just our liabilities, in the coming debate over Afghanistan policy this fall. Democracies sometimes talk themselves out of keeping up the faith in tough situations, and we should avoid any such tendency towards defeatism, especially so early in the execution of the Obama administration's new military/civilian/economic strategy, which combines stronger and more widespread counterinsurgency measures with increased nation-building efforts. Indeed, the U.S., our NATO allies, and the future Afghan government—be it another Hamid Karzai presidency, or a new administration—have a number of major strengths in this mission. Consider:
• The Afghan people want success. There is frankly too much talk of Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires, as land of a xenophobic and backward people who will always resist efforts to enter the modern world. Afghans fought against the British in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 20th century because these imperialist powers were pursuing their own agendas. Today, Afghans consistently show a desire for progress, and their support for the Taliban hovers just above 6%, according to an ABC News/BBC/ARD poll taken in February; support is essentially zero among the non-Pashtun majority of the population.
• Afghans are still largely pro-American. As the war slipped away from us in recent years, U.S. favorability ratings fell too, winding up at about 30% last winter, according to polls conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI). But the new Obama strategy, combined with at least some modest excitement about the presidential elections, has changed that. IRI polls this summer show that Afghans now give the U.S. (and NATO) favorability ratings of 60%. A similar percentage express optimism about their own future, despite all the challenges of current life.
• The Afghan Army is reasonably effective. It is too small, with roughly 90,000 total soldiers. But by most accounts, the Afghan Army is fighting well, and cooperating well with NATO forces. Gen. McChrystal's new approach to training Afghan troops will greatly strengthen and deepen this cooperation. Not only will NATO finally field enough personnel to embed with each Afghan unit in mentoring teams, but its combat units will partner with Afghans at every level on every major operation—living, planning, operating, and fighting with each other in one-to-one formal partnerships.
• Even the Afghan police show some hope. This force is too intertwined with drug dealers, underequipped, and overstressed by the hazards of combat, taking up to 100 or more fatalities a month. But it is willing to fight. As a member of an IRI observing team on election day, I was impressed with their professionalism. They did a passable job securing voting sites, and while there were many insurgent attacks that day, there were very few civilian casualties. Also the reform efforts promoted by the very able Interior Minister Hanif Atmar are showing signs of progress.
• The economy is better. Afghanistan remains poor, its economy remains dominated by opium, and the twin scourge of corruption and insecurity plagues efforts to revitalize the agricultural system. Despite all that, legal GDP has been growing up to 10% a year, health care reaches much larger segments of the population than before, and seven million children are in school (in contrast to a nationwide total of less than one million during Taliban rule). What's more, the Afghan people know these things, perhaps helping explain why they are guardedly optimistic about the future despite worsening security.
• The elections were not all bad. Whether President Karzai secures the 50% vote total needed to avoid an October runoff in the presidential race or not, the tainted election process has nonetheless had many impressive attributes. The campaign this summer was serious and focused largely on the issues. Although the state-run media favored Mr. Karzai, Afghanistan's flourishing private media provided balanced coverage, and millions watched or listened to presidential debates. Poll workers were well prepared and serious about their jobs on election day. Independent election groups are now carefully scrutinizing ballots and investigating claims of fraud, and I believe they will probably do their jobs well.
To be sure, our strategy is not perfect yet. Gen. McChrystal may not yet have the resources he needs to connect what counterinsurgency theorisists call "oil spots"—pockets of government control and stability—in the crucial south and east of the country with adequate numbers of NATO and Afghan forces. Economic donors do not yet coordinate their efforts adequately, or involve Afghan businesses sufficiently in the development effort. Pakistan's commitment to its own related fight has improved but remains tenuous. And we do not yet have a sufficiently sophisticated approach to improving law and order. We must still establish a network of courts that work with local and tribal justice systems.
These problems need to be corrected soon. Even then, it will take at least 12-18 months to see results. Our chief challenge in Afghanistan is building state institutions and that is an inherently slow process. But as we debate new changes to our strategy this fall, we would do well to remember all that is working in our favor in this crucial effort.
Mr. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is author of "The Science of War" (Princeton University Press, 2009) and author, with Hassina Sherjan, of the forthcoming Brookings book "The Case for Toughing It Out in Afghanistan." Mr. Riedel chaired President Obama's review on Afghanistan and Pakistan policy.
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By FREDERICK W. KAGAN
Winning the war in Afghanistan—creating a stable and legitimate Afghan state that can control its territory—will be difficult. The insurgency has grown in the past few years while the government's legitimacy has declined. It remains unclear how the recent presidential elections will affect this situation.
Trying to win in Afghanistan is not a fool's errand, however. Where coalition forces have conducted properly resourced counterinsurgency operations in areas such as Khowst, Wardak, Lowgar, Konar and Nangarhar Provinces in the eastern part of the country, they have succeeded despite the legendary xenophobia of the Pashtuns.
Poorly designed operations in Helmand Province have not led to success. Badly under-resourced efforts in other southern and western provinces, most notably Kandahar, have also failed. Can well-designed and properly-resourced operations succeed? There are no guarantees in war, but there is good reason to think they can. Given the importance of this theater to the stability of a critical and restive region, that is reason enough to try.
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.Critics of the war have suggested we should draw down our troops and force Pakistan to play a larger role in eliminating radical extremists. American concerns about al Qaeda and Taliban operating from Pakistani bases have led to the conventional wisdom that Pakistan matters to the U.S. because of what it could do to help—or hurt—in Afghanistan. The conventional wisdom is wrong as usual.
Pakistan is important because it is a country of 180 million Muslims with nuclear weapons and multiple terrorist groups engaged in a mini-arms race and periodic military encounters with India—the world's most populous state and one of America's most important economic and strategic partners. Pakistan has made remarkable progress over the last year in its efforts against Islamist insurgent groups that threatened to destroy it. But the fight against those groups takes place on both sides of the border. The debate over whether to commit the resources necessary to succeed in Afghanistan must recognize the extreme danger that a withdrawal or failure in Afghanistan would pose to the stability of Pakistan.
Pakistan's ambivalence toward militant Islamist groups goes back decades. The growth of radical Islamism in Pakistan dates to the 1970s and '80s when the government encouraged radicalism both for domestic political reasons and to combat Soviet encroachment. The Pakistani government, with U.S. support, established bases in its territory for Afghan mujahedeen (religious warriors) fighting the Red Army.
When Afghanistan descended into chaos in the '90s following the Soviet withdrawal, Pakistan intervened by building the Taliban into an organization strong enough to establish its writ at least throughout the Pashtun lands. Links forged in the anti-Soviet war between Pashtun mujahedeen and Arabs from the Persian Gulf remained strong enough to bring Osama bin Laden to the territory controlled by mujahedeen hero and Taliban leader Jalalluddin Haqqani. The 9/11 attacks were planned and organized from those bases.
The 9/11 attacks caught Pakistan by surprise and forced a radical, incoherent and unanticipated change in Pakistan's policies. Under intense pressure by the U.S., including an ultimatum from Secretary of State Colin Powell, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf chose to ally with America against Pakistan's erstwhile Afghan and Arab partners. Mr. Musharraf long tried to channel his own and U.S operations narrowly against al Qaeda while diverting them from the remnants of the Taliban (whom elements of the Pakistani intelligence services continued to support).
But U.S. pressure to act in Pakistan's tribal areas and the inexorable logic of the conflict led Pakistan to take actions that brought it into open conflict with some insurgent groups. Those groups in turn came to see Pakistan itself as their main enemy. By 2004, Pakistan faced a serious and growing insurgency in its tribal areas. By 2008 that insurgency had spread beyond the tribal areas into more settled areas such as the Swat River Valley. By 2009 it had metastasized to the point where Punjabis and not just Pashtuns were fighting the Pakistani government.
Pakistan turned an important—and little noticed—corner in its fight against its own Islamist insurgents this summer. The Pakistani military drove the Pakistani Taliban out of Swat and the surrounding areas, including much of the northern part of the tribal areas. Most recently, Pakistani military operations (with covert American support) decapitated the most dangerous Pakistani Taliban group based in Waziristan by killing its leader, Beitullah Mehsud. He was thought to be responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
In contrast with previous such efforts, the current Pakistani government has retained significant military force in all of these areas and so far appears to be continuing the fight even after these successes. Remarkably, the combat divisions now holding Swat and other areas in the northwest of Pakistan are among those most critical to Pakistan's strategy to defend against the always-feared Indian attack.
But as American and NATO forces in Afghanistan discovered, the fight against the Taliban must be pursued on both sides of the border. Pakistan's successes have been assisted by the deployment of American conventional forces along the Afghanistan border opposite the areas in which Pakistani forces were operating, particularly in Konar and Khowst Provinces.
Those forces have not so much interdicted the border crossings (almost impossible in such terrain) as they have created conditions unfavorable to the free movement of insurgents. They have conducted effective counterinsurgency operations in areas that might otherwise provide sanctuary to insurgents fleeing Pakistani operations (Nangarhar and Paktia provinces especially, in addition to Konar and Khowst). Without those operations, Pakistan's insurgents would likely have found new safe havens in those provinces, rendering the painful progress made by Pakistan's military irrelevant.
Pakistan's stability cannot be secured solely within its borders any more than can Afghanistan's. Militant Islam can be defeated only by waging a proper counterinsurgency campaign on both sides of the border.
Mr. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of "Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power" (AEI Press, 2008).
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Not sure this piece's hypothesis holds together once Pakistan and its nukes are thrown in the mix. Still, several points worth considering:
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By FOUAD AJAMI
The road that led to 9/11 was never a defining concern of President Barack
Obama. But he returned to 9/11 as he sought to explain and defend the war in
Afghanistan in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, Ariz.,
on Aug. 17. "The insurgency in Afghanistan didn't just happen overnight and
we won't defeat it overnight, but we must never forget: This is not a war of
choice; it is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are
plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean
an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda could plot to kill more
Americans."
This distinction between a war of choice (Iraq) and a war of necessity
(Afghanistan) has become canonical to American liberalism. But we should
dispense with that distinction, for it is both morally false and
intellectually muddled. No philosophy of just and unjust wars will support
it. It was amid the ferocious attack on the American project in Iraq that
there was born the idea of Afghanistan as the "good war." This was the club
with which the Iraq war was battered. This was where that binary division
was set up: The good war of necessity in the mountains of Afghanistan, the
multilateral war born of a collective NATO decision-versus George W. Bush's
war of choice in Iraq, fought in defiance of the opinions of allies who had
been with us in the aftermath of 9/11, and whose goodwill we squandered in
the cruel streets of Fallujah and the deserts of Anbar.
Our elections last November, this narrative had it, had given us a chance to
bring America's embattled solitude and isolation in the world to an end. A
man with strands of Islam woven into his identity and biography was
catapulted to the presidency. We had drained the swamps of anti-Americanism.
Assalam aleikum (peace be upon you) in Cairo, Ankara and Tehran. The great
enmity, that unfashionable clash of civilizations, was declared done and
over with. A new history presumably began with Mr. Bush's return to his home
in Texas.
But it will not do to offer up 9/11 as a casus belli in Afghanistan while
holding out the threat of legal retribution against the men and women in our
intelligence services who carried out our wishes in that time of concern and
peril. To begin with, a policy that falls back on 9/11 must proceed from a
correct reading of the wellsprings of Islamist radicalism. The impulse that
took America from Kabul to Baghdad had been on the mark. Those were not
Afghans who had struck American soil on 9/11. They were Arabs. Their
terrorism came out of the pathologies of Arab political life. Their
financiers were Arabs, and so were those crowds in Cairo and Nablus and
Amman that had winked at the terror and had seen those attacks as America
getting its comeuppance on that terrible day. Kabul had not sufficed as a
return address in that twilight war; it was important to take the war into
the Arab world itself, and the despot in Baghdad had drawn the short straw.
He had been brazen and defiant at a time of genuine American concern, and a
lesson was made of him.
No Arabs had been emotionally invested in Mullah Omar and the Taliban, but
the ruler in Baghdad was a favored son of that Arab nation. The decapitation
of his regime was a cautionary tale for his Arab brethren. Grant George W.
Bush his due. He drew a line when the world of the Arabs was truly in the
wind and played upon by powerful temptations. Mr. Obama and his advisers
need not pay heroic tribute to the men and women who labored before them.
But they have so maligned their predecessors and their motives that the
appeal to 9/11 rings hollow and contrived. In those years behind us,
American liberalism distanced itself from American patriotism, and the
damage is there to see.
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In the best of circumstances, this Afghan campaign would be a hard sell.
This is doubly so at a time of economic distress at home. There is no
tradition of central government to be restored in that most tribalized of
countries. The lessons, and the analogy, of Vietnam should perhaps be laid
to rest. This is not Mr. Obama's Vietnam. It is what it is-his Afghanistan.
But there are irresistible parallels with Lyndon Baines Johnson and the way
he committed his presidency, and the nation, to a war he dreaded from the
start.
This is LBJ in 1964, from a definitive history by A.J. Langguth, "Our
Vietnam," published in 2000: "I just don't think it is worth fighting for,
and I don't think we can get out. It's just the biggest damn mess." He would
prosecute what he called that "bitch of a war" with a premonition that it
could wreck his Great Society programs. He knew America's mood. "I don't
think the people of the country know much about Vietnam, and I think they
care a hell of a lot less." Yet, he took the plunge, he would try to
"cheat"-guns and butter at the same time, the war in Asia and the domestic
agenda of civil rights and the Great Society. History was merciless. It
begot a monumental tragedy in a land of no consequences to American
security.
Wars are great clarifiers. Barack Obama's trumpet is uncertain. His call to
arms in Afghanistan does not stir. He fears failure in Afghanistan, and
nothing more. Having disowned Iraq, kept its cause at a distance, he is
forced to fight the war in Afghanistan. So he equivocates and plays for
time. Forever the campaigner, he has his eye on the public mood, the steel
that his predecessor showed in 2007 when all was in the balance in Iraq is
not evident in Mr. Obama.
For the American effort in Afghanistan to stick on the ground in the face of
a Taliban insurgency that's gaining in strength and geographical reach, Mr.
Obama will have to make a hard choice. He will need a troop commitment of
sufficient weight to turn the tide of war. Furthermore, he will have to face
his own coalition on the left and convince it that there is a project in
Afghanistan worth fighting (and paying) for.
By the evidence of things, this is a decision that he has refused to make,
as he pursues his sweeping domestic agenda while keeping Afghanistan in
play. He had been sure that NATO forces would rush to his banners, that
Europe had stayed away from a serious commitment in Afghanistan because it
had been seized with an animus for his predecessor. But Mr. Bush had been an
alibi all along. The Europeans are in no mood for this war.
There is a British contingent of decent size in Afghanistan, but there had
been one in Iraq as well. The likes of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder
(who dabbled in the most craven of anti-Americanism) are gone and forgotten,
but the French and the Germans have not ridden to the rescue of Kandahar.
The stringent restrictions on their forces, their very rules of engagement,
have left Afghanistan an Anglo-American burden in much the same way Iraq had
been.
Eight years ago, we were visited by the furies of Arab lands. We were rudely
awakened from a decade whose gurus and pundits had announced the end of
ideology, of politics itself, and the triumph of the world-wide Web and the
"electronic herd." We had discovered that on the other side of the world
masterminds of terror, and preachers, and their foot-soldiers were telling
of America the most sordid of tales. We had become, without knowing it, a
party to a civil war in the Arab-Islamic world between the autocrats and
their disaffected children, between those who wanted to live a normal life
and warriors of the faith bent on imposing their will on that troubled arc
of geography.
Our country answered that call, not always brilliantly, for we are fated to
be strangers in that world and thus fated to improvise and make our way
through unfamiliar alleyways. We met chameleons and hustlers of every shade
and had to learn, in a hurry, incomprehensible atavisms and pathologies. We
fared best when we trusted our sense of things. We certainly haven't been
kept safe by the crowds in Paris and Berlin, or by those in Ankara and Cairo
who feign desire for our friendship while they yearn for our undoing.
Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced
International Studies and an adjunct fellow at Stanford's Hoover
Institution, is the author, among other books, of "The Foreigner's Gift: The
Americans, the Arabs and the Iraqis in Iraq" (Free Press, 2007).
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Gen. David Petraeus writing in the Times of London:
In Afghanistan, security is the principal concern, although there are numerous other challenges as well, with governmental legitimacy prominent among them. Clearly, the security trend in Afghanistan has been a downward spiral, with levels of violence at record highs in recent weeks.
At a time when the challenges loom so large, it is important to remember why we are there. That is to ensure that al-Qaeda and other transnational extremist groups are not able to re-establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan like those they had during Taliban rule there before 9/11.
General Stan McChrystal, the Commander of Nato's International Security Assistance Force, who has spent most of his career since 9/11 leading the U.S.'s most elite counterterrorist element, the Joint Special Operations Command, is employing a comprehensive, counterinsurgency campaign. He is the first to recognize not just the extraordinary capabilities but also the limitations of counterterrorism forces in Afghanistan.
In addition to our military operations we are helping the Afghan Government to combat the corruption that has undermined the legitimacy of certain Afghan institutions. We are also working hard to accelerate the development of the Afghan security forces. And we are working to disrupt narcotics trafficking by promoting agricultural alternatives and developing the infrastructure to help Afghan farmers to get their products to market.
But we need to be realistic in recognizing that the campaign will require a sustained, substantial commitment. Many tough tasks loom before us—including resolution of the way ahead after the recent election, which obviously has been marred by allegations of fraud. The challenges in Afghanistan clearly are significant. But the stakes are high. And, while the situation unquestionably is, as General McChrystal has observed, serious, the mission is, as he has affirmed, still doable. In truth, it is, I think, accurate to observe that, as in Iraq in 2007, everything in Afghanistan is hard, and it is hard all the time.
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Stratfor
The Trials of a Strategy in Afghanistan
U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA said Wednesday that the formulation of a strategy for Afghanistan was an ongoing effort, and that no announcement was imminent on whether more troops would be deployed. In short, the White House continues to struggle with the deeply intractable nature of the mission in Afghanistan.
The challenges of Afghanistan — rugged geography, highly localized loyalties, traditions of governance, warlordism, poor infrastructure — are compounded by the interrelated challenge of Pakistan. Not only do Taliban and foreign fighters receive support and sanctuary across the border, but the Pakistani Taliban has become a problem in its own right. Matters recently have been further complicated by a marked decline in popular support in the West for efforts in Afghanistan, as well as widespread allegations of fraud in the recent presidential election, which would appear to have returned Hamid Karzai to power.
Nevertheless, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is pushing forward aggressively with more counterinsurgency-focused tactics and is attempting to squeeze more combat power into the existing force. He is expected to issue a formal request for additional troops soon.
“Ultimately, the question is not how many more troops McChrystal can get in the next six months, but how much the United States can accomplish in Afghanistan with fewer and fewer troops in the coming years.”
McChrystal is laying the groundwork for an extended counterinsurgency effort. In this effort, more troops certainly would help in a tactical sense, but the numbers under discussion — likely a few brigades at best — are far from what would be necessary to impose a military reality. In any event, U.S. troop numbers are going to have to rise simply to keep International Security Assistance Force levels constant in the coming years, as European states and Canada begin following through on their plans to withdraw.
Without sufficient troops to bring about a military reality, the objective of a temporary surge is to establish a semblance of security and change perceptions enough to permit political accommodation (as was the case with the Iraq surge in 2007). However, if political accommodation in Iraq seemed complicated, consider the complexity of Afghanistan’s challenges.
U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus has acknowledged that the Americans lack the situational awareness and nuanced understanding needed even to identify potentially reconcilable elements of the Taliban. Even if some clarity is achieved, there is little incentive for most fighters to come to the table when their own fortunes are on the rise.
The lack of prospects in Afghanistan for the kind of remarkable turnaround that took place in the last few years in Iraq (though the durability of even that turnaround is increasingly suspect) forces the question of how durable the American commitment will be in Afghanistan. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has pointed out that truly turning things around there is a challenge of a decade or more.
Ultimately, the question is not how many more troops McChrystal can get in the next six months, but how much the United States can accomplish in Afghanistan with fewer and fewer troops in the coming years. Indeed, the underlying issue is not simply one of eroding political support, but the disconnect between the Afghanistan mission and the lengthy list of American geopolitical challenges elsewhere in the world.
The White House has problems enough without Afghanistan — and we’re not talking about health care reform (though domestic issues are absorbing a considerable amount of the administration’s bandwidth, and that will not change with the mid-term elections in 2010). Washington continues to deal with the consequences of an invasion that took place eight years ago. Meanwhile, Russia has resurged on the global scene, Iran has become a front-burner problem and the world has experienced the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The problem with Afghanistan is that it is detracting the administration from dealing effectively with these issues.
The balancing act continues.
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WASHINGTON — President Obama could read the grim assessment of the Afghanistan war from his top military commander there in two possible ways.
Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era. Go to the Blog »
He could read Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s report as a blunt and impassioned last-chance plea for a revamped counterinsurgency strategy bolstered by thousands more combat troops to rescue the beleaguered, eight-year mission.
Or he could read it as a searing indictment of American-led NATO military operations and a corrupt Afghan civilian government, pitted against a surprisingly adaptive and increasingly dangerous insurgency.
Either way, General McChrystal’s 66-page report with the deceptively bland title “Commander’s Initial Assessment” is serving to catalyze the thinking of a president — who is keenly aware of the historical perils of a protracted, faraway war — about what he can realistically accomplish in this conflict, and whether his vision for the war and a commitment of American troops is the same as his general’s.
Mr. Obama faces a deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, growing opposition to the war at home from Democrats and a desire to put off any major troop decision while he still needs much political capital to pass major health care legislation in Congress.
But even as the president expresses skepticism about sending more American troops to Afghanistan until he has settled on the right strategy, he is also grappling with a stark reality: it will be very hard to say no to General McChrystal.
Mr. Obama has called Afghanistan a “war of necessity,” and in the most basic terms he has the same goal as President George W. Bush did after the Sept. 11 attacks, to prevent another major terrorist assault.
“Whatever decisions I make are going to be based first on a strategy to keep us safe, then we’ll figure out how to resource it,” Mr. Obama said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“We’re not going to put the cart before the horse and just think by sending more troops we’re automatically going to make Americans safe,” he said.
The White House expects General McChrystal’s request to be not just for American troops but for NATO forces as well. This week, the White House is sending questions about his review back to the general in Kabul, Afghanistan, and expects to get responses by the end of next week.
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, said in an interview Monday that he wants to know how the uncertainty surrounding the recent Afghan elections and a plan to reintegrate Taliban fighters into Afghan society could affect General McChrystal’s troop request.
Mr. Obama has had only one meeting so far on the McChrystal review, but aides plan to schedule three or four more after he returns from the Group of 20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh at the end of this week.
Aides said it should take weeks, not months, to make a decision. “The president’s been very clear in our discussion that he’s open-minded and he’s not going to be swayed by political correctness one way or the other,” Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, said in an interview. “Different people are going to have different opinions, and he wants to hear them, but at the end of the day, he’s going to do what he thinks is the right thing for the United States and most especially for the men and women who have to respond to his orders.”
Senior officers who work with General McChrystal say he was surprised by the dire condition of the Afghan mission when he assumed command in June.
His concerns went beyond the strength and resilience of the insurgency. General McChrystal was surprised by the lack of efficient military organization at the NATO headquarters and that a significant percentage of the troops were not positioned to carry out effective counterinsurgency operations.
There was a sense among General McChrystal’s staff that the military effort in Afghanistan was disjointed and had not learned from the lessons of the past years of the war.
“We haven’t been fighting in Afghanistan for eight years,” said one officer. “We’ve been fighting in Afghanistan for one year, eight times in a row.”
In his assessment, General McChrystal also portrayed a more sophisticated Taliban foe that uses propaganda effectively and taps into the Afghan prison system as a training ground.
Taliban leaders based in Pakistan appoint shadow governors for most provinces, install their own courts, levy taxes, conscript fighters and wield savvy propagandists. They stand in sharp contrast to a corrupt and inept government.
And Taliban fighters exert control not only through bombs and bullets. “The insurgents wage a ‘silent war’ of fear, intimidation and persuasion throughout the year — not just during the warmer weather ‘fighting season’ — to gain control over the population,” the general said in his report.
Administration officials said that the general’s assessment, while very important, was just one component in the president’s thinking.
Asked on CNN on Sunday why after eight months in office he was still searching for a strategy, Mr. Obama took issue. “We put a strategy in place, clarified our goals, but what the election has shown, as well as changing circumstances in Pakistan, is that this is going to be a very difficult operation,” he said, referring to the Afghan election. “We’ve got to make sure that we’re constantly refining it to keep our focus on what our primary goals are.”
Peter Baker and Thom Shanker contributed reporting.
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Commit to Afghanistan or Get Out
We shouldn't send Americans to fight and die if we're not in it to win.
By KORI SCHAKE
In his inaugural address in 1961, John F. Kennedy said the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend” in defense of liberty. Less than three months later, he decided not to supply air support to U.S.-trained Cuban exiles who tried to overthrow Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. It wasn’t a shining moment for American foreign policy. But JFK was right to turn off the spigot of American assistance if he wasn’t committed to the fight.
President Barack Obama now faces a similar tough decision. The war in Afghanistan is not going well. The rebuilding effort isn't going well. The effort to create a competent government isn't going well. So should he commit American support if he isn't committed to doing what is needed to succeed?
Mr. Obama owns the war in Afghanistan. He bought it, on credit. But he is fulminating at the cost now that the bill is coming due. Gen. Stanley McChrystal has made clear what the bill will be in terms of additional troops. And the president now wants a review to determine whether we're pursuing the right strategy.
It is disappointing that this review comes after the president decided to keep 68,000 Americans risking their lives in Afghanistan. But Mr. Obama is right to give himself a chance to decide whether he is willing to follow through on this war, given what it will cost in blood, treasure, and other things.
What the president's review will reveal is a shocking incapacity by the nonmilitary parts of our war effort. Its talk of the need for "smart power" notwithstanding, right now the administration has only a military strategy for Afghanistan. What's more, the administration appears to only be debating the military requirements of the war, not the much bigger challenges—the nonmilitary pieces of the Afghanistan strategy.
When Mr. Obama announced his current Afghanistan policy in March, he said it was "a stronger, smarter, more comprehensive strategy" that would build schools, hospitals, roads, and enterprise zones, addressing issues like energy and trade. Where are those efforts?
He said "to advance security, opportunity and justice—not just in Kabul, but from the bottom up in the provinces—we need agricultural specialists and educators; engineers and lawyers." Where are those specialists?
The president said "I am ordering a substantial increase in our civilians on the ground." He directed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to develop a diplomatic plan to parallel Gen. McChrystal's military plan. Where is that plan?
The administration has done virtually nothing in these areas. Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, sent in a plea for funding for some of these civilian projects last month. It was dismissed as premature. The administration has not named a director for the Agency for International Development. And only 56 additional civilians as part of the "civilian surge" were in place before Afghanistan's August elections.
If the president turns off the spigot of American assistance in Afghanistan, he will pay a substantial price for it. He'll be going back on his rhetoric about Afghanistan as the "good war," a war of necessity. He will cast the withdrawal from Iraq in a different light, endow the jihadist with a public victory (which will only encourage future attacks), and make it more difficult to achieve positive change in Afghanistan as well as collect intelligence on terrorists. He may turn Hamid Karzai's government into an adversary. He will diminish our ability to help Pakistan fight terrorists, and will likely make the U.S. less trusted in the world. But those prices will be less than the cost of sending young Americans to fight and die in a war the president is not committed to winning.
The military is doing its job in Afghanistan. It's time the rest of the government does its job. We need to turn our attention to the failures of the nonmilitary parts of our strategy and bring them up to the standard at which our military is performing. Otherwise we will not be doing what is needed to win.
Ms. Schake is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and an associate professor at the United States Military Academy.
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The Afghan Imperative Recommend
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 24, 2009
Always there is the illusion of the easy path. Always there is the illusion, which gripped Donald Rumsfeld and now grips many Democrats, that you can fight a counterinsurgency war with a light footprint, with cruise missiles, with special forces operations and unmanned drones. Always there is the illusion, deep in the bones of the Pentagon’s Old Guard, that you can fight a force like the Taliban by keeping your troops mostly in bases, and then sending them out in well-armored convoys to kill bad guys.
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There is simply no historical record to support these illusions. The historical evidence suggests that these middling strategies just create a situation in which you have enough forces to assume responsibility for a conflict, but not enough to prevail.
The record suggests what Gen. Stanley McChrystal clearly understands — that only the full counterinsurgency doctrine offers a chance of success. This is a doctrine, as General McChrystal wrote in his remarkable report, that puts population protection at the center of the Afghanistan mission, that acknowledges that insurgencies can only be defeated when local communities and military forces work together.
To put it concretely, this is a doctrine in which small groups of American men and women are outside the wire in dangerous places in remote valleys, providing security, gathering intelligence, helping to establish courts and building schools and roads.
These are the realistic choices for America’s Afghanistan policy — all out or all in, surrender the place to the Taliban or do armed nation-building. And we might as well acknowledge that it’s not an easy call. The costs and rewards are tightly balanced. But in the end, President Obama was right: “You don’t muddle through the central front on terror. ... You don’t muddle through stamping out the Taliban.”
Since 1979, we have been involved in a long, complex conflict against Islamic extremism. We’ve fought this ideology in many ways in many places, and we shouldn’t pretend we understand how this conflict will evolve. But we should understand that the conflict is unavoidable and that when extremism pushes, it’s in our long-term interests to push back — and that eventually, if we do so, extremism will wither.
Afghanistan is central to this effort partly because it could again become a safe haven to terrorists, but mostly because of its effects on the stability of Pakistan. As Stephen Biddle noted in a recent essay in The American Interest, the Taliban is a transnational Pashtun movement active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is part of a complex insurgency trying to topple the Pakistani regime.
Pakistan has a fragile government with an estimated 50 or more nuclear weapons. A Taliban conquest in Afghanistan would endanger the Pakistani regime at best, create a regional crisis for certain and lead to a nuclear-armed Al Qaeda at worst.
A Taliban reconquest would also, it should be said, be a moral atrocity from which American self-respect would not soon recover.
Proponents of withdrawal often acknowledge the costs of defeat but argue that the cause is hopeless anyway. On this, let me note a certain pattern. When you interview people who know little about Afghanistan, they describe an anarchic place that is the graveyard of empires. When you interview people who live there or are experts, they think those stereotypes are rubbish. They usually take a hardened but guardedly optimistic view. Read Clare Lockhart’s Sept. 17 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to get a sense of the way many knowledgeable people view the situation.
Amidst all the problems, the NATO coalition has a few things going for it. First, American forces have become quite good at counterinsurgency. They have a battle-tested strategy, experienced troops and a superb new leadership team. According to the political scientists Andrew J. Enterline and Joseph Magagnoli, since World War II, counterinsurgency efforts that put population protection at their core have succeeded nearly 70 percent of the time.
Second, the enemy is wildly hated. Only 6 percent of Afghans want a Taliban return, while NATO is viewed with surprising favor. This is not Vietnam or even Iraq.
Third, while many Afghan institutions are now dysfunctional, there is a base on which to build. The Afghan Army is a successful institution. Local villages have their own centuries-old civic institutions. The National Solidarity Program was able to build development councils in 23,000 villages precisely because the remnants of civil society still exist.
We have tried to fight the Afghan war the easy way, and it hasn’t worked. Switching now to the McChrystal strategy is a difficult choice, and President Obama is right to take his time. But Obama was also right a few months ago when he declared, “This will not be quick, nor easy. But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. ... This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”
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I am floored. What is going on in the White house? Obama spoke to his field commander only 1 time in 70 days? :-o :x :cry:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/28/mcchrystal-says-hes-met-obama-taking-afghanistan-command/ (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/28/mcchrystal-says-hes-met-obama-taking-afghanistan-command/)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVK2_8QFfOs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVK2_8QFfOs)
p.s. I have not been following this thread like I should....if this is posted elsewhere I missed it in a brief scan
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That datum caught my attention too and it speaks volumes. As low as an opinion as I already have of our President, it just went quite a bit lower.
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The Taliban in Afghanistan: An Assessment
Stratfor Today » September 28, 2009 | 1148 GMT
STR/AFP/Getty Images
Three suspected Taliban held by Afghan police Aug. 18Summary
Nearly eight years after removing the Taliban from power in Kabul, U.S. and NATO International Security Assistance Force troops continue to struggle against an elusive enemy. As the United States and NATO ramp up their offensive against Taliban strongholds, STRATFOR examines the nature of the Afghan Taliban phenomenon: how they operate, what their motivations are and what constraints they face.
The Taliban are a direct product of the intra-Islamist civil war that erupted following the fall of the Afghan Marxist regime in 1992, only three years after the withdrawal of Soviet forces. Dating back to the 1950s, the Soviet-allied communist party in Afghanistan sought to undermine the local tribal structure: It wanted to gain power via central control. This strategy was extremely disruptive, and resulted in a deterioration in order and the evisceration of the traditional local/regional tribal ethnic system of relations. But these efforts could not dislodge regional and local warlords, who continued to fight amongst each other for territorial control with little regard for civilians, long the modus operandi in Afghanistan.
After the Islamist uprising against the communist takeover and the subsequent entry of Soviet troops into the country in 1979, disparate Afghan factions united under the banner of Islam, aided by the then-Islamist-leaning regime in neighboring Pakistan, which was backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia. In terms of the Taliban movement, Pakistan was the most influential, but Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were also involved — mostly through financial support. The Saudis had political and religious ties as well.
During this time, madrassas (Islamic schools) in Pakistan became incubators, drawing young, mostly ethnic Pashtun youth, who would in turn facilitate the later rise of the Taliban in the early/mid 1990s in the wake of the decline of the mujahedeen factions.
The madrassas were instrumental in providing assistance, allowing orphans or displaced war refugees to study in Pakistan while Afghanistan experienced a brutal civil war. Refugees were taught a particularly conservative brand of Islam (along with receiving training in guerrilla tactics) with the intention that when they returned to Afghanistan, Pakistan would be able to control these groups, maintaining a powerful lever over its volatile and often unpredictable neighbor.
These radicalized fighters, many of whom originated in the madrassas and considered themselves devoted students of Islam, labeled themselves “Taliban.” The name “Taliban” comes from the Pashtun word for student — “Talib” — with Taliban being the plural form. The Taliban restored some sense of law and order by enforcing their own brand of Shariah, where local warlords previously ruled as they pleased — often to the detriment of civilians. The Taliban, issuing arrests and executing offending warlords, avenged injustices such as rape, murder and theft. As a result, the Taliban won support from the locals by providing a greater sense of security and justice.
(click here to enlarge map)
By the mid-1990s, the Taliban had become more cohesive under their nominal leader from Kandahar, Mullah Mohammad Omar. The Taliban gained prominence as a faction in 1994 when they were able to impose order amid chaos in the Kandahar region. By 1996, Taliban forces had entered Kabul, overthrown then-President Burhanuddin Rabbani and claimed control, renaming the country “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” Omar was named the leader of the country but remained in Kandahar. It was during this rise to power that outside forces began partnering with the Taliban — namely al Qaeda — emphasizing their common radical Islamist ideology, but ultimately putting the Taliban in unsavory company. Pakistan and al Qaeda competed for influence over the Taliban, with Pakistan seeking to use them as leverage in Afghanistan and al Qaeda wanting to use the Taliban’s control over Afghanistan to spread their power throughout the Islamic world.
During their rule, the Taliban attempted to rid Afghanistan of any Western influences that had crept in, such as Western clothing, cinemas, music, schools and political ideologies. The proxy forces of the Pakistanis were now essentially governing the state, providing Pakistan with a tremendous amount of influence in Afghanistan, and, consequently, a very secure western border, which allowed Pakistan to focus on India to the east.
But this situation did not last long. Al Qaeda’s influence was on the upswing in Afghanistan, from which it staged 9/11. As a result, and after the refusal of the Taliban regime to disassociate itself from al Qaeda, the Pashtun jihadist group was forced out of power by U.S. forces in late 2001 following 9/11. (The United States implicated the Taliban for providing sanctuary to al Qaeda.) Instead of fighting against conventionally superior U.S. and NATO forces, the Taliban retreated into the rural southern and eastern traditional strongholds, returning to their traditional support bases. In other words, despite both claims and perceptions of a quick U.S. victory in Afghanistan in 2002, in reality, the Taliban largely declined to fight.
In many ways, there was no real interregnum between the fall of the regime and the insurgency. The West’s earliest attempts to talk to the Taliban occurred in 2003, a sign that the West viewed the Taliban as a force that had not been defeated and was capable of staging a comeback. In the early days, the West’s strategy was to eliminate the Taliban as a fighting force, but they were never successful, due to adverse geography, the lack of forces and the shifting of focus to Iraq in 2003. More importantly, the fight to control the Pashtun areas turned into a fight to prevent a resurgent Taliban. The U.S. focus on the insurgency in Iraq allowed the Taliban to galvanize and regroup, and by 2005, it was clear that they were rebounding. Since 2006, the Taliban insurgency has gained momentum to the point that U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus commented in April that foreign forces in Afghanistan are dealing with an “industrial strength” insurgency.
The Current Status of the Taliban
Despite their removal from power in Kabul, the Taliban continue to be the most powerful indigenous force in Afghanistan. Unlike the Afghan National Army or the Afghan National Police, which are entities built around the idea that Afghanistan can be centrally controlled (although the geography of Afghanistan severely limits the power of any governing body in Kabul to exert power beyond the capital). The Taliban have a much looser command structure that functions on regional and local levels. Various Taliban commanders have attempted to control the movement and call it their own, but the disjointedness of Taliban units means that each commander enjoys independence and ultimately controls his own men. The Afghan Taliban should also not be confused with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani Taliban. The TTP are an indigenous movement, and while they cooperate with the Afghan Taliban and share similar objectives, the two sets of groups are independent.
The closest the Taliban have to a leader is Omar, who has no coequal. He has recently issued orders in an attempt to consolidate the disparate forces in various regions. However, these orders are not always followed, largely because the malleable and semi-autonomous command structure allows the Taliban to be much more in tune with the structural realities of operating in Afghanistan than the Afghan forces created by the United States and ISAF (in addition to U.S. and ISAF forces themselves).
Though a loose command and control structure denies its enemies from targeting any central nerve center that would significantly disrupt the group’s existence, the nebulous structure of the Taliban also prevents them from being a single, coherent force with a single, coherent mission. The Taliban fighting force is far from uniform. Fighters range from young locals who are either fighting for ideological reasons or are forced by circumstances to fight with the Taliban, to hardened, well-trained veterans from the Soviet war in the 1980s, to foreigners who have come to Afghanistan to cut their teeth fighting Western forces and contribute their assistance to re-establishing the “Islamic” emirate. This also leads to variable objectives. On the most basic level, the desire to drive out foreign forces from the area and control it for themselves is a sentiment that appeals to every Taliban fighter and many Afghan civilians. The Taliban know that foreigners have never been able to impose an order on the country and it is only a matter of time before foreign forces will leave, which is when the Taliban — being the single-most organized militia — could have the opportunity to restore their lost “emirate.” For now, the presence of foreign fighters restricts their ability to administer self rule. This common sentiment is what keeps the Taliban somewhat united.
However, the Afghan national identity is easily trumped by subnational ones. While there is consensus for opposing foreign militaries, agreement becomes more tenuous when it comes to the presence of Afghan security forces. Tribal and ethnic identities tend to trump any national identity, meaning that the ethnic Baluchi in the south are unlikely to support the presence of an ethnic Pashtun military unit from Kabul in their home village. These tribal and ethnic splits explain why Afghan security forces are frequently targeted in attacks.
(click map to enlarge)
But Taliban forces across Afghanistan share one goal: removing foreign military presence. The Taliban have plenty of fighting experience outside of their opposition to the Soviets. Militants know that direct confrontation with foreign military forces typically ends poorly for the Taliban because, given enough time, foreign forces can muster superior firepower to destroy an enemy position. For this reason, the Taliban rely heavily on indirect fire and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which avoid putting Taliban fighters directly in harm’s way. When the Taliban fighters do confront military forces directly, it has generally (though not universally) been in hit-and-run ambushes (often supported by heavy machine guns and mortars) that seek to inflict damage through surprise, not overwhelming force.
Rough terrain and meager transportation infrastructure limit mobility in Afghanistan, which limits the routes that ground convoy traffic can choose from, especially in rugged, outlying areas where the Taliban enjoy more freedom to operate. This makes routes predictable and creates more choke points where IEDs can be placed, which have caused the most deaths for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
These tactics do not always inflict damage on foreign forces and are often unsuccessful, but their model is low-risk, cheap and very sustainable. Meanwhile, as Taliban forces inflict casualties against foreign forces, the overall campaign becomes harder to sustain for Western governments.
Additionally, suicide bombings and suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) are on the rise in areas like Kabul. However, various elements of the Taliban (as well as entities like foreign jihadists) have not proven to be able to use these tactics as effectively as Iraqi or Pakistani militants. This is because the Afghan Taliban have much more experience using guerrilla tactics, fighting as small, armed units, than using terrorist tactics such as VBIEDs and suicide bombings. VBIEDs are hardly indigenous to Afghanistan and did not become common until around 2005-2006, well after they had become common occurrences in Iraq. As militants migrated from different jihadist theaters and shared information, tactics spread to Afghanistan. There was also an effort by al Qaeda to impart their tactics onto the Taliban. But there is a learning curve for perfecting the construction and tactical expertise at deploying these weapons. While the Taliban have not been as proficient as some of their contemporaries, their capability could be improving.
It remains to be seen what kind of implications the collateral damage that these attacks cause will have on the popular perception of the movement. One clear implication of killing civilians is that it undermines local support for the Taliban, which is why Omar has sought to limit the use of suicide bombings as a modus operandi. (Afghans have traditionally abhorred suicide bombings.) But the continued employment of such tactics against Afghan and Western security forces can be expected.
But areas where the Taliban conduct attacks should not be confused with areas that the Taliban control. Attacks certainly indicate a Taliban presence, but the Taliban would not necessarily need to conduct sustained attacks in an area if they did not feel they were under threat. The issue of controlling territory is, in reality, much more complex. There have been many mainstream publications recently that attempt to calculate what percentage of Afghanistan is under Taliban “control” or where the Taliban have influence. But these terms are misleading and need to be properly defined to understand the reality of the insurgency and its grip on the country.
“Controlling” Afghanistan
Western military forces and the Taliban have pursued different strategies to control territory in Afghanistan. Foreign forces have pursued the model of controlling the national capital and projecting power into the provinces. This means that Kabul is the main objective, with other major cities and provincial capitals being the secondary objective, followed third by district capitals and smaller towns. Foreign forces tend to hold urban areas because they are crucial to maintaining heavier logistical needs, and the supply chains that support them, and are deemed necessary to carry out a more centralized conception of national governance. Holding urban areas and roads allows them to expand further into the rural areas where, conversely, the Taliban derive their power.
The Taliban implement almost the exact opposite model. The Taliban employ decentralized control with a much lighter logistical footprint. The Taliban begin at the local level, in isolated villages and towns so that it can pressure district-level capitals. This scheme, which comes naturally to the Taliban, is much more in line with the underlying realities of Afghanistan.
Both sides have managed to prevent the other from gaining any real control over the country. By holding district and provincial capitals, foreign forces deny the Taliban formal control. By entrenching themselves in the countryside, the Taliban simply survive — and can afford to wait for their opportunity.
Click map to enlarge
Few areas of the country are secure for Taliban, foreign or Afghan forces — or civilians — indicating that no side has absolute control over territory. What STRATFOR wrote in 2007 still stands today: Control in Afghanistan essentially depends on who is standing where at any given time. The situation remains extremely fluid, largely because of mobility advantages on both sides. Taliban forces have mobility advantages over foreign forces due their self-sufficiency. Taliban conscripts do not rely on lengthy, tenuous supply chains that cross over politically and militarily hostile territory. They are local fighters who depend on family and friends for supplies and shelter or, when forced, use intimidation to take what they need from civilians. They can also easily blend into their surroundings. These abilities translate into superior tactical mobility.
An example of the control that the Taliban have on the ground is opium production. In poppy-producing (the flower used to make opium) areas of the south and west, locals rely on the Taliban for protecting, purchasing and moving their product to market. In these areas, the Taliban have not only physical leverage over civilians, but also economic, which helps strengthen allegiances. While opium production in Helmand, the province with the highest rate of poppy cultivation, dropped by one-third over the past year, poppy production continues to increase in other provinces such as Kandahar, Farah and especially Badghis province, where poppy production increased 93 percent and violent attacks have increased over the past year. This province — and the north/northwest of Afghanistan in general — is an area that STRATFOR certainly needs to watch as it has traditionally not been a Taliban stronghold.
Conversely, foreign forces and the Afghan forces modeled on them are bound by supply chain limitations — a weakness that the Taliban have targeted in the past year. This reality constrains their ability to be flexible and spontaneous, resulting in predictable troop movements and requires the reliance on stationary bases, which make for easier targeting on the part of the Taliban.
However, what U.S. and ISAF forces have that the Taliban do not is air superiority. Foreign forces have been able to deny the Taliban sanctuaries by using air surveillance and air strikes that can neutralize large contingents of Taliban fighters and commanders without putting U.S. and ISAF forces in harm’s way. Air superiority gives foreign forces an advantage over the Taliban’s superior ground mobility and denies the Taliban’s complete control over any territory. However, air superiority does not guarantee control over any specific territory, as ground control is required to administer territory through organized government. This arrangement creates concentric circles of influence: The Taliban may patrol one stretch of land one day, but U.S. forces will patrol the next. Similarly, village allegiances shift constantly as they try to avoid being perceived by foreign forces as harboring Taliban lest they are the target of an airstrike, yet also maintain cordial relations with the local Taliban to avoid harsh reprisal.
Additionally, foreign forces are able to use air power to overcome some of the limitations of the supply chain vulnerabilities by relying on helicopter transport for shuttling supplies and deploying troops. Helicopters greatly reduce reliance on ground transport and convoys, but are in short supply and, in an environment where counter-tactics develop as quickly as tactics, they have their own vulnerabilities.
The Realities That Remain
Just as foreign and Afghan forces struggle to outright control territory, so do the Taliban. Even during the days of the Islamic Emirate, when the Taliban were at their peak, considerable swaths of territory in the north eluded their control. The fact remains that Afghanistan’s geography and ethnic/tribal makeup ensure that any power seeking to control Afghanistan will face a serious struggle. With flat, unprotected borderlands (where the bulk of the population resides) and a mountainous center, Afghanistan is both highly susceptible to foreign interference (it has so many neighbors who are able to easily project power into it, yet are unable and unwilling to rule it outright) and is governed poorly from any centralized location.
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http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers32/paper3186.html
US policy-makers had hoped that the taking-over of Gen. David Petraeus as the commander of the US Central Command, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the US Commander in Afghanistan working under Gen.Petraeus would bring about a more proactive strategy to weaken the Taliban and create a divide between it and the Afghan people. The two had earned a reputation in Iraq for reversing the fortunes of Al Qaeda and the former Baathist soldiers of Saddam Hussein, creating a divide between the two and enlisting the support of different tribal leaders and through them their followers for the US military operations. The improvement in the ground situation in Iraq----though not yet irreversible--- was largely due to their thinking, planning and execution.
2. Hopes in Washington that the two Generals would bring about similar results in Afghanistan have been belied so far.The Af-Pak troika of the administration of Barack Obama---- Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special representative for the Af-Pak region, who handles the political and diplomatic angles, and the two Generals--- has not been able to come to grips with the problem almost six months after the new Af-Pak policy of the Obama adminstration was launched in March last. The present ground situation favours the Pakistan-based Neo Taliban. Since the two Generals took over, the Neo Taliban has been able to increase and strengthen its presence in the north too. The situation is still one of a bleeding stalemate, but the prospects of the US-led forces breaking the stalemate and prevailing over the Neo Taliban are not any the brighter since the two Generals took over.
3. The dilemma posed by the worrisome ground situation is reflected in the growing impression that Obama's Af-Pak strategy has failed to take off and is unlikely to take off and that the time has come to think of a new strategy in which the key to success would be in Pakistan and not in Afghanistan.Vice-President Joe Biden seems to favour a change of focus from a Neo Taliban-centric strategy in Afghanistan to an Al Qaeda-centric one in Pakistan.
4.Presently, the political pressure is on Pakistan to act against the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements operating from sanctuaries in its territory and on the Hamid Karzai Government in Kabul to improve governance, reduce corruption and pay better attention to the problems of the people in the areas controlled by the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the US-led Western forces.
5. Neither of these pressures has worked. Nor have the never-ending incentives offered by the US to Pakistan---the latest of which is the expected passage by both Houses of the US Congress of the Kerry-Lugar Bill making a long term commitment of US$ 7.5 billion to Pakistan in the form of non-military aid over a period of five years. The military aid, which too continues to increase, will be in addition. Original expectations when Obama assumed office in January last that strict benchmarks would be laid down for the periodic disbursements of this aid in order to ensure that Pakistan does act sincerely and firmly against the terrorists have been belied.The more Pakistan is pampered, the less it acts against the terrorists. That has been the lesson since 9/11 and this lesson has not been learnt by the officials of the Obama administration.This is evident even from the grim Assessment dated August 30,2009, prepared by Gen.McChrystal, on the basis of which he is reported to be planning to ask for another surge of 21000 US troops--- a request over which Obama is reportedly not enthusiastic.
6. The pressures on Karzai to improve governance have not worked either. This is partly due to the difficult ground situation, which would pose a dilemma to any ruler---however democratic and however competent. Moreover, instead of strengthening the position of Karzai, US officials have done everything to weaken his credibility in the eyes of his own people as well as the international community through allegations---some true, many unwisely inspired--- regarding his inability or unwillingness to act against corruption and narcotics production and rigging in the Presidential elections. Even if he wins the elections in the first round itself----as he is expected to--- the importance of that victory has already been diluted by these allegations. US officials take a lot of care not to say or do anything, which might weaken the position of the Pakistani leadership, but they do not take similar care in respect of Karzai.
7.In the existing gloomy scenario, there are only two positive factors, which provide some cheer. Firstly, the improvement in the flow of human intelligence to the US intelligence community from sources in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, which has led to some significant sucesses in the form of eradication of some middle-level leaders of Al Qaeda and even senior leaders of the Pakistan Taliban known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) by US drone strikes. After having eliminated Baitullah Mehsud, the Amir of the TTP, the Drone strikes are now focussed on eliminating the Haqqani network consisting of the old Soviet era mujahideen warrior Jalaluddin Haqqani and his sons. If the US succeeds in eliminating the Haqqani network--- I hope it will--- the pressure on the US forces in Afghan territory could lessen--- at least in the short term. As against this, the impact of the elimination of Baitullah on the ground situation in Afghanistan would be minimal. His elimination was more a boon to the Pakistani security forces grappling with terrorists of their own creation in their territory than to the US-led Western forces in Afghanistan.
8.The second positive factor is the role of India as a force for stability in Afghanistan. Any objective analyst has to concede that the various road construction, democracy-promotion and people-oriented programmes undertaken by India in the areas controlled by the Government of Afghanistan have benefitted not only the people of Afghanistan immensely, but also the long-term Western objective of a democratic, modern Afghanistan.
9. One would have expected the US policy-makers not only to recognise the importance of retaining the role of India as a force for stability, but also encouraging India to expand further its people-oriented role in Afghanistan. In his assessment, McChrystal recognises --- though somewhat grudgingly-- the beneficial role of India and the support for that role from the Karzai Government, but one is surprised to find that he shows understanding for the Pakistani concerns over India's role and hints that these concerns have to be taken into consideration while formulating any revised strategy. He himself says that no strategy will work unless it is people-oriented, but at the same time wants something to be done to address Pakistani concerns over India's people-oriented role.
10.The Afghan people---whether Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbecks or others--- distrust and hate the Pakistanis after seeing the role played by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the creation and fattening of the Taliban since 1994. One saw the extent of the hatred for the Pakistanis when the American and Northern Alliance troops entered Kabul in 2001 under Operation Enduring Freedom. Pakistanis assisting the Taliban Government in Kabul were hunted, killed and their dead bodies thrown into the gutters of Kabul.
11. Gen.McChrystal's ideas, if implemented, would provide an environment for the re-assertion of the hated Pakistani role by paying attention to Pakistani concerns over India's positive role.This shows how short-sighted US policy-makers and military-officers can be.The General's assessment is disappointing because it fails to put its finger on the crux of the dilemma being faced by the US-led Western forces, similar to the dilemma which the Soviet troops faced in Afghanistan in the 1980s before they decided to quit in 1988.This dilemma arose in the case of the Soviet troops and has now arisen in the case of the US-led Western troops from the absence of a counter-sanctuaries component to the counter-insurgency strategy.
12.The reluctance of the Soviet troops to take their fighting to the sanctuaries of the Afghan Mujahideen in Pakistani territory led to a situation where the Soviet troops kept bleeding till battle fatigue and public disenchantment with the war set in. Similarly, the absence of an effective counter-sanctuaries component is leading to a situation where the US and other Western forces as well as the ANA are bleeding more and more. There are already the incipient signs of a battle fatigue as cound be seen even from the General's assessment and the beginning of a public disenchantment with the involvement in Afghanistan. This disenchantment is already pronounced in West Europe and Canada and one could see the beginning of it even in the US. Instead of allowing the Neo Taliban to infiltrate in increasing numbers from its sanctuaries and recruiting grounds in the FATA and the Pashtun majority areas of Balochistan and then fighting or countering their ambushes in Afghan territory, the US should take its counter-insurgency operations to the camps of the Neo Taliban in adjoining Pakistani territory----whether in the FATA or in Balochistan.
13. The US already has an air-mounted counter-sanctuaries strategy in the FATA with the help of the Drones, which provide a deniable way of hitting at the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and the Neo Taliban. This strategy has had its successes, but, despite them, has proved inadequate. Initially, these strikes were concentrated on the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda and its allies in North Waziristan. Earlier this year, when there was a danger of the TTP expanding its presence to the non-tribal areas and posing a danger to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, the focus of the Drone strikes shifted to South Waziristan against the sanctuaries of the TTP.During the last six months or so, the objective of these strikes became not protecting the NATO forces and the ANA in Afghanistan from attacks mounted from the Pakistani territory, but assisting the Pakistan Army in reversing the advance of the TTP into the non-tribal areas. After killing Baitullah in the first week of August, the US has again changed the direction and is now focussing on the Haqqani network, whose threat is more in Afghan territory than in the FATA. The US has not been able to mount a full-scale operation against Al Qaeda sanctuaries in North Waziristan due to the dispersal of its resources to South Waziristan for use against the TTP.
14. Even this limited success has not been there against the staging grounds of the Neo Taliban in Balochistan.The US continues to depend on the Pakistan Army for action against the sanctuaries of the Neo Taliban. The ISI-sponsored Neo Taliban is the only asset left with the Pakistan Army for regaining its primacy in Afghanistan if and when the US and other Western troops leave Afghanistan. Pakistan wants to regain this primacy without the direct deployment of its own army as it did in the 1990s. If the US is waiting for the Pakistan Army to act against the Neo Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistani territory, this is not going to happen. The US has only two alternatives---either itself act against the sanctuaries in Balochistan and destroy the Neo Taliban leadership in order to restore the damaged image of the US forces in Afghanistan, thereby paving the way for an honourable exit or keep its operations confined to Afghan territory, thereby continuing to bleed and face the prospect of an exit forced on the US by the Neo Taliban under humiliating conditions.
15.The role of the Drones---even if extended to Balochistan-- may not be as effective as their role in the FATA. The places in the FATA where the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda,the TTP and the Haqqani network are located are far from inhabited areas. The dangers of civilian fatalities are not large. In the Quetta and adjoining areas of Balochistan, the sanctuaries of the Neo Taliban are located in inhabited areas. It would be very difficult---almost impossible---to avoid large civilian fatalities. Deniable ground operations would, therefore, be necessary to eliminate the sanctuaries of the Neo Taliban. The US has the capability for such ground operations, but does not have the political will to use it lest it add to the already high anti-US feelings in Pakistan and affect even the limited co-operration which it has presently been getting from Pakistan in the FATA.
16. This danger of adverse reaction in Pakistan has to be faced if the US wants to bring about better ground conditions, which would enable it to contemplate withdrawing from Afghanistan with honour and with some confidence that Afghanistan will not revert to its pre-9/11 position of being the rear base for Al Qaeda. Before contemplating withdrawal, the US has to destroy Al Qaeda sanctuaries, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, in the FATA, the Haqqani network and the Neo Taliban sanctuaries in Balochistan. It has to come to terms with the hard reality that this is something which the US has to do without depending on Pakistan.Pakistan and Al Qaeda are biding their time hoping that after the US withdrawal, they can move into Afghanistan once again. This should not be allowed to happen.
17. Instead of discussing the various options available in this regard,McChrystal's report skirts the crux of the dilemma and discusses other issues having little relevance to a counter-sanctuaries strategy. His assessment reads more like one prepared by a senior officer attending a joint staff course than a recommendation for action prepared by an officer in charge of command and control. It is possible there is a classified part of the Assessment in which McChrystal discusses a counter-sanctuaries strategy. If not, his thinking doesn't bode well for the ultimate success of the US operations in the Af-Pak region.
18. This may please be read in continuation of my earlier paper of May 13,2009, titled "The Af-Pak Situation--An Update", at
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers32/paper3186.html (27-9-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail:
seventyone2@gmail.com )
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Second post of the morning-- the first is the more important one.
The Taliban’s Toll
How American taxpayer dollars are being used to fund our Afghan enemies
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
Forget opium poppies for a moment. The Taliban has another huge source of revenue, worth up to $1 billion a year, which generously supplements its heroin-trafficking income and the cash-flow from rich oil sheiks in the Persian Gulf.
This money comes from you.
The allegation that millions of dollars of U.S aid and military funds have been siphoned off by the Taliban through elaborate extortion rackets is not something government officials readily discuss. But the departing head of the Army Corps of Engineers recently conceded that there was little his agency could do to stop it, and the U.S. State Department launched an investigation after reports of the scandal finally penetrated the mainstream news.
The Pentagon did not respond to TAC’s inquiries about charges that local contractors who deliver supplies and equipment to remote NATO bases in Afghanistan are charging Western governments “protection money” to pay off the Taliban, or Taliban-connected middlemen, to protect convoys along dangerous overland supply routes. Yet a growing consensus supports a fearsome prospect: U.S. taxpayers are funding the enemy.
“If you don’t pay, you will get attacked, you will not get through,” says Peter Jouvenal, a British expat and former BBC journalist who has been living and working in Kabul for nearly 30 years. He has operated several businesses in Afghanistan, including a small trucking company. “Everybody wins in the short-term,” he tells TAC. “The Taliban get their money, and the contractors get their money, and the soldiers get their food and fuel supplies. The only one that loses out is the United States taxpayer, who has to foot the bill for all this. That would be acceptable if we were achieving something, but we’re not.”
In late August, McClatchy News reported that the Taliban now controls districts in two key northern provinces along the new major supply route coming in from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, running through the Hindu Kush mountains and toward the U.S. military’s massive Bagram Air Base.
Yet supplies are getting through. Reports suggest that contractors big and small are paying the price for secure delivery, then off-loading that cost to their clients—the military, USAID, or whatever Western aid organization is footing the bill. There is lots of money to be made. At the beginning of this year, Washington announced it would be spending upwards of $4 billion to construct new facilities and upgrade old ones in order to support the Af-Pak “surge. ” The strategy included three new combat brigades, as well as new facilities for Afghan soldiers, not to mention the accompanying army of private contractors supporting them.
And that’s only part of the story. The U.S. has already appropriated $38 billion since 2001 in humanitarian aid and reconstruction funding for its post-invasion nation-building exercises, and the Obama administration wants to increase spending. According to recent reports, much of this money has already disappeared into the pockets of Taliban racketeers, calling into question the success of Western investment over the past eight years. “Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban prefer to term it, ‘the spoils of war,’ the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy,” wrote Jean MacKenzie, Kabul correspondent for the GlobalPost, in August.
MacKenzie is one of the few reporters who have tried to run the numbers: the manager of an Afghan firm with “lucrative construction contracts with the U.S government” builds in a “minimum” charge of 20 percent for Taliban payouts, she writes. He tells his friends privately that he makes upwards of $1 million per month, $200,000 of which goes to Taliban heavies.
“It adds up, of course,” says MacKenzie, estimating that the “outside limit” of the Taliban’s extortion earnings comes to roughly $1 billion a year. Add to that other sources of corruption in Afghanistan—whether it is the police, the politicians, the elections, or abusive Western contractors—and the picture of the Af-Pak effort starts to look pretty bleak.
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Even worse, it seems that insurgents might be ripping off some contractors, allowing them to proceed with their business, only to turn and use their ill-gotten gains to attack other allied convoys. In the Sept. 7 issue of Time magazine, Aryn Baker and Shah Mahmood Barakzai reported from Kabul that a week before a deadly Taliban blast in Kunduz killed four American soldiers, a local businessman, who had been subcontracted by a firm working for the German government, admitted to paying a cash bribe of $15,000 to a “Taliban middleman.” No one can prove that any of that money went toward assembling the makeshift bomb that killed the troops. “Nevertheless,” conclude Baker and Barakzai, “it is likely that a substantial amount of aid money from many countries—including the U.S.—has made its way, directly or indirectly, into the Taliban’s coffers.”
As the Obama administration struggles to come to terms with the looming reality that the Taliban might have the upper hand in this war, the last thing that government officials and members of Congress want to talk about is the idea that the enemy has his hand in the American purse. Requests for comment to key members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee went unanswered. Requests to House members who had just returned from Afghanistan were met with similar silence.
Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing David Cohen has admitted there is a problem, but will not talk about specifics or scope. In a statement consisting of just two lines, he said, “The Taliban obtains revenues from a variety of sources, including extortion of funds from both legitimate and unlawful activity in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” He finished by saying that an interagency task force had been convened to combat “funding for violent extremist groups.”
Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke, overcoming the American chain of command’s habitual preoccupation with opium poppies, has acknowledged that the Taliban does not just make money from the country’s $4 billion drug trade. “In the past there was a kind of a feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan,” he told reporters in Pakistan in June. “That is simply not true.”
“Rackets, extortion, kidnapping and bank heists are all helping the Pakistani Taliban pay the bills,” wrote Shahan Mufti for GlobalPost in August. In an April report about the NATO supply lines through Pakistan into Afghanistan, private intelligence provider Stratfor said:
The Taliban and their jihadist affiliates are ideologically driven to target Western forces and increase the cost for them to remain in the region. There are also a number of criminally motivated fighters who adopt the Taliban label as a convenient cover but who are far more interested in making a profit. Both groups can benefit from racketeering enterprises that allow them to extort hefty protection fees from private security firms in return for the contractors’ physical safety.
Holbrooke preferred to steer clear of that particular angle. Instead, he used the apparently candid moment to try to shift attention toward the shady international donors who send gifts to the Taliban through tenebrous charities and the like. It is true that foreign donations represent a thorny problem, though the issue is clearly not as embarrassing for the U.S. government as the thought of some Taliban middleman becoming $10,000 richer so that German International Security Alliance Forces could refill their watering holes.
Over the summer months, the Taliban has revealed, once more, what a cunning adversary it can be—busily skimming off cash from our altruism and manipulating the supply chain, either by bombing our convoys or shaking them down. Thus the destructive cycle evolves. Profiteers and insurgents thrive as long as the payoffs exceed the risks. We deploy more troops, who need more supplies, more fuel, more shelter, which in turn provide more targets for extortion and more revenue for the insurgency.
Jouvenal, a seasoned commentator on Afghanistan, calls it “business as usual.” “Afghans all know the West has failed,” he says. “This time, when the West packs up … the Taliban will come back and a lot of people will become refugees again. The thought is to make as much money as you can because you don’t know when you will be a refugee again.” The scramble to extort money, he explains, “increases, as time runs out.”
The Afghans seem able to grasp the reality of things. How long will it take us to get wise to this self-perpetuating disaster?
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Pakistan: The Death of an Uzbek Militant
Stratfor Today » October 2, 2009 | 1545 GMT
John Moore/Getty Images
A Pakistani army soldier in Pakistan’s South WaziristanSummary
A U.S. drone strike in Kanigram, Pakistan, killed Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) chief Tahir Yuldashev, Reuters reported Oct. 2. The air strike, which happened on Aug. 27, fatally wounded Yuldashev. Although it is unclear that the United States was targeting Yuldashev, his death will exacerbate tensions among Uzbek militants and other jihadist groups.
Analysis
A suspected U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strike in northwestern Pakistan killed the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Tahir Yuldashev, Reuters reported Oct. 2, citing unnamed Pakistani security officials. The officials said that the top Uzbek jihadist leader was killed when a South Waziristan facility was struck on Aug 27. STRATFOR sources in Pakistan reported that Yuldashev, who was among a group of militants when the strike occurred at Kanigram, succumbed to injuries on Aug. 28 and was buried in Khasori Ladha. Allegedly, the airstrike was not explicitly designed to target him; it is unclear that the United States was aware of his presence at the location.
Yuldashev’s death is a blow to his movement, the Pakistani Taliban, Uighur/East Turkestani militants fighting in China, other Central Asian jihadist outfits and al Qaeda. He is the most significant militant leader to have died after top Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. While Yuldashev was alive, he was instrumental in cooperation between Uzbek and other central Asian militants with Arab and Pashtun fighters. Now that he is dead, the Uzbeks will become more mercenary-like and subservient to non-Uzbek militant forces. This could exacerbate tensions among the Uzbeks and between the Uzbeks and others (Pashtuns, Arabs, Uighurs, Caucasians, other Central Asian, etc.), especially as his successors deal with his death and suspicions of betrayal.
Yuldashev emerged as the top leader of the IMU after his predecessor Juma Namangiani was killed in late 2001 in Afghanistan during the U.S. military campaign that followed 9/11. Yuldashev was a major figure in the movement during the days when Namangiani headed the IMU; that facilitated the succession. But under Yuldashev, no noteworthy deputy has emerged, suggesting that finding a new leader could be an issue.
When the IMU was based in Afghanistan, it was unable to use the country as a launch pad for attacks in Uzbekistan. But hitting Uzbekistan became even more difficult for the IMU after relocating to Pakistan with al Qaeda Prime, when the transnational jihadist base in Afghanistan was destroyed. Yuldashev and thousands of Uzbek fighters moved to the South Waziristan agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where they already had extensive local connections.
The IMU had become more involved in transnational al Qaeda causes while in Afghanistan, and Pakistani Taliban causes after relocating. In March 2004, Yuldashev was reportedly wounded when Pakistani forces launched their first-ever offensive against jihadists in South Waziristan.
Yuldashev and his militants have become a key source of support for the Pakistani Taliban, especially the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) founded by Mehsud. That is because they live in the area controlled by the TTP and have engaged in several battles with Islamabad-allied Taliban factions.
The news of his death also follows the mid-September death of Islamic Jihad Union chief Najmiddin Kamolitdinovich Jalolov, an Uzbek native implicated in terrorist plots and attacks in Germany and Uzbekistan. Jalolov died in a U.S. UAV strike in North Waziristan. In July, two top Tajik militants — Mirzo Ziyoev and Nemat Azizov — were killed by security forces in Tajikistan soon after they had traveled back to Tajikistan from Afghanistan.
For Pakistan and the United States, Yuldashev’s death is a significant victory, as it will facilitate the efforts to root out foreign fighters from the local ones by potentially turning them against one another. It will also be a relief for Uzbekistan and the other Central Asian republics, which fear that the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan and their recent rise in Pakistan could undermine their security in the near future.
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http://www.military.com/news/article/mcchrystal-slams-dod-bureaucracy.html?ESRC=dod.nl
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This is from Pravda on the Hudson and is about precisely the sort of thing where the NYT is most suspect as a reporting source. That said the subject matter seems very important-- but caveat lector:
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U.S. Review of Battle Disaster Sways Strategy on Afghanistan
By THOM SHANKER
Published: October 2, 2009
WASHINGTON — The paratroopers of Chosen Company had plenty to worry about as they began digging in at their new outpost on the fringe of a hostile frontier village in eastern Afghanistan.
Intelligence reports were warning of militants massing in the area. As the paratroopers looked around, the only villagers they could see were men of fighting age idling in the bazaar. There were no women and children, and some houses looked abandoned. Through their night scopes they could see furtive figures on the surrounding mountainsides.
A few days later, they were almost overrun by 200 insurgents.
That firefight, a debacle that cost nine American lives in July 2008, has become the new template for how not to win in Afghanistan. The calamity and its roots have been described in bitter, painstaking detail in an unreleased Army history, a devastating narrative that has begun to circulate in an initial form even as the military opened a formal review this week of decisions made up and down the chain of command.
The 248-page draft history, obtained by The New York Times, helps explain why the new commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is pressing so hard for a full-fledged commitment to a style of counterinsurgency that rests on winning over the people of Afghanistan even more than killing militants. The military has already incorporated lessons from the battle in the new doctrine for war in Afghanistan.
The history offers stark examples of shortcomings in the unit’s preparation, the style of combat it adopted, its access to intelligence, its disdain for the locals — in short, plenty of blame to go around.
Before the soldiers arrived, commanders negotiated for months with Afghan officials of dubious loyalty over where they could dig in, giving militants plenty of time to prepare for an assault.
Despite the suspicion that the militants were nearby, there were not enough surveillance aircraft over the lonely outpost — a chronic shortage in Afghanistan that frustrated Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates at the time. Commanders may have been distracted from the risky operation by the bureaucratic complexities of handing over responsibility at the brigade level to replacements — and by their urgent investigation of an episode that had enraged the local population, the killing a week earlier in an airstrike of a local medical clinic’s staff as it fled nearby fighting in two pickup trucks.
Above all, the unit and its commanders had an increasingly tense and untrusting relationship with the Afghan people.
The history cited the “absence of cultural awareness and understanding of the specific tribal and governance situation” and the emphasis on combat operations over the development of the local economy and other civil affairs, a reversal of the practices of the unit that had just left the area.
The battle of Wanat is being described as the “Black Hawk Down” of Afghanistan, with the 48 American soldiers and 24 Afghan soldiers outnumbered three to one in a four-hour firefight that left nine Americans dead and 27 wounded in one of the bloodiest days of the eight-year war.
Soldiers who survived the battle described how their automatic weapons turned white hot and jammed from nonstop firing. Mortally wounded troops continued to hand bullet belts to those still able to fire.
The ammunition stockpile was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, igniting a stack of 120-millimeter mortar rounds — and the resulting fireball flung the unit’s antitank missiles into the command post. One insurgent got inside the concertina wire and is believed to have killed three soldiers at close range, including the platoon commander, Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom.
The description of the battle at Wanat — the heroism, the violence and the missteps that may have contributed to the deaths — ends with a judgment that the fight was “as remarkable as any small-unit action in American military history.”
The author, the military historian Douglas R. Cubbison, also included a series of criticisms in his review, sponsored by the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., that laid blame on a series of decisions made before the battle.
The draft report criticized the “lack of adequate preparation time” before arriving in Afghanistan, which meant there was little training geared specifically for Afghanistan, and not even a detailed operational plan for the year of combat that lay ahead.
Pentagon and military officials say those initial criticisms are being revised to reflect subsequent interviews with other soldiers and officers who were at Wanat or who served in higher-level command positions. After a round of revisions, the study will go through a formal peer-review process and be published.
The battle stands as proof that the United States is facing off against a far more sophisticated adversary in Afghanistan today, one that can fight anonymously with roadside bombs or stealthily with kidnappings — but also can operate like a disciplined armed force using well-rehearsed small-unit tactics to challenge the American military for dominance on the conventional battlefield.
Official judgment on whether errors were made by the unit on the ground or by any leaders up the chain of command will be determined by a new investigation opened this week by Gen. David H. Petraeus of United States Central Command at the urging of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The call for such an independent review came from family members of the fallen, including David P. Brostrom, father of the slain platoon commander and himself a retired Army colonel, as well as from a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia.
The history is replete with wrong turns at every point of the unit’s mission, starting with the day it was reassigned to Afghanistan from training for Iraq.
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After having served for more than a year in other hot zones of eastern Afghanistan, the platoon arrived in the village at dark on July 8, 2008, just two weeks from the day it was supposed to go home to its base in Italy.
The men wore their adopted unit emblem — skull patches fashioned after Marvel Comics’ antihero, the Punisher. They unloaded their Humvees, packed with weapons, water and the single rucksack each had kept when the rest of his kit was shipped home. They had plenty of ammunition.
But at the end of an intense tour of combat, they had run out of good relations with an increasingly distrustful population.
They named it Outpost Kahler, after a popular sergeant who had been killed by one of their own Afghan guards early that year. His last words as he moved ahead of his comrades to check whether their Afghan partners were asleep while on duty had been, “This might be dangerous.” (The shooting was ruled an accident, but relations between skeptical American troops and Afghan forces deteriorated.)
Although the 173rd Airborne Brigade had been scheduled to return to Iraq from its base in Italy, the need for forces to counter a resurgence of militant violence in eastern Afghanistan prompted new orders for the brigade to switch immediately to preparations for mountain warfare — many of the outposts were linked only by narrow, rutted trails, and some could be reached only be helicopter — and a wholly different culture and language. “Unfortunately, the comparatively late change of mission for the 173rd Airborne B.C.T. from Iraq to Afghanistan did not permit the brigade sufficient time to prepare any form of campaign plan,” the history reports.
The unit arrived at Wanat ill prepared for the hot work of building an outpost in the mountains in July; troops were thirsty from a lack of fresh water, and their one construction vehicle ran out of gas, so the unit was unable to complete basic fortifications. The soldiers had no local currency to buy favor by investing in the village economy, the history makes clear. The soldiers also said they complained up the chain of command about the lack of air surveillance over their dangerous corner of Afghanistan, but no more was provided.
Even as they settled into their spartan command post, the unit’s commanders were insulted to learn that local leaders were meeting together in a “shura,” or council, to which they were not invited — and which might even have been a session used to coordinate the assault on the Americans that began before dawn the very next morning.
The four-hour firefight finally ended when American warplanes and attack helicopters strafed insurgent positions. The paratroopers drove back the insurgents, but ended up abandoning the village 48 hours later.
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10 Steps to Victory in Afghanistan
: October 3, 2009
Op-Ed page of NYTimes
Reform or Go Home
COUNTERINSURGENCY is only as good as the government it supports. NATO could do everything right — it isn’t — but will still fail unless Afghans trust their government. Without essential reform, merely making the government more efficient or extending its reach will just make things worse.
Only a legitimately elected Afghan president can enact reforms, so at the very least we need to see a genuine run-off election or an emergency national council, called a loya jirga, before winter. Once a legitimate president emerges, we need to see immediate action from him on a publicly announced reform program, developed in consultation with Afghan society and enforced by international monitors. Reforms should include firing human rights abusers and drug traffickers, establishing an independent authority to investigate citizen complaints and requiring officials to live in the districts they are responsible for (fewer than half do).
Other steps might include a census and district-level elections (promised since 2001, but never held), fair and effective taxation to replace kickbacks and extortion, increased pay to diligent local officials, the transfer of more budgetary authority to the provinces and the creation of local courts for dispute resolution.
If we see no genuine progress on such steps toward government responsibility, the United States should “Afghanize,” draw down troops and prepare to mitigate the inevitable humanitarian disaster that will come when the Kabul government falls to the Taliban — which, in the absence of reform, it eventually and deservedly will.
— DAVID KILCULLEN, a former adviser to Gen. David Petraeus and the author of “The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One”
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End Suicide Attacks
TO win in Afghanistan, the United States and its allies must prevent the rise of a new generation of anti-American terrorists, particularly suicide terrorists.
The metric for measuring this threat is not the amount of territory controlled by the Taliban or Al Qaeda, but the number of people willing to be recruited as suicide terrorists. These individuals are motivated not by the existence of a terrorist sanctuary, but by deep anger at the presence of foreign forces on land they prize.
This is why the number of suicide attacks in Afghanistan, overwhelmingly against military targets, has skyrocketed as United States and NATO forces have increasingly occupied the country from 2006 on. There were nine attacks in 2005, 97 in 2006, 142 in 2007, 148 in 2008 and more than 60 in the first six months of this year.
It is imperative to decrease the number of suicide attacks. Given the ethnic divisions of the country, our best tactic is to use political and economic means to empower local Pashtuns to feel that they have greater autonomy from both Taliban and Western domination, and less need to respond violently.
A similar strategy toward Sunni groups in Anbar Province reduced anti-American suicide terrorism in Iraq and is our best way forward in Afghanistan.
— ROBERT A. PAPE, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism”
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If You Can’t Beat Them, Let Them Join
WITHIN a year, we must persuade large numbers of insurgents to lay down their arms or switch to the government’s side. Afghanistan’s doughty warriors have a tradition of changing alliances, but success will require both military operations focused on the insurgent leadership and, even more important, incentives for fighters at the local level.
Mid-level insurgents and their followers should be offered a chance to join a revised version of the Afghan Public Protection Force. These local self-defense forces should be expanded and tied to legitimate local governing structures — both official and tribal. The majority of development funds should be funneled to leaders to strengthen local governance and development and pay the militias’ salaries.
Local self-defense forces in Colombia, Peru, South Vietnam and, most recently, Iraq, have proved very successful. The creation of a viable force like this is the single most important benchmark for the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan.
— LINDA ROBINSON, the author of “Tell Me How This Ends: Gen. David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq”
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Pump Up the Police
FOR all the disputes over strategy, virtually everyone agrees that we need to strengthen the Afghan security forces, make them true partners and put them in the lead. Afghans want lasting security, and they want it to have an Afghan face.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander there, wisely wants to double the size of the Afghan Army and increase the police forces to 160,000 men. This requires not just money, but also a commitment to send more trainers, embedded advisers and partner units. At the moment, international forces in Afghanistan say they still lack about 30 percent of the trainers and mentors needed to train even the current police force.
Creating effective security forces will also require more aid to create a functioning local justice system with courts, lawyers and jails. This will take at least a decade, so for the short term we should assist efforts to revive Afghanistan’s traditional justice systems.
— ANTHONY CORDESMAN, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
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Kick Out Corruption
TO defeat the insurgency, the Afghan government and its main partner, the United States, need to win the confidence of the public. Accountability must replace the widespread immunity enjoyed by officials who abuse their power.
Despite all the problems with our recent election, the incoming government will have a chance to start fresh, and a proper vetting of all new officials is the place to begin. This means establishing strict accountability mechanisms for high officials in the districts and provinces as well as in the ministries and directorates in Kabul. Simply shuffling abusive and incompetent officials among offices — as has been the norm over the past eight years — keeps the public from getting the governmental services it needs.
While the corruption in Kabul is well known, the alliances that American and other foreign forces have made at the local level with abusive officials and influential figures have emboldened those Afghans and alarmed the Afghan public. These alliances must be examined and stopped. The next government should make a statement by quickly clearing out some of the most blatantly corrupt officials.
— NADER NADERY, a commissioner on the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
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Learn to Tax From the Taliban
SKEPTICS of state-building proposals question whether the Kabul government — now almost fully dependent on foreign aid — will ever be able to support the military and police forces being trained. Yet there has been comparatively little investment by the international community in helping Kabul collect taxes, even though insurgents and corrupt officials have proved it can be done.
In addition to collecting taxes from the illegal opium trade, Taliban forces extort money from trucks carrying legal cargo through their territories and demand “protection fees” from local businesses, even hitting up construction projects financed by NATO.
Government officials also take illegal kickbacks — one governor in the eastern part of the country is reported to earn as much as $10 million a month extorting trucking firms. But this money doesn’t end up in state coffers — it just lines the governor’s deep pockets.
The “civilian surge” should include tax experts who could help federal and provincial officials develop mechanisms for collecting revenue — and make sure that money ends up where it belongs.
— GRETCHEN PETERS, the author of “Seeds of Terror”
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Polls Have the Power
BY and large, my generation of military professionals trained for and thought about what we might call “Type A” war — modern war, featuring the clash of mechanized forces fielded by industrial states. Happily, we never had to fight the Soviets on the northern German plain, though Operation Desert Storm showed we might have been pretty good at it, had the balloon gone up.
In Afghanistan we’re fighting a “Type B” war that is in some of its essentials “postmodern.” Like postmodernism itself, the concept has a variety of meanings and may not represent a coherent set of ideas. But one thing is clear: the Type B enemy likely has little to lose — no territory to protect, few important targets at risk, perhaps even no life worth living. Thus the Type A objective of fatally weakening an opponent by destroying assets important to his success — in theory, a measurable process — is replaced in Type B war by the much more complicated, essentially unquantifiable task of defeating him.
In time, democracies tire of war, as well they should. Thus, the single most important factor a Type B enemy counts on is time. The outcome in Afghanistan may be determined already, simply because we’ve been there for eight years. The strategic center of gravity is American public opinion, which will tell us when we’ve run out of time. If you want to know how we are doing in Afghanistan, read the polls in America.
— MERRILL McPEAK, the chief of staff of the Air Force from 1990 to 1994
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Take a Risk
Page 3 of 3)
WHILE in Afghanistan last summer as part of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s initial assessment team, I found many American and other international units more focused on protecting themselves than protecting the Afghan population. Traveling through the allegedly secure city of Mazar-i-Sharif with a German unit, for example, was like touring Afghanistan by submarine. What little I saw of the city was through a small slit of bulletproof glass in an armored personnel carrier. (While I was a light-infantry officer in both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I had never before traveled in an armored personnel carrier.) The Germans offered their assessment of security in the region, but since they lack regular face-to-face contact with the people living there, why should I trust their analysis? Can they speak with authority on the degree to which an insurgent campaign of intimidation is having an effect when they themselves keep the Afghans at such a distance?
It’s not just the Germans, though. Some American and other allied commanders also insist on protective measures that hamper troops from interacting with the population and gathering information on what is driving the conflict at the local level.
After eight years of war with little to show for American and allied efforts, many Americans have tired of the campaign in Afghanistan and are wary of putting our soldiers in greater danger. But if we are to be successful in Afghanistan, it is a risk we must take.
— ANDREW McDONALD EXUM, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security
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Don’t Believe That We Can Afford to Lose
AMERICA cannot achieve even the minimal objective of preventing Al Qaeda from re-establishing safe havens in Afghanistan without a substantial increase in forces over the coming year. The Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan’s south is growing. The Afghan and international forces there now cannot reverse that growth. They may not even be able to stem it. That is the assessment of the top American commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
President Obama said in August, “If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.” Some of his advisers now say the opposite: Taliban control will not lead to terrorist havens. Why not? Osama bin Laden first built camps in the territory of a Taliban leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani, in the mid-1980s. Relations between Al Qaeda and the Taliban remain close. Even if they do not invite Al Qaeda in, could they, unlike Pakistan, keep Al Qaeda out? The president was right: the triumph of the Taliban will benefit Al Qaeda.
Rejecting General McChrystal’s request for more forces leaves two options. The United States withdraws and lets Afghanistan again collapse into chaos, or it keeps its military forces and civilians in harm’s way while denying them the resources they need to succeed. Neither is acceptable.
— FREDERICK KAGAN, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and KIMBERLY KAGAN, the president of the Institute for the Study of War
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Pakistani Patronage
THE government of Pakistan, through its intelligence agency, has long been a patron of the Afghan Taliban, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal recently warned that the collaboration continues. Pakistan sees the relationship as a way of hedging its bets in Afghanistan, an asset in its confrontation with India.
It is difficult to define a clear benchmark for ending that aid because the Pakistanis refuse to acknowledge that any relationship exists. But let us consider it to have ended or gone into remission if, a year from now, six consecutive months have gone by with no credible reporting of the sort that underlay the general’s observation.
The significance of this benchmark is threefold. First, Pakistani patronage is an impediment to subduing the Taliban. Second, it is an excellent gauge of how well or poorly NATO’s campaign in Afghanistan is going. Continued Pakistani dealing with the Taliban would reflect Islamabad’s judgment that it is going poorly enough that bets still must be hedged. Third, an end to the relationship would eliminate one of the biggest paradoxes in the rationale for the counterinsurgency: the Pakistani government that our efforts in Afghanistan are supposedly helping to save is assisting the forces from which we are trying to save it.
— PAUL R. PILLAR, a former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia at the C.I.A. and a professor in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program
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To summarize, if we continue on the course we are on we will fail. If we increase our presence and the foreign footprint we will increase the flow of nationalists into suicide bomber missions and fail. And if we retreat or withdraw, terrorists will retake, set up terror training camps and we fail.
Certainly this is a most difficult conundrum. I can see now why Pres. Obama took 25 minutes out his Olympic journey to meet with our commander.
I don't suppose the villagers along the countryside notice the American lack of commitment shown by our Commander and Chief, while troops are in harm's way, taking several weeks to re-evaluate our commitment to their security and freedom.
One reason the Iraq surge worked was that the people of Anbar for example saw a) an American President not hedge, flinch or waiver with all the setbacks, b) got re-elected by the American people in spite of it all, and then c) raised up the commitment to win - noticeably - at ground level.
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04 Oct 2009: Eight US soldiers killed as Taliban storm outpost
Nato-led forces have suffered their bloodiest attack in more than a year after eight American soldiers were killed in a multi-pronged assault on outposts near the Pakistan border.
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By MATTHEW ROSENBERG in Islamabad and SIOBHAN GORMAN in Washington
Since first invading Afghanistan nearly a decade ago, America set one primary goal: Eliminate al Qaeda's safe haven.
Today, intelligence and military officials say they've severely constrained al Qaeda's ability to operate there and in Pakistan -- and that's reshaping the debate over U.S. strategy in the region.
Hunted by U.S. drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al Qaeda is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistani and U.S. officials. Conversations intercepted by the U.S. show al Qaeda fighters complaining of shortages of weapons, clothing and, in some cases, food. The number of foreign fighters in Afghanistan appears to be declining, U.S. military officials say.
For Arab youths who are al Qaeda's primary recruits, "it's not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding," said a senior U.S. official in South Asia.
In Washington, the question of Al Qaeda's strength is at the heart of the debate over whether to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan. On Saturday, eight American troops and two Afghan soldiers were killed fighting Taliban forces -- one of the worst single-day battlefield losses for U.S. forces since the war began.
Opponents of sending more troops prefer a narrower campaign consisting of missile strikes and covert action inside Pakistan, rather than a broader war against the Taliban, the radical Islamist movement that ruled Afghanistan for years and provided a haven to al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden. Their reasoning: The larger threat to America remains al Qaeda, not the Taliban; so, best not to get embroiled in a local war that history suggests may be unwinnable.
Military commanders pressing for extra troops counter that sending more forces could help translate the gains against al Qaeda into a political settlement with less ideologically committed elements of the Taliban. And, they argue, that would improve the odds of stabilizing Afghanistan for the long run.
A key point of contention in President Barack Obama's review of war strategy is the ability of al Qaeda to reconstitute in Afghanistan. Some officials, including aides to Richard Holbrooke, the U.S.'s special representative to the region, have argued that the Taliban wouldn't allow al Qaeda to regain its footing inside Afghanistan, since it was the alliance between the two that cost the Taliban their control of the country after Sept. 11.
A senior military official, however, characterized this as a minority view within the debate. He noted that even if the Taliban sought to keep al Qaeda from returning, it would have little means to do so.
Retired Gen. James Jones, the president's National Security Adviser, acknowledged on CNN Sunday that the links between the two groups had become a "central issue" in the White House discussion. He said he believed the return of the Taliban "could" mean the return of al Qaeda.
More
Afghan Attack Kills Eight U.S. Soldiers
In the political debate, al Qaeda's diminished role has bolstered the argument of those advocating a narrower campaign. They say continuing the drone campaign is sufficient to keep al Qaeda at bay, said Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University professor who has written extensively on al Qaeda. Mr. Hoffman believes that argument is misguided, however, and that if the U.S. pulls out, al Qaeda will return.
"Al Qaeda may be diminished, but it still poses a threat," he said. The debate will move to Capitol Hill Tuesday when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds a hearing on confronting al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Though there is emerging international consensus among counterterrorism officials that al Qaeda isn't the foe it used to be, U.S., Afghan and Pakistani officials caution that it doesn't mean the fight in Afghanistan or Pakistan is tilting America's way. "They're not defeated. They're not dismantled, but they are being disrupted," said a senior U.S. intelligence official in Washington.
Mr. Obama himself has argued that al Qaeda could strengthen if the U.S. eases up on the Taliban. "If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting," he said at a speech in Phoenix at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in August, before the current strategy debate heated up. "This is fundamental to the defense of our people."
Al Qaeda apparently retains a global reach, as suggested by the Sept. 19 arrest in Colorado of Najibullah Zazi, 24 years old. U.S. prosecutors allege Mr. Zazi is part of an al Qaeda cell who trained in Pakistan and was trying to make the same kind of explosives used in the 2005 London bombings.
U.S. officials also say al Qaeda remains tight with the network of Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Sirajuddin, one of the Afghan insurgency's top leaders. The late leader of the Pakistan Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, was similarly close with al Qaeda before being killed in August by a strike from a U.S. drone aircraft. U.S. officials say they hope his death will weaken al Qaeda's Taliban ties.
For years, the fortunes of al Qaeda and the Taliban moved in tandem. The Taliban hosted al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and Mr. bin Laden's network launched its 2001 attacks from there. After the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban continued to provide haven after retreating to the tribal areas of Pakistan, while al Qaeda trained Taliban fighters.
But in the past year, the fates of the two organizations have diverged. The Taliban insurgency has become increasingly violent and brazen and spread to areas of Afghanistan that only a year ago were considered solidly pro-government. Al Qaeda, in contrast, has seen its role shrink because it is struggling to raise money from its global network of financiers and attract recruits.
Today there are signs al Qaeda is relying more on affiliated groups to press its agenda world-wide, according to one official briefed on the matter. These groups include Pakistani movements such as Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah and the Islamic Jihad Union, whose roots are in Uzbekistan.
As affiliates like these "continue to develop and evolve," their threat to the U.S. has grown, Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in Senate hearings last week.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the presence of fewer foreign fighters -- Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks and others -- potentially changes the dynamics of the fight there.
Foreign militants serve as a battlefield "accellerant," said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan, in an interview. "When a foreign fighter comes into Afghanistan, he doesn't have anything else he's going to do -- he's going to fight until he dies or goes somewhere else," he said. By contrast, "an Afghan is fighting for something, and if he starts to get that, his motivation changes."
Right now, Gen. McChrystal said, "we don't see huge numbers of foreign fighters, which obviously makes you believe there's not nearly the presence there was of foreign fighters....I hope it's a trend, but I'm not prepared to confidently say that."
Even if Al Qaeda is struggling, it already has imparted dangerous knowledge -- how to build suicide car bombs, launch complex gunmen assaults and tap wealthy sympathizers in the Persian Gulf -- that made it a key asset to the Taliban several years ago.
Al Qaeda also remains allied with and protected by the Taliban. Allowing the insurgents to succeed would likely give al Qaeda the space it needs to regroup, rearm and, most importantly, reestablish itself as the premier global jihadi movement, U.S., Pakistani and Afghan officials say.
Al Qaeda's message of world-wide jihad, however, has lost much of its popularity amid the rise of militant groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere who tend to focus their ire locally. That, combined with a perception among would-be followers that the group has only paid lip-service to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, also has reduced its global credibility, officials say.
Support is even declining among some of al Qaeda's allies. It has lost support from a group of Saudi sheiks known as the Sahwa, or "Awakening," movement. (It's unrelated to a similar-sounding group in Iraq.) Some of the sheiks are now trying to persuade members of al Qaeda's North African branch to give up jihad, said Daniel Lav, director of the Middle East and North Africa Reform Project at the Middle East Media Research Institute in Washington.
Mr. bin Laden and al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding in Pakistan's tribal lands bordering Afghanistan. But a U.S. campaign of missile strikes by pilotless Predator aircraft has decimated al Qaeda's second- and third-tier leadership.
One example cited by U.S. and Pakistani officials: Usama al-Kini, a Kenyan citizen believed to have been al Qaeda's operations chief inside Pakistan and a key architect of the September 2008 truck bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which killed at least 50 people. He was slain along with his deputy, Sheik Ahmed Salim Swedan, a Kenyan, in a Jan. 1 missile strike, officials say.
Both men's history with al Qaeda stretched back to the group's first major strike, the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Officials also pointed to Rashid Rauf, the alleged mastermind of a 2006 plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic, who they say was slain in a drone attack last year, although Pakistani and British officials express uncertainty over whether he is actually dead.
But even if Mr. Rauf is still alive, the fact that he became such a primary target made it tough for him to fulfill his role as a communications link between Pakistan and Britain, says an officer from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency. Other operatives who have been detained by British authorizes have further eroded those communications links, an official familiar with the intelligence reports on al Qaeda added.
The drones, operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, have so far killed 11 of the men on the U.S.'s initial list of the top 20 al Qaeda targets, the official said. The U.S. has since drawn up a fresh list, including the nine holdovers from the first one. Four of the men on the new list are now dead, too. Those who remain are focused on finding sanctuary, possibly at the expense of operations and training, say officials and militants with links to al Qaeda.
"The Arabs stay out of sight now. They were always secretive. But now they are very secretive...They see spies everywhere," said a man named Walliullah, who Pakistani officials say is an aide to Afghan insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Mr. Hekmatyar is allied with the Afghan Taliban and loosely tied to al Qaeda.
At the same time, U.S. intelligence collection in Pakistan has vastly improved, officials say. Western intelligence services have had more success penetrating al Qaeda groups lately, according to Richard Barrett, the United Nations' coordinator for monitoring al Qaeda and the Taliban. "There's many more human sources being run into the groups," Mr. Barrett, a former official with Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, told an audience at a Washington think tank last week.
Similarly, the U.S. in the past was unable to comprehensively monitor communications in Pakistan; that has now been rectified, said an official briefed on U.S. operations. Through that monitoring, U.S., British and Pakistani intelligence officials have seen increasing evidence that al Qaeda is having difficulty raising money.
"Al Qaeda is in fund-raising mode, and they seem to be hurting for cash," said another U.S. official. Intercepts of conversations have caught al Qaeda militants complaining they lack cash and supplies, including weapons.
The new intelligence has provided fresh ways to try to undermine the foreign al Qaeda fighters. Pakistani authorities say they've started targeting food shipments believed to be headed for al Qaeda operatives, who prefer their own cuisine over local fare. "The Talibs, they're eating mutton, chicken, bread -- the food ordinary people eat," said an officer from Pakistan's ISI spy agency. "The Arabs want their own food."
—Rehmat Mehsud in Islamabad and Evan Perez and Peter Spiegel in Washington contributed to this report.
Write to Matthew Rosenberg at matthew.rosenberg@wsj.com and Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com
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second post of the AM
The ego, the arrogance, the utter cluelessness boggle the mind , , ,
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Barack Obama furious at General Stanley McChrystal speech on Afghanistan
The relationship between President Barack Obama and the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan has been put under severe strain by Gen Stanley McChrystal's comments on strategy for the war.
By Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 7:00AM BST 05 Oct 2009
According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week.
The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago's unsuccessful Olympic bid.
Gen James Jones, the national security adviser, yesterday did little to allay the impression the meeting had been awkward.
An adviser to the administration said: "People aren't sure whether McChrystal is being naïve or an upstart. To my mind he doesn't seem ready for this Washington hard-ball and is just speaking his mind too plainly."
In London, Gen McChrystal, who heads the 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan as well as the 100,000 Nato forces, flatly rejected proposals to switch to a strategy more reliant on drone missile strikes and special forces operations against al-Qaeda.
He told the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that the formula, which is favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden, would lead to "Chaos-istan".
When asked whether he would support it, he said: "The short answer is: No."
He went on to say: "Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support."
The remarks have been seen by some in the Obama administration as a barbed reference to the slow pace of debate within the White House.
Gen McChrystal delivered a report on Afghanistan requested by the president on Aug 31, but Mr Obama held only his second "principals meeting" on the issue last week.
He will hold at least one more this week, but a decision on how far to follow Gen McChrystal's recommendation to send 40,000 more US troops will not be made for several weeks.
A military expert said: "They still have working relationship but all in all it's not great for now."
Some commentators regarded the general's London comments as verging on insubordination.
Bruce Ackerman, an expert on constitutional law at Yale University, said in the Washington Post: "As commanding general, McChrystal has no business making such public pronouncements."
He added that it was highly unusual for a senior military officer to "pressure the president in public to adopt his strategy".
Relations between the general and the White House began to sour when his report, which painted a grim picture of the allied mission in Afghanistan, was leaked. White House aides have since briefed against the general's recommendations.
The general has responded with a series of candid interviews as well as the speech. He told Newsweek he was firmly against half measures in Afghanistan: "You can't hope to contain the fire by letting just half the building burn."
As a divide opened up between the military and the White House, senior military figures began criticising the White House for failing to tackle the issue more quickly.
They made no secret of their view that without the vast ground force recommended by Gen McChrystal, the Afghan mission could end in failure and a return to power of the Taliban.
"They want to make sure people know what they asked for if things go wrong," said Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defence.
Critics also pointed out that before their Copenhagen encounter Mr Obama had only met Gen McChrystal once since his appointment in June.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ghanistan.html
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I can't seem to find a transcript of his speech in London.
Even though I don't agree with OBama it is not helpful to have a commander directly contradicting the commander in chief in public.
***By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: October 1, 2009
LONDON — The top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, used a speech here on Thursday to reject calls for the war effort to be scaled down from defeating the Taliban insurgency to a narrower focus on hunting down Al Qaeda, an option suggested by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as part of the current White House strategy review.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal speaking in London on Thursday about the war in Afghanistan. He has requested more troops.
Several Afghan Strategies, None a Clear Choice (October 1, 2009) After his first 100 days in command in Kabul, General McChrystal chose an audience of military specialists at London’s Institute for Strategic Studies as a platform for a public airing of the confidential assessment of the war he delivered to the Pentagon in late August, parts of which were leaked to news organizations. General McChrystal, 55, did not mention Mr. Biden or his advocacy of a scaled-down war effort during his London speech, and referred only obliquely to the debate within the Obama administration on whether to escalate the American commitment in Afghanistan by accepting his request for up to 40,000 more American troops on top of the 68,000 already deployed there or en route.
But he used the London session for a rebuttal of the idea of a more narrowly focused war. When a questioner asked him whether he would support scaling back the American military presence over the next 18 months by relinquishing the battle with the Taliban and focusing on tracking down Al Qaeda, sparing ground troops by hunting Qaeda extremists and their leaders with missiles from remotely piloted aircraft, he replied: “The short answer is: no.”
“You have to navigate from where you are, not from where you wish to be,” he said. “A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy.”
In Washington on Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus told an audience that he had “not yet endorsed” General McChrystal’s specific request for additional troops, even though he has said he supports General McChrystal’s grim assessment of the war.
General Petraeus, the American commander who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and works closely with General McChrystal, was sounding a careful note in public after participating in a three-hour strategy meeting with Mr. Obama and the administration’s national security team at the White House on Wednesday. For now, his aides say he does not want to get ahead of the president and the continuing deliberations.
Speaking with Brian Williams of NBC as part of a two-day conference with newsmakers at the Newseum in Washington, General Petraeus said that Wednesday’s meeting at the White House was “a very good and quite long discussion going back and looking at the goals and objectives and assumptions” underlying Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan strategy that the president announced in March.
At the Institute for Strategic Studies, General McChrystal noted that the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan had provided sanctuary to Al Qaeda, from which it planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and he said political stability there was vital to regional security, as well as to the security of Britain, the United States and elsewhere.
Advocating a “counterterrorist focus” in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda, instead of a “counterinsurgency focus” against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, he said, was a formula for what he called “Chaos-istan.” Proponents of that approach, he said, would accept an Afghanistan in which there was “a level of chaos, and just manage it from outside.”
The general’s troop request was at the heart of the White House strategy session on Wednesday led by Mr. Obama, which included Mr. Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, other cabinet secretaries, top generals, and General McChrystal, participating by videolink from London. The request has come as the worsening conflict in Afghanistan has prompted increased unease in the United States and Europe.
In an oblique acknowledgment of the tricky political terrain, General McChrystal said there had been no pressure on him from military superiors to scale down his troop request — a pattern that developed at points during the Iraq war, when American generals hesitated to call for more troops after the defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, ruled them out.
“All of the interaction I’ve had with my senior leadership, they’ve not only encouraged me” to be blunt in stating his case, the general said, “they’ve insisted on it.”
As if in an afterthought, he added, laughing, that there was no certainty he would always be so free to speak so plainly. “They may change their minds and crush me some day,” he said.
General McChrystal was named the new American and allied commander in Afghanistan this summer in succession to Gen. David D. McKiernan, who was removed after barely a year in the job, and retired, when Mr. Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates decided they needed a fresh approach.
But direct contact between Mr. Obama and the Afghanistan commander has been rare. Aides in London said that Wednesday’s teleconference was only the second time since General McChrystal assumed his command in June that the two men had talked by videolink, a form of contact with field commanders that President George W. Bush, at the height of the Iraq war, used as often as once a week. Although he was out of Afghanistan on Wednesday, the aides said, General McChrystal was not invited to attend the White House strategy session in person.
But judging from General McChrystal’s relaxed demeanor at the session in London, any suggestion he might be headed for a showdown with the White House over war strategy — for the kind of clash that Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur had with President Truman during the Korean War — seemed far-fetched. He went out of his way to say that the White House strategy review was an essential part of developing a successful approach to the war. “I think the more deliberation and the more debate we have, the healthier that’s going to be,” he said.
In the war assessment he delivered to the Pentagon, he struck a note of urgency, saying that if the troop increases he had recommended were not in place within 12 months, the allied effort risked failure. But he told the London audience that the time being taken by current policy review in Washington was worth it. “I don’t think we have the luxury of going so fast that we make the wrong decision,” he said.
The general has used his London trip to make a renewed bid for an increase in Britain’s troop commitment in Afghanistan. With 9,000 soldiers, Britain currently has the second largest coalition contingent after the Americans. Officials at Britain’s Defense Ministry have said discussions with the Americans have included the possibility of about 2,500 additional troops in the British contingent.
John F. Burns reported from London, and Alan Cowell from Paris.***
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Orbat.com's take on the recent US deaths in Af-Pak area...FWIW...
Three days ago the Taliban attacked a US/Afghan outpost in Nuristan Province of Afghanistan. The outpost is described as "remote"; this is not particularly helpful because most any part of Afghanistan is "remote" Be that as it may, the outpost is set among forests and mountains, perhaps 10-km as the bird flies from the Pakistan border.
The reason the outpost was set up in the first place was to interdict infiltration from Pakistan. when attacked, it had 50 US soldiers and 90 Afghan Army and police. A year ago the US decided things weren't working, and decided to withdraw the outpost. The new Afghanistan strategy in any case calls for giving up desolate outposts in the middle of nowhere, and focusing the limited available resources on the main town and cities. This is sensible, as in any case no one manages to control the countryside, which has been, is, and always will be the home of the tribes. If the west thinks it will at some point succeed in building up sufficient Afghan forces to permit Kabul to control the country, then the west is sadly deluded and will fail even worse than it is failing.
Back to the outpost.
Every story we read leaves us shaking our head in sheer bewilderment. We cannot understand in the slightest what the US military thinks it has been doing.
Let us first make very, very clear: we would never presume to judge the tactics employed at a particular place and time, no matter which army we are discussing. Not just are we going solely by the media reports, the media more often than not gets things very wrong. Unless we went over, carefully examined the ground, and extensively discuss matters with the US troops, the Afghan military, the locals, and the Taliban, we would lack the data needed for an objective judgment.
So we are not passing any judgments: we are simply going to point out a few things that make absolutely no sense to us about this outpost.
The outpost was situated 1-km down-mountain of the mosque and village used by the insurgents as their assembly area. It does not matter what the reason, you absolutely never put yourself down-mountain of the enemy especially when he is practically at your doorstep.
US troops had not visited the village for a year, and also did not visit other villages in the area. The reason given is that the US, in the interests of good relations, did not want to enter the local villages unless invited, and they were never invited. Bosh, Baloney and Bunkum. Since when has it been US policy not to enter villages without invitation? Where in the world when you are doing CI do you wait for invitations from the locals who are hand in glove with the insurgents to issue you polite invites for tea and crumpets?
US troops could not patrol the area beyond a couple of thousand meters out. The reason given is that the area was too dangerous. We accept that. But in that case the Army was super-negligent in stationing the outpost because the troops there are blind to what's happening all around them, and sending over a UAV every so often is not going to give them eyes to see.
The outpost was not evacuated because the local Governor said if the Americans withdrew before the election, it would Not Look Good. In case you are waiting for us to grandly proclaim: "Military decisions should never be made on political grounds," you wait in vain. That is complete twaddle. Everything in CI is political first, military second.
But a clear distinction has to be made: the decision to go to that region can be political. Once you arrive there, however, purely military considerations have to take over. How can it be that US Army found the outpost untenable but hung around for a year because the provincial governor would lose face? Makes no sense - and here we are willing to acknowledge likely the press has got things wrong. Nonetheless, if for political reasons US had to be there, the US Army should have done everything possible to make the outpost defensible.
US is short of helicopter lift and could not evacuate earlier Someone has got something egregiously wrong here. It take 4-5 Chinook sorties or 20 UH-60 sorties to get 140 men and essential equipment out. Mo way you will get us to believe that for weeks or months or whatever US couldn't spare this tiny bit of airlift.
US Army knew this was a hotspot: outpost has come under attack 50 times since May 2009. This speaks for itself. No one can say they were caught unawares.
How it looks to us in the absence of better information. You have an outpost in the middle of nowhere, and the troops are boxed into a tiny space. They cannot get out because its not safe. They cannot go out every night and lay ambushes, even if it is just a 2-man sniper team. They are sitting passively in the middle of Indian Country, with a big Kick My Butt sign on the outpost. The enemy knows everything the post does, the post knows nothing of what the enemy is doing.
The Taliban obliged.
We are NOT attempting to second-guess anyone We are not joining the coulda woulda shoulda brigade here. We don't know the whole story, likely even 5% of the story. But what we do know is, this outpost looks like a Prime A error to us. It smells of careless complacency and people who have still not understood what counter-insurgency is about.
If and when we get more information, we will be the first to revise/update/change our formulation. Right now things don't look good to us, not one little bit.
What's the big deal, the outpost held It did. Excellent. We are not going all mushy hearted because 8 US soldiers got killed. That's war. People get killed, and most of them get killed for no good reason or meaningful gain. Sorry about that.
But see, people. We are not writing about this outpost because of the battle the other day. The same outpost was written up in detail some weeks back in the WashPo. Our head shaking reaction is from then. We've been mulling over writing the same thing we have above, then.
We're writing because when we read the first article, we thought what we have said here: why is the US Army accepting being in lock-down in a little place in the middle of nowhere. The story then said no one had been interdicted or intercepted in months. And that's not because All Was Calm, etc., the troops made clear they couldn't get out and couldn't control anything.
The Taliban on the battle This battle, as far as is know as of now, was very professionally fought by the Taliban. Aside from the US casualties, there were several Afghan dead and perhaps 20 or more Afghans captured. This means the Taliban caught the outpost completely by surprise and got inside the wire. This is Big Boys League.
Likely this is the caliber of the enemy in this region, because the Taliban certainly has not managed anything like this elsewhere. The 2008 attack at Wanat, which in the same province, was also highly professional.
US deploys a powerful lot of firepower, and when artillery, gunships and tactical air joins in the battle, a lot of attackers are going to die. But only five bodies were found. This is very, very professional indeed.
So, we are suspicious and so is our occasional correspondent Major AH Amin. He has said, in a circumspect way, that he believes the Pakistan Army conducted the attack. Nothing impossible: till the US came into Afghanistan the hard military core of the Taliban was the Pakistan Army, not just as advisors, but as entire brigades. That's how the Taliban came out of "nowhere" and in two years took the entire country bar 15% in the northwest, beating one warlord after another in conventional battle.
In fairness, we must say Bill Roggio does not agree He feels the Taliban are quite capable of executing such attacks by themselves and there is no need to invoke the Pakistan Army.
Either way, however, this attack is trouble, even if only - say - 10 percent of the Taliban have reached this level of competence.
Meanwhile, the Taliban tied the attack directly to the impending US reinforcement of Afghanistan, saying they too could reinforce, and reinforce more than the US could.
Now boys and girls: here is a question. Since the outpost is 10-km from Pakistan border, guess just where those Taliban or Pakistani-soldiers-as-Taliban came from.
Hint: it wasn't from London or Paris.
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Beijing’s Afghan Gamble
By ROBERT D. KAPLAN Published: October 6, 2009
IN Afghanistan’s Logar Province, just south of Kabul, the geopolitical future of Asia is becoming apparent: American troops are providing security for a Chinese state-owned company to exploit the Aynak copper reserves, which are worth tens of billions of dollars. While some of America’s NATO allies want to do as little as possible in the effort to stabilize Afghanistan, China has its eyes on some of world’s last untapped deposits of copper, iron, gold, uranium and precious gems, and is willing to take big risks in one of the most violent countries to secure them.
In Afghanistan, American and Chinese interests converge. By exploiting Afghanistan’s metal and mineral reserves, China can provide thousands of Afghans with jobs, thus generating tax revenues to help stabilize a tottering Kabul government. Just as America has a vision of a modestly stable Afghanistan that will no longer be a haven for extremists, China has a vision of Afghanistan as a secure conduit for roads and energy pipelines that will bring natural resources from the Indian Ocean and elsewhere. So if America defeats Al Qaeda and the irreconcilable elements of the Taliban, China’s geopolitical position will be enhanced.
This is not a paradox, since China need not be our future adversary. Indeed, combining forces with China in Afghanistan might even improve the relationship between Washington and Beijing. The problem is that while America is sacrificing its blood and treasure, the Chinese will reap the benefits. The whole direction of America’s military and diplomatic effort is toward an exit strategy, whereas the Chinese hope to stay and profit.
But what if America decides to leave, or to drastically reduce its footprint to a counterterrorism strategy focused mainly on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border? Then another scenario might play out. Kandahar and other areas will most likely fall to the Taliban, creating a truly lawless realm that wrecks China’s plans for an energy and commodities passageway through South Asia. It would also, of course, be a momentous moral victory achieved by radical Muslims who, having first defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, will then have triumphed over another superpower.
And the calculations get more complicated still: a withdrawal of any kind from Afghanistan before a stable government is in place would also hurt India, a critical if undeclared American ally, and increasingly a rival of China. Were the Taliban to retake Afghanistan, India would face a radical Islamistan stretching from its border with Pakistan deep into Central Asia. With the Taliban triumphant on Pakistan’s western border, jihadists there could direct their energies to the eastern border with India.
India would defeat Pakistan in a war, conventional or nuclear. But having to do so, or simply needing to face down a significantly greater jihadist threat next door, would divert India’s national energies away from further developing its economy and its navy, a development China would quietly welcome.
Bottom line: China will find a way to benefit no matter what the United States does in Afghanistan. But it probably benefits more if we stay and add troops to the fight. The same goes for Russia. Because of continuing unrest in the Islamic southern tier of the former Soviet Union, Moscow has an interest in America stabilizing Afghanistan (though it would take a certain psychological pleasure from a humiliating American withdrawal).
In nuts-and-bolts terms, if we stay in Afghanistan and eventually succeed, other countries will benefit more than we will. China, India and Russia are all Asian powers, geographically proximate to Afghanistan and better able, therefore, to garner practical advantages from any stability our armed forces would make possible.
Everyone keeps saying that America is not an empire, but our military finds itself in the sort of situation that was mighty familiar to empires like that of ancient Rome and 19th-century Britain: struggling in a far-off corner of the world to exact revenge, to put down the fires of rebellion, and to restore civilized order. Meanwhile, other rising and resurgent powers wait patiently in the wings, free-riding on the public good we offer. This is exactly how an empire declines, by allowing others to take advantage of its own exertions.
Of course, one could make an excellent case that an ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan is precisely what would lead to our decline, by demoralizing our military, signaling to our friends worldwide that we cannot be counted on and demonstrating that our enemies have greater resolve than we do. That is why we have no choice in Afghanistan but to add troops and continue to fight.
But as much as we hone our counterinsurgency skills and develop assets for the “long war,” history would suggest that over time we can more easily preserve our standing in the world by using naval and air power from a distance when intervening abroad. Afghanistan should be the very last place where we are a land-based meddler, caught up in internal Islamic conflict, helping the strategic ambitions of the Chinese and others.
Robert D. Kaplan is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a correspondent for The Atlantic.
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China may well find it's self fighting against the global jihad anyway. Unlike the US they will use torture and scorched earth tactics and unlike the US the "world" won't utter a peep in protest.
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The Obama Plan to Radically Remake Pakistan
IN AN UNUSUAL MOVE, the Pakistani military on Wednesday publicly criticized the Kerry-Lugar Bill — a five-year, multibillion-dollar U.S. aid package recently approved by Congress and now awaiting President Barack Obama’s signature. The military’s motivation is simple: The aid package is designed to limit the Pakistani military’s role in governance. It stipulates that the aid is contingent upon the U.S. secretary of state’s certification that, among other things, a democratic government in Pakistan “exercises effective civilian control of the military, including a description of the extent to which civilian executive leaders and parliament exercise oversight and approval of military budgets, the chain of command, the process of promotion for senior military leaders, civilian involvement in strategic guidance and planning, and military involvement in civil administration.”
Effectively, this means that, through the aid package, the Obama administration is trying to alter the nature of the Pakistani state — a very ambitious project to say the least. Encouraged by events in Pakistan during the final days of the Bush administration — as the military government of former President Pervez Musharraf weakened and eventually fell, paving the way for a civilian government — the Obama administration feels that the Pakistani state is ready to move toward an even more robust form of democratic rule. The administration’s thinking holds that the U.S. fight against militant Islamism in South Asia is best served by ensuring civilian primacy in Pakistan, given the military’s historical ties to militant non-state proxies. The Obama administration believes that aggressively pushing for a more democratic Pakistan will reset the imbalance in civilian-military relations.
“The administration’s thinking holds that the U.S. fight against militant Islamism in South Asia is best served by ensuring civilian primacy in Pakistan.”
But this view disregards the nature of the Pakistani state as it has evolved since its creation. The military has ruled the country directly — or indirectly dominated during brief periods of civilian rule — throughout its 62-year history. The current democratic arrangement is in its infancy, with disparate forces competing within civilian institutions: The presidency, parliament and judiciary all have been wracked by internal conflict. The need to rein in an assortment of jihadist non-state actors threatening national security is putting the nascent civilian state under even more pressure. In short, though weakened, the military remains the Pakistani institution best positioned to meet the first requirement of any nation-state: keeping the country together.
The U.S. move will exacerbate civilian-military tensions. This is already evident, as the Pakistani central command moves to counter the Kerry-Lugar Bill. It is extremely unlikely that it will go so far as to mount a coup — and face a domestic and international backlash — but the military has no intention of yielding without a struggle, which almost surely will result in increased instability.
While Washington’s actions can be explained as a mere misreading of the situation, the motives of President Asif Ali Zardari’s government for supporting the Kerry-Lugar Bill are less apparent. According to well-placed sources, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government is trying to follow the model of the ruling Justice & Development (AK) Party in Turkey, which over the last few years has successfully reined in the Turkish military establishment. After a successful collaboration with the military in mounting effective offensives against Taliban rebels, the Zardari government now feels that with U.S. financial and political support, it can consolidate greater civilian rule over time. But there are too many differences between the circumstances in Turkey and Pakistan to prevent the PPP from accomplishing in Pakistan what the AK Party has been able to do in Turkey.
For starters, unlike the AK Party government, which enjoys an overwhelming parliamentary majority, the PPP leads a fractious coalition government that became very unpopular shortly after coming to power in February 2008. Despite the fact that it is the country’s largest political force and a secular party, the PPP and its coalition are struggling to deal with Islamist radicalism. In Turkey, by contrast, the AK Party has maintained a decent equilibrium between the Islamist and secularist elements, despite its own Islamist roots. And the Turkish military — a staunchly secularist establishment — has established a working relationship with the government of the AK Party, while the Pakistani military leadership historically has been at odds with the PPP, despite their shared secular ideology.
That said, Pakistan is no longer a place where the military can simply dismiss civilian governments, let alone take over. At the same time, the country is also far from the point where civilians can exercise greater control over the military. Therefore, any radical move to alter the nature of the state could have serious repercussions for both the country and U.S. interests in the region — a serious matter, given that Washington already is struggling to craft a policy for Afghanistan.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/10/08/obama-wh-bought-coin-without-understanding-the-cost-wapo/
Obama WH bought COIN without understanding the cost: WaPo
posted at 9:30 am on October 8, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
If nothing up to this point convinced people of the amateurish and bungling nature of Barack Obama and his administration, this Washington Post story makes the case all by itself. For two years, Obama campaigned on changing the strategy in Afghanistan to a more effective counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, claiming that the Bush administration had dropped the ball in the Af-Pak theater in large part by not committing the resources needed for an effective battle plan (an assessment shared by John McCain). On taking office, Obama quickly increased troop levels in Afghanistan and appointed COIN strategist Gen. Stanley McChrystal to lead the mission.
However, the Post reports that Obama and his team never understood the implications of his demand for the new strategy. McChrystal’s assessment of the needs for his COIN plan sent them into “sticker shock,” according to one Post source in the White House (emphasis mine):
In early March, after weeks of debate across a conference table in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the participants in President Obama’s strategic review of the war in Afghanistan figured that the most contentious part of their discussions was behind them. Everyone, save Vice President Biden’s national security adviser, agreed that the United States needed to mount a comprehensive counterinsurgency mission to defeat the Taliban.
That conclusion, which was later endorsed by the president and members of his national security team, would become the first in a set of recommendations contained in an administration white paper outlining what Obama called “a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Preventing al-Qaeda’s return to Afghanistan, the document stated, would require “executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy.” …
To some civilians who participated in the strategic review, that conclusion was much less clear. Some took it as inevitable that more troops would be needed, but others thought the thrust of the new approach was to send over scores more diplomats and reconstruction experts. They figured a counterinsurgency mission could be accomplished with the forces already in the country, plus the 17,000 new troops Obama had authorized in February.
“It was easy to say, ‘Hey, I support COIN,’ because nobody had done the assessment of what it would really take, and nobody had thought through whether we want to do what it takes,” said one senior civilian administration official who participated in the review, using the shorthand for counterinsurgency.
The failure to reach a shared understanding of the resources required to execute the strategy has complicated the White House’s response to the grim assessment of the war by the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, forcing the president to decide, in effect, what his administration really meant when it endorsed a counterinsurgency plan. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s follow-up request for more forces, which presents a range of options but makes clear that the best chance of achieving the administration’s goals requires an additional 40,000 U.S. troops on top of the 68,000 who are already there, has given senior members of Obama’s national security team “a case of sticker shock,” the administration official said.
After two years of campaigning on this new strategy and eight months of ordering it as Commander in Chief, Barack Obama now has to make up his mind what he meant? It was the single most important issue on the war during the general campaign, thanks to the sharp improvement in Iraq that Obama predicted would never happen. He had hundreds of military officers and foreign-policy experts advising him on this issue — and none of them apparently ever taught the young candidate what COIN actually entailed.
This is a damning indictment of the President and his lack of preparation for the job, but it goes farther than that. Obama has essentially been “on the job” since the transition, which started eleven months ago. Considering the priority of any policy that puts American men and women in battle, Obama should have worked to understand the implications of his COIN solution from Day 1 in the transition, if not Day 1 of his term in office. He appointed McChrystal for this specific purpose in the spring without bothering to understand the concepts and the resources required for COIN.
In other words, Obama has half-assed it, and has gotten caught.
Update: Michael Yon links to an intriguing report from Anthony Lloyd from Afghanistan. Don’t forget to hit Michael’s tip jar. We’re going to need him on the ground more than ever.
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October 5, 2009
Shortsighted U.S. Policies on Afghanistan to Bring Long-Term Problems
by Lisa Curtis and James Phillips
WebMemo #2640
I absolutely believe that al-Qaeda and the threat of al-Qaeda and Taliban senior leadership are critical to stability in the region. ... But I also believe that a strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a shortsighted strategy.
--U.S. and NATO Forces Commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal, speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, October 1, 2009
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the outcome of the current White House debate on Afghanistan to the future of vital U.S. national security interests. Early discussions have been characterized by wishful thinking about the U.S.'s ability to negotiate a political solution in the near term and confusion about the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. A shortsighted view of the long-entrenched problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan risks plunging the region into deeper instability, thus reversing recent gains against al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.
The success of increased drone strikes against al-Qaeda and senior Taliban leaders in Pakistan's tribal border areas over the last year has apparently led some U.S. officials to mistakenly conclude that these types of operations alone can end the threat from al-Qaeda and its extremist allies. Analysis of the Taliban and its evolution over the last 15 years reveals, however, that its ideology, operational capabilities, and close ties with al-Qaeda and other Pakistan-based extremist organizations allows the movement to wield tremendous influence in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thus the U.S. cannot hope to uproot extremism from the region without denying the Taliban the ability to again consolidate power in Afghanistan.[1]
Voices in Pakistan
There have been several positive developments in Pakistan over the last six months, such as the Pakistan military's thrust into the Swat Valley to evict pro-Taliban elements and significant improvement in U.S.-Pakistani joint operations along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border that led to the elimination of Baitullah Mehsud in August. Moreover, the Pakistani military is reportedly preparing for an offensive in South Waziristan, where al-Qaeda and other extremists have been deeply entrenched for the last few years.
But this recent success in Pakistan should not mislead U.S. policymakers into thinking that the U.S. can turn its attention away from Afghanistan. In fact, now is the time to demonstrate military resolve in Afghanistan so that al-Qaeda and its affiliates will be squeezed on both sides of the border.
If the U.S. scales back the mission in Afghanistan at a time when the Taliban views itself as winning the war there, it is possible that the recent gains in Pakistan will be squandered. Anti-extremist constituencies in Pakistan that are fighting for their lives and the future of Pakistan are begging the U.S. to "stay the course" in Afghanistan, with full knowledge that a U.S. retreat would embolden extremists region-wide. Washington should listen to these voices.
Negotiation from Position of Weakness Equals Surrender
There appears to be some wishful thinking within the Obama Administration regarding the U.S.'s ability to negotiate a political solution with the Taliban in the near term. A survey of the failed attempts by U.S. diplomats in the late 1990s to convince the Taliban to improve their record on human rights and to turn over Osama bin Laden should inform current U.S. deliberations about the efficacy of such attempts at engagement.
After eight years of battling coalition forces, the Taliban ideology is even more anti-West and visceral now than it was in the 1990s, and the bonds between al-Qaeda and the senior Taliban leadership are stronger. In addition to close ties forged on the battlefield and congruent ideological goals, the symbiotic relationship between the two Islamist organizations has been reinforced by intermarriage. For example, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the top leader of the Taliban, is reportedly married to one of bin Laden's daughters.
Despite these strong ties, there is a perpetual desire in Washington to try to distinguish the Taliban leadership from al-Qaeda and its global agenda--a desire that has little basis in reality. The goals espoused by the senior Taliban leadership and al-Qaeda do not differ enough to justify separating the two organizations with regard to the threat they pose to U.S. national security interests. If the Taliban increases its influence in Afghanistan, so does al-Qaeda.
Some in the Obama Administration appear to advocate allowing the Taliban to control certain parts of Afghanistan or including their leaders in governing structures. The risk of pursuing these "top-down" negotiations right now is that the Taliban is in a relatively strong position in Afghanistan and would be able to cow moderate Afghans who support a democratic process.
A top-down negotiation with hard-line elements of the Taliban at this time would also constitute an abandonment of America's Afghan partners who are fighting for a better future for their country. These Afghans are fighting to avoid a return to Taliban rule, which included complete disregard for citizens' rights--particularly of women (including outlawing education for girls)--and the systematic destruction of the rich historical and cultural traditions of the country in order to force a barbaric interpretation of Islam on the Afghan people. If the U.S. caves in to the Taliban, America would be seen the world over as a weak and unreliable partner, unwilling to defend the very ideals upon which the U.S. itself is founded.
Although there are no signs that the senior Taliban leadership is ready to compromise on a political solution or break its ties with al-Qaeda's destructive global agenda, there is advantage in pursuing local reconciliation efforts that bring the non-ideological "foot soldiers" of the Taliban into the political process. The goal of such a strategy is to put military pressure on the top Taliban leaders and to protect the population from intimidation by the Taliban while simultaneously convincing local insurgents that they are on the losing side and would benefit by laying down their arms and joining the mainstream political process.
Do Not Undermine Friends and Embolden Enemies
President Obama must give his military commanders the best chance for success by meeting their requests for the troops and resources necessary to fully implement the counterinsurgency strategy adopted by his Administration in March.[2] As General McChrystal warned in his October 1 speech: "We must show resolve. Uncertainty disheartens our allies, emboldens our foe."
If the Obama Administration chooses to deny its field commander's request for more troops and instead seeks to engage Taliban leaders in negotiations with the vain hope that these militants will break from their al-Qaeda allies, the results would likely be disastrous. Many Afghans that currently support the Kabul government would be tempted to hedge their bets and establish ties with the Taliban, while Afghans sitting on the fence would be much more likely to come down on the Taliban's side. President Obama must take the long view and avoid shortsighted policies that undermine U.S. friends in Afghanistan and Pakistan while encouraging America's enemies.
Lisa Curtis is Senior Research Fellow for South Asia in the Asian Studies Center and James Phillips is Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.
[1]See Lisa Curtis, "Scaling Back in Afghanistan Would Jeopardize Security of U.S. Homeland," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2625, September 23, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/wm2625.cfm.
[2]James Phillips, "Success in Afghanistan Requires Firm Presidential Leadership, Not Half-Measures," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2607, September 4, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific
/wm2607.cfm.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/wm2640.cfm
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By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
SHARANA, Afghanistan -- U.S. commanders here are enlisting some unusual allies: former mujahedeen guerrillas who battled the Russians with tactics now used by the Taliban.
Gen. Dawlat Khan, who commands the 2,000 Afghan police in this town in eastern Paktika province, came of age during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. His father was a leader of the local resistance efforts, and during his teenage years Gen. Khan helped to funnel American-donated machine guns and weaponry to the tribal fighters.
Capt. Suleimanjan, who fought the Soviets in the 1980s, this year arrested his province's No. 2 Taliban commander.
Today, American commanders say former Islamic militants like Gen. Khan make valuable partners because they are well-schooled in the insurgency's tactics.
"We used roadside bombs and ambushes, just like they do now," Capt. Suleimanjan, one of Gen. Khan's top commanders, said in his office at a crumbling old fort in Sharana. "It was the same kind of fight, but now we're on the other side."
The strategy carries risks. Former mujahedeen forged close ties to warlords during the long fight against the Soviets, and it is far from clear that they have shifted their loyalties to Kabul's fragile central government. U.S. officials also worry that some onetime militants who have since joined the police force have struck informal peace treaties with the Taliban.
"It's like the police in the States making a deal with the mob," said Capt. Mark Evans, who until recently ran the U.S. effort to train the Afghan police in Sharana. "The police aren't that well trained or well equipped, and I can understand why they'd want a quid pro quo."
The strategy of working with former mujahedeen has been tried with the Afghan National Army, and is part of an American push to overhaul the national police, a beleaguered force whose ineffectiveness is a threat to President Barack Obama's hopes of pacifying the country.
"The police are the first line of defense," said Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, the U.S.'s top day-to-day commander in Afghanistan.
Gen. Khan, 45 years old, said that when he returned home to Paktika last October after a long exile he was stunned to discover how many of his officers were corrupt or addicted to hashish.
Gen. Khan and his aides ousted the department's chief of security and top administrative official. They also fired a trio of police chiefs who had turned a blind eye to lower-ranking policemen extorting money from truck drivers and motorists.
In rebuilding the department, he turned to other former mujahedeen. His top investigator, Capt. Suleimanjan, who like many Afghans goes by only one name, fought with Gen. Khan's father against the Soviets. Chief Nazerkhan, who commands the garrison in the nearby town of Motakhan, battled the Russians alongside Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is now one of the most-wanted militants in the world.
Gen. Khan was at school one afternoon in 1979 when he saw Russian tanks moving through the streets of his town, followed by columns of soldiers. His father, Haj Sultan Muhammed, led armed men from his tribe into the local mountains and joined the nascent religious war against the Soviets.
Afghan Interior Ministry officials in Kabul said Mr. Muhammed became a leader of the local mujahedeen, working closely with Mr. Haqqani, then a charismatic young fighter. Gen. Khan himself remembers playing soccer with the militant, today a key Taliban ally.
"We were friends once but if I saw him today I'd try to arrest or kill him," Gen. Khan said. "He would do the same if he saw me."
During the long war, Gen. Khan moved to Pakistan, where he says he worked to funnel U.S.-donated AK-47s and other weaponry to his father. Gen. Khan won't say how he got the guns. An Afghan official in Kabul who worked with Mr. Muhammed said the weapons were delivered by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA declined to comment.
Paktika has deteriorated sharply in recent years. The Taliban control many towns and have littered the province's dirt roads with buried roadside bombs that have killed dozens of police officers. At night, cellphone service shuts down because the Taliban have threatened to destroy relay towers that remain operational.
Gen. Khan's biggest victory as police chief came earlier this year when Capt. Suleimanjan arrested the No. 2 Taliban commander in the province.
Capt. Suleimanjan said he identified the insurgent after an informant slipped him a promotional video the local Taliban command filmed to recruit new fighters. "I have shadows in every village," Capt. Suleimanjan said with a smile. "Sometimes they give me things."
He said that there are key differences between the two generations of Islamic fighters. Capt. Suleimanjan says that while the mujahedeen tried to avoid harming civilians, the Taliban have killed Afghan engineers working on roads and burned down several schools. "They use the name of Islam, but it's fake," he said.
The U.S. mentors worry that Chief Nazerkhan and some of Gen. Khan's other police commanders maintain secret ties to the insurgency.
In August, a group of American trainers prepared to leave the small police base at Motakhan after two days of training. Lt. Israel Darbe, a member of the mentor team, called over one of the Afghan translators.
"We're fixing to roll on out of here," Lt. Darbe told him. "Have the chief tell his Taliban buddies to leave us the hell alone."
Capt. Evans said he suspected Chief Nazerkhan had struck an informal peace treaty with the Taliban. Chief Nazerkhan dismissed the speculation. "It is all rumor and lies," he said.
Gen. Khan, for his part, is increasingly focused on staying alive. A few months ago, an elderly man walked to the gates of the police headquarters here, asked for Gen. Khan, and then blew himself up. Several police officers died in the blast.
The Afghan commander said he wasn't surprised by the failed assassination attempt.
"The mujahedeen used to assassinate Russian commanders all the time," he said, shrugging.
Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com
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October 8, 2009, 2:16 PM
The Real Trouble with Afghanistan and Obama
Underneath all this week's he-said/she-said over the war's future lies a self-inflicted wound: Our young president has lost sight of what matters in the military conflict that will define him, and lost sight of it to another Boomer-era vice president's guilty conscience.
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
Should I surge or should I go now? It's the question that has Washington — and, indeed, the world — abuzz over America's future in Afghanistan. First it was the military's convenient leak to Bob Woodward of the starkest assessment of the war to date (Failure!). Then, a week ago, it was General Stanley McChrystal's smacking down of the Joe Biden "fewer troops, more Al Qaeda hunting" plan (Short-sighted!). Then Bob Gates told him, in so many words, to shut up and listen to the Communicator in Chief (Eyebrow-raising!). On Tuesday, President Obama had the ears of thirty legislators, but it seemed to set the Afghan debate further off course than anywhere near consensus (Grumpy old men! And a liberal catfight!).
By this morning, with Kabul rocking and Obama stalling, the question many Americans were asking seemed perfectly natural: So how many troops are we gonna send, Mr. President? And therein lies Team Obama's Bushian dilemma: They've created such huge expectations of a definitive decision on the war that no matter which way the president turns, he will have backed himself into a strategic corner from which he cannot escape. All the leaks and sound bytes and "senior White House official" signal shifts have made some number more important than the most complex military conflict of our time. It's Truman-versus-MacArthur and Bush-versus-Fallon all over again, but the fallout could lead to trouble the likes of which we didn't even see in Iraq. Here's what Obama has been ignoring (Chain of command? China? Petraeus? A firm hand? Anyone?), and why it will all come back to haunt him sooner than he or Stan McChrystal would like to admit.
Truth or Consequences, Afghanistan: Potential Fallout Along the Chain of Command
I was at the Pentagon on Monday, just around the time Gates was giving his "candidly but privately" spiel, and every conversation I had kept coming back to the same concern: "How can we show positive impact in Afghanistan over the next couple of months?" Believe me — when your national-security establishment wraps itself around the axle like that, your narrow strategic mindset ain't no secret.
But if the administration doesn't go along with the recommendations of its handpicked commander (and there were signs this afternoon that it was leaning away from the McChrystal plan and back toward Biden's strategy), then it will have effectively repudiated McChrystal's command with a highly publicized vote of no confidence. By extension, the White House will have completed its marginalization of McChrystal's boss, General David Petraeus. Which, given that the Iraq surge hero and Central Command chief has been urged to run for president in 2012, may be politically hard to resist for Obama's politically savvy advisors. But, again, the political savvy is getting the best of Team Obama when it comes to Afghanistan — this is a war, not an election, with many more lives at stake than a few of the best and brightest, and they'd be stupid to muddle or confuse the two.
The more profound consequence of choosing the Biden option, however, would be to repudiate what is working in Afghanistan. The troops are already pissed off at the anti-McChrystal hyperbole, and limiting our footprint for more drones amounts to a public discounting of the American armed forces' tremendous effort in recent years to transform into an effective instrument of "small wars" counterinsurgency — especially the Army and Marines. Again, by extension, such a decision would tarnish Gates's legacy-in-the-making as bureaucratic godfather to this stunning institutional evolution. I mean, if this was a capacity our military lacked going into Afghanistan and Iraq, only to subsequently develop it under extreme duress, will it be the decision of the Obama administration to immediately shelve our hard-earned capability in a "war of necessity" just because Joe Biden said so?
Worse yet, the world will interpret any "half measures" (John McCain's fighting words) as a signal toward our inevitable withdrawal (watch for the phrase "exit strategy"). And once that happens, world leaders — friend or foe — will immediately start interpreting any statements by Obama that threaten to use force as, you know, threatening to pin-prick with fancy robotic bombers. Waffling, in other words, doesn't answer that Pentagon-wide concern.
The Obama Doctrine: A Product of Another Vietnam-Shadowed Veep
And yet Obama will almost certainly seek to split his Big Afghanistan Decision down the middle (Talk big but act small!). That won't work, and not just because the world's bad boys will think of the American military as a bunch of high-tech pansies — because it reeks of Obama speak for permanent downshifting in our long-term commitment to Afghanistan's future, which, by extension, makes everybody nervous about Pakistan's future.
And so, by shorting Afghanistan, the president may end up inadvertently declaring The Obama Doctrine: (1) yes, Iraq was a one-of-a-kind war, never to be repeated; and (2), in Clinton-era Colin Powell speak honed for the counterterrorism era, we go anywhere we want to kill anyone we want, but as far as the locals are concerned, they can simply fuck off.
In doing so, Obama will position himself internationally as both a full-blown wimp (Jimmy Carter much?) and a sanctimonious cynic (hellooooo, Bill Clinton!), confirming French president Nicolas Sarkozy's first impression that under that fabulous exterior lies a fabile young president.
What's so intriguing and tragic about Obama's indecisiveness here is that it's been triggered by yet another vice-presidential, Boomer-era "wise man" determined to right the wrongs of the Vietnam era. With George W. Bush, it was Jerry Ford's chief of staff Dick Cheney who was determined to restore the power of the imperial presidency, and with Barry, it's Joe Biden (his '72 Senate upset win in Delaware was fueled by his fierce opposition to the war), who, along with 'Nam vets John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, counsels our JFK-ish president to get out of this quagmire now — while he still can. Despite all of Obama's campaign rhetoric about bringing a post-Boomer perspective to the White House, on this crucial call he appears as captive to that mindset as his two predecessors were.
And yes, the perverse influence that links them all is Obama's kitchen-cabinet adviser Colin Powell (aka Two-Face), who never met a war he didn't want to decisively win but likewise never met a post-war situation he didn't want to assiduously avoid. If you want a poster-child for how Vietnam still screws up presidencies, then General Powell's your man. Just understand that, later on, he'll deny everything to Bob Woodward.
Esquire contributing editor Thomas P.M. Barnett is the author of Great Powers: America and the World After Bush.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/war-room/obama-new-afghanistan-strategy-100809#ixzz0TXxu9gBO
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Normally I find Frank Rich to be a typical Pravda on the Hudson douche bag-- and indeed some of that is on full display here. That said, mingled in with some historical innaccurracies are some questions posed that we need to be able to answer.
Anyone here up to it?
Two Wrongs Make Another Fiasco Sign in to Recommend
By FRANK RICH
Published: October 10, 2009
THOSE of us who love F. Scott Fitzgerald must acknowledge that he did get one big thing wrong. There are second acts in American lives. (Just ask Marion Barry, or William Shatner.) The real question is whether everyone deserves a second act. Perhaps the most surreal aspect of our great Afghanistan debate is the Beltway credence given to the ravings of the unrepentant blunderers who dug us into this hole in the first place.
Let’s be clear: Those who demanded that America divert its troops and treasure from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 and 2003 — when there was no Qaeda presence in Iraq — bear responsibility for the chaos in Afghanistan that ensued. Now they have the nerve to imperiously and tardily demand that America increase its 68,000-strong presence in Afghanistan to clean up their mess — even though the number of Qaeda insurgents there has dwindled to fewer than 100, according to the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones.
But why let facts get in the way? Just as these hawks insisted that Iraq was “the central front in the war on terror” when the central front was Afghanistan, so they insist that Afghanistan is the central front now that it has migrated to Pakistan. When the day comes for them to anoint Pakistan as the central front, it will be proof positive that Al Qaeda has consolidated its hold on Somalia and Yemen.
To appreciate this crowd’s spotless record of failure, consider its noisiest standard-bearer, John McCain. He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed the Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq because there was “not a history of clashes” between them.
What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.
Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could “in the long term” somehow “muddle through” in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to “muddle through” there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the “remarkable success” of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony “truce” ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb’s up. As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn’t even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site.
He takes no responsibility for any of this. Asked by Katie Couric last week about our failures in Afghanistan, McCain spoke as if he were an innocent bystander: “I think the reason why we didn’t do a better job on Afghanistan is our attention — either rightly or wrongly — was on Iraq.” As Tonto says to the Lone Ranger, “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”
Along with his tribunes in Congress and the punditocracy, Wrong-Way McCain still presumes to give America its marching orders. With his Senate brethren in the Three Amigos, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, he took to The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page to assert that “we have no choice” but to go all-in on Afghanistan — rightly or wrongly, presumably — just as we had in Iraq. Why? “The U.S. walked away from Afghanistan once before, following the Soviet collapse,” they wrote. “The result was 9/11. We must not make that mistake again.”
This shameless argument assumes — perhaps correctly — that no one in this country remembers anything. So let me provide a reminder: We already did make that mistake again when we walked away from Afghanistan to invade Iraq in 2003 — and we did so at the Three Amigos’ urging. Then, too, they promoted their strategy as a way of preventing another 9/11 — even though no one culpable for 9/11 was in Iraq. Now we’re being asked to pay for their mistake by squandering stretched American resources in yet another country where Al Qaeda has largely vanished.
To make the case, the Amigos and their fellow travelers conflate the Taliban with Al Qaeda much as they long conflated Saddam’s regime with Al Qaeda. But as Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post reported on Thursday, American intelligence officials now say that “there are few, if any, links between Taliban commanders in Afghanistan today and senior Al Qaeda members” — a far cry from the tight Taliban-bin Laden alliance of 2001.
The rhetorical sleights of hand in the hawks’ arguments don’t end there. If you listen carefully to McCain and his neocon echo chamber, you’ll notice certain tics. President Obama better make his decision by tomorrow, or Armageddon (if not mushroom clouds) will arrive. We must “win” in Afghanistan — but victory is left vaguely defined. That’s because we will never build a functioning state in a country where there has never been one. Nor can we score a victory against the world’s dispersed, stateless terrorists by getting bogged down in a hellish landscape that contains few of them.
Most tellingly, perhaps, those clamoring for an escalation in Afghanistan avoid mentioning the name of the country’s president, Hamid Karzai, or the fraud-filled August election that conclusively delegitimized his government. To do so would require explaining why America should place its troops in alliance with a corrupt partner knee-deep in the narcotics trade. As long as Karzai and the election are airbrushed out of history, it can be disingenuously argued that nothing has changed on the ground since Obama’s inauguration and that he has no right to revise his earlier judgment that Afghanistan is a “war of necessity.”
Those demanding more combat troops for Afghanistan also avoid defining the real costs. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the war was running $2.6 billion a month in Pentagon expenses alone even before Obama added 20,000 troops this year. Surely fiscal conservatives like McCain and Graham who rant about deficits being “generational theft” have an obligation to explain what the added bill will be on an Afghanistan escalation and where the additional money will come from. But that would require them to use the dread words “sacrifice” and “higher taxes” when they want us to believe that this war, like Iraq, would be cost-free.
The real troop numbers are similarly elusive. Pre-emptively railing against the prospect of “half measures” by Obama, Lieberman asked MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell rhetorically last week whether it would be “real counterinsurgency” or “counterinsurgency light.” But the measure Lieberman endorses — Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s reported recommendation of 40,000 additional troops — is itself counterinsurgency light. In his definitive recent field manual on the subject, Gen. David Petraeus stipulates that real counterinsurgency requires 20 to 25 troops for each thousand residents. That comes out, conservatively, to 640,000 troops for Afghanistan (population, 32 million). Some 535,000 American troops couldn’t achieve a successful counterinsurgency in South Vietnam, which had half Afghanistan’s population and just over a quarter of its land area.
Lieberman suggested to Mitchell that we could train an enhanced, centralized Afghan army to fill any gaps. In how many decades? The existing Afghan “army” is small, illiterate, impoverished and as factionalized as the government. For his part, McCain likes to justify McChrystal’s number of 40,000 by imbuing it with the supposedly magical powers of the “surge” in Iraq. But it’s rewriting history to say that the “surge” brought “victory” to Iraq. What it did was stanch the catastrophic bleeding in an unnecessary war McCain had helped gin up. Lest anyone forget, we still don’t know who has “won” in Iraq.
Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention. Even if the countries were interchangeable, the wars are not. No one-size surge fits all. President Bush sent the additional troops to Iraq only after Sunni leaders in Anbar Province soured on Al Qaeda and reached out for American support. There is no equivalent “Anbar Awakening” in Afghanistan. Most Afghans “don’t feel threatened by the Taliban in their daily lives” and “aren’t asking for American protection,” reported Richard Engel of NBC News last week. After eight years of war, many see Americans as occupiers.
Americans, meanwhile, want to see the fine print after eight years of fiasco with little accounting. While McCain and company remain frozen where they were in 2001, many of their fellow citizens have learned from the Iraq tragedy. Polls persistently find that the country is skeptical about what should and can be accomplished in Afghanistan. They voted for Obama not least because they wanted a new post-9/11 vision of national security, and they will not again be so easily bullied by the blustering hawks’ doomsday scenarios. That gives our deliberating president both the time and the political space to get this long war’s second act right.
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"I find Frank Rich to be a typical Pravda on the Hudson douche bag" - Reading only this piece I would say you are sugar-coating it. Good to know what post-partisan liberal journalism looks like. Can't we all just get along? His obsession with McCain makes me want to write an attack piece on Walter Mondale, and see what readership I get. No wonder they are bankrupt and seeking federal bailouts. Does he know that Republicans and conservatives especially can no longer declare war, fund war, stop war or even participate in committee meetings? What an *sshole.
I just hate reading a piece where the first sentence is a lie but that is how today's liberals start an argument: "...America divert its troops and treasure from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 and 2003".
- I would like to see the supply route aerial photos of our troops and treasure leaving Kabul on the long journey to Baghdad.
In fact the Afghanistan war was the model of a multi-lateralist intervention and Iraq at least according to this scumbag was a go-it-alone venture. In Iraq, we won - not mentioned in the piece. In Afghanistan, apparently there is still a problem and why would allies stay committed if we are happy to do it for them.
"these hawks insisted that Iraq was “the central front in the war on terror” when the central front was Afghanistan, so they insist that Afghanistan is the central front now that it has migrated to Pakistan. When the day comes for them to anoint Pakistan as the central front, it will be proof positive that Al Qaeda has consolidated its hold on Somalia and Yemen."
- If we keep winning, the world they operate in keeps getting smaller and smaller. BTW, it was bin Laden who put the central focus on Iraq and who chose Afghan for an ungoverned safe haven that this author infers that he would prefer. Also curious about his writings that propose a US war right now in Pahkistahn or is this all just hot air and bullsh*t?
Side note, how would it affect the pressure we want to put on Iran right now to prevent them from going fully nuclear if Saddam had just this week successfully tested his own new nuclear weapons. That is what the Iraq Study Group predicted: he was 5-7 years away, more than 5-7 years ago... not mentioned in the hit piece.
"[McCain] hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq"
- The WMD evidence came through all the best intelligence agencies in the world, why would you not 'hype' it if you gave a damn about American security. The part that was faulty originated with Saddam himself over-hyping his ability to impose destruction - even after he had attacked FOUR of his neighbors: Iran, Kuwait, Israel and Saudi. Besides the Bush hatred, or in this case McCain just to mix it up, the only response these armchair hate writers have had to Saddam taking Kuwait, Saudi and maybe Israel, shooting American aircraft, defying UN resolutions and their own surrender agreement and going fully nuclear would come from Paul McCartney lyrics (to the beautiful melody): "Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be. There will be an answer,let it beeeee."
"they promoted their strategy (war in Iraq) as a way of preventing another 9/11 — even though no one culpable for 9/11 was in Iraq."
- I wonder if they don't read their own words, but we weren't trying to prevent the attack that already happened, we are trying to prevent future attacks by taking battle to our declared enemies. Not mentioned as usual is that future attacks were stopped and BTW, Saddam did not go nuclear or restart his chemical or biological programs.
"If you listen carefully to McCain and his neocon echo chamber, you’ll notice certain tics. President Obama better make his decision by tomorrow, or Armageddon (if not mushroom clouds) will arrive."
- No. I don't think he said that, lol. What they perhaps are saying is that the Commander in Chief, Lyndon Baines Obama, should make clear to the troops in harm's way whether we are in this war to win or are we out or are we content to settle for a quagmire under his watch.
"Most tellingly, perhaps, those clamoring for an escalation in Afghanistan avoid mentioning the name of the country’s president, Hamid Karzai, or the fraud-filled August election..."
- But he would return our troops to America? With the ACORN prosecutions in full force and the ACORN legal defense team in charge??? Lol. That election (Afghanistan in August) took place under Obama's new plan for Afghanistan and uner his watch and command. Not McCain. Did I miss a news story where Obama alled for a re-vote or a re-count?
"Those demanding more combat troops for Afghanistan also avoid defining the real costs. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the war was running $2.6 billion a month in Pentagon expenses alone even before Obama added 20,000 troops this year."
- Those demanding more troops are Obama's chosen command team.
"Gen. David Petraeus stipulates that real counterinsurgency requires 20 to 25 troops for each thousand residents. That comes out, conservatively, to 640,000 troops for Afghanistan (population, 32 million)."
- I don't think the major battle areas of Afghanistan encompass the whole nation or the whole population.
Frankly this anti-war piece could more logically be written attacking Obama. Even if some points are valid, what is his plan to protect America while allowing all known safe havens to fester?
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1. When the first American troops landed to engage the nazis in north africa after Pearl Harbor, no one screamed about it. (This is before the modern left, where rooting for your country to lose a war is standard behavior)
2. Saddam was a state sponsor of terror in violation of the cease-fire and Iraq was the ideal nation where an alternative to a totalitarian or jihadist nation could be built. This is a multigenerational war and creating a free Iraq would create an alternate vision for the muslim world rather than the standard of statism or jihad.
3. The intel under Clinton and most every other nation state's intel apparatus was that Saddam retained a WMD program and the ability to use it or hand it off to a non-state actor for use against us.
4. Karzai is corrupt, but Afghanistan doesn't have any prince charmings waiting in the wings. It's the proverbial sow's ear and the fact that it in no way resembles a silk purse doesn't mean that there were better options left untouched. In much of the world, the least evil version of a Tony Soprano is the best thing you'll find that has any chance of success.
5. Lot's of scrutiny of McCain here, funny that the guy he's run against seems to avoid all but the most book-licking adoration.
6. AQ and today's talibs aren't tight like they were in 2001 ? Would making peace with an Axis state have been ok in 1943?
7. Yeah, Iraq is a tragedy in the minds of Frank Rich and his ilk as it may well become a decent country, despite their best efforts.
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Doug, GM:
Nice work gentlemen!
Please give me a soundbite response (plus more if you wish, but please do include a soundbite) to the argument that Bush took his eye off the ball in Iraq, that while we committed our bandwidth to Iraq, that Afghanistan was left to fester and degenerate into the clusterfcuk it currently is.
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FDR sunk most of his resources into the european theater and won there first. Did he take his eye off the ball in asia? In any fight, you must prioritize and disperse your resources in the way you see as best for you. Iraq is much closer to being a viable nation-state. Afghanistan is a mess of near stone-age tribes. Where would you invest your assets in the hope of winning approval from a post-modern American public with an MTV-attention span?
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/10/11/obama-wh-falsely-downplaying-risks-of-retreat-in-afghanistan-military-intel-sources/
Obama WH falsely downplaying risks of retreat in Afghanistan: Military, intel sources
posted at 11:00 am on October 11, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Sources within both the intelligence and military communities tell McClatchy that Barack Obama’s White House has not been honest about the risks of moving away from a robust strategy of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Obama and his advisers have begun publicly discussing the Taliban as a moderate alternative to al-Qaeda in terms of enemies, but the latest intelligence shows just the opposite. Taliban leadership and AQ have integrated even more tightly than ever since 9/11 and act in concert on strategy and tactics:
As the Obama administration reconsiders its Afghanistan policy, White House officials are minimizing warnings from the intelligence community, the military and the State Department about the risks of adopting a limited strategy focused on al Qaida, U.S. intelligence, diplomatic and military officials told McClatchy.
Recent U.S. intelligence assessments have found that the Taliban and other Pakistan-based groups that are fighting U.S.-led forces have much closer ties to al Qaida now than they did before 9/11, would allow the terrorist network to re-establish bases in Afghanistan and would help Osama bin Laden export his radical brand of Islam to Afghanistan’s neighbors and beyond, the officials said.
McClatchy interviewed more than 15 senior and mid-level U.S. intelligence, military and diplomatic officials, all of whom said they concurred with the assessments. All of them requested anonymity because the assessments are classified and the officials weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Bob Kerrey openly wonders why the White House has begun to tread the ground of retreat, in an op-ed for today’s Wall Street Journal:
Yet despite these setbacks, our leaders must remain focused on the fact that success in Afghanistan bolsters our national security and yes, our moral reputation. This war is not Vietnam. The Taliban are not popular and have very little support other than what they secure through terror.
Afghanistan is also not Iraq. No serious leader in Kabul is asking us to leave. Instead we are being asked to withdraw by American leaders who begin their analysis with the presumption that victory is not possible. They seem to want to ensure defeat by leaving at the very moment when our military leader on the ground has laid out a coherent and compelling strategy for victory.
When it comes to foreign policy, almost nothing matters more then your friends and your enemies knowing you will keep your word and follow through on your commitments. This is the real test of presidential leadership. I hope that President Obama—soon to be a Nobel laureate—passes with flying colors.
If the military and intel communities are telling Obama that the idea of a “moderate Taliban” is false — and Lara Logan emphatically agrees — then where did this idea arise in the first place? It comes not from Afghanistan, but from the left wing of the Democratic Party. They have increased pressure on Obama to get out of Afghanistan, and the Nobel Peace Prize was specifically intended to help in that effort. The Left wants a way out of the war, and the Obama administration has begun floating trial balloons to help sell this as something other than a retreat, if Obama goes along with it.
Kerrey doesn’t think Obama will do so, and to his credit, Obama has increased resources and offered stalwart political support for the war … until last month, when he finally got schooled on COIN resourcing. If Obama intends on making an honest decision on this, he needs to stop his advisers from making very dishonest arguments in public about it. The Taliban are not moderates, and they share the same ideological, political, and tactical goals as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Anyone saying anything differently is simply selling a false argument for a dishonorable retreat in the face of our enemies.
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Sorry no sound bites. :-(
Their main argument is a fictional picture that Obama and Edwards drew in the 2008 Democrat debates where the viewer is led to believe that American snipers, high in the mountains, had Osama bin Laden surrounded and in their sights, ready to shoot, but received instead a radioed message from President Bush telling them to quickly lay down their rifles and leave the mountains of Tora Bora immediately, and take the next train to Fallujah lol because that is now the central focus of the war on terror. It just didn't happen that way. The politicians in Washington did not micro-manage the commanders in either war, they weren't denied resources to track terrorists in the mountains and no one ever had bin Laden in their sights much less turn back, unless you count the opportunities we passed up under President Clinton.
Ironically, the intelligence that could have prevented the 'unnecessary' war was not available perhaps due to the gutting of the intelligence agencies by the appeasers who took power after the cold war threats were settled without a shot fired by the trigger happy Pres. Reagan. The prevention opportunity for the attacks on America on September 11, 2001 would have been to massively and fatally strike al Qaeda after one of the many previous attacks they made on Americans and American interests such as the USS Cole bombing in Aden in 2000 or the Embassy attacks in Africa in 1998.
Post-9/11/01 is when bin Laden truly knew to hide because (other than Saddam Hussein as published in his own state newspaper 51 days prior- http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2002_record&page=S8525&position=all) only al Qaeda knew of the attacks that were coming.
Both Bush and the Nobel peace laureate have authorized major strikes into the 'safe' areas of Pakistan. It is ridiculous and counter-productive to make the choices we face now out to be political or partisan.
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"and the Nobel peace laureate" :wink:
Doug, this shocker from Drudge and the WSJ:
***Obama fails to win Nobel prize in economics
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- In a decision as shocking as Friday's surprise peace prize win, President Obama failed to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Monday.
While few observers think Obama has done anything for world peace in the nearly nine months he's been in office, the same clearly can't be said for economics.
The president has worked tirelessly since even before his inauguration to wrest control of the U.S. economy from failed free markets, and the evil CEOs who profit from them, and to turn it over to wise, fair and benevolent bureaucrats.
Obama reacts to NobelPresident Obama says he was surprised and humbled by the honor. Video courtesy of Fox Business News.
From his $787 billion stimulus package, to the cap-and-trade bill, to the seizures of General Motors and Chrysler, to the undead health-care "reform" act, Obama has dominated the U.S., and therefore the global, economy as few figures have in recent years.
Yet the Nobel panel chose instead to award the prize to two obscure academics -- Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson -- one noted for her work on managing collective resources, and the other for his work on transaction costs. See full story on the Nobel winners.
Other surprise losers include celebrity noneconomist and filmmaker Michael Moore; U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; and Larry Summers, head of the U.S. national economic council.
It is unclear whether the president will now refuse his peace prize in protest against the obvious slight to his real achievements this year.
-- Tom Bemis, assistant managing editor
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cowboyup6 17 minutes ago+2 Votes (5 Up / 3 Dn) Request sentBut he has garnered the praise of every marxist and jihadist leader in the world, so that is the surest sign that he is succeeding in socializing the U.S. The Nobel Peace prize, not, was merely a prod from the leftist loons in Norway to continue on the path of marxism that he and his looters, like George Soros, have planned. Now, if he can only make Israel stand still for their complete destruction at the hands of his muslim brothers and not make waves by fighting for their survival. The destruction of Israel will bring another peace prize and the eternal gratitude of muhammed.Reply Link Track Replies Report Abuse UncleDudley 17 minutes ago+2 Votes (4 Up / 2 Dn) Request sentI'm in total shock that the prize didn't go to Charles Rangel.
Reply Link Track Replies Report Abuse
tothemoon 13 minutes ago+3 Votes (5 Up / 2 Dn) Request sentIt was a close race, Rangel, Dodd, Frank were all in the running against Mugabe.
Reply Link Track Replies Report Abuse probability 9 minutes ago+2 Votes (3 Up / 1 Dn) Request sentOr good ol' Ben and Timmy.Reply Link Track Replies Report Abuse producer 17 minutes ago+6 Votes (6 Up / 0 Dn) Request sentWatch out Tom! Here come the true believers decrying you for heresy. Remember the hatred shown to Palin after she punctured the bubble on the deification in Denver. All of the people who put Obama in that Greek Temple will be screaming for your blood.
Reply Link Track Replies Report Abuse flintooffm 14 minutes ago-1 Vote (0 Up / 1 Dn) Request sentI hope every one is enjoying Casino and the jokers of the circusReply Link Track Replies Report Abuse ranger 10 minutes agoEven (1 Up / 1 Dn) Request sentYou mean Bernanke or Paulson or Barney Frank did not win? Sarcasm.
Perhaps they should have awarded the prize to our congress for not listening to the people and voting to approve 2 bailout bills and now there is dicussion of bailout bill # 3 on the way.Reply Link Track Replies Report Abuse woodsmoke52 8 minutes ago+2 Votes (4 Up / 2 Dn) Request sentI hope we can still poke fun at a sitting president without being called "partisan". Leno, Letterman and O'Brien had a field day with Bill Clinton's peccadilloes and Bush's blunders without being flogged as political partisans. Why are the Neo-Stalinists so touchy about their man Barry?
I guess we could go back and flog the Bush carcass some more over No WMD's, Henry "Let's Loot America" Paulson and the public indiscretions of the Bush daughters, but where's the fun in that? Bush is so Not President Any More, so yesterday.
This is (I hope) still America, and lampooning politicians is a leading national pastime. Clinton needed a good lampooning and he got it, Bush needed it bad and also got it bad.
But few presidents have needed deflating more than this one, with his enormous ego and gigantic fake humility, his "I will heal the oceans and end the suffering of mankind" blather.
Deifying presidents is not a healthy trend.
Awarding Obama a Nobel Prize in "diplomacy" was an embarrassing political prostration by Stockholm. All he did was jump in a taxpayer-funded 757 and fly around the world, bowing to a succession of thugs and mountebanks and apologizing for America. Medvedev scoffed at him, Putin smiled behind his hand, Ahmadinejad mocked him openly, Chavez insulted him.
What did he actually accomplish, beyond trimming jet-fuel inventories?
This is the most arrogant presidency since....uh, since the last one. Load on the satire, Mr. Bemis. It will do us all good.Reply Link Track Replies Report Abuse funbus 8 minutes ago+1 Vote (2 Up / 1 Dn) Request sentI would like to see Obama choke on that peace prize!Reply Link Track Replies Report Abuse flintooffm 8 minutes ago+1 Vote (1 Up / 0 Dn) Request sentFire works are getting ready for Dow to reach Mt. Everest @ 10,000 heightReply Link Track Replies Report Abuse funbus 7 minutes ago+1 Vote (2 Up / 1 Dn) Request sentObama hasn't done sh't! Everyone around the world now knows he's a joke!
According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded to the person who:
“ during the preceding year [...] shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.
Reply Link Track Replies Report Abuse funbus 4 minutes agoEven (1 Up / 1 Dn) Request sentBarack Obama win mocks Nobel peace prize: Alexander Downer
Print Brad Norington, Washington correspondent | October 13, 2009
Article from: The Australian
THE Nobel Peace Prize was discredited if Barack Obama could be nominated for the award after just 11 days in office and win it nine months later, former foreign minister Alexander Downer said yesterday.
Mr Downer called the US President's surprise win a farce, saying it was a pity Mr Obama had not refused the award.
He singled out Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai as a worthy alternative who had been ignored after years of struggling for human rights.
"The peace prize has to be for actual achievement - not potential - and it has to be achievement in promoting world peace, not raising the prestige of the American state, which is largely what Barack Obama has done so far," Mr Downer told the ABC.
Mr Obama had been in office for just 11 days when nominations for this year's Nobel Peace Prize closed on February 1. He spent most of those first days settling into the White House.
Although humbly questioning whether he was deserving, he described the prize as a "call to action".
The award's founder, Alfred Nobel, decreed the annual prize was to be bestowed for achievements "during the preceding year". According to his will, the winner "shall have done the most, or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".
The Norwegian judges took an alternative approach, handing the prize to Mr Obama for future works. Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee's chairman, defended the award in the face of public outcry, saying: "It was because we would like to support what he is trying to achieve."
It took two other former US presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, a combined total of 12 years before they were given the award.
Roosevelt had been president for five years when the Nobel committee gave him the honour in 1906 for mediating a peace treaty that ended war between Russia and Japan. He declined to personally accept the award until years after he had left office.
Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 - seven years after he became president - for creating the League of Nations in the wake of World War I. Wilson's drive in bringing the US into the war was critical to its end, and he took the leading role afterwards in the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
When Mr Obama was nominated for the peace prize in February, he was still five months away from delivering his Cairo speech that called for a new beginning in relations between the US and Muslim world.
It was eight months before his UN speech in New York last month in which he pledged that the US would re-engage with the world after the isolation of the Bush administration.
Mr Obama has also launched a policy initiative to reduce nuclear weapons, sought to restart the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians and declared he was open to renewed diplomacy with North Korea and Iran.
But most commentators said the challenges lay ahead of the President, not behind him, and pointed out he was still fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the first 11 days after January 20, Mr Obama appointed Richard Holbrooke as his envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and George Mitchell as his envoy to the Middle East. His other notable moves attracting international attention were pledges to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and ban torture.
Mr Obama's Nobel win came as a surprise to him when he was awoken with the news by his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, at 6am last Friday (9pm AEST).
But on February 27, he was reported as a nominee, along with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who intervened after conflicts in Georgia and Gaza.
Under the Nobel process, nominations are not released for 50 years and the judging process remains secret.
It is not known who nominated Mr Obama. Under the rules, names can be submitted only by members of governments and national assemblies, international courts, academics, past winners and former advisers appointed by the Norwegian institute. Invitations for nominations are sent out each September, and the deadline is February. A shortlist is sent to a panel of permanent advisers, and then sent back for a majority vote by the five-person peace prize committee in early October.
The decision is final, with no appeal.
Reply Link Track Replies Report Abuse joeyzero 3 minutes ago+2 Votes (2 Up / 0 Dn) Request sentI read this twice. I thought the reporter was creating a tongue-in-cheek article. Sure Obama has made a lot of noise around economic and healthcare reform but you can't give him credit for any achievement. This isn't kindergarten; we don't give out green ribbons for trying hard...Reply Link Track Replies Report Abuse Obama-a-Bankster 3 minutes ago+1 Vote (1 Up / 0 Dn) Request sentWarmonger Wins Peace Prize
Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com, October 10, 2009
It took 25 years longer than George Orwell thought for the slogans of 1984 to become reality.
“War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” “Ignorance is Strength.”
I would add, “Lie is Truth.”
The Nobel Committee has awarded the 2009 Peace Prize to President Obama, the person who started a new war in Pakistan, upped the war in Afghanistan, and continues to threaten Iran with attack unless Iran does what the US government demands and relinquishes its rights as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty.
The Nobel committee chairman, Thorbjoern Jagland said, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”
Obama, the committee gushed, has created “a new climate in international politics.”
Tell that to the 2 million displaced Pakistanis and the unknown numbers of dead ones that Obama has racked up in his few months in office. Tell that to the Afghans where civilian deaths continue to mount as Obama’s “war of necessity” drones on indeterminably.
No Bush policy has changed. Iraq is still occupied. The Guantanamo torture prison is still functioning. Rendition and assassinations are still occurring. Spying on Americans without warrants is still the order of the day. Civil liberties are continuing to be violated in the name of Oceania’s “war on terror.”..more..****
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Robert D. Kaplan writing in the Atlantic:
Even if Obama does end up making the correct decision on Afghanistan strategy (by which I mean adding troops, since counterinsurgency is manpower-intensive), the public agony over his deliberations may already have done incalculable damage. The Afghan people have survived three decades of war by hedging their bets. Now, watching a young and inexperienced American president appear to waiver on his commitment to their country, they are deciding, at the level of both the individual and the mass, whether to make their peace with the Taliban—even as the Taliban itself can only take solace and encouragement from Obama's public agonizing. Meanwhile, fundamentalist elements of the Pakistani military, opposed to the recent crackdown against local Taliban, are also taking heart from developments in Washington. . . .This is how coups and revolutions get started, by the middle ranks sensing weakness in foreign support for their superiors.
Obama's wobbliness also has a corrosive effect on the Indians and the Iranians. India desperately needs a relatively secular Afghan regime in place to bolster Hindu India's geopolitical position against radical Islamdom, and while the country enjoyed an excellent relationship with Bush, Obama's dithering is making it nervous. And Iran, in observing Washington's indecision, can only feel more secure in its creeping economic annexation of western Afghanistan.
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French troops were killed after Italy hushed up ‘bribes’ to Taleban
Taleban insurgents involved in the ambush that killed ten French soldiers in 2008 show off some of the weapons and uniforms that were stripped from mutilated bodies
Tom Coghlan
When ten French soldiers were killed last year in an ambush by Afghan insurgents in what had seemed a relatively peaceful area, the French public were horrified.
Their revulsion increased with the news that many of the dead soldiers had been mutilated — and with the publication of photographs showing the militants triumphantly sporting their victims’ flak jackets and weapons. The French had been in charge of the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, for only a month, taking over from the Italians; it was one of the biggest single losses of life by Nato forces in Afghanistan.
What the grieving nation did not know was that in the months before the French soldiers arrived in mid-2008, the Italian secret service had been paying tens of thousands of dollars to Taleban commanders and local warlords to keep the area quiet, The Times has learnt. The clandestine payments, whose existence was hidden from the incoming French forces, were disclosed by Western military officials.
US intelligence officials were flabbergasted when they found out through intercepted telephone conversations that the Italians had also been buying off militants, notably in Herat province in the far west. In June 2008, several weeks before the ambush, the US Ambassador in Rome made a démarche, or diplomatic protest, to the Berlusconi Government over allegations concerning the tactic.
However, a number of high-ranking officers in Nato have told The Times that payments were subsequently discovered to have been made in the Sarobi area as well.
Western officials say that because the French knew nothing of the payments they made a catastrophically incorrect threat assessment.
“One cannot be too doctrinaire about these things,” a senior Nato officer in Kabul said. “It might well make sense to buy off local groups and use non-violence to keep violence down. But it is madness to do so and not inform your allies.”
On August 18, a month after the Italian force departed, a lightly armed French patrol moved into the mountains north of Sarobi town, in the district of the same name, 65km (40 miles) east of Kabul. They had little reason to suspect that they were walking into the costliest battle for the French in a quarter of a century.
Operating in an arc of territory north and east of the Afghan capital, the French apparently believed that they were serving in a relatively benign district. The Italians they had replaced in July had suffered only one combat death in the previous year. For months the Nato headquarters in Kabul had praised Italian reconstruction projects under way around Sarobi. When an estimated 170 insurgents ambushed the force in the Uzbin Valley the upshot was a disaster. “They took us by surprise,” one French troop commander said after the attack.
A Nato post-operations assessment would sharply criticise the French force for its lack of preparation. “They went in with two platoons [approximately 60 men],” said one senior Nato officer. “They had no heavy weapons, no pre-arranged air support, no artillery support and not enough radios.”
Had it not been for the chance presence of some US special forces in the area who were able to call in air support for them, they would have been in an even worse situation. “The French were carrying just two medium machine guns and 100 rounds of ammunition per man. They were asking for trouble and the insurgents managed to get among them.”
A force from the 8th Marine Parachute Regiment took an hour and a half to reach the French over the mountains. “We couldn’t see the enemy and we didn’t know how many of them there were,” said another French officer. “After 20 minutes we started coming under fire from the rear. We were surrounded.”
The force was trapped until airstrikes forced the insurgents to retreat the next morning. By then ten French soldiers were dead and 21 injured.
The French public were appalled when it emerged that many of the dead had been mutilated by the insurgents— a mixed force including Taleban members and fighters from Hizb e-Islami.
A few weeks later French journalists photographed insurgents carrying French assault rifles and wearing French army flak jackets, helmets and, in one case, a dead soldier’s watch.
Two Western military officials in Kabul confirmed that intelligence briefings after the ambush said that the French troops had believed they were moving through a benign area — one which the Italian military had been keen to show off to the media as a successful example of a “hearts and minds” operation.
Another Nato source confirmed the allegations of Italian money going to insurgents. “The Italian intelligence service made the payments, it wasn’t the Italian Army,” he said. “It was payments of tens of thousands of dollars regularly to individual insurgent commanders. It was to stop Italian casualties that would cause political difficulties at home.”
When six Italian troops were killed in a bombing in Kabul last month it resulted in a national outpouring of grief and demands for troops to be withdrawn. The Nato source added that US intelligence became aware of the payments. “The Italians never acknowledged it, even though there was intercepted telephone traffic on the subject,” said the source. “The démarche was the result. It was not publicised because it would have caused a diplomatic nightmare. We found out about the Sarobi payments later.”
In Kabul a high-ranking Western intelligence source was scathing. “It’s an utter disgrace,” he said. “Nato in Afghanistan is a fragile enough construct without this lot working behind our backs. The Italians have a hell of a lot to answer for.”
Haji Abdul Rahman, a tribal elder from Sarobi, recalled how a benign environment became hostile overnight. “There were no attacks against the Italians. People said the Italians and Taleban had good relations between them.
“When the country [nationality of the forces] changed and the French came there was a big attack on them. We knew the Taleban came to the city and we knew that they didn’t carry out attacks on the Italian troops but we didn’t know why.”
The Italian Defence Ministry referred inquiries to the Prime Minister’s Office. A spokesman said: “The American Ambassador in Rome did not make any formal complaint. He merely asked for information, first from the previous Government and then from the current Government. The allegations were denied and they are totally unfounded.”
Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, defeated Romano Prodi at elections in April 2008.
The claims are not without precedent. In October 2007 two Italian agents were kidnapped in western Afghanistan; one was killed in a rescue by British special forces. It was later alleged in the Italian press that they had been kidnapped while making payments to the Taleban.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6875376.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093
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Friday, October 16, 2009 STRATFOR.COM Diary Archives
Pakistan and the Kerry-Lugar Bill: Aid, or an Affront to an Alliance?
THURSDAY WAS A PARTICULARLY ROUGH DAY for Pakistan. Suspected Taliban militants carried out a spate of armed assaults and suicide attacks against three security facilities in Lahore, killing 38 people. The violence followed 11 other attacks that occurred in the past week. And with the military gearing up for an offensive against Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan, more attacks designed to demonstrate the militants’ resolve are likely in store.
Also on Thursday, U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Kerry-Lugar bill — legislation that triples the amount of U.S. aid to Pakistan to $7.5 billion over five years. This might seem like a silver lining in the cloud of Pakistan’s terrorism woes. After all, the United States is signaling a deepened commitment to its front-line ally in the war against terrorism, during its most desperate hour, isn’t it?
Not exactly.
“In the eyes of the military — the indisputable power-broker of the Pakistani state — the mere inclusion of these provisions, even if they are non-binding, is a direct affront to the U.S.-Pakistani alliance. An alliance that is already very troubled.”
While that might be the popular viewpoint in Washington, any reaction in Islamabad to mention of the Kerry-Lugar bill likely would have a stream of colorful expletives attached. For many in Islamabad, the aid package represents a deep betrayal because it includes what the Pakistanis call “highly intrusive” provisions — clauses that make the flow of funds contingent upon the U.S. secretary of state’s ability to certify that Pakistan is combating militant groups on its soil and that the Pakistani government wields “effective civilian control over the military.”
In the eyes of the military — the indisputable power broker of the Pakistani state — the mere inclusion of these provisions, even if they are non-binding, is a direct affront to the U.S.-Pakistani alliance. It is an alliance that is already very troubled.
Since Pakistan’s violent inception in 1947, it was clear that the state had gotten the short end of the stick when it was carved out of British-controlled India. Pakistan’s borders deprived it of any significant strategic depth, while its rival India had significantly advantages in size, military prowess, population and wealth. This is a reality that Pakistan cannot escape. Therefore, it is a strategic imperative for Pakistan to acquire an outside power patron, preferably a superpower like the United States.
For decades, Pakistan has been willing to help the United States: It has offered to host U.S. bases along the Baloch coast, facilitated a U.S. rapprochement with China at the height of the Cold War, took the lead in operationalizing the U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviets, and it is now on the front line in the war against terrorism. Yet time and again Pakistan has been disappointed.
Islamabad essentially expected the United States to repay it with security guarantees, as well as military and economic assistance that would allow Pakistan to level the playing field with India.
But Washington could never really fulfill Islamabad’s expectations. An alliance with Pakistan offers short-term utility from time to time, but the United States recognizes India as the heavyweight on the Asian subcontinent. India’s location in the Indian Ocean basin provides a strategic advantage, allowing it to hedge against Russia and China and to form a bulwark against radical Islam. Moreover, it can help to either secure or threaten critical sea-lanes running from the Persian Gulf to Asia. As an added bonus to the United States, India is also the world’s largest democracy. Circumstances may not always have permitted a deeper U.S.-Indian strategic partnership, but geopolitical times have changed. No longer bound by Cold War alliances, India and the United States see an opening to work on common interests. Ironically, Pakistan (and its Islamist militancy issues) is now one such common interest.
The idea of a deepening U.S.-Indian strategic partnership is enough to shake Pakistan to its core. In the past, when Islamabad saw that the United States wasn’t prepared to guarantee Pakistan’s territorial integrity, it developed nuclear weapons, but also came up with a back-up insurance policy to use against its rivals: irregular warfare through the development of militant proxies. Pakistan’s irregular warfare doctrine eventually spiraled out of control, and the side effects of that policy now form the glue in its current alliance with the United States in the battle against terrorism. But as the Kerry-Lugar bill symbolizes, an alliance with the United States rarely comes without strings attached. This is especially true as the debate intensifies in Washington over whether the United States should reduce its commitments in battling jihadists and refocus attention on other priorities in the world.
A familiar sense of betrayal is creeping back into Islamabad. Only this time, the irregular warfare policy is broken and militants that Pakistan once nurtured are threatening to shatter its political coherence. Meanwhile, India and the United States are finding a lot more common ground.
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America's political class has developed a habit of talking itself into defeat. Yet the predictions of doom in Afghanistan and Pakistan are as misplaced there as they were in Iraq, as events in the last week show. Afghanistan yesterday demonstrated political maturity by moving to resolve a dispute over a fraudulent election. On Sunday, Pakistan's military launched an offensive against the Islamist sanctuary in the mountainous tribal region of South Waziristan.
Since the August 20 poll, the independent Electoral Complaints Commission has reviewed and disqualified fraudulent votes. Enough ballots were thrown out to put President Hamid Karzai's final tally below the 50% threshold required to win. A second round must now be held to determine a winner, which will take place November 7. Mr. Karzai was reluctant, but he did the right thing and accepted a runoff, earning praise as a "statesman" from the U.S.
To Afghanistan's credit, the election tensions never degenerated into violence, which could have pitted the Pashtuns against Tajiks, who back challenger Abdullah Abdullah. Mr. Karzai didn't declare victory when the state-run Independent Electoral Commission initially gave him 54% of the vote. Nor did Mr. Abdullah rile up his supporters to fight outside the system. Few emerging democracies would have shown such restraint.
The runoff won't come off without security or logistical risks, and the resurgent Taliban want to disrupt the poll. But in the first round, the bigger threat to the election's integrity came from Mr. Karzai's supporters in the southern provinces who inflated his tally. Mr. Karzai is still favored to win, but a more successful second round will help with his popular legitimacy—as much in the U.S. as in Afghanistan.
As for Pakistan, this week's offensive goes into tribal areas that Islamabad has never managed to control. About 30,000 Pakistani troops are taking on 10,000 or so Islamist fighters associated with the Mehsud clan. Leader Baitullah Mehsud was killed by a U.S. drone strike this summer, but his men remain a formidable fighting force.
Pakistani public opinion now backs this costly fight because the Pashtun insurgents in the tribal areas are increasingly viewed as a threat to Pakistan itself. At the same time, anti-Americanism runs deep, Obamamania or not. Many in the military and intelligence service support Islamist terror groups fighting more in Kashmir or Afghanistan. If Pakistan's rulers finally decide to end their role as a leading sanctuary for Islamist terror, the outlook for Afghanistan will brighten as well. The battle in Waziristan is an early litmus test.
All of this progress is being made despite President Obama's all too public second thoughts over the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. His advisers and generals deserve credit for helping to turn events around in the Afpak theater, but our allies are still waiting to find out what kind of "statesman" the U.S. President will be.
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The Afghanistan challenge
Expecting infantry to bring victory is a radical departure from US fighting doctrine since World War II.
The decision over whether to send more U.S. troops into Afghanistan may wait until the contested Afghan election is resolved, U.S. officials said Oct. 18. The announcement comes as U.S. President Barack Obama is approaching a decision on the war in Afghanistan. During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Obama argued that Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time, but Afghanistan was a necessary war. His reasoning went that the threat to the United States came from al Qaeda, Afghanistan had been al Qaeda’s sanctuary, and if the United States were to abandon Afghanistan, al Qaeda would re-establish itself and once again threaten the U.S. homeland. Withdrawal from Afghanistan would hence be dangerous, and prosecution of the war was therefore necessary.
After Obama took office, it became necessary to define a war-fighting strategy in Afghanistan. The most likely model was based on the one used in Iraq by Gen. David Petraeus, now head of U.S. Central Command, whose area of responsibility covers both Afghanistan and Iraq. Paradoxically, the tactical and strategic framework for fighting the so-called “right war” derived from U.S. military successes in executing the so-called “wrong war.” But grand strategy, or selecting the right wars to fight, and war strategy, or how to fight the right wars, are not necessarily linked.
Afghanistan, Iraq and the McChrystal Plan
Making sense of the arguments over Afghanistan requires an understanding of how the Iraq war is read by the strategists fighting it, since a great deal of proposed Afghan strategy involves transferring lessons learned from Iraq. Those strategists see the Iraq war as having had three phases. The first was the short conventional war that saw the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s military. The second was the period from 2003-2006 during which the United States faced a Sunni insurgency and resistance from the Shiite population, as well as a civil war between those two communities. During this phase, the United States sought to destroy the insurgency primarily by military means while simultaneously working to scrape a national unity government together and hold elections. The third phase, which began in late 2006, was primarily a political phase. It consisted of enticing Iraqi Sunni leaders to desert the foreign jihadists in Iraq, splitting the Shiite community among its various factions, and reaching political — and financial — accommodations among the various factions. Military operations focused on supporting political processes, such as pressuring recalcitrant factions and protecting those who aligned with the United States. The troop increase — aka the surge — was designed to facilitate this strategy. Even more, it was meant to convince Iraqi factions (not to mention Iran) that the United States was not going to pull out of Iraq, and that therefore a continuing American presence would back up guarantees made to Iraqis.
It is important to understand this last bit and its effect on Afghanistan. As in Iraq, the idea that the United States will not abandon local allies by withdrawing until Afghan security forces could guarantee the allies’ security lies at the heart of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. The premature withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, e.g., before local allies’ security could be guaranteed, would undermine U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. To a great extent, the process of U.S. security guarantees in Afghanistan depends on the credibility of those guarantees: Withdrawal from Iraq followed by retribution against U.S. allies in Iraq would undermine the core of the Afghan strategy.
U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s strategy in Afghanistan ultimately is built around the principle that the United States and its NATO allies are capable of protecting Afghans prepared to cooperate with Western forces. This explains why the heart of McChrystal’s strategy involves putting U.S. troops as close to the Afghan people as possible. Doing so will entail closing many smaller bases in remote valleys — like the isolated outpost recently attacked in Nuristan province — and opening bases in more densely populated areas.
McChrystal’s strategy therefore has three basic phases. In phase one, his forces would fight their way into regions where a large portion of the population lives and where the Taliban currently operates, namely Kabul, Khost, Helmand and Kandahar provinces. The United States would assume a strategic defensive posture in these populated areas. Because these areas are essential to the Taliban, phase two would see a Taliban counterattack in a bid to drive McChrystal’s forces out, or at least to demonstrate that the U.S. forces cannot provide security for the local population. Paralleling the first two phases, phase three would see McChrystal using his military successes to forge alliances with indigenous leaders and their followers.
It should be noted that while McChrystal’s traditional counterinsurgency strategy would be employed in populated areas, U.S. forces would also rely on traditional counterterrorism tactics in more remote areas where the Taliban have a heavy presence and can be pursued through drone strikes. The hope is that down the road, the strategy would allow the United States to use its military successes to fracture the Taliban, thereby encouraging defections and facilitating political reconciliation with Taliban elements driven more by political power than ideology.
There is a fundamental difference between Iraq and Afghanistan, however. In Iraq, resistance forces rarely operated in sufficient concentrations to block access to the population. By contrast, the Taliban on several occasions have struck with concentrations of forces numbering in the hundreds, essentially at company-size strength. If Iraq was a level one conflict, with irregular forces generally refusing conventional engagement with coalition forces, Afghanistan is beginning to bridge the gap from a level one to a level two conflict, with the Taliban holding territory with forces both able to provide conventional resistance and to mount some offensives at the company level (and perhaps at the battalion level in the future). This means that occupying, securing and defending areas such that the inhabitants see the coalition forces as defenders rather than as magnets for conflict is the key challenge.
Adding to the challenge, elements of McChrystal’s strategy are in tension. First, local inhabitants will experience multilevel conflict as coalition forces move into a given region. Second, McChrystal is hoping that the Taliban goes on the offensive in response. And this means that the first and second steps will collide with the third, which is demonstrating to locals that the presence of coalition forces makes them more secure as conflict increases (which McChrystal acknowledges will happen). To convince locals that Western forces enhance their security, the coalition will thus have to be stunningly successful both at defeating Taliban defenders when they first move in and in repulsing subsequent Taliban attacks.
In its conflict with the Taliban, the coalition’s main advantage is firepower, both in terms of artillery and airpower. The Taliban must concentrate its forces to attack the coalition; to counter such attacks, the weapons of choice are airstrikes and artillery. The problem with both of these weapons is first, a certain degree of inaccuracy is built into their use, and second, the attackers will be moving through population centers (the area held by both sides is important precisely because it has population). This means that air- and ground-fire missions, both important in a defensive strategy, run counter to the doctrine of protecting population.
McChrystal is fully aware of this dilemma, and he has therefore changed the rules of engagement to sharply curtail airstrikes in areas of concentrated population, even in areas where U.S. troops are in danger of being overrun. As McChrystal said in a recent interview, these rules of engagement will hold “Even if it means we are going to step away from a firefight and fight them another day.”
This strategy poses two main challenges. First, it shifts the burden of the fighting onto U.S. infantry forces. Second, by declining combat in populated areas, the strategy runs the risk of making the populated areas where political arrangements might already be in place more vulnerable. In avoiding air and missile strikes, McChrystal avoids alienating the population through civilian casualties. But by declining combat, McChrystal risks alienating populations subject to Taliban offensives. Simply put, while airstrikes can devastate a civilian population, avoiding airstrikes could also devastate Western efforts, as local populations could see declining combat as a betrayal. McChrystal is thus stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place on this one.
One of his efforts at a solution has been to ask for more troops. The point of these troops is not to occupy Afghanistan and impose a new reality through military force, which is impossible (especially given the limited number of troops the United States is willing to dedicate to the problem). Instead, it is to provide infantry forces not only to hold larger areas, but to serve as reinforcements during Taliban attacks so the use of airpower can be avoided. Putting the onus of this counterinsurgency on the infantry, and having the infantry operate without airpower, is a radical departure from U.S. fighting doctrine since World War II.
Seismic Shift in War Doctrine
Geopolitically, the United States fights at the end of a long supply line. Moreover, U.S. forces operate at a demographic disadvantage. Once in Eurasia, U.S. forces are always outnumbered. Infantry-on-infantry warfare is attritional, and the United States runs out of troops before the other side does. Infantry warfare does not provide the United States any advantage, and in fact, it places the United States at a disadvantage. Opponents of the United States thus have larger numbers of fighters; greater familiarity and acclimation to the terrain; and typically, better intelligence from countrymen behind U.S. lines. The U.S. counter always has been force multipliers — normally artillery and airpower — capable of destroying enemy concentrations before they close with U.S. troops. McChrystal’s strategy, if applied rigorously, shifts doctrine toward infantry-on-infantry combat. His plan assumes that superior U.S. training will be the force multiplier in Afghanistan (as it may). But that assumes that the Taliban, a light infantry force with numerous battle-hardened formations optimized for fighting in Afghanistan, is an inferior infantry force. And it assumes that U.S. infantry fighting larger concentrations of Taliban forces will consistently defeat them.
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Obviously, if McChrystal drives the Taliban out of secured areas and into uninhabited areas, the United States will have a tremendous opportunity to engage in strategic bombardment both against Taliban militants themselves and against supply lines no longer plugged into populated areas. But this assumes that the Taliban would not reduce its operations from company-level and higher assaults down to guerrilla-level operations in response to being driven out of population centers. If the Taliban did make such a reduction, it would become indistinguishable from the population. This would allow it to engage in attritional warfare against coalition forces and against the protected population to demonstrate that coalition forces can’t protect them. The Taliban already has demonstrated the ability to thrive in both populated and rural areas of Afghanistan, where the terrain favors the insurgent far more than the counterinsurgent.
The strategy of training Afghan soldiers and police to take up the battle and persuading insurgents to change sides faces several realities. The Taliban has an excellent intelligence service built up during the period of its rule and afterward, allowing it to populate the new security forces with its agents and loyalists. And while persuading insurgents to change sides certainly can happen, whether it can happen to the extent of leaving the Taliban materially weakened remains in doubt. In Iraq, this happened not because of individual changes, but because regional ethnic leadership — with their own excellent intelligence capabilities — changed sides and drove out opposing factions. Individual defections were frequently liquidated.
But Taliban leaders have not shown any inclination for changing sides. They do not believe the United States is in Afghanistan to stay. Getting individual Taliban militants to change sides creates an intelligence-security battle. But McChrystal is betting that his forces will form bonds with the local population so deep that the locals will provide intelligence against Taliban forces operating in the region. The coalition must thus demonstrate that the risks of defection are dwarfed by the advantages. To do this, the coalition security and counterintelligence must consistently and effectively block the Taliban’s ability to identify, locate and liquidate defectors. If McChrystal cannot do that, large-scale defection will be impossible, because well before such defection becomes large scale, the first defectors will be dead, as will anyone seen by the Taliban as a collaborator.
Ultimately, the entire strategy depends on how you read Iraq. In Iraq, a political decision was made by an intact Sunni leadership able to enforce its will among its followers. Squeezed between the foreign jihadists who wanted to usurp their position and the Shia, provided with political and financial incentives, and possessing their own forces able to provide a degree of security themselves, the Sunni leadership came to the see the Americans as the lesser evil. They controlled a critical mass, and they shifted. McChrystal has made it clear that the defections he expects are not a Taliban faction whose leadership decides to shift, but Taliban soldiers as individuals or small groups. That isn’t ultimately what turned the Iraq war but something very different — and quite elusive in counterinsurgency. He is looking for retail defections to turn into a strategic event.
Moreover, it seems much too early to speak of the successful strategy in Iraq. First, there is increasing intracommunal violence in anticipation of coming elections early next year. Second, some 120,000 U.S. forces remain in Iraq to guarantee the political and security agreements of 2007-2008, and it is far from clear what would happen if those troops left. Finally, where in Afghanistan there is the Pakistan question, in Iraq there remains the Iran question. Instability thus becomes a cross-border issue beyond the scope of existing forces.
The Pakistan situation is particularly problematic. If the strategic objective of the war in Afghanistan is to cut the legs out from under al Qaeda and deny these foreign jihadists sanctuary, then what of the sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal belt where high-value al Qaeda targets are believed to be located? Pakistan is fighting its share of jihadists according to its own rules; the United States cannot realistically expect Islamabad to fulfill its end of the bargain in containing al Qaeda. The primary U.S. targets in this war are on the wrong side of the border, and in areas where U.S. forces are not free to operate. The American interest in Afghanistan is to defeat al Qaeda and prevent the emergence of follow-on jihadist forces. The problem is that regardless of how secure Afghanistan is, jihadist forces can (to varying degrees) train and plan in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia — or even Cleveland for that matter. Securing Afghanistan is thus not necessarily a precondition for defeating al Qaeda.
Iraq is used as the argument in favor of the new strategy in Afghanistan. What happened in Iraq was that a situation that was completely out of hand became substantially less unstable because of a set of political accommodations initially rejected by the Americans and the Sunnis from 2003-2006. Once accepted, a disastrous situation became an unstable situation with many unknowns still in place.
If the goal of Afghanistan is to forge the kind of tenuous political accords that govern Iraq, the factional conflicts that tore Iraq apart are needed. Afghanistan certainly has factional conflicts, but the Taliban, the main adversary, does not seem to be torn by them. It is possible that under sufficient pressure such splits might occur, but the Taliban has been a cohesive force for a generation. When it has experienced divisions, it hasn’t split decisively.
On the other hand, it is not clear that Western forces in Afghanistan can sustain long-term infantry conflict in which the offensive is deliberately ceded to a capable enemy and where airpower’s use is severely circumscribed to avoid civilian casualties, overturning half a century of military doctrine of combined arms operations.
The Bigger Picture
The best argument for fighting in Afghanistan is powerful and similar to the one for fighting in Iraq: credibility. The abandonment of either country will create a powerful tool in the Islamic world for jihadists to argue that the United States is a weak power. Withdrawal from either place without a degree of political success could destabilize other regimes that cooperate with the United States. Given that, staying in either country has little to do with strategy and everything to do with the perception of simply being there.
The best argument against fighting in either country is equally persuasive. The jihadists are right: The United States has neither the interest nor forces for long-term engagements in these countries. American interests go far beyond the Islamic world, and there are many present (to say nothing of future) threats from outside the region that require forces. Overcommitment in any one area of interest at the expense of others could be even more disastrous than the consequences of withdrawal.
In our view, Obama’s decision depends not on choosing between McChrystal’s strategy and others, but on a careful consideration of how to manage the consequences of withdrawal. An excellent case can be made that now is not the time to leave Afghanistan, and we expect Obama to be influenced by that thinking far more than by the details of McChrystal’s strategy. As McChrystal himself points out, there are many unknowns and many risks in his own strategy; he is guaranteeing nothing.
Reducing American national strategy to the Islamic world, or worse, Afghanistan, is the greater threat. Nations find their balance, and the heavy pressures on Obama in this decision basically represent those impersonal forces battering him. The question he must ask himself is simple: In what way is the future of Afghanistan of importance to the United States? The answer that securing it will hobble al Qaeda is simply wrong. U.S. Afghan policy will not stop a global terrorist organization; terrorists will just go elsewhere. The answer that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is important in shaping the Islamic world’s sense of American power is better, but even that must be taken in context of other global interests.
Obama does not want this to be his war. He does not want to be remembered for Afghanistan the way George W. Bush is remembered for Iraq or Lyndon Johnson is for Vietnam. Right now, we suspect Obama plans to demonstrate commitment, and to disengage at a more politically opportune time. Johnson and Bush showed that disengagement after commitment is nice in theory. For our part, we do not think there is an effective strategy for winning in Afghanistan, but that McChrystal has proposed a good one for “hold until relieved.” We suspect that Obama will hold to show that he gave the strategy a chance, but that the decision to leave won’t be too far off.
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Strat has the analysis of the Afghan situation as good as any I've read. Obama doesn't have the commitment to go in and do what is necessary in the urban centers and take heat like Bush took over casualties and mistakes. If he tries without full commitment it will fail because the trust of the people necessary to get good intelligence won't happen. Retreating to the horizon will fail for the lack of on-the-ground intelligence and because air strikes would take casualties making things worse. Lack of a commitment to win (or exit) means perpetual war favoring the side willing and able to take the most casualties, and unless I'm missing something, we lack the commitment.
Strat: "The problem is that regardless of how secure Afghanistan is, jihadist forces can (to varying degrees) train and plan in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia — or even Cleveland for that matter."
Yes but I draw a distinction. It is very important that the terrorists over time have a smaller map to operate in and they not get too comfortable in any of their locations.
The fact that the governments of Indonesia and Pakistan are at least trying to end/prevent safe havens is important - governments of Cleveland, Detroit and Minneapolis could take a lesson from them.
Joining the jihad is not glamorous, even for a suicide bomber, when your side is losing. OBL knows that; recall the importance he put on winning in Iraq.
Obama's goal is political, to keep the conflict from getting worse and to find cover. He needs to make peace with his fellow contributors to the 'General Betray Us' ad from when the General was sworn in to take condescension from then-Sen. Hillary et al. Remember that LBJ was removed by his own party.
If Obama allows global terrorism to fester and we are attacked after his term he won't be harmed any worse than Bill Clinton was in his legacy. From what I can see, this is about him and about not losing political power to wield at home. How could anyone read his statements and positions over his brief career and think his focus is national security?
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Pravda on the Hudson
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Defense ministers from NATO on Friday endorsed the ambitious counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan proposed by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, giving new impetus to his recommendation to pour more troops into the eight-year-old war.
Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era. Go to the Blog »
General McChrystal, the senior American and allied commander in Afghanistan, made an unannounced appearance here on Friday to brief the defense ministers on his strategic review of a war in which the American-led campaign has lost momentum to a tenacious Taliban insurgency.
“What we did today was to discuss General McChrystal’s overall assessment, his overall approach, and I have noted a broad support from all ministers of this overall counterinsurgency approach,” said NATO’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
The acceptance by NATO defense ministers of General McChrystal’s approach did not include a decision on new troops, and it was not clear that their judgment would translate into increased willingness by their governments, many of which have been seeking to reduce their military presence in Afghanistan, to contribute further forces to the war.
But it was another in a series of judgments that success there could not be achieved by a narrower effort that did not increase troop levels in Afghanistan substantially and focused more on capturing and killing terrorists linked to Al Qaeda — a counterterrorism strategy identified with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The NATO briefing, though held privately, thrusts General McChrystal back into the debate over what President Obama should do about Afghanistan — a role that has raised tensions between the general and the White House in the past, and even drawn a rebuke from his boss, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
NATO’s support got no official reaction from the White House. But an administration official noted that an endorsement by defense ministers was not the same as an endorsement by the alliance’s political leadership. Other officials were emphatic that Mr. Obama would not be stampeded in his deliberations and suggested that the NATO statement should not be taken as evidence that the White House had made a decision about how to proceed.
“In no way, shape or form are the president’s options constrained,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, speaking to reporters at the State Department.
General McChrystal’s review calls for adopting a full-scale counterinsurgency strategy that would protect population centers and accelerate training of Afghan Army and police units — both of which would require significant numbers of fresh troops. NATO diplomats noted that it was difficult to see how an acceptance of this broad strategy could be viewed as anything but an endorsement of the need to increase both military and civilian contributions.
Mr. Gates, who has kept his views about additional troops close to his vest and has discouraged his commanders from lobbying too publicly for their positions, declined to be drawn out on this assessment.
“For this meeting, I am here mainly in listening mode,” Mr. Gates said in Bratislava after the NATO briefing, although he noted that “many allies spoke positively about General McChrystal’s assessment.”
Mr. Gates said the administration’s decision on Afghanistan was still two or three weeks away, and he cautioned that it was “vastly premature” to draw conclusions now about whether the president would deploy more troops. He said that allied defense ministers had not voiced concerns about the administration’s decision-making process.
Although NATO will not meet until next month to decide whether to commit more resources to Afghanistan, Mr. Gates did reveal that he had received indications that some allies were prepared to increase their contributions of civilian experts or troops, or both.
Britain and other NATO members have had their own fractious political debates over troop levels. A retired top general in Britain recently said that the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown had rebuffed his requests for more troops, a charge Mr. Brown denied.
Separate from his strategic review, General McChrystal has submitted a request for forces, which is now working its way through both the American and NATO chains of command.
The options submitted by General McChrystal range to a maximum of 85,000 more troops, although his leading option calls for increasing forces by about 40,000, according to officials familiar with the proposal.
The pressure for more troops was a theme throughout the day at the NATO meeting, as other senior international representatives told defense ministers of the need to increase their commitments in order to succeed in Afghanistan.
The United Nations special representative for Afghanistan, Kai Eide, who also flew to the Slovakian capital to meet the ministers, stressed that “additional international troops are required.” He also told the allies, “This cannot be a U.S.-only enterprise.”
Mr. Eide acknowledged that it might be difficult to rally public support for force contributions while allegations of election fraud continued to taint the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Senior American military officers have already endorsed General McChrystal’s overall strategy, including Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in the Middle East.
Senior NATO officials made clear that additional commitments should go beyond combat forces to include trainers for the Afghan Army and police force, as well as civilians to help rebuild the economy and restore confidence in the government.
“What we need is a much broader strategy, which stabilizes the whole of Afghan society, and this is the essence in the recommendations presented by General McChrystal,” said Mr. Rasmussen, the NATO secretary general. “This won’t happen just because of a good plan. It will also need resources — people and money.”
General McChrystal was not scheduled to make any public comments here. The general’s reticence was not unexpected, as some administration officials have criticized his recent statements as an attempt to press the White House to act.
The general and his aides have denied they were playing politics. General McChrystal said in a recent interview that success required a unified, government-wide strategy.
NATO officials assessing the potential for allied troop contributions said that delicate negotiations were under way, and that NATO capitals were watching the Obama administration for signals even while they sent signals of their own.
Thom Shanker reported from Bratislava, and Mark Landler from Washington.
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After a week of fighting Taliban and Qaeda militants in the mountains of South Waziristan, the Pakistani Army said Saturday that it had captured a town important for both its symbolic and strategic value.
Kotkai, a strategic town, was taken after "intense fighting."
The town, Kotkai, most of whose 5,000 residents had already fled, is the home of the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, and one of the most feared Taliban commanders, Qari Hussain. Mr. Hussain is believed to be the organizer and trainer of the group’s suicide bombing squads.
The army has been struggling in the treacherous terrain in South Waziristan, long a militant sanctuary. Military officials said Saturday that Kotkai had been taken only after “intense fighting.” Four days ago, the militants repulsed the first army attempt to capture the town and killed nine soldiers, according to a military intelligence officer.
It was the first notable sign of progress in what military analysts say will be an arduous slog for the army against a resilient enemy. And it came as Pakistan has been enduring a withering series of terrorist attacks over the past three weeks.
At a military briefing Saturday, the information minister, Qamar Zaman Kaira, acknowledged that the attacks, which have focused on police and government sites and have killed about 200 people, had taken a serious toll. But he insisted that “the nation will not be terrorized.”
The farther the army tries to penetrate South Waziristan, the harder the fighting will get, as soldiers encounter defensive positions dug into the sides of mountains that the guerrillas will battle hard to keep, military analysts and residents of the area said.
For example, on the southeast axis of the army’s attack into the Taliban stronghold, soldiers will soon encounter the defensive positions leading to Kaniguram, a village about 6,700 feet high that serves as the hide-out of Uzbek fighters, some of the most battle-hardened around, a former resident of the area said.
“The military’s movement is faster than in their previous campaigns,” a former government official from North Waziristan said, referring to three short-lived army campaigns that ended in negotiated settlements with the Taliban. “But the more they get inside the sanctuary, the more they will be bogged down.”
Time may also be working against the army. In past years, many of the Taliban militants fighting American and NATO forces in Afghanistan have come to Waziristan as winter approached to train and prepare for the next year’s fighting.
Although there is evidence that the seasonal fighting in Afghanistan has become a more year-round affair, the concern is that any Taliban fighters who do cross the border into Pakistan could be used against the army in South Waziristan. One militant organizer in the region, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the migration had already started, swelling the number of active militants in the region well beyond the present estimates of 7,000 to 10,000.
Reinforcements for the militants were also coming from other parts of the Pakistani tribal region, the militant organizer said.
Still, Pakistani soldiers are receiving more support than they did in past campaigns, including better winter gear and air support from fighter jets, the former Waziristan official said.
American officials have praised the Waziristan offensive, after months of pressure on Pakistani officials to begin. But at the military briefing, the army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said that the fight was a purely Pakistani enterprise, unaided by the United States or anyone else.
There have been no reported missile attacks by American drones in South or North Waziristan against Qaeda targets since the beginning of the Pakistani Army offensive a week ago. Both South and North Waziristan have been the focus of the more than 40 drone attacks this year.
Pakistan had asked the United States to refrain from drone attacks while the army operation was under way in South Waziristan, a senior Pakistani government official said Saturday.
Families continued to flee South Waziristan, and Mr. Kaira said the government was granting the refugees a month’s supply of food and a monthly stipend worth about $50.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it still had no access to North or South Waziristan to care for civilians. “We are concerned by the lack of access granted to humanitarian organizations like the I.C.R.C. whose role it is to protect and assist victims of fighting,” the committee said in a statement.
Elsewhere, in the tribal belt in Bajaur, a missile fired from a drone killed 22 people in the town of Damadola on Saturday, two Pakistani officials said.
The strike appeared to be aimed at a senior Pakistani Taliban leader, Faqir Mohammad, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. They said two relatives of Mr. Mohammad were killed.
Jane Perlez reported from Islamabad, and Pir Zubair Shah from Peshawar, Pakistan.
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This from Pravda on the Hudson, so caveat lector:
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — Forced to confront the rising insurgency in once peaceful northern Afghanistan, the German Army is engaged in sustained and bloody ground combat for the first time since World War II.
A German soldier stands guard in a compound in Kunduz Province. Two men from his company were killed in June, among 36 German soldiers who have died in the Afghan war. More Photos »
Soldiers near the northern city of Kunduz have had to strike back against an increasingly fierce campaign by Taliban insurgents, while carrying the burden of being among the first units to break the German taboo against military combat abroad that arose after the Nazi era.
At issue are how long opposition in Germany will allow its troops to stay and fight, and whether they will be given leeway from their strict rules of engagement to pursue the kind of counterinsurgency being advocated by American generals. The question now is whether the Americans will ultimately fight one kind of war and their allies another.
For Germans, the realization that their soldiers are now engaged in ground offensives in an open-ended and escalating war requires a fundamental reconsideration of their principles.
After World War II, German society rejected using military power for anything other than self-defense, and pacifism has been a rallying cry for generations, blocking allied requests for any military support beyond humanitarian assistance.
German leaders have chipped away at the proscriptions in recent years, in particular by participating in airstrikes in the Kosovo war. Still, the legacy of the combat ban remains in the form of strict engagement rules and an ingrained shoot-last mentality that is causing significant tensions with the United States in Afghanistan.
Driven by necessity, some of the 4,250 German soldiers here, the third-largest number of troops in the NATO contingent, have already come a long way. Last Tuesday, they handed out blankets, volleyballs and flashlights as a goodwill gesture to residents of the village of Yanghareq, about 22 miles northwest of Kunduz. Barely an hour later, insurgents with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades ambushed other members of the same company.
The Germans fought back, killing one of the attackers, before the dust and disorder made it impossible to tell fleeing Taliban from civilians.
“They shoot at us and we shoot back,” said Staff Sgt. Erik S., who, according to German military rules, could not be fully identified. “People are going to fall on both sides. It’s as simple as that. It’s war.”
The sergeant added, “The word ‘war’ is growing louder in society, and the politicians can’t keep it secret anymore.”
Indeed, German politicians have refused to utter the word, trying instead to portray the mission in Afghanistan as a mix of peacekeeping and reconstruction in support of the Afghan government. But their line has grown less tenable as the insurgency has expanded rapidly in the west and north of the country, where Germany leads the regional command and provides a majority of the troops.
The Germans may not have gone to war, but now the war has come to them.
In part, NATO and German officials say, that is evidence of the political astuteness of Taliban and Qaeda leaders, who are aware of the opposition in Germany to the war. They hope to exploit it and force the withdrawal of German soldiers — splintering the NATO alliance in the process — through attacks on German personnel in Afghanistan and through video and audio threats of terrorist attacks on the home front before the German elections last month.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior American and allied commander in Afghanistan, is pressing NATO allies to contribute more troops to the war effort, even as countries like the Netherlands and Canada have begun discussing plans to pull out. Germany has held out against pleas for additional troops so far.
Ties between Germany and the United States were strained last month over a German-ordered bombing of two hijacked tanker trucks, which killed civilians as well as Taliban. Many Germans, from top politicians down to enlisted men, thought that General McChrystal was too swift to condemn the strike before a complete investigation.
Germany’s combat troops are caught in the middle. In interviews last week, soldiers from the Third Company, Mechanized Infantry Battalion 391, said they were understaffed for the increasingly complex mission here. Two men from the company were killed in June, among 36 German soldiers who have died in the Afghan war.
The soldiers expressed frustration over the second-guessing of the airstrike not only by allies, but also by their own politicians, and over the absence of support back home.
While the intensity of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan’s south has received most attention, the situation in the Germans’ part of the north has deteriorated rapidly. Soldiers said that just a year ago they could patrol in unarmored vehicles. Now there are places where they cannot move even in armored vehicles without an entire company of soldiers.
American officials have argued that an emphasis on reconstruction, peacekeeping and the avoidance of violence may have given the Taliban a foothold to return to the north.
German officers here said they had adjusted their tactics accordingly, often engaging the Taliban in firefights for hours with close air support. In July, 300 German soldiers joined the Afghan Army and National Police in an operation in Kunduz Province that killed more than 20 Taliban fighters and led to the arrests of half a dozen more.
The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called the operation “a fundamental transition out of the defensive and into the offensive.”
Germany’s military actions are controlled by a parliamentary mandate, which is up for renewal in December. The German contingent has unarmed drones and Tornado fighter jets, which are restricted to reconnaissance and are not allowed to conduct offensive operations.
German soldiers usually stay in Afghanistan for just four months, which can make it difficult to maintain continuity with their Afghan partners. The mandate also caps the number of troops in the country at 4,500.
A NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, called the mandate “a political straitjacket.”
A company of German paratroopers in the district of Chahar Darreh, where insurgent activity is particularly pronounced, fought off a series of attacks and stayed in the area, patrolling on foot and meeting with local elders for eight days and seven nights.
“The longer we were out there, the better the local population responded to us,” said Capt. Thomas K., the company’s commander. Another company relieved them for three days but then abandoned the position, where intelligence said that a bomb was waiting for the next group of German soldiers.
“Since we were there, no other company has been back,” the captain said.
Stefan Pauly contributed reporting from Berlin.
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Commentary posing as news-- from Pravda on the Hudson? Shocking!
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Obama administration is putting pressure on Pakistan to eliminate Taliban and Qaeda militants from the country’s tribal areas, but the push is straining the delicate relations between the allies, Pakistani and Western officials say.
The Pakistani military’s recent heavy offensive in South Waziristan has pleased the Americans, but it left large parts of Pakistan under siege, as militants once sequestered in the country’s tribal areas take their war to Pakistan’s cities. Many Pakistanis blame the United States for the country’s rising instability.
When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrives in Pakistan this week, as she is scheduled to do, she will find a nuclear-armed state consumed by doubts about the value of the alliance with the United States and resentful of ever-rising American demands to do more, the officials said.
The United States is also struggling to address Pakistan’s concerns over the conditions imposed on a new American aid package of $7.5 billion over five years that the Pakistani military denounced as designed to interfere in the country’s internal affairs.
The Obama administration has endorsed the Pakistani Army’s recent offensive in South Waziristan, suggesting it showed overdue resolve. But it has also raised concerns about the Pakistani Army’s long-term objectives. How South Waziristan plays out may prove to be a bellwether for an alliance of increasingly divergent interests.
The special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, said Friday that the Obama administration would be trying to find out whether the army was simply “dispersing” the militants or “destroying” them, as the United States would like.
From the number of troops in South Waziristan, it was not clear that the army wanted to “finish the task,” said a Western military attaché, who spoke on the condition of anonymity according to diplomatic protocol.
The army would not take over South Waziristan as it had the Swat Valley, where the military is now an occupying force after conducting a campaign in the spring and summer that pushed the Taliban out, the officials said.
It remains to be seen how the campaign will play out in a region where the army has failed in the past, analysts said. The army has sent about 28,000 soldiers to South Waziristan to take on about 10,000 guerrillas, a relatively low ratio, according to military specialists.
In all, of the roughly 28,000 soldiers, there are probably about 11,000 army infantrymen, said Javed Hussain, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier. Instead of a ratio of one to one, he said, the ratio should be at least five to one.
The army appeared to have no plans to occupy South Waziristan, but rather to cut the militants “to size,” said Tariq Fatemi, who served briefly as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States in 1999.
With the uncertainty of American plans in Afghanistan, and the strong sentiment in Pakistan that India was “up to no good” in the restive province of Baluchistan and the tribal areas, Mr. Fatemi said, the army would not abandon the militant groups that it has relied on to fight as proxies in Afghanistan and in Kashmir against India.
The goal in South Waziristan, Mr. Fatemi said, was to eliminate the leadership that had become “too big of their boots” with the attacks on Pakistan’s cities. The army would like to find more pliant replacements as leaders, he said.
The militants’ war against the cities in the past three weeks had produced a wave of fear that shored up support for the army to fight back in South Waziristan, many Pakistanis said.
But the terror has also amplified complaints that the unpopular civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari, who is seen as slavishly pro-American, is unable to cope with the onslaught.
Mr. Zardari, whose relations with the Pakistani military appear increasingly strained, has not addressed the nation since the militants unfurled their attacks or since the army launched the offensive in South Waziristan.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik was pelted with stones last week when he visited the International Islamic University after two suicide bomb attacks on the campus killed six students, including women.
After the attack at the university, the government ordered all schools and universities closed in Punjab, the most populous province, a move that affected Pakistani families like never before.
“The impact is being felt in every home, before it was just the North-West Frontier Province,” said Jahangir Tareen, a member of Parliament and a member of the cabinet under President Pervez Musharraf.
When schools were ordered re-opened Monday, parents were still unhappy.
“The mood is as bleak as I remember,” said a well-to-do parent in Lahore who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “The government says the private schools must open, but security is up to the schools. Where is the government?”
The range and different style of attacks in the urban areas, particularly in Islamabad, the capital, and the nearby garrison city of Rawalpindi, surprised Pakistani security officials, said a Western diplomat who is in frequent contact with them.
The Pakistani security services knew that sleeper cells had been put in place in both cities in the past six months, but their strength was unknown, the diplomat said. “These were not your scared suicide bomber boys from the villages, these were well trained commandos,” the diplomat said.
The assassination of an army brigadier as he drove through Islamabad last week further unnerved people, demonstrating that the militants had a cadre of spotters or observers probably marshaled from the increasing number of students attending radical religious schools in the capital, the diplomat said.
Whatever President Obama decides about troop levels in Afghanistan, Pakistan sees the United States and NATO headed for the exits, an outcome that encourages Pakistan to hang onto the militants that it has used as proxies, the Western diplomat said.
The fact that the United States had so far failed to persuade India to restart talks with Pakistan and that it was doing little to curb what Pakistan sees as the undue influence of India in Afghanistan was unsettling for Pakistan, Mr. Fatemi, the former ambassador, said.
On top of everything else, that feeling was driving a surge of anti-American sentiment, even among the elite, some Pakistanis said, increasing the challenges ahead.
“There is a general perception in the educated class that Pakistan is paying a very heavy price for fighting alongside the United States,” said Ashfaq Khan, a prominent economist and dean of the business school at the National University of Science and Technology in Islamabad.
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third post of the AM
By JAMES SHINN
Those of us in the Bush administration who were responsible for its "Afghan Strategy Review" kept our mouths shut when we handed over the document to the Obama transition team last fall. We didn't want to box in the new administration.
And when President Barack Obama and his advisers rolled out their own Afghanistan strategy on March 27, I was quietly pleased. It came to basically the same conclusion we had: The paramount goal was to squash terrorism through counterinsurgency and better governance in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs promised the press corps at the time that its strategy would be "fully resourced." Later, in August, Gen. Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the situation in Afghanistan was leaked. It was a road map to implement precisely the Obama strategy that was announced in March.
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David Klein
.But one key element of both the Bush and Obama strategies is getting lost in the debate—that we must apply the military and economic resources for the time required to achieve our goals. As the Obama administration's March 27 White Paper notes, "There are no quick fixes to achieve U.S. national security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
The average counterinsurgency war lasts a decade and a half; the successful British campaign in Malaya in the 1950s, for example, took 12 years. Even if Gen. McChrystal gets the 40,000 additional troops he has requested, there is unlikely to be short-term progress in meeting any of the security "metrics" that opponents of the war in Afghanistan will try to insert into the defense appropriations for carrying out the president's strategy.
What the White House says—or doesn't say—about a long-term commitment is hugely important. Americans are famously impatient, and there is cruel wisdom in the oft-quoted Taliban boast that "NATO has all the watches, but we have all the time." Most Afghans are sitting on the fence, waiting to see who wins. Our allies are nervously looking for the exits, and the Pakistanis and the Iranians are hedging their bets in case the U.S. decides to pull the plug.
Meanwhile, as the Obama national security apparatus publicly wrings its hands over strategy, the media promote half-baked solutions to Afghanistan that further confuse friends and enemies while ignoring the crucial matter of time. Three of the least sensible solutions are "remote control" counterterrorism, a grand regional solution to disputes between neighboring states (including a resolution of the Kashmir territorial dispute between India and Pakistan), and the negotiation of a peace deal with the Taliban.
Replacing the hard work of counterinsurgency and nation-building with Predator drones and Special Operations defies geography and common sense. A Predator has a range of 400 miles: It is 600 miles from Pakistan's Waziristan region to the Arabian Sea.
From where are you going to fly the drones? What intelligence will be available to guide the drones or special ops if we abandon Kabul and Islamabad to fight on their own?
A "regional" solution that convinces India, Pakistan and Iran (among others) that their interests are better served by a stable Afghanistan than by backing proxy forces there is a laudable undertaking. But it would take years of patient diplomacy, in which the terms and pace of NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan will be the central item of negotiation. Fat chance of striking a deal if you're already gone.
As for a deal with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his leadership council, the Quetta Shura, forget about it. They have no incentive to lay down their arms if they still think time is on their side.
The Taliban will eventually come down from the hills, probably in dribs and drabs, when they've been sufficiently pummeled by the combined Afghan National Army and NATO forces, seen their base among the Afghan people undermined by improved governance, and had their sanctuaries in Pakistan squeezed from the East. This is going to take time.
Time was very much on the mind of Afghanistan's Minister of the Interior Hanif Atmar recently, when I visited him in his office in Kabul—shards of glass still on the floor from the suicide bomb attack on the nearby Indian Embassy a few days earlier. "All the Taliban have to do is blow things up," he said. "We have a lot more things to worry about. Despite the deteriorating security situation in parts of the country, we still have a window of time to prevail, if we and our American allies have sufficient resolve."
I also visited Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil on a dusty street in the Karte Char district. A sleepy policeman with an AK-47 outside was the only symbol of his house arrest. He was Mullah Omar's secretary and then both a spokesman and foreign minister for the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan until his capture in 2001. Today he remains an interlocutor between the Karzai government and the Quetta Shura up in the mountains. I thought he'd be a good judge of Taliban resolve.
Time was on his mind, too. He was puzzled by the drawn-out pace of the Obama administration's strategy deliberations. He took care to distance the Quetta Shura's objectives (to govern Afghanistan and remove foreign troops) from the goals of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan across the border (which are close to those of al Qaeda, namely to bring down the government in Islamabad and establish a greater Islamic Caliphate).
In response to my skeptical questions, he also drew a distinction between the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda. "But the longer this war drags on, the harder it is to separate our interests from theirs," he said.
Mullah Mutawakil's sparse quarters featured a Koran, several volumes of Islamic jurisprudence and a television. "I watch the news, and the Turkish soap operas," he confessed with a smile. He wasn't wearing a watch.
Mr. Shinn was assistant secretary of defense for Asia (2007-2008) and one of the authors of the Bush administration's Afghan Strategy Review. He previously served in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency.
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U.S. Official Matthew Hoh Resigns in Protest of Afghanistan War Policy
Posted:
10/27/09
Filed Under:Foreign Policy, Afghanistan
Matthew Hoh, the senior U.S. civilian in Afghanistan's Zabul province, resigned in protest because he believes the American effort there is simply fueling the insurgency, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. Hoh, a former Marine Corps captain who also served in Iraq, wrote a four-page letter to the State Department's head of personnel in September, and his resignation became official last week.
"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote in the letter. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."
Hoh's letter caused a stir in the Obama administration, and he was hastened to meetings with senior U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington. They praised his record of service and begged him to stay, offering him new positions in both locations. Hoh initially accepted the Washington job, but changed his mind a week later.
Hoh said that his act of protest and decision to speak out were painful, even "nauseating" at times, but he was strongly motivated by the friends he had lost on the battlefield and the mental anguish he has experienced since returning home. "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right,' " he explained, adding that he "is not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love."
Hoh will meet with Joe Biden's foreign policy adviser this week, and will advise a reduction in troops. He said he feels the U.S. "has an obligation for it not to be a bloodbath," but that Afghans are resistant to what they see as a military occupation.
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A few months ago I had a very interesting conversation here in LA with an Afghani taxi driver who clearly had been no ordinary man back in Afghanistan. The following tracks very closely with what he told me. Bottom line for him: The whole thing was about business.
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Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Tue, October 27, 2009 -- 9:10 PM ET
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Brother of Afghan President Is on C.I.A. Payroll, Officials Say
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a
suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium
trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence
Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according
to current and former American officials.
The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, and
those financial ties and the agency's close working
relationship with him raise significant questions about
America's war strategy, which is currently under review at
the White House.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na
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Continuing our search for truth with the second post of the day-- a cynic might note that this piece takes a position favorable to those who would reject McChrystal's plan and that the author is looking for a job , , ,
WSJ
By DAVID ADAMS AND ANN MARLOWE
From the beginning of 2007 to March 2008, the 82nd Airborne Division's strategy in Khost proved that 250 paratroopers could secure a province of a million people in the Pashtun belt. The key to success in Khost—which shares a 184 kilometer-long border with Pakistan's lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas—was working within the Afghan system. By partnering with closely supervised Afghan National Security Forces and a competent governor and subgovernors, U.S. forces were able to win the support of Khost's 13 tribes.
Today, 2,400 U.S. soldiers are stationed in Khost. But the province is more dangerous.
Mohammed Aiaz, a 32-year-old Khosti advising the Khost Provincial Reconstruction Team, puts it plainly: "The answer is not more troops, which will put Afghans in more danger." If troops don't understand Afghan culture and fail to work within the tribal system, they will only fuel the insurgency. When we get the tribes on our side, that will change. When a tribe says no, it means no. IEDs will be reported and no insurgent fighters will be allowed to operate in or across their area.
Khost once had security forces with tribal links. Between 1988 and 1991, the Soviet client government in Kabul was able to secure much of eastern and southern Afghanistan by paying the tribal militias. Khost was secured by the 25th Division of the Afghan National Army (ANA), which incorporated militias with more than 400 fighters from five of Khost's 13 major tribes. The mujahedeen were not able to take Khost until internal rifts among Pashtuns in then-President Mohammed Najibullah's government resulted in a loss of support for the militias in Khost and, eventually, the defection of the 25th Division in April 1991.
The mistake the Najibullah government made was not integrating advisers to train the tribal militias and transform them into a permanent part of the government security forces. During the Taliban period between 1996-2001 the 25th Division dispersed amongst the tribes. Many fled to Pakistan.
When the U.S. invaded in 2001, the 25th Division, reformed under the command of Gen. Kilbaz Sherzai, immediately secured Khost. But the division was disbanded by the new Afghan government for fear of warlordism.
Today, some elements of the 25th still work for the Americans as contract security forces. However, the ANA now stationed in Khost is mainly composed of northern, non-Pashtun Dari speakers, and it is regarded as a foreign body. Without local influence and tribal support, the ANA tends to stay on its bases.
Part of this is our fault. We built the ANA in our own Army's image. Its soldiers live on nice bases and see themselves as the protectors of Afghanistan from conventional attacks by Pakistan. But to be effective, the ANA must be structured more like a National Guard, responsible for creating civil authority and training the police.
We saw how this could work in the Tani district of Khost starting in 2007. By assisting an ANA company—with a platoon of American paratroopers, a civil affairs team from the U.S.-led Provincial Reconstruction Team, the local Afghan National Police, and a determined Afghan subgovernor named Badi Zaman Sabari—we secured the district despite its long border with Pakistan.
Raids by the paratroopers under the leadership of Lt. Col. Scott Custer were extremely rare because the team had such good relations with the tribes that they would generally turn over any suspect. These good tribal relations were strengthened further by meeting the communities' demands for a new paved road, five schools, and a spring water system that supplies 12,000 villagers.
Yet security has deteriorated in Khost, despite increases of U.S. troops in mid-2008. American strategy began to focus more on chasing the insurgents in the mountains instead of securing the towns and villages where most Khostis live.
The insurgents didn't stick around to get shot when they saw the American helicopters coming. But the villagers noticed when the roads weren't built on time and the commanders never visited.
Meanwhile, the increasing number of raids on Afghan homes alienated many of Khost's tribal elders. The Afghan National Police in Tani and many other districts of Khost were afraid to patrol in their uniforms and official vehicles lest they be killed by insurgents. The ANA in Tani rarely left the district center, which came to resemble a small fortress. Having lost support of the tribes, Badi Zaman Sabari was assassinated on Feb. 14, 2009, by insurgents led by the longtime mujahedeen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani. They are the main belligerents focused on undermining ISAF's efforts in southeast Afghanistan.
A major reason for our slow progress in Afghanistan is that, because of turnovers in leadership and changes in strategy, we continue to fight one-year wars and forget about the long term. When we become fixated on clearing insurgents, we lose focus on the tribes, which are critical to our success. The proper recipe is not clear, hold and build. As we learned in Khost, it is befriend, secure, build governance—and then hold. Without a consistent strategy of enlisting tribal cooperation, more troops will simply find more trouble in the Pashtun belt.Cmdr. Adams commanded the Khost Provincial Reconstruction Team from March 2007 to March 2008. He is now the prospective commander of the nuclear submarine the USS Santa Fe. Ms. Marlowe did four embeds with American forces in Khost during 2007-2008.
Cmdr. Adams commanded the Khost Provincial Reconstruction Team from March 2007 to March 2008. He is now the prospective commander of the nuclear submarine the USS Santa Fe. Ms. Marlowe did four embeds with American forces in Khost during 2007-2008.
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Stratfor
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THE IMPLICATIONS OF A PARTIAL U.N. RELOCATION FROM AFGHANISTAN
THE UNITED NATIONS on Thursday announced plans to relocate about 600 personnel who
have been working in Afghanistan. The move follows a recent attack on U.N. living
quarters in Kabul that left six people dead. The relocation is intended to be
temporary, and U.N. personnel will continue to work on their projects from afar. But
the message is clear: U.N. officials believe that the organization’s foreign
employees in Afghanistan are vulnerable.
Even as U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration contemplates its strategic
options in Afghanistan, senior commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal is pushing forward
with a counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign. This model of warfare entails a generally
protracted effort to win the support of the local population. As an outside power,
the U.S. military has inherent difficulty with blending in and understanding the
local population. This limits the availability of intelligence, it makes identifying
the enemy difficult, and it can make traditional advantages -- such as overwhelming
firepower -- self-defeating if they are not wielded with discretion.
But COIN also implies the need to establish a friendly political environment. NATO
forces use provincial reconstruction teams that coordinate a broader spectrum of
government services than military units can provide. Aid agencies are also critical
and will continue to play an important role after troops have left.
Attacking aid agencies therefore can be an effective tool. Aid agencies can be
particularly casualty-averse (especially when it comes to Western foreign
nationals), and when push comes to shove, they are not able to operate in highly
dangerous conditions. While they take advantage of the opportunity to employ locals,
they also rely on an outside, professional presence to orchestrate operations.
"The more that can be done outside of the military rubric, the more the military
will be able to focus on its core goal: security."
Aid agencies have to be visible, dispersed and engaged with populations that may or
may not be friendly to foreign powers. Essentially, if they are to conduct
operations, they are vulnerable to attack. In less hostile environments, this is
part of the job. But when there cannot be a reasonable expectation of security, they
cannot do their jobs. If the U.N. is not able to protect its personnel in Kabul, it
speaks volumes about maintaining safety throughout the country.
The more that can be done outside of the military rubric, the more the military will
be able to focus on its core goal: security. The problem is that if aid agencies are
unable to help with the development side of counterinsurgency, the burden falls to
an overstretched military -- or the work doesn't get done.
Provincial reconstruction teams are still at work. Thousands of Afghan nationals are
still employed by the U.N. But on Thursday, the U.N. took a significant step back
from Afghanistan -- a step that parallels those of many NATO states that refuse to
commit new resources and are anxious to withdraw from the country.
The U.N. has not given up on Afghanistan. But by drawing down personnel at what
McChrystal repeatedly has declared to be the critical moment in the now 8-year-old
campaign, the move raises serious questions about the efficacy of the current
strategy.
Copyright 2009 Stratfor.
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Summary
The former foreign minister of the ousted Taliban regime, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, has said that one part of the Taliban movement is prepared to negotiate with the United States if Washington is ready to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, top Afghan Taliban commander in Kandahar Mullah Toor Jan said the Afghan Taliban movement has nothing to do with Pakistan’s main Taliban rebel group, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, that the Afghan Taliban only targets U.S. and NATO forces, and that al Qaeda has no influence over the Afghan Taliban. Though the statements suggest the mainstream Afghan Taliban movement is positioning itself for substantive talks down the road with the United States, a U.S.-Taliban understanding — assuming it can be achieved — would not suffice to solve all of Washington’s problems in Afghanistan.
Analysis
Part of the Taliban movement is prepared to negotiate with the United States if Washington is ready to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil told CNN on Nov. 11. Muttawakil added that there is a huge difference between al Qaeda and the Taliban, as the former has an international agenda while the Taliban pose no threat to the world. He also said the Taliban are prepared to assure the world that Afghanistan will not be used as a launching pad for transnational attacks. Just one day before that, top Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Toor Jan (aka Abdul Manan) in the southeastern Afghan city of Spinboldak told Pakistani news channel Aaj TV that the Afghan Taliban movement has nothing to do with Pakistan’s main Taliban rebel group, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Mullah Toor said that the Afghan Taliban only attacks U.S. and NATO forces, and that al Qaeda has no influence over the Afghan Taliban.
The statements suggest the mainstream Afghan Taliban movement is working hard to distinguish itself from al Qaeda and from the Pakistani Taliban, and that the Afghan Taliban could be ready to negotiate with the United States. Many obstacles still lie ahead for the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, however.
Since Muttawakil’s surrender to U.S. forces shortly after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and his subsequent release from detention at Bagram air base in 2003, the Afghan Taliban leadership has found him useful as a conduit for communications with the West. While Muttawakil does not hold major influence over the Taliban movement, he has been engaged in a number of efforts to connect the Taliban with the U.S. government; so far, these have not born fruit.
In a July report, STRATFOR discussed how Mullah Omar would be willing to negotiate, but only for the right price. Though the Taliban have the initiative in the war, and the United States and its NATO allies are struggling to come up with a coherent strategy to deal with the Afghan insurgency, the Taliban realize the limits of their own power. This is not 1996, when the Taliban were able to take power in Kabul by force and later impose their writ upon as much as 95 percent of the country. The Taliban is not the same organization it was when it first arose in the mid-1990s, as the Taliban now is a moniker for a broad array of largely Pashtun Islamist militant factions on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border and Afghanistan no longer faces the kind of anarchy that allowed the Taliban to take power.
The Afghan Taliban realizes that to successfully stage a political comeback, it will need broad international recognition as a legitimate stakeholder in Afghanistan. This requires losing its designation as a terrorist organization — no easy feat given the shelter it offered the masterminds of Sept. 11 — explaining the recent bid to sharpen the distinction between itself and transnational jihadism.
While the Taliban are ready to deal on al Qaeda, they cannot accept a settlement that does not provide for a withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan. The Taliban are hoping they can exploit the sentiment within the West against a long-term military commitment to their advantage. Still, Western governments feel that at a minimum, they will need a limited military commitment in Afghanistan to guarantee the country does not once again become a safe-haven for transnational jihadists.
By saying the things the United States is most interested in hearing, the Afghan Taliban are hoping to expand the advantage they hold in terms of the insurgency into a political one. The current statements seem to offer Washington just the opening it has sought. Washington’s strategy calls for driving a wedge between pragmatic and more ideological segments of the Taliban as well as separating the Pashtun jihadist movement from al Qaeda. But the United States, assuming it can somehow get past the political hurdles of dealing with the leadership that harbored the group responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, still lacks the intelligence on the Taliban to be able to tell one faction apart from the other.
The only actor that has any semblance of an understanding of the internal configuration of the Afghan Taliban is Pakistan. Islamabad, however, has its hands full with its own indigenous Taliban rebellion, and has lost a certain degree of influence over the Afghan Taliban. Nonetheless, given the Pashtun ethnic linkages between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islamabad is the only player that can help connect Washington with the Afghan Taliban. But the growing rift between Washington and the Pakistani military has made such cooperation less likely.
The multibillion-dollar Kerry-Lugar aid package has soured the Pakistani military on Washington, as have fears within Pakistani central command that the United States is out to denuclearize Islamabad. The gap between how Pakistan distinguishes between “good” versus “bad” Taliban and how the United States distinguishes reconcilable versus irreconcilable Taliban elements also will hamper such cooperation. Both sides’ efforts to categorize the Taliban into two parts ignore al Qaeda’s links across the entire Taliban landscape. And while the United States welcomes the Pakistani offensive against TTP rebels and their transnational allies, deep mistrust between the two sides remains, with Washington concerned about the scope of the offensive and Islamabad wondering about U.S. intentions with regard to Afghanistan (and troubled about an increased Indian role in Afghanistan and close U.S.-Indian relations).
Even Pakistani assistance in Afghanistan would not suffice to solve the United States’ problems there, however. Iran must also be brought on board if there is to be a settlement on Afghanistan, given Iran’s influence among the anti-Taliban forces as well as certain elements within the Pashtun jihadist movement — something Washington has acknowledged. Tensions over the nuclear negotiations are preventing any U.S.-Iranian consensus on Afghanistan, however. With the nuclear talks in limbo and the risk of a U.S. or Israeli military strike against Iran, any agreement on Afghanistan appears unlikely anytime soon.
Meanwhile, U.S. relations with Kabul have hit a serious low point given the fiasco over the recent Afghan presidential election and the Obama administration’s efforts to find an alternative to President Hamid Karzai. No alternative was found, and the effort ended up creating a rift among the forces previously united in their opposition to the Taliban.
Ultimately, each major stakeholder in Afghanistan whose participation is critical to a settlement — Kabul, the Taliban, Pakistan, and Iran — has a problematic relationship with the United States. If there is to be a settlement in Afghanistan, Washington will have to deal with each of these issues.
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By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: November 12, 2009
JURM, Afghanistan — Small grants given directly to villagers have brought about modest but important changes in this corner of Afghanistan, offering a model in a country where official corruption and a Taliban insurgency have frustrated many large-scale development efforts.
Since arriving in Afghanistan in 2001, the United States and its Western allies have spent billions of dollars on development projects, but to less effect and popular support than many had hoped for.
Much of that money was funneled through the central government, which has been increasingly criticized as incompetent and corrupt. Even more has gone to private contractors hired by the United States who siphon off almost half of every dollar to pay the salaries of expatriate workers and other overhead costs.
Not so here in Jurm, a valley in the windswept mountainous province of Badakhshan, in the northeast. People here have taken charge for themselves — using village councils and direct grants as part of an initiative called the National Solidarity Program, introduced by an Afghan ministry in 2003.
Before then, this valley had no electricity or clean water, its main crop was poppy and nearly one in 10 women died in childbirth, one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Today, many people have water taps, fields grow wheat and it is no longer considered shameful for a woman to go to a doctor. If there are lessons to be drawn from the still tentative successes here, they are that small projects often work best, that the consent and participation of local people are essential and that even baby steps take years.
The issues are not academic. Bringing development to Afghans is an important part of a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at drawing people away from the Taliban and building popular support for the Western-backed government by showing that it can make a difference in people’s lives.
“We ignored the people in districts and villages,” said Jelani Popal, who runs a state agency that appoints governors. “This caused a lot of indifference. ‘Why should I side with the government if it doesn’t even exist in my life?’ ”
Jurm was tormented by warlords in the 1990s, and though it never fell to the Taliban, the presence of the central government, even today, is barely felt. The idea to change that was simple: people elected the most trusted villagers, and the government in Kabul, helped by foreign donors, gave them direct grants — money to build things like water systems and girls’ schools for themselves.
Local residents contend that the councils work because they take development down to its most basic level, with villagers directing the spending to improve their own lives, cutting out middle men, local and foreign, as well as much of the overhead costs and corruption.
“You don’t steal from yourself,” was how Ataullah, a farmer in Jurm who uses one name, described it.
The grants were small, often less than $100,000. The plan’s overall effectiveness is still being assessed by academics and American and Afghan officials, but the idea has already been replicated in thousands of villages across the country. Anecdotal accounts point to some success. There have even been savings. When villages in the Jurm Valley wanted running water, for instance, they did much of the work themselves, with help from an engineer. A private contractor with links to a local politician had asked triple the price. (The villagers declined.)
Even such modest steps have not come easily. Jurm presented many obstacles, and it took a development group with determined local employees to jump-start the work here. One basic problem was literacy, said Ghulam Dekan, a local worker with the Aga Khan Development Network, the nonprofit group that supports the councils here. Unlike the situation in Iraq, which has a literacy rate of more than 70 percent, fewer than a third of Afghans can read, making the work of the councils painfully slow. Villagers were suspicious of projects, believing that the people in the groups that introduced them were Christian missionaries.
“They didn’t understand the importance of a road,” Mr. Dekan said.
Most projects, no matter how simple, took five years. Years of war had smashed Afghan society into rancorous bits, making it difficult to resist efforts by warlords to muscle in on projects.
“They said, ‘For God’s sake, we can’t do this, we don’t have the capability,’ ” Mr. Dekan said. “We taught them to have confidence.”
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Muhamed Azghari, an Aga Khan employee, spent more than a year trying to persuade a mullah to allow a girls’ school. His tactic: sitting lower than the man, a sign of deference, and praising his leadership. He paid for the man to visit other villages to see what other councils had accomplished.
“Ten times we fought, two times we laughed,” Mr. Dekan said, using the Afghan equivalent of “two steps forward, one step back.”
When it came to women, villagers were adamant.
But forcing conditions would have violated a basic principle of the approach: never start a project that is not backed by all members of the community, or it will fail.
“People have to be mentally ready,” said Akhtar Iqbal, Aga Khan’s director in Badakhshan. If they are not, the school or clinic will languish unused, a frequent problem with large-scale development efforts.
Five years later, the village of Fargamanch has women’s literacy classes and a girls’ high school. Over all, girls’ enrollment in Badakhshan is up by 65 percent since 2004, according to the Ministry of Education. The number of trained midwives has quadrupled. Health has also improved. Now, 3,270 families have taps for clean drinking water near their homes, reducing waterborne diseases. The councils are also a check on corruption. When 200 bags of wheat mysteriously disappeared from the local government this year, council members demanded they be returned. (They were.) When a minister’s aide cashed a check meant for a transformer, Mr. Ataullah spent a week tracking down a copy. (The aide was fired.)
“The government doesn’t like us anymore,” Mr. Azghari said, laughing. “They want the old system back.”
While Badakhshan’s changes are fragile, the forces of modernization are growing. Televisions have begun to broadcast the outside world into villages. Phone networks cover more than 80 percent of the province, triple what the figure was in 2001. Perhaps most important, Afghans are tired of war, and seeing the benefits of a decade of peace might be enough to encourage new kinds of decisions. Ghulam Mohaiuddin, a farmer, seethes when he remembers the past.
“The jihad was useless,” he said, sitting cross-legged in his mud-walled house.
Suddenly, a loud blast went off, startling his guests. He laughed. It was the sound of canal construction, not a bomb.
“Now we’ve put down our weapons and started building,” he said, smiling.
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Anyone want to take a stab at assessing the hypothesis here?
The Missing Link From Killeen to Kabul
By FRANK RICH
Published: November 14, 2009
THE dead at Fort Hood had not even been laid to rest when their massacre became yet another political battle cry for the self-proclaimed patriots of the American right.
Their verdict was unambiguous: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born psychiatrist of Palestinian parentage who sent e-mail to a radical imam, was a terrorist. And he did not act alone. His co-conspirators included our military brass, the Defense Department, the F.B.I., the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and, of course, the liberal media and the Obama administration. All these institutions had failed to heed the warning signs raised by Hasan’s behavior and activities because they are blinded by political correctness toward Muslims, too eager to portray criminals as sympathetic victims of social injustice, and too cowardly to call out evil when it strikes 42 innocents in cold blood.
The invective aimed at these heinous P.C. pantywaists nearly matched that aimed at Hasan. Joe Lieberman announced hearings to investigate the Army for its dereliction of duty on homeland security. Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, vowed to unmask cover-ups in the White House and at the C.I.A. The Weekly Standard blog published a broadside damning the F.B.I. for neglecting the “broader terrorist plot” of which Hasan was only one of the connected dots. Jerome Corsi, the major-domo of the successful Swift-boating of John Kerry, unearthed what he said was proof that Hasan had advised President Obama during the transition.
William Bennett excoriated soft military leaders like Gen. George Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, who had stood up for diversity and fretted openly about a backlash against Muslim soldiers in his ranks. “Blind diversity” that embraces Islam “equals death,” wrote Michelle Malkin. “There is a powerful case to be made that Islamic extremism is not some fringe phenomenon but part of the mainstream of Islamic life around the world,” wrote the columnist Jonah Goldberg. Islam is “not a religion,” declared the irrepressible Pat Robertson, but “a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world.”
As a snapshot of where a chunk of the country stands right now, these reactions to the Fort Hood bloodbath could not be more definitive. And it’s quite possible that some of what this crowd says is right — not about Islam in general, but about the systemic failure to stop a homicidal maniac like Hasan in particular. Whether he was an actual terrorist or an unfathomable mass murderer merely dabbling in jihadist ideas, the repeated red flags during his Army career illuminate a pattern of lapses in America’s national security. Whether those indicators were ignored because of political correctness, bureaucratic dysfunction, sheer incompetence or some hybrid thereof is still unclear, but, whichever, the system failed.
Yet the mass murder at Fort Hood didn’t happen in isolation. It unfolded against the backdrop of Obama’s final lap of decision-making about Afghanistan. For all the right’s jeremiads, its own brand of political correctness kept it from connecting two crucial dots: how our failing war against terrorists in Afghanistan might relate to our failure to stop a supposed terrorist attack at home. Most of those who decried the Army’s blindness to Hasan’s threat are strong proponents of sending more troops into our longest war. That they didn’t mention Afghanistan while attacking the entire American intelligence and defense apparatus in charge of that war may be the most telling revelation of this whole debate.
The reason they didn’t is obvious enough. Their screeds about the Hasan case are completely at odds with both the Afghanistan policy they endorse and the leadership that must execute that policy, including Gen. Stanley McChrystal. These hawks, all demanding that Obama act on McChrystal’s proposals immediately, do not seem to have read his strategy assessment for Afghanistan or the many press interviews he gave as it leaked out. If they had, they’d discover that the whole thrust of his counterinsurgency pitch is to befriend and win the support of the Afghan population — i.e., Muslims. The “key to success,” the general wrote in his brief to the president, will be “strong personal relationships forged between security forces and local populations.”
McChrystal thinks we might even jolly up those Muslims who historically and openly hate America. “I don’t think much of the Taliban are ideologically driven,” he told Dexter Filkins of The Times. “In my view their past is not important. Some people say, ‘Well, they have blood on their hands.’ I’d say, ‘So do a lot of people.’ I think we focus on future behavior.”
Whether we could win those hearts and minds is, arguably, an open question — though it’s an objective that would require a partner other than Hamid Karzai and many more troops than even McChrystal is asking for (or America presently has). But to say that McChrystal’s optimistic — dare one say politically correct? — view of Muslim pliability doesn’t square with that of America’s hawks is the understatement of the decade.
As their Fort Hood rhetoric made clear, McChrystal’s most vehement partisans don’t trust American Muslims, let alone those of the Taliban, no matter how earnestly the general may argue that they can be won over by our troops’ friendliness (or bribes). If, as the right has it, our Army cannot be trusted to recognize a Hasan in its own ranks, then how will it figure out who the “good” Muslims will be as we try to build a “stable” state (whatever “stable” means) in a country that has never had a functioning central government? If our troops can’t be protected from seemingly friendly Muslim American brethren in Killeen, Tex., what are the odds of survival for the 40,000 more troops the hawks want to deploy to Kabul and sinkholes beyond?
About the only prominent voice among the liberal-bashing, Obama-loathing right who has noted this gaping contradiction is Mark Steyn of National Review. “Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet” were “gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously,” he wrote. “And that’s the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas.” You have to applaud Steyn’s rare intellectual consistency within his camp. One imagines that he does not buy the notion that our Army, however brilliant, has a shot at building “strong personal relationships” with a population that often regards us as occupiers and infidels.
In a week of horrific news, it was good to hear at the end of it that Obama is dissatisfied with the four Afghanistan options he has been weighing so far. The more time he deliberates, the more he is learning that he’s on a fool’s errand with no exit. After Karzai was spared a runoff last month and declared the winner of the fraud-infested August “election,” Obama demanded that he address his government’s corruption as a price for American support. Only days later the Afghan president mocked the American president by parading his most tainted cronies on camera and granting an interview to PBS’s “NewsHour” devoted to spewing his contempt for his American benefactors.
Matthew Hoh, a former Marine and, until recently, a State Department official in Afghanistan, could be found on MSNBC on Thursday once again asking the question no war advocate can answer, “Do you want Americans fighting and dying for the Karzai regime?” Hoh quit his post on principle in September despite the urging of colleagues, including our ambassador there, Karl W. Eikenberry, that he stay and fight over war policy from the inside. But Hoh had lost confidence in our strategy and would not retract his resignation. Now he has been implicitly seconded by Eikenberry himself. Last week we learned that the ambassador, a retired general who had been the top American military commander in Afghanistan as recently as 2007, had sent two cables to Obama urging caution about sending more troops.
We don’t know everything in those cables. What we do know is that American intelligence continues to say that fewer than 100 Qaeda operatives can still be found in Afghanistan. We also know that the Taliban, which are currently estimated to number in the tens of thousands, can’t be eliminated. As McChrystal put it to Filkins, there is no “finite number” of Taliban, so there’s no way to vanquish them. Hence his counterinsurgency alternative, which could take decades, costing untold billions and countless lives.
Perhaps those on the right are correct about Hasan, and he is just one cog in an apocalyptic jihadist plot that has infiltrated our armed forces. If so, then they have an obligation to explain how pouring more troops into Afghanistan would have stopped Hasan from plotting in Killeen. Don’t hold your breath. If we have learned anything concrete so far from the massacre at Fort Hood, it’s that our hawks, for all their certitude, are as utterly confused as the rest of us about who it is we’re fighting in Afghanistan and to what end.
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As Obama dithers, Iran acts:
Afghans fear infiltration from Iran
By Zia Ahmadi and Mustafa Saber
HERAT - Islam Qala, a small border town that forms the gateway between Iran and Afghanistan, is a focus of concern for Afghan officials fighting the Taliban insurgency because some believe Iran is using it to infiltrate guerrillas intent on destabilizing the Kabul government.
"I was working in Iran for about eight months," said one man, a former refugee, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But I got an offer from the Taliban in Gozara district [of Herat province] offering me a higher salary, so I accepted."
Once he had crossed the border into Afghanistan, he said Pakistanis and Iranians based in the hills of Pashtun Zarghon
district, the site of a growing insurgency, gave him military training.
For four months, the man said he participated in armed attacks on behalf of the Taliban in the Gozara and Pashtun Zarghon districts, and received a monthly salary of 20,000-30,000 Pakistani rupees (US$240 to $360).
"We struck security posts in the villages of Toot, Siyawooshan and Injel, as well as carrying out attacks on foreign military convoys," he said.
Now he is happily settled in civilian life, having been awarded a certificate by the Peace and Reconciliation Commission - an Afghan body established in 2005 as a mechanism for engaging with insurgents - that records his decision to lay down his arms.
Border police officials in Islam Qala say that more than 100 Afghans return from Iran daily. Many lack refugee documents or other identity cards to prove their Afghan citizenship and there is no adequate process to check them, which leads to many undesirables passing through, they say.
"Dozens of refugees are deported from Iran every day," said Abdullah Achakzai, a border police officer who works at the Islam Qala checkpoint. "We have caught Arab and Iranian citizens trying to enter Afghanistan without the proper documentation and have turned them over to the National Directorate of Security, NDS. But we cannot check everybody so carefully. We do not have enough officers, or the right equipment."
Officials fear that Islam Qala is being used as an infiltration point by potential guerrillas, whether they are returning Afghans or foreign citizens trying to conceal their identities.
"One of these refugees told us that Iranian troops at the Sang-e-Safed military base said that Afghanistan is under American occupation," Achakzai said. "They asked him to fight against America when he went back to Afghanistan."
Achakzai said the border police had recently stopped an Iranian citizen posing as an Afghan refugee. "He had maps with him of Herat airport and other documents concerning the 207th Zafar [Afghan National Army] corps."
Haji Sher Ahmad, who owns a hotel in Islam Qala, told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting that many foreigners had stayed there recently.
"Several men who were speaking Arabic, and had apparently been deported from Iran, came to my hotel and stayed several nights," he said. "They asked for the best rooms, and ordered the most expensive food. I contacted the police, but they did not do anything."
An employee of the Bamyan Chahr Fasel Hotel in Herat city said that over the past year, several people had come to the hotel introducing themselves as Afghan refugees returning from Iran, but were in fact speaking Arabic among themselves.
"After staying a few nights, they went off someplace," said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We recently found a suitcase of one of the 'repatriates' that had been forgotten at the hotel. When we opened it, it was full of maps and other documents. We gave it to the NDS."
Police officials in Herat say that many foreigners who support the insurgency in western Afghanistan have entered the country illegally through checkpoints like Islam Qala.
"Two Iranian citizens were arrested during a police operation against anti-government militants in Gozara district," said Ismatullah Alizai, Herat police chief. "We turned them over to the NDS for further investigation."
According to Alizai, more than 50 foreigners, among them Pakistanis, Chechens and Iranians, had been identified in the Gozara and Pashtun Zarghon districts. They are suspected of supporting the insurgency.
"Many terrorist attacks are organized by foreigners in Herat province," he said.
In Gozara district, which has seen a spike in insurgent activity over the past year, residents say that two Iranian Kurdish women had been seen in Siyawooshan village.
"I spoke with these two women," said one Gozara resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They were over 30 years old. They told me that Afghanistan has been invaded by America, and it is the duty of every Muslim man and woman to devote their lives to the liberation of this Muslim land."
Parliamentarian Mohammad Daud Sultanzoy said he had seen reports indicating that foreign militants who are cooperating with the Taliban often enter Afghanistan posing as refugees being repatriated.
"If the Afghan border police cannot control the borders, it is undeniable that the influence of foreigners who support the anti-government militants will grow," he said.
He recommended that the number of border police be increased, so that no refugee without the proper documentation would be able to enter the country.
Officials at the Iranian consulate in Herat said the country deports only Afghans who do not have proper documentation. They dismissed any suggestion that they were encouraging or allowing Pakistanis, Chechens or other foreign citizens to enter Afghanistan as Afghan refugees.
But in early October, Afghan speculation about Iranian intentions was further fueled when local people say Iran temporarily relaxed its border restrictions and allowed hundreds of undocumented Afghans to cross the border into Iran.
According to Colonel Hamidullah Sarhadi, the quartermaster of the border police in Herat, close to 2,000 Afghans were allowed to enter Iran during a two-day period.
Some Afghans fear Iran is deliberately attracting energetic young people so that they can be indoctrinated and sent back to Afghanistan to fight the Americans.
"With the use of Afghan refugees, Iran is paving the way for opposition against the Afghan government," said Khalil Ahmad Amiri, 30, a resident of Herat city.
But Iranian border officials deny that their frontier was opened. According to the Iranian consulate in Herat, the country already has close to one million registered Afghans in the country, along with another million who have entered illegally. In past years, Iran has embarked on a campaign to expel illegal Afghan refugees, sometimes as many as 500 per day, creating huge problems on the Afghan side of the border.
Some Afghan commentators have poured cold water on the speculation around the reported relaxation of border restrictions. "It is too early to say that Iran is going to use these Afghans for military purposes," said political expert Ahmad Saeedi.
Saeedi thinks a more subtle Iranian opposition to the United States and the Afghan government could have been the reason behind the alleged move.
"Iran wants to show its sympathy to the Afghans, who have suffered so much as a result of Iranian deportation. It wants to gain a political, social and economic advantage in Afghanistan because of its opposition to the United States," he said.
Basir Begzad, a political analyst in Herat, suggests that the reported frontier opening was an attempt to undermine confidence in the Kabul authorities and the international community. "They want to show the world that Afghans are not happy with the current government and the foreign forces, and that they run away as soon as they get the chance," he said.
Zia Ahmadi and Mustafa Saber are IWPR-trained reporters based in Herat.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK13Df03.html
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Pakistan: The Taliban Strategy Behind Targeting the ISI
Stratfor Today » November 13, 2009 | 2252 GMT
An injured Pakistani man after the Nov. 13 Inter-Services Intelligence building bombing in PeshawarSummary
The Taliban’s suicide-bombing attack on the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate’s headquarters in Peshawar Nov. 13 was intended to send a clear message: that a government offensive against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in South Waziristan is having little effect on the TTP’s ability to wage war. For now, even if the TTP is limited to operating only within the North-West Frontier Province, the group continues to have the upper hand in the insurgency.
Analysis
The vehicle-borne suicide bombing of the headquarters of Pakistan’s premier spy service in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) Nov. 13 killed relatively few people (16 at last count). However, the blast was so powerful that a significant portion of the provincial headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate in Peshawar was demolished. This is the second time an ISI provincial headquarters has been targeted by Taliban rebels since the much larger May 27 attack on the intelligence agency’s Punjab headquarters in Lahore.
The Nov. 13 attack was against a major ISI facility focused on fighting the jihadist insurgency in the region at a time when Pakistani troops are trying to dismantle the headquarters of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in South Waziristan. The attack is intended to send a clear message: that the government offensive is not having much of an effect on the TTP’s ability to operate. There is also much PR mileage to be gained from striking a facility of the country’s most powerful security organization. Yet another message the jihadists are trying to send — this time to an already rattled Pakistani public — is that the state is unable to protect itself, let alone its citizens.
But a careful examination of the series of Taliban attacks since the beginning of the ground offensive in South Waziristan on Oct. 17 shows that the TTP has not been able to pull off any major attacks beyond the NWFP. The last major attack was on Oct. 10, when militants were able to penetrate the main headquarters of the military in Rawalpindi (the twin city of the capital, Islamabad) and take control of the Military Intelligence directorate building along with 30 hostages. Since then, however, the attacks that have taken place in Lahore and Islamabad have proved to be relatively small-scale strikes.
For the time being, law enforcement and intelligence operations in Punjab and Karachi, coupled with the offensive in South Waziristan and operations elsewhere in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, appear to have limited the effective radius of TTP attacks to the NWFP. And there has been a sustained focus on Peshawar, with several large-scale bombings in the NWFP provincial capital. There have also been attacks that have targeted civilians, for which TTP and al Qaeda leaders have denied responsibility. One of these attacks, on Oct. 28, killed more than150 people — mostly women and children.
In fact, TTP chief Hakeemullah Mehsud and al Qaeda prime leader for Afghanistan/Pakistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, have said the bombings targeting civilians were the work of the U.S. private security contractor Blackwater (which has been renamed Xe). By accusing the security firm, the jihadists are trying to exploit perceptions in Pakistan that the firm is engaged in suspicious activity in the country and may be trying to destabilize it or even remove or dismantle its nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, attacking the ISI headquarters in Peshawar is a way for the TTP to conduct damage control in the wake of the civilian bombings. Even if the TTP is limited, at least for now, to a meaningful striking capability only within NWFP, the group continues to have the upper hand in the insurgency. The question is whether the government’s Waziristan offensive can put a significant dent in its overall war-making capability.
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Corruption in Afghanistan
It’s tempting to say fighting corruption is for police, not soldiers. Tempting, but wrong.
By Brock Dahl
In his congratulatory phone call to Hamid Karzai, President Obama emphasized the importance of fighting corruption and noted that “the proof is not going to be in words; it’s going to be in deeds.” He would do well to heed his own advice.
Since the beginning of our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. and coalition forces have never seen policing as a priority element of the counterinsurgency mission. Indeed, when asked about looting in 2003, a British military spokesman responded, “Do I look like I’m a policeman?” Around the same time, a U.S. Central Command official told reporters, “The U.S. won’t be a police force.”
Regarding Afghanistan, Douglas Feith proudly tells a story in his memoirs about a confrontation between Hamid Karzai and a provincial warlord named Pacha Khan in 2002. Karzai sought U.S. assistance, but Secretary Rumsfeld declined to give it. Feith concluded, “Karzai rose to the challenge from Pacha Khan. He managed in time to quiet the situation without major fighting, using political skill within his own means.” We may never know what Karzai and Pacha Khan actually discussed. Afghan sources have told me, however, that as the U.S. shifted forces to Iraq and seemed to lose interest in Afghanistan, Karzai did not have the resources to enforce the authority of his Kabul government, and had to make concessions to leading provincial personalities to maintain some hold on power. No wonder, then, that the country is now riddled with corruption.
A policing vacuum can make civil conflict worse. We have rightly focused on fighting insurgents and terrorists. Yet organized crime and government corruption are often tied to these primary threats, and they may do more to undermine the Iraqi and Afghan governments in the eyes of their own people than the insurgents and terrorists themselves.
When violence and chaos escalate, normal state and market activities are disrupted. Powerful players step into the void, profiting off conflict by providing access to all kinds of goods, from food and clothing to guns and drugs. As the violence abates, these actors solidify their newfound power. What some experts refer to as a “political-criminal nexus” develops. A host of corrupt and criminal activities pursued by powerful networks weaken state institutions.
When such alternative power centers develop, it takes forceful efforts to deconstruct them. These are efforts of a sort that a weak government, racked by war and lacking resources, may not be able to prosecute successfully. If U.S. and coalition forces refuse to support selected policing operations in Afghanistan, the state will never be able to break the cycle of corruption and criminality.
The U.S. military is slowly coming around to this realization. As Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, recently put it, “The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone.” Indeed, General Flynn is onto something. Ending the rule of complex organizations such as Capone’s required aggressive law-enforcement measures against the most powerful individuals in the organization. We have not yet undertaken such advanced policing operations in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Military forces usually operate by eliminating targets. Our military cannot kill corrupt Afghan officials, but it could do much more than it has been doing to help the Afghan government investigate, arrest, and prosecute them. In other words, it can give Afghan law-enforcement agencies the added strength that they need to make any headway against corruption and crime.
How Karzai would use this assistance is in question. But since he was willing to seek it previously, he may be willing to accept it now. The awkwardness of the recent elections and the substantial international pressure for change provide an opportunity. Karzai, however, having been left out in the cold before, may require convincing that U.S. assistance will be sustained and that a compelling plan for turning the tide toward properly functioning institutions is available. Both require immediate U.S. action.
So, when it comes to the U.S. concern about corruption, President Obama was right on target in saying “the proof is not going to be in words; it’s going to be in deeds.”
— Brock Dahl is a former U.S. Treasury Department official who worked in the Treasury attaché’s office in Baghdad and on the Afghanistan Interagency Operations Group. He is currently a Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute and is pursuing a J.D. at the George Washington University Law School.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGRmYjM1ODk0MTViMTlkN2U1MzVmNWRkNzhlZjJmYzM=
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One of the notions that I have held throughout the War with Islamic Fascism is the importance of defining it as a matter of civilization vs barbarism. Seen through this filter, the true turning point of Iraq was not only the Surge, but the fact that the excessess of AQ Iraq provoked a situation in which both Sunni and Shia Muslims were able to work with the Surge.
Now that the Islamo Fascists of the Whackostans have frontally taken on the Pakistani State, we now "coincidentally" see the Pak State having at it with them on their home turf.
Of course our President now sees this as a moment to be shocked, absolutely shocked, that there is corruption in Afghanistan and apparently prepares the way to "Run Away!" -- just as he called for us to do in Iraq during the pivotal moments of decision making on the Surge.
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The Pakistani Army recently took control in Sararogha, a town in the South Waziristan region that militants had claimed as their capital.
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: November 17, 2009
SARAROGHA, Pakistan — This windswept, sand-colored town in the badlands of western Pakistan is empty now, cleared of the militants who once claimed it as their capital. But its main brick buildings, intact and thick with dust, tell not of an epic battle, but of sudden flight.
A month after the Pakistani military began its push into the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, militants appear to have been dispersed, not eliminated, with most simply fleeing. That recurring pattern illustrated the problems facing the Obama administration as it enters its final days of a decision on its strategy for Afghanistan.
Success in this region, in the remote mountains near the Afghan border, could have a direct bearing on how many more American troops are ultimately sent to Afghanistan, and how long they must stay.
Pakistan has shown increased willingness to tackle the problem, launching sweeping operations in the north and west of the country this year, but American officials are still urging it to do more, most recently in a letter from President Obama to Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, over the weekend.
On Tuesday, the military escorted journalists on a tour of the area, where it closely restricts access, showing piles of things they had seized, including weapons, bombs, photos and even a long, curly wig. “It all started from here,” said Brig. Muhammed Shafiq, the commander here. “This is the most important town in South Waziristan.”
But lasting success has been elusive, tempered by an agile enemy that has moved easily from one part of the tribal areas to the next — and even deeper into Pakistan — virtually every time it has been challenged.
American analysts expressed surprise at the relatively light fighting and light Pakistani Army casualties — seven soldiers in five days in Sararogha — supporting their suspicions that the Taliban fighters from the local Mehsud tribe and the foreign fighters who are their allies, including a large contingent of Uzbeks, have headed north or deeper into the mountains. In comparison, 51 Americans were killed in eight days of fighting in Falluja, Iraq, in 2004.
“That’s what bothers me,” an American intelligence officer said. “Where are they?”
The Pakistani military says it has learned from past failures in a region where it lost hundreds in fighting before. It spent weeks bombing the area before its 30,000 troops entered. It struck alliances with neighboring tribes.
But the pending campaign was no secret, allowing time for local people and militants to escape, similar to what happens during American operations in Afghanistan.
“They are fleeing in all directions,” said a senior Pakistani security official, who did not want to be identified while discussing national security issues. “The Uzbeks are fleeing to Afghanistan and the north, and the Mehsuds are fleeing to any possible place they can think of.”
But there was some fighting, as destruction in Sararogha’s market area shows, and the fact that the military now occupies the area is something of a success, analysts say. American officials have expressed measured praise for the Pakistani operation so far.
“The Pakistani Army has done pretty well, and they have learned lessons from the Swat campaign, including the use of close-air support from their fighter jets,” said a senior American intelligence official, referring to the army’s first offensive this spring.
But big questions remain: How long will the military be able to hold the territory? And once they leave, will the militants simply come back?
“Are they really winning the people — this is the big question,” said Talat Masood, a military analyst and former general in Islamabad, the capital. “They have weakened the Taliban tactically, but have they really won the area if the people are not with them?”
Winning them over will not be easy. Waziristan’s largely Pashtun population has been abandoned by the military in the past, including in 2005, when, after a peace deal, a military commander called Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Taliban, a “soldier of peace.” People who are from this area are still deeply skeptical of the army’s intentions.
“People want to know: how serious is the military this time?” said a military official who asked not to be named in order not to undermine the official position publicly.
The military argues that it is, saying that it has lost 70 soldiers in this operation so far, on top of more than 1,000 killed in the last several years of conflict.
Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, principal spokesman for the Pakistan military, said that about 50 percent of the Mehsud territory is now under army control, including most major towns and roads, and that the military would soon begin to press into villages where militants were hiding.
Finding a reliable local partner will be difficult. The Taliban and Al Qaeda have ruled the impoverished area for so long that they have altered its social structure, killing hundreds of tribal elders and making it hard for the military to negotiate.
The alliances that the military has struck with neighboring tribal leaders, including Hafiz Gul Bahadur, may also prove problematic. The senior Pakistani security official said Mr. Bahadur was hosting the families of two top Pakistani Taliban leaders.
Some American officials also voiced concern that if and when the Pakistani Army crushes the Mehsuds, it will declare victory and cut more permanent peace deals with other Pakistani militant factions, rather than fighting and defeating them.
But the Pakistani military argues that as long as the other groups are not attacking the Pakistani Army or state, it would be foolish to draw them into the war, particularly because Pakistan is not confident the United States will be around much longer.
Mr. Masood explained the thinking: “You are 10,000 miles away and we are going to live with them, so how can we take on every crook who is hostile to you?”
And there is history to overcome. One Pakistani intelligence official pointed to the American abandonment of the region in 1989, after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan. “If they leave in haste, like they left in the past, we will be back to the bad old days,” the official said. “Our jihadis would head back to Afghanistan, reopen training camps, and it will be business as usual.”
Sabrina Tavernise reported from Sararogha, Pakistan, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.
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As Afghans Resist Taliban, U.S. Spurs Rise of Militias
By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: November 21, 2009
ACHIN, Afghanistan — American and Afghan officials have begun helping a number of anti-Taliban militias that have independently taken up arms against insurgents in several parts of Afghanistan, prompting hopes of a large-scale tribal rebellion against the Taliban.
Members of the Afghan National Police, above, passed an abandoned Russian Army vehicle on a patrol near a village in Kunduz Province.
The emergence of the militias, which took some leaders in Kabul by surprise, has so encouraged the American and Afghan officials that they are planning to spur the growth of similar armed groups across the Taliban heartland in the southern and eastern parts of the country.
The American and Afghan officials say they are hoping the plan, called the Community Defense Initiative, will bring together thousands of gunmen to protect their neighborhoods from Taliban insurgents. Already there are hundreds of Afghans who are acting on their own against the Taliban, officials say.
The endeavor represents one of the most ambitious — and one of the riskiest — plans for regaining the initiative against the Taliban, who are fighting more vigorously than at any time since 2001.
By harnessing the militias, American and Afghan officials hope to rapidly increase the number of Afghans fighting the Taliban. That could supplement the American and Afghan forces already here, and whatever number of American troops President Obama might decide to send. The militias could also help fill the gap while the Afghan Army and police forces train and grow — a project that could take years to bear fruit.
The Americans hope the militias will encourage an increasingly demoralized Afghan population to take a stake in the war against the Taliban.
“The idea is to get people to take responsibility for their own security,” said a senior American military official in Kabul, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “In many places they are already doing that.”
The growth of the anti-Taliban militias runs the risk that they could turn on one another, or against the Afghan and American governments. The Americans say they will keep the groups small and will limit the scope of their activities to protecting villages and manning checkpoints.
For now, they are not arming the groups because they already have guns.
The Americans also say they will tie them directly to the Afghan government.
These checks aim to avoid repeating mistakes of the past — either creating more Afghan warlords, who have defied the government’s authority for years, or arming Islamic militants, some of whom came back to haunt the United States.
The American plan echoes a similar movement that unfolded in Iraq, beginning in late 2006, in which Sunni tribes turned against Islamist extremists.
That movement, called the Sunni Awakening, brought tens of thousands of former insurgents into government-supervised militias and helped substantially reduce the violence in Iraq. A rebellion on a similar scale seems unlikely in Afghanistan, in large part because the tribes here are so much weaker than those in Iraq.
The first phase of the Afghan plan, now being carried out by American Special Forces soldiers, is to set up or expand the militias in areas with a population of about a million people. Special Forces soldiers have been fanning out across the countryside, descending from helicopters into valleys where the residents have taken up arms against the Taliban and offering their help.
“We are trying to reach out to these groups that have organized themselves,” Col. Christopher Kolenda said in Kabul.
Afghan and American officials say they plan to use the militias as tripwires for Taliban incursions, enabling them to call the army or the police if things get out of hand.
The official assistance to the militias so far has been modest, consisting mainly of ammunition and food, officials said. But American and Afghan officials say they are also planning to train the fighters and provide communication equipment.
“What we are talking about is a local, spontaneous and indigenous response to the Taliban,” said Hanif Atmar, the Afghan interior minister. “The Afghans are saying, ‘We are willing and determined and capable to defend our country; just give us the resources.’ ”
In the Pashtun-dominated areas of the south and east, the anti-Taliban militias are being led by elders from local tribes. The Pashtun militias represent a reassertion of the country’s age-old tribal system, which binds villages and regions under the leadership of groups of elders.
The tribal networks have been alternately decimated and co-opted by Taliban insurgents. Local tribal leaders, while still powerful, cannot count on the allegiance of all of their tribes’ members.
Militias have begun taking up arms against the Taliban in several places where insurgents have gained a foothold, including the provinces of Nangarhar and Paktia.
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Published: November 21, 2009
(Page 2 of 2)
So far, there appears to be some divergence in the American and Afghan efforts. While American Special Forces units have focused on helping smaller militias, Afghan officials have been channeling assistance to larger armed groups, including those around the northern city of Kunduz. In that city, several armed groups, led by ethnic Uzbek commanders as well as Pashtuns, are confronting the Taliban.
“In Kunduz, after they defeated the Taliban in their villages, they became the power and they took money and taxes from the people,” Mr. Atmar, the interior minister, said. “This is not legal, and this is warlordism.”
Colonel Kolenda said, “In the long run, that is destabilizing.”
One of the most striking examples of a local militia rising up on its own is here in Achin, a predominantly Pashtun district in Nangarhar Province that straddles the border with Pakistan.
In July, a long-running dispute between local Taliban fighters and elders from the Shinwari tribe flared up. When a local Taliban warlord named Khona brought a more senior commander from Pakistan to help in the confrontation, the elders in the Shinwari tribe rallied villagers from up and down the valley where they live, killed the commander and chased Khona away.
The elders had insisted that the Taliban stay away from a group of Afghans building a dike in the valley. When Khona’s men kidnapped two Afghan engineers, the Shinwari elders decided they had had enough.
“The whole tribe was with me,” one of the elders said in an interview. “The Taliban came to kill me, and instead we killed them.”
The two tribal elders in Achin who led the rebellion spoke at length with The New York Times about their activities. At the request of American commanders in Kabul, who feared that the elders would be killed by the Taliban, the identities of the men are being withheld.
Since the fight, the Taliban have been kept away from a string of villages in Achin District that stretch for about six miles. The elders said they were able to do so by forming a group of more than 100 fighters and posting them at each end of the valley.
The elders said they had been marked for death by Taliban commanders on both sides of the border.
“Every day people call me and tell me the Taliban is trying to kill me,” one of the Shinwari elders said. “They call me and tell me: ‘Don’t take this road. Take a different one.’ I am worried about suicide bombers.”
The feud between the Taliban and the Shinwari elders caught the attention of American officers, who sent a team of Special Forces soldiers to the valley. This reporter was unable to reach the interior of the valley where the men live, so it was difficult to verify all of the elders’ claims.
Both the Shinwari elders said that “Americans with beards” had flown into the valley twice in recent weeks and had given them flour and boxes of ammunition. (Unlike other American troops, Special Forces soldiers are allowed to wear beards.)
American officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they intended to help organize and train the Shinwari militia. They said they would give them communication gear that would enable them to call the Afghan police if they needed help.
But that, as well as other aspects of the plan, seems problematic, at least for now. There are only about 50 Afghan police officers in Achin, the district center, and none in the valley. There are no Afghan Army soldiers in the area, and the nearest American base is many miles away.
The hope, of course, is that the revolt led by the Shinwari elders spreads. Each of the elders interviewed leads a branch of the 12 Shinwari tribes. If they survive, both elders said, they believe that others will join them.
“The Taliban are not popular here, not educated,” another Shinwari elder said. “They are stray dogs.”
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Pravda on the Hudson struggles with articulating His Glibness's strategy. There's so many references to "signaling" in the piece and so much blowing of smoke that for me it all blended into "smoke signals".
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WASHINGTON—In declaring Tuesday that he would “finish the job” in Afghanistan, President Obama used a phrase clearly meant to imply that even as he deploys an additional 30,000 or so troops, he has finally figured out how to bring the eight-year-long conflict to an end.
But offering that reassuring if somewhat contradictory signal — that by adding troops he can speed the United States toward an exit — is just the first of a set of tricky messages Mr. Obama will have to deliver as he rolls out his strategy publicly.
Over the next week, he will deliver multiple messages to multiple audiences: voters at home, allies, the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the extremists who are the enemy. And as Mr. Obama’s own aides concede, the messages directed at some may undercut the messages sent to others.
He must convince Democrats, especially the antiwar base that helped elect him, and the slim majority of the country that tells pollsters the conflict is no longer worth the sacrifice, that in sending more troops he is not escalating the war L.B.J.-style. In fact, some of those involved in the deliberations on an Afghanistan strategy say Mr. Obama will argue that providing the additional numbers is the fastest way to assure that the United States will be able to “finish the job,” because it will speed the training of the Afghan national army.
But at the same moment, he must persuade Republicans that he is giving the military what it needs to beat back the Taliban and keep Al Qaeda from threatening the United States.
That would be a difficult task even if Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s strategic assessments and troop requests had not been paraded across front pages, including his contention that the task will require 40,000 or more troops if Mr. Obama wants to create true security in the country’s major population centers.
At a time when Mr. Obama is vowing to reduce sky-high deficits, he must make the case that the price tag — roughly $1 million per soldier — is justified. He already faced pre-emptive resistance on Tuesday from the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
So it is no surprise that one of Mr. Obama’s senior aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged Tuesday that the forthcoming speech was a “potential minefield.” One of his national security strategists put Mr. Obama’s challenge this way: The trick, he said, will be “signaling resolve to the allies while not signaling open-ended commitment to the American people.”
Both sides of that equation are complicated.
Mr. Obama must signal resolve — and staying power — because the Dutch and the Canadians are both scheduled to be pulling their troops out of Afghanistan just as Mr. Obama is putting more forces in. In quiet meetings over the past month, American defense and national security officials have been trying to forestall those departures, while obtaining commitments of increasing numbers of troops from NATO allies.
So far, the administration has been successful only with the British, who have pledged an additional 500 troops. Germany, Italy and other NATO contributors have been silent, explaining to their American visitors that the war has become so unpopular at home that they can barely sustain the troop levels now in place.
“I think we’ll get there,” said an official who has been sent for those conversations. “But not in time for the president’s announcement.” Others said it may be early next year before Mr. Obama can extract any additional commitments.
Pakistan poses a particularly difficult problem. Mr. Obama has been highly attuned to the need to declare that the United States is not in what he recently called “an open-ended commitment” in Afghanistan.
But for years, throughout the Bush administration and into the Obama administration, American officials have been making trips to Pakistan to reassure its government that the United States has no intention of pulling out of Afghanistan as it did 20 years ago, after the Soviets retreated from the country. Inside the Pakistani Army and the intelligence service, which is known as the ISI, it is an article of faith among some officers that the United States is deceiving them, and that it will replay 1989.
If that happens, some Pakistanis argue, India will fill the void in southern Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan surrounded by its longtime enemy. So any talk of exit strategies is bound to reaffirm the belief of some Pakistani officials that they have to maintain their contacts with the Taliban — their hedge against Indian encroachment.
So the United States is stuck, one official said, between not wanting to suggest it will be a military presence in the region forever and showing enough commitment to encourage Pakistan to change its behavior.
Mr. Obama has a similar signaling problem with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. A parade of Washington officials, most recently Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, have traveled to Kabul to warn that continuing American help is dependent on the Afghan government’s meeting benchmarks in tackling corruption and building up credible security forces. But Mr. Obama is not likely to say what will happen if Mr. Karzai fails to deliver, for fear of further alienating the mercurial Afghan president.
At home, the more urgent issues are troop numbers and the cost of the escalation. Here, Mr. Obama will have more room to maneuver. Over the past two weeks, military officials have been expecting a decision that will give them roughly 34,000 additional troops, not far from what was sought by General McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan. At the White House and among the allies, the figure most commonly heard is just under 30,000.
Both figures, and anything in between, could prove right. Counting support troops and “trainers” is an art form in the military. The troops will be dispatched in phases, and Mr. Obama is likely to declare that he will review the deployment next year, to evaluate its progress.
That gives him the flexibility to tell the Democrats that his commitment is limited, and to tell the Republicans that he will do whatever it takes to win what, only three months ago, he called a “war of necessity.”
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I bet President Bush would have appreciated such support from POTH when he was rallying the nation to back the Surge , , , but I digress , , ,
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Afghans Offer Jobs to Taliban Rank and File if They Defect Recommend
DEXTER FILKINS
Published: November 27, 2009
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — The American-backed campaign to persuade legions of Taliban gunmen to stop fighting got under way here recently, in an ornate palace filled with Afghan tribal leaders and one very large former warlord leading the way.
“O.K., I want you guys to go out there and persuade the Taliban to sit down and talk,” Gul Agha Shirzai, the governor of Jalalabad, told a group of 25 tribal leaders from four eastern provinces. In a previous incarnation, Mr. Shirzai was the American-picked governor of Kandahar Province after the Taliban fell in 2001.
“Do whatever you have to do,” the rotund Mr. Shirzai told the assembled elders. “I’ll back you up.”
After about two hours of talking, Mr. Shirzai and the tribal elders rose, left for their respective provinces and promised to start turning the enemy.
The meeting is part of a battlefield push to lure local fighters and commanders away from the Taliban by offering them jobs in development projects that Afghan tribal leaders help select, paid by the American military and the Afghan government.
By enlisting the tribal leaders to help choose the development projects, the Americans also hope to help strengthen both the Afghan government and the Pashtun tribal networks.
These efforts are focusing on rank-and-file Taliban; while there are some efforts under way to negotiate with the leaders of the main insurgent groups, neither American nor Afghan officials have much faith that those talks will succeed soon.
Afghanistan has a long history of fighters switching sides — sometimes more than once. Still, efforts so far to persuade large numbers of Taliban fighters to give up have been less than a complete success. To date, about 9,000 insurgents have turned in their weapons and agreed to abide by the Afghan Constitution, said Muhammad Akram Khapalwak, the chief administrator for the Peace and Reconciliation Commission in Kabul.
But in an impoverished country ruined by 30 years of war, tribal leaders said that many more insurgents would happily put down their guns if there was something more worthwhile to do.
“Most of the Taliban in my area are young men who need jobs,” said Hajji Fazul Rahim, a leader of the Abdulrahimzai tribe, which spans three eastern provinces. “We just need to make them busy. If we give them work, we can weaken the Taliban.”
In the Jalalabad program, tribal elders would reach out to Taliban commanders to press them to change sides. The commanders and their fighters then would be offered jobs created by local development programs.
The Pashtuns, who form the core of the Taliban, make up a largely tribal society, with families connected to one another by kinship and led by groups of elders. Over the years, the Pashtun tribes have been substantially weakened, with elders singled out by three groups: Taliban fighters, the rebels who fought the former Soviet Union and the soldiers of the former Soviet Union itself. The decimation of the tribes has left Afghan society largely atomized.
Afghan and American officials hope that the plan to make peace with groups of Taliban fighters will complement an American-led effort to set up anti-Taliban militias in many parts of the country: the Pashtun tribes will help fight the Taliban, and they will make deals with the Taliban. And, by so doing, Afghan tribal society can be reinvigorated.
“We’re trying to put pressure on the leaders, and at the same time peel away their young fighters,” said an American military official in Kabul involved in the reconciliation effort. “This is not about handing bags of money to an insurgent.”
The Afghan reconciliation plan is intended to duplicate the Awakening movement in Iraq, where Sunni tribal leaders, many of them insurgents, agreed to stop fighting and in many cases were paid to do so. The Awakening contributed to the remarkable decline in violence in Iraq.
In the autumn of 2001, during the opening phase of the American-led war in Afghanistan, dozens of warlords fighting for the Taliban agreed to defect to the American-backed rebels. As in Iraq, the defectors were often enticed by cash, sometimes handed out by American Army Special Forces officers.
At a ceremony earlier this month in Kabul, about 70 insurgents laid down their guns before the commissioners and agreed to accept the Afghan Constitution. Some of the men had fought for the Taliban, some for Hezb-i-Islami, another insurgent group. The fighters’ motives ranged from disillusion to exhaustion.
“How long should we fight the government? How many more years?” said Molawi Fazullah, a Taliban lieutenant who surrendered with nine others. “Our leaders misled us, and we destroyed our country.”
Like many fighters who gave up at the ceremony, he shrouded his face with a scarf and sunglasses, for fear of being identified by his erstwhile comrades.
The Americans say they have no plans to give cash to local Taliban commanders. They say they would rather give them jobs.
In a defense appropriations bill recently approved by Congress, lawmakers set aside $1.3 billion for a program known by its acronym, CERP, a discretionary fund for American officers. Ordinarily, CERP money is used for development projects, but the language in the bill says officers can use the money to support the “reintegration into Afghan society” of those who have given up fighting.
For all the efforts under way to entice Taliban fighters to change sides, there will always be the old-fashioned approach: deadly force. American commanders also want to squeeze them; such is the rationale behind Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for tens of thousands of additional American troops.
Indeed, sometimes force alone does the trick. On Oct. 9, American Special Forces soldiers killed Ghulam Yahia, an insurgent commander believed responsible for, among other things, sending several suicide bombers into the western city of Herat. Mr. Yahia had changed sides himself in the past: earlier in the decade, he was Herat’s mayor.
When the Americans killed Mr. Yahia, in a mountain village called Bedak, 120 of his fighters defected to the Afghan government. Others went into hiding. Abdul Wahab, a former lieutenant of Mr. Yahia’s who led the defectors, said that the Afghan government had so far done nothing to protect them or offer them jobs. But he said he was glad he had made the jump anyway.
“We are tired of war,” he said. “We don’t want it anymore.”
Sangar Rahimi and Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
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Pakistan: Nuclear Weapons and a Presidential Struggle
Stratfor Today » November 28, 2009 | 1915 GMT
VINCENZO PINTO/AFP/Getty Images
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Sept. 29 in ItalySummary
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari late on Nov. 27 handed over control of the country’s nuclear arsenal to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. The move is more about the president’s political survival than the South Asian nation’s nuclear weapons. Zardari’s efforts are unlikely to bear fruit and the potential political instability could have grave implications for Islamabad’s counter-insurgency efforts against jihadists and Washington’s plans for the region.
Analysis
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari late on Nov. 27 transferred power of the country’s nuclear arsenal to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. According to a statement from presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar, Zardari issued the 2009 National Command Authority (NCA) Ordinance — an amendment to the original ordinance that was issued by former President Pervez Musharraf naming the president chairman and the prime minister vice-chairman. The amendment is part of a re-promulgation of 27 ordinances that were enacted by Musharraf, which the Supreme Court ruled on July 31would expire on Nov. 28 if parliament did not approve them.
The move is Zardari’s way of catering to the demand from across the country that he shed powers he inherited from Musharraf, yet allowing him to retain control over the government. He hopes giving up the chairmanship will help defuse pressure from the military — the state’s principal stakeholder.
The military opposes Zardari primarily because it perceives he is working with the United States to weaken the position of the military through the recently approved Kerry-Lugar Aid package. The military has also been particularly concerned that the multibillion-dollar assistance program undermines the country’s national defense by seeking to limit its nuclear weapons arsenal. But domestic and international circumstances limit the military’s ability to get rid of the president, hence the increasingly complex legal procedures against him.
From Zardari’s point of view, the chairmanship is symbolic: The nuclear establishment is dominated by the military. The chairmanship was significant under Musharraf, who served as president and military chief. Currently, with a civilian president, the real players in the nuclear establishment are the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC); Gen. Tariq Majid, who heads the powerful Development Control Committee (DCC); and the director general of Strategic Plans Division (SPD), retired Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai.
The chairman only plays a role when rare strategic decisions have to be made — at which time the entire committee meets. Given that the chairman, despite being the committee’s head, is one of many NCA members who are among the top brass and civilian leadership in the nation, Zardari is not losing much by handing the post over to Gilani. If anything, it could help, given that Gilani is more acceptable to the military and the country as a whole. The DCC and the Employment Control Committee (which includes the defense, interior and finance ministers, the CJCSC, the SPD chief and the three armed services chiefs with the foreign minister at the helm) make up the NCA.
As far as command and control of the nuclear arsenal are concerned, these political maneuverings and domestic changes are superficial. The nuclear establishment is not affected by the political changes. In the event of a true crisis, the civilian and military leadership would be jointly involved in nuclear decisions.
In addition to the NCA move, Zardari on Nov. 27 told private television channel Express News that the controversial 17th amendment would be abolished by parliament in December. The 17th amendment of 2003 rendered Musharraf more powerful than the legislature or the prime minister, as opposed to the original 1973 constitution. Yet it is unclear to what extent Zardari, who also heads the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, would be willing to heed to the growing demand that he shed powers he enjoys, including the right to dismiss parliament and appoint the military chiefs.
The country’s constitution calls for a parliamentary form of government in which the popularly elected prime minister is the chief executive, while the president, elected by national and provincial legislatures, is a ceremonial head of state. However, through long periods of military rule, through some crafty constitutional and political engineering, the president has remained powerful while the prime minister was relegated to the status of a vice-president. Interestingly, it is ironic that the military wants to return to the original system, when it favored a strong presidency in the past.
Ideally, Zardari would like to appoint the next army chief when Gen. Ashfaq Kayani retires in November 2010. Given Zardari’s weak position and the pressure from the military, he is likely to also relinquish this authority to the prime minister. As head of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party — and in his pursuit to hold onto that role — Zardari must try to retain control of the government, even as he is forced to accept a presidency with ceremonial powers. The dilemma for Zardari is: How does he retain control over the government should he be forced to accept a presidency with ceremonial powers?
Furthermore, within months he may face a constitutional ouster, given the brewing controversy surrounding the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), which also expired Nov. 28. Musharraf in late 2007 issued the NRO, which granted amnesty to politicians accused of corruption, murder and other criminal activity.That made it possible for Zardari and many of his key allies to rise to power. The law’s expiration sets into motion a political and constitutional crisis because of the revival of all criminal cases against thousands of senior government officials — a development temporarily delayed by the Eid al-Adha holiday.
Once the country returns from the holiday, the domestic political crisis will likely overshadow all other issues. Because Zardari has legal immunity from prosecution so long as he holds the office of president, it will be sometime before the presidency will be affected. However, many senior Cabinet ministers, appointees and bureaucrats will have to face the courts – overwhelming the judiciary. Zardari’s opponents seek to force him out of office by challenging his eligibility to run for the presidency in the Supreme Court, which is expected to be the main event in the coming legal storm.
Pakistan’s civilian institutions historically have been weak, with political instability hardwired into the state system. Even as the civilian institutions try to assert themselves, the end result is the same instability — and it comes at a critical time when the country’s military has its hands full with a major counter-insurgency offensive against jihadists. This latest round of instability could exacerbate the problems the United States and its NATO allies face as they try to come up with a strategy for neighboring Afghanistan.
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Pakistan: The South Waziristan Offensive Continues
Stratfor Today » November 25, 2009 | 2145 GMT
NASEER MEHSUD/AFP/Getty Images
A Pakistani army soldier guards his South Waziristan post Nov. 18 as he watches internally displaced civilians fleeing from military operations against Taliban militants
Summary
Inspector-General of the Pakistani Frontier Corps Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan said Nov. 24 that South Waziristan would be split into two separate agencies. The statement comes nearly six weeks into a Pakistani military offensive to root out Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) forces from their stronghold in South Waziristan, and will form part of Pakistan’s political strategy to maintain alliances with neutral tribal leaders and prevent the Taliban from re-entrenching themselves in the region.
Analysis
The military offensive Rah-i-Nijat is entering its sixth week of ground operations in South Waziristan. The Pakistani army has been fighting through a section of South Waziristan home to the Mehsud tribe that was, until recently, the center of operations for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The military has employed a strategy of attacking this area from three directions: Jandola-Sararogha, Shakai-Kaniguram and Razmak-Makeen. Each axis has led to the capture of major roads and major population centers in the area — objectives that deny militants mobility and sanctuary.
The military has not completely consolidated its control over the area — militant ambushes, mortar and improvised explosive devices (IED) attacks continue. However, the military has captured and cleared the major population centers of Sararogha, Kaniguram and Makeen, and is now moving to other strategic population centers such as Ladha (where there is a fort that was taken by the TTP in 2008) and Janata, as well as clearing smaller villages outside of the larger towns.
It is important to emphasize that military operations are ongoing and that the Pakistani forces deployed to South Waziristan will be tied up there for some time. Presently, there is no withdrawal plan and the military has not indicated when operation Rah-i-Nijat will conclude. This also means that internally displace persons (IDPs) in South Waziristan will continue to be without homes for a while. However, the total IDPs resulting from Rah-i-Nijat number around 300,000 — much more manageable for the government than the nearly 2 million IDPs that resulted from Rah-i-Rast, the May 2009 military operation in the Swat Valley.
Pakistan, however, still faces many challenges, including how it can mitigate the dispersion of soldiers and prevent the TTP from simply re-establishing itself outside of South Waziristan. Even before military operations began, many of the high-level TTP commanders were believed to have fled to other areas of Pakistan, so it is key that the militant threat does not return and re-establish itself as soon as the military operations end. By the nature of non-state groups like the Taliban, leaders are elusive, so capturing or killing all of them is extremely difficult, but disrupting their bases of operations will likely weaken their power and frustrate their objectives against the Pakistani state.
In addition to the South Waziristan, the army has also paid considerable attention to the northern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) agencies of Bajaur, Orakzai, and Khyber, where pre-existing Taliban allies remain strong and have likely attracted at least some fleeing militants from South Waziristan. Militants in Bajaur Agency continue to engage the Pakistani army, and as recently as Nov. 22, the army killed 16 militants in an operation there that was part of the larger mission of preventing the spread of militant fighters. Despite recent success against militants in Bajaur, Islamabad still faces belligerents there.
Meanwhile, in Orakzai Agency (which was the home of current TTP leader Hakeemullah Mehsud before he took over following Baitullah Mehsud’s death), the Pakistani air force has conducted a sustained air campaign against several militant positions and killed scores of militants. However, it is clear that the TTP and its militant allies have maintained their capability to attack the Pakistani state, as seen by the string of attacks since Rah-i-Nijat began.
Additionally, Pakistani ground forces and helicopter gunships have been patrolling Khyber Agency to protect the major route that is used to supply NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan as well as deny militants a sanctuary from which they can strike at nearby Peshawar. Lashkar-i-Islam (LI) in collaboration with the TTP is likely responsible for recent attacks in Peshawar. Even though LI is more oriented toward organized crime and making money by smuggling goods into Afghanistan, it has an interest in allying with the TTP (which it has been in competition with) in order to resist the state’s offensive.
The Nov. 24 announcement that South Waziristan will be divided and politically administered as two separate agencies (raising the number of agencies in FATA from seven to eight) is also part of Islamabad’s strategy to maintain order in South Waziristan once the military mission there is complete. The specific geographical split is not yet clear, but it will largely divide the Mehsud and Waziri tribal areas. The Mehsud area is in the center of South Waziristan, where the TTP has its largest presence and, consequently, where the Pakistani military has launched operation Rah-i-Nijat. The Waziri tribal area (largely under the control of Taliban warlord Maulvi Nazir Ahmad) is located primarily in the west along the border with Afghanistan.
Maulvi Nazir and the Waziri tribes located along the Afghan border have cooperated with Islamabad by remaining neutral before and during the execution of Rah-i-Nijat. Nazir’s forces are more concerned with fighting Western forces in Afghanistan and have not taken up arms against Islamabad. The understanding reached between Islamabad and Nazir was an effort to divide forces in South Waziristan in order to isolate the TTP and its leadership from neighboring tribes, whose combined resistance to the Pakistani military would have frustrated their mission. Splitting South Waziristan agency in two would be a continuation of the strategy to divide control of the geographically difficult-to-govern territory in order to weaken remaining TTP elements. This also would have put the TTP’s area of operation under Islamabad’s direct control without unnecessarily impeding upon other actors in the region (like the Waziris) whom Islamabad is wary of further alienating.
Islamabad is considering several options to govern South Waziristan and FATA in general after Rah-i-Nijat. First, FATA may lose its autonomous status and become another province, which would give Islamabad more control over the area’s governance and services. Another option would be to follow the recent example of Gilgit-Baltistan in the north, which is not a new province but will now be responsible for its own regional executive, legislature and judiciary. FATA could also be incorporated into the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and its governing structures assimilated into the NWFP’s government (which is much more closely controlled than FATA). Regardless of what happens, it will be quite some time before military control on the ground can permit effective political changes that would drastically alter the way the area is governed.
The federal government is responsible for these decisions, which is itself suffering from destabilizing disputes like the one surrounding the National Reconciliation Ordinance — a highly controversial piece of legislation that granted amnesty to politicians accused of corruption and other criminal activity, many of whom are part of the current government.
But for now, the Pakistani military is still occupied with the task of securing the area and preventing the TTP from taking back what it has lost. The future success of this offensive depends upon the outcome of the political battle in Islamabad over the NRO, which will be heating up once the legislation expires on Nov. 28.
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Regarding President BO's speech last night:
Let me see if I have this straight:
1) This is a "must win war";
2) We will begin leaving in 18 months;
3) We will leave our fate in the hands of the Afghan Army whether it is ready or not;
4) Pakistan and the people of Afghanistan, knowing that we are leaving, will align with us;
5) We can't afford to stay any longer than because we need to pass the President's health care, cap and trade, and so much other spending;
6) Therefore we will give Gen. McChrystal less troops than he has said are necessary to prevent defeat.
Is that about right?
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That would be funny, were it not so painfully true. :|
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second post of the morning:
Obama's Plan and the Key Battleground
December 2, 2009
By George Friedman
U.S. President Barack Obama announced the broad structure of his Afghanistan
strategy in a speech at West Point on Tuesday evening. The strategy had
three core elements. First, he intends to maintain pressure on al Qaeda on
the Afghan-Pakistani border and in other regions of the world. Second, he
intends to blunt the Taliban offensive by sending an additional 30,000
American troops to Afghanistan, along with an unspecified number of NATO
troops he hopes will join them. Third, he will use the space created by the
counteroffensive against the Taliban and the resulting security in some
regions of Afghanistan to train and build Afghan military forces and
civilian structures to assume responsibility after the United States
withdraws. Obama added that the U.S. withdrawal will begin in July 2011, but
provided neither information on the magnitude of the withdrawal nor the date
when the withdrawal would conclude. He made it clear that these will depend
on the situation on the ground, adding that the U.S. commitment is finite.
In understanding this strategy, we must begin with an obvious but unstated
point: The extra forces that will be deployed to Afghanistan are not
expected to defeat the Taliban. Instead, their mission is to reverse the
momentum of previous years and to create the circumstances under which an
Afghan force can take over the mission. The U.S. presence is therefore a
stopgap measure, not the ultimate solution.
The ultimate solution is training an Afghan force to engage the Taliban over
the long haul, undermining support for the Taliban, and dealing with al
Qaeda forces along the Pakistani border and in the rest of Afghanistan. If
the United States withdraws all of its forces as Obama intends, the Afghan
military would have to assume all of these missions. Therefore, we must
consider the condition of the Afghan military to evaluate the strategy's
viability.
Afghanistan vs. Vietnam
Obama went to great pains to distinguish Afghanistan from Vietnam, and there
are indeed many differences. The core strategy adopted by Richard Nixon (not
Lyndon Johnson) in Vietnam, called "Vietnamization," saw U.S. forces working
to blunt and disrupt the main North Vietnamese forces while the Army of the
Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) would be trained, motivated and deployed to
replace U.S. forces to be systematically withdrawn from Vietnam. The
equivalent of the Afghan surge was the U.S. attack on North Vietnamese Army
(NVA) bases in Cambodia and offensives in northern South Vietnam designed to
disrupt NVA command and control and logistics and forestall a major
offensive by the NVA. Troops were in fact removed in parallel with the
Cambodian offensives.
Nixon faced two points Obama now faces. First, the United States could not
provide security for South Vietnam indefinitely. Second, the South
Vietnamese would have to provide security for themselves. The role of the
United States was to create the conditions under which the ARVN would become
an effective fighting force; the impending U.S. withdrawal was intended to
increase the pressure on the Vietnamese government to reform and on the ARVN
to fight.
Many have argued that the core weakness of the strategy was that the ARVN
was not motivated to fight. This was certainly true in some cases, but the
idea that the South Vietnamese were generally sympathetic to the Communists
is untrue. Some were, but many weren't, as shown by the minimal refugee
movement into NVA-held territory or into North Vietnam itself contrasted
with the substantial refugee movement into U.S./ARVN-held territory and away
from NVA forces. The patterns of refugee movement are, we think, highly
indicative of true sentiment.
Certainly, there were mixed sentiments, but the failure of the ARVN was not
primarily due to hostility or even lack of motivation. Instead, it was due
to a problem that must be addressed and overcome if the Afghanistation war
is to succeed. That problem is understanding the role that Communist
sympathizers and agents played in the formation of the ARVN.
By the time the ARVN expanded - and for that matter from its very
foundation - the North Vietnamese intelligence services had created a
systematic program for inserting operatives and recruiting sympathizers at
every level of the ARVN, from senior staff and command positions down to the
squad level. The exploitation of these assets was not random nor merely
intended to undermine moral. Instead, it provided the NVA with strategic,
operational and tactical intelligence on ARVN operations, and when ARVN and
U.S. forces operated together, on U.S. efforts as well.
In any insurgency, the key for insurgent victory is avoiding battles on the
enemy's terms and initiating combat only on the insurgents' terms. The NVA
was a light infantry force. The ARVN - and the U.S. Army on which it was
modeled - was a much heavier, combined-arms force. In any encounter between
the NVA and its enemies the NVA would lose unless the encounter was at the
time and place of the NVA's choosing. ARVN and U.S. forces had a tremendous
advantage in firepower and sheer weight. But they had a significant
weakness: The weight they bought to bear meant they were less agile. The NVA
had a tremendous weakness. Caught by surprise, it would be defeated. And it
had a great advantage: Its intelligence network inside the ARVN generally
kept it from being surprised. It also revealed weakness in its enemies'
deployment, allowing it to initiate successful offensives.
All war is about intelligence, but nowhere is this truer than in
counterinsurgency and guerrilla war, where invisibility to the enemy and
maintaining the initiative in all engagements is key. Only clear
intelligence on the enemy's capability gives this initiative to an
insurgent, and only denying intelligence to the enemy - or knowing what the
enemy knows and intends - preserves the insurgent force.
The construction of an Afghan military is an obvious opportunity for Taliban
operatives and sympathizers to be inserted into the force. As in Vietnam,
such operatives and sympathizers are not readily distinguishable from loyal
soldiers; ideology is not something easy to discern. With these operatives
in place, the Taliban will know of and avoid Afghan army forces and will
identify Afghan army weaknesses. Knowing that the Americans are withdrawing
as the NVA did in Vietnam means the rational strategy of the Taliban is to
reduce operational tempo, allow the withdrawal to proceed, and then take
advantage of superior intelligence and the ability to disrupt the Afghan
forces internally to launch the Taliban offensives.
The Western solution is not to prevent Taliban sympathizers from penetrating
the Afghan army. Rather, the solution is penetrating the Taliban. In
Vietnam, the United States used signals intelligence extensively. The NVA
came to understand this and minimized radio communications, accepting
inefficient central command and control in return for operational security.
The solution to this problem lay in placing South Vietnamese into the NVA.
There were many cases in which this worked, but on balance, the NVA had a
huge advantage in the length of time it had spent penetrating the ARVN
versus U.S. and ARVN counteractions. The intelligence war on the whole went
to the North Vietnamese. The United States won almost all engagements, but
the NVA made certain that it avoided most engagements until it was ready.
In the case of Afghanistan, the United States has far more sophisticated
intelligence-gathering tools than it did in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the basic
principle remains: An intelligence tool can be understood, taken into
account and evaded. By contrast, deep penetration on multiple levels by
human intelligence cannot be avoided.
Pakistan's Role
Obama mentioned Pakistan's critical role. Clearly, he understands the
lessons of Vietnam regarding sanctuary, and so he made it clear that he
expects Pakistan to engage and destroy Taliban forces on its territory and
to deny Afghan Taliban supplies, replacements and refuge. He cited the Swat
and South Waziristan offensives as examples of the Pakistanis' growing
effectiveness. While this is a significant piece of his strategy, the
Pakistanis must play another role with regard to intelligence.
The heart of Obama's strategy lies not in the surge, but rather in turning
the war over to the Afghans. As in Vietnam, any simplistic model of
loyalties doesn't work. There are Afghans sufficiently motivated to form the
core of an effective army. As in Vietnam, the problem is that this army will
contain large numbers of Taliban sympathizers; there is no way to prevent
this. The Taliban is not stupid: It has and will continue to move its people
into as many key positions as possible.
The challenge lies in leveling the playing field by inserting operatives
into the Taliban. Since the Afghan intelligence services are inherently
insecure, they can't carry out such missions. American personnel bring
technical intelligence to bear, but that does not compensate for human
intelligence. The only entity that could conceivably penetrate the Taliban
and remain secure is the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This
would give the Americans and Afghans knowledge of Taliban plans and
deployments. This would diminish the ability of the Taliban to evade
attacks, and although penetrated as well, the Afghan army would enjoy a
chance ARVN never had.
But only the ISI could do this, and thinking of the ISI as secure is hard to
do from a historical point of view. The ISI worked closely with the Taliban
during the Afghan civil war that brought it to power and afterwards, and the
ISI had many Taliban sympathizers. The ISI underwent significant purging and
restructuring to eliminate these elements over recent years, but no one
knows how successful these efforts were.
The ISI remains the center of gravity of the entire problem. If the war is
about creating an Afghan army, and if we accept that the Taliban will
penetrate this army heavily no matter what, then the only counter is to
penetrate the Taliban equally. Without that, Obama's entire strategy fails
as Nixon's did.
In his talk, Obama quite properly avoided discussing the intelligence aspect
of the war. He clearly cannot ignore the problem we have laid out, but
neither can he simply count on the ISI. He does not need the entire ISI for
this mission, however. He needs a carved out portion - compartmentalized and
invisible to the greatest possible extent - to recruit and insert operatives
into the Taliban and to create and manage communication networks so as to
render the Taliban transparent. Given Taliban successes of late, it isn't
clear whether he has this intelligence capability. Either way, we would have
to assume that some Pakistani solution to the Taliban intelligence issue has
been discussed (and such a solution must be Pakistani for ethnic and
linguistic reasons).
Every war has its center of gravity, and Obama has made clear that the
center of gravity of this war will be the Afghan military's ability to
replace the Americans in a very few years. If that is the center of gravity,
and if maintaining security against Taliban penetration is impossible, then
the single most important enabler to Obama's strategy would seem to be the
ability to make the Taliban transparent.
Therefore, Pakistan is important not only as the Cambodia of this war, the
place where insurgents go to regroup and resupply, but also as a key element
of the solution to the intelligence war. It is all about Pakistan. And that
makes Obama's plan difficult to execute. It is far easier to write these
words than to execute a plan based on them. But to the extent Obama is
serious about the Afghan army taking over, he and his team have had to think
about how to do this.
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third post of the morning
Obama Announces New U.S. Afghan Strategy
U
.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, speaking at West Point, laid out his new strategy for “concluding” the Afghan war. The short version is as follows: 30,000 additional U.S. troops will begin deployment at the fastest possible rate beginning in early 2010; the force’s primary goal will be to enable Afghan forces to carry on the war themselves; U.S. troops will begin withdrawing by July 2011 and complete their withdrawal by the end of the president’s current term.
Obama outlined a series of goals for U.S. forces, the four most critical of which STRATFOR will reproduce here. The first is to deny al Qaeda a safe-haven. The second is to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government, largely by securing key population centers. The third is to strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s Security Forces and government so that more Afghans can get into the fight. The fourth is to create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.
“In many ways the new strategy seems less like an active military strategy than one of a series of mild gambles.”
Let us first look at the somewhat obvious points from STRATFOR’s point of view:
There isn’t a lot that you can do in 18 months, even with that many troops. You certainly cannot eradicate the Taliban. Even reversing the Taliban’s momentum as Obama hopes to do is a very tall order. And you might find it fairly difficult to root out the apex leadership of al Qaeda, especially if it is in Pakistan instead of Afghanistan. Simply pursuing that goal would require the regular insertion of forces into Pakistan, enraging the country upon which NATO military supply chains depend. Even more so, having full withdrawal by the end of Obama’s current term puts a large logistical strain on the force, giving it less manpower to achieve its goals — particularly once the drawdown begins in July 2011. For most of the period in question, the United States will have far fewer than the roughly 100,000 troops at the ready that the Obama policy envisions.
In many ways the new strategy seems less like an active military strategy than one of a series of mild gambles: that the force will be sufficient to (temporarily) turn the tide against the Taliban, that this shift will be sufficient to allow the Afghan army to step forward, and that this shift will be sufficient to allow U.S. forces to withdraw without major incident. That’s tricky at best.
Now for the less-than-obvious points:
Ramrodding 30,000 troops into Afghanistan immediately will severely tax the military. Bear in mind that the drawdown in Iraq has only recently begun, and forces pulled from Iraq will either need substantial time to rest and retool before they can do something else, which in many cases may to be shipped off to Afghanistan. The ability of U.S. ground forces to react to any problem anywhere in the world in 2010 just decreased from marginal to nonexistent. Many of America’s rivals are sure to take note.
However, by committing to a clear three-year timeframe, Obama is aiming for something that Bush did not. He is bringing the U.S. military back into the global system as opposed to its current sequestering in the Islamic world. The key factor that has enabled many states to challenge U.S. power in recent years — Russia’s August 2008 war with Georgia perhaps being the best example — is that the United States has lacked the military bandwidth to deploy troops outside of its two ongoing wars. If Obama is able to carry out his planned Iraqi and Afghan withdrawals on schedule, the United States will shift rapidly from massive overextension to full deployment capability.
And so states that have been taking advantage of the window of opportunity caused by American preoccupation now have something new to incorporate into their plans: the date the window closes.
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4th post of the morning.
Tis a rare event, but a reasoned piece from Thomas Friedman:
This I Believe
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: December 1, 2009
Let me start with the bottom line and then tell you how I got there: I can’t agree with President Obama’s decision to escalate in Afghanistan. I’d prefer a minimalist approach, working with tribal leaders the way we did to overthrow the Taliban regime in the first place. Given our need for nation-building at home right now, I am ready to live with a little less security and a little-less-perfect Afghanistan.
I recognize that there are legitimate arguments on the other side. At a lunch on Tuesday for opinion writers, the president lucidly argued that opting for a surge now to help Afghans rebuild their army and state into something decent — to win the allegiance of the Afghan people — offered the only hope of creating an “inflection point,” a game changer, to bring long-term stability to that region. May it be so. What makes me wary about this plan is how many moving parts there are — Afghans, Pakistanis and NATO allies all have to behave forever differently for this to work.
But here is the broader context in which I assess all this: My own foreign policy thinking since 9/11 has been based on four pillars:
1. The Warren Buffett principle: Everything I’ve ever gotten in life is largely due to the fact that I was born in this country, America, at this time with these opportunities for its citizens. It is the primary obligation of our generation to turn over a similar America to our kids.
2. Many big bad things happen in the world without America, but not a lot of big good things. If we become weak and enfeebled by economic decline and debt, as we slowly are, America may not be able to play its historic stabilizing role in the world. If you didn’t like a world of too-strong-America, you will really not like a world of too-weak-America — where China, Russia and Iran set more of the rules.
3. The context within which people live their lives shapes everything — from their political outlook to their religious one. The reason there are so many frustrated and angry people in the Arab-Muslim world, lashing out first at their own governments and secondarily at us — and volunteering for “martyrdom” — is because of the context within which they live their lives. That was best summarized by the U.N.’s Arab Human Development reports as a context dominated by three deficits: a deficit of freedom, a deficit of education and a deficit of women’s empowerment. The reason India, with the world’s second-largest population of Muslims, has a thriving Muslim minority (albeit with grievances but with no prisoners in Guantánamo Bay) is because of the context of pluralism and democracy it has built at home.
4. One of the main reasons the Arab-Muslim world has been so resistant to internally driven political reform is because vast oil reserves allow its regimes to become permanently ensconced in power, by just capturing the oil tap, and then using the money to fund vast security and intelligence networks that quash any popular movement. Look at Iran.
Hence, post-9/11 I advocated that our politicians find sufficient courage to hike gasoline taxes and seriously commit ourselves to developing alternatives to oil. Economists agree that this would ultimately bring down the global price, and slowly deprive these regimes of the sole funding source that allows them to maintain their authoritarian societies. People do not change when we tell them they should; they change when their context tells them they must.
To me, the most important reason for the Iraq war was never W.M.D. It was to see if we could partner with Iraqis to help them build something that does not exist in the modern Arab world: a state, a context, where the constituent communities — Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — write their own social contract for how to live together without an iron fist from above. Iraq has proved staggeringly expensive and hugely painful. The mistakes we made should humble anyone about nation-building in Afghanistan. It does me.
Still, the Iraq war may give birth to something important — if Iraqis can find that self-sustaining formula to live together. Alas, that is still in doubt. If they can, the model would have a huge impact on the Arab world. Baghdad is a great Arab capital. If Iraqis fail, it’s religious strife, economic decline and authoritarianism as far as the eye can see — the witch’s brew that spawns terrorists.
Iraq was about “the war on terrorism.” The Afghanistan invasion, for me, was about the “war on terrorists.” To me, it was about getting bin Laden and depriving Al Qaeda of a sanctuary — period. I never thought we could make Afghanistan into Norway — and even if we did, it would not resonate beyond its borders the way Iraq might.
To now make Afghanistan part of the “war on terrorism” — i.e., another nation-building project — is not crazy. It is just too expensive, when balanced against our needs for nation-building in America, so that we will have the strength to play our broader global role. Hence, my desire to keep our presence in Afghanistan limited. That is what I believe. That is why I believe it.
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Summary
U.S. President Barack Obama’s long-awaited announcement on U.S. strategy for the war in Afghanistan is not sitting well in Islamabad or New Delhi. While Pakistan now has to figure out how to keep American forces from taking more aggressive action against jihadists in Pakistan, India does not want to deal with the messy aftermath of a U.S. military exit from the region in two years. Meanwhile, the jihadists operating in Pakistan have a greater incentive to create a crisis on the Indo-Pakistani border through rogue attacks in India — a scenario that could well upset Obama’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.
Analysis
U.S. President Barack Obama announced Dec. 1 the broad strokes of his administration’s strategy for the war in Afghanistan. In short, he said there are three main objectives: deny al Qaeda a safe haven on the Afghan-Pakistani border, halt the momentum of the Taliban offensive in Afghanistan with an additional 30,000 troops, and train and build Afghan security and civilian forces to deal with the jihadist threat themselves. Notably, Obama also refused to commit to a long-haul nation-building strategy in Afghanistan. On the contrary, he defined the endgame for the war and specified that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan could begin as early as July 2011.
Pakistani Concerns
Pakistan’s primary concern with the strategy has to deal with the first objective: denying al Qaeda a safe haven. It is well known that al Qaeda’s safe haven is not in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are concentrated, but in Pakistan, where Pakistani forces employ a much more nuanced method of distinguishing between “good” and “bad” jihadists.
Under the Obama plan, the U.S. military is evidently working on a tight timeline to demonstrate (prior to the 2012 U.S. elections) that al Qaeda has been defeated. The United States needs results and it needs them fast. Pakistan can thus assume that the United States is about to apply a lot more pressure on Islamabad to dismantle al Qaeda in Pakistan.
But Pakistan’s definition of “bad” jihadists does not mesh with that of the United States. Indeed, the targets of Pakistan’s offensive in Swat and South Waziristan have been those Taliban militants who have clearly turned against the Pakistani state, namely the Tehrik-i-Taliban movement. Al Qaeda and its allies, on the other hand, have strategically kept their focus on Afghanistan while maintaining a safe haven in Pakistan. If Pakistan widens the scope of its counterinsurgency efforts to include the militants on Washington’s hit list — particularly the Haqqani network, the Mullah Omar-led group of Afghan Taliban, Maulvi Nazir, Hafiz Gulf Bahadir and other high-value targets with strong linkages to al Qaeda — then the Pakistani military will be forced to deal with a bigger backlash.
Pakistan continues to deliberate over how the United States actually intends to achieve its objective of denying al Qaeda safe haven in Pakistan. In private discussions with Pakistani leaders, the United States has delivered an ultimatum to Islamabad: either give up its militant-proxy project and enjoy the political, economic and military benefits of an enhanced relationship with Washington or the United States will take unilateral action on Pakistani soil. Such unilateral action would go beyond the CIA’s unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in the borderlands and likely entail sending in fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft with special forces for quick “get in and get out” operations against al Qaeda targets deep inside Pakistani territory. The United States carried out such an overt incursion in Pakistan in September 2008 in South Waziristan, which led to widespread popular backlash inside the country.
This type of unilateral U.S. military action is a redline for the Pakistani military. The impression STRATFOR has gotten from Pakistani military sources is that Islamabad is still quite confident that the United States won’t risk a serious destabilization of Pakistan in pursuit of its counterterrorism objectives. In fact, Pakistani officials have made it a point to paint a doomsday scenario for the United States should the Pakistani military be pushed to the edge in its fight against Pakistani jihadists while trying to hold a feeble government and shaky economy together.
Pakistan will thus try to hedge as best it can to keep U.S. forces at bay. The Pakistani military has a strategic imperative to continue along the current path and engage in limited military offensives against those jihadists who have turned on the Pakistani state while turning a blind eye to those jihadists whose efforts are focused on Afghanistan and/or India. But the United States is unlikely to tolerate Pakistan’s way of handling its jihadist threat, particularly now that U.S. forces are under a tight deadline to neutralize al Qaeda in Pakistan.
As U.S. pressure on Islamabad and the threat to Pakistani sovereignty inevitably increase in the months ahead, Pakistan will rely more heavily on intelligence cooperation with Washington to manage its relationship with the United States. STRATFOR’s Geopolitical Intelligence Report this week discusses in depth how the U.S. battle against al Qaeda and its jihadist allies is largely an intelligence war, one in which Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate could play a crucial role in penetrating al Qaeda and the Taliban. The more reliant the United States is on Pakistani intelligence to achieve its aims in Afghanistan, the better able Islamabad will be in convincing Washington that it’s better off leaving the Pakistani segment of the U.S.-jihadist war to the Pakistanis — or so Pakistan hopes. At the end of the day, Pakistan cannot escape its fear that the United States will take more aggressive action on Pakistani soil with or without Islamabad’s consent.
Pakistan also has a deeper dilemma to contend with concerning its relationship with the United States. Though Pakistan’s alliance with the United States has often left Pakistan feeling betrayed, Pakistan still needs a great power patron with enough interest in the region, like the United States, to counter India. During the Cold War, Pakistan was the key for the United States in containing Soviet expansion in South-Central Asia. Today, Pakistan is the key to containing radical Islamism. In both cases, Pakistan has benefited from U.S. political, economic and military support in its attempts to level the playing field with India.
Though the U.S. partnership with Pakistan against the jihadists is fraught with complications, Pakistan still does not want the day to come when U.S. forces draw down from the region and leave it to Islamabad to pick up the pieces of the jihadist war. If the United States is sufficiently satisfied with its mission in the region by the summer of 2011 to draw down forces according to the timeline Obama laid out, U.S. interest in Pakistan will wane and Islamabad will be left in a difficult position. Pakistan is feeling especially vulnerable these days considering the United States’ growing strategic partnership with India next door.
Pakistan can therefore be expected to lay heavy demands on the United States to restrain India if Washington expects greater cooperation from Islamabad. Pakistan is already urging the United States to restrict Indian influence in Afghanistan, which is viewed by Islamabad as nothing short of an Indian encirclement strategy. Whereas India has been careful to specify that its support for Afghanistan is primarily economic, Pakistan remains convinced that the Indian presence in Afghanistan, whether in the form of consulates or construction companies, is simply a front for Indian Research and Analysis Wing intelligence agents to exploit the Baloch and jihadist insurgencies in Pakistan.
Moreover, Pakistan will continue to insist to the United States that it cannot devote more forces to combating the jihadist threat in its western periphery as long as it has to worry about the high concentration of Indian troops along the Indo-Pakistani border to the east. New Delhi, however, remains convinced that Pakistan continues to support militant proxies against India and is unlikely to heed any U.S. request to back off the border with Pakistan to assuage Islamabad’s concerns when the threat of another militant attack remains real and near.
Indian Skepticism
Obama telephoned Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the eve of his Dec. 1 speech to brief him on his strategy for Afghanistan. India publicly expressed support for the strategy, maintaining the image that U.S.-Indian relations are tightening following Singh’s official state visit to the United States the previous week. Privately, however, India has reason to be skeptical of Obama’s plan.
There is no getting around the fact that Obama is attempting to define an endgame for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, recognizing the need to free up the U.S. military for crises beyond South Asia. This is not to say that the United States will completely abandon the region or that the threat of militant Islam will not persist, but removing thousands of U.S. troops in the region certainly changes the equation in New Delhi’s mind. The last thing India wants is for the United States to draw down its commitment to Afghanistan (and thus ease up pressure on Pakistan) in two years, leaving New Delhi to deal with the aftermath. Indeed, when Singh met with Obama at the White House, he told the U.S. president to stay resolute on his mission in Afghanistan, warning that a U.S. defeat there would have catastrophic consequences.
India sees the benefit of developing a closer partnership with the United States but also wants Washington to do its part to convince Pakistan to give up its decades-long policy of supporting proxy militants against India. Now that Pakistan is experiencing the side effects of its own militant-proxy strategy, India’s hope is that with enough U.S. pressure, Pakistan can be induced to clean up its militant landscape. Yet if the United States is preparing its exit from the region, India may end up losing a valuable lever to use against Pakistan.
Jihadist Wild Card
New Delhi and Islamabad have different reasons to be concerned about U.S. strategy in the region, but there is one area of concern that is common to both: rogue jihadists operating on Pakistani soil.
Al Qaeda and its jihadist allies are examining Obama’s strategy just as intently as everyone else. These jihadists can quite easily deduce that more pressure will be brought to bear on their safe havens in northwest Pakistan, thus threatening their survival. There is a clear intent, therefore, for these jihadists to keep Pakistan focused on the Indian threat on its eastern border in order to alleviate the pressure on their jihadist bases in the northwest. The best way to do this is to create a conflict between India and Pakistan through a large-scale militant attack in hopes of inducing an Indian military response and possibly triggering another near-nuclear confrontation on the border.
Pakistan wants to avoid getting bogged down in a fight with India while trying to deal with its jihadist problems at home. Though Pakistan is trying to rein in many of its former militant proxies, it still has to worry about a number of rogues that could embroil Pakistan in a conflict that it did not ask for. The 2001 bombing of the Indian parliament and the 2008 attacks in Mumbai revealed signs of jihadist involvement that may not have been under direct Pakistani control. Pakistan can attempt to stave off such a crisis by sharing intelligence on militant plots and actors with India through a U.S. channel, but even with enhanced intelligence cooperation, an attack could still happen.
India is already bracing itself for such a scenario and is still grappling with the dilemma that any Indian military response inside Pakistan — even limited strikes — would risk emboldening the jihadists, seriously destabilizing Pakistan and bringing the region to the brink of a nuclear conflagration. India struggled with this issue in the wake of the Mumbai attacks and it appears undecided on how to react to another major attack. In any case, a crisis along the border can be expected, and it would be up to the United States to put out the fire.
The United States is already giving itself a limited timetable to complete its objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it needs Pakistan’s cooperation to make its strategy work. A crisis on the Indo-Pakistani border would certainly jeopardize those plans, since Pakistan would devote its energy to dealing with India (its primary existential threat) rather than al Qaeda and the Taliban. Throw the threat of nuclear war into the equation, and the United States has an entirely new challenge.
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Tis passing odd that I would post something by POTH blathering idiot Frank Rich, but I do so precisely because of where he sits on the political spectrum and what he says.
ColumnistObama’s Logic Is No Match for Afghanistan Recommend
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 5, 2009
AFTER the dramatic three-month buildup, you’d think that Barack Obama’s speech announcing his policy for Afghanistan would be the most significant news story of the moment. History may take a different view. When we look back at this turning point in America’s longest war, we may discover that a relatively trivial White House incident, the gate-crashing by a couple of fame-seeking bozos, was the more telling omen of what was to come.
Obama’s speech, for all its thoughtfulness and sporadic eloquence, was a failure at its central mission. On its own terms, as both policy and rhetoric, it didn’t make the case for escalating our involvement in Afghanistan. It’s doubtful that the president’s words moved the needle of public opinion wildly in any direction for a country that has tuned out Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq alike while panicking about where the next job is coming from.
You can think the speech failed without questioning Obama’s motives. I don’t buy the criticism that he contrived a cynical political potpourri to pander to every side in the debate over the war. Nor was his decision to escalate mandated by his campaign stand positing Afghanistan as a just war in contrast to the folly of Iraq. Nor was he intimidated by received Beltway opinion, which, echoing Dick Cheney, accused him of dithering. (“The urgent necessity is to make a decision — whether or not it is right,” wrote the Dean of D.C. punditry, David Broder.)
Obama’s speech struck me as the sincere product of serious deliberations, an earnest attempt to apply his formidable intelligence to one of the most daunting Rubik’s Cubes of foreign policy America has ever known. But some circles of hell can’t be squared. What he’s ended up with is a too-clever-by-half pushmi-pullyu holding action that lacks both a credible exit strategy and the commitment of its two most essential partners, a legitimate Afghan government and the American people. Obama’s failure illuminated the limits of even his great powers of reason.
The state dinner crashers delineated those limits too. This was the second time in a month — after the infinitely more alarming bloodbath at Fort Hood — that a supposedly impregnable bastion of post-9/11 American security was easily breached. Yes, the crashers are laughable celebrity wannabes, but there was nothing funny about what they accomplished on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Their ruse wasn’t “reality” television — it was reality, period, with no quotation marks. It was a symbolic indication (and, luckily, only symbolic) of how unbridled irrationality harnessed to sheer will, whether ludicrous in the crashers’ case or homicidal in the instance of the Fort Hood gunman, can penetrate even our most secure fortifications. Both incidents stand as a haunting reproach to the elegant powers of logic with which Obama tried to sell his exquisitely calibrated plan to vanquish Al Qaeda and its mad brethren.
For all the overheated debate about what Obama meant in proposing July 2011 as a date to begin gradual troop withdrawals, the more significant short circuit in the speech’s internal logic lies elsewhere. The crucial passage came when Obama systematically tried to dismantle the Vietnam analogies that have stalked every American foreign adventure for four decades. “Most importantly,” the president said, “unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border.” This is correct as far as it goes, but it begs a number of questions.
“Along its border,” of course, means across the border — a k a Pakistan. Obama never satisfactorily argued why more troops in Afghanistan, where his own administration puts the number of Qaeda operatives at roughly 100, will help vanquish the far more substantial terrorist strongholds in Pakistan. But even if he had made that case and made it strongly, a larger issue remains: If the enemy in Afghanistan, whether Taliban or Qaeda, poses the same existential threat to America today that it did on 9/11, why is the president settling for half-measures?
It’s not just that Obama is fielding somewhat fewer troops than the maximum Gen. Stanley McChrystal requested. McChrystal himself didn’t ask for enough troops to fight a proper counterinsurgency in Afghanistan in the first place. Using the metrics outlined in the sacred text on the subject, Gen. David Petraeus’s field manual, we’d need a minimal force of 568,000 for Afghanistan’s population of 28.4 million. After the escalation, allied forces will reach barely a quarter of that number.
If the enemy in Afghanistan today threatens the American homeland as the Viet Cong never did, we should be all in, according to Obama’s logic. So why aren’t we? The answer is not merely that Afghans don’t want us as occupiers. It’s that such a mission would require a commensurate national sacrifice. One big difference between the war in Vietnam and the war in Afghanistan that the president conspicuously left unmentioned on Tuesday is the draft. Given that conscription is not about to be revived, we’d have to spend money, lots more money, to recruit the troops needed for the full effort Obama’s own argument calls for.
Which again leads us back to the ghosts of Vietnam. As L.B.J. learned the hard way, we can’t have both guns and the butter of big domestic projects, from health care to desperately needed jobs programs. We have to make choices. Obama paid lip service to that point, but the only sacrifice he cited in the entire speech was addressed to his audience at West Point, not the general public — the burden borne by the military and military families. While the president didn’t tell American civilians to revel in tax cuts and go shopping, as his predecessor did after 9/11, that may be a distinction without a difference. Obama’s promises to accomplish his ambitious plans for nation building at home while pursuing an expanded war sounded just as empty.
In this, he’s like most of the war’s supporters, regardless of party. On Fox News last Sunday, two senators, the Republican Jon Kyl and the Democrat Evan Bayh, found rare common ground in agreeing that an expanded Afghanistan effort should never require new taxes. It’s this bipartisan mantra that more war must be fought without more sacrifice — rather than Obama’s tentative withdrawal timeline — that most loudly signals to the world the shallowness of the American public’s support for any Afghanistan escalation. This helps explain why, as Fred Kaplan pointed out in Slate, the American share of allied troops in Afghanistan is rising (to 70 percent from under 50 percent at the time George Bush left office) despite Obama’s boast of an enthusiastic new coalition of the willing.
To his credit, Obama’s speech did eschew Bush-Cheneyism at its worst. He conceded some counterarguments to his policy: that the Afghanistan government is corrupt, mired in drugs and in “no imminent threat” of being overthrown. He framed his goals in modest and realistic terms, rather than trying to whip up the audience with fear-mongering, triumphalist sloganeering and jingoistic bravado. He talked of “success,” not “victory.”
But the president’s own method for rallying public support — a plea to “summon that unity” of 9/11 again — fell flat. There are several reasons why. First, 9/11 has been cheapened by the countless politicians who have exploited it, culminating with Rudy Giuliani. The sole achievement of America’s Former Mayor’s farcical presidential campaign was to render the evil of 9/11 banal. Second, 9/11 is eight years in the past. Looking at the youthful faces of the cadets in Obama’s audience on Tuesday, you realized that they were literally children on that horrific day, and that the connection between 9/11/01 and the newest iteration of the war they must fight in a new decade is something of an abstraction.
Finally, the notion that we are still fighting in Afghanistan because the 9/11 attacks originated there is based on the fallacy that our terrorist enemies are so stupid they have remained frozen in place since 2001. Most Americans know that they are no more static than we are. Obama acknowledged as much in citing such other Qaeda havens as Somalia (the site of a devastating insurgent suicide bombing on Thursday) and Yemen.
Americans want our country to be secure. Most want Obama to succeed. And so we hope that we won’t get bogged down in Afghanistan while our adversaries regroup elsewhere, that the casualties and costs can be contained, that the small, primitive Afghan Army (ravaged by opium, illiteracy, incompetence and a 25 percent attrition rate) will miraculously stand up so we can stand down. We want to believe that Obama’s marvelous powers of reason can check a ruthless enemy and reverse decades of tragic history in one of the world’s most treacherous backwaters.
That’s the bet Obama made. As long as our wars remain sacrifice-free, safely buried in the back pages behind Tiger Woods and reality television stunts, he’ll be able to pursue it. But I keep returning to the crashers at the gates, who have no respect for our president’s orderliness of mind and action. All it takes is a few of them at the wrong time and wrong place, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan or America or sites unknown, and all bets will be off.
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Another post by someone I rarely post. I think TF makes some very good points here.
May It All Come True
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: December 5, 2009
President Obama certainly showed leadership mettle in going against his own party’s base and ordering a troop surge into Afghanistan. He is going to have to be even more tough-minded, though, to make sure his policy is properly executed.
I’ve already explained why I oppose this escalation. But since the decision has been made — and I do not want my country to fail or the Obama presidency to sink in Afghanistan — here are some thoughts on how to reduce the chances that this ends badly. Let’s start by recalling an insight that President John F. Kennedy shared in a Sept. 2, 1963, interview with Walter Cronkite:
Cronkite: “Mr. President, the only hot war we’ve got running at the moment is, of course, the one in Vietnam, and we have our difficulties there.”
Kennedy: “I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the [Vietnamese] government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them; we can give them equipment; we can send our men out there as advisers. But they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the Communists. We are prepared to continue to assist them, but I don’t think that the war can be won unless the people support the effort and, in my opinion, in the last two months, the [Vietnamese] government has gotten out of touch with the people. ...”
Cronkite: “Do you think this government still has time to regain the support of the people?”
Kennedy: “I do. With changes in policy and perhaps with personnel I think it can. If it doesn’t make those changes, the chances of winning it would not be very good.”
What J.F.K. understood, what L.B.J. lost sight of, and what B.H.O. can’t afford to forget, is that in the end it’s not about how many troops we send or deadlines we set. It is all about our Afghan partners. Afghanistan has gone into a tailspin largely because President Hamid Karzai’s government became dysfunctional and massively corrupt — focused more on extracting revenues for private gain than on governing. That is why too many Afghans who cheered Karzai’s arrival in 2001 have now actually welcomed Taliban security and justice.
“In 2001, most Afghan people looked to the United States not only as a potential mentor but as a model for successful democracy,” Pashtoon Atif, a former aid worker from Kandahar, recently wrote in The Los Angeles Times. “What we got instead was a free-for-all in which our leaders profited outrageously and unapologetically from a wealth of foreign aid coupled with a dearth of regulations.”
Therefore, our primary goal has to be to build — with Karzai — an Afghan government that is “decent enough” to earn the loyalty of the Afghan people, so a critical mass of them will feel “ownership” of it and therefore be ready to fight to protect it. Because only then will there be a “self-sustaining” Afghan Army and state so we can begin to get out by the president’s July 2011 deadline — without leaving behind a bloodbath.
Focus on those key words: “decent enough,” “ownership” and “self-sustaining.” Without minimally decent government, Afghans will not take ownership. If they don’t take ownership, they won’t fight for it. And if they won’t fight for it on their own, whatever progress we make will not be self-sustaining. It will just collapse when we leave.
But here is what worries me: The president’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said flatly: “This can’t be nation-building.” And the president told a columnists’ lunch on Tuesday that he wants to avoid “mission creep” that takes on “nation-building in Afghanistan.”
I am sorry: This is only nation-building. You can’t train an Afghan Army and police force to replace our troops if you have no basic state they feel is worth fighting for. But that will require a transformation by Karzai, starting with the dismissal of his most corrupt aides and installing officials Afghans can trust.
This surge also depends, the president indicated, on Pakistan ending its obsession with India. That obsession has led Pakistan to support the Taliban to control Afghanistan as part of its “strategic depth” vis-à-vis India. Pakistan fights the Taliban who attack it, but nurtures the Taliban who want to control Afghanistan. So we now need this fragile Pakistan to stop looking for strategic depth against India in Afghanistan and to start building strategic depth at home, by reviving its economy and school system and preventing jihadists from taking over there.
That is why Mr. Obama is going to have to make sure, every day, that Karzai doesn’t weasel out of reform or Pakistan wiggle out of shutting down Taliban sanctuaries or the allies wimp out on helping us. To put it succinctly: This only has a chance to work if Karzai becomes a new man, if Pakistan becomes a new country and if we actually succeed at something the president says we won’t be doing at all: nation-building in Afghanistan. Yikes!
For America’s sake, may it all come true.
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WASHINGTON - On the afternoon he held the eighth meeting of his Afghanistan
review, President Obama arrived in the White House Situation Room ruminating
about war. He had come from Arlington National Cemetery, where he had
wandered among the chalky white tombstones of those who had fallen in the
rugged mountains of Central Asia.
How much their sacrifice weighed on him that Veterans Day last month, he did
not say. But his advisers say he was haunted by the human toll as he
wrestled with what to do about the eight-year-old war. Just a month earlier,
he had mentioned to them his visits to wounded soldiers at the Army hospital
in Washington. "I don't want to be going to Walter Reed for another eight
years," he said then.
The economic cost was troubling him as well after he received a private
budget memo estimating that an expanded presence would cost $1 trillion over
10 years, roughly the same as his health care plan.
Now as his top military adviser ran through a slide show of options, Mr.
Obama expressed frustration. He held up a chart showing how reinforcements
would flow into Afghanistan over 18 months and eventually begin to pull out,
a bell curve that meant American forces would be there for years to come.
"I want this pushed to the left," he told advisers, pointing to the bell
curve. In other words, the troops should be in sooner, then out sooner.
When the history of the Obama presidency is written, that day with the chart
may prove to be a turning point, the moment a young commander in chief set
in motion a high-stakes gamble to turn around a losing war. By moving the
bell curve to the left, Mr. Obama decided to send 30,000 troops mostly in
the next six months and then begin pulling them out a year after that,
betting that a quick jolt of extra forces could knock the enemy back on its
heels enough for the Afghans to take over the fight.
The three-month review that led to the escalate-then-exit strategy is a case
study in decision making in the Obama White House - intense, methodical,
rigorous, earnest and at times deeply frustrating for nearly all involved.
It was a virtual seminar in Afghanistan and Pakistan, led by a president
described by one participant as something "between a college professor and a
gentle cross-examiner."
Mr. Obama peppered advisers with questions and showed an insatiable demand
for information, taxing analysts who prepared three dozen intelligence
reports for him and Pentagon staff members who churned out thousands of
pages of documents.
This account of how the president reached his decision is based on dozens of
interviews with participants as well as a review of notes some of them took
during Mr. Obama's 10 meetings with his national security team. Most of
those interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal
deliberations, but their accounts have been matched against those of other
participants wherever possible.
Mr. Obama devoted so much time to the Afghan issue - nearly 11 hours on the
day after Thanksgiving alone - that he joked, "I've got more deeply in the
weeds than a president should, and now you guys need to solve this." He
invited competing voices to debate in front of him, while guarding his own
thoughts. Even David Axelrod, arguably his closest adviser, did not know
where Mr. Obama would come out until just before Thanksgiving.
With the result uncertain, the outsize personalities on his team vied for
his favor, sometimes sharply disagreeing as they made their arguments. The
White House suspected the military of leaking details of the review to put
pressure on the president. The military and the State Department suspected
the White House of leaking to undercut the case for more troops. The
president erupted at the leaks with an anger advisers had rarely seen, but
he did little to shut down the public clash within his own government.
"The president welcomed a full range of opinions and invited contrary points
of view," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an interview
last month. "And I thought it was a very healthy experience because people
took him up on it. And one thing we didn't want - to have a decision made
and then have somebody say, 'Oh, by the way.' No, come forward now or
forever hold your peace."
The decision represents a complicated evolution in Mr. Obama's thinking. He
began the process clearly skeptical of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's request
for 40,000 more troops, but the more he learned about the consequences of
failure, and the more he narrowed the mission, the more he gravitated toward
a robust if temporary buildup, guided in particular by Defense Secretary
Robert M. Gates.
Yet even now, he appears ambivalent about what some call "Obama's war." Just
two weeks before General McChrystal warned of failure at the end of August,
Mr. Obama described Afghanistan as a "war of necessity." When he announced
his new strategy last week, those words were nowhere to be found. Instead,
while recommitting to the war on Al Qaeda, he made clear that the larger
struggle for Afghanistan had to be balanced against the cost in blood and
treasure and brought to an end.
Aides, though, said the arduous review gave Mr. Obama comfort that he had
found the best course he could. "The process was exhaustive, but any time
you get the president of the United States to devote 25 hours, anytime you
get that kind of commitment, you know it was serious business," said Gen.
James L. Jones, the president's national security adviser. "From the very
first meeting, everyone started with set opinions. And no opinion was the
same by the end of the process."
Taking Control of a War
Mr. Obama ran for president supportive of the so-called good war in
Afghanistan and vowing to send more troops, but he talked about it primarily
as a way of attacking Republicans for diverting resources to Iraq, which he
described as a war of choice. Only after taking office, as casualties
mounted and the Taliban gained momentum, did Mr. Obama really begin to
confront what to do.
========
Page 2 of 6)
Even before completing a review of the war, he ordered the military to send
21,000 more troops there, bringing the force to 68,000. But tension between
the White House and the military soon emerged when General Jones, a retired
Marine four-star general, traveled to Afghanistan in the summer and was
surprised to hear officers already talking about more troops. He made it
clear that no more troops were in the offing.
With the approach of Afghanistan's presidential election in August, Mr.
Obama's two new envoys - Richard C. Holbrooke, the president's special
representative to the region, and Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired
commander of troops in Afghanistan now serving as ambassador - warned of
trouble, including the possibility of angry Afghans marching on the American
Embassy or outright civil war.
"There are 10 ways this can turn out," one administration official said,
summing up the envoys' presentation, "and 9 of them are messy."
The worst did not happen, but widespread fraud tainted the election and
shocked some in the White House as they realized that their partner in
Kabul, President Hamid Karzai, was hopelessly compromised in terms of public
credibility.
At the same time, the Taliban kept making gains. The Central Intelligence
Agency drew up detailed maps in August charting the steady progression of
the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, maps that would later be used
extensively during the president's review. General McChrystal submitted his
own dire assessment of the situation, warning of "mission failure" without a
fresh infusion of troops.
While General McChrystal did not submit a specific troop request at that
point, the White House knew it was coming and set out to figure out what to
do. General Jones organized a series of meetings that he envisioned lasting
a few weeks. Before each one, he convened a rehearsal session to impose
discipline - "get rid of the chaff," one official put it - that included
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Gates and other
cabinet-level officials. Mr. Biden made a practice of writing a separate
private memo to Mr. Obama before each meeting, outlining his thoughts.
The first meeting with the president took place on Sept. 13, a Sunday, and
was not disclosed to the public that day. For hours, Mr. Obama and his top
advisers pored through intelligence reports.
Unsatisfied, the president posed a series of questions: Does America need to
defeat the Taliban to defeat Al Qaeda? Can a counterinsurgency strategy work
in Afghanistan given the problems with its government? If the Taliban
regained control of Afghanistan, would nuclear-armed Pakistan be next?
The deep skepticism he expressed at that opening session was reinforced by
Mr. Biden, who rushed back overnight from a California trip to participate.
Just as he had done in the spring, Mr. Biden expressed opposition to an
expansive strategy requiring a big troop influx. Instead, he put an
alternative on the table - rather than focus on nation building and
population protection, do more to disrupt the Taliban, improve the quality
of the training of Afghan forces and expand reconciliation efforts to peel
off some Taliban fighters.
Mr. Biden quickly became the most outspoken critic of the expected
McChrystal troop request, arguing that Pakistan was the bigger priority,
since that is where Al Qaeda is mainly based. "He was the bull in the china
shop," said one admiring administration official.
But others were nodding their heads at some of what he was saying, too,
including General Jones and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.
A Review Becomes News
The quiet review burst into public view when General McChrystal's secret
report was leaked to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post a week after the
first meeting. The general's grim assessment jolted Washington and lent
urgency to the question of what to do to avoid defeat in Afghanistan.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David
H. Petraeus, the regional commander, secretly flew to an American air base
in Germany for a four-hour meeting with General McChrystal on Sept. 25. He
handed them his troop request on paper - there were no electronic versions
and barely 20 copies in all.
The request outlined three options for different missions: sending 80,000
more troops to conduct a robust counterinsurgency campaign throughout the
country; 40,000 troops to reinforce the southern and eastern areas where the
Taliban are strongest; or 10,000 to 15,000 troops mainly to train Afghan
forces.
General Petraeus took one copy, while Admiral Mullen took two back to
Washington and dropped one off at Mr. Gates's home next to his in a small
military compound in Washington. But no one sent the document to the White
House, intending to process it through the Pentagon review first.
Mr. Obama was focused on another report. At 10 p.m. on Sept. 29, he called
over from the White House residence to the West Wing to ask for a copy of
the first Afghanistan strategy he approved in March to ramp up the fight
against Al Qaeda and the Taliban while increasing civilian assistance. A
deputy national security adviser, Denis McDonough, brought him a copy to
reread overnight. When his national security team met the next day, Mr.
Obama complained that elements of that plan had never been enacted.
==========
Page 3 of 6)
The group went over the McChrystal assessment and drilled in on what the
core goal should be. Some thought that General McChrystal interpreted the
March strategy more ambitiously than it was intended to be. Mr. Biden asked
tough questions about whether there was any intelligence showing that the
Taliban posed a threat to American territory. But Mr. Obama also firmly
closed the door on any withdrawal. "I just want to say right now, I want to
take off the table that we're leaving Afghanistan," he told his advisers.
Tension with the military had been simmering since the leak of the
McChrystal report, which some in the White House took as an attempt to box
in the president. The friction intensified on Oct. 1 when the general was
asked after a speech in London whether a narrower mission, like the one Mr.
Biden proposed, would succeed. "The short answer is no," he said.
White House officials were furious, and Mr. Gates publicly scolded advisers
who did not keep their advice to the president private. The furor rattled
General McChrystal, who, unlike General Petraeus, was not a savvy Washington
operator. And it stunned others in the military, who were at first
"bewildered by how over the top the reaction was from the White House," as
one military official put it.
It also proved to be what one review participant called a "head-snapping"
moment of revelation for the military. The president, they suddenly
realized, was not simply updating his previous strategy but essentially
starting over from scratch.
The episode underscored the uneasy relationship between the military and a
new president who, aides said, was determined not to be as deferential as he
believed his predecessor, George W. Bush, was for years in Iraq. And the
military needed to adjust to a less experienced but more skeptical commander
in chief. "We'd been chugging along for eight years under an administration
that had become very adept at managing war in a certain way," said another
military official.
Moreover, Mr. Obama had read "Lessons in Disaster," Gordon M. Goldstein's
book on the Vietnam War. The book had become a must read in the West Wing
after Mr. Emanuel had dinner over the summer at the house of another deputy
national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and wandered into his library
to ask what he should be reading.
Among the conclusions that Mr. Donilon and the White House team drew from
the book was that both President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B.
Johnson failed to question the underlying assumption about monolithic
Communism and the domino theory - clearly driving the Obama advisers to
rethink the nature of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The Pakistan Question
While public attention focused on Afghanistan, some of the most intensive
discussion focused on the country where Mr. Obama could send no troops -
Pakistan. Pushed in particular by Mrs. Clinton, the president's team
explored the links between the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban and Al
Qaeda, and Mr. Obama told aides that it did not matter how many troops were
sent to Afghanistan if Pakistan remained a haven.
Many of the intelligence reports ordered by the White House during the
review dealt with Pakistan's stability and whether its military and
intelligence services were now committed to the fight or secretly still
supporting Taliban factions. According to two officials, there was a study
of the potential vulnerability of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, posing
questions about potential insider threats and control of the warheads if the
Pakistani government fell.
Mr. Obama and his advisers also considered options for stepping up the
pursuit of extremists in Pakistan's border areas. He eventually approved a
C.I.A. request to expand the areas where remotely piloted aircraft could
strike, and other covert action. The trick would be getting Pakistani
consent, which still has not been granted.
On Oct. 9, Mr. Obama and his team reviewed General McChrystal's troop
proposals for the first time. Some in the White House were surprised by the
numbers, assuming there would be a middle ground between 10,000 and 40,000.
"Why wasn't there a 25 number?" one senior administration official asked in
an interview. He then answered his own question: "It would have been too
tempting."
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part 2 of third post of morning:
Page 4 of 6)
Mr. Gates and others talked about the limits of the American ability to
actually defeat the Taliban; they were an indigenous force in Afghan
society, part of the political fabric. This was a view shared by others
around the table, including Leon E. Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., who
argued that the Taliban could not be defeated as such and so the goal should
be to drive wedges between those who could be reconciled with the Afghan
government and those who could not be.
With Mr. Biden leading the skeptics, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Gates and Admiral
Mullen increasingly aligned behind a more robust force. Mrs. Clinton wanted
to make sure she was a formidable player in the process. "She was determined
that her briefing books would be just as thick and just as meticulous as
those of the Pentagon," said one senior adviser. She asked hard questions
about Afghan troop training, unafraid of wading into Pentagon territory.
After a meeting where the Pentagon made a presentation with impressive
color-coded maps, Mrs. Clinton returned to the State Department and told her
aides, "We need maps," as one recalled. She was overseas during the next
meeting on Oct. 14, when aides used her new maps to show civilian efforts
but she participated with headphones on from her government plane flying
back from Russia.
Mr. Gates was a seasoned hand at such reviews, having served eight
presidents and cycled in and out of the Situation Room since the days when
it was served by a battery of fax machines. Like Mrs. Clinton, he was
sympathetic to General McChrystal's request, having resolved his initial
concern that a buildup would fuel resentment the way the disastrous Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan did in the 1980s.
But Mr. Gates's low-wattage exterior masks a wily inside player, and he knew
enough to keep his counsel early in the process to let it play out more
first. "When to speak is important to him; when to signal is important to
him," said a senior Defense Department official.
On Oct. 22, the National Security Council produced what one official called
a "consensus memo," much of which originated out of the defense secretary's
office, concluding that the United States should focus on diminishing the
Taliban insurgency but not destroying it; building up certain critical
ministries; and transferring authority to Afghan security forces.
There was no consensus yet on troop numbers, however, so Mr. Obama called a
smaller group of advisers together on Oct. 26 to finally press Mrs. Clinton
and Mr. Gates. Mrs. Clinton made it clear that she was comfortable with
General McChrystal's request for 40,000 troops or something close to it; Mr.
Gates also favored a big force.
Mr. Obama was leery. He had received a memo the day before from the Office
of Management and Budget projecting that General McChrystal's full
40,000-troop request on top of the existing deployment and reconstruction
efforts would cost $1 trillion from 2010 to 2020, an adviser said. The
president seemed in sticker shock, watching his domestic agenda vanishing in
front of him. "This is a 10-year, trillion-dollar effort and does not match
up with our interests," he said.
Still, for the first time, he made it clear that he was ready to send more
troops if a strategy could be found to ensure that it was not an endless
war. He indicated that the Taliban had to be beaten back. "What do we need
to break their momentum?" he asked.
Four days later, at a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Oct. 30, he
emphasized the need for speed. "Why can't I get the troops in faster?" he
asked. If they were going to do this, he concluded, it only made sense to do
this quickly, to have impact and keep the war from dragging on forever.
"This is America's war," he said. "But I don't want to make an open-ended
commitment."
Bridging the Differences
Now that he had a sense of where Mr. Obama was heading, Mr. Gates began
shaping a plan that would bridge the differences. He developed a
30,000-troop option that would give General McChrystal the bulk of his
request, reasoning that NATO could make up most of the difference.
"If people are having trouble swallowing 40, let's see if we can make this
smaller and easier to swallow and still give the commander what he needs," a
senior Defense official said, summarizing the secretary's thinking.
The plan, called Option 2A, was presented to the president on Nov. 11. Mr.
Obama complained that the bell curve would take 18 months to get all the
troops in place.
He turned to General Petraeus and asked him how long it took to get the
so-called surge troops he commanded in Iraq in 2007. That was six months.
"What I'm looking for is a surge," Mr. Obama said. "This has to be a surge."
============
Page 5 of 6)
That represented a contrast from when Mr. Obama, as a presidential
candidate, staunchly opposed President Bush's buildup in Iraq. But unlike
Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama wanted from the start to speed up a withdrawal as well.
The military was told to come up with a plan to send troops quickly and then
begin bringing them home quickly.
And in another twist, Mr. Obama, who campaigned as an apostle of
transparency and had been announcing each Situation Room meeting publicly
and even releasing pictures, was livid that details of the discussions were
leaking out.
"What I'm not going to tolerate is you talking to the press outside of this
room," he scolded his advisers. "It's a disservice to the process, to the
country and to the men and women of the military."
His advisers sat in uncomfortable silence. That very afternoon, someone
leaked word of a cable sent by Ambassador Eikenberry from Kabul expressing
reservations about a large buildup of forces as long as the Karzai
government remained unreformed. At one of their meetings, General Petraeus
had told Mr. Obama to think of elements of the Karzai government like "a
crime syndicate." Ambassador Eikenberry was suggesting, in effect, that
America could not get in bed with the mob.
The leak of Ambassador Eikenberry's Nov. 6 cable stirred another storm
within the administration because the cable had been requested by the White
House. The National Security Council had told the ambassador to put his
views in writing. But someone else then passed word of the cable to
reporters in what some in the process took to be a calculated attempt to
head off a big troop buildup.
The cable stunned some in the military. The reaction at the Pentagon, said
one official, was "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" - military slang for an expression
of shock. Among the officers caught off guard were General McChrystal and
his staff, for whom the cable was "a complete surprise," said another
official, even though the commander and the ambassador meet three times a
week.
A Presidential Order
By this point, the idea of some sort of time frame was taking on momentum.
Mrs. Clinton talked to Mr. Karzai before the Afghan leader's inauguration to
a second term. She suggested that he use his speech to outline a schedule
for taking over security of the country.
Mr. Karzai did just that, declaring that Afghan forces directed by Kabul
would take charge of securing population centers in three years and the
whole country in five. His pronouncement, orchestrated partly by Mrs.
Clinton and diplomats in Kabul, provided a predicate for Mr. Obama to set
out his own time frame.
The president gathered his team in the Situation Room at 8:15 p.m. on Nov.
23, the unusual nighttime hour adding to what one participant called a
momentous wartime feeling. The room was strewn with coffee cups and soda
cans.
Mr. Obama presented a revised version of Option 2A, this one titled "Max
Leverage," pushing 30,000 troops into Afghanistan by mid-2010 and beginning
to pull them out by July 2011. Admiral Mullen came up with the date at the
direction of Mr. Obama, despite some misgivings from the Pentagon about
setting a time frame for a withdrawal. The date was two years from the
arrival of the first reinforcements Mr. Obama sent shortly after taking
office. Mr. Biden had written a memo before the meeting talking about the
need for "proof of concept" - in other words, two years ought to be enough
for extra troops to demonstrate whether a buildup would work.
The president went around the room asking for opinions. Mr. Biden again
expressed skepticism, even at this late hour when the tide had turned
against him in terms of the troop number. But he had succeeded in narrowing
the scope of the mission to protect population centers and setting the date
to begin withdrawal. Others around the table concurred with the plan. Mr.
Obama spoke last, but still somewhat elliptically. Some advisers said they
walked out into the night after 10 p.m., uncertain whether the president had
actually endorsed the Max Leverage option or was just testing for reaction.
===========
Page 6 of 6)
Two days later, Mr. Obama met with Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker and a
critic of the Afghan war. The president outlined his plans for the buildup
without disclosing specific numbers. Ms. Pelosi was unenthusiastic and
pointedly told the president that he could not rely on Democrats alone to
pass financing for the war.
The White House had spent little time courting Congress to this point. Even
though it would need Republican support, the White House had made no
overtures to the party leaders.
But there was back-channel contact. Mr. Emanuel was talking with Senator
Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who urged him to settle on a
troop number "that began with 3" to win Republican support. "I said as long
as the generals are O.K. and there is a meaningful number, you will be
O.K.," Mr. Graham recalled.
The day after Thanksgiving, Mr. Obama huddled with aides from 10:30 a.m. to
9:15 p.m. refining parameters for the plan and mapping out his announcement.
He told his speechwriter, Ben Rhodes, that he wanted to directly rebut the
comparison with Vietnam.
On the following Sunday, Nov. 29, he summoned his national security team to
the Oval Office. He had made his decision. He would send 30,000 troops as
quickly as possible, then begin the withdrawal in July 2011. In deference to
Mr. Gates's concerns, the pace and endpoint of the withdrawal would be
determined by conditions at the time.
"I'm not asking you to change what you believe," the president told his
advisers. "But if you do not agree with me, say so now." There was a pause
and no one said anything.
"Tell me now," he repeated.
Mr. Biden asked only if this constituted a presidential order. Mr. Gates and
others signaled agreement.
"Fully support, sir," Admiral Mullen said.
"Ditto," General Petraeus said.
Mr. Obama then went to the Situation Room to call General McChrystal and
Ambassador Eikenberry. The president made it clear that in the next
assessment in December 2010 he would not contemplate more troops. "It will
only be about the flexibility in how we draw down, not if we draw down," he
said.
Two days later, Mr. Obama flew to West Point to give his speech. After three
months of agonizing review, he seemed surprisingly serene. "He was," said
one adviser, "totally at peace."
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http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=514693
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Stratfor
Summary
Pakistan’s premier intelligence service was once again a Taliban target, this time in an attack Dec. 8 in the city of Multan in southern Punjab province. This latest attack comes on the heels of several others in Pakistan’s heartland, highlighting an intensification of the jihadist insurgency in the Punjab core. Unless the state is able to achieve a major breakthrough in its counterinsurgency, such attacks could spread even further south to the urban areas of Sindh province.
Analysis
Yet another multi-man assault team of the Taliban rebel group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) struck a facility of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate Dec. 8, killing 12 people and wounding 47 others in the city of Multan, in the southern part of Punjab province. In keeping with TTP’s hybrid tactic of combining suicide bombings with small arms fire, as many as four militants reached a security post and fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles at the ISI facility, then got close enough to detonate a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, which badly damaged the building.
This is the third attack against an ISI facility in the last six months — all intended to show the vulnerability of the country’s most powerful security agency, which is expected to be the front line of defense against internal and external enemies of the state. On Nov. 12, a suicide bomber in a vehicle blew himself up near ISI’s provincial headquarters in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Peshawar, destroying a large part of the building. The most brazen attack against the ISI occurred on May 27, when the Taliban struck the directorate’s much larger Punjab provincial headquarters in Lahore, killing a number of ISI officials.
The Dec. 8 attack is the first Taliban assault in Multan, which is the farthest south that the insurgents have been able to strike to date. Thus far, Taliban attacks have been limited to the northern half of Punjab. By attacking Multan, the Taliban are demonstrating their expanding geographical reach and their ability to intensify their strikes in Punjab — the core of Pakistan. The Multan attack also follows several attacks in the last week in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore — the three most strategic cities in Punjab province — and in the NWFP capital of Peshawar. On Oct. 17, when the army launched its ground offensive in the TTP heartland and Mehsud tribal areas of South Waziristan in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the expectation was that the ability of the TTP to strike in urban areas in Punjab would be reduced. This has not been the case.
Instead the number of attacks has actually increased. Since the beginning of the ground offensive, which has allowed Pakistani troops to take control of significant chunks of TTP territory and cut off remaining militant areas from the outside world, there have been two waves of Taliban attacks separated by a lull in early November.
A key reason for the TTP’s ability to continue to project power into Punjab and increase the number of attacks is the group’s command and control structure, which relocated northward in the tribal belt long before the army began its offensive. While the Mehsud tribal area in South Waziristan was the group’s home base, the TTP and its Pakistani and transnational allies maintain infrastructure throughout FATA and the Pashtun areas of NWFP (and to a lesser degree in Punjab). Being able to push southward has been facilitated by a pre-existing social support network in southern Punjab that until now had remained dormant. The FATA-based TTP’s Punjabi allies had been facilitating the reach of the Pashtun jihadists into the northern part of the province.
Hitting Multan also has symbolic value. Both the country’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, and its foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, are from the area. Multan is also the headquarters of the army’s II Corps, one of six in the province, and the southern-most major town before the province of Sindh, which thus far has not seen attacks by Taliban rebels, though there is ample evidence of their presence there.
By being able to hit a sensitive facility in Multan, the Taliban want to not only show that all of Punjab is within their reach but that they could expand into Sindh as well. A key concern has been the threat of attacks in Karachi, which is Pakistan’s largest urban center and hub of economic and financial activity, its major port city, and the country’s primary access point for the outside world. An attack there could have huge repercussions for the country’s economy.
Further complicating this scenario are ethnic tensions between the city’s Muhajir and Pashtun communities that the jihadists would like to exploit in their efforts to expand unrest to Karachi, which could facilitate their efforts to overwhelm an already weak state. The city’s ruling Mutahiddah Qaumi Movement is already extremely nervous about Taliban accessibility to the city via the several million Pashtuns that reside in Karachi. At a time when the state is dealing with a growing list of security, economic and political problems, violence in Karachi — whether jihadist or ethnic — is the last thing the state wants to see.
Still, the war maintains a kind of painful balance. While the jihadists are indeed trying to overwhelm the state, they know they are nowhere close to being in a position to overthrow the government. And it is also true that the state has not been able to make a decisive dent in jihadists’ war-making capabilities. The bar is much higher for the state, which has to impose its writ all across the country, thereby denying the militants space to operate. In sharp contrast, all the jihadists have to do is pull off attacks periodically in a variety of areas to show that the state’s writ is weakening. By widening the scope of their operations, the Taliban are trying to get the state to expand its counter-insurgency so as to stretch its resources and widen the battlefield. But by expanding its target set, the TTP has increased its attacks on soft targets, which will alienate the population.
The TTP and its allies are thus in a race against time. They want to be able to exploit political and ethnic differences, an incoherent counterinsurgency strategy and deep financial problems to create sufficient anarchy before the state can gain an advantage in the war against jihadism. Meanwhile, as they strategically allocate their limited resources, the jihadists will continue their periodic attacks across the country, hitting targets hard and soft.
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December 10, 2009
Recruits Pour In After Afghan Army Offers a Raise
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
KABUL, Afghanistan
The American commander in charge of training the Afghan security forces said Wednesday that there had been a recent wave of recruits for the Afghan Army, most likely because of a pay increase that he said put salaries close to those of Taliban fighters.
The commander, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said that an Afghan soldier in a high-combat area like Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan would now make a starting salary of $240 a month, up from $180. General Caldwell said that the Taliban often paid insurgents $250 to $300 a month.
The Afghan Army pay increase was announced 10 days ago, General Caldwell said. In the first seven days of December, more than 2,600 Afghans signed up — a striking change, he said, from September, when there were 831 Afghans recruits for the entire month, or November, when there were 4,303 recruits.
General Caldwell was at Camp Eggers in Kabul, the headquarters of the American effort to train the Afghans. He was speaking to reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who was on his second day of a trip to Afghanistan focusing in part on Afghan training.
General Caldwell acknowledged the serious difficulties ahead in training the Afghan security forces, which the United States hopes to increase in size — from nearly 192,000 to as high as 282,000 — as well as in efficiency before President Obama’s goal of beginning to withdraw American troops in July 2011. The obstacles were outlined in a recent series of internal administration reviews that describe the Afghan Army and police as largely illiterate, often corrupt and poorly led.
However, other responsibilities will linger: on Tuesday, President Hamid Karzai said Afghanistan would not be able to pay for its own security until at least 2024.
General Caldwell expressed cautious optimism over the new recruiting.
“Seven days doesn’t prove anything yet, but it’s a positive step,” he said, adding, “I would never make the leap to say, ‘Therefore we’re going to fix this.’ ” Later, he said that success in Afghanistan would require far more than military might, and that “we’ll never kill our way to victory.” ....... "
The article continues with current rehash etc
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/wo...ef=global-home
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Any comments?
======================
To Beat Al Qaeda, Look to the East
By SCOTT ATRAN
Published: December 12, 2009
IN testimony last week before Congress, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, insisted that President Obama’s revised war strategy will “build support for the Afghan government,” while Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander there, vowed that it will “absolutely” succeed in disrupting and degrading the Taliban.
Confidence is important, but we also have to recognize that the decision to commit 30,000 more troops to a counterinsurgency effort against a good segment of the Afghan population, with the focus on converting a deeply unpopular and corrupt regime into a unified, centralized state for the first time in that country’s history, is far from a slam dunk. In the worst case, the surge may push General McChrystal’s “core goal of defeating Al Qaeda” further away.
Al Qaeda is already on the ropes globally, with ever-dwindling financial and popular support, and a drastically diminished ability to work with other extremists worldwide, much less command them in major operations. Its lethal agents are being systematically hunted down, while those Muslims whose souls it seeks to save are increasingly revolted by its methods.
Unfortunately, this weakening viral movement may have a new lease on life in Afghanistan and Pakistan because we are pushing the Taliban into its arms. By overestimating the threat from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, we are making it a greater threat to Pakistan and the world. Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan are unlike Iraq, the ancient birthplace of central government, or 1960s Vietnam, where a strong state was backing the Communist insurgents. Afghanistan and Pakistan must be dealt with on their own terms.
We’re winning against Al Qaeda and its kin in places where antiterrorism efforts are local and built on an understanding that the ties binding terrorist networks today are more cultural and familial than political. Consider recent events in Southeast Asia.
In September, Indonesian security forces killed Noordin Muhammad Top, then on the F.B.I.’s most-wanted terrorist list. Implicated in the region’s worst suicide bombings — including the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton bombings in Jakarta last July 17 — Noordin Top headed a splinter group of the extremist religious organization Jemaah Islamiyah (he called it Al Qaeda for the Malaysian Archipelago). Research by my colleagues and me, supported by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Department, reveals three critical factors in such groups inspired by Al Qaeda, all of which local security forces implicitly grasp but American counterintelligence workers seem to underestimate.
What binds these groups together? First is friendship forged through fighting: the Indonesian volunteers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan styled themselves the Afghan Alumni, and many kept in contact when they returned home after the war. The second is school ties and discipleship: many leading operatives in Southeast Asia come from a handful of religious schools affiliated with Jemaah Islamiyah. Out of some 30,000 religious schools in Indonesia, only about 50 have a deadly legacy of producing violent extremists. Third is family ties; as anyone who has watched the opening scene from “The Godfather” knows, weddings can be terrific opportunities for networking and plotting.
Understanding these three aspects of terrorist networking has given law enforcement a leg up on the jihadists. Gen. Tito Karnavian, the leader of the strike team that tracked down Noordin Top, told me that “knowledge of the interconnected networks of Afghan Alumni, kinship and marriage groups was very crucial to uncovering the inner circle of Noordin.”
Consider Noordin Top’s third marriage, which cemented ties to key suspects in the lead-up to the recent hotel bombings. His father-in-law, who founded a Jemaah Islamiyah-related boarding school, stashed explosives in his garden with the aid of another teacher at the school. Using electronic intercepts and tracing family, school and alumni ties, police officers found the cache in late June 2009. That discovery may have prompted Noordin Top to initiate the hotel attacks ahead of a planned simultaneous attack on the residence of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
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Scott Atran, an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, John Jay College and the University of Michigan, is the author of the forthcoming “Listen to the Devil"
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In addition, an Afghan Alumnus and nephew of Noordin Top’s father-in-law was being pursued by the police for his role in a failed plot to blow up a tourist cafe on Sumatra. Unfortunately, Noordin Top struck the hotels before the Indonesian police could penetrate the entire network, in part because another family group was still operating under the police radar. This group included a florist who smuggled the bombs into the hotels and a man whose eventual arrest led to discovery of the plot against the president. Both terrorists were married to sisters of a Yemeni-trained imam who recruited the hotel suicide bombers, and of another brother who had infiltrated Indonesia’s national airline.
Had the police pulled harder on the pieces of social yarn they had in hand, they might have unraveled the hotel plot earlier. Still, their work thwarted attacks planned for the future, including that on the president.
Similarly, security officials in the Philippines have combined intelligence from American and Australian sources with similar tracking efforts to crack down on their terrorist networks, and as a result most extremist groups are either seeking reconciliation with the government — including the deadly Moro Islamic Liberation Front on the island of Mindanao — or have devolved into kidnapping-and-extortion gangs with no ideological focus. The separatist Abu Sayyaf Group, once the most feared force in the region, now has no overall spiritual or military leaders, few weapons and only a hundred or so fighters.
So, how does this relate to a strategy against Al Qaeda in the West and in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Al Qaeda’s main focus is harming the United States and Europe, but there hasn’t been a successful attack in these places directly commanded by Osama bin Laden and company since 9/11. The American invasion of Afghanistan devastated Al Qaeda’s core of top personnel and its training camps. In a recent briefing to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. case officer, said that recent history “refutes claims by some heads of the intelligence community that all Islamist plots in the West can be traced back to the Afghan-Pakistani border.” The real threat is homegrown youths who gain inspiration from Osama bin Laden but little else beyond an occasional self-financed spell at a degraded Qaeda-linked training facility.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq encouraged many of these local plots, including the train bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. In their aftermaths, European law and security forces stopped plots from coming to fruition by stepping up coordination and tracking links among local extremists, their friends and friends of friends, while also improving relations with young Muslim immigrants through community outreach. Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have taken similar steps.
Now we need to bring this perspective to Afghanistan and Pakistan — one that is smart about cultures, customs and connections. The present policy of focusing on troop strength and drones, and trying to win over people by improving their lives with Western-style aid programs, only continues a long history of foreign involvement and failure. Reading a thousand years of Arab and Muslim history would show little in the way of patterns that would have helped to predict 9/11, but our predicament in Afghanistan rhymes with the past like a limerick.
A key factor helping the Taliban is the moral outrage of the Pashtun tribes against those who deny them autonomy, including a right to bear arms to defend their tribal code, known as Pashtunwali. Its sacred tenets include protecting women’s purity (namus), the right to personal revenge (badal), the sanctity of the guest (melmastia) and sanctuary (nanawateh). Among all Pashtun tribes, inheritance, wealth, social prestige and political status accrue through the father’s line.
This social structure means that there can be no suspicion that the male pedigree (often traceable in lineages spanning centuries) is “corrupted” by doubtful paternity. Thus, revenge for sexual misbehavior (rape, adultery, abduction) warrants killing seven members of the offending group and often the “offending” woman. Yet hospitality trumps vengeance: if a group accepts a guest, all must honor him, even if prior grounds justify revenge. That’s one reason American offers of millions for betraying Osama bin Laden fail.
Afghan hill societies have withstood centuries of would-be conquests by keeping order with Pashtunwali in the absence of central authority. When seemingly intractable conflicts arise, rival parties convene councils, or jirgas, of elders and third parties to seek solutions through consensus.
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After 9/11, the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, assembled a council of clerics to judge his claim that Mr. bin Laden was the country’s guest and could not be surrendered. The clerics countered that because a guest should not cause his host problems, Mr. bin Laden should leave. But instead of keeping pressure on the Taliban to resolve the issue in ways they could live with, the United States ridiculed their deliberation and bombed them into a closer alliance with Al Qaeda. Pakistani Pashtuns then offered to help out their Afghan brethren.
American-sponsored “reconciliation” efforts between the Afghan government and the Taliban may be fatally flawed if they include demands that Pashtun hill tribes give up their arms and support a Constitution that values Western-inspired rights and judicial institutions over traditions that have sustained the tribes against all enemies.
THE secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, suggest that victory in Afghanistan is possible if the Taliban who pursue self-interest rather than ideology can be co-opted with material incentives. But as the veteran war reporter Jason Burke of The Observer of London told me: “Today, the logical thing for the Pashtun conservatives is to stop fighting and get rich through narcotics or Western aid, the latter being much lower risk. But many won’t sell out.”
Why? In part because outsiders who ignore local group dynamics tend to ride roughshod over values they don’t grasp. My research with colleagues on group conflict in India, Indonesia, Iran, Morocco, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories found that helping to improve lives materially does little to reduce support for violence, and can even increase it if people feel such help compromises their most cherished values.
The original alliance between the Taliban and Al Qaeda was largely one of convenience between a poverty-stricken national movement and a transnational cause that brought it material help. American pressure on Pakistan to attack the Taliban and Al Qaeda in their sanctuary gave birth to the Pakistani Taliban, who forged their own ties to Al Qaeda to fight the Pakistani state.
While some Taliban groups use the rhetoric of global jihad to inspire ranks or enlist foreign fighters, the Pakistani Taliban show no inclination to go after Western interests abroad. Their attacks, which have included at least three assaults near nuclear facilities, warrant concerted action — but in Pakistan, not in Afghanistan. As Mr. Sageman, the former C.I.A. officer, puts it: “There’s no Qaeda in Afghanistan and no Afghans in Qaeda.”
Pakistan has long preferred a policy of “respect for the independence and sentiment of the tribes” that was advised in 1908 by Lord Curzon, the British viceroy of India who established the North-West Frontier Province as a buffer zone to “conciliate and contain” the Pashtun hill tribes. In 1948, Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, removed all troops from brigade level up in Waziristan and other tribal areas in a plan aptly called Operation Curzon.
The problem today is that Al Qaeda is prodding the Pakistani Taliban to hit state institutions in the hopes of provoking a full-scale invasion of the tribal areas by the Pakistani Army; the idea is that such an assault would rally the tribes to Al Qaeda’s cause and threaten the state. The United States has been pushing for exactly that sort of potentially disastrous action by Islamabad. But holding to Curzon’s line may still be Pakistan’s best bet. The key in the Afghan-Pakistani area, as in Southeast Asia, is to use local customs and networks to our advantage. Of course, counterterrorism measures are only as effective as local governments that execute them. Afghanistan’s government is corrupt, unpopular and inept.
Besides, there’s really no Taliban central authority to talk to. To be Taliban today means little more than to be a Pashtun tribesman who believes that his fundamental beliefs and customary way of life are threatened. Although most Taliban claim loyalty to Afghanistan’s Mullah Omar, this allegiance varies greatly. Many Pakistani Taliban leaders — including Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed by an American drone in August, and his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud — rejected Mullah Omar’s call to forgo suicide bombings against Pakistani civilians.
In fact, it is the United States that holds today’s Taliban together. Without us, their deeply divided coalition could well fragment. Taliban resurgence depends on support from those notoriously unruly hill tribes in Pakistan’s border regions, who are unsympathetic to the original Taliban program of homogenizing tribal custom and politics under one rule.
It wouldn’t be surprising if the Taliban were to sever ties to Mr. bin Laden if he became a bigger headache to them than America. Al Qaeda may have close relations to the network of Jalaluddin Haqqani, an Afghan Taliban leader living in Pakistan, and the Shabi Khel branch of the Mehsud tribe in Waziristan, but it isn’t wildly popular with many other Taliban factions and forces.
Unlike Al Qaeda, the Taliban are interested in their homeland, not ours. Things are different now than before 9/11. The Taliban know how costly Osama bin Laden’s friendship can be. There’s a good chance that enough factions in the loose Taliban coalition would opt to disinvite their troublesome guest if we forget about trying to subdue them or hold their territory. This would unwind the Taliban coalition into a lot of straggling, loosely networked groups that could be eliminated or contained using the lessons learned in Indonesia and elsewhere. This means tracking down family and tribal networks, gaining a better understanding of family ties and intervening only when we see actions by Taliban and other groups to aid Al Qaeda or act outside their region.
To defeat violent extremism in Afghanistan, less may be more — just as it has been elsewhere in Asia.
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I rarely read, still less often quote from Pravda Newspeak, yet this article seems thoughtful.
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Learning From the Soviets
By Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova | NEWSWEEK
Published Dec 11, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Dec 21, 2009
Talk to Russian veterans of Afghanistan and it's hard not to think that they're rooting for the U.S. to lose. For these proud men, seeing NATO succeed at a job they botched would deepen the humiliation of defeat. Easier to affirm that if the Soviets couldn't win there, no one can. "We did not succeed and you will not either," says Gen. Victor Yermakov, who commanded Soviet forces in Afghanistan from 1982 to 1983. "They didn't trust us. They won't trust you." Ambassador Zamir Kabulov, who served in Afghanistan under the occupation and has just completed a four-year term as Russia's envoy in the country, is no more optimistic. "We tried to impose communism. You are trying to impose democracy," he says. "There is no mistake made by the Soviet Union that the international community has not repeated."
Such unrelenting bearishness is hardly encouraging, and there are undeniably echoes of the Soviet experience in President Barack Obama's new Afghan surge. Obama is doubling down on his attempt to do what no foreign power ever has: defeat an Afghan insurgency and leave behind a stable and legitimate local regime. The Soviets' misadventures in Afghanistan—begun 30 years ago this Christmas Eve—faced many similar challenges: managing tribal politics, stemming support for insurgents from over the border in Pakistan, creating a credible government in Kabul and viable local security forces, and containing civilian casualties. Yet the differences are equally profound, and they suggest that America may just manage to succeed where Russia failed—in part by learning from its own and the Soviets' mistakes.
Moscow's troubles in Afghanistan started nearly the moment the war began, with a deluge of international condemnation far stronger than the Soviet leaders ever expected. The U.S. imposed trade sanctions and boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Obama today finds himself in a very different position. The NATO campaign enjoys wide international support—including from Russia, in spirit at least.
But the most important difference between then and now is that the Taliban isn't backed by a superpower supplying it with money and deadly weapons. That makes it a far less formidable enemy than the mujahedin of the 1980s, who were enthusiastically supported and armed by the U.S. and Pakistan. Washington suspects, with reason, that many of the old insurgents still fighting today—notably Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani—are getting covert support from elements in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. But even if that's true, the ISI's current involvement is nothing like that of the old days, not least because Pakistan's civilian government officially opposes the Taliban and had even made sporadic attempts to fight it. A generation ago, Stinger missiles, supplied to the rebels in large numbers after 1986 thanks to a campaign by U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson, effectively robbed the Soviets of their air superiority. Today's Taliban has no such technological advantage, and few friends. As a result, "the Americans are in a much better position than we ever were," says Yuri Krupnov, director of Russia's Institute of Regional Development, which promotes Russian-Afghan ties. "This will not be a second Vietnam."
Another reason he's probably right is that NATO is proving better at learning from Moscow's mistakes than the Soviets were. Take civilian casualties. Initial military victory came almost effortlessly for both the Soviets and NATO. But both powers soon stepped on the same rake: losing hearts and minds by accidentally hitting civilian targets. Yermakov recalls ordering his troops to mine the irrigation channels around the town of Gardez in 1983. Many dushmany (a pejorative local term for the mujahedin) were blown up, but so were channels essential for local farmers. "At one point our aviation destroyed half of Kandahar because somebody did not get the right instructions," says Alexander Shkirando, a fluent Pashto and Farsi speaker who spent 10 years in Afghanistan in the 1980s as a political and military adviser. NATO has made similar blunders—notably two bombings of wedding parties in Kunduz and Uruzgan—but on nothing like the same scale. The exact number of Afghan civilian casualties during the Soviet campaign is hard to come by, but estimates range from 700,000 to more than a million. According to the United Nations, combined civilian deaths directly and indirectly caused by the latest war range from 12,000 to 30,000.
The Americans have been careful to avoid the wanton brutality of the Soviets not only on the battlefield but in their treatment of prisoners too. Even before U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal commissioned a review earlier this year, the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2004 led to an improvement in the treatment of detainees at the U.S. interrogation camp at Bagram. And as dire as conditions at Bagram may have been, they were nothing compared with the abuse committed by the Soviets' proxy force of Afghan secret police, who murdered at least 27,000 political prisoners at their notorious detention center at Pul-e-Charkhi. Russians like to compare the Soviet and U.S. occupations: Krupnov asks, "Who is more imperialist, the Soviets or the Americans?" In reality, however, there's a world of difference in the two armies' behavior.
The Soviets tried a surge of their own in 1984–85, boosting troop levels to 118,000 to clear rebel areas like the lower Panjshir Valley and the strategic road to Khost. But it didn't work. The mujahedin would "melt away like mist," recalls Paulius Purickis, an ethnic Lithuanian draftee who served as a sergeant. "We were never able to engage them in a head-on battle," he says. General McChrystal hopes to avoid that problem with the extra troops being made available to him, which will allow him to "clear and hold" whole provinces, with small forward posts used to befriend and gather intelligence from locals.
The Soviets also tried to win hearts and minds, of course. But they left that job to the KGB, with dismal results. Today, rather than run a network of secret torture centers as the Soviets' proxy Mohammad Najibullah did, President Hamid Karzai has set himself up as a defender of the rights of Afghans detained in U.S.-run prisons, something that plays well with the population.
The Soviets also bungled the process of building relations with tribal leaders. Vasily Kravtsov spent 12 years in Afghanistan, rising to become the ranking KGB officer in Kandahar responsible for establishing an Afghan security and intelligence service in the area. Pashtun tribal politics were Kravtsov's specialty, and the bane of his life. The problem was, in part, a communist agenda to enlighten the Afghans by replacing religious schools with secular ones and to undermine the authority of local mullahs. "We made stupid ideological mistakes," says Gen. Ruslan Aushev, one of the most decorated Russian commanders of the Afghan war. "We told the Muslim people that religion was the opium of the masses!" U.S. officials have tried to be more culturally sensitive: as McChrystal put it in a recently leaked report, the American military is shifting away from "an excessively defensive posture to enable the troops to engage with the Afghan people."
Perhaps the closest parallel—and the area with the most lessons for Washington today—is in how to shore up the local government. And here again there is reason for optimism. Moscow's puppet Najibullah was weak and unpopular and ended up hanging from a lamppost soon after his patrons went home. Karzai is also little loved. But for all his troubles, he's in a far better position than his predecessor, for despite electoral gerrymandering and allegations of corruption, Karzai is still more popular than any other politician in the country.
That's a huge asset, for getting local government right is probably the ultimate key to success or failure. To do that, Washington should probably make a point of ignoring the Russians' advice. Today Russian veterans insist that the main reason for their failure was their attempt to impose a foreign mindset on an age-old system of tribal alliances: "Forget your ideas of bringing democracy there," says Yermakov. But communism wasn't the real problem, and neither is democracy. Indeed, democracy may be the solution. Najibullah's government fell not because it was secular and socialist but because it disintegrated under the twin evils of tribalism and corruption. Moscow grafted a veneer of communism onto a narrow, repressive, and widely hated Pashtun tribal clique that was no match for the mujahedin. This suggests that the key today is to support a government that's as inclusive, democratic, and accountable as possible. That means doing everything in Washington's power to get Karzai to clean up his act. The United States, with its rapid adaptation, has already shown it is in better shape than any previous invader to win the Afghan war on the ground. The challenge now is to also avoid repeating Russia's mistakes on the way out—and to become the first foreign force to leave Afghanistan in better shape than it found it.
Find this article at
http://www.newsweek.com/id/226412
© 2009
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Pakistan: The Supply Line Dilemma
Stratfor Today » December 14, 2009 | 1310 GMT
Summary
Rumors have been circulating that the Obama administration will approve
unilateral military action deeper into Pakistani territory beyond the tribal
belt. A potential backlash to such a strategy is the disruption of already
vulnerable U.S. and NATO supply lines running through Pakistan.
With U.S. President Barack Obama's revised Afghan strategy now under way,
rumors have been spreading rapidly in both Washington and Islamabad that the
Obama administration will approve drone strikes and other types of
unilateral U.S. military action deeper into Pakistani territory beyond the
tribal belt. These discussions are indeed taking place, but U.S. officials
are also taking a hard look at the potential backlash of such a strategy -
particularly, the threat to already-vulnerable U.S. and NATO supply lines
running through Pakistan.
The primary mission that Obama has assigned to U.S. Central Command is to
neutralize al Qaeda - a mission that encompasses pursuing high-value
jihadist targets in the region, knocking the momentum out of the Taliban
insurgency and training Afghan security forces to help shoulder the
counterterrorism burden. Obama has also articulated a plan to initiate a
drawdown of forces from the region as early as the summer of 2011, depending
on conditions on the ground. That means that the United States needs
results, and has a strategic need to see those results sooner rather than
later.
This is an extremely worrying prospect for Pakistan. To escape pressure from
U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, al Qaeda has shifted its safe-havens to
the tribal areas in Pakistan's rugged northwest periphery with the help of
select Taliban allies. If a large part of the U.S. mission is to defeat al
Qaeda, then the United States can be expected to have very little regard for
the Durand Line that divides the Pashtun lands between Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
The CIA and U.S. Special Forces already have a track record in carrying out
covert, cross-border activity in Pakistan, ranging from human intelligence
operations to unmanned aerial vehicle attacks against high-value targets,
such as Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) leader Baitullah Mehsud. These operations
cause Pakistan extraordinary unease, and to add insult to injury, the drones
fly out of bases in Pakistan itself. In June 2008, a U.S. airstrike targeted
a Pakistani paramilitary checkpoint in Mohmand Agency in the northwestern
tribal area, which the Pakistani military continues to believe was
deliberate targeting by their supposed ally. The United States crossed a
line with Islamabad, however, in September 2008 when it went beyond the
tribal belt and launched its most overt full-scale raid against high-value
Taliban and al Qaeda targets hiding out in a town in South Waziristan. That
attack ended up killing 20 people and sparked a public backlash, as
Pakistani citizens charged the government and military with selling out
Pakistan's national sovereignty to Washington.
Pakistan decided at that point that it would have to resort to the one tool
that gives Islamabad enormous leverage over Washington: control over U.S.
and NATO supply lines. The United States currently depends almost
exclusively on Pakistan to transport mostly non-lethal supplies (such as
food, fuel and building materials) for troops fighting the war in
Afghanistan. This may not be the safest route, but Pakistan does offer the
shortest and most logistically viable supply lines into landlocked
Afghanistan. The Pakistani supply lines originate in Karachi and then split
into two separate routes. The longer and more commonly-used northern route
passes through Sindh, Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Khyber Pass to the
Torkham border crossing into central and northern Afghanistan. The shorter,
southern route passes through Sindh to the Balochistan-Chaman border
crossing into southern Afghanistan.
(click here for STRATFOR Interactive map on attacks targeting U.S.-NATO
supply lines)
Following the September 2008 U.S. operation in South Waziristan, U.S. and
NATO logistics teams ran into trouble at the port of Karachi. Within several
days of the strike, Pakistani authorities suddenly demanded that the
logistics teams would have to fill out all their paperwork in Urdu, and that
it would be up to Pakistani authorities to determine whether their Urdu was
up to Pakistani standards to allow supplies to pass through. The disruption
lasted a few days. This was essentially Pakistan's way of signaling to the
United States that it was not going to tolerate unilateral U.S. military
action in Pakistan and that the consequences of such action would be a
supply cut-off to U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has since caused sporadic disruptions to the supply lines, usually
by citing security concerns and closing the border crossings at Torkham and
Chaman for days at a time. And though Pakistan has been battling its own
jihadist insurgency for several years now, militant attacks on the supply
lines only picked up at the end of 2008 when U.S.-Pakistani tensions were
running particularly high following the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. This
phenomenon has been discussed among officials in New Delhi and Washington,
though no evidence has been presented to demonstrate a direct link between
the sudden uptick in attacks and an increase of U.S. pressure on Pakistan.
Pakistan-based jihadists have their own incentive to wreak havoc on
U.S./NATO supply lines into Afghanistan, but Pakistan's murky militant
landscape could also provide the Pakistani military and intelligence
services with the means to disrupt the supply lines should the political
need arise.
Now that the United States is pursuing a more aggressive posture in
targeting high-value militants on Pakistani soil, the Pakistani military and
government have an even greater strategic incentive to hold U.S./NATO supply
lines hostage. Pakistan and the United States cannot agree to disagree on
their definitions of "good" versus "bad" Taliban. While Pakistan is serious
about pursuing TTP militants whose main battle is with the Pakistani state,
it does not want to incur the backlash of pursuing those militants and
allies of al Qaeda whose focus is on Afghanistan, most notably the Haqqani
network and Hafiz Gul Bahadir in North Waziristan, Maulvi Nazir in South
Waziristan, and the Mullah Omar-led group of Afghan Taliban in the Pashtun
belt of Balochistan. Pakistan's intelligence services have a delicate
network of alliances to maintain within each of these networks, and from
Islamabad's point of view, strikes by U.S. Hellfire missiles do not
particularly help in this regard.
Pakistan is particularly concerned about the United States going beyond the
tribal areas and pursuing militants closer to the Pakistani core. While the
Pakistani public has become more or less tolerant of drone strikes in FATA,
the idea of a U.S. drone going after Mullah Omar in Balochistan province is
another matter entirely. FATA is an autonomous region, where the writ of the
Pakistani state does not reach very far. Balochistan, in spite of its own
separatist tendencies, is still an integral piece of the Pakistani state.
The public backlash from the September 2008 attack in South Waziristan was
notable - to the point where even the Pakistani army chief gave orders to
Pakistani forces to fire on U.S. drones - but U.S. military operations in
Balochistan would trigger a much more intense and violent response.
And then there is the issue of Punjab - the Pakistani heartland - where the
population, military, industry and agriculture are concentrated. Several TTP
attacks in the past week have taken place in Punjab, with the most recent
suicide attack against an Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) facility in
Multan. Though the Pakistani Taliban has nowhere near the support network in
Punjab than it has in the Pashtun-dominated northwestern tribal badlands,
these attacks are spreading fears that the TTP has activated a preexisting
social support network of radical Islamists in southern Punjab. The last
thing the Pakistani military wants is to be drawn into military operations
in the Pakistani core, but the Pakistani military cannot afford to see U.S.
operations expand to Punjab. Such a possibility, though remote, would cause
a major crisis of confidence within an already embattled military, whose
loss of internal coherence would pose a direct threat to the survival of the
state.
The United States is thus caught in a dilemma. On one hand, it's on a tight
timeline to achieve results in defeating al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan
so that it can move on to other pressing issues beyond South Asia. On the
other hand, the means that the United States would use in defeating al Qaeda
run a good chance of seriously destabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear-armed ally
whose cooperation is essential to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.
The United States has begun tackling this dilemma by depriving Pakistan of
at least some of the leverage it holds through the supply lines. Washington
has been in negotiations with Moscow for roughly a year to develop a
supplemental supply line through the former Soviet Union, and is now at a
point where the two are working on the details of an agreement to transport
U.S. and NATO supplies from the Latvian port of Riga through Russia and into
Afghanistan. This is one of several alternate routes, but any route through
the Central Asian states or through Ukraine and Romania would still require
the White House to deal with the Kremlin, a lesson the United States learned
the hard way. The supplemental supply routes through the former Soviet Union
cannot replace the routes through Pakistan, and are resting on an extremely
shaky political foundation. After all, Russia is more than happy to make
Washington more dependent on Moscow for its mission in Afghanistan since the
Kremlin would then have the ability to cut the supply line whenever
U.S.-Russian political negotiations go south.
Even as plans are in the works for a supplemental supply line through the
former Soviet Union, Washington knows there is still no going around
Pakistan. Between a raging jihadist insurgency, an economy in turmoil and a
government on the verge of collapse, Pakistan is already under a great deal
of pressure. An increase in U.S. military operations on Pakistani soil going
beyond the tribal badlands could well be the final straw. The United States
is thus in a quandary: How does it achieve its goals on the western
periphery of Pakistan without creating anarchy in its core? Pakistani
authorities are now tasked with making the United States understand just how
fragile their situation is, and if those appeals don't work, Pakistan's
alternate plan will likely be to hold U.S./NATO supply lines hostage.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/14/report-u-s-may-target-taliban-leadership-in-quetta-with-drone-strikes/
Report: U.S. may target Taliban leadership in Quetta with drone strikes
posted at 8:04 pm on December 14, 2009 by Allahpundit
Consider this an unexpected benefit of The One’s eagerness to get out of Afghanistan. He has every incentive to do as much damage to the enemy as possible as quickly as possible, which may encourage him to make moves even Bush wasn’t daring enough to make. It’s been an open secret, and an international disgrace, for years that the Taliban leadership operates relatively freely in the Pakistani city of Quetta; I’ve written about it before but not until just recently did Pakistan itself admit the obvious. We know they’re in the city. The question is, what are we — and, more importantly, Pakistan — prepared to do about it?
Senior U.S. officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan’s tribal region and into a major city in an attempt to pressure the Pakistani government to pursue Taliban leaders based in Quetta.
The proposal has opened a contentious new front in the clandestine war. The prospect of Predator aircraft strikes in Quetta, a sprawling city, signals a new U.S. resolve to decapitate the Taliban. But it also risks rupturing Washington’s relationship with Islamabad.
The concern has created tension among Obama administration officials over whether unmanned aircraft strikes in a city of 850,000 are a realistic option. Proponents, including some military leaders, argue that attacking the Taliban in Quetta — or at least threatening to do so — is crucial to the success of the revised war strategy President Obama unveiled last week.
“If we don’t do this — at least have a real discussion of it — Pakistan might not think we are serious,” said a senior U.S. official involved in war planning. “What the Pakistanis have to do is tell the Taliban that there is too much pressure from the U.S.; we can’t allow you to have sanctuary inside Pakistan anymore.”…
Pakistan is working with the CIA to coax certain Taliban lieutenants in Omar’s fold to defect. U.S. officials said contacts have been handled primarily by the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence services. The results of the effort are unclear.
The fear, of course, is that drone strikes in a place as crowded as a city will produce a catastrophic misfire and a similarly catastrophic public backlash. Which is why, I assume, this is mostly a bluff aimed at scaring the Pakistanis into sending people in and taking out the leadership itself. But how likely is that? Via Bill Roggio, a bit of insight into our “friends” in Pakistan’s intel service, the ISI:
Champagne popped open this week as Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) celebrated US President Barack Obama’s announcement that American troops would start withdrawing from Afghanistan in July 2011. Despite the extra 30,000 soldiers and the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) expansion of its unmanned drone operations inside Pakistan’s tribal areas, Islamabad was jubilant. The ISI’s strategy of waiting for the Americans to leave was paying off. Soon, Islamabad would recapture Kabul after eight years of domination by New Delhi…
Clearly, the ISI runs circles around the CIA. The CIA knows it, but can do little except gnash its teeth, because it has no spies among the jihadists. The ISI doesn’t need spies; it created the Taliban.
The Americans ought to demand that the ISI demonstrate sincerity by handing over Mullah Omar, the Taliban chief. The one-eyed Mullah and his cohorts are said to have converted one of Quetta’s suburbs into a kind of mini-Taliban city; it is a place which neither Pakistani police nor journalists dare visit. Houses, shops and mosques have all been purchased by the Taliban (using ISI money, which is basically US military aid; yes, ironic). The ISI is in constant touch with the Taliban hierarchy. And even with expanded CIA drone operations, it will be difficult to get Mullah Omar; the drones have been hitting targets in the countryside and mountains, not in the cities, and even that has swelled anti-American sentiment, according to every Pakistani leader, civilian or military. Imagine what a strike in a crowded urban area would do.
ISI can tell us where they are — and it can also give us bogus information which would cause massive civilian casualties, a resulting PR nightmare, and a very rapid abandonment of the drone-strike strategy in Quetta. Which, I assume, explains why Bush never tried it: It’s likely too hard to get CIA people inside a Taliban citadel so we’re forced to rely on Pakistani intel to hand over their own proxy jihadi army, something they have little incentive to do. In fact, just today there’s a story at the Times about their refusal to crack down on Siraj Haqqani, another creation of ISI who’s been waging war on the U.S. inside Afghanistan from North Waziristan.
The core reason for Pakistan’s imperviousness is its scant faith in the Obama surge, and what Pakistan sees as the need to position itself for a major regional realignment in Afghanistan once American forces begin to leave…
Pakistan is particularly eager to counter the growing influence of its archenemy, India, which is pouring $1.2 billion in aid into Afghanistan. “If American walks away, Pakistan is very worried that it will have India on its eastern border and India on its western border in Afghanistan,” said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States who is pro-American in his views.
For that reason, Mr. Fatemi said, the Pakistani Army was “very reluctant” to jettison Mr. Haqqani, Pakistan’s strong card in Afghanistan. Moreover, the Pakistanis do not want to alienate Mr. Haqqani because they consider him an important player in reconciliation efforts that they would like to see get under way in Afghanistan immediately, the officials said.
It’s a Catch-22: Obama’s eagerness to leave is aimed in part at pressuring Pakistan to help us succeed and get out, but Pakistan has less incentive to help us succeed and get out if it thinks we’re eager to leave. Which brings us back to the main question of how the U.S. can even credibly threaten to hit high-value targets in Quetta without ISI help and, indeed, with the ISI actively trying to thwart them. Presumably there have been defections to our side from inside the city giving us an intelligence presence there, or else there’s some sort of leverage we have over ISI which you and I don’t know about that would cause them to start ratting out big fish like Mullah Omar. Keep an eye out in your news-reading travails for reports of Taliban capos suddenly being arrested. It has, after all, happened before.
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I posted this in Military Science as well.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html
DECEMBER 17, 2009
Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones
$26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected
By SIOBHAN GORMAN, YOCHI J. DREAZEN and AUGUST COLE
WASHINGTON -- Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America's enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.
The drone intercepts mark the emergence of a shadow cyber war within the U.S.-led conflicts overseas. They also point to a potentially serious vulnerability in Washington's growing network of unmanned drones, which have become the American weapon of choice in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Obama administration has come to rely heavily on the unmanned drones because they allow the U.S. to safely monitor and stalk insurgent targets in areas where sending American troops would be either politically untenable or too risky.
The stolen video feeds also indicate that U.S. adversaries continue to find simple ways of counteracting sophisticated American military technologies.
U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered the problem late last year when they apprehended a Shiite militant whose laptop contained files of intercepted drone video feeds. In July, the U.S. military found pirated drone video feeds on other militant laptops, leading some officials to conclude that militant groups trained and funded by Iran were regularly intercepting feeds.
In the summer 2009 incident, the military found "days and days and hours and hours of proof" that the feeds were being intercepted and shared with multiple extremist groups, the person said. "It is part of their kit now."
A senior defense official said that James Clapper, the Pentagon's intelligence chief, assessed the Iraq intercepts at the direction of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and concluded they represented a shortcoming to the security of the drone network.
"There did appear to be a vulnerability," the defense official said. "There's been no harm done to troops or missions compromised as a result of it, but there's an issue that we can take care of and we're doing so."
Senior military and intelligence officials said the U.S. was working to encrypt all of its drone video feeds from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but said it wasn't yet clear if the problem had been completely resolved.
Some of the most detailed evidence of intercepted feeds has been discovered in Iraq, but adversaries have also intercepted drone video feeds in Afghanistan, according to people briefed on the matter. These intercept techniques could be employed in other locations where the U.S. is using pilotless planes, such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, they said.
The Pentagon is deploying record numbers of drones to Afghanistan as part of the Obama administration's troop surge there. Lt. Gen. David Deptula, who oversees the Air Force's unmanned aviation program, said some of the drones would employ a sophisticated new camera system called "Gorgon Stare," which allows a single aerial vehicle to transmit back at least 10 separate video feeds simultaneously.
Gen. Deptula, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said there were inherent risks to using drones since they are remotely controlled and need to send and receive video and other data over great distances. "Those kinds of things are subject to listening and exploitation," he said, adding the military was trying to solve the problems by better encrypting the drones' feeds.
The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The U.S. government has known about the flaw since the U.S. campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, the officials said.
Last December, U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered copies of Predator drone feeds on a laptop belonging to a Shiite militant, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter. "There was evidence this was not a one-time deal," this person said. The U.S. accuses Iran of providing weapons, money and training to Shiite fighters in Iraq, a charge that Tehran has long denied.
The militants use programs such as SkyGrabber, from Russian company SkySoftware. Andrew Solonikov, one of the software's developers, said he was unaware that his software could be used to intercept drone feeds. "It was developed to intercept music, photos, video, programs and other content that other users download from the Internet -- no military data or other commercial data, only free legal content," he said by email from Russia.
Officials stepped up efforts to prevent insurgents from intercepting video feeds after the July incident. The difficulty, officials said, is that adding encryption to a network that is more than a decade old involves more than placing a new piece of equipment on individual drones. Instead, many components of the network linking the drones to their operators in the U.S., Afghanistan or Pakistan have to be upgraded to handle the changes. Additional concerns remain about the vulnerability of the communications signals to electronic jamming, though there's no evidence that has occurred, said people familiar with reports on the matter.
Predator drones are built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of San Diego. Some of its communications technology is proprietary, so widely used encryption systems aren't readily compatible, said people familiar with the matter.
In an email, a spokeswoman said that for security reasons, the company couldn't comment on "specific data link capabilities and limitations."
Fixing the security gap would have caused delays, according to current and former military officials. It would have added to the Predator's price. Some officials worried that adding encryption would make it harder to quickly share time-sensitive data within the U.S. military, and with allies.
"There's a balance between pragmatics and sophistication," said Mike Wynne, Air Force Secretary from 2005 to 2008.
The Air Force has staked its future on unmanned aerial vehicles. Drones account for 36% of the planes in the service's proposed 2010 budget.
Today, the Air Force is buying hundreds of Reaper drones, a newer model, whose video feeds could be intercepted in much the same way as with the Predators, according to people familiar with the matter. A Reaper costs between $10 million and $12 million each and is faster and better armed than the Predator. General Atomics expects the Air Force to buy as many as 375 Reapers.
Write to Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com, Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com and August Cole at august.cole@dowjones.com
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1
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Second post
NOTE the UAV capability upgrades: "By next spring, a single pod on a UAV could track 13 separate people as they leave a meeting place. The capability will expand to 65 people by 2012 and eventually to perhaps as many as 150 image feeds from a single UAV combat air patrol."
Black UAV Performs In Afghanistan
Dec 11, 2009
David A. Fulghum and Bill Sweetman
The U.S. has been flying a classified, stealthy, remotely piloted aircraft in Afghanistan. That single fact reveals the continued development of low-observable UAVs, hidden aspects of the surveillance buildup in Afghanistan, the footprint of an active “black aircraft world” that stretches to Southwest Asia, and links into the Pentagon’s next-generation recce bomber.
The mystery aircraft—once referred to as the Beast of Kandahar and now identified by the U.S. Air Force as a Lockheed Martin Skunk Works RQ-170 Sentinel—flew from Kandahar’s airport, where it was photographed at least twice in 2007. It shared a hangar with Predator and Reaper UAVs being used in combat operations. On Dec. 4, three days after declassification was requested, Aviation Week revealed the program on its web site. Like Predator and Reaper, the Sentinel is remotely piloted by aircrews—in this case the 30th Reconnaissance Sqdn. (RS) at Tonopah Test Range Airport in the northwest corner of the Nevada Test and Training Range.
The confirmation came the same week as the Air Force’s top intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) officer called for a new, stealth, jet-powered strike-reconnaissance aircraft that can meet the requirements of both irregular and conventional conflicts and strategic, peacetime information-gathering.
The demands of fighting an irregular war do not change the critical operational need for a stealthier, strategic-range, higher-payload, strike-reconnaissance aircraft, says Air Force Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, deputy chief of staff for ISR.
The battle will be to balance the way the military wants to fight in Afghanistan now against how it wants to fight elsewhere in the future. Air Force officials want to keep those two needs from becoming widely divergent points in geography, technology and operational techniques. For the next 18 months, about 150,000 U.S. and allied troops will try to break the offensive capabilities of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghan istan, and new technologies will be brought into play.
“Don’t get enamored with current conditions,” Deptula cautions. “We don’t know what the future will bring.” While operations in Afghanistan will be “more complex than ever,” the future is “not only going to be about irregular warfare.”
Beyond 2011, the Air Force’s first priority and the destination of the next dollar to be spent “if I were king for a day,” Deptula says, “would be for long-range [reconnaissance and] precision strike. That’s the number-one need.
“We cannot move into a future without a platform that allows [us] to project power long distances and to meet advanced threats in a fashion that gives us an advantage that no other nation has,” he notes. “We can’t walk away from that capability.”
A next-generation design would be equally important as a stealthy ISR platform to greatly extend—through speed, endurance and stealth—the capability produced by putting electro-optical and infrared sensor packets on the B-1 and B-52 bombers for precise attacks on fleeting targets in Southwest Asia.
Surveillance aircraft can see a lot more (farther and better) with long-wave infrared if the platform can operate at 50,000 ft. or higher. The RC-135S Cobra Ball, RC-135W Rivet Joint and E-8C Joint Stars are all limited to flying lower than 30,000 ft. Moreover, the multispectral technology to examine the chemical content of rocket plumes has been miniaturized to fit easily on a much smaller aircraft. Other sensors of interest are electronically scanned array radars, low-probability-of-intercept synthetic aperture radars and signals intelligence.
In fact, combat in Afghanistan could have—if well planned—direct benefits for conventional wars. The target set for the new surge campaign includes “cohesive units without chains of command” that the U.S. and its allies need to “dominate and win [against] across the spectrum” of conflict, Deptula says.
That then brings the focus back to what has been going on at Tonopah.
The 30th RS falls under Air Combat Command’s 432nd Wing at Creech AFB, Nev., home of the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 training and remote operations facilities. Tonopah is where classified projects—such as the F-117 fighter—are kept when they are still secret but have grown to a point where they cannot be easily accommodated at the Air Force’s “black” flight-test center at Groom Lake. Its operations are restricted by the need to prevent personnel cleared into any one program from observing other “sight-sensitive” test aircraft. The squadron was activated as part of the 57th Operations Group on Sept. 1, 2005, and a squadron patch was approved on July 17, 2007. The activation—although not the full meaning of the event—was noted among those who watch for signs of activity in the classified world.
The RQ-170 is a tailless flying wing design from Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs. It has a single engine and pronounced compound sweep on the leading and trailing edges. It is difficult to estimate the aircraft’s size, but one report suggests that the wingspan is similar to that of the Reaper at 66 ft. The high degree of blending and center-body depth would suggest a greater takeoff weight and thrust than the RQ-3 DarkStar, Lockheed Martin’s earlier stealth UAV, which was powered by a 1,900-lb.-thrust Williams FJ44 engine and weighed 8,500 lb.
A number of features suggest that the RQ-170 is a moderately stealthy design, without the DarkStar’s or Northrop Grumman X-47B’s extreme emphasis on low radar cross section (RCS). The leading edges do not appear to be sharp—normally considered essential for avoiding strong RCS glints—and it appears that the main landing gear door’s front and rear edges are squared off rather than being notched or aligned with the wing edges.
In addition, the exhaust is not shielded by the wing, and the wing is curved rather than angular. That suggests the Sentinel has been designed to avoid the use of highly sensitive technologies. As a single-engine UAV, vehicle losses are a statistical certainty. Ultra-stealthy UAVs—such as the never-completed Lockheed-Boeing Quartz for which DarkStar was originally a demonstrator—were criticized on the grounds they were “pearls too precious to wear”—because their use would be too restricted by the risk of compromising technology in the event of a loss.
The medium-gray color, similar to the Reaper’s, is a clue to performance. At extreme altitudes (above 60,000 ft.), very dark tones provide the best concealment even in daylight because there is little lighting behind the vehicle while it is illuminated by light scattered from moisture and particles in the air below it. The RQ-170 is therefore a mid-altitude platform, unlikely to operate much above 50,000 ft. This altitude also would have simplified the use of an off-the-shelf engine. General Electric has been working on a classified variant of its TF34 engine that appears to fit the thrust range of the RQ-170.
The overwing housings for sensors or antennas are also significant. One could accommodate a satcom antenna; but if both housed sensors, they would cover the entire hemisphere above the aircraft.
An Air Force official tells Aviation Week that the service has been “developing a stealthy, unmanned aircraft system [UAS] to provide reconnaissance and surveillance support to forward-deployed combat forces.
“The fielding of the RQ-170 aligns with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’s request for increased . . . ISR support to the Combatant Commanders and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz’s vision for an increased USAF reliance on unmanned aircraft,” says the memorandum prepared for Aviation Week by the Air Force.
The RQ-170 designation is a correct prefix but numerically out of sequence to avoid obvious guesses of the program’s existence. Technically, “RQ” denotes an unarmed aircraft rather than the MQ prefix applied to the armed Predator and Reaper. A phrase in the memorandum, “support to forward-deployed combat forces,” when combined with visible details that suggest a moderate degree of stealth (including a blunt leading edge, simple nozzle and overwing sensor pods), suggests that the Sentinel is a tactical, operations-oriented platform and not a strategic intelligence-gathering design.
With its moderately low-observable design, the aircraft would be useful for flying along the borders of Iran and peering into China, India and Pakistan to gather useful information about missile tests and telemetry, as well as garnering signals and multispectral intelligence.
The RQ-170 has links to earlier Skunk Works designs such as the experimental DarkStar and Polecat. “DarkStar didn’t die when Lockheed Martin [retired the airframe],” said a former company executive last week. “It just got classified.”
Following the landing of a damaged Navy EP-3E in China in early 2001, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called a classified, all-day session of those with responsibilities for “sensitive reconnaissance operations” (AW&ST June 4, 2001, p. 30). They discussed how to avoid embarrassing and damaging losses of classified equipment, documents or aircrews without losing the ability to monitor the military forces and capabilities of important nations such as China. Their leading option was to start a new stealthy, unmanned reconnaissance program that would field 12-24 aircraft. Air Combat Command, which was then led by Gen. John Jumper, wanted a very-low-observable, high-altitude UAV that could penetrate air defense, fly 1,000 nm. to a target, loiter for 8 hr. and return to base.
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a UAV described as a derivative of DarkStar was being prepared and was said by several officials to have been used operationally in prototype form (AW&ST Mar. 15, 2004, p. 35; July 7, 2003, p. 20).
“It’s the same concept as DarkStar; it’s stealthy and it uses the same apertures and data links,” said an Air Force official at the time. “Only it’s bigger,” said a Navy official. “It’s still far from a production aircraft, but the Air Force wanted to go ahead and get it out there.” The classified UAV’s operation caused consternation among U-2 pilots who noticed high-flying aircraft operating within several miles of their routes over Iraq. Flights of the mysterious aircraft were not coordinated with those of other manned and unmanned surveillance units.
There is great interest in how the U.S. now leverages its black- and white-world UAVs and remotely piloted aircraft to maintain a watch over the vast and rugged areas of Afghanistan that NATO’s force of about 100,000 troops will be unable to patrol. The revitalized conflict in Afghanistan will be largely a ground war with airpower serving as flying artillery and as a wide-ranging reconnaissance force.
Emphasis will be attached to manned MC-12W and unmanned surveillance and light-attack aircraft. New technologies such as the Gorgon Stare ISR pod will address ground commanders’ insatiable desire for full-motion video. By next spring, a single pod on a UAV could track 13 separate people as they leave a meeting place. The capability will expand to 65 people by 2012 and eventually to perhaps as many as 150 image feeds from a single UAV combat air patrol.
Along with its new ISR products, the U.S. will be providing close air support and helicopter airlift to its allies.
“I don’t know exactly when the NATO forces or non-U.S. forces will be flowing,” says Gates. “We do have some private commitments. There will be some additional announcements, I expect, [after the] London conference in January on Afghanistan.”
The rough plan so far is to divide operational responsibilities between the allies in the north and west and the U.S. in the east and south. The allies are expected to total “a brigade or two” comprising about 3,500-4,000 troops each, says Gates. Training of the Afghan troops will focus on partnering in combat with international personnel, rather than on basic training.
With Guy Norris in Los Angeles.
Illustration by Gregory Lewis/AW&ST
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No matter how many troops President Obama orders to Afghanistan, victory will also require a surge across the Pakistan border that the Taliban and al Qaeda—but not American GIs—cross easily. The President knows this, but he hasn't made Pakistan's help any easier to obtain by signalling his intention to draw down a mere year after his surge troops arrive in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has slowly expanded its cooperation this year as its public and military have awakened to the threat from their own Islamist militants after a spate of terrorist attacks, including on the military headquarters in Rawalpindi. Long portrayed as noble bearded mountain fighters in Pakistan's press, the Islamists are at last seen as an existential threat to Islamabad and Lahore. And this year the military has pushed the Pakistani Taliban from the Swat Valley and South Waziristan and, in contrast with past offensives, hasn't for now ceded back the ground in a misconceived truce. This is progress.
But so far the generals have refused to take on other Islamists they don't view as a danger and have long cultivated as strategic assets—that is, the Afghan Taliban. This means the Taliban government in exile in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, and Afghan insurgents loyal to the ailing Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj based in North Waziristan. The so-called Quetta shura is led by deposed Taliban leader and Osama bin Laden ally, Mullah Omar, who fled in 2001 and now directs the fighting in southern Afghanistan from Quetta. The Haqqani network is the largest insurgent group in eastern Afghanistan.
We're told that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, in a private letter to Mr. Obama earlier this month, promised to take the fight to North Waziristan and Baluchistan. Merely to have a Pakistani politician acknowledge the existence of the Quetta shura counts as progress. The Pakistanis are reluctant to arrest their longtime proxies, Haqqani or Omar, but they could at least disrupt their headquarters and make it harder to operate from Pakistan.
As ever, the final decision rests with the Pakistan military led by General Ashfaq Kayani. According to a story in the New York Times, he has resisted the entreaties and told the U.S. that his troops have their hands too full with their own Pakistani Taliban to expand their operations.
The head of the U.S. Central Command, General David Petraeus, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen visited Pakistan last week to nudge some more. Perhaps they used the opportunity to express U.S. frustration about official Pakistani complicity in the deaths of American troops in Afghanistan. Such messages need to be sent, though the best way is in private.
If Pakistan truly has given up on its old double game of claiming to back America while allowing a Taliban sanctuary within its borders, now would be a good time to show it's serious. If not, the U.S. has leverage with Islamabad through foreign aid, as well as various military options. U.S. drone strikes can be expanded, including for the first time to Baluchistan, and special forces might be deployed across the porous border.
Both carry diplomatic risks. Though drone strikes have killed about two dozen civilians according to one Pakistani government estimate, the country's press loves to exaggerate the toll to embarrass the government and stoke anti-Americanism. The presence of U.S. troops in Pakistan, if publicized, could also undermine a Zardari government that's taken brave risks to help Washington.
This is where Mr. Obama's decision to announce a July 2011 deadline for beginning to withdraw from Afghanistan has been damaging. Various Administration officials have tried to walk back that deadline, but it has played inside Pakistan as further evidence that the Americans will eventually bug out of the region. Pakistan's military and intelligence services have long hedged their bets by supporting Mullah Omar and the Afghan Taliban in case the U.S. leaves and for fear that India will try to fill any power vacuum in Kabul. Now they have another excuse not to change.
The reality is that the gravest threat to Pakistan comes from Islamic radicals, especially if they are able to survive the U.S. and NATO surge. Their next targets will be Islamabad and Rawalpindi as much as Kabul, London or New York. The U.S. and Pakistan share a common enemy, and Mr. Obama will have to assure the Pakistanis that the American commitment won't end with some arbitrary withdrawal deadline made to appease the U.S. antiwar left.
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December 27, 2009
Elite U.S. Force Expanding Hunt in Afghanistan
By ERIC SCHMITT
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan
Secretive branches of the military’s Special Operations forces have increased counterterrorism missions against some of the most lethal groups in Afghanistan and, because of their success, plan an even bigger expansion next year, according to American commanders.
The commandos, from the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s classified Seals units, have had success weakening the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the strongest Taliban warrior in eastern Afghanistan, the officers said. Mr. Haqqani’s group has used its bases in neighboring Pakistan to carry out deadly strikes in and around Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Guided by intercepted cellphone communications, the American commandos have also killed some important Taliban operatives in Marja, the most fearsome Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province in the south, the officers said. Marine commanders say they believe that there are some 1,000 fighters holed up in the town.
Although President Obama and his top aides have not publicly discussed these highly classified missions as part of the administration’s revamped strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the counterterrorism operations are expected to increase, along with the deployment of 30,000 more American forces in the next year.
The increased counterterrorism operations over the past three or four months reflect growth in every part of the Afghanistan campaign, including conventional forces securing the population, other troops training and partnering with Afghan security forces, and more civilians to complement and capitalize on security gains.
American commanders in Afghanistan rely on the commando units to carry out some of the most complicated operations against militant leaders, and the missions are never publicly acknowledged. The commandos are the same elite forces that have been pursuing Osama bin Laden, captured Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 and led the hunt that ended in 2006 in the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader in Iraq of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
In recent interviews here, commanders explained that the special-mission units from the Joint Special Operations Command were playing a pivotal role in degrading some of the toughest militant groups, and buying some time before American reinforcements arrived and more Afghan security forces could be trained.
“They are extremely effective in the areas where we are focused,” said one American general in Afghanistan about the commandos, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified status of the missions.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is in charge of the military’s Central Command, mentioned the increased focus on counterterrorism operations in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Dec. 9. But he spoke more obliquely about the teams actually conducting attacks against hard-core Taliban extremists, particularly those in rural areas outside the reach of population centers that conventional forces will focus on.
“We actually will be increasing our counterterrorist component of the overall strategy,” General Petraeus told lawmakers. “There’s no question you’ve got to kill or capture those bad guys that are not reconcilable. And we are intending to do that, and we will have additional national mission force elements to do that when the spring rolls around.”
Senior military officials say it is not surprising that the commandos are playing such an important role in the fight, particularly because Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior American and NATO officer in Afghanistan, led the Joint Special Operations Command for five years.
In addition to the classified American commando missions, military officials say that other NATO special operations forces have teamed up with Afghan counterparts to attack Taliban bomb-making networks and other militant cells.
About six weeks ago, allied and Afghan special operations forces killed about 150 Taliban fighters in several villages near Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, a senior NATO military official said.
Some missions have killed Taliban fighters while searching for Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, who was reported missing on June 30 in eastern Afghanistan. The Taliban in July posted a video on jihadist Web sites in which the soldier identified himself and said that he had been captured when he lagged behind on a patrol. A second video was released on Friday.
“We’ve been hitting them hard, but I want to be careful not to overstate our progress,” said the NATO official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to describe the operations in detail. “It has not yet been decisive.”
In Helmand, more than 10,000 Marines, as well as Afghan and British forces, are gearing up for a major confrontation in Marja early next year. Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, the senior Marine commander in the south, said in a recent interview, “The overt message we’re putting out is, Marja is next.”
General Nicholson said there were both “kinetic and nonkinetic shaping operations” under way. In military parlance that means covert operations, including stealthy commando raids against specific targets, as well as an overt propaganda campaign intended to persuade some Taliban fighters to defect.
Military officials say the commandos are mindful of General McChrystal’s directive earlier this year to take additional steps to prevent civilian casualties.
In February, before General McChrystal was named to his current position, the head of the Joint Special Operations Command, Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, ordered a halt to most commando missions in Afghanistan, reflecting a growing concern that civilian deaths caused by American firepower were jeopardizing broader goals there.
The halt, which lasted about two weeks, came after a series of nighttime raids by Special Operations troops killed women and children, and after months of mounting outrage in Afghanistan about civilians killed in air and ground attacks. The order covered all commando missions except those against the top leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, military officials said.
Across the border in Pakistan, where American commandos are not permitted to operate, the Central Intelligence Agency has stepped up its missile strikes by Predator and Reaper drones on groups like the Haqqani network.
But an official with Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or I.S.I., said there had also been more than 60 joint operations involving the I.S.I. and the C.I.A. in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Baluchistan in the past year.
The official said the missions included “snatch and grabs” — the abduction of important militants — as well as efforts to kill leaders. These operations were based on intelligence provided by either the United States or Pakistan to be used against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the official said.
“We can expect to see more U.S. action against Haqqani,” a senior American diplomat in Pakistan said in a recent interview.
The increasing tempo of commando operations in Afghanistan has caused some strains with other American commanders. Many of the top Special Operations forces, as well as intelligence analysts and surveillance aircraft, are being moved to Afghanistan from Iraq, as the Iraq war begins to wind down.
“It’s caused some tensions over resources,” said Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., the second-ranking commander in Iraq.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/wo...gewanted=print
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lite U.S. Force Expanding Hunt in Afghanistan
Kevin Frayer/Associated Press
American and Afghan troops in Helmand Province. Special Operations units are stepping up attacks on insurgents, officers say.
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: December 26, 2009
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — Secretive branches of the military’s Special Operations forces have increased counterterrorism missions against some of the most lethal groups in Afghanistan and, because of their success, plan an even bigger expansion next year, according to American commanders.
Skip to next paragraph
The New York Times
Officers at Bagram Air Base expect a major fight in Marja.
The commandos, from the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s classified Seals units, have had success weakening the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the strongest Taliban warrior in eastern Afghanistan, the officers said. Mr. Haqqani’s group has used its bases in neighboring Pakistan to carry out deadly strikes in and around Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Guided by intercepted cellphone communications,(WTF?!? Why does the NYTimes/Pravda on the Hudson insist on putting this sort of intel out there?!?) the American commandos have also killed some important Taliban operatives in Marja, the most fearsome Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province in the south, the officers said. Marine commanders say they believe that there are some 1,000 fighters holed up in the town.
Although President Obama and his top aides have not publicly discussed these highly classified missions as part of the administration’s revamped strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the counterterrorism operations are expected to increase, along with the deployment of 30,000 more American forces in the next year.
The increased counterterrorism operations over the past three or four months reflect growth in every part of the Afghanistan campaign, including conventional forces securing the population, other troops training and partnering with Afghan security forces, and more civilians to complement and capitalize on security gains.
American commanders in Afghanistan rely on the commando units to carry out some of the most complicated operations against militant leaders, and the missions are never publicly acknowledged.
The commandos are the same elite forces that have been pursuing Osama bin Laden, captured Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 and led the hunt that ended in 2006 in the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader in Iraq of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
In recent interviews here, commanders explained that the special-mission units from the Joint Special Operations Command were playing a pivotal role in hurting some of the toughest militant groups, and buying some time before American reinforcements arrived and more Afghan security forces could be trained.
“They are extremely effective in the areas where we are focused,” said one American general in Afghanistan about the commandos, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified status of the missions.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is in charge of the military’s Central Command, mentioned the increased focus on counterterrorism operations in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Dec. 9. But he spoke more obliquely about the teams actually conducting attacks against hard-core Taliban extremists, particularly those in rural areas outside the reach of population centers that conventional forces will focus on.
“We actually will be increasing our counterterrorist component of the overall strategy,” General Petraeus told lawmakers. “There’s no question you’ve got to kill or capture those bad guys that are not reconcilable. And we are intending to do that, and we will have additional national mission force elements to do that when the spring rolls around.”
Senior military officials say it is not surprising that the commandos are playing such an important role in the fight, particularly because Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior American and NATO officer in Afghanistan, led the Joint Special Operations Command for five years.
In addition to the classified American commando missions, military officials say that other NATO special operations forces have teamed up with Afghan counterparts to attack Taliban bomb-making networks and other militant cells.
About six weeks ago, allied and Afghan special operations forces killed about 150 Taliban fighters in several villages near Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, a senior NATO military official said.
Some missions have killed Taliban fighters while searching for Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, who was reported missing on June 30 in eastern Afghanistan. The Taliban in July posted a video on jihadist Web sites in which the soldier identified himself and said that he had been captured when he lagged behind on a patrol. A second video was released on Friday.
“We’ve been hitting them hard, but I want to be careful not to overstate our progress,” said the NATO official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to describe the operations in detail. “It has not yet been decisive.”
In Helmand, more than 10,000 Marines, as well as Afghan and British forces, are gearing up for a major confrontation in Marja early next year. Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, the senior Marine commander in the south, said in a recent interview, “The overt message we’re putting out is, Marja is next.”
General Nicholson said there were both “kinetic and nonkinetic shaping operations” under way. In military parlance that means covert operations, including stealthy commando raids against specific targets, as well as an overt propaganda campaign intended to persuade some Taliban fighters to defect.
Military officials say the commandos are mindful of General McChrystal’s directive earlier this year to take additional steps to prevent civilian casualties.
In February, before General McChrystal was named to his current position, the head of the Joint Special Operations Command, Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, ordered a halt to most commando missions in Afghanistan, reflecting a growing concern that civilian deaths caused by American firepower were jeopardizing broader goals there.
The halt, which lasted about two weeks, came after a series of nighttime raids by Special Operations troops killed women and children, and after months of mounting outrage in Afghanistan about civilians killed in air and ground attacks. The order covered all commando missions except those against the top leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, military officials said.
Across the border in Pakistan, where American commandos are not permitted to operate, the Central Intelligence Agency has stepped up its missile strikes by Predator and Reaper drones on groups like the Haqqani network.
But an official with Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or I.S.I., said there had also been more than 60 joint operations involving the I.S.I. and the C.I.A. in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Baluchistan in the past year.
The official said the missions included “snatch and grabs” — the abduction of important militants — as well as efforts to kill leaders. These operations were based on intelligence provided by either the United States or Pakistan to be used against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the official said.
“We can expect to see more U.S. action against Haqqani,” a senior American diplomat in Pakistan said in a recent interview.
The increasing tempo of commando operations in Afghanistan has caused some strains with other American commanders. Many of the top Special Operations forces, as well as intelligence analysts and surveillance aircraft, are being moved to Afghanistan from Iraq, as the Iraq war begins to wind down.
“It’s caused some tensions over resources,” said Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., the second-ranking commander in Iraq.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
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A page of interesting articles on the ISI by the NYT/POTH. Yes, yes, I know the source, so caveat emptor:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/interservices_intelligence/index.html?inline=nyt-org
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Army History Finds Early Missteps in Afghanistan
By JAMES DAO
Published: December 30, 2009
In the fall of 2003, the new commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, decided on a new strategy. Known as counterinsurgency, the approach required coalition forces to work closely with Afghan leaders to stabilize entire regions, rather than simply attacking insurgent cells.
An American B-52 headed back to continue a bombing run at Tora Bora, a crucial battle in Afghanistan, in December 2001.
But there was a major drawback, a new unpublished Army history of the war concludes. Because the Pentagon insisted on maintaining a “small footprint” in Afghanistan and because Iraq was drawing away resources, General Barno commanded fewer than 20,000 troops.
As a result, battalions with 800 soldiers were trying to secure provinces the size of Vermont. “Coalition forces remained thinly spread across Afghanistan,” the historians write. “Much of the country remained vulnerable to enemy forces increasingly willing to reassert their power.”
That early and undermanned effort to use counterinsurgency is one of several examples of how American forces, hamstrung by inadequate resources, missed opportunities to stabilize Afghanistan during the early years of the war, according to the history, “A Different Kind of War.”
This year, a resurgent Taliban prompted the current American commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to warn that the war would be lost without an infusion of additional troops and a more aggressive approach to counterinsurgency. President Obama agreed, ordering the deployment of 30,000 more troops, which will bring the total American force to 100,000.
But as early as late 2003, the Army historians assert, “it should have become increasingly clear to officials at Centcom and D.O.D. that the coalition presence in Afghanistan did not provide enough resources” for proper counterinsurgency, the historians write, referring to the United States Central Command and the Department of Defense.
“A Different Kind of War,” which covers the period from October 2001 until September 2005, represents the first installment of the Army’s official history of the conflict. Written by a team of seven historians at the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and based on open source material, it is scheduled to be published by spring.
The New York Times obtained a copy of the manuscript, which is still under review by current and former military officials.
Though other histories, including “In the Graveyard of Empires” by Seth G. Jones and “Descent Into Chaos” by Ahmed Rashid, cover similar territory, the manuscript of “A Different Kind of War” offers new details and is notable for carrying the imprimatur of the Army itself, which will use the history to train a new generation of officers.
The history, which has more than 400 pages, praises several innovations by the Pentagon, particularly the pairing of small Special Operations Forces teams with Afghan militias, which, backed by laser-guided weapons, drove the Taliban from power.
But, once the Taliban fell, the Pentagon often seemed ill-prepared and slow-footed in shifting from a purely military mission to a largely peacekeeping and nation-building one, fresh details in the history indicate.
“Even after the capture of Kabul and Kandahar,” the historians write, “there was no major planning initiated to create long-term political, social and economic stability in Afghanistan. In fact, the message from senior D.O.D officials in Washington was for the U.S. military to avoid such efforts.”
In one telling anecdote from 2004, the history describes how soldiers under General Barno had so little experience in counterinsurgency that one lieutenant colonel bought books about the strategy over the Internet and distributed them to his company commanders and platoon leaders.
In another case, a civil affairs commander in charge of small-scale reconstruction projects told the historians that he had been given $1 million in cash to house and equip his soldiers but that bureaucratic obstacles prevented him from spending a penny on projects. It took months to reduce the red tape, the historians say.
The historians also say that such anecdotes underscore the resourcefulness of commanders faced with unclear guidance and inadequate resources. But limited manpower still had an impact on operations, the history indicates.
When the Taliban was on the run in the spring of 2002, Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the incoming commander of American forces, traveled to Washington seeking guidance. The message conveyed by the Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. Jack Keane, was, “Don’t you do anything that looks like permanence,” General McNeill recalled. “We are in and out of there in a hurry.”
Largely as a result of that mandate, General McNeill took only half of his headquarters command from the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, N.C. But as the conflict became more complicated, requiring diplomatic and political operations as well as military ones, General McNeill lacked enough planning personnel, the history suggests. He was replaced in 2003 by an even smaller headquarters unit, the history says.
The lack of resources was also apparent in the training of Afghan security forces, the history shows.
Early in the war, the training program was hampered by poor equipment, low pay, high attrition and not enough trainers. Living conditions for the Afghan army were so poor that Maj. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry likened them to Valley Forge when he took command of the training operation in October 2002.
“The mandate was clear and it was a central task, but it is also fair to say that up until that time there had been few resources committed,” Mr. Eikenberry, now the ambassador to Afghanistan, told the historians, referring to the army training program.
The historians say resistance to providing more robust resources to Afghanistan had three sources in the White House and the Pentagon.
First, President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had criticized using the military for peacekeeping and reconstruction in the Balkans during the 1990s. As a result, “nation building” carried a derogatory connotation for many senior military officials, even though American forces were being asked to fill gaping voids in the Afghan government after the Taliban’s fall.
Second, military planners were concerned about Afghanistan’s long history of resisting foreign invaders and wanted to avoid the appearance of being occupiers. But the historians argue that this concern was based partly on an “incomplete” understanding of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan.
Third, the invasion of Iraq was siphoning away resources. After the invasion started in March 2003, the history says, the United States clearly “had a very limited ability to increase its forces” in Afghanistan.
The history provides a detailed retelling of the battle of Tora Bora, the cave-riddled insurgent redoubt on the Pakistan border where American forces thought they had trapped Osama bin Laden in December 2001. But Mr. bin Laden apparently escaped into Pakistan along with hundreds of Qaeda fighters.
The historians call Tora Bora “a lost opportunity” to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden. But they concluded that even with more troops, the American and Afghan forces probably could not have sealed the rugged border. And they deemed the battle a partial success because it “dealt a severe blow to those Taliban and Al Qaeda elements that remained active in Afghanistan.”
The history also recounts well-known battles like Operation Anaconda, in eastern Afghanistan in spring 2002. The history ends in the fall of 2005, when many American officials still felt optimistic about Afghanistan’s future. Postponed parliamentary elections were held that fall, but Taliban attacks were also on the rise.
“It was clear that the struggle to secure a stable and prosperous future for Afghanistan was not yet won,” the history concludes.
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Fascinating and wide ranging piece, a bit long to post.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15173037
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Taliban militants underscored their determination on Friday to prevent Pakistani citizens from forming armed militias to keep them at bay, as a suicide bomber rammed a truck loaded with hundreds of pounds of explosives into families and children crowded on a playground in the northwest.
Local authorities said they had little doubt that the village, Shah Hassan Khel, was chosen because residents were forming a pro-government militia. The village sits at the edge of the tribal area of South Waziristan, where the military opened an offensive to break up Taliban strongholds in October.
The bombing killed at least 89 people and wounded scores more, making it one of the deadliest in a string of suicide attacks that have killed more than 500 Pakistanis since October. The blast was so powerful that it left a number of victims buried under rubble, and the authorities were uncertain exactly how many had died.
The strike was all the more devastating, as the bomber did not choose the most obvious target: a meeting under way of local leaders of the new militia. Instead, he drove his double-cabin pickup truck into the middle of a nearby playing field where teams were playing volleyball. The explosion collapsed homes surrounding the field.
“When we came out, there was a plume of smoke and dust,” said Gul Janan, a member of the pro-government militia, who, along with its other dazed members, had been bruised but not seriously wounded when the roof collapsed on the mosque where they were meeting. They emerged to find their village ravaged.
“Nothing was visible,” Mr. Janan said in a telephone interview. “It was a huge bombing.”
The attack was the latest retaliation for the Pakistani military’s offensive in nearby South Waziristan that had driven the Taliban out of their longstanding sanctuary and into other parts of the Pashtun-dominated northwest.
Militants have intensified their attacks since the offensive began in October, with suicide bombing in major cities, including the military garrison city of Rawalpindi; the capital, Islamabad; the nation’s financial center, Karachi; and Peshawar, the hub of the northwest frontier.
The Pakistani military has also expanded its operations the past year, with offensives in Swat, Buner, South Waziristan and other parts of the northwest. But they have found it impossible to contain militants.
The Taliban fighters have spread far afield and pushed farther into the settled areas of the country, where they carry out attacks with ease, including regions bordering the tribal areas, like the village hit Friday. In those areas, they routinely fight government forces and citizen militias for supremacy.
Militia leaders increasingly have become principal targets, as the Taliban aim to undercut a vulnerable but critical component of the government’s strategy to supplement badly outgunned and underfinanced police forces with the citizen posses.
Two anti-Taliban militia leaders have been killed in the past week in Bajaur — one kidnapped and beheaded and the other killed by a roadside bomb — as Taliban forces have regained strength in the northernmost part of the country’s tribal areas.
“The terrorists are losing the battle and that’s why they have turned to terrorizing the civilians,” said the information minister for North-West Frontier Province, Mian Iftikhar Hussain.
The attack on Friday was clearly also, in the view of local officials, specific retribution for the villagers’ willingness to throw their lot in with the government and organize an anti-Taliban militia.
Mr. Janan said militants were angry with the residents of Shah Hassan Khel for forming what the local people called a “peace committee” to fend off the insurgents.
“They are thugs who claim to be Taliban,” he said of the militants. “They kidnap people for ransom.”
He said that when the attack occurred, the peace committee “was in session to devise a strategy on how to deal with the militants.” Then the blast caved in the roof at the mosque where they were meeting. “Luckily, save for minor bruises, none of us were seriously wounded,” he said.
But he said the bomber drove into a vulnerable crowd of hundreds. “There were a lot of people there watching a match between two local teams,” Mr. Janan said.
The peace committee members and officials in the larger district that includes the village, Lakki Marwat, had been marked men for weeks. They received calls from militants in North Waziristan demanding that they abandon the peace committee, or they would be killed.
Two weeks ago, militants sent a suicide bomber to kill the political leader in Lakki Marwat as he received guests at home. The bomber got close, and many people could have been killed, but the bomber tripped before he could reach his target, setting off part of the bomb and killing only himself.
The United States has stepped up pressure on Pakistan to go after militants based in North Waziristan, including the Taliban network run by Sirajuddin Haqqani, who uses the area to stage his insurgency against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Americans commanders consider eliminating sanctuaries in North Waziristan to be critical to the success of President Obama’s troop escalation.
So far the demand has been rebuffed by the Pakistani military, which, along with the intelligence services, has long regarded the Haqqanis as assets to exert influence in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani military says it has its hands full already with its operation in South Waziristan. But many of the militants it was fighting there have simply moved and are now being sheltered by groups in North Waziristan.
Mr. Hussain, the provincial information minister, suggested that they, too, should now be targets. He called for limited operations to flush out militants from their remaining strongholds in the tribal areas.
“The military has done well in South Waziristan,” he said, “but it’s time to go after the militants who have taken shelter in other places.”
Ismail Khan reported from Peshawar, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Islamabad, Pakistan. Pir Zubair Shah contributed reporting from Islamabad.
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The double agent homicide bomber appears to have gutted the CIA's Af-Pak operations. I smell the ISI, or at least a jihadist element within.
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http://abcnews.go.com/WN/cia-attacker-driven-pakistan/story?id=9463880
Sophisticated.
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I forget exactly when I posted it, but Stratfor had what I thought to be a profound insight: The ANA and the ANP WILL be inflitrated by the enemy. The question is whether we can infiltrate the enemy? With President Obama having declared that we will begin leaving in 18 months, the apparent answer is "no". :cry: :x
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From time to time I receive thoughtful reads from a friend in India. India tends to have a lot more and a lot deeper knowledge of the players involved and the history of how things came to be. IMHO this piece deserves serious consideration.
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Some fresh perspectives on the Fak-Ap problem..
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2010/01/will-obama-administration-occupy.html
SOURCE: http://cinemarasik.com/2009/04/25/will-the-obama-administration-occupy-pashtunistan-or-all-of-paksitan.aspx
This week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the US Congress that the situation in Pakistan “poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world.”. These are strong words. A “mortal threat” to the security of America, we would think, would require a serious military and strategic response.
That is why we titled our article as we did. Frankly, we were not impressed with Clinton's outburst and neither were Pakistan's Panjabi Generals.
Then Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that relations with the United States will be threatened unless Islamabad combats the rise of the Taleban. This was serious. After all, Pakistan's Panjabi Army survives on American aid and so the Pakistani generals pretended to comply.
They told their friends in the Taleban leadership to withdraw from their new foray into the Buner province (70 miles from Pakistan's capital) and the Taleban made a public show of its "withdrawal". But, this was only for media consumption.
The American Newspapers and TV shows covered the new Taleban foray extensively and superficially. This coverage showed the total lack of understanding or insight into the Af-Pak problem and the type of urgent solutions needed. This prompted us to write this detailed article and propose the only solution that we think will work.
This position paper features the following sections:
I. The Genesis of the Af-Pak problem
II. Misconceptions, Ignorance and Denial in Pakistan and America
III. An Immediate, Legal, Globally Acceptable, Cost-Effective and Simple Solution to the Af-Pak Problem
IV. Is this Solution rapidly becoming obsolete?
V. Final Choice that might be forced upon the Obama Administration
I. The Genesis of the Af-Pak Problem
The Af-Pak situation began in 1893 when the British-led Indian Army conquered South Afghanistan (the part of Afghanistan below the Khyber Pass) and forced the partition of Afghanistan into North and South. Under the 1893 Treaty, the Afghan King was forced to accede to annexation of South Afghanistan by British-India. Today's border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is still called the "Durand Line" after Mortimer Durand, the Foreign Secretary of British India (see map below left).
When the British left India in 1947, Pakistan inherited the possession of South Afghanistan and the Af-Pak problem was created.
In 1949, Afghanistan declared the 1893 Treaty as ex parte and therefore invalid. Today, Afghanistan does NOT recognize the Durand Line as the legal border and claims all of South Afghanistan (or Pashtunistan as it is popularly called) as an integral part of Afghanistan.
(Pink - Baluch, Green - Pashtuns, Grey - Panjabis, Yellow-Sindhi)
(Durand's Partition of Afghanistan)
The map on the right above shows the ethnic composition of the territory controlled by today's Pakistan. The area in green is the real Pashtun-i-stan or the land of the Pashtuns. This is today the home of the Pashtun Taleban and virtually all of it is under Taleban control. In this article, we refer to the section in green when we refer to Pashtunistan.
From 1947 to 1979, Pashtunistan remained quiet. Actually in 1947, a popular non-violence movement spread through Pashtunistan under the leadership of Badshah Gaffar Khan, popularly called "Sarhad-Gandhi" or "Gandhi-on-the-border". Gaffar Khan wanted his province to become a part of India in 1947 but Nehru, in another act of utter, arrogant stupidity, refused.
So, Pakistan took over Pashtunistan and began the transformation of the non-violent movement into a movement subordinated to the interests of Pakistani Panjabis.
Then, in 1979, America entered the province and flooded it with weapons. Brezinsky toured the province and exhorted the Pashtuns to fight a holy war against the Russian Army that had occupied North Afghanistan. Under American leadership and with American encouragement, angry young men poured into Pashtunistan from all over the Muslim Middle East to fight the Russians. The rest, as they say, is history.
II. Misconceptions, Ignorance and Denial in Pakistan and America
From what we read or hear on TV, the American Media and the American Establishment lack the basic understanding of the nature of the Taleban and remain in total denial about the real problem. Virtually all American commentators are European-American and their frame of reference is the British frame of reference. Notable Pakistani journalists like Ahmad Rashid use this ignorance to sway opinion towards Pakistani interests and notable South Asian journalists like Fareed Zakaria continue to pander to the European-American line of thinking.
II.a - The Taleban Fight movement is a Racial conflict and NOT a Religious Conflict
Look at the ethnic map of Pakistan (above right). The fight in Pakistan is a war between the Green and the Grey; between the Pashtuns of Pashtunistan (or NWFP as Pakistan calls it) and the Panjabis of Pakistani Panjab. These are distinct ethnic groups that have fought wars for more than 2,000 years. Pakistani Panjabis are an Indian ethnic people while the Pashtuns are a mixed breed of Indian, Iranian, Tajik, Uzbek and even Greek blood (going back to post-Alexander days).
Both ethnic groups are Sunni Muslims and so the Pashtun-Panjabi struggle is not a religious struggle but a racial struggle. Panjabis dominate Pakistan, its Government and its all-controlling Army. They have deep contempt for the uneducated Pashtun mountain people.
The main aim of the Pashtun Taleban used to be to reconquer North Afghanistan and unite all of Afghanistan under Pashtun rule. The American presence in North Afghanistan and the determination of the Obama Administration have convinced the Taleban that America will not leave Kabul.
So the Pashtun Taleban have decided move south towards the plains of Pakistani Panjab, a much richer prize than impoverished Afghanistan. They now believe that control of Pakistani Panjab is possible and they have a game plan to win this prize.
The Taleban now controls virtually all of the green area of Pashtunistan. They began this control in the mountain regions called FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas - see map below left), consolidated this control, made peace deals with the Pakistani Panjabi Army and then slowly but surely began the same game further south into the NWFP or the more urban parts of Pashtunistan (see map below left).
Last week, they entered the border province of Buner, 70 miles from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan in Panjab, setting off the alarms in the Obama Administration. Control of Buner would enable the Pashtun Taleban to cut off the road link between Islamabad and Peshawar, the capital of NWFP.
II.b - Why doesn't the Pakistani Army fight the Taleban? - Good Reasons
In 1947, Pakistan was created to comprise of West Pakistan (today's Pakistan) and East Pakistan (today's Bangladesh), separated by over a 1,000 miles of Indian territory. The Pakistani Panjabis had racial contempt for the more eastern Pakistani Bengalis. This racial superiority led to draconian rule by the Panjabis over Bengalis and fostered a deep anger in the Pakistani Bengalis.
In 1971, the Bengalis of Pakistan began a struggle for greater political rights and autonomy. The Pakistani Panjabi Army retaliated with a brutal campaign that backfired. The struggle for autonomy morphed into a struggle for independence and eventually dragged India into a war with Pakistan. This war created the independent state of Bangladesh and split up Pakistan.
The Pakistani Panjabi Army recognizes the parallels between today's Pashtun movement and the 1971 Bengali movement. They also understand the racial element of this struggle and are trying to tone it down.
This is why Pakistan only deploys the pre-dominantly Pashtun para-military force (called the Frontier Corps) against the Taleban. In other words, Pakistani Army is using its Pashtun regiments to fight the Pashtun Taleban. Unfortunately, the Frontier Corps is a poor cousin of the Pakistani Army, poorly trained and poorly armed. The soldiers of the Frontier Corps come from the same villages that the Pashtun Taleban come from. So, their sympathies are with the Pashtun Taleban, their brothers and not with their Panjabi masters.
The Pakistani Generals have NOT deployed its core Panjabi Divisions against the Taleban, despite the major advances made by the Taleban recently. They know fully well that if they do, they risk a full-scale Pashtun-Panjabi civil war, like the 1971 Bengali-Panjabi civil war. We are sympathetic to their point of view.
This is why the Pakistani Panjabi Army prefers to appease the Pashtun Taleban by signing peace deals with them and by ceding huge tracts of Pashtun territory to Taleban's control.
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II.c - Why doesn't the Pakistani Army fight the Taleban? - Bad Reasons
The Panjabi Generals of the Pakistani Army remember 1971 vividly. They carry deep emotional scars from that humiliating surrender to the Indian Army and the split of Pakistan. They have sworn to not let that happen again. They also began a campaign to pay back India by trying to separate Kashmir from India.
They got their chance in 1979 when America poured its resources into Pakistan to create a Pashtun force to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis used American money, American weapons, American expertise to train the Pashtuns into a fighting force. When the Russians left Afghanistan, Pakistan, in a few years, moved the Pashtun Taleban into Afghanistan. This made Afghanistan a Pakistani vassal and gave Pakistan its much desired strategic depth against India.
Since that period, the Pakistani Generals have viewed the Pashtun Taleban as a critical ally and a weapon to be used against India without exposing the Pakistani Panjabi Army to India's retaliation. This role makes the Pashtun Taleban a strategic asset of Pakistan's Panjabi Army and such strategic assets are not given up regardless of whatever pressure America decides to use.
Besides, due to its deeply ingrained anti-India mindset, the Pakistani Army will not even consider moving its core Panjabi divisions from the Indian border. That would signal utter defeat of their dreams and of their strategy of the past 38 years.
Remember that the Panjabi Generals created the Pashtun Taleban, fed it and built it to its current state. They simply refuse to believe that their child would turn on them. They also refuse to believe that they would not be able to squash the Taleban if they really chose to do so.
The Pakistani Panjabis have deep racial contempt for the Pashtuns. They consider the Pashtuns to be illiterate, uneducated, mountain hilly-billies who are way beneath the cultured Panjabis with their literary traditions. Pakistani Panjabis, beginning with their founder Jinnah, used Islam as a banner to unite the poor but never believed in it themselves. The Pakistani Panjabi Generals claim their heritage from the British Army and still carry on the scotch-drinking, non-religious traditions of the British Generals.
Unfortunately, America relies on these Pakistani Panjabi Generals for support as well as knowledge and insight. Admiral Mullen, America's highest military officer, says that he trusts Pakistan's General Kiyani totally and implicitly.
Both America and Pakistan seem to have forgotten the lessons of Iran. America trusted the Shah of Iran implicitly and totally. America believed that the Shah, with his large, American supplied army, would be able quell any rebellion in Iran. The Shah of Iran remained supremely confident until he found out that his army would not fire on his people. Then, one day, he left Iran forever.
We fear the same in Pakistan. The racial contempt of the Pakistani Panjabi Generals is making them blind to the realities on the ground. The Pashtun Taleban are getting Panjabi recruits and building a Panjabi Taleban sub-movement. This combination is rapidly making inroads into rural Panjab and seems poised to take over some semi-urban areas in Panjab.
When they succeed, the Pakistani Panjabi Generals will find that their soldiers are not willing to fire on their rural Panjabi brothers. Then, the Panjabi Generals will leave Pakistan to go to their estates outside Pakistan. Nawab Sharif, Panjab's civilian landlord leader, will run back to Saudi Arabia and Asif Zardari, the Sindhi President, will return to London. America will then exit Pakistan as it exited Iran 30 years ago.
II.D. - America's conception of Taleban a murderous, fanatical Islamic organization
You have to admit that the behavior of the Taleban fits the murderous and fanatical label. Their actions against women have revolted people in Pakistan and around the world. Special Envoy Holbrooke described the Taleban as "murderous" in a CNN interview last week.
But labels can blind people and countries to the underlying reality. The Taleban are not stupid, illiterate crazies as the Pakistani Panjabis and Americans think. The Taleban leaders are extraordinarily intelligent men who understand tactics and strategy. Their game plan combines military tactics with social, religious and media tactics to win hearts & minds besides winning on the ground.
They use their brand of Islam as a way of influencing society, winning recruits and keeping them loyal. They understand that love of land and love of customs is a powerful force. They use Islam as a cry against the secular civil society of Pakistan. This is similar to the "anti secular-progressive culture-warrior" cry of right-wing American opinionators like Bill O'Reilly.
The Taleban are smart. They retreat very quickly when they realize they have made a mistake. The Taleban leaders realized that they made a big mistake when their followers flogged a woman in public. Their media spokesman immediately clarified that this bad behavior was triggered by the presence of "western white women who have entered Pakistan to fight". The New York Times might scoff at this explanation but it does make sense in conservative Pashtun territory. This is sort of like liberal Europeans scoffing at the "American crudity" of Bill O'Reilly.
II.e - The return of Aurnagzeb's model
The Mughal dynasty of Delhi faced the problem of governing a predominantly Hindu population. One extreme model was the "respect for all religions" model of Akbar, called by history as the Greatest Mughal. The other extreme model was that of was his grandson, Aurangzeb.
Every reader of this blog has heard of the Taj Mahal, the greatest monument to love in the world. A few readers might know the name of Shah Jahan, the ruler who built the Taj Mahal. But, very few readers are likely to have heard of his son, Aurangzeb.
Aurangzeb revolted against his father Shah Jahan and his elder brother Dara ShuKoh, the Crown Prince. He won the battle, imprisoned Shah Jahan and killed Dara ShuKoh as well as all his other brothers. Then, Aurangzeb created his model for ruling India.
He was a practicing Muslim but not a fanatic. But his actions seemed fanatical. Like all right-wingers, he ruled to gain the abiding loyalty of his base, the right wing Islamists. He even imposed a tax on non-Muslims called the "Jeeziya", simply for being non-Muslims in his kingdom. He tried to destroy temples but stopped when he realized he was going too far.
The Taleban approach is based on the Aurangzeb model. It has a deep and historical resonance in the entire Indian Subcontinent, let alone Pashtunistan. It evokes memories of the days when the Pashtuns dominated India. A couple of weeks ago, we read a story that the Taleban have imposed the Jeeziya tax of Aurangzeb on the Sikh community in Pashtunistan, a tax for simply being Sikh in Taleban country. Aurangzeb's model worked for him in North India. Who is to say that his model would not work for the Taleban in Pakistan?
So, when America and Pakistan feel racial and cultural contempt for the Taleban, they should watch out. Decisions based on racial and cultural superiority often exact a steep price in war.
Recall that the French despised Ho-Chi-Minh and the Vietnamese racially and culturally. They expressed disdain for this savage "who would teach military strategy to the country of Napoleon". Unless our history is wrong, Ho-Chi-Minh defeated the French Army in the decisive battle of Dien-Bien-Phu. The French left Vietnam in disgrace and America entered Vietnam to inherit French racism and the French outcome.
III. An Immediate, Legal, Globally Acceptable, Cost-Effective and Simple Solution to the Af-Pak Problem
To solve a problem, we often need to go to its genesis. The Af-Pak problem originated in 1893 with the partition of Afghanistan. The solution begins there.
III.a - A Legal, Globally Acceptable, Political Solution
Afghanistan is a protectorate and an ally of America. Nato is involved in Afghanistan and the UN backs this effort. It is time for the United States to back the legal stand of Afghanistan that the 1893 Treaty between British India and Afghanistan is ex parte (because British India does not exist any more) and hence invalid.
America can then push for the reunification of North and South Afghanistan. This will enable America to take the war to the Taleban strongholds in South Afghanistan or Pashtunistan.
America is the ethnic, spiritual, economic and military successor to England. America is ideally placed to invalidate the 1893 British treaty.
England and Continental Europe will support this solution. This solution is in Russia's interests and after some face-saying gestures, Russia will support it. Saudi Arabia, which is getting increasingly worried about the Taleban, will support this solution and so will the Emirates, Kuwait and other Middle Eastern states.
This solution benefits Iran strategically and Iran would support this solution. Iran would get a greater influence in a moderate united Afghanistan than in a virulently anti-Shia Taleban-controlled Afghanistan.
The only obstacle could be China. This solution would possibly cut off China's land access to the Persian Gulf through Pakistan. But, given the global stakes involved, China would abstain from opposing this solution.
It is not generally known that the majority of the Pashtuns in Pashtunistan do not support Islamic fundamentalism. Recall that in the last election, the Pashtuns voted for secular, non-religious parties in Pashtunistan and not for the Islamic parties. Unification of Pashtunistan with Afghanistan and the consequent unification of the Pashtun society on both sides of the Durand Line would be a dream come true for the Pashtuns.
This support of the Pashtuns would be the greatest strength of this legal solution. It will help the Obama Administration finally solve the Af-Pak problem by winning the hearts and minds of the Pashtun people.
The UN ratification of the unification of Afghanistan would be a legal globally acceptable political solution to the Af-Pak problem.
III.b - A Cost-Effective, Quick, Decisive Military Solution
Special Envoy Holbrooke said last week on CNN that the Frontier Corps of Pakistan was originally created by the British. He is correct.
The British created the Pashtun Frontier Corps when they gained legal control of Pashtunistan from the 1893 Durand Treaty. The Frontier Force kept control and peace in Pashtunistan and served as a military liaison between the British Indian Army and the tribal elders of Pashtunistan. This military-administrative-social structure continued until the Pashtun Taleban destroyed it recently. They did so by killing many of the tribal elders, waging attacks on the Frontier Corps and by scaring the administrators into obeying the Taleban.
The American Military and Nato should, after the above legal deal, take immediate control of the Frontier Corps. US Special Forces and US Military Advisors should then guide and train the Frontier Corps. The American Air Force and its Airborne Predators should fly over Pashtunistan legally, take out Taleban strongholds and kill Taleban leaders on sight.
This is the model that allowed America to destroy the Taleban regime in Afghanistan without putting American boots on the ground. In that war, the boots on the ground were those of the Afghan National Alliance. They were advised by US Special Forces and supported by American precision air power. In Pashtunistan, the Frontier Corp would play the role played by the Northern Alliance in North Afghanistan.
The support of the local Pashtuns would provide ample local intelligence just as the support of the north Afghani people provided intelligence during the 2001 war against the Taleban in Afghanistan.
The 2001 war in North Afghanistan was quick, decisive and highly cost-effective. We are convinced that a 2009 war in Pashtunistan would be just as quick, decisive and cost-effective.
Once America and Nato seize military control of Pashtunistan, the Taleban insurgency would be encircled like in Iraq. Then, the David Petraeus strategy can be put into effect in Pashtunistan with the support and participation of the Pashtun tribal elders. Pashtunistan can then be made peaceful as was done in Iraq.
III.c - What About Pakistan?
The political leaders of Pakistan would be in tacit support of this solution. Nawab Sharif's economic interests and political base are in Pakistani Panjab. He stands to lose it all if the Taleban take control of rural Panjab.
Asif Zardari is a Sindhi. He is also a wealthy businessman. He has no interest in maintaining control of Pashtunistan. He would be a big supporter, at least in private, of this solution.
The silent majority in Pakistan would probably oppose an imposed American solution but would accept a globally backed UN solution supported by the Middle Eastern countries. We believe that the average Pakistani Panjabi is angry at the Pashtun Taleban, holds them in racial contempt and is petrified at the thought of being governed by them. So, we believe that the silent majority of Pakistani Panjabis and the Sindhis would support a globally backed unification of Afghanistan.
This leaves the Generals of Pakistan. This solution would end their dreams of strategic depth against India and would create a fear of Indian encirclement via a partnership between a United Afghanistan and India.
But, we are convinced that the Pakistani Panjabi Generals would not oppose a global solution backed by America, Saudi Arabia and the UN. They would not survive if they did so. After all, this solution would leave their empire in Pakistani heartland unchanged and undamaged.
America, Europe and Saudi Arabia can promise substantial civil aid to Pakistan's Panjab and Sindh provinces for their support of the globally acceptable solution. As a result, this solution might finally bring both peace and prosperity to this troubled land.
IV. Is this Solution rapidly becoming obsolete?
As we have said before, the Taleban leaders are not dumb. They remember how their rule in North Afghanistan came to an abrupt end in 2001.
The solution we have proposed may be new to the American Establishment but it will not come as a surprise to the Taleban leaders. They know such a solution would work and work quickly. So, they are rapidly moving to make this solution obsolete.
How? By using a variation of the Donald Rumsfeld dictum. The Taleban are rapidly making the problem bigger, much much bigger.
They are doing so by moving their soldiers and supporters into urban provinces like Buner that border Pakistani Panjab and into Panjab itself. By gaining sanctuary and support in Pakistani Panjab, the Taleban are making the problem so big that it might remain unsolvable.
The Pakistani people might support the cessation of Pashtunistan and the resultant occupation of Pashtunistan by American Military. But, they will not support any occupation of Pakistani Panjab, the society's heartland. The Taleban know this and that is why they are rapidly moving into Pakistani Panjab. The Pakistani Panjabi Generals know this and that is why they allow the Taleban to encroach into Panjab.
V. Final Choice that might be forced upon the Obama Administration
"Speed Kills" is a favorite line of John Madden (the great NFL coach and TV Sports Analyst). The Obama Administration is moving ahead with slow, deliberate planning in their Af-Pak analysis, while the Taleban is moving with great speed to implement its plan. So far, the Taleban speed is killing the chances of success of the Obama Initiatives.
Soon, we fear, the Obama Administration would be faced with two alternatives:
Leave Af-Pak to its own misery and take the risk of being attacked in the American homeland OR
Get into a military confrontation with the Taleban inside Pakistan and with the Pakistani Military.
The first choice would be far worse than Vietnam and the second choice would be far worse than Iraq.
Send your feedback to editor@macroviewpoints.com.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34687312/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
NBC: Jordanian double-agent killed CIA officers
Officials: Perpetrator of Afghan attack was supposed to infiltrate al-Qaida
By Robert Windrem and Richard Engel, NBC News
updated 9:23 a.m. MT, Mon., Jan. 4, 2010
The suicide bombing on a CIA base in Afghanistan last week was carried out by a Jordanian doctor who was an al-Qaida double agent, Western intelligence officials told NBC News.
Initial reports said that the attack, which killed seven CIA officers, was carried out by a member of the Afghan National Army.
According to Western intelligence officials, the perpetrator was Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, 36, an al-Qaida sympathizer from the town of Zarqa, which is also the hometown of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant Islamist responsible for several devastating attacks in Iraq.
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Again we see underlined the Stratfor point which seems so pivotal to me:
There is no way around the fact that the ANA and the ANP will be riddled with enemy agents; therefore it is doubly key that we infiltrate the enemy!!! That mission did not seem to succeed here. Can we have any hope in succeeding at this mission when both potential friends and the enemy have heard our President say we will begin leaving in 18 months?
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We are pretty much fcuked.
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Woof,
Well, we have been hurting them with the drone attacks and someone has been giving us target locations, so I would say that we do have some infiltration, how beit old contacts from the Bush era that have been in place for awhile.
P.C.
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Bomber Who Killed C.I.A. Staff Worked With Jordanian Intelligence
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The suicide bomber who killed seven
C.I.A. officers and one Jordanian intelligence officer last
week in southeastern Afghanistan was an asset of the
Jordanian intelligence service who had been brought to
Afghanistan to help hunt down top members of the Qaeda
network, according to a Western official briefed on the
matter.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na
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http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=9486017
How a Double Agent Lured Seven CIA Operatives to Their Deaths
Suicide Bomber Al-Balawi Convinced Americans He Was the 'Golden Goose'
By BRIAN ROSS, NICK SCHIFRIN, NASSER ATTA and LEE FERRAN
Jan. 5, 2010 —
As the CIA mourns its dead from a devastating suicide bombing in Afghanistan, the questions grow about how professional spies could have been so taken in, failing to spot a double agent and letting a bomber into their midst.
Some 13 CIA operatives, including private contractors from the company once known as Blackwater, had gathered to hear the informant's report when the bomb went off. Among the nine people killed were seven CIA operatives, the informant, and a Jordanian intelligence officer, a cousin of Jordan's King Abdullah, who had been the liaison between the informant and the CIA.
The suicide bomber, who killed some of the CIA's top al Qaeda hunters, lured the agents to the meeting by claiming he had just met with Ayman al-Zawahiri, this country's most wanted terrorist after Osama bin Laden, sources told ABC News.
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The double agent homicide bomber appears to have gutted the CIA's Af-Pak operations. I smell the ISI, or at least a jihadist element within.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/06/scarborough-scoop-how-the-talibans-double-agent-bomber-ambushed-the-cia/
Even more so, now.
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Jordan? Why should they be involved in any way? Their BAATH Party and Iraq's were real close relatives if not siamese twins. Too much risk of score settling there from any agent who had an axe to grind. <throw hands up in disgust> No internal measures for 'leak proofing' either. No "working cells" to fire wall possible penetrations by double agents? 13 members on a team is not a good cell.
They totally forgot tradecraft, and got what they earned, much to the detriment of the overall mission.
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Forgive me, but I think upon reflection you may wish to reconsider you "got what they earned" language. We know little about the details here and I one for am loathe to criticize men who were in the thick of the worst and most dangerous area of a badly led war.
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The double agent homicide bomber appears to have gutted the CIA's Af-Pak operations. I smell the ISI, or at least a jihadist element within.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/06/scarborough-scoop-how-the-talibans-double-agent-bomber-ambushed-the-cia/
Even more so, now.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-01-07/did-pakistani-spies-help-cia-bomber/full/
Did Pakistani Spies Help CIA Bomber?
by Gerald Posner
Afghan spy officials tell The Daily Beast’s Gerald Posner that the chemical fingerprint of the bomb that killed seven CIA agents matches the kind produced by Pakistani intelligence.
Early evidence in the December 30 bombing that killed seven CIA agents suggests a link to Pakistan, two senior Afghan sources, including an official at their spy agency, told The Daily Beast. The pair said that U.S. has already taken a chemical fingerprint of the bomb used by a Jordanian double agent in the attack, and that it matches an explosive type used by their Pakistan equivalents, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
The bomb’s provenance was an immediate concern after the attack, which took place in a remote base in eastern Afghanistan called Camp Chapman, because of its compact power. Most suicide attacks involve a bulky vest or belt. “It is not possible that the Jordanian double agent received that type of explosive without the help of ISI,” a senior government aide to President Hamid Karzai told me. “The problem is that CIA trusted a Jordanian but not the Afghan operatives we offer to them. If the U.S. forces recruit, they must recruit Afghans who do not have family members in Pakistan.”
“The CIA has a policy usually not to trust anyone,” says Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother. “But when they do they trust someone, it is often the enemy, as obvious from the case of the CIA deaths.”
The CIA declined comment on the accusation of a possible ISI role. The U.S. embassy in Pakistan had no comment. Multiple attempts over two days to obtain a comment from Pakistani officials were unsuccessful.
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Well, that is as unsettling as it is unsurprising.
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Worth reading because of the authors...
Don't discount Europe's commitment to Afghanistan
By Carl Bildt and Anders Fogh Rasmussen
Friday, January 8, 2010; A19
For decades, Europeans have heard an enduring message from the United States: Do more. Carry your weight. Don't make America do all the heavy lifting. And this message has been delivered, loud and clear, once again, on Afghanistan.
An honest assessment would conclude that over the years these complaints have occasionally had some foundation. The United States has played a central role in defending the values and the security of the Euro-Atlantic community -- something for which Europeans are grateful.
But that honest assessment would also conclude that Europe can pull its weight. That Europe can deliver and can be a real partner for the United States. That is what is happening now in the global mission in Afghanistan. It is important that America recognize its partners' actions at this critical time, because if it becomes the conventional wisdom in the United States to talk down the European contribution, no matter what Europe does, then it will become impossible to sustain our commitment.
In just the past few months, the European Union has taken important steps to strengthen its common action in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the surrounding region. For the first time, the European Union has adopted a common action plan for the efforts of its 27 member states and the European Commission. The focus is on building strong state institutions because the best way to defeat the insurgency is to help Afghanistan build a government in which its citizens trust and believe.
With the aim of increasing Afghan responsibilities, and in accordance with the priorities set by the government in Kabul, the European Union will concentrate its immediate assistance in six areas: building civilian capacity; strengthening sub-national, or provincial, governance; election review and reform; mechanisms to support the reintegration of former insurgents into society; economic development; and strengthened assistance in building a civilian police force through the E.U. Police Mission in Afghanistan.
On the military side, U.S. allies and partners in the NATO-led military operation have responded clearly to President Obama's decision to significantly increase American troop levels in the mission. In early December, the other members of the mission pledged an additional 7,000 troops, on top of the almost 40,000 non-U.S. troops already on the ground. More contributions are possible this year. Non-U.S. forces will eventually be about 40 percent of the total; they already endure about 40 percent of the casualties. There should be no more doubt in the United States on whether America can count on its allies; we are proving that in blood and treasure every day in Afghanistan.
But creating stability in Afghanistan requires more than a military and civilian surge from the United States, the European Union, Canada and our partners. It requires a responsive and responsible Afghan government, coordination among the international community and a regional approach in which Afghanistan's neighbors play a prominent role.
The international community needs to develop a renewed partnership with Afghanistan, whereby in return for continued political, civilian and military assistance, we see clear commitments from the government in Kabul and delivery and responsibility on those pledges. In line with the goals stated in President Hamid Karzai's inauguration speech, the international community is looking for improved governance through the reinvigoration of cabinet ministries by reform-oriented appointments, and for efforts to actively fight corruption even at the highest levels. Other key priorities include improving human rights (perhaps by setting up a separate ministry) as well as enhancing national reconciliation where possible.
International meetings to be held in London and Kabul this spring are key to creating fresh momentum for our support to Afghanistan. There is a new recognition that we all need to do more and do better on civilian as well as military issues. Everyone understands that one will not work without the other. We need a civilian-military partnership in Afghanistan and the surrounding region as much as we need a partnership across the Atlantic. There is much work ahead in all these respects.
As we enter 2010, three things are clear about this mission. First, it is as necessary as ever, for the security of all nations, that the international community succeed in helping Afghanistan become an inhospitable environment for terrorism. Second, that despite all the difficulties -- and they are many -- this mission can succeed, first and foremost because the Afghan people want to stand on their own feet and defeat extremism themselves. Third, that the United States cannot do this alone, and will not have to; Europe, and Canada, will continue to be America's allies, partners and brothers in arms.
Carl Bildt is the foreign minister of Sweden. Anders Fogh Rasmussen is secretary general of NATO.
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Substitute Pakistan everytime you see Afghanistan in that europeon policy article, and I would agree. Afghanistan is a crazy quilt of Valley-States and the people in the next valley over are either the equivalent of Canadians, or Venezuelans for all practical purposes. I think stabilizing Pakistan should be far more important since they are 1/2 of a nuclear fuse equation with India.
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What do you think of my two-part entry of January 3? I always find the Indian perspective worth considering.
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Well our work against the Taliban in afghanistan probably makes the Pakistani Taleban units less reliable, but I am mainly concerned about Pakistan becomeing a 3rd rogue nuke country with something less than a "common good" outlook.
India won't jump unless given a reason to, (some of that reason could be a weakened Pakistani border) they have trade links with a lot of the west they do not want to risk. That money flowing to them is making a genuine difference, since it is coming as real trade. Pakistan also has similar influences operating, but that may change significantly given our economy.
I will admit I have not looked real hard at India, while it has nukes, it is not a world threat aside from trouble with its neighbors. If world leaders keep their heads, they can hopefully keep from making the WW1 mistake of interlocking treatys dragging the whole world in. (wishful thinking?)
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Did you read the article, and if so, what did you think of its analysis?
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"What do you think of my two-part entry of January 3? I always find the Indian perspective worth considering."
I went back to read it more closely. Found it to be rich with background, insight and perspective, well worth reading. They offer what they consider to be a simple solution to world peace / regional peace. Have the global community chop up the borders of their arch enemy Pakistan and downsize it. What they call North Afghanistan is what we call Aghanistan. They want it reunited with what he calls South Afghanistan which I assume is western Pakistan. Then America and NATO could more aggressively take on its enemy without invading Pak. I'm confused in my map reading because I thought the mountainous autonomous tribal regions in question were in the north and I'm not confident of our ability to permanently stabilize an enlarged Afghan much less what we face now. I doubt Pakistan is prepared to give up land without war. But who knows.
The closing is worth repeating:
"...The Obama Administration is moving ahead with slow, deliberate planning in their Af-Pak analysis, while the Taleban is moving with great speed to implement its plan. So far, the Taleban speed is killing the chances of success of the Obama Initiatives.
Soon, we fear, the Obama Administration would be faced with two alternatives:
Leave Af-Pak to its own misery and take the risk of being attacked in the American homeland OR
Get into a military confrontation with the Taleban inside Pakistan and with the Pakistani Military.
The first choice would be far worse than Vietnam and the second choice would be far worse than Iraq. "
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"Well worth the reading"
NOW I know you've read it :-)
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Read it, did some poking around on Wikipedia. It may work, but you would have to make deals with at least 3 or 4 major ethnic groups to settle new borders and that would bring up a whole can full of issues, wouldn't it?
Pashtuni, indian, the northern alliance, and a couple others are in the mix. Heck the Pashtun tribes look like the scottish clans and federations, how long did it take england to settle the highlands into civility?
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Didn't say it would be easy :lol: Nor do I even say it is the right course of action. Only that it should be considered.
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I remember a criticism of our efforts during the Viet Nam war is that we rotated officer through so fast that they had just started to get a feel for their operation environment when they were being sent home. Looks like history is doing so repeating.
The Meaning of al Qaeda's Double Agent
The jihadists are showing impressive counterintelligence ability that the CIA seems to have underestimated.
By REUEL MARC GERECHT
The recent death in Afghanistan of seven American counterterrorist officers, one Jordanian intelligence operative, and one exploding al Qaeda double agent ought to give us cause to reflect on the real capabilities of the Central Intelligence Agency and al Qaeda.
The report card isn't good. America's systemic intelligence problems were partially on display in the bombing at the CIA's Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province. Worse, al Qaeda showed skill that had been lacking in many of its operations. In response, President Barack Obama will likely be obliged to adopt counterterrorist methods that could make his administration as tough as his predecessor's.
Professionally, one has to admire the skill of suicide bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi's handlers. This operation could well have been months—if not longer—in the making, and neither the Jordanian intelligence service (GID), which supplied the double agent to the CIA, nor Langley apparently had any serious suspicion that al-Balawi still had the soul and will of a jihadist.
That is an impressive feat. The Hashemite monarchy imprisons lots of Islamic militants, and the GID has the responsibility to interrogate them. The dead Jordanian official, Sharif Ali bin Zeid, reportedly a member of the royal family, may not have been a down-and-dirty case officer with considerable hands-on contact with militants, but al-Balawi surely passed through some kind of intensive screening process with the GID. Yet the GID and the CIA got played, and al Qaeda has revealed that it is capable of running sophisticated clandestine operations with sustained deception.
Indeed, al Qaeda did to us exactly what we intended to do to them: use a mole for a lethal strike against high-value targets. In the case of al-Balawi, it appears the target was Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Ladin's top deputy. During the Cold War, the CIA completely dropped its guard in the pursuit of much-desired Cuban and East German agents. The result? Most of our assets were plants given to us by Cuban and East German intelligence. With al-Balawi supposedly providing "good" information about al Zawahiri and al Qaeda's terrorist planning, a salivating CIA and the GID proved inattentive to counterintelligence concerns.
Whereas al Qaeda is showing increasing proficiency, the same cannot be said for the CIA. Competent case officers can get duped by a good double. And the GID, whose skill has been exaggerated in fiction and film and by Hashemite-stroked American case officers, isn't a global service. Take it far from its tribal society, where it operates with admirable efficiency, and it is nothing to write home about.
The CIA uses the GID so often not because the Jordanians are brilliant but because the Americans are so often, at best, mediocre. The GID's large cadre of English-speaking officers makes liaison work easy with Langley, which has never been blessed with a large number of Arabic-speaking officers, particularly within the senior ranks.
Language issues aside, the now-deceased chief of Base Chapman should have kept most of her personnel away from al-Balawi, and should never have allowed seven officers to get that close to him at one time. Traditional operational compartmentation clearly broke down.
It is also highly likely that all of the CIA officers at Chapman—and especially the chief of base, who was a mother of three—were on short-term assignments. According to active-duty CIA officers, the vast majority of Langley's officers are on temporary-duty assignments in Afghanistan, which usually means they depart in under one year. (The same is true for the State Department.) Many CIA officers are married with children and they do not care for long tours of duty in unpleasant spots—the type of service that would give officers a chance of gaining some country expertise, if not linguistic accomplishment.
Moreover, security concerns usually trap these officers into a limited range of contacts. Truth be told, even the most elemental CIA activity—meeting recruited agents or "developmentals" outside of well-guarded compounds—often cannot be done without contractor-supplied security. Without Blackwater, now renamed Xe, which handles security for Langley in Afghanistan, CIA case officers would likely be paralyzed.
The officers at Chapman were probably young. This isn't necessarily bad. As a general rule, younger case officers do better intelligence-collection work than older colleagues, whose zeal for Third World field work declines precipitously as their knowledge and expertise in CIA bureaucratic politics increases. But experience does breed cynicism, which doesn't appear to have been in abundance at the CIA base.
All of this reinforces the common U.S. military criticism of the Agency in Afghanistan and Iraq: It does not often supply the hard tactical and intimate personal and tribal portraits that military officers need to do their work. Army officers are generally among the natives vastly more than their CIA counterparts.
What does this all mean for President Obama? He did not come into office pledging to reform the CIA, only restrain it from aggressively interrogating al Qaeda terrorists. There is near zero chance that the president will attempt to improve the Agency operationally in the field. His counterterrorist adviser, John Brennan, is as institutional a case officer as Langley has ever produced. If Attorney General Eric Holder is so unwise as to bring any charges against a CIA officer for the rough interrogation of an al Qaeda detainee during the Bush administration, the president will likely find himself deluged with damaging CIA-authored leaks. Mr. Obama would be a fool to confront the CIA on two fronts.
But the president is likely to compensate for systemic weakness in American intelligence in substantial, effective ways. Mr. Obama has been much more aggressive than President George W. Bush was in the use of drone attacks and risky paramilitary operations. One can easily envision him expanding such attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Visa issuances, airport security, and perhaps even FBI surveillance of American Muslim militants are likely to become much tougher under Mr. Obama than under Mr. Bush. President Obama will, no doubt, continue to say empirically bizarre things about Guantanamo's imprisonment system creating jihadists, but his administration will now likely find another location to jail militants indefinitely. Too many of President Bush's released detainees have returned to terrorism.
National Security Adviser James Jones has already described the 21st century as the liaison century, where intelligence and security services cooperate energetically. The CIA has often compensated for its internal weaknesses through liaising with foreigners. President Bush and then Central Intelligence Director George Tenet kicked these relationships into hyper-drive after 9/11; President Obama is likely to kick them even further. Mr. Obama may have foreclosed the possibility of the CIA again aggressively questioning jihadists, but he's kept the door wide open for the rendition of terrorists to countries like Jordan, where the GID does not abide by the Marquess of Queensbury rules in its interrogations.
The deadly attack in Fort Hood, Texas, by Maj. Malik Hassan in November, the close call in the air above Detroit on Christmas Day, and now the double-agent suicide bombing in Khost have shocked America's counterterrorist system. Mr. Obama surely knows that one large-scale terrorist strike inside the U.S. could effectively end his presidency. He may at some level still believe that his let's-just-all-be-friends speech in Cairo last June made a big dent in the hatred that many faithful Muslims have for the U.S., but his practices on the ground are likely to be a lot less touchy-feely. This is all for the good. These three jihadist incidents ought to tell us that America's war with Islamic militancy is far—far—from being over.
Mr. Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704130904574644132628157104.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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Didn't say it would be easy :lol: Nor do I even say it is the right course of action. Only that it should be considered.
Nothing in those parts is easy. If there way a way to hold a regional referendum to Balkanize Afghanistan like recently happened in the former Czechslovakia region might be the answer. Hamid Kharzai would hold on to his power base, the various tribal federations would get international acknowledgement of their turf, and a lot of the levers the Talibananas use to recruit would dissappear?
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I have no idea if such is feasible or not, but I do like that we include thinking outside of the box.
I am but a beginning student in these things, but the idea that the Durand line is but a fiction to which only we pay attention seems pretty sound to me. The idea of abanding it and allowing the unification of Pashtunland seems pretty intriguing to me.
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There is also the access to ports and such that would be an issue, Afghanistan and Pakistan both have accustomed access, but some of the tribal lands cut others off. There are inland trade routes which also would be an issue, and then the few East/West passes.............
I think it is more like a 55 gallon drum of worms, rather than a can, but going to the moon wasn't easy.........
I am just hoping we have a president with the cocoanuts to try and broker such a deal, and get it to stick. THAT would be Nobel worthy.
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Afghan Love
Posted 01/12/2010 06:36 PM ET
Liberation: Nearly seven out of 10 Afghans support the U.S. presence in their country, and 61% favor the president's military expansion there. Among congressional Democrats, the results would likely be reversed.
ABC News, the BBC and ARD German TV announced their fifth survey of Afghan citizens since 2005. The national random sample of 1,534 Afghan adults between Dec. 11 and Dec. 23 shows a huge turnaround from last year — a 30% increase in favorability toward the American troop presence.
The Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research in Kabul, part of Vienna, Va.-based D3 Systems Inc., conducted the field research.
The poll also registered a new high in Afghans expecting to live improved lives a year from now: 71%, a 20-percentage-point jump from a year ago. Added to that, 61% think their children will enjoy life quality superior to their own — a 14% increase from last year.
This doesn't fit the paradigm of colonizer oppressing the downtrodden. Afghans just aren't acting like those weird blue pagans on the planet Pandora that the U.S. is stealing minerals from in the movie "Avatar."
Indeed, the Taliban have only 10% support, according to the ABC poll. Some 42% blame them for the violence that plagues Afghanistan, a gain of 27% from the last poll a year ago, while only 17% blame the U.S., NATO, the Karzai government or the Afghan security forces. That's a drop of 36% from last January.
In light of such numbers, the opposition from Democrats in Congress to finishing the job in Afghanistan strikes us as obscene.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., have both tried to impose war taxes, a thinly veiled attempt to fiscally starve the U.S. war effort.
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who tried his best to cut and run in the Iraq War during the Bush administration, is similarly trying to use congressional funding ploys to abandon the struggle against terrorism in Afghanistan.
Such remarkable Afghan public support should be a lesson to policymakers as terrorists contemplate a renewed onslaught against the U.S. and the free world.
No matter what Third World U.N. diplomats may tell you, when Americans and Westerners spend resources and spill blood giving those in other countries — Muslim ones included — the chance for freedom, we can and will be viewed as popular liberators.
The commander of our forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, on Monday linked public opinion there to an ultimate U.S. victory. If Afghans had lost confidence in the coalition forces' military effort, "then I think that I would sense that this would not be possible," McChrystal said. "I don't feel that now."
But the people will only love us if they believe we are willing to win, a U.S. commitment Afghans now seem sure of.
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Greg Mortenson (author "Three Cups of Tea" - which I have read- and "Stones into Schools") has tremendous right to his opinions. He has lived and put his butt on the line opening schools, including for girls, in Afg and Pak:
I will be watching this show:
Bill Moyers Journal | Peace Through Education
truthout - Bill Moyers - 53 minutes ago
America has committed billions to escalate military action in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but humanitarian and bestselling author Greg Mortenson argues that ...
Rotary International
Convention speaker to be featured on PBS show
Rotary International - Jan 11, 2010
Greg Mortenson, best-selling author and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, will be featured on the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS TV on 15 January. ...
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By Asif Ali Zardari
Friday, January 15, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/14/AR2010011403921.html
When I was elected president more than a year ago, Pakistan was in grave condition, strained by terrorism and a ravaged economy. Countering the effects of a decade of dictatorship requires bold actions, some of which are unpopular. I am working with Parliament to run a country, not a political campaign. The goal of our democratic government is to implement policies that will dramatically improve the lives of Pakistanis. In time, good policies will become good politics.
This Story
A Pakistan on the verge of greatness
Special Report: Combating Extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Our economic crisis demanded unprecedented response. On taxes, education, agriculture and energy, we have shown that we must adapt, reform and become self-sufficient. Terrorists do not want Pakistan to succeed. They want to distract us from preparing for a stable and prosperous future. After a suicide bomber killed 75 people in northwestern Pakistan this month, U.S. media reports noted that "the militants' objective is to sow terror among the general population in hopes of putting more political pressure on President Asif Ali Zardari's government to back down." But militants underestimate us. Just as our people refuse to be terrorized, our government refuses to be derailed from its course of fiscal responsibility, social accountability and financial transparency.
Restoring economic health has required raising fuel prices and taxes. These moves are understandably unpopular. Stringent terms had to be accepted to partner with the International Monetary Fund, but we understood the condition of our economy and the global economy and acted decisively.
The war against terrorism has cost Pakistan not just in lives but also in economic terms, freezing international investment and diverting priorities from social and other sectors. Despite constant challenges on multiple fronts, we took the political hits and stuck with reform. The IMF has even praised "the efforts being made by the authorities to further stabilize the economy, to advance structural reform and lay the foundations for high and sustainable growth. The early signs of recovery, declining inflation, and the improved external position are encouraging." Pakistan met IMF criteria last month to receive the "fourth tranche," or $1.2 billion, of its loan funding -- no easy feat during a global recession. Corrupt governments don't reach this level of IMF partnership. The World Bank, European Union and United States have all applauded our accomplishments. This praise may be little reported, but it's far more important than the chimera of polls.
Pakistan's economic resurrection has been the product, primarily, of our own sweat and blood. The return of democracy was negotiated and carried out by the intercession of the West. Pakistanis know that expediency has at times caused the world's extended democracies to support dictatorships, as happened after Sept. 11, 2001. The West has a moral responsibility to ensure that our democratic transition continues. Long-term moral values must prevail. If the community of developed democratic nations had, after our last democratic election, crafted an innovative development plan with the scope and vision of the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II, much greater economic, political and military stability would already have been achieved. Some in my country disapprove of efforts to increase the power and fiscal responsibility of our provinces and the integrity of our institutions. Those who found comfort with dictators have resisted change. Pakistan tried it their way -- and endured catastrophe. We intend to build a new Pakistan using long-term solutions based on sound fiscal management.
Now, some Western reports suggest the Pakistani military does not support the policies of our democratic government. This is not true. Not only is our military courageously battling extremists in Swat and Waziristan, and succeeding, but our troops also are supporting the country's democratic transition and adherence to our Constitution. Some in Pakistan question our international alliances because they disapprove of our allies' actions, such as Thursday's unilateral U.S. drone attack against militants in Waziristan. We should all understand that concern. But we are fighting for our lives, and Pakistan's policies cannot be based solely on what is popular. When Franklin Roosevelt threw a lifeline to Britain with the Lend-Lease program, few Americans supported challenging the Nazis. Harry Truman had less than 15 percent support among Americans to rebuild Europe. They did what was right, not what was popular, and so will we.
History has shown the difference between expedient policies and the long-term goals of true statesmen. When the history of our time is written, Pakistan's decisions will be seen as a turning point in containing international terrorism. We are building a functioning society and economy. In the end, these sometime unpopular steps will create a Pakistan that sucks the oxygen from the fire of terrorism. Those who are counting on Pakistan to back off the fight -- militarily and economically -- underestimate my country and me.
The writer is president of Pakistan.
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Jim Gant, the Green Beret who could win the war in Afghanistan
Washington Post
By Ann Scott Tyson
Sunday, January 17, 2010; B01
It was the spring of 2003, and Capt. Jim Gant and his Special Forces team had just fought their way out of an insurgent ambush in Afghanistan's Konar province when they heard there was trouble in the nearby village of Mangwel. There, Gant had a conversation with a tribal chief -- a chance encounter that would redefine his mission in Afghanistan and that, more than six years later, could help salvage the faltering U.S. war effort.
Malik Noorafzhal, an 80-year-old tribal leader, told Gant that he had never spoken to an American before and asked why U.S. troops were in his country. Gant, whose only orders upon arriving in Afghanistan days earlier had been to "kill and capture anti-coalition members," responded by pulling out his laptop and showing Noorafzhal a video of the World Trade Center towers crumbling.
That sparked hours of conversation between the intense 35-year-old Green Beret and the elder in a tribe of 10,000. "I spent a lot of time just listening," Gant said. "I spoke only when I thought I understood what had been said."
In an unusual and unauthorized pact, Gant and his men were soon fighting alongside tribesmen in local disputes and against insurgents, at the same time learning ancient tribal codes of honor, loyalty and revenge -- codes that often conflicted with the sharia law that the insurgents sought to impose. But the U.S. military had no plans to leverage the Pashtun tribal networks against the insurgents, so Gant kept his alliances quiet.
No longer. In recent months, Gant, now a major, has won praise at the highest levels for his effort to radically deepen the U.S. military's involvement with Afghan tribes -- and is being sent back to Afghanistan to do just that. His 45-page paper, "One Tribe at a Time," published online last fall and circulating widely within the U.S. military, the Pentagon and Congress, lays out a strategy focused on empowering Afghanistan's ancient tribal system. Gant believes that with the central government still weak and corrupt, the tribes are the only enduring source of local authority and security in the country.
"We will be totally unable to protect the 'civilians' in the rural areas of Afghanistan until we partner with the tribes for the long haul," Gant wrote.
A decorated war veteran and Pashto speaker with multiple tours in Afghanistan, Gant had been assigned by the Army to deploy to Iraq in November. But with senior military and civilian leaders -- including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; and Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command -- expressing support for Gant's views, he was ordered instead to return to Afghanistan later this year to work on tribal issues.
"Maj. Jim Gant's paper is very impressive -- so impressive, in fact, that I shared it widely," Petraeus said, while McChrystal distributed it to all commanders in Afghanistan. One senior military official went so far as to call Gant "Lawrence of Afghanistan."
The abrupt about-face surprised the blunt-spoken major. "I couldn't believe it," Gant said in a recent interview, recalling how his orders were canceled just days before he was set to deploy to Iraq. "How do I know they are serious? They contacted me. I am not a very nice guy. I lead men in combat. I am not a Harvard guy. You don't want me on your think tank."
Gant, who sports tattoos on his right arm featuring Achilles and the Chinese characters for "fear no man," is clearly comfortable with the raw violence that is part of his job. An aggressive officer, he is known to carry triple the ammunition required for his missions. (One fellow soldier referred to this habit as a "Gantism.") But he is equally at ease playing for hours with Afghan children or walking hand-in-hand with tribesmen, as is their custom.
As a teenager in Las Cruces, N.M., Gant was headed to college on a basketball scholarship and had no plans to join the military until he read Robin Moore's 1965 fictionalized account of Special Forces actions in Vietnam. Captivated by the unique type of soldier who waged war with indigenous fighters, Gant decided to become a Green Beret and scheduled an appointment with his father, a middle school principal, to break the news.
Enlisting in the Army soon after his high school graduation, Gant became a Special Forces communications sergeant and fought in the Persian Gulf War. Later, as a captain, he served combat tours in Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, and one in Iraq during the height of the violence there in 2006 and 2007.
Intellectually, Gant is driven by a belief that Special Forces soldiers should immerse themselves in the culture of foreign fighters, as British officer T.E. Lawrence did during the 1916-1918 Arab revolt. In Iraq as well as in Afghanistan, Gant relied on his Special Forces training to build close bonds with local fighters, often trusting them with his life.
In Iraq in December 2006, a roadside bomb flipped over Gant's Humvee twice and left it engulfed in flames, with him pinned inside. Members of the Iraqi National Police battalion that Gant was advising pulled him out. Soon afterward, Gant led those same police in fighting their way out of a complex insurgent ambush near the city of Balad, saving the lives of two policemen and an Iraqi girl while under heavy fire, and deliberately driving his Humvee over two roadside bombs to protect the police riding in unarmored trucks behind him.
Gant earned a Silver Star for his bravery, but he remembers most the goat sacrifice the police held for him that day. "We had just won a great battle. We had several [police] commandos there, with several goats, and they were putting their hands in the blood, and putting their handprints all over us and on the vehicles," Gant recalled in a 2007 interview. He felt both strange and honored. "It's something I will never forget," he said.
Under Gant's plan, small "tribal engagement teams," each made up of six culturally astute and battle-tested Special Forces soldiers, would essentially go native, moving into villages with rifles, ammunition and money to empower tribal leaders to improve security in their area and fight insurgents. The teams would always operate with the tribes, reducing the risk of roadside bombs and civilian casualties from airstrikes.
The U.S. military would have to grant the teams the leeway to grow beards and wear local garb, and enough autonomy in the chain of command to make rapid decisions. Most important, to build relationships, the military would have to commit one or two teams to working with the same tribe for three to five years, Gant said.
Such a strategy, he argues, would bolster McChrystal's counterinsurgency campaign by tapping thousands of tribal fighters to secure rural populations, allowing international troops and official Afghan forces to focus on large towns and cities. Building strong partnerships with the tribes, whose domains straddle Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, could also prove critical to defeating insurgents entrenched in Pakistan's western tribal areas, he contends.
Adm. Eric Olson, who leads the 57,000-strong Special Operations Command, said in the latest issue of Joint Force Quarterly that Gant's proposal is "innovative and bold" and likely to have "strategic effects." And in recent congressional testimony, Gates agreed that the U.S. military should step up cooperation with Afghan tribes, saying many security responsibilities are likely to fall on them rather than the Afghan army or police force.
Thorough intelligence analysis should drive the selection of the tribes, Gant said, noting that the U.S. military has already gathered much of the intelligence. "There are 500-page documents breaking these tribes down. You would be shocked how much we know about who is who," he said.
Gant's proposals go well beyond the more cautious tribal-outreach efforts underway in Afghanistan, where the U.S. military is experimenting with neighborhood-watch-type programs such as the Community Defense Initiative, in which Special Forces teams partner with tribes selected by an Afghan minister. With time running out, Gant believes tribal engagement must be bolder. "We are trying not to lose, not trying to win," he said. (Gant's experiences helped shape the CDI effort, and he is currently preparing to return to Afghanistan to implement his vision, according to a senior military official.)
Still, Gant acknowledges that his strategy has risks. The teams would depend on the tribes for their safety. "American soldiers would die. Some of them alone, with no support. Some may simply disappear," he wrote in his paper on the strategy. Another possibility is that intertribal conflict would break out between two or more U.S.-backed tribes. "Could it happen? Yes. Could it cause mission failure? Yes. Could we have to pick sides for our own safety? Yes," Gant said. But he believes that if American advisers forge strong ties with the tribes, the chances of such conflicts can be minimized.
Gant's greatest fear is that the United States will lack the fortitude to back the tribes for the long haul, eventually abandoning them. He, for one, plans to stick with his tribe in Afghanistan, at least to fulfill a personal promise to return to Konar province to see elder Malik Noorafzhal, now 86.
"I am not here to imply that I think I could win the war in Afghanistan if put in charge," Gant wrote in his paper. ". . . I just know what I have done and what I could do again, if given the chance."
Ann Scott Tyson, a staff writer for The Washington Post, has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.
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And here is the URL to Gant's piece itself:
http://blog.stevenpressfield.com/wp-..._at_a_time.pdf
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second post of the AM
Red Alert Update: Taliban Assault on Kabul
January 18, 2010 | 0827 GMT
The Taliban attack in Kabul is reportedly winding down. The assault began around 9:35 a.m. local time Jan. 18 (the day the new cabinet was being sworn in) when reports of rocket fire and explosions were heard in the Afghan capital near several government buildings.
Just 23 minutes later, reports emerged that the Taliban had claimed the attack in a message to the Afghan Islamic Press. In the claim, Taliban spokesman Zabihollah Mojahed said 20 suicide assailants were attacking the Presidential Palace, the Central Bank and the Ministries of Finance, Justice and Mines and Industries. The Serena Hotel, the Defense Ministry and the Afghan Telecom had also reportedly come under attack.
A little after noon local time, militants began to lay siege on two major shopping centers, including a mall called the Grand Afghan Shopping Center near the Justice Ministry. Eyewitness reported militants carrying rocket-propelled grenades entered the second and third floors of the mall. A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) reportedly detonated outside one of the shopping centers killing several security forces.
Around the same time, reports emerged that militants who had earlier breached the southern gate of the presidential palace had entered the building where a swearing-in ceremony for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s Cabinet was scheduled to take place. The Afghan government denied any breach of the palace had taken place. Several minutes later, another blast was heard outside the Cinema Pamir in an area far from the other attacks, about 1 kilometer away from the Serena hotel.
The size of this attack (if it involved 20 assailants as the Taliban have claimed) is more than twice as large as the Feb. 11, 2009, attack in Kabul, which involved a team of eight attackers. While a complete and concise assessment of what has been struck is still being compiled, it does appear that the justice ministry (the main target of the February 2009 attack) was again hit hard and there are reports of a substantial fire burning inside the building. It is unclear if the fire was started by a rocket attack or assailants who had succeeded in penetrating the building’s security.
STRATFOR sources are reporting that the Taliban may have used suicide vehicle bombs and artillery rockets in addition to the suicide bombers on foot and armed gunmen. If so, this is a new wrinkle. We have seen VBIEDS and artillery rockets employed by the Taliban in Kabul, but not in coordination with an armed assault.
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Gant is actually following the original Green Beret mandate, the fact that some folks consider it "unique and innovative" shows a serious lack of home work. A lot of it looks like the ink blot tactic some of the Vietnam Vetran's I have talked to mentioned. A unit adopts a tribe or villiage and they work hand in hand on dealing with insurgency/ bandits. Individuals in the unit may rotate, but the mission and relationship is maintained.
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What Europe and Pakistan's Self-Preservation Means for Afghanistan
DIRE ECONOMIC NEWS continues streaming from Europe, with the latest figures released on Thursday showing a slowdown in the expansion of Europe’s service and manufacturing industries. The composite index based on a purchasing managers’ survey conducted by Merkit Economics, fell to 53.6 points in January from 54.2 points in December 2009.
Europe’s problems are far more serious than those of the United States. The recession actually began about six months earlier in parts of Europe than in the United States. Furthermore, Europe has yet to seriously address the problems triggered by the U.S. recession — namely, several European banks are still worried about write-downs due to toxic assets on their balance sheets. Banks are wary of lending while governments are using any means necessary, including threats of regulation, to persuade them to lend.
“The Europeans’ concern about the growing economic crisis at home will have geopolitical implications for the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.”
The problem would be less serious if it were limited to the economies on Europe’s periphery, but it is the main economic powerhouses that are hurting. The euro’s strength against the U.S. dollar is hurting Europe’s competitiveness. Under particular strain is Europe’s economic engine, Germany, whose exports account for 47 percent of its gross domestic product. Unemployment is also inching above 10 percent, with only government stimulus programs — which are expiring or largely expired — holding it back.
Finally, the peripheral economies — starting with Greece, Portugal and Ireland, but also including Spain — are not looking good. Greece in particular has been rocked by investor uncertainty over Athens’ ability to cut its budget deficit. As investors become more spooked by the Greek macroeconomic outlook, the demand for the country’s debt decreases, raising the costs Athens needs to pay to service its already enormous debt.
The question for Europe is what happens if Greece can no longer pay for its budget deficit or debt servicing. At that point, the story would no longer be about Greece, but about Germany and the eurozone as a whole. If Greece and some other Mediterranean countries were the extent of the problem, Germany probably could intervene and save the day. But how can Germany have the economic and — much more importantly — the political capability to bail out peripheral economies when it is facing a potential double dip recession? In such economic uncertainty — with the potential for rising unemployment and more dire banking news in store for 2010 — it would be political suicide for Berlin to try to rescue Athens or Lisbon.
Therefore, it seems that peripheral Europe and core Europe are growing further apart as Europe devolves into an “every man for himself” situation. The Europeans’ concern about the growing economic crisis at home will have geopolitical implications for the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Namely, it places significant limitations on the commitment Washington’s NATO allies can offer to Afghanistan.
This means the U.S. military surge — already fraught with limitations — is unlikely to produce the kind of results Washington wants in terms of undermining the momentum of the Afghan Taliban insurgency. This is where the battle in Afghanistan becomes even more of an intelligence war. Pakistan is the one reservoir of intelligence that could help the United States, but Washington and Islamabad are having numerous serious problems, as evidenced by U.S. Secretary Robert Gates’ trip to the country on Thursday.
For starters, Gates — leading a 125-member delegation — flew into Islamabad from Pakistan’s arch rival India, where he made statements that fueled Pakistan’s fears. Gates said India is unlikely to use restraint if Pakistan-based militants should stage another attack like those seen in Mumbai in November 2008. Then, in a rare move, the top U.S. defense official authored an opinion piece in a leading Pakistani daily (published before his arrival in Islamabad) saying there is no difference between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. Gates also said he would ask Islamabad to expand its counterjihadist military offensive to North Waziristan, an area in the tribal belt that contains the largest concentration of Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda elements and is not being targeted by the Pakistanis.
The Pakistanis quickly responded by saying they had no plans for any operations beyond their current engagements in the next six to 12 months. The country’s military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said it would take that much time to stabilize South Waziristan before Pakistani forces moved on to new fronts. There is no doubt that Pakistan cannot fight all types of Islamist militants in different areas at the same time. The Pentagon’s press secretary, Geoff Morrell, acknowledged that much when he told reporters that Pakistan’s military is “operating at a higher operational tempo than it has in recent memory and they are being stretched very thin, as our military is for that matter.”
But the issue is not just one of capability. It is also about intent and Islamabad’s strategic imperatives. The Pakistanis realize that the United States and its Western allies aren’t looking at a long-term military commitment to Afghanistan. Therefore, from Islamabad’s point of view, it makes no sense to go after those militants fighting in Afghanistan. Doing so would not only exacerbate the insurgency within its own borders in the short term, it would also create a much larger cross-border mess for Islamabad to deal with long after Western forces leave the region. Furthermore, Taliban fighting in Afghanistan are tools Pakistan can use to roll back Indian influence in Afghanistan, which has increased significantly in the last eight years. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that Pakistan will undertake the kind of action that the United States wants, because it would be tantamount to national suicide.
Essentially, strategic interests are preventing full support from the two key allies — Europe and Pakistan — that the Obama administration has been counting on to fight the war in Afghanistan.
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With the US announced to begin leaving this "essential war of self-defense" to the Afghan Army in 16 months or so, is it really surprising that Pakistan plans for what happens after we leave?
Here's POTH's spin:
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Gates Sees Fallout From Troubled Ties With Pakistan
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: January 23, 2010
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Nobody else in the Obama administration has been mired in Pakistan for as long as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. So on a trip here this past week to try to soothe the country’s growing rancor toward the United States, he served as a punching bag tested over a quarter-century.
“Are you with us or against us?” a senior military officer demanded of Mr. Gates at Pakistan’s National Defense University, according to a Pentagon official who recounted the remark made during a closed-door session after Mr. Gates gave a speech at the school on Friday. Mr. Gates, who could hardly miss that the officer was mimicking former President George W. Bush’s warning to nations harboring militants, simply replied, “Of course we’re with you.”
That was the essence of Mr. Gates’s message over two days to the Pakistanis, who are angry about the Central Intelligence Agency’s surge in missile strikes from drone aircraft on militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, among other grievances, and showed no signs of feeling any love.
The trip, Mr. Gates’s first to Pakistan in three years, proved that dysfunctional relationships span multiple administrations and that the history of American foreign policy is full of unintended consequences.
As the No. 2 official at the C.I.A. in the 1980s, Mr. Gates helped channel Reagan-era covert aid and weapons through Pakistan’s spy agency to the American allies at the time: Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Many of those fundamentalists regrouped as the Taliban, who gave sanctuary to Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and now threaten Pakistan.
In meetings on Thursday, Pakistani leaders repeatedly asked Mr. Gates to give them their own armed drones to go after the militants, not just a dozen smaller, unarmed ones that Mr. Gates announced as gifts meant to placate Pakistan and induce its cooperation.
Pakistani journalists asked Mr. Gates if the United States had plans to take over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons (Mr. Gates said no) and whether the United States would expand the drone strikes farther south into Baluchistan, as is under discussion. Mr. Gates did not answer.
At the same time, the Pakistani Army’s chief spokesman told American reporters at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Thursday that the military had no immediate plans to launch an offensive against extremists in the tribal region of North Waziristan, as American officials have repeatedly urged.
And the spokesman, Maj. Gen Athar Abbas, rejected Mr. Gates’s assertion that Al Qaeda had links to militant groups on Pakistan’s border. Asked why the United States would have such a view, the spokesman, General Abbas, curtly replied, “Ask the United States.”
General Abbas’s comments, made only hours after Mr. Gates arrived in Islamabad, were an affront to an American ally that gave Pakistan $3 billion in military aid last year. But American officials, trying to put a positive face on the general’s remarks and laying out what they described as military reality, said that the Pakistani Army was stretched thin from offensives against militants in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan and probably did not have the troops.
“They don’t have the ability to go into North Waziristan at the moment,” an American military official in Pakistan told reporters. “Now, they may be able to generate the ability. They could certainly accept risk in certain places and relocate some of their forces, but obviously that then creates a potential hole elsewhere that could suffer from Taliban re-encroachment.”
Mr. Gates’s advisers cast him as a good cop on a mission to encourage the Pakistanis rather than berate them. And he was characteristically low-key during most his visit here, including during a session with Pakistani journalists on Friday morning at the home of the American ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson.
But Mr. Gates perked up when he was brought some coffee, and he soon began to push back against General Abbas. American officials say that the real reason Pakistanis distinguish between the groups is that they are reluctant to go after those that they see as a future proxy against Indian interests in Afghanistan when the Americans leave. India is Pakistan’s archrival in the region.
“Dividing these individual extremist groups into individual pockets if you will is in my view a mistaken way to look at the challenge we all face,” Mr. Gates said, then ticked off the collection on the border.
“Al Qaeda, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Tariki Taliban in Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani network — this is a syndicate of terrorists that work together,” he said. “And when one succeeds they all benefit, and they share ideas, they share planning. They don’t operationally coordinate their activities, as best I can tell. But they are in very close contact. They take inspiration from one another, they take ideas from one another.”
Mr. Gates, who repeatedly told the Pakistanis that he regretted their country’s “trust deficit” with the United States and that Americans had made a grave mistake in abandoning Pakistan after the Russians left Afghanistan, promised the military officers that the United States would do better.
His final message delivered, he relaxed on the 14-hour trip home by watching “Seven Days in May,” the cold war-era film about an attempted military coup in the United States.
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Bill Moyers? I know, I know :-o :roll:
OTOH Greg Mortenson has been places and done things in Afpakia that merit deep respect and give his words weight.
I haven't viewed this yet, having read GM's first book "Three Cups of Tea" I do not hesitate to post it here:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01152010/profile2.html
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Second post of the morning:
http://documents.nytimes.com/eikenberry-s-memos-on-the-strategy-in-afghanistan?hp#p=1
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Woof,
Just something I think is quite relevant to the Afghanistan situation.
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The following is a guest column, written by a reserve NCO with Special Forces, Mark Sexton. It is based on his personal observations in Afghanistan. It represents his analysis only, not any position taken by DOD, the U.S. Army, or any other agency of the U.S. government. In my opinion, it represents exactly the sort of intelligence analysis we need but seldom get.
How the Taliban Take a Village
By SFC Mark Sexton
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A current method used by the Taliban in Afghanistan to gain control of an area deemed of strategic interest to the Taliban leadership, which operates from safe havens in Pakistan or within Afghanistan, is to identify and target villages to subvert. The Taliban have recognized the necessity to operate with the cooperation of the local population, with their modus operandi being to gain villagers’ cooperation through indoctrination (preferred) or coercion (when necessary).
VILLAGE NODES OF INFLUENCE
For a non-Afghan or foreigner to understand how the Taliban can subvert a village, we can use a simple social structure model to identify the key nodes of influence within a typical Afghan village. A village can be divided into three areas that most affect how daily life is lived. These key nodes are political and administrative, religious, and security aspects of village life. Of the three nodes, the one that is the most visible to outsiders is that of the malik (tribal leader or chieftain) and village elders. The malik and village elders represent the political aspects of the village. A second key node of influence is the imam (religious leader). The imam represents the religious node of influence within a village. A third local node of influence is the individuals and system of security found within a village. Security is traditionally conducted by the men of each individual village. If either the Taliban or the Afghan government controls one of the parts or nodes of influence in a village, then that entity also heavily influences or controls the village and perhaps other villages in the area.
TALIBAN CONTROL OF VILLAGE NODES
The Taliban look for villages and areas within which they can operate and use as a base against US and Afghan forces. Areas with little US or Afghan police or army presence are prime areas the Taliban will initially seek to subvert and hold. The Taliban build networks by getting a fighter, religious leader, or village elder to support them. Whichever one or more are initially used will be exploited for tribal and familial ties. The village politics administered by the elders and represented by an appointed malik are the most identifiable node of influence of any particular village. The Taliban will attempt to sway those maliks who are not supportive by discussion and, if necessary, threats, violence, or death. In villages where the locals say there is no malik, it is usually described as a convenience to the village as “no one wants the position,” or sometimes “the elders cannot agree on a malik so it is better there is none.” In these cases it is most likely the Taliban have neutralized the desired representative of that village. When locals are pressed for a representative they will give you a name of a person who has come to represent the village. This individual will also most likely be in support of and supported by the Taliban. The Taliban will try to install a malik or “representative of the village” by coercion or force.
A sub-commander will be established in the village to keep those in line who would resist the Taliban or their malik, who will be supported by limited funding. The sub-commander will generally have 2–5 fighters under his control. The fighters will often be armed only with small arms and shoulder-fired antitank rocket launchers (RPGs). They may or may not have an improvised explosive device (IED) capability, and if not will coordinate IED activities for the defense and when possible offense against US and Afghan forces. These fighters may stay in the village, but preferably are not from the village. Locals can sometimes be pressed into service to fight when needed, but the Taliban tend to use fighters from different villages so that when threats or physical violence is utilized, it won’t be kinsman against kinsman. The Taliban often visit the village imam and local mosques. Villagers do not generally oppose this, as it is expected that even the Taliban must be allowed to perform and express their Islamic duties. These mosque visits afford the Taliban opportunities to gage village sentiment and to build and establish contacts within localities. Village religious leaders also serve to educate children in villages where the Taliban have either closed or destroyed the local school. The mosque and imam serve as an education center for the Taliban while still presenting an opportunity for village children to be “educated.” This presents a solution to the unpopular notion of schools being closed. A constant and recognized complaint from the Afghan people is the lack of opportunity because of poor education. The Taliban will supplant the local imam if needed by supplying their own to a village. A village with no imam will receive one and the Taliban will establish a mosque. This mosque will serve as a Taliban meeting place, storage facility, and indoctrination center.
Sympathetic locals are used as auxiliaries to provide food and shelter. One way to do this is for known supporters to place food and blankets outside their living quarters or in guest quarters to be used by Taliban in transit or operating within a village. This gives the resident supporter some plausible deniability. When US or Afghan forces arrive, all that is found are the blanket, possibly clothing, footprints and other signs of visitors. The Taliban have blended into the surrounding village.
TALIBAN CAN CONTROL WITH FEW FIGHTERS
The Taliban method requires relatively few of their own personnel. Its strength is in the local subversion of the most basic levels of village organization and life. It is also a decentralized approach. Guidance is given and then carried out, with commanders applying their own interpretation of how to proceed. The goal is to control the village, and at the local level the only effective method, which must be used by all commanders, is to control what we have termed the nodes of influence. Form fits function; an Afghan village can only work one way to allow its members to survive a subsistence agrarian lifestyle, and the Taliban know it well.
To control an area the Taliban will identify villages that can be most easily subverted. They will then spread to other villages in the area one at a time, focusing their efforts on whichever node of influence seems most likely to support their effort first. Using this model the Taliban could influence and dominate or control a valley or area with a population of 1000–2500—ten villages with 100–250 people (100–250 compounds)—with only between 20–50 active fighters and ten fighting leaders. The actual numbers may encompass greater population and fewer fighters.
The Taliban will have an elaborate network to support their fighters in areas they control or dominate. They will have safe houses, medical clinics, supply sites, weapons caches, transportation agents, and early warning networks (the British Army calls them “dickers”) to observe and report. The US and Afghan forces, heavily laden with excessive body armor and equipment, are reluctant to leave their vehicles. They are blown up on the same roads and paths they entered the area on. The Taliban will use feints and lures to draw our forces away from caches and leaders in an attempt to buy them time to relocate, or into a lethal ambush. After the attack the Taliban will disperse and blend into the village. The village will frequently sustain civilian casualties and the information or propaganda will be spread of US and Afghan soldiers using excessive force. The US and Afghan forces will leave or set up an outpost nearby, but the attacks will continue because the forces are not in the village, do not truly know “who’s who in the zoo,” and aren’t able to effectively engage Taliban personnel or effectively interface with the village nodes of influence to their benefit.
We say one thing but our actions are different. Locals are reluctant to help because to be seen talking with the Americans and Afghan security forces will result in a visit from a Taliban member to determine what they talked about and to whom. The local villagers know the government has no effective plan that can counter the Taliban in their village, and will typically only give information on Taliban or criminal elements to settle a blood feud. The Pashtu people are patient to obtain justice and will use what they have to pay back “blood for blood,” even against the Taliban.
COUNTERING THE TALIBAN IN THE VILLAGE
Countering Taliban subversion of the populace is not done effectively with just more troops located at outposts. The troops must coordinate their activities with the local population and establish security through and within the village. When US and Afghan forces do this, the fight will typically take on a particularly violent aspect, and involve the population as the Taliban attempt to maintain or reassert control.
The US and Afghan forces and government will need to identify individuals in order to employ lethal and non-lethal targeting. This requires in-depth knowledge of tribal structure, alliances, and feuds. Viable alternatives or choices need to be available to village leaders and villagers. Just placing US and Afghan soldiers at an outpost, conducting token presence patrols, occasionally bantering with locals, and organizing a shura once a month are not going to work.
Afghan identity is not primarily national, i.e., belonging within a geographic boundary with a centralized national government. Afghan identity is tribal in nature. Americans view identity as a national government; Afghans in the villages do not. The tribe is most important. The country “Afghanistan” running things from Kabul does not mean very much to the Afghan people in the villages under duress from the Taliban.
US and Afghan forces must be able to infiltrate and shape the village nodes of influence and then target individuals. Right now our military embraces a centralized, top-driven approach that prevents our military and US-trained Afghan counterparts from doing so. Current US procedures and tactics attempt to identify the Taliban without regard to their influence or social role at the village level. Instead we attempt to link individuals to attacks and incomplete network structures through often questionable intelligence. The individuals in nodes of influence must be identified as neutral, pro, or anti-Afghan government and then dealt with. To target any other way is haphazard at best and does not gain us the initiative.
US and Afghan forces must also devise and utilize tactics to fight outside and inside the village. This requires true light infantry and real counterinsurgency tactics employed by troops on the ground, not read from a “new” COIN manual by leadership in a support base. The tactics must entail lightly equipped and fast-moving COIN forces that go into villages and know how to properly interact with locals and identify Taliban insurgents. They must have the ability to take their time and stay in areas they have identified at the local level as worth trying to take back. Being moved from place to place and using armored vehicles while scarcely engaging local leadership will not work. Targeting identified high value targets will only result in the “whack-a-mole” syndrome. It’s demoralizing for US and Afghan troops, the American public, and the Afghans who just want to live in peace. A light infantry force conducting specialized reconnaissance in villages, and using proven tactics like trained visual trackers to follow insurgents into and out of villages, proper ambush techniques on foot outside the village, and knowledge of the local village situation is the key. Infantry tactics should also include vertical envelopment of Taliban fighters by helicopter and parachute to cut off avenues of escape. Troop units should have a secure local patrol base from which to operate, send foot patrol into villages at night, and talk with and document compounds and inhabitants for later analysis. Mega bases or forward operating bases (FOBS) are only for support; units and tactics should be decentralized.
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Any thoughts?
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Ink blot strategy and tactics is what you are describing. It is slow and sustained grind type of work, political realities like elections get in the way of that.........
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believe me brother, i know exactly what you mean...
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Woof Jkrenz:
Welcome home!
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:? In that case welcome back to the land of the big PX and TV commercials you can understand, too!
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Restating matters: The President says that our war with man-made disasters in Afg is a vital and necessary war of self-defense which we must win. Therefore we will leave it up to the Afghan Army and the Afghan Police in 16 months.
This just in from the NY branch of Pravda.
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With Raw Recruits, Afghan Police Buildup Falters
By ROD NORDLAND
Published: February 2, 2010
NYT
KABUL, Afghanistan — The NATO general in charge of training the Afghan police has some tongue-in-cheek career advice for the country’s recruits.
Italian paramilitary Carabinieri officers train Afghan police recruits. On average, 5 percent of recruits cannot pass firearms tests.
“It’s better to join the Taliban; they pay more money,” said Brig. Gen. Carmelo Burgio, from Italy’s paramilitary Carabinieri force.
That sardonic view reflects a sobering reality. The attempts to build a credible Afghan police force are faltering badly even as officials acknowledge that the force will be a crucial piece of the effort to have Afghans manage their own security so American forces can begin leaving next year.
Though they have revamped the program recently and put it under new leadership, Afghan, NATO and American officials involved in the training effort list a daunting array of challenges, as familiar as they are intractable.
One in five recruits tests positive for drugs, while fewer than one in 10 can read and write — a rate even lower than the Afghan norm of 15 percent literacy. Many cannot even read a license plate number. Taliban infiltration is a constant worry; incompetence an even bigger one.
After eight weeks of training, an average of 5 percent of recruits cannot pass firearms tests — but are given a gun and sent out to duty. Unsurprisingly, the Afghan National Police have the highest casualty rates of all the security forces fighting the Taliban; 646 died last year, compared with 282 Afghan Army soldiers and 388 NATO troops, according to NATO figures.
The death rate, poor pay and lack of equipment are among the reasons that a fourth of the officers quit every year, making the Afghan government’s lofty goals of substantially building up the police force even harder to achieve.
“They say the numbers prove ‘the Afghan National Police are in the fight,’ ” said General Burgio, quoting a frequently heard mantra from NATO officials. “This is not true. Usually the police are killed in ambushes, not because they were sent out to fight, but because they have no armored vehicles, for instance.”
The list of reasons for the failures is almost as lengthy as the list of problems officials cite with the police force.
General Burgio said the countries that were supposed to be building up Afghanistan’s security had not followed through on their promises to send enough qualified instructors. But even when the instructors arrive, he said, the countries involved seem unable to agree on a uniform training protocol.
The United States has recognized the problems and has begun making significant changes.
Under orders from the American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, control of police training is being shifted from the State Department to the military.
DynCorp, the American company that provided retired police officers to do much of the training, has been told its contract will not be renewed. But it has appealed that decision, holding up the changeover until the appeal is decided, by March 24.
That has left NATO struggling to augment the police trainers with active-duty police officers from European countries.
“As of Jan. 12, we require 4,245 trainers to meet our goal of training 134,000 police by 2011,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, during a visit here on Jan. 13. “I think it’s inexcusable.”
General Burgio declined to say which countries had yet to contribute. He contended that one of the biggest failings of the training program was the State Department’s overreliance on private contractors, whom he described as often over age and undermotivated, and expensive.
“For the cost of 10 DynCorp, I can put 30 Carabinieri trainers in and save money,” he said. He warned that if DynCorp won its challenge, it would “set us back six to nine months.
A spokesman for DynCorp, Douglas Ebner, said, “DynCorp is proud of its work in Afghanistan training and mentoring the Afghan National Police.”
The international nature of the NATO-led training program has resulted in a welter of 20 different programs run by half a dozen countries and agencies with widely varying methodologies and standards. Officials are now trying to write a nationwide instruction program that will be more standardized.
“We’ve lost so much time,” General Burgio said.
There have been some positive changes recently. Police pay is increasing to $165 a month, and police officers assigned to hostile areas can make as much as $240 a month, according to Brig. Gen. Anne F. Macdonald, the American in charge of police training and program development at the ministerial level.
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That is better than the pay for Taliban insurgents, who typically make $200 a month. But even the new pay is lower than the cost of living for a typical Afghan family, encouraging corruption among many officers, NATO officials say.
In the new program of mandatory drug screening, General Macdonald said, 15 percent of police recruits test positive — a figure that may be low because recruits know in advance about the testing.
Divided loyalties are another problem. Most of the recruits are first hired locally, and then sent to regional or national training centers for their eight-week course.
“I don’t agree with the word ‘national’ in Afghan National Police,” the head of the Central Training Center, Brig. Gen. Khudadad Agah, said. “They’re all local police, and the problem with that is, one has a brother who is with the Taliban, another has an uncle. We go on an operation and one brother calls another and they know we’re coming.”
By comparison, army troops are recruited nationally. Their units are mixed ethnically and geographically so soldiers are not posted in their own communities.
Taliban infiltration of the Afghan National Police has had tragic consequences even for NATO soldiers: five British soldiers who were training a police unit in Helmand Province were killed by one of their trainees last November. The Taliban claimed credit for the attack. It was one of at least two instances in which police officers or recruits turned on their trainers or other NATO soldiers.
That explains why when recruits from the last class of 560 at the Central Training Center go to the firing range, as they did last month, they are allowed to put only 10 rounds at a time in the magazines of their automatic rifles, Hungarian-made variants of the AK-47. A team of Gurkha private security guards are on duty, too, watching the recruits carefully, as well as their own backs.
The recruits’ visit to the range comes during the seventh week of their eight-week course, and they have three days to qualify by managing to hit a man-size target 42 times out of 60 shots, a bit more than two-thirds of the time. If they cannot, they still graduate — with a certificate that says they are not competent to shoot — but are issued a weapon anyway.
“They’ll be out there on a checkpoint with an automatic weapon in a couple weeks,” said one of the trainers, who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press. “I wouldn’t want to be an innocent civilian downrange of them.”
A few of the recruits were crack shots, hitting their targets 60 times out of 60. One scored 62 out of 60, apparently thanks to a neighbor’s errant fire. Because so few of the recruits can read, the target numbers are written on their hands by the instructors, so the recruits can compare them and figure out which targets to shoot at.
Their Afghan firearms instructor, Lt. Ahmed Zay Mirweis, was contemptuous. “These guys wear the uniform of a policeman,” he said, “but that is all that is police about them.”
Saudi Terms for Role in Talks
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabian officials said Tuesday during a visit by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that they would not get involved in peacemaking in his country unless the Taliban severed all ties with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
Mr. Karzai is hoping that the Saudis will agree to play an active role in his plan to persuade Taliban militants to switch sides. He is to meet with Saudi officials on Wednesday after performing the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca.
The Saudi conditions for participating in talks with the Taliban are not new, but Saudi leaders are making them clear amid a new international push to work with the Afghan militants.
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Summary
U.S. Marines, British troops and Afghanistan’s national army are making preparations for assaulting the town of Marjah in Helmand province. The town is a key Taliban stronghold and logistical hub; and because it lies at the center of a provincial breadbasket, it also is populated and surrounded by open terrain. Indeed, there is probably no better ground in Helmand on which to fight a defensive battle than the Marjah area.
The U.S. Marine-led effort in Afghanistan’s Helmand province is about to get more kinetic. Marines, along with British troops and units of the Afghan national army, are preparing to begin a major assault on the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, which is touted as the “last holdout” of the Mullah Omar-led Quetta Shura Council in the province and is known to be a major logistical hub that the Taliban have controlled for years.
With British, Canadian and Dutch forces seeing some of the toughest fighting in Afghanistan in Regional Command South, which encompasses the southwestern quadrant of the country, the United States began surging troops into the region in 2008 with the deployment of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. More Marines have poured in (the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force is now in place), and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is now trying to hold key population centers in the Helmand River valley.
Most recently, U.S. Marines assaulted the town of Now Zad as part of Operation Cobra’s Anger, an ongoing attempt to disrupt Taliban logistics. Perhaps even more central to breaking the group’s hold on the province is Marjah, but the impending assault is no secret — and Taliban fighters have been preparing.
The town is at the center of a large irrigation project built by the United States in the 1950s, leaving large swaths of open terrain and clear fields of fire that assaulting elements will have to traverse. The irrigation canals also will be difficult to maneuver across and may channelize assaulting forces, though some breaching efforts can be expected. The town is at the center of a key breadbasket for the province, so the area is also populated, which could compound the challenges of the assault. In short, there is probably no better ground in Helmand on which to fight a defensive battle than the Marjah area.
And though the Taliban have begun to shy away from large, direct-fire engagements like the one against a small outpost in Wanat in Nuristan province in 2008, their use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has increased dramatically in recent years; and there is little doubt that the approaches to the town and the town itself are laced with mines and IEDs. Resistance is expected to be considerably heavier than it was in Now Zad, but the forces the Taliban are dedicating to the town’s defense remain to be seen. Estimates have varied from 400 fighters to 1,000 or more — perhaps as much as two battalions.
The U.S. Marine Corps’ Assault Breacher VehicleWhile Marjah offers good defensive ground, the assault is likely to include cordoning off of the area, so many of the fighters dedicated to its defense will probably be forced to fight to the death or surrender. If they choose to stay and fight in numbers, the Taliban could try and exact a heavy cost on the assaulting force, but they likely would lose those fighters in the process. And lately, the Taliban have shown a proclivity for attacks that are low-risk and likely to preserve the forces committed.
The Marines already have brought in new, heavy Assault Breaching Vehicles for use in Now Zad, and they have no illusions about the Taliban’s heavy preparations in Marjah. With assaults on Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq under their belts, the Marines are experienced with this sort of urban assault. The extent to which IEDs can be managed and the number of Taliban forces dedicated to the town’s defense will be pivotal to the battle’s outcome.
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Special Forces Assassins Infiltrate Taliban Stronghold in Afghanistan
Sunday , February 07, 2010
American and British forces poised to assault the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, have begun targeting insurgent leaders for assassination, The Sunday Times reported.
Special forces have been infiltrating the town on "kinetic" missions — jargon for armed attacks.
"Special forces guys have been going in on assassination missions with the aim of decapitating the Taliban force," a military source told the Sunday Times.
At U.S. Marine base Camp Leatherneck and the adjoining British base of Camp Bastion, troops and munitions have been airlifted in by night to avoid enemy rockets. In a break from traditional military secrecy, American, British and Afghan commanders have revealed that Marjah, the last town in Helmand under Taliban control, will in fact be the site of fighting in the near future.
Though Operation Moshtarak —Operation Together — has been widely publicized by top military leaders, the timeline for the offensive has not been revealed.
The success of the planned campaign depends on how quickly troops and civilian development workers can get public services up and running once the Taliban have been driven away, the top U.S. and NATO commander said Sunday.
The military has widely publicized the upcoming offensive in Marjah — the biggest Taliban-held community in the south — although the precise date for the attack in Helmand province remains classified.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal said the element of surprise is not as important as letting Marjah's estimated 80,000 residents know that an Afghan government is on its way to replace Taliban overlords and drug traffickers.
"We're trying to create a situation where we communicate to them that when the government re-establishes security, they'll have choices," McChrystal said.
Establishing functioning government has been messy even in the relatively safe parts of Afghanistan. NATO forces and international diplomats have to balance the need to increase security with the desire to build up Afghan institutions that have too-often been corrupt or ineffective.
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http://www.military.com/news/article/marine-deaths-underscore-us-struggle.html?ESRC=marine.nl
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The Afghanistan Campaign, Part 1: The U.S. Strategy
Stratfor Today » February 15, 2010 | 1450 GMT
Summary
The United States is in the process of sending some 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, and once they have all arrived the American contingent will total nearly 100,000. This will be in addition to some 40,000 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) personnel. The counterinsurgency to which these troops are committed involves three principal players: the United States, the Taliban and Pakistan. In the first of a three-part series, STRATFOR examines the objectives and the military/political strategy that will guide the U.S./ISAF effort in the coming years.
Editor’s Note: This is part one in a three-part series on the three key players in the Afghanistan campaign.
Analysis
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the United States entered Afghanistan to conduct a limited war with a limited objective: defeat al Qaeda and prevent Afghanistan from ever again serving as a sanctuary for any transnational terrorist group bent on attacking the United States. STRATFOR has long held that the former goal has been achieved, in effect, and what remains of al Qaeda prime — the group’s core leadership — is not in Afghanistan but across the border in Pakistan. While pressure must be kept on that leadership to prevent the group from regaining its former operational capability, this is an objective very different from the one the United States and ISAF are currently pursuing.
The current U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is to use military force, as the United States did in Iraq, to reshape the political landscape. Everyone from President Barack Obama to Gen. Stanley McChrystal has made it clear that the United States has no interest in making the investment of American treasure necessary to carry out a decade-long (or longer) counterinsurgency and nation-building campaign. Instead, the United States has found itself in a place in which it has found itself many times before: involved in a conflict for which its original intention for entering no longer holds and without a clear strategy for extricating itself from that conflict.
This is not about “winning” or “losing.” The primary strategic goal of the United States in Afghanistan has little to do with the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. That may be an important means but it is not a strategic end. With a resurgent Russia winning back Ukraine, a perpetually defiant Iran and an ongoing global financial crisis — not to mention profound domestic pressures at home — the grand strategic objective of the United States in Afghanistan must ultimately be withdrawal. This does not mean total withdrawal. Advisers and counterterrorism forces are indeed likely to remain in Afghanistan for some time. But the European commitment to the war is waning fast, and the United States has felt the strain of having its ground combat forces almost completely absorbed far too long.
To facilitate that withdrawal, the United States is trying to establish sustainable conditions — to the extent possible — that are conducive to longer-term U.S. interests in the region. Still paramount among these interests is sanctuary denial, and the United States has no intention of leaving Afghanistan only to watch it again become a haven for transnational terrorists. Hence, it is working now to shape conditions on the ground before leaving.
Immediate and total withdrawal would surrender the country to the Taliban at a time when the Taliban’s power is already on the rise. Not only would this give the movement that was driven from power in Kabul in 2001 an opportunity to wage a civil war and attempt to regain power (the Taliban realizes that returning to its status in the 1990s is unlikely), it would also leave a government in Kabul with little real control over much of the country, relieving the pressure on al Qaeda in the Afghan-Pakistani border region and emboldening parallel insurgencies in Pakistan.
The United States is patently unwilling to commit the forces necessary to impose a military reality on Afghanistan (likely half a million troops or more, though no one really knows how many it would take, since it has never been done). Instead, military force is being applied in order to break cycles of violence, rebalance the security dynamic in key areas, shift perceptions and carve out space in which a political accommodation can take place.
(click here to enlarge image)
In terms of military strategy, this means clearing, holding and building (though there is precious little time for building) in key population centers and Taliban strongholds like Helmand province. The idea is to secure the population from Taliban intimidation while denying the Taliban key bases of popular support (from which it draws not only safe haven but also recruits and financial resources). The ultimate goal is to create reasonably secure conditions under which popular support of provincial and district governments can be encouraged without the threat of reprisal and from which effective local security forces can deploy to establish long-term control.
The key aspect of this strategy is “Vietnamization” — working in conjunction with and expanding Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) forces to establish security and increasingly take the lead in day-to-day security operations. (The term was coined in the early 1970s, when U.S. President Richard Nixon drew down the American involvement in Vietnam by transitioning the ground combat role to Vietnamese forces.) In any counterinsurgency, effective indigenous forces are more valuable, in many ways, than foreign troops, which are less sensitive to cultural norms and local nuances and are seen by the population as outsiders.
But the real objective of the military strategy in Afghanistan is political. Gen. McChrystal has even said explicitly that he believes “that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome.” Though the objective of the use of military force almost always comes down to political goals, the kind of campaign being conducted in Afghanistan is particularly challenging. The goal is not the complete destruction of the enemy’s will and ability to resist (as it was, for example, in World War II). In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, the objective is far more subtle than that: It is to use military force to reshape the political landscape. The key challenge in Afghanistan is that the insurgents — the Taliban — are not a small group of discrete individuals like the remnants of al Qaeda prime. The movement is diffuse and varied, itself part of the political landscape that must be reshaped, and the entire movement cannot be removed from the equation.
At this point in the campaign, there is wide recognition that some manner of accommodation with at least portions of the Taliban is necessary to stabilize the situation. The overall intent would be to degrade popular support for the Taliban and hive off reconcilable elements in order to further break apart the movement and make the ongoing security challenges more manageable. Ultimately, it is hoped, enough Taliban militants will be forced to the negotiating table to reduce the threat to the point where indigenous Afghan forces can keep a lid on the problem with minimal support.
Meanwhile, attempts at reaching out to the Taliban are now taking place on multiple tracks. In addition to efforts by the Karzai government, Washington has begun to support Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani efforts. At the moment, however, few Taliban groups seem to be in the mood to talk. At the very least they are playing hard to get, hinting at talks but maintaining the firm stance that full withdrawal of U.S. and ISAF forces is a precondition for negotiations.
The current U.S./NATO strategy faces several key challenges:
For one thing, the Taliban are working on a completely different timeline than the United States, which — even separating itself from many of its anxious-to-withdraw NATO allies — is poised to begin drawing down forces in less than 18 months. While this is less of a fixed timetable than it appears (beginning to draw down from nearly 100,000 U.S. and nearly 40,000 ISAF troops in mid-2011 could still leave more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan well into 2012), the Taliban are all too aware of Washington’s limited commitment.
Then there are the intelligence issues:
One of the inherent problems with the Vietnamization of a conflict is operational security and the reality that it is easy for insurgent groups to penetrate and compromise foreign efforts to build effective indigenous forces. In short, U.S./ ISAF efforts with Afghan forces are relatively easy for the Taliban to compromise, while U.S./ISAF efforts to penetrate the Taliban are exceedingly difficult.
U.S. Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, the top intelligence officer in Afghanistan who is responsible for both ISAF and separate U.S. efforts, published a damning indictment of intelligence activity in the country last month and has moved to reorganize and refocus those efforts more on understanding the cultural terrain in which the United States and ISAF are operating. But while this shift will improve intelligence operations in the long run, the shake-up is taking place amid a surge of combat troops and ongoing offensive operations. Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. McChrystal have both made it clear that the United States lacks the sophisticated understanding of the various elements of the Taliban necessary to identify the potentially reconcilable elements. This is a key weakness in a strategy that ultimately requires such reconciliation (though it is unlikely to disrupt counterterrorism and the hunting of high-value targets).
The United States and ISAF are also struggling with information operations (IO), failing to effectively convey messages to and shape the perceptions of the Afghan people. Currently, the Taliban have the upper hand in terms of IO and have relatively little problem disseminating messages about U.S./ISAF activities and its own goals. The implication of this is that, in the contest over the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, the Taliban are winning the battle of perception.
The training of the ANA and ANP is also at issue. Due to attrition, tens of thousands of new recruits are necessary each year simply to maintain minimum numbers, much less add to the force. Goals for the size of the ANA and ANP are aggressive, but how quickly these goals can be achieved and the degree to which problems of infiltration can be managed — as well as the level of infiltration that can be tolerated while retaining reasonable effectiveness — all remain to be seen. In addition, loyalty to a central government has no cultural precedent in Afghanistan. The lack of a coherent national identity means that, while there are good reasons for young Afghan men to join up (a livelihood, tribal loyalty), there is no commitment to a national Afghan campaign. There are concerns that the Afghan security forces, left to their own devices, would simply devolve into militias along ethnic, tribal, political and ideological lines. Thus the sustainability of gains in the size and effectiveness of the ANA and ANP remains questionable.
This strategy also depends a great deal on the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, over which U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry has expressed deep concern. The Karzai government is widely accused of rampant corruption and of having every intention of maintaining a heavy dependency on the United States. Doubts are often expressed about Karzai’s intent and ability to be an effective partner in the military-political efforts now under way in his country.
While the United States has already made significant inroads against the Taliban in Helmand province, insurgents there are declining to fight and disappearing into the population. It is natural for an insurgency to fall back in the face of concentrated force and rise again when that force is removed, and the durability of these American gains could prove illusory. As Maj. Gen. Flynn’s criticism demonstrates, the Pentagon is acutely aware of challenges it faces in Afghanistan. It is fair to say that the United States is pursuing the surge with its eyes open to inherent weaknesses and challenges. The question is: Can those challenges be overcome in a war-torn country with a long and proven history of insurgency?
Next: The Taliban strategy
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Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Mon, February 15, 2010 -- 9:15 PM ET
-----
Secret Joint Raid Captures Taliban's Top Commander
The Taliban's top military commander was captured several
days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by
Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to
American government officials.
The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan
described by American officials as the most significant
Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in
Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks
second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the
Taliban's founder, and was a close associate of Osama bin
Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several
days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both
taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/world/asia/16intel.html?emc=na
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==============
Two More Senior Taliban Leaders Are Arrested
Two senior Taliban leaders have been arrested in recent days
inside Pakistan, officials said Thursday, as American and
Pakistani intelligence agents continued to press their
offensive against the group's leadership after the capture of
the insurgency's military commander last month.
Afghan officials said the Taliban's "shadow governors" for
two provinces in northern Afghanistan had been detained in
recent days hiding inside Pakistan. Mullah Abdul Salam, the
Taliban's leader in Kunduz, was detained in the Pakistani
city of Faisalabad, and Mullah Mohammed of Baghlan Province
was also captured in an undisclosed Pakistani city, they
said.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/world/asia/19taliban.html?emc=na
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Yep, we take them down any time we want, like when we first went into Afganistan. Can we get a change in the conditions/ environment that allowed them to regrow? THAT is the trick. Either that or settle for doing a little pruning of their organization, which will eventually backfire.
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Yep, we take them down any time we want, like when we first went into Afganistan. Can we get a change in the conditions/ environment that allowed them to regrow? THAT is the trick. Either that or settle for doing a little pruning of their organization, which will eventually backfire.
That is the trick now isn't it? Too many for too long have been worried about "getting the bad guys". We can take out TB commanders and key players all we want, but that's like trying to cut the heads off of the fabled Hydra. Cut one off and two more are there to take its place. What about the "good guys"? The common, average, run of the mill Afghan. The people that don't want anything to do with either side (US/CF or TB). What measures are we, as the "good guys", implementing to change these peoples lives and possibly motivate them to take ownership of the situation in their territory/country? Our current approach is hardly working...
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http://www.eisf.eu/alerts/item.asp?n=698
Civil-military relations in Afghanistan and Pakistan
09 Feb 2010 | 10:56
In Afghanistan, following US President Obama's decision to "surge" military forces and endorse the strategy earlier laid out by General Stanley McChrystal, military "aid", designed to provide quality-of-life improvements to populations and thus win their "hearts and minds", has become an increasingly emphasized component of NATO operations. The Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP), a fund military commanders can draw upon to support projects in their areas of operation, will be worth up to $1.2 billion in 2010, for instance. This indicates the growing trend of militaries involved in counterinsurgency operations adopting humanitarian activities and language in order to support political agendas. This was highlighted further by the deaths of three US soldiers in Pakistan on 2 February 2010; in the country to train the Frontier Corps, they were killed on their way to attending the opening ceremony of a girls school, whilst dressed in civilian clothes. These articles analyse the issue of civil-military interaction in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the military's use of "aid" to build support for the governments their operations are designed to support:
3 US soldiers among 9 killed in bombing in northwest Pakistan
from the Long War Journal, 3 Feb 2010
This article demonstrates the conflation between "aid" and counterinsurgency in Pakistan. The Pakistani Frontier Corps is playing a major role in reasserting government influence and control over previously Taliban-held parts of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). As noted above, three US soldiers, in Pakistan to train the Frontier Corps in counterinsurgency techniques, were killed whilst dressed as civilians as they convoyed towards the opening ceremony of a girls' school. That the soldiers were attending such an event illustrates the importance of the underlying counterinsurgency principles of "clear, hold and build", with the latter phase judged central to cementing populations' support. It also highlights military encroachment upon activities traditionally undertaken by international aid agencies, and hints at the danger that actors will not be able to, or will not want to, distinguish between humanitarian and political motives where the outputs appear comparable.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/02/three_us_soldiers_am.php
"Humanitarian aid" not something the military can do - experts
from IRIN, 26 Jan 2010
Military forces in Afghanistan are not simply seeking to harness humanitarian activities to serve political ends, but also are adopting the language of humanitarian aid, even when contradicting its central principles. Thus, this article provides an example of a NATO/Afghan army operation labelled "humanitarian" by military spokesmen, but which clearly served a political motive. It argues that such activities could cause a perceptual conflation of military and humanitarian actors in the eyes of Afghan communities and armed actors; insecurity for both humanitarians and their beneficiaries could thus be increased.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/2c9f5559304d2c5f416282e2aecb909a.htm
Money can't buy America love
from Foreign Policy, 1 Dec 2009
This article provides a case against militarised "aid", though it also reflects some scepticism toward the effectiveness of aid agencies' activities in Afghanistan. As noted, counterinsurgency's "build" component is judged increasingly central to fostering support for the Afghan government. And yet this research, conducted by the Feinstein International Centre at Tufts University, argues that this use of aid as a "weapons system" is actually ineffective, and perhaps even counterproductive. It contends that politicised aid tends to feed the dynamics Afghans despair of - most notably government corruption - whilst failing to ensure the provision of sufficient needs-meeting programmes. It further contends that this has lead Afghan perceptions of those delivering aid, including aid agencies, to grow "overwhelmingly negative". This article thus provides a scathing critique of politicised aid, but it does not provide an unreserved endorsement of humanitarian aid activities either.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/12/01/money_cant_buy_america_love?page=0,0
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Humanitarian assistance and the like SHOULD IN NO WAY be something with a US/CF military face on it at this point with the situation Afghanistan. The first couple of years, yes. But 9 years later we should barely be a shadow. As with any complicated situation, there are a lot more factors involved that need to be taken into consideration. We still have a lot to offer but there is a different approach. So as Rarick said, "THAT is the trick".
-John
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Their outlook is tribal, the next valley over is another tribe. "They see themselves as cherokees, mowhawks, apaches and crow not Americans." In otherwords their tribe is their country and identity. LONG row to hoe to get them untited to any great extent.
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John:
Very glad to have you with us on this discussion and very interesting points about the militarization of the of humanitarian work.
The challenges here are daunting and it seems to me that our mission and the strategy to realize it are often unclear, inconsistent, and often inchoate.
As I understand it (and I am not sure that I have this correctly) our current strategy under CiC Obama is to win this war of essential national self-defense by enabling the ANP and the ANA in the next 16 months to be sufficiently far on a path to a self-sustaining winning trajectory towards establishing an Afg from which the Taliban will not enable attacks to be launched against the United States that we can begin reducing our troops there.
Do I have this right?
If so, IMHO we are delusional , , ,or we are simply going through a pretense by our CiC so he can say that he kept his campaign promise to fight in Afpakia. Then after our 18 month efforts do not succeed he gets to say "Well, we tried with our best but the central government is too weak, incoherent, and corrupt, and so, just like Iraq, we are going to leave. Anyway, Iran will soon have the nuclear bomb, so our position in the region is incoherent and untenable anyway."
I am in a mood.
Certainly we are led by fine, outstanding generals in Patraeus and McCrystal, and it appears that the Pak govt/ISI may be waking up to the fact that a Taliban Pashtunistan is an existential threat to their regime. Too bad that our Cic gave McC only 50% of the 40-60,000 troops he asked for and too bad he let everyone, including our enemies now, that we would begin leaving in 18 months.
QUESTION:
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Stratfor
Reports have come out in recent days that more than half of the Afghan Taliban’s leadership has been arrested. However, most of these reports have come from unverifiable sources in the Pakistani government, making these claims dubious. Islamabad has every reason to want to appear supportive of the United States’ goals in Afghanistan while simultaneously positioning itself for control over the country when U.S. forces withdraw.
Analysis
Seven of the 15 members of the so-called Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban’s shadowy apex leadership council based in the Pashtun corridor of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, have been arrested according to a Feb. 24 report in the Christian Science Monitor, a U.S. newspaper, citing unnamed Pakistani intelligence officials. According to this report, in addition to the previously reported arrests of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Maulavi Abdul Kabir and Mullah Muhammad Younis, Mullah Abdul Qayoum Zakir, who oversees the movement’s military affairs, Mullah Muhammad Hassan, Mullah Ahmed Jan Akhunzada and Mullah Abdul Raouf were also arrested.
Only about half of these arrests have thus far been confirmed in any way. But more importantly, the composition of the Quetta Shura is itself a closely guarded secret. Only Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has the sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the Afghan Taliban to even have a good grasp of the council’s members, so reports from unnamed officials are extremely difficult to verify. No one has a master list of the Afghan Taliban leadership with which to check off individuals.
Even if all these men have indeed been arrested, it is difficult to say whether the Quetta Shura has really been reduced significantly, or — in many cases — if the individuals arrested are actually those they are thought to be. Almost all reports on the details of the arrests cite Pakistani security officials, and there is no way to independently verify them. Islamabad has incentive to show that it is cooperating with the United States, while at the same time reshaping the Afghan Taliban leadership landscape to suit its own long-term purposes.
This most recent leak comes as Pakistan has publicized a string of intelligence coups ranging from the arrest of shadow Taliban governors from northern Afghanistan, to the death of the leader of Lashkar e Jhangvi (LeJ), Qari Zafar and a supporting role in the Iranian arrest of Abdolmalek Rigi, the leader of Jundallah. Many aspects of these reports cannot be verified at this time, and given the lack of corroboration and Pakistan’s interests in manipulating perceptions, there is much to suggest that at least some element of Islamabad is feeding the media for its own purposes.
There is little doubt that there are at least partial truths to this series of reports, and that there have been some significant achievements. Baradar, for example, absolutely appears to be in Pakistani custody and may soon be transferred to a detention facility at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul.
But there are a number of moving parts in the attempts to negotiate with the Taliban — or degrade its capabilities. Pakistan is playing a complex game, and one important question is the extent to which Pakistan is indeed cooperating and coordinating with the United States in a meaningful way, rather than simply making temporary or symbolic gestures. The Pakistanis are deeply skeptical of U.S. support in the long run, and they already are thinking about managing Afghanistan when the United States begins to draw down there in coming years.
However, there is an entire chapter of history to be written before that happens, and Pakistan has every intention of being at the center of any negotiations with the Afghan Taliban, including the talks, the reconciliation process and the implementation of a settlement. A spate of arrests like those of the Quetta Shura members — regardless of whether they actually have been taken out of commission — may indicate that some sort of power play is taking place. But such a development cannot be confirmed presently, and Islamabad has no shortage of reasons to manipulate perceptions.
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There is a movie "we were soldiers once" that sums up the situation pretty well. A paraphrase from the old man in the mountain "This is a sad battle, they won it, but the only thing that will change in the end is the number of people that will die before they too go home".
In the DVD deleted scence section there is a scene out take where the American commander is being debriefed. The point made at the end of the scene is that the people who are being fought are already home, and it is only a matter of time before we got tired and went home too............
This is a fact we are facing in both Iraq and Afganistan. One country or the other is probably going to be seeing us for a long time, I am thinking Iraq due to there oil. Afganistan will be seeing us only long enough to get the Taliban Neutralized, but eventually we will end up going back there because it is a good training ground for any guerilla group due to the inter tribal rivalries. I suspect we will also be back in Somalia for much the same reasons.
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Great post Rarick,
It really is is too bad that we have such short attention spans as Americans. Everything is "instant" it seems and if the public doesn't see overnight results then it's not worth the effort to the. it's sad really. Never mind the fact that the enemy had the audacity to fly our own planes carrying or own fellow citizens into our own buildings. Lets just quit...
"Somewhere a True Believer is training to kill you. He is training with minimal food or water, in austere conditions, training day and night. The only thing clean on him is his weapon and he made his web gear. He doesn't worry about what workout to do - his ruck weighs what it weighs, his runs end when the enemy stops chasing him. This True Believer is not concerned about 'how hard it is;' he knows either he wins or dies. He doesn't go home at 17:00, he is home.
He knows only The Cause.
Still want to quit?" -Attributed to an anonymous SF Commander
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And now from NPR News...
I didn't see where much of the "values" came in...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124211413
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Marjah Effort Shows Values, Flaws Of Afghan Forces
by Tom Bowman
March 2, 2010
When the U.S. military began its counterinsurgency offensive in Afghanistan's Helmand River valley last summer, some 4,000 Marines took part in the operation aside about 300 Afghan forces.
By autumn, the number of Afghan troops participating more than doubled, according to Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, the Marine commander in southern Afghanistan. Nicholson told NPR that a major challenge in building local relationships was the lack of Afghan soldiers and police.
"We are vetting our police. And my assessment is that probably 3 to 4 out of every 10 we have probably need to really go home," Nicholson says.
More Afghan Troops In Marjah Operation
But senior U.S. officers say the current operation against the Taliban-stronghold of Marjah in Helmand province is far different.
Several thousand Afghan soldiers and police are participating alongside U.S. Marines in the operation that began in mid-February. Afghan national police were brought in from elsewhere in the country to replace corrupt local cops, U.S. officers say.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, points out that there are about 4,500 Afghans with U.S. and coalition troops in Marjah. "It's well planned," Mullen says. "Afghans are in the lead."
You don't forge armies out of nothing. It takes a long time for units to become cohesive and to learn their tasks properly.
- James Danly, retired U.S. Army officer
But a senior military official tells NPR that the U.S. definition of "in the lead" means Afghans are planning the operation, and sitting down with Afghan elders in mosques or in meetings known as shuras.
The Afghans are not leading in combat, says the senior official.
The combat performance of Afghan soldiers is spotty, according to numerous reports from the field. Reporters on the ground report Afghan soldiers in the rear, sometimes smoking hashish or looting, as U.S. Marines move forward to secure Marjah.
American and British troops provide the artillery, the airpower and the logistics. They are also suffering the bulk of the casualties — at least 10 times that of Afghans.
An Uneasy Partnership
James Danly, a retired Army officer who trained Iraqi forces, says the problem in Afghanistan is that for years Afghan units were kept on the periphery of U.S.-led operations. They were never real partners, although that is now beginning to change.
"You don't forge armies out of nothing. It takes a long time for units to become cohesive and to learn their tasks properly," says Danly. "It could take a long time."
Just how long that will take is central question of President Obama's Afghanistan strategy. Obama wants to start removing some U.S. troops by the summer of 2011, turning over responsibility to Afghan forces.
But the Afghans may not be ready.
In a secret memo last fall — later leaked to the press — the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, wrote: "We overestimate the ability of the Afghan security forces to take over."
Eikenberry, who served as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan until 2007, expressed doubt in the memo that Afghan forces could assume full security even by the target date of 2013.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno thinks that may be too pessimistic. Like Eikenberry, Barno once commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Barno says success in the Marjah operation could turn things around in southern Afghanistan, much like the "surge" of American forces in Iraq in 2007 changed the security calculus there.
Afghanistan "could look a lot different in the next six months or a year from now," Barno says. But that will depend on better governance — as well as security, he says.
"I think the Afghan army is going to provide a key part of that," says Barno says. "In some ways maybe this is the first time that the people actually see their army in action. And I know during my experience there that was an eye-opening experience."
An Effort To Recruit In The South
Just getting the Afghan army into the field has been a struggle. The Afghan government has increased pay in an effort to lure and retain recruits. But illicit drug use and illiteracy are common in the ranks.
Senior U.S. trainers, including Maj. Gen. David Hogg, are having a hard time recruiting, especially among the country's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns.
"Now we do have an issue as far as getting Afghans from the south, Pashtuns mainly, and so that's one of the things that will be a challenge as far as maintaining an ethnic balance," Hogg says.
Hogg says part of the problem in increasing the army's ranks in the south in that the region is the heartland of the Taliban movement.
Officials estimate that three-quarters of insurgents in the southern Afghanistan were born and raised there, and did not come from neighboring Pakistan — which is the case for many insurgents in eastern Afghanistan.
But for the Afghan army to be seen as legitimate in the south, more soldiers have to come from there. Most military-age males in the south are already fighting — for the Taliban.
Hogg also says that large numbers of Afghan soldiers are going absent without leave or not reenlisting.
"What that means is we've got retain more and we've got to recruit more to make up for the attrition," Hogg says.
But recruiting is going better outside the south. Hogg says nationwide in December there were nearly 9,000 recruits for the army, double the number from just a few months earlier.
Hogg says his command is hopeful it can meet its target of 134,000 Afghan soldiers by this fall.
But that recruiting success has revealed still another problem: Finding instructors from NATO countries to turn the Afghan recruits into soldiers.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has pressed NATO countries to send more trainers. But Hogg says the allied training effort is still short about 1,900 trainers.
If NATO doesn't send more, the U.S. may have to fill that void, even as the already expanding U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan is expected to reach about 100,000 this fall.
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Krenz:
Correct me if I am wrong--and unlike me, you are not armchair-- but this piece completely dances around stating openly that the ANA is utterly riddled by Taliban-AQ agents and that we really have no way around this.
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OTOH this sounds encouraging:
Special Forces Assassins Infiltrate Taliban Stronghold in Afghanistan
Sunday , February 07, 2010
American and British forces poised to assault the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, have begun targeting insurgent leaders for assassination, The Sunday Times reported.
Special forces have been infiltrating the town on "kinetic" missions — jargon for armed attacks.
"Special forces guys have been going in on assassination missions with the aim of decapitating the Taliban force," a military source told the Sunday Times.
At U.S. Marine base Camp Leatherneck and the adjoining British base of Camp Bastion, troops and munitions have been airlifted in by night to avoid enemy rockets. In a break from traditional military secrecy, American, British and Afghan commanders have revealed that Marjah, the last town in Helmand under Taliban control, will in fact be the site of fighting in the near future.
Though Operation Moshtarak —Operation Together — has been widely publicized by top military leaders, the timeline for the offensive has not been revealed.
The success of the planned campaign depends on how quickly troops and civilian development workers can get public services up and running once the Taliban have been driven away, the top U.S. and NATO commander said Sunday.
The military has widely publicized the upcoming offensive in Marjah — the biggest Taliban-held community in the south — although the precise date for the attack in Helmand province remains classified.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal said the element of surprise is not as important as letting Marjah's estimated 80,000 residents know that an Afghan government is on its way to replace Taliban overlords and drug traffickers.
"We're trying to create a situation where we communicate to them that when the government re-establishes security, they'll have choices," McChrystal said.
Establishing functioning government has been messy even in the relatively safe parts of Afghanistan. NATO forces and international diplomats have to balance the need to increase security with the desire to build up Afghan institutions that have too-often been corrupt or ineffective.
Click here for more from the Sunday Times.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Krenz:
Correct me if I am wrong--and unlike me, you are not armchair-- but this piece completely dances around stating openly that the ANA is utterly riddled by Taliban-AQ agents and that we really have no way around this.
There are bound to be bad guys infiltrating the ranks of the ANA and ANP. There really is no "black & white" in Afghanistan. Just a whole lot of gray. The vetting process for these guys is minimal at best. In my personal opinion, it's not the TB/AQ that are the major underlying cause for the apparent incompetence and inability of Afghan forces to perform independently and without help from outsiders. The real problem is actual incompetence at every level throughout the ANA an ANP. The vast majority have next to no education and a lot of them don't care as long as they get a paycheck however little the pay may be. And it is very little compared to what the bad guys pay their Holy Soldiers. Lack of discipline is another major consideration. Discipline can be thought of as the lube that keeps the gears of the military machine turning smoothly. Without it the machine breaks. Lack of pride in the true sense. Somebody needs to instill in these men a true, deeply rooted sense of worth in these guys. It seems to me that the majority of them place no real value or importance on what their mission is, Afghanistan as a nation, and themselves as soldiers. When an American recruit makes it through basic training or boot camp, they're pissing red, white and blue. Afghans on the other hand aren't exactly pissing their national colors (red, black & green) though. Considering all this, the TB/AQ that do exist within the ranks have an easy job and there really is no way around it. We just have to wait until someone from an opposing tribe rats them out...
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"Special Forces Assassins Infiltrate Taliban Stronghold in Afghanistan"
non-kinetic operations at it finest... :-D
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"There are bound to be bad guys infiltrating the ranks of the ANA and ANP. There really is no "black & white" in Afghanistan. Just a whole lot of gray. The vetting process for these guys is minimal at best. In my personal opinion, it's not the TB/AQ that are the major underlying cause for the apparent incompetence and inability of Afghan forces to perform independently and without help from outsiders. The real problem is actual incompetence at every level throughout the ANA an ANP. The vast majority have next to no education and a lot of them don't care as long as they get a paycheck however little the pay may be. And it is very little compared to what the bad guys pay their Holy Soldiers. Lack of discipline is another major consideration. Discipline can be thought of as the lube that keeps the gears of the military machine turning smoothly. Without it the machine breaks. Lack of pride in the true sense. Somebody needs to instill in these men a true, deeply rooted sense of worth in these guys. It seems to me that the majority of them place no real value or importance on what their mission is, Afghanistan as a nation, and themselves as soldiers. When an American recruit makes it through basic training or boot camp, they're pissing red, white and blue. Afghans on the other hand aren't exactly pissing their national colors (red, black & green) though. Considering all this, the TB/AQ that do exist within the ranks have an easy job and there really is no way around it. We just have to wait until someone from an opposing tribe rats them out..."
I am truly delighted to have this conversation with you, so I communicate effectively that I am not arguing with you/your experience but rather testing my ideas with you precisely out of respect.
That said, given what you say-- does President Obama's strategy make any sense at all?
As best as I can tell it is to build a coherent army out of what you just describe (fully consistent with my armchair readings btw) an army that will allow us to begin to leave by , , , when? , , , spring/summer 2011?
Do I have this right and if so, does it make any sense?
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Woof Guro Crafty,
"I am truly delighted to have this conversation with you, so I communicate effectively that I am not arguing with you/your experience but rather testing my ideas with you precisely out of respect."
Thank you very much
"That said, given what you say-- does President Obama's strategy make any sense at all?"
Let's see here...
"As best as I can tell it is to build a coherent army out of what you just describe (fully consistent with my armchair readings btw) an army that will allow us to begin to leave by , , , when? , , , spring/summer 2011?"
What's going to happen !?!?!? :-o
"Do I have this right..."
That appears to be What the CIC has in mind. :lol:
"...and if so, does it make any sense?"
NONE. Not one bit.
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The Info Ops are crucial but seriously?
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In August 2009, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard C. Holbrooke told the New York Times that "concurrent with the insurgency is an information war," as he discussed the new U.S. effort of up to $150 million a year (to be led by him) to counter the Taliban's well-oiled propaganda machine. "We are losing that war," he confessed.
Now, seven months following the Times interview, Ambassador Holbrooke sings the same tune, even if slightly out of pitch. In accepting the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award last week at Tufts University for his distinguished career in public service, Holbrooke again touted the lack of strategy in countering the Taliban's consistent and effective use of the airwaves to undermine the U.S. engagements in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Citing the initiative mentioned late last summer, Holbrooke stated that efforts to that end are "just rolling in." In fact, the initial figure of $150 million seems to have not been adequate. According to a State Department document from January, the budget this year for Afghanistan and Pakistan communications projects is about $250 million, with pots of money in the Defense Department and other U.S. agencies, too.
Given how complex it is for us living here in the United States to measure the effectiveness thus far of the U.S. strategy to counter the Taliban communications team on the ground -- though by most accounts, progress has been pegged between abject and abysmal, for such information campaigns are inherently viewed as U.S. propaganda themselves -- let's focus on an initiative we can take a closer look at, such as the military's use of Twitter.
"There's an entire audience segment that seeks its news from alternative means outside traditional news sources, and we want to make sure we're engaging them as well," Col. Greg Julian told the Associated Press in June 2009. At the time, Julian was the top U.S. spokesman in Afghanistan and twittered away as part of the strategy, though his last tweet was "Obama Afghan strategy decision 'within days'" in November of last year. Succeeding Julian -- now spokesman for NATO -- as the chief public affairs officer of coalition forces is Col. Wayne Shanks. He does not have a Twitter account, or if he does, it probably has less than Col. Julian's 591 followers. Perhaps Shanks is of the position that the new U.S. forces in Afghanistan Twitter account (USforA) will suffice as an effective counter-Taliban information source. With nearly 6300 followers and a collection of positive tweets and hard facts about the reality on the ground, it would seem the strategy is on point and the initiative well directed.
But wait; let's take a closer look. On March 4th, USforA tweeted, "VIDEO: NATO's Joint Forces Command Photo Contest," which links to a YouTube video of a photo-montage that you simply have to see for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCVxXrIwCoo
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Gates sees momentum in Afghanistan but plays down prospects for reconciliation
By Greg Jaffe
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
KABUL -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday that recent military offensives against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan had gained momentum but that a reconciliation effort proposed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai was unlikely in the near term to cause senior Taliban leaders to lay down their arms. Such defections will not happen until senior insurgent leaders begin to "realize that the odds of success are no longer in their favor," Gates said in a joint news conference with the Afghan president.
Karzai has proposed a major conference this spring to begin the process of reconciliation with dissident ethnic and political leaders, including the Taliban. Gates arrived in Kabul to discuss Karzai's plans for his conference and to get a better sense of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's plans for a large offensive in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, which will probably take place this summer. His visit comes about three weeks after McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, launched an assault on the southern town of Marja, the first major U.S. military operation in the country since President Obama announced his revised war strategy late last year. The Obama administration's approach is built around the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops and an increased focus on building Afghan governance at the district and provincial level.
Although Gates seemed less sanguine than Karzai about the immediate prospects for reconciliation, he said that as U.S., Afghan and NATO forces pushed the Taliban out of havens in the south and east, it was likely that some Taliban leaders would feel pressure to switch allegiances and support the Afghan government.
About 6,000 of the 30,000 additional troops approved by Obama in December have arrived in Afghanistan. "I would say it is very early yet and people still need to understand there is some very hard fighting and very hard days ahead," Gates said. McChrystal said the coming offensive in Kandahar would look significantly different from the recent effort in Marja. U.S. Marines and Afghan forces mounted a large assault on the town, which was dominated by Taliban forces. There was essentially no Afghan government presence in Marja before the assault.
By contrast, there is already a government presence in Kandahar. Instead of U.S. and Afghan forces pushing directly into the city, U.S. officials plan to focus on the region around Kandahar, where the Taliban has been able to exact significant casualties on U.S., Afghan and NATO troops. "Kandahar has not been under Taliban control, [but] it has been under a menacing Taliban presence, particularly in the districts around it," McChrystal said.
The campaign to take back the city is likely to proceed far more gradually than the recent move into Marja. "There won't be a D-Day that is climactic," McChrystal said. "It will be a rising tide of security." In the weeks before the summer offensive, the United States will significantly bolster its presence in the province with Army troops. Afghan and U.S. leaders will begin reaching out to tribal elders in the area in an effort to win their support for military action and an enduring Afghan government presence.
If U.S. and Afghan forces can drive the Taliban from the region and reestablish an Afghan government presence, senior U.S. and NATO officials said it could swing the momentum of the war in favor of the struggling Karzai government. "If we are able to succeed in Kandahar and really ensure Kandahar is stable and sustainable, in my view the historians will look back on it as one of the decisive moments of this campaign," said Mark Sedwill, NATO's senior civilian representative to Afghanistan.
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Its WaPo (a.k.a. Pravda on the Potomac) so caveat lector. That said, we search for the Truth, inconvenient and otherwise, so here it is:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/08/AR2010030804916.html
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Pakistan's ISI Chief: When Personalities Matter
TUESDAY WAS ONE OF THOSE DAYS when a key development with global implications got very little attention around the world. On March 9, Pakistani Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani extended the term of service of Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of the country’s premier intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate. Pasha, who has been serving as Director-General of the ISI since his appointment by Kayani in September 2008, was due to retire on March 18. Many of the army’s top brass —including Kayani and Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman Gen. Tariq Majid — are due to retire by autumn.
Normally, personalities and factions do not matter insofar as geopolitics is concerned, certainly not in the long run. In this case, however, we are dealing with the short term, given the narrow window of opportunity that U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has to turn things around in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region –- the epicenter of global jihadist activity. This is why Pasha’s extension is an extremely significant development. Given the domestic and regional jihadist insurgency situation, the development is obviously based on Pakistan’s need for continuity of policy. But it is equally important for the American strategy for Afghanistan.
Pasha heads the ISI, which plays the single most important role in the U.S.-led international effort to bring about an end to the regional jihadist morass. In general, Washington relies heavily on Pakistan’s army-led security establishment to help bring a close to the now nine-year-old jihadist war. But without the ISI, the United States simply could not realize its objectives in the region.
There are two reasons for this. The first has to do with the historical role of the ISI in cultivating and managing Islamist militants, particularly in the case of Afghanistan’s Taliban movement. The second reason is that the ISI is in the process of a major shift; it is transitioning from being the cultivator of jihadists to being an entity that fights them.
“The ISI plays the single most important role in the U.S.-led international effort to bring about an end to the regional jihadist morass.”
Both of these attributes are absolutely essential for the success of the American strategy. Washington needs the ISI to help with intelligence to eliminate irreconcilable Taliban and their allies among the al Qaeda-led transnational jihadist nexus. More importantly though, Washington needs the ISI to eventually help negotiate a settlement with the reconcilable elements among the Afghan Taliban.
After years of tense relations, U.S.-Pakistani cooperation has recently seen considerable progress. The gains made thus far are nascent and have largely taken place under the current military-intelligence leadership. In the nearly 18 months that Pasha has been leading the ISI, Pakistan has taken a variety of unprecedented steps against Islamist militants. These include a crackdown against key Lashkar-e-Taiba figures due to their involvement in the Mumbai attacks in November 2008; the retaking of the Swat region from Taliban rebels; the ongoing offensive in the tribal belt, especially South Waziristan; growing intelligence-sharing to facilitate the U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in the tribal areas; and the recent actions against the Afghan Taliban.
These accomplishments are not possible without the cooperation of institutions, not just particular individuals. But when we talk about paradigmatic shifts in state behavior, specific individuals become important because they are the ones spearheading the radical changes. In the case of the ISI, this is even more important because the organization is in the process of transforming its decades-old policy of working with Islamist militants, and is now combating them.
The United States has acknowledged that the jihadist war in southwest Asia is primarily an intelligence war, and that it needs the ISI to move in a certain direction. This, in turn, requires specific personalities at the helm. Therefore, not only does Pakistan need continuity in its current intelligence leadership, the United States is dependent upon it as well. In other words, this war is as political as it is geopolitical.
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KABUL, Afghanistan — The tribal elders had traveled many hours to reach a windswept Afghan military base on the capital’s outskirts to sign their names to a piece of paper allowing them to bring their countrymen home from American detention.
As an Afghan general read the document aloud, Cmdr. Dawood Zazai, a towering Pashtun tribal leader from Paktia Province who fought the Soviets, thumped his crutch for attention. Along with other elders, he did not like a clause in the document that said the detainees had been reasonably held based on intelligence.
“I cannot sign this,” Commander Zazai said, thumping his crutch again. “I don’t know what that intelligence said; we did not see that intelligence. It is right that we are illiterate, but we are not blind.
“Who proved that these men were guilty?”
No one answered because Commander Zazai had just touched on the crux of the legal debate that has raged for nearly a decade in the United States: Does the United States have the legal right to hold, indefinitely without charge or trial, people captured on the battlefield? His question also exposed a fundamental disagreement between the Afghans and the American military about whether people had been fairly detained.
This is the latest chapter in America’s tortuous effort to repair the damage done over the last nine years by a troubled, overcrowded detention system that often produced more insurgents rather than reforming them. The problems were similar in the huge sweeps of suspected insurgents in Iraq.
Now, in Afghanistan, detainees who are deemed not to be a threat are handed over to local elders on the understanding that it is the community’s responsibility to ensure that they stay on the right side of the law.
The releases that took place at a recent ceremony at the 201st Afghan Army Corps headquarters, as well as the release or assignment to Afghan detention of 70 to 80 detainees earlier this year, are part of a new effort to free detainees who are no longer thought to be an imminent threat to the government of Afghanistan or the international forces.
Under the program, recently overhauled by Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward and Brig. Gen. Mark S. Martins, a Harvard-trained lawyer with the army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, there is now an automatic administrative review devised to speed the release process, and for the first time it allows detainees to make a case for their release.
Once the review board has approved a release, the Afghan military, in conjunction with the Americans, asks the detainee to sign a pledge to stay away from the insurgency, from the Taliban and from Al Qaeda. The elders are asked to sign a similar pledge that they will help them. Similar programs have been used with considerable success in Iraq, and the new one in Afghanistan builds on that experience.
There are now about 800 detainees at the American-run Detention Facility in Parwan, the new detention center that opened at the end of 2009 to replace the notorious holding facility at Bagram Air Base, which is associated with abuses that resulted in the deaths of at least two detainees. The vast majority of detainees are Afghans, but about 32 are foreigners, according to a senior American officer.
The American plan is to hand control of the detention center to the Afghan Ministry of Defense by January 2011, but Americans will still be deeply involved in the detention operations. In the coming months, the Americans hope to use the review process to release as many detainees as possible if they are deemed no longer a threat and to transfer to Afghan custody those who can be tried for crimes under Afghan law.
But as the recent ceremony showed, beyond the cake and fruit and formal speeches lies a reservoir of resentment about how the United States has handled detentions since 2001.
In interviews, former detainees and their families said the Americans were routinely misled by informants who either had personal grudges against them or were paid by others to give information to the Americans that would put the person in jail.
In addition, many Afghans have experienced the detentions as humiliating, and found almost unbearable the depths of poverty borne by their families during their internment.
“The information you had about these men was wrong in the first place,” said Hajji Azizullah, 54, a leader of the Andar tribe in Ghazni, who had come to sign for two detainees. “We are confident they were not involved with insurgents. If they were, we wouldn’t be here to sign for them.”
One detainee, Pacha Khan, 29, an illiterate bread baker from Kunar Province, said he was still puzzled about why he had been detained in the first place, let alone held for three years. “I was innocent,” he insisted. “Spies took money and sold me to the Americans. The Americans treated us very well, but as you know, jail is a big thing — to be away from your family, your relatives.”
His brother, Gul Ahmed Dindar, was less forgiving. He had to support his brother’s family of eight children and a wife on the meager salary of a local police officer. “They were about to sell their children,” he said. “They had very little to live on. They sold their one goat, their one sheep and their cow. Then they sold the furniture — it was not much. They have had a very tough life.”
Admiral Harward insisted that the American intelligence was good and that these were insurgents, but on hearing the elders’ protests about signing a document that made it sound as if the tribal leaders agreed with the American view, he offered to change the language to say that in the eyes of American forces these detainees were insurgents. The elders nodded their assent. The new language will be used on future sponsor forms. “We learn something every time we do this,” Admiral Harward said.
The Afghan military made its own effort to solve the problem when it heard the elders’ protests, by simply writing in the word “no” in front of the phrase saying the detainee had a “link to the insurgency.” The version the elders signed said the detainee had “no link.”
In the shifting shadows of this often invisible war, where no one is sure who is lying and who is telling the truth, it seemed a reasonable way to resolve the day’s discord.
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Yon's track record in this is quite strong.
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Kandahar Province, Afghanistan
25 March 2010
Dogs have been trained to carry bombs to attack enemies for decades. The Soviets and others have used dogs as low-tech smart bombs. Yet canine platoons likely would rebel if they caught scent they were being duped to die.
Today, more sophisticated people employ men (mostly) to deliver bombs in Afghanistan. Gullible souls are selected, conditioned, trained and deployed. Malleable minds are identified then loaded with psychic software that uses their minds to create a vision. Evil persons of superior intellect identify the raw material—that raw material might be an engineer from a stable family—and trains them to fetch myths.
Suicide attackers have murdered countless thousands of people around the world. They go by various names, such as Kamikaze, Black Tiger, and Martyr.
The attackers are not all men. Some are Tigresses. My friend Alex Perry met a wannabe Black Tigress in Sri Lanka. She was 18. Alex described the girl in Time Magazine:
“But asked when she hoped to achieve her dream of being a suicide bomber, she grinned, squirmed and buried her face in her arms. "She's already written her application," said her commander, Lt. Col. Dewarsara Banu, smiling at her charge's shyness. "But there's still no reply." "Why hasn't there been a reply?" whined Samandi, looking up with the one eye, her left, that survived a shot to the head and fiddling with the capsule of cyanide powder around her neck. "I want this. I want to be a Black Tiger. I want to blast myself for freedom."
How Sri Lanka's Rebels Build a Suicide Bomber.
Many people are persuaded by cult artifices into any sort of behavior, including ritual suicide and murder. It’s crucial to understand that many suicide-murders are part of a religious ceremony. The attack is the climax of the ceremony. This is neither complicated, nor subtle.
Suicide murders are merely a small fraction of cult behaviors. Cults often do not revolve around religions. Communist cadres once fanned across the globe, teaching that capitalism must die on a global scale for communism to reach its imagined grandeur. Yet even as communist countries have failed across the world, true believers intoned the conviction that “real communism” had never been tried, and if it were, it would fulfill its promises. This “willing suspension of disbelief” demonstrates an important aspect often organic to cults: when cult prophecies are proven wrong, we might expect the cult to disintegrate in face of the evidence. Yet instead of disintegrating, powerful cults often refortify, strengthen, and redouble recruitment. Failure can cause them to grow.
Some cult leaders are true believers while others are true deceivers. From the outside, cults often can be easy to spot, though the hardest cult to see is the one you are in.
We face an increasing number of suicide murders here in the “Muslim world”—in places where suicide attacks were previously unheard of. Some people are coerced into suicide, such as the unfortunate women who were raped and defiled in Iraq, then shamed and coerced into suicide for the sake of “honor.” Or the case of a young Libyan, captured by soldiers from a unit I was with in Iraq. The Libyan was thankful for his capture: Iraqis were trying to force him to wear a suicide bomb.
Others are “brainwashed” and reloaded with brainware whose program creates suicide murderers.
A few weeks ago, on the morning of March 1st, just close by Kandahar Airfield, a suicide murderer waited in ambush. An American convoy from the 82nd Airborne was crossing the Tarnak River Bridge when the man detonated his car bomb, sending a heavily armored American MRAP off the bridge. At 0735, the boom thundered across Kandahar Airfield. I felt the explosion and turned around to look for a mushroom. The sound was vigorous enough that I thought we may have been hit on base. There it was: the orange mushroom cloud of dust gathered and could be seen floating away. It was off base in the direction of Highway 4 to Kandahar.
American Soldier Ian Gelig and several Afghans were killed. It’s difficult to know how many locals are killed and wounded in attacks; often they die later or are never taken to hospitals.
Soldiers from 5/2 Stryker Brigade Combat team were planning to conduct a mission that morning that required crossing the now badly damaged bridge. Our mission was cancelled, as were many other missions for the next couple days. In addition to killing Ian Gelig, the single attacker impacted the flow of the war in this crucial battle space.
Nearly two weeks later, on Saturday 13 March, I was preparing to go on another mission with 5/2 SBCT soldiers. Shortly before our departure, just up the road in Kandahar City, a serious attack unfolded at night, including three or four suicide attackers. About 35 people were killed and roughly another 50 wounded. Again, our mission was cancelled because the roads were closed, though by morning we took helicopters and bypassed the incident. Turns out, the enemy was disappointed with their attack. About half the attacks apparently did not go off, while American and Afghan forces responded more quickly than the enemy had expected and limited the damage. According to intelligence, the Taliban are extremely paranoid. Taliban leadership suspected there had been an inside informant. They planned to conduct a purge. Meanwhile, I got one report from the ground that Afghans believed most of the casualties were caused by Afghan police who are said to have fired wildly during the attack. One man told me that an Afghan position randomly fired his 12.7mm DsHK machine gun across the city. (These guns are so large they can rip a man in two.) Whether the allegation is true or false is not known by me, though it stands alone as a bullet in the information war.
Ground Sign
On 8 April 2006, I was driving with a friend from Lashkar Gah to Camp Bastion when shortly after we left the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) at Lash, a suicide attacker struck. We escaped entirely, hearing about the attack later. Some days later, we drove back to Lash. On 13 April, a second suicide attack happened at the same place, shaking the building while I was writing a dispatch about how the war was going sour.
These were the first two suicide attacks in Lashkar Gah.
(A couple more suicide attackers were killed in that same close area in Lash while I was writing this dispatch in neighboring Kandahar.)
Lone Wolf suicide murders occur, but the context of these first two bombings in Lashkar Gah indicated that a system was in place, and the suicide bombers were not terribly expensive to buy. If those suicide bombers were expensive or hard to come by, the commander likely would have saved them for special missions of high specific significance. Yet the targets of the two attacks were small and tactical, of little specific significance. Why would a commander waste “smart ammo” on tactical targets? Perhaps the “price” of the ammo—whether through coercion or bribery—must be reasonable, and he can buy more.
One intelligence report indicates that a certain Mullah paid cash and wheat seed to the father of Shafiqullah Rahman and Mohammed Hashim who detonated suicide car bombs on 11 November and 19 November 2009.
Suicide attackers come in different “grades.” Some are illiterate, unsophisticated people, unsuited for complex targeting. A plotter could not expect to select an illiterate village boy from the hinterlands of Zabul Province to move to Florida, obtain a place to live and begin flight training to crash airplanes into buildings.
Just days before 9/11, in Afghanistan, attackers passed themselves off as international journalists and managed to kill Ahmad Shah Massoud. A couple days later, on 9/11, hijackers attacked the United States. The killers were polyglots who combined savvy with international experience to wage complex attacks, such as was seen in Mumbai, India. Another sophisticated international suicide attack occurred in Afghanistan in December 2009, killing seven CIA agents.
More locally, within a short distance of this keyboard, suicide attackers who are spent on random convoys or “common targets” probably tend to be simple folk. Many suicide attackers in Afghanistan are believed to be street children or young people from dirt-poor villages, for instance from Zabul Province. Most are thought to be young, uneducated and impoverished. These unfortunates are believed to be conditioned in madrassas in Pakistan, and in fact our intelligence people believe that there might be three madrassas in one particular town, where suicide bombers are conditioned and shipped straight into Kandahar Province.
IEDs are by far our biggest threat here, yet suicide attacks are also deadly while generating more press. Also, IEDs generally only affect people who go where the IEDs are, while suicide murderers are known to hijack “random” airplanes far away from the perceived battlefield. Most victims of the suicide murderers we face are other Muslims. This was also true in Iraq where murderers would attack mosques or funeral processions, as an example.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, civilian casualties cause the people to turn against the side perpetrating the casualties. This photo was taken after a suicide bombing in Mosul, Iraq, in May 2005. The neighborhood had been pro-insurgent. After this bomb in the midst of children, the neighborhood turned against the terrorists. The little girl’s name was Farah. She died shortly after this moment.
There was a time when Americans seemed to view suicide attacks as a sign of the complete conviction of the enemy, an immutable dedication to their cause that many people found terrifying and cause for soul-searching. “What could we have done to provoke such anger?” Yet with time, American views of suicide attacks have matured and become more grounded. Firstly, Americans in particular are far less afraid of suicide attackers and extremely unlikely to capitulate with anyone who attacks on American soil. Suicide attackers hit American soil. In Iraq and Afghanistan, they have become commonplace. Secondly, most importantly, wild use of suicide attackers is seen not as evidence that we are attacking the “wrong people” whose dedication to their cause is unstoppable, but as concrete evidence that we are attacking the right people and that they should be destroyed. Japanese Kamikaze attacks are ingrained in the psyche of generations of Americans born post-World War II. Despite enemy demonstrations of absolute conviction, our military is today stationed peacefully in Japan.
Overuse of suicide attackers does not appear to cause Americans to cower, but to evoke Americans to want to kill the perpetrator.
Al Qaeda in Iraq was partially but significantly undone by overuse of suicide attackers. The Taliban is marching down the same path, but top-tier Taliban are smarter than al Qaeda and are trying to avert backlash.
Savage behavior continues to turn people against the Taliban. Realizing this, Mullah Omar and his Taliban issued a code of conduct in 2009: “Rules and Regulations for Mujahidin.”
Item 41:
Make sure you meet these 4 conditions in conducting suicide attacks:
A-Before he goes for the mission, he should be very educated in his mission.
B-Suicide attacks should be done always against high ranking people.
C-Try your best to avoid killing local people.
D-Unless they have special permission from higher authority, every suicide attack must be approved by higher authority.
In 2009, one report indicated there were 148 suicide bombings or attempts in Afghanistan. Suicide murders continue to occur a short drive from here that are not meeting the above requirements. Taliban continue to hit all manner of targets, and regularly slaughter non-combatant men, women and children.
Within a week subsequent to the publication of this dispatch, suicide murderers will likely kill innocent people here. The Taliban’s efforts at repackaging themselves as kinder, gentler mass-murderers is failing. Their suicide bombing campaign is backfiring. The Taliban are losing their cool. Something is in the air. The enemy remains very deadly, yet the scent of their weakness is growing stronger while our people close the in.
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M. Yon has been on the ground and in the area pretty much for the duration, and has had the perspective of the war documented at all levels. This I would accept over the curent MSM pelosi propoganda. I think this guy should be up for a Pulitzer if that award means anything anymore.
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Yon is reader supported. Best thing is to set up a monthly payment so that he can budget accordingly.
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Summary
As the U.S. drawdown from Iraq continues, the renewed focus on stabilizing Afghanistan includes a new counterinsurgency strategy. Along with more restrictive rules of engagement comes a less urgent insistence on opium-poppy eradication — this in a country that produces more than 90 percent of the world’s opium supply. The transition to other cash crops is still part of the long-term solution, but it will take time to determine the best approach. Meanwhile, opium production will remain a primary livelihood for thousands of rural Afghans. And there are plenty of other players — from the Taliban and certain members of the Afghan government to the Iranian military and the Moscow Mob — who have a vested interest in the enterprise.
Analysis
At a NATO conference in Brussels March 24, NATO spokesman James Appathurai rejected suggestions from Russian counternarcotics director Victor Ivanov that an opium crop eradication program be implemented in Afghanistan. Over the past 20 years, Russia has gone from being a trans-shipment route for heroin to a major consumer of heroin, the second largest market in the world behind Europe. Such a development has dramatic effects on public health and social stability in a country already facing dire demographic challenges, so it makes sense that Russia would take an interest in eliminating the source of the drugs.
However, opium cultivation has become a main source of income for thousands of rural Afghans, and as we recently saw in the NATO-led push into southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province, making peace with the locals by not interfering with their livelihood is a higher priority than eradicating their opium poppies. Right now, as a new counterinsurgency strategy takes shape in Afghanistan, Russian counternarcotics officials are unlikely to get much cooperation from NATO when it comes to the destruction of crops. That will likely come in time. The Russians may find more immediate cooperation in interdicting opiate trafficking in Afghanistan, which is largely managed by militant factions opposing NATO forces.
Afghanistan is at the center of the global trade in illicit opiates, with more than 90 percent of the world’s opium supply originating there. (The country also is a huge cultivator of marijuana, which is a significant cash crop but not as significant as opium.) Despite the fact that opium poppies can be grown in a variety of climates and soil conditions, its production is so concentrated in Afghanistan and countries like it because the cultivation of opium poppies can thrive only in regions with limited government control. Within Afghanistan, the cultivation of poppies is concentrated in the south and west of the country, with Helmand province alone accounting for more than half of Afghanistan’s total production. These are also the regions of the country where Afghan government control is the weakest and Taliban control is the strongest.
Besides Afghanistan, the other big opium producers are Myanmar, Pakistan, Laos and Mexico, but these countries make up only a fraction of overall production. Southeast Asia previously dominated opium production during the 1970s and most of the 1980s, while Afghanistan’s opium was consumed regionally. It was not until the mid-1990s that Afghanistan went from being one of several large opium-growing countries to producing more than 50 percent of the world’s supply. As Afghanistan’s importance in the global opiate trade has grown, so has the value of trafficking routes out of the country. When Southeast Asian opium dominated the world market, Thailand and China were the main routes through which the product reached the consumer. Now, with Afghanistan producing most of the world’s opium, Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia are the most important transit countries.
The trafficking of opiates out of Afghanistan to outside consumer markets is a highly lucrative business. The annual global market for illicit opiates is estimated to be about $65 billion, which, to put it in context, is roughly equal to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Croatia. In 2009, according to U.N. estimates, the opiate trade accounted for $2.3 billion of the Afghan economy, or about 19 percent of the country’s GDP. The flow of drugs in one direction and money in the other is of strategic significance because it provides financial support for regional players, some of whom are militant groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban. Because production is centralized in Afghanistan, actors immediately surrounding Afghanistan control routes to and profits from the primary consumer markets in Iran, Russia and Europe.
Production
Opiates are the family of refined narcotics to which heroin, morphine, codeine and other often-abused substances belong. Opiates such as morphine were developed in the 19th century for medicinal purposes and are still widely used (although much more restricted) today. Heroin is processed in a way that allows faster absorption into the system, making it a more potent form of morphine. Both, along with other related drugs, are refined from opium, a naturally occurring product of the opium poppy plant.
Opium is produced by slitting the seed pod of opium poppies to extract the sap. The sap oozes out as a thick brown-black gum which is then formed into bricks that are sold to traffickers and distributors. The poppy growing season in Afghanistan runs from planting in December to harvest in April. But the growing season does not greatly affect the times of the year that the drugs are trafficked, since Afghan farmers and traffickers have built up an opium stockpile of approximately 12,000 tons, which is enough to supply about two years worth of global demand. Only 10 percent of this stockpile is in the hands of Afghan farmers, with the rest under the control of traffickers and militants both in Afghanistan and along the trafficking routes. This stockpile buffers against extreme market fluctuations by providing a steady stream of product that evens out the spike in supply during harvesting season, and it also serves a safety net in case of seizures or crop destruction. This suggests a fairly high level of planning and organization among those trafficking opiates.
After the opium is collected by farmers it is usually sold to traffickers, who will often refine the opium further before moving it out of Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, this system is well organized, with farmers and traffickers often having agreements that run for several years. About 60 percent of the opium produced in Afghanistan is processed into heroin and, to a lesser extent, morphine, before being moved out of the country. Refining also takes place all along the transit route from Afghanistan, especially in Iran and Russia, but it makes sense to refine the opium as close to the production site as possible. Refining opium into heroin and morphine gives traffickers a number of advantages over trafficking unrefined opium as a commodity. Heroin and morphine are more compact (10 kilograms of opium produce one kilogram of heroin), which makes it more efficient to transport. And one kilogram of heroin can fetch upward of 100 times more than a kilogram of opium, making it more cost effective to transport.
The technology required to convert opium to heroin is very basic, requiring little more than a container to heat the opium in and some chemicals. However, some of the chemicals needed are difficult to acquire, acetic anhydride being the most important, and these have to be smuggled into Afghanistan. Anti-drug authorities have made a concerted effort to target the precursor trade, and this has made acquiring these chemicals in the necessary quantities (more than 13,000 tons a year) in Afghanistan difficult. However, refining in Afghanistan is still very common, and one sign of this has been the recent anthrax deaths of heroin users in Europe. The infected users were likely consuming heroin cut with ground-up goat bones, which is more prevalent in Afghanistan than the more commonly used sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and is known to host anthrax spores.
Trafficking Routes
Illicit opiates are moved out of Afghanistan through three main routes. About 40 percent of Afghanistan’s opiates travel through Iran to reach their end markets, while 30 percent goes through Pakistan and 25 percent through central Asia, with the last 5 percent having an indeterminate route. Afghan opiates are trafficked all over the world, but the most important end markets are Russia, Europe and Iran.
Iran
Iran’s land bridge connecting south Asia to the Middle East and Anatolian Peninsula has long been a trafficking route for all sorts of products, both licit and illicit. In 2007, more than 80 percent of the world’s opium seizures and 28 percent of its heroin seizures were made in Iran. Since 1979 more than 3,600 police officers and soldiers have been killed in violence between the Iranian government and drug traffickers. Before Afghanistan became the world’s leading opium-producing country, Iran was primarily a consumer of illicit opiates; trafficking through the country was very limited. This began to change as Afghanistan’s importance in opium cultivation rose in the 1990s and Iran became the main route through which Afghan opiates reach the wealthy consumer markets in Europe (Iran is still a substantial consumer of opiates, particularly unrefined opium). Those opiates that are trafficked through Iran continue onward to Turkey and Azerbaijan, with the Turkish route being the most important, accounting for approximately 80 percent of the opiates consumed in Europe.
Afghan opiates enter Iran via three main routes: by land from Afghanistan, by land from Pakistan and by sea from Pakistan, with small amounts coming over the border to Turkmenistan. Within Iran the product is moved toward the northwestern regions of the country and on to Europe and Russia along two main routes. Drugs that come directly from Afghanistan are moved north of the Dasht-e-Kavir desert toward Tehran, and then on to Turkey or Azerbaijan. Most of what is smuggled in from Pakistan is moved south of the Kavir-e-Lut desert and then on toward Esfahan and Tehran. What is brought in by sea goes mainly to the ports of Bandar Abbas and Chabahar, before moving northwest with the rest of the flow. While opiates trafficked through Iran do go in other directions — mainly toward the Arabian Peninsula and into Iraq — most are bound for consumer markets in Europe or are consumed domestically. Once in Iran, the drugs are moved mainly by car and truck. Drug seizures are fairly common throughout Iran, but especially on the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan, along the northern and central corridors, and in Tehran.
Cross-border ethnic links are important to the smuggling of Afghan drugs in all of the countries of the region. This is particularly true in southeastern Iran, where the Baloch ethnic group is heavily involved in the drug trade. There are significant populations of Balochis in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they move with relative ease between these countries. Government control over this border region is weak and traffickers move around in heavily armed groups with little fear of the authorities. Most of the drugs that cross the border in this region are transported by large, well-armed and motorized convoys. This is in contrast to the northern route, where drugs are more often brought over on foot or by camel or donkey — and frequently in the stomachs of these animals — before being loading into vehicles for transit across Iran.
One reason that we know of Balochi involvement in drug trafficking between southwest Pakistan and Iran is that the Iranian government is anxious to associate militant separatist groups in the region with drug trafficking, and the Balochs in southern Iran are among the most active separatists in the country. News reports of raids and seizures along Iran’s border with Pakistan tend to play up this aspect of the trade.
Little is known about the groups that are moving Afghan drugs through Iran, but given the substantial value of the drugs and the logistical management needed to ensure a steady flow of product, these groups seem to know what they are doing. The system must be organized at a higher level, and with the absence of official blame being placed on a nationwide organized-crime network, it is very likely that the Iranian government is involved. STRATFOR sources in Iran indicate that individual Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and military commanders oversee the flow of drugs through their regions, receiving a lucrative income in a country beset by multiple economic problems due to sanctions and the threat of more to come.
Given the value of opiates passing through Iran, estimated to be worth about $20 billion once they reach the street (approximately 5 percent of Iran’s GDP), it is hard to believe that a state whose geography predisposes it to land trade would fight so hard to keep the financial boon linked to opiates out of the system. Seizures are still made across the country, but these are more likely triggered by traffickers who refuse to cooperate with the authorities managing the trade. In recent months Iranians have also been arrested for drug smuggling in a number of Southeast Asian countries, suggesting an expanded geographical scope for Iranian drug traffickers.
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Pakistan
While Iran is the main trafficking route for Afghan-produced opiates, Pakistan is the most common first stop for drugs out of Afghanistan. The long border between the two countries is virtually impossible to control, and smuggling across the border is very common, especially for the Taliban. Indeed, opiate production and smuggling through Pakistan has provided essential support to the Afghan Taliban, which raised an estimated $450 million to $600 million between 2005 and 2008, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
Drugs enter the country along the northwest Afghan-Pakistani border and then take several paths across Pakistan. One is from southern Afghanistan across the border to the city of Quetta, which is an important transit point for Afghan opiates and a center of Afghan Taliban activity. About a quarter of the opiates that enter Pakistan are then taken into Iran through Balochistan province. Another important route is south through the Indus valley toward Karachi, a port city on the Arabian Sea and a key hub for organized crime in Pakistan. Once they leave the port of Karachi, the largest port in the region, drugs can be moved all over the world. Shipments of drugs are usually hidden in cargo containers, or they can be smuggled aboard commercial airliners. Afghan opiates moving through Pakistan also make their way to India and China, although Myanmar supplies most of the opiates to these markets.
Central Asia
Opiates moving north out of Afghanistan into Central Asia follow numerous routes. According to the United Nations, Tajikistan reported the most seizures in 2008, but tracking drug seizures does not necessarily indicate where most of the drugs are going. It does show where drug trafficking is the most volatile, where competing actors (including the government) are battling for turf and stealing each other’s shipments. Afghan opiates are certainly trafficked north from Afghanistan through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, but most of the northbound product goes through Turkmenistan along the northern route to Russia.
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In many ways, this route is the most efficient one out of Afghanistan. Turkmenistan borders western Afghanistan, where some of the major opium-producing provinces are, so it is the shortest route north, linked to Afghanistan’s northern trafficking route out of Herat. Also, the terrain between western Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, consisting for the most part of hilly desert that is very difficult to monitor, is relatively easy to traverse undetected. Uzbekistan’s border with Afghanistan is relatively flat, but it is disconnected from Afghanistan’s poppy-cultivating areas and defined in part by a river that is difficult to cross. Tajikistan also serves as a border crossing, since its western border with Afghanistan provides access (albeit through routes that are far from ideal) into Central Asia. Eastern Tajikistan, however, is covered in rugged mountains and very lightly populated, making the efficient trafficking of anything very difficult. Finally, traffickers in southern Turkmenistan have the benefit of working under the protection of the Mary clan, the largest of five major clans that dominate Turkmenistan’s political landscape. Occupying Turkmenistan’s Mary region, the clan is largely blocked from having any kind of real power in the government, but it has been given control of the lucrative drug trade in Turkmenistan in order to ensure its loyalty.
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Crossing the border from Afghanistan to Turkmenistan is the trickiest part of the Central Asian journey. Avoiding government checkpoints is relatively easy, since the border is an uninhabited desert and traffickers can simply drive across in most places. However, they do face the threat of roaming bandits in search of profitable targets to rob — such as heroin smugglers. For this reason, traffickers are constantly changing their routes, taking advantage of a roughly 90-mile-wide and 130-mile-long desert corridor in southwestern Turkmenistan between the Iranian border and the Murghab River that is crisscrossed by a network of jeep paths created to evade bandits. Once traffickers get through this desert, they enter the protection of the Mary clan, which provides secure trafficking north to the Kazakh border.
From there, drugs pass through Kazakhstan and farther north to Russian consumer markets, hitting regional distribution hubs along the way to Moscow. Russian organized-crime groups (primarily the Moscow Mob) and elements within the Federal Security Service provide cover to traffickers along this route (for a price, of course).
Markets
The majority of Afghan opiates go to three main markets: Iran, Russia and Europe. Together they account for the consumption of about 66 percent of Afghan opiates. Iran is the main consumer of the unrefined opium, accounting for 42 percent of the world’s total, while heroin is more common in Russia and Europe, accounting for 21 percent and 26 percent of the world’s total, respectively. In the 1990s Russia was more of a transit market than a consumption market for opiates. This began to change in the late 1990s, when the rate of heroin use in Russia rose rapidly. Between 1998 and 1999, the number of Russian users increased 400 percent, absorbing much of the product that used to go on to other markets. As wealth in Russia (i.e., Moscow and St. Petersburg) rose over the past decade, the Russian consumer market helped absorb even more of the product flow. Recently, Afghan opiates also have begun to supply Chinese consumers and may now account for as much as 25 percent of that market. The United States, a huge market for illicit opiates, is low on the list because most of the heroin consumed there is produced in Colombia and Mexico.
Russia has largely become a consumer market for Afghan opiates, with southern land routes through Iran and Turkey and maritime routes taking over most of the supply to Europe. The significance of this is that countries along the southern trafficking routes, such as Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, are benefiting more from the financial gains of opiate trafficking while Russia is suffering more from the social strains of opiate use. Russia is estimated to have as many as 2.5 million consumers of illicit opiates, and the Russian government recently estimated that Russians spend $17 billion annually on Afghan opiates.
So it does make sense that post-Soviet Russia is starting to lobby for opium-crop eradication in Afghanistan. But it will not happen overnight. Winning hearts and minds is a painstaking process, and weaning farmers from a lucrative cash crop will take time. Popular support for the U.S./NATO mission has become a valuable currency in Afghanistan, as valuable as opium profits are to the growers and traffickers, and some kind of balance must be struck between the two. In the coming years, with the U.S. and NATO on watch, interdiction of traffickers may well take precedence over destroying the poppy fields of struggling Afghan farmers.
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RED ALERT UPDATE: U.S. Consulate Attack
Stratfor Today » April 5, 2010 | 1120 GMT
A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images
Smoke billows following a large bomb blast in Peshawar on April 5 Summary
The U.S. Consulate in Peshawar was the target of a well-coordinated attack carried out by Pakistani militants shortly after 1 p.m. local time April 5. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad is reporting that at least three employees at the compound were killed in the attack. Reports are still sketchy and many details are unconfirmed, but this is a rare direct attack against a U.S. diplomatic mission in Pakistan. The attack comes as the Pakistani military opened up offensives against militants in North Waziristan and Orakzai agencies in the tribal belt of northwest Pakistan beginning April 1.
Analysis
The U.S. Consulate in Peshawar appears to have been the target of a well-coordinated attack carried out by Pakistani militants during early afternoon local time April 5. Militants dressed in military uniforms (a common tactic used to confuse response teams) reportedly attacked a security checkpoint on a road leading to the consulate, with eyewitnesses reporting that they saw at least two vehicles carrying gunmen enter into the heavily guarded area. Shortly after, three large explosions — likely vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED) — were detonated near the consulate at 1:19, 1:30, and 1:33 p.m. local time. Militants on foot fired at least two rocket-propelled grenades at the consulate and engaged security personnel in gunfire. According to Aaj TV, one suicide bomber was able to get into the consulate compound and detonate his vest inside the wall. Video footage from Pakistan’s Geo TV network show large mushroom clouds rising over one of the blasts. Gunfire was also heard in the area as local security forces engaged armed militants attempting a siege against the consulate building. The area is now reportedly clear, but Pakistani helicopter gunships can still be seen patrolling the area.
The attack employed suicide bombers (both using suicide vests and vehicles) and gunmen (armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades) on foot to overwhelm security forces in order to get closer to the consulate building. This attempt is similar to the attack on the Army General Headquarters by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Oct. 10, 2009, but it is the largest in recent memory given that it involved at least three VBIEDs. The TTP has claimed responsibility for the attack.
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According to local press, two of the large explosions (likely VBIEDs) hit the outer perimeter wall, while the third was able to hit the exterior perimeter of the consulate. Three U.S. Consulate employees are reported dead and a helicopter could be seen airlifting casualties out of the consular compound. Given the number of explosions, the death toll is likely to increase. Most casualties, however, will likely be outside the compound, as many U.S. diplomatic missions (including the consulate in Peshawar) have high-level security features (including concentric rings of security) built in to prevent attacks such as these from reaching the building itself. It is likely that the perimeter wall sustained heavy damage and that any perimeter security checkpoints were also destroyed. Attacking the primary consular building would be extremely difficult, however. Many attempts have been made to penetrate the security at well-defended U.S. diplomatic facilities in recent years such as in Sanaa, Yemen; Istanbul, Turkey; and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, but none have been able to penetrate the perimeter security and successfully attack the main diplomatic building.
Regardless of how much damage this attack was able to inflict upon the U.S. Consulate, the fact that militants attacked the compound in the first place marks an unusual, direct attack against U.S. targets in Pakistan. Western hotels known to have housed U.S. citizens such as the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad or the Pearl Continental in Peshawar have been attacked in recent years and personnel at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi were targeted in 2006, but none of the attacks were as complex as today’s appears to have been. Also, three U.S. military officials were killed in a VBIED attack in Lower Dir district of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province on Feb. 3; it is not clear that the militants involved in that attack specifically targeted the U.S. officials, however.
The April 5 attack comes as the Pakistani military opened up another offensive against militants in Orakzai agency (which is just southwest of Peshawar agency) in an ongoing effort to eliminate militant sanctuary in the Pakistani tribal belt. The United States has been working closely with Pakistan to isolate the foreign militant presence (groups such as al Qaeda) from the local militant groups to gain a better negotiating position against Pakistani militants. While today’s attack bore the signature of the TTP and occurred in an area where the group is active, that the target set was so different could be an indicator that local al Qaeda forces were also involved. Al Qaeda frequently has been responsible for attacks like these against U.S. diplomatic missions — including the three most recent attacks named above.
STRATFOR is monitoring the situation for more details.
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Three Points of View: The United States, Pakistan and India
April 28, 2010
By Peter Zeihan
In recent weeks, STRATFOR has explored how the U.S. government has been seeing its interests in the Middle East and South Asia shift. When it comes down to it, the United States is interested in stability at the highest level — a sort of cold equilibrium among the region’s major players that prevents any one of them, or a coalition of them — from overpowering the others and projecting power outward.
One of al Qaeda’s goals when it attacked the United States in 2001 was bringing about exactly what the United States most wants to avoid. The group hoped to provoke Washington into blundering into the region, enraging populations living under what al Qaeda saw as Western puppet regimes to the extent that they would rise up and unite into a single, continent-spanning Islamic power. The United States so blundered, but the people did not so rise. A transcontinental Islamic caliphate simply was never realistic, no matter how bad the U.S. provocation.
Subsequent military campaigns have since gutted al Qaeda’s ability to plot extraregional attacks. Al Qaeda’s franchises remain dangerous, but the core group is not particularly threatening beyond its hideouts in the Afghan-Pakistani border region.
As for the region, nine years of war have left it much disrupted. When the United States launched its military at the region, there were three balances of power that kept the place stable (or at least self-contained) from the American point of view. All these balances are now faltering. We have already addressed the Iran-Iraq balance of power, which was completely destroyed following the American invasion in 2003. We will address the Israeli-Arab balance of power in the future. This week, we shall dive into the region’s third balance, one that closely borders what will soon be the single largest contingent of U.S. military forces overseas: the Indo-Pakistani balance of power.
Pakistan and the Evolution of U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan
U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has changed dramatically since 2001. The war began in the early morning hours — Pakistan time — after the Sept. 11 attacks. Then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called up then-Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to inform him that he would be assisting the United States against al Qaeda, and if necessary, the Taliban. The key word there is “inform.” The White House had already spoken with — and obtained buy-in from — the leaders of Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel and, most notably, India. Musharraf was not given a choice in the matter. It was made clear that if he refused assistance, the Americans would consider Pakistan part of the problem rather than part of the solution — all with the blessings of the international community.
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Islamabad was terrified — and with good reason; comply or refuse, the demise of Pakistan was an all-too-real potential outcome. The geography of Pakistan is extremely hostile. It is a desert country. What rain the country benefits from falls in the northern Indo-Pakistani border region, where the Himalayas wring moisture out of the monsoons. Those rains form the five rivers of the Greater Indus Valley, and irrigation works from those rivers turn dry areas green.
Accordingly, Pakistan is geographically and geopolitically doomed to perpetual struggle with poverty, instability and authoritarianism. This is because irrigated agriculture is far more expensive and labor-intensive than rain-fed agriculture. Irrigation drains the Indus’ tributaries such that the river is not navigable above Hyderabad, near the coast — drastically raising transport costs and inhibiting economic development. Reasonably well-watered mountains in the northwest guarantee an ethnically distinct population in those regions (the Pashtun), a resilient people prone to resisting the political power of the Punjabis in the Indus Basin. This, combined with the overpowering Indian military, results in a country with remarkably few options for generating capital even as it has remarkably high capital demands.
Islamabad’s one means of acquiring breathing room has involved co-opting the Pashtun population living in the mountainous northwestern periphery of the country. Governments before Musharraf had used Islamism to forge a common identity for these people, which not only included them as part of the Pakistani state (and so reduced their likelihood of rebellion) but also employed many of them as tools of foreign and military policy. Indeed, managing relationships with these disparate and peripheral ethnic populations allowed Pakistan to stabilize its own peripheral territory and to become the dominant outside power in Afghanistan as the Taliban (trained and equipped by Pakistan) took power after the Soviet withdrawal.
Thus, the Americans were ordering the Pakistanis on Sept. 12, 2001, to throw out the one strategy that allowed Pakistan to function. Pakistan complied not just out of fears of the Americans, but also out of fears of a potentially devastating U.S.-Indian alignment against Pakistan over the issue of Islamist terrorism in the wake of the Kashmiri militant attacks on the Indian parliament that almost led India and Pakistan to war in mid-2002. The Musharraf government hence complied, but only as much as it dared, given its own delicate position.
From the Pakistani point of view, things went downhill from there. Musharraf faced mounting opposition to his relationship with the Americans from the Pakistani public at large, from the army and intelligence staff who had forged relations with the militants and, of course, from the militants themselves. Pakistan’s halfhearted assistance to the Americans meant militants of all stripes — Afghan, Pakistani, Arab and others — were able to seek succor on the Pakistani side of the border, and then launch attacks against U.S. forces on the Afghan side of the border. The result was even more intense American political pressure on Pakistan to police its own militants and foreign militants seeking shelter there. Meanwhile, what assistance Pakistan did provide to the Americans led to the rise of a new batch of homegrown militants — the Pakistani Taliban — who sought to wreck the U.S.-Pakistani relationship by bringing down the government in Islamabad.
The Indian Perspective
The period between the Soviet collapse and the rise of the Taliban — the 1990s — saw India at a historical ebb in the power balance with Pakistan. The American reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks changed all that. The U.S. military had eliminated Pakistan’s proxy government in Afghanistan, and ongoing American pressure was buckling the support structures that allowed Pakistan to function. So long as matters continued on this trajectory, New Delhi saw itself on track for a historically unprecedented dominance of the subcontinent.
But the American commitment to Afghanistan is not without its limits, and American pressure was not sustainable. At its heart, Afghanistan is a landlocked knot of arid mountains without the sort of sheltered, arable geography that is likely to give rise to a stable — much less economically viable — state. Any military reality that the Americans imposed would last only so long as U.S. forces remained in the country.
The alternative now being pursued is the current effort at Vietnamization of the conflict as a means of facilitating a full U.S. withdrawal. In order to keep the country from returning to the sort of anarchy that gave rise to al Qaeda, the United States needed a local power to oversee matters in Afghanistan. The only viable alternative — though the Americans had been berating it for years — was Pakistan.
If U.S. and Pakistan interests could be aligned, matters could fall into place rather quickly — and so they did once Islamabad realized the breadth and dangerous implications of its domestic insurgency. The five-year, $7.5 billion U.S. aid package to Pakistan approved in 2009 not only helped secure the arrangement, it likely reflects it. An unprecedented counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaign conducted by the Pakistani military continues in the country’s tribal belt. While it has not focused on all the individuals and entities Washington might like, it has created real pressure on the Pakistani side of the border that has facilitated efforts on the Afghan side. For example, Islamabad has found a dramatic increase in American unmanned aerial vehicle strikes tolerable because at least some of those strikes are hitting Pakistani Taliban targets, as opposed to Afghan Taliban targets. The message is that certain rules cannot be broken without consequences.
Ultimately, with long experience bleeding the Soviets in Afghanistan, the United States was inherently wary of becoming involved in Afghanistan. In recent years, it has become all too clear how distant the prospect of a stable Afghanistan is. A tribal-ethnic balance of power overseen by Pakistan is another matter entirely, however. The great irony is that such a success could make the region look remarkably like it did on Sept. 10, 2001.
This would represent a reversal of India’s recent fortunes. In 10 years, India has gone from a historic low in the power balance with Pakistan to a historic high, watching U.S. support for Pakistan shift to pressure on Islamabad to do the kinds of things (if not the precise actions) India had long clamored for.
But now, U.S. and Pakistani interests not only appear aligned again, the two countries appear to be laying groundwork for the incorporation of elements of the Taliban into the Afghan state. The Indians are concerned that with American underwriting, the Pakistanis not only may be about to re-emerge as a major check on Indian ambitions, but in a form eerily familiar to the sort of state-militant partnership that so effectively limited Indian power in the past. They are right. The Indians also are concerned that Pakistani promises to the Americans about what sort of behavior militants in Afghanistan will be allowed to engage in will not sufficiently limit the militants’ activities — and in any event will do little to nothing to address the Kashmiri militant issue. Here, too, the Indians are probably right. The Americans want to leave — and if the price of departure is leaving behind an emboldened Pakistan supporting a militant structure that can target India, the Americans seem fine with making India pay that price.
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By SADANAND DHUME
Monday night's arrest of Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old Pakistani-American accused of planting a car bomb in Times Square on Saturday, will undoubtedly stoke the usual debate about how best to keep America safe in the age of Islamic terrorism. But this should not deflect us from another, equally pressing, question. Why do Pakistan and the Pakistani diaspora churn out such a high proportion of the world's terrorists?
Indonesia has more Muslims than Pakistan. Turkey is geographically closer to the troubles of the Middle East. The governments of Iran and Syria are immeasurably more hostile to America and the West. Yet it is Pakistan, or its diaspora, that produced the CIA shooter Mir Aimal Kasi; the 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef (born in Kuwait to Pakistani parents); 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's kidnapper, Omar Saeed Sheikh; and three of the four men behind the July 2005 train and bus bombings in London.
The list of jihadists not from Pakistan themselves—but whose passage to jihadism passes through that country—is even longer. Among them are Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohamed Atta, shoe bomber Richard Reid, and John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban. Over the past decade, Pakistani fingerprints have shown up on terrorist plots in, among other places, Germany, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands. And this partial catalogue doesn't include India, which tends to bear the brunt of its western neighbor's love affair with violence.
In attempting to explain why so many attacks—abortive and successful—can be traced back to a single country, analysts tend to dwell on the 1980s, when Pakistan acted as a staging ground for the successful American and Saudi-funded jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. But while the anti-Soviet campaign undoubtedly accelerated Pakistan's emergence as a jihadist haven, to truly understand the country it's important to go back further, to its creation.
Pakistan was carved out of the Muslim-majority areas of British India in 1947, the world's first modern nation based solely on Islam. The country's name means "Land of the Pure." The capital city is Islamabad. The national flag carries the Islamic crescent and star. The cricket team wears green.
From the start, the new country was touched by the messianic zeal of pan-Islamism. The Quranic scholar Muhammad Asad—an Austrian Jew born Leopold Weiss—became an early Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations. The Egyptian Said Ramadan, son-in-law of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, made Pakistan a second home of sorts and collaborated with Pakistan's leading Islamist ideologue, the Jamaat-e-Islami's Abul Ala Maududi. In 1949, Pakistan established the world's first transnational Islamic organization, the World Muslim Congress. Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the virulently anti-Semitic grand mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed president.
Through alternating periods of civilian and military rule, one thing about Pakistan has remained constant—the central place of Islam in national life. In the 1960s, Pakistan launched a war against India in an attempt to seize control of Kashmir, the country's only Muslim-majority province, one that most Pakistanis believe ought to be theirs by right.
In the 1970s the Pakistani army carried out what Bangladeshis call a genocide in Bangladesh; non-Muslims suffered disproportionately. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto boasted about creating an "Islamic bomb." (The father of Pakistan's nuclear program, A.Q. Khan, would later export nuclear technology to the revolutionary regime in Iran.) In the 1980s Pakistan welcomed Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Palestinian theorist of global jihad Abdullah Azzam.
In the 1990s, armed with expertise and confidence gained fighting the Soviets, the army's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spawned the Taliban to take over Afghanistan, and a plethora of terrorist groups to challenge India in Kashmir. Even after 9/11, and despite about $18 billion of American aid, Pakistan has found it hard to reform its instincts.
Pakistan's history of pan-Islamism does not mean that all Pakistanis, much less everyone of Pakistani origin, hold extremist views. But it does explain why a larger percentage of Pakistanis than, say, Indonesians or Tunisians, are likely to see the world through the narrow prism of their faith. The ISI's reluctance to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism—training camps, a web of ultra-orthodox madrassas that preach violence, and terrorist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba—ensure that Pakistan remains a magnet for any Muslim with a grudge against the world and the urge to do something violent about it.
If Pakistan is to be reformed, then the goal must be to replace its political and cultural DNA. Pan-Islamism has to give way to old-fashioned nationalism. An expansionist foreign policy needs to be canned in favor of development for the impoverished masses. The grip of the army, and by extension the ISI, over national life will have to be weakened. The encouragement of local languages and cultures such as Punjabi and Sindhi can help create a broader identity, one not in conflict with the West. School curricula ought to be overhauled to inculcate a respect for non-Muslims.
Needless to say, this will be a long haul. But it's the only way to ensure that the next time someone is accused of trying to blow up a car in a crowded place far away from home, the odds aren't that he'll somehow have a Pakistan connection.
Mr. Dhume, the author of "My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist" (Skyhorse Publishing, 2009), is a columnist for WSJ.com.
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Summary
It has been just over a year now since Pakistan began its military campaign against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat district. Since then, the military has set upon the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, launching operations from the north and south, converging on the militant stronghold of Orakzai agency. Military operations have been slowly progressing in Orakzai for the past two months. While Orakzai is key turf for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the showdown is still set for North Waziristan, a theater in which the Pakistanis are slowly building their forces for a final push.
Analysis
Pakistan has made significant headway against the Islamist militant insurgency that presented the country with an existential challenge in early 2009. Squaring off against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani military launched offensives against militant strongholds in Swat district in late April 2009 and has kept up the momentum ever since. During the summer of 2009, the military expanded operations into Dir, Malakand, Buner and Shangla districts and then began going after core TTP turf when it launched operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). First the military struck from the northern agencies of Bajaur and Mohmand, and in October 2009, after much anticipation, it began pushing from the south though South Waziristan.
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While all of these missions are ongoing, troops are not staying long in any of the districts before moving on to the next one in order to prevent the TTP or its militant associates from settling down and getting comfortable in any one spot. Pakistani troops are stretched thin across the country’s tribal region, largely because of the operational model that the military is using. Under the model, the military announces that operations are about to commence in a certain area, then civilians are allowed out and sent to camps to live until it is safe to return. Once the area is declared cleared of noncombatants, the military launches air and artillery strikes to “soften up” militant targets. After a few days of bombardment, ground troops go in and remove any remaining militants.
Days after an area is cleared of militants, the military moves on, leaving behind a small contingent of soldiers to provide security as the area residents return home, among whom, invariably, are militants who continue to carry out attacks against civilian and government targets — albeit at a slower and typically less damaging pace. In this environment, the military works to build up a civil government that can control the town on its own without the military providing security.
The result is that the primary population centers and transportation infrastructure are under the control of the government, while militants maintain a presence in the more rural areas, where they can regroup, gather their strength and push back once the military leaves. Thus it is the establishment of civil authority and long-term security that is essential in consolidating and sustaining what is initially achieved through military force.
It is important to the Pakistani government to establish security as quickly as possible because its military is needed elsewhere. After securing the edges of the FATA, the Pakistani military now has its sights set on the central FATA agencies of Kurram, Khyber and Orakzai. Of these three, Orakzai is proving to be the most difficult for the Pakistani military, as Kurram and Khyber have social networks that make it more difficult for militants to thrive there: Kurram agency is made up of mostly Shia — sectarian rivals to the Sunni TTP — and Khyber agency is home to many powerful allies of Islamabad who are being recruited to assist the Pakistani government.
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Orakzai, however, is the TTP’s second home. With the denial of South Waziristan to the TTP as their primary sanctuary, Orakzai agency is now the most permissive environment to the TTP leadership. Orakzai, after all, is where former TTP leader Hakeemullah Mehsud rose to power. TTP militant leaders evacuated agencies like South Waziristan following the military operation there and took up residence in Orakzai and North Waziristan. The TTP in Orakzai (led by Aslam Farooqi) had strongholds in Daburai, Stori Khel, Mamozai and numerous other, smaller towns. The TTP was able to regularly harass agency authorities in Kalaya, preventing them from enforcing the writ of the government in Orakzai. Other jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammad also had training and base camps in Orakzai. These groups carried out suicide attacks in Punjab province which terrorized the Pakistani population in late 2009 and early 2010, but these attacks have slowed in 2010, largely because of the offensive operations the Pakistani military has engaged in over the past year.
Unlike Kurram and Khyber agencies, Orakzai is home to tribes such as the Mamozai group, which is very loyal to the TTP and hence much more hostile to the Pakistani state. This hostility could be seen on May 19, when more than 200 unidentified militants believed to be tribesmen stormed a military outpost in northwest Orakzai agency, killing two Pakistani soldiers. The TTP typically does not mass fighters in such large numbers and send them against Pakistani military targets — their resources are simply far too limited. More common TTP tactics include suicide bombings and small-unit assaults. The May 19 assault was more likely the work of local tribesmen sympathetic to the TTP, and it was hardly the first time such an assault happened in Orakzai agency. On April 19, more than 100 tribesmen raided a checkpoint in Bizoti. This raid was beaten back by Pakistani forces, but such large raids against the Pakistani military are not as common elsewhere in the FATA, indicating that different fighting forces exist there.
This kind of local support only compounds the other problems that the Pakistani military is facing in Orakzai. For one thing, the Pakistani military is working with fewer resources. In Swat, the military deployed 15,000 troops and in South Waziristan it had more than 25,000 troops on the ground. But in Orakzai, the military has deployed only five battalions — approximately 5,000 troops. And this number becomes increasingly spread out as the operation unfolds.
The military also faces the challenge of geography in Orakzai, as it does in most other agencies in Pakistan’s tribal belt. The most inhabitable region of Orakzai, known as “lower Orakzai,” stretches from Stori Khel in the northeast to Mamozai in the southwest. This stretch of land is a lower-elevation valley (still above 5,000 feet), with Kalaya as its largest city. Stori Khel is at the mouth of the valley, which broadens out to the west. To the east the valley rises up to form mountains higher than 10,000 feet, an area known as “upper Orakzai.” Upper Orakzai agency is lightly inhabited in the narrow, mountainous section between Stori Khel and Darra Adam Khel. The only way out of upper Orakzai is through primitive roads south to Kohat. Population picks back up farther east in the frontier regions of Peshawar and Kohat, where Highway N-55 follows the Indus River, creating major population centers like Darra Adam Khel. This mountainous core between Stori Khel and Darra Adam Khel provides a natural fortress and plenty of hideouts for militants. Darra Adam Khel is also a hub for weapons manufacturing, and the black and gray markets there supply Taliban forces throughout the Pakistani tribal areas.
On March 24, to counter the militants in Orakzai, the Pakistani military launched operation Khwakh Ba De Sham northeast of the main valley in the area of Feroz Khel and Stori Khel. Ground operations were preceded and accompanied by air operations, with the air force striking known militant buildings and paving the way for ground forces to move in and kill or capture remaining militants. Residents largely fled to Khyber and Kohat, with militants occasionally attacking them as they were preparing to leave. The military moved generally from northeast to southwest, clearing the towns of Mishti, Bizoti, Daburai and finally Mamozai. Meanwhile, forces in Kurram and Kohat agencies (specifically along the roads to Kohat and Hangu) worked to seal the border to prevent militants from streaming south to avoid the military operation.
The focus of the Orakzai operation now is in the very northwest corner of agency (where tribal militants raided the military outpost on May 19), which means that the core valley of Orakzai has been cleared. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) began returning to Stori Khel in early May, but militant attacks at IDP repatriation checkpoints have slowed the process and indicated that the areas may not be cleared, contrary to what the Pakistani military has claimed.
The next phase of the Orakzai operation (which actually began last week) is targeting upper Orakzai, east of Stori Khel. The military has already begun artillery shelling and airstrikes against militant hideouts in the area, where operations will be complicated by the more mountainous terrain and conservative Muslim villages whose inhabitants are hardened against outside influence. The high ridges and narrow valleys of upper Orakzai typify the fractured Pakistani terrain which is not easily controlled by Islamabad. It is here where militants can more easily hold and influence small, isolated villages, find sanctuary and thrive as a militant movement.
The next step in Pakistan’s broader counterinsurgency, however, is shaping up to be North Waziristan. The United States has been pushing the Pakistanis to move into the region and the Pakistanis have signaled that they will — on their own timetable. Pakistani troops have engaged in minor operations along North Waziristan’s border over the past six months, but they have yet to go in full force as they did in South Waziristan and the other FATA agencies. Most of the militants who fled South Waziristan are believed to be in North Waziristan now, making it the new home of the TTP, especially after Orakzai is cleared. But this home will not be the same as South Waziristan or Orakzai, where the TTP enjoyed generous local support. North Waziristan is wild country, where a number of both local and transnational jihadists are hiding from the Pakistani government or whoever else may be looking for them.
However, the TTP and transnational jihadists do not control any territory outright in North Waziristan. The authority in this lawless region lies with warlord groups like the Hafiz Gul Bahadur organization and the Afghan Taliban-linked Haqqani network. Neither of these groups intends to attack the Pakistani state, and Islamabad goes to great lengths to maintain neutral relations with both. This means that the TTP and other jihadist elements that have been moving into North Waziristan over the past six months are guests there, and it is unclear how long they will be welcome. Conversely, Bahadur and Haqqani are not keen on the idea of Pakistani troops moving into the area, so we would expect to see a great deal of political bargaining and a negotiated settlement between Islamabad and Bahadur and Haqqani over what actions to take against militants in North Waziristan.
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Granted this is the NYT, and as such is a Pravda, but it reads very plausibly to me.
I have posted here for a long time about incoherence of our strategy , , ,
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Karzai Is Said to Doubt West Can Defeat Taliban
By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: June 11, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — Two senior Afghan officials were showing President Hamid Karzai the evidence of the spectacular rocket attack on a nationwide peace conference earlier this month when Mr. Karzai told them that he believed the Taliban were not responsible.
In January, Hanif Atmar, then the interior minister of Afghanistan, gestured during a medal ceremony in Kabul. He and another top official have resigned from the Hamid Karzai government.
Afghanistan’s former intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, in Kabul on Wednesday. He also resigned his position.
“The president did not show any interest in the evidence — none — he treated it like a piece of dirt,” said Amrullah Saleh, then the director of the Afghan intelligence service.
Mr. Saleh declined to discuss Mr. Karzai’s reasoning in more detail. But a prominent Afghan with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Karzai suggested in the meeting that it might have been the Americans who carried it out.
Minutes after the exchange, Mr. Saleh and the interior minister, Hanif Atmar, resigned — the most dramatic defection from Mr. Karzai’s government since he came to power nine years ago. Mr. Saleh and Mr. Atmar said they quit because Mr. Karzai made clear that he no longer considered them loyal.
But underlying the tensions, according to Mr. Saleh and Afghan and Western officials, was something more profound: That Mr. Karzai had lost faith in the Americans and NATO to prevail in Afghanistan.
For that reason, Mr. Saleh and other officials said, Mr. Karzai has been pressing to strike his own deal with the Taliban and the country’s archrival, Pakistan, the Taliban’s longtime supporter. According to a former senior Afghan official, Mr. Karzai’s maneuverings involve secret negotiations with the Taliban outside the purview of American and NATO officials.
“The president has lost his confidence in the capability of either the coalition or his own government to protect this country,” Mr. Saleh said in an interview at his home. “President Karzai has never announced that NATO will lose, but the way that he does not proudly own the campaign shows that he doesn’t trust it is working.”
People close to the president say he began to lose confidence in the Americans last summer, after national elections in which independent monitors determined that nearly one million ballots had been stolen on Mr. Karzai’s behalf. The rift worsened in December, when President Obama announced that he intended to begin reducing the number of American troops by the summer of 2011.
“Karzai told me that he can’t trust the Americans to fix the situation here,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He believes they stole his legitimacy during the elections last year. And then they said publicly that they were going to leave.”
Mr. Karzai could not be reached for comment Friday.
If Mr. Karzai’s resolve to work closely with the United States and use his own army to fight the Taliban is weakening, that could present a problem for Mr. Obama. The American war strategy rests largely on clearing ground held by the Taliban so that Mr. Karzai’s army and government can move in, allowing the Americans to scale back their involvement in an increasingly unpopular and costly war.
Relations with Mr. Karzai have been rocky for some time, and international officials have expressed concern in the past that his decision making can be erratic. Last winter, Mr. Karzai accused NATO in a speech of ferrying Taliban fighters around northern Afghanistan in helicopters. Earlier this year, following criticism by the Obama administration, Mr. Karzai told a group of supporters that he might join the Taliban.
American officials tried to patch up their relationship with Mr. Karzai during his visit to the White House last month. Indeed, on many issues, like initiating contact with some Taliban leaders and persuading its fighters to change sides, Mr. Karzai and the Americans are on the same page.
But their motivations appear to differ starkly. The Americans and their NATO partners are pouring tens of thousands of additional troops into the country to weaken hard-core Taliban and force the group to the bargaining table. Mr. Karzai appears to believe that the American-led offensive cannot work.
At a news conference at the Presidential Palace this week, Mr. Karzai was asked about the Taliban’s role in the June 4 attack on the loya jirga and his faith in NATO. He declined to address either one.
“Who did it?” Mr. Karzai said of the attack. “It’s a question that our security organization can bring and prepare the answer.”
Asked if he had confidence in NATO, Mr. Karzai said he was grateful for the help and said the partnership was “working very, very well.” But he did not answer the question.
“We are continuing to work on improvements all around,” Mr. Karzai said, speaking in English and appearing next to David Cameron, the British prime minister.
A senior NATO official said the resignations of Mr. Atmar and Mr. Saleh, who had strong support from the NATO allies, were “extremely disruptive.”
The official said of Mr. Karzai, “My concern is, is he capable of being a wartime leader?”
Page 2 of 2)
The NATO official said that American commanders had given Mr. Karzai a dossier showing overwhelming evidence that the attack on the peace conference had been carried out by fighters loyal to Jalalhuddin Haqqani, one of the main leaders fighting under the Taliban’s umbrella.
“There was no doubt,” the official said.
The resignations of Mr. Saleh and Mr. Atmar revealed a deep fissure among Afghan leaders as to the best way to deal with the Taliban and with their patrons in Pakistan.
Mr. Saleh is a former aide to the late Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary commander who fought the Soviet Union and the Taliban. Many of Mr. Massoud’s former lieutenants, mostly ethnic Tajiks and now important leaders in northern Afghanistan, sat out the peace conference. Like Mr. Saleh, they favor a tough approach to negotiating with the Taliban and Pakistan.
Mr. Karzai, like the overwhelming majority of the Taliban, is an ethnic Pashtun. He appears now to favor a more conciliatory approach.
At the end of the loya jirga, Mr. Karzai announced the formation of a commission that would review the case of every Taliban fighter held in custody and release those who were not considered extremely dangerous. The commission, which would be led by several senior members of Mr. Karzai’s government, excluded the National Directorate of Security, the intelligence agency run by Mr. Saleh.
In the interview, Mr. Saleh said he took offense at the exclusion. His primary job is to understand the Taliban, he said; leaving his agency off the commission made him worry that Mr. Karzai might intend to release hardened Taliban fighters.
“His conclusion is — a lot of Taliban have been wrongly detained, they should be released,” Mr. Saleh said. “We are 10 years into the collapse of the Taliban — it means we don’t know who the enemy is. We wrongly detain people.”
Mr. Saleh also criticized the loya jirga. “Here is the meaning of the jirga,” Mr. Saleh said. “I don’t want to fight you. I even open the door to you. It was my mistake to push you into the mountains. The jirga was not a victory for the Afghan state, it was a victory for the Taliban.”
Mr. Karzai has been seeking to build bridges to the Taliban for months. Earlier this year, the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, held secret meetings with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy commander, according to a former senior Afghan official.
According to Gen. Hilaluddin Hilal, the deputy interior minister in an earlier Karzai government, Ahmed Wali Karzai and Mr. Baradar met twice in January near Spin Boldak, a town on the border with Pakistan. The meeting was brokered by Mullah Essa Khakrezwal, the Taliban’s shadow governor of Kandahar Province, and Hafez Majid, a senior Taliban intelligence official, General Hilal said.
A Western analyst in Kabul confirmed General Hilal’s account. The senior NATO official said he was unaware of the meeting, as did Mr. Saleh. Ahmed Wali Karzai did not respond to e-mail queries on the meeting.
The resolution of that meeting was not clear, General Hilal said. Mr. Baradar was arrested in late January in a joint Pakistani-American raid in Karachi, Pakistan. But Mr. Karzai’s attempts to negotiate with the Taliban have continued, he said.
“He doesn’t think the Americans can afford to stay,” General Hilal said.
Mr. Saleh said that Mr. Karzai’s strategy also involved a more conciliatory line toward Pakistan. If true, this would amount to a sea change for Mr. Karzai, who has spent his nine years in office regularly accusing the Pakistanis of supporting the Taliban insurgency.
Mr. Saleh says he fears that Afghanistan will be forced into accepting what he called an “undignified deal” with Pakistan that will leave his country in a weakened state.
He said he considered Mr. Karzai a patriot. But he said the president was making a mistake if he planned to rely on Pakistani support. (Pakistani leaders have for years pressed Mr. Karzai to remove Mr. Saleh, whom they see as a hard-liner).
“They are weakening him under the disguise of respecting him. They will embrace a weak Afghan leader, but they will never respect him,” Mr. Saleh said.
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Hmm, wonder how this will change the game if it pans out?
U.S. Discovers Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries.
The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.
While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.
“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”
The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.
“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.
American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House.
So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.
Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.
The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.
Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.
“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, undersecretary of defense and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.
At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.
Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection either. “The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Mr. Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.”
With virtually no mining industry or infrastructure in place today, it will take decades for Afghanistan to exploit its mineral wealth fully. “This is a country that has no mining culture,” said Jack Medlin, a geologist in the United States Geological Survey’s international affairs program. “They’ve had some small artisanal mines, but now there could be some very, very large mines that will require more than just a gold pan.”
The mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country, including in the southern and eastern regions along the border with Pakistan that have had some of the most intense combat in the American-led war against the Taliban insurgency.
The Pentagon task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development. International accounting firms that have expertise in mining contracts have been hired to consult with the Afghan Ministry of Mines, and technical data is being prepared to turn over to multinational mining companies and other potential foreign investors. The Pentagon is helping Afghan officials arrange to start seeking bids on mineral rights by next fall, officials said.
“The Ministry of Mines is not ready to handle this,” Mr. Brinkley said. “We are trying to help them get ready.”
Like much of the recent history of the country, the story of the discovery of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth is one of missed opportunities and the distractions of war.
In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989.
During the chaos of the 1990s, when Afghanistan was mired in civil war and later ruled by the Taliban, a small group of Afghan geologists protected the charts by taking them home, and returned them to the Geological Survey’s library only after the American invasion and the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.
“There were maps, but the development did not take place, because you had 30 to 35 years of war,” said Ahmad Hujabre, an Afghan engineer who worked for the Ministry of Mines in the 1970s.
Armed with the old Russian charts, the United States Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources in 2006, using advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment attached to an old Navy Orion P-3 aircraft that flew over about 70 percent of the country.
The data from those flights was so promising that in 2007, the geologists returned for an even more sophisticated study, using an old British bomber equipped with instruments that offered a three-dimensional profile of mineral deposits below the earth’s surface. It was the most comprehensive geologic survey of Afghanistan ever conducted.
The handful of American geologists who pored over the new data said the results were astonishing.
But the results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments. In 2009, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan, and came upon the geological data. Until then, no one besides the geologists had bothered to look at the information — and no one had sought to translate the technical data to measure the potential economic value of the mineral deposits.
Soon, the Pentagon business development task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey’s findings, and then briefed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Karzai.
So far, the biggest mineral deposits discovered are of iron and copper, and the quantities are large enough to make Afghanistan a major world producer of both, United States officials said. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan.
Just this month, American geologists working with the Pentagon team have been conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan where they believe there are large deposits of lithium. Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni Province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large of those of Bolivia, which now has the world’s largest known lithium reserves.
For the geologists who are now scouring some of the most remote stretches of Afghanistan to complete the technical studies necessary before the international bidding process is begun, there is a growing sense that they are in the midst of one of the great discoveries of their careers.
“On the ground, it’s very, very, promising,” Mr. Medlin said. “Actually, it’s pretty amazing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?pagewanted=all
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Oh boy. Talk about a Tom Clancy novel in the making. "The Bear and The Dragon" or something like that comes to mind. The only question is who Afghanistan cooses to help them exploit this motherlode. How clean can they keep this as well?
I hope they can get it turned around, I can hear the drool drops from Iran and Russia? if they do not.
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Woof,
Actually, this may explain all the intrest in the first place.
P.C.
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I've been running across some stuff wondering why this is coming out now and seeing seemingly serious commentary saying this is all a bunch of smoke-- that no one is going to invest the money and take the risks that these projects would entail.
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I'll bet China is already working on a plan.
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Hell, they're probably already working on a tunnel dug by North Korean laborers.
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Actually, according to my readings, China is quite out of play on this one. Look at a topographical map of the Afg-Chinese border area. Look at the distances involved. Consider that Afg has no paved roads in the regions in question.
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Well I was being facetious. . . .
Looks to me like a railhead to the Indian ocean is most viable, but that takes it through Pakistan. Maybe through some of the other 'Stans via railhead, then Russia. GM is right, though: if this proves a viable find China will be deep in the game as they are starving for resources.
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Maybe this could get them off the opium poppy for income.
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http://www.china.org.cn/english/business/232800.htm
The China Metallurgical Group Corp., Jiangxi Copper Corporation, and Zijin Mining Group Company recently won a joint bid to develop the Aynak mine, the largest copper mine in Afghanistan, according to the Afghanistan Ministry of Mines and Industries. Reliable resources revealed that the project, possibly worth up to US$2.87 billion, would kick off six months later.
As one of the world's largest copper mines, the Aynak mine has a prospective reserve of 690 million tons of cooper ores. With 1.65 percent copper content, these ores are expected to produce 11.33 million tons of copper, or more than one third of the total copper reserve in China, which stands at some 30 million tons. Some geologists predicted the Aynak copper mine was probably the largest copper mine in the world.
With a huge domestic demand, China is now the world's largest copper consumer. Last year, copper consumption in China totaled four million tons, or 22 percent of the world’s whole supply. However, the country is suffering from a deficiency of copper resources. Currently, more than two thirds of the copper consumed in the country is from overseas markets.
For more details, please read the full story in Chinese
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Any idea how they are moving all that, GM?
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Nope, but I bet they'll build a rail system either to a port in Pakistan or by land into China. We'll know by next year.
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U.S. Geological Survey
Workers taking part in a 2006 U.S. Geological Survey mission in AfghanistanSummary
In a June 13 story, The New York Times revived interest in Afghanistan’s potential mineral wealth, which has long been suspected. The country’s mountainous terrain indicates the likelihood of such deposits, and in 2007 the U.S. Geological Survey published a study reporting much of what is being said in the media today. But the challenges of extracting the minerals and bringing them to market in an economical and competitive way remain extraordinarily daunting.
Analysis
The potential for mineral extraction in Afghanistan has generated immense press in the last few days, following a June 13 New York Times story on an estimated $1 trillion in mineral deposits believed to exist in the country and a June 12 statement by U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus characterizing Afghanistan (with caveats, of course) as having “stunning potential” economically.
Yet much of what is being discussed dates back to two studies done in 2006-07 by the U.S. Geological Survey in conjunction with the U.S. Agency for International Development and Afghan geologists. The results of these studies were published in 2007 by the U.S. government, and their findings have now reportedly been verified by a small, Pentagon-led team, which will release its report at a conference in Kabul scheduled for July 20, according to a spokesperson for the French Foreign Ministry. There also is increasing talk of lithium deposits in particular, one of the reasons behind the current coverage. Statements regarding Afghanistan’s potential mineral wealth have been made in the recent past, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai using the $1 trillion figure at least as early as February of this year and Petraeus using it when discussing the matter in December 2009.
U.S. Geological Survey
A map from the 2006 U.S. Geological Survey mission in Afghanistan, including GPS and magnetic base station locations
(click here to enlarge image)
The China Metallurgical Group has already committed $3 billion up front and $400 million thereafter to secure the rights to the Aynak copper mining district in Logar province. Verification drillings were done last year, and a temporary camp is now being prepared, though a massive railway, power plant and smelting facility remain to be built. The Hajigak iron-ore deposit also was examined in an area about 100 kilometers west of Kabul, in Bamyan province, but the Chinese pulled out of the bidding, which was later canceled following a corruption scandal involving the Chinese company and the Afghan Ministry of Mines during the Aynak bidding process. The Chinese experience shows that what little progress is being made in terms of foreign investment in Afghan mining projects is already slowed by problems relating to poor infrastructure, awkward logistics, security threats, and corrupt or opaque negotiations.
The potential presence of large mineral deposits in Afghanistan has never been in doubt — the country’s mountainous terrain indicates the likelihood of such deposits. The challenge is extracting the minerals and bringing them to market in an economical and competitive way, and this challenge remains extraordinarily daunting. Afghanistan is an underdeveloped country with extremely poor infrastructure, including no rail connection to the outside world (though one is under construction to Masar-i-Sharif in the north). Though the nature of a mineral deposit and the economics of its exploitation can vary considerably — even within a single country — pulling ore out of the ground and moving it a great distance is a logistically intensive proposition, even with relatively developed road and rail networks.
Technically, developing sufficient infrastructure in Afghanistan is possible, but the cost of doing so is almost certain to drive the costs of mineral investment, extraction and transportation far above what can be recouped on the global market.
STRATFOR has been focusing and continues to focus on how these reports came about just in the past week. There is clearly a media blitz now under way, and it is important to understand why. Over the next few years there will be little meaningful impact on the ground in Afghanistan in terms of investing in and developing the country’s minerals. The key question at this point is how Washington will play this mineral-wealth story to serve its interests in the region, especially as the United States struggles to break a stalemate in southwestern Afghanistan and force the Taliban to the negotiating table. But local mistrust of U.S. intentions may counter any potential benefit of playing up Afghanistan’s economic potential.
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second post
The trillion-dollar Afghan battlefield
By RALPH PETERS
Posted: 12:10 AM, June 15, 2010
Afghanistan just got its worst news since the Soviet invasion three decades ago: American geologists have charted as much as a trillion dollars' worth of mineral deposits in that tormented landscape.
Up to now, Afghanistan's internal factions and neighbors have been fighting over worthless dirt, Allah and opium. Assigning the battlefield a trillion-dollar value is not a prescription for reconciliation. Expect "The Beverly Hillbillies" scripted by Satan.
Even were Afghanistan at peace, its endemic corruption would generate a grabocracy -- a Nigeria, not a Norway. Throw in inherited hatreds and the appetites of its neighbors, and Afghanistan may end up more like eastern Congo, a playground for state-sanctioned murderers and looters.
Beyond reportedly vast deposits of rare minerals (lithium, etc.) essential to popular technologies, there's copper, cobalt, iron and gold in them thar hills. Afghanistan never before offered so much to fight over.
Instead of making life easier for our troops, the finds will make it harder to disengage. Washington will succumb to arguments that we need to preserve access to these strategic resources, even though it's far cheaper to buy them than to prolong a military protectorate. (US firms won't get the good contracts, anyway.)
We already provide strategic security for Chinese mining interests in Afghanistan -- having been chumped by the Karzai government out of the gate. Now the Chinese will arrive in hordes, bribing and smiling.
The Russians will also take a renewed interest. And the Iranians have already crept into western Afghanistan (where key deposits are located). The potential for violence spilling across more borders -- including into unstable Central Asia -- will be enormous.
But the gravest danger of an all-out shootin' war comes from Pakistan and India. Until the revelation of these finds, Islamabad (which continues to support the Afghan Taliban) just wanted strategic depth in the event of a war with New Delhi, while India had engaged in Afganistan just to frustrate Pakistan.
Now Pakistan, a country in which the powerful have already stolen all there is to steal, will develop delusions of grandeur about controlling Afghanistan's subsurface wealth. And India's swelling economy will develop a sudden hunger for Afghan minerals.
China will side with Pakistan, exploiting Islamabad as a proxy. Iran may line up with China and Pakistan, as well. Pakistan will turn up the heat in Kashmir. The "Great Game" of yore is about to become Monopoly played with corpses.
Afghanistan's one hope was that, eventually, outsiders would leave it alone. That hope's gone now. Development of a full-blown mining industry will take decades, but that just means decades of violent competition.
Back in the happy-face United States, optimists insist that these Afghan finds will fund good government, security and development. Ain't gonna happen. A country living on aid and opium won't go Harvard Business School when megawealth floods in (the opium trade won't disappear, either). And the environmental damage will put BP to shame.
Meanwhile, we can't manage the war we've got. The CIA, at least, keeps killing al Qaeda terrorists across the border in Pakistan. But our troops, in the words of one fighter on the ground, just "patrol, patrol and patrol, making themselves IED magnets."
Afghan National Army training is showing progress, but President Hamid Karzai just dumped his two most pro-American ministers, and our ballyhooed Kandahar offensive -- delayed yet again -- has begun to seem like "Brigadoon" with body armor.
It's high time to ask ourselves the basic question about Afghanistan that we've avoided since we made the decision to stay: What do we get out of it?
"Chinese access to strategic minerals" is not an adequate answer.
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Actually, according to my readings, China is quite out of play on this one. Look at a topographical map of the Afg-Chinese border area. Look at the distances involved. Consider that Afg has no paved roads in the regions in question.
A nasty terrain feature called something like Himalaya too?
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***We already provide strategic security for Chinese mining interests in Afghanistan -- having been chumped by the Karzai government out of the gate. Now the Chinese will arrive in hordes, bribing and smiling.
Back in the happy-face United States, optimists insist that these Afghan finds will fund good government, security and development. Ain't gonna happen. A country living on aid and opium won't go Harvard Business School when megawealth floods in (the opium trade won't disappear, either). And the environmental damage will put BP to shame.
It's high time to ask ourselves the basic question about Afghanistan that we've avoided since we made the decision to stay: What do we get out of it?
"Chinese access to strategic minerals" is not an adequate answer.***
Interesting stuff. A lot of food for thought. Has anyone begun to try to answer Ralph's question: What do we get out of it? All this over OBL.
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Buraq Hussein O-barry told everyone he planned to throw in the towel by July 2011, thus setting the stage for what is happening now.
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(http://www.acepilots.com/vietnam/saigon_helicopter.jpg)
The Obama Afghan endgame.
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http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/06/16/a-feature-not-a-bug/
It's a feature, not a bug!
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CCP/Ralph Peters: "time to ask ourselves the basic question about Afghanistan that we've avoided since we made the decision to stay: What do we get out of it?"
The answer is necessarily nothing in terms of mineral deposits. As with oil in Iraq, if that money or resource becomes ours, then the rhetoric of our enemies, and of our leaders who apologize for our national behavior, will ring true. Best case would be to have American companies bidding on an equal footing with the others, that the resources will enter the world markets somewhere, and that the money generated will help build a healthy and peaceful country. Time will tell.
Sad and likely true, Peters point that the mineral will be an additional motive for war more than a solution to what they lack.
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Regarding the current appearance of failure, GM wrote: "Buraq Hussein O-barry told everyone he planned to throw in the towel by July 2011, thus setting the stage for what is happening now."
Agree. The question I didn't see that that answers: what would a better leader do differently than Pres. Obama? How would a hawkish Republican or responsible Democrat prosecute this war? The answer may have been the same surge, same commanders and same strategy, but you do not telegraph to your own troops much less your enemy, during the battles, your willingness to surrender and leave in short order regardless of results.
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Exactly, Doug!
No matter what the fight is, you never give that information out.
Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.
Sun Tzu
The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.
Sun Tzu
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**Wow, it's almost like he's trying to lose this war....**
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is focused on meeting its July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, but it has no political strategy to help stabilize the country, current and former U.S. officials and other experts are warning.
The failure to articulate what a post-American Afghanistan should look like and devise a political path for achieving it is a major obstacle to success for the U.S. military-led counter-insurgency campaign that's underway, these officials and experts said.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/16/96019/experts-us-has-no-long-term-political.html#ixzz0rAPDYoRF
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So, what should BO's strategic decision have been? If you were President, what would you have done? And, what would you do now?
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Well, Strategically speaking we have been the "arsenal of Democracy" since WW2. Maybe we need to find a new primary global trade item to finance Lady Liberty, or put her on an allowance?
China is not a democracy, but they have some serious man power- let them pay for those minerals in their blood. Make it thouroughly understood to the Talibananas that if we have to come back, that it will be very different. Basically if they were acting against us before, and find them acting against us again it will be a wall and a bullet. Then a gain that is sooooooo.......un-nice, the message may never be sent.
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"So, what should BO's strategic decision have been? If you were President, what would you have done? And, what would you do now?"
Crafty, what do YOU think we should be doing: A larger presence? Smaller? Smarter? Or just out?
As an aside, Debka, who is ridiculed often here for inaccurate and unconfirmed reports, is reporting that bin Laden is in Iran, not Pak.
I guess if it was me, I would define down some of the missions abroad and go leaner and meaner in most locations. (That is the opposite of appease and disarm.)We need to keep a presence, improve the intelligence and continue hitting enemy targets as we identify them. There is no way to know from here if the current surge-like strategy has any prospect for improving conditions.
Right now I cannot tell if we are trying to win something or just slow the rate of loss and save face. The only real news story is Michael Yon reporting that reporters are not allowed to embed with troops any longer to witness, question or report, and those who write critically will be badgered by customs upon their return.
I wonder if 200k soldiers returning from 2 venues will have any affect on unemployment at home.
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We need to get seriously outside the box.
The following is offered in a brainstorming way only-- there may be some serious flaws in it, but at the moment it is what occurs to me.
a) I would consider ignoring the Darcy line and cut a deal with the Pashtuns to give them a Pashtunistan in return for giving up the AQ in their territory. This would freak the Paks and I would green light the Indians while taking out Pak's nuke program.
b) I would consider fg with the Russians and freeing the Germans from dependance on Russki gas AND provide an alternate source of money for the rest of Afg by building/threaten/offer to build a natural gas pipeline for central Asian gas through Pashtunistan and the remains of Pakistan to the Indian Ocean that gives it access to the market other than Russia. Without this gas, Russia will not be able to export to and control Europe, especially Germany and Afgans, Pashtuns, and Paks have an alternate source to making money.
Again, these ideas may be crazy, but maybe there is some value to extract.
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I am still waiting for an answer/ideas/comments to CCP's succinct comment;
CCP said, "It's high time to ask ourselves the basic question about Afghanistan that we've avoided since we made the decision to stay: What do we get out of it?"
Crafty offered a couple of interesting "out of the box" ideas, but if the answer is "nothing", and so it seems, why are we there and why are American's dying?
Not to mention the billions of dollars spent... I think it's a question a lot of Americans are asking in these difficult times...
We had a strong purpose, we "got a lot" out of WWII on many levels. And we fought to win. I am, and I think much of the world is grateful. Further, maybe I understand the Korea War. After that...?
"What do we get out of it" is a good question.
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Crafty, Very, very interesting ideas. Even if the final answer is unwise, these options on the table could be serious bargaining chips or incentives for our fair weathered friends to consider as they decide whether or not to help our efforts.
The CCP what do we get out of it question is the same IMO as how do we define success. Best case I would say is that the forces that would destroy us now have to operate in a smaller and smaller world as we close down the state sponsors of terror and set up camp in the former safe haven territories of anarchy and tribalism. If you are Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan or N. Korea, your sovereignty during this time of war on terror should depend on your ability to control the elements within your borders that would otherwise be attacking the free world. Maybe we freed 50 million people or gave them a shot at self-rule they didn't have before, but our justification is based on our security, taking battle to enemies and disrupting attack plans. Most certainly we have done that, but progress has stalled and resources and patience are are showing limits.
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I think that if the possibility for nation building was ever viable in Afghanistan, it isn't at this time and well may have never been. Our bottom line must be preventing Afghanistan as being used as a base for AQ/Talib attacks on the US, as Doug mentioned.
I think that Crafty has the core concepts for how we should proceed. Pakistan has to be defanged. We reward that tribes that help us and punish those that wage war against us and our allied tribes.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Durand_Line_Border_Between_Afghanistan_And_Pakistan.jpg
"a) I would consider ignoring the Darcy line and cut a deal with the Pashtuns to give them a Pashtunistan in return for giving up the AQ in their territory. This would freak the Paks and I would green light the Indians while taking out Pak's nuke program."
Where did this come from?
So Pashtuns who are in Afghnanistan and Pakistan would like to have their own unified country?
"while taking out Pak's nuke program."
Can this be done? Should it be done? At least while NOT also taking out the Iranian nuke program to maintain some balance of power in the region.
Did you notice the Drudge headline that Saudi Arabia gave the greenlight to Israel to use their airspace?
SA clearly fears Iran. Let the Jews take care of Iran for them I guess.
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The Saudis are very tribal. If they can play of one rival tribe of against another- so much the better. The Saudis learned from Desert Storm, they probably do not want us over there ever again, and will do whatever to prevent that.
Good points about the tribal lines Crafty. If you look at an "ethnic Map" of the area ( I forgot where I saw it) you see that the arbitrary border was less about tribes than easy to use terrain for border lines. They probably could have done a way better job and divided things up by tribe. Willful ignorance is a human trait tho'..........
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Thank you for catching and cleaning up my using the wrong name for the boundary CCP.
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Actually I wan't trying to correct you. I was just wondering where the concept of a "Pashtun" country came from.
Only because I never heard about it before. It seems like an intriguing idea but the perception I am left from the MSM is that this region is filled with a bunch of decentralized tribes.
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Of which the Pashtuns are one of the biggest and most important. I am suggesting that some of our problems in this part of the world derive from the fact that we are operating under the conceptual illusion and delusion of the Durand Line.
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There's never a good time for an American administration to air its dirty laundry in public, but the departure of Gen. Stanley McChrystal amid a flurry of sniping and backbiting comes at a particularly inauspicious moment.
The Afghanistan war effort Gen. McChrystal had been leading—and the strategy he personally devised for it—are entering a crucial few months that may well determine their success or failure. Before being dismissed Wednesday for intemperate remarks about civilian officials, Gen. McChrystal had put in place what most analysts consider the most comprehensive plan of coordinated military action and economic development in eight years of warfare. The troops he persuaded President Barack Obama to dispatch to execute that plan are still arriving.
A rising number of insurgent leaders have been killed or detained recently, and, with U.S. help, the size of Afghan security forces has been ramped up about 30% in the last year, but in recent days, implementation of the strategy, as well as political support for it, have started to look considerably more shaky. A military push into the city of Marjah hasn't been the success hoped for, and a larger operation in the major city of Kandahar has been put off.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, after briefly reassuring American officials of his reliability, has lately rekindled doubts by firing two cabinet ministers highly regarded in Washington. Allied support is fading; two allied nations plan to pull out next year, and only about a third of the Western military trainers once thought necessary to upgrade Afghanistan's security forces are on the job. American troops in the field have begun to openly question rules of engagement that require a high degree of caution in launching military attacks to avoid civilian casualties.
.All that raises questions about how secure Afghanistan will look when parliamentary elections, crucial to broadening the Afghan government's grip, are held in September. Soon after that, allies will reassess their commitment to the war. A bigger political test comes in December when Mr. Obama reviews progress on the ground in anticipation of a July 2011 start to an American drawdown.
Now the troubled war effort proceeds minus Gen. McChrystal, its main architect and the one commander President Karzai appears to really trust.
.During a video conference Tuesday night with Mr. Obama, the Afghan leader told the U.S. president that he had full confidence in Gen. McChrystal, said the Afghan president's spokesman, Waheed Omar. Firing him would disrupt the war effort at a critical moment, Mr. Karzai argued, with troops poised to begin a major effort to secure Kandahar and its Taliban-infested surroundings.
"The president believes that we are in a very sensitive juncture in the partnership, in the war on terror and in the process of bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan, and any gap in this process will not be helpful," the spokesman told reporters in Kabul.
The new commander Mr. Obama named, Gen. David Petraeus, shares Gen. McChrystal's philosophy of counter-insurgency operations, which stresses dispersing troops and civilian aid to secure selected areas and winning residents' loyalty through intense, on-the-ground cooperation with local leaders. Indeed, Gen. Petraeus essentially was the originator of the approach when he was head of American forces in Iraq.
Gen. Petraeus, currently commander of U.S. forces across the Middle East, has a much more solid relationship with President Obama and civilian leaders in the administration.
But he doesn't have Gen. McChrystal's knowledge of Afghanistan or the same trust of leaders there and in Pakistan, an important ally in the fight against the Taliban.
Anthony Cordesman, a veteran military analyst and sometime-adviser to Gen. McChrystal, offers this summary: "Is it winnable? Yes. Are we going to win? That's not a question anyone can answer. This is a war with so much uncertainty."
One immediate risk is that the military command team in Afghanistan could fracture. After arriving a year ago, Gen. McChrystal reshaped the allied command in his image, creating an unusual operation filled with handpicked loyalists.
Military headquarters and the U.S. embassy in Kabul have been filled in the past two days with talk that a departure of Gen. McChrystal could prompt an exodus of other top officers. Speculation Wednesday was that Gen. Petraeus would bring in his own aides.
Gen. McChrystal last fall sold President Obama on a counter-insurgency strategy that called for defeating the Afghan Taliban by sending troops to selected districts, ridding those of insurgents, and working with Afghan forces and international aid officials to hold the areas.
As important as the military effort was a push to use economic aid and Western development advice to build local governments that would win the hearts and minds of the locals.
But agreement on the plan came only after weeks of divisive administration debate. In giving Gen. McChrystal 30,000 of the 40,000 troops he sought to execute the strategy, Mr. Obama insisted on two conditions.
First, administration aides say, he told the general not to use the troops to take any cities or regions he wasn't confident they could then hold. And second, the president said there would be the December 2010 review of progress, and a decision in July 2011 about when and how to begin drawing down American troops.
The contingent of 30,000 additional troops isn't likely to be deployed in full before the end of September, coalition officials say. This means the coalition will be fighting at full strength only 10 months before the deadline for deciding on a drawdown plan—a timetable many military commanders see as severely handicapping their chances of rolling back the Taliban.
Military Fatalities in Afghanistan
.Troops Deployed in Afghanistan
..Meanwhile, progress on the ground is slower than Gen. McChrystal's team anticipated. That's especially clear in Marjah, where the general sent American forces to drive out the Taliban and establish a kind of showcase of counter-insurgency strategy.
Instead, after besting the Taliban in February and early March, Afghan and allied forces failed to set up a functioning government in Marjah quickly. The result has been a population that remains wary of the coalition forces and the Afghan authorities they back. That, in turn, has allowed the Taliban to make a resurgence, and Marjah today is contested turf.
Casualty Count
.Track the deaths of U.S. and allied forces' troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
.Violence is up nearly 100% this year across Afghanistan, according to internal figures from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose countries provide the allied forces.
Some of that is due the increased number of soldiers; the more fighters brought in, the more fighting there will be, say coalition officials. But they also say it indicates the Taliban aren't backing down but looking to push back. June has been the deadliest month yet, by an Associated Press count, with 76 Western troops killed, including 46 Americans.
In Kandahar province, most troops for the surge have yet to arrive, and the military piece of the offensive has been delayed until September. For now, U.S. and Afghan officials are focusing on the softer parts of the campaign. They're mapping out how to build government offices in surrounding districts, boost the number of police in the city and set up fruit and other farming projects.
Sensing the need to show progress soon, senior military officers have begun to talk less of Marjah and Kandahar and more about a pair of districts in the southern province of Helmand, called Nawa and Garmsir, that were taken last summer in operations designed before Gen. McChrystal assumed command.
Meantime, a drive Gen. McChrystal implemented to minimize Afghan civilian casualties—a strategy based on the belief that a softer, gentler approach would dent the insurgency's appeal to the averge Afghan—has run into internal resistance.
.There is growing frustration among front-line troops, who blame spiking casualties on increasingly restrictive rules of engagement. Platoon and company commanders in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand openly speak of having to fight with one hand tied behind their back.
Use of indirect fire such as mortars requires so many layers of approval that, by the time it's secured, the intended targets are often long gone. Helicopter gunships are usually not allowed to shoot if the pilots don't see their targets holding weapons—even if these men had been spotted firing at American infantry just seconds earlier.
The result, troops complain, is that the U.S. has surrendered much of its technological advantage over the Taliban, who can trump coalition forces in an equal fight because of superior knowledge of the terrain and ability to blend in with civilians.
For all the military uncertainty, the key to the war effort this summer may lie more in how well the civilian side of Gen. McChrystal's formula works out. Progress in establishing a coherent rule of law continues to be hampered by the low pay offered Afghan civil servants and judges, for example.
A sense of pervasive government corruption persists, and analysts fear that will continue to be the case until Western nations figure out how to write foreign-aid contracts that make sure money goes to projects and Afghan citizens instead of corrupt political figures.
One sign of how broad that problem remains: A new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that up to 40% of all foreign aid "goes to corruption, security and overhead."
Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com and Matthew Rosenberg at matthew.rosenberg@wsj.com
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Second post
President Obama explained his decision to dismiss General Stanley McChrystal yesterday by noting that he had a duty "to ensure that no diversion complicates the vital mission" that American forces are carrying out in Afghanistan. Fair enough. We don't begrudge the President's right to make that call, and no one is better qualified than General David Petraeus to replace his former deputy and run a counterinsurgency.
The larger questions now are whether the President can exert as much policy discipline over his civilian subordinates as he has on the military—and whether he's willing to make a political investment in the war commensurate with the military sacrifice.
Mr. Obama seemed to acknowledge the first point in his remarks yesterday, saying that he had warned his national security team that, when it comes to war strategy, "I won't tolerate division." We hope that message got through to Vice President Joe Biden, whose opposition to the strategy has been leaked around the world and back, and who was recently quoted by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter as saying that "in July 2011, you're going to see a whole lot of people moving out [of Afghanistan], bet on it."
View Full Image
ZUMApress.com
Gen. David Petraeus
.Defense Secretary Robert Gates flatly contradicted the Veep on Fox News Sunday, insisting "that absolutely has not been decided," and that the July 2011 date was only a "starting point" for withdrawal, contingent on local conditions.
The President ought to put this debate to rest, rather than trying to appease his liberal base by promising withdrawal while winking and nodding to our partners in Afghanistan that the deadline is effectively meaningless.
So far, his ambiguity has fueled the very infighting that led to General McChrystal's dismissal, persuaded our NATO partners to prepare their own exit strategies, and convinced Afghan President Hamid Karzai that he can't count on America's long-term support. The damage isn't merely the deadline but the sense projected by Mr. Biden that the U.S. will leave the Afghans in the lurch again, much as we did at the end of the Cold War.
More
A Critical Moment in Afghan War Effort
Obama Turns to Petraeus
Swift Decision to Dismiss McChrystal
New General Is a Politician
Vote: Do you agree with the decision? Photos: McChrystal's career
Photos: Who's in Charge? A History of Tension
Latest updates on Washington Wire
.In naming General Petraeus, the President made an astute political and military choice. But there is also a hint here of a last stand, with the General again being put in the unenviable position of having to turn the tide of a failing war. The General might have been too deferential to make this point himself, but we hope he asked the President in return to give him all the support he needs to succeed.
The President could help on this score by deploying a civilian team to Afghanistan that gets along with their U.S. military counterparts and Afghanistan's leaders. We like Senator John McCain's suggestion to replace U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry—whose relationship with Mr. Karzai is as poisonous as his dealings were with General McChrystal—with former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker. Mr. Crocker, who also previously served as a highly effective U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, understands there is no diplomatic mileage to be gained by undercutting the very government the U.S. is seeking to shore up.
General Petraeus also needs a replacement at Central Command (his nominal superior) who won't undermine his efforts. That is precisely the situation General Petraeus faced when he served in Iraq under then-Centcom Commander William Fallon, until Admiral Fallon was pushed out. We're partial to General James Mattis, who previously ran the Marine component of Central Command, served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and helped write the Army's counterinsurgency manual with General Petraeus.
Above all, Mr. Obama has to give General Petraeus more political backing and personal attention to the war than he has so far provided. It's remarkable that it took the firing of General McChrystal to hear again from Mr. Obama, for the first time in months, why he is committed to the war. Mr. Obama said yesterday that no one individual is indispensable in war, but if any single person is, it is a President. Mr. Obama too often gives the impression of a leader asking, "Won't someone rid me of this damn war?"
In choosing to throw a Hail Mary pass to General Petraeus, the President has chosen a commander who understands counterinsurgency, who helped to design the current Afghan strategy, and who knows how to lead and motivate soldiers. He—and they—need a Commander in Chief willing to show equal commitment and staying power.
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Man I am surprised the presidents knees aren't getting sore with all this knee jerking going on. I do not think that hwe is thinking for himself at all, very, very bad. He should have had a new AfPak CinC to plug right into the slot if he was going to relieve McChrystal, and given this action that theatre is a defacto Vietnam with poltics driving the war rather than winning the war driving the war.
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Strange times we live in. Petraeus was the one defamed in the famous ad. Sec. of State Hillary was the one who disrespected him the worst during questioning (lecturing) trying to prove her ANTI-war credentials. Obama was the poster boy of move-on-dot-org that ran the ad. Biden is still the clown. McChrystal is the one who allegedly voted for Obama. Petraeus is the one who saved Bush's Iraq. The right wing rags are the ones who most think we are losing the war based on the troops' limited rules of engagement. And left wing Rolling Stone is the pub that broke the story - two huge anti-Obama stories within a couple of weeks.
A bad deal for Petraeus. Tampa, even in summer, is nicer than Kabul. A mixed story for Obama. The article filled with truths will now lose interest as the story has moved forward. Obama gets a better commander for the war and gets a chance to be seen as a strong leader even though it was all about ego instead of what was best for the country. The McChrystal quotes in the article may be ignored now, but will find their way into 2012 Presidential race if the Pres. decides to seek reelection, especially if the war is still going badly.
Going forward, I don't see Petraeus at this point in his career being shy about asking the administration for everything he needs to succeed or in answering questions honestly in front of congressional hearings. Obama can't afford to lose another commander. Petraeus will have McChrystal's loyal lieutenants for continuity unless they clean out the whole staff. Yet all of the dynamics that were going wrong in Afghanistan before this move are still firmly in place and central command loses its wisest leader as the Iraq effort either ends in success or failure.
Petraeus' first move should be to end the ban on embedded reporting so the American public might have a clue what is going on there. And his second move should be to implement the Crafty Doctrine rearranging and realigning that dangerous region.
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Love that opening paragraph!!! (The last one is not too shabby either :lol: )
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PN is less than she used to be, but this piece strikes me as worthy of inclusion here:
McChrystal Forces Us to Focus
Now Petraeus owes us a candid assessment of the Afghan effort.
By
<http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=PEGGY+NOONAN&bylinesearch=t
rue> PEGGY NOONAN
Gen. Stanley McChrystal's greatest contribution to the war in Afghanistan
may turn out to be forcing everyone to focus on it. The real news there this
week was not Gen. McChrystal's epic faux pas and dismissal but that 12
soldiers were killed on June 7-8, including five Americans by a roadside
bomb, making that "the deadliest 24 hour period this year," as The Economist
noted. Insurgency-related violence was up by 87% in the six months prior to
March. Agence France-Presse reported Thursday that NATO forces are
experiencing their deadliest month ever.
There have been signal moments in this war since its inception, and we are
in the middle of one now.
It has gone on almost nine years. It began rightly, legitimately. On 9/11 we
had been attacked, essentially, from Afghanistan, harborer of terrorists. We
invaded and toppled the Taliban with dispatch, courage and even, for all our
woundedness, brio. We all have unforgettable pictures in our minds. One of
mine is the grainy footage of a U.S. cavalry charge, with local tribesman,
against a Taliban stronghold. It left me cheering. You too, I bet.
But Washington soon took its eye off the ball, turning its focus and fervor
to invading Iraq. Over the years, the problems in Afghanistan mounted. In
2009, amid a growing air of crisis, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates sacked
the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan-institutional
Army, maybe a little old-style. He was replaced by Gen. McChrystal-specials
forces background, black ops, an agile and resourceful snake eater.
"Politicians love the mystique of these guys," said a general this week.
Snake eaters know it, and wind up being even more colorful, reveling in
their ethos of bucking the system.
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noonan0626
Associated Press
Last August, Gen. McChrystal produced, and someone leaked, a 66-page report
warning of "mission failure." More troops and new strategy were needed. The
strategy, counterinsurgency, was adopted. That was a signal moment within a
signal moment, for at the same time the president committed 30,000 more
troops and set a deadline for departure, July 2011. The mission on the
ground was expanded-counterinsurgency, also known as COIN, is nation
building, and nation building is time- and troop-intensive-but the timeline
for success was truncated.
COIN is a humane strategy not lacking in shrewdness: Don't treat the people
of a sovereign nation as if they just wandered across your battlefield.
Instead, befriend them, consult them, build schools, give them an investment
in peace. Only America, and God bless it, would try to take the hell out of
war. But the new strategy involved lawyering up, requiring troops to receive
permission before they hit targets. Some now-famous cases make clear this
has endangered soldiers and damaged morale.
The Afghan government, on which COIN's success hinges, is corrupt and
unstable. That is their political context. But are we fully appreciating the
political context of the war at home, in America?
The left doesn't like this war and will only grow more opposed to it. The
center sees that it has gone on longer than Vietnam, and "we've seen that
movie before." We're in an economic crisis; can we afford this war? The
right is probably going to start to peel off, not Washington policy
intellectuals but people on the ground in America. There are many reasons
for this. Their sons and nephew have come back from repeat tours full of
doubts as to the possibility of victory, "whatever that is," as we all now
say. There is the brute political fact that the war is now President
Obama's. The blindly partisan will be only too happy to let him stew in it.
Republican leaders such as John McCain are stalwart: This war can be won.
But there's a sense when you watch Mr. McCain that he's very much speaking
for Mr. McCain, and McCainism. Republicans respect this attitude: "Never
give in." But people can respect what they choose not to follow. The other
day Sen. Lindsey Graham, in ostensibly supportive remarks, said that Gen.
David Petraeus, Gen. McChrystal's replacement, "is our only hope." If he
can't pull it out, "nobody can." That's not all that optimistic a statement.
The U.S. military is overstretched in every way, including emotionally and
psychologically. The biggest takeaway from a week at U.S. Army War College
in 2008 was the exhaustion of the officers. They are tired from repeat
deployments, and their families are stretched to the limit, with children
reaching 12 and 13 without a father at home.
The president himself is in parlous position with regard to support, which
means with regard to his ability to persuade, to be believed, to be
followed. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows more people
disapprove of Mr. Obama's job performance than approve.
When he ran for president, Mr. Obama blasted Iraq but called Afghanistan the
"good war." This was in line with public opinion, and as a young Democratic
progressive who hadn't served in the military, he had to kick away from the
old tie-dyed-hippie-lefty-peacenik hangover that dogs the Democratic Party
to this day, even as heartless-warlike-bigot-in-plaid-golf-shorts dogs the
Republicans. In 2009 he ordered a top-to-bottom review of Afghanistan. In
his valuable and deeply reported book "The Promise," Jonathan Alter offers
new information on the review. A reader gets the sense it is meant to be
reassuring-they're doing a lot of thinking over there!-but for me it was
not. The president seems to have thought government experts had answers, or
rather reliable and comprehensive information that could be weighed and
fully understood. But in Washington, agency analysts and experts don't have
answers, really. They have product. They have factoids. They have
free-floating data. They have dots in a pointillist picture, but they're not
artists, they're dot-makers.
More crucially, the president asked policy makers, in Mr. Alter's words, "If
the Taliban took Kabul and controlled Afghanistan, could it link up with
Pakistan's Taliban and threaten command and control of Pakistan's nuclear
weapons?" The answer: Quite possibly yes. Mr. Alter: "Early on, the
President eliminated withdrawal (from Afghanistan) as an option, in part
because of a new classified study on what would happen to Pakistan's nuclear
arsenal if the Islamabad government fell to the Taliban."
That is always the heart-stopper in any conversation about Afghanistan,
terrorists and Pakistan's nukes. But the ins and outs of this question-what
we know, for instance, about the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service,
and its connections to terrorists-are not fully discussed. Which means a
primary argument in the president's arsenal is denied him.
It is within the context of all this mess that-well, Gen. Petraeus a week
and a half ago, in giving Senate testimony on Afghanistan, appeared to
faint. And Gen. McChrystal suicide-bombed his career. One of Gen.
McChrystal's aides, in the Rolling Stone interview, said that if Americans
"started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular."
Maybe we should find out. Gen. Petraeus's confirmation hearings are set for
next week. He is a careful man, but this is no time for discretion. What is
needed now is a deep, even startling, even brute candor. The country can
take it. It's taken two wars. So can Gen. Petraeus. He can't be fired
because both his predecessors were, and because he's Petraeus. In that sense
he's fireproof. Which is not what he'll care about. He cares about doing
what he can to make America safer in the world. That means being frank about
a war that can be prosecuted only if the American people support it. They
have focused. They're ready to hear.
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Second post
"Pajamas Media » Europeans React Skeptically to McChrystal Debacle
U.S.
President Barack Obama's decision to remove General Stanley McChrystal
as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan has generated considerable
media commentary in Europe, where governments are facing an uphill
struggle to reverse dwindling public support for the Afghan deployment.
Most
European opinion-shapers say that Obama had no choice but to relieve
McChrystal of his command after the general and his associates publicly
ridiculed Obama's war cabinet in a magazine article. But the
overarching theme in European newspaper commentary is that McChrystal's
insubordination is a symptom of a much larger problem, namely that
Obama's counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is not working.
Around
25 European countries collectively have more than 30,000 troops
stationed in Afghanistan, but political pressure is mounting on
European governments to withdraw those troops from the country. Recent
polls show that more than 70 percent of Britons want their troops out
of Afghanistan immediately, as do 62 percent of Germans. Polling across
Europe — from Portugal to Poland — shows that well over 50 percent of
Europeans want their troops to come home.
In February, Dutch
Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's coalition government collapsed
when the two largest parties failed to agree on whether to withdraw
troops from Afghanistan this year as planned. Now the Poles, the
British, and others are discussing how long they will stay.
Although
European governments have praised Obama's decision to name General
David Petraeus as the new commander in Afghanistan, the public
squabbling within Obama's inner circle clearly has undermined the
president's credibility, which up until now has provided European
governments with much-needed political cover to help them keep their
troops in Afghanistan. The question is now: can Petraeus make enough
headway in Afghanistan to keep the Europeans from rushing to the exits?
What follows is a brief selection of European commentary on the McChrystal affair:
In
Britain, the left-wing Guardian published an article titled "Fears for
Afghan Strategy after 24 Hours of Turmoil." It says the "Rolling Stone
story has focused attention on the serious divisions and personality
clashes among those in charge of the military and political strategies.
That in turn has led to further questioning of whether McChrystal's
counterinsurgency strategy is working. … The likelihood that
McChrystal's strategy will fail is accepted by some senior British Army
officials. One speculated that the coming year would bring a further
scaling back of the objective of the international mission in
Afghanistan, which already slipped last year from 'defeating' to
'degrading' the Taliban."
Another Guardian article titled "Where
McChrystal Led, Britain Followed" says McChrystal's dismissal should
make British commanders, diplomats, and politicians rethink their
Afghan policy. The article says: "For the British military, especially
the British special forces, McChrystal was a hero of almost Homeric
proportions. His dismissal should make the commanders, diplomats and
politicians think hard and think again about the Afghanistan policy
from top to bottom. It is no use them clinging to the notion that the
British army needs to defend its military honour and prowess to prove
Britain is still a vital ally to the U.S. — which is how some argue for
our troops still being there. Notions of honour and fidelity are not in
any sense practical operational objectives."
Also in Britain,
the Economist magazine published an essay titled "McChrystal and
Afghanistan: It's His War." It says: "Mr. McChrystal is an advocate of
full-spectrum counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare, a sophisticated
approach that embraces politics and economic development as part of the
war effort. But the question facing COIN advocates in Afghanistan today
isn't whether they are, in principle, right about how to fight
insurgencies. The question is whether this approach — which demands
such sophistication and expertise, so many soldiers who are also social
workers, agriculture experts and police trainers, so many USAID
consultants who need to be protected by soldiers, and such an effective
development aid effort in a world that has rarely seen effective
development aid anywhere, let alone in the middle of a jihadist
insurgency — is possible in practice. And, if so, is it possible in
Afghanistan? Is it achievable by the actually existing American
military and aid bureaucracy in Afghanistan? And can it be done at a
price that Americans are willing or even able to pay? The answer we're
seeing so far isn't yes."
In another article titled "Out with
the New, in with the Old," the Economist says: "Today's decisions [to
replace General McChrystal] do not change the reality on the ground in
Afghanistan, where a brutal insurgency and incompetent government make
victory, however it is defined, uncertain at best. Nor does it do much
to change Eliot Cohen's observation that Mr. Obama has assembled a
dysfunctional team to work on the Afghan project. And, with General
Petraeus now focused 1,500 miles east, what becomes of Iraq?"
Soeren
Kern is Senior Analyst for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based
Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group."
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/europeans-react-sceptically-to-mcchrystal-debacle/
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THE moment he pulled the trigger, there was near-universal agreement that President Obama had done the inevitable thing, the right thing and, best of all, the bold thing. But before we get carried away with relief and elation, let’s not forget what we saw in the tense 36 hours that fell between late Monday night, when word spread of Rolling Stone’s blockbuster article, and high noon Wednesday, when Obama MacArthured his general. That frenzied interlude revealed much about the state of Washington, the Afghanistan war and the Obama presidency — little of it cheering and none of it resolved by the ingenious replacement of Gen. Stanley McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus, the only militarily and politically bullet-proof alternative.
What we saw was this: 1) Much of the Beltway establishment was blindsided by Michael Hastings’s scoop, an impressive feat of journalism by a Washington outsider who seemed to know more about what was going on in Washington than most insiders did; 2) Obama’s failure to fire McChrystal months ago for both his arrogance and incompetence was a grievous mistake that illuminates a wider management shortfall at the White House; 3) The present strategy has produced no progress in this nearly nine-year-old war, even as the monthly coalition body count has just reached a new high.
If we and the president don’t absorb these revelations and learn from them, the salutary effects of the drama’s denouement, however triumphant for Obama in the short run, will be for naught.
There were few laughs in the 36 hours of tumult, but Jon Stewart captured them with a montage of cable-news talking heads expressing repeated shock that an interloper from a rock ’n’ roll magazine could gain access to the war command and induce it to speak with self-immolating candor. Politico theorized that Hastings had pulled off his impertinent coup because he was a freelance journalist rather than a beat reporter, and so could risk “burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks.”
That sentence was edited out of the article — in a routine updating, said Politico — after the blogger Andrew Sullivan highlighted it as a devastating indictment of a Washington media elite too cozy with and protective of its sources to report the unvarnished news. In any event, Politico had the big picture right. It’s the Hastings-esque outsiders with no fear of burning bridges who have often uncovered the epochal stories missed by those with high-level access. Woodward and Bernstein were young local reporters, nowhere near the White House beat, when they cracked Watergate. Seymour Hersh was a freelancer when he broke My Lai. It was uncelebrated reporters in Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau, not journalistic stars courted by Scooter and Wolfowitz, who mined low-level agency hands to challenge the “slam-dunk” W.M.D. intelligence in the run-up to Iraq.
Symbolically enough, Hastings was reporting his McChrystal story abroad just as Beltway media heavies and their most bold-faced subjects were dressing up for the annual White House correspondents’ dinner. Rolling Stone has never bought a table or thrown an afterparty for that bacchanal, and it has not even had a Washington bureau since the mid-1970s. Yet the magazine has not only chronicled the McChrystal implosion — and relentlessly tracked the administration’s connections to the “vampire squid” of Goldman Sachs — but has also exposed the shoddy management of the Obama Interior Department. As it happens, the issue of Rolling Stone with the Hastings story also contains a second installment of Tim Dickinson’s devastating dissection of the Ken Salazar cohort, this time detailing how its lax regulation could soon lead to an even uglier repeat of the Gulf of Mexico fiasco when BP and Shell commence offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean.
The Interior Department follies will end promptly only if Obama has learned the lessons of the attenuated McChrystal debacle. Lesson No. 1 should be to revisit some of his initial hiring decisions. The general’s significant role in the Pentagon’s politically motivated cover-up of Pat Tillman’s friendly-fire death in 2004 should have been disqualifying from the start. The official investigation into that scandal — finding that McChrystal peddled “inaccurate and misleading assertions” — was unambiguous and damning.
Once made the top commander in Afghanistan, the general was kept on long past his expiration date. He should have been cashiered after he took his first public shot at Joe Biden during a London speaking appearance last October. That’s when McChrystal said he would not support the vice president’s more limited war strategy, should the president choose it over his own. According to Jonathan Alter in his book “The Promise,” McChrystal’s London remarks also disclosed information from a C.I.A. report that the general “had no authority to declassify.” These weren’t his only offenses. McChrystal had gone on a showboating personal publicity tour that culminated with “60 Minutes” — even as his own histrionic Afghanistan recommendation somehow leaked to Bob Woodward, disrupting Obama’s war deliberations. The president was livid, Alter writes, but McChrystal was spared because of a White House consensus that he was naïve, not “out of control.”
We now know, thanks to Hastings, that the general was out of control and the White House was naïve. The price has been huge. The McChrystal cadre’s utter distaste for its civilian colleagues on the war team was an ipso facto death sentence for the general’s signature counterinsurgency strategy. You can’t engage in nation building without civilian partnership. As Rachel Maddow said last week of McChrystal, “the guy who was promoting and leading the counterinsurgency strategy has shown by his actions that even he doesn’t believe in it.”
This fundamental contradiction helps explain some of the war’s failures under McChrystal’s aborted command, including the inability to hold Marja (pop. 60,000), which he had vowed to secure in pure counterinsurgency fashion by rolling out a civilian “government in a box” after troops cleared it of the Taliban. Such is the general’s contempt for leadership outside his orbit that it extends even to our allies. The Hastings article opens with McChrystal mocking the French at a time when every ally’s every troop is a precious, dwindling commodity in Afghanistan.
In the 36 hours between the Rolling Stone bombshell and McChrystal’s firing, some perennial war cheerleaders in the Beltway establishment, including the editorial page of The Washington Post and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, did rally to the general’s defense and implored Obama to keep him in place. George Stephanopoulos, reflecting a certain strain of received Beltway wisdom, warned on ABC that the president risked looking “thin-skinned and petulant” if he fired McChrystal.
But none of the general’s defenders had an argument for him or the war beyond staying the course, poor as the results have been. What McChrystal’s supporters most seemed to admire was his uniquely strong relationship with Hamid Karzai, our Afghanistan puppet. As if to prove the point, Karzai was the most visible lobbyist for McChrystal’s survival last week. He was matched by his corrupt half-brother, the reported opium kingpin Ahmed Wali Karzai, who chimed in to publicly declare McChrystal “honest.” Was Rod Blagojevich unavailable as a character witness?
You have to wonder whether McChrystal’s defenders in Washington even read Hastings’s article past its inflammatory opening anecdotes. If so, they would have discovered that the day before the Marja offensive, the general’s good pal Hamid Karzai kept him waiting for hours so he could finish a nap before signing off on the biggest military operation of the year. Poor McChrystal was reduced to begging another official to wake the sleeping president so he could get on with the show.
The war, supported by a steadily declining minority of Americans, has no chance of regaining public favor unless President Obama can explain why American blood and treasure should be at the mercy of this napping Afghan president. Karzai stole an election, can’t provide a government in or out of a box, and has in recent months threatened to defect to the Taliban and accused American forces of staging rocket attacks on his national peace conference. Until last week, Obama’s only real ally in making his case was public apathy. Next to unemployment and the oil spill, Karzai and Afghanistan were but ticks on our body politic, even as the casualty toll passed 1,000. As a senior McChrystal adviser presciently told Hastings, “If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular.”
To appreciate how shielded Americans have been from Afghanistan, revisit Rahm Emanuel’s appearance last Sunday morning on “This Week,” just before the McChrystal firestorm erupted. Trying to put a positive spin on the war, the president’s chief of staff said that the Afghans were at long last meeting their army and police quotas. Technically that’s true; the numbers are up. But in that same day’s Washington Post, a correspondent in Kandahar reported that the Afghan forces there are poorly equipped, corrupt, directionless and infiltrated by Taliban sympathizers and spies. Kandahar (pop. 1 million) is supposed to be the site of the next major American offensive.
The gaping discrepancy between Emanuel’s upbeat assessment and the reality on the ground went unremarked because absolutely no one was paying attention. Everyone is now. That, at least, gives us reason to hope that the president’s first bold move to extricate America from the graveyard of empires won’t be his last.
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Even if Obama was a strong and competent president, he should have fired McChrystal. The fact that McChrystal let himself be torpedoed by this Rolling Stoner raises questions as to his ability as well.
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While the US is looking all over the map for Haqqani, they forgot to look
under the bed...
[image: Stratfor
logo]<http://www.stratfor.com/?utm_source=General_Analysis&utm_campaign=none&utm_medium=email>Afghanistan:
Karzai Holds Talks With Haqqani -
Report<http://www.stratfor.com/sitrep/20100627_afghanistan_karzai_holds_talks_haqqani_report>
June 27, 2010
Al Jazeera reported June 27 that Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with
Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan and a
member of the Haqqani network. The unnamed sources told Al Jazeera the
meeting took place during the week of June 20, and that Haqqani was
accompanied by Pakistani military chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and
Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha. Karzai’s
office has denied the meeting took place, and a Pakistani army spokesman
said he had no knowledge of such a meeting.
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Why wouldn't Karzai meet with the victors of the war when Obarry has thrown in the towel?
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http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/103451/World/us-and-afghan-forces-kill-150-taliban-militants.html
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http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/29/awkward-dems-trying-to-recast-petraeus-as-a-savior/
David Petraeus trudged up to Capitol Hill today to win a certain confirmation from the Senate, and one has to wonder whether the general is considering the odd twists of history that have surrounded him. Today, he’s the heroic commander tapped by Barack Obama in desperation to salvage his Afghanistan surge and to reinstill confidence in the war. Three years ago, Obama’s allies in Congress and on the Left painted Petraeus as a very different figure, and The Hill reports on the awkward position Democrats now face:
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http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/29/petraeus-the-commitment-to-afghanistan-is-necessarily-an-enduring-one/
“Insurgent leaders view their tactical and operational losses in 2010 as inevitable and acceptable. The Taliban believe they can outlast the Coalition’s will to fight and believe this strategy will be effective despite short-term losses. The Taliban also believe they can sustain momentum and maintain operational capacity,” he wrote.
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Then: "strongly implied that Petraeus was either a liar or a fool three years ago." (Harry Reid, Durbin, Move-on-dot-org etc.)
Hillary: "The reports that you provide to us requires the willing suspension of disbelief."
Obama to Petraeus: " We have now set the bar so low that modest improvement in what was a completely chaotic situation’s considered success, but it’s not. This continues to be a disastrous foreign policy mistake.(surge in Iraq)”
Now: “The commitment to Afghanistan is necessarily…an enduring one” - Gen. Petraeus
-----
It would take a clinical psychiatrist to explain to us what disorder allows them to trash someone so ruthlessly, never apologize or explain what has changed and then choose that same person to lead their most important mission.
Charles Krauthammer who is no Obama supporter pointed out that maybe a part of this country needed these horrible 4 years to grasp that these are not George Bush's wars, these are America's wars, this is America's security, America's wiretaps, America's detention facilities etc. We don't do these for fun or to enrich our friends. We are under attack and taking the fight to the enemy.
Now Obama needs to save face on his phony exit promise that prevents any real progress by saying he is simply following what the best minds of the best leaders are telling him. The 'willing suspension of disbelief requirement' and 'bar so low that modest improvement in what was a completely chaotic situation’s considered success' policy is no longer operative / never happened.
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Note that MoveOn has purged it's "General Betray-us" video from it's website. Kind of like how the Soviets would remove purged party officials from their books, documentation.
"We have always been at war with Eastasia".
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http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/showArticle3.cfm?article_id=18304
Down the Orwellian memory hole, eh? How perfect.
Changing subjects, here's this piece which comes recommended by an Indian friend who has sent many good things my way over the years. Note the congruity with what I suggested the other day-- though my suggestion (Pashtunistan) sought the fragmentation/dissolution of Pakistan, here the other side of the coin is that if our current strategy is really applied, Pakistan's current incarnation will not survive.
============================
http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/showArticle3.cfm?article_id=18304
All Kayani's Men
written by: Anatol Lieven, 02-Jun-10
VOLTAIRE REMARKED of Frederick the Great's Prussia that "where .some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state!" The same can easily be said of Pakistan. The destruction of the army would mean the destruction of the country. Yet this is something that the Pakistani Taliban and their allies can never achieve. Only the United States is capable of such a feat; if Washington ever takes actions that persuade ordinary Pakistani soldiers that their only honorable course is to fight America, even against the orders of their generals and against dreadful odds, the armed forces would crumble.
There is an understanding in Washington that while short-term calculations demand some kind of success in Afghanistan, in the longer run, Pakistan, with its vastly greater size, huge army, nuclear weapons and large diaspora, is a much more important country, and a much greater threat should it in fact succumb to its inner demons. The collapse of Pakistan would so vastly increase the power of Islamist extremism as to constitute a strategic defeat in the "war on terror."
The Pakistani military is crucial to preventing such a disaster because it is the only state institution that works as it is officially meant to. This means, however, that it also repeatedly does something that it is not meant to-namely, overthrow what in Pakistan is called "democracy" and seize control of the government. The military has therefore been seen as extremely bad for Pakistan's progress, at least if that progress is to be defined in standard Western terms.
Yet, it has also always been true that without a strong military, Pakistan would probably have long since disintegrated. That is truer than ever today, as the country faces the powerful insurgency of the Pakistani Taliban and their allies. That threat makes the unity and discipline of the army of paramount importance to Pakistan and the world-all the more so because the deep dislike of U.S. strategy among the vast majority of Pakistanis has made even the limited alliance between the Pakistani military and the United States extremely unpopular in general society and among many soldiers. Those soldiers' superiors fully understand the importance of this alliance to Pakistan and the disastrous consequences for the country if it were to collapse.
The Pakistani army is a highly disciplined and professional institution, and the soldiers will continue to obey their generals' orders. Given their basic feelings, however, it would be unwise to push the infantrymen too far. One way of doing this would be to further extend the U.S. drone campaign by expanding it from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to Baluchistan. Much more disastrous would be any resumption of U.S. ground raids into Pakistani territory, such as occurred briefly in the summer of 2008.
TO UNDERSTAND this somewhat-counterintuitive (at least to Western audiences) prescription, a close look inside the military is necessary. In essence, the armed forces' success as an institution and its power over the country come from its immunity to kinship interests and the corruption they bring with them; but the military has only been able to achieve this immunity by turning into a sort of giant kinship group itself, extracting patronage from the state and distributing it to its members.
During my journeys to Pakistan over the years, I have observed how the Pakistani military, even more than most armed forces, sees itself as a breed apart, and devotes great effort to inculcating new recruits with the feeling that they belong to a military family different from (and vastly superior to) civilian society. The mainly middle-class composition of the officer corps increases contempt for the "feudal" political class. The army sees itself as both morally superior to this group and far more modern, progressive and better educated.
Pakistani politics is dominated by wealth and inherited status, whereas the officer corps has become increasingly egalitarian and provides opportunities for social mobility that the Pakistani economy cannot. As such, a position in the officer corps is immensely prized by the sons of shopkeepers and big farmers across Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). This allows the military to pick the very best recruits and increases their sense of belonging to an elite. In the last years of British rule, circa 1947, and the first years of Pakistan, most officers were recruited from the landed gentry and upper-middle classes. These are still represented by figures like former-Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Jehangir Karamat, who, perhaps most tellingly, is the former president of the Pakistan Polo Association; but a much more typical figure is the current COAS, General Ashfaq Kayani, the son of an NCO. This social change partly reflects the withdrawal of the upper-middle classes to more comfortable professions, but also the immense increase in the quantity of officers required in the military as a result of its vast expansion since independence.
A number of officers and members of military families have told me something to the effect that "the officers' mess is the most democratic institution in Pakistan because its members are superior and junior during the day, but in the evening are comrades. That is something we have inherited from the British."
This may seem like a ludicrous statement, until one remembers that in Pakistan, saying that something is the most spiritually democratic institution isn't saying very much at all. Pakistani society is permeated by a culture of deference to superiors.
Islamabad's dynastically ruled "democratic" political parties exemplify this subservience in the face of inheritance and wealth; while in the army, as an officer told me:
You rise on merit-well, mostly-not by inheritance, and you salute the military rank and not the sardar [tribal chieftain and great landowner] or pir [hereditary religious figure] who has inherited his position from his father, or the businessman's money. These days, many of the generals are the sons of clerks and shopkeepers, or if they are from military families, they are the sons of havildars [NCOs]. It doesn't matter. The point is that they are generals.
Meanwhile, the political parties continue to be dominated by "feudal" landowners and wealthy urban bosses, many of them not just corrupt but barely educated. This increases the sense of superiority in the officer corps has toward the politicians-something I have heard from many officers (and which was very marked in General Pervez Musharraf's personal contempt for the late Benazir Bhutto and her husband, the current president).
This same disdain for the country's civilian political leadership is widely present in Pakistani society as a whole, and has become dominant at regular intervals, leading to mass popular support for military coups. Indeed, it is sadly true that whatever the feelings of the population later, when each military coup initially occurred, it was popular with most Pakistanis-including the media-and was subsequently legitimized by the judiciary.
It is possible that developments since 2001 have changed this pattern, above all because of the new importance of the independent judiciary and media, and the way that the military's role in both government and the unpopular war with the Pakistani Taliban has tarnished its image with many Pakistanis. However, it is not yet clear that such a sea change has definitively taken place. Whether or not it eventually does depends in large part on how Pakistani civilian governments perform in the future.
By the summer of 2009-only a year after the resignation of then-President Musharraf, who had seized power from the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif in 1999-many Pakistanis of my acquaintance, especially in the business classes, were once again calling for the military to step in and oust the civilian administration of President Asif Ali Zardari; not necessarily to take over themselves, but to purge the most corrupt politicians and create a government of national unity (or, at the very least, a caretaker administration of technocrats).
AS THE military has become more egalitarian, the less-secular have filled its ranks. This social change in the officer corps over the decades has caused many in the West to fear that the army is becoming "Islamized," leading to the danger that the institution as a whole might support Islamist revolution, particularly as the civilian government falters. More dangerously, there might be a mutiny by Islamist junior officers against the high command. These dangers do exist, but in my view, the absolutely key point is that only a direct attack on Pakistan by the United States could bring them to fruition.
Westerners must realize that commitment to the army, and to martial unity and discipline, is drilled into every officer and soldier from the first hour of their joining the military. Together with the material rewards of loyal service, it constitutes a very powerful obstacle to any thought of a coup from below, which would by definition split the army and very likely destroy it altogether. Every military coup in Pakistan has therefore been carried out by the chief of army staff, backed by a consensus of the corps commanders and the rest of the high command. Islamist conspiracies by junior officers against their superiors (of which there have been two over the past generation) have been penetrated and smashed by Military Intelligence.
It is obviously true that as the officer corps becomes lower-middle class, so its members become less Westernized and more religious-after all, the vast majority of Pakistan's population is conservative Muslim. However, it is made up of many different kinds of orthodox Muslim, and this is also true of the officer corps.
In the 1980s, then-President of Pakistan and Chief of Army Staff General Zia ul-Haq did undertake measures to make the army more Islamic, and subsequently, a good many officers who wanted a promotion adopted an Islamic facade. Zia also encouraged Islamic preaching within the army, notably by the Tablighi Jamaat, a nonviolent, nonpartisan but fundamentalist group dedicated to Islamic proselytizing and charity work. But, as the career of the notoriously secular General Musharraf indicates, this did not lead to known secular generals being blocked from promotion; and in the 1990s, especially under Musharraf, most of Zia's measures were rolled back. In recent years, preaching by the Tablighi has been strongly discouraged, not so much because of political fears (the Tablighi is determinedly apolitical) as because of instinctive opposition to any groups that might encourage factions among officers and loyalties to anything other than the army.
Of course, the Pakistani military has always gone into battle with the cry of Allahu Akbar (God is Great)-just as the imperial-era German army inscribed Gott mit Uns(God with Us) on its helmets and standards; but according to Colonel Abdul Qayyum, a retired, moderate-Islamist officer:
You shouldn't use bits of Islam to raise military discipline, morale and so on. I'm sorry to say that this is the way it has always been used in the Pakistani army. It is our equivalent of rum-the generals use it to get their men to launch suicidal attacks. But there is no such thing as a powerful jihadi group within the army. Of course, there are many devoutly Muslim officers and jawans [enlisted troops], but at heart the vast majority of the army are nationalists, and take whatever is useful from Islam to serve what they see as Pakistan's interests. The Pakistani army has been a nationalist army with an Islamic look.
On the whole, by far the most important aspect of a Pakistani officer's identity is that he (or sometimes she) is an officer. The Pakistani military is a profoundly shaping influence as far as its members are concerned. This can be seen, among other places, in the social origins and personal habits of its chiefs of staff and Pakistan's military rulers over the years. It would be hard to find a more different set of men than generals Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia ul-Haq, Pervez Musharraf, Mirza Aslam Beg, Jehangir Karamat and Ashfaq Kayani in terms of their social origins, personal characters and attitudes toward religion; some were rich others poor, some secular others religious and some conspiratorial others loyal. Yet all have been first and foremost military men.
This means in turn that their ideology is largely one of nationalism. The military is tied to Pakistan, not to the universal Muslim ummah of the radical Islamists' dreams; tied not only by sentiment and ideology but also by the reality of what supports the army. If it is true, as so many officers have told me, that "no army, no Pakistan," it is equally true that "no Pakistan, no army."
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AMERICAN OPERATIONS in South Asia, however, are threatening to upset this fragile balance between Islam and nationalism in the Pakistani military. The army's members can hardly avoid sharing the broader population's bitter hostility to U.S. policy. To judge by retired and serving officers, this includes the genuine conviction that either the Bush administration or Israel was responsible for 9/11. Inevitably therefore, there was deep opposition throughout the army after 2001 to American pressure to crack down on the Afghan Taliban and their Pakistani sympathizers. "We are being ordered to launch a Pakistani civil war for the sake of America," an officer told me in 2002. "Why on earth should we? Why should we commit suicide for you?"
Between 2004 and 2007, there were a number of instances of mass desertion and refusal to serve in units deployed to fight militants, though mostly in the Pashtun-recruited Frontier Corps rather than in the regular army. These failures were caused above all by the feeling that these forces were compelled to turn against their own. We must realize in these morally and psychologically testing circumstances, anything that helps maintain Pakistani military discipline cannot be altogether bad-given the immense scale of the stakes concerned, and the consequences if that discipline were to fail.
For in 2007-2008, the battle was beginning to cause serious problems of morale. The most dangerous single thing I heard during my visits to Pakistan in those years was that soldiers' families in villages in the NWFP and the Potwar region of the Punjab were finding it increasingly difficult to find high-status brides for their sons serving in the military because of the growing popular feeling that "the army is the slave of the Americans" and "the soldiers are killing fellow Muslims on America's orders."
By late 2009, the sheer number of soldiers killed by the Pakistani Taliban and their allies, and still more importantly, the increasingly murderous and indiscriminate Pakistani Taliban attacks on civilians, seem to have produced a change of mood in the areas of military recruitment. Nonetheless, if the Pakistani Taliban are increasingly unpopular, that does not make the United States any more well liked; and if Washington ever put Pakistani soldiers in a position where they felt that honor and patriotism required them to fight America, many would be willing to do so.
And we have seen this willingness before. In August and September 2008, U.S. forces entered Pakistan's tribal areas on two occasions in order to raid suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda bases. During the second incursion, Pakistani soldiers fired in the air to turn the Americans back. On September 19, 2008, General Kayani flew to meet U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, and, in the words of a senior Pakistani general, "gave him the toughest possible warning about what would happen if this were repeated."
Pakistani officers from captain to lieutenant general have told me that the entry of U.S. ground forces into Pakistan in pursuit of the Taliban and al-Qaeda is an incredibly dangerous scenario, as it would put both Pakistan-U.S. relations and the unity of the army at risk. As one retired general explained, drone attacks on Pakistani territory, though humiliating for the ordinary officers and soldiers, are not the critical issue. What would create a military overthrow takes more:
U.S. ground forces inside Pakistan are a different matter, because the soldiers can do something about them. They can fight. And if they don't fight, they will feel utterly humiliated, before their wives, mothers, children. It would be a matter of honor, which as you know is a tremendous thing in our society. These men have sworn an oath to defend Pakistani soil. So they would fight. And if the generals told them not to fight, many of them would mutiny, starting with the Frontier Corps.
At this point, not just Islamist radicals, but every malcontent in the country would join the mutineers, and the disintegration of Pakistan would become imminent.
THERE IS a further complication. Of course, the Pakistani military has played a part in encouraging Islamist insurgents. The army maintains links with military and jihadi groups focused on fighting India (its perennial obsession). Contrary to what many believe, the military's support of these actors has not been based on ideology. The bulk of the high command (including General Musharraf, who is by no conceivable stretch of the imagination an Islamist) has used these groups in a purely instrumental way against New Delhi with Pakistani Muslim nationalism as the driver. But this doesn't mean balancing these relationships with U.S. demands will be easy.
Since 2002, the military has acted to rein in these groups, while at the same time keeping some of them (notably Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the 2008 terrorist attacks against Mumbai) on the shelf for possible future use against India should hostilities between the two countries resume. Undoubtedly, however, some lower-level officers of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), responsible for "handling" these groups, have developed close affinities for them and have contributed to their recent operations. The ISI's long association with the militants, first in Afghanistan and then in Kashmir, had led some ISI officers to have a close personal identification with the forces that they were supposed to be controlling.
The high command, moreover, is genuinely concerned that if it attacks some of these groups, it will drive them into joining the Pakistani Taliban-as has already occurred with sections of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, suspected in the attempts to assassinate Musharraf in December 2003 (apparently with low-level help from within the armed forces).
This leads to a whole set of interlocking questions: How far does the Pakistani high command continue to back certain militant groups? How far does the command of the ISI follow a strategy independent from that of the military? And how far have individual ISI officers escaped from the control of their superiors and supported and planned terrorist actions on their own? And this leads to the even-more-vital question of how far the Pakistani military is penetrated by Islamist extremist elements, and whether there is any possibility of these groups carrying out a successful military coup from below.
Since this whole field is obviously kept very secret by the institutions concerned (including Military Intelligence, which monitors the political and ideological allegiances of officers), there are no definitive answers. What follows is informed guesswork based on numerous discussions with experts and off-the-record talks with Pakistani officers, including retired members of the ISI.
Concerning the ISI, the consensus of my informants is as follows: There is considerable resentment of the organization in the rest of the military due to its perceived arrogance and suspected corruption. However, when it comes to overall strategy, the ISI follows the line of the high command. It is, after all, always headed by a senior regular general, not a professional intelligence officer, and a majority of its officers are also seconded regulars. General Kayani was director of the ISI from 2004-2007 and ordered a limited crackdown on jihadi groups that the ISI had previously supported. As to the military's attitude toward the Afghan Taliban, the army and the ISI are as one, and the evidence is unequivocal: both groups continue to give them shelter, and there is deep unwillingness to take serious action against them on America's behalf, both because it is feared that this would increase the potential for a Pashtun insurgency in Pakistan and because they are seen as the only assets Pakistan possesses in Afghanistan. The conviction in the Pakistani security establishment is that the West will quit Kabul, leaving civil war behind, and that India will then throw its weight behind the non-Pashtun forces of the former Northern Alliance in order to encircle Pakistan strategically.
This attitude changes, however, when it comes to the Pakistani Taliban and their allies. The military as a whole and the ISI are now committed to the struggle against them, and by the end of 2009, the ISI had lost more than seventy of its officers in this fight-some ten times the number of CIA officers killed since 9/11, just as Pakistani military casualties fighting the Pakistani Taliban have greatly exceeded those of the United States in Afghanistan. Equally, however, in 2007-2008 there were a great many stories of ISI officers intervening to rescue individual Taliban commanders from arrest by the police or the army-too many, and too circumstantial, for these all to have been invented.
It seems clear, therefore, that whether because some ISI officers felt a personal commitment to these men, or because the institution as a whole still regarded them as potentially useful, actions were taking place that were against overall military policy-let alone that of the Pakistani government. As well, some of these Islamist insurgents had at least indirect links to al-Qaeda. This does not mean that the ISI knows where Osama bin Laden (if he is indeed still alive), Ayman al-Zawahri and other al-Qaeda leaders are hiding. But it does suggest that they could probably do a good deal more to find out.
However, for Islamist terrorists who wish to carry out attacks against India, ISI help is not necessary (though it has certainly occurred in the past). The discontent of sections of India's Muslim minority (increased by ghastly incidents like the massacres of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, and encouraged by the Hindu nationalist state government) gives ample possibilities for recruitment; the sheer size of India, coupled with the incompetence of the Indian security forces, give ample targets of opportunity; and the desire to provoke an Indian attack on Pakistan gives ample motive. But whether or not the ISI is involved in future attacks, India will certainly blame Pakistan for them.
This creates the real possibility of a range of harsh Indian responses, stretching from economic pressure through blockade to outright war. Such a war would in the short term unite Pakistanis and greatly increase the morale of the army. The long-term consequences for Pakistan's economic development would, however, be quite disastrous. And if the United States were perceived to back India in such a war, anti-American feelings and extremist recruitment in Pakistan would soar to new heights. All of this gives the United States every reason to push the Pakistani military to suppress some extremist groups and keep others on a very tight rein. But Washington also needs to press New Delhi to seek reconciliation with Islamabad over Kashmir, and to refrain from actions which will create even more fear of India in the Pakistani military.
IN THE end, Washington must walk a very fine line if it wants to keep the military united and at least onboard enough in the fight against extremists. If it pushes the army too far by moving ground troops into Pakistan proper, the consequences will be devastating. The military-and therefore the state of Pakistan-will be no longer.
Anatol Lieven, a senior editor at The National Interest, is a professor in the War Studies Department of King's College London and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. He is author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2004). His next book,Pakistan: A Hard Country, is to be published in 2011.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/10471517.stm
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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010/07/02/story_2-7-2010_pg7_9
Babar Formula’ on the cards to protect fake degree-holders
* Govt engaged in negotiations with allies, PML-Q to introduce bill in NA over issue
* PML-N, MQM not going to back the proposed bill
By Irfan Ghauri
ISLAMABAD: The government’s legal pundits led by Federal Law Minister Babar Awan have come up with a new national reconciliation bill to bail out fake degree-holders, informed sources told Daily Times on Thursday.
The government is currently engaged in taking into confidence its allied parties, as well as the PML-Q over the proposed bill. As pressure mounts on fake degree-holders with each passing day, the Federal Law Ministry has devised a formula — known amongst political circles as the Babar Formula — to save the parliamentarians from any further embarrassment.
“The political ground work is almost complete and the bill has also been drafted”, the sources said, adding that, “It would be presented in the upcoming session of the National Assembly”. Though no more valid now, possessing a bachelors’ degree was one of the prerequisites for contesting national and provincial assembly elections back in 2008.
According to estimates, more than 150 members of the assemblies contested elections on fake degrees and they might have to resign in a move that could have huge political implications for the current government. The bill, if approved by the National Assembly and the Senate, would have a retrospective effect.
The government has so far been successful in convincing at least three of its four allied parties to support the legislation. However, the MQM has still not committed itself to supporting the bill, saying it would be tantamount to favoring “culprits of the nation”.
But officials from both sides said that the MQM was considering abstaining form voting on the bill to give the government a chance of getting it approved from both the houses without any difficulty. According to insiders, President Asif Ali Zardari has assigned Labour Minister Khursheed Ali Shah and Interior Minister Rehman Malik the task of convincing the MQM and contacts have already been established.
The ANP, the JUI-F and group of parliamentarians from the tribal regions led by Munir Orakzai have assured the government that they would vote in favor of the bill. The government has managed to get the support of the PML-Q, in what appears to be an indication of the new political alignment in the country.
A PML-Q MNA from Bahawalpur division Riaz Pirzada said the bill had already been drafted and might be introduced to the National Assembly later this month. According to Pirzada, the government is negotiating with various parties and there are indications that a consensus can emerge over the issue ahead of the next meeting of the lower house.
Pirzada, however, added the legislation would be brought to the National Assembly as a private bill by himself and several other parliamentarians from various parties.
PML-Q Information Secretary Kamal Ali Agha, however, said the party is still to decide its “official reaction” to the issue and had not decided whether or not to support the bill. Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Information Secretary Fauzia Wahab did not deny that the government was seeking support from other parties for protecting fake degree-holders.
A top leader of the JUI-F said that the party would support “anything in favor of the democracy”.
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I have high regard for Stratfor in general and for its head, George Friedman. That said, this article, which makes many excellent points, IMHO also makes some glib ones and fails to ask certain important questions-- what was to be done in the wake of 2001? Was the third phase sustainable, or was it, as Michael Yon asserts, imploding? Why is the Durand Line taken seriously/why do we/should we do nothing about the enemy's presence in Pakistan? etc.
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The 30-Year War in Afghanistan
Is it worthwhile getting American troops to fight in Afghanistan instead of arming the Taliban's allies?
This article was first published on the Stratfor website. The author, George Friedman, is chairman and CEO of Stratfor, the world’s leading online publisher of geopolitical intelligence.
The Afghan War is the longest war in U.S. history. It began in 1980 and continues to rage. It began under Democrats but has been fought under both Republican and Democratic administrations, making it truly a bipartisan war. The conflict is an odd obsession of U.S. foreign policy, one that never goes away and never seems to end. As the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal reminds us, the Afghan War is now in its fourth phase.
The Afghan War’s First Three Phases
The first phase of the Afghan War began with the Soviet invasion in December 1979, when the United States, along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, organized and sustained Afghan resistance to the Soviets. This resistance was built around mujahideen, fighters motivated by Islam. Washington’s purpose had little to do with Afghanistan and everything to do with U.S.-Soviet competition. The United States wanted to block the Soviets from using Afghanistan as a base for further expansion and wanted to bog the Soviets down in a debilitating guerrilla war. The United States did not so much fight the war as facilitate it. The strategy worked. The Soviets were blocked and bogged down. This phase lasted until 1989, when Soviet troops were withdrawn.
The second phase lasted from 1989 until 2001. The forces the United States and its allies had trained and armed now fought each other in complex coalitions for control of Afghanistan. Though the United States did not take part in this war directly, it did not lose all interest in Afghanistan. Rather, it was prepared to exert its influence through allies, particularly Pakistan. Most important, it was prepared to accept that the Islamic fighters it had organized against the Soviets would govern Afghanistan. There were many factions, but with Pakistani support, a coalition called the Taliban took power in 1996. The Taliban in turn provided sanctuary for a group of international jihadists called al Qaeda, and this led to increased tensions with the Taliban following jihadist attacks on U.S. facilities abroad by al Qaeda.
The third phase began on Sept. 11, 2001, when al Qaeda launched attacks on the mainland United States. Given al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan, the United States launched operations designed to destroy or disrupt al Qaeda and dislodge the Taliban. The United States commenced operations barely 30 days after Sept. 11, which was not enough time to mount an invasion using U.S. troops as the primary instrument. Rather, the United States made arrangements with factions that were opposed to the Taliban (and defeated in the Afghan civil war). This included organizations such as the Northern Alliance, which had remained close to the Russians; Shiite groups in the west that were close to the Iranians and India; and other groups or subgroups in other regions. These groups supported the United States out of hostility to the Taliban and/or due to substantial bribes paid by the United States.
The overwhelming majority of ground forces opposing the Taliban in 2001 were Afghan. The United States did, however, insert special operations forces teams to work with these groups and to identify targets for U.S. airpower, the primary American contribution to the war. The use of U.S. B-52s against Taliban forces massed around cities in the north caused the Taliban to abandon any thought of resisting the Northern Alliance and others, even though the Taliban had defeated them in the civil war.
Unable to hold fixed positions against airstrikes, the Taliban withdrew from the cities and dispersed. The Taliban were not defeated, however; they merely declined to fight on U.S. terms. Instead, they redefined the war, preserving their forces and regrouping. The Taliban understood that the cities were not the key to Afghanistan. Instead, the countryside would ultimately provide control of the cities. From the Taliban point of view, the battle would be waged in the countryside, while the cities increasingly would be isolated.
The United States simply did not have sufficient force to identify, engage and destroy the Taliban as a whole. The United States did succeed in damaging and dislodging al Qaeda, with the jihadist group’s command cell becoming isolated in northwestern Pakistan. But as with the Taliban, the United States did not defeat al Qaeda because the United States lacked significant forces on the ground. Even so, al Qaeda prime, the original command cell, was no longer in a position to mount 9/11-style attacks.
During the Bush administration, U.S. goals for Afghanistan were modest. First, the Americans intended to keep al Qaeda bottled up and to impose as much damage as possible on the group. Second, they intended to establish an Afghan government, regardless of how ineffective it might be, to serve as a symbolic core. Third, they planned very limited operations against the Taliban, which had regrouped and increasingly controlled the countryside. The Bush administration was basically in a holding operation in Afghanistan. It accepted that U.S. forces were neither going to be able to impose a political solution on Afghanistan nor create a coalition large enough control the country. U.S. strategy was extremely modest under Bush: to harass al Qaeda from bases in Afghanistan, maintain control of cities and logistics routes, and accept the limits of U.S. interests and power.
The three phases of American involvement in Afghanistan had a common point: All three were heavily dependent on non-U.S. forces to do the heavy lifting. In the first phase, the mujahideen performed this task. In the second phase, the United States relied on Pakistan to manage Afghanistan’s civil war. In the third phase, especially in the beginning, the United States depended on Afghan forces to fight the Taliban. Later, when greater numbers of American and allied forces arrived, the United States had limited objectives beyond preserving the Afghan government and engaging al Qaeda wherever it might be found (and in any event, by 2003, Iraq had taken priority over Afghanistan). In no case did the Americans use their main force to achieve their goals.
The Fourth Phase of the Afghan War
The fourth phase of the war began in 2009, when U.S. President Barack Obama decided to pursue a more aggressive strategy in Afghanistan. Though the Bush administration had toyed with this idea, it was Obama who implemented it fully. During the 2008 election campaign, Obama asserted that he would pay greater attention to Afghanistan. The Obama administration began with the premise that while the Iraq War was a mistake, the Afghan War had to be prosecuted. It reasoned that unlike Iraq, which had a tenuous connection to al Qaeda at best, Afghanistan was the group’s original base. He argued that Afghanistan therefore should be the focus of U.S. military operations. In doing so, he shifted a strategy that had been in place for 30 years by making U.S. forces the main combatants in the war.
Though Obama’s goals were not altogether clear, they might be stated as follows:
1.Deny al Qaeda a base in Afghanistan.
2.Create an exit strategy from Afghanistan similar to the one in Iraq by creating the conditions for negotiating with the Taliban; make denying al Qaeda a base a condition for the resulting ruling coalition.
3.Begin withdrawal by 2011.
To do this, there would be three steps:
1.Increase the number and aggressiveness of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
2.Create Afghan security forces under the current government to take over from the Americans.
3.Increase pressure on the Taliban by driving a wedge between them and the population and creating intra-insurgent rifts via effective counterinsurgency tactics.
In analyzing this strategy, there is an obvious issue: While al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan in 2001, Afghanistan is no longer its primary base of operations. The group has shifted to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other countries. As al Qaeda is thus not dependent on any one country for its operational base, denying it bases in Afghanistan does not address the reality of its dispersion. Securing Afghanistan, in other words, is no longer the solution to al Qaeda.
Obviously, Obama’s planners fully understood this. Therefore, sanctuary denial for al Qaeda had to be, at best, a secondary strategic goal. The primary strategic goal was to create an exit strategy for the United States based on a negotiated settlement with the Taliban and a resulting coalition government. The al Qaeda issue depended on this settlement, but could never be guaranteed. In fact, neither the long-term survival of a coalition government nor the Taliban policing al Qaeda could be guaranteed.
The exit of U.S. forces represents a bid to reinstate the American strategy of the past 30 years, namely, having Afghan forces reassume the primary burden of fighting. The creation of an Afghan military is not the key to this strategy. Afghans fight for their clans and ethnic groups. The United States is trying to invent a national army where no nation exists, a task that assumes the primary loyalty of Afghans will shift from their clans to a national government, an unlikely proposition.
The Real U.S. Strategy
Rather than trying to strengthen the Karzai government, the real strategy is to return to the historical principles of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan: alliance with indigenous forces. These indigenous forces would pursue strategies in the American interest for their own reasons, or because they are paid, and would be strong enough to stand up to the Taliban in a coalition. As CIA Director Leon Panetta put it this weekend, however, this is proving harder to do than expected.
The American strategy is, therefore, to maintain a sufficient force to shape the political evolution on the ground, and to use that force to motivate and intimidate while also using economic incentives to draw together a coalition in the countryside. Operations like those in Helmand province — where even Washington acknowledges that progress has been elusive and slower than anticipated — clearly are designed to try to draw regional forces into regional coalitions that eventually can enter a coalition with the Taliban without immediately being overwhelmed. If this strategy proceeds, the Taliban in theory will be spurred to negotiate out of concern that this process eventually could leave it marginalized.
There is an anomaly in this strategy, however. Where the United States previously had devolved operational responsibility to allied groups, or simply hunkered down, this strategy tries to return to devolved responsibilities by first surging U.S. operations. The fourth phase actually increases U.S. operational responsibility in order to reduce it.
From the grand strategic point of view, the United States needs to withdraw from Afghanistan, a landlocked country where U.S. forces are dependent on tortuous supply lines. Whatever Afghanistan’s vast mineral riches, mining them in the midst of war is not going to happen. More important, the United States is overcommitted in the region and lacks a strategic reserve of ground forces. Afghanistan ultimately is not strategically essential, and this is why the United States has not historically used its own forces there.
Obama’s attempt to return to that track after first increasing U.S. forces to set the stage for the political settlement that will allow a U.S. withdrawal is hampered by the need to begin terminating the operation by 2011 (although there is no fixed termination date). It will be difficult to draw coalition partners into local structures when the foundation — U.S. protection — is withdrawing. Strengthening local forces by 2011 will be difficult. Moreover, the Taliban’s motivation to enter into talks is limited by the early withdrawal. At the same time, with no ground combat strategic reserve, the United States is vulnerable elsewhere in the world, and the longer the Afghan drawdown takes, the more vulnerable it becomes (hence the 2011 deadline in Obama’s war plan).
In sum, this is the quandary inherent in the strategy: It is necessary to withdraw as early as possible, but early withdrawal undermines both coalition building and negotiations. The recruitment and use of indigenous Afghan forces must move extremely rapidly to hit the deadline (though officially on track quantitatively, there are serious questions about qualitative measures) — hence, the aggressive operations that have been mounted over recent months. But the correlation of forces is such that the United States probably will not be able to impose an acceptable political reality in the time frame available. Thus, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is said to be opening channels directly to the Taliban, while the Pakistanis are increasing their presence. Where a vacuum is created, regardless of how much activity there is, someone will fill it.
Therefore, the problem is to define how important Afghanistan is to American global strategy, bearing in mind that the forces absorbed in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the United States vulnerable elsewhere in the world. The current strategy defines the Islamic world as the focus of all U.S. military attention. But the world has rarely been so considerate as to wait until the United States is finished with one war before starting another. Though unknowns remain unknowable, a principle of warfare is to never commit all of your reserves in a battle — one should always maintain a reserve for the unexpected. Strategically, it is imperative that the United States begin to free up forces and re-establish its ground reserves.
Given the time frame the Obama administration’s grand strategy imposes, and given the capabilities of the Taliban, it is difficult to see how it will all work out. But the ultimate question is about the American obsession with Afghanistan. For 30 years, the United States has been involved in a country that is virtually inaccessible for the United States. Washington has allied itself with radical Islamists, fought against radical Islamists or tried to negotiate with radical Islamists. What the United States has never tried to do is impose a political solution through the direct application of American force. This is a new and radically different phase of America’s Afghan obsession. The questions are whether it will work and whether it is even worth it.
w
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Some quite remarkable photos of Afg before its modern troubles began.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/27/once_upon_a_time_in_afghanistan
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Amazing how islam can destroy a society from within.
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I am surprised to see that there have been no comments on Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele suggestion at a Connecticut fundraiser that Afghanistan is "a war of Obama's choosing". Lots of Republicans on this site; what are your thoughts?
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Steele needs to go, though the statement could have meant that Afghanistan was Obama's good war that Obama allegedly wanted to win when Obama was running for the presidency.
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Steele is proving to be an ass on many levels, one of which is exhibited here, and should resign.
GM is right. BO ran on Afpakia being the right war and that we had to get out of Iraq so we would have the bandwidth to focus on Afpakia. Instead , , , well you already know the story.
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http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/10/gen-casey-america-may-be-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-for-another-decade/?fbid=khJA6CYykye
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My "arm chair" opinions tends to agree with Kristol, FWIW, but I don't agree with fighting in Afghanistan-"Pocky"stan with one arm tied behind our backs. If we are going to fightn enemy than we should fight them not coddle them.
****Ann Coulter's recent column "Bill Kristol Must Resign" may have officially kicked off the next great schism within the conservative movement. At issue is the war in Afghanistan -- and, more specifically, whether Republicans should support President Obama's approach to a conflict that has now lasted for Americans far longer than World War II.
Mocking neoconservatives, Coulter wrote: "Bill Kristol [editor of The Weekly Standard] and Liz Cheney have demanded that [Michael] Steele resign as head of the RNC for saying Afghanistan is now Obama's war -- and a badly thought-out one at that. (Didn't liberals warn us that neoconservatives want permanent war?)"
Coulter failed at convincing Kristol to resign -- she never says from what. In fact, channeling Michael Steele, who vows to stay on as party chief, Kristol responded: "I ain't going anywhere." But she may have succeeded at advancing a major debate.
Until now, there has been somewhat of an unspoken rule, adhered to by most on the right, that conservative Republicans would vigorously oppose Obama's liberal domestic policies while supporting his efforts to win in Afghanistan. After all, Republicans had staunchly backed George W. Bush when he made the case for fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Changing course now would seem craven -- playing politics with national security. And so, in foreign policy, Obama was criticized from the right only when he appeared to be showing weakness, not when he displayed toughness.
But recent comments from Steele have sparked a debate that was probably long overdue. Notwithstanding the fact that Steele almost immediately backtracked, some conservatives began defending the substance of Steele's comments. "Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele was absolutely right," Coulter wrote. "Afghanistan is Obama's war and, judging by other recent Democratic ventures in military affairs, isn't likely to turn out well."
This is a serious point. As Politics Daily's own David Corn recently wrote:
The war in Afghanistan is President Obama's war and partly of the president's choosing. Sure, Obama inherited the conflict. Bush initiated the military action in Afghanistan after 9/11 -- and then veered into Iraq before the war in Afghanistan was resolved. Yet Obama, after much deliberation, decided to change the nature of the Afghanistan war. In December, following many weeks of review, he announced he would send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and he embraced the counterinsurgency plan proposed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was then commanding U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
There was always skepticism on the left about Obama's decision to escalate the war -- perhaps even to waging war there in the first place. And if the commander in chief is losing any significant portion of the right when it comes to Afghanistan, his policies could be on perilous ground.
One of the ideas advanced by Coulter is that Bush wisely kept a relatively small footprint in Afghanistan, while choosing instead to invade Iraq -- terrain more hospitable for a traditional ground war. There is some revisionism at work here, and it must be said that prominent voices, like Liz Cheney's (not to mention Gen. David Petraeus'), were raised in support of the surge in Afghanistan. Still, it's fair to broach the question raised by Steele and Coulter: Would Bush be doing anything differently today in terms of Afghanistan?
Or is Coulter's position a less high-minded one? After a decade of defending Bush's actions, and getting beat up for it, are Republicans now saying it's time for a Democratic president to get the Bush treatment?
Coulter is not the first conservative to warn that Afghanistan could turn into a quagmire. George Will and Tony Blankley have raised that very point. But Coulter has made it in a way that directly -- and personally -- challenges conservative orthodoxy. And it's catching on. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough tweeted Coulter's column out to his followers, adding, "Thank you, Ann Coulter. She speaks out against the GOP now being for permanent war. She is right."
And if conservatives are asked to choose sides between, say, the elected leader of the Republican National Committee (Steele) and the titular head of the Democratic National Committee (Obama), how many will decide that Obama's Afghanistan policies are not worth the trouble? Maybe it was unavoidable, but it does seem as if Coulter's comments today hearken back to the 1990s -- when Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office -- and conservatives criticized his efforts in places like Bosnia and Kosovo as "nation building."
Clearly, things have changed since 2008, when candidates John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and even Mitt Romney represented the mainstream viewpoint, and when Congressman Ron Paul was essentially mocked for his isolationist tendencies and his desire for a "humble foreign policy." Today, Paul's positions are enjoying resurgence, and his son, Rand Paul, is poised to be elected to the U.S. Senate. How quickly things change.
Regardless, debating this policy is healthy, and conservatives are justified to have this discussion. There are conservative arguments to be made for -- or against -- continuing the war in Afghanistan, just as I believe a principled conservative case could have been made (and was, in some quarters) against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This is a debate that conservatives, and all Americans, should keep having. War is not something to be entered into lightly; nor should support for it ever be contingent on whether the commander in chief has a D after his name, or an R.
Filed Under: Republicans, Afghanistan, Conservatives, Military, Analysis
Tagged: Afghanistan war, ann coulter, Bill Kristol, conservatives, liz cheney, Michael Steele, war
More articles from Matt Lewis »****
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Its POTH, so caveat lector
WARSAK, Pakistan — The recent graduation ceremony here for Pakistani troops trained by Americans to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda was intended as show of fresh cooperation between the Pakistani and American militaries. But it said as much about its limitations.
Nearly 250 Pakistani paramilitary troops in khaki uniforms and green berets snapped to attention, with top students accepting a certificate from an American Army colonel after completing the specialized training for snipers and platoon and company leaders. But this new center, 20 miles from the Afghanistan border, was built to train as many as 2,000 soldiers at a time. The largest component of the American-financed instruction — a 10-week basic-training course — is months behind schedule, officials from both sides acknowledge, in part because Pakistani commanders say they cannot afford to send troops for new training as fighting intensifies in the border areas.
Pakistan also restricts the number of American trainers throughout the country to no more than about 120 Special Operations personnel, fearful of being identified too closely with the unpopular United States — even though the Americans reimburse Pakistan more than $1 billion a year for its military operations in the border areas. “We want to keep a low signature,” said a senior Pakistani officer.
The deep suspicion that underlies every American move here is a fact of life that American officers say they must work through as they try to reverse the effects of the many years when the United States had cut Pakistan off from military aid because of its nuclear weapons program.
That time of estrangement, which lasted through the 1990s, left the Pakistanis feeling scorned and abandoned by the United States, and its military distant and seeded with officers and soldiers sympathetic to conservative Islam — and even at times the very militants they are today charged with fighting.
Today the American-led war in Afghanistan and its continuing campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas have made the United States suspect at all levels of the military, and among the Pakistani population, as anti-Americanism has hit new heights. This training program is among the first steps to repair that relationship. “This is the most complex operating environment I’ve ever dealt with,” said Col. Kurt Sonntag, a West Point graduate who handed out the graduation certificates here.
Such are the limits on the Americans that dozens of Pakistani enlisted “master trainers,” taught by the Americans, do the bulk of the hands-on instruction here. Since January 2009, about 1,000 scouts from Pakistan’s Frontier Corps have completed the training, which is designed to help turn the 58,000-member paramilitary force that patrols the tribal areas from a largely passive border force into skilled and motivated fighters.
The personnel training is just one piece of what is now a multipronged relationship. With combating Al Qaeda and the Taliban now the overriding priority, the United States provides Pakistan with a wide array of weapons, shares intelligence about the militants, and has given it more than $10 billion toward the cost of deploying nearly 150,000 troops in and around the border areas since 2001 — with the promise of much more to come.
On June 27, the United States delivered to Pakistan the first of three new F-16 jet fighters equipped with precision targeting instruments for day and night use. A half dozen United States Air Force pilots traveled here to train and qualify Pakistani aviators on night operations.
Washington is stressing that these upgraded fighters will be used by Pakistan against the militants in the tribal areas, but they also augment the F-16 fleet that the United States has financed over the years as part of the country’s arsenal that is directed against India.
By urging Pakistan to embrace counterinsurgency training, the United States is trying to steer the Pakistani Army toward spending more resources against what Washington believes is Pakistan’s main enemy, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, rather than devoting almost the entire military effort against India, American officials said. Central to this approach is an array of training that the Americans tailor to what Pakistani says it needs for the Frontier Corps, its conventional army and its Special Operations forces.
About a dozen American trainers are assigned to yearlong duty at this training center, a cluster of classrooms and dormitories and adjacent training ranges on a large campus, which the United States spent $23 million to build, plus another $30 million for training and equipment requested by the Pakistani military.
The most gifted Frontier Corps marksmen are selected for sniper training, a skill in need against the Taliban who have been using Russian-made Dragonov sniper rifles to deadly effect against the Pakistani Army.
Five two-man sniper teams, trained to use American-made M24 rifles as well as how to work with a spotter, measure wind speeds and camouflage their positions, received awards from Colonel Sonntag. But five two-man teams were dropped during the training because their math skills were not good enough, another American trainer said.
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Much of the training here is aimed at building the confidence of the Frontier Corps scouts, some of whom have relatives in the Taliban, and who speak the same language, Pashto, as many militants. Often the militants are better armed and more handsomely paid than the scouts.
Three basic skills were built into the course, one of the American trainers said: How to shoot straight, how to administer battlefield first aid, and how to provide covering fire for advancing troops.
Until a few years ago, the Frontier Corps was widely ridiculed as corrupt and incompetent. But under the leadership of Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, salaries have quadrupled to about $200 a month, new equipment is flowing in, and the scouts are winning praise in combat. Still, General Khan acknowledged in an interview that the training here was still “settling down and maturing.”
The scouts face a battle-hardened enemy that has lived in the mountains around here for decades. “We’ve been here one-and-a-half years,” said Col. Ahsan Raza, the training center’s commandant. “They have been preparing for the last 20 years.”
The Pakistani Army also conducts training on its own without direct American aid. At the Pabbi Hills training center, halfway between Islamabad and Lahore, a visitor drives up a rutted dirt road, past clusters of troop tents pitched amid acacia trees, to a sprawling, 2,500-acre series of ranges and obstacle courses.
Every Pakistani Army unit assigned to the fight in the country’s tribal belt now receives at least four weeks of training in what the Pakistani Army calls “low-intensity conflict.”
Atop a 30-foot-high observation tower that doubles as a rappelling wall, Maj. Shaukat Hayat, second in command of the 55 Baloch Regiment, a 700-man infantry unit, oversees as his troops drill in how to clear a militant’s house. A billowing white smoke grenade offers advancing forces cover as they go room to room, exchanging gunfire with mock militants.
A Pakistani trainer stands on a walkway above the roofless rooms that allows him to observe and grade the troops’ performance. “When they’re done, they’ll go back and review what they did, and do it again,” said Major Hayat, 36.
The instructors are veterans of the campaigns in the tribal areas. Troops conduct live-fire drills on outdoor ranges with popup targets of militants. Similar drills at indoor ranges have paper targets with pictures of guerrillas and civilians, testing the troops’ split-second skills to judge friend or foe under fire.
But simulating the fight with the militants goes only so far, Pakistani officers say.
“It’s good textbook training, but the final training has to take place on the ground and must deal with the idea of a bullet coming at you,” said Lt. Gen. Asif Yasin Malik, who commands all Pakistani forces in the tribal areas. “After that first encounter, it’s done. They’re O.K.”
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U.S. May Label Pakistan Militants as Terrorists
By MARK LANDLER and THOM SHANKER
Published: July 13, 2010
WASHINGTON — The new American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, is pushing to have top leaders of a feared insurgent group designated as terrorists, a move that could complicate an eventual Afghan political settlement with the Taliban and aggravate political tensions in the region.
General Petraeus introduced the idea of blacklisting the group, known as the Haqqani network, late last week in discussions with President Obama’s senior advisers on Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to several administration officials, who said it was being seriously considered.
Such a move could risk antagonizing Pakistan, a critical partner in the war effort, but one that is closely tied to the Haqqani network. It could also frustrate the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who is pressing to reconcile with all the insurgent groups as a way to end the nine-year-old war and consolidate his own grip on power.
The case of the Haqqani network, run by an old warlord family, underscores the thorny decisions that will have to be made over which Taliban-linked insurgents should win some sort of amnesty and play a role in the future of Afghanistan. Mr. Karzai has already petitioned the United Nations to lift sanctions against dozens of members of the Taliban, and has won conditional support from the Obama administration, so long as these people sever ties to Al Qaeda, forswear violence and accept the Afghan Constitution.
“If they are willing to accept the red lines and come in from the cold, there has to be a place for them,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said to reporters at a briefing on Tuesday.
From its base in the frontier area near the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani is suspected of running much of the insurgency around Kabul, the Afghan capital, and across eastern Afghanistan, carrying out car bombings and kidnappings, including spectacular attacks on American military installations. It is allied with Al Qaeda and with leaders of the Afghan Taliban branch under Mullah Muhammad Omar, now based near Quetta, Pakistan.
But the group’s real power may lie in its deep connections to Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, which analysts say sees the Haqqani network as a way to exercise its own leverage in Afghanistan. Pakistani leaders have recently offered to broker talks between Mr. Karzai and the network, officials said, arguing that it could be a viable future partner.
American officials remain extremely skeptical that the Haqqani network’s senior leaders could ever be reconciled with the Afghan government, although they say perhaps some midlevel commanders and foot soldiers could. Some officials in Washington and in the region expressed concerns that imposing sanctions on the entire network might drive away some fighters who might be persuaded to lay down their arms.
The idea of putting the Haqqani network on a blacklist was first made public on Tuesday by Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, who has just returned from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mr. Levin did not disclose any conversations he might have had with General Petraeus on the subject.
The Haqqani network is perhaps the most significant threat to stability in Afghanistan, said Mr. Levin, a powerful voice in Congress on military affairs as chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Mr. Levin also advocated increasing attacks against the organization by Pakistan and by the United States, using unmanned drone strikes.
“At the moment, the Haqqani network — and their fighters coming over the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan — is the greatest threat, at least external threat, to Afghanistan,” Mr. Levin said at a morning breakfast with correspondents.
“More needs to be done by Pakistan,” he added. “The Pakistanis have said they now realize, more than ever, that terrorism is a threat to them — not just the terrorists who attack them directly, but the terrorists who attack others from their territory.”
Placement on the State Department’s list would mainly impose legal limits on American citizens and companies, prohibiting trade with the Haqqani network or its leaders and requiring that banks freeze their assets in the United States.
But Mr. Levin noted that the law would also require the United States government to apply pressure on any nation harboring such a group, in this case Pakistan.
In Kabul, a spokesman for General Petraeus said he would not comment on any internal discussions. But in public General Petraeus has expressed alarm about the network and has talked about his desire to see the Pakistani military act more aggressively against the group’s stronghold in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan.
In testimony before Mr. Levin’s committee last month, General Petraeus said he viewed the network as a particular danger to the mission in Afghanistan.
He said he and other senior military officers had shared information with their counterparts in Pakistan that showed the Haqqani network “clearly commanded and controlled” recent attacks in Kabul and against the Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, which is controlled by the United States.
The focus on a political settlement is likely to intensify next week at a conference in Kabul, to be headed by Mr. Karzai and attended by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other officials. Mr. Karzai recently signed a decree authorizing the reintegration of lower-level Taliban fighters, and Mr. Holbrooke said the meeting would kick off that program, which will be financed by $180 million from Japan, Britain and other countries, as well as $100 million in Pentagon funds.
But Mr. Karzai is eager to extend an olive branch to higher-level figures as well. His government wants to remove up to 50 of the 137 Taliban names on the United Nations Security Council’s blacklist. Mr. Holbrooke, the special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, said the administration supported efforts to cull the list, but would approve names only on a case-by-case basis. Certain figures, like Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, remain out of bounds, he said.
For its part, the United States is trying to keep the emphasis on the low-level fighters, rather than the leadership. The planned American military campaign in Kandahar, officials said, could weaken the position of Taliban leaders, making them more amenable to a settlement.
Still, the United States backs “Afghan-led reconciliation,” Mr. Holbrooke said. And he said the administration was encouraged by recent meetings between Mr. Karzai and Pakistani leaders, which he said were slowly building trust between these often-suspicious neighbors.
“Nothing could be more important to the resolution of the war in Afghanistan,” he said, “than a common understanding between Afghanistan and Pakistan on what their strategic purpose is.”
David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
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Gurkha ordered back to UK after beheading dead Taliban fighter
By Christopher Leake
Last updated at 11:26 AM on 18th July 2010
A Gurkha soldier has been flown back to the UK after hacking the head off a dead Taliban commander with his ceremonial knife to prove the dead man’s identity.
The private, from 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles, was involved in a fierce firefight with insurgents in the Babaji area of central Helmand Province when the incident took place earlier this month.
His unit had been told that they were seeking a ‘high value target,’ a Taliban commander, and that they must prove they had killed the right man. The Gurkhas had intended to remove the Taliban leader’s body from the battlefield for identification purposes but they came under heavy fire as their tried to do so. Military sources said that in the heat of battle, the Gurkha took out his curved kukri knife and beheaded the dead insurgent.
He is understood to have removed the man’s head from the area, leaving the rest of his body on the battlefield. This is considered a gross insult to the Muslims of Afghanistan, who bury the entire body of their dead even if parts have to be retrieved. British soldiers often return missing body parts once a battle has ended so the dead can be buried in one piece.
A source said: ‘Removing the head in this way was totally inappropriate.’
Army sources said that the soldier, who is in his early 20s, initially told investigators that he unsheathed his kukri – the symbolic weapon of the Gurkhas – after running out of ammunition but later the Taliban fighter was mutilated so his identity could be verified through DNA tests.
The source said: ‘The soldier has been removed from duty and flown home. There is no sense of glory involved here, more a sense of shame. He should not have done what he did.’
The incident, which is being investigated by senior commanders, is hugely embarrassing to the British Army, which is trying to build bridges with local Afghan communities who have spent decades under *Taliban rule.
It comes just days after a rogue Afghan soldier murdered three British troops from the same Gurkha regiment.
If the Gurkha being investigated by the Army is found guilty of beheading the dead enemy soldier, he will have contravened the Geneva Conventions which dictate the rules of war. Soldiers are banned from demeaning their enemies. The Gurkha now faces disciplinary action and a possible court martial. If found guilty, he could be jailed. He is now confined to barracks at the Shorncliffe garrison, near Folkestone, Kent.
The incident happened as the Gurkha troop was advancing towards a hostile area before engaging the enemy in battle.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said: ‘In this case, it appears that the *soldier was not acting maliciously, but his actions were clearly ill-judged. The Gurkhas are a very fine regiment with a proud tradition of service in the British forces and have fought very bravely in Afghanistan. I have no doubt that this behaviour would be as strongly condemned by the other members of that regiment, as it would by all soldiers in the British forces.’
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: ‘We are aware of an incident and have informed the Afghan authorities. An investigation is underway and it would not be appropriate to comment further until this is concluded.’
The Ministry also revealed yesterday that four British servicemen had been killed in Afghanistan in 24 hours. An airman from the RAF Regiment died in a road accident near Camp Bastion in Helmand and a marine from 40 Commando Royal Marines was killed in an explosion in Sangin on Friday. A Royal Dragoon Guard died in a blast in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand Province yesterday. The fourth serviceman also died in an explosion. The British death toll in the Afghan campaign since 2001 is now 322.
Afghan troops trained by the British Army recently led a major operation into a Taliban stronghold. It was one of the first operations organised by the Afghan National Army.
Regiment’s proud symbol of valour
The iconic kukri knife used by the Gurkhas can be a weapon or a tool. It is the traditional utility knife of the Nepalese people, but is mainly known as a symbolic weapon for Gurkha regiments all over the world. The kukri signifies courage and valour on the battlefield and is sometimes worn by bridegrooms during their wedding ceremony. The kukri’s heavy blade enables the user to inflict deep wounds and to cut muscle and bone with one stroke. It can also be used in stealth operations to slash an enemy’s throat, killing him instantly and silently.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...n-fighter.html
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The Real Heart of the International Conference in Kabul
On Tuesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon co-chair a nearly unprecedented international conference in Kabul attended by 40 foreign ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Some 60 international dignitaries have arrived in the Afghan capital, where Karzai will attempt to show evidence of progress, address international concerns about rampant corruption and competent governance, and convince international donors that more aid should be channeled through and overseen directly by his government. (As it is, huge swaths of aid monies deliberately bypass his government due to concerns about corruption.) But at the end of the day, the conference is not about financial aid.
Financial aid matters because as rudimentary as it is, the Afghan government — particularly its security forces — cannot be fiscally supported and sustained by the war-ravaged and undeveloped Afghan economy. But donor countries are also unlikely to be surprised by Karzai’s claims of progress or comforted by his promises. For the most part, those countries made their decisions about giving before they arrived in Kabul. In any event, monetary donations are easier to make than troop contributions to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Most countries are more focused on reducing the latter, while the former allows them to appear to invest something in the Afghan mission.
“It is Afghanistan’s neighbors that will be the ones to watch most closely.”
This is not lost on Kabul, or the wider region. With the surge nearing full strength, the next year will be an incredibly important one for Washington and Kabul. But Karzai, his domestic competitors and his neighbors are looking beyond the surge to a world in which the foreign troop presence inexorably declines. Not only is it clear to everyone in and around Afghanistan that the withdrawal of foreign forces is nearing, but it is clear that the American strategy for that withdrawal is failing to achieve its objectives within the timetable the Americans have set for themselves.
The real heart of this conference is not how compelling Karzai’s message is to the West. It is about the maneuverings of Islamabad, New Delhi and Tehran, as well as Ankara, which is attempting to establish itself as a power broker in the conflict. Kabul must balance these powers — as well as the United States — in order to shape the post-NATO environment.
That environment has already begun to take shape, with a rapprochement between the Americans and the Pakistanis, as well as an emerging Afghan-Pakistani understanding — one that Turkey has played no small part in. All this comes at the expense of India, which until recently quietly established contacts and built its influence. But New Delhi now appears to be re-evaluating its strategy, while still seeking to ensure its own interests, namely that some sort of lid remains on Islamist extremism in Afghanistan. Iran is in the midst of all this. Though its foremost interests — and its greatest influence — are on its western flank in Iraq, Tehran also looks to ensure its interests in Afghanistan, and to use its influence there as leverage for a larger settlement with the Americans. Indeed, Iran’s foreign minister told Karzai on Monday that a regional approach was needed in Afghanistan.
Nothing will be solved Tuesday. Afghanistan’s challenges are difficult to overstate on the best of days, and are complicated by the confluence of a resurgent Taliban and a foreign power nearing the limit of its finite commitment to the country while attempting to re-establish balances of power to Afghanistan’s west and southeast. But as the Americans focus on withdrawing troops and re-establishing regional balances of power, it is Afghanistan’s neighbors — not fickle Western donors — who will be the ones to watch most closely.
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By JULIAN E. BARNES
WASHINGTON—U.S. Special Operations Forces have begun venturing out with Pakistani forces on aid projects, deepening the American role in the effort to defeat Islamist militants in Pakistani territory that has been off limits to U.S. ground troops.
The expansion of U.S. cooperation is significant given Pakistan's deep aversion to allowing foreign military forces on its territory. The Special Operations teams join the aid missions only when commanders determine there is relatively little security risk, a senior U.S. military official said, in an effort to avoid direct engagement that would call attention to U.S. participation.
The U.S. troops are allowed to defend themselves and return fire if attacked. But the official emphasized the joint missions aren't supposed to be combat operations, and the Americans often participate in civilian garb.
Pakistan has told the U.S. that troops need to keep a low profile. "Going out in the open, that has negative optics, that is something we have to work out," said a Pakistani official. "This whole exercise could be counterproductive if people see U.S. boots on the ground."
Because of Pakistan's sensitivities, the U.S. role has developed slowly. In June 2008, top U.S. military officials announced 30 American troops would begin a military training program in Pakistan, but it took four months for Pakistan to allow the program to begin.
The first U.S. Special Operations Forces were restricted to military classrooms and training bases. Pakistan has gradually allowed more trainers into the country and allowed the mission's scope to expand. Today, the U.S. has about 120 trainers in the country, and the program is set to expand again with new joint missions to oversee small-scale development projects aimed at winning over tribal leaders, according to officials familiar with the plan.
Such aid projects are a pillar of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, which the U.S. hopes to pass on to the Pakistanis through the training missions.
U.S. military officials say if U.S. forces are able to help projects such as repairing infrastructure, distributing seeds and providing generators or solar panels, they can build trust with the Pakistani military, and encourage them to accept more training in the field.
"You have to bring something to the dance," said the senior military official. "And the way to do it is to have cash ready to do everything from force protection to other things that will protect the population."
Congressional leaders last month approved $10 million in funding for the aid missions, which will focus reconstruction projects in poor tribal areas that are off-limits to foreign civilian aid workers.
The Pakistani government has warned the Pentagon that a more visible U.S. military presence could undermine the mission of pacifying the border region, which has provided a haven for militants staging attacks in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan.
The U.S. has already aroused local animosity with drone strikes targeting militants in the tribal areas, though the missile strikes have the tacit support of the Pakistani government and often aid the Pakistani army's campaign against the militants.
Providing money to U.S. troops to spend in communities they are trying to protect has been a tactic used for years to fight insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The move to accompany Pakistani forces in the field is even more significant, and repeats a pattern seen in the Philippines during the Bush administration, when Army Green Berets took a gradually more expansive role in Manila's fight against the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf in the southern islands of Mindanao.
There, the Green Berets started in a limited training role, and their initial deployment unleashed a political backlash against the Philippine president. But as the Philippine military began to improve their counterinsurgency skills, Special Operations Forces accompanied them on major offensives throughout the southern part of the archipelago.
In Pakistan, the U.S. military helps train both the regular military and the Frontier Corps, a force drawn from residents of the tribal regions but led by Pakistani Army officers.
The senior military official said the U.S. Special Operations Forces have developed a closer relationship with the Frontier Corps, and go out into the field more frequently with those units. "The Frontier Corps are more accepting partners," said the official.
For years the Frontier Corps was underfunded and struggled to provide basic equipment for its soldiers. A U.S. effort to help equip the force has made them more accepting of outside help.
Traveling with the Frontier Corps is dangerous. In February, three Army soldiers were killed in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province when a roadside bomb detonated near their convoy. The soldiers, assigned to train the Frontier Corps, were traveling out of uniform to the opening of a school that had been renovated with U.S. money.
The regular ular Pakistani military also operates in the tribal areas of Pakistan, but they are less willing to go on missions with U.S. forces off the base, in part because they believe appearing to accept U.S. help will make them look weak, the senior U.S. military official said. The Pakistani official said the military simply doesn't need foreign help.
During the past two years, Pakistan has stepped up military operations against the militant groups that operate in the tribal areas. Although Washington has praised the Pakistani offensives, Pentagon officials have said Pakistan's military needs help winning support among tribal elders. If successful, the joint missions and projects may help the Pakistani military retain control of areas in South Waziristan, the Swat valley and other border regions they have cleared of militants.
In Pakistan, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad will retain final approval for all projects, according to Defense officials. But congressional staffers briefed on the program said the intent is to have Pakistani military forces hand out any of the goods bought with the funding or pay any local workers hired.
"The goal is never to have a U.S. footprint on any of these efforts," said a congressional staffer.
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third post of the day:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvWEqwq3CrRvaQCmt21MfoYhjZJQD9H39D9G0
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I'm sure that gets a collective yawn from the liberal bedwetters wanting to hang the Gurkha.
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Afghanistan
Aside from the sporadic impact of a few artillery rockets in Kabul late July 19 and July 20, the one-day International Conference on Afghanistan, attended by more than 40 foreign ministers, appears to have gone smoothly — perhaps too smoothly. While commitments have been renewed and assurances have been given, there do not appear to have been any groundbreaking or unexpected shifts. Nevertheless, there are several developments worth noting:
The conference focused less on talk of the U.S. 2011 deadline to begin a drawdown and more on emphasizing that Afghanistan would take control of the domestic security situation, with Afghan security forces leading operations in all parts of the country by 2014. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the shift to Afghan control would happen slowly, based on “conditions, not calendars.”
Of the $14 billion in aid that flows into Afghanistan annually, the government in Kabul reportedly manages only about 20 percent. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has argued against the practice, in part applied by donors to ensure more control over how the money is spent and to sidestep concerns over corruption in the Afghan government. At the conference, Karzai obtained a pledge that Kabul will be allowed to manage some 50 percent of aid money within two years.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emphasized for the first time that while Washington was still moving toward putting the Haqqani network on its terrorist list, that the U.S. would not necessarily rule out Afghan efforts to reconcile with it — something Washington has long opposed.
(click here to enlarge image)
Ultimately, the real movement and significance of the conference is regional. The American shift on the Haqqanis and the signing of a transit agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan that Islamabad had long blocked are both signs that Washington and Islamabad have made significant progress in coordinating their Afghan policies. U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard C. Holbrooke acknowledged as much to reporters in Islamabad on July 18 when he spoke of a “dramatic acceleration” in cooperation between the two countries. There are even reports that the United States is now revising its strategy to embrace the idea of negotiating with senior members of the Taliban through third parties.
So as the American strategy shifts toward more regional accommodation and reliance on regional allies, and as foreign forces move closer to drawing down, the regional dynamics will become increasingly defining for Afghanistan. Indeed, Washington especially seems to be realizing that a real exit strategy cannot take place without regional understandings — particularly from Pakistan.
Community Police Initiative
In another shift, Afghan President Hamid Karzai on July 14 conceded to pressure from the commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry to the recruitment of as many as 10,000 personnel for service in a more comprehensive, nationwide community police initiative. Karzai did achieve concessions like the inclusion of the new personnel under the aegis of the Interior Ministry.
While this compromise will allow for the creation of a force that may be able to confront the Taliban in new ways, it also exacerbates the long-term risks of such an initiative. The community police will be linked to a system that has been ineffective at both supplying its own local police forces and managing issues of corruption and infiltration by the Taliban. The concessions also fail to address the issue that the underlying and inherent loyalty of these new community police is to their locality rather than the government in Kabul. This was one of Karzai’s main complaints about this initiative, although the new personnel are ostensibly not to be trained in “offensive” tactics.
It remains to be seen whether the compromise and implementation will have the hoped-for short-term tactical impact. The real question is whether those possible short-term gains will justify longer-term issues that are sure to arise with the establishment of such armed groups. For Washington, they may. For Kabul, the answer is far less certain.
Afghan Security Forces Violence
Two American civilian trainers and one Afghan soldier were reportedly killed July 20 near Mazar-e-Sharif by another Afghan soldier serving alongside them as a trainer. The event comes less than a week after the killing of three British soldiers by an Afghan soldier at a base in Helmand province. The week before that, on July 7, five Afghan soldiers were killed by friendly fire from a NATO helicopter.
Although there are inherent problems with indigenous forces being penetrated and compromised, as well as issues of mutual interference with a dispersed and indigenous force, this series of developments begins to stand out. This is not the first time Afghan soldiers or police have been killed in airstrikes, but the killings of foreign troops by uniformed Afghans only further complicates deep-seated issues of trust. While in neither case can such danger ever be completely eliminated, these developments come at a time when ISAF and indigenous forces must work more closely together. An increase in distrust could seriously impact operational practices and effectiveness.
Mullah Omar’s Guidance
NATO announced July 18 it had obtained a June communique from top Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Mohammed Omar allegedly issuing new orders to his Afghan commanders. In the guidance, Omar modifies the previous year’s guidance to avoid civilian casualties, calling on his commanders to capture or kill Afghan civilians working for foreign forces or the Afghan government — a small and specific subset of the population. It is not yet clear whether this claim is genuine. However, the June 9 public hanging of a seven-year-old boy and an alleged suicide bombing at a wedding the same day that killed some 40 people — both attributed to the Taliban, though the group claims the wedding attack was an ISAF strike — demonstrate that either the guidance has changed or some commanders are violating it.
(click here to enlarge image)
Omar’s alleged shift in guidance may seem to run counter to his earlier focus on not antagonizing the population — a sentiment readily understandable to foreign forces waging a counterinsurgency. But it may indicate that the Taliban has made far more progress in winning over a key portion of the population and can therefore act more aggressively against locals on the opposite end of the political spectrum — and from their perspective this would be a very selective and surgical targeting of a small subset of people. So the shift may reflect confidence in the strength of that local support; indeed, at least from the Taliban’s constituency, more aggressive and ruthless tactics may not only be acceptable but desired.
This is, after all, a struggle that is now in an extremely decisive phase. ISAF forces are already having some difficulties securing the population in key focus areas in Afghanistan’s southwest. Already Taliban night letters and other forms of intimidation have made the local population extremely hesitant to cooperate not only out of fear for their lives in the immediate future but also once foreign forces depart. So despite the ongoing struggle to convince Afghan civilians that the other side is responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths (a struggle the Taliban is not necessarily losing because it is better at getting its message out in a compelling way), an aggressive campaign by the Taliban against local civilians could erode the ISAF’s position and local support more than it costs the Taliban local supporters.
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We've long believed the U.S. government classifies too many documents as secret, and now we know for sure. How else to explain why Sunday's release of some 92,000 previously confidential documents reveals so little that we didn't already know about the war in Afghanistan? This document dump will only matter if it becomes an excuse for more of America's political class to turn against a war they once supported.
One news item we could find in the orchestrated rollout on WikiLeaks.org and three newspapers is that the Taliban have heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles, perhaps even Stingers of the sort we gave the Afghan rebels to fight the Soviets in the 1980s. But even if they do have Stingers, the U.S. continues to dominate the skies and few U.S. aircraft have been shot down.
Another, more important, disclosure is how closely Iran has been working with the Taliban, as well as with al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists. This makes logical sense, given Iran's support for terrorists in Iraq and its general desire to chase America from the region. But the evidence should discredit those who think Tehran can be made peaceable by diplomatic entreaties.
Among the many nonscoops in the documents, we learn that war is hell, especially for infantry, and that sometimes troops make mistakes; that drone aircraft sometimes crash; that a forward U.S. base near the Pakistan border was ill-positioned to defend against Taliban attacks and had to be abandoned; and that many Afghan officials are corrupt and that Afghan troops flee often under fire. Any newspaper reader knew as much.
Far from being the Pentagon Papers redux, the larger truth is how closely the ground-eye view in these documents reinforces what U.S. officials were long saying: that the war wasn't going well, the Taliban were making gains, and a new and invigorated strategy was needed to combat them. Both the Bush and Obama Administrations made the same diagnosis in recent years, neither one kept it secret, and this year Mr. Obama followed through with an increase in troops levels and a renewed counterinsurgency.
The most politically explosive documents concern the conflicting loyalties of Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. Nearly 200 reports allege that the Pakistani military intelligence arm is in cahoots with the Taliban, despite claiming to side with America. This is undoubtedly true but also no surprise.
The ISI helped the U.S. arm and organize the mujahideen against the Soviets, and it kept doing so to fill the Afghan power vacuum after America abandoned the region in the early 1990s. The reports released this week allege—often citing a single source or uncertain information—that the ISI helped train Afghan suicide bombers, plotted to poison beer slated for GIs, and schemed to assassinate President Hamid Karzai. It isn't clear how many of these plots were ever attempted, but there's no doubt that many Pakistanis doubt U.S. staying power, fear Indian influence in Afghanistan, and want to use the Taliban to shape events on their Western border.
Then again, we also know that Pakistan has shifted its behavior in a more pro-American direction in the last 14 months as the Taliban began to threaten Pakistan's own stability. Responding to a surge of terrorism against Pakistani targets, the Pakistani army has pushed Islamist insurgents from the Swat Valley and even South Waziristan. It has taken heavy casualties in the process. Islamabad now actively aids U.S. drone strikes against Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in the mountains along its Afghan border.
Pakistan can and should do more to pursue the terrorist enclaves along the border, as well as in Quetta and Karachi. The question is what's the best way to persuade their leaders to act. U.S.-Pakistan cooperation has been one of the Obama Administration's foreign policy successes, and it would be a tragedy if the leak of selective documents, often out of context, would now poison that cooperation.
Pakistan's military elites already see evidence of weak American will in President Obama's declared desire to start a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan next summer. While parts of the ISI are fighting on the wrong side, the U.S. needs to stay engaged with Islamabad both to bring more stability to Afghanistan and especially to destroy terrorist sanctuaries that remain a threat to the U.S. mainland.
That is why it is so disconcerting, if also predictable, to see the usual political suspects seize on the media hullabaloo to claim the Afghan effort is hopeless. The political left, which can't forget Vietnam, is comparing the WikiLeakers to Daniel Ellsberg and even the Tet offensive. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry, who pays close attention to the region and has led the fight for more U.S. aid to Pakistan, nonetheless declared that, "However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan."
As informed as he is, Mr. Kerry can't possibly have learned all that much from these documents. His statement is more worrisome as a signal of political panic, a desire to placate his party's growing opposition to President Obama's war effort. Yet this is precisely the time when cooler political heads should be putting the documents into context, explaining the importance of U.S. ties to Pakistan, and above all giving Generals David Petraeus and James Mattis the time they need to succeed in that crucial theater. We can't afford another liberal antiwar stampede.
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Lack Of Commitment???!!!!
They question our will when we have been trying to help them get on their feet for 10 years huh? I guess that some sort of demonstration of will mat become necessary? Something properly barbaric, like they treat each other. "This is the last chance for the Taliban and AlQueda remnants to join the modern world, from now on it is scorched earth mongol style." type demonstration of will? They have had 10 years to get their country stable, and prosperous. We have been helping to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, military coaching, etc. Their own troops run instead of fight..............
If they aren't willing to step up and start swinging for themselves after ten years of help, then why expect us to? ( A ten year old kid is pretty capable, he can dress, feed himself, keep track of allowance, self defend when a bully shows up......)
Mark the whole area as tribal, much like most of Africa, and walk away.......OH yeah! there are nukes involved. (*&&*%^&**& Europeon countries simply could not resist selling these folks the reactors to make the big bang in order to make a big profit.........
What a mess.
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Lack Of Commitment???!!!!
They have had 10 years to get their country stable, and prosperous. We have been helping to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, military coaching, etc. Their own troops run instead of fight..............
If they aren't willing to step up and start swinging for themselves after ten years of help, then why expect us to? ( A ten year old kid is pretty capable, he can dress, feed himself, keep track of allowance, self defend when a bully shows up......)
Mark the whole area as tribal, much like most of Africa, and walk away.......
What a mess.
I've gotta love your straightforward summary.
I think you are right; maybe it is time to "walk away". Americans are dying, we spend tens of billions of dollars, and for what?
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I am open to additional thoughts changing my mind, but at the moment I cannot see a good end here outside of outside the box thoughts such as those I recently posted. As best as I can tell Obama's psuedo-surge has ensured this.
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WikiLeaks and the Afghan War
July 27, 2010
By George Friedman
On Sunday, The New York Times and two other newspapers published summaries and excerpts of tens of thousands of documents leaked to a website known as WikiLeaks. The documents comprise a vast array of material concerning the war in Afghanistan. They range from tactical reports from small unit operations to broader strategic analyses of politico-military relations between the United States and Pakistan. It appears to be an extraordinary collection.
Related special topic page
The War in Afghanistan
Tactical intelligence on firefights is intermingled with reports on confrontations between senior U.S. and Pakistani officials in which lists of Pakistani operatives in Afghanistan are handed over to the Pakistanis. Reports on the use of surface-to-air missiles by militants in Afghanistan are intermingled with reports on the activities of former Pakistani intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, who reportedly continues to liaise with the Afghan Taliban in an informal capacity.
The WikiLeaks
At first glance, it is difficult to imagine a single database in which such a diverse range of intelligence was stored, or the existence of a single individual cleared to see such diverse intelligence stored across multiple databases and able to collect, collate and transmit the intelligence without detection. Intriguingly, all of what has been released so far has been not-so-sensitive material rated secret or below. The Times reports that Gul’s name appears all over the documents, yet very few documents have been released in the current batch, and it is very hard to imagine intelligence on Gul and his organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, being classified as only secret. So, this was either low-grade material hyped by the media, or there is material reviewed by the selected newspapers but not yet made public. Still, what was released and what the Times discussed is consistent with what most thought was happening in Afghanistan.
The obvious comparison is to the Pentagon Papers, commissioned by the Defense Department to gather lessons from the Vietnam War and leaked by Daniel Ellsberg to the Times during the Nixon administration. Many people worked on the Pentagon Papers, each of whom was focused on part of it and few of whom would have had access to all of it.
Ellsberg did not give the Times the supporting documentation; he gave it the finished product. By contrast, in the WikiLeaks case, someone managed to access a lot of information that would seem to have been contained in many different places. If this was an unauthorized leak, then it had to have involved a massive failure in security. Certainly, the culprit should be known by now and his arrest should have been announced. And certainly, the gathering of such diverse material in one place accessible to one or even a few people who could move it without detection is odd.
Like the Pentagon Papers, the WikiLeaks (as I will call them) elicited a great deal of feigned surprise, not real surprise. Apart from the charge that the Johnson administration contrived the Gulf of Tonkin incident, much of what the Pentagon Papers contained was generally known. Most striking about the Pentagon Papers was not how much surprising material they contained, but how little. Certainly, they contradicted the official line on the war, but there were few, including supporters of the war, who were buying the official line anyway.
In the case of the WikiLeaks, what is revealed also is not far from what most people believed, although they provide enormous detail. Nor is it that far from what government and military officials are saying about the war. No one is saying the war is going well, though some say that given time it might go better.
The view of the Taliban as a capable fighting force is, of course, widespread. If they weren’t a capable fighting force, then the United States would not be having so much trouble defeating them. The WikiLeaks seem to contain two strategically significant claims, however. The first is that the Taliban is a more sophisticated fighting force than has been generally believed. An example is the claim that Taliban fighters have used man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) against U.S. aircraft. This claim matters in a number of ways. First, it indicates that the Taliban are using technologies similar to those used against the Soviets. Second, it raises the question of where the Taliban are getting them — they certainly don’t manufacture MANPADS themselves.
If they have obtained advanced technologies, this would have significance on the battlefield. For example, if reasonably modern MANPADS were to be deployed in numbers, the use of American airpower would either need to be further constrained or higher attrition rates accepted. Thus far, only first- and second-generation MANPADS without Infrared Counter-Countermeasures (which are more dangerous) appear to have been encountered, and not with decisive or prohibitive effectiveness. But in any event, this doesn’t change the fundamental character of the war.
Supply Lines and Sanctuaries
What it does raise is the question of supply lines and sanctuaries. The most important charge contained in the leaks is about Pakistan. The WikiLeaks contain documents that charge that the Pakistanis are providing both supplies and sanctuary to Taliban fighters while objecting to American forces entering Pakistan to clean out the sanctuaries and are unwilling or unable to carry out that operation by themselves (as they have continued to do in North Waziristan).
Just as important, the documents charge that the ISI has continued to maintain liaison and support for the Taliban in spite of claims by the Pakistani government that pro-Taliban officers had been cleaned out of the ISI years ago. The document charges that Gul, the director-general of the ISI from 1987 to 1989, still operates in Pakistan, informally serving the ISI and helping give the ISI plausible deniability.
Though startling, the charge that Islamabad is protecting and sustaining forces fighting and killing Americans is not a new one. When the United States halted operations in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Soviets in 1989, U.S. policy was to turn over operations in Afghanistan to Pakistan. U.S. strategy was to use Islamist militants to fight the Soviets and to use Pakistani liaisons through the ISI to supply and coordinate with them. When the Soviets and Americans left Afghanistan, the ISI struggled to install a government composed of its allies until the Taliban took over Kabul in 1996. The ISI’s relationship with the Taliban — which in many ways are the heirs to the anti-Soviet mujahideen — is widely known. In my book, “America’s Secret War,” I discussed both this issue and the role of Gul. These documents claim that this relationship remains intact. Apart from Pakistani denials, U.S. officials and military officers frequently made this charge off the record, and on the record occasionally. The leaks on this score are interesting, but they will shock only those who didn’t pay attention or who want to be shocked.
Let’s step back and consider the conflict dispassionately. The United States forced the Taliban from power. It never defeated the Taliban nor did it make a serious effort to do so, as that would require massive resources the United States doesn’t have. Afghanistan is a secondary issue for the United States, especially since al Qaeda has established bases in a number of other countries, particularly Pakistan, making the occupation of Afghanistan irrelevant to fighting al Qaeda.
For Pakistan, however, Afghanistan is an area of fundamental strategic interest. The region’s main ethnic group, the Pashtun, stretch across the Afghan-Pakistani border. Moreover, were a hostile force present in Afghanistan, as one was during the Soviet occupation, Pakistan would face threats in the west as well as the challenge posed by India in the east. For Pakistan, an Afghanistan under Pakistani influence or at least a benign Afghanistan is a matter of overriding strategic importance.
(click here to enlarge image)
It is therefore irrational to expect the Pakistanis to halt collaboration with the force that they expect to be a major part of the government of Afghanistan when the United States leaves. The Pakistanis never expected the United States to maintain a presence in Afghanistan permanently. They understood that Afghanistan was a means toward an end, and not an end in itself. They understood this under George W. Bush. They understand it even more clearly under Barack Obama, who made withdrawal a policy goal.
Given that they don’t expect the Taliban to be defeated, and given that they are not interested in chaos in Afghanistan, it follows that they will maintain close relations with and support for the Taliban. Given that the United States is powerful and is Pakistan’s only lever against India, the Pakistanis will not make this their public policy, however. The United States has thus created a situation in which the only rational policy for Pakistan is two-tiered, consisting of overt opposition to the Taliban and covert support for the Taliban.
This is duplicitous only if you close your eyes to the Pakistani reality, which the Americans never did. There was ample evidence, as the WikiLeaks show, of covert ISI ties to the Taliban. The Americans knew they couldn’t break those ties. They settled for what support Pakistan could give them while constantly pressing them harder and harder until genuine fears in Washington emerged that Pakistan could destabilize altogether. Since a stable Pakistan is more important to the United States than a victory in Afghanistan — which it wasn’t going to get anyway — the United States released pressure and increased aid. If Pakistan collapsed, then India would be the sole regional power, not something the United States wants.
The WikiLeaks seem to show that like sausage-making, one should never look too closely at how wars are fought, particularly coalition warfare. Even the strongest alliances, such as that between the United States and the United Kingdom in World War II, are fraught with deceit and dissension. London was fighting to save its empire, an end Washington was hostile to; much intrigue ensued. The U.S.-Pakistani alliance is not nearly as trusting. The United States is fighting to deny al Qaeda a base in Afghanistan while Pakistan is fighting to secure its western frontier and its internal stability. These are very different ends that have very different levels of urgency.
The WikiLeaks portray a war in which the United States has a vastly insufficient force on the ground that is fighting a capable and dedicated enemy who isn’t going anywhere. The Taliban know that they win just by not being defeated, and they know that they won’t be defeated. The Americans are leaving, meaning the Taliban need only wait and prepare.
The Pakistanis also know that the Americans are leaving and that the Taliban or a coalition including the Taliban will be in charge of Afghanistan when the Americans leave. They will make certain that they maintain good relations with the Taliban. They will deny that they are doing this because they want no impediments to a good relationship with the United States before or after it leaves Afghanistan. They need a patron to secure their interests against India. Since the United States wants neither an India outside a balance of power nor China taking the role of Pakistan’s patron, it follows that the risk the United States will bear grudges is small. And given that, the Pakistanis can live with Washington knowing that one Pakistani hand is helping the Americans while another helps the Taliban. Power, interest and reality define the relations between nations, and different factions inside nations frequently have different agendas and work against each other.
The WikiLeaks, from what we have seen so far, detail power, interest and reality as we have known it. They do not reveal a new reality. Much will be made about the shocking truth that has been shown, which, as mentioned above, shocks only those who wish to be shocked. The Afghan war is about an insufficient American and allied force fighting a capable enemy on its home ground and a Pakistan positioning itself for the inevitable outcome. The WikiLeaks contain all the details.
We are left with the mystery of who compiled all of these documents and who had access to them with enough time and facilities to transmit them to the outside world in a blatant and sustained breach of protocol. The image we have is of an unidentified individual or small group working to get a “shocking truth” out to the public, only the truth is not shocking — it is what was known all along in excruciating detail. Who would want to detail a truth that is already known, with access to all this documentation and the ability to transmit it unimpeded? Whoever it proves to have been has just made the most powerful case yet for withdrawal from Afghanistan sooner rather than later.
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"Our man (formerly in) Iraq" flags this article for our attention:
Some cogent points made in a Wash Post article today in re Kandahar. The whole article is worth reading:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080205235.html
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In Baghdad, the use of checkpoints, identification cards and walled-off communities helped to reduce violence because there were two feuding factions, riven by sect. Because the city had been carved into a collection of separate Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, U.S. forces were able to place themselves along the borders. Both sides tolerated the tactics to a degree because they came to believe U.S. troops would protect them from their rivals.
The conflict in Kandahar is far murkier. There are no differences in religion or ethnicity: Nearly everyone here is a Sunni Pashtun. There are divisions among tribes and clans, but they are not a reliable indicator of support for the Taliban. And many residents regard U.S. forces as the cause of the growing instability, rather than the solution to it.
...
"Since they put the cement walls up, security is better, but nobody is coming to our shops," an elderly man named Rafiullah told Hodges as he visited his small stall filled with sundries next to a checkpoint on the western border.
...
Perhaps the most important reason population control worked to the extent it did in Baghdad was because each side believed the other posed an existential threat, and both turned to the United States for security. In many parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan, the population has yet to seek protection.
Many Kandaharis regard the Taliban as wayward brothers and cousins -- fellow Pashtuns with whom they can negotiate and one day reconcile. They also worry about siding with their government because they fear Taliban retribution, both now and when U.S. troop reductions begin next summer.
...
But the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy depends on persuading Pashtuns to get off the fence and cast their lot with their government. The U.S. military and civilian agencies are trying to help the government win over the public by delivering services to the population that the Taliban does not offer, including education, health care, agricultural assistance and justice based on the rule of law.
That requires capable civil servants willing to work in an unstable environment -- and that's where the strategy is hitting its most significant roadblock.
A recent effort by Karzai's local-governance directorate to fill 300 civil service jobs in Kandahar and the surrounding district turned up four qualified applicants, even after the agency dropped its application standards to remove a high school diploma, according to several U.S. officials.
The main impediment is security. Afghans don't want to work for their government or U.S. development contractors in such an unsafe environment.
...
In the Panjwai district to the west of Kandahar, U.S. officials say, the district governor and the police chief recently got into a fight. The chief hit the governor with a teakettle and the governor smashed a teacup on the chief's head, the confrontation culminating in a shootout between their guards.
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Yep, feral humans are a PITA. They do not act from a sense of logic, are willing to TAKE by force whatever they want, and generally have no sense of respect for anyone- not even themselves. I guess these guys need to be left alone to move up the ladder of evolution on their own as best they can. When you get the stupidity that these government officials are acting out, there is not "material" to get stitches to take .......
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3 page editorial basically favoring the war and stating that we have a long way to go. My take on their take: There is currently a Presidential promise in place to end our commitment in less than one year. If kept that means all we sacrificed so far and for the next year will be lost. Gen. Petraeus seems to have the job of explaining to everyone sensible that we will stay longer. The NY Times apparently has taken the assignment of explaining it to the liberal elites, the academics, the arts crowd and the kooks that make up the rest of the (Obama) ruling coalition. The President will follow later with some fireside chat and explain to us what we already knew from these surrogates. As the NY Times puts it: "Americans need regular, straight talk from President Obama about what is happening in Afghanistan, for good and ill, and the plan going forward." I'm sure it is coming - as soon as his pollsters and political advisers tell him it is time to do that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/opinion/13fri1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
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I saw a piece that the Taliban executed a couple for eloping , , ,
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Newspaper wonders if we cause the floods , , ,
http://www.daily.pk/is-the-cia-playing-the-haarp-in-pakistan-19785/
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The muslim world is up to it's neck in crazy conspiracy theories.
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**Wow, it's almost like he's trying to lose this war....**
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is focused on meeting its July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, but it has no political strategy to help stabilize the country, current and former U.S. officials and other experts are warning.
The failure to articulate what a post-American Afghanistan should look like and devise a political path for achieving it is a major obstacle to success for the U.S. military-led counter-insurgency campaign that's underway, these officials and experts said.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/16/96019/experts-us-has-no-long-term-political.html#ixzz0rAPDYoRF
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/08/24/marine-corps-commandant-obamas-withdrawal-timetable-is-giving-sustenance-to-the-taliban/
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http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/sep/04/insurgents-attack-2-bases-in-east-afghanistan/
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12 REASONS WHY A TALIBAN VICTORY IS INEVITABLE:
by Dr. Fadl
1. A successful jihad must be accompanied by a religious reform movement. The religious motivation of the Taliban (as opposed to tribal loyalties or the pursuit of wealth) meets this criterion.
2.The Taliban cause is just, as it seeks to repel foreign occupation. Dr. Fadl points to the examples of the American Revolution, French resistance to Vichy and Nazi rule and the anti-Japanese resistance movements in Asia during World War Two.
3. Cross-border tribal bonds with Pakistani Pashtun tribesmen are vital to the jihad's success; "Loyalty of the Pashtun in Pakistan to the Pashtun in Afghanistan is stronger than their loyalty to their government in Islamabad."
4. Jihad has popular support from the people of Afghanistan, who provide fighters with support, shelter and intelligence.
5. The nature of the terrain in Afghanistan and the inaccessibility of Taliban refugees make it eminently suitable for guerrilla warfare; "He who fights geography is a loser."
6. The backwardness of Afghanistan favors the success of jihad. The Russian experience proved that even a scorched-earth policy has little effect on people who are tolerant, patient and have little to lose in the first place. There is little in the way of cultural establishments to be destroyed -- Afghanistan's monuments are its mountains and "even atomic bombs do not affect them."
7. As the battlefield widens beyond the Taliban strongholds in the south, occupation forces must face increasing financial and personnel losses.
8. Both time and the capacity to endure losses are on the side of the Taliban, who "do not have a ceiling to their losses, especially with regards to lives..."
9. Suicide operations make up for the shortage of modern weapons.
10. After three decades of nearly continuous warfare, Taliban fighters and leaders have the necessary experience to prevail against the occupation.
11. History is also on the Taliban's side. Despite being world powers, both the British Empire and the Soviet Union failed to conquer Afghanistan.
12. Pakistan's support of the Taliban provides the necessary third-party refuge and supplies to any successful guerrilla struggle.
Dr. Fadl wrote the 1988 jihadi manual The Master in Making Preparation (for jihad), and a reexamination of al-Qaeda's global jihad called Rationalizing the Jihad Action in Egypt and the World. The latter he wrote after being sentenced to life imprisonment after 9/11 by an Egyptian court. He was a colleague of Ayman al-Zawahiri and his new book entitled Future of the War between America and the Taliban, is being released in excerpts by the pan-Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat.
From a brief put out by the Jamstown Foundation, I consider them a valuable resource: www.jamestown.org/programs/gta/aboutusgta/
P.C.
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Woof,
I would like to discard Dr. Fadl's 12 points as being overly optimistic but in reading this, I have to concede that there is something to what he said. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39027654/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia
P.C.
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Well certainly we have no chance with the currently enunciated strategy.
I too have made the point about Pashtunistan in my offering of some outside the box strategy. Although I admit to the vanity of thinking my ideas rather clever, no one else in enunciating anything that I respect and so amongst the currently offered choices my vote is for "none of the above."
We need to remember that people cheered the overthrow of the Taliban and appreciate that maybe they do terrorize those who know we are leaving.
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I liked your solution too, but I suspect that there is no real material there for traction.......too many vested interests willing to pursue their own agenda over what could be a solution.
In my darker moments I get the simple old school "tribal Warfare Paradigm" wipe out as many people as possible in the threatening tribe, and hell with opinion/politics.
As it is I suspect we will be back in the area every 20-30 years cutting weeds, unless China begins to take over the job.
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Ideally we can get China directed towards the 'Stans rather than the Pacific as it finds an outlet for it's excess male population.
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Why would they be motivated to do that?
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Well, the Chinese have been killing/keeping their boot on muslim populations within their borders for a long time. A long border with various 'Stans makes a Chinese city even more vulnerable to ugly things like a loose nuke. It's much easier to use land based transportation rather than sealift to project military power. Translate "Monroe Doctrine" into Mandarin, as I'm sure Beijing feels that way about it's immediate surroundings. A shrinking America will leave a vacuum of power that will require filling by someone and China needs natural resources from that part of the world.
Just a few off the top of my head....
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The "trillion of dollars in minerals" recently outed on the internet, and in Popular Mechanics are an incentive as well. India and China would have an interest in that........
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Take a look at the topography of the narrow strip of China through which they would have to build a road sufficient to support that level of economic endeavor. Then add in the dangers of operating in Afganistan. The expense in money and the military effort IMHO are quite unappealing, even for the Chinese.
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Expectations and Reality in Afghanistan
Afghan officials told Reuters on Tuesday that President Hamid Karzai’s regime had frozen the assets of leading shareholders and borrowers at the country’s top bank. These include Kabul Bank’s former chairman, Sher Khan Farnood, and chief executive officer, Khalilullah Frozi — each of whom owns a 28 percent stake in the bank. Both reportedly resigned their positions last week, which apparently triggered the run on the financial institution because of fears that the bank was collapsing in the wake of illegal withdrawals by some of its owners. Karzai’s brother, Mahmood, is the third-largest shareholder, with a 7 percent stake, and First Vice President Mohammad Qasim Fahim’s brother, Mohammad Haseen, also has interests in Kabul Bank.
That Afghanistan’s largest private bank is in trouble is not as significant as the Western media coverage of the issue. The Western press is depicting it as a major crisis, with some saying it is a larger problem than the rapidly intensifying Taliban insurgency. This view does not take into account that modern financial institutions in a country like Afghanistan cannot be treated as they are in other countries and the West.
“There is an assumption that Afghanistan’s problems can be solved by imposing a Western-style political economy on the country, which is why there is a tendency to gauge progress or the lack thereof in Western terms.”
Most Afghans who live beyond the few urban enclaves in the country do not rely on these institutions in their day-to-day business. In other words, Afghanistan’s financial world has nowhere near as far to fall as the West’s, so even its utter collapse — not just a crisis of confidence in one bank — would not have the same geopolitical magnitude. Thus, the effects of the collapse are not as important as we are led to believe, especially when compared to Afghanistan’s more fundamental problems of insecurity.
This is not to suggest that Western efforts in Afghanistan do not depend on aid and development. But after nearly nine years and tens of billions of dollars of Western aid, Afghanistan has not shown progress in terms of becoming a functional economy and the primordial goal of security has become increasing elusive. More importantly, given the plethora of reports on corruption and graft in the country incessantly produced in the Western public domain, it is only to be expected that Afghanistan’s political elite will skim more than a little off the top of the coffers. In a country defined by the lack of rule of law where tribal, ethnic, and regional warlords reign supreme, graft is only natural. It is not necessary to control corruption to achieve good governance. Indeed, in most countries, control over corruption is the outcome of the maturing of a political system that evolves from a consensus among its stakeholders.
In any case, that the potential collapse of Kabul Bank has created so much anxiety in the West points to a deeper problem — one directly related to the failures of Western strategy for the country. There is an assumption that Afghanistan’s problems can be solved by imposing a Western-style political economy on the country, which is why there is a tendency to gauge progress or the lack thereof in Western terms. Such views are based on an utter disregard for the simple reality that Afghanistan, which has not existed as a nation — let alone a state — for more than three decades, does not operate by the same rules as do most other countries. This much should be obvious from the fact that the U.S.-led West will not be turning Afghanistan into anything resembling a modern Western-style state anytime soon — and definitely not within the narrow window the Obama administration has given itself.
And herein lies the strategic problem. The United States wants to exit the country militarily as soon as possible, which means it does not have the luxury of time to bring Afghanistan into the 21st century. This would explain the story in the Washington Post from over the weekend that — contrary to the political rhetoric condemning corruption and promising to address it — reported that the U.S. military leadership in country is in the process of assuming a more pragmatic attitude toward corruption. The United States appears to be coming to terms with the reality that graft is a way of life in Afghanistan and needs to be tolerated to the degree that allows Washington to work with local leaders (who are unlikely to be clean) in attempting to undermine the momentum of the Taliban insurgency.
At this stage it is not clear that such a strategy would produce the desired results. But Washington has no other choice. Because what is very clear is that Afghanistan does not even compare to Iraq where, despite the massive challenges that remain, the United States was able to get the various factions to at least agree to a political system.
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Basically, for example, the Bank of Denver collapsing in 1910 would not affect many people outside of Denver.......... Most third world countries are living at exactly that level. Outside the cities there is very little- no electricity, sewer, garbage collection. Think instead of a house lit by kerosene lamps, supplied water by a well, an outhouse out back, and a trash/burn/compost pile.
Their banks are likely to be equally isolated and compartmented.
You have to think of each Valley as a separate tribe/ country and win each over. While keeping the "advanced wild west" conditions in mind (Wyatt Earp did not pack a satellite phone and solar charger....)
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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KH27Ad02.html
Chinese troops offer an Afghan solution
By Francesco Sisci
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/04/troops-kashmir-alarm-india-pakistan
The claim that more than 7,000 Chinese troops have been handed "de facto control" of Gilgit-Baltistan, a northern part of Kashmir, by Islamabad, has set alarm bells ringing in Delhi. India – which, like its nuclear-armed rival Pakistan, claims the entire state – has long been worried that the People's Liberation Army was working on roads and railway projects in the Karakoram mountains.
What is true is that China plans a massive highway linking western China to the port it is building at Gwadar, Pakistan, on the shore of the Arabian Sea. The benefits are obvious: the journey time from factory gate in, say, China's wild west, to container ships bound for the Gulf will be cut from weeks to a few days. Eventually it may even become a key energy supply route.
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I did not see this coming. Very interesting GM.
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Only a matter of time. Afpakia is really just a smaller bit of a bigger picture?
China has a vastly improved economy, it would follow that it would have the surplus to start thinking of making "investments" with in the form of extending influence, and acquireing resource providers. That could mean state backed Mining/Mineral companies helping develop a country like Aramco. (ChiMetals/ Afpakia Metals?) Extending the influence by putting troops in disputed areas is also a good method. China is also building an aircraft carrier, It is probably going to be spending a lot of time where? I would guess Indian Ocean and China Sea.
China is going thru an awakening much like America during the 40-50's. Think it thru a bit............. China is also going to be the first country coming to its own after being influenced by Europeon Imperialism in the pre WW1 era too. What considerations does that bring to the table?
The China Sea and Indian oceans could become China's "Great Lakes", India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Indonesia, Singapore......... are all highly linked to that basin.
I just hope we can extract ourselves from the "anchors" in that area, and are strong enough to help the Aussies when the time comes?
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Woof,
If that evil Bush and Cheney don't get things lined out over there.... oh I forgot Bush and Cheney don't have anything to do with this anymore. Well, what's fair is fair; Oh that evil Obama.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39133494/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia
P.C.
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Woof,
Record levels of US airstrikes hit Afghan militants.
www.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_pakistan
P.C.
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**Wow, it's almost like he's trying to lose this war....**
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is focused on meeting its July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, but it has no political strategy to help stabilize the country, current and former U.S. officials and other experts are warning.
The failure to articulate what a post-American Afghanistan should look like and devise a political path for achieving it is a major obstacle to success for the U.S. military-led counter-insurgency campaign that's underway, these officials and experts said.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/16/96019/experts-us-has-no-long-term-political.html#ixzz0rAPDYoRF
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelGerson/2010/09/24/the_reluctant_warrior/page/full/
What comes across is a president deeply skeptical about the Afghan War, suspicious of the advice of military leaders and obsessed with finding exits and setting withdrawal deadlines. To a press or political aide in the administration, this must seem like the public relations sweet spot: Since Americans are conflicted about the Afghan War, won't they be reassured to know that the commander in chief is conflicted as well?
But a president has a number of audiences, including American troops, the allies who fight at our side, and enemies who constantly take the measure of our resolve. None are likely to be impressed by America's reluctant warrior.
The craziness of the process is not irrelevant. Future historians will study the Afghan policy review as a warning, not as a model. Obama's ambivalence has created a national security team in which arguments fester instead of ripen. The process revealed and widened divisions between civilian and military leaders, within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, between the National Security Council and the Department of Defense, and between American and Afghan officials. How can America's ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, possibly continue in his job, having accused President Hamid Karzai of being on and off his depression meds?
Obama eventually imposed the broad outlines of an outcome. But the assent he demanded did not create agreement or consensus. There is no evidence that past arguments -- particularly concerning the hardness of the July 2011 withdrawal deadline -- have ended.
The process was not only chaotic but highly politicized, with national security adviser James Jones criticizing the role of the "campaign set," which he also dubbed the "Politburo" and the "mafia." Obama himself tied the outcome of the policy review to political considerations. "I can't lose the whole Democratic Party," he reportedly told Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Cynics may regard this as typical. Actually, it is remarkable. It is the most basic duty of a commander in chief to pursue the national interest above any other interest. The introduction of partisan considerations into strategic decisions merits a special contempt.
The largest problem is the president's own ambivalence. "This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as saying. During his campaign for president, Afghanistan was the good war, the war of necessity, the war that had been ignored but must be won. As president, Obama's overriding goal is retreat. "Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint," Woodward quotes Obama. There can be no "wiggle room."
This attitude led to the president's decisive intervention -- a six-page memo designed to impose time and resource limitations on a reluctant military. Generals, of course, are not always right, as President George W. Bush discovered in the early years of the Iraq War. But are we supposed to be reassured that a president, of no proven military judgment, driven at least partially by political calculations, imposed a split-the-difference approach, only loosely related to actual need or analysis? A temporary increase of 30,000 troops coupled with a withdrawal deadline, it now seems, was an arbitrary compromise, not a fully developed military strategy. The armed forces were told to salute and make do. No wonder an Obama adviser complained to Woodward that the strategic review did not "add up" to the president's eventual policy.
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Not all of this makes sense to me (e.g. the comment on India) but George Friedman is no fool. What do we make of this?
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Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan
September 28, 2010
By George Friedman
Bob Woodward has released another book, this one on the debate over Afghanistan strategy in the Obama administration. As all his books do, the book has riveted Washington. It reveals that intense debate occurred over what course to take, that the president sought alternative strategies and that compromises were reached. But while knowing the details of these things is interesting, what would have been shocking is if they hadn’t taken place.
It is interesting to reflect on the institutional inevitability of these disagreements. The military is involved in a war. It is institutionally and emotionally committed to victory in the theater of combat. It will demand all available resources for executing the war under way. For a soldier who has bled in that war, questioning the importance of the war is obscene. A war must be fought relentlessly and with all available means.
But while the military’s top generals and senior civilian leadership are responsible for providing the president with sound, clearheaded advice on all military matters including the highest levels of grand strategy, they are ultimately responsible for the pursuit of military objectives to which the commander-in-chief directs them. Generals must think about how to win the war they are fighting. Presidents must think about whether the war is worth fighting. The president is responsible for America’s global posture. He must consider what an unlimited commitment to a particular conflict might mean in other regions of the world where forces would be unavailable.
A president must take a more dispassionate view than his generals. He must calculate not only whether victory is possible but also the value of the victory relative to the cost. Given the nature of the war in Afghanistan, U.S. President Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus — first the U.S. Central Command chief and now the top commander in Afghanistan — had to view it differently. This is unavoidable. This is natural. And only one of the two is ultimately in charge.
The Nature of Guerrilla Warfare
In thinking about Afghanistan, it is essential that we begin by thinking about the nature of guerrilla warfare against an occupying force. The guerrilla lives in the country. He isn’t going anywhere else, as he has nowhere to go. By contrast, the foreigner has a place to which he can return. This is the core weakness of the occupier and the strength of the guerrilla. The former can leave and in all likelihood, his nation will survive. The guerrilla can’t. And having alternatives undermines the foreigner’s will to fight regardless of the importance of the war to him.
The strategy of the guerrilla is to make the option to withdraw more attractive. In order to do this, his strategic goal is simply to survive and fight on whatever level he can. His patience is built into who he is and what he is fighting for. The occupier’s patience is calculated against the cost of the occupation and its opportunity costs, thus, while troops are committed in this country, what is happening elsewhere?
Tactically, the guerrilla survives by being elusive. He disperses in small groups. He operates in hostile terrain. He denies the enemy intelligence on his location and capabilities. He forms political alliances with civilians who provide him supplies and intelligence on the occupation forces and misleads the occupiers about his own location. The guerrilla uses this intelligence network to decline combat on the enemy’s terms and to strike the enemy when he is least prepared. The guerrilla’s goal is not to seize and hold ground but to survive, evade and strike, imposing casualties on the occupier. Above all, the guerrilla must never form a center of gravity that, if struck, would lead to his defeat. He thus actively avoids anything that could be construed as a decisive contact.
The occupation force is normally a more conventional army. Its strength is superior firepower, resources and organization. If it knows where the guerrilla is and can strike before the guerrilla can disperse, the occupying force will defeat the guerrilla. The occupier’s problems are that his intelligence is normally inferior to that of the guerrillas; the guerrillas rarely mass in ways that permit decisive combat and normally can disperse faster than the occupier can pinpoint and deploy forces against them; and the guerrillas’ superior tactical capabilities allow them to impose a constant low rate of casualties on the occupier. Indeed, the massive amount of resources the occupier requires and the inflexibility of a military institution not solely committed to the particular theater of operations can actually work against the occupier by creating logistical vulnerabilities susceptible to guerrilla attacks and difficulty adapting at a rate sufficient to keep pace with the guerrilla. The occupation force will always win engagements, but that is never the measure of victory. If the guerrillas operate by doctrine, defeats in unplanned engagements will not undermine their basic goal of survival. While the occupier is not winning decisively, even while suffering only some casualties, he is losing. While the guerrilla is not losing decisively, even if suffering significant casualties, he is winning. Since the guerrilla is not going anywhere, he can afford far higher casualties than the occupier, who ultimately has the alternative of withdrawal.
The asymmetry of this warfare favors the guerrilla. This is particularly true when the strategic value of the war to the occupier is ambiguous, where the occupier does not possess sufficient force and patience to systematically overwhelm the guerrillas, and where either political or military constraints prevent operations against sanctuaries. This is a truth as relevant to David’s insurgency against the Philistines as it is to the U.S. experience in Vietnam or the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
There has long been a myth about the unwillingness of Americans to absorb casualties for very long in guerrilla wars. In reality, the United States fought in Vietnam for at least seven years (depending on when you count the start and stop) and has now fought in Afghanistan for nine years. The idea that Americans can’t endure the long war has no empirical basis. What the United States has difficulty with — along with imperial and colonial powers before it — is a war in which the ability to impose one’s will on the enemy through force of arms is lacking and when it is not clear that the failure of previous years to win the war will be solved in the years ahead.
Far more relevant than casualties to whether Americans continue a war is the question of the conflict’s strategic importance, for which the president is ultimately responsible. This divides into several parts. This first is whether the United States has the ability with available force to achieve its political goals through prosecuting the war (since all war is fought for some political goal, from regime change to policy shift) and whether the force the United States is willing to dedicate suffices to achieve these goals. To address this question in Afghanistan, we have to focus on the political goal.
The Evolution of the U.S. Political Goal in Afghanistan
Washington’s primary goal at the initiation of the conflict was to destroy or disrupt al Qaeda in Afghanistan to protect the U.S. homeland from follow-on attacks to 9/11. But if Afghanistan were completely pacified, the threat of Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism would remain at issue because it is no longer just an issue of a single organization — al Qaeda — but a series of fragmented groups conducting operations in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, North Africa, Somalia and elsewhere.
Today, al Qaeda is simply one manifestation of the threat of this transnational jihadist phenomenon. It is important to stop and consider al Qaeda — and the transnational jihadist phenomenon in general — in terms of guerrillas, and to think of the phenomenon as a guerrilla force in its own right operating by the very same rules on a global basis. Thus, where the Taliban apply guerrilla principles to Afghanistan, today’s transnational jihadist applies them to the Islamic world and beyond. The transnational jihadists are not leaving and are not giving up. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, they will decline combat against larger American forces and strike vulnerable targets when they can.
There are certainly more players and more complexity to the global phenomenon than in a localized insurgency. Many governments across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia have no interest in seeing these movements set up shop and stir up unrest in their territory. And al Qaeda’s devolution has seen frustrations as well as successes as it spreads. But the underlying principles of guerrilla warfare remain at issue. Whenever the Americans concentrate force in one area, al Qaeda disengages, disperses and regroups elsewhere and, perhaps more important, the ideology that underpins the phenomenon continues to exist. The threat will undoubtedly continue to evolve and face challenges, but in the end, it will continue to exist along the lines of the guerrilla acting against the United States.
There is another important way in which the global guerrilla analogy is apt. STRATFOR has long held that Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism does not represent a strategic, existential threat to the United States. While acts of transnational terrorism target civilians, they are not attacks — have not been and are not evolving into attacks — that endanger the territorial integrity of the United States or the way of life of the American people. They are dangerous and must be defended against, but transnational terrorism is and remains a tactical problem that for nearly a decade has been treated as if it were the pre-eminent strategic threat to the United States.
Nietzsche wrote that, “The most fundamental form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to do in the first place.” The stated U.S. goal in Afghanistan was the destruction of al Qaeda. While al Qaeda as it existed in 2001 has certainly been disrupted and degraded, al Qaeda’s evolution and migration means that disrupting and degrading it — to say nothing of destroying it — can no longer be achieved by waging a war in Afghanistan. The guerrilla does not rely on a single piece of real estate (in this case Afghanistan) but rather on his ability to move seamlessly across terrain to evade decisive combat in any specific location. Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism is not centered on Afghanistan and does not need Afghanistan, so no matter how successful that war might be, it would make little difference in the larger fight against transnational jihadism.
Thus far, the United States has chosen to carry on fighting the war in Afghanistan. As al Qaeda has fled Afghanistan, the overall political goal for the United States in the country has evolved to include the creation of a democratic and uncorrupt Afghanistan. It is not clear that anyone knows how to do this, particularly given that most Afghans consider the ruling government of President Hamid Karzai — with which the United States is allied — as the heart of the corruption problem, and beyond Kabul most Afghans do not regard their way of making political and social arrangements to be corrupt.
Simply withdrawing from Afghanistan carries its own strategic and political costs, however. The strategic problem is that simply terminating the war after nine years would destabilize the Islamic world. The United States has managed to block al Qaeda’s goal of triggering a series of uprisings against existing regimes and replacing them with jihadist regimes. It did this by displaying a willingness to intervene where necessary. Of course, the idea that U.S. intervention destabilized the region raises the question of what regional stability would look like had it not intervened. The danger of withdrawal is that the network of relationships the United States created and imposed at the regime level could unravel if it withdrew. America would be seen as having lost the war, the prestige of radical Islamists and thereby the foundation of the ideology that underpins their movement would surge, and this could destabilize regimes and undermine American interests.
The political problem is domestic. Obama’s approval rating now stands at 42 percent. This is not unprecedented, but it means he is politically weak. One of the charges against him, fair or not, is that he is inherently anti-war by background and so not fully committed to the war effort. Where a Republican would face charges of being a warmonger, which would make withdrawal easier, Obama faces charges of being too soft. Since a president must maintain political support to be effective, withdrawal becomes even harder. Therefore, strategic analysis aside, the president is not going to order a complete withdrawal of all combat forces any time soon — the national (and international) political alignment won’t support such a step. At the same time, remaining in Afghanistan is unlikely to achieve any goal and leaves potential rivals like China and Russia freer rein.
The American Solution
The American solution, one that we suspect is already under way, is the Pakistanization of the war. By this, we do not mean extending the war into Pakistan but rather extending Pakistan into Afghanistan. The Taliban phenomenon has extended into Pakistan in ways that seriously complicate Pakistani efforts to regain their bearing in Afghanistan. It has created a major security problem for Islamabad, which, coupled with the severe deterioration of the country’s economy and now the floods, has weakened the Pakistanis’ ability to manage Afghanistan. In other words, the moment that the Pakistanis have been waiting for — American agreement and support for the Pakistanization of the war — has come at a time when the Pakistanis are not in an ideal position to capitalize on it.
In the past, the United States has endeavored to keep the Taliban in Afghanistan and the regime in Pakistan separate. (The Taliban movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan are not one and the same.) Washington has not succeeded in this regard, with the Pakistanis continuing to hedge their bets and maintain a relationship across the border. Still, U.S. opposition has been the single greatest impediment to Pakistan’s consolidation of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and abandoning this opposition leaves important avenues open for Islamabad.
The Pakistani relationship to the Taliban, which was a liability for the United States in the past, now becomes an advantage for Washington because it creates a trusted channel for meaningful communication with the Taliban. Logic suggests this channel is quite active now.
The Vietnam War ended with the Paris peace talks. Those formal talks were not where the real bargaining took place but rather where the results were ultimately confirmed. If talks are under way, a similar venue for the formal manifestation of the talks is needed — and Islamabad is as good a place as any.
Pakistan is an American ally which the United States needs, both to balance growing Chinese influence in and partnership with Pakistan, and to contain India. Pakistan needs the United States for the same reason. Meanwhile, the Taliban wants to run Afghanistan. The United States has no strong national interest in how Afghanistan is run so long as it does not support and espouse transnational jihadism. But it needs its withdrawal to take place in a manner that strengthens its influence rather than weakens it, and Pakistan can provide the cover for turning a retreat into a negotiated settlement.
Pakistan has every reason to play this role. It needs the United States over the long term to balance against India. It must have a stable or relatively stable Afghanistan to secure its western frontier. It needs an end to U.S. forays into Pakistan that are destabilizing the regime. And playing this role would enhance Pakistan’s status in the Islamic world, something the United States could benefit from, too. We suspect that all sides are moving toward this end.
The United States isn’t going to defeat the Taliban. The original goal of the war is irrelevant, and the current goal is rather difficult to take seriously. Even a victory, whatever that would look like, would make little difference in the fight against transnational jihad, but a defeat could harm U.S. interests. Therefore, the United States needs a withdrawal that is not a defeat. Such a strategic shift is not without profound political complexity and difficulties. But the disparity between — and increasingly, the incompatibility of — the struggle with transnational terrorism and the war effort geographically rooted in Afghanistan is only becoming more apparent — even to the American public.
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"The Foxification of the henhouse". :roll:
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Certainly it is hard to square with reports like this:
WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan in recent weeks, American officials said. The strikes are part of an effort by military and intelligence operatives to try to cripple the Taliban in a stronghold being used to plan attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.
As part of its covert war in the region, the C.I.A. has launched 20 attacks with armed drone aircraft thus far in September, the most ever during a single month, and more than twice the number in a typical month. This expanded air campaign comes as top officials are racing to stem the rise of American casualties before the Obama administration’s comprehensive review of its Afghanistan strategy set for December. American and European officials are also evaluating reports of possible terrorist plots in the West from militants based in Pakistan.
The strikes also reflect mounting frustration both in Afghanistan and the United States that Pakistan’s government has not been aggressive enough in dislodging militants from their bases in the country’s western mountains. In particular, the officials said, the Americans believe the Pakistanis are unlikely to launch military operations inside North Waziristan, a haven for Taliban and Qaeda operatives that has long been used as a base for attacks against troops in Afghanistan.
Beyond the C.I.A. drone strikes, the war in the region is escalating in other ways. In recent days, American military helicopters have launched three airstrikes into Pakistan that military officials estimate killed more than 50 people suspected of being members of the militant group known as the Haqqani network, which is responsible for a spate of deadly attacks against American troops.
Such air raids by the military remain rare, and officials in Kabul said Monday that the helicopters entered Pakistani airspace on only one of the three raids, and acted in self-defense after militants fired rockets at an allied base just across the border in Afghanistan. At the same time, the strikes point to a new willingness by military officials to expand the boundaries of the campaign against the Taliban and Haqqani network — and to an acute concern in military and intelligence circles about the limited time to attack Taliban strongholds while American “surge” forces are in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials have angrily criticized the helicopter attacks, saying that NATO’s mandate in Afghanistan does not extend across the border in Pakistan.
As evidence of the growing frustration of American officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has recently issued veiled warnings to top Pakistani commanders that the United States could launch unilateral ground operations in the tribal areas should Pakistan refuse to dismantle the militant networks in North Waziristan, according to American officials.
“Petraeus wants to turn up the heat on the safe havens,” said one senior administration official, explaining the sharp increase in drone strikes. “He has pointed out to the Pakistanis that they could do more.”
Special Operations commanders have also been updating plans for cross-border raids, which would require approval from President Obama. For now, officials said, it remains unlikely that the United States would make good on such threats to send American troops over the border, given the potential blowback inside Pakistan, an ally.
But that could change, they said, if Pakistan-based militants were successful in carrying out a terrorist attack on American soil. American and European intelligence officials in recent days have spoken publicly about growing evidence that militants may be planning a large-scale attack in Europe, and have bolstered security at a number of European airports and railway stations.
“We are all seeing increased activity by a more diverse set of groups and a more diverse set of threats,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano before a Senate panel last week.
The senior administration official said the strikes were intended not only to attack Taliban and Haqqani fighters, but also to disrupt any plots directed from or supported by extremists in Pakistan’s tribal areas that were aimed at targets in Europe. “The goal is to suppress or disrupt that activity,” the official said.
The 20 C.I.A. drone attacks in September represent the most intense bombardment by the spy agency since January, when the C.I.A. carried out 11 strikes after a suicide bomber killed seven agency operatives at a remote base in eastern Afghanistan.
According to one Pakistani intelligence official, the recent drone attacks have not killed any senior Taliban or Qaeda leaders. Many senior operatives have already fled North Waziristan, he said, to escape the C.I.A. drone campaign.
Over all the spy agency has carried out 74 drone attacks this year, according to the Web site The Long War Journal, which tracks the strikes. A vast majority of the attacks — which usually involve several drones firing multiple missiles or bombs — have taken place in North Waziristan.
The Obama administration has enthusiastically embraced the C.I.A.’s drone program, an ambitious and historically unusual war campaign by American spies. According to The Long War Journal, the spy agency in 2009 and 2010 has launched nearly four times as many attacks as it did during the final year of the Bush administration.
One American official said that the recent strikes had been aimed at several groups, including the Haqqani network, Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. The United States, he said, hopes to “keep the pressure on as long as we can.”
But the C.I.A.’s campaign has also raised concerns that the drone strikes are fueling anger in the Muslim world. The man who attempted to detonate a truck filled with explosives in Times Square told a judge that the C.I.A. drone campaign was one of the factors that led him to attack the United States.
In a meeting with reporters on Monday, General Petraeus indicated that it was new intelligence gathering technology that helped NATO forces locate the militants killed by the helicopter raids against militants in Pakistan.
In particular, he said, the military has expanded its fleet of reconnaissance blimps that can hover over hide-outs thought to belong to the Taliban in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
The intelligence technology, General Petraeus said, has also enabled the expanded campaign of raids by Special Operations commandos against Taliban operatives in those areas.
Rod Nordland and Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.
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I said it years ago. When it is all said and done, we'll find out that Pakistan's ISI knew where OBL went from Tora Bora, and most likely helped him evade US forces.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703694204575518553113206756.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories
WASHINGTON—In an effort to foil a suspected terrorist plot against European targets, the Central Intelligence Agency has ramped up missile strikes against militants in Pakistan's tribal regions, current and former officials say.
The strikes, launched from unmanned drone aircraft, represent a rare use of the CIA's drone campaign to preempt a possible attack on the West.
In this July 8, 2010 file photo, Pakistani paramilitary troops took position on a hilltop post in Khajore Kut, an area of Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region.
The terror plot, which officials have been tracking for weeks, is believed to target multiple countries, including the U.K., France, and Germany, these officials said.
The exact nature of the plot or plots couldn't be learned immediately, and counterterrorism officials in the U.S., Pakistan and Europe are continuing to investigate. There have, however, been multiple terror warnings in recent days in France, Germany and the U.K.
"There are some pretty notable threat streams," said one U.S. military official, who added that the significance of these threats is still being discussed among counterterrorism officials but that threats of this height are unusual.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano plans to discuss the current European terrorism intelligence with her European counterparts at a U.N. aviation security meeting this week in Montreal. "We are in constant contact with our colleagues abroad," she told a Senate panel last week. "We are all seeing increased activity by a more diverse set of groups and a more diverse set of threats. That activity, much of which is Islamist in nature, is directed at the West generally."
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The Necessity -- and Difficulties -- of Negotiations With the Taliban
Afghan President Hamid Karzai made an impassioned speech on Tuesday calling for the Taliban to enter into negotiations to reach a political settlement. His office then announced the names of 68 former officials and tribal leaders who will form the High Peace Council. This council, which was decided upon in June during the National Council for Peace, Reconciliation and Reintegration, is to be responsible for negotiations with the Taliban — and the government in Kabul is, at least in theory, expected to abide by the agreement the council reaches. Of course, Karzai has handpicked the council members, so his interests are protected. The day before Karzai’s speech, The New York Times published comments from the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, that “very high-level” Taliban leaders have reached out to the “highest levels” of the Afghan government. The correlation of these events indicates that considerable movement has occurred this week on efforts to set the stage for negotiations with the Taliban.
Not only did elements of the Taliban issue denials on Tuesday regarding Petraeus’ assertion, but also another Taliban spokesman insisted that the Afghan people were anxiously anticipating a Taliban victory in Afghanistan. While some factions of the Taliban might be interested in a negotiated settlement, as a whole the movement has maintained considerable internal discipline and is not being forced to the negotiating table out of fear of defeat.
“The Taliban lose little by being at the negotiating table; they can always walk away.”
But negotiation and political accommodation can stem from both fear and opportunity. It is the role of force of arms to provide the former, and the current counterinsurgency strategy has not instilled — and does not appear close to instilling — that fear. But U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force efforts have not been without their tactical effect. The squeeze has been put on Taliban funds, and special operations forces raids have reduced the Taliban’s ranks. There is certainly the opportunity for a settlement that brings political accommodation about sooner rather than later and at a reduced cost to the Taliban in terms of lives and effort. The Taliban lose little by being at the negotiating table; they can always walk away. And they do not harbor illusions about being able to return to power and control the country to the degree they did at the turn of the century.
So the question is not one of whether talks might take place. They already have taken place behind closed doors, and they will no doubt continue. The question is what the cost will be, in terms of concessions, of convincing the Taliban to negotiate meaningfully and genuinely on a political settlement on a timeframe compatible with U.S. constraints. Because the United States, and by proxy Karzai’s regime, are now at the height of their military strength, and because the Taliban — not Washington and Karzai — enjoy the luxury of time, the Taliban have little incentive to allow negotiations to proceed rapidly or make significant concessions themselves.
Thus, the question becomes what price the Taliban will demand from their position of strength and whether that price is one that not only Kabul and Washington, but also Islamabad (which could well be key to a negotiated settlement), will accept. That remains very much in doubt. None of the underlying realities of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan have suddenly shifted.
The developments of recent days essentially provide additional infrastructure to facilitate negotiations, but it is unclear whether an agreement on political accommodation is reachable or on what timetable any agreement might be implemented. Nevertheless, political accommodation will both underlie and facilitate a U.S. drawdown, so the prospects for progress will warrant careful scrutiny.
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Woof,
Bad news from the front, I think we need to consider ending aid to Pakistan and align ourselves with India. Obama has soured any chance of maintaining any support there.
www.news.yahoo.com/s/ynewspoint/ynewspoint_ts3760
P.C.
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Here's Stratfor's report on the same matter:
Pakistan Blocks ISAF Supply Lines After Border Incident
September 30, 2010 | 1332 GMT
TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images
NATO supply trucks traveling through the Khyber PassRelated Special Topic Page
The War in Afghanistan
Attack helicopters supporting International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops on the Afghan-Pakistani border reportedly fired upon a Pakistani Frontier Corps position Sept. 30, killing three paramilitary Frontier Corps troops and wounding three others. According to Pakistani media reports, there have been two incidents of ISAF attack helicopters engaging targets in Pakistan. One took place before dawn and one at 9:30 a.m. local time, both northwest of Parachinar, the main town in the Kurram agency of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, according to preliminary reports. The ISAF forces were operating in the Dand Patan district of Afghanistan’s Paktia province. ISAF has claimed that its troops were responding to mortar fire and remained on the Afghan side of the border, and it believes that at least one of the two places engaged by close air support could have been on the Afghan side of the border. The Pakistani government quickly issued strong condemnation of the incident.
(click here to enlarge image)
There is no shortage of potential scenarios for what actually happened on the ground. ISAF troops are regularly engaged from the Pakistani side of the border, and cross-border exchanges of fire and fighting on the border are common. ISAF may have even been fired upon from the Frontier Corps position. Or it may have been an error on the ISAF’s part and the Frontier Corps position was accidentally or inappropriately engaged. Pakistan has suggested that the Frontier Corps position was deliberately engaged.
But the facts in this case are really beside the point. According to a well-placed STRATFOR source in Pakistan, the Pakistani army’s General Headquarters considers this the fourth incident in less than a week — and the most offensive because the Pakistanis believe their troops were directly targeted. Just two days earlier, Pakistan warned that it would stop protecting ISAF supply lines to Afghanistan if foreign aircraft continued engaging targets across the border. Following through on that threat, the Pakistanis closed the border crossing over the Khyber Pass at Torkham in response to the Sept. 30 incident.
It is not yet clear how long the border will remain closed in protest. Short disruptions are completely manageable logistically in Afghanistan and have been accommodated in the past. But the government in Islamabad has been feeling increased pressure as U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle strikes on militant positions in Pakistan’s tribal areas have increased, and widespread domestic dissatisfaction with the response to the humanitarian disaster caused by flooding earlier this year has only further strained the government.
Domestically, Islamabad has little room to compromise or back down on this. Moving forward, the key issue is not the facts of this particular incident, but the Pakistani government’s response — essentially whether this is largely for show, and what Islamabad demands of the United States operationally. At this stage it is unclear how long this situation will persist but it is very likely that the move to block the supply route was designed to force the United States to back off from the latest wave of cross-border operations.
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Our very next cross-border op should be to seize Pakistan's nukes.
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Washington's Logistical Need for Pakistan
Tankers carrying fuel and trucks hauling vehicles and supplies bound for Afghanistan were regularly attacked over the weekend and Monday in Pakistan as militants took advantage of logjams of trucks caused by the closing of the Torkham border crossing at the Khyber Pass. The pass was closed in protest Sept. 30 after the deaths of three paramilitary Frontier Corps troops by International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) attack helicopters in what the Pakistanis considered to be the fourth cross-border incursion in less than a week’s time. The southern crossing at Chaman remains open.
The Frontier Corps deaths simply served as the culminating offense in a long series of increasing American brazenness and disregard of Pakistani sovereignty (the offending forces were almost certainly American, and in any event, the aggressive cross-border operational agenda is being pushed by Washington, largely in pursuit of Haqqani militants). There is no shortage of outraged Pakistani militant groups seeking to hit back, and their targets — dozens of tankers laden with gasoline and parked in close proximity — require little operational expertise or technical complexity to strike. Indeed, few of the attacks have evinced much sophistication.
Even on a good day, the line of supply from the port of Karachi to Torkham has never been particularly secure, and as such, the ISAF holds stockpiles in Afghanistan to make temporary disruptions manageable. Thus, the key issue is not about short-term losses; it is whether the closure of Torkham is indeed temporary. So far, this appears to be the case: The Pakistani ambassador to the United States on Sunday insisted that the border would reopen soon, and a STRATFOR source in Pakistan has reiterated this claim. However, this is not the usual spat between Washington and Islamabad.
“It is unlikely that the United States and ISAF could support nearly 150,000 troops in Afghanistan and sustain combat operations at the current tempo — or, it is worth noting, easily withdraw its forces in the years ahead — without Pakistani acquiescence allowing the transit of supplies.”
CIA unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in Pakistan in September totaled as many as the previous four months combined and were roughly double the previous one-month high at the beginning of the year. Other forms of fire support, close air support and cross-border incursions also appear to be on the rise as the U.S. struggles to put meaningful pressure on the Taliban to force a negotiated settlement that will facilitate the beginnings of an American exit from the country. Pakistan, angered at these blatant operational escalations, has exercised one of its key levers against its ally: reminding Washington of its reliance on Pakistani territory (and Pakistani refineries) to wage the war in Afghanistan.
War requires logistics — even the Taliban has logistical vulnerabilities. But sustained, multidivisional expeditionary warfare conducted with modern, combined arms is unspeakably resource intensive. The withdrawal of American vehicles, equipment and materiel from Iraq in 2010 has been characterized as more massive and complex than the “Red Ball Express” that sustained the Allied offensive in Europe in World War II — and this for a country with flat, unimpeded access to Kuwaiti ports. It is unlikely that the United States and ISAF could support nearly 150,000 troops in Afghanistan and sustain combat operations at the current tempo — or, it is worth noting, easily withdraw its forces in the years ahead — without Pakistani acquiescence allowing the transit of supplies. In recent years, alternate northern routes have been opened and expanded. But these have served to complement, not replace, the Pakistani routes, which are by far the shortest, most direct and most established.
Ultimately, as we have noted, the United States is demanding and needs contradictory things from Pakistan. But of all the things the Americans want from the Pakistanis — intelligence sharing, permission for (or at least tolerance of) cross-border operations, Pakistani operations to complement those efforts or replace them where possible — Islamabad’s acquiescence on the unimpeded flow of supplies is a need dictated by the logistical realities of war.
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Book Review: Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History featuring Doug Bandow
Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History
By Thomas Barfield
Princeton University Press, $29.95, 389 pages
Nine years after the United States engineered the ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the fundamentalist Islamic movement is back. Al Qaeda has been displaced and greatly weakened, but America's attempt to create a stable regime in Kabul is failing.
The U.S. government's attempt at nation-building risks failure for a number of reasons. Foreign social engineering is never easy — especially because Washington routinely fails to understand other nations, peoples and conflicts. Boston University anthropologist Thomas Barfield's new book offers a remedy for Americans' pervasive ignorance of Afghanistan.
The country has the image of "the graveyard of empires" — an ever-violent, never-governed, always-at-war Central Asian black hole. If it is, Mr. Barfield asks, "how did a ruling dynasty established in 1747 manage to hold power over such a fractious people until 1978?"
Other anomalies abound. For all of the ethnic divisions, there is little sentiment for secession. Federalism appears to be what most Afghans desire.
Aiding the Mujahedeen probably sped up the end of the Cold War. But today's conflict is an example of blowback, an unexpected consequence of that Cold War policy. Particularly problematic was allowing Pakistan to use American money to fund the most extreme Islamist groups.
Moreover, Mr. Barfield writes, "the successful resistance strategy of making the country ungovernable for the Soviet occupier also ended up making Afghanistan ungovernable for the Afghans themselves. While the Afghans had recovered from many earlier periods of state collapse, the body politic was now afflicted with an autoimmune disorder in which the antibodies of resistance threatened to destroy any state structure."
Mr. Barfield explores the demographic and geographic complexity of Afghanistan that complicates the effort to create a Western-style government in Kabul. The nation is a patchwork dominated by Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmen and Aimaqs. However, Mr. Barfield adds, "ethnic group definitions are based on multiple criteria that are often locally idiosyncratic."
The people are largely rural, but the geography is diverse, dominated by "the mountainous central massif" that "discourages easy travel" and isolates people in villages. Nevertheless, Mr. Barfield notes, historically "many of the routes through the mountains have been conduits of international trade that have consistently brought outsiders and high levels of culture through these regions." While Kabul dominates Western attention, such cities as Herat, Mazar and Jalalabad represent very different peoples and experiences.
The history of the territory now known as Afghanistan is more complex than most people assume. Afghanistan "had a positively magnet[ic] attraction for conquerors, not because they coveted the wealth of Afghanistan, but rather because control of Afghan territory gave them access to more prosperous places like India or central Asia," Mr. Barfield says.
Moreover, outside empires frequently subdued those living in Afghanistan. The "main problem they faced after establishing their power was attacks by rival states, not rebellions by the inhabitants."
The Anglo-Afghan wars most established the terrifying Afghan reputation. Mr. Barfield explores this fascinating period, including its impact on the creation of an Afghan state. It was the time of "the great game" between Britain and Russia. The British got into trouble when they attempted to impose their will directly and meddle in traditional Afghan society. They had far more success wielding influence indirectly, subsidizing favored rulers, who maintained the veneer of independence while using foreign cash to maintain control. Mr. Barfield tells the story well.
In contrast, the 20th century was a more peaceful time for Afghans. Nevertheless, Mr. Barfield warns against the tendency to idealize this period: "Like most such golden ages, it looks much better in hindsight than it did to the people of the time." The country was stable, not prosperous, democratic or liberal. And there was a brief civil war in 1929 before another ruling dynasty was established.
Still, that time looks positively idyllic compared to today. Former Prime Minister Mohammed Daud Khan triggered nearly four decades of conflict when he overthrew his cousin and brother-in-law, King Mohammed Zahir Shah. President Daud was murdered in a communist-led coup five years later. Brutal infighting among his successors led to the Soviet invasion in 1979 and installation of Babrak Karmal as president. Then followed the Mujahedeen resistance, Soviet withdrawal, civil war and the rise of the Taliban.
It is no surprise that debilitating conflict and Islamic fundamentalism deformed Afghan society. There were many possible lost opportunities over the years. Several revolved around Ahmad Shah Massoud, perhaps the most respected leader of the resistance against the Soviets. He was assassinated just before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Barfield even makes the surprising suggestion that Washington should have cut a deal with President Mohammed Najibullah Ahmadzai after his Soviet protectors withdrew. The author argues that only Pakistan benefited from the ensuing conflict, which empowered Islamic radicals and ultimately the Taliban.
He writes: "Had the dead spirits of the British raj arisen to give their advice on the matter they would surely have advised their American cousins to cut a deal with Najibullah now that he had become an Afghan nationalist and proved his staying power." The problems with such an approach are obvious, but it looks ever better in hindsight.
More than a few mistakes have been made since then by Washington. Some were strategic, including attempting to create a centralized government in Kabul and diverting resources to Iraq. Some were tactical, such as providing aid with "little familiarity with Afghanistan's culture or history." The result, Mr. Barfield observes, was that "spending large amounts of money that generated disappointing results at the local level exacted a political price when rural Afghans came to believe that their needs were being ignored."
At this stage, there are no good options. Mr. Barfield dispassionately discusses the dangers of escalation and risks of disengagement, concluding that "as the second decade of the 21st century dawned, Afghanistan could expect to remain the focus of world attention for years to come."
Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History is an invaluable book. Mr. Barfield does not give the United States a way out of Afghanistan, but he does provide the context necessary for good policymaking. The next step is up to U.S. officials.
Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is the author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire (Xulon, 2006).
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12458
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The president's new plan for Afghanistan:
1. Cut and run.
2. ????????????
3. PROFIT!!!!!
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STRATFOR
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October 28, 2010
PAKISTAN'S NORTH WAZIRISTAN AND SALVAGEABLE JIHADISTS
A top Pakistani military official told reporters on a tour of the tribal areas on
Tuesday that Islamabad would consider mounting a counterinsurgency offensive in
North Waziristan only after other parts of Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt are
stabilized. Lt. Gen. Asif Yasin Malik -- commander of the Peshawar-based XIth Corps,
which is leading the counterjihadist operations in Pakistan's northwest -- said
Pakistani forces do not have the resources to cover the entire area under his
command. He said it would take at least another six months to clear out just Mohmand
and Bajaur, the two agencies on the northern rim of the Federally Administered
Tribal Areas (FATA). Malik estimated that "by 2012, things should have turned it
around totally."
This statement comes within days of the U.S. announcement of a $2 billion military
assistance package for Pakistan. It conflicts with Washington's expectations that
Pakistan would expand its ongoing offensive to North Waziristan -- which has become
the world's largest gathering spot for jihadists of various stripes -- as quickly as
possible. North Waziristan is the only agency of the seven in the autonomous tribal
belt along the Afghan border where Pakistani security forces (despite having six
brigades in the area) have not launched a major assault on Taliban and al Qaeda
fighters. This issue has spurred the growing tensions between Washington and
Islamabad.
"Islamabad feels it would be suicidal to act against Bahadur and Haqqani, especially
when the Pakistanis are struggling to combat renegade Taliban forces elsewhere."
Occasionally, senior U.S. officials issue statements that they understand that
Pakistani forces are stretched to the limit and that Islamabad will decide when it
is appropriate to send its forces into the area. On different occasions, however,
Washington will go back to pressuring Islamabad into taking swift action in North
Waziristan. In other words, the U.S. government oscillates between the realization
that a premature expansion of the Pakistanis' offensive could make matters worse for
Pakistan and its own desire for the rapid development of conditions in Afghanistan
that would facilitate a U.S. withdrawal.
All of this raises the question of why North Waziristan is such a huge point of
contention between the United States and Pakistan. The answer has to do with the
complex militant landscape in this particular FATA agency. North Waziristan's
territory can be divided broadly into two dominions: one under the control of
Pakistani warlord Hafiz Gul Bahadur, and the other under the most prominent Afghan
Taliban regional commander, Sirajuddin Haqqani. Neither Bahadur nor Haqqani is
participating in the Pakistani Taliban rebellion, but both have complex ties to al
Qaeda-led transnational jihadists and are focused on fighting coalition forces in
eastern Afghanistan. From the Pakistani viewpoint, these men are not hostile forces
who need to be fought: In fact, they are allies who can help Islamabad regain
control of territory on its side of the border and regain its sphere of influence in
a post-NATO Afghanistan. Islamabad feels it would be suicidal to act against Bahadur
and Haqqani, especially when the Pakistanis are struggling to combat renegade
Taliban forces elsewhere.
But Pakistan cannot completely ignore North Waziristan -- and not just because of
U.S. pressure. Many of its own Taliban rebels relocated to the area late last year
when security forces mounted a ground offensive in South Waziristan. Furthermore, al
Qaeda and the transnational jihadists who are supporting Pakistani Islamist rebels
are also based in this area.
This is why Pakistan has not just accepted the increasing number of U.S. unmanned
aerial vehicle strikes in North Waziristan: It is also facilitating them. However,
Islamabad knows that the strikes alone will not solve its problems in the area and
certainly will not satisfy Washington. Islamabad also wants to be able to regain
control over the area, and it expects it can achieve this with a settlement in
Afghanistan. Pakistan will argue that if the United States cannot impose a military
solution in Afghanistan and is forced to negotiate on the other side of the border,
then Pakistan should not wage war against those in its territory who are not
fighting against Islamabad.
This leads back to the disagreement between Washington and Islamabad over the
definition of salvageable jihadists. To the United States, Haqqani is not just
responsible for a great deal of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. He is also
tied to al Qaeda, which continues to plot attacks in the United States and threatens
U.S. interests in the region, and is thus irreconcilable. As far as the Pakistanis
are concerned, Haqqani can be negotiated with and his ties with al Qaeda can be
severed, much like what happened with Iraq's Awakening Councils.
It is unclear that the United States and Pakistan can come to terms on which Taliban
can be negotiated with. Until that happens, North Waziristan will remain a major
source of tension between the two sides.
Copyright 2010 STRATFOR.
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Summary
Two of prominent militant leader Jalauddin Haqqani’s sons have been meeting with tribal elders from Kurram agency in Peshawar and Islamabad in a bid to end Sunni-Shiite violence in northwestern Pakistan’s Kurram agency. Many outside parties have an interest in what happens in the strategic region, including the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, Islamabad and Washington. While having the Haqqanis negotiate a settlement may be a boon to Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban, it will create challenges for the Pakistani Taliban and Washington.
Analysis
Media reports have emerged that two of important Taliban leader Jalauddin Haqqani’s sons, Khalil and Ibrahim, are involved in peace talks in Pakistan’s tribal belt between Sunni and Shiite leaders from Kurram agency. The talks, which have been held in Peshawar and Islamabad, represent an attempt to settle the long-running sectarian dispute in Kurram agency.
This dispute has expanded beyond localized sectarian violence into one with much further-reaching consequences involving the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban. The implications of the wider struggle encapsulate divergent U.S. and Pakistani interests in the wider region.
A Strategic Area
Kurram agency is one of seven districts in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). With an area of 3,380 square kilometers (about 1,300 square miles), it is the third-largest agency of the FATA after South and North Waziristan. The only area in the tribal badlands with a significant Shiite population, Kurram has a long history of sectarian violence predating the creation of Pakistan in 1947.
The area became the main staging ground for joint U.S.-Saudi-Pakistani intelligence aid for the multinational force of Islamist insurgents battling Soviet forces and the pro-Moscow regime in Kabul during the 1980s, during which time Kurram’s capital, Parachinar, frequently came under attack by Soviet and Afghan aircraft. The influx of predominantly Sunni Afghan and other Islamist fighters altered the sectarian demographic balance to some extent. The Shia bitterly resisted, but Islamabad’s support of Sunni locals overcame their efforts.
Kurram saw its most intense sectarian clashes only after the rise of the Pakistani Taliban phenomenon in 2006-07, however. The agency saw two weeks of violence in April 2007 as sectarian attacks spiraled out of control after a gunman opened fire on a Shiite procession in Parachinar. The violence spread all the way southeast to Sadda before the Pakistani military went in to restore order. Despite a peace agreement between the two sides that officially ended the conflict in October 2008, antagonism between the communities continued to simmer. Violence comes mostly in the form of tit-for-tat small-arms attacks carried out by tribal militias on their Sunni or Shiite neighbors.
(click here to enlarge image)
Tribal and geographic differences reinforce the sectarian conflict. The Shia break down into three major tribes, the Turi, Bangash and Hazara. Meanwhile, eight major Sunni tribes populate most of central and lower Kurram. Sunni and Shia live in close proximity to each other throughout Kurram, which has a population of around 500,000 consisting of roughly 58 percent Sunni and 42 percent Shia.
The Sunnis’ main advantage lies in control of lower Kurram. They have exploited this to close off the only major road from Parachinar, which lies on the edge of the mountains of Upper Kurram, to Thal in lower Kurram — where connections to larger markets of Peshawar and Karachi can be made. Without access to this highway, supplies have become scarce in upper Kurram.
The Shia’s main advantage is control of a strategic piece of high ground that forms a peninsula of Pakistani territory jutting into Afghanistan, territory that has shifted over the centuries between Mughal, Afghan, British and Pakistani control. Upper Kurram provides powers from the east easy access to Kabul, which lies just under 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) from the border between Kurram agency and Paktia province, Afghanistan. This geographic advantage is why the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate decided on it as the location for training and deploying Mujahideen fighters into Afghanistan to fight the Soviets during the 1980s. It is thus key territory for anyone who wants access into eastern Afghanistan — Islamabad and the Taliban included.
The sectarian violence simmering in Kurram complicates Islamabad’s efforts to defeat the Pakistani Taliban while maintaining ties with the Afghan Taliban. The violence has become a more serious threat to Islamabad’s efforts in recent years, as outside forces reportedly have begun to exploit the sectarian violence. Sunni leaders in Kurram have blamed Iran for supplying weapons and cash to their Shiite rivals. While there is little evidence to back up this claim, it would make sense that Iran would want to establish a bridgehead in the Shiite population allowing it to operate in eastern Afghanistan.
The Sunni Militant Landscape in Kurram and the Afghan Angle
Well-known Pakistani jihadist Baitullah Mehsud used the base of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Orakzai to expand TTP influence in Kurram. Following Baitullah’s death, Mullah Toofan (aka Maulana Noor Jamal) emerged as the main TTP leader in the central rim of the FATA. Mullah Toofan now leads efforts targeting Kurram from Orakzai, which has become the main TTP hub since the Pakistani army evicted the group from South Waziristan in a late 2009-early 2010 ground offensive. Many militants subsequently resettled in Kurram.
The TTP formed alliances with the Sunni tribes in Kurram in its bid to establish a sanctuary there. The TTP later began using the sanctuary provided by allied Sunni tribes in Kurram in coordination with Orakzai and South Waziristan to conduct attacks in the core of Pakistan.
For their part, the Haqqanis want a more stable environment in Kurram. Kurram is a key piece of territory for the Haqqani network, which organizes and has sanctuaries in Pakistan’s northwest from which it engages U.S., NATO and Afghan government military forces in eastern Afghanistan as part of the Afghan Taliban’s eastern front.
Islamabad is very open to cooperation with the Haqqanis. They pose no direct threat to Islamabad but have the military and political clout to shape conditions on the ground in northwestern Pakistan — to say nothing of Afghanistan, where Pakistan is trying to rebuild its influence. The Haqqanis are best positioned to convince Sunnis in lower Kurram to open up the road to Parachinar and to restrain Shiite forces from attacking Sunnis (and vice versa). The easing of sectarian tensions, likely if this happens, would hamper the TTP’s ability to grow in Kurram, satisfying Islamabad’s goal in the agency.
If the Haqqanis can successfully negotiate a peace in Kurram (or at least a cease-fire — Kurram’s geopolitical and sectarian rivalries will not simply vanish) it would give them a stronger foothold in an area close to Kabul and eastern Afghanistan. This arrangement would not bode well for security in eastern Afghanistan, where U.S. and coalition forces are concentrating much of their efforts in their current offensive against the Taliban and al Qaeda.
This would come at a bad time for Washington, which is looking to contain the Afghan Taliban as it seeks to bolster the U.S. negotiating position ahead of eventual talks regarding a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Kurram sectarian conflict is also the most prominent example of Islamabad trying to eliminate “bad” Taliban while supporting “good” Taliban. Preventing sectarian violence in Kurram from spiraling out of control and benefiting the TTP requires that Islamabad seek the services of the Haqqanis. This also will help Pakistan’s longer-term efforts to re-establish its influence in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. Kurram thus encapsulates the larger challenges Washington faces in containing a militant movement that enjoys Islamabad’s tacit support.
Read more: Kurram Agency and the U.S. and Pakistan's Divergent Interests | STRATFOR
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second post of the morning
The indeterminate state of the war in Afghanistan continues, with reports of progress by the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the south and southwest and Taliban reversals elsewhere in the country.
In Helmand province, U.S. Marines have reportedly begun to hand over control of small outposts in Nawa-i-Barakzayi district to Afghan security forces. The U.S. Marines have been operating in Helmand for several years now, reinforcing British, Canadian, Danish and Dutch troops who have been holding the line in some of the territory held most tenaciously by the Taliban. Yet despite an influx of combat troops into the province, ISAF units are still spread extremely thin.
(click here to enlarge image)
Despite this dispersal of forces, some important gains appear to have been achieved in denying key bases of support and income to the Taliban. The handing over of outposts to Afghan security forces is the next step toward what amounts to the exit strategy of “Vietnamization.” By any measure, however, this is a small and isolated step. As the winter takes hold and the White House begins to review the efficacy of the current counterinsurgency focus for a report that will be issued next month, the pace and scale of these handovers will be important in gauging their effect. The United States has set a very tight timetable for itself in Afghanistan, and the only way it can stick to it is for Afghan security forces to rapidly step up and take the point in providing day-to-day security district by district. This not only will free up ISAF troops to concentrate their focus and attempt to achieve faster results elsewhere but it will also set the stage for Afghan security forces to operate and function independently, thereby reducing the overall demand for ISAF forces in the country.
Handing over smaller, isolated outposts can reduce the vulnerability of ISAF troops as well as the logistical requirements of sustaining Western forces as opposed to indigenous forces. In many cases, this means the transition could free up forces disproportionate to the size and significance of the outpost itself. The transition could also reflect local understandings being reached that are far more important to the security of the area than the makeup and nationality of forces that occupy the position.
And the most critical part of the handover is not the physical transition but what happens afterward. Obviously, military positions are not turned over to new units without due consideration. And one important consideration in the localized landscape of Afghanistan can be the makeup of an “indigenous” unit, whether it consists mainly of outsiders recruited and trained elsewhere and then shipped in or reflects the area’s distinct demographics and loyalties. This dynamic can either consolidate or undermine the conditions that led to the ISAF handover in the first place.
Going to the Other Side
Farther north, in Ghazni province, as many as 19 Afghan police officers — essentially the entire unit in Khogyani district — apparently defected to the Taliban earlier this week. The local police chief does not appear to have been involved, but the police station reportedly broke radio contact with the provincial government early Nov. 1. When Afghan security forces arrived hours later, the officers and their vehicles, weapons, uniforms and supplies had all disappeared and the police station was burned to the ground. The Taliban claimed all the officers had joined their cause.
The factors leading up to this incident are unclear, but the story is hardly an unprecedented one. For every Taliban contingent that comes over to the government/ ISAF side there is an example of a government contingent going the other way. Police units are particularly vulnerable to acts of coercion and intimidation by the Taliban — particularly in isolated areas far from reinforcements — and are all too often poorly equipped and supported. That, coupled with the perception that the ISAF is on its way out, forces Afghan security personnel to fend for themselves day-to-day and to think very seriously about the long-term implications of loyalty.
The modern history of conflict in Afghanistan is rife with the changing of sides. Hizb-i-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is a notorious case in point. He fought against the Soviets and even served as the country’s prime minister after the overthrow of the Marxist regime, but he was also quick to change loyalties when it is to his advantage. The ongoing fragility of security in Iraq is a reminder of how tenuous even significant security gains can be. And in Iraq, the demographics are far less complex than they are in Afghanistan, where tribal and ethno-sectarian conflict are not so cut and dry. The Taliban “movement” is a diffuse and diverse phenomenon that finds its support at the grassroots level, and though they practice and enforce a particularly severe form of Islamism, the Taliban are more naturally attuned to local sensitivities and issues.
Durability of the Transition
And this is where the durability of the transition from ISAF to Afghan security forces really comes into question. The Taliban represent a strong and enduring reality in Afghanistan — one that perceives itself as winning. In a world where locals cannot trust either the ISAF or Kabul to guarantee their security, Afghan troops in isolated areas as well as local residents must be concerned about their safety where there is no meaningful ISAF or Afghan security presence day-to-day.
The ISAF is hindered by its alliance with the regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is widely perceived as being not only corrupt but also distant and uninterested in providing for local needs (or unable to do so). Indeed, some of Kabul’s successes (including recent operations in the city of Kandahar and the surrounding districts of Argandab, Panjwai and Zhari) reportedly have involved local warlord militias that exist outside the aegis of the Afghan security apparatus and beyond Kabul’s control. These forces are often more capable and aggressive than official government units, but the question of their loyalty remains an issue, and there are long-term implications in creating, supporting and strengthening independent militias in a country that already has too many of them.
The overarching U.S. strategy of crafting the conditions for a withdrawal make near-term and even potentially short-lived gains important. But the long-term gains are what count, and the United States continues to suffer from its alliance with an artificial, weak and compromised central government in a country where all politics really is local.
Just as the Vietnamization strategy hangs on wider regional arrangements with countries like Pakistan and Iran, the successful handover of an isolated outpost depends on local political accommodations. And the durability of the security transition just beginning in southern and southwestern Afghanistan will be an important gauge of the time and space that actually has been created by the surge of forces into Afghanistan.
Read more: A Week in the War: Afghanistan, Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 2010 | STRATFOR
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Summary
The spectrum of intelligence-gathering capabilities deployed by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan has expanded significantly in recent years, but perhaps the most important type of intelligence in counterinsurgency — human intelligence — remains elusive. Not all signs are negative, however, and the evolution of human intelligence will be a key factor in the success or failure of allied efforts in the months and years ahead.
Analysis
The Afghanistan Campaign, Part 1: The U.S. Strategy
Military Doctrine, Guerrilla Warfare and Counterinsurgency
STRATFOR has long held that Afghanistan is at its heart an intelligence war. While we are hardly alone in this view, intelligence remains central to our perspective and coverage of the war. Intelligence for the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has seen a broad spectrum of improvements in recent years, but the most important developments may be in the sphere of human intelligence.
The Broad Spectrum of Intelligence
The technical platforms for battlefield intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) have improved dramatically in recent years, with most honed in Iraq at the height of American military efforts there. Over time, these ISR assets have been freed up (to a certain degree) from Iraq and transitioned to Afghanistan, more platforms have been built and deployed and the technologies themselves — as well as the ways in which ISR is communicated and disseminated — have been further refined.
SPC THEODORE SCHMIDT, U.S. Department of Defense
A Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment blimp being launched over a forward operating base in AfghanistanThere is now such a broad spectrum of ISR platforms deployed in Afghanistan that it is difficult to cover concisely even what is known and discussed in the open source (and this does not even include “national technical means,” i.e., spaced-based sensors). The list of deployed ISR platforms includes:
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs): The RQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper are only the most recognized. Equipped with electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) turrets, significant additional numbers of UAVs have been surged into the country in recent years, dramatically expanding the number of sustained UAV orbits and their availability — though they remain in high demand.
Manned aircraft: The MC-12W Liberty, a recent addition to the operational arsenal, provides both EO/IR coverage and signals intelligence. A squadron is now operating from Kandahar Airfield. These and other fixed-wing platforms dedicated to ISR and signals collection (including the British R1 Sentinel) are complemented by the EO/IR capabilities of attack helicopters and combat aircraft overhead to provide close air support — all of which are increasingly well integrated.
Aerostats: Persistent Threat Detection System and Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) lighter-than-air aerostats (e.g., blimps) deployed at major airfields and forward operating bases provide ISR coverage from fixed ground stations.
Elevated systems: Tower- and mast-mounted system variants of the RAID system have been around for years but are now being complemented by the Ground-Based Operational Surveillance System (GBOSS), a system that is being mated with Man-portable Surveillance and Target Acquisition Radars (MSTAR) that provide all-weather day and night capabilities that are low-power and can be deployed on light trailers or even vehicles.
Limits of ISR
Airborne capabilities are beholden to weather both in order to fly (rotary wing and lighter fixed-wing aircraft can be more restricted) and to see (some thermal and particularly radar-based sensors are less sensitive to overcast weather), which is particularly problematic in the winter months. However, the variety and number of platforms has dramatically increased, leading to improved situational awareness. The scale, affordability and power requirements of the smaller GBOSS variants especially are translating into the deployment of dedicated EO/IR and MSTAR capabilities to lower and lower echelons — some of which are less sensitive to unpredictable weather.
U.S. Air Force
An MC-12W Liberty intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance planeBut this sort of surveillance is limited in that one must know where to look, what to look for, and what can be discerned. The technology can be applied to main supply routes and route clearance efforts — keeping the lines of supply open in the country by watching specific stretches of road, for example. Similarly, with more bandwidth, even squad-level engagements can quickly have eyes overhead.
But short of being spotted actively digging in the ground on a main supply route or openly toting an assault rifle or rocket-propelled grenade while retreating from a firefight, the Taliban exist as a guerrilla force among the people. Even with the remarkable resolution of modern EO/IR sensors, visual means of intelligence gathering will only achieve so much in a counterinsurgency effort. More important, their tactical and battlefield utility may not translate into larger operational or strategic success. In many cases, it is only with biometrics such as eye scans that individuals can readily be visually identified as Taliban if they are not overtly engaged in some sort of incriminating activity (and then only if they have committed some nefarious deed that caused security forces to scan their eye).
Further emphasizing this lack of clarity in terms of individual identity and relationship to the diffuse and amorphous Taliban phenomenon, a purported senior Taliban leader taking part in back-channel negotiations with the Afghan government is now being reported as an impostor. STRATFOR has long held that no one has a good master list of the Taliban hierarchy; without this sort of sound analytic construct and sophisticated and nuanced understanding of one’s adversary, raw intelligence can only get you so far.
Similarly, signals intelligence — also a very broad, active and significant effort — has its value. If claims of success against the Taliban through special operations forces raids to capture and kill senior leadership and operational commanders are accurate, signals intelligence is likely playing an active and pivotal role.
Human Intelligence
But the one type of intelligence upon which the war might truly turn is human intelligence. This is not to denigrate or disregard the pivotal importance of ISR, signals and other means of collection. Each type of intelligence is different in extremely important and defining ways, and each has its role. Continued collection efforts and continually improving technical means are obviously important.
LCPL JOHN MCCALL, U.S. Department of Defense
A Ground Based Operational Surveillance System tower being secured in southwestern AfghanistanBut an indigenous guerrilla force naturally enjoys advantages in intelligence by virtue of its demographic identity, its cultural awareness and its human relationships. Merely managing this disadvantage can be a daunting task for a foreign power. Moreover, indigenous security forces trained and supported by that foreign power are very often inherently compromised to the benefit of the guerrilla.
Intelligence that cannot be gotten directly can be secured from allies with that knowledge, though it is not at all clear that the capabilities of Afghanistan’s fledgling intelligence services (particularly in key areas like the Taliban’s heartland in southwestern Afghanistan) or its willingness to share what actionable intelligence it does have can be decisive. It certainly has not been yet. Similarly, the United States has struggled to get sufficiently timely and accurate intelligence from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence directorate.
The assistance of locals at the tactical level presents another avenue — both for intelligence to flow to U.S. units and for actionable intelligence to flow directly to Afghan security forces (which are only in some cases manned with local troops). Even in places like Marjah, which were until recently controlled — uncontested by ISAF forces — by the Taliban, there have been instances of locals not only helping identify improvised explosive devices or individuals that other forms of intelligence have not, but doing so openly, without attempting to conceal their own identity or collaboration.
In Iraq, active intelligence sharing from Iraq’s Sunnis on the al Qaeda and foreign jihadist operations that they had previously supported proved decisive in turning the tide in the war (even if the situation remains fragile and uncertain). This was done at a high level within the Sunni community — a level and example that is simply not replicable in the Afghan case. But it is nevertheless a reminder of how decisive indigenous intelligence can be in counterinsurgency.
Without a single demographic to turn to, and with such complex demography to begin with, there is no comparable single solution in Afghanistan. And a local here and there pointing out an explosive device that may well be near where his children play or travel or selling out a particularly unpleasant hard-line Taliban operative does not necessarily indicate much tactical progress in the intelligence sphere. The motivation of the source is of pivotal importance in human intelligence — he may be doing it for personal gain (by accurately or inaccurately fingering a competitor) or seeking financial or political gain. This is why it is difficult to draw conclusions, but the intelligence relationship between ISAF forces, Afghan security forces and locals in areas like Marjah will warrant close scrutiny moving forward. There are more and more instances of this sort of local assistance, and now that the United States and NATO have overtly committed to four more years of combat operations, that assistance may prove at least sustainable. The extent and actual intelligence value of that assistance is unclear, but the prospect for an increasingly broad (if not systematic) network of local human sources could yet hold strategic significance for the U.S.-led war effort.
Read more: Afghanistan: The Intelligence War | STRATFOR
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second post of the morning:
Tactical Successes
One theme of this weekly update, particularly in recent months, has been a rather critical view of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan. This perspective has its roots in the strategic and grand strategic altitude from which STRATFOR views the world and the context into which STRATFOR attempts to place world events. In particular, STRATFOR has raised questions regarding the opportunity costs of the forces committed to the counterinsurgency-focused strategy in Afghanistan and the size and duration of the commitment necessary to attempt to achieve meaningful and lasting results. But this update has also long endeavored to provide an accurate portrayal of operational and tactical developments — both challenges and successes. STRATFOR noted at the beginning of the year that the “new” American strategy, though it has its flaws, is more coherent and entails a more tough-minded recognition and awareness of U.S. challenges and weaknesses in Afghanistan.
The central Helmand River Valley is an example of recent tactical success. Here the U.S. Marine Regimental Combat Team-1 (RCT-1) is responsible for key areas south of Lashkar Gah, the Helmand provincial capital, including the farming community of Marjah to the west and Nawa and Gamshir further south down the Helmand River. Some two years ago, this area was the responsibility of a single Marine infantry battalion (some 1,000 Marines), that was spread quite thin simply attempting to provide some semblance of security in district centers. Today, four battalions provide security across the Regimental Area of Operations from more than 100 positions — many held by a squad of only about nine Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman and partnered with an Afghan National Army (ANA) squad. Other positions are held by the Afghan Uniform Police, the Afghan National Civil Order Police (a gendarmerie formation) or the ANA independently. A local community police initiative awkwardly known as the Interim Security Critical Infrastructure provides a block-by-block arrangement where locals provide for their own security.
(click here to enlarge image)
After two years of security operations in Nawa, Marine commanders will now visit the central market without helmets or body armor. It is the success story of the recent U.S.-led effort here, and one which commanders consider replicable in Marjah and Gamshir — where the fight is still more kinetic — given time. And there have been signs that locals are more forthcoming with intelligence and share it with both U.S. forces and Afghan forces, a potentially important sign for the durability of the civilian relationship with the government.
Gains across the central Helmand River Valley remain fragile and reversible, and it will take time to consolidate and entrench these successes, particularly since the area was once broadly and firmly controlled by the Taliban. It will also take time for the Afghan security forces and government — through trial and error, experience, training, and further support — to become strong enough to resist any return of Taliban fighters to the area or, perhaps more important, to deny the Taliban any meaningful ideological or material local support. It has often been said that the United States won all the battles in Vietnam but lost the war. Tactical success does not necessarily indicate broader operational or strategic gains, but it is nevertheless a trend that will warrant close scrutiny.
2014 and Beyond
The (not entirely unexpected) announcement by U.S. President Barack Obama on Nov. 20 at the NATO Summit in Lisbon that responsibility for security in Afghanistan would be completely transferred to Afghan forces by 2014 was particularly important in this regard, because it now makes explicit that there is more room for consolidating and cementing near-term gains against the Taliban. Notably, the 2014 timetable entails combat forces; in Iraq, some 50,000 U.S. troops remain in the country following the termination of combat operations at the end of August, playing an “advisory and assistance” role — meaning that the overall commitment of U.S. forces to Afghanistan could well last many years beyond 2014.
But the recent gains in Afghanistan have required the massing of forces. Four reinforced and heavily supported U.S. Marine infantry battalions in the central Helmand River Valley represent a far denser concentration of combat power than most areas of Afghanistan ever have or likely will ever experience. The Helmand River Valley is not a representative case study because the laser-sharp focus of forces cannot be replicated everywhere in the country. But it has been an area deliberately identified and targeted in the U.S. strategy in order to focus on key population centers and deny the Taliban both that population and the income from the poppy crop that the militants rely upon significantly.
This application of force has seen results — if not as rapidly as was originally hoped when Marines seized key bazaars in Marjah back in February. Relationships and a degree of trust are forming between locals and both U.S. and Afghan forces. But an insurgency is a moving target, and already the most intense combat operations have shifted northward to the district of Sangin. So while Marine efforts in Marjah in the last six months have indeed succeeded, the effects of the transition to Afghan forces as U.S. forces begin to pull back and focus their efforts elsewhere will warrant close and ongoing scrutiny.
Logistics
The United States announced Nov. 19 that it will expand its Northern Distribution Network (NDN) supply chain to the Afghan theater by utilizing the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda. U.S. Transportation Command said the initial shipment will involve approximately 100 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers and will arrive in December. Klaipeda will join the Latvian port of Riga, the Estonian port of Tallinn, Georgia’s port of Poti and the Turkish port of Mersin in receiving non-lethal materiel such as building supplies, fuel and food bound for northern Afghanistan (the variety of materiel shipped has also expanded). The NDN began operation in early 2009 in response to threats to the supply chain in Pakistan and already sees the transit of some 1,000 TEU containers per week. The port of Klaipeda has the highest container-handling rate of all the other Baltic ports, though the capacities of the Russian, Kazakh, Uzbek and Tajik railways are a key limiting factor.
The United States is also looking at expanding its ability to use transportation networks in Russia and Central Asia. Russia agreed to allow the shipment of armored vehicles through its territory along the NDN and is currently negotiating with NATO to allow reverse transit, which would let NATO send materiel upstream, back to the Baltic, Turkish and Georgian ports for repair or redeployment. But Central Asia also poses several challenges for the United States and NATO. Aside from being extremely long, the NDN is not completely free of security risks. Militants in Tajikistan have threatened to attack shipments traversing Uzbekistan and Tajikistan into Afghanistan. While there is no evidence that this is happening enough to be significant — Pakistani militants have set a high standard for interfering with logistics — militants along the Tajik-Afghan border do have ties to the Afghan Taliban and could mount a more aggressive campaign, much like the Pakistani militants’ continuing challenges to NATO supply lines there. Nevertheless, further diversification of the logistical network, while it cannot replace reliance on Pakistan and entails risks of its own, can be considered significant progress for the U.S.-led war effort.
Main Battle Tanks
Logistics remain a key aspect of the fight inside Afghanistan as well. The notoriously poor road infrastructure — there is not currently a single paved road in the entire RCT-1 area of operations — is further degraded in wet conditions. This makes a Marine request for the deployment of a company of M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks (MBTs) particularly noteworthy. The tanks will offer heavy direct fire support that further taxes that infrastructure — at nearly 70 tons, the M1 does not tread lightly on local roads, and it is a fuel-hungry beast, with its gas turbine engine capable of burning through a gallon of gasoline in a quarter mile — but will also, by virtue of the off-road mobility that tracks provide, give greater freedom of movement. This will mark the first deployment of U.S. MBTs to the country, though Canadian and Danish Leopard tanks have been used to considerable effect in Kandahar province since 2007.
JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images
M-1 Abrams main battle tanksThe Marine Assault Breacher Vehicle, which is built on an M1A1 chassis, has been operating in Helmand province for a year now, giving the Marines a sense of what it takes to operate a vehicle of that size and weight. Both institutionally and doctrinally, the Marine tanker community is a small one that has always worked closely with infantry. Much has been said of what this request signifies at the current time, but the request was submitted earlier in the year and in fact echoed a request made last year that was denied. A small contingent of tanks — a single company has been requested which, including support vehicles, will amount to only around 15 vehicles to be deployed by the entire 1st Marine Division (Forward) — is simply part and parcel of how the Marines do business. The tanks will not win the war, and the request is not a sudden, panicked call for reinforcements.
The precision-engagement that the Abrams’ 120 mm main gun offers will be a significant direct-fire support asset, especially as vegetation is now thinning out, allowing for it to engage targets at longer range (beyond 2 miles). Indeed, in the lightly armored and largely foot-mobile Afghan campaign, even the Abrams’ M2 .50-caliber machine gun — often found along with the Mk 19 40 mm automatic grenade launcher mounted on M-ATV trucks — will often be found valuable, since the tanks’ tracks will allow them to move and position themselves in places that even the M-ATVs cannot go.
Negotiations
Meanwhile, the lack of a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the Taliban’s composition remains an issue. Nowhere was this made clearer than when a purported senior Taliban leader taking part in backchannel negotiations with the Afghan government was announced to have been an impostor. While this is an emerging development that requires further clarification and investigation, the mere statement — and the viability of such a claim, even if this one turns out to be different — underscores a longstanding STRATFOR point that no one has a good master list of the Taliban hierarchy. And without this sort of sound analytic construct and sophisticated and nuanced understanding of one’s adversary, raw intelligence can only go so far.
Read more: A Week in the War: Afghanistan, Nov. 17-23, 2010 | STRATFOR
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about one month old:
Some random musings...paki perfidy always gets my goat!.
Have you ever wondered, why the US cannot control pak ?. The solution to pak problem is very simple, and the US could implement it in a minute. What is not said is the need of the US govt to keep India in check (to maintain balance of power between India and Pak). The pakis know this and they exploit it fully. If the US did not try to keep India down, the pak problem would go away very quickly. Every weapons shipment (free) to Pak is done with the ostensible aim to help fight the taliban, but in reality it is to keep India under control. All the US needs to do is stop financing pak and keep a watch on the nukes. Within a few months pak will collapse, the state will break into its provinces, Balochistan would be free, the durrand line will go away, Afghan-Pak problem will disappear, The kashmir problem would go away and peace will reign :-)). Yugoslavia is quite peaceful now...
Carrying on with the current policy is a setup for failure. The Americans are generally the most hated nationals in pak, we waste resources on a god forsaken land. Due to american support, the army steals all the money it can, with very little left to improve the infrastructure, education or the poor. Its only a matter of time when the peasant class rises against the feudal elites. The MQM party is proposing land reforms, though I expect the bill to not pass. In essence, american money makes it easy for the generals to steal even more. In reality, the beggar nation should not be spending on nukes. If pak has nukes, the US is fully to blame, because we turned a blind eye to the chinese, who gave them the technology.
However, the US-India equation is changing. Instead of trying to check India wrt pak, the US now needs to checkmate China, for that reason the US is now supportive of India, which means that support to Pak must fade. I anticipate a harder line wrt to Pakiland, and improved relationship with India. This change seems to be happening. In Nov, Obama travels to India, many billion dollar deals will be signed, most related to weapons!. What is galling to americans is that Bush signed the nuclear deal with India, which has allowed many nations (France, Russia, canada etc) to sign nuclear power plant and uranium deals with India, but the US is still to bag a single deal!. This is because of Obama's insistence on technology denial to India under equal terms. The world is changing, and the Americans seem to be the last to realize it. When I talk to visiting Indians, the energy and enthusiasm regarding the future place of India in the comity of nations is palpable. In India, people ignore Pak needle pricks, and are now focussed on China. The thinking is that if a war can be avoided for one more decade, the economic progress will be sufficient to make any aggression by China very painful to them.
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Afghanistan's President Karzai signs deal on gas pipeline project
The proposed 1,000-mile natural gas pipeline would cut through Taliban territory in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A flurry of 26 deaths over two days highlights difficulties the project would face.
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times
December 12, 2010
Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with regional leaders Saturday to sign an agreement for a massive energy project that could eventually net his country billions of dollars in revenue: a 1,000-mile natural gas pipeline whose proposed route cuts through the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.
As if to highlight the complications facing the project, at least 26 people were killed in attacks Friday and Saturday, including a Taliban commander and several people believed to be with a private security firm, Afghan and NATO officials said.
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The United States strongly supports the proposed pipeline because it could draw Central Asia's significant energy resources to Pakistan and India an bypass Iran, Washington's top adversary in the region.
Karzai met with Turkmen, Indian and Pakistani officials in Ashgabat, the capital of neighboring Turkmenistan, to sign the accord.
"On this very important occasion, let me once again highlight our vision for regional cooperation, which is to contribute to regional stability and prosperity," Karzai said in a statement, "and to enhance the conditions for Afghanistan to resume its central role as a land bridge in this region."
But the proposed $7.6-billion TAPI Gas Pipeline project and any revenue it may generate may be years away. The planned route passes from Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic, through violent territory still unsettled by insurgencies, including the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, and the Pakistani city of Quetta, which is considered the home of the Taliban leadership.
The latest violence took place in Afghanistan's south and the northern province of Kunduz.
In the most deadly attack, a roadside bomb blast struck a pickup truck carrying Afghan men Friday in a rural stretch of Helmand province, killing 15 people, Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand's governor, said Saturday.
Also in Helmand, a man described as a senior Taliban commander and three members of his family were killed Saturday in a North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrike, the official Bakhtar news agency reported.
A car bomb exploded Saturday afternoon in the parking lot of the Information and Culture Directorate in Kandahar, injuring four police officers and two youths, said Zalmay Ayoubi, spokesman for the governor there.
"The enemies of peace and the people have lost the ability to fight against the government, and now they want to terrorize the public by committing such criminal acts just to show their existence," said a statement issued by the governor's office.
In Kunduz, a suicide bomber driving an explosives-laden car attacked an Afghan army checkpoint, injuring five soldiers and nine civilians in nearby homes, mostly women and children, said Muhbullah Sayedi, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
U.S.-led forces also announced an investigation of allegations that seven Afghan members of a private security firm were killed Saturday during a counterinsurgency operation near the eastern Afghan city of Gardez, the site of a Dec. 5 suicide bombing that killed Western troops.
A military news release said the U.S.-led troops opened fire after armed men emerged from a vehicle and compound suspected of being linked to the Haqqani network, which is allied with the Taliban.
"The security force takes civilian casualty allegations seriously and is currently accessing who the individuals were, why they were armed and why they were in that area at that time of the morning," the news release said.
Protecting civilian lives has become a key component of the international force's strategy in Afghanistan. Deteriorating security erodes the Afghan civilians' trust in the central government and its armed forces, sometimes leading them to turn to the Taliban for protection.
The United States hopes the Afghan army and police force will be able to secure the country and tamp down the Taliban once international troops begin to depart. But attempts at political reconciliation between the central government and the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan from the mid-1990s until the U.S. invasion in 2001, appear to have stalled.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters Wednesday in Kabul, the Afghan capital, that a large U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan was showing results.
After a meeting with Karzai, Gates told reporters he would return to Washington believing that Afghanistan will be ready for a U.S. troop drawdown by 2014, as set out by President Obama.
daragahi@latimes.com
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No comments on the previous post? I thought it quite significant , , ,
Anyway, in a tragi-comic vein, here's this:
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2010/12/05/
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"No comments on the previous post? I thought it quite significant"
- I loved your title: "Karzai reading this thread". It's surprising who you bump into here!
"...natural gas pipeline whose proposed route cuts through the heartland of the Taliban insurgency..."
- What could possibly go wrong with that?? If this is possible it is the beginning of finding a revenue stream other than poppies for this wasteland. I forget why we favor legalization here but not poppy exports for the Afghans...
"Gates told reporters he would return to Washington believing that Afghanistan will be ready for a U.S. troop drawdown by 2014, as set out by President Obama"
- I thought Obama said 2011(?) Do you still think there will be no challenge to Obama from his own (anti-war) party?
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FWIW IMHO BO is simply posturing until we get out.
FWIW IMHO if we were there to succeed this pipeline project would really be something around which to focus our efforts; both for its symbolic and real world meaning.
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KABUL, Afghanistan — As the Obama administration reviews its strategy in Afghanistan, residents and even a Taliban commander say the surge of American troops this year has begun to set back the Taliban in parts of their southern heartland and to turn people against the insurgency — at least for now.
Mixed Picture on Taliban as Pentagon Reviews War
On Thursday, the Pentagon will release a year-end review of the nearly nine-year war in Afghanistan.
While the review seems certain to emphasize progress that has been made around the important southern city of Kandahar, security in other critical areas of the country continues to deteriorate.
The uneven picture in Afghanistan is raising questions about whether the United States military is gambling too heavily on a strategy aimed at breaking the back of the Taliban in their southern stronghold, at the expense of securing the country over all. (It would have helped if our CiC didn't announce that we are leaving too one suspects)
The stepped-up operations in Kandahar Province have left many in the Taliban demoralized, reluctant to fight and struggling to recruit, a Taliban commander said in an interview this week. Afghans with contacts in the Taliban confirmed his description. They pointed out that this was the first time in four years that the Taliban had given up their hold of all the districts around the city of Kandahar, an important staging ground for the insurgency and the focus of the 30,000 American troops whom President Obama ordered to be sent to Afghanistan last December.
“To tell you the truth, the government has the upper hand now” in and around Kandahar, the Taliban member said. A midlevel commander who has been with the movement since its founding in 1994 and knows it well, he was interviewed by telephone on the condition that his name not be used.
NATO commanders cautioned that progress on the battlefield remained tentative. It will not be clear until next summer if the government and the military can hold on to those gains, they said. Much will depend on resolving two problems: improving ineffectual local governments and strengthening Afghan troops to fight in NATO’s place.
The Taliban commander said the insurgents had made a tactical retreat and would re-emerge in the spring as American forces began to withdraw.
But in a dozen interviews, Afghan landowners, tribal elders and villagers said they believed that the Taliban could find it hard to return if American troops remained.
The local residents and the Taliban commander said the strength of the American offensive had already shifted the public mood. Winning the war of perceptions is something the military considers critical to the success of the counterinsurgency strategy being pursued by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the coalition commander.
While coalition gains in other parts of the south are spottier, Afghans with Taliban contacts say the insurgents have lost their bases in the rural areas around Kandahar and are a much weakened force in their old southern stronghold. Commanders have taken refuge across the border in Pakistan and are unwilling to return, they said.
“They are very upset and worried,” said one Afghan who lives in Quetta, the western Pakistani city where the Taliban leadership is based, and knows a number of Taliban commanders who live in his neighborhood. “This whole operation in the south has made it very difficult for them. They have lost their heart. A lot of leaders have been killed.”
NATO commanders have issued reams of press releases on the capture and killing of Taliban fighters.
While an emphasis on body counts can be misleading when fighting an indigenous insurgency, Afghans around the country said the strategy of targeted raids on Taliban field commanders had hit the movement hard. The Taliban member also confirmed the impact, and said the Taliban were dismayed to see the much more concerted offensive by coalition forces, as well as the corresponding shift in the public mood.
American forces have occupied former bases of the Taliban in districts surrounding Kandahar, and set up positions in the same buildings, including the Taliban’s main headquarters and courthouse in Sayedan where they held trials under Islamic law, or Shariah.
“Positioning themselves in the Taliban bases signals to the people that the Taliban cannot come back,” said one landowner from Panjwai, an important district outside the city of Kandahar. Like many others, he asked not to be named, indicating there was still widespread fear of Taliban retribution in the rural communities.
“Our Afghan security forces are assuring us that they will stay, and that gives hope,” said Hajji Agha Lalai, a provincial council member from Panjwai District. A medical worker who visited his home village in Panjwai on Monday said the area that used to be the front line between the government and the Taliban was now completely cleared and safe.
The coalition and government forces had blocked access to Panjwai and Zhare, another important district outside Kandahar, with wire fencing, concrete blast walls and tank berms so that all traffic had to filter through their checkpoints, making it nearly impossible for insurgents to move through the area clandestinely, the Taliban member and residents said.
Raids on houses of suspected Taliban members have also badly rattled those Taliban remaining in the area, landowners and residents said. Most of the Taliban have either fled or gone into hiding, they said. One local landlord, Abdul Aleem, said a group of Taliban had begged for food and lodging from villagers in Zhare 20 days ago, but were terrified whenever they heard shooting.
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The Taliban are even more concerned that the Americans are gaining the upper hand in the battle of perceptions on who is winning the war, several people with contacts in the Taliban said. “The people are not happy with us,” the Taliban fighter said. “People gave us a place to stay for several years, but we did not provide them with anything except fighting. The situation is different now: the local people are not willingly cooperating with us. They are not giving us a place to stay or giving us food.”
On Thursday, the Pentagon will release a year-end review of the nearly nine-year war in Afghanistan.
While the review seems certain to emphasize progress that has been made around the important southern city of Kandahar, security in other critical areas of the country continues to deteriorate.
The uneven picture in Afghanistan is raising questions about whether the United States military is gambling too heavily on a strategy aimed at breaking the back of the Taliban in their southern stronghold, at the expense of securing the country over all.
NATO’s announcement that it would remain until a transfer to Afghan forces in 2014 has also convinced people that it will not withdraw quickly, he said.
“The Americans are more serious, and another thing that made people hopeful was when they said they would stay until 2014,” the Taliban commander said. “That has made people change their minds.”
That shift in support could hamper Taliban operations, said one landowner, a former guerrilla fighter who has Taliban contacts. “It will hurt the leadership because they will not have people to work for them in the area,” he said.
The Taliban leadership was so concerned that it held a meeting recently to discuss how to counter the American-led offensive and regain key districts around the city of Kandahar, the Taliban member said. They appointed a new commander, Maulavi Sattar, to oversee the winter campaign in Kandahar and are pressing fighters to stall expansion of coalition and government forces in the province, and prevent recruitment of local police officers in the districts.
Nevertheless the Taliban fighters were losing heart and showing signs of division, said the Taliban commander, who has been sheltering in Kandahar city since the insurgents were routed from his district in October.
He said he traveled recently to the Pakistani border town of Chaman and met three Taliban commanders there. But when he asked when they were coming back to Kandahar, they said they were reluctant to return and feared they would be killed. “They said they feared our own men, that other Taliban might betray them,” he said.
The Afghan living in Quetta said that Taliban commanders he knew were trying to recruit and pay others to fight while holding themselves back. “One threw me 50,000 Pakistani rupees and said, ‘If you have anyone who can go and fight, take them and go and fight,’ ” he said. “When they threw me the money, they said, ‘If you don’t want to go and fight, could you find some recruits for the spring?’ ”
The Taliban leaders and commanders will certainly not give up, Afghans familiar with them said. Some of them have moved to Pakistan and will rest up until the spring. Others have shifted to more remote areas, where the coalition and government presence is not as strong.
“The Taliban will come back in the spring, but most people predict that they will not come with the force of previous years because they have been hit very hard and they keep being hit,” the landowner from Kandahar said.
“And if the Americans stay, the Taliban commanders will never come back,” he said.
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My recollection during the dither over the strategy of an Afghan surge was that the withdrawal was set for July 2011, date certain. That date was chosen for American political reasons, not for future facts on the ground which were by definition unknown when the date was set. Now I understand we are out in 2014, date certain. That date, again, was chosen for American political purposes because, again, conditions and circumstances on the ground in 2014 can't be known now as that date is set - with certainty.
Under Obama, we escalated the war in terms of numbers of troops committed, cost. civilian deaths, enemy attacks, drone attacks, kills and captures and especially increasing is the number and rate of Americans dying in Afghanistan to the point of more deaths now than under 8 years of Bush. Also less press coverage so I write the above with no judgment whatsoever about how it is going.
The Afghan war had the potential of splitting the Democrat party, but it was off the political radar in 2010 because we are already committed to be out in 2011, date certain (I am not the one over-using that phrase). Switching now to 2014, date certain, allows the incumbent Commander in Chief to run just one more time as the true anti-war candidate because of his firm commitment to bring our troops home, a 'commitment' that a conservative Republican likely nominee will be unable to make.
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The Continuing U.S.-Pakistani Disconnect Over the Afghan War
A number of developments related to the complex dealings between the United States and Pakistan over the war in Afghanistan took place Tuesday. The day began with the head of the Pakistani army’s public relations wing telling the Pakistani English daily Express Tribune that the army’s preliminary plans to launch an offensive in a key tribal region was delayed. The top Pakistani officer explained that the delay of sending forces into North Waziristan was the consequence of a resurgence of militant activity in other parts of the tribal areas — the latest manifestation of two separate attacks over the weekend in Mohmand and Bajaur agencies.
Since the recent strategy review by U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, Islamabad has come under increasing pressure from Washington to expand the scope of its counterinsurgency offensive in North Waziristan. It is the only agency (out of the seven that constitute the Federally Administered Tribal Areas or FATA) that the Pakistani government has not targeted as part of its 20-month-old campaign against Taliban rebels and their transnational allies. North Waziristan has also become the hub of jihadist forces of various stripes, particularly Taliban forces engaged in the fight in Afghanistan, especially so after the mid-2009 Pakistani-commenced operations against militants in other parts of the FATA.
“Both the United States and Pakistan agree that there is to be a negotiated settlement with the Afghan Taliban, but there is a huge disagreement on how to go about getting to the negotiating table.”
In a separate Express Tribune report by Pakistan’s first internationally affiliated daily — a partner of the International Herald Tribune — unnamed military sources were quoted as saying that senior military commanders decided to redeploy combat troops into the Swat district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province in the wake of a renewed threat from Pakistani Taliban rebels. According to intelligence reports, the Taliban rebel leaderships in Swat and the FATA, which had escaped to Afghanistan’s eastern provinces of Kunar and Nuristan, were now regrouping in Mohmand and Bajaur to stage a comeback in Swat.
This report provides a justification for the Pakistani argument that it cannot expand its operations into North Waziristan — at least not for a while. It also upends the American argument that Pakistani territory along the Durand Line is a launch pad for Afghan Taliban insurgents fighting Afghan and NATO troops in Afghanistan. In other words, from the Pakistani view, while it is true that Pakistani soil is being used by militants to stage attacks in Afghanistan, the reverse is also true in that Taliban and al Qaeda forces waging war against Islamabad enjoy safe havens in eastern Afghanistan. Interestingly, on Tuesday, The New York Times published a story quoting unnamed U.S. intelligence and military officials stating that rival militant forces on both sides of the border had begun to cooperate to enhance their respective cross-border operations.
On a related note, and in response to the U.S. strategy review, Pakistan recently criticized the United States for demanding that Islamabad prevent militants on its side of the border from staging attacks in Afghanistan, while Washington-led forces with far more superior capabilities were not able to seal the border from the Afghan side. An American military commander responded Tuesday saying that it was not possible for Western forces to seal the lengthy Afghan-border and prevent militants from slipping in from the Pakistani side. Herein lies the dilemma in that both the United States and Pakistan have different priorities.
As far as Washington is concerned, Islamabad should not limit itself to action against Islamist militants waging war on Pakistani soil. Conversely, the Pakistanis want the Americans to realize that they can’t risk exacerbating the war in their country by going after forces that are not waging war against Pakistan. Ultimately, both sides agree that there is to be a negotiated settlement with the Afghan Taliban, but there is a huge disagreement on how to go about getting to the negotiating table.
As this disagreement continues to play itself out, the idea of setting up a Taliban office in Turkey surfaced last week around a summit-level meeting in Istanbul involving the Turkish, Afghan and Pakistani leaderships. While both Kabul and Islamabad welcomed the suggestion, the United States is unlikely to seriously entertain the idea of talks with the Taliban, at least not until after the end of 2011 due to the U.S. surge campaign. That said, if there is to be a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, the Afghan insurgent movement will need to achieve international recognition as a legitimate Afghan national political force and opening an office in a neutral country is a first step in that direction. And until that happens, the U.S.-Pakistani disconnect over the cross-border insurgency is likely to continue.
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Potential Significance of a Local Afghan Deal
A local peace deal may be emerging in one of the most violent corners of Afghanistan. U.S. Maj. Gen. Robert Mills, commander of Regional Command Southwest and commanding general of First Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), on Monday confirmed reports from the weekend that the largest tribe in Sangin district in Helmand province has pledged to end fighting and expel “foreign” fighters from the area. The Taliban, for their part, remain silent on the issue. But according to reports, the deal was struck with the Alikozai tribe in the Sarwan-Qalah area of the Upper Sangin Valley (only a portion of Sangin district), which controls some 30 villages. The agreement was made between tribal elders and the provincial governor, though the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was involved.
ISAF has neither the troops nor the staying power to actually defeat the Taliban. While they may yet succeed in eroding the strength and cohesion of the Taliban phenomenon, any lasting exit strategy would require some sort of political accommodation. In a sense, this can be compared to Iraq, where the 2007 surge of American combat forces — while not without its impact — did not turn the tide in Mesopotamia so much as play a supporting role in a political arrangement with Sunni insurgents (in the previously restive Anbar province and beyond) to not only cease supporting but to actively cooperate in the form of both local militias and, critically, intelligence sharing, in the war against the foreign jihadists that they had previously fought alongside. While Iraqi and regional politics remain very much in flux, this paved the way for a national-scale counter to the Sunni insurgency and foreign jihadist threat.
“The history of insurgency provides little to suggest that recent gains presage or herald an entity near defeat.”
Due to terrain and demography, power in Afghanistan — militarily and politically — is far more localized. While a comprehensive deal with the Pashtun, the ethnic group at the heart of the Taliban insurgency, could yield considerable results, the Pashtun do not fear any other ethnic group in the country as the Sunnis in Iraq feared the Shia. And the nature of local and tribal loyalties — not to mention the now cross-border and transnational Taliban phenomenon — makes settling on, much less enforcing, a nationwide solution far more problematic. Indeed, the Alikozai tribe speaks for only a small portion of Sangin (not to mention the potential impact of tribal rivalries) while the provincial government in Helmand has very little ability to impose or enforce much of anything on its own.
But while this most recent development in Sangin does not mark the beginning of a comprehensive solution, it remains noteworthy. Under the American counterinsurgency-focused strategy, forces have been massed in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar provinces — the heartland and home turf of the Afghan Taliban. In places like Nawa and Marjah, the sustained application of force has pushed the Taliban from territory that they once held uncontested. And the ability to turn the tide politically in former insurgent strongholds (as in Anbar province) has the potential to have wider significance.
Yet, it is classic guerrilla strategy to fall back in the face of concentrated conventional military force. STRATFOR does not trust the recent quietude of the Taliban in Helmand and beyond. The history of insurgency provides little to suggest that recent gains presage or herald an entity near defeat. And while ISAF’s claims of progress in terms of undermining Taliban funds and the capturing and killing of its leadership do not appear to be without grounds (though the true seniority of those killed and the operational impact of those losses remain pivotal questions), that does not necessarily translate into a more lasting political solution.
After all, while the United States succeeded in Iraq in extracting itself from an internal counterinsurgency battle that it was losing, the fate of the wider region is anything but settled. Transnational and regional issues — as well as the larger American grand strategy — will continue to loom long after American and allied forces begin to leave Afghanistan. But finding a solution whereby ISAF can extract itself from the day-to-day work of a difficult counterinsurgency where foreign forces are at an inherent disadvantage is of central importance to the current campaign in Afghanistan. And all caveats aside, political accommodation in Sangin must be seen as a positive development. Just how positive remains to be seen and will warrant close scrutiny in the weeks and months ahead.
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**Whoops! Nevermind.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12111831
4 January 2011 Last updated at 17:54 ET
Punjab Governor Salman Taseer assassinated in Islamabad
Salman Taseer was repeatedly shot at close range with a sub-machine gun
* In pictures: Taseer assassination
* Your reaction to the killing
* Pakistan's very unhappy new year
The influential governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, Salman Taseer, has died after being shot by one of his bodyguards in the capital, Islamabad.
Mr Taseer, a senior member of the Pakistan People's Party, was shot when getting into his car at a market.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the guard had told police that he killed Mr Taseer because of the governor's opposition to Pakistan's blasphemy law.
Many were angered by his defence of a Christian woman sentenced to death.
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Cheers and tears in Pakistan after assassination
ISLAMABAD – Lawyers showered the suspected assassin of a liberal Pakistani governor with rose petals as he entered court. Some 170 miles away, the prime minister joined thousands to mourn the loss of the politician, who dared to challenge the demands of Islamic extremists.
The cheers and tears across the country Wednesday underscored Pakistan's journey over the past several decades from a nation defined by moderate Islam to one increasingly influenced by fundamentalists willing to use violence to impose their views.
Even so-called moderate Muslim scholars praised 26-year-old Mumtaz Qadri for allegedly killing Punjab province Gov. Salman Taseer on Tuesday in a hail of gunfire while he was supposed to be protecting him as a bodyguard. Qadri later told authorities he acted because of Taseer's vocal opposition to blasphemy laws that order death for those who insult Islam.
As Qadri was escorted into court in Islamabad, a rowdy crowd patted his back and kissed his cheek as lawyers at the scene threw flowers. On the way out, some 200 sympathizers chanted slogans in his favor, and the suspect stood at the back door of an armored police van and repeatedly yelled "God is great."
Many other Pakistanis were appalled.
"Extremist thought has become so mainstream that what we need to question in Pakistan is what people think constitutes extremism now," said Fasi Zaka, a 34-year-old radio host and columnist.
Pakistan's founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, helped establish the country in 1947 as a moderate Islamic state welcoming all minority groups and religions. But that foundation has slowly been eroded over the years, especially in the 1980s during the military rule of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who imposed a more conservative brand of Islam on the country.
The U.S. participated in this process by providing Zia's government with billions of dollars that it funneled to the mujahideen fighting the Soviets in neighboring Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia also provided billions and established scores of conservative Islamic schools that have played a major role in empowering the religious right in Pakistan.
Analysts say a majority of Pakistan's Muslims still follow a moderate form of Sufi-influenced Islam. But there are signs that even some of those beliefs may have shifted to the right. An influential group of 500 clerics and scholars from the Barelvi sect, which opposes the Taliban, praised Taseer's assassination.
The Jamat Ahle Sunnat group said no one should pray or express regret for the killing of the governor. The group also issued a veiled threat to other opponents of the blasphemy laws.
"The supporter is as equally guilty as one who committed blasphemy," the group warned in a statement, adding politicians, the media and others should learn "a lesson from the exemplary death."
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and other senior ruling party officials joined up to 6,000 mourners under tight security to pay homage to Taseer at a funeral in the eastern city of Lahore. Other parties, including the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N, which is more aligned with religious groups, had limited presence at the event.
The response to Taseer's murder among ordinary Pakistanis seemed mixed. Some praised Qadri for targeting the governor, who in recent weeks had spoken forcefully in favor of clemency for a Christian woman sentenced to die for allegedly insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
"Salman Taseer committed a grave crime calling the blasphemy law a 'black law,'" said 30-year-old Ghulam Murtaza, a farmer on the outskirts of the southern port city of Karachi.
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An Indian friend who is an astute observer of these things comments:
The recent murder of the governor of punjab in pakistan marks an important turning point in pakistan's death spiral. The RAPE (Rabid Anglicized Pakistani Elite) class has been effectively silenced. 500 muslim priests refused to perform the last rites of the man. The body guard who shot the governor, did so with apparent agreement of other body guards (I guess the nukes are safe though). The shooter was brought to court and showered with rose petals, lawyers fighting to defend him!. As background the governor was shot for supporting a christian woman who was handed down a death sentence for blasphemy following a verbal altercation with other muslim women, who had refused to accept drinking water from her.
Effectively, the lunatics now rule the asylum....you have been warned.
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Lahore, Pakistan
TWENTY-SEVEN. That’s the number of bullets a police guard fired into my father before surrendering himself with a sinister smile to the policemen around him. Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, was assassinated on Tuesday — my brother Shehryar’s 25th birthday — outside a market near our family home in Islamabad.
The guard accused of the killing, Mumtaz Qadri, was assigned that morning to protect my father while he was in the federal capital. According to officials, around 4:15 p.m., as my father was about to step into his car after lunch, Mr. Qadri opened fire.
Mr. Qadri and his supporters may have felled a great oak that day, but they are sadly mistaken if they think they have succeeded in silencing my father’s voice or the voices of millions like him who believe in the secular vision of Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
My father’s life was one of struggle. He was a self-made man, who made and lost and remade his fortune. He was among the first members of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party when it was founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the late 1960s. He was an intellectual, a newspaper publisher and a writer; he was jailed and tortured for his belief in democracy and freedom. The vile dictatorship of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq did not take kindly to his pamphleteering for the restoration of democracy.
One particularly brutal imprisonment was in a dungeon at Lahore Fort, this city’s Mughal-era citadel. My father was held in solitary confinement for months and was slipped a single meal of half a plate of stewed lentils each day. They told my mother, in her early 20s at the time, that he was dead. She never believed that.
Determined, she made friends with the kind man who used to sweep my father’s cell and asked him to pass a note to her husband. My father later told me he swallowed the note, fearing for the sweeper’s life. He scribbled back a reassuring message to my mother: “I’m not made from a wood that burns easily.” That is the kind of man my father was. He could not be broken.
He often quoted verse by his uncle Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one of Urdu’s greatest poets. “Even if you’ve got shackles on your feet, go. Be fearless and walk. Stand for your cause even if you are martyred,” wrote Faiz. Especially as governor, my father was the first to speak up and stand beside those who had suffered, from the thousands of people displaced by the Kashmir earthquake in 2005 to the family of two teenage brothers who were lynched by a mob last August in Sialkot after a dispute at a cricket match.
After 86 members of the Ahmadi sect, considered blasphemous by fundamentalists, were murdered in attacks on two of their mosques in Lahore last May, to the great displeasure of the religious right my father visited the survivors in the hospital. When the floods devastated Pakistan last summer, he was on the go, rallying businessmen for aid, consoling the homeless and building shelters.
My father believed that the strict blasphemy laws instituted by General Zia have been frequently misused and ought to be changed. His views were widely misrepresented to give the false impression that he had spoken against Prophet Mohammad. This was untrue, and a criminal abdication of responsibility by his critics, who must now think about what they have caused to happen. According to the authorities, my father’s stand on the blasphemy law was what drove Mr. Qadri to kill him.
There are those who say my father’s death was the final nail in the coffin for a tolerant Pakistan. That Pakistan’s liberal voices will now be silenced. But we buried a heroic man, not the courage he inspired in others. This week two leading conservative politicians — former Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and the cricket-star-turned-politician Imran Khan — have taken the same position my father held on the blasphemy laws: they want amendments to prevent misuse.
To say that there was a security lapse on Tuesday is an understatement. My father was brutally gunned down by a man hired to protect him. Juvenal once asked, “Who will guard the guards themselves?” It is a question all Pakistanis should ask themselves today: If the extremists could get to the governor of the largest province, is anyone safe?
It may sound odd, but I can’t imagine my father dying in any other way. Everything he had, he invested in Pakistan, giving livelihoods to tens of thousands, improving the economy. My father believed in our country’s potential. He lived and died for Pakistan. To honor his memory, those who share that belief in Pakistan’s future must not stay silent about injustice. We must never be afraid of our enemies. We must never let them win.
Shehrbano Taseer is a reporter with Newsweek Pakistan.
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To the previous post here, 27 shots into the Governor? The last 26 sound like sending a message to whoever wants to try being sane and rational next. And we ask why more moderate Muslims don't stand up and step forward.
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"In Pakistan, the Zardari government is likely to fall in 2011."
This piece, Warcast 2011, could go under Geopolitics but has interesting insights on Pak-Afghan and our involvement. I will excerpt that here and read it all if you want. Also interesting regarding Iraq, Israel and Iran. Read it all if you if you like the excerpt. I don't agree or disagree, just taking it in.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/01/08/2011_warcast_108473.html
...
In Afghanistan, we will see the largest yearly number of American and coalition casualties since the war there began in 2001. Our military operations will be accelerated, bigger and more far-reaching this year because President Obama may still draw down the surge of troops into Afghanistan this summer. (the news this week of an additional 1400 combat troops being sent in will proves the acceleration). The biggest question is whether the Karzai government - increasingly uncooperative with our military operations - seeks to assert greater control over those operations.
Vice President Biden's declaration that we will be out of Afghanistan "come hell or high water" in 2014 raises the likelihood of open conflict between Karzai and Afghanistan commander Gen. David Petraeus to a near-certainty. Petraeus is frustrated at the lack of progress in establishing local government operations where military operations have temporarily cleared areas of the Taliban. Karzai - looking ahead three years - will be less cooperative as the year goes on. Karzai's 70-member "high peace council" will be meeting with Pakistani representatives in talks designed to reach an accommodation with the Taliban. Those talks will not produce a peace agreement, but pressure by Karzai on Petraeus to reduce military strikes to incent the Taliban to talk peace will result in greater tensions.
In neighboring Pakistan, the Zardari government is likely to fall in 2011. As recently as this past weekend, the second largest party in the Pakistani coalition government - the Muttahida Qaumi Movement - quit the government and joined the opposition. Corruption, rising inflation and the government's poor performance during the 2010 floods have combined to weaken the Zardari government to the point that a military coup - or a parliamentary move to "temporarily" replace Zardari with a military strongman -- is more likely than not.
Gen. Pervez Musharraf would like to return to power, but more likely is the ascendance Gen. Ashfaq Kayani. Gen. Kayani, commander of the Pakistani military, plays a closely-held poker hand. He often chooses to turn a blind eye to American military strikes at terrorists in the Pakistani northern tribal regions, but he is keeping his options open in all directions.
The black swan hovering over Southwest Asia is what Kayani would do if he were to replace Zardari. Kayani, according to Pakistani media, quietly thwarted American aid legislation designed to ensure civilian control over Pakistan's military. Kayani, like Karzai, is making his own plans based on the Obama administration's plan to withdraw from Afghanistan no later than 2014. At that point, the Taliban will be neither defeated nor sufficiently disrupted to no longer be a threat to Pakistan. If he takes power, Kayani will move to force al-Qaeda and the Taliban back into Afghanistan and attempt to contain them there. His cooperation with American military operations will be sporadic, aimed only at that containment. ...
(author Jed Babbin served as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush)
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As I have been posting here for a few years now, our strategy for Afpakia is utterly incoherent. Bush left a mess, no doubt! but as best as I can tell at present we simply are posturing so that our Commander in Chief can pretend that he kept his campaign promise to wage this "essential war of national self-defense" before doing what he fully intended to do along anyway-- which is to leave, under the guise of , , , well , , , that is going to be tricky, isn't it? The Democratic left and all sentient political observers understood that-- which is why the left supported him as the "peace" candidate.
As best as I can tell, we will withdraw under dishonorable conditions, Pakistan's underlying hostility will become overt, and its nuke program will become a major player in the proliferation ensuing from Iran's nukes.
Meanwhile, our CiC will cut the military while enslaving our children with deficit entitlements, bluster with China, set the stage for China's takeover of Taiwan not so many years down the road, etc etc etc.
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Note the interesting comments on Indian Muslims at the end too.
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MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011
Pakistan Multiple Crises
Two to three years has been the average life span of elected governments in Pakistan ever since Z A Bhutto was PM from 1973 to 1977. His daughter Benazir alternated with her rival Nawaz Sharif from 1988 till 1999 when the Mian Sahib was overthrown by yet another saviour in Khaki, General Pervez Musharraf. And both former Prime Ministers were forced into exile.
Thus, going by past precedents the present combine of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani would now seem to have run out of its allotted time. Several crises confront the PPP led government and there are no easy solutions, quite a few outside the range of the PPP leadership's capabilities to solve them.
The Commissar and the General
Apart from the ongoing turmoil in FATA and the tussle between the US and the Pak Army over North Waziristan is well known. An exasperated US administration finds itself unable to push the Pakistan Army led by Gen Kayani into launching operations in North Waziristan as it prepares for its draw down of forces later in the year. Each time the Americans press this issue or launch their drone attacks they slip in their popularity rating among the Pakistanis and each time Gen Kayani stonewalls he shines as a patriot.
The General has been driving a hard bargain with the Americans successfully as he silently strengthens his hold both on the system and the armed forces. Quite obviously, General Kayani has an agenda that goes beyond just refurbishing the image of the Army with generous assistance from the US. A professional Army does not need three year extensions in service to its Chief beyond the stipulated term unless the agenda is wider and political or ominously, even military and strategic.
Setting aside the economic crisis that engulfs Pakistan, there are two other crises that are brewing a political crisis in Islamabad and an ethnic-religious crisis in Karachi of grave dimensions that no one really wants to talk about.
A Political Crisis Unfolds
Zardari and Gilani are resigned to having to deal with an over bearing Army since this is the way of political life in Pakistan. But they have other disadvantages compared to their main political rival, Mian Nawaz Sharif and his PML (N) or even their ally the MQM led by Altaf Hussain both of who command personal loyalties and have strong cadre based parties.
Nawaz controls the Punjab, while Altaf controls Karachi. Gilani and Zardari are comparative lightweights in the PPP and do not command that kind of respect that these two do within their parties and people. Nawaz is a Punjabi, has close links with the Saudis and the Jamaat Islami, which has a following in the Pak Army. He himself has strong right wing religious leanings, which endears him to a section of the Army and the religious parties. Yes his attempts to manipulate the Army in the past despite being originally a protigi of the Army, and his religious leanings would make him unacceptable to the Army and the US.
In a free and fair election, Nawaz could possibly sweep Punjab and he who wins Punjab rules Pakistan. This is possibly Kayani's threat to the Americans at this juncture a few months before they plan their pull out. In the present crisis, perhaps Nawaz himself would not want to take over the reins of office so it suits him to see the government further weakened. He would rather wait it out unless an election is thrust upon him.
The MQM's Complaints
The MQM crisis is somewhat different. While the world's attention has been focused on the war in FATA against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the NWFP (Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa) ethnic and religious violence has been increasing alarmingly in Karachi. The MQM has for years complained and feared that the ingress of Pushtuns from the frontier many of whom are Talibanised would tilt the balance away from them while the activities of religious parties like the Deobandi parties like Lashkar e Jhangvi would further erode its hold in urban Sindh especially Karachi and Hyderabad. There is another complication in that politically the Mohajirs support the MQM, the Sindhis support the PPP and the Pushtun support the Awami National Party. The latter two invariably combine against the MQM.
Politically motivated targeted killings in Karachi have been increasing alarmingly. The Daily Times of Lahore reported that last year about 780 people were killed in ethnic, religious and political violence in Karachi which is similar to the suicide killings in the NWFP (797) and more than in the rest of the country (427). While the MQM may have its own political objectives in complaining to Gilani about the worsening law and order situation in Karachi the fact is that the metropolis has become a hot bed of rivalries between various competing and conflicting interests with strong overtones of a Talibanised culture and MQM fears it may have to cede ground to Wahhabi-Salafi beliefs brought in by more and more Pushtun leaving their homes for Karachi. Islamabad's failure to redress the MQM's complaints is the real reason for the threat of MQM to walk out although it is camouflaged in economic demands to bring in support from the Sindhis as well. To make matters worse for the MQM, its leaders have been trading insults with the PML (N) leadership. Consequently, the political situation looks very uncertain and the PPP looks extremely weak. And enter General Kayani centre stage?
The Assassination and the Islamic Fundamentalist Fervour
There is another development that could make the Army even more indispensible to the situation in today's Pakistan - the assassination of Salman Taseer the Punjab Governor and a close ally and friend of President Zardari, by one of his own guards for his opposition to Blasphemy Laws. It is not the first time that the religious right has resorted to punish those opposed to its creed. While Pakistan's liberal elite may mourn Taseer's death a wide section of the religious right has actually approved the killing.
The comments that were visible on Twitter and Facebook supporting the assassin were a chilling indicator of the direction Pakistan had taken in recent years. Killing for religion is frightening enough but the reaction that has been visible is even more frightening. The diktat by the Jamaate Ahle Sunnat Pakistan that no Muslim should attend Taseer's funeral sends a chill down every liberal spine.
The JASP is the largest body of the Barelvi group and considerate moderate in comparison to the Deobandhi-Wahhabi-Salafi Sunnis. Gen Zia's dream has become Pakistan's nightmare. The message to the liberal elite is - shut up and put up. The comment by the well known Pakistani commentator Cyril Almeida that, "Conservative forces are not just on a roll in Pakistan, they're pretty dominant. And liberal forces are not just on the back foot, but, really, they are extinguished," sums up the despondency and the gravity.
This is not the first time that a prominent Pakistani leader has been assassinated by suspected Islamic hardliners or attempts have been made. Benazir was killed by three years ago at the second attempt. They almost succeeded in killing Gen Musharraf in 2003 when he turned his back to the Taliban and some religious extremists in response to American demands. Then there were several attacks on the symbols of Pak power since September 11, 2001 including the Army and obviously the rot had set in but all this was swept away in the larger interest of preserving the peace and fighting the larger American war.
Teacher's Pets
In the midst of all this one would continue to have doubts about Pakistani leadership's commitment to fight terror. It is believed that, the well-known senior Pakistani terrorist Qari Saifullah Akhtar from the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami with links to both the ISI and Al Qaeda was released from custody in early in December 2010. He had been taken into custody in August 2010 for trying to recruit five Americans for Al Qaeda when they had visited Pakistan in November 2009.
Qari Akhtar has a colourful jihadi history. Qari and the HUJI have been very close to the Taliban and Al Qaeda; he was involved along with some jihadi Army officers in an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Gen Abdul Waheed Kakkar in 1995 and over throw the government in 1995. Released in 1996, Akhtar fled to Afghanistan and then plotted the assassination of General Musharraf in 2003; he fled again to the UAE, deported in 2004 and released from custody again in 2007; was suspected to have been involved in the abortive attempt on Benazir in October 2007; detained in February 2008 and released in June 2008; and he was one of the main conspirators in the attack on the Marriott hotel in Islamabad in September 2008.
The ease with which Akhtar has been able to change residence only adds to suspicions that when the trail gets too hot the Pakistani establishment pulls in its assets for the trail to go cold and then release them when it is considered safe. This happens ever so often to Lashkar e Tayyaba leader Hafiz Saeed and the Jaish e Mohammed leader Maulana Masood Azhar.
Indian reactions
Some of us worry that this could have an adverse reaction in India. There is an overreaction in some sections about intolerance in India. We must learn to trust the Indian Muslim instead of assuming he will be influenced by events and thought processes or ideologies in Pakistan. In so doing we challenge his intelligence and doubt his loyalties. In Pakistan they demanded the funeral of Taseer be boycotted because he was a liberal, in India the Indian Muslim leaders refused to allow the killers of Mumbai 26/11 be buried on Indian soil because they were terrorists. That is the difference between them and us.
True there is a fringe element in India as in most democratic societies but it does not endanger the state in the manner it has in Pakistan where it is no longer a fringe element but may well have become mainstream. In fact, extreme belief has been state sponsored in Pakistan; not so in India. The trick is to marginalise the extreme fringe but not to frighten the mainstream. Reaction here tends to lose touch with Indian realities and creates more discord. Careless off the cuff remarks are more responsible for this sort of thing and do not make for responsible commentary. By Vikram Sood(ANI)
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As things progress, muslims that live in non-muslim lands will have to make a choice between the nation and the umma.
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Only if we put that choice to them.
Any comments from anyone on the substance of the article? I always appreciate the Indian POV on Pakistan; the Indians (at least the pieces forwarded to me by my Hindu friend) always seem to have much more knowledge and insight into what is going on there whereas BO (and Bush too for that matter) just seems to be coyote to the various roadrunners of the region.
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By ZAHID HUSSAIN
LAHORE, Pakistan—A U.S. consular official shot dead two armed men Thursday as they tried to rob him in a crowded street in the central Pakistani city of Lahore, triggering a public protest in a nation where anti-Americanism is fierce.
A pedestrian also was killed when hit by another car that came to rescue the diplomat as he was being chased by a crowd.
Police later detained the American, who wasn't identified by name.
"The man said he fired in self-defense," Umar Saeed, a senior police officer in Lahore, was quoted as saying by local media.
Scores of people protested and burnt tires outside the police station where the American man was held. Television footage showed the man's white Honda car, with a civilian registration number plate, riddled with bullets and the windshield smashed.
One eyewitness told GEO TV network that the American fired after the armed men, who were riding a motorbike, tried to stop his car.
One of the alleged robbers died on the spot while the second succumbed to injuries in a local hospital.
It was unclear whether the attackers had any links to militant Islamist groups that have mounted attacks across Pakistan in the past two years.
The U.S. embassy in Islamabad confirmed that a U.S. consular employee was involved in an incident in Lahore without providing further details.
Mr. Saeed said police officials were investigating the incident.
It wasn't clear whether any case was registered against the U.S. official, who customarily should be covered by diplomatic immunity from any legal action in Pakistan.
The incident fueled anti-American rhetoric as some local television channels called for an investigation into why the American was armed.
There have been several incidents in the past where U.S. diplomatic cars were stopped by the security agencies in Lahore and Islamabad and searched for weapons.
A section of Pakistan's media has been fanning anti-American sentiment, accusing U.S. diplomats of being involved in spying.
Western diplomats in Pakistan are supposed to follow strict security guidelines while traveling because of threats from rising militant violence.
Lahore, which is the country's second-largest city, has in the past couple of years been hit by a series of terrorist attacks that have left hundreds of people dead.
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Marc:
I may have shared this with you earlier, if not pl. see this link
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/EBOOKS/pfs.pdf (http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/EBOOKS/pfs.pdf)
This is obviously written from the Indian POV, take it FWIW. But anyone reading this, would be leagues ahead in understanding Pakistan.
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Should we be giving billions in aid to pak...since it allows them to redirect their own meagre resources to nuclear weapons.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/world/asia/01policy.html?_r=1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/world/asia/01policy.html?_r=1)
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Woof YA:
A most pertinent question!
I was greatly intrigued by a different Indian POV piece you shared with me a year or so ago which I think I shared here which argued for the dismemberment of Pakistan.
Your post of the 27th is quite lengthy--though it looks quite worthy of the time to read it, the fact is that I don't have the time. May I ask for your synopsis thereof?
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You ask is there a backstory. Very likely there is.
The longish link to Bharat-Rakshak, posted below, re: Pak is difficult to summarize (more suitable for a read on the plane ride), but it provides insights into the paqui mind. I do hope to however comment on the way pakilanders think. Thus, wrt to the shooting, its easy to understand, that they are holding out for more $$. Another possibility is that the issue will be used to make a swap, perhaps the MIT trained female terrorist under US custody (daughter of the paki nation), or perhaps the withdrawl of cases against General Pasha (head of ISI), which have been filed in NY, in connection with the Mumbai terrorist act. Another, possibility is H & D (honor and dignity), which has been shattered by Raymond Davis, the shooter. Afterall, its not often that ISI operatives get shot in their own country by americans. To extract more dollah, they are drumming up demonstrations http://ibnlive.in.com/news/us-suspends-all-highlevel-dialogue-with-pak/142751-2.html (http://ibnlive.in.com/news/us-suspends-all-highlevel-dialogue-with-pak/142751-2.html), see the photo (looks like Microsoft is involved :-D). Its also very strange that the wife of the ISI operative, poisoned herself with rat poisonhttp://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/02/06/pakistan.us.shooting/ (http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/02/06/pakistan.us.shooting/). More likely scenario is that ISI forced it down her throat (again, anything to maintain a facade of H&D, and extract more dollah). I am betting that they will release Davis soon, the game has gone on far too long. If they hold him too long, the jihadists could get involved, which would make it very messy.
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Glad to have you here, Ya!
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Here is one perspective on life in Pureland.
The game preserve By Mohsin Hamid | From the Newspaper Yesterday
LAST summer in Lahore, I had a little party at my house for the final of the football World Cup. It was a pretty relaxed affair, maybe 20 people, cushions on the TV room floor, pizza on the dining room table. Some of my friends brought friends of their own.
One was an American man. He was wearing a light jacket. After he left, my wife told me he was also wearing a gun. Now, I’m open to my friends bringing their friends to my house. But I’m not very accepting of a friend bringing a gun — or, worse, bringing a complete stranger with a gun. Yet that’s what happened, and it left me angry and disturbed.
Like everyone else I knew, I’d heard the stories about large numbers of armed Americans in Lahore, staying at such-and-such hotels, for example, or working out at such-and-such gyms. Maybe I became more sensitive to their presence after the incident at my house, but suddenly I began to see them all around town. To be precise, I didn’t know if the men I was seeing were armed. But they looked like Americans, and they didn’t look like rock guitarists or maths teachers or irrigation specialists or heart surgeons. They looked, to my unschooled eye, like what I’d expect trained killers to look like.
(Of course it was possible that groups of non-violent, hard-faced, physically fit, all-male Swedish and Dutch and Spanish tourist groups with a niche interest not in ancient outdoor monuments but in the interiors of tacky hotels had descended on Lahore, but I thought this unlikely.)
Then, last month, in broad daylight on a main Lahore road, one such man, Raymond Davis, shot dead two Pakistani citizens with his Glock, and a US consular car sent to retrieve him killed another Pakistani citizen while speeding the wrong way down a street. Davis is being held by the Pakistani police, the US government is demanding that he be released and threatening to withhold aid to Pakistan if he is not, and the wife of one of the Pakistani men killed has committed suicide saying lucidly from her deathbed that her reason for doing so is that she does not expect Davis will be punished for his actions.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan government has tied itself up in obfuscatory knots over what should be the straightforward issue of whether Davis has diplomatic immunity, and therefore whether he can be tried in Pakistan.
So what is going on? Who is Raymond Davis, and what are people like him doing in Pakistan? I’ve read articles likening him to Rambo and RoboCop. But I believe another Hollywood film franchise metaphor is more apt. Predator.
The Raymond Davis affair has brought home what should have been obvious to us Pakistanis for a long time. Pakistan has become a game preserve, a place where deadly creatures are nurtured, and where hunters pay for the chance to kill them.
Here in the game preserve, money flows to the hunt. Pakistani extremists are funded, armed and trained. And American hunters, whether far away at the remote controls of Predator drones or on the ground in the form of men with the shooting skills of a Raymond Davis, operate under paid immunity. Want a blanket Tribal Area Hellfire missile licence? Well that might set you back the price of 18 new F-16s. An all-Lahore Glock licence to kill? Perhaps double-oh-seven billion in development aid.
But while the Pakistani population has until now grudgingly tolerated the notion of a game preserve limited to the Pak-Afghan border, the outcry over Raymond Davis has demonstrated that a game preserve encompassing the whole country strikes people as a different matter entirely.
Which puts both our governments in a bind. What are the warden-owners and hunter-consumers of a game preserve to do, after all, when the frogs and butterflies and trees and worms that make up the traumatised and hungry population of this land object to its current business model?
Because when I speak to my Pakistani friends the message I hear, though admittedly far from uniform, is nonetheless becoming increasingly clear. No more Pakistani extremists. No more American killers. And, if it comes to it, no more American aid either. We don’t want to live in a game preserve. We want to get on with our lives and build a future in peace for ourselves and our children.
The multi-billion dollar question is this: do the Pakistani and American governments — no, that term is too limited, focusing as it does mainly on our elected officials — do the Pakistani and American states have the capacity to listen?
If they do not, then the continued passivity of the long-neglected, inflation-gouged, and violence-subjected people of Pakistan is far from guaranteed. In the meantime, however, widespread reports that our country has produced a more-than-previously-estimated 100 nuclear warheads will surely increase the price of hunting permits.
The writer is the author of the novels Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
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YA:
What do you make of this piece?
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This article as well as other purelander boards that I follow, suggests that the common man (aka mango abdul in Indian defense forum lingo) has realized that the paki govt has given the US the right to bomb its citizens in the NWFP/FATA territories in return for mucho $$. Even worse the paki army bombs its own citizens and strafes them with F-16's. All this was acceptable, because the action was outside of pak's core regions. As the taliban moved into interior regions of pak proper (Lahore, karachi, Islamabad), and the pak govt was not interested in taking action, the US was forced to arm its own black water types and send them into battle along with paki forces, mostly to monitor that real "encounters" took place, as opposed to the sham fights. It seems that the numbers of these gun toting "diplomats" has increased tremendously in the last year or so. Raymond Davis is obviously a military type, who on paper has diplomatic cover. If the paki govt would have been smart, they would have immediately released him, but being paki, they wanted to milk the situation for all its worth. Now, that the jihadi types are agitating, all bets are off.
Pak is addicted to US $$ support, the politicians loot the country and same goes for the army which gets billions in aid. The mango abdul suffers. Another paki trait is to negotiate by putting a gun to their own head, "give me money or I blow my brains out". At the moment its unthinkable that the US will stop supporting Pak, but if the US stops funding pak, there could be significant upheaval. The army will be forced to fund themselves from paki resources, which means that whatever little goes to the common man, will stop almost completely....a recipe for social upheaval.
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If he was NOC, then I could see the US walking away. Walking away when Davis has diplomatic immunity would be unthinkable, well before Obama was president it would be.....
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YA:
That was very interesting commentary. It gives me a sense of things that I did not have before. That said, am I missing the mark when I wonder where the sense of responsibility is for refuge being given to those who launch attacks on the US from their territory?
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If pak were to act on the taliban sanctuaries inside pak, that would solve americas immediate problems, allowing for an honorable withdrawal. With the US gone, the aid would likely diminish. Now why would the aid(s) addicted army want such an outcome ?. There is a moral hazard here, aid continues and increases only as long as the taliban are a problem. Side note: same issue in N.Korea, the more N.Korea misbehaves, the more aid we give. The solution obviously is to use a heavier stick, as opposed to a larger carrot.
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Ya, Welcome! That was a great post - very insightful thinking. It is strange that the more people don't solve a problem, the more we are willing to pay.
I wonder why the reward for bin Laden doesn't work. That is an example of at least trying to pay for results. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6898075.stm
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And right on cue, here is Ombaba with his http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Obama-admin-proposes-31-billion-for-Pakistan/articleshow/7499640.cms (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Obama-admin-proposes-31-billion-for-Pakistan/articleshow/7499640.cms) money sack, certainly pays to misbehave...
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LAHORE, Pakistan—U.S. President Barack Obama called for Pakistan to release a government employee who killed two men last month, as Sen. John Kerry arrived here for talks aimed at ending the diplomatic standoff.
The man, Raymond Davis, has been in custody in Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city, since the incident on Jan. 27. The U.S. says he is covered by diplomatic immunity and should be released.
Mr. Obama weighed in on the row Tuesday, saying Pakistan must release Mr. Davis under its commitments as a signatory to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, a pact from the 1960s that guarantees diplomats immunity from prosecution. "If it starts being fair game on our ambassadors around the world, including in dangerous places…it means they can't do their job," Mr. Obama told a news conference.
The comments escalated a diplomatic dispute over Mr. Davis's detention. Public anger over the shooting and demands for Mr. Davis's prosecution make it difficult for Pakistan's central government—an ally of the U.S.—to order his release.
A court in Lahore is expected to begin hearing a case Thursday on whether Mr. Davis has immunity from prosecution.
Mr. Kerry, at a news conference in Lahore, promised the U.S. Justice Department would conduct its own "thorough criminal investigation" if Pakistan were to release Mr. Davis.
"It is a strong belief of our government that this case does not belong in the court," Mr. Kerry said Tuesday. "And it does not belong in the court because this man has diplomatic immunity."
Mr. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has made four trips to Pakistan in the past two years and was instrumental in co-writing in 2009 a five-year, $7.5 billion civilian aid package, part of a strategy to help counter Islamic radicalism in the country. Despite closer ties, many here remain wary of the U.S., which is viewed as building strategic alliances with Pakistan's traditional rivals, notably India.
Washington, too, has been disappointed with Pakistan for failing to clamp down on Taliban havens on its soil.
The incident involving Mr. Davis has added a further level of mistrust to the relationship.
The U.S. last week canceled a meeting scheduled for late February in Washington, involving Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan, in protest against Mr. Davis's detention. Washington has also scaled back other routine bilateral contacts.
According to the U.S. version of events, Mr. Davis, 36 years old, opened fire on two armed men in self-defense after they attempted to stop his white Honda Civic car at a busy intersection in broad daylight. U.S. officials say the two men, who were on a motorbike, had earlier in the day robbed other people in the area.
The U.S. has said Mr. Davis is a "technical and administrative" staff of the U.S. Consulate in Lahore, but hasn't said what his role was or whether he was authorized to carry a weapon. The U.S. confirmed Mr. Davis's identity Friday, two weeks after Pakistani authorities released his name.
Lahore police officers say they recovered a number of effects from Mr. Davis's car after the incident, including two Glock pistols and more than 70 rounds of ammunition. Officials say they also found a metal detector, a latex face mask with a beard and headpiece, and a make-up kit.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad declined to comment on Mr. Davis's effects.
Pakistani officials appear to be angered by what they say was Mr. Davis's covert role in Pakistan. A senior official with Inter-Services Intelligence, the military's spy agency, said the organization was unaware of Mr. Davis. "Apparently he was working behind our backs," the official said.
The U.S. Embassy denied this and said it notified Pakistan's Foreign Ministry of Mr. Davis's arrival in the country in January 2010, which, the U.S. says, means he is covered by diplomatic immunity.
Senior Pakistani officials have made contradictory statements in recent weeks over whether, in their view, Mr. Davis is covered by immunity from prosecution.
Pakistani police investigating the incident have yet to formally charge Mr. Davis, but say they are treating the case as murder. If the high court finds Mr. Davis isn't covered by immunity, state prosecutors must bring his case to court by Feb. 25.
In Lahore's British-era town center, placards put up by an Islamist group show a photo of Mr. Davis's head with a hangman's noose superimposed around it.
Two Lahore police officers involved in the case say the two men who confronted Mr. Davis were likely armed due to a dispute with another family. One of the men's elder brothers had been killed in December in a row over a girl. They denied the men, who resided in Lahore, had earlier robbed others in the area.
Witnesses say the men were circling around Mr. Davis's car, which he was driving himself, according to the police officers.
What happened next is unclear. Mr. Davis fired nine bullets from inside the car, seven of which hit the men in various parts of their bodies. He got out of the car to photograph the dead men on his cellphone and then fled an angry crowd that was forming, the officers said. Police arrested him in his car a few miles from the scene.
Another vehicle from the consulate, which came to rescue Mr. Davis, ran over and killed a bystander. The driver of that car wasn't taken into custody and hasn't been identified.
Authorities had previously detained Mr. Davis for a few hours two years ago, the two police officers said.
In that incident, police stopped the car in which Mr. Davis was traveling in Lahore during a routine check in a posh part of town and found a number of weapons in the car, the officers said. But they let Mr. Davis go after orders from the central government, they added.
The U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said reports about this detention were "unsubstantiated."
—Shahnawaz Khan contributed to this article.
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A Dilemma in U.S.-Pakistani Relations
While most of the recent international focus has been on Egypt’s unrest and the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, another key geopolitical crisis has been brewing, this time between the United States and Pakistan. Getting a bit of respite from the situation in Egypt, U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday called on the Pakistani government to release a U.S. security contractor serving at the U.S. Consulate in Lahore. Raymond Davis shot and killed two armed Pakistani nationals on Jan. 27 because he thought they were going to rob him. U.S. Sen. John Kerry arrived in Islamabad on Tuesday as part of an effort to secure the release of Davis, who has been held in a Pakistani prison. Kerry is also attempting to ease tensions between the two sides.
Relations between the United States and Pakistan have long been extremely tense over disagreements on how to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. From the American point of view, Pakistan is not taking action against Afghan Taliban forces operating on its soil. Conversely, the Pakistanis feel that the incoherence of the United States’ strategy for Afghanistan threatens Pakistani security.
“Many Pakistanis deeply resent what they see as their leaders’ quick surrender of national rights to appease the Americans.”
This latest crisis, however, has taken the situation to a new level. Washington insists that in keeping with the international conventions of diplomatic immunity, Islamabad needs to release Davis. Pakistan, on the other hand, has been prosecuting Davis in keeping with its laws.
Beyond competing versions about the shooting and how the matter needs to be resolved, this standoff is difficult for both sides. The Obama administration cannot afford to see a foreign country prosecute one of its diplomats. Likewise, neither the government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari nor the country’s military establishment can afford to be seen domestically as giving up an American who has admitted to killing two Pakistani nationals, especially in light of strong anti-American sentiment.
The Pakistanis are in a far worse situation than the Americans because of the country’s extremely unstable economic, security and political conditions. As a result, Islamabad is heavily reliant on Washington’s goodwill while dealing with the exceedingly difficult circumstances it faces. And in the interest of sustaining the much-needed relationship with the United States, Pakistan is not in a position to resist pressure from its great power patron.
Succumbing to American pressure, however, can lead to further unrest in Pakistan, where a significant segment of the population feels strongly that Davis should be punished according to the law of the land. Many Pakistanis deeply resent what they see as their leaders’ quick surrender of national rights to appease the Americans. If the Pakistani government handed Davis over to American authorities, there could be further deterioration in political and security conditions — no Pakistani government can afford to be seen as caving into U.S. demands.
In addition to the political backlash, Pakistani Taliban rebels threatened to target all officials responsible for giving in to U.S. demands. This is a problem not just for the Pakistanis, but also for the Americans. The U.S. strategy for Afghanistan depends upon cooperation from Pakistan.
For Pakistan to cooperate with Washington’s efforts to reach a political settlement in Afghanistan, Islamabad needs to be stable. Thus, the Davis case has complicated an already difficult situation. The key challenge for the United States is how to retrieve Davis and not make matters worse for Islamabad so that the two sides can focus on the bigger picture in Afghanistan.
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I think Ya has nailed the motivations behind Pakistan's behaviors quite well.
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I do too.
So, what do we do?
My starting point is that what we are doing now is utterly incoherent and we need to get WAY out of our current mental boxes.
When blended with Baraq's strategy in the mid-east IMHO we are on the precipice of complete defeat: being run out of the mid-east and Afpakia, Pak's nuke program completely slipping its leash, Iranian nukes, Lebanon being taken over by Heabollah, serious war against Israel, the return of the Taliban to rule in Afg, etc etc etc
I for one remain intrigued by the idea of an alliance with India and dismemberment of Pakistan while cutting a deal giving Pashtunistan to the Pashtuns in return for them being very clear on the concept that we will rain death and destruction on them if they EVER support attacks on the West (and separating the Pashtuns from the rest of Afg might really simplify things for Afg) destroying Pak's nuke program, and related actions.
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As when you first suggested that strategy, I think that's the way to go. Of course, we won't.
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The US is on its best behaviour...exactly what Pak wants. After Raymond Davis is released....strikes will start with impunity...so why would they hurry to free him ?..In the meantime the aid package gets larger, no more drone strikes...paradise.
Analysis: Gap in Pakistan Predator strikes not unusual
By BILL ROGGIOFebruary 16, 2011
For over three weeks, the CIA's controversial covert air campaign that targets al Qaeda, Taliban, and allied terror groups' leaders and operatives in Pakistan's lawless and Taliban-controlled tribal areas has been silent. There has not been an airstrike by the armed, unmanned Predators and Reapers, or drones as they are more commonly called, for 25 days. This pause has sparked speculation that the US has halted the strikes for political reasons, but a look at the pace of the strikes over time shows that long pauses are not uncommon.
The current 23-day lull in strikes in Pakistan is the third-longest period of inactivity since the US ramped up the program in August 2008, according to data on the strikes compiled by The Long War Journal [a list of operational pauses that have been longer than eight days appears below].
The most recent strikes took place on Jan. 23, when the Predators and Reapers pounded al Qaeda and Taliban targets in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan.
The two most extended periods of operational inactivity so far have occurred in 2009. The longest recorded pause was 33 days, from Nov. 4 to Dec. 8, 2009. The second-longest pause was 28 days, from May 16 to June 14, 2009.
Also, there have been two other periods of time in which 20 or more days went by without a strike. Again, both operational pauses occurred in 2009: from Jan. 23 to Feb. 14 (21 days); and from Jan. 2 to Jan. 23 (20 days).
In 2010, there were two periods exceeding 15 days' time in which no Predator strikes occurred in Pakistan: from July 25 to Aug. 14 (19 days) ; and from June 29 to July 15 (15 days).
Since August 2008, there have been 24 periods of eight days or longer with no Predator strikes.
Most US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal were unwilling to discuss the reasons for the current pause in strikes, or previous strikes, citing operational security concerns. But weather in the region is known to be the primary reason for slowdowns in the strikes.
Pakistani news outlets have speculated that the pause in strikes is related to the arrest of Raymond Davis, the US consular official who shot and killed two Pakistanis in Lahore. Davis believed the men were trying to kill him, but Pakistani courts refuse to recognize his diplomatic status and release him. One theory is that the US is not launching Predator strikes while Davis is in custody lest an attack inflame Pakistani sentiments.
But US officials contacted by The Long War Journal would not link Davis' detention to the pause in strikes.
Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/02/analysis_gap_in_paki.php#ixzz1EHGClizN
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Lovely.
I wish I could say I was surprised.
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From the Op-ed page of today's POTH:
IT is hard to tell when momentum shifts in a counterinsurgency campaign, but there is increasing evidence that Afghanistan is moving in a more positive direction than many analysts think. It now seems more likely than not that the country can achieve the modest level of stability and self-reliance necessary to allow the United States to responsibly draw down its forces from 100,000 to 25,000 troops over the next four years.
The shift is most obvious on the ground. The additional 30,000 troops promised by President Obama in his speech at West Point 14 months ago are finally in place and changing the trajectory of the fight.
One of us, Nathaniel, recently flew into Camp Leatherneck in a C-130 transport plane, which had to steer clear of fighter bombers stacked for tens of thousands of feet above the Sangin District of Helmand Province, in southwestern Afghanistan. Singly and in pairs, the jets swooped low to drop their bombs in support of Marine units advancing north through the Helmand River Valley.
Half of the violence in Afghanistan takes place in only 9 of its nearly 400 districts, with Sangin ranking among the very worst. Slowly but surely, even in Sangin, the Taliban are being driven from their sanctuaries as the coalition focuses on protecting the Afghan people in key population centers and hubs of economic activity, and along the roads that connect them. Once these areas are cleared, it will be possible to hold them with Afghan troops and a few American advisers — allowing the United States to thin its deployments over time.
A significant shift of high-tech intelligence resources from Iraq to Afghanistan, initiated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former top commander, is also having benefits. The coalition led by the United States and NATO has been able to capture or kill far more Taliban leaders in nighttime raids than was possible in the past.
The United States certainly can’t kill its way to victory, as it learned in Vietnam and Iraq, but it can put enough pressure on many Taliban fighters to encourage them to switch their allegiance, depriving the enemy of support and giving the coalition more sources of useful intelligence.
Afghan Army troop strength has increased remarkably. The sheer scale of the effort at the Kabul Military Training Center has to be seen to be appreciated. Rows of new barracks surround a blue-domed mosque, and live-fire training ranges stretched to the mountains on the horizon.
It was a revelation to watch an Afghan squad, only days from deployment to Paktika Province on the Pakistani border, demonstrate a fire-and-maneuver exercise before jogging over to chat with American visitors. When asked, each soldier said that he had joined the Army to serve Afghanistan. Most encouraging of all was the response to a question that resonates with 18- and 19-year-old soldiers everywhere: how does your mother feel? “Proud.”
These changes on the ground have been reinforced by progress on three strategic and political problems that have long stymied our plans.
The first is uncertainty about how long America and its allies will remain committed to the fight. The question is still open, but President Obama and the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, have effectively moved the planned troop withdrawal date from July 2011 to at least 2014, with surprisingly little objection. Congress and the American public seem to have digested without a murmur the news that far fewer troops will be withdrawn in 2011 than will remain. NATO is not collapsing because of Afghanistan. In fact, the International Security Assistance Force continues to grow, with one-quarter of the world’s countries on the ground in Afghanistan with the United States.
Two more vexing problems are the corruption of the Afghan government and the complicity of some Pakistanis with the insurgency. While it is safe to assume that neither the Afghan nor Pakistani leaders will fundamentally alter their policies any time soon, we are changing ours. Previously, our policy options with Presidents Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Asif Ali Zardari were limited to public hectoring and private pleading, usually to little effect.
Now, however, the coalition’s military and civilian leaders are taking a new approach to the Afghan and Pakistani governments. We are establishing a task force to investigate and expose corruption in the Afghan government, under the leadership of Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster. We are also shoring up the parts of the border that the Taliban uses by thickening the line with Afghan forces, putting up more drones and coordinating more closely with Pakistani border guards.
Not since the deterioration in conditions in Iraq that drew our attention away from Afghanistan have coalition forces been in such a strong position to force the enemy to the negotiating table. We should hold fast and work for the day when Afghanistan, and our vital interests there, can be safeguarded primarily by Afghans.
That day is coming, faster than many Americans think.
Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine captain, is the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security. John Nagl, a former Army lieutenant colonel, is the president of the center.
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Found this old letter (see URL) by Rumsfeld...kind of direct. http://www.shahid-saeed.com/2011/02/transactional-relationship/ (http://www.shahid-saeed.com/2011/02/transactional-relationship/)
Transactional Relationship
by SHAHID on FEBRUARY 23, 2011
in HISTORY
I recently came across a story about former US Secretary of Defense and Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld, having launched “The Rumsfeld Papers” – a collection of his memos and communications on his website. As little and as screened as they may be, it’s a great job and good resource for historians.
I quickly ran a search for terms relevant to Pakistan. There are small notes and memos, the earthquake rehabilitation and all, but one letter to Pervez Musharraf summarizes the basis of our relationship with the US as it was during those days and perhaps has been forever. You can call it a strategic relationship, you can call it an alliance of necessity, you might have had defence treaties, but in the end, the nuts and bolts say it’s a transactional relationship. Yes, people are trying to change that but break it down, it’s still a relationship of expedience, mistrust, skepticism and collaboration that relies on $$$$$.
Ever so wise ex-Major Butt (retd), reborn as Majorly Profound, summarized it in the wake of the Raymond Davis incident as:
Raymond Davis works for the CIA. CIA is an organization in the USA. USA pays all of Pakistan’s bills.
Yes, not all of them but that’s just semantics. So here’s the Rumsfeld memo sent on December 21, 2001 :-
Precise, to the point and straight-forward. No long ambiguous sentences to hide the real meaning. “Direct payments”, “forward an initial payment” and “further funds” – a relationship as business-like as there can be.
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I found this insightful...http://nationalinterest.org/article/mutiny-grows-punjab-4889 (http://nationalinterest.org/article/mutiny-grows-punjab-4889)
If Pakistan is to be broken as a state, it will be on the streets of Lahore and other great Punjabi cities, not in the Pashtun mountains. By the same token, the greatest potential terrorist threat to the United States and its Western allies from the region stems not from the illiterate and isolated Pashtuns but from Islamist groups based in urban Punjab, with their far-higher levels of sophistication and their international links, above all to the Pakistani diaspora in the West.
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Good stuff Ya; grateful for your contributions here.
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Woof y'all
This is Abu Hamza, and this is my first post.
I am presently in a FOB for a certain LEA in lovely Afghanistan (just ordered some Top Dog sticks and the new KaliTudo dvd too Marc, hope they get here soon-LOL), anyway, we have several locals working here-in the office, as translators, cooks etc. I have repeatedly heard an appreciation of the presence of US personel here in country. One local told me that if the US leaves, he plans on leaving the country too, anywhere he says-Iran, Pakistan-he don't care. He just says he wouldn't feel safe here anymore.
The locals I have spoken too hate the Taliban. They have no hesitation in expressing this either. I am a Muslim-American, and, in the past, have heard odd comments from other Muslims in the US about how the Taliban may be misunderstood, or the info we get on the news is skewed, etc. Make no mistake, and I'm speaking AS a Muslim, the Taliban and their ilk have a perverted notion of Islam. The Taliban don't practice Islam correctly, in general, they pervert many things and overall have little knowledge about what is supposed to be the guiding force in their lives. The Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) spoke about a group of people who would appear. He said something like-"When you see their prayer, you would be jealous, when you see their fasting, you would be impressed, when you hear their recitation of the Qur'an, you would find it beautiful-but it only reaches their throats (meaning it won't reach their heart, i.e.: they won't have an understanding of it)". Furthermore He called men like this "The DOGS of Hell" and indicated it is an OBLIGATION upon Muslims who are able, to hunt them down and kill them.
When I remind Muslims of this in America, many are a bit averse to this notion. But, when I point this out here, in Afghanistan, Muslims completely agree and are ready to accept this responsibility--interesting....
Anyway--can't wait till my sticks arrive---hehehe
Woof from Kunduz
Abu Hamza
Makoa Combatives Group
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So, where would one find islam being practiced in an authentic manner?
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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/another-runaway-general-army-deploys-psy-ops-on-u-s-senators-20110223?page=1
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This just in, multinational corporations spending billions yearly to fund psy-ops on American citizens.
:roll:
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It is not unknown for Pravda on the Hudson (POTH/NYTimes) to shade things against US military efforts. Caveat Lector
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This article is by C. J. Chivers, Alissa J. Rubin and Wesley Morgan
KABUL, Afghanistan — After years of fighting for control of a prominent valley in the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan, the United States military has begun to pull back most of its forces from ground it once insisted was central to the campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The withdrawal from the Pech Valley, a remote region in Kunar Province, formally began on Feb. 15. The military projects that it will last about two months, part of a shift of Western forces to the province’s more populated areas. Afghan units will remain in the valley, a test of their military readiness.
While American officials say the withdrawal matches the latest counterinsurgency doctrine’s emphasis on protecting Afghan civilians, Afghan officials worry that the shift of troops amounts to an abandonment of territory where multiple insurgent groups are well established, an area that Afghans fear they may not be ready to defend on their own.
And it is an emotional issue for American troops, who fear that their service and sacrifices could be squandered. At least 103 American soldiers have died in or near the valley’s maze of steep gullies and soaring peaks, according to a count by The New York Times, and many times more have been wounded, often severely.
Military officials say they are sensitive to those perceptions. “People say, ‘You are coming out of the Pech’; I prefer to look at it as realigning to provide better security for the Afghan people,” said Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell, the commander for eastern Afghanistan. “I don’t want the impression we’re abandoning the Pech.”
The reorganization, which follows the complete Afghan and American withdrawals from isolated outposts in nearby Nuristan Province and the Korangal Valley, runs the risk of providing the Taliban with an opportunity to claim success and raises questions about the latest strategy guiding the war.
American officials say their logic is simple and compelling: the valley consumed resources disproportionate with its importance; those forces could be deployed in other areas; and there are not enough troops to win decisively in the Pech Valley in any case.
“If you continue to stay with the status quo, where will you be a year from now?” General Campbell said. “I would tell you that there are places where we’ll continue to build up security and it leads to development and better governance, but there are some areas that are not ready for that, and I’ve got to use the forces where they can do the most good.”
President Obama’s Afghan troop buildup is now fully in place, and the United States military has its largest-ever contingent in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama’s reinforced campaign has switched focus to operations in Afghanistan’s south, and to building up Afghan security forces.
The previous strategy emphasized denying sanctuaries to insurgents, blocking infiltration routes from Pakistan and trying to fight away from populated areas, where NATO’s superior firepower could be massed, in theory, with less risk to civilians. The Pech Valley effort was once a cornerstone of this thinking.
The new plan stands as a clear, if unstated, repudiation of earlier decisions. When Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former NATO commander, overhauled the Afghan strategy two years ago, his staff designated 80 “key terrain districts” to concentrate on. The Pech Valley was not one of them.
Ultimately, the decision to withdraw reflected a stark — and controversial — internal assessment by the military that it would have been better served by not having entered the high valley in the first place.
“What we figured out is that people in the Pech really aren’t anti-U.S. or anti-anything; they just want to be left alone,” said one American military official familiar with the decision. “Our presence is what’s destabilizing this area.”
Gen. Mohammed Zaman Mamozai, a former commander of the region’s Afghan Border Police, agreed with some of this assessment. He said that residents of the Pech Valley bristled at the American presence but might tolerate Afghan units. “Many times they promised us that if we could tell the Americans to pull out of the area, they wouldn’t fight the Afghan forces,” he said.
It is impossible to know whether such pledges will hold. Some veterans worry that the withdrawal will create an ideal sanctuary for insurgent activity — an area under titular government influence where fighters or terrorists will shelter or prepare attacks.
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While it is possible that the insurgents will concentrate in the mountain valleys, General Campbell said his goal was to arrange forces to keep insurgents from Kabul, the country’s capital.
“There are thousands of isolated mountainous valleys throughout Afghanistan, and we cannot be in all of them,” he said.
The American military plans to withdraw from most of the four principal American positions in the valley. For security reasons, General Campbell declined to discuss which might retain an American presence, and exactly how the Americans would operate with Afghans in the area in the future.
As the pullback begins, the switch in thinking has fueled worries among those who say the United States is ceding some of Afghanistan’s most difficult terrain to the insurgency and putting residents who have supported the government at risk of retaliation.
“There is no house in the area that does not have a government employee in it,” said Col. Gul Rahman, the Afghan police chief in the Manogai District, where the Americans’ largest base in the valley, Forward Operating Base Blessing, is located. “Some work with the Afghan National Army, some work with the Afghan National Police, or they are a teacher or governmental employee. I think it is not wise to ignore and leave behind all these people, with the danger posed to their lives.”
Some Afghan military officials have also expressed pointed misgivings about the prospects for Afghan units left behind.
“According to my experience in the military and knowledge of the area, it’s absolutely impractical for the Afghan National Army to protect the area without the Americans,” said Major Turab, the former second-in-command of an Afghan battalion in the valley, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “It will be a suicidal mission.”
The pullback has international implications as well. Senior Pakistani commanders have complained since last summer that as American troops withdraw from Kunar Province, fighters and some commanders from the Haqqani network and other militant groups have crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan to create a “reverse safe haven” from which to carry out attacks against Pakistani troops in the tribal areas.
The Taliban and other Afghan insurgent groups are all but certain to label the withdrawal a victory in the Pech Valley, where they could point to the Soviet Army’s withdrawal from the same area in 1988. Many Afghans remember that withdrawal as a symbolic moment when the Kremlin’s military campaign began to visibly fall apart.
Within six months, the Soviet-backed Afghan Army of the time ceded the territory to mujahedeen groups, according to Afghan military officials.
The unease, both with the historical precedent and with the price paid in American blood in the valley, has ignited a sometimes painful debate among Americans veterans and active-duty troops. The Pech Valley had long been a hub of American military operations in Kunar and Nuristan Provinces.
American forces first came to the valley in force in 2003, following the trail of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hezb-i-Islami group, who, like other prominent insurgent leaders, has been said at different times to hide in Kunar. They did not find him, though Hezb-i-Islami is active in the valley.
Since then, one American infantry battalion after another has fought there, trying to establish security in villages while weathering roadside bombs and often vicious fights.
Along with other slotlike canyons that the United States has already largely abandoned — including the Korangal Valley, the Waygal Valley (where the battle of Wanat was fought in 2008), the Shuryak Valley and the Nuristan River corridor (where Combat Outpost Keating was nearly overrun in 2009) — the Pech Valley was a region rivaled only by Helmand Province as the deadliest Afghan acreage for American troops.
On one operation alone in 2005, 19 service members, including 11 members of the Navy Seals, died.
As the years passed and the toll rose, the area assumed for many soldiers a status as hallowed ground. “I can think of very few places over the past 10 years with as high and as sustained a level of violence,” said Col. James W. Bierman, who commanded a Marine battalion in the area in 2006 and helped establish the American presence in the Korangal Valley.
In the months after American units left the Korangal last year, insurgent attacks from that valley into the Pech Valley increased sharply, prompting the current American battalion in the area, First Battalion, 327th Infantry, and Special Operations units to carry out raids into places that American troops once patrolled regularly.
Last August, an infantry company raided the village of Omar, which the American military said had become a base for attacks into the Pech Valley, but which earlier units had viewed as mostly calm. Another American operation last November, in the nearby Watapor Valley, led to fighting that left seven American soldiers dead.
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Hypothesis only: This is "page 16" news, that may have a story behind it. As leader of the nuclear ummah, there is suggestion that Pak is storing/making/providing nuclear devices for use by the Saudi's. On and off, one hears reports that Paki planes/pilots are at the disposal of SA. Perhaps this facility is now being offered also to the Kuwaitis. It also jives with recent reports that paki nuclear arsenal is now greater than that of the UK. So how does a bankrupt country fund its nuclear program ?.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/124157/energy-crisis-pakistan-to-seek-free-oil-from-kuwait/ (http://tribune.com.pk/story/124157/energy-crisis-pakistan-to-seek-free-oil-from-kuwait/)
Energy crisis: Pakistan to seek free oil from Kuwait
By Shahbaz Rana
Published: February 26, 2011
Pakistan imports roughly 3.4 million tons of diesel oil annually from Kuwait, worth $2.5 billion. DESIGN: ESSA MALIK
ISLAMABAD: A day after authorities refused to increase domestic oil prices in line with the international market, President Asif Ali Zardari is scheduled to visit Kuwait to find a solution to the matter – which may include seeking free oil from the Gulf state.
The president, who on Friday flew to Kuwait on a two-day visit, will request the Amir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, to supply half of the diesel fuel it exports to Pakistan for free while extending the credit period on the remaining 50 per cent, according to sources at the petroleum ministry.
In 1998, Pakistan was granted a similar facility by Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the country’s nuclear weapons tests, which resulted in economic sanctions from the United States and Europe. In 2008, however, the government’s attempts to seek such a facility from Iran were rebuffed.
The government faces a severe financial crunch, since international donor agencies have refused to grant any more aid to Pakistan until the government undertakes drastic reforms to the energy sector and tax collection mechanisms. The $11.2 billion loan facility from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been put on hold because of the government’s failure to deregulate energy prices – including oil – and levy the value added tax.
For the past three months, the government has refused to increase domestic retail oil prices owing to the growing unpopularity of the PPP-led administration, which feels that increasing fuel prices would be unpopular. During this time, international oil prices have risen by 16 per cent and are expected to continue rising as unrest in the Middle East continues. The decision to not increase oil prices has already cost the government Rs11 billion and is expected to take that cost to Rs24 billion in forgone petroleum taxes over the coming month owing to the president’s decision to hold domestic prices steady, despite the international rise.
Kuwait is the third largest exporter of oil to Pakistan, following Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Imports from Kuwait constitute 19 per cent of the country’s total oil imports.
Pakistan imports roughly 3.4 million tons of diesel oil annually from Kuwait, worth $2.5 billion, approximately three-fourth of total domestic consumption. If Kuwait agrees to provide half of its exports for free, it will cost approximately $1.2 billion, at current rates, in forgone revenue to the government-owned Kuwait Petroleum Company.
According to an existing agreement that will expire on December 31, 2011, Pakistan imports oil from Kuwait on two months’ deferred payments. Islamabad has sought a 30 day extension in the credit period and also wants to sign a new agreement for a period of two years.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 26th, 2011.
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ya,
Would you be so kind as to give the readership here a nutshell explanation of Indian history, specifically how the muslim invasion of India was for the Hindu and Sikh peoples? It's not commonly taught/known in N. America.
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Anyone think the AQ Khan network went away? I don't. The NorKs, elements within the PLA, Land of the Pure, Iran, now all the sunni gulf states clamoring for their own nukes. It just went deeper and expanded, IMHO.
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Ya:
You have an astute eye. That is very interesting.
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http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/02/25/army-gen-caldwells-accuser-had-no-psy-ops-training/
Psy-ops! Maybe even death rays!
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ya,
Would you be so kind as to give the readership here a nutshell explanation of Indian history, specifically how the muslim invasion of India was for the Hindu and Sikh peoples? It's not commonly taught/known in N. America.
GM: That's a very important question to understand that part of the world, unfortunately I dont have the in depth knowledge base to do justice to that. An understanding of that topic would explain why India has old and warm relations with Iran, Baluchistan and Afghanistan. Muslim invasion of greater India started in the 6th century (what is now Baluchistan), it really got going in the 12th century in areas which are recognised as India these days. By 1160 the Afghan leader Muhammad Ghori ruled from central afghanistan to lahore. Later came the Delhi sultanate rulers who claimed to be the descendents of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. Some of these were moderate rulers like Akbar, most were tyrants who believed in forcible conversions, one of them Shah Jehan (1650) built the Taj Mahal. Collection of jiziya started around that time, an easy translation is protection money which the hindus had to pay. These days the americans pay that, except that they dont yet think of it that way. Since then it has been a tale of forcible conquest, with some moderate rulers, some enlightened rulers, mostly destructive rulers. Important temples such as at Nalanda (also univ), Vijayanagara and Somnath were destroyed. Perhaps you have followed the controversy about the demolition of the mosque at Ayodhya in recent years, the scars of temple demolitions remain deep within the population. This mosque was built by muslims (1521) at the presumed birth site of Lord Ram (from Hare Rama, Hare Krishna fame) the major god of hinduism. There have been many victories for Hindus, some defeats (but that's another story).
The Sikhs are the sword arm of India, and their founder guru was a hindu (1539), as were many subsequent gurus who had traditional hindu names. The hindus rightly consider sikhism an offshoot of hinduism, though some sikhs who seek an independent nation (Khalistan) resent that. Infact it was quite common for one brother to be a sikh and the other to remain a hindu. Even today there is considerable inter marrying between hindus and sikhs. The Sikhs opposed muslim rule and even protected hindus, or many times fought together. The sikhs were actually quite secular, and even muslims were allowed to flourish under their rule. Unfortunately, the sikhs suffer persecution in present day pak, just like other minorities. Devout sikhs carry a few items with them, which include long hair (thus turban), comb, knife, underwear!. They are like 1.5% of the population, but approx. 20% of the Indian army and one of the most highly decorated regiments. The sikhs fought many battles with the afghan and central asian invaders, but that's again another story. Many of the sikh holy places are in present day pak, so the history of the 2 nations (india and pak) is quite entwined.
At independence (1947), the Radcliffe line became the border between India and Pak, the Durrand line became the border between Pak and afghanistan. As you can see these are somewhat arbitrary lines. In any case there was a huge massacre of both hindus and muslims, as they tried to cross to hindu and muslim dominated regions across the radcliffe line.
The hindus like to think of the muslims as the "weaker" hindus who were forcibly converted to islam many centuries ago. For this reason, they (indian muslims) retain indic values and are not jihadi like the muslims in pakistan. The paki fanatic muslims in the last 60 years have taken upon themselves to deny any connection to their heritage in India, and instead have started calling themselves as descendents of central asian rulers, and even of persians and of arab origin. Even common greetings like Khuda Hafiz or God be with you, has become Allah hafiz, which is the same in arabic!. Hope this helps somewhat...
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Thank you, Ya!
I was wondering when the fatwa was given in India that allowed Hindus to be considered "People of the book" (Ahl al-kitab) as a practical measure, as the muslims felt exhausted trying to kill all the Hindus by hand, thus allowing them to pay jizya and receive dhimmi status?
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That terminology is not generally used with respect to hinduism, or is even much discussed in India. Its worth remembering that the muslims in India were converts from hinduism, and that may be one reason why it never gained any traction.
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Ah, ok.
I do remember reading about that fatwa, but I can't track it down right now.
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The Davis Spy Crisis: Top Spooks in the U.S. and Pakistan Get in the Act
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2055690,00.html#ixzz1FAHkswDs
"There are people in this town," adds Washington-based Fair, "who are simply saying, 'F--- this, let's just call Pakistan the enemy.' They are saying Pakistan is supporting the killing of our troops in Afghanistan, they're supporting the LeT, they call [the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist] AQ Khan a national hero. The fact that the CIA is coming to this conclusion should be very worrisome for Pakistan. For years, the CIA was the only organization in this town that would defend the Pakistanis."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2055690,00.html#ixzz1FAHAc1GX
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About frackin' time......
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http://www.slate.com/id/2286722/ (http://www.slate.com/id/2286722/)
"Not to mince words, then, Davis is a hostage. In addition to the usual sense of the word, he is a hostage to the Pakistani authorities who dare not—even if they wish—make an enemy either of the Islamist mobs or the uniformed para-state run by the intelligence services. He is also a hostage to the inability or unwillingness of the U.S. government to call things by their right names. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have made the correct noises about the relevant international statutes governing immunity, and their envoy Sen. John Kerry (who should never have been sent unless notified in advance that he would return with the prisoner) has even spoken of putting Davis on trial in the United States, which in ordinary circumstances might seem a little premature. But they all talk as if Pakistan were a country of law, and they all talk as if Pakistan were not a client state. Its client status, indeed, is what leads so many Pakistanis to detest America, without whose largesse and indulgence it would long ago have faced collapse. Thus to the final irony: We are denied leverage by the fact of the very influence for which we are hated.
This sick relationship with Pakistan, which plays a continuous and undisguised double-cross on us in Afghanistan, will probably have to be terminated at some point. But in the meantime, it will have to be made very clear to the rulers of that country that if they want to keep Raymond Davis in prison, they will have to manage without our subsidies. He may be a bad test of an important principle, but it is still the important principle that is being tested, and we have no more right to compromise on the principle of diplomatic immunity than the Pakistanis have to violate it."
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Pakistani Intelligence and the CIA: Mutual Distrust and Suspicion
March 3, 2011
By Scott Stewart
On March 1, U.S. diplomatic sources reportedly told Dawn News that a proposed exchange with the Pakistani government of U.S. citizen Raymond Davis for Pakistani citizen Aafia Siddiqui was not going to happen. Davis is a contract security officer working for the CIA who was arrested by Pakistani police on Jan. 27 following an incident in which he shot two men who reportedly pointed a pistol at him in an apparent robbery attempt. Siddiqui was arrested by the Afghan National Police in Afghanistan in 2008 on suspicion of being linked to al Qaeda.
During Siddiqui’s interrogation at a police station, she reportedly grabbed a weapon from one of her interrogators and opened fire on the American team sent to debrief her. Siddiqui was wounded in the exchange of fire and taken to Bagram air base for treatment. After her recovery, she was transported to the United States and charged in U.S. District Court in New York with armed assault and the attempted murder of U.S. government employees. Siddique was convicted in February 2010 and sentenced in September 2010 to 86 years in prison.
Given the differences in circumstances between these two cases, it is not difficult to see why the U.S. government would not agree to such an exchange. Siddique had been arrested by the local authorities and was being questioned, while Davis was accosted on the street by armed men and thought he was being robbed. His case has served to exacerbate a growing rift between the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI).
Pakistan has proved to be a very dangerous country for both ISI and CIA officers. Because of this environment, it is necessary for intelligence officers to have security — especially when they are conducting meetings with terrorist sources — and for security officers to protect American officials. Due to the heavy security demands in high-threat countries like Pakistan, the U.S. government has been forced to rely on contract security officers like Davis. It is important to recognize, however, that the Davis case is not really the cause of the current tensions between the Americans and Pakistanis. There are far deeper issues causing the rift.
Operating in Pakistan
Pakistan has been a very dangerous place for American diplomats and intelligence officers for many years now. Since September 2001 there have been 13 attacks against U.S. diplomatic missions and motorcades as well as hotels and restaurants frequented by Americans who were in Pakistan on official business. Militants responsible for the attack on the Islamabad Marriott in September 2008 referred to the hotel as a “nest of spies.” At least 10 Americans in Pakistan on official business have been killed as a result of these attacks, and many more have been wounded.
Militants in Pakistan have also specifically targeted the CIA. This was clearly illustrated by a December 2009 attack against the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, in which the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), led by Hakeemullah Mehsud, used a Jordanian suicide operative to devastating effect. The CIA thought the operative had been turned and was working for Jordanian intelligence to collect intelligence on al Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan. The attack killed four CIA officers and three CIA security contractors. Additionally, in March 2008, four FBI special agents were injured in a bomb attack as they ate at an Italian restaurant in Islamabad.
Pakistani intelligence and security agencies have been targeted with far more vigor than the Americans. This is due not only to the fact that they are seen as cooperating with the United States but also because there are more of them and their facilities are relatively soft targets compared to U.S. diplomatic facilities in Pakistan. Militants have conducted dozens of major attacks directed against Pakistani security and intelligence targets such as the headquarters of the Pakistani army in Rawalpindi, the ISI provincial headquarters in Lahore and the Federal Investigative Agency (FIA) and police academies in Lahore.
In addition to these high-profile attacks against facilities, scores of military officers, frontier corps officers, ISI officers, senior policemen and FIA agents have been assassinated. Other government figures have also been targeted for assassination. As this analysis was being written, the Pakistani minorities minister was assassinated near his Islamabad home.
Because of this dangerous security environment, it is not at all surprising that American government officials living and working in Pakistan are provided with enhanced security to keep them safe. And enhanced security measures require a lot of security officers, especially when you have a large number of American officials traveling away from secure facilities to attend meetings and other functions. This demand for security officers is even greater when enhanced security is required in several countries at the same time and for a prolonged period of time.
This is what is happening today in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The demand for protective officers has far surpassed the personnel available to the organizations that provide security for American officials such as the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and the CIA’s Office of Security. In order to provide adequate security for American officials in high-threat posts, these agencies have had to rely on contractors provided by large companies like Blackwater/Xe, Dyncorp and Triple Canopy and on individual contract security officers hired on personal-services contracts. This reliance on security contractors has been building over the past several years and is now a fact of life at many U.S. embassies.
Using contract security officers allows these agencies not only to quickly ramp up their capabilities without actually increasing their authorized headcount but also to quickly cut personnel when they hit the next lull in the security-funding cycle. It is far easier to terminate contractors than it is to fire full-time government employees.
CIA Operations in Pakistan
There is another factor at play: demographics. Most CIA case officers (like most foreign-service officers) are Caucasian products of very good universities. They tend to look like Bob Baer and Valerie Plame. They stick out when they walk down the street in places like Peshawar or Lahore. They do not blend into the crowd, are easily identified by hostile surveillance and are therefore vulnerable to attack. Because of this, they need trained professional security officers to watch out for them and keep them safe.
This is doubly true if the case officer is meeting with a source who has terrorist connections. As seen in the Khost attack discussed above, and reinforced by scores of incidents over the years, such sources can be treacherous and meeting such people can be highly dangerous. As a result, it is pretty much standard procedure for any intelligence officer meeting a terrorism source to have heavy security for the meeting. Even FBI and British MI5 officers meeting terrorism sources domestically employ heavy security for such meetings because of the potential danger to the agents.
Since the 9/11 attacks, the primary intelligence collection requirement for every CIA station and base in the world has been to hunt down Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda leadership. This requirement has been emphasized even more for the CIA officers stationed in Pakistan, the country where bin Laden and company are believed to be hiding. This emphasis was redoubled with the change of U.S. administrations and President Barack Obama’s renewed focus on Pakistan and eliminating the al Qaeda leadership. The Obama administration’s approach of dramatically increasing strikes with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) required an increase in targeting intelligence, which comes mostly from human sources and not signals intelligence or imagery. Identifying and tracking an al Qaeda suspect amid the hostile population and unforgiving terrain of the Pakistani badlands also requires human sources to direct intelligence assets toward a target.
This increased human intelligence-gathering effort inside Pakistan has created friction between the CIA and the ISI. First, it is highly likely that much of the intelligence used to target militants with UAV strikes in the badlands comes from the ISI — especially intelligence pertaining to militant groups like the TTP that have attacked the ISI and the Pakistani government itself (though, as would be expected, the CIA is doing its best to develop independent sources as well). The ISI has a great deal to gain by strikes against groups it sees as posing a threat to Pakistan, and the fact that the U.S. government is conducting such strikes provides the ISI a degree of plausible deniability and political cover.
However, it is well known that the ISI has long had ties to militant groups. The ISI’s fostering of surrogate militants to serve its strategic interests in Kashmir and Afghanistan played a critical role in the rise of transnational jihadism (and this was even aided with U.S. funding in some cases). Indeed, as we’ve previously discussed, the ISI would like to retain control of its militant proxies in Afghanistan to ensure that Pakistan does not end up with a hostile regime in Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal from the country. This is quite a rational desire when one considers Pakistan’s geopolitical situation.
Because of this, the ISI has been playing a kind of a double game with the CIA. It has been forthcoming with intelligence pertaining to militants it views as threats to the Pakistani regime while refusing to share information pertaining to groups it hopes to use as levers in Afghanistan (or against India). Of course, the ability of the ISI to control these groups and not get burned by them again is very much a subject of debate, but at least some ISI leaders appear to believe they can keep at least some of their surrogate militants under control.
There are many in Washington who believe the ISI knows the location of high-value al Qaeda targets and senior members of organizations like the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, which are responsible for many of the attacks against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. This belief that the ISI is holding back intelligence compels the CIA to run unilateral intelligence operations (meaning operations it does not tell the ISI about). Many of these unilateral operations likely involve the recruitment of Pakistani government officials, including members of the ISI. Naturally, the ISI is not happy with these intelligence operations, and the result is the mistrust and tension we see between the ISI and the CIA.
It is important to remember that in the intelligence world there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service. While services will cooperate on issues of mutual interest, they will always serve their own national interests first, even when that places them at odds with an intelligence service they are coordinating with.
Such competing national interests are at the heart of the current tension between the CIA and the ISI. At present, the CIA is fixated on finding and destroying the last vestiges of al Qaeda and crippling militant groups in Pakistan that are attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The Americans can always leave Afghanistan; if anarchy and chaos take hold there, it is not likely have a huge impact on the United States. However, the ISI knows that after the United States withdraws from Afghanistan it will be stuck with the problem of Afghanistan. It is on the ISI’s doorstep, and it does not have the luxury of being able to withdraw from the region and the conflict. The ISI believes that it will be left to deal with the mess created by the United States. It is in Pakistan’s national interest to try to control the shape of Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal, and that means using militant proxies like Pakistan did after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989.
This struggle between the CIA and ISI is a conundrum rooted in the conflict between the vital interests of two nations and it will not be solved easily. While the struggle has been brought to the public’s attention by the Davis case, this case is really just a minor symptom of a far deeper conflict.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/04/AR2011030405729.html
I hope YA will comment.
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This is a typical article by Mr.10%....which demonstrates what I call pakiness...
"Two months ago my friend Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was cut down for standing up against religious intolerance and against those who would use debate about our laws to divide our people. On Tuesday, another leading member of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), Shahbaz Bhatti, the minister for minority affairs and the only Christian in our cabinet, was murdered by extremists tied to al-Qaeda and the Taliban." Mr.10 % did not even attend his friend's funeral.
"We will not be intimidated, nor will we retreat".Infact he has taken blasphemy laws off the PPP agenda, as well as off the pak govt agenda
"Our economic growth was stifled by the priorities of past dictatorial regimes that unfortunately were supported by the West". You are responsible for our miserable situation
"The religious fanaticism behind our assassinations is a tinderbox poised to explode across Pakistan." Give me money, or I blow my brains out
Plain and simple, shameless begging....
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Loving Ya's analysis. :-D
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Also enjoying and benefiting from Ya's contributions. The name Mr.10% is for Zardari's bribery/corruption reputation and conviction. He did well financially while his wife Benazir Bhutto was Prime Minister. http://middleeast.about.com/b/2008/08/24/mr-10-percent-president-of-pakistan-meet-asif-ali-zardari.htme
"shameless begging" - That is a regular feature in the paper with rotating leaders for authors. That is a good title for the page. Tomorrow it will be Chairman of General Motors or head of the Wisconsin Teachers Union.
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So, where would one find islam being practiced in an authentic manner?
In an authentic manner? If you mean a particular country, I would have to say nowhere, Saudi is perhaps the closest, but with their human rights issues and such-they fall short.
But, I would have to say--Islam is practiced authentically in the hearts and minds of close to a billion people world wide. When you see a local wall guard in Afghanistan, who risks his life and the lives of his family to fight the Taliban, who are deviants--this is it. When you see whole communities of Muslims in America refusing to get caught up with jihadi ideologies and instead drop a dime a Joe-jihadi, becasue the things he says scare them, this is it. When you see Muslims who don't bend to the threats, murders, kidnappings and bombings in their backyards-by continuing to say "No, we won't join you, no matter how many you kill", then this is it. Whenever they stand up and declare one can't overthrow the rulers, one can't keep little girls from going to school, one can't kill non-Muslims just because they are non-Muslims--then ths is it--and I would have to say this is the majority of Muslims--how they feel, think, and act--but it always seems to miss FauxNews' headlines--so nobody knows.
So, I would say religion is in the heart, but it is also the speach from your mouths and the actions of your limbs. And sometimes it is practiced appropriately in a collective manner. But all religions--all of them-usually aren't.
Woof from Kunduz
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Why is it islam falls so short in terms of human rights? Why is it that even the heroic wall guard you mention would kill a member of his family for becoming another religion? Why is it that all the "Mainstream" muslim groups in the US, like CAIR are fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood?
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Why is it islam falls so short in terms of human rights? Why is it that even the heroic wall guard you mention would kill a member of his family for becoming another religion? Why is it that all the "Mainstream" muslim groups in the US, like CAIR are fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood?
Huh?
You obviously read my reply/answered with an agenda, I am used to this. So, I just won't post here anymore-kinda sad really. Glad my kids live in Oregon, where bigots are few and far between...
Woof from Kunduz
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Why is it islam falls so short in terms of human rights? Why is it that even the heroic wall guard you mention would kill a member of his family for becoming another religion? Why is it that all the "Mainstream" muslim groups in the US, like CAIR are fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood?
Huh?
You obviously read my reply/answered with an agenda, I am used to this. So, I just won't post here anymore-kinda sad really. Glad my kids live in Oregon, where bigots are few and far between...
Woof from Kunduz
So why can't you answer these simple questions?
Speaking of Oregon, wasn't that where a young muslim wanted to blow up a christmas tree lighting? Wasn't Oregon where Oussama Kassir wanted to set up a jihad training camp? Isn't Oregon where a group of muslims were arrested by the FBI in 2002 for wanting to wage war against the US? Wasn't John Allen Muhammad (DC Sniper) a member of the Oregon Nat'l Guard?
Lots of interesting things seem to go on with the "religion of peace" in Oregon.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/260155/death-apostates-not-perversion-islam-islam-andrew-c-mccarthy
February 19, 2011 4:00 A.M.
Death to Apostates: Not a Perversion of Islam, but Islam
The case of Said Musa shows why we cannot graft democracy onto Islamic societies.
On NRO Friday, Paul Marshall lamented the Obama administration’s fecklessness, in particular the president’s appalling silence in the face of the death sentence Said Musa may suffer for the crime of converting to Christianity. This is in Afghanistan, the nation for which our troops are fighting and dying — not to defeat our enemies, but to prop up the Islamic “democracy” we have spent a decade trying to forge at a cost of billions.
This shameful episode (and the certain recurrence of it) perfectly illustrates the folly of Islamic nation-building. The stubborn fact is that we have asked for just these sorts of atrocious outcomes. Ever since 2003, when the thrust of the War On Terror stopped being the defeat of America’s enemies and decisively shifted to nation-building, we have insisted — against history, law, language, and logic — that Islamic culture is perfectly compatible with and hospitable to Western-style democracy. It is not, it never has been, and it never will be.
This is not the first time an apostate in the new American-made Afghanistan has confronted the very real possibility of being put to death by the state. In 2006, a Christian convert named Abdul Rahman was tried for apostasy. The episode prompted a groundswell of international criticism. In the end, Abdul Rahman was whisked out of the country before his execution could be carried out. A fig leaf was placed over the mess: The prospect of execution had been rendered unjust by the (perfectly sane) defendant’s purported mental illness — after all, who in his right mind would convert from Islam? His life was spared, but the Afghans never backed down from their insistence that a Muslim’s renunciation of Islam is a capital offense and that death is the mandated sentence.
They are right. Under the construction of sharia adopted by the Afghan constitution (namely Hanafi, one of Islam’s classical schools of jurisprudence), apostasy is the gravest offense a Muslim can commit. It is considered treason from the Muslim ummah. The penalty for that is death.
This is the dictate of Mohammed himself. One relevant hadith (from the authoritative Bukhari collection, No. 9.83.17) quotes the prophet as follows: “A Muslim . . . may not be killed except for three reasons: as punishment for murder, for adultery, or for apostasy.” It is true that the hadith says “may,” not “must,” and there is in fact some squabbling among sharia scholars about whether ostracism could be a sufficient sentence, at least if the apostasy is kept secret. Alas, the “may” hadith is not the prophet’s only directive on the matter. There is also No. 9.84.57: “Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him.” That is fairly clear, wouldn’t you say? And as a result, mainstream Islamic scholarship holds that apostasy, certainly once it is publicly revealed, warrants the death penalty.
Having hailed the Afghan constitution as the start of a democratic tsunami, the startled Bush administration made all the predictable arguments against Abdul Rahman’s apostasy prosecution. Diplomats and nation-building enthusiasts pointed in panic at the vague, lofty language injected into the Afghan constitution to obscure Islamic law’s harsh reality — spoons full of sugar that had helped the sharia go down. The constitution assures religious freedom, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice maintained. It cites the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and even specifies that non-Muslims are free to perform their religious rites.
Read the fine print. It actually qualifies that all purported guarantees of personal and religious liberty are subject to Islamic law and Afghanistan’s commitment to being an Islamic state. We were supposed to celebrate this, just as the State Department did, because Islam is the “religion of peace” whose principles are just like ours — that’s why it was so ready for democracy.
It wasn’t so. Sharia is very different from Western law, and it couldn’t care less what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has to say on the matter of apostasy. Nor do the authoritative scholars at al-Azhar University in Cairo give a hoot that their straightforward interpretation of sharia’s apostasy principles upsets would-be Muslim reformers like Zuhdi Jasser. We may look at Dr. Jasser as a hero — I do — but at al-Azhar, the sharia scholars would point out that he is merely a doctor of medicine, not of Islamic jurisprudence.
The constitution that the State Department bragged about helping the new Afghan “democracy” draft established Islam as the state religion and installed sharia as a principal source of law. That constitution therefore fully supports the state killing of apostates. Case closed.
The purpose of real democracy, meaning Western republican democracy, is to promote individual liberty, the engine of human prosperity. No nation that establishes a state religion, installs its totalitarian legal code, and hence denies its citizens freedom of conscience, can ever be a democracy — no matter how many “free” elections it holds. Afghanistan is not a democracy. It is an Islamic sharia state.
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The US war in Afghanistan would go much better, if the US could pressure the pakis. Instead the purelanders have the US by the family jewels, as military supplies need to go through Karachi...The US has looked for other options, such as the one outlined below, see link for maps. However, there exists another route, through a seaport, that is not being discussed. Anyone want to hazard a guess ?.
http://www.europeaninstitute.org/February-%E2%80%93-March-2010/new-supply-front-for-afghan-war-runs-across-russia-georgia-and-the-stans.html
New Supply ‘Front’ for Afghan War Runs Across Russia, Georgia and the ‘Stans
Written by Bill Marmon
The U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, including the 30,000 “plus-up” currently underway, represents one of the most difficult logistical challenges in the annals of war – a challenge even for the United States, which is the world champion of supply solutions. Afghanistan is harder than the Vietnam “land war in Asia” or the Berlin airlift or Iraq I and II. These previous engagements, although difficult logistically, pale in comparison to the task of supplying 100,000 troops and as many contractors in Afghanistan over nine years and counting. Landlocked, mountainous, beset by civil war, banditry and extreme underdevelopment, Afghanistan is surrounded by a clutch of hostile, suspicious, barely functioning sovereignties.
And U.S. and allied troops require a Herculean mass of supplies from ammunition to toothbrushes, fuel, computers, night-vision goggles, concertina wire et cetera, et cetera – at the rate of thousands of tons per day. Even with the containerized packing systems and all the technology that made-in-USA delivery systems have made available to the military, the traffic volumes are immense. In 2008, nearly 30,000 containers were sent to the front – or about 75 percent of the total need in fuel, food, equipment and construction materials. Traffic reportedly doubled in 2009, and the requirements for 2010 will likely double again.
Part of this massive resupply travels by air in giant military transports (some American, some Antonovs leased from Russia): for example, the tons of ammunition, from small artillery to missiles, is delivered entirely by aircraft landing at military air fields. But the bulk of the traffic must be carried by sea-lift, mainly cargo ships that dock in the Indian Ocean port of Karachi in Pakistan, and then are off-loaded onto trucks. The road north is a hazardous trip of nearly 1,000 miles, finally passing through the difficult and often-hostile terrain of the Hindu Kush and then over the treacherous Khyber Pass before finally dropping down into Afghanistan.
Because of Pakistani sensitivities about sovereignty, these trucks are 100 percent civilian-operated, with no military escorts. The pay is good but the work is dangerous. Drivers are subject to kidnapping, ransoming, and destruction by roadside bombs or rocket and bazooka ambushes. U.S. sources report that over 450 trucks were destroyed in 2009, and one international shipping company confirms to European Affairs that 50 of its trucks were attacked, many of them fatally. Pilferage has been a problem too, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Karachi itself is a hotbed of political unrest rife with strong pro-Taliban currents: cargo ships and oil tankers have been sabotaged in the harbor.
Pakistan Supply Line
Map from Google Earth. Courtesy of CSIS
Not surprisingly, the U.S. military logisticians have sought a better way – or at least an alternative one affording a route around the potential choke-point in Pakistan. Pentagon planners started their quest for an alternative to Karachi as early as 2006, when the U.S.-led campaign there was still a comparatively low-level grind and well before there was even a blueprint for the current surge. Gradually, stage by stage, U.S. officials stitched together a series of deals for rights of passage, crucially with Russia and other nations around Afghanistan.
Largely under-reported and unnoticed by the public at the time, these bilateral accords finally took shape as a whole by mid-2008 in what the U.S. military has dubbed the “Northern Distribution Network (NDN).” In fact, the NDN comprises several itineraries, commencing at one of two “western hubs” in Latvia and Georgia. From these secure jumping-off points, the cargo goes by combinations of trains, trucks and ferries across Russian territory and the adjacent ex-Soviet “stans” to enter Afghanistan from the north. All of the new routes share the same attraction of altogether avoiding Pakistan. Taken together, these new routes in the NDN provide redundant paths for overland supplies that, however expensively, make it logistically sustainable for the U.S. and its allies to wage their Afghan campaign.
The most important new route, the “northern route” (see map), starts in the Latvian port of Riga, the largest all-weather harbor on the Baltic Sea, where container ships offload their cargo onto Russian trains. The shipments roll south through Russia, then southeast around the Caspian Sea through Kazakhstan and finally south through Uzbekistan until they cross the frontier into north Afghanistan. The Russian train-lines were built to supply Russia’s own war in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, and today Moscow’s cooperation is making them available for use by the U.S. and NATO in their own Afghan campaign.
NDN North
Map from Google Earth. Courtesy of CSIS
The NDN also involves two additional routes. A “southern route” transits the Caucuses, completely bypassing Russia, from Georgia. Starting from the Black Sea port, Ponti, it travels north to Azerbaijan and its port, Baku, where goods are loaded onto ferries to cross the Caspian Sea. Landfall is Kazakhstan, where the goods are carried by truck to Uzbekistan and finally Afghanistan. This southern route now carries about one-third of the NDN’s traffic volume. While shorter than the northern route, it is more expensive because of the on-and-off loading from trucks to ferries and back onto trucks.
NDN South
Map from Google Earth. Courtesy of CSIS
A third route, which is actually a spur of the northern route, bypasses Uzbekistan and proceeds from Kazakhstan via Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which has a northeast border with Afghanistan. This route is hampered by bad roads in Tajikistan.
KKT Route
Map from Google Earth. Courtesy of CSIS
Not available to the U.S. for obvious political reasons is the most attractive land route into Afghanistan - through Iran, which has a 600-mile border along Afghanistan’s western provinces. The best line would begin at the Iranian port of Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, and proceed over excellent roads to the Afghan border city of Zaranj, which is connected to the main trans-Afghan highway by a recently completed road. Although the U.S. cannot use this route, other countries including European nations (among the 42 countries that have forces in Afghanistan) can take advantage of it, using private hauling companies to handle some non-lethal cargo. And as remote as it may seem today, a shift in U.S.-Iranian relations is a contingency to consider.
As of November 2009, the NDN had delivered 4,500 containers, and through-put on this route could easily double this year. As of now, the NDN routes are not only longer but also more expensive than the connection via Pakistan, but they are also safer and, despite the distance and border crossings, more reliable. U.S. Central Command, in charge of the Afghan campaign, would like to be able to move a third of the surface traffic over the NDN in the future.
Despite its signal success in establishing the new system, Washington has not trumpeted its accomplishment, perhaps it fears there might be a higher political price in drawing attention to the fact that the ongoing flow via the NDN depends on continuing cooperation with Russia and Uzbekistan and other “stans” that have often exhibited shaky relations with the U.S. Relations were recently strained with Uzbekistan, for instance, over human-rights issues with that country’s ruler. And given the ebbs and flows of U.S.-Russia relations, the reliability of continued cooperation from Moscow is not insured..
The issues and opportunities raised by the new routes have recently been well ventilated by reports prepared by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) [www.CSIS.org], a think-tank in Washington. CSIS initiated its thorough-going, politically sophisticated study a year ago after a senior CSIS executive, Arnaud de Borchgrave, was briefed on the subject over dinner by General David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in the theater.
The new routes are difficult and long, but they offer incontrovertible security advantages over the routes through Pakistan – an option that invited Taliban commanders to see the road as a long, exposed jugular vein of the U.S. force in Afghanistan. And there must be a surface route because air shipments to Bagram, the main Afghan airfield, cost $14,000 a ton, a prohibitive price tag. Even if Washington were ready to pay whatever it costs, air lift capabilities are already being strained (including those of civilian contractors) by the task of simply delivering weaponry and other “sensitive” materials. This air route also involves over-flight permissions that need to be secured (and often renegotiated frequently): in Kazakhstan, for example, U.S. access to the large airfield at Manas has been an on-and-off option that now seems to be “on” after bargaining that led to a fourfold increase in U.S. aid assistance to that country.
Russian assistance is obviously crucial, and that U.S. dependence on Moscow always raises some eyebrows in the security-policy community in Washington among people who worry that Moscow may someday take advantage of the leverage it has gained thanks to the NDN running across Russian territory. Proponents of the NDN contend that the route is an example of cooperation between the U.S. and Russia (and the European Union) that offers advantages to all three parties and could help pave the way to more such “triangular cooperation.” In any event, the U.S. needs this alternative so direly that it is worth some political risk, according to Obama administration officials. Russia has strong incentives not to hit the “off switch,” they add. Similarly, CSIS concluded that the Russian position is accurately formulated by Zamer Kabulov, the Russian ambassador to Afghanistan and a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, when he told the Times of London: “it’s not in Russia’s interest for NATO to be defeated and leave behind all these problems…we’d prefer NATO to complete its job and then leave this unnatural geography.” Of course, from Moscow’s vantage, the issues could be seen as a reprise of “the Great Game,” the long-running 19th Century struggle between Britain and Russia for control of central Asia that may be revisited in coming decades between Russia and U.S.-led NATO in the region.
Last summer at the U.S.-Russian summit conference Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama signed a significant military transit agreement that covers not only the overland routes across Russia but also over-flight permissions. Contracts for Russian transport on Russian military aircraft of non-lethal supplies, which proceeded without pause during the Russia-Georgian war, will also be continued. The agreement permits the movement of both soldiers and military supplies overland. The White House indicated the new transit routes would save at least $133 million annually in fuel, maintenance and other transportation costs.
Opening the new routes has been a quiet triumph of the U.S. military and diplomatic corps. The U.S. Central Command continues working to expand the supply routes to multiply the military options and cope with the additional logistical demands of 30,000 more U.S. troops and 10,000 more European and other allied reinforcements. With the arrival of these numbers and also more contractor corps that use the military resupply system, there will be a short term “bow wave” effect as infrastructure and pre-positioning supplies for the expansion moves to the area.
Civilian policy observers see a potential long term gain for the U.S. in taking a leadership role in re-establishing the Silk Road that once brought thriving commercial life to Afghanistan and beyond. The NDN could also create a positive collateral effect of re-establishing a “Modern Silk Road,” which boosters say would contribute to the long term economic development of Afghanistan and surrounding countries. The new routes could presage a Modern Silk Road (“MSR”) if the routes opened for the military convert into civilian commerce and enhance regional prosperity for the adjacent central Asian nations. .
In the meantime, the opening of alternative supply routes for the military is a formidable achievement. If the Afghan war ends with anything like success, the NDN will likely be hailed as an important element of that success. Creation of the NDN once again proves the old axiom: “It’s OK for strategy to be conducted by amateurs, but logistics requires professionals.”
Bill Marmon is Assistant Managing Editor of European Affairs.
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Ya:
I'd be curious of your take on the interesting piece you post.
FWIW my initial reaction is that we are profoundly foolish to put ourself in a position of relying on the Russians (which applies to relying upon them now for rides into space too!) and that the southern root, higher costs or not, makes much more sense-- including the tangential benefits of having money flowing to/through Georgia, which must be feeling rather lonely after the Russian invasion.
@those who have been here a while: Is there someone who can find my post about "the Crafty Dog" strategy for Afpakia? I'd be really curious to get Ya's take on it because several of its strands are a result of my trying to think about interesting materials he sent me previously.
Abruptly changing subjects, here's this little item which portends so well :roll: for our strategy , , ,
Afghanistan: Karzai Requests NATO Operations End
March 12, 2011 1552 GMT
U.S.-led NATO forces must end operations in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai stated March 12, Iran's Press TV reported. More than 70 civilians were reported dead following NATO fighting near the city of Asadabad, causing increased tensions between Kabul and Washington, according to Karzai.
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We need to get seriously outside the box.
The following is offered in a brainstorming way only-- there may be some serious flaws in it, but at the moment it is what occurs to me.
a) I would consider ignoring the Darcy line and cut a deal with the Pashtuns to give them a Pashtunistan in return for giving up the AQ in their territory. This would freak the Paks and I would green light the Indians while taking out Pak's nuke program.
b) I would consider fg with the Russians and freeing the Germans from dependance on Russki gas AND provide an alternate source of money for the rest of Afg by building/threaten/offer to build a natural gas pipeline for central Asian gas through Pashtunistan and the remains of Pakistan to the Indian Ocean that gives it access to the market other than Russia. Without this gas, Russia will not be able to export to and control Europe, especially Germany and Afgans, Pashtuns, and Paks have an alternate source to making money.
Again, these ideas may be crazy, but maybe there is some value to extract.
Here.
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The route that I was thinking of involves using the sea port of Chabahar in Iran. Yes, it will involve reaching agreement with the Iranians, but that should be possible because its in Shia Iran's interest to not have a sunni taliban leadership in Afghanistan. India has spend treasure and lives to link Delaram in Afghanistan to Zaranj (near Iranian border),http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaranj (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaranj), so that the port of Chabahar can be used to bypass Karachi in Pakistan.
This port can be used for any supplies including oil that needs to come in by sea, just like Karachi, infact its geographic location may make it cheaper to use. If needed India could serve as a mediator, since India has historic ties to Iranhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo%E2%80%93Iranian_relations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo%E2%80%93Iranian_relations), as well as an interest to support the use of Chabahar (which was also built partially with Indian help).
There is a second way, if airlift will suffice. It will involve pissing of the purelanders, but perfectly legal. In this scenario, Indian help would be needed, for landing rights in India. Planes could fly from Diego Garcia, refuel in India and then through POK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir), via the Wakhan Corridor to Afghanistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakhan_Corridor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakhan_Corridor). Wakhan is ofcourse part of Afghanistan. Pakistan cannot object to flights over POK, because that's disputed territory with India, and even the Pakis dont consider it as part of Pakistan (since they are supportive of Kashmiri Independence).
India would help, if the US was willing to shift policy re: maintaining balance of power between Pak and India, or if the US was serious about supporting Pak's break up, either into Pashtoonistan, or free Balochistan (which BTW, was always independent of Pak, as the princely state of Kalat, and annexed to pak after the India/Pak partition). The F-16's that the US supplies to pak are a significant pain to India.
These options are no worse than the deals we cut with Russia and Central Asian states.
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"India would help, if the US was willing to shift policy re: maintaining balance of power between Pak and India, or if the US was serious about supporting Pak's break up, either into Pashtoonistan, or free Balochistan (which BTW, was always independent of Pak, as the princely state of Kalat, and annexed to pak after the India/Pak partition). The F-16's that the US supplies to pak are a significant pain to India."
Works for me.
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Very interesting Ya.
IIRC, Iran was very helpful against the Taliban/AQ in the early days after 911.
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Iran also killed lots of US troops in Iraq, both directly and indirectly, and has waged a covert war against the US since 1979.
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Well, duh, and we aided Saddam Hussein against Iraq too.
My intended point is that despite the bad background between our countries, that when interests convene, perhaps deals can be made.
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I trust Iran even less than I trust Pakistan. You don't make deals with those waging war against you. You find a way to ram a spear through their heart.
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Well, I would distinguish its government and its people; the latter I gather have rather positivie feelings about the US, though they may wonder about BO's lack of verbal support for their freedom when they were trying to take the streets.
Also, lets keep in mind here the alternatives e.g. depending on Russia and Pakistan for our logistical supply chains for our war in Afpakia.
Also, and I am winging it here (Ya, as always, please jump in) but would not this course of action strengthen the Balochs in their dealings with Islamabad and Teheran?
As for a spear in the heart of Iran, I'm all ears: What do you have in mind?
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Well, someone has been effective at running covert ops inside Iran, I suspect our friends from a small country that speaks Hebrew. We should be training and arming a resistance within Iran and more targeted killings of mullahs and Revolutionary Guards, as well as nuclear scientists while we squeeze them economically by damaging their oil infrastructure.
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Iranian people are generally supportive of the US (they are not arab)...its Ahmedinijad who needs to go. Iran does not have friendly relations with the Baloch, since the Baloch are spread over into Iran, and eye their territory, sort of like the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey.
The goals of US presence in Afghanistan are not clear (to me). I suspect, it has something to do with playing the new great game, or access to central asian oil resources. The reasons espoused, ie to get rid off AQ in Pak/Afghanistan are likely red herrings. We will never eliminate the last Al Qaeda in the AF-PAK theater, and even if we could, what's to stop AQ from moving to other "friendly countries" and setting up shop (which they already have) there (Pak, Yemen etc).
The world is changing, and traditional US support of Pak is receding, as the US seeks new allies and alliances against China. The Ray Davis saga is a manifestation of that, as the US moves away from pak (and towards India). In recent years, the US has wanted to strengthen India against China, which means less support for Pak. China will end up supporting Pak (which will be interesting, since the Chinese are tougher task masters).
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Ya,
The US sucks at playing "Great Game" games. Note that for all our blood and treasure, we got exactly zero Iraqi oil contracts. If only the US were the skilled Machiavellians we are accused of being.
Our goal in Afghanistan was to Kill Bin Laden and the core of AQ, destroy the AQ training camp infrastructure and make A-stan a place where AQ couldn't rebuild.
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"Our goal in Afghanistan was to Kill Bin Laden and the core of AQ, destroy the AQ training camp infrastructure and make A-stan a place where AQ couldn't rebuild."
That's what they say...but let's look at the 3 points you make.
1.Bin Laden: is now dead, or if alive, the trail has gone cold. Bin Laden is likely not even in Afgh, but in Pak, so we are likely wasting our resources in Afghanistan.
2. Destroy "training camps": These are mostly in Pak (again we are in the wrong country), and very rarely do we hear of training sites in Afghanistan, and how do you destroy these camping sites with a few tents and perhaps a few obstacle courses. These are rudimentary camps, even if destroyed can be put back very quickly. So far I dont think we have bombed a single jihadi training camp, about 50 of which are known to be in POK.
3. Make Afg. a place where AQ cannot rebuild. Its the taliban who want to take over Afghanistan, not AQ. When the heat got too much in Sudan, Osama moved to the Af-Pak border, they can always move again. Its much more easy to go after governments that support terrorism.
The only thing sensible, we are doing, is with our drone attacks, but those video games can be played from Centcom in Florida, or from bases inside Pak.
I think the above goals, wrt afghanistan have been achieved to the extent we could, or wanted to. There must be something more to our presence in Afghanistan. Why do we want to build a permanent base in that country ?, its certainly not to tackle AQ a highly mobile terrorist organization, over the next 10 years ?. Why is the US taking all this crap from the beggar nation of pakistan, aka epicenter of terrorism. If our aim is to destroy the jihadis,we need to be squeezing the pakis. Since we are not doing that, there must be some other reason for the US in Afghanistan..
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1.Bin Laden: is now dead, or if alive, the trail has gone cold. Bin Laden is likely not even in Afgh, but in Pak, so we are likely wasting our resources in Afghanistan.
Agreed. However, we sure have killed a lot of jihadists on the battlefield as well as gathered lots of intel and wiped out much of AQ's middle management.
2. Destroy "training camps": These are mostly in Pak (again we are in the wrong country), and very rarely do we hear of training sites in Afghanistan, and how do you destroy these camping sites with a few tents and perhaps a few obstacle courses. These are rudimentary camps, even if destroyed can be put back very quickly. So far I dont think we have bombed a single jihadi training camp, about 50 of which are known to be in POK.
Agreed. Those that were in A-stan go wiped out early on.
I think the above goals, wrt afghanistan have been achieved to the extent we could, or wanted to. There must be something more to our presence in Afghanistan. Why do we want to build a permanent base in that country ?
Part of it is that failed states are the swamp that breeds AQ, and thus nation building is seen as the way to drain the swamp, part of it is mission creep.We can't been seen as pulling out without Bin Laden's head on a spike, otherwise it will be taken as a major victory by the jihadists worldwide.
If our aim is to destroy the jihadis,we need to be squeezing the pakis. Since we are not doing that, there must be some other reason for the US in Afghanistan..
The US nat'l security machine tends to be very risk adverse. The only time we really got P-stan to do anything was right after 9/11. We were scared, we were pissed and no one knew how far we'd go or what we'd do. No one wants to be the one that "lost Pakistan". As you have pointed out in great detail, P-stan understands how the US works and milks us for money while playing the usual double game. I said years ago that I would bet a huge amount of money the the ISI knows exactly where Bin Laden is, and most likely extracted him from Tora Bora.
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"Part of it is that failed states are the swamp that breeds AQ, and thus nation building is seen as the way to drain the swamp, part of it is mission creep.We can't been seen as pulling out without Bin Laden's head on a spike, otherwise it will be taken as a major victory by the jihadists worldwide."
I agree the ISI likely knows Osama's location...so what is the US going to doing about it. If nothing, then why are we wasting resources in Af-Pak.
The part which concerns me is the "nation building" and "draining the swamp".
Nation building: One can do nation building in eg Japan, they want to put the tsunami behind them, they are a fairly advanced society. They are progressive. Doing the same is not going to work in a Islamic society like Afghanistan, which is very primitive (outside of kabul). eg It has taken many centuries for the muslims to adjust to indic values in India, it will be a long time, before the average taliban understands "democracy". Under optimistic conditions, perhaps a generation is needed.
Draining the swamp How many swamps can we afford to drain ?.
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I'm not optimistic as to the attempted nation building in A-stan, it is however a reflection of American values. We build schools and hospitals and feed the hungry, as opposed to the Soviets and their scorched earth strategy.
Can we afford to, at this point, probably not. Can we afford to pull out, in the long run, that would probably be even more costly.
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Our current strategy is incoherent.
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This from today's WSJ. I'm not really sure I get "supporting civilian supremacy", as called for here, as being on point. Hopefully Ya will continue our education.
By MIRA SETHI
Two months after Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, was assassinated by his own bodyguard for criticizing the country's blasphemy law, the only Christian member of the Pakistani cabinet, Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, was killed for doing his job—advocating protection of the country's two million Christians.
Taseer's assassination prompted a debate: Was the blasphemy law, introduced by Gen. Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s in his bid to "Islamize" Pakistan, being exploited for mundane interests? Was it leading to witch hunts? Bhatti's death should prompt Pakistanis to ask themselves an equally disquieting question: Does Pakistan have a future as a successful nation state, at peace with itself and the world?
The civilian government's reaction to Bhatti's death has outraged many Muslim and Christian Pakistanis. As after Taseer's murder, it retreated into vague bromides. At Bhatti's funeral in Islamabad, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani vowed to "do the utmost to bring the culprits to justice." There was no mention of who these culprits were (the Tehreek-e-Taliban of Punjab has claimed responsibility), no mention of the ideologies, religious parties and jihadi organizations fueling their actions, and no mention of the blasphemy laws that Bhatti had campaigned against.
But the deaths of Taseer and Bhatti are the outcome not just of the Pakistan People's Party abandonment of the principles that once made it an appealing, popular force. They are the result of a decades-long imbalance in governance and power, which now has the PPP and other liberal and centrist civilians cowering in fear.
The failure of the political classes to initiate democratic, constitutional reform after Pakistan's separation from India in 1947 enabled the military to quickly define "national interest" as an anti-India ideology. This ideology, a type of Islamic nationalism, is one from which the Pakistan military has reaped rich dividends. It has kept civilian politicians on the defensive and the people numbed.
With the onset of the Cold War the U.S. armed Pakistan for its own strategic purposes. When the Pakistani army undertook adventures creating instability in the region—wars with India and attempts, eventually successful, to build nuclear weapons—the U.S. suspended military and economic aid.
But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 put the Pentagon and the Pakistani army on good terms again. This time, Gen. Zia extracted huge sums from Washington: Pakistan's army was paid billions of dollars in direct correlation to its usefulness in organizing an anti-Soviet Islamic jihad. The '90s saw a nasty separation—aid was suspended again—and a reunion followed after 9/11, when the U.S. needed Pakistan's help in Afghanistan.
Now Zia's "children" have come of age. Extremists of all stripes—the Taliban and the mujahedeen—roam the streets of Lahore and Karachi unchecked by the security agencies who once thought it would be a good idea to arm them. Anger and frustration fueled by inequality are making young Pakistanis turn to religion for answers.
As in Egypt, over 60% of the population of Pakistan is under 25. Unlike Egypt, they want an Islamic revolution, not a democratic one. Salman Taseer's police bodyguard—all of 26 years old—killed him for "insulting" the Prophet Muhammad. (The governor had criticized a manmade blasphemy law, not the Prophet, but his assassin didn't know the difference).
Slowly, the U.S. is beginning to understand that Pakistan's existential confusion is the result of the grand strategic designs of the Pakistani military, an army that has carried out three coups to thwart the development of a democratic political system. In the process, Pakistan's civilian leadership has been eliminated—Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto hanged, Benazir Bhutto, Taseer and Bhatti assassinated—the country dismembered, ethnic subnationalism, regional tension and inequalities aggravated.
The U.S. must support civilian supremacy and recognize the Pakistani army's game for what it is. Alarmed by the idea that if America leaves Afghanistan its U.S. funds will dwindle, the military is loath to crush the Islamist warriors who can be "calibrated" to deliver strategic value to it. Until the U.S. recognizes this, Pakistan's military will continue to hold the world to ransom.
Ms. Sethi, a native of Lahore, Pakistan, is assistant books editor at the Journal.
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Our current strategy is incoherent.
Because the "community organizer in chief" is voting "present".
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I loathe the man as much as any of us here, but, as Glenn Beck says "The Truth has no agenda": Bush left an incoherent mess that was unravelling rather quickly-- see the reports of Michael Yon in the last year of the Bush presidency. Baraq simply has multiplied it.
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I think the key problem is the unwillingness to confront Pakistan.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/weekinreview/13lashkar.html?_r=1
A Shooting in Pakistan Reveals Fraying Alliance
By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: March 12, 2011
WASHINGTON — Inside a dark jail cell on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, a brawny 36-year-old American from the mountains of southwest Virginia has sat for weeks as Pakistan began proceedings against him on murder charges and his own government made frantic attempts to secure his release.
Tangled Web Raymond Davis, center, opened a window on the fraught relationships between America and, clockwise from top left, the Pakistani military, whose chief once headed its spy agency, and the mili- tant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is linked to raids in Mumbai and is led by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.
Adam Ferguson for The New York Times
KABUL, 2010 A suicide car bomb wrecked a guest house, killing 18. American intelligence suspects Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Late in January, Raymond A. Davis — a covert security officer for the Central Intelligence Agency and onetime Green Beret — unloaded a Glock pistol into two armed Pakistanis on a crowded street in Lahore, according to a Pakistani police report. His case was to move forward in court as early as this week.The shooting complicated American attempts to portray Mr. Davis as a paper-shuffling diplomat who stamped visas as a day job; generated an extraordinary swirl of recriminations and for many Pakistanis confirmed suspicions that America has deployed a secret army of spies and contractors inside the country.
It has also called unwelcome attention to a bigger, more dangerous game in which Mr. Davis appears to have played just a supporting role.
The C.I.A. team Mr. Davis worked with, according to American officials, had among its assignments the task of secretly gathering intelligence about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant “Army of the Pure.” Pakistan’s security establishment has nurtured Lashkar for years as a proxy force to attack targets and enemies in India and in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. These and other American officials, all of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity, are now convinced that Lashkar is no longer satisfied being the shadowy foot soldiers in Pakistan’s simmering border conflict with India. It goals have broadened, these officials say, and Lashkar is committed to a campaign of jihad against the United States and Europe, and against American troops in Afghanistan.
During a visit to Islamabad last July, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared Lashkar a “global threat,” a statement that no doubt rankled his Pakistani hosts.
And so a group that Pakistan has seen for years as an essential component of its own national security, and that American counterterrorism officials could once dismiss as a regional problem, has emerged as a threat that Washington feels it can no longer ignore.
Given such a fundamental collision of interests, it was perhaps inevitable that Lashkar would one day provoke tensions between Pakistani and American security officials, and the collision itself would come into full public view. Rather than being a cause of the problem, Mr. Davis was merely an all-too-visible symptom.
As Mr. Davis discovered, the regularly accepted rules of the spy game don’t apply here. There was little chance of quickly brokering a quiet deal, allowing Mr. Davis to be spirited out of Pakistan without anyone making a fuss. Because Lashkar has long been nurtured by Pakistan’s spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, American espionage operations against the group are freighted with grave risks, and are not viewed kindly by Pakistani spies.
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From B.Raman's blog http://ramanstrategicanalysis.blogspot.com/ (http://ramanstrategicanalysis.blogspot.com/). Some snippets..
"13.There are three destabilizing ideological influences in Pakistan---- the Wahabised Islamic extremism, the trans-Ummah pan-Islamism and the country-wide anti-Americanism. The Wahabised Islamic extremism calls for the transformation of Pakistan into an Islamic democracy ruled according to the Sharia and the will of Allah, as interpreted by the clerics. It says that in an Islamic democracy, Allah will be sovereign and not the people. The trans-Ummah pan-Islamism holds that the first loyalty of a Muslim should be to his religion and not to the State, that religious bonds are more important than cultural bonds, that Muslims do not recognize national frontiers and have a right and obligation to go to any country to wage a jihad in support of the local Muslims and that the Muslims have the religious right and obligation to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in order to protect their religion, if necessary. The anti-Americanism projects the US as the source of all evils afflicting the Islamic as well as the non-Islamic world. The religious elements look upon the US as anti-Islam. The non-religious elements look upon it as anti-people.
14. The geo-religious landscape in Pakistan is dominated by two kinds of organizations-----the fundamentalist parties and the jihadi organizations. The fundamentalist parties have been in existence since Pakistan became independent in 1947 and have been contesting the elections though they are opposed to Western-style liberal democracy. Their total vote share has always been below 15 per cent. They reached the figure of 11 per cent in the 2002 elections, thanks to the machinations of the Pervez Musharraf Government, which wanted to marginalize the influence of the non-religious parties opposed to him such as the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) of Mr.Nawaz Sharif. In his over-anxiety to cut Mrs.Bhutto and Mr.Nawaz down to size, Musharraf handed over the tribal areas on a platter to the fundamentalists and the jihadis, thereby ---- more unwittingly than consciously --- facilitating the resurgence of the Neo Taliban and Al Qaeda.
15.The jihadi organizations are so called because they misinterpret the concept of jihad and advocate its use against all perceived enemies of Islam----internal or external, non-Muslims or Muslims---- wherever they are found. Their call for jihad has a domestic as well as an external agenda. The domestic agenda is the setting up of an Islamic democracy in Pakistan ruled according to the Sharia and the will of Allah. The external agenda is to “liberate” all so-called traditional Muslim lands from the “occupation” of non-Muslims and to eliminate the influence of the US and the rest of the Western world from the Ummah.
16. The jihadi organizations were brought into existence in the 1980s by the ISI and the Saudi intelligence at the instance of the CIA for being used against the troops of the USSR and the pro-Soviet Afghan Government in Afghanistan. Their perceived success in bringing about the withdrawal of the Soviet troops and the collapse of the Najibullah Government has convinced them that the jihad as waged by them is a highly potent weapon, which could be used with equal effectiveness to bring about the withdrawal of the Western presence from the Ummah, to “liberate the traditional Muslim lands” and to transform Pakistan into an Islamic fundamentalist State. The Pakistani Army and the ISI, which were impressed by the motivation, determination and fighting skills displayed by the jihadi organizations in Afghanistan, transformed them, after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops, into a new strategic weapon for use against India to annex J&K and in Afghanistan to achieve a strategic depth.
17.The aggravation of the anti-US feelings in the Islamic world post-9/11 has resulted in a dual control over the Pakistani jihadi organizations.The ISI has been trying to use them for its national agenda against India and in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden has been using them for his global agenda against “the Crusaders and the Jewish people”. The jihadi organizations are now fighting on three fronts with equal ferocity----against India as desired by the ISI, against the US and Israel as desired by Al Qaeda and against the Pakistani State itself as dictated by their domestic agenda of an Islamic State ruled according to the Sharia and the will of Allah. The growing Talibanisation of the tribal areas in the FATA and the Khyber Pakhtoonkwa province (KP) and its spread outside the tribal areas are the outcome of their determined pursuit of their domestic agenda. The acts of jihadi terrorism in Spain and the UK, the thwarted acts of terrorism in the UK and the unearthing of numerous sleeper cells in the UK, the USA, Canada and other countries and the resurgence of the Neo Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan are the outcome of their equally determined pursuit of their international agenda. Members of the Pakistani diaspora in the Gulf and the Western countries have been playing an increasingly active role in facilitating the pursuit of their international agenda.
18.The international community’s concern over the prevailing and developing situation in Pakistan has been further deepened by the status of Pakistan as a nuclear weapon State. The Pakistan Army has been repeatedly assuring the US and the rest of the international community that the security of its nuclear arsenal is strong and that there is no danger of its falling into the hands of the jihadi terrorists. Despite this, the concerns remain. This is due to various factors.
19. Firstly, it is admitted even in Pakistan that there has been an infiltration of extremist elements into every section of the Pakistani State apparatus---- the Armed Forces, the Police, the Para-military forces and the civilian bureaucracy. When that is so, it is inconceivable that there would not be a similar penetration of Pakistan’s nuclear establishment.
20. Secondly, the fundamentalist and jihadi organizations are strong supporters of a military nuclear capability for the Ummah to counter the alleged nuclear capability of Israel. They project Pakistan’s atomic bomb not as a mere national asset, but as an Islamic asset. They describe it as an Islamic bomb, whose use should be available to the entire Ummah. They also support Pakistan sharing its nuclear technology with other Muslim countries. In their eyes, A.Q.Khan, the so-called father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, committed no offence by sharing the nuclear technology with Iran and Libya because both are Muslim States or with North Korea as a quid pro quo for its sharing its missile technology with Pakistan. They look upon Pakistan’s sharing its nuclear technology and know-how with other Islamic States as an Islamic obligation and not as an illegal act of proliferation.
21.Thirdly, while serving scientists may be prepared to share the technology and know-how with other Muslim States, there has been no evidence of a similar willingness on their part to share them with Islamic non-State actors such as Al Qaeda. However, the dangers of such a sharing of know-how with the non-State actors were highlighted by the unearthing of evidence by the US intelligence after 9/11 that at least two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists ----Sultan Bashiruddin Chaudhury and Abdul Majid---were in touch with Osama bin Laden after their retirement and had even visited him at Kandahar. They were taken into custody and questioned. They admitted their contacts with bin Laden, but insisted that those were in connection with the work of a humanitarian relief organization, which they had founded after their retirement. Many retired Pakistani military and intelligence officers have been helping the Neo Taliban and the Pakistani jihadi organizations. The most well-known example is that of Lt.Gen.Hamid Gul, who was the Director-General of the ISI during Mrs.Benazir’s first tenure as the Prime Minister (1988-90). Are there retired nuclear scientists, who have been maintaining similar contacts with Al Qaeda and other jihadi organizations?
22. The Pashtun belt on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border would continue to be under the de facto control of Al Qaeda, the Neo Taliban and the Pakistani jihadi organizations with neither the Pakistani Army in Pakistani territory nor the US-led NATO forces in the adjoining Afghan territory being able to prevail over the terrorists in an enduring manner. The NATO forces will not be able to prevail in the Afghan territory unless and until the roots of the jihadi terrorism in the Pakistani territory are initially sterilized and ultimately destroyed. The Pakistani Army has so far not exhibited either a willingness or the capability to undertake this task. The lack of willingness arises from its perception that it will need its own jihadis for continued use against India and the Neo Taliban for retrieving the strategic ground lost by it in Afghanistan. Moreover, the Army fears that any strong action by it against the jihadis operating in the Pashtun belt could lead to a major confrontation between the Army and the tribals, who contribute a large number of soldiers to the Pakistan Army. Next to Punjab, the largest number of soldier-recruits to the Pakistan Army comes from the KP and the FATA.
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CIA contractor Raymond Davis was released from prison in Lahore, Pakistan, on March 16. The release comes after several weeks of negotiations between Pakistani and U.S. government officials as to whether Davis had diplomatic immunity when he shot and killed two Pakistanis in Lahore on Jan. 27 as they allegedly attempted to rob him. Davis has now left Pakistan, and reportedly is flying to London.
Instead of being released on the basis of diplomatic immunity, Davis, facing murder charges, was released after being pardoned by the families of the individuals who were killed. Later reports indicate that “blood money” was paid to the families of the victims, prompting them to say that Davis should not stand trial for the murders, in accordance with Pakistani law and Shariah. The families reportedly also received U.S. visas in exchange for absolving Davis of his actions. The resolution was apparently brokered by Saudi authorities, who visited Pakistan to convince the families of those killed to accept the bargain in the interest of ending the diplomatic problems caused by Davis’ arrest.
STRATFOR is now watching to see how the Pakistani public and opposition forces respond to Davis’ release. As STRATFOR noted earlier, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has called for Davis to be executed, while other opposition movements have called for Davis to stand trial, on both murder and espionage charges. While STRATFOR earlier predicted that the release of Davis could cause serious unrest, the deal — which was conducted in a accordance with the Pakistani justice system — may convince mainstream groups to believe that justice has been served. More radical groups may be dissatisfied with Davis’ departure, however, and turn to violence to express their sentiments. Though the Saudi-brokered agreement will help mute the overall reaction to the Davis release, U.S. companies and U.S. citizens in Pakistan should remain prepared for potential threats.
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In the urdu media, the lawyer of the victims family, says that the family members were forced to sign off on RDavis. Atleast in the near term, the tamasha will continue.
ta·ma·sha
[tuh-mah-shuh]
–noun
(in the East Indies) a spectacle; entertainment.
Origin:
1680–90; < Urdu < Persian tamāshā a stroll < Arabic
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How do you say "shakedown" in Urdu?
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Also of interest, Gen.Pasha, head of ISI got a year's extension. The Sharif brothers were conveniently out of the country, and Nawaz Sharif is now in London hospital admitted with chest pain!. So the story will be that RD was released when the Sharif's were out of the country by the PPP and zardari...
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DAVIS DEAL: US to Limit Humint Ops in Pak Territory
by B. Raman
It is leant from reliable sources in Pakistan that acceptance of blood money by the heirs to the two Pakistanis who were killed by Raymond Davis on January 27, 2011, their withdrawal of the complaint of murder against him, his release from detention in the Kot Lakpat jail of Lahore and his airlift from Lahore to the Bagram air base of the US in Afghanistan and subsequently to the US naval base in Diego Garcia on March 16,2011,followed an agreement reached between the Inter-Serices Intelligence (ISI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in secret talks held in Oman under the intermediary of the Saudi intelligence under which the CIA has agreed not to run its own Human intelligence (HUMINT) network in Pakistani territory.
2. It is further learnt that under this agreement while the US would be free to run its Technical Intelligence (TECHINT) network, which provides TECHINT for the operations of the US as well as Pakistan in the tribal belt, the US HUMINT requirements would in future be projected to the ISI which has agreed to strengthen its HUMINT capability with assistance to be provided by the CIA.
3. To avoid embarrassing allegations of payment of blood money by the official agencies of the US or Pakistan, it was reported to have been paid by the Saudi intelligence in the court before which Davis was being tried in Lahore on March 16.
4. According to these sources, the ISI and the Pakistani Foreign Office had the following two major complaints against the CIA:
Deployment of an increasing number of retired officers of the US intelligence community and Special Forces as contract employees in Pakistani territory without the knowledge and approval of the ISI for collecting HUMINT.
Ex-post facto grant of diplomatic status to them after they had arrived in Pakistan with official or ordinary visas by showing them as members of the staff of the US diplomatic mission in Pakistan.
5. The sources say that the CIA has agreed to end both these practices. The agreement will not come in the way of the posting of regular staffers of the CIA under diplomatic cover in Pakistan for liaison with the Pakistani agencies. It will also not come in the way of officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) being posted under diplomatic cover as Legal Attaches in the US missions to liaise with the Pakistani intelligence agencies and the Police.
6. Raymond Davis, who was shown as a member of the technical and administrative staff of the US Consulate-General in Lahore, had reportedly arrived in Pakistan with an official and not a diplomatic visa. He was subsequently shown by the US as transferred to the US Embassy in Islamabad, which upgraded his status to a diplomatic one, but he continued to function from the Lahore Consulate. The unilateral upgradation of his status by the US Embassy had not been accepted by the Pakistani Foreign Office.
7. The option of a blood money had been there from the beginning, but was not seriously considered because the heirs to the two Pakistanis allegedly killed by Davis were under tremendous pressure from the Islamic fundamentalist organisations not to accept it. The ISI refrained from pressuring them to accept the blood money, but once the US agreed to accept the ISI's demands in respect of HUMINT operations, the ISI intervened and persuaded the legal heirs to accept the money and move for the withdrawal of the prosecution of Davis.
8. The adverse public and jihadi reactions in Pakistan to the release were expected to some extent. The Government is hopeful that the ISI, which handled the negotiations, would be able to contain the protests through its influence over the fundamentalist and jihadi organisations and prevent any new wave of reprisal attacks. Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the Director-General of the ISI, has been given an extension of one more year from March 18, when he was due to retire. But one should not over-estimate the ISI's ability to control the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Sunni extremist Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ). The recent assassinations of Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab, and Shabaz Bhatti, Minister for Minority Affairs, showed the limited nature of the ISI's control over these organisations. The ISI has fairly effective control over the Punjabi Taliban organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, but its control over the TTP, the SSP and the LEJ is very weak. Serious reprisal attacks could come from these organisations. Pakistan could be in for a renewed spell of reprisal suicide terrorism directed against the ISI and the political leadership.
9. Does the agreement also provide for the eventual release of Aafia Siddiqui, a US-educated Pakistani neuro-scientist, presently in jail in the US after having been convicted on charges arising from her suspected collaboration with the Afghan Taliban? The answer to this is not clear. Aafia's case is much more complex than that of Davis. She has already been convicted whereas Davis was only an under-trial.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
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2. It is further learnt that under this agreement while the US would be free to run its Technical Intelligence (TECHINT) network, which provides TECHINT for the operations of the US as well as Pakistan in the tribal belt, the US HUMINT requirements would in future be projected to the ISI which has agreed to strengthen its HUMINT capability with assistance to be provided by the CIA.
In other words, we continue to pay the ISI, while they feed us whatever BS they wish without worrying we might learn different.
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Yes, its likely that HUMINT operations will cease by the US, or will be done under ISI supervision...atleast for the next few months. I was pleased to see the national bird of Pakistan fly again. see picture, below.
(http://www.worldwidehippies.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/US-drone101.jpg)
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:lol:
I note that particular bird is of the US Customs & Border Protection sub-species , , ,
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I like the subspecies that turns jihadis into smoking bits.
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Another paki trait...maintainence of H&D (Honor & Dignity) :-D...Pak airforce F-16 and drones likely fly out from the same airbases, most likely maintained by paki technicians....
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Pak-air-force-on-alert-after-US-drone-hits/articleshow/7746400.cms (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Pak-air-force-on-alert-after-US-drone-hits/articleshow/7746400.cms)
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has intensified air patrols and surveillance over its restive tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, especially North Waziristan, and put its air force at a higher alert level in the wake of US drone attacks that killed over 40 people, a media report said.
Orders were issued on Thursday at the "highest level " on an "emergency basis", including cancellation of leave of all personnel involved in air reconnaissance, BBC Urdu quoted its sources in the Pakistan air force as saying.
The leave of all personnel stationed at airbases and the PAF headquarters in Islamabad too had been cancelled and officials at sensitive installations had been asked to ensure the presence of all personnel on Saturday and Sunday, the sources were quoted as saying.
Some "operational changes" had been made but they are being kept secret though these are apparently related to round-the-clock reconnaissance in the tribal belt, the sources said. The administrative and operational changes are part of Pakistan's efforts to quickly respond to threats from the CIA-operated drones, the sources said.
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Been reading the Long War Journal lately. Don't know it's bona fides, but they post interesting pieces like this one:
Afghan Local Police vital to General Petraeus' strategy
from 1 The Long War Journal
(http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/maps/Afghanistan-key-terrain-Sept2010.jpg)
In his briefing to Congress on March 15, General David Petraeus stated that the "Afghan Local Police initiative was an important addition to the overall campaign" to secure the war-torn country and deny the Taliban control in key districts.
Purpose of the ALP
General Petraeus' campaign plan calls for providing security to the population for 80 "critical" districts. However, the forces available to the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan National Security Forces are insufficient to cover all of the areas within these districts. Although the ANSF is growing, it will be several years before it reaches the required size. In the meantime, there will be areas where security forces are weak or non-existent that the Taliban could exploit. Local villagers can try to protect themselves, but in most cases they do not have the capacity to stand up to the Taliban on their own.
The purpose of the ALP is to provide a short term solution to the shortage of ANSF and ISAF forces. The initiative provides support to local armed villagers so they can provide security for their own villages.
History and issues of local defense forces
The ALP constitutes the third attempt by ISAF to create local defense forces. The earlier initiatives illustrated the problems with creating such a force.
The first initiative, begun in 2007, was the Afghan Auxiliary Police (AAP). This initiative was quickly implemented with little oversight or resources provided. The result was a poorly trained and equipped force that spent more time preying on locals than defending them. In addition, command was appropriated by local strongmen whose interests did not necessarily coincide with those of the Afghan government. The project was abandoned.
The second initiative, which started in early 2009, was the Afghan Public Protection Police (AP3). The AP3 addressed issues with the AAP. It was both heavily supervised and heavily supported. It was run by the Afghan Ministry of Interior. Training and equipment was provided by ISAF. The project was more successful in producing an effective force. However, it required so many resources and so much time that it created forces far too slowly. Of the original plan for 10,000, only 1,200 AP3 were fielded in 1.5 years.
The current initiative, the Afghan Local Police, was launched in July 2010. It adapts the lessons learned from the first two initiatives. More resources have been provided, with more community involvement and more specialized training skills, including participation of US Special Operations Forces. As part of the initiative, the AP3 will be rolled into the ALP.
ALP mission
The ALP initiative is intended to support local forces in the defense of their own villages. Individual units have no authority outside their own village.
The initiative is limited in size to ensure that the units created can be sufficiently supported. This is currently sized to be 70 districts with about 300 ALP per district, a total of about 20,000.
The ALP are expected to perform only limited duties. "The intent is not to make them a military capability force, but just give them enough training to thicken the security," said Lieutenant General William Caldwell, the commander of the NATO Training Mission. General Petraeus describes the ALP as a "night watch with AK-47's". They are expected to man checkpoints, detain individuals and turn them over to regular forces, and to provide intelligence on Taliban activities. For other issues, they are expected to call in ANSF or ISAF for support. The intent is to allow villages to resist intimidation and to prevent the Taliban from creating safe havens.
The operation of the ALP is designed to be complementary to existing ANSF operations, not to replace them. ALP units are set up in villages near existing ANSF outposts, thereby extending security beyond areas covered by the ANSF. This proximity allows the ANSF to provide prompt reinforcements to the ALP if needed.
The ALP is expected to be a temporary program with a lifespan of approximately two years. By then, the ANSF is projected to have grown to sufficient size to allow regular ANSF forces to replace the ALP. And at that point, members of the ALP deemed to be effective would be given the option of receiving regular training and joining the ANSF.
Implementation
Areas selected to participate in the ALP initiative go through a vetting process. The application process requires village leaders to formally request participation in the program. In other words, the village has to want to participate. This is followed by an Afghan government visit to validate that the village's need is legitimate.
Once the village has been selected for participation, local tribal leaders recommend recruits. They must then be approved by the ISAF trainers and the district chief of police. Recruits must be from their home village and must pass background checks. Recruits are on probation for a year, and ISAF can blacklist someone against whom they have evidence of criminal or insurgent activies.
US Special Operations Force trainers are assigned to each unit, along with Afghan Interior Ministry personnel. Training may take from 5 days to 3 weeks. Units are paid through the Ministry of Interior, and participants are paid 60% of an Afghan National Policeman's salary. Equipment provided consists of AK-47 rifles, radios, and uniforms.
The ALP units report though the Ministry of Interior chain of command through the local district Chief of Police.
Status
At the beginning of the program, the target was 10,000 police. In October 2010, this was revised upward to 20,000. With the greater number of ALP to be fielded, it was no longer possible to assign a US Special Forces team to mentor every ALP unit, so a conventional US Army battalion, as well as Afghan special forces, was assigned to supplement the SOF.
Currently, there are 70 districts identified for ALP participation, with each district authorized about 300 ALP members. At present, 27 ALP units have been validated for full operations, and the other 43 units are in various stages of being established. General Petraeus has speculated that the ALP might be expanded to 50,000 with 40 additional districts (110 districts in total).
The initiative has been in effect for eight months. As might be expected, reports from the field have been mixed, ranging from "glowing praise to condemnation and fear".
"In some cases, they have 'flipped' communities who once even actively supported the Taliban," Petraeus said in October 2010.
However, there have also been also cases in which safeguard procedures are not being followed. "The recruits in western Herat province's Shindand district are precisely those who are supposed to be kept out," said Lal Mohammad Omerzai, the head of the district government. "These people who have been recruited up to this point, they are not good people. They have criminal backgrounds." He said that police officials consulted community leaders for the first three days, then dumped the procedure.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/03/afghan_local_police.php
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Afghanistan is about 50% larger in area than Iraq...which means it will be hard to police with 1/5th the troops that we had in Iraq.
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Especially when everyone knows we will be leaving , , , soon.
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Aafia Siddiqui the MIT neuroscientist and daughter of Pakistan was arrested for trying to shoot a US soldier in Afghanistan...and for waging jihad. Currently, the pakis are clamouring to have Aafia freed....unlikely to happen.
family connections
The man who has been charged with masterminding and planning the 9/11 attacks on the US, Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, is of Pakistani origin and has interesting family connections. His clan comes from Balochistan and he is a cousin of former minister Zubeida Jalal. KSM’s family migrated to Kuwait, as many Baloch have done to Oman and the Gulf, and that is where he got radicalized. Abdul Aziz Al-Balochi, an important member of Al-Qaeda and second husband of Aafia Siddiqui, is also from the same family. In fact, he is both Zubeida Jalal and KSM’s nephew.
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Regular readers here know that I hold Michael Yon in high regard. His website/blog is required reading for serious students of Afpakia.
Here is a recent report of particular note. http://www.michaelyon-online.com/last-man-standing.htm
Comments YA?
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While I have the highest respect for Michael Yon, and he brings the unvarnished truth with all the gory details, I think organizations such as CADG that he talks about, are dealing with a microcosm of afghan society. CADG is likely welcomed by the locals, but it does not mean that their problems or the taliban's issues with the west are solved. Every winter there is a lull in insurgent activity, which picks up with the start of spring. Its also possible that the talibs have realized that the US will bring home troops come 2012 elections, so why not sober up for a while, extract $ and concessions from the US, and then it would be back to business soon thereafter. How else to explain this report from the Obama adminhttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/US-doubts-Pakistans-plan-to-defeat-Taliban-Report/articleshow/7881142.cms (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/US-doubts-Pakistans-plan-to-defeat-Taliban-Report/articleshow/7881142.cms).
So yes we are "winning" in Afghanistan, but losing in Pak. Such wins will likely be illusory, but will offer a face saving way to withdaw from afghanistan, and the talibs know all about saving face in that part of the world. Looks like we are able to swat the flies which cross into Afghanistan, but no one is doing anything about the large festering sore in Pakistan.
"WASHINGTON: Pakistan lacks a robust plan to defeat Taliban militants and its security forces struggle to hold areas cleared of the al-Qaida-linked fighters at great cost, according to US report released on Tuesday.
The United States wants Pakistan to subdue Taliban fighters using safe havens in its rugged tribal areas to attack US forces across the border in Afghanistan.
"There remains no clear path toward defeating the insurgency in Pakistan, despite the unprecedented and sustained deployment of over 147,000 forces," President Barack Obama's administration said in a report to lawmakers in Congress.
Major security operations by Pakistani forces along the lawless Afghan border have failed to break Taliban fighters' resolve, a fact underlined by twin suicide bombings of a Sufi shrine in eastern Pakistan on Sunday that killed 41.
The report highlighted concern that even if areas were cleared of militants, fighters were not being kept out.
"This is the third time in the past two years that the army has had to conduct major clearing operations ... a clear indication of the inability of the Pakistani military and government to render clear areas resistant to insurgent return," the report said.
The doctrine of clearing ground occupied by insurgents, holding it against their return and then building up the infrastructure and public services to engender confidence in the local population was used effectively by US forces in Iraq. "
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More fun and games continue http://www.indianexpress.com/news/no-pak-exit-for-us-military-personnel/772118/ (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/no-pak-exit-for-us-military-personnel/772118/)
‘No Pak exit for US military personnel’
Close on the heels of a spat over a CIA contractor who gunned down two men in Lahore, another diplomatic row is brewing between Pakistan and the US after Islamabad barred US military personnel from leaving the country.
The US personnel have been barred from leaving Pakistan because of expired visas and other documentary irregularities, the Dawn newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying. There are varying claims about the number of US soldiers denied exit. Some sources claimed about 20 to 30 people had been affected while others put the figure at slightly less than 100.
The personnel were assigned to the US Office of Defence Representative in Pakistan (ODRP), which oversees bilateral military relations, including training and equipment. Some of the personnel overstayed their visas while a majority of them had expired no-objection certificates (NOCs).
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They better not get on Obama's bad side or.....
Nevermind.
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Thank you YA.
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In late September, U.S. fighter jets streaked over the cedar-studded slopes of Korengal, the so-called Valley of Death, to strike a target that hadn't been seen for years in Afghanistan: an al Qaeda training camp.
Among the dozens of Arabs killed that day, the U.S.-led coalition said, were two senior al Qaeda members, one Saudi and the other Kuwaiti. Another casualty of the bombing, according to Saudi media and jihadi websites, was one of Saudi Arabia's most wanted militants. The men had come to Afghanistan to impart their skills to a new generation of Afghan and foreign fighters.
Even though the strike was successful, the very fact that it had to be carried out represents a troubling shift in the war. Nine years after a U.S.-led invasion routed almost all of al Qaeda's surviving militants in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden's network is gradually returning.
Over the past six to eight months, al Qaeda has begun setting up training camps, hideouts and operations bases in the remote mountains along Afghanistan's northeastern border with Pakistan, some U.S., Afghan and Taliban officials say. The stepped-up infiltration followed a U.S. pullback from large swatches of the region starting 18 months ago. The areas were deemed strategically irrelevant and left to Afghanistan's uneven security forces, and in some parts, abandoned entirely.
American commanders have argued that the U.S. military presence in the remote valleys was the main reason why locals joined the Taliban. Once American soldiers left, they predicted, the Taliban would go, too. Instead, the Taliban have stayed put, a senior U.S. military officer said, and "al Qaeda is coming back."
The militant group's effort to re-establish bases in northeastern Afghanistan is distressing for several reasons. Unlike the Taliban, which is seen as a mostly local threat, al Qaeda is actively trying to strike targets in the West. Eliminating its ability to do so from bases in Afghanistan has always been the U.S.'s primary war goal and the motive behind fighting the Taliban, which gave al Qaeda a relatively free hand to operate when it ruled the country. The return also undermines U.S. hopes that last year's troop surge would beat the Taliban badly enough to bring them to the negotiating table—and pressure them to break ties with al Qaeda. More than a year into the surge, those ties appear to be strong.
To counter the return, the coalition is making quick incursions by regular forces into infiltrated valleys—"mowing the grass," according to one U.S. general. It is also running clandestine raids by Special Operations Forces, who helped scout out the location of the Korengal strike, U.S. officials said. The twin actions offer a preview of the tactics the coalition is likely to pursue in some parts of the country as its forces hand off chunks of contested territory to Afghanistan's security forces. The process is already under way and is due to accelerate in July.
Precise numbers of al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan at any given time are hard to come by. But officials say al Qaeda camps and gathering spots similar to the one targeted in September are now scattered across sparsely populated Kunar province, a few inaccessible parts of Nuristan province and, most worryingly to some officials, the edges of Nangarhar province. That province sits astride a major overland route from Pakistan and is home to one of Afghanistan's major cities, Jalalabad.
For the most part, al Qaeda has been viewed by Western officials as a declining force in the Afghan fight. Just six months ago, U.S. intelligence estimates indicated only one or two dozen al Qaeda fighters were present in Afghanistan at any given time. Most of the few hundred fighters it had in the region were holed up in Pakistan, hiding from Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes in mountain shelters, and beset by morale and money problems. Some fighters would occasionally cross the border to conduct training or embed with Taliban units, a pattern that had become well established over a decade of war.
Now, the U.S. pullback from northeastern Afghanistan appears to have given al Qaeda the opening it needed to re-establish itself as a force in the Afghan fight, say some U.S. and Afghan officials.
"Al Qaeda tends to navigate to areas where they sense a vacuum," said Seth G. Jones, a senior political scientist at Rand Corp. in Washington who has spent much of the past two years in Afghanistan advising the U.S. military. "There are serious concerns about al Qaeda moving back into some areas of Afghanistan, the places that we've pulled back from."
Al Qaeda's message of Islamic revolution has in recent months seemed increasingly out of sync in a Middle East where a series of grass-roots upheavals are being driven largely by secular young people demanding democracy. But its recent resurgence in Afghanistan suggests that it retains potency in predominately Muslim parts of South Asia where it has put down roots in the past 15 years.
Last year's surge of 30,000 U.S. forces, authorized by President Barack Obama, aimed to inflict enough pain on the Taliban that they would negotiate a peace settlement on terms acceptable to the West. Coalition commanders and civilian officials were initially bullish about the new strategy's chances, seizing on reports from Taliban detainees that a "wedge" was developing between al Qaeda and midlevel insurgent commanders. The insurgent leaders were said to be tired of fighting and increasingly resentful of what they considered the Arab group's meddling in their fight.
The reappearance of al Qaeda fighters operating in Afghanistan undercuts those reports from detainees. "There are still ties up and down the networks...from the senior leadership to the ground level," said a U.S. civilian official, citing classified intelligence.
Interviews with several Taliban commanders bear out that assessment. The commanders say the al Qaeda facilities in northeastern Afghanistan are tightly tied to the Afghan Taliban leadership. "In these bases, fighters from around the world get training. We are training suicide bombers, [improvised explosive device] experts and guerrilla fighters," said an insurgent commander in Nuristan who goes by the nom de guerre Agha Saib and who was reached by telephone.
The two senior al Qaeda operatives killed in the September air strike—identified by coalition officials as Abdallah Umar al-Qurayshi, an expert in suicide bombings from Saudi Arabia, and Abu Atta, a Kuwaiti explosives specialist—are believed to have come across the border from Pakistan's neighboring tribal areas with the aid of the Taliban in the wake of the American withdrawal
The wanted Saudi, Saad al Shehri, hailed from one of the most prominent Arab jihadi families, according to Saudi accounts and jihadi websites. Two of his brothers, including a former Guantanamo detainee, and several cousins were among the founders of al Qaeda's Yemen-based network.
Coalition officials say the senior al Qaeda men were accompanied by one or two dozen lower-level Arab fighters. Their mission was to train locals and get into the fight themselves.
"The raid gave us insight that al Qaeda was trying to reestablish a base in Afghanistan and conduct some training of operatives, suicide attackers," the senior U.S. military officer said. "They found a safe haven in Afghanistan."
A raid in December netted another senior al Qaeda operative, Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, who has long operated in and around Kunar, said another U.S. official. His capture has provided intelligence about al Qaeda's attempts to reestablish Afghan bases, said the official.
There is debate within the U.S. military and intelligence community about the scope of the al Qaeda problem in Afghanistan. The September strike was watched carefully and "was a big deal," said another military official.
But that official and others said the numbers remain small enough to manage and that camps are, at worst, few and far between and largely temporary. And almost all U.S. and Afghan officials caution that al Qaeda isn't yet secure enough in northeastern Afghanistan to use the area as a staging ground for attacks overseas.
Besides, the officials said, having al Qaeda on the Afghan side of the border—where American forces have far greater freedom to strike—rather than in Pakistan has its advantages. The officials said many of al Qaeda's fighters are fearful of establishing too big or permanent a presence in Afghanistan because of the threat posed by U.S. and allied forces.
Kunar and eastern Nangarhar and Nuristan are strategic terrain, which is why U.S. forces first moved in a few years ago. The area is bisected by a web of infiltration routes—mountain passes, smugglers' trails, old logging roads—from Taliban-dominated parts of Pakistan's tribal areas, and the valleys channel insurgents into Jalalabad city. From there, it's a few hours by car to Kabul—and an international airport—on one of Afghanistan's better-paved roads. Islamabad, and another international airport, is a day's drive in the other direction.
The area's blend of ample hiding spots, readily traversable routes and a population historically wary of central authority have long made it a favorite for militants.
The first revolts against Afghanistan's Soviet-backed communist regime began there in the late 1970s. In the past decade, it has become a haven for an alphabet soup of Islamist groups.
Apart from al Qaeda and the Taliban, two of the most potent Pakistani militant groups have a significant presence in Kunar—Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which orchestrated the 2008 attacks in Mumbai. There's also the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, as the Pakistan Taliban are known, and the two other main Afghan insurgent factions, the Haqqani network and Hezb-e-Islami. Rounding out the scene is a smattering of militants from Central Asia, Chechnya and beyond.
Some of the valleys in Kunar "look like what we"—the U.S. and President Hamid Karzai's government—"are trying to keep Afghanistan from becoming," said Rangin Dafdar Spanta, Afghanistan's pro-Western national security adviser.
The fight in the northeast is being waged openly by regular U.S. forces, which are now routinely sweeping through valleys in limited operations that ordinarily last a few days. The operations mostly target Taliban units but sometimes disrupt al Qaeda activities, too, military commanders say.
"There's been several times that we'll get intelligence that there's going to be a gathering, whether it's junior-level leadership, whether it's Taliban, Haqqani or al Qaeda and if we can target those locations than we're absolutely going to do that," said Major Gen. John Campbell, the commander of NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan, in an interview.
More quiet—and more effective, many American officials say—is the U.S. military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command, known as JSOC, which oversees elite units like the Army's Delta Force and Navy Seal Team Six. The groups are working with Afghan intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to keep al Qaeda off balance in northeastern Afghanistan.
It was a JSOC operation that led to the capture of Mr. al-Masri, the al Qaeda veteran, in December.
The problem, say officials, is that JSOC, with a global counterterrorism mission that gives it responsibility for strikes in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and other trouble spots, is already stretched thin. Relying on it to police Afghanistan's hinterlands as American forces pull out may be unrealistic, some officials said.
"We do not have an intelligence problem. We have a capacity problem. We generally know the places they are, how they are operating," said the senior U.S. military official, speaking of al Qaeda. The problem "is our ability to get there and do something."
—Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
Write to Matthew Rosenberg at matthew.rosenberg@wsj.com
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http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=1708 (http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=1708)
US-Pakistan: Losing the plot
Ramtanu Maitra
02 Apr 2011
With the handover of $2 million-plus in “blood money” to Pakistani relatives of his shootout victims, the controversial Raymond Davis is back in the United States. While Davis’ release has enraged vast numbers of Pakistanis, it has pleased others, including US state department officials and the Pakistan “experts” in Washington.
Think-tank based Pakistan experts are particularly relieved by the Davis settlement, because the unsavory event had put them in a dilemma about who to support and who to condemn. These pundits that are tied to one or another faction of the American political spectrum find it difficult to keep the party line going vis-à-vis the US-Pakistan relationship: namely, that it is mutually beneficial, substantive, vital, and deep-rooted.
As a result, they focus on extraneous matters, and contrive to insert Jammu and Kashmir into the debate, to somehow justify the rabid anti-Americanism within Pakistan. They would like to blame Islamabad for it but the Afghan crisis prevents them.
Meanwhile, the contradictions proliferate and play out. Droning the “bad guys” in Pakistan’s tribal areas warring against US and NATO forces finds complete acceptance in the US. But hitting the Pakistani “terrorists” attacking Jammu and Kashmir does not.
You could categorize this as “talking-heads’ license.” But more often than not, commentators on US-Pakistan relations mistake the wood for the trees, fixing on one or another aspect of the relationship as if it were the Rosetta Stone. For example, last November, prior to President Barack Obama’s visit to India and other Asian nations, Moeed Yusuf, South Asia adviser at the US Institute of Peace’s Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention advanced a disingenuous argument.
Yusuf argued that the Kashmir issue was not only central to improving India-Pakistan relations, but US resolution of the J & K dispute would grow America-Pakistan ties. “While the situation in Afghanistan and the threat emanating from Pakistani Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) has preoccupied the international community in recent years, long-term stability in South Asia cannot be achieved unless Indo-Pak normalization becomes reality. Kashmir remains the single most important outstanding issue,” Yusuf proclaimed.
“The objective reality in terms of Pakistan’s state policy vis-à-vis terrorism in India is difficult to decipher,” Yusuf went on in a paper on “US-Pakistan-India”. “Pakistan pledges incapacity to eliminate all anti-India groups completely in the short run. This is valid. However, whether incapacity is complemented by lack of will - as India contends - is not clear.”
“Regardless, what is clear is that Kashmir remains intrinsically linked to acts of terrorism - it is the outstanding nature of this dispute that allows militant groups in Pakistan to rally and continue operating with a certain amount of legitimacy,” Yusuf concluded. In other words, the US-Pakistan relationship also includes the deal that Washington must impose a resolution of the Kashmir issue on India.
Missing the wood...
In late January, the US Institute for Peace (USIP) held a one-day programme, “The Future of Pakistan,” that featured many of the most prominent experts. Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution warned that the US must not squander the symbolic value of Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari’s expected visit to Washington, and be careful not to bad-mouth him ahead of the trip. Riedel suggested that Zardari ought to be asked to address a joint session of Congress to make the case for Pakistan. “He can fight for what Pakistan needs,” Riedel said. He also held that Obama’s pledge to visit Pakistan was rich with substantive and symbolic value. Riedel said Obama should get out of Islamabad to meet as many Pakistanis as he can. “This is an enormously important visit,” added Riedel. “He needs to connect with the Pakistani people.”
It is another matter that the Davis dispute and its prickly resolution have put Obama’s visit to Pakistan on long-term “hold”.
Another USIP academic, Andrew Wilder, pointed out that money may not be the all-encompassing solution. Since 2001, the US has given Pakistan some $15 billion in American aid, but the US-Pakistani relationship remains weak, at best.
Georgetown University’s Christine Fair (a former USIP senior research associate) noted that “It really is important that we think about a new “big idea” for Pakistan.” Fair said that the US and Pakistan actually don’t share strategic interests but can build a long-term alliance anyway.
For example, Islamabad does not believe that the US accepts Pakistan as a nuclear state. But if Washington conferred legitimacy on Pakistan’s nuclear programme, it could change the dynamic, she argued. “Putting that out on the table,” Fair argued, “creates an enormous space for us to talk about what you, Pakistan, can do to deal with these strategic issues over which we disagree so much.”
On the other hand, Brookings Institution’s Stephen Cohen focused on Kashmir. “The United States must have its own views on Kashmir. I think we should speak up and talk about this,” he said.
Another view is that the Kashmiris themselves must count for more. “For too long the Pakistanis and the Indians have been talking as if the Kashmiris don’t exist,” says the Atlantic Council’s Shuja Nawaz. “I see Kashmir as a great opportunity.”
Needed: Plain talking
One can begin to get an idea of what these experts are evading from an article by Arnold Zeitlin, “How Pakistan Is Seen by the Washington Think Tanks,” that appeared in the Pakistani daily, The News, in February. Zeitlin served as the first AP bureau chief in Islamabad in 1969 and was a close friend of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Zeitlin pungently wrote, “If Pakistan and the US were a married couple instead of being strategic players (if not partners), counselors would recommend at least a long, trial separation, if not total divorce.”
Though not part of the Washington punditocracy, Zeitlin attended the USIP’s discussion. He thought it “might have been more realistic to adopt the title used by the Heritage Foundation, which called a conference on Pakistan and the US “Deadly Embrace.” “Washington,” observed Zeitlin, “hosts what appears to be an endless fascination that borders on fantasy about the Pakistan-US relationship... Much of the DC hand-wringing about Pakistan often focuses on what the US must do to save its relationship with that benighted country.”
“I suspect the nervousness over saving Pakistan is rooted more than 60 years ago when the notorious China lobby of Henry Luce and others branded those Mao-influenced diplomats in the State Department as traitors for losing Chiang Kai-shek’s China to Mao Zedong. None now wants the distinction of losing Pakistan, even if Pakistanis are doing a good job of it themselves.”
Ramtanu Maitra is South Asia analyst for the Executive Intelligence Review in Washington DC.
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http://www.thenews.com.pk/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=14021 (http://www.thenews.com.pk/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=14021)
ISI chief meets CIA head and leaves Washington
WASHINGTON: Pakistan's ISI chief Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha held an important meeting with the CIA chief on Monday but apparently cut short his visit and was leaving the US capital on Monday night.
A Pakistan Embassy official confirmed that Gen Pasha was scheduled to leave Monday night although earlier reports had indicated he may be staying in Washington for three days and leave on April 13.
There was no official word from the Pakistani side but the New York Times quoted a CIA spokesman, George Little, saying that the two spy chiefs had held "productive" meetings and that the relationship between the two services "remains on solid footing."
Political analysts were, however, a little surprised that Gen Pasha, who had arrived on Sunday evening, was leaving the US capital in just about 24 hours. There was no word of his meetings, if any, with other senior US leaders, including the Defence Secretary.
"The United States and Pakistan share a wide range of mutual interests," the CIA spokesman said, "and today's exchange emphasized the need to continue to work closely together, including on our common fight against terrorist networks that threaten both countries."
The newspaper said the meetings were part of an effort to repair the already tentative and distrustful relations between the spy agencies that plunged to a new low as a result of the Davis episode, which further exposed where Pakistani and American interests diverge as the endgame in Afghanistan draws closer.
The NYT also reported that Pakistan has demanded that the US steeply reduce the number of CIA operatives and Special Operations forces working in Pakistan, and that it put on hold CIA drone strikes aimed at militants in northwest Pakistan, a sign of the near collapse of cooperation between the two testy allies.
The demand that the United States scale back its presence is the immediate fallout of the arrest in Pakistan of Raymond A. Davis, a CIA security officer who killed two men in broad daylight during a mugging in January, Pakistani and American officials said in interviews.
The NYT said the scale of the Pakistani demands emerged as Gen Pasha met the CIA Director. The paper said Pakistan Army firmly believes that Washington's real aim in Pakistan is to neutralize the nation's prized nuclear arsenal, which is now on a path to becoming the world's fifth largest, said the Pakistani official closely involved in the decision on reducing the American presence.
On the American side, frustration has built over the Pakistan Army's seeming inability to defeat a host of militant groups, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which have thrived in Pakistan's tribal areas despite more than $1 billion in American assistance a year to the Pakistani military.
American officials said last year that the Pakistanis had allowed a maximum of 120 Special Forces soldiers to operate in Pakistan. The Americans had reached that quota, the Pakistani official said.
In an illustration of the severity of the breach between the CIA and the ISI, two intelligence agencies that were supposed to have been cooperating since the Sept. 11 attack in the United States but that have rarely trusted each other, the Pakistani official said: "We're telling the Americans: 'You have to trust the ISI or you don't. There is nothing in between.'"
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Pakistan's Uneasy Relationship with the United States
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha visited Washington on Monday and met with CIA Director Leon Panetta. The trip gave Islamabad a chance to express its anger over the Raymond Davis affair. The CIA contractor’s shooting on the streets of Lahore of two Pakistani citizens – followed by his lengthy detention and subsequent release – has generated waves of criticism amid the Pakistani populace, and has plunged the ISI-CIA relationship into a state of tension that surpasses the normal uneasiness that has always plagued the alliance between Washington and Islamabad.
“The Pakistani concern is that the U.S. will simply rush through a settlement in Afghanistan and exit the country without creating a sustainable post-war political arrangement. This would leave Pakistan to pick up the pieces.”
Pasha’s central demand in the meeting with his American counterpart was reportedly that the United States hand over more responsibility for operations currently carried out by the CIA over Pakistani soil. This primarily means unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strikes, immensely unpopular with the average Pakistani, but quietly seen as necessary by the political and military establishment, which has an interest in degrading the capability of the Pakistani Taliban. UAV strikes are most politically damaging for Islamabad when the joystick is in the hands of a foreigner; the thinking goes that handing over the controls to a Pakistani at home would greatly reduce popular objections to the bombing missions in northwest Pakistan. Tactically speaking, Pakistan would encounter problems of capability if it ever actually put its own people to the task of running the UAV missions, but this point is rendered moot by the fact that Washington would almost certainly never allow the ISI – seen as a hostile intelligence agency – to have access to some of America’s most secret technology. The same day as Pasha’s visit, the media reported that Pakistan had also demanded Washington dramatically reduce the number of CIA operatives and Clandestine Special Operations Forces working inside of Pakistan. Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani reportedly wants 335 such personnel to leave the country, in addition to CIA “contractors” like Davis.
These demands reflect the general Pakistani complaint that it is not seen as an equal by the U.S. government. Islamabad has cooperated with Washington for almost a decade in its war in Afghanistan, though that cooperation is not always forthcoming and helpful in the eyes of the United States. Despite being on the receiving end of billions of dollars of U.S. military aid, Pakistan asserts that the myopic focus on security since 2001 has prevented it from developing its own economy. Washington would counter that without security aid, Pakistan would not have developed to the extent that it has, not to mention issues of corruption and how that has hindered the Pakistani economy. Whatever the reality may be, this encapsulates the Pakistani view toward its relationship with Washington. Indeed, an interview given by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on April 10 focused extensively on Americans’ lack of empathy regarding the help Pakistan is asked to provide Washington on the Afghan front. In addition to pointing to the existence of large amounts of natural gas that are not being developed for export because the issue falls low on the list of priorities created by the Afghan War, Zardari likened the impact of the Afghan War on Pakistan’s border region to the intractability of the Mexican drug war on the borderlands of Texas, saying many U.S. politicians do not understand the impact American foreign policy has in the AfPak region. He also specifically called out members of the U.S. Congress for suffering from “deadline-itis,” a term he coined to describe the compulsion to push ahead with the self-imposed deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan regardless of the realities on the ground.
The United States knows that Pakistan is a critical ally in the Afghan War due to the intelligence it can provide on the various strands of Taliban operating in the country, but it simply does not trust the Pakistanis enough to hand over UAV technology or control over UAV strikes to Islamabad. With time running out before the start of its scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Pakistani concern is that Washington will simply rush through a settlement in Afghanistan and exit the country without creating a sustainable post-war political arrangement. This would leave Pakistan to pick up the pieces.
Zardari is expected to visit the United States next month and will likely bring up the issue during the trip. He will remind U.S. President Barack Obama of Islamabad’s view that it is in the United States’ interests to utilize Pakistan’s knowledge of Afghan politics in order to come to a real settlement in Afghanistan. Forming a makeshift solution through securing large cities and leaving the countryside in a state of disorder will only plant the seeds for an eventual resurgence of Taliban in the country, which would lead to bigger problems down the line for Pakistan. Gen. David Petraeus has noted publicly that the United States doesn’t have the intelligence capabilities to succeed in Afghanistan on its own, meaning that it needs Islamabad’s help.
The Pakistanis see an opportunity in the current geopolitical environment to garner concessions from Washington that it would otherwise not be able to demand. Washington is distracted by myriad crises in the Arab world at the moment and AfPak is no longer the main course on its plate, as was the case for some time in the earlier days of the Obama presidency. Obama, who billed Afghanistan as the “good war” during his 2008 campaign, would very much like to point to some sort of success there when running again in 2012. For this, he would need Pakistan’s help. The United States is being driven by short-term needs to preclude any sort of serious concessions being made to Islamabad, however. This weakens the Pakistani state just when Washington needs a strong one to help wield its influence in preventing Afghanistan from reverting back to its pre-Sept. 11 days. This is where Pakistan’s leverage lies. However, the question of just how strong it is remains unanswered.
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See my comment at the end:
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So Pakistan now demands that the United States withdraw hundreds of American intelligence operatives and special-ops trainers from its soil and stop the CIA drone strikes on al Qaeda, Taliban and affiliated terrorists. Maybe the Obama Administration can inform its friends in Islamabad that, when it comes to this particular fight, the U.S. will continue to pursue its enemies wherever they may be, with or without Pakistan's cooperation.
Relations between Washington and Islamabad historically have never been easy, and now they seem to have reached something of a watershed. The fault is not all one-sided. Congressional potentates have made a habit of criticizing Pakistan publicly even when it was cooperating with the U.S. and deploying thousands of troops to fight elements of the Taliban. And promised American aid has been haltingly disbursed.
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Reuters
Protesters during a rally against Raymond Davis in Karachi in February.
.Then again, Pakistan's behavior hasn't exactly been exemplary. Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, has longstanding links to terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani network. The government and military have made no move against the Quetta Shura, the operational nerve center in Pakistan of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
Islamabad's U.S. cooperation has also been double-edged. The government of President Asif Ali Zardari allowed the U.S. to increase the number of drone strikes. Yet it has made a point of complaining about them publicly, playing a particularly cheap form of politics to shore up its waning popularity with a domestic constituency smart enough to see through the hypocrisy.
The Pakistani army was also happy to cooperate with the U.S. when the targets of the strikes were members of the Pakistani Taliban who had their sights set on Islamabad. But the army has been less cooperative when the targets were the Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan or the ISI's terrorist partners.
Matters came to a head in January with Pakistan's arrest of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, after he had shot and killed two armed pursuers. Mr. Davis, who carried an official passport, ought to have been released immediately to U.S. custody under the terms of the Vienna Convention. Instead he was held for 47 days, questioned for 14, and released only after the U.S. government agreed to pay a multimillion-dollar indemnity to the families of the pursuers.
The failure to release Mr. Davis was an indication of how easily cowed Pakistan's civilian government has become in the face of an anti-American public. It also suggested a darker turn by Pakistan's military and the ISI, which were infuriated that Mr. Davis was investigating the activities of the Lashkar-e-Taiba now that it has expanded operations to include terrorism in Afghanistan. Pakistan has also complained bitterly about a drone strike in North Waziristan last month that it claims killed tribal leaders meeting with the Taliban.
A more charitable explanation is that Pakistan's military is angry the CIA is sharing less intelligence with the ISI. In this reading, the mass expulsion of U.S. security officials is really a demand for closer cooperation, even if it's a peculiar way of eliciting it. It's also possible that Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani is trying to burnish his own public image by way of an anti-American tantrum that will pass in time.
Still, if the CIA doesn't trust the ISI, that's because it has demonstrated repeatedly that it isn't trustworthy. The Pakistani army has yet to reconcile itself to the idea that Afghanistan should be something other than its strategic backyard, preferably under the control of clients such as the Taliban, and it harbors paranoid illusions that India will encroach on Afghanistan to encircle its old enemy.
Pakistan's civilian government has also done itself neither credit nor favor by failing to tell Pakistan's people the truth about drone strikes, which is that they strike with pinpoint accuracy and that claims of civilian casualties are massively inflated for the benefit of Taliban propaganda. The government could also add that insofar as those drones are taking out leaders of the Pakistan Taliban, they are safeguarding Pakistan's beleaguered democracy.
However Islamabad chooses to act, the U.S. has a vital national interest in pursuing Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in their Pakistani sanctuaries, both for the sake of the war in Afghanistan and the security of the American homeland. Pakistan can choose to cooperate in that fight and reap the benefits of an American alliance. Or it can oppose the U.S. and reap the consequences, including the loss of military aid, special-ops and drone incursions into their frontier areas, and in particular a more robust U.S. military alliance with India.
In the wake of 9/11, the Bush Administration famously sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to Islamabad to explain that the U.S. was going to act forcefully to protect itself, and that Pakistan had to choose whose side it was on. It's time to present Pakistan with the same choice again.
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What is the point if we are leaving?
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My speculation is that the purelanders know that we are leaving, which is a fair assumption based on Obama's wishes. The pakis are now in the process of scoring points with the locals (jihadis), that the tough purelander army is going to throw out uncle sam. This will save their H&D (Honor & Dignity), after all the beating they took over the drone strikes. OTOH, if the US is actually wanting to stay in pakiland, then this misbehaviour on the part of the purelanders will result in more baksheesh. Its a win-win, as far as I can see.
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Report: "Three Cups of Tea" inaccurate
(AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — A "60 Minutes" investigation alleges that the inspirational multimillion seller "Three Cups of Tea" is filled with inaccuracies and that co-author Greg Mortenson's charitable organization has taken credit for building schools that don't exist.
The report, which airs Sunday night on CBS television, cites "Into the Wild" author Jon Krakauer as among the doubters of Mortenson's story of being lost in 1993 while mountain climbing in rural Pakistan and stumbling upon the village of Korphe, where the kindness of local residents inspired him to build a school. The "60 Minutes" story draws upon observations from the porters who joined Mortenson on his mountain trip in Pakistan and dispute his being lost. They say he only visited Korphe a year later.
The "60 Minutes" report alleges that numerous schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan that Mortenson's Central Asia Institute is said to have established either don't exist or were built by others. According to the CAI's website, the institute has "successfully established over 170 schools" and helped educate over 68,000 students, with an emphasis on girls' education."
In a statement issued Friday through the institute, Mortenson defended the book he co-authored with David Oliver Relinhis, and his humanitarian work.
"Afghanistan and Pakistan are fascinating, inspiring countries, full of wonderful people. They are also complex places, torn by conflicting loyalties, and some who do not want our mission of educating girls to succeed," Mortenson said.
"I stand by the information conveyed in my book and by the value of CAI's work in empowering local communities to build and operate schools that have educated more than 60,000 students. I continue to be heartened by the many messages of support I receive from our local partners in cities and villages across Afghanistan and Pakistan, who are determined not to let unjustified attacks stop the important work being done to create a better future for their children."
"Three Cups of Tea" was released by Penguin in 2006. Spokeswoman Carolyn Coleburn declined comment, saying the publisher had not seen the "60 Minutes" story. The book sold moderately in hardcover, but was a word-of-mouth hit as a paperback and became an international sensation, selling more than 3 million copies.
Mortenson has received numerous honors, including the Sitara-e-Pakistan (Star of Pakistan), a civilian award rarely given to foreigners.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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And from this monring's POTH, Greg Mrortenson responds:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/business/media/18mortenson.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25
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60 Minutes Charges Author Greg Mortenson Fabricated Key Stories and Misspent Charitable Funds
60 Minutes aired a report Sunday night on Greg Mortenson, author of the bestselling THREE CUPS OF TEA, questioning "whether some of the most dramatic stories in his books are even true" and raising "serious questions about how millions of dollars have been spent" by the charity he set up and "whether Mortenson is personally benefiting."
The most direct accuser was author Jon Krakauer, who says of the tale in the book about how Mortenson was inspired to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, "It's a beautiful story, and it's a lie." Mortenson's central storyline is that he "stumbled into" the village of Korphe after trying to climb K2 and getting lost, but two of his porters (and "three other sources") say he didn't visit the town--where he says he promised to come back and build them a school in return for their kindness--until almost a year later. "If you go back and read the first few chapters of that book you realize 'I'm being taken for a ride here,'" Krakauer charges.
In a written response Mortenson first claimed the local people and language have "only a vague concept of tenses and time." But in an updated version of an interview last Friday with his local paper, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, he concedes the book's account of "the time about our final days on K2 and ongoing journey to Korphe village and Skardu is a compressed version of events that took place in the fall of 1993.... What was done was to simplify the sequence of events for the purposes of telling what was, at times, a complicated story."
60 Minutes also contests a story in the book in which Mortenson writes that he was kidnapped and held hostage by the Taliban for 8 days. His subsequent book STONES INTO SCHOOLS includes a picture of his alleged captors, but some of those men directly deny the story. CNN also speaks to one, Mansur Khan Mahsud, who runs a Pakstani think tank, who tells them the story "is a pack of lies and not a single word of it is true." He and others say they were Mortenson's protectors rather than his captors. CNN adds that the Taliban "had no presence in Waziristan in 1996" and they also had a ban on photography at the time. In the Bozeman interview, Mortenson revised his wording, saying that he was "detained" and claiming "I thought it best to befriend the people detaining me." In a later written statement, he appears to redefine what he meant by the Taliban, writing "a 'Talib' means student in Arabic, and yes there were Taliban in the region. Waziristan is an area where tribal factions and clan ties run deep. Some people are Taliban, some are not, and affiliations change overnight often on a whim."
Examining the tax returns of the charity Mortenson established, the Central Asia Institute, 60 Minutes reports that in a recent year the organization spent $1.5 million on advertising to promote Mortenson's books, and another $1.3 million in domestic travel expenses, mostly for his often-paid speaking engagements, "some of it on private jets." The Bozeman newspaper offers this explanation: "Mortenson responded that he gets a royalty of about 40 or 50 cents per book, and that he has contributed more than $100,000 of his own money to CAI, which has more than offset the book royalties."
The Central Asia Institute claims in their written response that "because of [their] programmatic focus, he faces significant security risks that are unique in the charitable sector," which is why he often flies charters. While it seems clear that Mortenson's "donations" are but a fraction of what the institute spent on promotion, the organization's more plausible position is that "the contributions generated by Greg's presentations at these events far exceed the travel expenses." They also say they have "purchased thousands of copies" of Mortenson's books over the years to donate to various organizations, saying "the costs of the books vary depending on when they were purchased and from whom."
As for the schools that CAI funds, their tax return itemizes 141 schools it "claimed to have built or supported," but investigating 30 of those schools, CBS found that "roughly half were empty, built by somebody else, or not receiving support at all.... In Afghanistan, we could find no evidence that six of the schools had ever been built at all." On that point, the institute speculates the CBS may have been misled in their investigation by a "former disgruntled manager in Pakistan who was involved in some improprieties."
In classic 60 Minutes fashion, they also feature brief footage of Mortenson avoiding the camera. When they approach him at a signing, he has hotel security remove the camera crew and then he slips out the back. Here the author and his institute offered a variety of responses. On Friday the CAI said Mortenson "was diagnosed with a tear hole in his heart wall that causes significant blood shunting and he will have a heart surgical procedure done on Thursday to correct it. Once his cardiologist allows he will be able to comment on his story in person." But in the meantime he spoke to his local newspaper, as noted, and then he posted a response on the institute's web site.
CBS says they first asked for an interview last fall, and more recently tried two weeks of messages and e-mails. But in yet another dispatch, Mortenson writes he "made the very difficult decision to not engage with 60 Minutes on camera, after they attempted an eleventh hour aggressive approach to reach me, including an ambush in front of children at a book signing at a community service leadership convention in Atlanta. It was clear that the program's disrespectful approach would not result in a fair, balanced or objective representation of our work, my books or our vital mission."
In another statement, he said "I stand by the information conveyed in my book and by the value of CAI's work in empowering local communities to build and operate schools that have educated more than 60,000 students."
Mortenson also writes that he "heard...last week" that Krakauer has written "a similar negative piece...in an unknown magazine." On camera, after his accusations, Krakauer tries to provide context by underscoring that Mortenson "has done a lot of good. He has helped thousands of school kids in Pakistan and Afghanistan....He has become perhaps the world's most effective spokesperson for girls' education in developing countries. And he deserves credit for that... Nevertheless, he is now threatening to bring it all down, to destroy all of it by this fraud and by these lies.
Video
60 Minutes transcript
CNN
CAI statement
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WAZA KHWA, Afghanistan—The U.S. military, using Google Earth and disposable parachutes, is escalating its airdrops to troops in isolated outposts, to avoid exposing ground convoys to ambushes and roadside bombs.
Around-the-clock Air Force drops of ammunition, fuel, food and water have doubled annually since 2006, reaching 60 million pounds of supplies last year.
The airdrops have taken on a new urgency with the surge in U.S. forces to almost 100,000 troops and the intensified threat from hidden explosives, which are often placed along known supply routes. Such booby-traps killed 268 American troops last year, up 60% from 2009, according to the Associated Press.
"It's our lifeline," says Army Capt. Cole DeRosa, a company commander in the 506th Infantry Regiment. "Without receiving aerial resupply, we would have no supply."
Capt. Cole's men operate out of a small base in Waza Khwa, in Paktika Province, some 30 miles from the Pakistan border. The only road connecting his position to a major supply depot threads through the Gwashta Pass, a Taliban haven featuring steep mountainsides that offer ideal cover for ambushers.
No U.S. ground convoy has attempted that dangerous trip in two years.
Parachute drops of supplies to American forces in Afghanistan are increasingly common thanks to rough terrain and roads seeded with booby traps by the Taliban. WSJ's Michael M. Phillips reports from Waza Khwa.
.A dozen of the 18 Army positions in Paktika are supplied solely through parachute drops and helicopter lifts. Capt. Cole's artillery cannon arrived in slings hanging from the bellies of helicopters. Drums of diesel fuel for his vehicles and generators float down from the rear ramps of cargo planes flying overhead.
"You can mitigate the risk by just dropping those supplies rather than lining the vehicles up," says Col. Sean Jenkins of the 4th Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, who commands all U.S. forces in the province.
The air crews prepare for each mission by studying a three-dimensional Google Earth image of the line of approach, giving them a moving, cockpit-window view of the ridges, rivers and villages they'll see as they near the drop zone.
The approach is slow and low, and sometimes the planes come under fire from insurgents on the ground. Unless the delivery is urgent, the pilots usually don't go around for a second run if they can't make the drop on the first pass. "We get one shot at it," says Lt. Col. Karl Stark, commander of the 774th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron.
When pinpoint accuracy is needed, crews use expensive satellite-guided parachutes that steer themselves to the drop zone.
In a low-tech innovation, soldiers from the 101st Airborne keep water, food and ammunition in black body bags, nicknamed speedballs, ready for immediate delivery by helicopter or parachute to troops running low during firefights.
"You don't want guys out there needing food, ammo and water, and it taking you an hour to get it to them," says Capt. Xavier Burrell of the 801st Brigade Support Battalion.
In most cases, however, the air crews use low-cost, disposable parachutes strapped to the top of small pallets of supplies. A single such pallet can hold four 55-gallon drums of fuel.
As they approach the drop zone, the crew lowers the rear ramp and the pilot tilts the plane's nose upwards. A pulley system yanks a blade through restraining straps that hold the cargo in place, and the pallets roll out of the back of the plane.
The parachutes open automatically; their ripcords are connected to a cable that runs along the inside of the fuselage.
Crewmen install a heavy metal protective barrier at the cockpit end of the cargo bay. They don't want tens of thousands of pounds of cargo slamming into the front of the plane if it inadvertently dives—instead of climbing—after the restraining straps have been cut.
When the bundles hit the ground, soldiers race out to collect the supplies, load them onto vehicles and burn the parachutes to prevent them from becoming useful finds for the Taliban.
About 3% of the bundles go wrong; the parachutes get tangled with each other or don't open fully, sending hundreds of gallons of fuel or water plunging to the ground.
Another concern is accuracy. Last year, an Italian crew accidentally dropped most of its load into a base in western Afghanistan. The bundles hit the gym, barracks and a medevac helicopter, but caused no injuries, according to Capt. John Gruenke, a U.S. Air Force officer who visited the site afterwards to help retrain the drop-zone crew.
In another case, special-operations troops on a steep hillside were only able to retrieve 10% of the supplies dropped to their location.
At Waza Khwa, the Army has the opposite problem. Capt. DeRosa's men have received so much fuel by airdrop that they have collected hundreds of empty metal drums. Now commanders are trying to figure out how to get them back to the supply depot to be reused.
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Here is some history (from one of the blogs I frequent) about the Kunduz airlift, and the results of the strategic brilliance of the purelanders that you may be unaware of.
"The tragic events of 9/11 thrust Pakistan into limelight once again for all the wrong reasons. As is its wont, Pakistan saw an opportunity even amidst the gloom of being reduced to a rubble and being taken back to stone-age. It offered its unstinted services to the USA and hoped to resurrect its relationship with that country which was at its nadir then. More importantly, it also wished to stem the growing India-US engagement which was being interpreted as a threat for itself. Thus, it hoped to correct the perceived tilt in US policies favouring India. It also saw a window of opportunity to acquire American arms and ammunition apart from getting large funds just as in the decade of the 50s and 80s. It was also Pakistan’s calculation that with the US once again dependent on it due to its geographical advantages, it will get a free hand in pressurizing India on Kashmir and other issues through not only diplomacy but terrorism as well, just as it happened in the 80s when terrorism in the Indian Punjab was instigated. This is where it differed from a host of other countries which also demanded and got various favours from the US for their support for the US prosecution of war on Al Qaeda.
Pakistan therefore gave the US permission to use its airbases at Jacobabad, Dalbandin, Shamsi, Pasni, naval base at Ormara and several unmarked airstrips in Balochistan to operate drones. It allowed it unhindered airspace during the initial stages of the war on terror. It allowed logistics to support troops in Afghanistan through the Karachi Port and the Indus Highway to Khyber pass in FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Agencies) and Chaman pass in Balochistan It allowed the CIA to operate freely within the country, setup electronic listening posts, capture Al Qaeda suspects including Pakistanis and deport them secretively elsewhere. These Pakistani policies were to result in a severe blowback later, but, for the moment Pakistan was benefitting from its surrender of sovereignty. Apart from the write-off of some debts and the postponement in repayments of most others by over two decades, Pakistan was getting sophisticated arms ostensibly to fight terrorists in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, like F-16s, AMRAAM, naval ships, Harpoon missiles etc !!
Pakistan also extracted other tangible benefits as well from such unstinted support. One such famous benefit was the Kunduz airlift which was authorized at the Presidential level within the US to allow Gen. Musharraf to save his face and possibly his skin by airlifting over a thousand Pakistanis including ISI officers, regular Pakistani soldiers of the Frontier Corps and possibly some members of Pakistani terrorist outfits, from Kunduz in north-east Afghanistan in mid November, 2001. For the location of Kunduz, see map below.
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zK8l6WlilWs/TbDgZ3CVnWI/AAAAAAAAAAk/V7wfCiqpYsE/s400/Afghanistan%2BUN%2BMap%2BConverted.bmp)
Map Courtesy: The United Nations
To send hundreds of Pakistani Army regulars and ISI officers as far away as Kunduz to fight the Northern Alliance of Ahmed Shah Masoud, demonstrates how much Pakistan values the 'Strategic Depth' of Afghanistan. When they were finally airlifted to the safety of Pakistan, they were simply let go. Several of those charged with many assassination attempts on Gen. Musharraf later in c. 2003 were former soldiers who were airlifted out of Kunduz. Many of them later also joined Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) set up by Maulana Masood Azhar (with the help of the ISI) who was released from an Indian prison in December, 1999 in exchange for the release of the hijacked IC-814 flight. It is these Punjabi Taliban (mostly from Punjab and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir,POK) who are wreaking extensive havoc within Pakistan today. Thus, the Kunduz airlift not only helped Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders to escape, but also deeply affected personally the man who requested that, Gen. Musharraf and far more importantly has brought Pakistan to its knees today by rehabilitating hundreds of battle-hardened and vengeful jihadists. Pakistan’s tactical decisions, while looking impressive at that moment, have thus brought that nation only strategic misery.
As the Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban groups escaped into Pakistan’s unruly FATA with the support of Pashtun tribal leaders on either side of the Durand Line and also the Pakistani Army at the border checkposts, they later re-grouped to take on the NATO and Afghan forces. One strategy employed by the Al Qaeda and Taliban was to bring under a common umbrella the various other jihadi outfits and warlords operating within Pakistan and in FATA. Thus, the Islamic International Front (IIF) of Osama bin Laden truly morphed into what is today known as AQAM with the merging of the various Pakistani terrorist tanzeems. Thus, Tehrik-e-Taliban, Pakistan (TTP) was formed (officially in c. 2007) to coordinate efforts within Pakistan given the fact that the Taliban needed to marshal the meagre and battered resources well against the mighty forces of the US, NATO and Pakistan arrayed against them. This was a tough task because of the oftentimes conflicting clannish loyalties, inter-tribal rivalries and independent warlords. The effort of unification took a long time and has not been a complete success either but it survived and has been fairly successful over the years. Though the AQAM leadership knew that Pakistan would not get too close to the Americans for AQAM’s comfort, they still needed to ensure that, by creating the TTP which maintained enough pressure on the Government and the Army of Pakistan. With Islamist-military leaders like Gen. Aslam Beg, Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul and Col. Imam guiding them, the AQAM knew only too well what perfidy Pakistan was capable of. Therefore, they needed to establish the Caliphate in FATA and TTP was the force to capture space, establish the rule there and maintain it. This is the first of the twin objectives of TTP.
Already the Pakistani terrorist tanzeem, Harkat-ul-Ansar (later renamed as Harkat-ul-Jihadi-al-Islami or HuJI and the original bearer of the tag, Punjabi Taliban) occupied an important place in the governing structure of Afghanistan during the heady days of the Taliban there. Later, Jaish-e-Mohammed also threw its weight behind Al Qaeda and Taliban. Others like the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), the Ahl-e-Hadith Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Wahhabi Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) of Maulana Sufi Mohammed of Malakand, Brigade 313 of Ilyas Kashmiri, the Karachi-based Jandullah of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the Berelvi terrorist organization Sunni Tehrik and the mother of all Pakistani terrorist organizations Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) coalesced with them making the AQAM a formidable group at least within Af-Pak. Collectively these Pakistani terrorist organizations are referred to as the Punjabi Taliban.
The latter have carried their 'Hanud' component to the 'Yahud-Nasara' conspiracy theory of Al Qaeda. The collective wisdom now seems to be that Pakistan must also be turned into Taliban-style rule so that in future the Taliban regime of Afghanistan would be secure and a worldwide assault on the kafir can be sustained. The Afghan Taliban, while still needing the support of the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan, has therefore outsourced that effort to TTP. They give the appearance of keeping the TTP at an arm's distance. The Pakistani Taliban thus seek to overthrow the Pakistani government. This is the second of the twin objectives of TTP. The Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan have no option but to continue with their support for the Afghan Taliban as they blindly continue to chase the mirage of 'strategic depth'. Like a monkey whose hand is trapped in the honey jar, the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan are thus caught in a cleft, from which they can come out only if they let go of their Indian obsession, an impossibility. Thus the Afghan Taliban is the cleverest of them all as it gets support from Pakistan while at the same time bringing it under its sphere of influence (a reverse strategic depth). While the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan believe that by supporting the Haqqani Shura and the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, another old friend of the ISI, they are preparing themselves for the day after the American departure, the AQAM also believes that it has also prepared well for the same day. Pakistan therefore could be in for a rude shock when the reinstated Taliban might fall foul of their creators and mentors, the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan, because it has grown an independent mind and strategy. The assassination of Khalid Khwaja and the mujahideen and Taliban creator Col. Imam are pointers in that direction.
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Here's some interesting data from long war journal and comments from posters that I know.
(http://img218.imageshack.us/i/fatanwfp22apr2011.jpg/)
http://img218.imageshack.us/i/fatanwfp22apr2011.jpg/
The change in Drone Strike Ratio, and the respective composition of ISI-proxy-Taliban vs. TTP (Tehrik e Taliban Pak) in various agencies, gives a good indication as to the direction in which US-TSP relations have been headed for a while.
The figure also attempts to illustrate where PA (pak army) is active (blue regions), where PA has refused to deploy in spite of US demands (red/purple regions), where the US drones are active (also the red/purple regions), and where new fronts are being opened by TTP against TSPA at the present time (blue regions in central and eastern FATA.)
There is a clear distinction between theatres of interest that is beginning to show up. PA/ISI are using proxies mainly in the western part of FATA... Waziristan... to wage war against NATO and Kabul. TTP is stronger in central and eastern FATA, and directing its energies towards eastern NWFP in the direction of Punjab (to link up with Punjabi Tanzeems?) The US is hitting the PA/ISI proxies with 95% of its drone strikes, and largely leaving the TTP alone (at least on Pakistani soil.)
A slightly different picture than "US being taken for a ride" that some have advanced. At least three distinct wars are going on in different theatres:
1) Kabul/NATO vs. ISI-proxy-Taliban in North and South Waziristan and in Southwest Afghanistan
2) Kabul/NATO vs. TTP-leaning Taliban in Central/Eastern Afghanistan
3) ISI/TSPA vs. TTP-leaning Taliban in Central/Eastern FATA and in NWFP.
It seems interesting that the new fronts being opened by TTP do not seem directed towards expanding influence in the FATA but are going directly for the heart of Pak proper...NE part of NWFP, Dir and Swat.
(Source: Long War Journal)
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Whoa. That's heavy. :-o
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Well, at least we're winning in Libya......
:roll:
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Worth noting is that much of the incoherence of our strategy has its origins in the Bush-Rumbo era , , ,
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Well, at least we elected the lightwalker who will end the Iraq war, win in Afghanistan and close Gitmo. When does he get sworn in?
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I'm more interested in finding a way forward for America. What are the implications of what YA just posted?
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As the search function here will reveal, I read and was impressed by the "Three Cups of Tea" book a few years ago, and so I have followed its recent fall from grace with a certain amount of personal interest. Here is a column that gives a sense of what was involved:
The first tip-off that Greg Mortenson's memoir "Three Cups of Tea" has some credibility issues comes in the book's introduction. Co-author David Oliver Relin writes that as Mortenson is flying over Pakistan, the helicopter pilot marvels to Mortenson, "I've been flying in northern Pakistan for 40 years. How is it you know the terrain better than me?"
The pilot also confides, "Flying with President Musharraf, I've become acquainted with many world leaders, many outstanding gentlemen and ladies. But I think Greg Mortenson is the most remarkable person I've ever met."
People don't talk like that. Books don't lead with that level of self-aggrandizement. Unless they want to induct you into a cult.
Last Sunday, "60 Minutes" reporter Steve Kroft ripped into Mortenson's claim of stumbling years ago into a Pakistani village as he descended from a K2 climb and meeting a young girl who asked him to build a school. While he refused Kroft's request for an on-camera interview, in a statement, Mortenson admitted his version of events was "condensed."
It seems Mortenson also fabricated a story of being kidnapped by the Taliban. Kroft interviewed Mansur Khan Mahsud, the research director of an Islamabad think tank, who was surprised to see himself in a photo that Mortenson had claimed showed his 1996 captors.
In the statement, Mortenson explained that "Talib" means student of Arabic. And Khan wants to sue him for defamation.
The worst part: "60 Minutes" checked out 30 of the 141 schools that Mortenson's charity, Central Asia Institute, claimed to have built in Afghanistan and Pakistan "mostly for girls." Kroft reported, "Roughly half were empty, built by someone else or not receiving any support at all."
American Institute of Philanthropy President Daniel Borochoff found that in 2009, CAI spent more on "domestic outreach" -- largely advertising and travel promoting Mortenson's books, "like a book tour" -- than it spent overseas.
"Into Thin Air" author Jon Krakauer, who is mentioned in "Three Cups" as a CAI supporter, charged that Mortenson, who has made millions in book sales, used the charity "as his private ATM."
That revelation must have hit "Three Cups" fans in the gut. The memoir asserts that Mortenson made repeated sacrifices -- such as living in his car rather than pay rent -- because "every wasted dollar stole bricks or books from the school."
But there were so many other signals that the book was problematic.
In "Three Cups," Mortenson charmed his Taliban kidnappers by asking for a Quran and showing his devotion -- and so they let him go. Which is amazing.
More amazing was the claim that they gave him money, saying, "For your schools. So, Inshallah, you'll build many more." (It helps if you forget how bad the Taliban take on education for girls is.)
There were other signals. Writer Ann Marlowe questioned some of the "anti-military nonsense" in a 2008 Forbes commentary. Mortenson claimed that during his stint as an Army medic in Germany, Vietnam veterans were hooked on heroin and died "in their bunks and we'd have to go and collect their bodies." Marlowe suggested that readers take his tales with "three grains of salt."
Instead, he sold 3 million books. Why? Through the pouring of "Three Cups," Mortenson came to personify every liberal conceit. He pushed books, not bombs. He had a nuanced take on Islamic extremism. He's not afraid of terrorism; for him, "the enemy is ignorance."
Marlowe observed, "The implication is that this solitary do-gooder's work is a better model for helping the rural poor in areas that are a breeding ground for Islamic extremism." While to the contrary, the U.S. Army built more schools in just one Afghan province in 15 months than CAI built in a decade.
Listeners of KQED-FM's "Forum" last week were outraged and perplexed. On the one hand, Mortenson has done a lot of good for a lot of children. On the other hand, the "60 Minutes" story makes his fans look gullible.
A caller asked: How are we supposed to know a book is a phony?
Hmmmm. If the cash-giving girls-school-loving Taliban tale doesn't ring a bell, if the constant reminders of Mortenson's greatness -- and modesty -- don't do the trick, maybe there is another warning sign. Global Fund for Women Vice President Shalini Nataraj warned about any memoir that hails "the white savior who's going to come in and save the local people."
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SMITH: Why Pakistan will betray us
The question isn’t if - it’s why
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/23/why-pakistan-will-betray-us/print/ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/23/why-pakistan-will-betray-us/print/)
It should come as little surprise, but U.S. headlines are again dominated by dour news out of Pakistan. The U.S.-Pakistan relationship is today under severe strain, rattled by heated disputes over CIA drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas; clandestine U.S. intelligence operations inside Pakistan; and Islamabad's persistent refusal to crack down on the Taliban and their radical allies. Intelligence cooperation is at an all-time low.
This latest series of rifts may indeed prove more damaging and permanent than previous disruptions, but they fit all too neatly in the general narrative of U.S.-Pakistan relations. One day Islamabad is touted as an indispensable ally; the next it is a back-stabbing fountain of Islamist militancy. For the longest time, these competing tensions were encapsulated in the Washington debate over whether or not Pakistan was playing a "double game."
But we were debating the wrong question. Of course Pakistan is playing a double game. Of course its intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), supports Islamist militants. The relevant question is not if Pakistan is playing a double game, but why? The simplest answer is that Pakistan believes it needs a pliant, anti-Indian regime in Afghanistan and - as it has for decades - Pakistan is using Islamist militants as an extension of its foreign policy.
In short, Islamabad sees a Taliban-led government in Kabul as the best guarantor of its interests in neighboring Afghanistan. But this, too, begs the question: What are its interests? Why risk international condemnation and the ire of your superpower benefactor for influence in a desolate, landlocked country with few natural resources or infrastructure, and of questionable strategic value?
Two motivations are often cited: First, Islamabad is said to covet Afghanistan for "strategic depth." Pakistan is geographically narrow and its major cities, positioned as they are near its eastern border with India, are vulnerable to attack in the event of a war with its rival. Thus, Pakistan's military planners - for whom an Indian invasion is always imminent - yearn for the rugged Afghan terrain to the west, where a retreating army could regroup and coordinate a guerrilla war, if necessary.
Second, Pakistan is fearful of Indian influence in Afghanistan. Around every corner in Kabul, Pakistanis see Indian agents and behind every Afghan initiative, a nefarious Hindu plot. That India's presence in Afghanistan has been benign, civilian and economic in nature has not stopped the ISI from backing brazen jihadi attacks on the Indian Embassy in Kabul.
This suggests that Pakistan's perceived interests in Afghanistan are India-centric. However, the fear of ethnic (specifically Pashtun and Baluch) nationalism may play an even greater role in Pakistan's strategy, penetrating to the heart of what constitutes Pakistani identity and the integrity of the Pakistani state.
There are roughly 40 million Pashtuns straddling the Afghan-Pakistan border, the notoriously autonomous "martial race," with legendary fighting prowess (virtually all Taliban are Pashtun, but not all Pashtun are Taliban). The Af-Pak border that cuts this stateless nation in half was drawn by India's colonial British overlords in 1893. Incorporating a sliver of the Afghan frontier into northwestern India, the Durand Line, as the border is called, was designed to create a buffer zone between India and the lawless hinterland beyond. But after partition in 1947, the new (West) Pakistani state inherited these Pashtun tribal areas.
Like their countrymen in the east, the Pashtuns - and the even more disaffected Baluch minority in the south - are Muslim, but they share little else in common in terms of culture, language, allegiance or history. So it comes as no surprise that they have periodically agitated for greater autonomy, independence or even incorporation into Afghanistan. As the saying goes, the Afghans have a terribly weak state but a cohesive national identity. In Pakistan, the strong, military-run state is in part compensation for its fragile national identity.
Consequently, Islamabad is hypersensitive to ethnic nationalism and separatism. Pakistan already lost nearly half its territory - East Pakistan - to another disgruntled ethnic minority in the 1971 war that created Bangladesh. To complicate matters further, successive Afghan governments, including the Pakistani-backed Taliban regime of the 1990s, have refused to recognize the Durand Line. Pakistan fears that a strong and independent Afghanistan - let alone one allied to India - could challenge their artificial border and agitate Pashtun or Baluch nationalists, undermining Pakistan from within. A friendly, Taliban-led regime in Kabul is thus seen by Islamabad as the best defense against this possibility and against Indian "encirclement."
Of course, none of Pakistan's "interests" in Afghanistan justify its backing fanatical jihadists that slaughter the innocent, the majority of which are Muslim. But Washington must better understand the misguided logic behind Pakistan's double game if it insists on being a party to it until 2014. Pakistan, on the other hand, has been obsessing for so long over a phantom menace, it is blind to the real threat to its strategic interests: a fundamental split with the United States. Ten years of supporting America's Islamist enemies has poisoned its reputation in America. Its once-mighty defenders in Washington are isolated and shrinking in number, while a younger generation of policymakers knows nothing of Pakistan but militancy, corruption and deception. When the United States inevitably departs Afghanistan, so too, will Pakistan's "leverage" over America. Only then will Pakistan's leadership realize the true cost of their double game.
Jeff M. Smith is a fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.
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http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/04/27/richard-north-patterson-pakistan-dangerous-place-earth/
RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON: Why Pakistan Is the Most Dangerous Place On Earth
By Richard North Patterson
Published April 27, 2011
| FoxNews.com
In recent years, American and Israeli fears of nuclear proliferation have focused on Iran. The consequences of an Iranian bomb could be grave indeed: a chain reaction of nuclear armament among Arab countries, some of whom are threatened by, or may collaborate with, jihadists.
It is unlikely, however, that Iran would start a nuclear war: its regime has a return address, and Israel could annihilate them. That is why nuclear terrorism by non-state actors like Al Qaeda is the West’s ultimate nightmare and why Pakistan, not Iran, is the most dangerous place on earth.
Imagine this: Three jihadist groups in Pakistan—Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba (“LET”)—forge an operational alliance to steal a nuclear bomb from the Pakistani arsenal in order to destroy a major Western city. Pursuant to the plan, LET—which carried out the Mumbai attacks—destroys the Taj Mahal and attacks the Indian Parliament, precipitating a state of nuclear alert between India and Pakistan, whose intelligence agency is the chief sponsor of LET.
When a Pakistani convoy moves a bomb from its secret storage facility to an Air Force base near the border, a group of Pakistani Taliban—directed by Al Qaeda and tipped off by a military insider—attacks the convoy and steals the bomb. From there, Al Qaeda has several routes for smuggling the bomb to America, Europe, or Israel.
This is not a Bondian fantasy. What is so frightening about this scenario is its realism: every detail is of grave concern to the national defense and intelligence communities. But almost as disturbing is how little most Americans know about this threat.
There is no country with more active terrorists than Pakistan, and few with more nuclear weapons. The spur for nuclear armament is Pakistan’s bitter rivalry with India, focused on the violent sixty-year-old dispute over Kashmir. The unintended consequences could be lethal: a jihadist capture of nuclear weapons or materials for use against the West.
This could happen in several different ways: the clandestine acquisition of nuclear materials; seizure of a nuclear facility by a rogue military officer; a jihadist takeover of the Pakistan government; and the theft of a nuclear weapon.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/04/27/richard-north-patterson-pakistan-dangerous-place-earth/
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The article is certainly Bondesque :-D...
Initially, the American thinking was that an India-Pak nuclear exchange while undesirable, was without risk to the US and so the US turned a blind eye to Chinese proliferation support to Pak. Today, the thinking on Indian defense sites is that the jihadis hate the US and Israel more than they hate India (infact polls show that). Anytime the pakis hate someone more than India, that's a major achievement....ie the nukes may come back and bite us in the US and not India. I for one dont doubt the plausibility of the scenario.
The paki army is highly jihadized, their motto is "Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabilillah". Translated into English, it means "Faith, Piety and Fight in the path of God". They now claim to have more nukes or weapons grade material than the UK. Continuing the story...I forsee a jihadi general allocating a couple of rough nukes for shipment to the US. The general would know that the retaliation from the US would be painful, so I would expect that the general would move out of Pak to some mid east country until things settle.
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Found this interesting picture...Lyndon Johnson extending hand, while field marshall Ayub Khan (ex dictator of pureland), playfully wanting to slap him. Nothings has really changed today...
(http://www.thefridaytimes.com/29042011/images/big_p30a.jpg)
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Amazing foto YA! :-o :-o :-o
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Red Alert: Osama bin Laden Killed
May 2, 2011 | 0249 GMT
The United States has killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and recovered his body, according to numerous media reports May 1 citing U.S. officials. U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to make an announcement on the subject. It is not clear precisely how bin Laden was killed or how his body was recovered, but the assertion that he is dead is significant.
Bin Laden had become the symbol of al Qaeda, even though the degree to which he commanded the organization was questionable. The symbolic value of his death is obvious. The United States can claim a great victory. Al Qaeda can proclaim his martyrdom.
It is difficult to understand what this means at this moment, but it permits the Obama administration to claim victory, at least partially, over al Qaeda. It also opens the door for the beginning of a withdrawal from Afghanistan, regardless of the practical impact of bin Laden’s death. The mission in Afghanistan was to defeat al Qaeda, and with his death, a plausible claim can be made that the mission is complete. Again speculatively, it will be interesting to see how this affects U.S. strategy there.
Equally possible is that this will trigger action by al Qaeda in bin Laden’s name. We do not know how viable al Qaeda is or how deeply compromised it was. It is clear that bin Laden’s cover had been sufficiently penetrated to kill him. If bin Laden’s cover was penetrated, then the question becomes how much of the rest of the organization’s cover was penetrated. It is unlikely, however, that al Qaeda is so compromised that it cannot take further action.
At this early hour, the only thing possible is speculation on the consequences of bin Laden’s death, and that speculation is inherently flawed. Still, the importance of his death has its consequences. Certainly one consequence will be a sense of triumph in the United States. To others, this will be another false claim by the United States. For others it will be a call to war. We know little beyond what we have been told, but we know it matters.
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Question of Pakistani Cooperation in bin Laden Strike
May 2, 2011 | 0421 GMT
U.S. President Barack Obama announced late May 1 that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead and that the body of the jihadist leader is in U.S. custody. Obama said bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. special operations forces in Abbottabad, about 56 kilometers (35 miles) north of Islamabad. Prior to Obama’s announcement, Pakistani intelligence officials were leaking to U.S. media that their assets were involved in the killing of bin Laden. Obama said, “Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we’ve done. But it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.” Obama said he had called Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and that his team had also spoken to their counterparts. He said Islamabad agreed it is “a good and historic day for both of our nations and going forward its essential for Pakistan to join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates.”
The detailed version of what led to the hit and the extent of U.S.-Pakistani cooperation in the strike is not yet publicly known, but reports so far claim that bin laden and his son were hiding in a massive compound with heavy security and no communications access when they were attacked. Two key questions thus emerge. How long was the Pakistani government and military-security apparatus aware of bin Laden’s refuge deep in Pakistani territory? Did the United States withhold information from Pakistan until the hit was executed, fearing the operation would be compromised?
Major strains in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship have rested on the fact that the United States is extraordinarily dependent on Pakistan for intelligence on al Qaeda and Taliban targets and that Pakistan in turn relies on that dependency to manage its relationship with the United States. Following the Raymond Davis affair, U.S.-Pakistani relations have been at a particularly low point as the United States has faced increasing urgency in trying to shape an exit strategy from the war in Afghanistan and has encountered significant hurdles in eliciting Pakistani cooperation against high-value targets.
Now that the United States has a critical political victory with which to move forward with an exit from the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan now faces the strategic dilemma of how to maintain the long-term support of its major external power patron in Washington.
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And Pakistan is shocked, SHOCKED, to find out OBL was hiding in Pakistan. :roll:
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So much for the Obama is soft on terrorists mantra.
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So much for the Obama is soft on terrorists mantra.
Yes, his willingness to adopt Bush's policies after running against them as a candidate was welcome indeed.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42853221/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
Senior White House officials said early Monday that the trail that led to Osama bin Laden began before 9/11, before the terror attacks that brought bin Laden to prominence. The trail warmed up last fall, when it discovered an elaborate compound in Pakistan.
"From the time that we first recognized bin Laden as a threat, the U.S. gathered information on people in bin Laden's circle, including his personal couriers," a senior official in the Obama administration said in a background briefing from the White House.
After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "detainees gave us information on couriers. One courier in particular had our constant attention. Detainees gave us his nom de guerre, his pseudonym, and also identified this man as one of the few couriers trusted by bin Laden." (Detainees, like in the Gitmo facility Obama was going to close within the first year of his presidency? Were these detainees waterboarded?-GM)
In 2007, the U.S. learned the man's name.
In 2009, "we identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated. They were very careful, reinforcing belief we were on the right track."
In August 2010, "we found their home in Abbottabad," not in a cave, not right along the Afghanistan border, but in an affluent suburb less than 40 miles from the capital.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8488236/WikiLeaks-Osama-bin-Laden-protected-by-Pakistani-security.html
WikiLeaks: Osama bin Laden 'protected' by Pakistani security
Pakistani security forces allegedly helped Osama bin Laden evade American troops for almost 10 years, according to secret US government files.
By Tim Ross
5:31PM BST 02 May 2011
American diplomats were told that one of the key reasons why they had failed to find bin Laden was that Pakistan’s security services tipped him off whenever US troops approached.
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID) also allegedly smuggled al-Qaeda terrorists through airport security to help them avoid capture and sent a unit into Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban.
The claims, made in leaked US government files obtained by Wikileaks, will add to questions over Pakistan’s capacity to fight al-Qaeda.
Last year, David Cameron caused a diplomatic furore when he told Pakistan that it could not “look both ways” on terrorism. The Pakistani government issued a strongly-worded rebuttal.
But bin Laden was eventually tracked down and killed in compound located just a few hundred yards from Pakistan’s prestigious military academy in Abbotabad.
The raid by elite US troops was kept secret from the government of Pakistan. Only a tight circle within the Obama Administration knew of the operation.
In December 2009, the government of Tajikistan warned the United States that efforts to catch bin Laden were being thwarted by corrupt Pakistani spies.
According to a US diplomatic dispatch, General Abdullo Sadulloevich Nazarov, a senior Tajik counterterrorism official, told the Americans that “many” inside Pakistan knew where bin Laden was.
The document stated: “In Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden wasn’t an invisible man, and many knew his whereabouts in North Waziristan, but whenever security forces attempted a raid on his hideouts, the enemy received warning of their approach from sources in the security forces.”
Intelligence gathered from detainees at Guantanamo Bay may also have made the Americans wary of sharing their operational plans with the Pakistani government.
One detainee, Saber Lal Melma, an Afghan whom the US described as a probable facilitator for al-Qaeda, allegedly worked with the ISID to help members flee Afghanistan after the American bombing began in October 2001.
His US military Guantanamo Bay detainee file, obtained by Wikileaks and seen by The Daily Telegraph, claims he allegedly passed the al-Qaeda Arabs to Pakistani security forces who then smuggled them across the border into Pakistan.
He was also overheard “bragging about a time when the ISID sent a military unit into Afghanistan, posing as civilians to fight along side the Taliban against US forces”.
He also allegedly detailed “ISID's protection of Al-Qaida members at Pakistan airports. The ISID members diverted Al-Qaida members through unofficial channels to avoid detection from officials in search of terrorists,” the file claims.
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http://gulfnews.com/news/world/other-world/compound-in-pakistan-was-once-a-safe-house-1.802539
Compound in Pakistan was once a safe house
House was not owned by the government and had been rented by Afghan nationals, intelligence official says
By Ashfaq Ahmed, Chief Reporter
Published: 00:00 May 3, 2011
Soldiers of Pakistan Army seen near the house in Abbottabad on Tuesday where Osama Bin Laden was believed to have been residing. The physical security measures of the compound are extraordinary. It has 12-to-18-foot outer walls, topped with barbed wire fencing.
Dubai: The compound in Abbottabad where Osama Bin Laden was killed was once used as a safe house by Pakistan's premier intelligence agency ISI, Gulf News has learnt.
"This area had been used as ISI's safe house, but it was not under their use any more because they keep on changing their locations," a senior intelligence official confided to Gulf News. However, he did not reveal when and for how long it was used by the ISI operatives. Another official cautiously said "it may not be the same house but the same compound or area used by the ISI".
The official also confirmed that the house was rented out by Afghan nationals and is not owned by the government. The house is located just 800 metres away from the Pakistan Military Academy and some former senior military officials live nearby.
Abbottabad is a garrison town located just 50 kilometres north of Islamabad and it is a popular summer resort, originally built by the British during colonial rule. The city houses a number of upscale educational institutions and religious schools as well.
Secluded affluence
According to the briefing by senior US officials on the killing of Bin Laden, the area is relatively affluent, with lots of retired military staff. It is also insulated from the natural disasters and terrorist attacks that have afflicted other parts of Pakistan — an extraordinarily unique compound. The compound sits on a large plot of land in an area that was relatively secluded when it was built. It is roughly eight times larger than nearby homes.
The physical security measures of the compound are extraordinary.
It has 12-to-18-foot outer walls, topped with barbed wires. Internal walls sectioned off different portions of the compound to provide extra privacy.
Access to the compound is restricted by two security gates and the residents of the compound burnt their trash, unlike their neighbours, who put the trash out for collection.
The property is valued at approximately $1 million (Dh3.67 million), but has no telephone or Internet connection.
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Its very clear that the ISI/Army was hiding OBL. It seems the house was built in Musharraf's time (very likely with US money!). Of note, current army chief (Kiyani), was the head of the ISI then. The house is in the army cantonment area, ie its completely under army control. One cannot build anything without approval from the army. It seems that OBL has been there for a few years, ie full blessings of the ISI.
So now that the US has expended over a trillion $ over 10 years + lives, the least that the US should do is to declare Pak a terrorist nation....but we wont. ISI needs to be disbanded and brought under civilian control. Paki duplicity cannot be tolerated....its time to call a spade a spade.
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KPS Gill, the Indian Police Officer, who brought the Khalistani movement in India (sponsered by pak) under control, wisely said wrt to Pak in 2008,
"The reality is, there is no such thing as Islamist terrorism. To understand the position correctly, we need to recognise that there is only ISI terror that has been dubbed as 'Islamist terror'. What we have, on the ground, is the proliferation of Pakistani terrorism, strategically compounded across new areas of disorder by networks loosely affiliated with their Pakistani sources. If Pakistani state support to so-called Islamist terrorism ended today, it would not be long before the various terrorist groups atrophied and withered away, lacking safe havens, institutional support and training infrastructure, and the vast ideological resources that have been brought to bear on the so-called global jihad".
This is a key lesson that Obama needs to take to heart, atleast when dealing with pak.
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Posting quickly from a terminal in the Madrid airport:
So, to the question presented of "What now?" the answer is , , , "Take down Pakistan"?
The question is sincere and serious.
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Like with Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, the question is: And replace it with what?
Answer: In Pakistan's case, we whack those responsible for sheltering OBL, seize their nukes and gut every bit of the important military hardware they got from us. Let the pieces fall where they may after we defang the beast.
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(http://www.prisonplanet.com/Pictures/june07/210607binladenfamily.jpg)
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Empire expresses surprise that Darth Vader was housed inside of "Death Star", charges Rebel Alliance with violations of law, excessive force in the destruction of peaceful space research facility....
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I would just like to join with the appreciation of ya's posts. The OBL kill operation indicates that ya has had it right all along regarding Pakistan - not being a trusted partner, likely harboring and enabling, walking a fine line with terror, keeping the U.S money flowing, but not doing all they can do. Especially vivid was the 'game preserve' post, quite a way of looking at it, and that's what this operation was. Maybe we went in without express permission, but we have already prepaid for our shooting season - and they accepted our money.
Except for specific actionable intell that came out of this, I doubt we will be going back into Pakistan anytime soon, not for invasion and not for nation building. Maybe we can just grow our business and security relationship with India that much stronger.
I'm very surprised that Obama kept up and increased the drone attacks in the border region and that it went on as long as it did with very little uproar here or there. People seemed to know those were terror camps and weren't very surprised by the attacks.
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Props indeed to YA.
Incredible foto YA-- is that for real?
I am in the land of the Little Satan at the moment on a not-very-good hotel connection, so I will be brief.
Welcome to the conversation Bandolero.
Where do we go from here?
Go after ISI? Pakistani govt? In alliance with India or not? Declare victory and leave (its not as if it won't be handy having bandwidth available for elsewhere?) If not, WTF is the mission in Afg now? We didn't really know before and I suspect we know even less now what the point is , , , The respect in which Petraeus is held made it hard for BO to bugout of Afg, but with him at CIA will this still apply?
For the record, my thoughts at the moment are not dissimilar from GM's-- I entertain going after ISI, seizing nukes, and the like-- but these are deep waters and my emotions of the moment are simply that.
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If we are to act on the intel seized at OBL's safehouse, we need to act quickly. We should go after anyone and everyone implicated. Will we with this president? Probably not.
What will probably happen is we'll let the momentum die, leaving the potential for the Pakistan collapse and the birth of a nuclear jihadistan.
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Elsewhere on this forum, BbG posted a good article published in the New Yorker.
BbG said, "The term "damned by faint praise" comes to mind." That sounds fair,
but there was definite praise as well.
it has been proposed to go after the ISI, seizing nukes, etc. But think about the ramifications.
Do we want to be involved in another war in that area?
I liked one comment from the New Yorker article.
"One of Donilon’s overriding beliefs, which Obama adopted as his own, was that America needed to rebuild its reputation, extricate itself from the Middle East and Afghanistan, and turn its attention toward Asia and China’s unchecked influence in the region. America was “overweighted” in the former and “underweighted” in the latter, Donilon told me. “We’ve been on a little bit of a Middle East detour over the course of the last ten years,” Kurt Campbell, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said. “And our future will be dominated utterly and fundamentally by developments in Asia and the Pacific region.”
Frankly, I hope Bin Laden's death begins to bring closure to our significant involvement in the Middle East and we begin focusing on Asia and the Pacific.
We definitely DON'T need to get involved or "go after anyone and everyone implicated" from Pakistan.
Time to move.
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So harboring bin Laden for years should have no consequences? Pakistan might crumble all on it's own. Then what of the Pak-nukes?
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So harboring bin Laden for years should have no consequences?
Basically that's right.
I am, and so are most Americas tired of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. We don't need or want another involvement in Pakistan.
Better to move on and focus on China and the Pacific region who has been eating our lunch lately while we have been distracted in
the Middle East. I don't care nor does anyone else I know really care about Pakistan or the Middle East.
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You might care if a Pak-nuke makes it's way into a cargo container to Long Beach.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/markurban/2009/06/pakistans_loose_nukes.html
Pakistan's 'loose nukes'
Mark Urban | 19:15 UK time, Thursday, 11 June 2009
Every now and then in this business someone in a position to know some enthralling secret passes information on to you, but you have no means of backing it up from other sources.
A few years ago, I was told about extraordinary US contingency plans to recover Pakistan's nuclear weapons, in the event of a collapse of law and order or an extremist coup in that country.
My informant gave me considerable detail. A super-secret agreement had been put in place early this decade following confrontations between India and Pakistan, two nuclear armed nations, over the disputed Kashmir region.
In order to stabilise an otherwise potentially highly volatile situation, Pakistan would tell the US where its nuclear weapons were.
India had been promised, that in the event of some Pakistani national cataclysm, the Americans would move in to remove the nuclear weapons.
The "loose nukes" nightmare would thus be avoided, and India would not be tempted into a first strike on Pakistan's atomic arsenal.
Sometimes stories, even from people who have held senior positions in Western governments, are a little too good to be true.
This one seemed to smack of Tom Clancy. Nobody would ever confirm it, and indeed some of those I checked it out with were openly sceptical. So I never ran the story.
Perhaps, after all, my original informant had been trying to plant it.
Now that the Obama administration is openly voicing its concern about the threat to Pakistan's nuclear weapons from rising militancy in that country, some aspects of that original tip off have come back into sharp focus.
In April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a US senate committee, that the US spent a lot of time worrying about Iran getting nuclear weapons, but that Pakistan already had them, and that, "they've adopted a policy of dispersing their nuclear weapons and facilities".
In this phrase, "adopted a policy" I detected a possible inference that Pakistan had moved away from an earlier procedure of keeping their bombs in a small number of locations.
My further inquiries suggested this inference was deliberate.
So here at last was a measure of confirmation for something I had heard years earlier.
As to what exactly Pakistan had told the US in the time of president (and former army chief) Pervez Musharraf, we are once again in hazier territory.
We do know however that Mr Musharraf knew far more about the country's nuclear complex than any civilian leader has ever been allowed to learn.
We also know that in the first years after 9/11, there was intimate strategic co-operation with the US.
Of course any suggestion that the US might, in the past, have had plans to sweep up these weapons is politically sensitive in Pakistan.
The country revels in the status that its arsenal has given it. Any suggestion that there were plans to "secure" the bombs, even in a state of anarchy, would strike many Pakistanis as a US plot to emasculate an Islamic nuclear power.
Read it all.
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So harboring bin Laden for years should have no consequences?
Basically that's right.
I am, and so are most Americas tired of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. We don't need or want another involvement in Pakistan.
Better to move on and focus on China and the Pacific region who has been eating our lunch lately while we have been distracted in
the Middle East. I don't care nor does anyone else I know really care about Pakistan or the Middle East.
We were tired of Afghanistan after the soviets left and walked away then. We had the opportunity to get Bin Laden years before 9/11 and didn't want to deal with the issue, so we let him go.
See a pattern here?
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GM wrote: "If we are to act on the intel seized at OBL's safehouse, we need to act quickly. We should go after anyone and everyone implicated. Will we with this president? Probably not. What will probably happen is we'll let the momentum die, leaving the potential for the Pakistan collapse and the birth of a nuclear jihadistan."
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Chicago Tribune editorial makes a similar point below. It doesn't seems to me we would brag publicly about the intel seized if we were really racing to act on it. More likely IMO older info that will help to piece together how previous acts of terror were accomplished. If this were the communication center for current and future ops I think we would have found him sooner.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-osama-20110503,0,6675564.story
The real terror coup
Bin Laden raid may yield treasure trove of intel
6:53 p.m. CDT, May 3, 2011
Clustering at their predetermined departure site, the two dozen American commandos juggled one heavy piece of carry-on baggage, a souvenir from their lightning visit to Pakistan. It was the lanky cadaver of a much-wanted global terrorist. But the two helicopters — the healthy Sikorsky Black Hawk and the backup Boeing Chinook — that choppered the raiders to Afghanistan also carried a delicious trove of electronic booty that may prove more valuable.
Tantalizing reports suggest that Osama bin Laden, one more baby boomer who liked digital toys, unwittingly bequeathed to his killers oodles of secret information.
CNN reports that Navy SEAL Team Six escaped with 10 hard drives, five computers and more than 100 storage devices such as DVDs, disks and thumb drives. Politico, meanwhile, quotes U.S. officials as saying the data devices hold "the mother lode of intelligence." One unnamed source says, "They (the commandos) cleaned it out. Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?" Another delightful-to-read boast from an intel source: "Hundreds of people are going through (the data devices) now," reportedly in Afghanistan and at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.
Think about the implications. We don't know whether bin Laden was a hoarder — one of those clutter-hugging people who can't part with old sandals. But he apparently has spent six years inside what's now the world's most notorious hideout. If Saddam Hussein had to kill time in that dark little spider hole, bin Laden has had the run of a house packed with computer gear.
What are the odds that bin Laden's impromptu estate included lots of intriguing info about his associates, their locations and their plans? We'd like to think those odds are excellent. So it wasn't surprising to read a Time magazine interview Tuesday in which CIA Director Leon Panetta acknowledges capturing an "impressive amount" of fresh intelligence.
Check out our crossword, sudoku and Jumble puzzles >>
Imagine you're one of bin Laden's most-wanted associates. Some of those folks are capable of executing deadly retaliations. All of them, though, have to be scared. They recall better than most of us that, when U.S. and Pakistani operatives rolled up al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in 2003, his computer hard drive reportedly included a wealth of carelessly stored data — including a list of bin Laden's safe houses. And that was one computer.
How satisfying it would be to find in bin Laden's files some clue to the whereabouts of his top aide, Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahri, or another of the senior al-Qaida terrorists who remain on the loose.
The faster that happens, the better. The death of bin Laden has done more than behead al-Qaida. More important, perhaps, the early repose of his soul is a crushing embarrassment for a group whose brand of Shariah-driven religious fanaticism has been falling from whatever favor it held in the Arab world. The motivation for bin Laden's survivors to strike is strong. Surely they are mulling whatever assets they possess or dream they can procure — maybe a stray Russian nuke, a less sophisticated dirty bomb, or the viral makings of a smallpox epidemic.
This long-lasting threat of retribution from al-Qaida makes us all the more appreciative of the commandos who lit up bin Laden's lair on Sunday morning. Panetta says the U.S. also considered flattening the compound with a high-altitude run by B-2 bombers, or launching a "direct shot" with cruise missiles. Those options, he says, were ruled out because they would cause too much collateral damage.
Obliterating the compound also would have denied U.S. warriors whatever intel they now glean from bin Laden's gear. Here's hoping that gear — and not that carry-on corpse — proves to be the raiders' real terror coup.
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"Obliterating the compound also would have denied U.S. warriors whatever intel they now glean from bin Laden's gear. Here's hoping that gear — and not that carry-on corpse — proves to be the raiders' real terror coup."
good point. another reason this was a "no brainer" using GM's accurate description.
Mark Levin also questioned the reason for publicizing the retrieval of the infornation and the broad headlines promoting it as a "trove" and even counting the number of thumb drives, hard drives, discs and everything else.
Oh the success of it all. All due to the ONE who "taught" Bush how to fight terror as per Lawrence of MSLSD last night.
All I can say is thank God for the brave and courageous men and women of our military. We are so lucky to have people volunteer for our country and for the rest of us.
I have a nephew going to Iraq next month but hopefully only for a few months. My sister is already a nervous wreck.
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Next steps wrt to Pak...
Historically the US has always supported Pak as a balance to India, especially since India was aligned with the ex-soviet union. Now however things have changed, the soviet union collapsed, India is non-aligned and an emerging power, China is moving towards super power status and has started to challenge the US. In these circumstances, US will have to partner and support India (that's a separate discussion).
Pak perfidy has cost us a lot of treasure as well as lives, since the last 10 years. Americans are unwelcome in the country, why the american tax payer should support nation building in a land where the common abdul hates americans is beyond me.
The key to controlling paki behaviour is through control of their nuclear weapons. If they are denuked, all their aggressiveness and support of terror will disappear because India would have no reason to with hold a punishing response to Pak every time there was a terrorist incident in India. The terror sanctuaries exist in pak, only because of state support. Currently the thinking in India is that pakis have nothing to lose in a nuclear exchange (except some goats and pakis) because there is very little industrialization, while Indian progress would receive a severe setback in the event of a nuclear exchange... and the jihadis are mad enough to lob a few towards India. The tactical brilliance of the pakis is seen in their recent missile test which was developed in response to India's Cold Start doctrine (a rapid response attack inside Pak). Apparently, they developed a nuclear tipped missile for use in their own country, to halt any rapid thrust by India in paki territory. The clowns forgot that use of a nuke in their own country on Indian troops would invite an additional larger nuclear response from india inside paki territory....but this is getting OT.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/04/20/n-capable-ballistic-missile-tested.html (http://www.dawn.com/2011/04/20/n-capable-ballistic-missile-tested.html)
So the question is how to denuke the purelanders....and there are many ways to skin a cat.
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http://gretawire.blogs.foxnews.com/usa-to-pakistan-give-us-our-helicopter-back-we-dont-want-the-chinese-to-get-it/
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http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/top-secret-stealth-helicopter-program-revealed-osama-bin/story?id=13530693
Coming soon! China's new stealth helicopter.....
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http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?271662 (http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?271662)
VIEW FROM PAKISTAN
A Cat And Mouse Game
Osama’s killing is now a bone stuck in the throat of Pakistan’s establishment that can neither be swallowed nor spat out.
PERVEZ HOODBHOY
Osama bin Laden, the figurehead king of al Qaeda, is gone. His hosts are still rubbing their eyes and wondering how it all happened. Although scooped up from Pakistani soil, shot in the head and then buried at sea, the event was not announced by General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani or by President Asif Ali Zardari. Instead, it was the president of the United States of America who told the world that bin Laden’s body was in the custody of US forces.
Suggestions that Pakistan played a significant role ring hollow. President Obama, in his televised speech on May 1, said “our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden”. But no sooner had he stopped speaking that his top national security aides declared that the United States had not told Pakistani leaders about the raid ahead of time. Significantly, Obama did not thank Pakistan. An American official pointedly declared that the information leading to bin Laden’s killing was shared “with no other country” and this top secret operation was such that “only a very small group of people inside our own government knew of this operation in advance”.
Today, Pakistan’s embarrassment is deep. On numerous occasions, our military and civilian leaders had emphatically stated that bin Laden was not in Pakistan. Some suggested that he might be in Sudan or Somalia. Others hinted that he might already have died from a kidney ailment, or perhaps that he was in some intractable area, protected by nature and terrain and thus outside the effective control of the Pakistani state.
But then it turned out bin Laden was not hiding in some dark mountain cave in Waziristan. Instead, probably for at least some years, he had lived comfortably smack inside the modern, peaceful, and extraordinarily secure city of Abbottabad. Using Google Earth, one sees that the deceased was within easy walking distance of the famed Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul. It is here where General Kayani had declared on April 23 that “the terrorist’s backbone has been broken and inshallah we will soon prevail”. Kayani has released no statement after the killing.
Still more intriguing are pictures and descriptions of bin Laden’s fortress house. Custom-designed, it was constructed on a plot of land roughly eight times larger than the other homes in the area. Television images show that it has high walls, barbed wire and two security gates. Who approved the construction and paid for it? Why was it allowed to be away from the prying eyes of the secret agencies?
Even the famous and ferocious General Hamid Gul (retd) — a bin Laden sympathiser who advocates war with America — cannot buy into the claim that the military was unaware of bin Laden’s whereabouts. In a recorded interview, he remarked that bin Laden being in Abbottabad unknown to authorities “is a bit amazing”. Aside from the military, he said “there is the local police, the Intelligence Bureau, the Military Intelligence, the ISI — they all had a presence there”. Pakistanis familiar with the intrusive nature of the multiple intelligence agencies will surely agree; to sniff out foreigners is a pushover.
So why was bin Laden sheltered in the army’s backyard? General Pervez Musharraf, who was army chief when bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad was being constructed in 2005, unwittingly gives us the clearest and most cogent explanation. The back cover of his celebrated book, In The Line Of Fire, written in 2006, reads:
“Since shortly after 9/11 — when many al Qaeda leaders fled Afghanistan and crossed the border into Pakistan — we have played multiple games of cat and mouse with them. The biggest of them all, Osama bin Laden, is still at large at the time of this writing but we have caught many, many others. We have captured 672 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars. Here, I will tell the story of just a few of the most significant manhunts”.
So, at the end of the day, it was precisely that: A cat and mouse game. Bin Laden was the ‘Golden Goose’ that the army had kept under its watch but which, to its chagrin, has now been stolen from under its nose. Until then, the thinking had been to trade in the Goose at the right time for the right price, either in the form of dollars or political concessions. While bin Laden in virtual captivity had little operational value for al Qaeda, he still had enormous iconic value for the Americans. It was therefore expected that kudos would come just as in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Kuwaiti-born senior al Qaeda leader who was arrested in Rawalpindi, or Mullah Baradar, the Taliban leader arrested from Karachi.
Events, however, have turned a potential asset into a serious liability. Osama’s killing is now a bone stuck in the throat of Pakistan’s establishment that can neither be swallowed nor spat out. To appear joyful would infuriate the Islamists who are already fighting the state. On the other hand, to deprecate the killing would suggest that Pakistan had knowingly hosted the king of terrorists.
Now, with bin Laden gone, the military has two remaining major strategic assets: America’s weakness in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. But moving these chess pieces around will not assure the peace and prosperity that we so desperately need. They will not solve our electricity or water crises, move us out of dire economic straits, or protect us from suicide bombers.
Bin Laden’s death should be regarded as a transformational moment by Pakistan and its military. It is time to dispense with the Musharraf-era cat and mouse games. We must repudiate the current policy of verbally condemning jihadism — and actually fighting it in some places — but secretly supporting it in other places. Until the establishment firmly resolves that it shall not support armed and violent non-state actors of any persuasion — including the Lashkar-e-Taiba — Pakistan will remain in interminable conflict both with itself and with the world.
Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. This article was first published in The Express Tribune, Pakistan
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Here's a short 10 point primer to Pak by "Shiv" a blogger.
Ten point Pakistan primer
1. Pakistan was created in 1947 by a group of politically savvy Indians who
leveraged the tumultuous events in India after World War II to secede and carve
out a country for themselves. Even though the majority of Muslims remained
behind in India, the creators of Pakistan claimed that Pakistan was a "homeland
for the Muslims of India"
2. Pakistan was created as two separate units a thousand miles apart in an act of
voluntary but disastrous cutting of centuries of cultural, family and
trade ties. This made Pakistan politically unstable from the beginning requiring
military rule for unity. Despite that a part of Pakistan split in 1971 to form
Bangladesh.
3. Pakistan's voluntary amputation from millennia of trade with mainland India made
Pakistan's economy untenable, causing its military rulers to depend on foreign
aid obtained from great powers and other wealthy nations in exchange for
providing support and soldiers for the cold war and other military
campaigns.This got them arms from the USA and eventually nuclear weapons from
China.
4. Foreign aid was largely appropriated by Pakistan's military making them powerful
and wealthy, while the people of Pakistan languished and lagged behind in
development literacy, healthcare and women's rights.
5. For the Pakistan military to retain its privileged position in Pakistan it had
to have an enemy and conduct external military campaigns. India became that
designated enemy.
6. Since the people of Pakistan had been Indians for many centuries and looked
like, spoke like and ate like Indians, some new differentiating factor had to be
created for enmity. Islam, which had coexisted in India for a thousand years was
suddenly declared to be in danger in Hindu India ignoring the fact that India
was home to more followers of Islam than Pakistan,
7. As the Pakistan military fought and lost a series of wars with "enemy number
one" India, its need to rely on irregular Islamic insurgents to fight India
increased. These armed islamic zealots came in useful to fight the Soviets in
Afghanistan, The Taliban was created out of these groups.
8. When the cold war ended, the Islamic militias of Pakistan, safe in their new
Afghan hideouts, turned their attention to other irredentist campaigns abroad,
from India to the middle east, Bosnia, Chechnya, the Philippines, western Europe and
finally the USA on 9-11-2001.
9. 9-11 brought the US into Afghanistan and this drove the armed Islamic militias
back to Pakistan where they had come from in the first place.
10. The Pakistan military needs the Islamic militias (like the Taliban and Lashkar e Toiba)
to fight its wars while it retains its wealthy, pre eminent position in a decrepit, overpopulated
country in a state of social and political failure. The people of Pakistan would benefit
from peace and trade with India, but the nuclear armed Pakistan military
stands to lose its main crutch for staying in power if that happens.
The military,along with its Islamist allies will not allow that to happen.
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Will calls the war on terror a misnomer and it is more properly a law enforcement action. I don't know what planet he is living on but I hardly think LAPD swat would have been able to carry off the raid of the OBL compound. Actually the war on terror is a hybrid military-law enforcement endeavor:
****The small footprint that eliminated bin Laden
By George Will
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Osama bin Laden’s death was announced by the president on May 1, a date that once had worldwide significance on the revolutionary calendar of communism, which was America’s absorbing national security preoccupation prior to Islamic terrorism. Times change.
Barack Obama, in his pitch-perfect address informing the nation that bin Laden is as dead as communism — never mind the cadaverous Cuban and North Korean regimes — rightly stressed that this is “the most significant achievement to date” against al-Qaeda, but that it “does not mark the end of” our effort to defeat that amorphous entity. Perhaps, however, America can use this occasion to draw a deep breath and some pertinent conclusions.
Many salient facts about the tracking of terrorism’s most prolific killer to his lair — some lair: not a remote cave but an urban compound — must remain shrouded in secrecy, for now. But one surmise seems reasonable: bin Laden was brought down by intelligence gathering that more resembles excellent police work than a military operation.
Granted, in nations as violent as Afghanistan and Pakistan, the line between military operations and police work is blurry, and military and other forms of intelligence gathering cannot be disentangled. Still, the enormous military footprint in Afghanistan, next door to bin Laden’s Pakistan refuge, seems especially disproportionate in the wake of his elimination by a small cadre of specialists.
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Jim Lacey of the Marine Corps War College notes that Gen. David Petraeus has said there are perhaps about 100 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. “Did anyone,” Lacey asks, “do the math?” There are, he says, more than 140,000 coalition soldiers in Afghanistan, or 1,400 for every al-Qaeda fighter. It costs about $1 million a year to deploy and support every soldier — or up to $140 billion, or close to $1.5 billion a year, for each al-Qaeda fighter. “In what universe do we find strategists to whom this makes sense?”
There remains much more to al-Qaeda than bin Laden, and there are many more tentacles to the terrorism threat than al-Qaeda and its affiliates. So “the long war” must go on. But perhaps such language is bewitching our minds, because this is not essentially war.
During the 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry received much derision for his belief (as expressed in a Jan. 29 debate in South Carolina) that although the war on terror will be “occasionally military,” it is “primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world.” Kerry, as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, thought “many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror.” True then; even more obviously true now.
Again: Granted, the distinction between military and law enforcement facets is not a bright line. But neither is it a distinction without a difference. And the more we couch our thinking in military categories, the more we open ourselves to misadventures like the absurd and deepening one in Libya.
There, our policy — if what seem to be hourly improvisations can be dignified as a policy — began as a no-fly zone to protect civilians from wanton violence. Seven weeks later, our policy is to decapitate the government by long-distance assassination and to intensify a civil war in that tribal society, in the name of humanitarianism. What makes this particularly surreal is that it is being done by NATO.
Unpack the acronym: North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO was created in 1949 to protect Western Europe from the Red Army. Its purpose was, in Lord Ismay’s famous formulation, “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.” NATO, which could long ago have unfurled a “mission accomplished” banner, has now become an instrument of addlepated mischief.
This is an episode of presidential malpractice. Obama has allowed NATO to be employed for the advancement of a half-baked doctrine (R2P — “responsibility to protect”), a quarter-baked rationalization (was it just in March that Hillary Clinton discovered that a vital U.S. national interest required the removal of Moammar Gaddafi because he “is a man who has no conscience”?) and an unworthy national agenda (France’s pursuit of grandeur on the cheap).
When this Libyan mistake is finished, America needs a national debate about whether NATO should be finished. Times change.****
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It's not a conventional nation-state vs. nation-state war, but it is a war. Does law enforcement have a role in it? Sure. Does intelligence and the occasional SEAL team provided death hold a much more important role? Yes.
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From the New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_wright?currentPage=all (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_wright?currentPage=all)
The Double Game
The unintended consequences of American funding in Pakistan
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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011/05/08/story_8-5-2011_pg3_4 (http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011/05/08/story_8-5-2011_pg3_4)
Here's some interesting info on the Pak budget...not much there for health, education, electricity....
"According to the budget presentation at the ministry of finance on Thursday, May 4, some 82 percent of the available national financial resources in the next fiscal year 2011-2012 will be allocated to three sectors: debt servicing, defence and running of the civil administration.
Even though these figures are a conservative estimate, they reveal the pathetic state of the economy and the callous nature of our ruling classes towards social development and the plight of the masses."
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From Walter Mead
High Noon in Pakistan
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
The taking of Osama was a defeat for Al Qaeda. It was a disaster for Pakistan.
The Assassination in Abbottabad was a strategic catastrophe for the military rulers of this slowly and painfully failing state. On the one hand, it leaves the reputation of Pakistan as an effective partner against fanatical terror groups in ruins. The debate in Washington and around the world now is whether the Pakistani state is in league with Al Qaeda or whether it is so weak, divided and incompetent that rogue factions within the state have escaped all control. The rich intelligence haul the US gathered in Osama’s lair will help the US learn more about Osama’s protectors in Pakistan; in the meantime it is transparently clear that whether incompetence or malfeasance is more to blame, the government of Pakistan cannot safely be trusted — by anyone, on anything.
The argument for a continued US-Pakistani alliance took a body blow. If Pakistan can’t or won’t help us with the capture of Osama bin Laden, what possible justification does the alliance have? Arguably, the two people who have done the greatest damage to American interests in the last twenty years have been A. Q. Khan, ringmaster of the nuclear proliferation circus that helped countries like North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran advance their nuclear ambitions, and Osama bin Laden. What country produced one and sheltered both?
From the ISI/military point of view, trust is not just a problem when it comes to relations with the US. The Pakistani military has to have foreign patrons; without foreign aid it cannot pretend even to itself to be a serious competitor to India. India is too big, and Pakistan is too small, too unstable, too divided by bitter internal fault lines, too poorly developed and too incompetently governed to hold its own without outside help.
As US-Pakistan tensions rise, the Pakistanis have looked to China as an alternative great power backer. The Pakistani argument to China is that Pakistan offers an offset to India that makes it harder for India to challenge Chinese influence in southeast Asia and elsewhere. Pakistan can also offer China friendly ports close to the vital oilfields of the Middle East and also a useful land route for trade and power projection.
This is not an unattractive proposition, and China is already in business with Pakistan, providing foreign aid and promoting growth in bilateral trade. The value of China’s aid to Pakistan is hard to estimate, but trade between the two countries is worth about $8.7 billion. (US military and economic aid to Pakistan last year totaled almost $4.5 billion and US-Pakistani trade was worth $1.6 billion.) Additionally, China provides material and financial assistance for Pakistan’s nuclear program; during a visit to Pakistan in December 2010, Wen Jiabao and Pakistani officials finalized plans for the construction of a one gigawatt nuclear reactor in Chashma, making it the third and largest reactor in Pakistan. China’s agreement to provide nuclear materials to Pakistan despite Pakistan’s nuclear program and poor record on proliferation was seen in Pakistan and elsewhere as a counter to the US-India agreement.
But for the Chinese, who have so far flirted with Pakistan but never come close to giving the Pakistanis the support they desperately crave, there are three very big catches. First, Pakistan looks as bent on self-destruction to China as it does to everyone else in the world; why put your money on a such a weak horse?
Second, if China becomes the partner of Pakistan’s dreams, it wrecks its relationship with India and drives India into America’s arms. A closer relationship with Pakistan might be necessary for China in the event that the US and India developed a tight alliance aimed against China, but China’s best strategy now is to prevent the US-India relationship from turning into an anti-China alliance. Flirting with Pakistan makes sense as a way to keep both Washington and Delhi on their toes, but anything more would be a costly mistake.
And third, there are the same questions of competence and trust that give Washington pause. Can Pakistan really be trusted on the subject of ‘Islamic’ terror? The Pakistani defense establishment is totally fixated on maintaining links with terror groups and radical groups to advance its interests in both Afghanistan and India. China doesn’t like this very much; none of the great powers with interests in Central Asia have much sympathy for Pakistan’s desire to strengthen radical Sunni groups. But if Pakistan showed that it was willing and able to use this weapon selectively — to tolerate and even promote terror groups aimed at India while cracking down ruthlessly and effectively on any Muslims crazy enough to dream of fighting for their co-religionists in western China — then maybe, just maybe, Pakistan and China could cut a deal.
But the Abbottabad imbroglio calls Pakistan’s good faith and its ability into question. Will Islamabad really suppress, murder and betray Uighur Muslims who want to bring jihad to their homeland, or will Pakistani weakness, incompetence, religious fanaticism and/or corruption mean that Pakistan will provide sanctuary and perhaps more to China’s deadly enemies even as it takes China’s cash? On the evidence of Abbottabad, few Chinese foreign policy analysts will propose trusting Pakistan. Nice words, candy and flowers on its birthday, but little else.
The attack on Abbottabad was not just a blow to Al Qaeda; it was a direct blow to the heart of Pakistani self confidence. Pakistan puts a lot of faith in its nuclear bombs. ISI types in Pakistan believe that US mistrust of Pakistan is so deep that the US is looking for an opportunity to take control of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.
The strong likelihood that somebody powerful in Pakistan was helping Osama makes the (far fetched) scenario of an American nuclear snatch more frightening to Pakistan. If the US concludes that Pakistan is a state sponsor of terror with close links to Al Qaeda with nuclear weapons and a long record of bad behavior on proliferation issues, the desire to separate those weapons from unworthy hands could become very strong.
The Abbottabad raid demonstrates two things that have shocked the Pakistani security establishment to the core: that the US in pursuit of supreme national interests is willing to send military forces into the heart of Pakistan’s territory and security zone — and that we have the capacity to do so at will. A. Q. Khan may be sleeping a little less soundly and may well have moved all his thumb drives to a more secure location.
India, of course watched the raid closely. India, a victim in the past of Pakistan-supported terrorist violence, has the same concerns about Pakistani nukes and terror groups that Washington does. After observing the mysteriously powerful Stuxnet computer worm in neighboring Iran, and now shocked by American ability to move forces at will, the Pakistani security establishment is now coming to terms with some profoundly unsettling realities. Already, Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir has warned India off an Abbottabad-style raid aimed at the accused perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The US is tightening the screws on this unsatisfactory ally. So far as it goes, that is good. Senators Bob Corker and Ben Cardin have been calling for the US to go farther — to stop aid to Pakistan.
But even that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. The US and Pakistan have had a long relationship, but the love has long since gone out of this bromance. Our interests are likely to diverge much more radically than at present as the US exit from Afghanistan draws closer.
Many of the most important details of the US-Pakistani relationship are only known by a handful of officials. That is inevitable when sensitive matters like counter-terrorism and nuclear weapons come into play. This means that outsiders are not going to get many of the vital nuances of one of the most delicate and difficult dances in the diplomatic world. But it does seem clear that the US now needs to muster all of its energy, resources and will for a strategic battle to determine the future parameters of our relations with Pakistan.
We are going to have to get tough. The Pakistani security establishment lives to a very large degree in what, to American eyes, looks like a dangerous and delusional imaginary world. As I’ve written before, Americans (and virtually everyone else in the world who looks at this question) sees Pakistan locked into a profoundly dysfunctional combination of misguided security ideas and comprehensive domestic failure. Pakistani strategists embrace these seemingly destructive policies out of some very deeply-held beliefs and in response to what they see as existential questions of national identity and cohesion. They will not be lightly diverted from this long-established and cherished course, however suicidal, and as is often the case with people whose goals are unrealistic, they are accustomed to very high risk strategies and brinkmanship. Defeat after defeat by India, progressive deterioration of the domestic security climate and the utter collapse of political morality in what passes for the governing class in Pakistan have not forced a reevaluation. Charm and appeals to sweet reason by American officials and emissaries won’t do it either. Neither will humanitarian aid: the suffering of ordinary Pakistanis has little impact on the elite, and in the short to medium term public opinion in Pakistan is so anti-American and so politically marginal that we could die of old age waiting for spending however generous to change our image in Pakistan enough to change the politics of the relationship.
I favor generous and long term assistance to Pakistan as part of a long term relationship — assuming that the country is willing to stop running toward the abyss and to start moving, however slowly, in a more promising direction. But we should not deceive ourselves that civilian aid buys much goodwill with what is, under a thin and increasingly unconvincing veneer of civilian rule, a military government on all security matters.
When it comes to changing Pakistani policy, aid however generous for schools and hospitals Pakistan’s rulers don’t care much about matters less than a credible threat that Pakistan could face an active US-led alliance from which it is excluded and which might even actively seek to frustrate its interests on key issues.
To get our relationship with Pakistan on the right track, the Obama administration is going to have to assemble and develop some serious threats. Sending the Seals to Abbottabad is a nice shot across the bow, but more will be needed. The administration is going to have to look at a broad range of options that stretch from adding some new dimensions to US-India relations and engaging more directly with more neighbors about the future of Afghanistan to additional operations like the Abbottabad raid where intelligence suggests appropriately important targets can be found. On the other hand, the administration needs to develop a crystal clear and specific vision for what we want from Pakistan and what we will do if and only if we can secure it.
This matters. The administration’s ability to put its relationship with Pakistan on a clear path will go far to determine both the speed at which we are able to leave Afghanistan and the nature of the post-US situation there. More, what is at stake in both Afghanistan and Pakistan is still America’s security at home. President Obama clearly understands that defending Americans from 9/11 style attacks remains the most important item on his job description. Getting Pakistan right is a must.
In this negotiation the Americans will do better if we have coordinated our approach with the Saudis — they, next to China, represent Pakistan’s best hope of a replacement partner should the US alliance cool even further. The Saudis are widely believed to have helped support Pakistan’s quest for what some call the ‘Sunni bomb’; Pakistanis are ready and, if suitably paid, willing to support embattled Sunni Arab sheikhs against restive Shi’a subjects. From the Saudi point of view, Pakistan’s 169 million people and nuclear arsenal look like reliable allies against Iran if US support should prove unreliable and one suspects that Pakistani contingency planning for a crisis with the US includes some assumptions about Saudi help.
The US needs to address this. The Obama administration can’t make geography go away; the Saudis can and should have a relationship with Pakistan based on mutual interests and strategic need. But the Pakistan card goes up in value as the US card falls: the Obama administration needs to improve its relationship with the Saudis and clear up any misunderstandings about where we stand on the question of Saudi security. The Saudis may be religiously radical by some standards, but as long as they believe in the strength of the US umbrella they are conservative geopolitically. There are all kinds of reasons (including the restraining influence that Saudi money can have on radical clerics) to make sure the Saudis understand the depth of the American commitment to their survival.
We have another card to play, I suspect. Some of the information the Seals acquired in Abbottabad is likely to show that under Pakistani protection Bin Laden continued to plot and scheme against the Saudis. Pakistan has betrayed everyone, including the Saudis. Nobody likes this kind of behavior; Pakistan has burned more than one bridge.
The much feared and long delayed moment of truth in US-Pakistan relations is almost upon us. Nobody outside the government can really know all the important factors here, but the Obama administration is unlikely to develop a satisfactory relationship with Pakistan unless it is ready, willing and able to face a complete rupture. As long as Pakistan perceives that Washington is desperate to keep the relationship alive, it will play games.
Perhaps we truly have no choice; in that case the US must continue mushing on as best we may. But Pakistan is a weak and vulnerable state, wracked by internal dissension, ethnic rivalries and the guerrilla secessionist movement in Baluchistan. It is high time that the US began looking carefully at the alternatives to its alliance with Pakistan and taking some of the initial steps to ease what may be a necessary and inevitable transition to a new alignment in the region.
One hopes those steps would bring some badly needed sobriety to the strategic culture of Islamabad. This may well be our only hope now of changing Pakistan’s behavior. In any case, basing our policy on comforting lies that we tell ourselves because we are too afraid to face bitter truths is not a good move.
The promise to focus on Pakistan was one of the hallmarks of President Obama’s 2008 campaign. The raid on Abbottabad shows he is still on the case. Every American should wish him and his team well as they prepare for even tougher choices ahead.
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(http://media.economist.com/images/images-magazine/2011/05/07/WW/20110507_WWD000.jpg)
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http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/05/09/frum.pakistan.trap/ (http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/05/09/frum.pakistan.trap/) I like his questions....
Washington (CNN) -- The killing of Osama bin Laden raises many haunting questions. Here's the most important:
Has our mission in Afghanistan become obsolete?
To think through that question, start with a prior question: Why did we remain in Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban?
The usual answer to that question is: To prevent Afghanistan from re-emerging as a terrorist safe haven.
There have always been a lot of problems with that answer. (For example: Does it really take 100,000 U.S. troops, plus allies, to prevent a country from becoming a terrorist safe haven? We're doing a pretty good job in Yemen with a radically smaller presence.)
But this week, we have exposed to sight two huge problems with the usual answer.
1. The world's most important terrorist safe haven is visibly not Afghanistan, but instead next-door Pakistan.
New videos of Osama bin Laden State Dept: Awaiting Pakistan's answers al Qaeda vows revenge U.S. wants answers from Pakistan
2. Because the U.S. presence in Afghanistan requires cooperation from Pakistan, the Afghanistan mission perversely inhibits the United States from taking more decisive action against Pakistan's harboring of terrorism.
Here's a very concrete example. Through the 2008 presidential campaign, candidates John McCain and Barack Obama tussled over the issue of direct anti-terrorist action inside Pakistan. On February 20, 2008, McCain called Obama "naive" for suggesting that he might act inside Pakistan without Pakistani permission.
In retrospect, McCain's answer looks wrong. But think about why McCain said what he did. He knew that acting in a way that offended Pakistan would complicate the mission in Afghanistan. The United States looks to Pakistan to police the Pashtun country on the other side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Guerrilla wars become much harder to win if the guerrillas are allowed sanctuary across an international border. So if the mission in Afghanistan is the supreme priority, then acting in ways that offend Pakistan must be avoided.
But this thinking leads to an upside-down result: In order to prevent Afghanistan from ever again harboring a potential future bin Laden, we have to indulge Pakistan as it harbors the actual bin Laden!
Some Democrats have retrospectively seized on McCain's upside-down logic as proof that candidate Obama was "right" in 2008. I was a guest on the Bill Maher program on HBO on Friday night where he insisted on this point.
But, of course, President Obama has made decisions that have aggravated the upside-down problem. By inserting so many additional U.S. forces into Afghanistan, he has made the United States more dependent than ever on Pakistan -- with the result that even after finding and killing Osama bin Laden in the heart of Pakistan's national security establishment, the Obama administration is reluctant to challenge Pakistan publicly or even privately.
Think now: What would our policy in South Asia look like if we had a much smaller mission in Afghanistan? Perhaps 20,000 U.S. and allied troops on a security assistance mission rather than 100,000-plus on a combat mission?
By emancipating itself from dependence on Pakistan, the United States would gain scope to focus on the most vital questions in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, such as:
• How confident do we feel that the people who sheltered bin Laden do not also control Pakistan's nuclear force?
• If we do not have confidence in the people who control Pakistan's nuclear force, what plans do we have to disable that nuclear force?
• Why wasn't Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, the Johnny Appleseed of nuclear proliferation, delivered to U.S. custody?
• Pakistan has a long history of not only harboring anti-U.S. terrorism, but actively promoting and supporting terrorism against India. Why is Pakistan not listed alongside Iran as a state sponsor of terror?
• Why is Pakistan receiving U.S. military aid?
• Why does Pakistan have the benefit of a trade and investment agreement with the United States?
Instead, even now -- even now! -- we're told that Pakistan is just too important to permit the U.S. to act on its stated doctrine--articulated by George W. Bush's administration and not repudiated by Obama's: "Those who harbor terrorists will be treated as terrorists themselves." So long as we remain in Afghanistan, that statement remains true. The question is, shouldn't we be taking now the steps to render the statement less true?
The less committed we are to Afghanistan, the more independent we are of Pakistan. The more independent we are of Pakistan, the more leverage we have over Pakistan. The more leverage we have over Pakistan, the more clout we have to shut down Pakistan's long, vicious, and now not credibly deniable state support for terrorism.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Frum.
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Our Strange Dance with Pakistan
Elizabeth Rubin
Osama bin Laden’s death in a mansion in exclusive club house territory of retired Pakistani officers has exposed the terrible paradox at the heart of our war in Afghanistan—Pakistan’s hypocrisy and our acquiescence. Bin Laden’s Pakistani hosts, two rich businessmen called Arshad and Tariq Khan who owned the house and were killed with him, hail from Charsadda, 15 miles north of Peshawar. Their uncle was a retired Brigadier. (Arshad was apparently the courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who led intelligence officials to the compound.) This is not a lawless land. This is highly controlled territory.
We give billions in aid to Pakistan’s military and civilian government. Yet Pakistan is harboring our enemies and even the enemies, one could argue, of its own healthy survival. Portions of our money are being funneled into the variety of insurgent networks whose fighters are killing American soldiers, Afghan soldiers, American civilians, Afghan civilians, European civilians, Pakistani civilians—mothers, fathers, children on multiple continents. Why, asks a US army major, did all his friends die in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province when the real problem is on the other side of the border? Why, asks a twelve-year-old Afghan girl in Kandahar whose family has been wiped out by US air strikes, are you bombing us? How has this come to pass?
In 2006, I traveled through Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, meeting with many Taliban fighters. I described it at the time as a kind of Taliban spa that offered them rest and rehab between battles in Afghanistan to which they would be returning. But it was more than that. I met Afghan Taliban who’d tried to make a deal with the Afghan government to get back to a life without fighting. One told me he was then arrested by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI, and blackmailed—they would release him if he would resume fighting and dispense with notions of reconciliation. He rose up the ranks of the Taliban command, traveling freely between Quetta in Pakistan and Zabul, a province in Afghanistan, where he was an intelligence commander for Afghan Taliban fighting coalition forces.
Another young Afghan Taliban I met in Peshawar was involved in the production and distribution of propaganda and recruiting DVDs—beheadings, inspirational music videos, and killings of American soldiers, all set to Pashtun war songs. But after spending hours and hours with him, I noticed his anti-infidel rhetoric beginning to subside, and when the subject of the ISI’s operatives came up, his whole demeanor changed. “Snakes,” he called them. Their first offense, he said, was trying to oust Mullah Omar and create a more obedient Taliban leader—like Jalaluddin Haqqani, an old jihadi we once financed to fight the Soviets but who has now set up shop in Waziristan under ISI protection. (Along with his son Sirajuddin, Haqqani stages the big-media-grabbing attacks in Afghanistan but seems to abide by the rules of his hosts—no attacks against Pakistan. He also runs a virtual kidnapping factory in Waziristan and the Pakistanis have done nothing to stop it.)
Then he said:
I told you that we burn schools because they’re teaching Christianity, but actually, most of the Taliban don’t like this burning of schools or destroying of roads and bridges, because the Taliban, too, could use them. Those acts were being done under ISI orders. They don’t want progress in Afghanistan.
He told me about ISI orders to behead an Indian engineer who was captured (and these orders were later corroborated). “People are not telling the story, because no one can trust anyone,” he told me. “And if the ISI knew I told you, I’d be fucked.”
That was 2006. Since then, just about everyone has learned the rules of the game: The ISI will continue to support the various jihadi groups (like Lashkar-e-Taiba) in order to attack and intimidate India, and get what it wants in Afghanistan—more or less a semi-independent extension of Pakistan. In 2008, American intelligence even proved definitively what Afghans and Indians on the ground already knew: that the deadly attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul was planned with the help of the ISI.
And it isn’t just the ISI that is supporting the Taliban. During my travels through Pakistan, I had a long discussion about the Pakistan Army’s conflicted loyalties with Najam Sethi, the longtime editor of Lahore’s Friday Times. What does it want? Where does it stand? The Pakistani military retains a secular strain, but religion is central to its ideology. Since its inception in 1947, its raison d’etre has been to defend the Muslim world. This mission, however, is constantly undermined by the fact that, while Pakistan was founded as a refuge for South Asia’s Muslims, more Muslims live in India, and most of the attacks by the militant groups it supports have ended up killing fellow Muslims. There is a contradiction at the heart of the Pakistani Army and it’s expressed in what everyone has come to call Pakistan’s “double game.”
The military officers I met—many of them retired, living better than bin Laden, in lavish Latin-American style mansions with pure-bred dogs, English-style cooks, and manicured lawns—spoke to me as if they envied the jihadists’ clarity of purpose, their moral vision. In Sethi’s view, the military also harbors “a degree of self-disgust for selling themselves” to the Americans. They are still angry with the US for abandoning them after the Afghan jihad, and for sanctioning them over the nuclear program. The standard army phrase about their treatment by the Americans was, Sethi said, “They used us like a condom.”
Despite these widely held sentiments and the evidence against a strong alliance, US diplomats and generals have tried to sustain the image of close cooperation.
In 2010, I had the chance to ask Secretary of Defense Robert Gates about the US relationship with Pakistan. He’d just been to the country to urge its generals to go after the jihadists, the Taliban, and the Haqqani network. I asked Gates how he could possibly consider Afshaq Kayani, the chief of the Pakistani army, an ally. “It’s frustrating,” Gates told me. I waited for more, but nothing came. Your silence says a lot, I said. “Well, I was very specific in a couple of my meetings in looking at them point-blank and saying, ‘Haqqani and his people are killing my troops. I’ve got a problem with that,’” Gates responded. And what did they say, I asked. Gates is all control, but he cracked a small smile as he said: “They listened.”
Admiral Mike Mullen has spent the better part of the first two years of the Obama administration—hours and hours of flight time, face time, and phone time—cultivating a strong relationship with Kayani. Up until recently, Kayani’s Wikipedia entry said that he counted Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a close friend and ally. That line has now been removed. US officials maintain they don’t think that Kayani or ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha had direct knowledge themselves about bin Laden. But even before Sunday’s assassination of bin Laden, a friend of mine told me that when he recently saw Mullen the admiral seemed puzzled by the breakdown of the relationship. “What relationship?” my friend asked. “[Kayani] was never on your side.”
Or as an advisor to Ambassador Holbrooke told me not long before Holbrooke died: “We see Pakistan as a flawed ally and the Afghan Taliban as our enemy. The truth is the reverse.” It is the Taliban, the advisor suggested, who can be worked with; they who distrust—and in many cases despise—the ISI overlords they depend on for safe havens and support. All along they’ve let it be known through different channels that they want to talk directly to the Americans. The question is how?
Will the revelation that bin Laden and family were dwelling in a newly built Pakistani Army mansion not far from the capital finally change the nature of the strange dance between the US and Pakistan? One wonders how good and smart men and women are taken in by diplomatic friendships, how they allow themselves to believe lies they know to be lies, or worse, settle for the lie because it seems there’s no way out, no creative solution to change the trusted old forms of diplomacy or the definitions of enemy and ally.
Of course at the heart of the problem lies Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. We’d rather our Pakistani army enemy controls it than our Pakistani Taliban enemy. But will we ever know who is who, and can we tell them apart? And so our policy in Pakistan has collided with the Lot equation: How many righteous men must there be for God to save Sodom and Gomorrah, asks Abraham. And when God says fifty, Abraham keeps lowering the number. What if there is just one? How many American, Afghan, Pakistani, European casualties are worth keeping this Catch-22 policy alive?
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"The world's most important terrorist safe haven is visibly not Afghanistan, but instead next-door Pakistan."
- True, but if nation building in Afghan is beyond our capability, nation building in Pakistan would be exponentially harder. At least we are taking some war to enemies inside Pakistan with the drone warfare and OBL kill. Our presence in Afghanistan puts some containment on Pakistan.
There are plenty of inconsistencies in our policies in the region and plenty of people here from all political stripes are losing interest in continuing our major presence. A lesson from Iraq, we should not go from a presence of 100,000 plus to not even keeping the right to a couple of permanent bases for future operations. The OBL kill came partly form our ability to stage, support and fly in from next door rather than from Virginia or Carolina. We kept a presence in the Japan and in Germany and peace broke out. Winding down a surge I would think should be coupled with maintaining our ability to go back in and put out future fires.
The consequence for harboring bin Laden under our nose while taking our money to fight terrorism should be another reason to strengthen our strategic partnership with India, we need an ally in the region, and to shift any future Pak aid to 100% non-cash support. If we say the money is for building a hospital for example, then we build a hospital, not hand out throw-around money. If we say it is for an anti-terrorism force, then our people join with that force and bring intelligence and weaponry.
Ya's posts beg the elephant in the room question, what is the consequence to China for helping Pakistan build nuclear arms. (Nothing so far, I know Hillary just said China poses no threat while the home of our biggest threat just went nuclear with their help.) The answer I think is an information war, like radio free Europe. Fight off the regime's efforts at censorship and weaken their hold over their own people, as it was the ruling party not the people who proliferated nuclear weapons to our enemy.
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We need to engage in nation-imploding in Pakistan, not nation-building. Lots of ISI/Army generals need to die. We need to take their nukes and gut them as a military power. They need to become an object lesson for the world.
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If someone were to search, I believe on this thread, not so many months ago I offered some ideas :wink:
Anyway, a momentary interruption from the important subjects which YA's excellent posts and the exellent responses thereto are discussing-- here's the latest on the Greg Mortenson saga:
While Montana's Attorney General looks into Greg Mortenson's dealings with his charity CAI, two state lawmakers--Rep. Michele Reinhart of Missoula to buy the book and Rep. Jean Price of Great Falls--filed suit in a Missoula Federal Court against Mortenson, alleging fraud. They claim they "purchased the book because of his heart-wrenching story which he said was true," says their attorney Alexander Blewett. "If people had known all of this was fabricated, they would not have given the money."
The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status and have asked the judge to creative a "constructive trust" to be "administered by a court-appointed charity that would direct it to schoolchildren in Afghanistan and Pakistan." The suit includes a RICO racketeering claim because some of the donations were made by mail. They are using that claim to seek triple damages.
Blewett says the suit is designed to elicit the truth from Mortenson: "We welcome the opportunity to let Mr. Mortenson testify under oath to all these things. To us, it seems overwhelmingly false and we will give him ample opportunity to explain away all of the falsehoods."
The Central Asia Institute did not comment on the filing. They posted a note last Monday saying that Mortenson's planned heart surgery had been postponed. His physician wrote, "Mortenson is convalescing at home with CPAP, oxygen and bed rest, allowed no electronics, and will undergo additional tests this week that will determine when his condition will allow for a safe procedure to repair the hole in his heart." The latest "update" on the CAI site is actually a new color brochure. There, they address Mortenson's extensive use of private aircraft at the charity's expense with an omnibus three-part excuse (without addressing why Mortenson charged travel expenses as part of his speakers' fees that he kept rather than reimbursing the CAI):
"Number one, Greg's schedule often presents difficult logistical scenarios that are nearly impossible to accomplish with commercial airlines. Generally he has to fly late at night to accommodate his hectic schedule, which in the past four years put him in an average 126 cities per year, plus international travel and overseas project visits. Number two is his health, which has been in decline for the past 18 months. And number three is security. Greg has received threats against his life, and commercial travel sometimes presents over-exposure to threatening elements."
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If someone were to search, I believe on this thread, not so many months ago I offered some ideas :wink:
As I did then, and do now support the "Crafty Doctrine" towards Pure-land. I want it to be especially punitive given their sheltering of Osama bin Fishfood.
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I will bet very large sums that money has already changed hands and the Chinese have already been all over this.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/10/pakistan-i-guess-well-have-to-show-china-the-wreckage-of-your-secret-stealth-helicopter/
Pakistan: I guess we’ll have to show China the wreckage of your secret stealth helicopter
posted at 8:52 pm on May 10, 2011 by Allahpundit
You know what the answer to this is? Have Mike Mullen very loudly and formally invite the head of India’s air force to tour an American air base and check out all the latest projects we’re working on. Maybe, as a bonus, let him sneak a peek at that insanely awesome shipborne laser that the Navy’s perfecting.
Why not? India’s the ultimate bulwark against these fascist and jihadist savages. Let’s make sure they’re prepared. And given their own growing knowledge base in weapons advances, it’d be useful to have a reciprocal relationship with them. It’s time to make this a proper alliance.
The U.S. has already asked the Pakistanis for the helicopter wreckage back, but one Pakistani official told ABC News the Chinese were also “very interested” in seeing the remains. Another official said, “We might let them [the Chinese] take a look.”
A U.S. official said he did not know if the Pakistanis had offered a peak to the Chinese, but said he would be “shocked” if the Chinese hadn’t already been given access to the damaged aircraft…
The potential technological advancements gleaned from the bird could be a “much appreciated gift” to the Chinese, according to former White House counterterrorism advisor and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke…
The Chinese and Pakistani governments are known to have a close relationship. Last month Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif concluded a trip to Beijing, afterwards telling Pakistan’s local press that China was Pakistan’s “best friend.”
Yes, please, let China know the singular joy that comes with being Pakistan’s “best friend.” ABC correctly points out that China is rumored to have jumpstarted its stealth program with pieces of a U.S. bomber that crashed in the Balkans in the late 90s; if that’s so, then that Point A might have led directly to this Point B. And yet, the question lingers: Is a stealth helicopter really all that difficult to figure out? Some experts say no:
[Lexington Institute head Loren Thompson] said that the technology and design features to enable an aircraft to reduce noise and evade radar are not shrouded in secrecy.
Countries that examine the wreckage “will not learn much from the remnants of the exploded helicopter that were not already readily available in open literature,” Thompson told AFP…
The helicopter appears to have at least five blades in its tail rotor, instead of the four associated with the Blackhawk, which analysts said could possibly allow for a slower rotor speed to reduce noise.
A cover on the rotor, akin to a hubcap, can also be seen as well as harder edges in the design, similar to the lines on stealth fighter planes such as the F-117. The cover on the rotor and the design lines would presumably be aimed at circumventing radar, according to analysts.
It’s not completely stealth, either. No doubt it’s radar-proof and quieter than a normal military helicopter in its approach, but remember that guy in Abbottabad who inadvertently tweeted the Bin Laden raid as it happened? His very first tweet was “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1 AM.” I don’t know how far he was from the compound, but if it was loud enough for him to hear, the Pakistani military must have heard it too. That’s why the raid was only 40 minutes; they would have showed up sooner or later.
As further reading, I recommend this short piece from Victor Davis Hanson about our very good friends in Islamabad. He’s tired of paying them billions in protection money not to do something crazy involving nukes, mainly because they seem to be getting crazier regardless. Exit quotation: “We’ve tried aid, no aid, sanctions, full diplomatic relations, estrangement,etc. At this point, all have failed, and failure without $3 billion a year is better than failure costing $3 billion a year.”
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I've been finding a lot of interesting material in the Long War Journal, though I'm still assessing 'em as a source. Lotta good illustrated material at the link.
Afghan National Army update, May 2011
By CJ RADINMay 9, 2011
The Afghan National Army's area of operations. Click map to view.
This article addresses the current status of the Afghan National Army (ANA). The updated Order of Battle is here and the unit location map is here. Future articles will address ANA issues and plans.
Growing the ANA
The Afghan army reached its previous goal of 134,000 troops in July 2010. The current goal is to have 171,600 by October 2011. As of March 2011, there were 160,000 troops on its rolls, 4,000 ahead of the March goal.
Earlier this year, there was discussion of increasing the size of the army beyond the current 171,600-troop goal, but this plan has not yet been officially adopted. The proposal suggests increasing the size of the force to between 195,000 and 208,000 by October 2012. Reaching the higher number would depend on meeting recruiting, retention, and attrition goals, which is not certain. Most of the additional troops would be used to expand the ANA's support structure [see "Specialized technical skills," below]. Some additional combat units would be added to fill out the existing organizational structure.
ANA Organization
As part of its continuing drive toward self-sufficiency, the Afghan National Army created the Ground Force Command (GFC) headquarters. GFC commands the six ANA corps plus the 111st Capitol division. The GFC is modeled on the International Security Assistance Force's Joint Command and is commanded by Lieutenant General Murad Ali Murad. The GFC is scheduled to reach initial operational capability by March 2012 and full operational capability by August 2012.
In May 2010, Regional Command -South (RC-S) was split into two regions. The newly created Regional Command-South West (RC-SW) and its 215th Corps took over the provinces of Helmand and Nimroz, and portions of Farah. RC-S and its 205th Corps retained Zabul, Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Daikundi provinces.
ANA Special Operations Command (ANASOC) brigade
Structure of the Afghan National Army Special Forces Command (ANASOC). Click image to view.
The ANA has established a new Special Operations Forces organization. The newly established Afghan Special Operations Command (ANASOC) is setting up a division headquarters at Camp Moorehead in Wardak province. It will command two different types of units, the existing ANA Commandos and a newly formed unit, the ANA Special Forces (ANASF).
The ANA Commandos are the ANASOC's "direct action" force. The existing nine Commando battalions will eventually be organized into two Commando brigades. However, the current 1st Commando brigade headquarters was dissolved in order to provide a cadre to staff the new ANASOC division headquarters. A new 1st Commando Brigade headquarters staff is being trained and will be operational soon. The 2nd Commando Brigade headquarters is planned to be operational by September 2011.
The ANASOC will also command the 1st Special Forces Brigade. Modeled on the US Special Forces, the brigade's missions will include "internal defense" and "SOF reconnaissance" as well as "direct action." The brigade headquarters is planned to be operational by September 2012. The brigade will consist of four battalions, the first one being fielded by June 2011. Each battalion will have 18 A-Teams, for a total of 72 A-Teams. The A-Teams are designed along US SOF lines. Each 15-member team is led by a captain, with a first lieutenant executive officer and a team sergeant. In addition, there are two each of medical sergeants, weapons sergeants, engineer sergeants, and communications sergeants; two intelligence sergeants; an information dissemination sergeant; and a civil-military operations specialist.
ANASF internal defense mission
The ANASF has been created to provide a special operations force capable of countering enemy efforts at the lowest level, the Afghan tribe and village. The ANASF brigade will accomplish this through the Village Stability Operations (VSO) program.
The VSO program is designed to help individual villages defend themselves against encroaching insurgency. Villages organize their own defense units, the Afghan Local Police. An ANASF brigade A-Team is assigned to each VSO village. The team's role is to support the village leadership to organize the overall project and mediate local disputes. They also train and advise the ALP. Up until now, US Special Operations Forces A-Teams have been running the VSO; however, the goal is to have ANASF replace the US SOF in this role. It is expected that the ANASF will be able to bring a better understanding of local cultural, economic, and political issues.
ANASF A-Team training
The first two classes of ANASF candidates were recruited exclusively from the Commando battalions. (Note: This necessitated a pause in the creation of new Commando battalions in order to free up resources to create the ANASF. The Commandos will be capped at nine battalions, with the formation of the 10th, 11th and 12th battalions postponed.) Because the ANASF candidates were already trained in direct action, the US trainers focused on the skills required for internal defense and SOF reconnaissance. This allowed the length of the first two classes to be reduced to 10 weeks. Future classes, recruited from across the ANA, will be larger, consisting of about 300 soldiers compared to 80 in each of the first two classes, and will take 15 weeks.
The first class started training in March 2010 and completed it in May; they were then grouped into four A-teams, one of which will be held back to form an Afghan cadre to help train the next class. At this point the teams were considered" mission-capable", but were not considered "Special Forces qualified" until they completed 26 weeks of "on-the- job training" during which each ANA A-team was partnered with a US SOF A-team.
The first A-Team was deployed to Khakrez district, northwest of Kandahar City, in May 2010. By March 2011, a total of 14 A-teams had completed training. All 72 A-Teams are expected to be fielded by 2014.
ANA development priorities
In 2010, the overall ANA priority was to grow an infantry-centric force that could immediately participate in counterinsurgency operations. Most of the effort was directed toward fielding additional infantry units.
The priority for 2011 has been to continue to grow the force but also to begin building the support functions necessary for self-sufficiency. This includes leadership, specialized technical expertise, and literacy training.
Leadership training
There is currently a significant shortage of both officers and NCOs within the ANA. In November 2010 there were 18,191 officers where 22,646 are required; and there were only 37,336 NCOs where 49,044 are required. To address the officer shortage, training capacity has been increased. Two additional Officer Candidate School companies opened in December 2010, and two more are to have opened by April 2011. The additional capacity is expected to reduce, but not entirely eliminate, the shortage by October 2012. For NCOs, training capacity is also being increased. The Regional Training Center in Darulaman has been converted from Basic Training to NCO training. Additionally, NCOs are being trained in the United Arab Emirates.The shortfall is expected to be eliminated by October 2012.
Specialized technical skills
In 2010, the ANA began setting up training institutions to teach the specialized skills needed to make it self-sufficient. Twelve "Branch Schools" are being set up:
Artillery
Human Resources
Signals
Infantry
Engineering
Legal
Military Police
Logistics
Religious and Cultural affairs
Intelligence
Finance
Eleven of these 12 branch schools have reached initial operating capability (IOC). The last school (Military Police) will reach IOC by June 2011. None, however, have reached full capacity due to limitation in facilites and ISAF trainers.
Logistics support development includes the establishment of Army Support Command. This will control six new Regional Support Commands (RLSCs), one for each of ANA's six corps. These units will provide medical, equipment maintenance, and logistics distribution capability. In addition, a National Depot Operation and National Vehicle Maintenance Facility will also be stood up in 2011.
Literacy training
About 86% of ANA enlisted recruits are illiterate. This constitutes a significant obstacle in the development of a competent army. An illiterate soldier cannot read a map, a training manual, or the serial number of his rifle. Furthermore, specialized fields such as medicine, logistics, and communications cannot be taught to an illiterate person.
The problem is being addressed by the establishment of an extensive literacy training program. Starting in March 2010, mandatory basic literacy and numeracy training was instituted for all ANSF enlisted personnel, both ANA and ANP. The goal is to train every member of the ANSF to at least a third-grade level. The curriculum is the equivalent of 312 hours of training. (Note: This program applies to enlisted and NCOs, since over 90% of officers are literate.)
For the ANA, literacy training begins in Basic Training. Each recruit is brought in two weeks early and taught basic reading and writing so he can at least write his name and read the serial number on his weapon. Literacy training continues through Basic Training, adding up to a total of 64 hours. Additional training occurs during seven weeks of unit training. When the recruits go to the field, or for troops already in the field, the program provides for continued training on the order of one to two hours per day over seven to eight months. For a soldier selected for specialty training in a Branch School, additional training is provided up to the sixth-grade level. By March 2011 there were 60,000 ANA soldiers and ANP police receiving literacy training.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/05/afghan_national_army_4.php
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Old cartoon....but with more than an ounce of truth
(http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/images/pakus-truth.jpg)
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Colin: With Taliban in Pakistan claiming responsibility for an attack that killed 80 people in a paramilitary academy in the country’s northwest frontier, the Pakistan question looms large in Washington. But despite the rhetoric from both the United States and Islamabad, it is likely to be business as usual.
Colin: Welcome to Agenda with George Friedman.
George: Well first let’s frame the basic picture. The Pakistanis need the United States to counterbalance India. The United States needs Pakistan to find some sort of solution in Afghanistan. This is not a relationship made of love it is a relationship made of interests. The United States, if it did not have the cooperation of Pakistan, would simply not be able to wage the war. First the supply line from Karachi to the Khyber Pass would be closed. We could find an alternative working with Russia perhaps, but that would cause a problem. There is another alternative on the Caspian but that won’t solve the entire problem. If Pakistan were to turn on us, our position in Afghanistan would become difficult. Plus whatever limited help the Pakistanis are giving the United States in dealing with Taliban strongholds in Pakistan itself would disappear.
First much of the wild talk about punishing Pakistan and so on fails to take into account the American position in Afghanistan. And secondly it fails to take into account that Pakistan is a country of 180 million people, not a country that you can easily punish. At the same time, the Pakistanis badly need the United States to balance India because the Pakistanis by themselves would be no match for the Indians, would be threatened and overwhelmed, and therefore they can’t simply reject American relations. For the past 10 years since 9/11, there’s been terrific tension between the two countries. The United States has wanted the Pakistanis to do things in support of the United States that the Pakistanis felt would lead to a possible breakdown in Pakistan because of civil tension between the various factions. A fine line has been walked. With the capture of Osama bin Laden and the assertion that the Pakistanis harbored him or didn’t effectively act against him, there is the temptation, particularly on the part of the Americans, to break with the Pakistanis. The problem is that’s not an option for the Americans so long as they remain in Afghanistan. They need whatever level of cooperation the Pakistanis are going to give and that’s really where it stands in the midst of all of the hubbub and charges and senators demanding investigations and cutoffs of aid. We simply need the supply lines. We need what ever support the Pakistanis are prepared to give or we’re going to have to think about how to leave Afghanistan.
Colin: Is it your view as some suggest that the recent events in the United States can now leave Afghanistan earlier?
George: Well it depends very much on how the United States positions the death of Osama bin Laden. If it makes the claim that with this death of Osama bin Laden the threat of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan has diminished to the point that mission has been accomplished, then it can make the claim that it has to leave. And the problem there is of course that the threat of terrorism isn’t so much emanating from Afghanistan; it’s emanating from Pakistan. The U.S. presence in Afghanistan is only minimally affecting the struggle against terrorism. Certainly if the United States left, al Qaeda would move back into Afghanistan but by definition al Qaeda is going to be operating where ever the United States isn’t. This is a guerrilla war on a global level. In that sense guerrillas constantly decline combat where the conventional force is overwhelming and move to areas where the conventional force is weak. On a global level where ever the United States isn’t, is where al Qaeda is going to be. The United States can’t be in Pakistan. The ability to overwhelm Pakistan, it is an enormous country in terms of population - it is just beyond reach of the number of troops in Americans have - and therefore the argument that Osama bin Laden’s death changes something dramatically is probably dubious but as a political claim may be persuasive and may allow the administration to begin to consider withdrawal with a claim of some sort of victory.
Colin: George we’ve seen a visit by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Afghanistan. Is that relevant to all this or is it a sideshow?
George: It’s not a sideshow but it’s not really relevant because in the end, India is geopolitically not in the position to insert large numbers of troops in Afghanistan and therefore can’t support the Karzai government. The map simply makes it almost impossible for the Indians to do that and so the Indians are fishing in muddy waters. They’re trying to shore up Karzai’s spirits. They’re trying to signal the Pakistanis. But again, all of this diplomatic signaling back and forth ignores geopolitical reality. The Indians cannot insert and support a significant military force in Afghanistan. They’re not an alternative to the United States. Their commitment to Afghanistan really doesn’t make that much of a difference. Sometimes diplomatic gestures mean something and sometimes they simply don’t. In this particular case I think the Indians would like it to be able to mean something but it doesn’t.
Colin: George thanks very much indeed. George Friedman there, ending Agenda. I’m Colin Chapman. Thanks for your time today.
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I bet India would let us base troops there while we hammered Pakistan. I bet we could implode Pakistan quickly enough.
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GF is an unusually insightful guy IMHO but in this one he seems to let himself be guided by the assumption that Afg. is the issue , , ,
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Imagine the panic in Pure-land if we announced we were pulling our troops out of Trashcanistan and into Indian Bases in Kashmir.
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http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/05/14/lawrence-solomon-break-it-up/
Lawrence Solomon: Break It Up
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Lawrence Solomon May 14, 2011 – 11:49 AM ET
Pakistan would be a more stable and peaceful place if its four component nations were unstitched from one another
Since Osama bin Laden was found living unmolested in a Pakistani military town, debate has raged over how to deal with this duplicitous, faction-ridden country. Should the United States and others in the West continue to provide Pakistan with billions in foreign aid, in the hopes of currying at least some influence among elements of the Pakistani leadership? Or should we get tough, and declare it to be the state sponsor of terrorism that it is, knowing this course of action could cripple our efforts to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan and drive Pakistan further into the Chinese sphere of influence?
Neither course would be satisfactory and neither should be adopted. Instead, the West should recognize that the muddle it faces stems from Pakistan’s internal contradictions. This is not one cohesive country but four entirely distinct nations, having little in common save their animosity toward one another, a predominantly Muslim faith and Britain’s decision to confine them within the same borders in partitioning the Indian subcontinent more than a half century ago. The West’s only sensible course of action today is to unstitch the British patchwork, let the major nations within Pakistan choose their future, and negotiate coherently with new national administrations that don’t have impossibly conflicted mandates.
The first A in the word “Pakistan” represents Afghania, a province (since renamed North West Frontier) predominantly inhabited by Pashtuns, the same tribal peoples who live in much of adjoining Afghanistan. They mostly share the same Pashto language and culture as well as religion, and they trade among themselves largely as if a border didn’t separate them.
And, they look out for one another, leading Pashtun factions within Pakistan’s intelligence service to serve interests among their cross-border brethren. In fact, a chief source of conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan stems from the separation of the Pashtuns by a British divide-and-conquer stratagem. The North West Frontier should be hived off Pakistan and allowed to vote for independence or union with Afghanistan, a more natural home.
South of North West Frontier lies Balochistan (the “t-a-n” of Pakistan), the largest and poorest of Pakistan’s four provinces, despite providing the country with 40% of its natural gas, as well as oil, copper and other minerals. Balochs, a largely secular and proWestern people with their own language and customs, have repeatedly tried to break away from their forcible incorporation into Pakistan. The most recent attempt, begun in 2005 with rumoured assistance from India and the CIA, has to date been suppressed by Pakistan’s military, by Pakistan’s intelligence agency, and by the many Taliban fighters that Pakistan hosts in Balochistan’s capital, Quetta. Human rights reports, which detail numerous instances of torture and the disappearances of some 5,000 Balochs, peg the number of internal war refugees in Balochistan at 240,000. Balochs, who consider the federal Pakistani govern-ment to be an occupying force, would welcome independence and freedom from their religiously militant Taliban oppressors.
Sindh (the S in “Pakistan”) is one of Pakistan’s two industrialized states, literate and economically developed. With a 7,000-year history, one of the oldest on Earth, Sindh also has its own language and customs, profound grievances with the federal government and a separatist movement. Like industrialized Punjab (the P in Pakistan), which likewise has its own language and customs, an independent Sindh would be a coherent country that could develop without the many contradictions that come of needing to live within an incoherent federal structure.
With the possible exception of Punjab, which is now the top dog in the Pakistani pack, the new nations to emerge from a breakup of Pakistan likely would soon become more prosperous as well as more free, leaving them better off. This breakup of the Pakistani federation would almost certainly be preferable from the West’s perspective as well.
Under the status quo, the monstrous hybrid that is Pakistan for decades has been one of the greatest forces for instability in the world. Apart from its role as a breeding ground for terrorism, Pakistan has been the single biggest proliferator of nuclear weapons technology, its A. Q. Khan network having made or helped make nukes available to North Korea, Iran, Libya and Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
In dealing with a Pakistan that has careened from one unstable government to another, most of them dictatorial and with no genuine national interest, the West has had no effective basis for diplomacy apart from bribes, aimed at securing short-term goals, in the form of foreign aid and military hardware. Once Pakistan is broken up into entities with true and distinct national interests, grievances that give rise to strife and terrorism would abate and the problems the West now faces in Pakistan would become more manageable.
Lawrence Solomon is managing director of Energy Probe Research Foundation and a founder of Probe International. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
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http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/267393 (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/267393)
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
ARCHIVE | LOG IN
MAY 17, 2011 4:00 A.M.
Adios, Pakistan
Pakistan’s internal politics are not our business. Its sheltering of major Islamist terrorists is.
“I don’t care if someone is giving us money; we are not a purchasable commodity. We cannot be bought. We can live in hunger, but we won’t compromise our national interests.”
– Bashir Bilour, a Pakistani senior minister, in angry response following an al-Qaeda reprisal for the American killing of Osama bin Laden
That quotation sums up in a nutshell our current impasse with Pakistan and why it is time to redefine our relationship. If one were to follow the counterfactual logic of Mr. Bilour, it was not in the national interests of Pakistan to arrest the mass murderer of 3,000 Americans living in sanctuary in the suburbs of its capital city. It was not in Pakistan’s interests because a vast segment of the Pakistani population favors the agenda of radical Islam, either condones or is indifferent to its jihadism, and feels that only American cash prevents the government from overtly supporting a preferable Islamist agenda. So Bilour is quite right: Pakistan should not be a “purchasable commodity,” and instead should feel free both to reject American aid and not to compromise its “national interests” by opposing radical Islam.
For years, we have heard ad nauseam both Pakistan’s excuses for why it acts so duplicitously and our own diplomatic community’s reasons why we, in response, cannot cut off aid.
The two narratives often run something like this:
The Pakistani Plea
(a) We suffer more from radical Islamic terrorism than do you, and in fact have experienced an upswing in violence because of our decade-long, post–9/11 alliance with you.
(b) The United States does not respect our sovereignty and violates both our land borders and our air space at will.
(c) There is no hope for Afghanistan without us; cut us off and we will cut you off from all logistics coming in and out of Afghanistan.
(d) Your aid — $3 to $4 billion a year — is not all that much.
(e) We are the only Islamic nuclear nation, and we deserve a respect commensurate with our strategic importance, especially given your use and abuse of us during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
(f) You already favor India, and you must show some modicum of diplomatic, political, and strategic balance.
American diplomatic, academic, and military experts tend to agree, and they usually offer us somewhat similar apologies.
The American Argument
(a) Yes, elements of the Pakistani government support terrorists — both al-Qaeda and the Taliban — who kill Americans and disrupt Afghanistan, but other, “good” elements of the military and government oppose these “rogue” actors and help us. So we are in a partnership with good Pakistanis against rogue Pakistanis.
(b) In truth, Pakistan is more duplicitous and untrustworthy in its alliances with Islamists than it is with the United States.
(c) A poor Pakistan has vast regions of wild borderlands and frontier that it simply cannot control; how can it be faulted for failing at what it cannot possibly do?
(d) Pakistan has the bomb; our aid, humiliating to us as it sometimes is portrayed, actually serves as valuable bribe money, ensuring that Pakistan does not “lend” a nuke or two to another illegitimate Islamic dictatorship or “lose” three or four bombs to assorted terrorists.
(e) The American public does not grasp, and cannot be fully told, of the myriad ways, informal and stealthy, that Pakistan helps us in the region.
All of these narratives have some merit but are ultimately unconvincing reasons to subsidize Pakistan.
First, we regret that Pakistan is a victim of domestic terrorism; but it antedated and will postdate our alliance, and is the wages of Pakistan’s own endemic corruption, religious intolerance, and government illegitimacy.
We can hardly respect a theoretical sovereignty that the Pakistani government itself admits it does not exercise. Are we to assume that Pakistan cannot enter its own borderlands, and so America cannot either, when those areas harbor killers of our citizens?
Americans do not like duplicitous allies, but they especially do not like subsidizing the duplicity. Almost every major Islamic terrorist with American blood on his hands whom our forces have captured or killed, from Khalid Sheik Mohammed to Osama bin Laden, was finally tracked down in Pakistan — often in upscale urban areas. As far as Afghanistan goes, Pakistan might do its worst, and we will try to do our best, and that is just the way it is, in this eternally bad/worse-case scenario.
There are all sorts of important nuclear powers that we do not subsidize. Russian Communism in Afghanistan was a greater threat to Pakistan than it was to the United States. Should we have given no aid then, or given aid and then stayed on? Either policy would have incurred Pakistani animosity. Again, as for nukes, it is not in Pakistan’s own interest to give nukes to anyone, unless it wishes current terrorism against it to include a nuclear component or prefers to lose its Islamic nuclear exclusivity. The United States would assume that any use of a nuclear device against America by an Islamic terrorist would ultimately be traced to Pakistan — and, of course, we would take the necessary countermeasures and retaliation. We would hope that deterrent message was by now well known.
India is democratic and pro-American; Pakistan is not. India is also huge, successful, and an ally in the war against jihadism. The question is not balance, but why we do not tilt farther toward India, a free-market economy that shares many of our own goals and aspirations. India is a natural and strategic ally; Pakistan is increasingly a natural and strategic belligerent.
As for our own rationales, consider the following rebuttals:
The good and bad elements of the Pakistani military and government are now so intertwined that even they cannot sort them out. What counts is not factions within Pakistan, but how they are expressed and play out. Among the worst setbacks in American foreign policy in the last twenty years were Pakistan’s acquisition of the bomb, and Pakistan’s hand in ensuring that bin Laden was largely safe for a decade. We care about those facts, not about Pakistan’s internal politics.
If Pakistan renounces American aid, it will nevertheless still incur terrorist attacks. Again, terrorism is endemic to Pakistan for reasons that transcend America.
Pakistan’s wild lands are useful to Pakistan, both providing deniability (e.g., “We can’t go there either”), and as an ongoing excuse for American aid. Terrorists get their own play yard, and their eternal presence justifies eternal billions in aid to Pakistani elites.
When we used to give aid to Pakistan it nevertheless still started work on the bomb; has resumption of that aid done much of anything to curtail its nuclear posturing?
The inability to explain the Pakistan alliance in any convincing fashion to the American public is not a reason to maintain the aid, but one to end it outright.
In conclusion, over the last two decades we have had all sorts of relationships with a nuclear and non-nuclear Pakistan: estrangement; an anti-Soviet, anti-Indian alliance; restored diplomatic relations; massive foreign aid; etc. We often change our approach; Pakistan stays the same.
What is the problem? The majority in Pakistan, so far as we can tell, is religiously intolerant, anti-American, and tribal. A plebiscite, fairly conducted, would result in a far more illiberal government than the Westernized megaphones that the often rigged and corrupt elections produce. Because elite Pakistani military and political leaders do not have real legitimacy, they must alternately disguise and lament, and then indulge and appease, the illiberal natures of their constituents.
What is the solution? Praise Pakistan. Avoid provocative statements. But by all means gradually and without fanfare prune back aid — say, at the rate of about $100 million a month. And then accept that in reaction Pakistan will more shamelessly hide terrorists, threaten nuclear proliferation, and destabilize the Karzai government, as it is freed to express its natural proclivities and “national interests” as a de facto enemy of the United States. Develop much closer relations with India. All of this will not make the situation in the region any better, but it will bring clarity, send a message that America is tired of treacherous allies — and save money. And in this ungodly mess, that at least counts for something.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.http://
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http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-osama-killed-most-pakistanis-grieve-for-osama-says-survey/20110517.htm
A majority of Pakistanis surveyed in a poll appeared to be aggrieved over the death of Osama bin Laden, with 51 per cent describing their emotions as "grief" though one-third said they were unconcerned by the incident.
The nationwide study was released by Gilani Foundation and carried out by Gallup Pakistan, the Pakistani affiliate of Gallup International. The poll covered 2,530 men and women in the rural and urban areas.
The poll was conducted among 2,530 men and women representatives of the adult population of Pakistan. They were distributed in the rural and urban areas of various provinces and districts and comprised a cross-section of various education, income, age and linguistic backgrounds.
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From a very knowledgeable blogger I know...
"The Islamists outside the PA (pak army) and the Islamists within the PA are increasingly becoming indistinguishable in their worldview. Certainly, the most influential section of the ulema (and therefore the society) is militant Deobandi, not the more circumspect Berelvi though the latter may still exist in absolutely larger numbers. I include Wahhabis and Ahl-e-Hadiths under the Deobandi classification. Not that the Berelvis are less jihadist or less fundamentalist (as Taseer's case demonstrated) in nature. In such a milieu, it is difficult to judge with any certainty when the PA would lose the nuclear weapons. The 'cradle-to-grave' vetting mechanism which the Strategic Planning Directorate (SPD) proudly claims to its American interlocutors or the multiple layers of security it claims to have in place for guarding the crown jewels, is as hollow as the claim by GoPak that PA is fighting against global terror. In a society that is overwhelmingly believing that 'Islam is in great danger' and conspiracies are being hatched against the Muslims, who can implement a comprehensive vetting process more common in civilized societies and guarantee its success ? How can the SPD even find men who do not subscribe to these falsehoods or jihadi ideologies ? Why should we even assume that the SPD itself is above board in these Islamist matters ? There has been a long list of jihadi Islamist Generals as DG of ISI or as Corps Commanders of the PA. The top leadership of PA may present a different face to the American interlocutors but the distrust of and anger against the infidel among the rest of PA is complete and cannot be reset. Why should we expect that the nukes may not fall into more adverse hands in Pakistan ? It is prudent to proceed on the assumption that it is indeed the case."
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:-o :-o :-o
Any comments on the following YA?
http://www.tnr.com/print/article/world/88652/pakistan-united-states-relations-islam-afghan-taliban-terrorism
Asymmetric Actors
Why Pakistan will never break with its Islamist allies.
Larry P. Goodson
May 19, 2011 | 12:00 am
Pakistan’s long conflict with India shapes its national security worldview. Far smaller and weaker than its neighbor, Pakistan compensates with far higher military spending and a larger Army than it can afford, creating a national security state. India is never far from the minds of Pakistan’s national leaders, but the differential in size is such that Pakistan has had to develop a strategic triad of national security tools in order to counter it.
First, Pakistan has a large and tactically proficient conventional Army, but of the four wars it has fought with India, it happens to have lost all of them. Second, it has an arsenal of perhaps 100 nuclear weapons, but these too are hardly useful because India is an immediate neighbor and many of its key military installations and formations are so close to the border that it would not be able to hit the Indian army without hitting itself. The shortcomings of these first two aforementioned tools have led Pakistan to rely heavily on a third one, of which the United States generally disapproves: an arsenal of asymmetric actors, variously known as irregulars, guerrillas, and/or terrorists. In the last decade, the United States has persuaded Pakistan to turn on some of these groups, but Pakistan’s perceived security needs have ensured that it still tolerates or actively cultivates the existence of others. And while the successful U.S. operation against bin Laden might provide Pakistan with the cover it needs to break decisively with al Qaeda, it will also likely lead the country to rely on its other militant groups even more.
Unlike its unsuccessful army or its unusable nuclear weapons, Pakistan’s irregulars have been used early, often, and successfully throughout the country’s history. Since creating an Islamic homeland for South Asia’s Muslims was the founding idea of Pakistan, some variant of Islamic ideology has frequently been the motivational principle for these irregulars. Initially, the Islamic ideology centered on the split between India and Pakistan, especially in the Kashmir region, but over time it has taken on additional dimensions. The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 deepened the sectarian divide within Pakistan and led to the creation of both Sunni and Shia militant groups within Pakistani society. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, also in 1979, combined with Pakistan’s simultaneous internal process of Islamization to beget the Afghan mujahideen and, eventually, the Taliban, which Pakistan supported as an instrument of its foreign policy right up to (and even a little beyond) September 11.
Operation Enduring Freedom, which began with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, complicated issues for Pakistan. After years of developing, supporting, and using Islamist irregulars as a foreign policy tool, Pakistan had to choose whether to abandon those irregulars and side with the United States, which intended to attack the Islamists, or stay with the Islamists and be attacked by the United States. The second choice was unthinkable, given the worldwide condemnation of al Qaeda in the wake of the September 11 attacks, but giving up its most effective national security tool was also deeply unappealing. As a result, Pakistan made the obvious choice to modulate its efforts against Islamist irregulars, going after some while cultivating others, based on a firmly established and highly justified belief that Americans do not really understand Pakistan and will not stay in the region for the long haul anyway.
Here is how it works. Pakistan’s Islamist universe contains five major types of groups. (Of course, it’s not really that simple, as there is substantial cross-pollination and overlap among them all, but as rough categories the distinctions are still useful). The first groups are Kashmiri in orientation, or anti-Indian, and they are primarily motivated by a desire to free the area of Kashmir that is occupied by India. The most well-known of these groups are Harakat-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Muhammad, and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. The second groups are sectarian, like the Sunni Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Shia Sipah-e-Muhammad Pakistan and Tehrik-e-Jafaria Pakistan. Third are the Afghan Taliban, who crossed into Pakistan in the face of American military pressure in late 2001 and 2002, just as their forebears did in the 1980s. Today, the remnants of the original Taliban leadership are based in and around Quetta and are known as the Quetta Shura Taliban, while the Haqqani Network operates out of North Waziristan, and the Hezb-i-Islami faction headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is based in Bajaur. The fourth group is comprised of international jihadis like al Qaeda, who also fled into Pakistan in 2001 and 2002. Finally, a fifth and extremely problematic group for Pakistan are the Pakistani Taliban, like the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and Tehrik-Nafaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi, which have emerged since September 11 to challenge the legitimacy of the Pakistani state.
This last category of groups is the problem, in the eyes of Pakistan, as they have declared war on the state itself. Thus, although these groups are descended from the other organizations, share some similar ideological views, and frequently cross membership and otherwise cooperate, the Pakistani government has attempted to fight the Pakistani Taliban, at times sharing intelligence about them with the United States, which has attacked these groups from across the border in Afghanistan. Likewise, the sectarian militants are problematic for Pakistan since most of their attacks happen in metropolitan areas and always produce tit-for-tat responses, but government efforts to crack down on these groups are thwarted by sectarian and communitarian loyalties within the police forces and local communities, not by a malign effort on the part of federal government officials to allow those groups to continue to murder.
On the other hand, the anti-Indian groups and the Afghan Taliban are important instruments of state policy, and Pakistan’s national government has every desire to maintain and utilize them in order to project force and counter Indian influence on both its Afghan and Indian borders. Al Qaeda and the international jihadis, for their part, have been the most troublesome group for Pakistan to categorize, since they often serve as the ideological inspiration for the other groups, but the most important targets for the Americans. That is, they could not be easily attacked, but they also could not be easily left alone. The solution Pakistan arrived at was to attempt to disconnect al Qaeda from the other groups, defang their operational capability, and occasionally cooperate (albeit very quietly) in the capture or killing of some al Qaeda operatives.
The killing of bin Laden has the potential to change Pakistan’s strategy, but not the fundamental national security reality that has underpinned it. Pakistan still needs its favored Islamist irregulars, while it will still fight, sideline, or actively ignore its less-favored militant Islamic groups. Bin Laden’s death weakens al Qaeda tremendously, as Ayman Al-Zawahiri and the rest of the second level of leadership are undoubtedly scrambling to stay alive and cannot concentrate on operational matters or inspirational leadership. The factors that, prior to bin Laden’s death, constrained Pakistan from attacking al Qaeda more seriously probably still exist, but greater American success in going after the group can be expected and explained away by virtue of the large intelligence cache recovered by the Americans in Abbottabad. It might be possible, therefore, for Pakistan to make a cleaner break with al Qaeda as a byproduct of the bin Laden killing.
But here’s the catch: If bin Laden’s death means Pakistan can perhaps better turn the screws on al Qaeda, it will also likely cause it to rely on its other Islamist irregulars even more. The reason for this is that bin Laden being alive and on the loose meant the United States still had unfinished business in the region, but his death—when combined with American war-weariness—is already emboldening proponents of the “counterterrorism is enough” strategy, who argue the U.S. has no reason to continue a full-fledged occupation of Afghanistan. An American withdrawal from the region—something that is already very much anticipated by Pakistan—has now become more likely, with an accelerated timetable for that withdrawal also possible. As a result, Pakistan will feel even more need to cultivate its Afghan Taliban and Kashmiri groups in order to thwart the possibility of a pro-Indian government in Afghanistan, as well as continue to pursue its interests in Kashmir. The Americans, meanwhile, might rely on Pakistan as an essential conduit in supplying its war effort in Afghanistan—some 75 percent of U.S. supplies destined for Afghanistan cross Pakistani territory—but to Pakistan, the United States remains a far-away, fair-weather friend. In the wake of bin Laden, in other words, expect Pakistan to stand by the third leg of its national security triad—the one that has worked for it in the past and promises to still be there in the future.
Larry P. Goodson is a Professor of Middle East Studies at the U.S. Army War College and author of the forthcoming book, Pakistan: Understanding the Dark Side of the Moon, to be published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2012. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Gov
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The US govt needs to think about the root cause of Pak-India conflict, its Kashmir. Attempts to gain strategic depth in Afghanistan, support of terror groups to wage war in India (who are now expanding to the western countries), waging jihad, development of nukes, all of these things relate to their quest to wrest Kashmir from India.
The legal situation wrt to Kashmir is quite clear, at Indian independence the ruler of Jammu (hindu dominated), Kashmir (muslim dominated), and Leh (Tibetan dominated) areas of "Kashmir", joined the Indian Union, along with tens of other princely states (who are part of the Indian Union). Pakistan which was formed as a muslim state, did not like this, and quite soon sent in irregulars and occupied parts of Kashmir (Pak occupied Kashmir). The point is that inspite of the formation of East (Bangladesh) and west pak (current Pak), a large population of muslims still choose to remain in India, so Pak has no right per se on Kashmir, just because its a muslim majority state.
After losing 4 wars (India has never started any), losing half their country (Bangladesh), suffering severe economic hardship, lack in development, rise of terrorism due to failed policies of supporting terror, most pakistanis know that they can never win back Kashmir. No Indian govt can give up Kashmir, the population would go ballistic. Yet the pakistani army living in la la land, believes it can, (a few years back Musharraf tried the Kargil misadventure). Paki army generals are delusional, because the US has always supported them, always asked India to bend over backwards to accomodate the purelanders. If the US and the world starts to understand the facts, and what can be changed and what is not even negotiable, Pakis will get the message.
Once the purelanders recognize that Kashmir is not even on the table, Pak has no reason to waste money on nukes, building a large army, or supporting terrors groups who have now graduated to threatening the US and Europe. India is no longer the economic basket case it was in the 60's and 70's. The current generation of senior Indian leaders, eg prime minister Man Mohan Singh was born in Pak (so he has a soft corner for Pak) will pass away soon, the new generation of Indian leaders dont have any sympathies or birth ties to pak, so one can be sure of a more aggressive Indian response. Interestingly, Musharraf (was born in India!) and ruled Pak.!.
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Meanwhile, Pak runs into the waiting arms of China.
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Meanwhile, Pak runs into the waiting arms of China.
And India into US arms....so its a delicate dance. If China gets too close to Pak, India gets closer to US, which pisses of China. The main thing holding back India from America is the american propensity to support Pak. I think the Indo-US alliance will get stronger as China strengthens. The Osama affair has irreversibly damaged relations between US-Pak...its like infidelity in marriage, very hard to overcome.
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Alliance with India makes a lot of sense to me.
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I think Pakistan will not enjoy it's new relationship with China once the newness fades. China is a hard taskmaster and much less forthcoming with the bribes for the Army/ISI.
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http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/05/09/should-the-us-cut-off-aid-to-pakistan/how-to-reduce-pakistans-leverage (http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/05/09/should-the-us-cut-off-aid-to-pakistan/how-to-reduce-pakistans-leverage)
Dont agree with everything below, but the highlighted part is quite insightful.
How to Reduce Pakistan's Leverage
Updated May 10, 2011, 07:47 PM
George Perkovich is the director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Aid is not the only independent variable that affects Pakistan. Other things the U.S. says and does are important, too.
If the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, it would greatly reduce our reliance on the Pakistani security establishment.
For example, the United States’ effort to help India become a global power, including by building up its nuclear and advanced conventional armories, makes the Pakistani establishment ever more angry and distrustful of the United States. The deployment of unaccountable mercenaries like Raymond Davis turns average Pakistanis against the U.S. These and other U.S. policies, including drone attacks in the tribal areas, may be tactically necessary because Pakistan’s own security establishment will not do its best to counter terrorists acting against India and Afghanistan. India’s growing power and importance inevitably will make the U.S. and others seek favorable terms of cooperation with it.
But aid combined with these other U.S. policies clearly has not changed the Pakistani military’s obsession with contesting India. There is nothing India or the United States can realistically do that will change this self-destructive obsession because the problem is India’s existence itself.
The pattern in U.S.-Pakistan relations merely repeats mutual frustrations and failings since the early 1950s. The U.S. always treats Pakistan as a means to achieve a larger end -- preventing the export of terrorism from Afghanistan now -- and Pakistan uses the U.S. to build capabilities to fight India. In fact, Pakistan is more important than Afghanistan, and too important to instrumentalize.
The U.S. would do less harm, and perhaps more good, by seeking the most friendly possible end of the symbiotic relationship with the Pakistani Army and intelligence services. By moving decisively to negotiate conditions for the withdrawal of most U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, the U.S. would greatly reduce its reliance on the Pakistani security establishment and that establishment’s leverage on Washington. The U.S. could then concentrate on Pakistan’s civilian political-economic development, offering assistance only in and as the Pakistani state itself is clearly committed to combating terrorism and promoting internal development.
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There is nothing India or the United States can realistically do that will change this self-destructive obsession because the problem is India’s existence itself.
Funny, reminds me of another country that surrounding countries have a self-destructive obsession about because of it's existance. Must be an aspect of a unique ontology or something.
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YA, in the past you have shared with me and I have posted here writings by Indian intel folks based around the idea of dissembling Pakistan altogether: Pashtunistan (peeling the western half off from Afghanistan), Balochistan, settling border issues in favor of India, and destroying/taking Pak's nuke program. (Well maybe the last one is my idea :-D ) or something like that.
As I have been posting here for a couple of years now (based in part upon the influence of materials which you have shared with me) our Afpakia policy is utterly incoherent.
When you think outside the box, what do you think?
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I wish I had the answers to the hard questions you pose. The simple answer is to not continue doing what we have been doing, since that is not working. So what have we been doing: We have been paying Pak for not sending terrorists over to the US. We have been killing of some terrorists (eg TTP) who are against the Pak state and the US, but not doing much to the haqqani group and others who support pak, but kill Americans. This approach has not yielded any significant benefits, because Pak will not kill the golden goose. If they kill all the terrorists that the US wants, then the moolah will stop coming, and it would weaken Pak vis a vis their state policy of terror against India. The new approach should therefore rely on imploding pakistan. As multiple other authors have correctly noted, Pak is not about to give up its "non-state actors".
I have a simple proposal, of which only one step (#2) is difficult, but not impossible. I am sure there are some in the US govt, who have a better understanding of those issues. If for some reason, step 2 is impractical, all of the other steps can still be accomplished quite easily, even without denuking Pak....what puzzles me is why is the US govt not doing it and getting some brownie points, while extricating itself from a messy situation.
1. Kashmir: Recognize that Kashmir belongs to India, or at the very least that the US will not support Pak's quest to get it. This can be done quite simply by a speech by the POTUS and change of official US policy. This will demoralize the purelanders army, to start fixing their internal affairs. The immediate benefit would be that India will be drawn closer to the US sphere of influence and against China.
2. Another important aspect is control of Pak's nukes. Pak is in many instances like N.Korea, punches above its weight, because of its nukes. Take away the nukes and the problem goes away. If the US wanted to, that could be done.
The nukes were not previously considered important, because they only threatened India, but now with the jihadis pushing towards europe and the usa, they are raising concerns in the west. Another reason to take them away, that is less well recognized is that the nukes are not solely for the use of purelanders, but they belong to the ummah. It is not inconceivable that some hard line paki general decides to punish the great satan, or little satan for that matter. Infact, on balance the risk of a rogue nuclear attack on India is now less, because the hatred against the US is more than that against India. I think its in American interests to denuke them. With the nukes gone, Pak will behave, otherwise India will finish them off and partition them (Pashtoonistan/Afghanistan, as well as free balochistan)
3. Derecognize the Durrand line: Instead to recognize Pashtoon and afghan aspirations. This may be the best way to make peace with the taliban and gain their support long term. Remember, the Durrand line was arbitrarily created by the british, it never existed for centuries before that. Were the US to support this, the entire Afghan nation would support the US. AQ cannot survive, if the locals dont support them. With NWFP/FATA under pashtoon hands, the sanctuaries in pak go away.
4. With the nukes and NWFP/FATA gone, next would be Balochistan. Balochistan was a princely state which was annexed after they had declared independence. As pak unravels, Balochistan will gain independence. Helping the baloch gain independence will also send a message to Iran. Sindh is not a "pure" state, it will likely join the Baloch or India, since its made up of "immigrants" from India. Only the much weakened Pakistani Punjab (pakjab) will remain as the core.
Its important to complete the above steps, in a controlled manner, because Pak is moving towards that fate in an uncontrolled manner.
What I have not discussed is how to denuke Pakistan...since I dont know enough about their nukes.
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Supposedly, there is a contingency plan to de-nuke Pakistan. Is it still viable? I dunno.....
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I heard it isn't viable any more , , ,
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The Paki nukes are the elephant in the room. Why would it be difficult to denuke pak. Yes a direct military strike on pak will be messy to say the least and not feasible politically. But there are other non-military ways to achieve the same goals. I think its worth thinking along those lines. The broad principle should be to weaken Pak territorially and increase the cost of keeping the nukes.
eg What is the impact of stopping US aid to pak and simultaneously getting rid of the Durrand line. At first glance, it would appear that China will replace the US as the big money donor, but with the Durrand line gone, China could no longer fund Pak without pissing off the pashtoons. Even the Haqqani group would prefer an enlarged Afghanistan. As Pak loses territory and aid dries up, it will no longer be feasible for them to maintain their nukes. With NWFP/FATA gone, other provinces namely Balochistan, followed by Sindh will want to be free. Having lost territory a weakened pak army will be forced to give up nukes.
I realize that some of the consequences might be unpredictable...but these need to be gamed.
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Leaving the Pak Army/ISI cartel in place is a mistake, one I think our current leadership is making.
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If the ISI/Army generals, keeper of the crown jewels lose power..Pak is in essence one step away from being denuked. The civilian govt in Pak is not enamoured with nuclear weapons, as they see that it has cost them their development.
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"If the ISI/Army generals, keeper of the crown jewels lose power..Pak is in essence one step away from being denuked."
This seems quite pertinent!
Any thoughts on how to go about disempowering ISI/Army generals?
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTM6gyHxbo&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Here's an interesting interview with SSS of atimes, who is well connected with AQ and Taliban...he makes a few interesting points, in the wake of OBL's killing
1. Parts of the paki army may mutiny, as they are mad at the generals. Hopefully, it wont be the section dealing with nukes.
2. The taliban will be supportive of AQ, in the post OBL world, because they are a "courteous people"...referring to pashtoonwali, code of conduct.
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http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/23/loud-explosion-heard-near-paf-museum.html (http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/23/loud-explosion-heard-near-paf-museum.html)
This is big news....so soon after the SSS interview. Interesting, that western media is mostly ignoring it. Looks like beard on beard type attack. Loss of two P3C Orions is a big loss for the pakis, apart from the idea that its likely that the terrorists had inside help...First, the US caused a lot of H&D (honor & dignity) loss with the OBL raid, now the military has been caught napping. I would be very surprised if Kayani and Pasha can keep their jobs...ofcourse they can always mount an attack on India to relieve the loss of H&D.
KARACHI: Militants stormed one of Pakistan’s main military bases in the country’s largest city late Sunday, triggering explosions and gunbattles three weeks after the US killing of Osama bin Laden. According to DawnNews there could be 10 to 12 attackers still inside the base as at least six reported to be dead amid terrorist’s attack.
DawnNews at 03:30 am reported that according to the Pakistan Navy’s spokesman, Commodore Irfan ul Haq, four Pakistan Navy officials and a Rangers soldier were martyred in the attack, while at least seven Navy officials were injured as well.
Two P3C aircrafts were also destroyed during the attack, he added.
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Is it possible that US forces did a covert op?
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3914bd36-8467-11e0-afcb-00144feabdc0.html
Pakistan turns to China for naval base
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad and Kathrin Hille in Beijing
Published: May 22 2011 13:22 | Last updated: May 22 2011 19:46
Pakistan has asked China to build a naval base at its south-western port of Gwadar and expects the Chinese navy to maintain a regular presence there, a plan likely to alarm both India and the US.
“We have asked our Chinese brothers to please build a naval base at Gwadar,” Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar, Pakistan’s defence minister, told the Financial Times, confirming that the request was conveyed to China during a visit last week by Yusuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s prime minister.
Hitherto, China has shied away from moves that might alienate the US and Beijing’s neighbours, such as India, Malaysia and Indonesia. “China’s rise is a beneficial force for peace and we have no hegemonic ambitions,” said a Chinese official familiar with Beijing’s security policy. (GM-These are not the droids you are looking for.)
But Christopher Yung, senior research fellow at National Defense University in Washington, said in a recent paper “the nature and degree of China’s access to out-of-area bases will be the ultimate indication and warning” of its eventual intention to become a global military power. A Pentagon official said: “We have questions and concerns about this development and [China’s] intentions. But that is why we believe it is important to have a healthy, stable and continuous military-to-military relationship.”
A senior Pakistani official familiar with Sino-Pakistani discussions on naval co-operation said: “The naval base is something we hope will allow Chinese vessels to regularly visit in [the] future and also use the place for repair and maintenance of their fleet in the [Indian Ocean region].”
Such a foothold would be the first overseas location offering support to the People’s Liberation Army navy for future out-of-area missions and so would be likely to reinforce international concerns over Beijing’s longer-term military ambitions.
“This will definitely be a ‘game changer’ in China’s defence and security relationships,” said Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, a south Asia security expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The construction of a naval base in Gwadar would provide its own ships and possibly submarines with ‘permanent’ basing rights, along with the possibility of regular patrols and exercises in the Arabian Sea to protect the growing number of Chinese-flagged oil tankers traversing the region to meet its increasing energy demands from the Gulf region.”
As anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden have made the PLA Navy aware that it lacks port access for restocking with food and water, swapping staff and maintenance, the force is lobbying for the construction of foreign bases.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/24/china-to-us-hands-off-pakistan/
Barack Obama says that if the US has another chance to get a high-value terrorist target like Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, he’ll make the same call as he did earlier this month. Not so fast, says China. According to a report from India a few days ago, China has warned that an “attack” on Pakistan will be taken as an attack on China
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"China has warned that an “attack” on Pakistan will be taken as an attack on China"
Just thinking aloud here, but maybe we can cut out the middle man.
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There is always value in calling when people are bluffing. Might undercut "regional superpower" ambitions a bit.
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Yup. Just look at all that spare bandwidth we have.
Any predictions on how BO will respond?
This discussion might better belong on the US-China thread , , ,
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The United States and the Jihadist Strategy for Pakistan
On Monday, Pakistani security forces secured a key naval aviation base in Karachi after a 17-hour standoff with a team of jihadist operatives. Details remain sketchy of how this group, composed of as few as six and as many as 20 militants, was able to make its way into the high-security facility to destroy one U.S. supplied P-3C Orion anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft and damage a second. What is clear, however, is that this latest attack is among the most significant to have targeted the country’s military establishment since the jihadist insurgency intensified in 2007.
The attack comes within three weeks of the U.S. unilateral military operation that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden at a compound a mere three-hour drive from the capital. The discovery that the al Qaeda leader had been residing in a house for years at walking distance from the country’s military academy reinforced long-held international suspicions that elements within the Pakistani military-intelligence complex were sheltering al Qaeda’s apex leadership. The attack on the navy in Karachi shapes another related perception that the country’s security forces are unable to protect their own assets from jihadist attacks.
“Ironically, the Pakistani security establishment, which cultivated Islamist militants for its foreign policy objectives, is now the only thing standing in the way of the country descending into a jihadist anarchy.”
We have a paradoxical situation in which enemies of the state are being protected by elements within the security establishment, which itself as an institution is the target of the same jihadists. This warped situation works well for the strategic objectives of al Qaeda and its allies within the South Asian nation. Pakistani jihadists and their al Qaeda allies are happy to see the United States and the international community increase pressure on Islamabad and more important, engage in increased unilateral operations inside the country due to the lack of confidence in Islamabad’s intent and/or capability to deal with the situation on its own.
The ultimate jihadist dream is to create the circumstances in which the United States invades Pakistan either because of the fear that the Pakistanis have become weak to the point that they are unable to contain the jihadist threat, or worse, that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were in danger of falling into the hands of radical forces. Each attack the jihadists launch against Pakistani security forces is designed to augment the American perception of threat. Demonstrating that the jihadists have significantly penetrated the country’s security organs further shapes this dynamic.
A U.S. invasion of Pakistan is the ideal outcome for the jihadists because they know that short-term American goals may undermine the state, but the long-term geopolitical interest of the United States in Pakistan is a strong Pakistan. So, they are happy to settle for increasing U.S. unilateral operations in the country. These, the jihadists hope, would help increase the anti-American sentiment and aggravate the mutual mistrust between Washington and Islamabad. The more the United States becomes aggressive toward Pakistan, the more it undermines the Pakistani state and its ability to govern a country that has already been significantly weakened by deteriorating political, security and economic conditions.
The jihadists have never been able to overthrow a sitting government in any Muslim country because they lack the capabilities to do so. But a template exists in the form of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in the mid-1990s when the country was in a state of chaos after years of civil war. The jihadists use this model wherever they operate — Iraq, Yemen, Somalia — with the goal of gradually eroding the incumbent state.
A key catalyst in this regard is U.S. military intervention, which from the jihadists’ point of view cannot be totally dismissed in the Pakistani context. Increasing U.S. action in Pakistan or pressure on Islamabad could lead to rifts within the military-intelligence complex — the one entity that stands in the way of jihadists’ being able to take over the state. In other words, the jihadist attacks on their own are not capable of bringing down the Pakistani state, and al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban are aware of this.
Therefore, these attacks are designed to exacerbate fears that Pakistan is a failing state and gradually compel the United States to increase its overt and unilateral military and intelligence footprint in the country. The Sept. 11 attacks were designed to achieve the same goal and force the United States to invade Saudi Arabia. Washington didn’t take the bait and instead sent forces into Afghanistan and Iraq, thwarting the jihadist strategy.
A decade later, however, the jihadists seem to be creating the kind of circumstances in which the United States is slowly being pushed into Pakistan. Ironically, the Pakistani security establishment, which historically has cultivated Islamist militants for its foreign policy objectives, is now the only force standing in the way of the country descending into a jihadist anarchy. For the jihadists, the most effective way of weakening the Pakistani state is to play upon American fears and force it into a country of 180 million people.
From the point of view of al Qaeda and its allies, Pakistan, along with Afghanistan, would make for one large Talibanistan, which would have catastrophic implications for the region and the world at large. Thus, there is a method to the jihadist madness in Pakistan — to get the United States to help them achieve what they can’t on their own. Therefore, bin Laden’s death, at the hands of American forces engaged in an unprecedented unilateral action on Pakistani soil, may have helped the jihadist cause in a way that the life of the al Qaeda founder could not.
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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME27Df06.html (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME27Df06.html)
Al-Qaeda had warned of Pakistan strike
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
This is the first article in a two-part report.
ISLAMABAD - Al-Qaeda carried out the brazen attack on PNS Mehran naval air station in Karachi on May 22 after talks failed between the navy and al-Qaeda over the release of naval officials arrested on suspicion of al-Qaeda links, an Asia Times Online investigation reveals.
Pakistani security forces battled for 15 hours to clear the naval base after it had been stormed by a handful of well-armed militants.
At least 10 people were killed and two United States-made P3-C
Orion surveillance and anti-submarine aircraft worth US$36 million each were destroyed before some of the attackers escaped through a cordon of thousands of armed forces.
An official statement placed the number of militants at six, with four killed and two escaping. Unofficial sources, though, claim there were 10 militants with six getting free. Asia Times Online contacts confirm that the attackers were from Ilyas Kashmiri's 313 Brigade, the operational arm of al-Qaeda.
Three attacks on navy buses in which at least nine people were killed last month were warning shots for navy officials to accept al-Qaeda's demands over the detained suspects.
The May 2 killing in Pakistan of Osama bin Laden spurred al-Qaeda groups into developing a consensus for the attack in Karachi, in part as revenge for the death of their leader and also to deal a blow to Pakistan's surveillance capacity against the Indian navy.
The deeper underlying motive, though, was a reaction to massive internal crackdowns on al-Qaeda affiliates within the navy.
Volcano of militancy
Several weeks ago, naval intelligence traced an al-Qaeda cell operating inside several navy bases in Karachi, the country's largest city and key port.
"Islamic sentiments are common in the armed forces," a senior navy official told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity as he is not authorized to speak to the media.
"We never felt threatened by that. All armed forces around the world, whether American, British or Indian, take some inspiration from religion to motivate their cadre against the enemy. Pakistan came into existence on the two-nation theory that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations and therefore no one can separate Islam and Islamic sentiment from the armed forces of Pakistan," the official said.
"Nonetheless, we observed an uneasy grouping on different naval bases in Karachi. While nobody can obstruct armed forces personnel for rendering religious rituals or studying Islam, the grouping [we observed] was against the discipline of the armed forces. That was the beginning of an intelligence operation in the navy to check for unscrupulous activities."
The official explained the grouping was against the leadership of the armed forces and opposed to its nexus with the United States against Islamic militancy. When some messages were intercepted hinting at attacks on visiting American officials, intelligence had good reason to take action and after careful evaluation at least 10 people - mostly from the lower cadre - were arrested in a series of operations.
"That was the beginning of huge trouble," the official said.
Those arrested were held in a naval intelligence office behind the chief minister's residence in Karachi, but before proper interrogation could begin, the in-charge of the investigation received direct threats from militants who made it clear they knew where the men were being detained.
The detainees were promptly moved to a safer location, but the threats continued. Officials involved in the case believe the militants feared interrogation would lead to the arrest of more of their loyalists in the navy. The militants therefore made it clear that if those detained were not released, naval installations would be attacked.
It was clear the militants were receiving good inside information as they always knew where the suspects were being detained, indicating sizeable al-Qaeda infiltration within the navy's ranks. A senior-level naval conference was called at which an intelligence official insisted that the matter be handled with great care, otherwise the consequences could be disastrous. Everybody present agreed, and it was decided to open a line of communication with al-Qaeda.
Abdul Samad Mansoori, a former student union activist and now part of 313 brigade, who originally hailed from Karachi but now lives in the North Waziristan tribal area was approached and talks begun. Al-Qaeda demanded the immediate release of the officials without further interrogation. This was rejected.
The detainees were allowed to speak to their families and were well treated, but officials were desperate to interrogate them fully to get an idea of the strength of al-Qaeda's penetration. The militants were told that once interrogation was completed, the men would be discharged from the service and freed.
Al-Qaeda rejected these terms and expressed its displeasure with the attacks on the navy buses in April.
These incidents pointed to more than the one al-Qaeda cell intelligence had tracked in the navy. The fear now was that if the problem was not addressed, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supply lines could face a new threat. NATO convoys are routinely attacked once they begin the journey from Karachi to Afghanistan; now they could be at risk in Karachi port. Americans who often visit naval facilities in the city would also be in danger.
Therefore, another crackdown was conducted and more people were arrested. Those seized had different ethnic backgrounds. One naval commando came from South Waziristan's Mehsud tribe and was believed to have received direct instructions from Hakeemullah Mehsud, the chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban). Others were from Punjab province and Karachi, the capital of Sindh province.
After Bin Laden was killed by American Navy Seals in Abbottabad, 60 kilometers north of Islamabad, militants decided the time was ripe for major action.
Within a week, insiders at PNS Mehran provided maps, pictures of different exit and entry routes taken in daylight and at night, the location of hangers and details of likely reaction from external security forces.
As a result, the militants were able to enter the heavily guarded facility where one group targeted the aircraft, a second group took on the first strike force and a third finally escaped with the others providing covering fire. Those who stayed behind were killed.
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Interesting article..
http://www.newsinsight.net/archivedebates/nat2.asp?recno=2147 (http://www.newsinsight.net/archivedebates/nat2.asp?recno=2147)
Why Mehran
Pakistan's India obsession blinds it to the threat from caliphate forces, says N.V.Subramanian.
25 May 2011: Three complex and inter-related narratives drive terrorism in Pakistan. And the Pakistani Taliban attack on the Karachi naval base that killed a dozen commandoes and destroyed two US-supplied Orions could mark the beginning of the end of Pakistan and its replacement by an Islamist caliphate with nuclear weapons. The reasoning for this goes thus:
The so-called "mujahideen" war against the Soviet Union beginning in the late-Seventies marked a phase of the most unity between the terrorists and its state backers, the US, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and (quietly) China. Once the Soviets left Afghanistan, the Americans turned their back, the Saudis patronized the Taliban if only to keep terrorism away from home, and Pakistan hoped to replicate the "mujahideen" experiment in Jammu and Kashmir.
The Pakistan army and ISI have wanted strategic depth in Afghanistan against India, even though this makes little sense after Pakistan became a declared nuclear power in 1998. Control of Afghanistan for Pakistan also means muting opposition of the Pashtuns to the Durand Line which they correctly believe divides a greater Pakhtunistan between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan and the United States created and financed the Taliban to take over Afghanistan from the "mujahideen" who fell out with one another once in power. The US needed a stable Afghanistan to pipe out hydrocarbons from Central Asia for final evacuation from a Pakistani warm-water port. Pakistan had strategic interests in Afghanistan in relation to India and the Pashtun question as explained before. The only opposition to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan came from the Northern Alliance backed by Russia, Iran, Central Asian republics and India.
Nine-eleven changed Pakistan's cozy equations in Afghanistan. The US war in Afghanistan deprived the Taliban/ Al-Qaeda of state power. With the assistance of the Pakistan army and ISI, their leaders were settled in FATA and later in Quetta. Pakistan was forced to ally in the US war because otherwise it had been warned of being "bombed back to the Stone Age".
FATA has always been a lawless area. Its fiercely Islamist tribes are very independent. As a launch pad for the Afghan "mujahideen" war, it became a melting pot for jihadis of several nations. In the thirty-two years since the start of the "mujahideen" war, a new generation of jihadis has grown on the ideologies, teachings and experiences of the Al-Qaeda and Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban is a product of that generation.
Like the Afghan Taliban/ Al-Qaeda want a Sharia state of Afghanistan, so the Pakistani Taliban dream and demand the same of Pakistan. After the Lal Masjid attack in which their young adherents were killed by the Pakistan army, the Pakistani Taliban views it inimically. Pakistan's collaboration with US drone attacks in FATA and the death of Osama Bin Laden in an American raid have furthered the enmity. While a US drone attack killed the Pakistan Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistan army made him a prized target.
Pakistan's second terrorism narrative is directed against Jammu and Kashmir. The late Pakistani military dictator, Zia-ul-Haq, set in motion plans for that. When J and K's own insurgency sputtered out, Pakistan backed Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorism, which was independent of whatever else was going on in FATA and Afghanistan, apart from the shared terror-training infrastructure.
Pakistan's third terror narrative related to Indian interests in Afghanistan. Obsessed about Indian action on two fronts, Pakistan launched suicide attacks on India's embassy and mission personnel in Kabul and targeted its development projects. The ISI has instigated these attacks using the terrorist forces of the Haqqani Taliban.
The thing to understand is that Pakistan wants control of all these disparate terrorism narratives to suit its ends in Afghanistan and against India. The Lashkar-e-Toiba could be amenable for the moment to work under the overall guidance of Pakistan's state terror institutions like the army and ISI. But the FATA/ Quetta Shura Islamists have their own plans.
The Afghan Taliban wants Afghanistan preferably without the involvement of the ISI, which it hates. The Al-Qaeda will return to Afghanistan as guests of the Taliban if the US leaves, which does not appear immediately imminent. The Pakistani Taliban wants a Pakistani caliphate eventually joined to Afghanistan.
The Pakistan army and ISI believe they can continue to calibrate terrorism to win their aims. But the US is tired of Pakistani terrorism/ perfidy in Afghanistan. The American killing of Bin Laden has been a game-changer. Pakistan can no longer calibrate terrorism to extract aid, concessions and support from all parties simultaneously, including the US and the terrorists.
It is in this background that the Pakistani Taliban attack on the naval base must be seen. Caliphate forces are attacking Pakistan. Their aim is to weaken the Pakistan army and destroy its confidence about protecting Pakistan state interests. The destruction of two Orions in a heavily guarded base is no small matter.
The caliphate forces are pushing for the tide to turn, when more in the Pakistan military/ ISI and atomic establishments will switch sides to them. But of course the Pakistan army and ISI with their endless obsession about India do not read the writing on the wall. One more successful attack such as on the Mehran base will cripple the Pakistan military.
India must be ready and prepared to face any eventuality, including a nuclear incident within Pakistan triggered by terrorists.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, www.NewsInsight.net, and writes internationally on strategic affairs. He has authored two novels, University of Love (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) and Courtesan of Storms (Har-Anand, Delhi). Email: envysub@gmail.com.
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Must say I had not thought of asking Pakis for war reparations, he certainly makes a good case..http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nake-m-kamrany/pakistans-duplicity-is-th_b_862950.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nake-m-kamrany/pakistans-duplicity-is-th_b_862950.html)
As a matter of retribution, the United Sates has several options when duplicity is firmly ascertained via bin Laden tapes and computer files.
1. Take out Pakistan's atomic facilities, thereby neutralizing its ability to detonate atomic weapons in any future conflicts.
2. Dismantle the ISI apparatus and arrest its leadership for crimes against humanity, including judicial criminal prosecutions that have caused the death and dismemberment of thousands of American soldiers and Afghan soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan. But for Pakistan's duplicity, the United States and Afghanistan would not have suffered sustained casualties inside Afghanistan. ISI of Pakistan was the ring leader of a criminal conspiracy whose members included bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, the Jalaluddin Huqqani group, the Mullah Mohammad Omar and the Afghani Taliban, and the Gulbuddin Hekmatyar group.
3. Impose war reparation upon Pakistan equal to the present and future value of the following: Work-life earnings loss and the value of life of every American and Afghan soldier and civilian killed since 2001, and the present value and future value of every American and Afghan soldier and civilian who sustained partial or total disabilities for the remainder of their life, plus the military and civilian expenditures of the U.S. war in Afghanistan since 2001 (had Pakistan turned over bin Laden to the U.S. in 2001, there would have been no U.S. war involvement in Afghanistan. Plus $20 billion -- the amount of assistance that Pakistan has received from the United Sates since 2001, plus punitive damages for bad faith.
4. Dissect Pakistan into three smaller states -- Baluchistan for the Baluchi separatists including the city of Quetta, Pashtunistan for the Pashtun separatists covering the Pashtun tribal areas including Peshawar and the border areas, and Pakistan proper including Lahore and the Karachi areas. The ongoing domestic dissent in the Pashtun and Baluchi areas are rooted in the exploitative and discriminatory practices of the ruling class of Pakistan -- the Lahore elite -- who have alienated those groups.
5. Create a strong civilian government in Pakistan by dismantling the ISI, reducing Pakistan's military prowess and supporting the educated and secular population. Pakistan has a strong judiciary and press at this time. A strong civilian government is needed to implement democratic institutions and processes.
6. At a minimum, Pakistan must turn over to the United States Gulbuddin Hekmatyar from the Peshawar area, Jalaluddin Haqqani from the northern Waziristan area and Mullah Mohammad Omar from Quetta, Baluchistan area. These insurgents are shooting at American and Afghan soldiers inside Afghanistan and enjoy safe havens that are provided by ISI and are being sheltered in Pakistan.
It is extraordinary that Pakistan's former president, Mr. Musharraf, still denies that he knew where bin Laden was residing in Pakistan while the current prime minister, Mr. Yousuf Raza Gilani, and the Pakistani parliament are trying to shift the debate from Pakistan's duplicity to the American violation of Pakistan's sovereignty. They believe that the rubric of sovereignty will save the day for them. Not so. The Navy SEALs' possession and custody of bin Laden's computer files and tapes will end that debate, which may identify Pakistan as the most dangerous nation on earth.
Nake M. Kamrany is professor of economics and director of program in law and economics at the University of Southern California and a member of California Bar.
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Wow. I never thought I'd agree so strongly with something from HuffPo. :-o
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The world is a wonder, isn't it? :lol:
"4. Dissect Pakistan into three smaller states -- Baluchistan for the Baluchi separatists including the city of Quetta, Pashtunistan for the Pashtun separatists covering the Pashtun tribal areas including Peshawar and the border areas, and Pakistan proper including Lahore and the Karachi areas. The ongoing domestic dissent in the Pashtun and Baluchi areas are rooted in the exploitative and discriminatory practices of the ruling class of Pakistan -- the Lahore elite -- who have alienated those groups.
5. Create a strong civilian government in Pakistan by dismantling the ISI, reducing Pakistan's military prowess and supporting the educated and secular population. Pakistan has a strong judiciary and press at this time. A strong civilian government is needed to implement democratic institutions and processes."
More followers of the YA-Crafty Doctrine :-D
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The world is a wonder, isn't it? :lol:
"4. Dissect Pakistan into three smaller states -- Baluchistan for the Baluchi separatists including the city of Quetta, Pashtunistan for the Pashtun separatists covering the Pashtun tribal areas including Peshawar and the border areas, and Pakistan proper including Lahore and the Karachi areas. The ongoing domestic dissent in the Pashtun and Baluchi areas are rooted in the exploitative and discriminatory practices of the ruling class of Pakistan -- the Lahore elite -- who have alienated those groups.
5. Create a strong civilian government in Pakistan by dismantling the ISI, reducing Pakistan's military prowess and supporting the educated and secular population. Pakistan has a strong judiciary and press at this time. A strong civilian government is needed to implement democratic institutions and processes."
More followers of the YA-Crafty Doctrine :-D
Agreed, Karachi=Sindh, Lahore=Punjab, as envisioned, along with Balochistan and Pashtoonistan. It seems there is a convergence of opinions. I think Pak is been given one last chance to produce the rest of the jihadis..see belowhttp://www.dawn.com/2011/05/28/us-hands-over-%E2%80%98most-wanted-terrorists%E2%80%99-list-to-pakistan.html (http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/28/us-hands-over-%E2%80%98most-wanted-terrorists%E2%80%99-list-to-pakistan.html)
"The list also includes Siraj Haqqani, the operational commander of the Haqqani network, the most violent group in the Afghan Taliban and believed to be run out of the Pakistani tribal areas; Ilyas Kashmiri, a senior member of al Qaeda once dubbed “the next Osama bin Laden”; and Atiya Abdel Rahman, the Libyan operations chief of al Qaeda who had emerged as a key intermediary between bin Laden and al Qaeda’s affiliate networks across the world.
The list was discussed during three separate meetings between senior Pakistani and US officials in the past two weeks, including today in Islamabad with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to a US official, a Pakistani government official and a Pakistani intelligence official.
The United States views the list as a test of whether Pakistan is serious about fighting terrorists who have long enjoyed safe havens within its borders.
But the list does not only include militants the United States wants Pakistan to target. In the case of Omar, the United States is interested in determining whether he can be part of political reconciliation in Afghanistan, and is pushing the Pakistanis to facilitate such an outcome, according to two US officials. The United States has already opened a dialogue with a man believed to be an emissary of Omar, according to two senior Afghan officials, but is proceeding cautiously.
Clinton and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen, who flew into Islamabad ahead of Clinton, today urged Pakistan to support that process and do nothing to scuttle it, according to senior administration officials. Pakistani intelligence officials have in the past admitted they detained Afghan Taliban leaders who expressed a willingness to reconcile.
Speaking to the media in Islamabad, Clinton declined to address specific names but said the United States expects Pakistan to authorize “joint action against al Qaeda and its affiliates,” adding, “there is still much more work required, and it is urgent.”
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And found this longish article http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25009 (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25009). What is surprising is, that much has come true...
Introduction
The recently reported assassination was a propaganda ploy aimed at targeting Pakistan. To understand this, it is necessary to examine how America has, in recent years, altered its strategy in Pakistan in the direction of destabilization. In short, Pakistan is an American target. The reason: Pakistan’s growing military and strategic ties to China, America’s primary global strategic rival. In the ‘Great Game’ for global hegemony, any country that impedes America’s world primacy – even one as historically significant to America as Pakistan – may be sacrificed upon the altar of war.
Part 1 of ‘Pakistan in Pieces’ examines the changing views of the American strategic community – particularly the military and intelligence circles – towards Pakistan. In particular, there is a general acknowledgement that Pakistan will very likely continue to be destabilized and ultimately collapse. What is not mentioned in these assessments, however, is the role of the military and intelligence communities in making this a reality; a veritable self-fulfilling prophecy. This part also examines the active on the ground changes in American strategy in Pakistan, with increasing military incursions into the country.
Imperial Eye on Pakistan
In December of 2000, the CIA released a report of global trends to the year 2015, which stated that by 2015, “Pakistan will be more fractious, isolated, and dependent on international financial assistance.”[1] Further, it was predicted, Pakistan:
Will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive politics, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction. Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. Further domestic decline would benefit Islamic political activists, who may significantly increase their role in national politics and alter the makeup and cohesion of the military – once Pakistan’s most capable institution. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the central government’s control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi.[2]
The report further analyzed the trends developing in relation to the Pakistan-India standoff in the region:
The threat of major conflict between India and Pakistan will overshadow all other regional issues during the next 15 years. Continued turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan will spill over into Kashmir and other areas of the subcontinent, prompting Indian leaders to take more aggressive preemptive and retaliatory actions. India’s conventional military advantage over Pakistan will widen as a result of New Delhi’s superior economic position.[3]
In 2005, the Times of India reported on a US National Intelligence Council report, written in conjunction with the CIA, which predicted a “Yugoslavia-like fate” for Pakistan, saying that, “by year 2015 Pakistan would be a failed state, ripe with civil war, bloodshed, inter-provincial rivalries and a struggle for control of its nuclear weapons and complete Talibanisation.”[4]
In November of 2008, the US National Intelligence Council released a report, “Global Trends 2025,” in which they outlined major trends in the world by the year 2025. When it came to Pakistan, the report stated that, “Ongoing low-intensity clashes between India and Pakistan continue to raise the specter that such events could escalate to a broader conflict between those nuclear powers.”[5] It stated that Pakistan “will be at risk of state failure.”[6] In examining potential failed states, the report stated that:
[Y]outh bulges, deeply rooted conflicts, and limited economic prospects are likely to keep Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and others in the high-risk category. Spillover from turmoil in these states and potentially others increases the chance that moves elsewhere in the region toward greater prosperity and political stability will be rocky.[7]
The report referred to Pakistan as a “wildcard” and stated that if it is “unable to hold together until 2025, a broader coalescence of Pashtun tribes is likely to emerge and act together to erase the Durand Line [separating Pakistan from Afghanistan], maximizing Pashtun space at the expense of Punjabis in Pakistan and Tajiks and others in Afghanistan.”[8]
In January of 2009, a Pentagon report analyzing geopolitical trends of significance to the US military over the next 25 years, reported that Pakistan could face a “rapid and sudden” collapse. It stated that, “Some forms of collapse in Pakistan would carry with it the likelihood of a sustained violent and bloody civil and sectarian war, an even bigger haven for violent extremists, and the question of what would happen to its nuclear weapons,” and as such, “that ‘perfect storm' of uncertainty alone might require the engagement of U.S. and coalition forces into a situation of immense complexity and danger.”[9]
A top adviser to former President George Bush and current President Obama warned in April of 2009, that Pakistan could collapse within months, and that, “We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we're calling the war on terror now.” The adviser and consultant, David Kilcullen, explained that this would be unlike the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, which each had a population of over 30 million, whereas “Pakistan has [187] million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al-Qaeda sitting in two-thirds of the country which the Government does not control.”[10]
Target: Pakistan
Going back to the later years of the Bush administration, it is apparent that the US strategy in Pakistan was already changing in seeing it increasingly as a target for military operations as opposed to simply a conduit. In August of 2007, newly uncovered documents revealed that the US military “gave elite units broad authority” in 2004, “to pursue suspected terrorists into Pakistan, with no mention of telling the Pakistanis in advance.”[11]
In November of 2007, an op-ed in the New York Times stated categorically that, “the United States simply could not stand by as a nuclear-armed Pakistan descended into the abyss,” and that, “we need to think — now — about our feasible military options in Pakistan, should it really come to that.” The authors, Frederick Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon are both well-known strategists and scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution, two of the most prominent and influential think tanks in the United States. While stating that Pakistan’s leaders are still primarily moderate and friendly to the US, “Americans felt similarly about the shah’s regime in Iran until it was too late,” referring to the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. They warn:
The most likely possible dangers are these: a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over outlying provinces, which splinter along ethnic and tribal lines; or a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda try to establish Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.[12]
They state that the military solutions are “daunting” as Pakistan is a nation of 187 million people, roughly five times the size of Iraq. They wrote that, “estimates suggest that a force of more than a million troops would be required for a country of this size,” which led them to conclude, “Thus, if we have any hope of success, we would have to act before a complete government collapse, and we would need the cooperation of moderate Pakistani forces.” They suggested one plan would be to deploy Special Forces “with the limited goal of preventing Pakistan’s nuclear materials and warheads from getting into the wrong hand.” However, they admit that, “even pro-American Pakistanis would be unlikely to cooperate.” Another option, they contend:
would involve supporting the core of the Pakistani armed forces as they sought to hold the country together in the face of an ineffective government, seceding border regions and Al Qaeda and Taliban assassination attempts against the leadership. This would require a sizable combat force — not only from the United States, but ideally also other Western powers and moderate Muslim nations.[13]
The authors concluded, saying that any state decline in Pakistan would likely be gradual, therefore allowing the US to have time to respond, and placed an emphasis on securing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and combating militants. They finished the article with the warning: “Pakistan may be the next big test.”[14]
In December of 2007, the Asia Times Online ran a story about the US plan to rid Pakistan of President Musharraf, and that the US and the West, more broadly, had begun a strategy aimed at toppling Pakistan’s military. As part of this, the US launched a media campaign aimed at demonizing Pakistan’s military establishment. At this time, Benazir Bhutto was criticizing the ISI, suggesting they needed a dramatic restructuring, and at the same time, reports were appearing in the US media blaming the ISI for funding and providing assistance to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. While much of this is documented, the fact that it suddenly emerged as talking points with several western officials and in the media does suggest a turn-around against a long-time ally.[15]
Both Democratic and Republican politicians were making statements that Pakistan represented a greater threat than Iran, and then-Senator (now Vice President) Joseph Biden suggested that the United States needed to put soldiers on the ground in Pakistan in cooperation with the “international community.” Biden said that, “We should be in there,” and “we should be supplying tens of millions of dollars to build new schools to compete with the madrassas. We should be in there building democratic institutions. We should be in there, and get the rest of the world in there, giving some structure to the emergence of, hopefully, the reemergence of a democratic process.”[16]
In American policy-strategy circles, officials openly began discussing the possibility of Pakistan breaking up into smaller states, and increasing discussion that Musharraf was going to be “removed,” which obviously happened. As the Asia Times stated:
Another worrying thing is how US officials are publicly signaling to the Pakistanis that Bhutto has their backing as the next leader of the country. Such signals from Washington are not only a kiss of death for any public leader in Pakistan, but the Americans also know that their actions are inviting potential assassins to target Bhutto.
If she is killed in this way, there won't be enough time to find the real culprit, but what's certain is that unprecedented international pressure will be placed on Islamabad while everyone will use their local assets to create maximum internal chaos in the country.[17]
Of course, this subsequently happened in Pakistan. As the author of the article pointed out with startlingly accurate foresight, “Getting Bhutto killed can generate the kind of pressure that could result in permanently putting the Pakistani military on a back foot, giving Washington enough room to push for installing a new pliant leadership in Islamabad.” He observed that, “the US is very serious this time. They cannot let Pakistan get out of their hands.”[18]
Thus, it would appear that the new US strategic aim in Pakistan was focused on removing the Pakistani military from power, implying the need to replace Musharraf, and replace him with a new, compliant civilian leadership. This would have the effect of fracturing the Pakistani elite, threatening the Army’s influence within Pakistani politics, and undertaking more direct control of Pakistan’s government.
As if on cue, in late December it was reported that, “US special forces snatch squads are on standby to seize or disable Pakistan's nuclear arsenal in the event of a collapse of government authority or the outbreak of civil war following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.”[19]
The New York Times ran an article in early January 2008, which reported that, “President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.” The article stated that the new strategy was purportedly in response to increased reports of Al-Qaeda and Taliban activity within Pakistan, which “are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government.” Bush’s National Security team supposedly organized this effort in response to Bhutto’s assassination 10 days previously.[20]
Officials involved in the strategy discussions said that some “options would probably involve the C.I.A. working with the military’s Special Operations forces,” and one official said, “After years of focusing on Afghanistan, we think the extremists now see a chance for the big prize — creating chaos in Pakistan itself.” Of pivotal importance to the strategy, as the Times reported: “Critics said more direct American military action would be ineffective, anger the Pakistani Army and increase support for the militants.”[21] Perhaps this is not simply a “side-effect” of the proposed strategy, but in fact, part of the strategy.
As one prominent Pakistani political and military analyst pointed out, raids into Pakistan would expand anger and “prompt a powerful popular backlash” against the Pakistani government, losing popular support.[22] However, as I previously stated, this might be the intention, as this would ultimately make the government more dependent upon the United States, and thus, more subservient.
On September 3, 2008, it was reported that a commando raid by US Special Forces was launched in Pakistan, which killed between 15 and 20 people, including women and children. The Special Forces were accompanied by five U.S. helicopters for the duration of the operation.[23]
In February of 2009, it was reported that, “More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas.” So not only are U.S. Special Forces invading Pakistani territory; but now US military advisers are secretly advising the Pakistani Army on its own operations, and the advisers are themselves primary made up of Special Forces soldiers. They provide the Pakistani Army “with intelligence and advising on combat tactics,” and make up a secret command run by US Central Command and Special Operations Command (presumably JSOC – Joint Special Operations Command).[24]
In May of 2009, it was reported that, “the U.S. is sending Special Forces teams into one of Pakistan's most violent regions as part of a push to accelerate the training of the Pakistani military and make it a more effective ally in the fight against insurgents there.” The Special Forces were deploying to two training camps in the province of Baluchistan, and “will focus on training Pakistan's Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force responsible for battling the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.” Further, the project “is a joint effort with the U.K.,” which helps “fund the training, although it is unclear if British military personnel would take part in the initiative. British officials have been pushing for such an effort for several years.”[25]
In December of 2009 it was revealed that, “American special forces have conducted multiple clandestine raids into Pakistan's tribal areas as part of a secret war in the border region where Washington is pressing to expand its drone assassination programme,” which was revealed by a former NATO officer. He said these incursions had occurred between 2003 and 2008, indicating they go even further back than US military documents stipulate. The source further revealed that, “the Pakistanis were kept entirely in the dark about it. It was one of those things we wouldn't confirm officially with them.” Further, as the source noted, British “SAS soldiers have been active in the province” of Bolochistan in 2002 and 2003 and “possibly beyond.”[26]
The “Balkanization” of Pakistan: Blaming the Pakistanis
Selig S. Harrison is a director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, former senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and former journalist and correspondent. “His reputation for giving ‘early warning’ of foreign policy crises was well established during his career as a foreign correspondent. In his study of foreign reporting, Between Two Worlds, John Hohenberg, former secretary of the Pulitzer Prize Board, cited Harrison’s prediction of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war eighteen months before it happened.” Further, “More than a year before the Russians invaded Afghanistan, Harrison warned of this possibility in one of his frequent contributions to the influential journal Foreign Policy.”[27]
On February 1, 2008, Selig Harrison threw his renowned “predictive” abilities on Pakistan in an op-ed for the New York Times in the run-up to the Pakistani elections. He started by stating that, “Whatever the outcome of the Pakistani elections, now scheduled for Feb. 18, the existing multiethnic Pakistani state is not likely to survive for long unless it is radically restructured.” Harrison then went on to explain that Pakistan would likely break up along ethnic lines; with the Pashtuns, concentrated in the northwestern tribal areas, the Sindhis in the southeast uniting with the Baluch tribesmen in the southwest, with the Punjab “rump state” of Pakistan.[28]
The Pashtuns in the north, “would join with their ethnic brethren across the Afghan border (some 40 million of them combined) to form an independent ‘Pashtunistan’,” and the Sindhis “numbering 23 million, would unite with the six million Baluch tribesmen in the southwest to establish a federation along the Arabian Sea from India to Iran,” presumably named Baluchistan; while the rump state of Pakistan would remain Punjabi dominated and in control of the nuclear weapons. Selig Harrison explained that prior to partition from India, which led to the creation of the Pakistani state in 1947, Pashtun, Sindhi and Baluch ethnicities had “resist[ed] Punjabi domination for centuries,” and suddenly:
they found themselves subjected to Punjabi-dominated military regimes that have appropriated many of the natural resources in the minority provinces — particularly the natural gas deposits in the Baluch areas — and siphoned off much of the Indus River’s waters as they flow through the Punjab.
The resulting Punjabi-Pashtun animosity helps explain why the United States is failing to get effective Pakistani cooperation in fighting terrorists. The Pashtuns living along the Afghan border are happy to give sanctuary from Punjabi forces to the Taliban, which is composed primarily of fellow Pashtuns, and to its Qaeda friends.
Pashtun civilian casualties resulting from Pakistani and American air strikes on both sides of the border are breeding a potent underground Pashtun nationalist movement. Its initial objective is to unite all Pashtuns in Pakistan, now divided among political jurisdictions, into a unified province. In time, however, its leaders envisage full nationhood.
... The Baluch people, for their part, have been waging intermittent insurgencies since their forced incorporation into Pakistan in 1947. In the current warfare Pakistani forces are widely reported to be deploying American-supplied aircraft and intelligence equipment that was intended for use in Afghan border areas. Their victims are forging military links with Sindhi nationalist groups that have been galvanized into action by the death of Benazir Bhutto, a Sindhi hero as was her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.[29]
This passage is very revealing of the processes and perceptions surrounding “Balkanization” and “destabilization.” What I mean by this, is that historically and presently, imperial powers would often use ethnic groups against each other in a strategy of divide and conquer, in order “to keep the barbarians from coming together” and dominate the region.
Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in his 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard,” that, “Geopolitics has moved from the regional to the global dimension, with preponderance over the entire Eurasian continent serving as the central basis for global primacy.”[30] Brzezinski then gave a masterful explanation of the American global strategy, which placed it into a firm imperialistic context:
To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.[31]
While imperial powers manipulate, and historically, even create the ethnic groups within regions and nations, the West portrays conflict in such regions as being the product of these “ethnic” or “tribal” rivalries. This perception of the East (Asia and the Middle East) as well as Africa is referred to as Orientalism or Eurocentrism: meaning it generally portrays the East (and/or Africa) as “the Other”: inherently different and often barbaric. This prejudiced perspective is prevalent in Western academic, media, and policy circles. This perspective serves a major purpose: dehumanizing a people in a region that an imperial power seeks to dominate, which allows the hegemon to manipulate the people and divide them against each other, while framing them as “backwards” and “barbaric,” which in turn, justifies the Western imperial power exerting hegemony and control over the region; to “protect” the people from themselves.
Historically and presently, Western empires have divided people against each other, blamed the resulting conflict on the people themselves, and thus justified their control over both the people, and the region they occupy. This was the strategy employed in major recent geopolitical conflicts such as the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide. In both cases, Western imperial ambitions were met through exacerbating ethnic rivalries, providing financial, technical, and military aid and training to various factions; thus, spreading violent conflict, war, and genocide. In both cases, Western, and primarily American strategic interests were met through an increased presence militarily, pushing out other major imperial and powerful rivals, as well as increasing Western access to key economics resources.
This is the lens through which we must view the unfolding situation in Pakistan. However, the situation in Pakistan presents a far greater potential for conflict and devastation than either Yugoslavia or Rwanda. In short, the potential strategy of “Balkanization” and destabilization of Pakistan could dwarf any major global conflict in the past few decades. It’s sheer population of 187 million people, proximity to two major regional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its strategic location as neighbor to India, China, and Iran with access to the Indian Ocean, and its nuclear arsenal, combine to make Pakistan the potential trigger for a much wider regional and possibly global war. The destabilization of Pakistan has the potential to be the greatest geopolitical catastrophe since World War II.
Thus, Selig Harrison’s op-ed in the New York Times in which he describes the “likely” breakup of Pakistan along ethnic lines as a result of “ethnic differences” must be viewed in the wider context of geopolitical ambitions. His article lays the foundation both for the explanation of a potential breakup, and thus the “justification” for Western intervention in the conflict. His “predictive” capacities as a seasoned journalist can be alternatively viewed as pre-emptive imperial propaganda.
Fracturing Pakistan
The war in Afghanistan is inherently related to the situation in Pakistan. From the days of the Afghan-Soviet war in the 1980s, arms and money were flowing through Pakistan to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. During the civil war that followed, Pakistan armed and financed the Taliban, which eventually took power. When the U.S. and NATO initially attacked Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, this was primarily achieved through cooperation with Pakistan. When the war theatre was re-named “AfPak,” the role of Pakistan, however, was formally altered. While the previous few years had seen the implementation of a strategy of destabilizing Pakistan, once the “AfPak” war theatre was established, Pakistan ceased to be as much of a conduit or proxy state and became a target.
In September of 2008, the editor of Indian Defence Review wrote an article explaining that a stable Pakistan is not in India’s interests: “With Pakistan on the brink of collapse due to massive internal as well as international contradictions, it is matter of time before it ceases to exist.” He explained that Pakistan’s collapse would bring “multiple benefits” to India, including preventing China from gaining a major port in the Indian Ocean, which is in the mutual interest of the United States. The author explained that this would be a “severe jolt” to China’s expansionist aims, and further, “India’s access to Central Asian energy routes will open up.”[32]
In August of 2009, Foreign Policy Journal published a report of an exclusive interview they held with former Pakistani ISI chief Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, who was Director General of the powerful intelligence services (ISI) between 1987 and 1989, at a time in which it was working closely with the CIA to fund and arm the Mujahideen. Once a close ally of the US, he is now considered extremely controversial and the US even recommended the UN to put him on the international terrorist list. Gul explained that he felt that the American people have not been told the truth about 9/11, and that the 9/11 Commission was a “cover up,” pointing out that, “They [the American government] haven’t even proved the case that 9/11 was done by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.” He said that the real reasons for the war on Afghanistan were that:
the U.S. wanted to “reach out to the Central Asian oilfields” and “open the door there”, which “was a requirement of corporate America, because the Taliban had not complied with their desire to allow an oil and gas pipeline to pass through Afghanistan. UNOCAL is a case in point. They wanted to keep the Chinese out. They wanted to give a wider security shield to the state of Israel, and they wanted to include this region into that shield. And that’s why they were talking at that time very hotly about ‘greater Middle East’. They were redrawing the map.”[33]
He also stated that part of the reason for going into Afghanistan was “to go for Pakistan’s nuclear capability,” as the U.S. “signed this strategic deal with India, and this was brokered by Israel. So there is a nexus now between Washington, Tel Aviv, and New Delhi.” When he was asked about the Pakistani Taliban, which the Pakistani government was being pressured to fight, and where the financing for that group came from; Gul stated:
Yeah, of course they are getting it from across the Durand line, from Afghanistan. And the Mossad is sitting there, RAW is sitting there — the Indian intelligence agency — they have the umbrella of the U.S. And now they have created another organization which is called RAMA. It may be news to you that very soon this intelligence agency — of course, they have decided to keep it covert — but it is Research and Analysis Milli Afghanistan. That’s the name. The Indians have helped create this organization, and its job is mainly to destabilize Pakistan.[34]
He explained that the Chief of Staff of the Afghan Army had told him that he had gone to India to offer the Indians five bases in Afghanistan, three of which are along the Pakistani border. Gul was asked a question as to why, if the West was supporting the TTP (Pakistani Taliban), would a CIA drone have killed the leader of the TTP. Gul explained that while Pakistan was fighting directly against the TTP leader, Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani government would provide the Americans where Mehsud was, “three times the Pakistan intelligence tipped off America, but they did not attack him.” So why all of a sudden did they attack?
Because there were some secret talks going on between Baitullah Mehsud and the Pakistani military establishment. They wanted to reach a peace agreement, and if you recall there is a long history of our tribal areas, whenever a tribal militant has reached a peace agreement with the government of Pakistan, Americans have without any hesitation struck that target.
... there was some kind of a deal which was about to be arrived at — they may have already cut a deal. I don’t know. I don’t have enough information on that. But this is my hunch, that Baitullah was killed because now he was trying to reach an agreement with the Pakistan army. And that’s why there were no suicide attacks inside Pakistan for the past six or seven months.[35]
An article in one of Canada’s national magazines, Macleans, reported on an interview with a Pakistani ISI spy, who claimed that India’s intelligence services, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), have “tens of thousands of RAW agents in Pakistan.” Many officials inside Pakistan were convinced that, “India’s endgame is nothing less than the breakup of Pakistan. And the RAW is no novice in that area. In the 1960s, it was actively involved in supporting separatists in Bangladesh, at the time East Pakistan. The eventual victory of Bangladeshi nationalism in 1971 was in large part credited to the support the RAW gave the secessionists.”[36]
Further, there were Indian consulates set up in Kandahar, the area of Afghanistan where Canadian troops are located, and which is strategically located next to the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, which is home to a virulent separatist movement, of which Pakistan claims is being supported by India. Macleans reported on the conclusions by Michel Chossudovsky, economics professor at University of Ottawa, that, “the region’s massive gas and oil reserves are of strategic interest to the U.S. and India. A gas pipeline slated to be built from Iran to India, two countries that already enjoy close ties, would run through Baluchistan. The Baluch separatist movement, which is also active in Iran, offers an ideal proxy for both the U.S. and India to ensure their interests are met.”[37]
Even an Afghan government adviser told the media that India was using Afghan territory to destabilize Pakistan.[38] In September of 2009, the Pakistan Daily reported that captured members and leaders of the Pakistani Taliban have admitted to being trained and armed by India through RAW or RAMA in Afghanistan in order to fight the Pakistani Army.[39]
Foreign Policy magazine in February of 2009 quoted a former intelligence official as saying, “The Indians are up to their necks in supporting the Taliban against the Pakistani government in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” and that, “the same anti-Pakistani forces in Afghanistan also shooting at American soldiers are getting support from India. India should close its diplomatic establishments in Afghanistan and get the Christ out of there.”[40]
The Council on Foreign Relations published a backgrounder report on RAW, India’s intelligence agency, founded in 1968 “primarily to counter China's influence, [however] over time it has shifted its focus to India's other traditional rival, Pakistan.” For over three decades both Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies have been involved in covert operations against one another. One of RAW’s main successes was its covert operations in East Pakistan, now known as Bangladesh, which “aimed at fomenting independence sentiment” and ultimately led to the separation of Bangladesh by directly funding, arming and training the Pakistani separatists. Further, as the Council on Foreign Relations noted, “From the early days, RAW had a secret liaison relationship with the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence agency.”[41]
Since RAW was founded in 1968, it had developed close ties with the Afghan intelligence agency, KHAD, primarily to do with intelligence sharing on Pakistan. In the 1980s, while Pakistan was funding, arming and training the Afghan Mujahideen with the support of Saudi Arabia and the CIA, India was funding two covert groups which orchestrated terrorist attacks inside Pakistan, which included a “low-grade but steady campaign of bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore.” RAW has also had a close relationship with the CIA, as even six years before RAW was created, in 1962, the CIA created a covert organization made up of Tibetan refugees, which aimed to “execute deep-penetration terror operations in China.” The CIA subsequently played a part in the creation of RAW. In the 1980s, while the CIA was working closely with the ISI in Pakistan, RAW, while wary of their relationship, continued to get counterterrorism training from the CIA.[42]
In October of 2009, the New York Times reported that the US strategy “to vastly expand its aid to Pakistan, as well as the footprint of its embassy and private security contractors here, are aggravating an already volatile anti-American mood as Washington pushes for greater action by the government against the Taliban.” The U.S. gave Pakistan an aid deal of $1.5 billion per year for the next five years, under the stipulation of “Pakistan to cease supporting terrorist groups on its soil and to ensure that the military does not interfere with civilian politics.” President Zaradari accepted the proposal, making him even more unpopular in Pakistan, and further angering Pakistan’s powerful military, which sees the deal as interfering in the internal affairs of the country.[43]
America is thus expanding its embassy and security presence within the country, as the Embassy “has publicized plans for a vast new building in Islamabad for about 1,000 people, with security for some diplomats provided through a Washington-based private contracting company, DynCorp.” The NYT article referred to how relations were becoming increasingly strained between Pakistan and the US, and tensions were growing within the country exponentially, as “the American presence was fueling a sense of occupation among Pakistani politicians and security officials,” and several Pakistani officials stated that, “the United States was now seen as behaving in Pakistan much as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Futher:
In particular, the Pakistani military and the intelligence agencies are concerned that DynCorp is being used by Washington to develop a parallel network of security and intelligence personnel within Pakistan, officials and politicians close to the army said.
The concerns are serious enough that last month a local company hired by DynCorp to provide Pakistani men to be trained as security guards for American diplomats was raided by the Islamabad police. The owner of the company, the Inter-Risk Security Company, Capt. Syed Ali Ja Zaidi, was later arrested.
The action against Inter-Risk, apparently intended to cripple the DynCorp program, was taken on orders from the senior levels of the Pakistani government, said an official familiar with the raid, who was not authorized to speak on the record.
The entire workings of DynCorp within Pakistan are now under review by the Pakistani government.[44]
As revealed in the Wikileaks diplomatic cables, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson wrote in September of 2009 that the U.S. strategy of unilateral strikes inside Pakistan “risk destabilizing the Pakistani state, alienating both the civilian government and military leadership, and provoking a broader governance crisis in Pakistan without finally achieving the goal.”[45]
In an interview with Press TV, Hamid Gul, former Inter-Services Intelligence chief revealed more of what he sees as the US strategy in Pakistan. He explained that with the massive expansion of the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, and alongside that, the increased security staff, the Chinese are becoming increasingly concerned with the sovereignty and security of Pakistan. He claimed that the money that the US government offered (with heavy conditions) to Pakistan, $1.5 billion every year for five years, will be spent under the direction of the Americans, and that “they are going to set up a large intelligence network inside Pakistan,” and ultimately “they really want to go for Pakistan's nuclear assets.” He further claimed that the Indians are trying to destabilize Pakistan; however, he explained, this does not necessarily mean disintegrate, but rather:
they are trying to destabilize Pakistan at the moment so that it feels weak and economically has to go begging on its knees to Americans and ask for succor and help. And in that process they will want to expect certain concessions with regards to nuclear power and also with regards to setting up their facilities here in Pakistan.[46]
When he was asked what America’s long-term goal was in regards to Pakistan, Gul responded that the goal:
for America is that they want to keep Pakistan destabilized; perhaps create a way for Baluchistan as a separate state and then create problems for Iran so that this new state will talk about greater Baluchistan... So it appears that the long-term objectives are really to fragment all these countries to an extent that they can establish a strip that would be pro-America, pro-India, pro-Israel. So this seems to be their long-term objective apart from denuclearizing Pakistan and blocking Iran's progress in the nuclear field.[47]
In Part 2 of ‘Pakistan in Pieces’, I will examine the specific ways in which the American strategy of destabilization is being undertaken in Pakistan, including the waging of a secret war and the expansion of the Afghan war into Pakistani territory. In short, the military and intelligence projections for Pakistan over the next several years (discussed in the beginning of Part 1 above) are a self-fulfilling prophecy, as those very same military and intelligence agencies that predict a destabilized Pakistan and potential collapse are now undertaking strategies aimed at achieving those outcomes.
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A few posts back, I posted an article by SSS, re: the recent attack on PNS Mehran. For his troubles the ISI took care of him.
Missing journalist Shahzad found dead
Missing journalist Shahzad found dead By Munawer Azeem and Waseem Ashraf Butt | From the Newspaper (1 hour ago) Today
Saleem Shahzad, who was the bureau chief for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times, an online publication, and the Italian news agency Adnkronos (AKI) and had worked for the Dawn Media Group’s evening newspaper Star for over a decade, was known for his investigative reporting on militancy and Al Qaeda. He had moved to Islamabad after Star closed down in 2007. – File Photo by AP
ISLAMABAD / GUJRAT: Tuesday added another chapter to the bloody history of Pakistan’s press freedom record when the body of missing journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad was found.
It was confirmed by the capital police as well as its counterparts in Mandi Bahauddin that a body buried in a local graveyard at Mandi Bahauddin was suspected to be that of Shahzad, an Islamabad-based journalist who had gone missing from the capital on Sunday evening. He had disappeared en route to a news channel’s office in Sector F-6 from his house in F-8/4.
Shahzad, who was the bureau chief for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times, an online publication, and the Italian news agency Adnkronos (AKI) and had worked for the Dawn Media Group’s evening newspaper Star for over a decade, was known for his investigative reporting on militancy and Al Qaeda. He had moved to Islamabad after Star closed down in 2007.
His book, “Inside Al-Qaeda & the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11”, had recently been published.
After his disappearance, the Human Rights Watch alleged that Shahzad had been picked up by the ISI and that the intelligence agency had threatened him last year as well when he had reported on the quiet release of Mullah Baradar, an aide to Mullah Omar, who had been captured by Pakistan earlier.
Ali Dayan, Pakistan researcher for HRW, also made public an email that Shahzad had sent then with the instructions to make it public in case something happened to him. The email provided Shahzad’s account of a meeting he held with two ISI officials on October 17, 2010.
After he disappeared on Sunday, there were allegations that he had been picked up by the ISI because of his recent story on the PNS Mehran base attack. Shahzad had reported that the attack took place after the Navy identified and interrogated a few of its lower-level officers for their ties with Al Qaeda.
Reporters without Borders also released a statement after Shahzad’s death was confirmed which said: “Experienced journalists in Islamabad said they suspected that Shahzad was kidnapped and executed by the military intelligence agency known as the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)…
“Sources close to Shahzad said he had reported getting several warnings from the security agencies in the past… This would tend to support the theory that he was kidnapped and killed in connection with his coverage of the attack on the naval base.”
On Tuesday it came to light that the body found at Head Rasul a day earlier was of the missing journalist. He was identified from the photos taken of the corpse on Tuesday during the postmortem at District Headquarters Hospital Mandi Bahauddin.
The police force’s efficiency knew no bounds on Tuesday. First the police force of Sara-i-Alamgir found an abandoned Toyota Corolla, which belonged to Shahzad, near the Upper Jhelum Canal. The vehicle, which had gone missing along with the journalist, had a broken window and a damaged ignition switch, hinting at car theft.
The police also found two CNICs and press cards, as well as other documents pertaining to Shahzad. They then contacted the Margalla police in Islamabad.
Once the police from Islamabad examined the car and determined its owner’s identity, they were informed by their counterparts that the Mandi Bahauddin police had found a body a day earlier.
According to the details collected by Dawn, some passersby spotted a corpse in the water on Monday. The Head Rasul police shifted the body to the DHQ.
Unusually quickly for Pakistani police, all legal formalities were completed, the autopsy was conducted on the unidentified body and it was handed over to Edhi Centre for burial. It was interred at the local graveyard temporarily.
According to the police, the postmortem report said that Shahzad had been subjected to severe torture. The report said he had 15 major injuries including fractured ribs and deep wounds on the abdomen.
It was also evident that the journalist’s hands and feet had been tied as there were marks on his wrists and ankles. However, his hands and feet were not tied when he was found.
The police said that the victim had been killed in the early hours of Monday.
The Mandi Bahauddin police told the capital police that there was no mortuary at the DHQ and Edhi Centre to keep the body; hence the pace at which it was buried.
The family, which was contacted by the capital police, identified him from the photographs, clothes and cards. Shahzad leaves behind a widow and three children.
Since the reports were first aired about the car and the body, condemnations had been pouring in from far and wide.
Human rights organisations, journalists and government officials were quick to condemn the incident. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani also ordered an immediate inquiry into the kidnapping and murder.
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Pakistan Civil War Now ON!
David Caploe | Jun. 1, 2011, 6:13 AM | 445 |
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David Caploe
On May 11, we predicted the US assassination of Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad would herald the start of a civil war in Pakistan.
Not too many people took it seriously, but in the past two days that grim prophecy has been brutally confirmed.
The headline event in the New York Times is the killing this past weekend of the courageous Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shehzad by members of the organization we identified as the key player in the Islamic country's politics, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, usually known as the ISI.
But the real story isn't simply the death of another journalist in Pakistan, a grim category in which it is a world leader.
Rather, it was the story Shehzad was working on -- the internal divisions within the ISI, which, again, we said would be the fault line out of which would erupt the Pakistan earthquake.
Shehzad had been receiving threats from the ISI for about three years because of his reporting that often relied on sources inside the intelligence agencies and inside the Taliban and other militant groups.
Which, of course, was exactly our point:
That every major player in Pakistani politics -- including the Taliban -- is riven with significant internal conflicts, some about power and personalities, but most significantly about policy:
namely, does Pakistan's future lie with the militants of Sunni political Islam -- or with the slavishly pro-Western lackeys -- or, even more potentially de-stabilizing, with genuinely democratic elements that reject both political Islam AND being the local agents of the US ?
The key event about which Shehzad was writing, and which was the direct cause of his death after three years of direct threats by Islamist elements within the ISI ?
A 16-hour battle that ensued at the navy's main base in Karachi when six -- please note, SIX -- attackers climbed over a wall and blew up two American-made naval surveillance planes.
Now, do you think SIX attackers of the navy's main base could have set off a 16-hour battle WITHOUT the help of at least SOME people inside ?
Not very likely, is it ?
Coming soon after the American raid on May 2 that killed Osama bin Laden, which caught the Pakistani Army and Air Force flat-footed, the attack on the naval base has shocked the entire country.
The armed forces chiefs have been deeply angered by the humiliation they have suffered from both episodes, and in particular the many questions raised about their competence by Pakistan’s increasingly rambunctious media.
Like we said in the immediate aftermath of Osama's killing, Pakistan's civil war is now going to become THE main event in the Arab / Muslim / Indian world.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/pakistan-civil-war-now-on--2011-5#ixzz1OHDIgDjy
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I like Stratfor a lot, and here is its most recent rumination on the current sit-rep, but I am liking our YA more:
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U.S., Pakistan: The Unending Love-Hate Relationship
The United States and Pakistan are developing a special joint intelligence team designed to eliminate jihadist high value targets in the South Asian nation, according to media reports on Thursday. The reported move comes within days of a visit to Islamabad by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen. The team will include CIA and Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) operatives. According to the reports, the team is assigned to hunt down top al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, including Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar; Ayman al-Zawahiri; the deputy of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, Sirajuddin Haqqani; the leader of Taliban forces in eastern Afghanistan, Atiya Abdel Rahman (purportedly the number three operational leader in al Qaeda); and Ilyas Kashmiri, the highest ranking Pakistani leader in al Qaeda who is involved in operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
“It is only reasonable to assume that Washington will continue to work on the unilateral path while pushing a viable joint operations program with the Pakistanis. In other words, the inherent problems in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship remain as is.”
That the CIA and ISI have agreed to joint operations aimed at eliminating key jihadist figures would be an extraordinary development considering that U.S.-Pakistani relations are at an all-time low. Washington and Islamabad were already at odds over American efforts to develop unilateral intelligence and military capabilities in Pakistan when U.S. Special Operations Forces on May 1 killed bin Laden in a compound some three hours’ drive time from the Pakistani capital in a unilateral operation. The incident massively aggravated tensions between the two sides, given that the Obama administration stated that its decision to go solo on the bin Laden hit was informed by concerns that the leaks within the Pakistani security system would jeopardize the mission.
So, the question is how — a mere month later — can the two sides come to an agreement on joint operations against top jihadist figures? Some of it can be explained by the fact that United States depends upon Pakistan for its regional strategy and that despite all the problems, Washington cannot simply afford to walk away from Pakistan and let it fall in its own jihadist abyss. Indeed, Mullen said, “I think the worst thing we could do would be cut them off…If the United States distanced itself from Pakistan, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, we go back and it’s much more intense and it’s much more dangerous. We’re just not living in a world where we can afford to be unengaged in a place like this.”
Accepting Pakistan for what it is and trying to stabilize it means that the United States must be careful not to completely undermine Islamabad, and thus needs to try and work with the Pakistanis. Unilateral operations that become public contribute to the undermining of the Pakistani state. This would explain the move to engage in joint operations so publicly — a long-standing Pakistani demand that in theory is designed to shore up the sagging credibility of the Pakistani government and its security establishment.
That doesn’t, however, solve the American problem in which it cannot afford to rely on a hemorrhaging Pakistani security system to fight jihadists on Pakistani soil, particularly when the United States is looking for high-level leaders who provide operational expertise, or inspirational leadership protected by, at the very least, rogue former employees of the Pakistani security apparatus. Therefore, it is only reasonable to assume that Washington will continue to work on the unilateral path while pushing a viable joint operations program with the Pakistanis. In other words, the inherent problems in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship remain as is. Liaison work between intelligence agencies is always a double game. The liaisons work together in mutual interest, while other operations deeper in the shadows work against each other. The purpose of the liaison work is to disguise those operations.
Even if the Pakistani security system was not compromised, there is another serious disconnect between the United States and the South Asian country. Washington and Islamabad agree that there ultimately has to be a negotiated settlement with local Taliban forces and that there are those with whom there can never be reconciliation. The problem is that there is a disagreement on the definition of what constitutes reconcilable Taliban.
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Another paki bites the dusthttp://www.dawn.com/2011/06/05/ilyas-kashmiri-killed-in-us-drone-strike.html (http://www.dawn.com/2011/06/05/ilyas-kashmiri-killed-in-us-drone-strike.html)
Saleem SS the journalist who was tortured/killed after his coverage on the attack on PNS mehran had indicated that Ilyas kashmiri (ex-special forces of Pak) was involved. Within days, SSS and now Ilyas Kashmiri are dead. The ISI turned him in. IK a noted terrorist, his death is most appreciated in India where he has carried out many operations.
IK was high up in Al-Qaeda, I would expect more revenge attacks in Pak. Reading their blogs, looks like the country is ready to fall apart. I am surprised that both Kiyani and Pasha have managed to stay on to their positions. Only a war with India can save paki H &D (honor and dignity).
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Ya, do you think Pure-land might start a war w/ India then?
What do you think of this? http://the-diplomat.com/2011/05/17/how-china-can-fix-pakistan/
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China cannot replace USA. India would object to Chinese presence/role in Pak. To curry favor with the Chinese, Pak donated a large portion of Pak Occupied Kashmir to the chinese. Furthermore, even the Chinese dont want to get too close to purelander issues, they have enough problems with their muslim minorities. They are happy selling their junk weapons, so the Chinese are a pain in the posterior, but nothing more.
If I was Kiyani, I would be thinking of the one thing that can take pressure off the military/ISI. A war with India will unite Pak, so it is very much on the general's interests to start one. Alternatively, a large terror attack in India will force a response from India.
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WASHINGTON—Fissures have opened within the Obama administration over the drone program targeting militants in Pakistan, with the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and some top military leaders pushing to rein in the Central Intelligence Agency's aggressive pace of strikes.
Such a move would roll back, at least temporarily, a program that President Barack Obama dramatically expanded soon after taking office, making it one of the U.S.'s main weapons against the Pakistan-based militants fighting coalition troops in Afghanistan.
The program has angered Pakistan, a key ally in the fight against Islamist militants. The debate over drones comes as the two sides try to repair relations badly frayed by the shooting deaths of two Pakistanis by CIA contractor Raymond Davis in January, a wave of particularly lethal drone strikes following Mr. Davis's release from Pakistani custody in March, and the clandestine U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2.
The White House National Security Council debated a slowdown in drone strikes in a meeting on Thursday, a U.S. official said. At the meeting, CIA Director Leon Panetta made the case for maintaining the current program, the official said, arguing that it remains the U.S.'s best weapon against al Qaeda and its allies.
The result of the meeting—the first high-level debate within the Obama administration over how aggressively to pursue the CIA's targeted-killing program—was a decision to continue the program as is for now, the U.S. official said.
Another official, who supports a slowdown, said the discussions about revamping the program would continue, alongside talks with Pakistan, which is lobbying to rein in the drone strikes.
Most U.S. officials, including those urging a slowdown, agree the CIA strikes using the pilotless aircraft have been one of Washington's most effective tools in the fight against militants hiding out in Pakistan. The weapons have killed some top al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and left militants off balance in a swath of mountainous territory along the Afghan border with Pakistan where they once operated with near impunity. No one in the administration is advocating an outright halt to the program.
.Yet an increasingly prominent group of State Department and military officials now argue behind closed doors that the intense pace of the strikes aggravates an already troubled alliance with Pakistan and, ultimately, risks destabilizing the nuclear-armed country, said current and former officials familiar with the discussions.
U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter, backed by top military officers and other State Department officials, wants the strikes to be more judicious, and argues that Pakistan's views need to be given greater weight if the fight against militancy is to succeed, said current and former U.S. officials.
Defenders of the current drone program take umbrage at the suggestion that the program isn't judicious. "In this context, the phrase 'more judicious' is really code for 'let's appease Pakistani sensitivities,' " said a U.S. official. The CIA has already given Pakistani concerns greater weight in targeting decisions in recent months, the official added. Advocates of sustained strikes also argue that the current rift with the Pakistanis isn't going to be fixed by scaling back the program.
The debate has largely been muted until now, in part because the details of the program are classified and because drone strikes against militants have generally been popular with the White House and most Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
Pakistani officials have always publicly condemned the drone program; only in private have they consented to the campaign and acknowledged to having helped the CIA pinpoint targets.
Now Islamabad is lobbying Washington in public and private to curtail the strikes because of Pakistani complaints that they take a high civilian death toll.
Lt. Gen. Asif Yasin Malik, who commands Pakistani forces fighting militants in the country's northwest, said in an interview that drone strikes are making it harder to win allies among tribal leaders.
"It's a negative thing in my area of responsibility. It causes instability and impinges on my relationship with the local people," Gen. Malik said.
Advocates for reining in the program argue that the pace and scope of strikes have become politically unsustainable because of their unpopularity in Pakistan.
In a series of recent closed-door meetings, according to current and former U.S. officials, Ambassador Munter and some senior military officials argued that more selective targeting will maintain the strikes' effectiveness while easing the political blowback in Pakistan, making it easier for officials there to work with Washington.
"You can't take your foot off the gas completely—the drones have a suppressing effect on them," a U.S. official said of militant groups in the border areas. "On the other hand, the Pakistanis need some breathing space."
Pakistan has given some indications it would ramp up efforts to root out militants, following a renewed U.S. request to do so by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen during a visit to Pakistan last week.
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss the covert program or any internal debate over its future.
"The president has issued a clear directive to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda, and the United States government is completely united behind that goal. I think the results speak for themselves," Mr. Vietor said.
The CIA's targeted killing program, ramped up by President George W. Bush in July 2008, was initially designed to target high-level al Qaeda leaders. Strikes averaged roughly one a week in the last half of 2008.
Mr. Obama has overseen a dramatic expansion of the program. The drones were originally used against specifically selected "high-value" targets, a list drawn up with Pakistani help.
But in the past year, the CIA has been targeting lower-level fighters after tracking their activities and movements.
The CIA last year conducted more than 100 strikes. The pace has slowed to roughly 30 in the first five months of 2011, partly over concerns about Pakistani reaction, a U.S. official said.
The latest drone strike came Friday, hitting three compounds in Pakistan's South Waziristan region and killing at least four people, according to an official familiar with the matter.
There is disagreement over how many civilian bystanders the strikes have killed. The Pakistanis say hundreds of civilians have died in the strikes, which is part of the reason they want them scaled back. The U.S. says 30 civilians have been slain. Both sides agree hundreds of militants have been killed.
The pushback by some U.S. officials against the drone program comes as U.S. diplomats and officials serving in Pakistan express dissatisfaction with what they see as the generally hostile tenor of the U.S.'s policy toward Pakistan.
These diplomats and officials say the deep vein of anti-Americanism that runs through Pakistani society forces its elected and military leaders, including army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to distance themselves from Washington to avoid a popular backlash.
"What's worrying a lot of us is whether we're turning people who should be our natural allies into our adversaries," said a U.S. diplomat in Pakistan.
A senior U.S. official said the key is figuring out what level of drone strikes can satisfy U.S. security needs and at the same be tolerated by the Pakistanis. "I think we underestimate the importance of public opinion in Pakistan to our detriment," the official said. The Pakistanis have "a legitimate concern."
Islamabad has proposed narrowing the scope of the CIA program to target militants that have been agreed to by both sides, a Pakistani official said.
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From the blogs...US-Pak relations:
Circa 2002
(http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/500/cartoondog.jpg)
Circa 2009
(http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/9173/zardari.jpg)
Circa2011
(http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/2571/postobl2.jpg)
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Looks like the YA-Crafty Strategy is not under consideration:
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Stratfor
During the final visit of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to Afghanistan the drawdown set to begin in July loomed large. The commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus is in the process of formulating his recommendations to the White House for those drawdowns. While Petraeus has insisted that these numbers are still being formulated internally, the idea of reductions of U.S. forces in the order of 3,000-5,000 have been discussed in recent weeks.
There are currently nearly 100,000 U.S. troops and some 40,000 additional allied forces in the country. Responsibility for security across the country is slated to be turned over to Afghan hands by 2014, at which point all combat forces are expected to be withdrawn. Reports have begun to emerge that the White House is considering more significant reductions. With the killing of Osama bin Laden, a symbolic event, and the very real movement of Gen. Petraeus to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the White House has at least given itself more room to maneuver in terms of adjusting timetables and modifying objectives, especially as the costs of the war continue to mount. Vice President Joe Biden and others advocated since at least 2009 for a more counterterrorism-focused and training-focused mission that would entail fewer troops, less combat and a lighter footprint.
In the end a Pentagon push for the surge that took place won out. But either way, the pressure to show demonstrable gains in security in an increasingly short time continues to mount. It’s really all about a question of what is achievable and how much should be invested in achieving that. On the one hand, there’s a push to really roll back the Taliban under the current counterinsurgency-focused strategy and reshape the security environment in the country before the U.S. withdraws. On the other side are skeptics that this can really be achieved or that achieving it is really worth the price in blood and treasure that the United States and its allies have been paying. On both sides it’s about an exit strategy, it’s about a withdrawal. The question is the pace and the risk that the United States is willing to accept in terms of the security environment it leaves behind as it withdraws. In terms of the Afghan security forces the question is what is good enough and how much more can be achieved before the U.S. begins to pull back in a big way as the 2014 deadline nears.
Click for more videos
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Because it would require a helping of brains and balls. Something this administration lacks. Now, if there was a way to implement the Crafty-ya plan that would enrich Soros or some union thugs, then it might stand a chance.
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http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/07/osama-bin-laden-201107 (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/07/osama-bin-laden-201107)
Christopher Hitchens....
"Again to quote myself from 2001, if Pakistan were a person, he (and it would have to be a he) would have to be completely humorless, paranoid, insecure, eager to take offense, and suffering from self-righteousness, self-pity, and self-hatred. That last triptych of vices is intimately connected. The self-righteousness comes from the claim to represent a religion: the very name “Pakistan” is an acronym of Punjab, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and so forth, the resulting word in the Urdu language meaning “Land of the Pure.” The self-pity derives from the sad fact that the country has almost nothing else to be proud of: virtually barren of achievements and historically based on the amputation and mutilation of India in 1947 and its own self-mutilation in Bangladesh. The self-hatred is the consequence of being pathetically, permanently mendicant: an abject begging-bowl country that is nonetheless run by a super-rich and hyper-corrupt Punjabi elite. As for paranoia: This not so hypothetical Pakistani would also be a hardened anti-Semite, moaning with pleasure at the butchery of Daniel Pearl and addicted to blaming his self-inflicted woes on the all-powerful Jews."
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YA, your thoughts on these two? There seems to be considerable divergence between the two.
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By KIMBERLY KAGAN AND FREDERICK KAGAN
It's been 18 months since President Obama announced the Afghan troop surge, and now July 2011—the date at which he promised that a withdrawal would begin—is nearly upon us. Washington still hasn't decided whether withdrawals will be "modest," as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is encouraging, or more substantial, as leaks to the media suggest the White House may prefer. What's clear from Afghanistan, though, is that nothing about conditions on the ground justifies the withdrawal of any U.S. or coalition forces.
The fight is approaching its peak, progress remains fragile and under assault, and we need every soldier we have—U.S., coalition and Afghan—to maintain momentum. The risks of a small withdrawal (say, 5,000 troops) are probably manageable. But any such withdrawal would be driven by politics rather than strategy.
Progress in the fight is undeniable. Coalition forces have driven the Taliban from their major safe havens in southern Afghanistan and are continuing to press into lesser enemy strongholds. The Taliban have launched operations to retake the ground they have lost, but so far to no avail.
Their tactics, moreover, indicate their weakness. Having long eschewed suicide bombings and direct attacks against Afghan civilians for fear of alienating the population, the Taliban are increasingly carrying out such attacks. The attacks, in turn, are driving a wedge between the enemy and the population, a phenomenon we have seen in Iraq and elsewhere.
There is every reason to believe that coalition forces and their increasingly effective Afghan partners can hold the gains in the south through this fighting season (that is, until November). This would allow them to create meaningful security zones around all of the major population centers in the south for the first time since 2001, but only if they have the resources and the time to do it.
Aggressive operations have managed to preserve a great degree of security in Kabul and are slowly expanding out from there. But the enemy still has safe havens within eastern Afghanistan that must be cleared before they are turned over to Afghan responsibility. So must the Haqqani network—which operates from eastern Afghanistan and is closely linked to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, with international aspirations—be defeated.
It hasn't been possible so far to undertake such clearing operations in the east because the surge was limited to about 30,000 troops. Without the full-force package requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commanders first had to focus on southern Afghanistan, which was in imminent danger of falling to the Taliban in 2009. Removing U.S. forces prematurely will deny the coalition and the Afghans the ability to shift their forces to eastern Afghanistan. Afghan security forces, although holding and fighting well, are not yet able to meet the Taliban threat on their own.
Above all, the Afghan population needs confidence before it really commits to resisting the Taliban and supporting the government. It can gain such confidence only by seeing that the coalition and Afghan forces will successfully fight off the coming Taliban counterattack.
A successful fighting season this year would permit decisive operations in eastern Afghanistan in 2012. The same rules will apply to those operations, however: If the coalition can clear remaining safe havens in the east in 2012, the enemy is likely to counterattack in 2013, and the coalition and the Afghans will have to defeat that counterattack to demonstrate to the local people that the insurgents have lost and are not coming back.
This timeline of operations is fully consistent with the 2014 deadline, announced by President Obama and the NATO allies in Lisbon last year, for transferring security control to the Afghans and reducing the American footprint to whatever is required for sustained training and counterterrorism operations. This timeline would also likely permit the beginning of substantial reductions in forces in 2013, assuming that progress continues in the south as we defeat enemy counterattacks in the east.
Pressure for withdrawal is driven largely by concerns about the U.S. budget, frustration with Afghanistan's government, anger at Pakistan, and irrational exuberance about the impact of Osama bin Laden's death. But bin Laden's death isn't significant to the situation on the ground in Afghanistan today because it has no meaningful effect on popular attitudes about the likelihood of insurgent victory or defeat.
As for the other problems, premature withdrawal will make them all worse. The Afghan government will behave more counterproductively the more it believes that the U.S. isn't serious about succeeding. The Pakistani military is much more likely to double down on its support for insurgent proxies in Afghanistan if Mr. Obama reinforces its decades-long conviction that America will inevitably abandon the region. And Pakistani failures to address terrorist bases on their own territory will be compounded by the re-emergence of such sanctuaries in Afghanistan.
The economic argument for withdrawing troops faster makes even less sense. The marginal savings of pulling an additional 5,000 or even 15,000 troops out of Afghanistan 12 or 18 months early is trivial compared to the cost of failure in this effort. If we defeat ourselves in Afghanistan now, we will have to choose later whether to accept likely attacks on the U.S. homeland or to intervene militarily once again—at a much higher price than we could hope to save now. Withdrawal is a penny-wise but pound-foolish approach to an enduring national security problem.
If Mr. Obama announces the withdrawal of all surge forces from Afghanistan in 2012, the war will likely be lost. Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and other global terrorist groups will almost certainly re-establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan. The Afghan state would likely collapse and the country would descend into ethnic civil war. The outcome of this policy would be far worse than Nixon's decision to accept defeat in Vietnam, for it would directly increase the threat to the American homeland.
Americans may be tired of war, but war is not tired of us. Thousands of people around the world wake up every morning and think about how to kill Americans and destroy the American way of life. Right now, we have the momentum against those enemies in Afghanistan. This is the time to press the fight.
Ms. Kagan is president of the Institute for the Study of War. Mr. Kagan is director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. They have spent about 10 months in Afghanistan since 2009.
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Russia's Concern in a Post-U.S. Afghanistan
Russian National Security Adviser Nikolai Patrushev, while on a visit to the Indian capital Monday, said there was no military solution to the situation in Afghanistan. Patrushev, who is the former long-time head of the Russian Federal Security Service and the second most influential intelligence official after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, explained that the problems of terrorism and drug trafficking in the southwest Asian nation would continue without some sort of negotiated settlement in the country that could allow for socio-economic development. Afghan forces on their own could not accomplish such tasks, and Russia is willing to provide the necessary assistance, the secretary of the Kremlin’s National Security Council said.
“Knowing that the Americans are unlikely to achieve some form of political resolution before they leave Afghanistan, the Russians are trying to step in and find with regional players some enduring strategy in the otherwise dysfunctional country.”
Patrushev’s remarks reflect Moscow’s growing concerns at the increasingly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, especially as the United States and its NATO allies approach the endgame. The Americans have the choice of walking away from Afghanistan while it remains a threat, albeit one that is not so close to home. For the Russians, however, given their interests in Central Asia and the Caucuses, Afghanistan in a state of anarchy — or worse, dominated by the Taliban — represents a clear and present danger due to terrorism, drugs, and political and regional destabilization.
Knowing that the Americans are unlikely to achieve some form of political resolution before they leave Afghanistan, the Russians are trying to step in and find with regional players some enduring strategy in the otherwise dysfunctional country. India and Russia, along with Iran, share similar concerns, and have long been supportive of anti-Taliban forces. But each of these powers realizes that the Taliban are a reality and thus need to be contained through engagement.
Iran already has significant ties to the Afghan jihadist militia, cultivated over the years since the Taliban began their resurgence. The Russians also have their own connections, a legacy from their involvement in the 1980s. India remains the weak link in this chain because of its rivalry with Pakistan and Taliban linkages to Islamabad, despite its having the most overt business relationship, and a recently announced training deal with Afghan security forces.
The Russians, who have been in communication with the Pakistanis, especially as U.S.-Pakistani relations have suffered, understand the need to work with Islamabad. This would explain Patrushev’s statement that the joint fight against terrorism could help normalize relations between India and Pakistan. “India and Pakistan have specific relations, and we do not see it as our role to try to change them,” he said. “However, there is a threat which affects everyone, international terrorism, and there is an understanding by the sides that this needs to be resolved together.”
However, the Indian-Pakistani rivalry is not the only thing that Russia has to be concerned about vis-a-vis Afghanistan. U.S. influence on the Indians has created a disconnect between India and Iran, preventing India from being able to purchase crude from Tehran. Tightening U.S.-led measures against doing business with the Iranians has left the Indians without a means by which to pay for the crude.
In the past couple of days there have been reports that Saudi Arabia is willing to make up for the amount of oil that the Indians have not been getting from Iran due to American-led sanctions. It is not clear if India can use Saudi Arabia to substitute this shortfall, but it creates problems between India and Iran as Tehran is at loggerheads with both Washington and Riyadh.
As Russia gets more nervous about what will come from the aftermath of the U.S. pullout in Afghanistan, it will seek assistance to engineer some direction in the country. Ultimately, if the Russians are to come up with a way to deal with Afghanistan, then they must have reach a consensus with the key regional players, especially Pakistan and Iran — the two countries with the most influence in Afghanistan and with problems with India.
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Re: the first article:
I think we should stay in Afghanistan only if we plan to take on the jihadi sanctuaries in Pak ourselves, or have a means to get the pak army to do the work for us. Otherwise, the talibs will play hide and seek with American forces by running back to Pak. We have now started to apply pressure on Pak to take action in N.Waziristan, this is good (10 years late), but likely to be ineffective since the paki army has no interest in that proposition. So it is time to come back from Afghanistan...since we are unwilling to take the hard decision of expanding the war (boots on the ground) into Pak.
Re: the second...its part of the "great game" in central asia. Dont know what the US objectives and interests are. My instinct is to think that the US should support its interests through proxies and friendly countries and not have a permanent physical presence there. The US is seen as a foreign occupying power, that will not be acceptable to anyone longterm (Russians, Chinese, Purelanders, Afghanis, Iranians). Only India benefits from a US presence in Afghanistan, since the US is doing some of the work for the Indians and there is atleast partial convergence of interests.
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I would be very surprised if Kayani and Pasha can keep their jobs....the common abdul is most displeased with the duo...the rank and file of the army is not too impressed either. Infact, by sending troops into N.Waziristan, Kayani will lose all respect amongst the population and lower ranks of the army. If he does not, his american masters will be most displeased.
I also find it ironic that Pak talks about strategic depth in Afghanistan, but its actually the Taliban who enjoy strategic depth in Pakistan against the US forces in Afghanistan.
The woes of an ostrich republic
Ayaz Amir
Friday, June 03, 2011
When the cover was blown from Osama bin Laden’s last gift to Pakistan – his choice of residence in Abbottabad, a favour we could have done without – it was only to be expected that the guardians of national ideology would be rendered speechless. There are some situations too embarrassing for words and this was one of them.
A frank admission of failure might have been more sensible. But this being no part of the Pakistani tradition, our guardians did the next best thing: climb the ramparts and blow the trumpets of national dignity and honour. For about 10-12 days it seemed as if Pakistan was trembling on the edge of a new declaration of independence. Politicians of all hues went wild with demands for an end to foreign aid.
It took only two brief visits – the first by Senator John Kerry, the second by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with Admiral Mike Mullen in tow – to puncture this euphoric post-Osama myth of born-again national sovereignty.
Pakistan’s leadership – president, prime minister and the chief guardian himself, Gen Ashfaq Kayani – dutifully lined up before Kerry (who, it bears noting, holds no official position in the US administration) to hear him say that Pakistan’s conduct henceforth would be judged not by words but deeds.
Any doubts persisting about whether the mood of the Pakistani leadership had sobered up were laid to rest by the second visit. Hillary Clinton offered a sop to her interlocutors, something they would have been keen to hear: “...I want to stress again that we have absolutely no reason to believe anyone at the highest level of the government knew (about Osama).” But this came with a sting: “...we have reached a turning point....we look to Pakistan to take decisive steps in the days ahead.”
What those steps were was made clear a few days later by Admiral Mullen who told American TV channels that an operation by the Pakistan army in North Waziristan was on the cards. “It’s a very important fight,” he said, “and a very important operation.”
One doesn’t have to be much of a war genius to figure out what’s going on. The Americans give the army leadership a sort of clean chit about Bin Laden but get the army to agree on a new, and potentially dangerous, operation, something Kayani and company were resisting for some time. So much for national honour and sovereignty.
And look at the ISI’s predicament. Since the Raymond Davis affair its leadership was getting hot under the collar wanting to reduce the American footprint in Pakistan. Now the same leadership has to go along with the opening of a new front in North Waziristan. In other words, taking a strong stand on a relatively small issue but helpless in the face of a larger decision.
The Peshawar corps commander has of course said that an operation in North Waziristan is not imminent and that it will be undertaken “...when we want to do it, when it is militarily and otherwise in the national interest.” While he should be applauded for his outspokenness, he forgets that we often leave it to our foreign friends to define our national interest.
The fight against terrorism should be taken forward but we should think long and hard before going into North Waziristan. This already looks like a compromised operation not because we are talking about it but because, given the present state of army morale, it is hard to imagine any unit of the Pakistan army having its heart in it when the fighting begins.
Swat and South Waziristan were different. There was hope in the air that we were about to turn a corner in our fight against extremism. There was also the feeling that military success would be complemented by something equally daring on the political front. But with no end in sight to what increasingly looks like an intractable struggle, and with the political leadership largely uninvolved (neither the president nor the prime minister having visited the troops even once) that mood has vanished, giving way to a feeling of resignation and despondency.
The effects of the Osama raid and the attack on the Mehran base should also be taken into account. With military morale not at its highest it will take a minor miracle of leadership to inject a gung-ho spirit into the units going into North Waziristan. If at all undertaken, this has to be our own operation, with our hearts and souls in it. If carried out under American pressure, there is a risk it will be a half-cocked affair.
We have to get one thing straight. That we are amenable to American pressure is not so much because of our economic vulnerability, although that too is a problem, but because of our strategic double games: fighting some militants while nurturing and supporting others because of their presumed usefulness against India. Or as future insurance policy for Afghanistan.
The foremost condition for the reclamation of sovereignty is an end to these games, a final farewell to the use of militancy as a tool of foreign policy. Support for such organisations as the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and a sovereign Pakistan are mutually contradictory aims. If we want to be masters in our own house we have to rid ourselves of the bitter legacy of ‘jihad’. It has caused Pakistan nothing but unmitigated harm and given a handle to others to use against us.
And can the godfathers of national security kindly get Afghanistan out of their system? Can’t we leave it to geography and cultural proximity to work their influences? Earlier on we propped up Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Then it was the Taliban. Now it is the Haqqanis. Can’t we get over this obsession of wanting to control things in Afghanistan? We never succeeded in the past, we won’t in the future. Afghan history has not been kind to would-be controllers.
The other half of our double games flows from our perceptions about India. The lashkar-this and the jaish-that have been pawns on our Indian chessboard. Without going into the details of our Indian obsession, suffice it to say that the world has changed, the sub-continent has changed, the dragons threatening us are no longer the same.
No one is saying bend the knee before India. Why should that even be a consideration? Larger neighbours can be a problem but we must learn to live with them. There’s no other choice. We have cultivated hostility towards India and all this has done is to drag us down, warping our thoughts and making them morbid, and crippling our ability to behave and function like a normal nation.
Pakistan has two problems – just two and no other: under-development and the curse of religious fundamentalism gone wild. Both are internal problems aggravated not by any international conspiracy – Zionist, Indian or American – but by our external obsessions. Unless the army, and here the key responsibility is the army’s, breaks free from its Indian bondage – and this is a bondage – there can be no peace for Pakistan.
Just think of it, clenching our mailed fist towards India but sucking up to the United States, acting upon American demands about necessary steps, what kind of sovereignty is this?
Islam is not the state religion of Pakistan, denial is. And our national emblem should be the ostrich, given our proclivity to bury our heads in the sand and not see the landscape around us as it is.
We need a drastic change of course, that’s for sure. The kind of civilian leaders we have, their quality we know. No hope for any miracles from that quarter. As for the military side, Kayani has begun to look too much like a dated product, a rep of the old order. He has outlived his usefulness. His extension may have been a Zardari political masterstroke, serving to protect his flanks, but otherwise it wasn’t a bright idea.
We need a change of guard, both political and military, the coming of some rebels to the fore. This is Pakistan’s foremost challenge...dependent, however, on divine grace because the political spectrum, from one end to the other, presents the aspect of a desert, the level and lonely sands (echoes of Shelley) stretching far away.
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Pakistan Officials Colluding With Militants? US Presents Evidence
By NICK SCHIFRIN (@nickschifrin) and MATTHEW COLE
June 10, 2011
The United States' attempts to regain trust in Pakistan's intelligence service suffered a blow in the last few weeks when the CIA gathered evidence that U.S. officials believe shows collusion between militants and Pakistani security officials.
During a visit to Islamabad on Friday, CIA Director Leon Panetta confronted the head of Pakistan's intelligence service, showing him satellite and other intelligence that the CIA believes is evidence of Pakistani security's efforts to help Islamic militants based in Pakistan, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.
According to the officials, Panetta revealed overhead imagery that showed two facilities where militants manufactured improvised explosive devices, known as IEDs, which are commonly used by militants fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The "IED factories" were located in North and South Waziristan, where many militants are based.
The CIA passed intelligence in the past several weeks to their Pakistani counterparts, alerting them to the two facilities, but when Pakistani forces raided the facilities, the militants had disappeared.
In his meetings Friday, Panetta conveyed the CIA's belief that the militants had been warned by Pakistani security officials prior to the raids.
Panetta traveled to Islamabad just hours after his Congressional hearing to become secretary of defense, an unannounced trip that U.S. officials publicly described as a way to "discuss ways to improve cooperation." But behind the scenes, Panetta's visit -- expected to be his last as CIA chief -- underscored the lack of trust that U.S. officials continue to have in their Pakistani counterparts.
Since Osama bin Laden's death, senior U.S. officials have demanded that Pakistan prove that it intends to help crack down on terror networks within its own borders with concrete, specific steps.
Today, U.S. and Pakistani officials both admitted that the escape of militants making bombs for use against Americans in Afghanistan was a setback.
Pakistani officials made a rare admission that some kind of collusion was possible.
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The country is ripe for civil war....insha allah..
http://www.marketwatch.pk/news/pakistan-business-news/pakistan-poverty-increased-to-an-astonishing-43-percent (http://www.marketwatch.pk/news/pakistan-business-news/pakistan-poverty-increased-to-an-astonishing-43-percent)
Pakistan Poverty increased to an astonishing 43 Percent
June 03, 2011
ISLAMABAD: For the third year in a row, the government of Pakistan refused to state how many people in the country live below the poverty line, although estimates based on data provided by the finance ministry in its economic survey suggest that the poverty rate may have increased to an astonishing 43%.
During much of the press conference, both Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh and the finance secretary refused to answer the question on poverty and unemployment rates, despite the fact that nearly every journalist present started off by asking about those two key metrics of the nation’s economic health.
Process of Compiling: The question was usually summarily ignored by both the minister and other officials present before the finance secretary finally gave a non-answer, saying that he had no new information on the matter. Since the last poverty survey in 2006, there are no new figures on poverty, said Finance Secretary Waqar Masood, during a press conference that marked the release of the 2011 Economic Survey. The government is in the process of compiling the results of its new poverty survey and will be able to release the data next year. In 2006, the government had determined that 22.3%, a figure that hid the fact that there was an increasingly wide gap between the poverty rates in urban and rural areas. Poverty rates in urban areas are lower by as much as 20% compared to rural areas. The government uses the World Bank’s definition of poverty, which is any person earning less than $1.25 per day. In Pakistan, that figure comes to any person living on less than Rs3,243 per month. The government has not given any reason as to why it does not produce even estimates of the poverty rates, even though this year’s economic survey seems to include suggestions on how much it might have increased by. By the ADB’s estimates, as cited by the ministry of finance, every 10% increase in food prices pushes 2.2% of Pakistan’s population below the poverty line.
The ministry estimates that food prices have risen 94% since its last poverty survey. If the ADB’s estimates hold across several years, poverty in Pakistan has increased to an astonishing 43%. Data from the finance ministry suggest that nearly 75% of the population lives very close to the poverty line and very small changes can push very large numbers of people below it, while relatively medium-paced economic growth can also bring several million people out of poverty as well.[/b]]If the ADB’s estimates hold across several years, poverty in Pakistan has increased to an astonishing 43%. Data from the finance ministry suggest that nearly 75% of the population lives very close to the poverty line and very small changes can push very large numbers of people below it, while relatively medium-paced economic growth can also bring several million people out of poverty as well. (http://[b)
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Pakis are getting paranoid..(http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/1899/pakistaninvasion.jpg)
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http://www.theonion.com/articles/pakistani-intelligence-announces-its-full-cooperat,20681/
Pakistani Intelligence Announces Its Full Cooperation With U.S. Forces During Upcoming Top Secret June 12 Drone Strike On Al-Qaeda At 5:23 A.M. Near Small Town Of Razmani In North Waziristan
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Comments by sanman in the Economist...explaining the history of the region.
In 1839, the British Empire sought to expand the borders of its colony of British India, by launching a war of conquest against the neighboring Pashtuns. The Pashtuns, as a fiercely independent tribal warrior people, resisted ferociously, so that the British conquest of them was not successful. The British were only able to conquer part of the Pashtun territory, and even that remained in constant rebellion against them. Meanwhile, the remaining unconquered portion of Pashtun territory became the nucleus for the formation of Afghanistan. In 1893, the British imposed a ceasefire line on the Afghans called the Durand Line, which separated British-controlled territory from Afghan territory. The local people on the ground however never recognized this line, which merely existed on a map, and not on the ground.
In 1947, when the colony of British India achieved independence and was simultaneously partitioned into Pakistan and India, the Pakistanis wanted the conquered Pashtun territory to go to them, since the Pashtuns were Muslims. Given that the Pashtuns never recognized British authority over them to begin with, the Pakistanis had tenuous relations with the Pashtuns and were consumed by fears of Pashtun secession.
When Pakistan applied to join the UN in 1947, there was only one country which voted against it. No, it wasn't India - it was Pashtun-ruled Afghanistan which voted against Pakistan's admission, on the grounds that Pakistan was in illegal occupation of Pashtun lands stolen by the British. Their vote was cast on September 30, 1947 and is a fact.
In 1948, in the nearby state of Kashmir, its Hindu princely ruler and Muslim political leader joined hands in deciding to make Kashmir an independent country rather than joining either Pakistan or India. Pakistan's leadership were immediately terrified of this precedent, fearing that the Pashtuns would soon follow suit and also declare their own ethnically independent state. In order to pre-empt that and prevent it from happening, Pakistan's founder and leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah quickly decided to raise the cry of "Hindu treachery against the Muslims" and despatched hordes of armed Pashtun tribesmen to attack Kashmir. This was his way of distracting the Pashtuns from their own ethnic nationalism by diverting them into war against Kashmir "to save Islam". These are the same Pashtun tribesman whose descendants are today's Taliban. Fleeing the unprovoked invasion of their homeland, Kashmir's Hindu prince and Muslim political leader went to India, pledging to merge with it if India would help repel the invasion. India agreed, and sent its army to repel the Pashtun invasion. Pakistan then sent its army to clash with Indian forces, and the result was Indo-Pakistani conflict, which has lasted for decades.
Pakistan's fear of Pashtun nationalism and separatism, which it fears can break up Pakistan, is thus the root of the Indo-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir and also the root of Pak conflict with Afghanistan, not any alleged Indian takeover of Kabul. This is all due to the legacy of 1839, which happened long before Pakistan was even created.
When a communist revolution happened in Kabul in the late 70s, Pakistan's fear of potential spillover effects on Pashtun nationalism caused Pakistan to embark on fomenting a guerrilla war against Kabul that led to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Aligned with with the USA, Pakistan then proceeded to arm the Pashtuns while indoctrinating them with Islamic fanaticism. The USA was not allowed any ground role, and was told it could only supply arms and funds to Pakistan, which would take care of the rest. Pakistan then simultaneously embarked on destabilization of India by fomenting insurgency there.
After the Soviets withdrew, Pakistan again feared that the well-armed Pashtuns would turn on it and pursue secession. So Pakistan then created the Taliban as a new umbrella movement for the fractious factional guerrilla groups under an ultra-fundamentalist ideology. Bin Laden's AlQaeda then became cosy with Taliban, and the result was 9-11.
When the 9-11 attacks occurred, the cornered Pakistanis then did a 180 and promised to help the US defeat the Taliban and bring the terrorists to justice. Meanwhile they were racking their brains hoping to come up with a way to undermine the War on Terror from within. Now that they have succeeded in doing that, and in bleeding US/NATO forces, they hope to jump horses by kicking the US out and aligning with China.
Because of Pakistan's attempts to illegitimately hang onto Pashtun land, it has brought itself into conflicts with so many countries - first against its neighbors and then against more distant larger powers. This is the reason why Pakistan is an irredentist state and can never be an ally against Islamic extremism, because Pakistan depends on this very Islamism as a national glue to hold itself together, and keep nationalistic ethnic groups like the Pashtuns from breaking Pakistan apart.
At the same time, Pakistanis don't dare own upto the Pashtun national question at any level, nor its effect on their national policies, because any attempt to do so would open up the legitimacy of their claim to Pashtun land.
Sovereignty is a 2-way street, entailing not just rights but obligations. Pakistan only wishes to assert rights owing to it from sovereignty, and wishes to completely duck the issue of any sovereign obligations to apprehend terrorists on what it claims as its own territory. This is because the fundamental reality is that the Pashtun territory is not really theirs, is not really under their control, and the Pashtuns don't really recognize Pakistani central authority over them.
Pakistan uses Islamic fundamentalism to submerge traditional Pashtun ethnic identity in a desperate attempt to suppress Pashtun ethnic nationalism, and to stave off the disintegration of Pakistan. The Pashtuns are a numerically large enough ethnic group possessing the strength of arms to be able to secede from Pakistan at any moment, should they decide upon it.
The answer is to let the separatists have their way and achieve their independent ethnic states, breaking up Pakistan. It's better to allow Pakistan to naturally break up into 3 or 4 benign ethnic states, than for it to keep promoting Islamic fundamentalist extremism in a doomed attempt to hold itself together. Pakistan is a failing state, and it's better to let it fail and fall apart. This will help to end all conflict in the region and the trans-national terrorist problem. An independent ethnic Pashtun state will be dominated by Pashtun ethnic identity instead of fundamentalist Islam, and thus AlQaeda will no longer be able to find sanctuary there. Conventional ethnic identity is far more natural and benign than trans-nationalist Islamism with its inherent collectivist political bent. Supporting the re-emergence of 4 natural ethnic states - Pashtunistan, Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab - would be far better than continuing to support a dangerous and dysfunctional failed state like Pakistan which continues to spew toxic Islamist extremist ideology in a doomed attempt to hold itself together.
Following the failure of the Vietnam War, many Americans later recognized that war was really a war of ethnic reunification by the Vietnamese people. It wasn't a case of one foreign country attempting to conquer another foreign country - indeed, the north and south Vietnamese were not strangers or aliens to one another - they were 2 halves of a common whole. The question was whether they would reunify under communist socialism or under free democracy, but because a blinkered American leadership refused to recognize the Vietnamese grassroots affinity for one another and their desire to reunify, it pretty much ensured that Vietnamese reunification would take place under communist socialism.
Likewise, the Pashtun people live on both sides of an artificial Durand Line (Afghan-Pak "border") which they themselves have never accepted or recognized. It's a question of whether they will politically reunify under close-minded theocratic Islamism or under a more secular and tolerant society. Because today's blinkered American leadership is again blindly defending another artificial line on a map, and refusing to recognize the oneness of the people living on both sides of that artificial line, America is again shutting itself out of the reunification process, guaranteeing that Pashtun reunification will occur under fanatical fundamentalist Islamism as prescribed by Pakistan (much as Hanoi's Soviet backers prescribed reunification under communist socialism.) It's only later on, much after America's defeat, that some Americans will realize too late that they should have seen that the Pashtuns on both sides of the artificial line were actually one people. Pakistan knows it all too well, because they've been living with the guilt and fear of it ever since Pakistan's creation - but that's why they're hell-bent on herding the Pashtuns down the path of Islamist fanaticism, using Islamist glue to keep the Pashtuns as a whole hugged to Pakistan's bosom.
If only the preachers at the Economist could shed their blinkers and really understand what's going on, then they might have a chance to shape events more effectively, and to their favor. Pakistan is rapidly building up its nuclear arsenal, as it moves to surpass Britain to become the world's 5th-largest nuclear state.The Pakistanis are racing to build up as much hard-power as possible to back up the soft-power they feel Islamist hate-ideology gives them.
The world needs to compel the Pakistanis to let the Pashtuns go, and allow them to have their own independent national existence, along with the Baluchis and Sindhis. Humoring Pakistan and allowing it to continue using Islamist hatred to rally the people towards unity to counter slow disintegration is not the way to achieve stability in the region, or security for the world.
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Note the last few lines as a solution to Pak...everyone seems to think break up of pak is a good thing.. :-D
http://www.newsinsight.net/archivedebates/nat2.asp?recno=2148 (http://www.newsinsight.net/archivedebates/nat2.asp?recno=2148)
Managing Afghanistan
Backing Northern Alliance II is the only viable option for India when US troops withdraw, says N.V.Subramanian.
27 May 2011: Through back channels, the US is telling India that it is leaving Afghanistan. After the discovery of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, the United States no longer trusts Pakistan to "hand over" Afghanistan to it and its Taliban allies. America wants regional ownership of Afghanistan, meaning that India, Iran, Russia, the Central Asian republics, China and Pakistan must sit together to decide the best course for bringing peace and stability to the benighted country. The US has promised to remain involved. And it will not let its anti-Iran biases obstruct a regional peace solution for Afghanistan.
So what should India do?
Retired senior US CIA and military officials are keen to let India know that America is absolutely serious about withdrawing from Afghanistan. The withdrawal will by no means be sudden. But since president Barack Obama has decided to stand for re-election, the White House wants some troops' withdrawal. One estimate of that is sixty thousand troops and another thirty thousand. There is also the compulsion to cut defence spending, and so it is imperative to keep a manageable size of troops in Afghanistan.
Even if a majority of US troops are withdrawn, a small number will be kept in non-Pashtun territories in the west but more likely in the north, roughly in the region of the former Northern Alliance. The trust with Pakistan is broken. The US national security establishment has evidence that Pakistan's ISI facilitated the Pakistani Taliban attack on a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan in December 2009 that killed eight American agents. The US is also convinced of an ISI hand in 26/11. Indeed, Pakistan hoped the US government would prevent the presentation of documentary evidence of the ISI role in 26/11 in the Tahawwur Rao trial in Chicago.
And previous to the Abbottabad raid that killed Bin Laden, strains in Pak-US relations came on the Raymond Davis affair. Davis who was a contract CIA operative in Pakistan killed two threatening ISI gunmen. While blood money was paid to return him to the US, the Obama administration made two other pledges to Pakistan for Davis' release. One was that about four dozen CIA undercover officers deployed in FATA and elsewhere against the Al-Qaeda and Taliban would be removed. The second was that the US would hand over the drone campaign to the Pakistanis.
Once Raymond Davis was back in the US, America signaled that the two deals were off. The CIA agents would not be pulled out. And the US would continue to manage drone warfare. Drone attacks significantly increased after Davis' return. And CIA undercover agents scored a big hit in tracing Osama Bin Laden to a secure compound in Abbottabad. When the ISI chief, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, came to the US to press for the honouring of the Davis deal, he got a tongue-lashing from the CIA director, Leon Panetta, and left the meeting in a huff.
The point the US wants to convey is that it no longer trusts Pakistan on Afghanistan. While it is leaving, it wants India, Russia, Iran, China and Pakistan to confabulate to return peace and stability to Afghanistan.
What should India do?
While the US position on Iran that it will not discourage its participation for an Afghan solution is welcome, trouble comes from China and Pakistan, and possibly, more from Pakistan than China. Following the Pakistan prime minister, Yousaf Reza Geelani's visit to China, it appears that China does not want to step into US shoes as a military aider of Pakistan. Nor it would seem is China keen to insert itself into Afghanistan in the present mess. Above all, it wants no damage in relations with the US.
But even assuming China and Pakistan come together on Afghanistan, they will not accept an India role in deciding that country's future. While Russia would have no obvious issues with Pakistan and China on Afghanistan, Iran would be deterred from their camp by the Shia-Sunni angle. But in the natural course, Russia and Iran would prefer India because of their past common Northern Alliance dealings. And if Pakistan ascertains it will have a major role in Afghanistan if a regional solution involving India fails, it will work towards its destruction.
What's the solution for Afghanistan in which India can play a role? There is no "solution" in sight and it is going to be messy. India's best bet is to remain engaged with Afghanistan's peaceful development till conditions worsen. Then, cutting its losses, India has to return to the pre-9/11 position of backing a previously created Northern Alliance II.
This is familiar territory for our readers. In time, Pakistan will face the blowback of encouraging terrorism in Afghanistan (and India), and it would sink the Pakistan state. The only worry is Pakistani nukes. Opinion is already building worldwide for denuclearizing Pakistan. Once Pakistan disintegrates by itself, its state policy of terrorism will crumble, and consequently the region will gradually stabilize, including Afghanistan.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, www.NewsInsight.net, and writes internationally on strategic affairs. He has authored two novels, University of Love (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) and Courtesan of Storms (Har-Anand, Delhi). Email: envysub@gmail.com.
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Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Tuesday, June 14, 2011 -- 10:32 PM EDT
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Pakistan Arrests C.I.A. Informants Who Aided Bin Laden Raid
Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials.
Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration is seeking Pakistan’s support in brokering an endgame in the war in neighboring Afghanistan.
The fate of the C.I.A. informants arrested in Pakistan is unclear, but American officials said that the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, raised the issue when he travelled to Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/world/asia/15policy.html?emc=na
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Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 -- 10:15 PM EDT
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Pakistan’s Chief Of Army Is Fighting to Keep His Job in Wake of Bin Laden Raid
Pakistan’s army chief, the most powerful man in the country, is fighting to save his position in the face of seething anger from top generals and junior officers since the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden, according to Pakistani officials and people who have met the chief in recent weeks.
Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who has led the army since 2007, faces such intense discontent over what is seen as his cozy relationship with the United States that a colonels’ coup, while unlikely, was not out of the question, said a well-informed Pakistani who has seen the general in recent weeks, as well as an American military official involved with Pakistan for many years.
The Pakistani Army is essentially run by consensus among 11 top commanders, known as the Corps Commanders, and almost all of them, if not all, were demanding that General Kayani get much tougher with the Americans, even edging toward a break, Pakistanis who follow the army closely said.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/world/asia/16pakistan.html?emc=na
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Pakistan Arrests C.I.A. Informants Who Aided Bin Laden Raid
From Kiyani's point of view...these guys killed the golden goose...cost Kiyani and friends a couple of billion $$.
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From a friend unusually seasoned in the ways of the world:
I had dinner with a friend last night, who is in town taking pre-deployment training to Pakistan. Either yesterday or the day before, the class had a guy from Pakistan speak to the class about culture over there. My friend talked about two things the Pakistani gentleman (PG) spoke about that I thought pariculary interesting.
First, the concept that there must always be a winner and a loser, and it essentially must be then and there. The example the PG gave was a car accident. He said that in America two people can get in a cars accident, pull over, exchange info, and move on knowing the matter will get sorted out. Not so in Pakistan. There must be a guilty party who admits guilt/responsibility right then and there. In other words, there must be a winner and a loser.
Secondly, the concept of an honor culture. Not a real surpise to many of us, but perhaps the extreme to which it is critical is the point the speaker tried to make. A Pakistani simply must maintain his honor, and never be seen to lose face, no matter the consequences. If they lose their honor, they "can't go back home." This results in actions that we would find hard to fathom why somebody would engage in because the consequences will be certain and severe. But no matter. If the alternative is losing honor/face, then the dire consequences route is the preferred option. It may not be logical, but that will not matter. Again, the point the speaker was making was just how extremely critical honor is to Pakistanis.
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I have been harping on the paki need for maintaining H&D (honor and dignity) for a while now. Unfortunately, H&D has been taking a beating as of late.. :-D, what with the OBL raid, PNS Mehran attack etc..
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For those of us who do not know him or may have forgotten, Michael Yon is an ex-SF soldier who became a reader supported journalist in Iraq. During the worst of the war there due to the respect his SF background afforded him, he went on missions with our troops including into firefights. He was by far and away the first forceful voice that the Surge was working when candidates Baraq and Shrillery "General Betrayus" Clinton were skittering for the exit.
What he did in Iraq, he now does in Afpakia. IMHO whatever this man writes should be taken quite seriously. He has courage, integrity, and he puts himself in harm's way so he can report to us his search for Truth.
Afghanistan is making undeniable progress, but it could all unravel
Next >
19 June 2011
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
It's time to make big decisions. These decisions will have a huge impact on the future of Afghanistan. The biggest question at hand: How many troops will we keep here and for how long?
The answer to that question must not be dreamed up in political strategy sessions or in focus groups. Buzzwords and abstractions won't do.
This is about real people — our soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines, our allies — and the people of Afghanistan. It's their lives that hang in the balance, and our judgment must respect the challenge they face and the progress they have made.
Let's begin with a few facts. For the strategy we used, we never had enough troops in Afghanistan to defeat our enemies and stand up a civil society. It can be argued that today, we still do not have enough.
Despite this, the coalition and the Afghans appear to finally be turning the tide in our favor, and a great deal of this can be credited to President Obama for deciding to send more troops. Unfortunately, the President has stated that we will begin bringing troops home this year.
This puts him in a bind. To keep his word, the President may have to undermine the very success that he facilitated.
And especially since the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, others can be expected to ratchet up the political pressure on Obama should he not begin the drawdown on schedule. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican frontrunner for the 2012 election, said this last week: "It's time for us to bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can, consistent with the word that comes to our generals that we can hand the country over… we've learned some important lessons in our experience in Afghanistan. I want those troops to come home based upon not politics, not based upon economics, but instead based upon the conditions on the ground determined by the generals. But I also think we've learned that our troops shouldn't go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation. Only the Afghanis can win Afghanistan's independence from the Taliban."
Gen. David Petraeus is the boss here in Afghanistan. He has been tasked with making a recommendation on troop withdrawal. He arrived in Washington last week, where he is recommending a timetable for the drawdown of the 30,000 “surge” troops sent to the country in 2009.
Obama had promised that those troops would start coming home in July, but conditions on the ground always matter more.
On June 5, I asked Petraeus in his Kabul office for insight into his recommendation to the President. He told me he has not yet told anyone what his recommendation will be.
Many people are waiting. Not even his staff knows.
Petraeus, tapped to take over the CIA upon his retirement from this post, has accumulated a long string of unlikely successes in Iraq, and increasingly in Afghanistan. These efforts have been far more than mere war. Our people triumphed in the kinetic fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan years ago; the far greater difficulties have been the second wars fought in both countries during the long nation-building phases.
Any politician who says we are not nation building in Iraq or Afghanistan should be dismissed. Nation building is the course we chose, and nation building is what is occurring. Slowly.
In Iraq, a government was shattered and rebuilt. In Afghanistan, there was no government to shatter. Afghanistan was just an area where a lot of people lived, and today it's being built up from mud and sticks. For instance, there was not a single meter of paved road in Ghor Province.
A country is being built from scratch and nobody has more experience at the messy and difficult job of “shatter and create” than does Petraeus. He knows his business, his profession and his art, and he knows more about the current war than anyone alive. His recommendation will carry significant weight.
But while we do this critical work, our young warriors are still dying and being wounded in large numbers. People at home are asking if Afghanistan is worth the sacrifice. And then there is the economy, still struggling and endangering our country strategically. The war here is very expensive.
Is it worth it? This is a hard question. We made the judgment that this war was worth fighting when we put our warriors into the arena in the first place. We've already jumped and now we are deciding whether to land on our heads, our rears or our feet. We cannot unjump. Our people are fighting as you read this. When we ordered our military to go, we cloaked ourselves in great responsibility to support them and to achieve success.
Our troops have two responsibilities, which are tightly interwoven: Win the war and create Afghanistan. It is not the troops' place to consider the global economy. They are not to consider unfolding debacle in Libya, the long challenges in Iraq or the dark side of the moon.
And so when Petraeus makes his recommendation to the President, his recommendation should not include any consideration of the U.S. economy, the debt or jobs in America. He is the man in the arena. The man in the arena does not collect parking tickets, or work at the concession stand or concern himself with the electric bill for the stadium. He beats his opponent to the ground. Or, in this case, beats some opponents into the ground and builds a country simultaneously. His recommendation to the President should be pure, devoid of outside considerations.
We must be honest about what we can accomplish. This is a century-long process. A little Afghan girl is watching me write this opinion. She appears to be about 4 years old, and she keeps peeking around the door smiling at me while her mother is cleaning the house and her father takes care of the property. The girl follows me around the house. A storm is coming and a lightning bolt just zapped the electricity. I am unarmed but safe in Kabul, and if this little girl is lucky, and we do not abandon Afghanistan, she may one day end up in a university.
Petraeus told me that at its peak, violence in Iraq was four times higher than current violence is here. This seems about right. I can drive around Afghanistan in many places. I've been back in Kabul for almost two weeks and have not heard a single gunshot or explosion, though I did feel an earthquake.
This isn't Baghdad. During peak times in Iraq, you couldn't go 30 minutes in Baghdad without seeing or hearing something. The most dangerous city in Afghanistan is Kandahar, yet I have driven around Kandahar many times, including recently, without a shred of armor. I could never have survived this in Fallujah, Basra, Baghdad, Baquba or Mosul. I have driven this year, without troops, to places in Afghanistan where last year I would have almost certainly been killed, such as Panjwai. You don't need thick intelligence reports to translate those realities.
Shouting at an oak tree will no not make it grow faster, and ignoring a sapling in this desert will leave it to die. An acorn was planted in 2001, and we mostly ignored it for more than half a decade while our people fought so hard in Iraq. Today, that acorn is a scrawny, 10-year-old oak tree that was so neglected until 2010 that it nearly died. Its skinny branches are still so weak that a sparrow dare not land, and while we focused on Iraq, the enemies here stayed busy nibbling away at anything green. Yet over the past year of extra care, there are clear signs of life and new growth.
Meanwhile, our enemies here are being monkey stomped. The rule of monkey stomping has never changed. Don't stop stomping until the enemy stops breathing. This enemy has earned respect for its courage, resilience and will-not-quit spirit, but there is only so much it can take.
At this rate, the Graveyard of Empires, the Undefeatables, will need a new advertising campaign. Our enemies here are turning out to be the Almost Undefeatables. The many good Afghans want to move forward. They want their kids, boys and girls, to see better days.
The bottom line is that there are unmistakable signs of progress in Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus is about to make a very important recommendation.
His judgment should be trusted.
Major fighting will soon begin in Afghanistan. I will be there providing coverage as I have done in the past. Your support is crucial. If you have enjoyed or benefited from my free dispatches, please consider supporting future work via: Paypal, or my Post Office Box, or other Methods of Support.
Osama bin Laden is dead, but the war rolls on.
Michael Yon
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When the GWOT history is written, Yon will be recognized as it's Ernie Pyle.
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From Associated Press
June 19, 2011 12:38 PM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Barack Obama nears a decision on a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, his retiring defense secretary says he doesn't believe the Taliban will engage in serious talks about ending their fight until they are under extreme military pressure.
Pentagon chief Robert Gates acknowledges that "there's been outreach" to the Taliban by the U.S. and others, but he describes the contacts as "very preliminary at this point."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that the U.S. and Afghan government have held talks with Taliban emissaries in an effort to end the nearly 10-year war. The Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan and sheltered al-Qaida before being driving from power in the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001, say publicly that there will be no negotiations until foreign troops leave the country.
"My own view is that real reconciliation talks are not likely to be able to make any substantive headway until at least this winter," said Gates, who retires as defense secretary at month's end.
"I think that the Taliban have to feel themselves under military pressure, and begin to believe that they can't win before they're willing to have a serious conversation," he told CNN's "State of the Union" in an interview taped Saturday after Karzai's announcement.
In the days ahead, Obama will decide how many of the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to withdraw in the initial round of reductions. Several members of Congress want significant cuts, citing the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and CIA Director Leon Panetta's assessment that fewer than 100 al-Qaida members remain in Afghanistan.
When Obama sent an additional 30,000 U.S. forces to Afghanistan at the end of 2009, he said some of those troops would start coming home in July 2011.
Obama has said the initial withdrawal will be "significant," but others in the administration, including Gates, have urged a more modest drawdown.
Gates said the troop reduction "must be politically credible here at home. So I think there's a lot of room for maneuvering there."
The U.S. goal is to give Afghans control of their own security by the end of 2014.
Many Taliban leaders remain unknown or underground since fleeing Kabul at the start of the war. Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has not been seen publicly since 2001.
"I think the first question we have is who represents Mullah Omar," Gates said. "Who really represents the Taliban? We don't want to end up having a conversation at some point with somebody who is basically a free-lancer."
Gates said the U.S. long has said that "a political outcome is the way most of these wars end. The question is when and if they're ready to talk seriously about meeting the redlines that President Karzai, and that the coalition have laid down, including totally disavowing al-Qaida."
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The Future of Afghanistan
Major AH Amin (Pakistan Army, Retired)
- The Pakistanis/ISI are not the masters of Afghanistan's destiny, although one may state that the Taliban in Afghanistan south of line Wardak-Shindand are Pakistan dependent as are near-Pakistani proxies.
- Kunnar, Laghman, Nuristan is a different game. It is Al Qaeda plus a combination of anti Pakistan Taliban groups with a heavy mixture of Swat. Dir, Bajaur, and Mohmand Talibans.
- The north is to a large extent pro Russian groups controlled with exception of pockets of Taliban in Baghlan and Kunduz. The Northern Alliance, Dostum and some other commanders will definitely look towards Russia, India and Iran rather than Pakistan.
- A new Northern Alliance is already being created with possible aerial fire support at Kulyab, Dehdadi, Kunduz and Herat Airfields. Russia will not allow the Taliban to have a clean run north of Hindu Kush; neither would Iran and India
In all probability the Taliban will have a clean run till line Kabul-Shindand but no further north.
- US has already abandoned large parts of Kunnar, Laghman, and Nuristan where the anti Pakistan Taliban are based.
- Note that 80 % of Taliban out of which 90 % are from Afghanistan regard Pakistan as a friend. There is no Pakistani regular army all along the 1500 Km stretch of Afghan border from Zhob to Taftan which is freely used for logistics by the 90 % of Taliban who are against USA and already pro Pakistan.
- The result will be an Afghanistan again divided in north and south regardless of Pakistan or USA liking it.
That Pakistan has been using Pashtuns as its pawns in its wars is now even very clear to the Pashtuns. The greatest beneficiary of money from Afghan wars has been the North Punjab.
- My fear is that Taliban backlash against Pakistan will be some kind of subconscious Pashtun backlash against Pakistan where Pashtuns will use religion to justify rebellion and even taking over Pakistan or some kind of secession. Here they would be aided by a simultaneous Baloch war of secession and a Punjab and Sindh paralyzed by inflation and unemployment.
- Pakistan is a suicide bombers factory. India may not be ideal but at least a young man can hope something in India but not in Pakistan which is a bastion of corruption, nepotism and red tapism. Inflation, poverty and despondency makes Pakistanis kill themselves or aspiring to kill some one, if not physically then spiritually and morally.
- A military coup in Pakistan can also not be ruled out. It has not succeeded before but it may next time.
- A serious strategic imbalance of Pakistan is that all institutions have lost their coercive value. This includes the military, the ISI and everybody who once mattered.
- The majority in Pakistan may be moderate but the extremists are the best organized and most ready to die. So Pakistan may be the worst nightmare of this world in next five to ten years.
- The Pakistani military and intelligence and its security apparatus is just not capable of containing extremism. What can the omnipotent USA do about it if they cannot manage to make an Frontier Corps training centre worth 31 Million USD at Tank which was long planned, or bring 1000-MW electricity to Pakistan because of the closing down of the CASA 1000 project.
- An Indo Pak showdown with nuclear weapons may become a reality within next five years.
With water resources decreasing and population rising an Indo-Pak conflict is a matter of few years unless Pakistan breaks down from within, not into Balkanization, but into a constant civil war bordering near breakdown.
- The militarization of the Indo-Pak has to see a showdown unless one party breaks down without a war. Pakistan seems more likely and the last resort may be a nuclear exchange or a cold start war with India which further weakens Pakistan.
- The US would not be able to make a dent with India over Pakistan as Pakistan is a solid Chinese concubine although its US relationship is a more temporary and fluctuating Mutaah or Sigheh (Temporary Marriage).
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By Nathan Hughes
U.S. President Barack Obama announced June 22 that the long process of drawing down forces in Afghanistan would begin on schedule in July. Though the initial phase of the drawdown appears limited, minimizing the tactical and operational impact on the ground in the immediate future, the United States and its allies are now beginning the inevitable process of removing their forces from Afghanistan. This will entail the risk of greater Taliban battlefield successes.
The Logistical Challenge
Afghanistan, a landlocked country in the heart of Central Asia, is one of the most isolated places on Earth. This isolation has posed huge logistical challenges for the United States. Hundreds of shipping containers and fuel trucks must enter the country every day from Pakistan and from the north to sustain the nearly 150,000 U.S. and allied forces stationed in Afghanistan, about half the total number of Afghan security forces. Supplying a single gallon of gasoline in Afghanistan reportedly costs the U.S. military an average of $400, while sustaining a single U.S. soldier runs around $1 million a year (by contrast, sustaining an Afghan soldier costs about $12,000 a year).
These forces appear considerably lighter than those in Iraq because Afghanistan’s rough terrain often demands dismounted foot patrols. Heavy main battle tanks and self-propelled howitzers are thus few and far between, though not entirely absent. Afghanistan even required a new, lighter and more agile version of the hulking mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle known as the M-ATV (for “all-terrain vehicle”).
Based solely on the activity on the ground in Afghanistan today, one would think the United States and its allies were preparing for a permanent presence, not the imminent beginning of a long-scheduled drawdown (a perception the United States and its allies have in some cases used to their advantage to reach political arrangements with locals). An 11,500-foot all-weather concrete and asphalt runway and an air traffic control tower were completed this February at Camp Leatherneck and Camp Bastion in Helmand province. Another more than 9,000-foot runway was finished at Shindand Air Field in Herat province last December.
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Meanwhile, a so-called iron mountain of spare parts needed to maintain vehicles and aircraft, construction and engineering equipment, generators, ammunition and other supplies — even innumerable pallets of bottled water — has slowly been built up to sustain day-to-day military operations. There are fewer troops in Afghanistan than the nearly 170,000 in Iraq at the peak of operations and considerably lighter tonnage in terms of armored vehicles. But short of a hasty and rapid withdrawal reminiscent of the chaotic American exit from Saigon in 1975 (which no one currently foresees in Afghanistan), the logistical challenge of withdrawing from Afghanistan — at whatever pace — is perhaps even more daunting than the drawdown in Iraq. The complexity of having nearly 50 allies with troops in country will complicate this process.
Moreover, coalition forces in Iraq had ready access to well-established bases and modern port facilities in nearby Kuwait and in Turkey, a long-standing NATO ally. Though U.S. and allied equipment comes ashore on a routine basis in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, the facilities there are nothing like what exists in Kuwait. Routes to bases in Afghanistan are anything but short and established, with locally contracted fuel tankers and other supplies not only traveling far greater distances but also regularly subject to harassing attacks. They are inherently vulnerable to aggressive interdiction by militants fighting on terrain far more favorable to them, and to politically motivated interruptions by Islamabad. The American logistical dependence on Pakistani acquiescence cannot be understated. Most supplies transit the isolated Khyber Pass in the restive Pakistani Federally Administered Tribal Areas west of Islamabad. As in Iraq, the United States does have an alternative to the north. But instead of Turkey it is the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), which runs through Central Asia and Russia (Moscow has agreed to continue to expand it) and entails a 3,200-mile rail route to the Baltic Sea and ports in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
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Given the extraordinary distances involved, the metrics for defining whether something is worth the expense of shipping back from Afghanistan are unforgiving. Some equipment will be deemed too heavily damaged or cheap and will be sanitized if necessary and discarded. Much construction and fortification has been done with engineering and construction equipment like Hesco barriers (which are filled with sand and dirt) that will not be reclaimed, and will continue to characterize the landscape in Afghanistan for decades to come, much as the Soviet influence was perceivable long after their 1989 withdrawal. Much equipment will be handed over to Afghan security forces, which already have begun to receive up-armored U.S. HMMWVs, aka “humvees.” Similarly, some 800,000 items valued at nearly $100 million have already been handed over to more than a dozen Iraqi military, security and government entities.
Other gear will have to be stripped of sensitive equipment (radios and other cryptographic gear, navigation equipment, jammers for improvised explosive devices, etc.), which is usually flown out of the country due to security concerns before being shipped overland. And while some Iraqi stocks were designated for redeployment to Afghanistan or prepared for long-term storage in pre-positioned equipment depots and aboard maritime pre-positioning ships at facilities in Kuwait, most vehicles and supplies slated to be moved out of Afghanistan increasingly will have to be shipped far afield. This could be from Karachi by ship or to Europe by rail even if they are never intended for return to the United States.
Security Transition
More important than the fate of armored trucks and equipment will be the process of rebalancing forces across the country. This will involve handing over outposts and facilities to Afghan security forces, who continue to struggle to reach full capability, and scaling back the extent of the U.S. and allied presence in the country. In Iraq, and likely in Afghanistan, the beginning of this process will be slow and measured. But its pace in the years ahead remains to be seen, and may accelerate considerably.
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The first areas slated for handover to Afghan control, the provinces of Panjshir, Bamiyan and Kabul — aside the restive Surobi district, though the rest of Kabul’s security effectively has been in Afghan hands for years — and the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, Lashkar Gah and Mehtar Lam have been relatively quiet places for some time. Afghan security forces increasingly have taken over in these areas. As in Iraq, the first places to be turned over to indigenous security forces already were fairly secure. Handing over more restive areas later in the year will prove trickier.
This process of pulling back and handing over responsibility for security (in Iraq often termed having Iraqi security forces “in the lead” in specific areas) is a slow and deliberate one, not a sudden and jarring maneuver. Well before the formal announcement, Afghan forces began to transition to a more independent role, conducting more small-unit operations on their own. International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops slowly have transitioned from joint patrols and tactical overwatch to a more operational overwatch, but have remained nearby even after transitions formally have taken place.
Under the current training regime, Afghan units continue to require advice and assistance, particularly with matters like intelligence, planning, logistics and maintenance. The ISAF will be cautious in its reductions for fear of pulling back too quickly and seeing the situation deteriorate — unless, of course, Obama directs it to conduct a hastier pullback.
As in Afghanistan, in Iraq the process of drawing down and handing over responsibility in each area was done very cautiously. There was a critical distinction, however. A political accommodation with the Sunnis facilitated the apparent success of the Iraqi surge — something that has not been (and cannot be) replicated in Afghanistan. Even with that advantage, Iraq remains in an unsettled and contentious state. The lack of any political framework to facilitate a military pullback leaves the prospect of a viable transition in restive areas where the U.S. counterinsurgency-focused strategy has been focused tenuous at best — particularly if timetables are accelerated.
In June 2009, U.S. forces in Iraq occupied 357 bases. A year later, U.S. forces occupied only 92 bases, 58 of which were partnered with the Iraqis. The pace of the transition in Afghanistan remains to be seen, but handing over the majority of positions to Afghan forces will fundamentally alter the situational awareness, visibility and influence of ISAF forces.
Casualties and Force Protection
The security of the remaining outposts and ensuring the security of U.S. and allied forces and critical lines of supply (particularly key sections of the Ring Road) that sustain remaining forces will be key to crafting the withdrawal and pulling back to fewer, stronger and more secure positions. As that drawdown progresses — and particularly if a more substantive shift in strategy is implemented — the increased pace begins to bring new incentives into play. Of particular note will be both a military and political incentive to reduce casualties as the endgame draws closer.
The desire to accelerate the consolidation to more secure positions will clash with the need to pull back slowly and continue to provide Afghan forces with advice and assistance. The reorientation may expose potential vulnerabilities to Taliban attack in the process of transitioning to a new posture. Major reversals and defeats for Afghan security forces at the hands of the Taliban after they have been left to their own devices can be expected in at least some areas and will have wide repercussions, perhaps even shifting the psychology and perception of the war.
When ISAF units are paired closely with Afghan forces, those units have a stronger day-to-day tactical presence in the field, and other units are generally operating nearby. So while they are more vulnerable and exposed to threats like IEDs while out on patrol, they also — indeed, in part because of that exposure — have a more alert and robust posture. As the transition accelerates and particularly if Washington accelerates it, the posture and therefore the vulnerabilities of forces change.
Force protection remains a key consideration throughout. The United States gained considerable experience with that during the Iraq transition — though again, a political accommodation underlay much of that transition, which will not be the case in Afghanistan.
As the drawdown continues, ISAF will have to balance having advisers in the field alongside Afghan units for as long as possible against pulling more back to key strongholds and pulling them out of the country completely. In the former case, the close presence of advisers can improve the effectiveness of Afghan security forces and provide better situational awareness. But it also exposes smaller units to operations more distant from strongholds as the number of outposts and major positions begins to be reduced. And as the process of pulling back accelerates and particularly as allied forces increasingly hunker down on larger and more secure outposts, their already limited situational awareness will decline even further, which opens up its own vulnerabilities.
One of these will be the impact on not just situational awareness on the ground but intelligence collection and particularly exploitable relationships with local political factions. As the withdrawal becomes more and more undeniable and ISAF pulls back from key areas, the human relationships that underlie intelligence sharing will be affected and reduced. This is particularly the case in places where the Taliban are strongest, as villagers there return to a strategy of hedging their bets out of necessity and focus on the more enduring power structure, which in many areas will clearly be the Taliban.
The Taliban
Ultimately, the Taliban’s incentive vis-a-vis the United States and its allies — especially as their exit becomes increasingly undeniable — is to conserve and maximize their strength for a potential fight in the vacuum sure to ensue after the majority of foreign troops have left the country. At the same time, any “revolutionary” movement must be able to consolidate internal control and maintain discipline while continuing to make itself relevant to domestic constituencies. The Taliban also may seek to take advantage of the shifting tactical realities to demonstrate their strength and the extent of their reach across the country, not only by targeting newly independent and newly isolated Afghan units but by attempting to kill or even kidnap now-more isolated foreign troops.
Though this year the Taliban have demonstrated their ability to strike almost anywhere in the country, they so far have failed to demonstrate the ability to penetrate the perimeter of large, secured facilities with a sizable assault force or to bring crew-served weapons to bear in an effective supporting manner. Given the intensity and tempo of special operations forces raids on Taliban leadership and weapons caches, it is unclear whether the Taliban have managed to retain a significant cache of heavier arms and the capability to wield them.
The inherent danger of compromise and penetration of indigenous security forces also continues to loom large. The vulnerabilities of ISAF forces will grow and change while they begin to shift as mission and posture evolve — and those vulnerabilities will be particularly pronounced in places where the posture and presence remains residual and a legacy of a previous strategy instead of more fundamental rebalancing. The shift from a dispersed, counterinsurgency-focused orientation to a more limited and more secure presence will ultimately provide the space to reduce casualties, but it will necessarily entail more limited visibility and influence. And the transition will create space for potentially more significant Taliban successes on the battlefield.
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U.S. President Barack Obama announced June 22 his plan to withdraw the “surge” troops deployed to Afghanistan in 2009. Five thousand will come out this summer, another 5,000 before the end of the year, and a total of 33,000 by next summer. While there has been some discussion about what exactly the military wanted and what his advisers wanted, this is not inconsistent with the timetable that was to be expected under the counterinsurgency-focused strategy that Gen. David Petraeus had been overseeing as commander of all forces in Afghanistan. While there’s been some rhetorical maneuvering, America’s allies are more than happy to be leaving sooner rather than later.
There has been no indication so far that there’s going to be a rapid shift in strategy or operations on the ground and with the limited initial reductions there are not necessarily going to be any major operational or tactical shifts. While President Barack Obama has been defining the war in Afghanistan since before his presidency in terms of al Qaeda, the 30,000 troops he sent to the country in 2009 joined nearly 70,000 U.S. troops already in place waging a protracted counterinsurgency not against al Qaeda but against the Taliban and the ongoing insurgency being waged by the Taliban remains as unsettled as it was two years ago. So while the United States is preparing the political ground for a drawdown and the idea of the war being won against al Qaeda, it still remains to be seen how the United States wants to pull back in the midst of insurgency that remains unsettled.
But while the war in Taliban remains unsettled, America’s allies are more than happy to be making withdrawal from the country. For the most part, these countries are primarily there at America’s allies and because of the importance of their alliance with the United States, not because of any deep-seated interest in what happens in Afghanistan specifically, especially as the al Qaeda phenomenon that is a transnational threat to more than just United States has really dispersed and devolved around the world. For the Europeans in particular there is a great deal of focus on the campaign in Libya, which isn’t going perfectly well which is also becoming more and more expensive, there is a focus on fiscal austerity and looming budget cuts including defense cuts, and so the expense of Afghanistan not just in terms of blood but treasure is on European minds in particular. But for allies in the region like Pakistan, the real question is what happens when United States is gone.
There will continue to be some sort of training, advising and probably special operations presence perhaps well beyond 2014, but the way the war has been fought for 10 years, particularly the last several years where there’s a large foreign force both attracting the attention of Taliban, absorbing the Taliban and continued the pressure upon them, that force goes away and however capable the Afghan forces are, they are not to be capable at the same degree in the same way. So there’s an enormous question for everywhere from Islamabad to Moscow about what sort of shape Afghanistan is left in as the U.S. and its allies pull back. The United States can go home, most of its allies can go home, but Pakistan cannot leave the Afghan border and so what happens there will be of essential importance for the countries that have to continue to live with whatever is left behind Afghanistan.
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Here's another POV:
Alexander's Essay – June 23, 2011
Opting Out of Enduring Freedom
Political Expediency vs. National Security
"t is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own." --Benjamin Franklin
In opposition to the advice of military and intelligence advisers -- but with the support of popular polls -- Barack Hussein Obama is moving ahead with his plan to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan beginning this July. In other words, though the drawdown does not comport with the best interests of U.S. national security, it does conform to his 2012 political campaign agenda.
Obama rolled out his worn rhetoric about Iraq being the wrong war, which distracted our nation from the right war, Afghanistan, which would seem to contradict his drawdown plans. As you recall, President George W. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom against al-Qa'ida and their Taliban hosts in Afghanistan on 7 October 2001, in response to the 9/11 attack on our nation. Operation Iraqi Freedom was not launched until 20 March 2003, after Saddam Hussein refused, repeatedly, to comply with UN Resolution 1441, giving him "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations."
At the time, we had ongoing combat operations over Iraq enforcing the "no-fly zone," and arguably, "Desert Storm 2.0" was necessitated because we departed Iraq prematurely after the first Desert Storm in 1991.
Obama credited himself with having taken "decisive action" in late 2009 by ordering a troop surge of 30,000 to Afghanistan. History will note, however, that he dithered for several months before finally granting his military commanders a smaller surge force than the one they'd requested, and that he hamstrung our forces by announcing a date certain by which we'd begin to remove them.
Obama has committed to withdraw at least 33,000 of our 100,000 warfighters in the region by "next summer," just in time to mollify his anti-war base and re-energize them for the 2012 presidential election. That would be 30,000 more than his advisers requested, which might explain why he made no mention of General David Petraeus, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan.
In early May, besieged with the failure of his socialist economic policies, BHO received a short-lived bounce in the polls after announcing that he (read "U.S. Special Forces") killed Osama bin Laden, thanks to intelligence "extracted" from Jihadi insurgents captured in Iraq when George Bush was president.
As Obama's domestic policies continue to fail miserably, and his popular approval sinks to new lows, he hopes to get another pop-poll bounce with the announcement of the Afghan drawdown. He jibed, "America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home," but just hours before, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke downgraded the outlook for the U.S. economic recovery, the direct result of Obama's "nation building here at home."
All political shenanigans aside, the question we should ask is what action in Afghanistan is in the best long-term interest of our national security? Is our nation-building strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan the right strategy, or will targeted hunt and kill operations suffice.
For the record, the primary national security objective of both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom were not, first and foremost, to eradicate dictators and establish democracy and free enterprise through extensive and expensive nation-building efforts. Our objective was to contain the nuclear threat posed by asymmetric elements in the region.
In plain words, our objective was (and should remain) to prevent the detonation by Jihadi terrorists of a nuclear device in one or more U.S. urban centers. If you think the cost of keeping the battle on their turf for the last 10 years has been expensive, try calculating the cost of recovery after a fissile weapon detonation in Boston or Baltimore, and the resulting economic consequence. Notably, the economic collapse of 2008 can be linked directly to the economic consequences of the 9/11 attack, (Marc: This comment is seriously wide of the mark in my opinion) but those consequences were minor in comparison to the cost of a nuclear attack.
The nuclear deterrence objective depends on a coherent Long War strategy to combat Islamist adversaries in the region, and around the world, but Obama has now made clear his intent to short-circuit that objective for his political expedience.
Obama errantly believes that concessions will inspire our Jihadi foes in al-Qa'ida's broad and amorphous terrorist network to go home in peace. However, since he took office, casualties in Afghanistan have increased five-fold. If history repeats itself -- and it will -- Obama's foreign policy today will cost us dearly at some future date. Retreat from Afghanistan without a clear military victory will be seen by jihadists as a victory for al-Qa'ida and Islamo-Facists around the world. (Tellingly, he never once used the words "win" or "victory" last night when he announced his rationale for withdrawing our forces.)
Obama was a national security neophyte when he entered office, and he hasn't learned much since then. Rather than exhibit leadership, a personality characteristic that remains enigmatic to him, Obama is content to follow the polls.
Unquestionably, most Americans want to "bring the troops home." Of course we do. The 10-year campaign to contain Islamists in Afghanistan has cost our nation the lives of 1,522 of its Patriot warriors -- about half the number of Americans killed on 9/11 -- and more than 10,000 injured. But the consequences of a rapid drawdown will cost us far more lives in the future.
This is clear to military leaders stateside, and military commanders in Afghanistan.
Of Obama's foreign policy, departing SecDef Robert Gates said of his decision to resign, "I've spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position. ... I can't imagine being part of a nation, part of a government ... that's being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world." (Gates's successor, Leon Panetta, will be charged with dramatic military cuts as Obama continues to massively expand the size and role of the central government, creating a "debt bomb," perhaps more perilous to our national security than the Jihadi threat.)
According to my sources, Gen. Petraeus has warned Obama that his proposed drawdown is too much, too soon, and that the current level of U.S. military personnel is needed for at least another year to turn the tide. U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. John Toolan, Regional Command Southwest, has expressed similar concerns, as has Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, commander of NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan.
However, it is the Army and Marine commanders on the frontlines in Afghanistan whose opinion we give greatest weight, because their perspective is unfettered by political agendas.
Having contacted five commanders at the O-5 to O-6 ranks on the ground in Afghanistan, I can present the following composite of the perspectives they shared with me: If we leave on Obama's political timeframe, not only will Afghanistan return to the breeding ground for terrorists as it was prior to 2003, but Islamists are likely to overtake Pakistan, a nuclear power on the precipice of chaos. In addition to redoubling their campaign against Israel and Western targets, they may also set their sights on India, another nuclear power, and the scene fades to dark after that. The rhetoric about timelines and drawdowns is counterproductive, because what our allied Afghans and Pakistanis hear is that America is abandoning them. That belief only serves to embolden the Taliban, al-Qa'ida and other Islamo-Fascists in the region, including those in Iran. Region-wide, Obama's policies portray us as uncommitted and untrustworthy, which further demoralizes the moderates we seek to empower. In short, this is a war against a formidable adversary that we must continue to prosecute if our ultimate objective -- keeping the battlefront on their turf rather than ours -- is to be maintained.
In summation, one Marine officer put it this way: "When I hear Obama say 'the American people want me to end this war and I am responding with an exit plan,' that's the antithesis of leadership. President Bush, against the popular will, surged forces here, and that was the right policy and required leadership."
The death of OBL gave BHO a temporary boost in the polls. Using that as a catalyst to draw down our forces in Afghanistan he might enjoy another temporary boost. But the bottom line that gets lost in this debate is the potential that Islamist terrorists will one day detonate a nuke on U.S. soil.
Graham Allison, Director of Harvard's Center for Science and International Affairs, and a leading analyst of U.S. national security and defense policy pertaining to nuclear weapons and terrorism, grimly notes in regard to a nuclear attack on the U.S., "I think that we should be very thankful that it hasn't happened already. ... We're living on borrowed time."
Unfortunately, while we currently control the clock, we're about to pass it back to the bad guys through Barack Obama's malfeasance.
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post
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A different take from the previous post from Stratfor-- any comments contrasting the two?
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Obama's Announcement and the Future of the Afghan War
U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday night made the most important political statement on the war in Afghanistan since the death of Osama bin Laden. In a planned statement, Obama spelled out his post-surge strategy, as the July 2011 deadline approaches that would mark the start of the drawdown of American and allied forces in Afghanistan. While Obama did not declare victory in his address, he laid the groundwork to do so.
Before he came to office, a key plank in Obama’s election platform was the idea that Iraq was the “wrong” war and Afghanistan, by contrast, the “right” war. That stance was founded on the idea that since al Qaeda attacked the United States in 2001, the war in Afghanistan is morally just and a military imperative. But even as the 2008 presidential campaign unfolded, the United States had already begun to shift its operational focus in Afghanistan toward a counterinsurgency-oriented campaign centered against the Taliban.
“It’s noteworthy that Obama’s speech lays the groundwork for American domestic political rhetoric to align with military reality..”
Even while justifying the 2009 surge by saying 30,000 additional troops were needed to fight al Qaeda, Obama was giving the military the resources to wage a protracted counterinsurgency against the Taliban. In 2001, al Qaeda and the Taliban were distinct, yet necessarily intertwined. After all, it was the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that had provided al Qaeda sanctuary, facilitating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But the Taliban declined combat in 2001, refusing to fight on American terms. Instead its fighters withdrew into the population — largely but not completely within Afghanistan — employing a standard guerrilla tactic. Meanwhile — and especially after Tora Bora — al Qaeda was increasingly driven into Pakistan and, more importantly, farther abroad.
Thus began the deepening divide between the two groups. For al Qaeda, a transnational jihadist phenomenon with global ambitions, the logic behind setting up franchises from Yemen and the Maghreb to East Asia was readily apparent. Its ideology was not reliant on location. As the United States focused its war effort on one locality, it made perfect sense for al Qaeda to devolve into a dispersed, decentralized organization. The group needed to avoid any place the United States decided to park more than 100,000 combat troops. Meanwhile, the Taliban, an Afghan phenomenon, doubled down on their home turf.
And so, while the United States never settled the war in Afghanistan, it found itself fighting an increasingly domestic entity near the heart of Central Asia — an entity that came to consider driving the United States out of the country its primary objective. For their part, the United States and its allies never wanted to occupy Afghanistan in the first place.
The war in Afghanistan has been a victory for the United States, but a qualified one. The war has helped prevent a subsequent attack of the magnitude of Sept. 11, 2001 — and there is no sign that the old al Qaeda core has the ability to launch another attack on that scale. But the war in Afghanistan has not proven an efficient or appropriately focused means of achieving this qualified victory. It has not kept al Qaeda franchise operations from waging an aggressive and innovative campaign to continue the struggle, nor can we say that what remains of al Qaeda in the Afghan-Pakistani region could not reconstitute itself, given sufficient space and time.
Meanwhile, even the most serious observers wonder why the United States is so heavily committed in Afghanistan. The example of the Korengal Valley, once considered an important focus of the war effort, is demonstrative. A vulnerable and isolated outpost at an old lumberyard was established and defended at no small cost in American blood and treasure. It was closed in 2010 as the United States reoriented toward a counterinsurgency-based strategy focused on population centers — and more importantly as it became clear that the strongest influence driving locals to the Taliban was the presence of American troops at that outpost.
The noteworthy aspect of Obama’s speech is that it lays the groundwork for American domestic political rhetoric to circle back into alignment with military reality. If military reality and military objectives are defined in terms of the Taliban insurgency, then Afghanistan is every bit as lost now as it was two years ago – if not more so. But if they are defined in terms of al Qaeda, then the United States has good cause to claim victory and reorient its posture in Afghanistan. The U.S. war against transnational extremism is far from over. But the trepidation that the rest of the world feels as Washington slowly regains the ability to focus its attention elsewhere is a testament to the magnitude of the window of opportunity that other global powers have enjoyed, thanks to the American focus on geographically restricted wars against an elusive, transnational phenomenon.
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A different take from the previous post from Stratfor-- any comments contrasting the two?
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Obama's Announcement and the Future of the Afghan War
If military reality and military objectives are defined in terms of the Taliban insurgency, then Afghanistan is every bit as lost now as it was two years ago – if not more so. But if they are defined in terms of al Qaeda, then the United States has good cause to claim victory and reorient its posture in Afghanistan.
If Baraq implements his withdrawl, I think US policy in Af-Pak will result in Talib controlled south Afghanistan, and Northern alliance controlled N.Afghanistan. If the US can force Pak army to take action on the Haqqani group, then the fun begins, as pak unravels. Pak will unravel, only question is the pace. A stable Pak is not in anyone's interest..the US govt is coming around to this view. A weaker Pak is a manageable pak.
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In the last few days, atleast two commentators have started talking about the balkanization of Af-Pak region, specifically southern afghanistan/northern afghanistan.
Here's from the Broadsword blog on the 25th of June "Critical to the American vision for Afghanistan is the reconciliation process with the Taliban. A long-term US presence is anathema to the Taliban; a US drawdown, alongside the failure of reconciliation, could well result in the effective Balkanisation of Afghanistan, with the Taliban controlling southern Afghanistan and the remaining US forces militarily propping up Karzai’s (or a successor’s) government in northern Afghanistan. At least one prominent American thinker, former US Ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, has foreseen the de facto division of Afghanistan, with US drone and Special Forces strikes being conducted from northern Afghanistan into the south and into Pakistan.
For Pakistan, the US drawdown is ominous since Washington’s reduced dependence on Pakistan will allow more effective arm-twisting of Islamabad. As senior US officials have briefed New Delhi, the dependence on Pakistan for logistical routes has already come down thanks to Russia’s cooperation in expanding the Northern Distribution Network (NDN). This involves landing US supplies in Baltic Sea ports and then transporting them to Afghanistan through Russia and the Central Asian countries over a 3,200-mile railway. Even though the NDN is four times as expensive as the comparatively straightforward route through Pakistan, it already accounts for half of America’s logistical requirements in Afghanistan. Any reduction in the American presence will further decrease Pakistan’s leverage."
Here's Major Amin, a Pak army commentator on June 22 "The result will be an Afghanistan again divided in north and south regardless of Pakistan or USA liking it.".
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From Night watch..http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_11000130.aspx (http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_11000130.aspx)
NightWatch has continued to track data in detail for all 400 districts of Afghanistan every other month and spot checked fighting reports in between. Preliminary analysis of the data for May 2011 was completed today. The table below shows the data from three tracking measures since last November.
See table:
What do these data signify?
First the "media expert" thesis that the Taliban have a fighting season that ends in winter is a fantasy. During each of the past three winters Taliban and other anti-government fighters increased their level of activity, reducing their operations only briefing for weather, as in January 2009. Winter weather imposes no lasting impediment to anti-government operations in the core provinces of the insurgency.
The Taliban did begin an offensive in May 2011, as announced. The number of security incidents in May reached an all-time high despite a brief dip in activity in late May apparently because of rumors that Mullah Omar was missing or deceased.
The number of districts experiencing security incidents was at an all-time high, despite the increase in US forces. The mix of districts has changed, indicating the anti-government fighters moved, rather than confront overwhelming US force. This explains the multiple reports of successfully cleared districts that have returned to normality while the overall number of security incidents increased.
About 200 of the 400 Afghan districts have Pashtun majorities or significant Pashtun minority populations. Any monthly total number of districts experiencing security incidents that exceeds 200 means the Taliban have acquired support or tolerance from non-Pashtun populations.
The May 2011 number of districts experiencing security incidents represents two-thirds of all districts, and is the highest number since the Taliban resurgence began in 2006. Much of this increase in reach is in districts north of Kabul.
The number of incidents is partly a function of increased US operations during the surge, but the Taliban are almost always present to shoot back. There also has been a noticeable spike in the use of improvised explosive devices, the most effective Taliban weapons.
The anti-government fighters waste lots of ammunition and explosives, but never seem to lack for supplies for long. Afghanistan makes no ammunition and no explosives. Almost all come from Pakistan or from leakage from US and Afghan supplies. The increase in security incidents always is matched by an increase in logistics for NATO and anti-government fighters.
The analysis continues, but the reports since November show no significant Afghan army involvement in combat operations. The May reports contained a single operation that clearly was Afghan army initiated. Afghan soldiers accompany NATO forces on operations, but seldom take casualties except from careless driving.
The Afghan police continue to sustain more casualties than any other armed entity. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates Afghanistan has more than 30,700 villages. NightWatch security incident data indicates up to two-thirds harbor or tolerate anti-government fighters in them.
The data show the Afghan government cannot survive without NATO support, especially logistics and tactical air support. More on casualties, later.
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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MF25Df02.html (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MF25Df02.html)
Obama puts the heat on Pakistan
By Karamatullah K Ghori
When the head of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) directorate of the Pakistan military makes a clean breast, as he did on June 21, that a serving brigadier of the army at the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi is in detention on charges of having links with an extremist religious organization, one has to believe that something very serious must be wrong in the military.
Another announcement from the ISPR, a day later, added four majors of the army to the brigadier's column. These four, however, are merely being questioned and not detained, at least not yet.
The Pakistan military is an exclusive club that doesn't let out much information about itself unless there's an overwhelming reason for it. And the current period in time is, no doubt, one such phase when a lot has happened that the denizens of this elitist club may never have wished to see.
The series of humiliations kicked off in early May with the embarrassment of Abbottabad and the macabre siege of the naval base Mehran, in Karachi, and shows little sign of abating.
As the sweltering heat in the plains of Pakistan is getting closer to making room for the annual monsoons - with the likelihood of another visitation of floods engulfing the country - dark clouds ominously dot the horizon for the army.
The open season that opposition politicians, led by two-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, have declared on the military's bloated but unwelcome role in governance is enough to test its resilience. And now United States President Barack Obama, too, has waded in to make the challenge even more onerous for the generals at GHQ.
Obama's June 22 speech from the White House - in which he announced the commencement of his promised drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan in July this year and phased over the next three years - contains a list of veiled demands and warnings for Pakistan, particularly its military.
To Obama, the thinning of the American combat presence in Afghanistan doesn't mean any dilution of his firm resolve to keep up the pressure on al-Qaeda and its militant comrades. He complimented Pakistan's efforts that, together with the American punch, have led to more than half of al-Qaeda's top brass being eliminated. However, he left no room for doubt that as long as he was in command, there would be no sanctuary for terrorists, anywhere.
That's where Pakistan and the role of its military take on a pivotal position in Obama's estimation. He was quite categorical that there would be no "safe havens for al-Qaeda". That was a loud and clear message for Pakistan to ensure there are no hide-outs for al-Qaeda and its fellow-travellers in the "no man's land" of Pakistan's tribal belt straddling Afghanistan.
It's an old but persistent demand of the Americans for the Pakistan army to do in its North Waziristan tribal area what it did in South Waziristan. The Pakistan army - for a variety of reasons - has been stalling on that demand. But Obama sounded more insistent and resolute than ever before. Indeed, his confidence has climbed since US special forces killed al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in his hideout not far from a military compound in Abbottabad. So he hardly minced his words in articulating that "we will insist" that Pakistan keeps its commitments.
It's easy for Obama to pile pressure on Pakistan, coupled with barely disguised warnings that if Pakistan didn't, then he would go about it on his own, which in simple words means another Abbottabad-like solo operation.
However, the relentless demands from Obama for the Pakistan army to do still more - with himself holding a gun to its head, is a catch-22 dilemma for the generals. The price Obama could exact from them and the country is enormous.
The latest survey by the Washington-based Pew research in Pakistan in the wake of Bin Laden's demise finds that 67% of Pakistanis questioned, a solid majority, don't think the "war on terror" is Pakistan's war. A fresh incursion by the army into North Waziristan to oblige the Americans could only trigger wider public uproar, which would be hard to stomach for an army leadership already forced onto the back foot.
The Pakistan army's operation in South Waziristan has already brought a massive spike in acts of terrorism that has taken a heavy toll of public life. Another Quixotic venture would inevitably add fuel to a burning fire and push the country to the brink of anarchy.
In a nutshell, Pakistan could slide into civil war, given an already super-charged tension in its political culture, where tolerance of any kind is at a heavy premium.
On top of that, Pakistan is wary of the talks that Washington has been carrying on for some time with the Afghan Taliban behind its back. Keeping Pakistan out of the loop has only one meaning for Islamabad: the Obama administration doesn't trust it enough to make it a party to the parleys, which could have far-reaching consequences for Pakistan, more than any other neighbor of Afghanistan.
Islamabad is also feeling increasingly leery of the traction that the so-called Blackwill formula - to divide Afghanistan along ethnic lines into a Pashtun south and a non-Pashtun north - is apparently receiving in top echelons of the Obama administration.
There's near-consensus in Pakistan's intellectual community, and policymakers, that the author of this prescription, Robert Blackwill, has absorbed a lot of Indian input into his brain wave. Blackwill was George W Bush's ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003.
:-D
Pakistan's intellectual community also fears Obama's drawdown of forces, spread over three years, is calibrated to allow the Blackwill plan ample opportunity to take root in Afghanistan.
A divided Afghanistan would not only denude Pakistan of its strategic depth, vis-a-vis India, but may also become a cause for the Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line, the poorly marked border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, to unite. Such unity could only mean further dismemberment of Pakistan and open up a Pandora's box. Pakistan simply can't countenance such an outcome and will pull no punches to thwart it.
Karamatullah K Ghori is a former career ambassador of Pakistan whose diplomatic assignments took him to the United States, Argentina, Japan, China, The Philippines, Algeria, Kuwait, Iraq, Macedonia and Turkey.
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YA:
As always, fascinating stuff. Much to think about there!
Although apparently a relatively minor point in the larger context, this caught my attention as something likely to go unnoticed:
"As senior US officials have briefed New Delhi, the dependence on Pakistan for logistical routes has already come down thanks to Russia’s cooperation in expanding the Northern Distribution Network (NDN). This involves landing US supplies in Baltic Sea ports and then transporting them to Afghanistan through Russia and the Central Asian countries over a 3,200-mile railway. Even though the NDN is four times as expensive as the comparatively straightforward route through Pakistan, it already accounts for half of America’s logistical requirements in Afghanistan. Any reduction in the American presence will further decrease Pakistan’s leverage."
A lot of implications there for the leverage Russia will have in its dealings with the US , , ,
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What does it mean that the U.S. will now be withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan on an accelerated and defined timetable in order to focus, as President Obama said last week, on "nation building here at home"?
It emboldens the Taliban, which thanks to Mr. Obama's surge and David Petraeus's generalship had all but been ousted from its traditional strongholds in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. "My soul, and the soul of thousands of Taliban who have been blown up, are happy," Taliban field commander Jamal Khan told the Daily Beast of his reaction to Mr. Obama's speech. "I had more than 50 encounters with U.S. forces and their technology. But the biggest difference in ending this war was not technology but the more powerful Islamic ideology and religion."
It increases the risk to U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where the fatality count was finally starting to come down after peaking in 2010. Fewer troops means that U.S. commanders will have to make an invidious choice between clearing territory of enemies and holding and building it for friends. "Whether it is Nangarhar or Ghazni, Kandahar or Herat, the place where we decide to 'surge' with remaining forces will leave a window open—and the Taliban will crawl in," says a U.S. military official with experience in Afghanistan. "Any commander who has experienced a withdrawal under pressure knows that it is perhaps the most difficult operation you can conduct and certainly the most dangerous; it gives the attacker a feeling of superiority and demoralizes the withdrawing force."
It strengthens already potent anti-American forces in Pakistan and weakens the hand of moderates. Skeptics of the U.S. within Pakistan's government, particularly the army, will mark the U.S. withdrawal as further evidence that Washington is a congenitally unreliable ally. Opponents of the U.S. outside of the government will capitalize politically on the perception of American weakness. Drone strikes, which outgoing CIA director Leon Panetta has called "the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership," will likely come to an end. Islamabad will also find new reasons to patch up its differences with erstwhile allies in the Taliban and other terrorist groups as a way of keeping its options open.
It strengthens the hand of Iran, which, as the Journal's Jay Solomon reported yesterday, "is moving to cement ties with the leaders of three key American allies—Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq—highlighting Tehran's efforts to take a greater role in the region as the U.S. military pulls out." As a demonstration of those ties, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi paid a visit to Kabul last week to sign a bilateral security agreement. "We believe that expansion of joint defense and security cooperation with Iran is in favor of our interests," said his Afghan counterpart Abdulrahim Wardak.
It further weakens NATO, whose future is already in doubt given its inability to oust Moammar Gadhafi from Tripoli. In the last decade it became the fashion to say of the alliance that it was either "out of area"—meaning Europe—or "out of business." Leaving and losing Afghanistan spells the latter.
It gives Hamid Karzai opportunity and motive to reinvent himself as an anti-American leader. The Afghan president is already well on his way to forging a close political alliance with insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is believed to have given Osama bin Laden safe passage out of Afghanistan in 2001 and is wanted by the U.S. on a $25 million bounty. Mr. Karzai is said to be furious that the Obama administration made no effort to get a strategic forces agreement that would have left a residual U.S. force after 2014. "I think the reality of their complete withdrawal has struck home," Afghan Human Rights Commissioner Nader Nadery tells the Associated Press. "Now he sees they may go and they don't want a [military] presence here . . . and perhaps now he is thinking, 'Who will protect me?'"
It accelerates Afghanistan's barely suppressed, and invariably violent, centrifugal forces. There are already reports that the old Northern Alliance, which held out against the Taliban in the 1990s and took Kabul in 2001, may be reconstituting itself as a fighting force in anticipation of a hostile government in Kabul. This is a formula for civil, and perhaps regional, war; it is not clear what kind of "partnership" the U.S. could hope to build, as Mr. Obama promised to do, with whatever emerges from its ashes.
Finally, it signals that the United States, like Britain before it, is a waning power. In his speech last week, Mr. Obama waxed eloquent on the point that "what sets America apart is not solely our power—it is the principles upon which our union was founded." Very true. But a nation that abandons to the Taliban those it was once committed to protect shows that it lacks power and principle alike.
At the end of "Charlie Wilson's War," the film quotes the late congressman saying: "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. . . . And then we f—ed up the endgame." To watch President Obama's Afghan policy unfold is to understand exactly what Wilson meant.
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Uh oh: White House caught lying about Petraeus’s withdrawal recommendations?
Share280 posted at 9:16 pm on June 28, 2011 by Allahpundit
printer-friendly Terrific catch by Stephen Hayes from this afternoon’s Afghanistan testimony by Lt. Gen. John Allen. I can’t help but wonder: Why would the White House lie and claim that Obama’s withdrawal plan was within the range of options presented to him by Petraeus? I thought the next 18 months were going to be all about Obama going with his gut. Wingin’ it, if you will.
His gut told him that he needs to get reelected, and the easiest way to do that was to yank as many troops as possible out of the country no matter what it might mean for the war. That was the only “range of options” that mattered.
So he winged it.
In response to questioning from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Allen testified that Obama’s decision on the pace and size of Afghanistan withdrawals was “a more aggressive option than that which was presented.”
Graham pressed him. “My question is: Was that a option?”
Allen: “It was not.”
Allen’s claim, which came under oath, contradicts the line the White House had been providing reporters over the past week—that Obama simply chose one option among several presented by General David Petraeus. In a conference call last Wednesday, June 22, a reporter asked senior Obama administration officials about those options. “Did General Petraeus specifically endorse this plan, or was it one of the options that General Petraeus gave to the president?”
The senior administration official twice claimed that the Obama decision was within the range of options the military presented to Obama.
Follow the link up top for a full transcript of what that senior administration official said last week. Are Hayes and I missing some nuance in the quotes? It’s one thing if the White House wants to squander the surge in the name of winning next year, but at least own it. Don’t use Petraeus as the fig leaf for a terrible, electorally motivated war “strategy.” Good lord.
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Americans simply want to get out of Afghanistan. It's hopeless. Money and lives lost; for what?
It reminds me of Vietnam. We don't need another debacle.
A Gallup poll this week showed 72% of Americans support Obama's withdrawal plan.
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/168937-poll-broad-majority-support-start-of-afghan-troop-withdrawal
An amazing number. Listen to the people.
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Yeah, the dems cutting and running sure worked out well for our allies in Vietnam.
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Yeah, but it sure would have worked out better for tens of thousands of American troops killed or injured. Not to mention
the billions upon billions of dollars spent. And the thousands of innocent Vietnamese killed.
Plus Viet Nam (our ally) was as corrupt as Afghanistan. It's a losing proposition. Time to move on. The French
figured that out, as did the Russians. Why are we so slow?
And remember, Viet Nam is our ally now. How about that? If we "won" the war, what would we have won?
At the cost of more lives and money.
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http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=13274
How North Vietnam Won The War
By: Grunt.com
Grunt.com | Monday, April 26, 2004
What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist [in The Wall Street Journal, 3 August 1995]. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism.
Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said,
"We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.
Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.
Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.
Q: How could the Americans have won the war?
A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.
Q: Anything else?
A: Train South Vietnam's generals. The junior South Vietnamese officers were good, competent and courageous, but the commanding general officers were inept.
Q: Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front would win power in South Vietnam?
A: No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap [commander of the North Vietnamese army] believed that guerrilla warfare was important but not sufficient for victory. Regular military divisions with artillery and armor would be needed. The Chinese believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had a different approach. The Chinese were reluctant to help us. Soviet aid made the war possible. Le Duan [secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party] once told Mao Tse-tung that if you help us, we are sure to win; if you don't, we will still win, but we will have to sacrifice one or two million more soldiers to do so.
Q: Was the National Liberation Front an independent political movement of South Vietnamese?
A: No. It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960. We always said there was only one party, only one army in the war to liberate the South and unify the nation. At all times there was only one party commissar in command of the South.
Q: Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?
A: It was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units.
Q: What of American bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail?
A: Not very effective. Our operations were never compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came out the bottom. Bombing by smaller planes rarely hit significant targets.
Q: What of American bombing of North Vietnam?
A: If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had plenty of times to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for months if a harvest were damaged. The Soviets bought rice from Thailand for us.
Q: What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive?
A: To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putting on us in late 1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve during a presidential election year.
Q: What about Gen. Westmoreland's strategy and tactics caused you concern?
A: Our senior commander in the South, Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh, knew that we were losing base areas, control of the rural population and that his main forces were being pushed out to the borders of South Vietnam. He also worried that Westmoreland might receive permission to enter Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
In January 1967, after discussions with Le Duan, Thanh proposed the Tet Offensive. Thanh was the senior member of the Politburo in South Vietnam. He supervised the entire war effort. Thanh's struggle philosophy was that "America is wealthy but not resolute," and "squeeze tight to the American chest and attack." He was invited up to Hanoi for further discussions. He went on commercial flights with a false passport from Cambodia to Hong Kong and then to Hanoi. Only in July was his plan adopted by the leadership. Then Johnson had rejected Westmoreland's request for 200,000 more troops. We realized that America had made its maximum military commitment to the war. Vietnam was not sufficiently important for the United States to call up its reserves. We had stretched American power to a breaking point. When more frustration set in, all the Americans could do would be to withdraw; they had no more troops to send over.
Tet was designed to influence American public opinion. We would attack poorly defended parts of South Vietnam cities during a holiday and a truce when few South Vietnamese troops would be on duty. Before the main attack, we would entice American units to advance close to the borders, away from the cities. By attacking all South Vietnam's major cities, we would spread out our forces and neutralize the impact of American firepower. Attacking on a broad front, we would lose some battles but win others. We used local forces nearby each target to frustrate discovery of our plans. Small teams, like the one which attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, would be sufficient. It was a guerrilla strategy of hit-and-run raids. [lloks like a re-writing of history with the benefit of hindsight]
Q: What about the results?
A: Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise;. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The second and third waves in May and September were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was.
Q: What of Nixon?
A: Well, when Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we knew we would win. Pham Van Dong [prime minister of North Vietnam] said of Gerald Ford, the new president, "he's the weakest president in U.S. history; the people didn't elect him; even if you gave him candy, he doesn't dare to intervene in Vietnam again." We tested Ford's resolve by attacking Phuoc Long in January 1975. When Ford kept American B-52's in their hangers, our leadership decided on a big offensive against South Vietnam.
Q: What else?
A: We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect.
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Yeah, but it sure would have worked out better for tens of thousands of American troops killed or injured. Not to mention
the billions upon billions of dollars spent. And the thousands of innocent Vietnamese killed.
Plus Viet Nam (our ally) was as corrupt as Afghanistan. It's a losing proposition. Time to move on. The French
figured that out, as did the Russians. Why are we so slow?
And remember, Viet Nam is our ally now. How about that? If we "won" the war, what would we have won?
At the cost of more lives and money.
Hardly. The left was responsible for the asian holocaust they cheered on. Because of the dems, we left those who fought and bled beside us to be slaughtered along with their families while the "peace" movement celebrated. The current alliance of need from Vietnam doesn't bring those people back to life.
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- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com -
Vietnam’s Legacy of Lies
Posted By Dennis Prager On February 15, 2011 @ 12:23 am In Afternoon Edition,Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 8 Comments
It was difficult to control my emotions — specifically, my anger — during my visit to Vietnam last week. The more I came to admire the Vietnamese people — their intelligence, love of life, dignity and hard work — the more rage I felt for the communists who brought them (and, of course, us Americans) so much suffering in the second half of the 20th century.
Unfortunately, communists still rule the country. Yet, Vietnam today has embraced the only way that exists to escape poverty, let alone to produce prosperity: capitalism and the free market. So what exactly did the 2 million Vietnamese who died in the Vietnam War die for? I would like to ask one of the communist bosses who run Vietnam that question. “Comrade, you have disowned everything your Communist party stood for: communal property, collectivized agriculture, central planning and militarism, among other things. Looking back, then, for what precisely did your beloved Ho Chi Minh and your party sacrifice millions of your fellow Vietnamese?”
There is no good answer. There are only a lie and a truth, and the truth is not good.
The lie is the response offered by the Vietnamese communists and which was repeated, like virtually all communist lies, by the world’s non-communist left. It was (and continues to be) taught in virtually every Western university and was and continues to be spread by virtually every news medium on the planet: The Vietnam communists, i.e., the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, were merely fighting for national independence against foreign control of their country.
First, they fought the French, then the Japanese and then the Americans. American baby boomers will remember being told over and over that Ho Chi Minh was Vietnam’s George Washington, that he loved the American Constitution, after which he modeled his own, and wanted nothing more than Vietnamese independence.
Here is the truth: Every communist dictator in the world has been a megalomaniacal, cult of personality, power hungry, bloodthirsty thug. Ho Chi Minh was no different. He murdered his opponents, tortured only God knows how many innocent Vietnamese, threatened millions into fighting for him — yes, for him and his blood soaked Vietnamese Communist Party, backed by the greatest murderer of all time, Mao Zedong. But the moral idiots in America chanted “Ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh” at antiwar rallies, and they depicted America as the real murderers of Vietnamese — “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”
The Vietnamese communists were not fighting America for Vietnamese independence.
America was never interested in controlling the Vietnamese people, and there is a perfect parallel to prove this: the Korean War. Did America fight the Korean communists in order to control Korea? Or did 37,000 Americans die in Korea so that Koreans could be free? Who was (and remains) a freer human being — a Korean living under Korean communist rule in North Korea or a Korean living in that part of Korea where America defeated the Korean communists?
And who was a freer human being in Vietnam — those who lived in non-communist South Vietnam (with all its flaws) or those who lived under Ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh’s communists in North Vietnam?
America fights to liberate countries, not to rule over them. It was the Vietnamese Communist Party, not America, that was interested in controlling the Vietnamese people. But the lie was spread so widely and so effectively that most of the world — except American supporters of the war and the Vietnamese boat people and other Vietnamese who yearned for liberty — believed that America was fighting for tin, tungsten and the wholly fictitious “American empire” while the Vietnamese communists were fighting for Vietnamese freedom.
I went to the “Vietnam War Remnants Museum” — the Communist Party’s three-floor exhibit of anti-American photos. Nothing surprised me — not the absence of a single word critical of the communist North Vietnamese or of the Viet Cong; not a word about the widespread threats on the lives of anyone who did not fight for the communists; not a word about those who risked their lives to escape by boat, preferring to risk dying by drowning, being eaten by sharks or being tortured or gang-raped by pirates, rather than to live under the communists who “liberated” South Vietnam.
Equally unsurprising is that there is little difference between the history of the Vietnam War as told by the Communist Party of Vietnam and what just about any college student will be told in just about any college by just about any professor in America, Europe, Asia or Latin America.
I will end with the subject with which I began — the Vietnamese. It is impossible to visit Vietnam and not be impressed by the people. I hope I live to see the day when the people of Vietnam, freed from the communist lies that still permeate their daily lives, understand that every Vietnamese death in the war against America was a wasted life, one more of the 140 million human sacrifices on the altar of the most bloodthirsty false god in history: communism.
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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/02/15/vietnams-legacy-of-lies/
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No it doesn't bring them back to life. As you have pointed out before, that is war. But it saved thousands of American lives.
And how many Vietnamese civilians did we kill? Napalm hardly targets only the enemy. Sure war is terrible. But again, as you point out, that is war.
Not to mention the South Vietnam government was corrupt.
And frankly, Vietnam IS our ALLY now. We do trade together. How would it be different for us if we "won"?
We never should have gotten involved. Just like Afghanistan.
10's of thousands of american lives were lost and billions upon billions of dollars spent. For absolutely nothing.
Again, in 10 years I predict we will ask the same question about Afghanistan. I and most Americans say cut our loses.
Save American lives, save the money; we need it.
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Vietnam is our ally because they hate the Chinese. So, should the lesson be that one should never trust the Americans, because they'll always abandon you and leave you and your families to die when the going gets tough?
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So you acknowledge Vietnam is already our ally. So IF we had won the war, in the end, what does American gain?
Frankly, the answer is we are no better off. We still have an peaceful ally - no more American lives lost
or threatened. Vietnam is our "friend" now, just as they would be if we had won the war.
But this is the Afghanistan thread. Yet I think it the same problem, the same worry that concerns most Americans.
American lives lost. American dollars lost. For what?
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Yeah, Germany is our ally now, so we shouldn't have cared about that whole holocaust thing there, right?
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No, there was a purpose to WWII; we fought with all we had and we fought to win. It was important; nothing else mattered.
And I am glad we did. America in the end would have been threatened.
Our entering the war made a huge difference for the world AND for America's future.
But frankly as you phrase it, "that whole holocaust thing" truly terrible though it was, had very little if anything to do with us entering or fighting WWII.
And bad analogy; a victorious Germany under Hitler would be a very different Germany. More important, it would be a threat to America.
In contrast, back to the topic, I doubt, regardless of who won/wins in Vietnam or Afghanistan if it will make much difference in the end for America.
So why do it? That's why an overwhelming percentage of America says get out of Afghanistan....
Save thousands of lives and billions of dollars.
Stop the needless wars and maybe we will balance the budget. That's more important to me.
Generals since the beginning of time want more troops and more money. I heard it in Korea, then Vietnam and I hear it now.
Somebody (the President) has to be practical and follow the will of the people and decide what's best for America.
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JDN to al Qaida (?): "Stop the needless wars and maybe we will balance the budget"... we need a leader "the President" [who will] follow...
I think GM's point was that quite a bloodbath followed our exit in Vietnam. A bit callous to say not our problem that perhaps 165,000 perished on our exit. Orange County Register 4/29/2001 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties
We went to war against Hitler because they attacked us at Pearl Harbor...oops that isn't right. I'm no WWII or Vietnam expert but Hitler's Germany was attacking and taking over countries. Stalin, Kruchev and the Soviets were not peace loving people either, nor Mao. The map of the 1960s was showing more and more red with the spread of communism. Maybe we look back now and see Vietnam more as a civil war but I think JFK and LBJ saw it as another domino in a world falling to communism. I think the point of the current wars was to give the current threat no safe harbor to launch from.
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Lets see if we can continue the relevant points on the foreign affairs thread please.
Regarding Afpakia:
Baraq ran on a platform of Iraq being the wrong war and Afpakia being the right war. Once elected he put his own man in, then ignored the war altogether until his own man said he hadn't heard from the President but once in six months and the military began a leak campaign that they needed more troops-- lots more. Finally the Pravdas bestirred themselves a bit and thus provoked Baraq into months of Hamlet like dithering which yielded an even more incoherent policy than the one he inherited (and Bush's Afpakia strategy was pretty bad). Solution: Both surge and withdraw :roll: :roll: :roll: leaving "an essential war of self-defense" in the hands of Karzai, the Afgan Army, and the Afghan police. Of course, knowing we were leaving wouldn't affect anybody's behavior in the meantime , , , :roll: Despite what normal folks might consider an act of war by harboring OBL (and many, many other deeds of similar character) Pakistan is our ally , , , but we have kowtowed to Russia in numerous ways (e.g. abandoning eastern Europe) so we can depend on them as a supply line to Afghanistan and depend on them should we ever need to get into outer space.
Seen in this light, I can readily understand people saying "You've been dithering and fg up for 10 years and Baraq has already told everyone we are leaving-- just like we are leaving Iraq (begun by candidates Baraq and Hillary et al), and the middle east altogether. We don't see a point in staying. Whenever we leave it will be a clusterfcuk. NO ONE is calling for going after Pak's nukes. NO ONE is bringing to the table the level of understanding that our YA does. Does anyone here see anyone whom they wish to follow in all this?
Then there are the points Stratfor makes about our overloaded bandwidth. Of course Baraq will use the stampede for the exits as an exucse to get Panetta to further gut our capabilities in an increasingly likely to go sideways world.
And so the gathering clusterfcuk develops momentum , , ,
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Even Colbert gets it..
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/391148/june-30-2011/colbert-report--formidable-opponent---pakistan (http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/391148/june-30-2011/colbert-report--formidable-opponent---pakistan)
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Ya, In general I just want to say "thank you"! You bring clarity and knowledge to a subject I know/knew nothing about.
I've learned a lot. Thank you again.
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JDN and others, thanks.
Here's some interesting stuff, about AQ Khan the nuclear proliferator, note in particular the link to NK letter.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/documents/north-korea-letter.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/documents/north-korea-letter.html)
If you are wondering, about the body, the story is here..http://www.fact.com.pk/archives/april/feng/spy.htm (http://www.fact.com.pk/archives/april/feng/spy.htm)
and this too http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=aearly0698koreanwifeshot#aearly0698koreanwifeshot (http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=aearly0698koreanwifeshot#aearly0698koreanwifeshot)
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If you are trying to understand the situation in Pak and having difficulty...and wondering why the US govt does not have a coherent policy..
Quotable from the web..
"The list of all who have declared Jihad in Pakistan against who all. Its not complete.
Muslims against Jews, Christians and Hindus.
Sunnis against Shias, Ahmedis and Sufis.
Shias against Sunnis.
Pashtoons against Mohajirs.
Mohajirs against Pashtoons.
`Commando` bodyguards against governors.
Taliban against Pakistan Army.
Pakistan Army against Taliban.
Pakistan Army against Balochi insurgents.
Pakistan army against terrorists.
Pakistan against USA, India and Israel.
Taliban against USA and India.
LeT/Al/Qaeda/JeM against the rest of the world.
Lashkar e Jhangvi against Shias........
....Pakistan is the first muslim country to have achieved such a comprehensive list of Jihaad declarations ."
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That , , , was , , , awesome.
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If you are trying to understand the situation in Pak and having difficulty...and wondering why the US govt does not have a coherent policy..
Quotable from the web..
"The list of all who have declared Jihad in Pakistan against who all. Its not complete.
Muslims against Jews, Christians and Hindus.
Sunnis against Shias, Ahmedis and Sufis.
Shias against Sunnis.
Pashtoons against Mohajirs.
Mohajirs against Pashtoons.
`Commando` bodyguards against governors.
Taliban against Pakistan Army.
Pakistan Army against Taliban.
Pakistan Army against Balochi insurgents.
Pakistan army against terrorists.
Pakistan against USA, India and Israel.
Taliban against USA and India.
LeT/Al/Qaeda/JeM against the rest of the world.
Lashkar e Jhangvi against Shias........
....Pakistan is the first muslim country to have achieved such a comprehensive list of Jihaad declarations ."
Wait, I though "jihad" meant some sort of internal spiritual struggle and had nothing to do with violence. :-D
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July 12, 2011
DETAILS ON THE DEATH OF KARZAI'S BROTHER
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was killed in
Kandahar on July 12 during a gathering in his house, Kandahar Governor Tooryali Wesa
confirmed. Initial reports remain sketchy but it is believed that the Afghan
leader's brother was killed by multiple gunshots to the head and chest with a AK-47
fired by Sardar Mohammad, a former bodyguard to Karzai's older brother Qayyoum.
Unconfirmed reports say that the assassin was immediately killed and Ahmad Wali's
body has been taken to Mirwais Civil Hospital. One of the two official spokesmen for
the Taliban, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, told the German News Agency Deutsche Presse Agentur
that Ahmad Wali Karzai was killed by a Taliban sleeper agent.
This particular Karzai brother has escaped assassination attempts in the past. His
death comes as a major blow to President Karzai who depended on Ahmed Wali for
creating a social support base for the president in Kandahar province, the homeland
of the Taliban. Ahmed Wali's official position was head of the legislative council
in Kandahar, but he wielded a disproportionate amount of influence in the province
and the country at large, claiming close relations with a wide array of players
including the CIA, local Taliban elements and even drug lords. Despite his close
dealings with U.S. intelligence, American officials openly criticized Ahmed Wali in
2009, accusing him of corruption and being involved in the drug trade.
For President Karzai, the death of Ahmed Wali couldn't have come at a worse time.
The senior Karzai was already confronting the fact that U.S.-NATO forces have begun
working toward a withdrawal from the country and have engaged in talks with the
Taliban as well as neighboring Pakistan. The loss of his influential sibling further
weakens President Karzai's position in the south of Afghanistan and complicates
efforts to try and reach a negotiated settlement with the Taliban.
Copyright 2011 STRATFOR.
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This comes under the "`Commando` bodyguards against governors" category pf jihad. :evil:
All over the region, the bodyguards are becoming suspect. The elites are sweating...there has been talk of hiring foreign body guards, since the locals cant be trusted. Soon the elites may start to leave the country (Pak)...once that happens the jihadis have won.
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http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/07/13/india.blasts/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
I'm sure Pakistan knows nothing about this, but would be willing to look into it for 500 billion or so.....
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This (Mumbai bombing) was completely expected. So the game goes like this...
Uncle Sam is tightening the screws on the purelanders to do more with respect to AQ, as well as to mount an operation in N.Wazoostan. Pakis wont do it, because its against their national interests vis a vis India. So Uncle sam decided to withold funds (800 mill$), in response pakis threaten to withdraw troops from their border with Afghanistan/FATA. Infact pakis have absolutely zero interest in doing uncle sam's bidding, because of the many jihadis who are members of the pak army. The problem is that the US does not want pakis to withdraw from the NWFP/FATA area, and if they withdraw, uncle sam will get even more pi$$ed off. So the only approach left for pak is to foment trouble in India via its proxies. They hope India will respond, or threaten to respond, which will allow pakis to withdraw from the afghan border to the border with India.
In the next few days, the US will call India to exercise restraint, and the indians will fume in impotent rage for a while....pakis will say india may attack and they need to protect the Indian border as opposed to the Afghan border, unless ofcourse US pays the 800 million$...so predictable.
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http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=578077&p=1 (http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=578077&p=1)
Calling Pakistan's Bluff On Aid
Posted 07/12/2011 06:35 PM ET
War On Terror: Washington finally has done what it should have done years ago: deny aid to Islamabad unless it can show its cooperation is more than just a facade to milk the U.S. for more cash.
After Pakistan ordered U.S. military trainers out of the country — in retaliation for the clandestine raid on Osama bin Laden's compound — the administration held back $800 million in aid to the Pakistani military.
The cut amounts to only a third of promised aid this year. And it was measured. The lack of trainers means that planned U.S. equipment can't be put into service, reducing some of the needed aid.
The reaction from Islamabad was predictable. Its defense minister threatened to pull back troops from border areas where Islamist militants are active.
But Pakistan already has failed to deploy troops to the region as the U.S. has requested, which is another reason aid was withheld.
About $300 million from the trimmed aid was intended to reimburse Pakistan for the cost of deploying troops along the Afghan border.
Pakistan wasn't through huffing and bluffing. It said the financial snub would only push it into the arms of its "all-weather friend," China.
But it's already there. In fact, there is evidence U.S. aid has been fueling a dangerous nuclear pact between Pakistan and China.
At a cost of $2.4 billion, Islamabad is buying two 635-megawatt reactors from Beijing for its plutonium production complex at Chasma.
These are military reactors with the capability of adding 24 nuclear weapons a year to Pakistan's existing arsenal of some 90.
There's no explanation for how impoverished Pakistan is paying for these weapons-grade reactors except for the $20 billion in aid the U.S. has blank-checked Islamabad since 9/11. So it's fairly clear we are subsidizing the deal — against U.S. interests in the region, as well as the world.
Pakistan has led one of the most dangerous nuclear smuggling rings ever disclosed, stretching from North Korea to Iran and possibly to Saudi Arabia.
There is also evidence the Pakistani military is diverting U.S. aid to supply the Taliban with weapons and direct cash payments.
According to one report, Pakistani intelligence pays Taliban insurgents $2,000 for every IED bomb they plant, $2,000 for every Afghan army soldier they kill, $10,000 for every American soldier they kill, and $20,000 to the family of suicide bombers.
Still, a former Pakistani ambassador claims suspending aid will end up hurting Washington more than Islamabad.
"It will strengthen those elements in the armed forces that have always had grave misgivings of the relationship with the United States," Tariq Fatemi warned.
Sorry, that bluff is equally weak. Their armed forces are already seriously compromised.
A noted Pakistani journalist recently detailed a "sizable al-Qaida infiltration" within the Pakistani military.
"No one can separate Islam and Islamic sentiment from the armed forces of Pakistan," Syed Shahzad quoted a senior Pakistani military official saying in his investigative story for the Asia Times.
Days after he published his report in May, Shahzad's tortured body was discovered. Last week, U.S. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pakistani government "sanctioned" the killing of the reporter.
More than 180 recently leaked intelligence files detail allegations that Pakistani intelligence has been aiding the insurgency in Afghanistan.
Support includes plots to train suicide bombers, smuggle surface-to-air missiles across the border, bomb the Indian Embassy in Kabul, and assassinate President Hamid Karzai and members of his administration.
U.S. officials say Pakistan provides direct support to two major groups carrying out attacks in Afghanistan: the Taliban based in Quetta, Pakistan, and the Haqqani group operating out of Pakistan's tribal region.
It's plain that Islamabad is playing both sides of the war on terror. Hold back the other two-thirds in aid.
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The Afghanistan Withdrawal Creates A Complex Diplomatic Dynamic
Three blasts struck Mumbai, India’s financial hub, Wednesday, killing at least 21 people and injuring more than 100 others. The attacks took place on the same day Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, head of Pakistan’s foreign intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, was in Washington on an unannounced visit. These two developments come a day before the head of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council (which is supposed to lead talks with the Taliban), Burhanuddin Rabbani, is due to visit the Indian capital.
“With these state actors locked in a difficult dynamic, Islamist militant non-state actors allied with al Qaeda are trying to act as spoilers to U.S.-led regional efforts.”
These three seemingly disparate events are important in the frame of the U.S. strategy to withdraw NATO forces from Afghanistan. The withdrawal of Western forces from the southwest Asian nation requires the United States to maintain a difficult triangular balance between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The United States and Pakistan must reconcile their differences on how to bring closure to the longest war in American history. The decades-old conflict between India and Pakistan also cannot be allowed to cloud the Western calculus for Afghanistan.
With these state actors locked in a difficult dynamic, Islamist militant non-state actors allied with al Qaeda are trying to act as spoilers to U.S.-led regional efforts. For al Qaeda and its South Asian allies, disrupting the American strategy is not only a means of countering their own existential issues but an opportunity to ensure that they can enhance their stature after Western forces pull out from Afghanistan. It is not clear whether Wednesday’s attacks were the work of al Qaeda-linked elements or local Indian Islamist militants. Nevertheless, the global jihadist network knows that the surest path toward their goals is reached by having Pakistan-based militants stage terrorist attacks in India, triggering an Indo-Pakistani conflict.
Washington, even as it tries to prevent such a scenario, must manage its unprecedented bilateral tensions with Pakistan. Washington and Islamabad should be jointly formulating an arrangement for post-NATO Afghanistan. However, this is not happening, at least not yet. The Obama administration is caught between the pragmatic need to work with Pakistan to achieve its goals in Afghanistan and idealistic ambitions of effecting a change in the Pakistani security establishment’s attitude toward Islamist militant proxies.
The ISI chief’s visit to Washington is an attempt by Pakistan to clear up misunderstandings and to try to get the Americans to appreciate the view from Islamabad. Pakistan does not want a Western exit from Afghanistan that exacerbates the jihadist insurgency within Pakistan’s borders.
While the Pakistanis work to sort out their problems with the Americans, India is concerned about its own regional security in post-NATO Afghanistan. Rabbani’s visit to the Indian capital is an important part of New Delhi’s efforts in this regard. Rabbani is the former Afghan president whose presidency was toppled when the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 and he is the most senior leader of the country’s largest ethnic minority, the Tajiks. The Tajiks have long opposed Pakistan’s backing of Pashtun forces, the Talibs in particular. Although Rabbani recently paid an extensive visit to Pakistan in an effort to facilitate peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban, he remains closer to the Indians than to the Pakistanis.
For this reason, Rabbani’s trip to New Delhi will be of concern to Islamabad. The Pakistanis hope that what they perceive as a disproportionate amount of Indian influence in Afghanistan will sink to manageable levels after NATO forces leave. Conversely, India does not want to lose the leverage it has built over the past decade in Afghanistan.
Therefore, a three-way relationship exists that needs to find its natural balance. Such an equilibrium cannot just be conducive to a NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan; it must also prevent a regional conflagration after the U.S.-led Western troops have departed.
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Assassination May Create Leadership Void In Crucial Kandahar
Ahmed Wali Karzai, a Kandahar strongman and the half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, was shot and killed during a meeting July 12 by a security commander from Ahmed Wali’s hometown. Sadar Mohammad, the shooter, who was then killed by Karzai’s bodyguards, had long worked for the Karzai family. Both men were members of the Popolzai tribe, which belongs to the Pashtun, Afghanistan’s main ethnic group. Much speculation will center on the reasons for the shooting — whether it resulted, for instance, from a personal dispute, perhaps related to Ahmed Wali’s illicit activities, or from an infiltration by the Taliban (which the latter claims, as they do in many cases whether they are responsible or not). Ahmed Wali’s death is an important development, but it must be looked at in the appropriate context to be understood.
“President Hamid Karzai will seek a replacement able to maintain the existing networks and power structure, but Ahmed Wali’s charisma, clout and relationships make him tough to replace.”
Ahmed Wali was often accused of corruption, drug dealing and other illicit behavior, yet his brother gave him consistently unflinching support. This loyalty was not simply due to family connections but reflected the important role Ahmed Wali played in maintaining the presence and influence of his brother’s government in Kandahar province, the Taliban’s homeland. While he was not the actual governor, as chairman of the provincial council Ahmed Wali developed relationships with various power networks in the Pashtun region. He even interacted with the Taliban, both out of pragmatism and for personal gain.
Ahmed Wali spent years systematically developing networks to enhance his wealth and influence — and to some extent that of the Karzai regime. He had his hands in all business in the province — from the drug trade to facilitating the movement of resources from the United States. Many U.S. officials would like to think that weeding out corruption would help a viable government take root in Kandahar. However, that same convoluted system of personal networks is characteristic of Afghan politics and is essential to maintaining stability. Ahmed Wali’s success within this system ensured Hamid Karzai’s influence and presence on the Taliban’s core territory.
A reassessment of all local alliances is necessary in gauging the state of affairs in Kandahar province after Ahmed Wali’s killing. President Karzai will seek to appoint a successor able to maintain the existing networks and power structure, but Ahmed Wali’s charisma, clout and relationships make him tough to replace. Conversely, his death gives the Taliban an opportunity to compete for some of these networks — not to mention lucrative narcotics routes — and to fracture or divide others. Local warlords and businessmen will be deciding where to place their allegiance in order to maximize their positions, security and personal gain. This process can be particularly fluid in a country like Afghanistan, and the timing is especially delicate as the United States and its allies are beginning to draw down their forces in the region.
As the United States prepares to begin its withdrawal, the important question is how much authority the Karzai regime can maintain against Taliban forces in the Taliban’s ethnic, tribal and historical geographic core. Kandahar is a key indicator. With or without Ahmed Wali, Kandahar is where we can first expect the Taliban to gain influence when foreign troops leave. Without Ahmed Wali as a bulwark against their influence — and if a capable successor is not found — the Karzai regime’s ability to maintain control after a U.S. exit just got harder. Meanwhile, if the Taliban or other groups try and take Ahmed Wali’s networks, renewed instability and fighting in the south could make the U.S. drawdown more difficult.
If the Taliban can capitalize on this moment and fracture the Karzai power structure substantially, it would bring about an important shift at a time when the United States is attempting to reshape perceptions and redefine the war. As Washington attempts to initiate and then accelerate the drawdown, U.S. leadership is trying to negotiate with the Taliban through intermediaries. The loss of Ahmed Wali eliminates one such conduit and potentially increases U.S. dependence on Pakistani networks.
A STRATFOR source illustrated the tenuous situation created by the loss of Ahmed Wali. The source said that some locals working with the International Security Assistance Force, upon hearing of Ahmed Wali’s death, rushed to withdraw their money from Kabul Bank, a business over which he wielded substantial influence. The question now becomes whether the United States and the Karzai regime can maintain stability if the structure they have so painstakingly built begins to come apart. Ahmed Wali was no doubt important, but it is unclear how much the development and perpetuation of his networks depended on his personality. It remains to be seen whether the command, management and maintenance of the networks he built can be transitioned without significant maneuvering and fracturing . For the Karzai regime, the challenge is to fill the leadership void in the midst of the U.S. withdrawal. For the United States, it must handle negotiations with Pakistan to manage its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-exercising-admirable-restraint-after-Mumbai-attacks-NYT/articleshow/9232341.cms (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-exercising-admirable-restraint-after-Mumbai-attacks-NYT/articleshow/9232341.cms)
As predicted a few posts back, "In the next few days, the US will call India to exercise restraint, and the indians will fume in impotent rage for a while....pakis will say india may attack and they need to protect the Indian border as opposed to the Afghan border, unless ofcourse US pays the 800 million$...so predictable."
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304911104576445862242908294.html#printMode (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304911104576445862242908294.html#printMode)
Why My Father Hated India
Aatish Taseer, the son of an assassinated Pakistani leader, explains the history and hysteria behind a deadly relationship
By AATISH TASEER
Ten days before he was assassinated in January, my father, Salman Taseer, sent out a tweet about an Indian rocket that had come down over the Bay of Bengal: "Why does India make fools of themselves messing in space technology? Stick 2 bollywood my advice."
My father was the governor of Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, and his tweet, with its taunt at India's misfortune, would have delighted his many thousands of followers. It fed straight into Pakistan's unhealthy obsession with India, the country from which it was carved in 1947.
Though my father's attitude went down well in Pakistan, it had caused considerable tension between us. I am half-Indian, raised in Delhi by my Indian mother: India is a country that I consider my own. When my father was killed by one of his own bodyguards for defending a Christian woman accused of blasphemy, we had not spoken for three years.
To understand the Pakistani obsession with India, to get a sense of its special edge—its hysteria—it is necessary to understand the rejection of India, its culture and past, that lies at the heart of the idea of Pakistan. This is not merely an academic question. Pakistan's animus toward India is the cause of both its unwillingness to fight Islamic extremism and its active complicity in undermining the aims of its ostensible ally, the United States.
The idea of Pakistan was first seriously formulated by neither a cleric nor a politician but by a poet. In 1930, Muhammad Iqbal, addressing the All-India Muslim league, made the case for a state in which India's Muslims would realize their "political and ethical essence." Though he was always vague about what the new state would be, he was quite clear about what it would not be: the old pluralistic society of India, with its composite culture.
Iqbal's vision took concrete shape in August 1947. Despite the partition of British India, it had seemed at first that there would be no transfer of populations. But violence erupted, and it quickly became clear that in the new homeland for India's Muslims, there would be no place for its non-Muslim communities. Pakistan and India came into being at the cost of a million lives and the largest migration in history.
This shared experience of carnage and loss is the foundation of the modern relationship between the two countries. In human terms, it meant that each of my parents, my father in Pakistan and my mother in India, grew up around symmetrically violent stories of uprooting and homelessness.
Rex USA
Salman Taseer, governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, in May 2009. He was assassinated in January 2011.
But in Pakistan, the partition had another, deeper meaning. It raised big questions, in cultural and civilizational terms, about what its separation from India would mean.
In the absence of a true national identity, Pakistan defined itself by its opposition to India. It turned its back on all that had been common between Muslims and non-Muslims in the era before partition. Everything came under suspicion, from dress to customs to festivals, marriage rituals and literature. The new country set itself the task of erasing its association with the subcontinent, an association that many came to view as a contamination.
Had this assertion of national identity meant the casting out of something alien or foreign in favor of an organic or homegrown identity, it might have had an empowering effect. What made it self-wounding, even nihilistic, was that Pakistan, by asserting a new Arabized Islamic identity, rejected its own local and regional culture. In trying to turn its back on its shared past with India, Pakistan turned its back on itself.
But there was one problem: India was just across the border, and it was still its composite, pluralistic self, a place where nearly as many Muslims lived as in Pakistan. It was a daily reminder of the past that Pakistan had tried to erase.
Pakistan's existential confusion made itself apparent in the political turmoil of the decades after partition. The state failed to perform a single legal transfer of power; coups were commonplace. And yet, in 1980, my father would still have felt that the partition had not been a mistake, for one critical reason: India, for all its democracy and pluralism, was an economic disaster.
Pakistan had better roads, better cars; Pakistani businesses were thriving; its citizens could take foreign currency abroad. Compared with starving, socialist India, they were on much surer ground. So what if India had democracy? It had brought nothing but drought and famine.
But in the early 1990s, a reversal began to occur in the fortunes of the two countries. The advantage that Pakistan had seemed to enjoy in the years after independence evaporated, as it became clear that the quest to rid itself of its Indian identity had come at a price: the emergence of a new and dangerous brand of Islam.
As India rose, thanks to economic liberalization, Pakistan withered. The country that had begun as a poet's utopia was reduced to ruin and insolvency.
The primary agent of this decline has been the Pakistani army. The beneficiary of vast amounts of American assistance and money—$11 billion since 9/11—the military has diverted a significant amount of these resources to arming itself against India. In Afghanistan, it has sought neither security nor stability but rather a backyard, which—once the Americans leave—might provide Pakistan with "strategic depth" against India.
In order to realize these objectives, the Pakistani army has led the U.S. in a dance, in which it had to be seen to be fighting the war on terror, but never so much as to actually win it, for its extension meant the continuing flow of American money. All this time the army kept alive a double game, in which some terror was fought and some—such as Laskhar-e-Tayyba's 2008 attack on Mumbai—actively supported.
The army's duplicity was exposed decisively this May, with the killing of Osama bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad. It was only the last and most incriminating charge against an institution whose activities over the years have included the creation of the Taliban, the financing of international terrorism and the running of a lucrative trade in nuclear secrets.
This army, whose might has always been justified by the imaginary threat from India, has been more harmful to Pakistan than to anybody else. It has consumed annually a quarter of the country's wealth, undermined one civilian government after another and enriched itself through a range of economic interests, from bakeries and shopping malls to huge property holdings.
The reversal in the fortunes of the two countries—India's sudden prosperity and cultural power, seen next to the calamity of Muhammad Iqbal's unrealized utopia—is what explains the bitterness of my father's tweet just days before he died. It captures the rage of being forced to reject a culture of which you feel effortlessly a part—a culture that Pakistanis, via Bollywood, experience daily in their homes.
This rage is what makes it impossible to reduce Pakistan's obsession with India to matters of security or a land dispute in Kashmir. It can heal only when the wounds of 1947 are healed. And it should provoke no triumphalism in India, for behind the bluster and the bravado, there is arid pain and sadness.
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Yes there will be consequences to a US withdrawl, but unless the US is willing to tackle Pak and focus on Pak....its not worthwhile to stay in Afghanistan, IMHO. The paki contribution to US body bags needs to be stopped, or we should come back. The other important development that is only briefly alluded to are the voices suggesting division of Afghanistan. The handling of the Pashtoon "problem", ie the artificial demarcation by the Durrand line, is key to controlling Pak. Its not Kashmir which many westerners and Pak keeps alluding to. Even the Kashmiris in Pak occupied Kashmir dont want to merge with Pak, leave alone those from India. I anticipate, in the coming year(s), this issue will gain more interest and comment in the media. Pakistan is scared $hit, as to what will happen if the pashtoons unite on both side of the Durrand line.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/350926/Made-in-US-disaster.html (http://www.dailypioneer.com/350926/Made-in-US-disaster.html)
Made in US disaster
July 05, 2011 11:18:33 PM
Ashok K Mehta
As the Americans flounder for an exit from the Afghan mess, India must be prepared for a precipitate and irresponsible US withdrawal.
The multiple suicide attack last week against Hotel Intercontinental perched on a hillock on the western edge of Kabul when Provincial Governors were meeting to chart out Afghanisation’s security reflects holes in capability of the Afghan National Security Forces. Not a single battalion of the Army can operate independently.
I stayed at the Intercontinental last year for a conference and wondered how the Taliban might storm the hotel. Of the three security checks along the road two were lightly held with armed guards. The third with X-ray machines was virtually in the hotel. But the rest of the area seemed uncovered, especially the slopes to the hill top. That’s where they came from and not along the road. The Taliban are both great improvisers and innovators, routinely springing new tricks and not afraid to die.
This setback will not derail the phased withdrawal beginning this month of the 33,000 US surge troops who will be out in 15 months. The remaining 70,000 troops are to deinduct by 2014. The politically choreographed drawdown is premised on preservation of gains of the surge. America’s Nato partners, except the UK, have earlier exit schedules which are to be finalised at the Chicago Nato summit next year.
US President Barack Obama’s 13-minute speech outlining the withdrawal marks the end of phase one of the war, a shift from counter-insurgency to counter-terrorism and from combat to combat support of the ANSF. The new US counter-terrorism strategy document released last week lays emphasis on raids and drone strikes.
The illusion of success has been buoyed by the dramatic elimination of Osama bin Laden and the annihilation of the Al Qaeda leadership, whereas opposition to foreign forces is from Al Qaeda’s affiliates, the Taliban. They too, have been degraded, some 2000 killed (700 middle-level commanders) and 4,000 captured, but nearly 80 per cent were civilians. Mr Obama characterised these ephemeral gains as “tide of war receding and drawdown from a position of strength”.
The core of Mr Obama’s assessment was embedded in two stark admissions: “We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place” and “nation-building has to be done at home facing rising debt and hard economic times”. The war cost of $12 billion annually and 30 to 40 body bags (in June there were 44) with nearly twice that number wounded monthly is politically unsustainable.
So how does Mr Obama hope to reduce American footprint, withdraw responsibly and leave behind a minimally stable Afghanistan? The key to transition — two small provinces and five urban centres, including Kabul, are to be handed over starting this month — is a capable and motivated ANSF. By October 2011, the Army will be 170,000-strong, to reach 240,000 by next year, optimally equipped with Nato class of weapons. Currently 70,000, the police force will increase to 130,000 but is terribly under-resourced. Too many countries are involved in their training and confusion obtains on whether it is to be CIS or policing. Interestingly, Pakistan’s hopes of a weak and sterile ANSF may turn out to be real.
A political settlement entailing power-sharing with the Taliban requires reintegration and reconciliation. Reintegration has proved more successful than reconciliation with nearly 2,000 rank and file Taliban reportedly brought overground. Response to reconciliation has been tardy despite claims of conversations with Mullah Omar’s aides, including some Taliban imposters. Here, too, many countries are involved: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the US, the UK and Germany which is coordinating the talks.
Mullah Omar has posted in mosques in southern Afghanistan warnings of death to anyone who talks to the Government. And why will Pakistan, which wants to be part of the solution and not the problem, be left out of reconciliation, as it has been so far? In February 2010, Quetta Shura’s number two, Mullah Biradar, was arrested in Karachi by the ISI and Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha has ensured Mullah Omar’s relocation after the Osama bin Laden plucking. Both former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said the Taliban will not engage in serious and fruitful talks. The Afghans feel that for serious reconciliation the surge has to continue — otherwise even if an agreement is reached its implementation is unlikely.
Against this background the recently established Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Commission on Reconciliation and Joint Task Force on Infiltration are as good as the India-Pakistan Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism: Good only for the joint statement. Similarly, at the counter-terrorism summit in Tehran last week, the Presidents of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan resolved to collectively fight militancy and oppose foreign interference — both aspirational goals.
The third element of the US exit strategy is turning the focus of operations from Afghanistan to Pakistan, reversing AfPak to PakAf, to neutralise Taliban sanctuaries inside Pakistan. In 2001, Pakistan was the base for the American war in Afghanistan; now it could be the opposite.
Cajoling and coercing Pakistan to act against its strategic assets will be the trickiest bit. Already the reverse is happening. Pakistan has asked the US to withdraw its trainers, close down drone bases, recall CIA operatives and the whole works. General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani is very angry the Army’s nose has been rubbed on the ground after the Osama bin Laden episode. He’s under extreme pressure from the conclave of Corps Commanders, political opposition and the public to punish the Americans.
As Pakistan is unlikely to cooperate easily, the frequency of drone attacks from Afghanistan will increase, prompting Islamabad to take up the legality of cross-border aerial attacks with Kabul and, who knows, the UN too. With US-Pakistan relations plummeting, training and capability of the ANSF under a cloud and good governance and a political settlement out of sight, Mr Obama’s exit strategy is as unworkable as Mr Henry Kissinger’s latest prescription in The International Herald Tribune: A ceasefire, withdrawal, coalition Government and an enforcing mechanism.
Already voices in the US suggest accelerated transition and division of Afghanistan if necessary. While the Americans are barking up the wrong tree, India must be prepared for a precipitate and irresponsible US withdrawal. Afghans want India to punch up to its weight without being inhibited by American and Pakistani sensitivities to a more proactive role. India must engage the Taliban and offer to equip and train the ANSF. But Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said last week in Washington, DC that India will not get involved in a security role. A rethink is required as was done on reintegration and reconciliation.
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The thing is that the taliban are against vaccination any way, and Pak is one of the few countries in the world with a high polio rate. One can safely assume that vaccinations will reduce markedly in Pak...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna?CMP=twt_gu (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna?CMP=twt_gu)
CIA organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden's family DNA
Senior Pakistani doctor who organised vaccine programme in Abbottabad arrested by ISI for working with US agents
Saeed Shah in Abbottabad
guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 July 2011 19.59 BST
CIA organised fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad to try and find Osama bin Laden. Photograph: Md Nadeem/EPA
The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader's family, a Guardian investigation has found.
As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the "project" in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.
The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has since been arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) for co-operating with American intelligence agents.
Relations between Washington and Islamabad, already severely strained by the Bin Laden operation, have deteriorated considerably since then. The doctor's arrest has exacerbated these tensions. The US is understood to be concerned for the doctor's safety, and is thought to have intervened on his behalf.
The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaida courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound last summer. The agency monitored the compound by satellite and surveillance from a local CIA safe house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that Bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country.
DNA from any of the Bin Laden children in the compound could be compared with a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010, to provide evidence that the family was present.
So agents approached Afridi, the health official in charge of Khyber, part of the tribal area that runs along the Afghan border.
The doctor went to Abbottabad in March, saying he had procured funds to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. Bypassing the management of the Abbottabad health services, he paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers, who took part in the operation without knowing about the connection to Bin Laden. Health visitors in the area were among the few people who had gained access to the Bin Laden compound in the past, administering polio drops to some of the children.
Afridi had posters for the vaccination programme put up around Abbottabad, featuring a vaccine made by Amson, a medicine manufacturer based on the outskirts of Islamabad.
In March health workers administered the vaccine in a poor neighbourhood on the edge of Abbottabad called Nawa Sher. The hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in three doses, the second a month after the first. But in April, instead of administering the second dose in Nawa Sher, the doctor returned to Abbottabad and moved the nurses on to Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived.
It is not known exactly how the doctor hoped to get DNA from the vaccinations, although nurses could have been trained to withdraw some blood in the needle after administrating the drug.
"The whole thing was totally irregular," said one Pakistani official. "Bilal Town is a well-to-do area. Why would you choose that place to give free vaccines? And what is the official surgeon of Khyber doing working in Abbottabad?"
A nurse known as Bakhto, whose full name is Mukhtar Bibi, managed to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound to administer the vaccines. According to several sources, the doctor, who waited outside, told her to take in a handbag that was fitted with an electronic device. It is not clear what the device was, or whether she left it behind. It is also not known whether the CIA managed to obtain any Bin Laden DNA, although one source suggested the operation did not succeed.
Mukhtar Bibi, who was unaware of the real purpose of the vaccination campaign, would not comment on the programme.
Pakistani intelligence became aware of the doctor's activities during the investigation into the US raid in which Bin Laden was killed on the top floor of the Abbottabad house. Islamabad refused to comment officially on Afridi's arrest, but one senior official said: "Wouldn't any country detain people for working for a foreign spy service?"
The doctor is one of several people suspected of helping the CIA to have been arrested by the ISI, but he is thought to be the only one still in custody.
Pakistan is furious over being kept in the dark about the raid, and the US is angry that the Pakistani investigation appears more focused on finding out how the CIA was able to track down the al-Qaida leader than on how Bin Laden was able to live in Abbottabad for five years.
Over the weekend, relations were pummelled further when the US announced that it would cut $800m (£500m) worth of military aid as punishment for Pakistan's perceived lack of co-operation in the anti-terror fight. William Daley, the White House chief of staff, went on US television on Sunday to say: "Obviously, there's still a lot of pain that the political system in Pakistan is feeling by virtue of the raid that we did to get Osama bin Laden, something the president felt strongly about and we have no regrets over."
The CIA refused to comment on the vaccination plot.
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It would be a shame if an enemy state unleashed a bioweapon.... How's India's biotech industry these days?
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India is not a leader in biotech...but all industries are improving in India. More of contract manufacturing of generics.
http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue=20110715&page=1 (http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue=20110715&page=1) from a semi sane Paki..
The military strategists of America who want to "save" Afghanistan from their Al-Qaeda enemy and the military establishment of Pakistan which wants to "secure" Afghanistan for its Taliban "assets", have both got it tragically wrong. If they insist on having it their exclusive way, they will lose both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Consider.
America's strategy in the run-up to the Afghan end-game is inconsistent and contradictory. Ten years after 9/11, with $1 trillion down the drain, Afghan "nationhood" is out, counter-insurgency is being substituted with counter-terrorism, troop surges with troop draw downs, and not all good Taliban are dead ones. So key Taliban leaders have to be targeted by drones in order to soften up their resistance and make them amenable to a US-sponsored power-sharing arrangement in Kabul. But this strategic direction-change is tripping up for two reasons.
First, the post-2014 "Base-Afghanistan" envisioned by Washington is critically based on two factors which are eroding faster than they are being consolidated. The first is the failure to build a reliable Afghan National Army that can do America's bidding - Taliban infiltration has made it an unreliable future adjunct. The second is America's inability to create a viable puppet regime of strongmen that can capture space and sustain stability - as testified by the assassination of the police head of Northern Afghanistan, General Dawood Dawood, two months ago, and that of Hamid Karzai's powerful, alliance-building brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, this week, followed by the abortive attempt on the life of the Home Minister, Bismillah Mohammadi, the same day. America's man in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, has never been more vulnerable as he is now.
The second is a continuing failure to persuade Pakistan's defense establishment to help knock out the core Al-Qaeda-Taliban trouble-makers in FATA. A carrot-and-stick policy that is based on "peanuts-for-aid" ($800 million for Pakistan in the last two years out of $3 billion pledged, as compared to $200 billion spent in Afghanistan in the same period) and largely ignores or denies Pakistan's legitimate security concerns in post-America Afghanistan (the need for a stable if not fully "friendly" Afghanistan on its western border) has failed to deliver. They want more aid, $$..my comment American unaccountability and unilateralism has fueled anti-Americanism in Pakistan following the Raymond Davis affair, the OBL raid in Abbottabad and the surge in drone strikes in FATA, putting the Pakistani military on the spot in the public eye. Now American impatience and arrogance - the attack on the ISI (publicly blamed for journalist Saleem Shahzad's murder) and its chief General Pasha ("sack him", says the New York Times) - and the decision to formally "announce" a "suspension" in $800 million in overdue US aid and compensation for the Pakistan military's big effort against the Pakistani Taliban, has added insult to injury.
Pakistan's strategy of continuing to obsess about India and making it an element of the future Afghan matrix on the basis of its Taliban "assets" is also coming a cropper. These Taliban "assets" were problematic even during Mullah Umar's reign from 1996-2001 when they refused to recognize the Durand Line as the international border with Pakistan, refused to kick out radical Islamic sectarian elements belonging to the Sipah Sahaba and Lashkar Jhangvi, and refused to break relations with Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda even though they were plotting against both America and Pakistan. These same Afghan Taliban "assets" have since networked with Al-Qaeda in FATA to give birth to and sustain the Pakistani Tehreek-i-Taliban which has exacted a toll of 35,000 Pakistan civilians and over 3000 Pakistani soldiers in Swat and South Waziristan in the last two years. As the murdered journalist and insider, Saleem Shahzad, noted, the real aim of the Al-Qaeda-Taliban network is to infiltrate the Pakistani state, plunge it into conflict with India (new Mumbais), erode the army's fighting capacity by de-motivating its rank and file, seize control of its nuclear weapons and transform its territory as a base area for world Islamic revolution. On the basis of Mullah Umar's past record, the Haqqani network's current liaison with Al-Qaeda, and Al-Qaeda's future ambitions, the Pakistan military's rigid protection of such assets is souring its longer term "strategic" relationship with the international community in general and America in particular. This is something it can ill-afford, given its trade and aid dependency on the West.
Pakistan and America should put their interests and concerns squarely on the table and abstain from airing their political differences or applying countervailing pressures through the media. America's carrot-and-stick policy won't yield dividends with Pakistan just as Pakistan's "double-game" breaches the trust red-line and mocks its "strategic" relations with America. Washington's plans for Afghanistan must not exclude Mullah Umar and the Haqqani network just as Islamabad's plans must not be exclusively based on them. In fact, America and Pakistan must not stake their all on the end-game in Afghanistan because its final outcome holds no guarantees for either of them.
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YA:
If you were the American Commander in Chief, what would you have us do?
Marc
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Not having any intelligence estimates or knowing the full capabilities of US intelligence, nor what the real US interests in the region might be...its kind of difficult. But assuming the US goal is to stop terrorism, these are the broad areas that i would push for.
Put pressure on pak to act against the jihadis in N.wazoostan. Pakis will not however do this (inspite of any amount of $$), because their army is itself jihadized. The next step would be to initiate the break up Pak. Two areas are ready to secede, Balochistan and Pashtoonistan. For the prsent lets focus only on Pashtoonistan. The US should support the aspirations of the pashtoon people, who have been artificially divided by the durrand line. If the US were to support the elimination of the Durrand line, and support the unification of the pashtoon people as a part of united Afghanistan, both the Afghans as well as the Taliban in FATA/NWFP region will support this initiative, and support the US. This could lead to real nation building and peace. If you come to think of it, this is what the afghan people want, and this is also Afghanistan's gripe with Pak. Why is the US not supporting this nation building. Make this offer to the Taliban, "Give up terrorism and we give you a united Afghanistan". This is in line with what Mullah Omar wants and what the haqqani group wants. There is a minor variant of the plan, whereby the southern areas of afghanistan/NWFP fuse to form pashtoonistan, whereas N.Afghanistan remains a separate country.
Paki interests are the opposite, they want to put a razor fence on the border with Afghanistan, and the way that they are controlling the pashtoon is with a radical version of Islam. Pak is financially broke, their bank contains only about 64 tonnes of gold!, they cannot wage a war against afghanistan or anybody else for that matter. Their frontier corps is mostly pashtoon, they are not going to fight against the formation of their homeland. The pak army's punjab based corps are not going to fight on the afghan border either, because that would leave the Indian border unguarded. India can make the appropriate saber rattling noises to keep the pak army at the indian border. Pak army cannot nuke the afghan people either, because it would be nuking the ummah, or worst case the nuclear winds blow down to the plains of pakistan. Furthermore, any use of the nukes should invite a massive response from the US.
Once they lose the "tribes" as proxy for use against India, a much chastened pak can be pressurized to give up nukes. The Balochistan card can be played at this stage, one can easily force a blockade of Karachi harbor if Pak does not give up nukes. At this stage the US must be willing to use overwhelming force if the pakis dont give up nukes.
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/US-exposes-ISI-subversion-of-Kashmir-issue-FBI-arrests-US-based-lobbyist/articleshow/9289454.cms (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/US-exposes-ISI-subversion-of-Kashmir-issue-FBI-arrests-US-based-lobbyist/articleshow/9289454.cms)
US exposes ISI subversion of Kashmir issue; FBI
WASHINGTON: Federal authorities on Monday arrested a prominent US-based pro-Pakistan activist associated with the Kashmiri separatist movement, accusing him of funneling money from the Pakistani spy agency ISI to lobby US decision-makers.
In the process, the Obama administration's law enforcement brigade also blew open the Pakistan and its spy agency's two-decade long subversion of the so-called Kashmir cause.
The FBI swooped down on the Virginia residence of Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, a well-known representative of Kashmiri separatists in the US and detained him on charges of ''participating in a long-term conspiracy to act as agents of the Pakistani government in the United States without disclosing their affiliation with the Pakistani government as required by law.''
Or simply put, he served as a frontman for ISI's Kashmir agenda.
Another individual, Zaheer Ahmed, like Fai a US citizen, was also similarly charged, but he is at large and believed to be in Pakistan, according to US authorities.
Fai has been a familiar and prominent figure in Washington DC for nearly two decades, lobbying Kashmiri separatist cause as executive director of the Kashmiri-American Council (KAC) and dallying with senators and congressmen. US authorities now say the KAC was just an ISI front, funded by Pakistan's spy agency.
The FBI affidavit alleges that, although the KAC held itself out to be a Kashmiri organization run by Kashmiris and financed by Americans, ''it is one of three 'Kashmir Centers' that are actually run by elements of the Pakistani government, including ISI.'' The two other Kashmir Centers are in London, England, and Brussels, Belgium.
According to the affidavit, a confidential witness told investigators that he participated in a scheme to obscure the origin of money transferred by Pakistan's ISI to Fai to use as a lobbyist for the KAC in furtherance of Pakistani government interests. The witness explained that the money was transferred to Fai through Ahmad, an American living in Pakistan.
A second confidential witness told investigators that the ''ISI created the KAC to propagandize on behalf of the government of Pakistan with the goal of uniting Kashmir.'' This witness said ''ISI's sponsorship and control of KAC were secret and that ISI had been directing Fai's activities for the past 25 years.''
The FBI affidavit alleges that Fai has "acted at the direction of and with the financial support of the Pakistani government for more than 20 years." Four Pakistani government handlers have directed Fai's US. activities and Fai has been in touch with his handlers more than 4,000 times since June 2008, according to the FBI.
The affidavit also alleges that Fai repeatedly submitted annual KAC strategy reports and budgetary requirements to his Pakistani government handlers for approval. One document entitled "Plan of Action of KAC / Kashmir Center for Fiscal Year 2009" laid out Fai's intended strategy to secure US. Congressional support in order to encourage the Executive Branch to support self-determination in Kashmir; his strategy to build new alliances in the State Department, the National Security Council, the Congress and the Pentagon, and to expand KAC's media efforts.
According to the affidavit, Fai also set forth KAC's projected budgetary requirements from the Pakistani government for 2009, including $100,000 for contributions to members of Congress.
Fai and the KAC have received at least $4 million from the Pakistani government since the mid-1990s through Ahmad and his funding network, the FBI said. The money is allegedly routed to Fai through Ahmad and a network of other individuals connected to Ahmad. Ahmad allegedly arranges for his contacts in the United States to provide money to Fai in return for repayment of those amounts in Pakistan.
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Nary a peep from the Pravdas on that , , ,
Turning now to Afg,
Two Prominent Southern Officials Killed
Jan Mohammad Khan, Afghanistan’s senior presidential adviser on tribal affairs, was assassinated July 17 at his home in Kabul at around 8 p.m. Khan, the former governor of Uruzgan province, was killed along with lawmaker Hashim Atanwal and three other people when a suicide bomber and three gunmen attacked Khan’s home in the Karte Char area of the city. Though the Taliban claimed responsibility, Afghan lawmaker Mohammad Daud Kalakani blamed Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate for the killings. Khan’s assassination comes less than a week after the death of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and head of the Kandahar provincial council, who was assassinated July 12 at his home in Kandahar city by Sardar Mohammad. Mohammad, who was a close associate of the Karzai family for the last seven to eight years in his capacity as the commander of all security posts in and around the town of Karz, the home city of the Karzai family, shot Karzai several times before being killed by his bodyguards.
The deaths of two government officials with strong influence in the southern provinces — the Taliban’s core territory — could have serious implications for the Afghan government and its ability to conduct business in the south.
Being closely affiliated with the Karzai family and the head of security, Mohammad was a frequent visitor at Ahmed Wali Karzai’s house, making it possible for him to bypass security while carrying a weapon. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, asserting that Mohammad was a Taliban agent (a routine and expected Taliban response, whether they were responsible or not), but it is far from clear whether this was the case. Mohammad and Karzai had a long-standing association and there were myriad licit and illicit activities in which Karzai was involved that could have provoked personal, criminal or other motivations for the killing.
Given that Karzai was a high-profile government official, he would have had tight security around him that would have been difficult for the Taliban to penetrate. Additionally, it seems unlikely that Mohammad would choose to work with the Taliban after being loyal to the Karzai family for several years. Mohammad likely would have known that Karzai had protection and that he would be killed in the process of assassinating him, making the act more likely motivated for personal rather than ideological reasons. Acting Kandahar police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq stated that the involvement of foreign circles could not be ruled out. Several suspects were detained and interrogated in relation to the assassination. Later reports from STRATFOR sources indicate that the assassination might be the result of a feud over finances arising from coalition contracts.
Later, during the funeral service for Karzai held at Red Mosque in Kandahar city on July 14, a suicide bomber staged an attack. The explosive device, hidden in the turban of the suicide bomber, killed Mawlawi Hekmatullah Hekmat, the head of the religious council in Kandahar, along with four other people. It remains unclear if Hekmat was the intended target. There are conflicting reports about the presence of Hamid Karzai at the funeral service, and if the Afghan president did attend he may have been the intended target. It is also possible that the attack may not have been aimed at any particular official at all, but instead may have targeted the large crowd of mourners gathered at the service.
This is a critical time for Hamid Karzai’s government, which is currently trying to hold talks with the Taliban in an effort to move toward a political accommodation and a negotiated settlement as foreign troops begin pulling out of the country. This does not necessarily mean that the Taliban will immediately have more room to operate in the absence of the Ahmed Wali Karzai and Khan. Much will depend on the ability of Karzai’s replacement to step into the role and wield power through the relationships and networks Karzai built for himself as well as the replacement’s ability to take the government’s relationship with the Taliban in a new direction. What is clear, however, is that the process of political transition is being forced upon Hamid Karzai’s regime through assassination in a key area of the country at a decisive time, and Kabul has work to do in reconsolidating what position it did have in the south under the president’s half-brother.
Transfer of Power
The targeted killings of three Afghan political figures — Khan, Ahmed Wali Karzai and then Hekmat at Karzai’s funeral — in a week’s time come as NATO is preparing to hand power to local Afghan forces in the northern province of Bamiyan. Additionally, 1,000 soldiers from two National Guard regiments at the Bagram Air Base in Parwan are scheduled to start withdrawing this month. Bamiyan is the first of seven locations that will make up the first phase transferring security responsibility to Afghan forces. The first phase of withdrawal will involve the transfer of power in the provinces of Panjshir, Kabul (aside from the restive Surobi district) and the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, Lashkar Gah and Mehtar Lam.
(click here to enlarge image)
All of these locations are relatively calm and have been largely secured by Afghan security forces for some time now. The transfer is a slow and measured process, but it will be important to watch the evolution of the standard for transfers and any potential shortening of timetables associated with the process as well as how sustainable security gains prove as International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops begin to pull back from key areas.
Meanwhile, Gen. David Petraeus, who will be the next director of the CIA, handed over command of the ISAF and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan to Marine Lt. Gen. John Allen on July 18. STRATFOR believes and has argued that this is more than a personnel change — it is the retirement of a key architect and principal proponent of the counterinsurgency-focused strategy currently being pursued. His replacement by a commander no doubt carefully vetted by the White House is beginning to show signs of how the appointment is intended to reshape and redefine the strategy for the war. The war in Afghanistan appears to be moving away from a focus on counterinsurgency and toward a counterterrorism approach, and Petraeus’ military experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and his newly appointed position are likely to help with that transition.
Read more: Afghanistan Weekly War Update: Losing Influence in the Taliban Core? | STRATFOR
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http://tribune.com.pk/story/213755/the-psychoanalysis-of-pakistan/ (http://tribune.com.pk/story/213755/the-psychoanalysis-of-pakistan/)
the psychoanalysis of pakistan
The door creaked open as the therapist led Pakistan into the room, his clothes drenched, his hair wild, his shirt unbuttoned, his hands covered in mud. “This is the last time I see you without an appointment, Pakistan.” The therapist tried not to reward Pakistan by obliging to his unannounced visits and subsequent tantrums, but this time, she knew that there was something terribly wrong.
Pakistan lay on the couch, with the therapist sitting behind him close to the door. She dimmed the lights, giving the weathered wood paneling a bronze glow. She hadn’t known Pakistan for long, but long enough to detect a disturbing pattern. Having changed several therapists, Pakistan followed a predictable course with all of his previous shrinks — starting off in a blaze of intimacy, slowly withdrawing, reaching a point of violent confrontation and then starting over with someone else. She knew that he badly needed her to understand him, even as he erected every possible obstacle in her endeavours to do so. Every session with Pakistan was a struggle — both for the therapist, as she tried to decipher his thoughts and motivations beneath the white noise of his obscurantist denial and obsessive paranoia — and for him, as he resolutely prevented her (and himself) from reaching his innermost chambers.
The therapist had no idea just how old Pakistan was, for even by his own accounts, his birth was a matter of great dispute. Pakistan was born either in the Bronze Age when the Indus Valley Civilisation was established in Mohenjodaro. Or, in the 8th century with the arrival of Muhammad bin Qasim, the 17-year-old Arab general, who became the first man to plant the flag of Islam in the Indian Subcontinent. Along the way, he also planted seeds in the collective Jungian psyche, the shoots from which continue to surface to this day. Sometimes he claimed to be born as a reactionary ideal in 1857. His real genesis, in 1947, was corroborated by an official birth certificate. Though that might simply be the day he was separated from his Siamese twin in a rather bloody operation.
The therapist took out her file to review her notes. From session to session, Pakistan varied from bouts of extreme pride and grandiosity– touting the mark on his forehead from excessive prostration during prayer, picking fights with the toughest boys in the neighbourhood, showing off the missile tattoos on his biceps — to states of despicable self-loathing — slitting his wrists to atone for his ‘sins’, claiming to have disavowed his religion and his brethren, shooting up heroin to disassociate himself from self-reflection. It was difficult to pin a diagnosis on him. Her initial hunch was that he had manic depression, swinging from grandiosity to doom and gloom. But she couldn’t pick that diagnosis, since these personality traits had persisted since about as long as the therapist could note. She relied on what she knew of Pakistan’s life thus far to inch closer towards a diagnosis.
Pakistan’s childhood remained of great interest to the therapist. While it was a topic that Pakistan refused to confront directly, drawing from his nightmares, his rambling digressions, and notes she had received from his previous therapists, a vague picture had come together. Born on the stroke of midnight, Pakistan and his twin brother, India, had had a tumultuous childhood, resulting in frequent fights, bleeding noses and cut lips. Orphaned in his infancy with the premature death of his father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, frequently beaten by his estranged brother (who also took away Pakistan’s favourite cashmere sweater), deeply insecure due to his short stature, and lacking any sort of guiding hand, Pakistan had a tormented upbringing. Once he attacked his brother to take back his sweater but failed (though he still claims it was his brother who started that particular round of fisticuffs). To this day, Pakistan refused to acknowledge any blood relationship with his brother, claiming to be a separate entity from him.
After his companion and childhood friend, Bangla, abandoned him in the early ‘70s, instead of reflecting on the many years of neglect and abuse he had inflicted on her, Pakistan transitioned into another high of energy. His charisma won him many friends and he formed a relationship with a mysterious sheikh, who would go on to have a deep impact on him. Sheikh Al-Wahab charmed Pakistan with his white robes and his shiny Rolexes (which he would jingle whenever he wanted Pakistan’s attention). The therapist could see that Pakistan believed that the sheikh, and his devout breed of Islam, offered him a chance to reconstruct his identity … but it was a dangerous façade.
Armed with this new identity, Pakistan entered a phase of gradual psychological self-mutilation, wherein he began to erase all memories that contradicted his new self. He grew a beard, rode his pants high on his tummy and learnt Arabic, but forgot his own native tongue. In his attempt to be born anew, he began to loathe himself: his brown skin, the festivals he celebrated, and the culture he shared with his estranged brother.
Pakistan’s newly found religiosity didn’t go entirely unnoticed. In fact, Uncle Sam encouraged Pakistan’s violent streak in order to settle a score against its long time adversary by training Pakistan’s crazy cousin, Talib. With his AK-47 loaded with incendiary rounds and an even more incendiary faith, Talib, with the help of his Arab roommate, Qaeda, and Pakistan’s full backing, did for Uncle Sam what no one else could have. After the fight, when Pakistan and Talib turned around to celebrate their victory with a series of high-fives and ‘Allah-u-Akbar’ chants, Sam was nowhere to be found. All they had to show for their efforts was a crate full of Kalashnikovs, heads full of grandiose delusions and a stash of smack to ensure insight remained an unwanted guest.
Pakistan, far from smothering Talib’s zeal, channeled it to settle scores with India in his unending struggle to regain his cashmere sweater. But in his efforts to agitate Talib against India, it was Pakistan who was influenced by his oddly appealing cousin. Meanwhile, Qaeda ran out of his supply of Ritalin® and, no longer in the spotlight, grew increasingly bored in his suburban house-cave. Convinced that Sam, who no longer showered him with attention, was the root of all the evils in the neighborhood, Qaeda went to Sam’s house with his bamboo stick and poked it right into Sam’s eye. Sam, infuriated, attacked Qaeda, who had taken refuge in Talib’s house-cave next to Pakistan’s, and demanded of Pakistan that he too join him in fighting both Qaeda and Talib. Scared out of his wits by the heavily muscled and belligerent Sam, Pakistan shaved his beard and donned a suit to convince Sam that he was ‘with him, not against him’. But in his heart, Pakistan could not abandon Talib, and banking on Sam’s short attention span (possibly due to serious ADHD), hoped to be able to hold off any Public Displays of Affection with Talib until Sam’s interest fizzled out.
But Talib just didn’t get it. He began to attack Pakistan for supporting Sam. Talib and Qaeda dealt Pakistan blows the likes of which he had never received, tearing into him, ripping apart whatever was important to him. But for all the pain they inflicted on him, Pakistan blamed everyone else in the neighborhood. Unable to remove himself from his association with Talib and Qaeda, and yet fully aware of their actions, the therapist noted that Pakistan found himself more confused, more in pain, more depressed and more vulnerable, than ever before.
The therapist formulated Pakistan’s history into what she regarded as a pattern of unstable identity, unstable relationships and fearful attachments. She started crossing out all the different diagnoses she had written on her sheet including adjustment disorder, substance abuse, depression with psychotic features, dysthymia and anti-social personality disorder, until the only diagnosis un-maimed by her pen was borderline personality disorder.
And yet, even armed with this knowledge, the therapist continued to have a difficult relationship with Pakistan. She knew that this was not just because Pakistan was, to put it mildly, un-normal, for she barely knew anyone in the entire neighbourhood who was.
“What happened, Pakistan? You look terrible.”
Pakistan remained mum, looking blankly up at the ceiling. The therapist prodded on, “Why do you have mud on your hands?”
“A great flood destroyed my house. I had to dig myself out of the rubble. My cow, Rani, my princess, I couldn’t find her. The waters took her away. My crops have all run a-waste.” Pakistan spoke in a monotone, staring blankly at the ceiling. The therapist didn’t know what to feel. A part of her believed he was pre-schizophrenic, his ability to process reality crumbling slowly. Another part felt that the heroin was like a virus, forever impairing his ability to test reality. She tried to feel sympathy for him, but found herself unable to do so. “Did anyone help you out?”
“Sam helped me out, not because he cared, but because he feared that if I lost my mind a bit more, I would blow up in his face.”
The therapist carried on, without believing his entire flood story. Just a few years back he had come running to her, with an earthquake-story in which his house was leveled, and here he was again, carrying on what was now becoming a comically long list of tragedies, some real, some imagined. “Why do you think these catastrophes happen to you?”
“It is a test of my faith, or a punishment for my transgressions, I can’t seem to understand.” The therapist’s attempts at objectivity began to fail, as Pakistan’s contradictions started to amuse her. His misery became a source of mirth, rather than solemn reflection.
“What transgressions?”
“I have failed my religion and no matter how much I pray for forgiveness, Allah continues to punish me. And I continue to be Sam’s slave. I have shaved my beard and started wearing suits just so that he does not suspect me of being with Talib. But inside, I know that I am in the wrong, and that is why Allah-Almighty punishes me.”
“But haven’t these Muslim ‘brothers’, hurt you more than even those who you claim are your enemies, including your actual sibling? Look at how you’re bruised, scarred, hurt — isn’t that the work of your so-called brothers?”
“They are angry, and justified in being so.”
“So they have the right to spew hatred and commit violence, but no one else does? Why bend the rules for them? Your sheikh has taken more from you than even your worst enemies: he took away you.”
“What is that supposed to mean? I have me.”
“What me, Pakistan? What of you do you have left?” The therapist’s frail figure shook, her spectacles danced on the bridge of her nose, as she continued to unabashedly counter-transfer.
“All of me is here in front of you. Me, born to live life governed by the laws of Islam, and to vanquish the apostates who tarnish its name.”
“But how can that be! Don’t you remember that when you were born, not in the 8th Century, but in 1947, your first law minister was a Hindu, and your finance minister was an Ahmadi, a sect you now consider as worthy of murder!”
“That cannot be true! Why wouldn’t I remember it if it were so? Wait, you are right, but how…?”
The blank look left Pakistan. Suddenly, he was awash with palpable emotion. The therapist knew what was going on, a rock had been upturned, and from beneath it had scampered out a thousand repressed memories. Memories of a father who never said his prayers, who swore by his suit and his whisky, of a time when festivals were marked with kites flying in the sky rather than blood from sacrificial animals running in the streets. Clearly in pain, Pakistan held his head. He tried to get up from the couch, before falling onto his knees, his hands covering his ears, ensuring that nothing but the voice within was heard. The therapist ran to the door, but stayed on to look at Pakistan writhe as alarmed guards ran in to pin him to the ground. Her unfinished case history was still lying next to her chair in the room. She was shaking. This would be her last session with Pakistan not so much because Pakistan’s malady awoke no empathy in her anymore, but because she knew she had stepped on the wrong side of Pakistan’s split monochromic psychological spectrum of blacks and whites.
Pakistan’s search for reflection began anew; a search that he ensured was always a never-ending spiral, where the journey itself is enacted only to avoid the destination. The therapist wondered who Pakistan would be if she were to meet him after some time; she wasn’t even sure if she would recognize him. She held the notebook tightly next to her chest and walked off determined to hold on to her diagnosis, if nothing else. And yet, she knew that in spite of all that he had endured (and inflicted) he had still lived to tell the tale. A survivor and stubborn to the core, she knew he’d be back. And while he wouldn’t be pretty for his pains, she knew, irrationally, that she might just like to see him again.
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, July 24th, 2011.
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"We are all human. God created us from one dirt. Why can we not marry each other, or love each other?"
HALIMA MOHAMMEDI, an Afghan teenager whose love for another teenager, Rafi Mohammed, set off a riot by flouting their village's tradition of arranged marriages.
"What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them."
KHER MOHAMMED, her father.
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HERAT, Afghanistan — The two teenagers met inside an ice cream factory through darting glances before roll call, murmured hellos as supervisors looked away and, finally, a phone number folded up and tossed discreetly onto the workroom floor.
Related
Times Topic: Afghanistan
Enlarge This Image
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
A car burned by a crowd during a riot that took place after the police rescued two teenagers from a group of men who had demanded that they be hanged or stoned for their relationship.
It was the beginning of an Afghan love story that flouted dominant traditions of arranged marriages and close family scrutiny, a romance between two teenagers of different ethnicities that tested a village’s tolerance for more modern whims of the heart. The results were delivered with brutal speed.
This month, a group of men spotted the couple riding together in a car, yanked them into the road and began to interrogate the boy and girl. Why were they together? What right had they? An angry crowd of 300 surged around them, calling them adulterers and demanding that they be stoned to death or hanged.
When security forces swooped in and rescued the couple, the mob’s anger exploded. They overwhelmed the local police, set fire to cars and stormed a police station six miles from the center of Herat, raising questions about the strength of law in a corner of western Afghanistan and in one of the first cities that has made the formal transition to Afghan-led security.
The riot, which lasted for hours, ended with one man dead, a police station charred and the two teenagers, Halima Mohammedi and her boyfriend, Rafi Mohammed, confined to juvenile prison. Officially, their fates lie in the hands of an unsteady legal system. But they face harsher judgments of family and community.
Ms. Mohammedi’s uncle visited her in jail to say she had shamed the family, and promised that they would kill her once she was released. Her father, an illiterate laborer who works in Iran, sorrowfully concurred. He cried during two visits to the jail, saying almost nothing to his daughter. Blood, he said, was perhaps the only way out.
“What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them,” said the father, Kher Mohammed.
The teenagers, embarrassed to talk about love, said plainly that they were ready for death. But they were baffled by why they should have to be killed.
Mr. Mohammed, who is 17, said: “I feel so bad. I just pray that God gives this girl back to me. I’m ready to lose my life. I just want her safe release.”
Ms. Mohammedi, who believes she is 17, said: “We are all human. God created us from one dirt. Why can we not marry each other, or love each other?”
The case has resonated in Herat, in part because it stirred memories of a brutal stoning ordered by the Taliban last summer in northern Afghanistan.
A young couple in Kunduz was stoned to death by scores of people — including family members — after they eloped. The stoning marked a brutal application of Shariah law, captured on a video recording released online months later. Afghan officials promised to investigate after an international outcry, but no one has faced criminal charges.
The immediate response to the violence in Herat was heartening by comparison. Top clerics declined to condemn the couple. Police officers risked their lives to pull the two teenagers to safety and deposit them into the legal system, rather than the hands of angry relatives. And the police reported that five or six girls had fled the city with their boyfriends and fiancés in the weeks after the riot.
After discussing the case, the provincial council decided that Mr. Mohammed and Ms. Mohammedi deserved the government’s protection because neither was engaged, and because each said they wanted to get married.
“They are not criminals, even if they have committed sexual activities,” said Abdul Zahir, the council’s leader.
But so far, their words have not freed either of the teenagers or lent them any long-term security.
Ms. Mohammedi was initially taken to the only women’s shelter in this province of more than 1.5 million people, but the police transferred her quickly to the city’s juvenile detention center, a sun-washed building where about 40 girls and 40 boys sleep in separate dormitories. The police said they had referred the teenagers’ cases to prosecutors.
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“From their point of view, she committed a crime,” said Suraya Pakzad, director of Voices of Women Organization, a rights group that provided Ms. Mohammedi with a bed for one night.
Enlarge This Image
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
The girl's father, Kher Mohammed, with his head in his hand, wants the government to kill her and her boyfriend.
Related
Times Topic: Afghanistan
Ms. Pakzad said most of the women and girls in the shelters of western Afghanistan had fled forced or abusive marriages, or had been ostracized from their communities for dating young men without their families’ approval. Male relatives often punish such transgressions with beatings or death.
But in separate interviews at the juvenile jail, Ms. Mohammedi and Mr. Mohammed said they had not worried about such things.
He did not think about the rage that would erupt if a young Tajik man picked up a Hazara girl in a neighborhood dominated by conservative Hazaras, members of one of Afghanistan’s many ethnic minorities. “It’s the heart,” Mr. Mohammed said. “When you love somebody, you don’t ask who she is or what she is. You just go for it.”
They had much in common. His father was dead, as was her mother. They described each other as quiet and polite, both a little shy. They liked the same sappy songs that float over from Iran.
After six years of primary school, Ms. Mohammedi had wanted to study English and take computer classes, but she said her family told her it was a waste of time, and sent her to work at the ice cream factory, for $95 a month.
There, at least, they found each other. Mr. Mohammed spent a month stealing hellos before Ms. Mohammedi tossed her phone number at his feet.
The couple talked on the phone most nights, even though her stepmother disapproved. After a year, they decided they were fed up with hiding their relationship. They would meet, go to the courthouse and get married. Mr. Mohammed persuaded an older cousin to take him to the village of Jabrail, where she was waiting in the town square.
They had not driven 30 feet when a yellow Toyota Corolla blocked their path and angry men jumped out. Ms. Mohammedi was not hurt in the melee that followed, but the crowd beat up the cousin and pummeled Mr. Mohammed until he collapsed.
“We knew they would kill us,” she said.
They now spend the days at opposite ends of the same juvenile jail, out of each other’s sight. Mr. Mohammed nurses the wounds still visible in his swollen face and blood-laced eyes, and Ms. Mohammedi has been going to classes and learning to tailor clothes.
Both say they want to be together, but there are complications. Family members of the man killed in the riot sent word to Ms. Mohammedi that she bears the blame for his death. But they offered her an out: Marry one of their other sons, and her debt would be paid.
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It's a beautiful, wonderful culture.
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/01/see_no_evil
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http://www.usni.org/print/8230 (http://www.usni.org/print/8230)
Interesting article..
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Hey Ya, who is sponsoring the ETM in Pakistan?
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August 5, 2011
PAKISTAN'S CONUNDRUM WITH THE TALIBAN NEGOTIATIONS
On Wednesday, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman
said a political settlement in Afghanistan was not possible without assistance from
Pakistan. Separately, Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Javid Ludin said Kabul wanted
Islamabad to bring the senior leadership of the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating
table. Both statements were made in Islamabad on the sidelines of a meeting of the
three countries.
These remarks represent the first time that either Washington or Kabul has openly
and directly sought Pakistani help in the efforts to negotiate with the Afghan
jihadist movement. Thus far, the Americans and Afghans have only demanded that the
Pakistanis crack down on Afghan Taliban operating in their territory. Pakistan has
long awaited the time when the U.S. government would engage in this policy shift.
"Any American search for Pakistani involvement in the Afghan reconciliation efforts
cannot be separated from this wider atmosphere of tensions."
From Islamabad's point of view, it made no sense for the Americans to keep pressing
Pakistan to use force against the Taliban when the Americans themselves would
eventually have to seek a political settlement. The Pakistanis have questioned why
they should have to fight the Afghan Taliban and lose their leverage over the
Islamist insurgents, especially while Islamabad fights its own Taliban rebels.
Therefore, Pakistan is likely pleased that the Americans have finally sought its
involvement in efforts to talk to the Afghan Taliban.
Islamabad, however, cannot be completely confident that things are moving in its
preferred direction. The United States seeks Pakistani assistance in the
reconciliation efforts toward the Taliban at a time when the American-Pakistani
relationship is mired in unprecedented tensions. The U.S. drive toward unilateral
military and intelligence capabilities in Pakistan has fostered mutual mistrust and
animosity.
Any American search for Pakistani involvement in the Afghan reconciliation efforts
cannot be separated from this wider atmosphere of tensions. While Washington may
have decided to involve Islamabad in the Afghan political settlement process, there
remains a disagreement over the definition of who among the Taliban is capable of
reconciliation. Though Kabul has asked Pakistan to encourage top Taliban leaders
toward the bargaining table, it is unlikely that the likes of Taliban chief Mullah
Mohammad Omar or the most prominent regional Taliban commander, Sirajuddin Haqqani
(both have enjoyed complex relations with al Qaeda), will be acceptable to
Washington as negotiating partners.
Also, the degree of influence Pakistan holds over senior Afghan Taliban leaders is
questionable. Over the past decade, the fragmentation and metamorphosis of the
Taliban phenomenon on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border have led to a waning
of Pakistani influence over the Pashtun jihadist landscape. The insurgency inside
Pakistan has weakened Islamabad's position; it remains to be seen to what degree
Islamabad can deliver vis-à-vis the Afghan Taliban.
This waning could explain why the Pakistanis have openly said that they do not seek
a Taliban comeback in Afghanistan and Islamabad. Islamabad has been trying to
diversify its sphere of influence in its western neighbor, working to improve its
relationship with the regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. With relations with
Kabul still uncertain and Pashtun influence perhaps softening, Pakistan may find it
difficult to nudge the Taliban toward a power-sharing deal with the Karzai regime.
The United States appears to have finally moved toward involving Pakistan in its
talks with the Taliban. However, it will be awhile before the appropriate conditions
(in which substantive talks could take place) can be created.
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**I'd be willing to bet this was an ISI op. I have no evidence to back this up, but if I was investigating this, that's the first place I'd look.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_AFGHANISTAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-08-06-06-27-19
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A military helicopter was shot down in eastern Afghanistan, killing 31 U.S. special operation troops, most of them from the elite Navy SEALs unit that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, along with seven Afghan commandos. It was the deadliest single incident for American forces in the decade-long war.
The Taliban claimed they downed the helicopter with rocket fire while it was taking part in a raid on a house where insurgents were gathered in the province of Wardak late Friday. It said wreckage of the craft was strewn at the scene. A senior U.S. administration official in Washington said the craft was apparently shot down by insurgents. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the crash is still being investigated.
NATO confirmed the overnight crash took place and that there "was enemy activity in the area." But it said it was still investigating the cause and conducting a recovery operation at the site. It did not release details or casualty figures.
"We are in the process of accessing the facts," said U.S. Air Force Capt. Justin Brockhoff, a NATO spokesman.
One current and one former U.S. official said that the dead included more than 20 Navy SEALs from SEAL Team Six, the unit that carried out the raid in Pakistan in May that killed bin Laden. They were being flown by acrew of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because families are still being notified.
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Hey Ya, who is sponsoring the ETM in Pakistan?
I have not followed the ETM story very much. Two possibilities come to mind.
1. Its an independent jihadi movement based in Pak, ie Pak has lost control of them. This is what the Pak govt wants you to believe.
2. Another possibility is that with the US trying to arm twist Pak, Pak desperately needs China's support. The Chinese however have not been very enthusuiastic to replace Uncle sam, atleast interms of free $$. This is the ISI reminding the Chinese, what could be if the renmibis dont flow through. This is a standard operating procedure for the pakis, to seek protection money. The US pays protection money, the Indians do, so no reason the Chinese will be given a free pass.
3. As GM points out below...the shooting of the heli might be an ISI op...fits a pattern. ie payback for the OBL operation..especially since these were navy seals..
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14430735 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14430735)
US special forces Afghan helicopter downed 'by Taliban'
Thirty US troops, said to be mostly special forces, have been killed, reportedly when a Taliban rocket downed their helicopter in east Afghanistan.
Seven Afghan commandos and a civilian interpreter were also on the Chinook, officials say.
US sources say the special forces were from the Navy Seal unit which killed Osama Bin Laden, but are "unlikely" to be the same personnel.
This is the largest single US loss of life in the Afghan conflict.
The numbers of those killed have now been confirmed by the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan.
The Chinook went down in the early hours of Saturday in Wardak province, said a statement from President Hamid Karzai's office.
It was returning from an operation against the Taliban in which eight insurgents are believed to have been killed.
A senior official of President Barack Obama's administration said the helicopter was apparently shot down, Associated Press news agency reports.
An official with the Nato-led coalition in Afghanistan told the New York Times the helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says it is rare for the Taliban to shoot down aircraft.
The Taliban say they have modified their rocket-propelled grenades to improve their accuracy but that may not be true, our correspondent says.
Nato's worst Afghan moments
6 April 2005 - Chinook crash in Ghazni province kills 15 US soldiers and three civilian contractors
28 June 2005 - 16 US troops killed when Taliban bring down Chinook in Kunar province
16 August 2005 - 17 Spanish soldiers die when Cougar helicopter crashes near Herat
5 May 2006 - 10 US soldiers die after Chinook crashes east of Kabul
2 Sept 2006 - 14 UK personnel killed when RAF Nimrod explodes following mid-air refuelling
18 August 2008 - 10 French soldiers killed in Taliban ambush east of Kabul
6 August 2011 - 31 US special forces and seven Afghan soldiers killed in Chinook crash
Source: BBC and news agencies
"The president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan expresses his sympathy and deep condolences to US President Barack Obama and the family of the victims," the statement from President Karzai said.
President Obama, too, issued a statement paying tribute to the Americans and Afghans who died in the crash.
"We will draw inspiration from their lives, and continue the work of securing our country and standing up for the values that they embodied. We also mourn the Afghans who died alongside our troops in pursuit of a more peaceful and hopeful future for their country," the statement said.
Reports say more than 20 of the US dead were Navy Seals.
A US military source has confirmed to the BBC that they were from Seal Team Six - the same unit which killed Bin Laden in Pakistan in May.
Continue reading the main story
Who are the Navy Seals?
2,500 US Navy special forces
They carry out Sea, Air and Land operations, hence their name
Origins lie in World War II
Involved in Vietnam, Panama, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen
Team Six is elite group officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group
Team Six based near Virginia Beach, members usually have five years of experience, part of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC )
The team that killed Bin Laden
However, US officials have told both they BBC and AP they do not believe that any of those who took part in the Bin Laden operation were on the downed helicopter.
The size of Team Six, an elite unit within the Seals, which is officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, is not known.
Several air force personnel, a dog and his handler, a civilian interpreter, and the helicopter crew were also on board, AP reports.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said it was mounting an operation to recover the helicopter and find out why it crashed. It said there had been "enemy activity in the area" where it went down.
A Taliban spokesman said insurgents had brought down the helicopter with a rocket after US and Afghan troops attacked a house in the Sayd Abad district of Wardak where insurgents were meeting late on Friday, Associated Press said.
Sayd Abad, near the province of Kabul, is known to have a strong Taliban presence.
A Wardak government spokesman quoted by AFP news agency agreed with this, saying the helicopter had been hit as it was taking off.
A local resident told the BBC Pashto service a rocket had hit the helicopter.
"What we saw was that when we were having our pre-dawn [Ramadan] meal, Americans landed some soldiers for an early raid," said Mohammad Wali Wardag.
"This other helicopter also came for the raid. We were outside our rooms on a veranda and saw this helicopter flying very low, it was hit by a rocket and it was on fire."
There are currently about 140,000 foreign troops - about 100,000 of them American - in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban insurgency and training local troops to take over security.
All foreign combat forces are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and some troop withdrawals have already taken place.
Nato has begun the process of handing over control of security in some areas to local forces, with Bamiyan becoming the first province to pass to Afghan control in mid-July.
An increase in US troop numbers last year has had some success combating the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan, but attacks in the north, which was previously relatively quiet, have picked up in recent months.
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http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_11000160.aspx
Pakistan: Update. Hundreds of extra paramilitary troops have been deployed to Karachi where 58 people have been killed in political violence in the past five days. More than 200 people were killed last month.
Comment: The Islamabad government has exhausted its options and ideas for halting politically-motivated violence in Karachi.
Pakistan is heading for a military takeover of government, based on precedent and barring a surprise improvement in economic, law and order and social conditions. In other words, the economic and social conditions that are necessary but not sufficient conditions for a military takeover are present. The instrumental and sufficient conditions -- security force dissatisfaction with the civilian leadership and refusal to carry out lawful orders - do not yet seem present, but can appear in a short time without additional warning.
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While there is general jubilation on the pak defense forum (about the downed chinook), pakis being masters at spinning conspiracies..have come up with this gem.
"Oh! looks like they killed their own Navy Seals who were witnesses of the OBL raid ......so they killed them cuz the US dont want the actual story comes out anyway that there was no OBL in Abbottabad operation.....and it was the CIA drama......looks like they wanted to wipe out the evidence........umm...... "
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While there is general jubilation on the pak defense forum (about the downed chinook), pakis being masters at spinning conspiracies..have come up with this gem.
"Oh! looks like they killed their own Navy Seals who were witnesses of the OBL raid ......so they killed them cuz the US dont want the actual story comes out anyway that there was no OBL in Abbottabad operation.....and it was the CIA drama......looks like they wanted to wipe out the evidence........umm...... "
No indication that these were the very same SEALs that were on the OBL op. SEAL Team 6 aka Devgru aka whatever it's really called now has many more SEALs than 28 in the unit.
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On the Indian defense forum...its an article of faith that this was an ISI operation. This is not based on evidence but tons of prior experience with the MO of the ISI. Seal Team 6 caused a loss of H&D in pak, so they had a target on their back. Also of interest, in the US media no one is even discussing this as a possibility. Would be interesting to know where the weapon to hit the heli came from, and who supplied the intelligence. I find it difficult to believe the taliban got off a luck shot.
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By "RajeshA"...a poster on the www.
Fighting Jihadism in Pakistan
Global Jihad Inc. and even the Local Mullah are proving very resistant to GWoT, to COIN, to the modern state's security measures.
It is a many-headed Hydra. You cut one head and another one would grow instead. The Mujahids feel they are doing Allah's work, so any opportunity to take greater responsibility in Jihad is considered a normal promotion. If the predecessor was mowed down by security agencies of a modern state, that in itself does not seem to act as an impediment. As long as they live in their new positions as commanders, they will enjoy the respect of their colleagues, other Mujahids, they will enjoy being able to put fear into the hearts of the infidel, they will enjoy their exalted position in society, which honors Mujahids who "do Allah's work"! When these Mujahids die, there are prospects of getting 72 virgins along with the virility of a 100 men to satisfy them and to relish the experience. Plus, the organization, the dawa, would ensure that their families would be looked after and would receive a monthly stipend.
There is as such from their PoV, no reason to not opt for a lifetime of service in the cause of Jihad and to become a martyr in the same cause. Considering that there is no other work, is all the more reason.
So just killing off Jihadis one by one is a never-ending task. Americans are finding that out in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Yemen, and elsewhere.
Israelis tried breaking out of this dynamic. It was considered as insufficient to simply kill off the Palestinian fighters. What the Israelis did in Gaza, was to use collective punishment on Palestinians to relent - the blockades, sanctions, withholding of tax revenues, counter-bombardment, etc. That just increased the resolve of Palestinians. The whole community felt bound by a collective destiny and so they pulled themselves together and their determination to fight and die together increased as well.
Some would use that example to prove that collective punishment does not pay.
So if killing mujahids does not pay and collective punishment does not pay, then how does one go about fighting Jihadism?
Any social dynamic is based on understandings and contracts. When these understandings and contracts are not heeded or adhered to, then the society starts falling apart - any society, even a deeply conservative society. One has to see what these understandings and contracts are. One would however notice that an outsider does not really have the ability to intervene to such a high degree, so as to ensure that social compacts are violated.
There are basically two ways:
1) Corrupt society: A community works like one big block sharing resources, sharing space and sharing secrets valuable to the security of the whole community, sharing trust. It is often not possible to change the behavior of the majority in the community in a way that the previous social compacts are not honored, but certain individuals can always be turned around. The poorer a society becomes, the more vulnerable the individuals are to being bought off by giving them some rewards. As such one can buy people's loyalty, and make them work for you against the interests and wishes of the wider society. Similarly if somebody has much to lose, in terms of wealth, then again the other one would be willing to cooperate with outside forces, and may sell out the mujahids.
The avenues of corruption need to be explored to the maximum. The challenge is of course gaining access to those individuals who would be willing to break the social compact, and be willing to trade the community's secrets and trust for some favors and rewards. Normally a community would be very alert against such turncoats and anybody acting funny would be investigated. Also punishments are always severe and quick against traitors, in Jihadized communities.
As such increased trade and interaction with the outside world, even aid organizations working in the area, all provide a better backdrop for infiltration and recruitment of possible 'traitors', a standard operating procedure for gather HUMINT.
2) Care for the Family: The choice to wage jihad comes easily as the mujahids know that after them their families would be respected and looked after properly, they will not be allowed to starve. Moreover their families would receive funds and protection from the dawa, from the tanzeems.
That is the basis of the social compact a mujahid enters into with the community, before he swears his allegiance to jihad. So the question arises, would a mujahid willingly go for Jihad if the safety of his family was not guaranteed! Now the outside world does not have any say over whether the mujahids tanzeem would make that promise, but the outside world very well has the capacity to decide whether mujahid's tanzeem would be able to keep that promise.
Outside forces can ensure a dynamic, where the potential mujahid needs to be afraid of the consequences of his decision on his faith and on the rest of his family. If there are consequences, then they should be of a nature which would really give the potential mujahid some cause for rethinking, something shocking enough for him to rethink his decision, a decision he has been told, is sanctioned by Allah himself.
Something shocking enough on the faith front for him would be say after his death his body is not turned over to his family or community but is in fact defiled in a way completely contrary to his beliefs - say fed to the pigs, or cremated.
Something shocking enough on the family front for him would be say the death of all his male offspring regardless of age, and if he doesn't have any, than those of his next of kin - his parents, his male siblings. Something shocking would be say, if his female offspring, or his female siblings were to be kidnapped and taken as women, forcibly or otherwise, by men belonging to a different faith as Islam.
Should this happen to each and every mujahid, that is either caught fighting or dies in the battlefield, or is simply identified as a fighter, then it would establish not a probability but an almost certainty in the minds of potential mujahids, about the consequences.
Moreover he should also be angry at those who suggest to him that he should become a mujahid. The argument should go something on the lines that he would be the only one making the sacrifice, while others would be sacrificing nothing.
This anger would come only only he is being asked to make this sacrifice, while the others suffer no consequences at all. That is why the above punishment should be very discriminatory. There should be no collateral damage if it can be avoided, so that the recruiters cannot claim on behalf of the community, that the war is being waged on the whole community, and they should pick the gun and do likewise. The punishment should be so surgical and discriminatory, that it is difficulty to make this argument.
The "traitors" as such can then help in ensuring that the punishment is very surgical and precise.
Thirdly, there should be people around him, who should be making the argument to him, that he should decide against becoming a mujahid, and their argument should carry more weight than those who want to push him into Jihad citing the interests of religion and community.
Here the talk is of grown up adults, possibly the brothers of a potential mujahid who talk him out of becoming a mujahid. They would make the argument only if they also share in some of the consequences spoken of earlier, should he become a mujahid. Only then would they have the motivation to speak up. They should be able to make the argument that only their family would suffer, while the others would not.
As a civilized society, we tend to think of punishments which would only dissuade one belonging to such a civilized society who prizes his freedoms and desire to be with his family, to whom prison can be insulting to his dignity, etc. etc. If however we are waging a war, then we have to think of punishments which can act as discouragement for the enemy community, and not the same laws apply.
The implementation of consequences on the dead body of a mujahid can be justified on the basis of a declaration that, "he was a terrorist, and we do not consider him a Muslim, for terrorists have no religion!"
The implementation of consequences on his family would have to be carried out extra-judiciously, using some organization which specializes only in the above, and uses HUMINT from within the community to aid them in carrying out their missions.
So if we want to wage a successful war against Jihad, we would have to rethink the basics again.
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On the Indian defense forum...its an article of faith that this was an ISI operation. This is not based on evidence but tons of prior experience with the MO of the ISI. Seal Team 6 caused a loss of H&D in pak, so they had a target on their back. Also of interest, in the US media no one is even discussing this as a possibility. Would be interesting to know where the weapon to hit the heli came from, and who supplied the intelligence. I find it difficult to believe the taliban got off a luck shot.
Lucky shots do happen. An RPG at close range could account for this, but unless the evidence points to this, I'm assuming it's an ISI, or possibly an Iranian op until proven otherwise.
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Combat helicopters are vulnerable to small-arms fire, especially at takeoff and landing, analysts say. Pictured, a U.S. Chinook CH-47 helicopter landed in Khost province in 2009.
.KABUL—U.S. Special Operations troops were closing in on a clandestine Taliban meeting thought to include a high-value commander in Afghanistan's rugged Tangi Valley when they ran into an insurgent patrol that pinned them down.
Before dawn on Saturday, members of the elite U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six packed into a twin-rotor Chinook transport helicopter and rushed to the rescue.
As their Chinook was about to land, Afghan and U.S. officials said, a lone insurgent shot it out of the sky with a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, in the deadliest attack endured by the American military in a decade of war in Afghanistan. Thirty American troops, including 22 SEALs, died in the crash, as did a civilian interpreter and seven Afghan commandos.
The U.S. military didn't report any casualties among the original Special Operations team.
It was the worst tragedy in the history of the SEALs, and it delivered a jarring setback to the U.S.-led coalition, which has already started pulling troops out of Afghanistan in hopes of extricating itself from the conflict that has become America's longest foreign war.
American Special Operations Forces, a community that includes the Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and Army Green Berets, have conducted thousands of night raids. Most such raids, American officials say, end without a shot being fired.
This time, said a local villager and Afghan officials, the operation quickly ran into trouble as a Special Operations strike team tried to sneak up on the Taliban gathering thought to include a high-value target.
Read More
Military Aims to Reduce Copter Vulnerability
.One local resident said Taliban fighters in groups of five to 10 fighters have been routinely patrolling every village in the area since the conventional U.S. forces pulled out.
Saturday's meeting, he said, included two midlevel Taliban commanders: Habib Rehman and Saif ur Rehman, both of whom had recently returned from Quetta, Pakistan, home of the Taliban leadership.
The Taliban patrol spotted the U.S. troops and identified them as Americans as the forces crossed a river near a cluster of three villages in the valley. Taliban fire kept the Americans pinned down and exposed, said an Afghan official briefed on the incident.
Insurgents shot down a coalition forces helicopter in Afghanistan Saturday, killing 38. Video courtesy Reuters.
.As the operation unraveled, the U.S. team called for help.
In response, the U.S. command scrambled the Navy SEALs, backed up by Air Force tactical controllers and Afghan commandos as a quick reaction force. They rushed onto the Chinook and flew into the firefight, said a U.S. official, who added that the Chinook was approaching the landing zone when it was hit. Afghan officials said a Taliban insurgent who was hiding in the area fired the RPG that brought down the chopper.
All 38 people on board were killed. The Taliban said eight of their fighters also died in the fighting. The insurgent who fired the RPG, a local resident said, escaped unhurt.
"This is a real psychological blow," said Jeffrey Addicott, a former senior legal adviser to Army Special Forces who now directs the Center for Terrorism Law in San Antonio.
Some Afghan and Western officials said the attack could be an early warning about the risks of ceding ground as the U.S. and its allies prepare to end major combat operations in late 2014, transferring security duties to Afghan forces.
Until this spring, the U.S. military had a base in the middle of the inhospitable Tangi Valley, in the Wardak province some 60 miles southwest of Kabul. When the U.S. military pulled out, local officials said, the Taliban moved back in, with the fledgling Afghan security forces unable to stop them.
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."The government can't protect the people, they are under Taliban threats," said Mohammad Hazrat Janan, the provincial council chief in Wardak. "So the people have chosen Taliban for themselves and don't support or cooperate with government anymore."
Saturday's attack cast a pall over the U.S. military as its members came to terms with the devastating loss. A military official who worked in Afghanistan said the incident would be a significant propaganda victory for the Taliban. "The impact is huge. Being rattled is certainly justified," the official said.
The U.S. military and administration officials in Washington said Saturday's losses wouldn't impact the operational tempo of special-operations raids, nor would it have any strategic effect on the war.
"There is not going to be any scaling back," said a military official in Washington. "The fight goes on and we are going to keep pressing."
Although the investigation is still in its early stages, officials said they believe the Taliban success in bringing down the Chinook CH-47 was an aberration and not an indication that the U.S. will have to radically overhaul its tactics.
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."There is not a sense we have been sent back on our heels," said an administration official. "The feeling here is lucky shot, last lucky shot."
But Saturday's attack marked the second time an insurgent RPG has brought down a Chinook helicopter. Two service members were injured in the July 25 attack in eastern Afghanistan.
American forces sealed off the crash site Sunday as they went through the difficult process of recovering the wreckage and trying to determine the exact sequence of events.
One Afghan official said on Sunday that there was "no doubt" that the crash was caused by an RPG. But the U.S.-led military offered no official comment while the recovery operation was under way.
The downing of the helicopter underscores the urgency, and difficulty, of making low-flying helicopters less vulnerable to attack. While sophisticated defenses can fool heat-seeking missiles, there is little current technology that can defend against the lucky shot of a crude AK-47 or an RPG.
At shortly after 8 p.m. Friday, East Coast time, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon delivered the bad news of the attack to President Barack Obama.
Mr. Obama, who was at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., received updates over the weekend from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Adm. Michael Mullen, Chief of Staff Bill Daley and Mr. Donilon, officials said.
Most of the SEALs killed on Saturday were part of the secretive SEAL Team Six, officially known as Naval Special Warfare Development Group and numbering only some 300 operators. Along with the Army's Delta Force it is one of the United States' Special Mission Units, given the most dangerous and sensitive counterterrorism tasks. Members of the unit killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan three months ago, but none of those service members involved in that raid were killed Saturday.
Operationally assigned to the Fort Bragg-based Joint Special Operations Command, SEAL Team Six is based at Training Support Center Hampton Roads in Virginia Beach, Va.
In the aftermath of the attack, officials scaled back the planned change of command ceremony to be held on Monday at JSOC's Tampa headquarters. Adm. William McRaven, until recently the commander of the most elite group of Special Operations forces, including SEAL Team Six, will take over from another SEAL, Adm. Eric Olsen.
But officials said the speeches at the JSOC ceremony on Monday will reflect the command's commitment not to let the devastating attack result in any slowing of the tempo of operations against the Taliban.
Because they have been repeatedly and frequently deployed throughout the Afghanistan war, the commandos in the SEAL units know each other well, and the loss will be felt throughout the command.
"The special-ops community is very tight-knit," said Richard "Ozzie" Nelson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Navy officer who served at JSOC. "They have very strong bonds that they have forged over 10 years in combat. And in a very small community when you have a loss of this magnitude, the impact is significant."
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Dispatch: Effects of the U.S. Helicopter Downing in Afghanistan
August 9, 2011 | 1809 GMT
Click on image below to watch video:
Analyst Kamran Bokhari examines the potential fallout from the Taliban’s downing of a U.S. Chinook helicopter.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Related Links
Afghanistan Weekly War Update: A Helicopter Crashes in Eastern Afghanistan
Intelligence Guidance: Week of Aug. 7, 2011
U.S. and Pakistan: Afghan Strategies
U.S. military authorities are referring to the downing of a helicopter used by U.S. special forces, in which as many as 30 American military personnel were killed, as a one-off incident. While that may be the case, the downing of a U.S. military helicopter, with as many as 25 members of the Navy SEALs aboard it, will be a source of emboldenment for the Taliban. Should the Taliban be able to reproduce this incident in the future, it will enhance its position on the battlefield as well as the negotiating table.
A Pentagon spokesperson described the incident in which 30 U.S. military officials were killed aboard a CH-47 helicopter that was brought down by a Taliban RPG [rocket-propelled grenade], as a one-off incident and cautioned against reading too much into it and said that this did not constitute “a watershed or a new trend.” Indeed, the available evidence does suggest that the Taliban militiamen got lucky in this particular incident in the province of Wardak in central Afghanistan, when a team of Navy SEALs tried to rescue rangers who were pinned down in a firefight with the jihadist militiamen.
Even though the Taliban may have gotten lucky this time around, they will definitely be wanting to try and reproduce this incident in the future, just as U.S. military officials are investigating the incident in terms of trying to understand how this happened and how it can be prevented in the future. The Taliban can be expected to do their own probe in which they would want to be able to glean from “lessons learned.”
The point to note here is that while the tactical military skills and circumstances may be reproducible, but in the long run the frequency of such events essentially depends upon the Taliban having advanced intelligence on helicopter missions. And that’s where they will run into some problems, because ultimately it depends upon how good the Taliban penetration is of the Afghan security forces and how much U.S. military authorities are sharing with their Afghan counterparts.
Should the Taliban be able to bring down additional helicopters in the near future, then that allows them to extract concessions from the United States on the negotiating table in terms of the circumstances of withdrawal and the share of power that the Taliban will be demanding in a post-NATO Afghanistan.
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The point to note here is that while the tactical military skills and circumstances may be reproducible, but in the long run the frequency of such events essentially depends upon the Taliban having advanced intelligence on helicopter missions. And that’s where they will run into some problems, because ultimately it depends upon how good the Taliban penetration is of the Afghan security forces and how much U.S. military authorities are sharing with their Afghan counterparts.
This is what indicates to me the potential for this to be an ISI op. I cannot exclude a "lucky shot", but the ISI is still my best suspect here.
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http://uk.news.yahoo.com/us-helicopter-shot-down-taliban-trap-afghan-official-060456657.html
The Taliban lured US forces into an elaborate trap to shoot down their helicopter, killing 30 American troops in the deadliest such incident of the war, an Afghan official said Monday.
US President Barack Obama pledged that the incident -- which killed 38 people -- would not keep foreign forces from prevailing in Afghanistan, and the Pentagon called the downing of the Chinook a "one-off" that would not alter US strategy.
The late Friday attack marked the biggest single loss of life for American and NATO forces since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban in late 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks.
The loss of the Chinook during an anti-Taliban operation southwest of Kabul dealt a blow to elite US special forces, which had 25 members on board -- 22 US Navy SEAL commandos and three Air Force Special Operations Forces.
Five US Army personnel, seven Afghan commandos and an interpreter also died.
A senior Afghan government official told AFP on condition of anonymity that Taliban commander Qari Tahir lured US forces to the scene by tipping them off that a Taliban meeting was taking place.
He also said four Pakistanis helped Tahir carry out the strike.
"Now it's confirmed that the helicopter was shot down and it was a trap that was set by a Taliban commander," said the official, citing intelligence gathered from the area.
"The Taliban knew which route the helicopter would take," he continued.
"That's the only route, so they took position on the either side of the valley on mountains and as the helicopter approached, they attacked it with rockets and other modern weapons. It was brought down by multiple shots."
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss the issue, also said President Hamid Karzai's US-backed government "thinks" the attack was retaliation for the May killing of Osama bin Laden.
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I will bet very large sums that money has already changed hands and the Chinese have already been all over this.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/10/pakistan-i-guess-well-have-to-show-china-the-wreckage-of-your-secret-stealth-helicopter/
Pakistan: I guess we’ll have to show China the wreckage of your secret stealth helicopter
posted at 8:52 pm on May 10, 2011 by Allahpundit
You know what the answer to this is? Have Mike Mullen very loudly and formally invite the head of India’s air force to tour an American air base and check out all the latest projects we’re working on. Maybe, as a bonus, let him sneak a peek at that insanely awesome shipborne laser that the Navy’s perfecting.
Why not? India’s the ultimate bulwark against these fascist and jihadist savages. Let’s make sure they’re prepared. And given their own growing knowledge base in weapons advances, it’d be useful to have a reciprocal relationship with them. It’s time to make this a proper alliance.
The U.S. has already asked the Pakistanis for the helicopter wreckage back, but one Pakistani official told ABC News the Chinese were also “very interested” in seeing the remains. Another official said, “We might let them [the Chinese] take a look.”
A U.S. official said he did not know if the Pakistanis had offered a peak to the Chinese, but said he would be “shocked” if the Chinese hadn’t already been given access to the damaged aircraft…
The potential technological advancements gleaned from the bird could be a “much appreciated gift” to the Chinese, according to former White House counterterrorism advisor and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke…
The Chinese and Pakistani governments are known to have a close relationship. Last month Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif concluded a trip to Beijing, afterwards telling Pakistan’s local press that China was Pakistan’s “best friend.”
Yes, please, let China know the singular joy that comes with being Pakistan’s “best friend.” ABC correctly points out that China is rumored to have jumpstarted its stealth program with pieces of a U.S. bomber that crashed in the Balkans in the late 90s; if that’s so, then that Point A might have led directly to this Point B. And yet, the question lingers: Is a stealth helicopter really all that difficult to figure out? Some experts say no:
[Lexington Institute head Loren Thompson] said that the technology and design features to enable an aircraft to reduce noise and evade radar are not shrouded in secrecy.
Countries that examine the wreckage “will not learn much from the remnants of the exploded helicopter that were not already readily available in open literature,” Thompson told AFP…
The helicopter appears to have at least five blades in its tail rotor, instead of the four associated with the Blackhawk, which analysts said could possibly allow for a slower rotor speed to reduce noise.
A cover on the rotor, akin to a hubcap, can also be seen as well as harder edges in the design, similar to the lines on stealth fighter planes such as the F-117. The cover on the rotor and the design lines would presumably be aimed at circumventing radar, according to analysts.
It’s not completely stealth, either. No doubt it’s radar-proof and quieter than a normal military helicopter in its approach, but remember that guy in Abbottabad who inadvertently tweeted the Bin Laden raid as it happened? His very first tweet was “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1 AM.” I don’t know how far he was from the compound, but if it was loud enough for him to hear, the Pakistani military must have heard it too. That’s why the raid was only 40 minutes; they would have showed up sooner or later.
As further reading, I recommend this short piece from Victor Davis Hanson about our very good friends in Islamabad. He’s tired of paying them billions in protection money not to do something crazy involving nukes, mainly because they seem to be getting crazier regardless. Exit quotation: “We’ve tried aid, no aid, sanctions, full diplomatic relations, estrangement,etc. At this point, all have failed, and failure without $3 billion a year is better than failure costing $3 billion a year.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/09700746-c681-11e0-bb50-00144feabdc0.html
August 14, 2011 4:27 pm
Pakistan gave China access to US helicopter
By Anna Fifield in Washington
Pakistan allowed Chinese military engineers to photograph and take samples from the top-secret stealth helicopter that US special forces left behind when they killed Osama bin Laden, the Financial Times has learned.
The action is the latest incident to underscore the increasingly complicated relationship and lack of trust between Islamabad and Washington following the raid.
"The US now has information that Pakistan, particularly the ISI, gave access to the Chinese military to the downed helicopter in Abbottabad," said one person in intelligence circles, referring to the Pakistani spy agency. The Chinese engineers were allowed to survey the wreckage and take photographs of it, as well as take samples of the special "stealth" skin that allowed the American team to enter Pakistan undetected by radar, he said.
President Barack Obama's national security council had been discussing this incident and trying to decide how to respond, said the situation “doesn't make us happy”, but the administration had little recourse.
As Navy Seals raided Bin Laden's compound in the military city of Abbottabad, just outside Islamabad, in May, one of their modified Black Hawk helicopters crashed into the wall of the compound, rendering it inoperable.
The Seals used a hammer to smash the instruments then rigged up explosives to detonate it in an effort to keep classified military technology secret, but the tail section landed outside the compound wall and remained intact. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, went to Pakistan two weeks after the raid to secure the tail's return.
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Lets see if I have this right. Pakistan has more people than Russia (I read this somewhere recently and was quite surprised); more nukes than everyone except the US, Russia, and China; a rogue nuclear program that is in alliance with the Norks rogue program and has connections with Iran's nuclear program, harbored Bin Laden, helps the Chinese get our military technology, etc etc , , , and they are an ally of ours , , ,
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Lets see if I have this right. Pakistan has more people than Russia (I read this somewhere recently and was quite surprised); more nukes than everyone except the US, Russia, and China; a rogue nuclear program that is in alliance with the Norks rogue program and has connections with Iran's nuclear program, harbored Bin Laden, helps the Chinese get our military technology, etc etc , , , and they are an ally of ours , , ,
Who are and will continue to get our tax dollars.
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This could go in a number of places on the forum but currently relates mostly to strikes in Pakistan. The AEI author (conservative) comes down on the pro-drone side, but can you imagine the public uproar today if it was a Cheney or McCain administration who had quadrupled the unmanned aerial attacks inside a 'sovereign' country? As an aside, I have a newer acquaintance who is a leading researcher/developer of UAV (drone) technology and I would be very interested in suggestions for intelligent, non-classified questions to ask if I am able to get some access.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576514372695629208.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion&_nocache=1313935905852&mg=com-wsj
The Morality of Drone Warfare
The reports about civilian casualties are unreliable.
By SADANAND DHUME
Last week, the London-based nonprofit Bureau of Investigative Journalism published a series of articles accusing the U.S. of covering up civilian casualties caused by drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas. In a New York Times op-ed on Sunday, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, President Obama's former director of national intelligence, declared that America's drone campaign "is eroding our influence and damaging our ability to work with Pakistan to achieve other important security objectives like eliminating Taliban sanctuaries, encouraging Indian-Pakistani dialogue, and making Pakistan's nuclear arsenal more secure."
In reality, drones represent the most discerning—and therefore most moral—form of aerial warfare in human history. In Pakistan, they keep terrorists on the run. They also help Washington to pressure an ostensible ally that doesn't respond to carrots alone.
According to the Bureau's journalists, drones have killed at least 45 civilians over the past year. This flatly contradicts White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, who said in June that drones have not caused "a single collateral death" since last August.
Then there's the realpolitik argument. Drones allegedly create day-to-day friction in U.S.-Pakistan relations. Without the bad blood they cause, Adm. Blair suggests, ties between Washington and Islamabad would flourish.
To be fair, neither argument can be casually dismissed. The claim of zero collateral deaths in a land where militants often live with their families, or cheek-by-jowl with other civilians, appears implausible. The strikes—53 so far this year—tend to draw street protests and harsh criticism from the Pakistani press. Both Pakistan's parliament and the provincial assembly in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province have passed resolutions calling for their end.
On closer examination, however, this case collapses. According to U.S. government officials quoted in the Times, the Bureau's reportage is unreliable. To begin with, Pakistani authorities, and the local reporters they hold sway over, have an incentive to fabricate or exaggerate casualty figures. And the reports rely, at least in part, on information provided by a Pakistani lawyer who publicly outed the CIA's undercover station chief last year.
Though even a single civilian casualty ought not to be taken lightly, the focus on alleged collateral damage distorts the essence of the drone program. Technology allows highly trained operators to observe targets on the ground for as much as 72 hours in advance. Software engineers typically model the blast radius for a missile or bomb strike. Lawyers weigh in on which laws apply and entire categories of potential targets—including mosques, hospitals and schools—are almost always out of bounds. All these procedures protect innocent civilian life.
As for affecting U.S. popularity, according to the Pew Global Attitudes survey, the U.S. favorability rating—long battered by conspiracy theories and an anti-American media—hovers at about 12%, almost exactly where it stood before the drone program's advent in 2004.
The program also serves a larger purpose. One of Washington's most pressing objectives in Pakistan is to end the use of its territory for attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan. Another is to wean the country off its historic support for terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, India and beyond. It cannot achieve either without the help of the Pakistani army and its notorious spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.
But the Pakistani army, riddled with jihadist sympathizers, and with a two-decade old belief in its mission to dominate Afghanistan and bleed India, has shown little inclination to do much more than the bare minimum. The violently anti-American Haqqani network remains comfortably ensconced in North Waziristan near the Afghan border. And terrorists such as Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, whose group was behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, including six Americans, routinely give inflammatory speeches to adoring crowds.
Against this backdrop, drones offer a practical way to eliminate some terrorists and keep others on the run. They also raise the incentives for the Pakistani military to crack down on terrorism, or else deal with the social unrest unleashed by the strikes.
Instead of cutting back on drones, the U.S. should threaten to ratchet up their use if the army and ISI fail to suppress anti-NATO forces in Afghanistan. Over $20 billion in aid in the past decade has not done enough to alter Islamabad's behavior. A carefully calibrated drone strategy, backed by resolve to stay the course in Afghanistan, may produce better results.
Mr. Dhume is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, and a columnist for WSJ.com.
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http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/g-parthasarathy/article2366300.ece?homepage=true (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/g-parthasarathy/article2366300.ece?homepage=true)
Watch out for Afpak turbulence G. PARTHASARATHY
With the US planning to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014, Pakistan is hoping for a Taliban takeover of the region. India should be under no illusion that it can change the jihadi mindset of Pakistan's armed forces.
The Americans intend to end active combat operations in Afghanistan after 2014, and the Pakistanis have started pondering over what life would be like after that. Optimists, particularly from the military and jihadi groups, believe that American withdrawal will lead to the fulfilment of General Zia-ul-Haq's dream of a Pakistan blessed with “strategic depth”' extending beyond the Amu Darya and into Central Asia.
Others fear that with Taliban extremism already having spread from across the Durand Line into Punjab and even Karachi, the country is headed for what author Ahmed Rashid once described as a Descent into Chaos.
The CIA report, Global Trends 2015, noted even in December 2001: “Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of economic mismanagement, divisive politics and ethnic feuds. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the Central Government's control will probably be reduced to the Punjab heartland and the economic hub of Karachi.”
PAKISTAN'S CALCULATIONS
Pakistan's military still believes that the Americans will meet the same fate as the Soviets did when confronted with the forces of “militant Islam” from across the Durand Line. There is nothing to indicate that Rawalpindi has any intention of ending its support for either the Taliban or the Haqqani network.
Both Mullah Omar and Sirajuddin Haqqani remain implacably opposed to American proposals on political “reconciliation” in Afghanistan. Neither of them has shown any sign of ending links with the Al Zawahiri-led Al Qaeda and its Chechen and Central Asian affiliates. Moreover, the Haqqani network unabashedly supports the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan, infuriating Pakistan's “all-weather friend,” China.
Pakistan's military has believed over the past few years that with the American economy in tatters and domestic opinion becoming increasingly hostile to growing casualties overseas, the Obama Administration will quit Afghanistan, paving the way for a Taliban takeover.
Another Pakistani calculation was that given their dependence on Pakistan's logistical support for supplies to their military in Afghanistan, the Americans were in no position to take coercive measures against Pakistan. These calculations have gone awry. It was the combined costs of war in Iraq (estimated at $806 billion) and the relatively less expensive war in Afghanistan ($444 billion over a decade) that were proving unaffordable to the US taxpayer.
While Americans have lost 1,760 soldiers in Afghanistan over a decade, their high casualties in Iraq, which included 4,474 killed in action, made the war in Iraq highly unpopular. Showing some intent to thwart Pakistani blackmail and threats of blocking supply routes, the Americans now move less than 35 per cent of their supplies through Pakistan, with the rest coming across their Northern Distribution Network, assisted by Russia and the Central Asian Republics. Two years ago, over 70 per cent of American supplies were routed through Pakistan.
Whether it is on the question of the secret approval it gave to American drone attacks on Pakistan territory, even as it raised a public hue and cry on the issue, or in its policy of providing shelter to Osama bin laden in Abbottabad, while claiming to be a loyal ally on America's “War on Terror”, the duplicity of the Pakistani military stands exposed. The Pakistan army is finding it difficult to defeat its erstwhile Pashtun protégés in the Tehriq-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan. There is, therefore, little prospect of its meeting American demands to act decisively against the followers of Mullah Omar and Sirajuddin Haqqani.
With Pakistan's Generals hell bent on retaining their jihadi assets in Afghanistan, on the one hand, and the US determined to ensure that the Afpak badlands straddling the Durand Line are not infested with anti-American Jihadis, on the other, the two “major non-NATO allies” appear set on a collision course, though with pretensions of seeking mutual understanding.
ANTI-TALIBAN CONSENSUS
The Russians have made it clear that their air-space and territory are available for American operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban, as long as they can jointly crackdown on production and smuggling of opium.
Unless there is a total meltdown in their economy, the Americans will retain a small, but significant military presence in Afghanistan, primarily for counter-terrorism, against groups operating across the Durand Line.
There are hints that their military presence in Afghanistan will also be geared to deal with any possible takeover of Pakistan's nuclear weapons by jihadi extremists, including such elements within Pakistan's much-vaunted military.
India should have no illusions that it can change the jihadi mindset of Pakistan's armed forces and should learn the right lessons from the heavy price the Americans have paid for their naiveté on the military mindset in Pakistan. The end-game in Afghanistan has only just begun.
(The author is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)
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The Afghan Taliban's Strategic Conciliatory Turn
Afghanistan’s Taliban movement was negotiating directly with the United States until the nervous regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai used media leaks to disrupt the talks in June, an AP report claimed Monday, quoting unnamed American and Afghan officials.
The AP report said negotiations were taking place not just with Tayyeb Agha, a representative of Taliban founder and chief Mullah Mohammad Omar, but also with Ibrahim Haqqani, the brother of Jalaluddin Haqqani, head of the so-called Haqqani Network — the branch of the Afghan jihadist movement active in the country’s east. Normally STRATFOR takes such reports with a strong dose of skepticism, but in a highly unusual communique, Mullah Omar himself confirmed that his group had been in negotiations with Washington.
“In today’s message, the Taliban chief referred to the Islamic Emirate as a non-state actor with no interest in ‘monopolizing power.’”
In a lengthy message on the occasion of the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr, the Taliban leader claimed that the talks were not aimed at reaching a political settlement but intended to secure the release of prisoners. More importantly, Mullah Omar went on to justify negotiations as a legitimate means of trying to establish his group’s vision of an Islamic polity in the country. Thus far the Taliban position has been to seek the re-establishment of their regime, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, toppled by the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
In today’s message, the Taliban chief referred to the Islamic Emirate as a non-state actor with no interest in “monopolizing power.” In fact, Mullah Omar said that all ethnic groups (including the non-Pashtun minorities of the north who are the historic enemies of the Taliban) would be part of a post-NATO Afghan government. The Taliban chief added that a future coalition government would not allow the developments that followed the collapse of communism — a time he categorized as when the country was roundly plundered and the state apparatus damaged entirely. “Strict measures will be taken to safeguard all national installations, government departments and the advancements that have occurred in the private sector,” he said.
A man known as a key international symbol for violent extremism, Mullah Omar also talked about economics, saying that his country had abundant arable land, rich mines and large energy resources with high potential. He said these resources could be invested under peaceful and stable circumstances and could help Afghanistan overcome poverty, unemployment and the social and economic problems arising from the economic ills. Clearly, this statement stands in sharp contrast to past communiques by Mullah Omar that have been heavy on ideological rhetoric while warning opponents of his jihadist militia’s capability for violence. So, why this major shift in attitude?
The answer involves the Taliban’s emerging realization that as the United States and its NATO allies begin to withdraw from Afghanistan, they are leaving behind a country far different from the one the Soviets left when they withdrew. If the communist state that the Soviets left behind was able to hold its own for three years before the much larger and more well-endowed Islamist insurgent alliance was able to topple it, then the Taliban realize that they face an even greater challenge with the Karzai regime. Even after they push Western forces out of the country, the Taliban are expecting a prolonged civil war with their opponents before they can regain power.
Assuming that scenario occurs, the Taliban would still be considered a global pariah with intense international isolation. Indeed, the group remembers how the country was sanctioned during their first stint in power. By opting for negotiations, the Taliban, who remain the single largest political force in the country, hope to dominate a post-NATO political dispensation and avoid international isolation. This tactic does not mean that the Taliban are moderating; rather they are adjusting to constraints that limit their ability to achieve their goals of resurging to power.
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http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2011/08/osama-bin-laden-the-real-story-fb-ali.html (http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2011/08/osama-bin-laden-the-real-story-fb-ali.html)
Osama bin Laden : The real story? - FB Ali
The killing of bin Laden in a US Special Forces raid on a house in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad unleashed a torrent of stories about the event. The accounts by various US officials (given in bits and pieces immediately after the raid) gave little information on the details of the operation, and none on the ‘back story’. This left the field open to a lot of speculative accounts about how the raid took place and the events leading up to it. A rash of conspiracy theories also sprang up, many of which flatly denied bin Laden was even present in the house, while others put forward various versions of the Pakistani role in these events.
Recently, two accounts have been published that claim to be based on information from sources ‘in the know’ or ones who actually participated in the planning (though perhaps not the execution) of the raid. The first was a detailed account by Nicholas Schmidle in The New Yorker, based on interviews with and information provided by senior White House staff and some of the planners of the raid. This was obviously the “official” version, what the US administration would like people to believe. The second is a post on her blog by RJ Hillhouse, in which she quotes her intelligence sources on certain aspects of the raid, especially the events leading up to it.
By studying these two accounts, separating the grain from the chaff, and judiciously filling in some of the blanks, it is possible to come up with what is likely to be fairly close to the real story.
It begins with the CIA station chief in one of the Gulf states receiving an unexpected visitor with a fascinating tale. He was a recently retired senior officer of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, and he wanted to talk about Osama bin Laden. Some years ago, he said, the Saudi intelligence chief approached the ISI with the request to provide sanctuary to bin Laden within Pakistan. The Saudis said that bin Laden was prepared to come down from the hills where he was hiding, provided sufficient assurances were available about his security. In return, he would ensure that al Qaeda would not target Pakistan, and he would also limit his own involvement in its operations.
The Saudi motive behind this request presumably had to do with their internal imperatives. The bin Ladens are a very rich and influential family in Saudi Arabia. Osama and al Qaeda, and their goals, are supported by a large number of religious Saudis (even though the royal family considers them enemies). If bin Laden were to be hunted down and killed by the Americans in the tribal badlands of Pakistan, it would give the regime a black eye in the view of many of its people as well as being a serious blow to the bin Laden clan. It made sense to the Saudis to get Osama bin Laden into a safe hideout while at the same time neutralizing him as a functioning jihadi.
Whatever the Saudi motivation, their request placed the Pakistanis in a severe dilemma. The Saudis were their helpers and supporters, in fact the kingdom was their backer of last resort; they could not afford to alienate them. On the other side, bin Laden was the principal enemy and target of their current backer and ally, the United States; they could not take the risk of being caught harbouring him. The matter went right up to President Musharraf, and was the subject of much anxious debate. Finally, it was decided that the affair would be handled through one of the client jihadi outfits of the ISI, with no official involvement, thus ensuring plausible deniability in case something went wrong.
This, said the former ISI official, was how bin Laden was moved into Pakistan some years ago, and was safely harboured there. He was prepared to divulge his current location to the CIA provided he was given the reward on offer, and he and his family (accompanying him on this holiday) were securely relocated to the USA. The CIA station chief set up another meeting with the informant, and promptly relayed the information to Washington. The background check on the ISI officer having proved satisfactory, at this second meeting the station chief accepted his offer on the condition that the reward would only be paid if his information proved accurate.
When the location of bin Laden reached Langley, the CIA commenced a sophisticated, but secret, operation to verify that bin Laden did indeed live in the house in Abbottabad that their ISI informant had betrayed to them. Even before the results of this activity became available, the top security officials in the US administration began to consider actions that could be taken if his presence there was confirmed. This process quickly narrowed down the options to essentially two: a drone strike on the house, or a Special Forces raid (of the type being regularly carried out in Afghanistan against suspected insurgent leaders). When the CIA established that there was a high probability that Osama bin Laden did indeed live in the Abbottabad house, detailed planning began for both options. Their pros and cons differed so radically, however, that choosing between them was not easy.
A drone strike would involve no risk to US personnel while also reducing the loss of face for the Pakistanis and, hence, their reaction after the event. An SF raid, on the other hand, would be a risky affair. Apart from the danger of various mishaps there was a possibility of Pakistani interference, both in the air and on the ground, which would endanger not only the success of the operation but also the US personnel involved. Such an intrusion of American ‘boots on the ground’ would likely cause serious problems in relations between the two countries. The biggest difference, however, lay in the degree to which the success of the operation could be established by the administration, and generally accepted by the world when announced. A successful drone strike would show that the house was destroyed, but not whether bin Laden had been killed (the Pakistanis would never admit that he had even been there). A successful SF raid, on the other hand, would provide definitive proof.
The two options were presented to President Obama for a decision. His military advisers generally favoured the drone option, though the JSOC command was quite happy to do the raid. The ‘political’ advisers did not want to pass up this great opportunity to claim a notable success for the administration, but that would only be possible with an SF raid. Obama mulled over the choice for a few days and decided to carry out the raid ─ but with its risks minimized by getting the Pakistan military to cooperate. This set off another hectic debate among the advisers; it was finally decided that a very hard line be taken with the Pakistanis, giving them, in effect, neither the option to refuse nor any wiggle room in compliance. Leon Panetta was chosen to deliver the ultimatum: in essence, to do another ‘Armitage’ on them.
Panetta enjoyed playing the heavy with the Pakistanis (especially after their successful false emissary caper and their exploitation of the Raymond Davis affair). He told the ISI chief how the US had found out, and then confirmed, that bin Laden was being sheltered by them. The US was going to take him out; Pakistan could either help, or it would be considered an enemy of the US and treated accordingly. Backed into a corner, with their ‘plausible deniability’ in shreds, the Pakistani generals folded: they were prepared to help, but they needed a good cover story, especially for the Saudis. The US agreed to work with them on this, but demanded that knowledge of the raid be confined to a very few people at the top of the command chain, no more than necessary to ensure that any attempt by someone in the security forces to interfere with the operation would be immediately detected and quashed.
The cover story finally agreed upon was that the US had carried out a drone strike on the house (though none would in fact take place). This would account for the night-time explosions at the house, and, more importantly, provide an explanation to give to the Saudis for bin Laden’s sudden and unfortunate demise (his body having been almost obliterated by the bombs!). The US’s agreement was simply a ruse, however, in order to keep the Pakistanis cooperating; having rejected the drone option because it did not allow a definitive claim of the operation’s success, the US administration had no intention of going through with this cover story. Instead, it intended to announce the carrying out of the raid, and its momentous result, as soon as it was completed, though it is likely they planned to shift its venue to some undefined place under insurgent control so as to allow the Pakistani military some face-saving, and thus limit their adverse reaction. In the event, the helicopter crash put paid to this.
With the Pakistani military on board, the raid was launched on May 1st. Two Black Hawk helicopters with the Navy SEALs team on board took off from Jalalabad late evening and landed at the Ghazi airbase, Tarbela. This base is used by Pakistani SF (the Special Services Group), and has a US SF helicopter-training contingent stationed there. Helicopter flights into the US base area from Afghanistan are routine, and the flight of these two helicopters was cleared on the same basis. The attack on the Abbottabad target was launched from here later that night. The flying distance from Ghazi to the target is approximately 60 km (40 miles).
Even though the Pakistan army chief had agreed to allow the raid to go through without any interference, the US was not taking any chances. Schmidle describes a backup force of four Chinook helicopters, two with a backup SEALs team (which remained on the Afghan side of the border), and two as helicopter backups for the assault Black Hawks. He says that these latter two “landed at a predetermined point on a dry riverbed in a wide, unpopulated valley”. This is probably correct since, in case of a Pakistani double-cross, they would be grounded if they were to wait at the Ghazi airbase instead. One of these Chinooks was later used as the replacement for the Black Hawk that crashed at the Abbottabad house.
Schmidle’s account (and critiques of it published afterwards) dwell mostly on the details of the action inside the bin Laden compound. It doesn’t really matter how that action unfolded, though controversy over it does shift attention away from those aspects of the operation that are being kept concealed by both the US and Pakistan. The important point of these actions is that they resulted in Osama bin Laden being killed. Many conspiracy theorists refuse to accept this, but al Qaeda does, and so do the Pakistanis, who have in their custody bin Laden’s wives who witnessed the event. It may be worth commenting on a couple of the items of controversy. It doesn’t matter whether bin Laden had a weapon or not; the orders were for him to be killed. The reason why Amal al-Fatah, bin Laden’s wife who tried to protect him, was shot in the leg (DEVGRU normally just kills) was probably because the plan was to bring the wives and surviving sons back as prisoners (the loss of one of the Black Hawks forced a change there).
As for the fallout from the operation, it was, as expected, mainly on US-Pakistan relations. If the US had the intention of making it easier for the Pakistanis by fudging the site of the raid, the crashed helicopter’s tail sticking up from bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound ended that option. This stark evidence of the US incursion left the US with no option but to (in Hillhouse’s apt phrase) throw the Pakistanis under the bus. Panetta couldn’t let the opportunity pass without adding an extra kick of his own (“ they were either complicit or incompetent”). The Pakistan military lost a lot of ‘face’ internally, but had a tolerable alibi for the Saudis. Most importantly, the raid and its aftermath ended all chances of them working as allies with the US in the future; the relationship became once again purely transactional, with no trust on either side.
The United States certainly got their man but, in the process, lost Pakistan. Time will tell whether that was a good deal.
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Some data porn...fryday is the big day for jihadis..
(http://www.dawn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/South-Asia-Terrorism-portal-2.png)
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Good thing it's a religion of peace.
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By DION NISSENBAUM
KABUL—Has the U.S. military surge in Afghanistan been a success?
As America begins to scale back its presence in the country, that question is generating diverging answers from U.S. military commanders and United Nations officials in Afghanistan. American military commanders argue the infusion of 33,000 more American forces has helped change the tide of the war by driving down violence and reducing the number of civilian casualties this summer. U.N. officials, along with independent security analysts in Afghanistan, contest that analysis and say violence and civilian deaths both hit record highs in recent months.
Somewhere between those contrasting interpretations of the strength of the insurgency is the question of whether the Afghan army and police will be able to protect their own people from the Taliban as the U.S. cedes security responsibility to local forces.
As the U.S. begins a phased withdrawal of the added forces who were deployed beginning early last year, American commanders say the surge has done exactly what was intended: dislodged Taliban fighters from southern sanctuaries and put insurgents on the defensive.
Coalition officials say insurgent attacks fell 20% in July from the same month in 2010. As of late August, violence was down 12 of the previous 16 weeks when compared with last summer, according to coalition officials, who declined to release specific numbers.
"Violence is down over the course of the last couple of months considerably from what it was this time last year," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Afghanistan this summer.
The drop in attacks, military officials say, is a sign the coalition has gained a decisive upper hand. "I think it's a leading indicator," a coalition official in Kabul said of the military analysis. "We believe we are making progress based on the numbers."
U.N. officials disagree, and say the coalition failed to achieve a counterinsurgency goal it set for itself ahead of the surge: protecting Afghan civilians.
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Close."The most important criteria for the average Afghan is whether civilians are dying, and whether their quality of life and capacity of moving around has increased or not," said Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan. "In terms of civilian casualties, all the reports we get are that they are not happy with this."
In the three months through July, the war claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Afghan civilians, according to U.N. statistics, the first time since U.N. investigators began tracking casualties in 2007 that they have documented more than 1,000 civilian deaths in a three-month period.
The U.N. charted a 15% rise in civilian casualties in the first six months of this year compared with the year-earlier period.
The single largest killer: Hidden explosives, a hallmark of the insurgency's summer campaign. Roadside bombs and other improvised explosive devices planted by insurgents accounted for nearly half the civilian casualties recorded by the U.N. in the first six months of 2011.
U.N. officials said that May was the deadliest month for Afghan civilians since the international body started tracking the figures in 2007, and that June marked a high in security incidents.
Coalition officials disputed the U.N. estimates and said that they documented a 14% decrease in civilian deaths between the second quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2011.
August also marked a grim milestone for the U.S. as the most deadly month in nearly a decade of war: 69 American soldiers died last month, according to the iCasualties website, with nearly half killed when a Taliban insurgent shot down a Chinook helicopter in eastern Afghanistan. So far this year, 310 Americans and 111 other coalition forces have been killed.
While the U.N. and the U.S.-led military coalition confer on their numbers, they still rely on their own investigators, collect varied intelligence and sometimes draw different conclusions on civilian casualties.
Military commanders and U.N. officials expressed confidence that their differing analysis, interpretations and methods of collecting data were accurate reflections of the state of the conflict.
Some Afghan leaders worry that the debate about numbers may miss the point.
Shaida Mohammad Abdali, President Hamid Karzai's deputy national security adviser, said the issue isn't the amount of violence; it is the Taliban's increasing effectiveness in killing prominent Afghan officials.
Since May, the Taliban have taken credit for killing a string of Afghan leaders, including Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Karzai's half-brother who worked closely with U.S. officials to fight the Taliban in Kandahar, and Gen. Daoud Daoud, the powerful police commander for northern Afghanistan.
That has raised concerns that a decline in overall insurgent attacks might not be a sign that things are getting better.
"We have to think about the optimism that we show about the level of violence," said Mr. Abdali. "Yes we may have a much more quiet countryside than before, but generally I am more concerned about the strategic impact of this war."
Mr. Abdali said American and Afghan military leaders had to focus more efforts on countering the Taliban's targeted assassination campaign.
"I hope that, instead of speaking about the decrease in the level of violence, we think about how we can counter this new tactic of the Taliban, or the terrorists, who are simply looking for the high-profile targets."
Michael Capstick, a retired Canadian military officer who worked in Afghanistan as an officer and a civilian, said the trends are taking a toll on the faith of the Afghan people.
"The high-profile attacks and assassinations since the spring are really eroding whatever confidence the Afghan people might have had in their security forces and, by extension, the military coalition," Mr. Capstick said. "The prevailing view seems to be: 'If they…can't protect themselves, how can they protect us?'," he said.
U.S. military commanders say the assassinations are militarily insignificant. "Those are not going to be decisive," a senior U.S. military commander said. The Taliban "are not physically controlling the terrain, they're not retaking what they have lost. And I don't think they can."
The U.N. assessment is supported by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, which examines security risks for aid groups working in the country. While the military charted a 20% decline in insurgent attacks in July, the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, or ANSO, documented a 7% rise.
The insurgency, the group concluded, has adapted to the surge, creating what it dubbed a "perpetually escalating stalemate."
The military's reports of progress against the Taliban are "at best misleading and at worst gravely irresponsible," says Nic Lee, director of the independent organization, which assesses security risks for scores of prominent aid groups in Afghanistan.
The coalition "is under a lot of pressure to demonstrate results ahead of transition, and this inevitably shapes the content of their data and the conclusions they draw from it," Mr. Lee said.
The U.S. military, when asked about ANSO's figures, said it stands by its analysis and sees it as the most comprehensive view of the conflict.
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KABUL—The Sept. 11 attacks that triggered the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan also uprooted 16-year-old Abdul Ghattar from his village in war-torn Helmand province, bringing him to a desolate refugee camp on the edge of Kabul.
Yet Mr. Ghattar stared blankly when asked whether he knew about al Qaeda's strike on the U.S., launched a decade ago from Afghan soil.
"Never heard of it," he shrugged as he lined up for water at the camp's well, which serves thousands of fellow refugees. "I have no idea why the Americans are in my country."
In a nearby tent that is the camp's school, his teacher, 22-year-old Mullah Said Nabi Agha, didn't fare much better. He said he has never seen the iconic image of the Twin Towers burning. He was vaguely aware that some kind of explosion had occurred in America.
"I was a child when it happened, and now I am an adult, and the Americans are still here," Mr. Agha said. "I think the Americans did it themselves, so they could invade Afghanistan."
The teacher's view is by no means rare here. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, of course, are known to educated Afghans, and to many residents of big cities. But that isn't always the case elsewhere in a predominantly rural country where 42% of the population is under the age of 14, and 72% of adults are illiterate. With few villages reached by television or electricity, news here is largely spread by word of mouth.
Such opinions highlight a contrast between American and Afghan perspectives on the longest foreign war in U.S. history, one that killed thousands of Afghans and, at the latest count, claimed the lives of 1,760 U.S. troops.
They also explain the Taliban's ability to rally popular support—in part by seizing the narrative to portray the war not as one triggered by America's need for self-defense, but as one of colonial aggression by infidels lusting for Afghanistan's riches.
"The Islamic Emirate wages a lawful struggle for the defense of its religion, country and soil," the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, told Afghans last month on the occasion of the Islamic Eid al-Fitr holiday.
According to a survey of 15- to 30-year-old men in the two southern provinces where President Barack Obama sent the bulk of American surge troops, 92% of respondents said they didn't know about "this event which the foreigners call 9/11" after being read a three-paragraph description of the attacks.
"Nobody explained to them the 9/11 story—and it's hard to win the hearts and minds of the fighting-age males in Helmand if they don't even know why the foreigners are here," says Norine MacDonald, president of the International Council on Security and Development, the think tank that carried out the survey of 1,000 Afghan men in eight districts of Kandahar and Helmand. "There is a vacuum—and it's being filled by al Qaeda and Taliban propaganda claiming that we are here to destroy Islam."
Some Afghans who do know about the events of 2001 often subscribe to conspiracy theories, imported from Pakistan and Iran, that have long lost currency even in the Middle East.
Maulvi Abdulaziz Mujahed, an imam at Kabul's Takbir mosque who served as chairman of the Kabul provincial council in 2008 to 2009, said in a recent interview that the Sept. 11 attacks were a Jewish conspiracy, a view he says was reinforced by his 2009 visit to New York's Ground Zero.
"I saw the photos of all those who have been killed in the attacks, and I saw people bring flowers for their loved ones. But I couldn't find a single Jew among them," Mr. Mujahed said. "The superpowers wanted a good pretext to invade Afghanistan, and these attacks provided it."
Abdul Hakim Mujahid, the deputy chairman of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, a body created to negotiate a peaceful solution to the war, was in New York when the two jets struck the Twin Towers—in his capacity as the Taliban regime's semi-official envoy to the U.S. and the United Nations.
While Mr. Mujahid says he was saddened by the attacks, he says he still doesn't believe al Qaeda was responsible for "the unfortunate incident."
"After 9/11, the whole world rushed to Afghanistan, and the people of Afghanistan were under the illusion that everything would be changed: The roads would be paved black, the houses would be painted white, the infrastructure rebuilt and the industries established," he says. "But gradually these expectations have come down, and now have reached the point of zero. The people are asking: When will the foreigners finally leave?"
Not every Afghan subscribes to the conspiracy theories or wants the Americans to leave. At the campus of Kabul University, where young women and men mix in a setting unimaginable under Taliban rule, students said in interviews they were fully aware of the Sept. 11 attacks and saw the U.S. invasion as bringing benefits to Afghanistan. Many of them were ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks from the country's north—ethnic minorities discriminated against under the rule of the Taliban.
"Under the Taliban, Afghanistan was a terrorist haven, nobody could leave their house, and I wouldn't have been able to attend university," says Nasser Hasrab, a 20-year-old literature student from the northern Faryab province. "After the Soviets left we had a civil war, and I am afraid that if the Americans leave, the same would happen again."
Across town in the Herat restaurant—once the favorite hangout of Taliban leaders and al Qaeda militants—owner Abdulazim Niyazi, dressed in a Polo shirt and clutching a Samsung cellphone, pondered the momentous change of the past decade.
Because TV was banned under the Taliban, there was no particular celebration or commotion in the restaurant on Sept. 11, 2001, he said. Since then, Mr. Niyazi complained, boomtown Kabul has been swamped with corruption, prostitution and vice. More importantly, his business has soured.
"Under the Taliban, we were the only place," he said. "Now, Kabul is filled with restaurants."
—Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
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The importance of this article is that it introduces a new term "the pakistanization of Al-Qaeda", which I guess is the next level from the mere "talibanization of Pakistan". To my understanding, this means that paki DNA has now been incorporated in AQ. As a result, one may expect AQ to play a more active role in many aspects of daily mayhem in Pak...
Al-Qaeda's roots grow deeper in Pakistan
By Amir Mir
ISLAMABAD - Ten years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City's twin World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and the subsequent "war on terror" launched by United Stated-led forces against al-Qaeda, the terrorist group continues to pose a serious threat to the world as it keeps surviving and thriving mainly on the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt.
In these rugged areas it has established an effective jihadi network that increasingly exploits its Pakistani affiliates to carry on the global jihadi agenda of Osama bin Laden, despite his May 2 killing in a United States military raid in Abbottabad in Pakistan.
Until recently, analysts have been mostly focusing on the dangers posed by the growing Talibanization of Pakistan. Yet, it has now become abundantly clear that the time has come to pay more attention to the bigger dangers posed by the Pakistanization of al-Qaeda.
Since US president George W Bush's declaration of war against global terrorism in September 2001, the US and its allies claim to have killed or captured over 75% of senior al-Qaeda leaders, the latest being Younis al-Mauritania, suspected of directing attacks against the US and Europe, who was arrested on September 5, 2011, during a raid in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province in Pakistan.
Yet, the frequency of terror attacks worldwide being attributed to the al-Qaeda network has increased, as compared to the pre-9/11 period, the latest being the September 7 twin suicide attacks targeting the residence of the deputy inspector general of the Balochistan Frontier Corps in Quetta, which killed 24 people.
Pakistani terrorism experts believe that the current spate of high-intensity attacks, despite Bin Laden's death four months ago, make obvious that al-Qaeda's core elements are still resilient and that the outfit is cultivating stronger operational connections that radiate outward from hideouts in Pakistan to affiliates scattered throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.
Therefore, as things stand, it appears that al-Qaeda not only remains in business in its traditional stronghold in the Waziristan tribal region on the largely lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt border, it has also clearly advanced to the urban areas in all the four provinces of Pakistan.
This is confirmed by the growing belief of the Barack Obama administration that if there is one country that matters most to the future of al-Qaeda, it is Pakistan.
A solid base
Al-Qaeda, which means "The Base" in Arabic, was founded in 1988 by Bin Laden with the aim of overthrowing the US-dominated world order. The outfit was relatively unknown until the 9/11 terror attacks when its operatives hijacked four US airliners and successfully crashed two of them into the World Trade Center towers in New York, with a third plane hitting the Pentagon building in Washington and a fourth one crashing in Pennsylvania as the passengers attempted to regain control of the plane.
In an exclusive interview with Geo television on July 23, 2008, Mustafa Abu Yazid alias Sheikh Saeed, then the third senior-most al-Qaeda leader after Bin Laden and Dr Ayman Zawahiri, confessed for the first time that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda operatives.
As US-led forces launched a ruthless military offensive in Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11, the Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda leadership started systematically moving its fighters across their eastern border into Pakistan, where they effectively took over the rugged mountainous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) after joining hands with local militants.
The al-Qaeda leadership's choice of using the FATA region, especially the North and South Waziristan tribal agencies as their hideout, has enabled the terror outfit to build a new power base, separate from Afghanistan. As a result, despite Pakistan's extensive contribution to the "war on terror", many questions persist about the extent to which al-Qaeda and its allied groups are operating within Pakistan.
Al-Qaeda's success in forging close ties to Pakistani jihadi groups has given it an increasingly secure haven in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan. These regions have replaced Afghanistan as the key training and indoctrination grounds for al-Qaeda recruits to be used in operations abroad and for training those indoctrinated and radicalized elsewhere.
The international community continues to portray Pakistan as a breeding ground for the Taliban militia and a sanctuary for fugitive al-Qaeda leaders. Despite repeated denials by Pakistani authorities, the global media keep reporting them having already established significant bases in Peshawar and Quetta, and carrying out cross-border ambushes against their targets in Afghanistan, while al-Qaeda suicide bombing teams target US-led forces from their camps in the mountainous region.
The general notion that al-Qaeda is getting stronger even after the decade-long "war on terror", can be gauged from the fact that Pakistan, despite being a key US ally during all those years, is undergoing a radical change, moving from the phase of Talibanization of its society to the Pakistanization of al-Qaeda.
Many of the key Pakistani jihadi organizations, which are both anti-American and anti-state, have already joined hands with al-Qaeda to let loose a reign of terror across Pakistan. The meteoric rise of the Taliban militia in Pakistan, especially after 9/11, has literally pushed the Pakistani state to the brink of civil war, claiming over 35,000 lives in terrorism-related incidents between 2001 and 2011.
Terrorism experts believe that the Pakistanization of al-Qaeda is rooted in decades of collaboration between elements of the Pakistani military and the intelligence establishment and extremist jihadi movements that birthed and nurtured al-Qaeda, which has evolved significantly over the years from a close-knit group of Arab Afghans to a trans-national Islamic global insurgency, dominated by more and more Pakistani militants.
American intelligence agencies believe that with a surge of motivated youth flooding towards the realm of jihad and joining al-Qaeda cadres, Pakistan remains a potential site for recruitment and training of militants as the fugitive leadership of the outfit keeps hiring local recruits with the help of their local affiliates in Pakistan. This is to bolster the manpower of al-Qaeda, which has grown from strength to strength despite the arrest and killing of hundreds of its operatives from within Pakistan since 2001.
These experts believe, despite the physical elimination of al-Qaeda founder Bin Laden, that his terrorist outfit remains a potent threat to global peace as it keeps blooming in the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt. They say al-Qaeda, for all practical purposes, is now a Pakistani phenomenon as a good number of the anti-American sectarian and jihadi groups in the country have joined the terrorist network, making Pakistan the nerve center of al-Qaeda's global operations.
Investigations into the May 22, 2011, fidayeen (suicide) attack on the Mehran Naval Base in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi have revealed that it was a coordinated operation involving al-Qaeda's Waziristan-based chief operational commander from Egypt, Saif Al Adal, the outfit's top military strategists from Pakistan, Ilyas Kashmir, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban - TTP) and the Punjabi Taliban, a term used to describe the Punjab-based jihadi organizations that are opposed to, and fighting, the Pakistani state as well as the United States.
The Pakistani intelligence findings on the Mehran attack clearly demonstrate that al-Qaeda and the TTP have teamed up with the Punjabi Taliban in recent years to form a triangular syndicate of militancy, with the aim to destabilize Pakistan, whose political and military leadership has been siding with "the forces of the infidel" in the "war against terror".
Therefore, the al-Qaeda-Taliban alliance has gained an edge in Pakistan because of the support the local jihadi groups provide. Ideological ties bind al-Qaeda, the TTP and the Punjabi Taliban to throw out international forces from Afghanistan. These three jihadi entities share intelligence, human resources and training facilities, and empathize with each other as American and Pakistani forces - however strained the relationship between the two countries may be - hunt and target them. This was proven recently with the arrest of Mauritania, which was the result of collaboration between US and Pakistani intelligence agencies.
The three organizations initially came together at the time the US invaded Afghanistan post-9/11, prompting al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban to rely on local partners such as Pakistani pro-Taliban tribes, anti-US and anti-Shi'ite groups like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and jihadi mercenaries in Pakistani religious seminaries and jihadi groups for shelter and assistance.
The ties between local militant groups and al-Qaeda were cemented further as the Afghan Taliban's astonishing successes against the US-led allied forces prompted the US to increase drone attacks in the tribal areas and turn the heat on Pakistan to crack down on the TTP and others.
However, this "axis of evil" remains an informal alliance that is mainly meant to protect and support each member. What gave the alliance a fillip was the migration of battle-hardened Pakistani commanders from the battlefront in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir to the Waziristan region of Pakistan.
As things stand, the violence-wracked Waziristan region has become the new battlefield for the pro-Kashmir militants, who have already joined hands with the anti-US al-Qaeda elements. Information collected by Pakistani agencies shows the presence of fighters belonging to several pro-Kashmir jihadi groups, many of which have fallen out of favor with the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, which is under tremendous pressure to stop harboring al-Qaeda-linked elements.
These groups, which include the Harkatul Jihad-al-Islami, al-Badar, Jamaatul Furqaan and renegade elements of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Lashkar-e-Toiba, have strong connections with al-Qaeda in terms of operational collaboration and logistical support.
Veteran jihadi commanders like Kashmiri, who was reportedly killed in June in a US drone attack, were the first to adopt al-Qaeda's ideology - that the weakening of the world's only superpower, the United States, is essential for the survival of the Muslim world.
The death of Bin Laden was unquestionably a major blow to al-Qaeda. Yet, terrorism experts say long before he was killed, al-Qaeda had adapted itself to survive and operate without him, ensuring that the threat his terror network posed lived well beyond his demise.
Therefore, a decade after the US unleashed its much-trumpeted "war on terror", and despite the death of Bin Laden, there is no reason to believe that the terrorist outfit he launched more than two decades ago is anywhere near defeat.
Amir Mir is a senior Pakistani journalist and the author of several books on the subject of militant Islam and terrorism, the latest being The Bhutto murder trail: From Waziristan to GHQ.
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Another fine post from YA. Here's this WSJ report on today's episode of congnitive dissonance:
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV And MARIA ABI-HABIB
KABUL—Peace negotiations with the Taliban are unlikely to bear results until additional military pressure is brought on the insurgents, the new American ambassador to Kabul said, playing down expectations of progress in the efforts to end the 10-year-old war. (Of course said pressure will be brought to bear as we draw down , , ,)
"The Taliban needs to feel more pain before you get to a real readiness to reconcile," Ambassador Ryan Crocker, a veteran diplomat who took over the American Embassy in Kabul in July, cautioned in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
U.S. and Afghan officials have been trying for more than a year to open negotiations with the insurgents, even as U.S. surge troops deployed since early last year advanced into Taliban strongholds, killing or capturing scores of insurgent commanders. That surge is now beginning to wind down, with the U.S.-led coalition aiming to bring most combat troops home by the end of 2014.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has made a peace settlement his key priority, establishing a special High Peace Council entrusted with pursuing a political solution to the intensifying conflict. So far, these contacts with insurgent representatives, carried out in Afghanistan and abroad, have failed to produce any concrete results.
"They are still just kind of feeling each other out at this stage," Mr. Crocker said.
A key stumbling block, a person familiar with these outreach attempts said, is that Afghan and U.S. officials are still trying to establish whether their interlocutors have the authority to speak for the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.
The Taliban until recently publicly rejected the idea of peace negotiations, saying all foreign forces must leave Afghanistan before any such talks begin. Last month, however, Mullah Omar appeared to soften that position, admitting for the first time that some contacts have already taken place.
In an Aug. 28 message for the Islamic Eid al-Fitr holiday, Mullah Omar said "every legitimate option can be considered" in order to reach the Taliban's goal of establishing "an independent Islamic regime" in Afghanistan. He added, however, that "the contacts which have been made with some parties for the release of prisoners can't be called a comprehensive negotiation for the solution of the current imbroglio of the country."
Mullah Omar's statement, which also promised to establish a "peace-loving and responsible regime" that would encompass all Afghan ethnicities and encourage businessmen and professionals, in recent days elicited cautious optimism among some U.S. and Afghan officials.
Mr. Crocker said he disagreed with such upbeat assessments.
"Mullah Omar's Eid message, read as positive in some quarters, did not infuse me with any optimism," the ambassador said. "He acknowledged the talks but said they are purely tactical. He did not indicate a readiness to make any concessions at all on the side of the Taliban," he said.
Mr. Crocker called it "the kind of statement that one would expect from a governmental leader in waiting. I think he's going to be disappointed."
If there was anything encouraging in Mullah Omar's new approach, he added, it was the indication that the Taliban may be feeling the effect of the coalition's offensives.
"They have been hurt militarily and they are therefore broadening the array of tools that they are prepared to deploy, like talks, visits, so forth," he said.
Until recently, some Afghan and Western officials had hoped that military pressure—combined with the peace outreach—would persuade the Taliban to send representatives to the international conference on Afghanistan that is scheduled for December in Bonn.
That isn't likely to happen, in part because of obstacles thrown up by Pakistan, where Mullah Omar and other key Afghan Taliban leaders reside, a Western diplomat said.
The Pakistani government, eager to maintain its leverage, hasn't yielded to Afghan requests to publicly call on the Taliban to open peace talks. Pakistan also declined to provide safe-passage guarantees that would allow Pakistan-based Taliban leaders to travel for any such negotiations.
"Implicit in that is, 'Yeah, you can try to get to Afghanistan. I hope your family is going to be OK!' " the Western diplomat quipped. Mullah Omar said in the Eid message that this year's Bonn conference will be no different from the one that created Afghanistan's post-Taliban government headed by Mr. Karzai 10 years earlier because "neither true representatives of the Afghan people have participation in it, nor attention is paid to the comprehensive and real solution of the problems of Afghanistan."
The deputy chairman of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, Abdul Hakim Mujahid—who served as the Taliban regime's unofficial envoy to the U.S. and the United Nations before 2001—said it is unrealistic to expect the Taliban to "come out of their caves" as long as the international community doesn't accept them as "a real force" in Afghanistan.
"There is a great ocean of a lack of confidence," Mr. Mujahid said.
In the absence of progress in high-level contacts with the Taliban, the U.S. and Afghan officials are concentrating on the so-called reintegration program that aims to woo Taliban foot soldiers and midlevel commanders from the battlefield with offers of amnesty and jobs.
"We've seen several thousand move forward in this process," Mr. Crocker said. "If this were to increase exponentially you could kind of see commanders without an army—and that could really change the dynamic."
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Several posts today. Make sure to read YA's post.
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Summary
The scheduled drawdown of U.S. and allied forces from Afghanistan has begun, and the need for a negotiated settlement to fill the eventual power vacuum in Afghanistan has become more evident. And as always, the key players each have their own set of goals for such a settlement.
Obama’s Afghanistan Plan and the Realities of Withdrawal
STRATFOR Book
Afghanistan at the Crossroads: Insights on the Conflict
The United States has begun the scheduled drawdown of U.S. and allied forces from Afghanistan, but there are clear indications that it is seeking ways to accelerate this timeline. While the surge of U.S. and allied combat forces has had an effect, it was insufficient both in scale and time to impose a military reality on Afghanistan and pacify the Taliban insurgency. So while progress outlined by Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in terms of the counterinsurgency-focused strategy, can certainly be defended, the Taliban also — and with good cause — perceive themselves to be winning and have continued to wage an aggressive assassination campaign.
Now that it is clear the United States is leaving, all sides must begin actually reaching understandings and taking concrete action in anticipation of the looming power vacuum in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the United States has once again intensified its efforts to reach a comprehensive political accommodation with Mullah Muhammad Omar, the most senior Taliban figure, and the Taliban movement as a whole. Such a settlement would stabilize the security situation in the country and facilitate an orderly withdrawal of at least most Western forces from the country.
The Taliban
The Taliban cannot take the United States’ stated intention to withdraw at face value. And in any event, the Taliban have multiple incentives to maintain the current intensity of operations: Doing so maintains the pressure on Washington and Kabul to negotiate, maximizes the strength of their position in those negotiations and maintains their visibility and relevance to the wider Afghan population.
But the Taliban also do not harbor the same ambitions they once did. Having run Afghanistan as a pariah regime in the late 1990s and perceiving Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government as more robust than the regime the Soviets left in place when they withdrew in 1989, the Taliban seek a power sharing agreement rather than complete dominion of the country. Part of that sharing of power entails getting aid monies and a piece of the foreign investment flowing into the country as well as positioning themselves to gain from the withdrawal of foreign forces.
In recent communiques, the Taliban have even shifted from speaking of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to acknowledging that the Islamic Emirate does not seek to monopolize power. Instead, the Taliban seek certain broad achievements:
Negotiations before withdrawal that help establish the Taliban’s international legitimacy (which would also entail the removal of the movement’s leadership from international terrorism watch lists and ensure that any government in which the Taliban is involved would not be subject to the same sanctions imposed on its government in the late 1990s).
Ultimately, the complete withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.
A reshaping of the Afghan government. Karzai (with heavy input from the West) has carefully crafted his regime, its offices and the government’s entire structure for the better part of a decade, maximizing his influence and the power of those close to him. It makes little political sense for the Taliban to accept that structure.
A more Shariah-compliant government. Afghanistan is largely a mountainous, rural and conservative society, so the more extreme brand of Islamism espoused by the Taliban actually has considerable traction with large swaths of Afghan society, particularly the Pashtun population that straddles the Afghan-Pakistani border. In other words, this is not necessarily something that a much broader demographic would resist.
A solution for the foreign fighters that have been waging war alongside the Taliban. Whether this is a repatriation agreement or one that allows these fighters to settle and live in Afghanistan peacefully, the Taliban want some viable solution. The Taliban — along with many Pakistani and Arab actors among others — see the lack of a settlement regarding foreign fighters at the time of the Soviet withdrawal as part of a problem that has plagued Afghanistan ever since: Those actors retained their autonomy and used it to maintain chaos in Afghanistan, drawing in other players and complicating the security and political situation further. And if Afghanistan is truly to rein in Islamist extremists with transnational ambitions in a post-NATO Afghanistan, many of these fighters will need to be weaned away from such movements.
(click here to enlarge image)
However, the Taliban face considerable challenges in their negotiations. The diffuse, decentralized and amorphous nature of the Taliban phenomenon has both strengths and weaknesses. Many of these benefits are operational, but internal discipline and cohesion become significant as insurgency gives way to coherent negotiations. Washington originally had hoped to hive off so-called “reconcilable” elements of the Taliban, and the United States and its allies have certainly had some successes in dealing with localized elements that carried the Taliban flag more as a convenience for personal gain or personal grievance. But recent years have been just as rife with Afghan government and security officials in particular changing sides in the other direction.
Internal discipline and cohesion are a challenge for any revolutionary entity — demonstrated all too clearly by the lack of cohesion of Libya’s National Transitional Council forces now that Moammar Gadhafi’s regime has fallen. As the Taliban’s objective of the withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces nears, the ability of the Taliban’s senior leadership to speak as one voice for the overall phenomenon — and with the demonstrated ability to control the overall phenomenon operationally as well as ideologically — is critical to the strength and credibility of the Taliban’s negotiating position.
As occurs with loosely affiliated groups and in agreements that result in winners and losers, some groups will seek to derail any settlement. Those groups will include what remains of al Qaeda and associated radicalized Islamist groups with a transnational agenda, other foreign fighters and even some locals who have a vested interest in the perpetuation of conflict. Whether the senior Taliban leadership headed by Mullah Omar can contain and manage all these countervailing forces remains to be seen. What is clear is that Mullah Omar is the best chance for a settlement to work. If he cannot manage these players, it is unclear who else might command anything like that sort of broad appeal and deference.
Kabul
For its part, Kabul also understands the need for reconciliation, though it will obviously seek terms that maintain the strength and cohesion of the regime Karzai has built. But having seen his brother killed as part of the Taliban’s assassination campaign and having announced that he has no intention of seeking another term in office, Karzai also wants an honorable retirement — one in which he remains in Afghanistan as a prominent and influential figure free of the constant threat of assassination by an unrestrained Taliban. (To retire in, say, northern Virginia, would be considered not only comparatively dishonorable but a repudiation of everything Karzai had ostensibly built since the U.S. invasion in 2001.) In short, he wants to survive.
Pakistan
Islamabad has long intended to be in the center of any negotiated settlement regarding Afghanistan so that it can maximize its influence in terms of the settlement itself and in post-settlement Afghanistan. Pakistan seeks to end the ideological basis for the ongoing armed struggle in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In other words, Islamabad wants everyone with influence and power — particularly within the Pashtun belt — to reject continued violent resistance. This would give Islamabad the basis for a broadly supported offensive against anyone who continues to fight and would strengthen Pakistan’s hand in its war against the Pakistani Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Pakistan sees this ability to exercise force in a more limited, but more effective and comprehensive, way as key to a lasting stabilization on both sides of the border. (Given the inherently cross-border nature of populations and fighting, stabilizing its side of the border entails stabilizing both sides.) Islamabad believes this stability would allow more comprehensive and deliberate efforts at consolidating Pakistani influence in Afghanistan.
At the same time, Pakistan will try to halt and ultimately reverse the expansion of Indian influence in Afghanistan. Similarly, Pakistan will also push for as small a U.S. presence in the country as possible.
Whether this sort of comprehensive settlement is achievable is open to question. But both Kabul and Islamabad see the way matters remained unsettled after the Soviet withdrawal as a major factor in the subsequent decades’ instability and war.
United States
After a decade of war, Washington is attempting to reorient its international military presence and the focus of its foreign policy toward regions of more pressing geopolitical and long-term strategic significance. Having executed the surge as planned, the White House is now firmly committed to withdrawing most of its forces, though what sort of residual and special operations presence might remain is another question.
The sooner a viable political accommodation can be reached, the more orderly the U.S. withdrawal — and the more stable the region — will be. But the counterterrorism and sanctuary denial mission — keeping pressure on what remains of al Qaeda and preventing the re-emergence of a sanctuary from which it can plan and orchestrate transnational operations — will require at best a small fraction of the forces currently deployed in the country.
The question moving forward, then, is how quickly the United States and its allies can extract themselves from Afghanistan and what sort of negotiated settlement might be possible in the interim.
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Pak ad in the WSJ (http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh271/pstar_bucket/Pakistan-WSJ-Ad.png)
Another way to look at that ad (http://i.imgur.com/kWmTw.png)
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Tuesday, September 13, 2011
A guide to dying in Pakistan —Fahd Husain
An array of death merchants awaits you. There are the wild TTP dudes who will cut your throat while chanting holy verses. Your religious sentiments will therefore be lovingly safeguarded while you experience that throat-slitting feeling
Bzzzzzzzz....That is the sound of death hovering over you. Take your pick: drone or dengue mosquito. Both ways, you are done for.
Death is the trend in Pakistan. You can choose from a wide variety of locales: Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Badin, North Waziristan. There is plenty of death to go around for all of you. There is the quick ka-boom if you want to experience the Reaper from the skies; there is the bloodsucking kind in Lahore if you desire to hold out for a while in a netted hospital bed before slipping into the hereafter; or if you want a surprise end, try walking a bazaar in say D I Khan. Who knows you might just meet a teenaged suicide bomber. Then of course, there is the famed drill-induced death that awaits you in Karachi. Chop, chop, chop and gunnybagged for your final journey. Karachi beckons if you are into this kind of stuff.
It is all happening here. If you’ve got the wish, we’ve got the means.
If you liked ‘Saw’, or ‘Saw 2’, you will absolutely love Pakistan. We have got Jigsaws crawling all over the place, and they do not even need funny masks. Decapitation? We got specialists. Death by your own bodyguard? Yep, done that. Severed limbs and noses? Happens in the warm confines of our homes. How about whipping? Hey, we can do that with our left hands, with an applauding audience as a bonus. Oh, and how about a shot in the back of the head by a posse of cops? We teach that at our police academies. If you want a headlined death, we have got this huge compound in Abbottabad you would cherish for the rest of your life — till the marines come. And now even our mosquitoes are trained to literally suck the life out of you. Beat that.
Remember we are 180 million strong. This means there are a lot of us. So a couple of hundred going six feet under does not really upset our demographic balance. We have lost 35,000 of our fellow Pakistanis in this war on terror and that does not even get us a mention in the 9/11 speeches by US presidents past and present. That is how conveniently expendable we are. Death gets a multiple visa on arrival.
We are the horror movie rated not ‘R’ but NC17. But age is no bar to death here. We have got dead kids turning up all the time. In fact, while movies end after two hours, this one does not. We just keep on killin’ and killin’. Imagine ‘Spartacus: Blood and Sand’ on steroids. That would be us.
An array of death merchants awaits you. There are the wild Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) dudes who will cut your throat while chanting holy verses. Your religious sentiments will therefore be lovingly safeguarded while you experience that throat-slitting feeling. If you do not want this cutting edge experience, we have for you the political militants. You can discuss your personal favourite ideologies and they will drill some sense into you — through your kneecaps. And there is also a homegrown scheme for you to whiten your black money if you so desire. You will be gagged and bound and bundled off to Fata and then perhaps to Afghanistan (no visa fee required). You can then pay a couple of million rupees of your black money as ransom — tax free — and return home to your loved ones. Word-of-mouth is the best advertisement, you know, that is why we are never short of thrill-seekers. ‘Pay as you go’ works best.
For the nature freaks, there is Lahore. Here are some tips to maximise your death wish: wear short sleeves, expose some skin (no midriffs please), try to stay near water bodies, and just hope for the worst. The mosquitoes, rest assured, will take care of the rest. Of course, if the thirsty insects mess it up, the doctors will ensure your wishes are fulfilled. Lahore Lahore aye na (Lahore is Lahore).
Further up north, Swat boasts lush hills and bloody memories. If you are lucky you may still run into a Taliban commander, but if not, you can dress like one and there are solid chances you will get lined up against a wall and shot. Look at the bright side: you got very dead in drop-dead surroundings. Swat is, after all, heaven on earth.
If on the other hand, you are the faint-hearted type, we could always just bore you to death. And we have just the place for it: parliament. You see, all good political debates have migrated to TV studios and parliament now echoes with eternal inanities. The roof of the building leaks, just like the politicians, and hardly anything ever gets done in there. You are in for a whole lot of — nothing. Are you man enough to do it?
We take our trade seriously here. We are good at the game of death — and striving for further excellence. We are blessed with trained manpower and fertile killing fields. We are open for business. We are dying for you to visit us. So snuff out those doubts, stop being killjoys and bite the bullet. Pakistan is a must-see, even if it is the last place you see.
The writer hosts a primetime show on a private TV channel. He can be reached at fahd.husain1@gmail.com
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Agenda: With George Friedman on the Taliban Strategy
September 16, 2011 | 1326 GMT
Click on image below to watch video:
The past week’s attacks by the Taliban on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul may not yet have had a psychological impact on the United States, but it does cast doubt on the Obama administration’s claims of progress in the war. STRATFOR CEO Dr. George Friedman suggests the well-planned strike was aimed at improving the Taliban’s negotiating position.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Related Links
Afghanistan Weekly War Update: U.S. Embassy in Kabul Attacked as Ambassador Discusses Talks with Taliban
Taliban Attacks Seek Broader Strategic Payoff
Colin: In Agenda this week, just when U.S. coalition commanders and political leaders are assuring us they’re making solid progress in Afghanistan, the Taliban exposed the inability of security forces to protect prime targets in Kabul, like the U.S. embassy and NATO headquarters. Eventually, their attackers quashed, but to what extent have the Taliban delivered a psychological blow to the United States and its allies?
Colin: Welcome to Agenda with George Friedman. George, the Taliban operation failed militarily but it has people thinking, hasn’t it?
George: Well, first, let’s define what happened. There was an attack on a complex of facilities, command and control facilities, in Afghanistan. The battle went on for 24 hours. It was demonstrated that the Taliban was able to penetrate the defenses and that it would take very long time for Western forces, allied forces, to root them out. Well, that may not have created a psychological effect, but it certainly has created a military effect. Because that means that security around these facilities, and really facilities all over Afghanistan, is going to be strengthened. And in doing that, that means that personnel will be diverted from counterinsurgency missions to other missions. So anytime you have a successful attack or an attack that makes the other side uncomfortable, there is a diversion of forces to the defensive, and that always benefits. But clearly, something important is going on politically in this. We know that discussions are going on between the Taliban, the Karzai government, the United States, and we know that because it’s been stated by senior leaders on all sides. In a negotiating situation of guerrilla war, we always refer back to Vietnam, which is a pretty good example. And in Vietnam, we have the example of, well two examples really, during the war against the French — the example of Dien Bien Phu, where the North Vietnamese, the Communists in that case, conducted an attack against a French outpost that was overrun, which created a psychological sense that the French could not possibly win. And then we think of the Tet Offensive in 1968 against the United States, which, although it turned into a military defeat for the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, it was a psychological blow against the United States because it essentially took the American narrative, which is that the North Vietnamese were weakening, that they were no longer able to mount an offensive against the United States, of that sort, and made it appear to be untrue. In the end they may have well weakening, but they could mount an offensive. And that drew into question the credibility of the Johnson administration and, not incidentally, had a serious effect on his decision not to run for president. The United States is now, again, in a presidential election. The Obama administration has been talking about how it has put the Taliban on the defensive, how it’s getting weaker and weaker, and the Taliban has mounted an attack which could show, depending on how you read it, that they are not only far from beaten, but have substantial capabilities. This is a very important story because, even though this may not directly have had an impact on the psychology of the United States, should the Taliban be able to mount multiple attacks of this sort, it would raise serious doubts about the Obama administration’s claims to having put them on the defensive and would also set the stage for an effective negotiating process from the Taliban point of view
Colin: But Dien Bien Phu and the Tet Offensive got heavy playing in global media. These attacks didn’t stay on the front pages for long at all.
George: Well I think, you know, it may have been, that the Taliban underestimated the extent to which the Western media has deteriorated since Vietnam so that these other stories were there. Fortunately, Michael Jackson didn’t die this week or it wouldn’t have been noticed it all. But, I think the point is Dien Bien Phu lasted for a very long time. The Tet Offensive also lasted for quite a while. This did not last for a very long time. We don’t know that this last offensive — not the beginning of multiple offenses, and we don’t know their other plans on attacking both there and other places. The fear of the United States ought to be that the Taliban begins assaulting the various outposts the United States has and begins taking prisoners. This became a very important factor for the North Vietnamese. I think the Taliban are looking at the North Vietnamese playbook carefully. I don’t know they’re able to do that, but I’m sure they would like that. So I think we should look at this as the first attempt and however long it takes the media to notice will depend on how many other events are taking place in the day, but, in due course, it is something that is going to undermine the credibility of the Obama administration’s claims on Afghanistan.
Colin: And particularly, the claim security could be handed over to the Karzai government?
George: I don’t think anybody’s claiming we can just leave it to the Afghans now. They are claiming that the trajectory is leading toward that. But the point I wanted to make, that is very important, is that this was not a minor target. This was a major target — it was a headquarters. It was in a very heavily guarded area. The Taliban clearly intended, and planned very carefully and devoted some very good troops to this operation because bad troops wouldn’t have succeeded in holding out as long as they did in penetrating the area. And I don’t think that the Taliban did this casually. I think they did this testing the waters to see whether this would have the impact they want. I strongly suspect they will be back for more and they will continue to act until he could no longer be ignored. Its sort of what Al Qaeda did. They first attacked the East African embassies, they then attacked the Cole. These were not responded to dramatically by the United States. They finally mounted an attack that even the media couldn’t ignore — that was 9/11 of course — and so I think we are now in in a situation where the Taliban is testing the waters.
Colin: Of course there are other actors in this, like Pakistan. I see American officials have blamed the Pakistani-based Haqqani group. They say they may have been responsible. What would Islamabad be thinking?
George: Well, I think Islamabad has been telling Washington, for a long time, that the the situation in Afghanistan is not under control, that their intelligence tells them that Taliban is quite robust and biding its time, and I think that the Pakistanis would vigorously deny any involvement in this at all. But remember, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is rather arbitrary. Their are people on both sides of the border who want the same thing, and I would not be surprised, given the fact the Taliban uses Pakistan as a sanctuary, that there are others who plan this attack with them. But this simply makes the situation that the Americans face, all the more difficult. Because if those American claims are true, then defeating the Taliban becomes that much more difficult. It also makes it more difficult to negotiate the kind of settlement the United States wants. And so, if the American charge is true, what the United States is really saying is that the war is in much more serious trouble, than we might think otherwise, because the planning is going on from Pakistan.
Colin: Now the Taliban have opened up a political office in Qatar, where U.S. Central Command is located, what do you think President Obama would try for a settlement before the election?
George: Well, according to what’s been said by the administration, they are attempting to negotiate with the Taliban right now. I think, either way you play it politically, it’s equally troubling for President Obama if he doesn’t have peace by the time the election, the charge can be made that he has an open-ended war, that he doubled-down on Bush’s policy, and be criticized by both sides of the spectrum. If he does make an agreement, it will be charged that he capitulated to the enemy. He’s going to have to live with it either way. The worst thing that could happen to him, is to be suffering a series of significant defeats with large and growing American casualties, Americans captured on the ground and things like that. That is the thing that he is going to have a great deal of difficulty with. Its not that he isn’t going to have difficulty no matter what he does, but that’s his worst-case scenario. He really, if there is a Taliban offensive under way, he really needs to shut it down fast for political reasons, as well as military.
Colin: George Friedman, thank you, and thank you for watching Agenda. Until next time, goodbye.
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Nothing new here...but the US has started to explicitly indicate that paki govt is involved..
U.S. ambassador says evidence links Pakistan to militant group
By the CNN Wire Staff
September 18, 2011 -- Updated 0052 GMT (0852 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Ambassador Cameron Munter says evidence ties the Haqqani network to Pakistan
U.S. officials blame the Haqqani network for this week's attack in Kabul
They consider the network one of the most significant threats to Afghanistan's stability
Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, and Adm. Michael Mullen meet in Spain
(CNN) -- The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan accused the government there of having links to the Haqqani network, a pro-Taliban militant group that U.S. officials blame for this week's attack on the U.S. Embassy and NATO command center in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Speaking to Radio Pakistan, Ambassador Cameron Munter said relations between the United States and Pakistan "need a lot of work" and urged closer cooperation. The interview was available Saturday on the Radio Pakistan website.
A Taliban assault on the U.S. Embassy and NATO command center in central Kabul was brought to a bloody end Wednesday with the deaths of half a dozen militants. Four policemen and two civilians were killed and 27 injured in that attack and a handful of other incidents across Kabul, according to Afghan government figures.
"The attack that took place in Kabul a few days ago -- that was the work of the Haqqani network," Munter told Radio Pakistan. "There is evidence linking the Haqqani network to the Pakistani government. This is something that must stop. We have to make sure that we work together to fight terrorism."
U.S. officials have previously blamed this week's attack on the Haqqani network, a pro-Taliban militant group based in Pakistan's North Waziristan region. They have also previously accused the Pakistani government of maintaining a relationship with that network.
Still, Munter's comments are noteworthy for their timing, amid heightened tensions between Pakistan and the United States, and because of their blunt nature.
They came one day after U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen told his Pakistani counterpart he was deeply concerned about the brazenness of attacks being staged by operatives loyal to the Haqqani network.
During a lengthy one-on-one meeting in Seville, Spain, Mullen "conveyed his deep concerns about the increasing -- and increasingly brazen -- activities of the Haqqani network and restated his strong desire to see the Pakistani military take action against them and their safe havens in North Waziristan," Capt. John Kirby, Mullen's spokesman, told CNN.
Mullen believes that "elements" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI, "directly support" the Haqqani network, Kirby said.
The Haqqani network is aligned with the Taliban and al Qaeda and is considered one the most significant threats to stability in Afghanistan. U.S. officials believe Haqqani operatives are moving unfettered across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and are responsible for several recent high-profile attacks in Kabul, including this week's assault.
In late April, Mullen said on Pakistan's Geo TV that the ISI has a "long-standing relationship" with the Haqqani network.
Pakistani officials have denied the existence of such a relationship.
Mullen, who is retiring at the end of this month, met with Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, for more than two hours in what was their final official meeting. Both men were in Spain to attend a high-level NATO military meeting.
"They agreed that the relationship between our two countries remained vital to the region and that both sides had taken positive steps to improve that relationship over the past few months. They also discussed the state of military-to-military cooperation and pledged to continue to find ways to make it better," Kirby said.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan's Interior Minister Bismillah Muhammadi avoided blaming Pakistan directly for this week's attack in Kabul. However, he used the phase "across the borders of Afghanistan," a typical way of referring to Pakistan, in connection to the recovered phones of the attackers.
"The six cell phones we found on them, and the evidence we got on them all shows that this plot was made across the borders of Afghanistan," he said. "Without doubt they are across the borders of Afghanistan. They get equipped, they get trained there, and then they get sent here for killing of our people."
CNN's Barbara Starr in Washington contributed to this report.
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The Evolution of a Pakistani Militant Network
September 15, 2011
By Sean Noonan and Scott Stewart
For many years now, STRATFOR has been carefully following the evolution of “Lashkar-e-Taiba” (LeT), the name of a Pakistan-based jihadist group that was formed in 1990 and existed until about 2001, when it was officially abolished. In subsequent years, however, several major attacks were attributed to LeT, including the November 2008 coordinated assault in Mumbai, India. Two years before that attack we wrote that the group, or at least its remnant networks, were nebulous but still dangerous. This nebulous nature was highlighted in November 2008 when the “Deccan Mujahideen,” a previously unknown group, claimed responsibility for the Mumbai attacks.
While the most famous leaders of the LeT networks, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, are under house arrest and in jail awaiting trial, respectively, LeT still poses a significant threat. It’s a threat that comes not so much from LeT as a single jihadist force but LeT as a concept, a banner under which various groups and individuals can gather, coordinate and successfully conduct attacks.
Such is the ongoing evolution of the jihadist movement. And as this movement becomes more diffuse, it is important to look at brand-name jihadist groups like LeT, al Qaeda, the Haqqani network and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan as loosely affiliated networks more than monolithic entities. With a debate under way between and within these groups over who to target and with major disruptions of their operations by various military and security forces, the need for these groups to work together in order to carry out sensational attacks has become clear. The result is a new, ad hoc template for jihadist operations that is not easily defined and even harder for government leaders to explain to their constituents and reporters to explain to their readers.
Thus, brand names like Lashkar-e-Taiba (which means Army of the Pure) will continue to be used in public discourse while the planning and execution of high-profile attacks grows ever more complex. While the threat posed by these networks to the West and to India may not be strategic, the possibility of disparate though well-trained militants working together and even with organized-crime elements does suggest a continuing tactical threat that is worth examining in more detail.
The Network Formerly Known as Lashkar-e-Taiba
The history of the group of militants and preachers who created LeT and their connections with other groups helps us understand how militant groups develop and work together. Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad (MDI) and its militant wing, LeT, was founded with the help of transnational militants based in Afghanistan and aided by the Pakistani government. This allowed it to become a financially-independent social-service organization that was able to divert a significant portion of its funding to its militant wing.
The first stirrings of militancy within this network began in 1982, when Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi traveled from Punjab, Pakistan, to Paktia, Afghanistan, to fight with Deobandi militant groups. Lakhvi, who is considered to have been the military commander of what was known as LeT and is awaiting trial for his alleged role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, adheres to an extreme version of the Ahl-e-Hadith (AeH) interpretation of Islam, which is the South Asian version of the Salafist-Wahhabist trend in the Arab world. In the simplest of terms, AeH is more conservative and traditional than the doctrines of most militant groups operating along the Durand Line. Militants there tend to follow an extreme brand of the Deobandi branch of South Asian Sunni Islam, similar to the extreme ideology of al Qaeda’s Salafist jihadists.
Lakhvi created his own AeH-inspired militant group in 1984, and a year later two academics, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Zafar Iqbal, created Jamaat ul-Dawa, an Islamist AeH social organization. Before these groups were formed there was already a major AeH political organization called Jamaat AeH, led by the most well-known Pakistani AeH scholar, the late Allama Ehsan Elahi Zaheer, who was assassinated in Lahore in 1987. His death allowed Saeed and Lakhvi’s movement to take off. It is important to note that AeH adherents comprise a very small percentage of Pakistanis and that those following the movement launched by Saeed and Lakhvi represent only a portion of those who ascribe to AeH’s ideology.
In 1986, Saeed and Lakhvi joined forces, creating Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad (MDI) in Muridke, near Lahore, Pakistan. MDI had 17 founders, including Saeed and Lakhvi as well as transnational militants originally from places like Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian territories. While building facilities in Muridke for social services, MDI also established its first militant training camp in Paktia, then another in Kunar, Afghanistan, in 1987. Throughout the next three decades, these camps often were operated in cooperation with other militant groups, including al Qaeda.
MDI was established to accomplish two related missions. The first involved peaceful, above-board activities like medical care, education, charitable work and proselytizing. Its second and equally important mission was military jihad, which the group considered obligatory for all Muslims. The group first fought in Afghanistan along with Jamaat al-Dawa al-Quran wal-Suna, a hardline Salafist group that shared MDI’s ideology. Jamil al-Rahman, the group’s leader at the time, provided support to MDI’s first militant group and continued to work with MDI until his death in 1987.
The deaths of al-Rahman and Jamaat AeH leader Allama Ehsan Elahi Zaheer in 1987 gave the leaders of the nascent MDI the opportunity to supplant Jamaat al-Dawa al-Quran wal-Suna and Jamaat AeH and grow quickly.
In 1990, the growing MDI officially launched LeT as its militant wing under the command of Lakhvi, while Saeed remained emir of the overall organization. This was when LeT first began to work with other groups operating in Kashmir, since the Soviets had left Afghanistan and many of the foreign mujahideen there were winding down their operations. In 1992, when the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was finally defeated, many foreign militants who had fought in Afghanistan left to fight in other places like Kashmir. LeT is also known to have sent fighters to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Tajikistan, but Kashmir became the group’s primary focus.
MDI/LeT explained its concentration on Kashmir by arguing that it was the closest Muslim territory that was occupied by non-believers. Since MDI/LeT was a Punjabi entity, Kashmir was also the most accessible theater of jihad for the group. Due to the group’s origin and the history of the region, Saeed and other members also bore personal grudges against India. In the 1990s, MDI/LeT also received substantial support from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) and military, which had its own interest in supporting operations in Kashmir. At this point, MDI/LeT developed relations with other groups operating in Kashmir, such as Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jihad e-Islami and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Unlike these groups, however, MDI/LeT was considered easier to control because its AeH sect of Islam was not very large and did not have the support of the main AeH groups. With Pakistan’s support came certain restraints, and many LeT trainees said that as part of their indoctrination into the group they were made to promise never to attack Pakistan.
LeT expanded its targeting beyond Kashmir to the rest of India in 1992, after the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque during communal rioting in Uttar Pradesh state, and similar unrest in Mumbai and Gujarat. LeT sent Azam Cheema, who Saeed and Iqbal knew from their university days, to recruit fighters in India. Indian militants from a group called Tanzim Islahul Muslimeen were recruited into LeT, which staged its first major attack with five coordinated improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on trains in Mumbai and Hyderabad on Dec. 5-6, 1993, the first anniversary of the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque. These are the first attacks in non-Kashmir India that can be linked to LeT. The group used Tanzim Islahul Muslimeen networks in the 1990s and later developed contacts with the Student Islamic Movement of India and its offshoot militant group the Indian Mujahideen.
The Student Islamic Movement of India/Indian Mujahideen network was useful in recruiting and co-opting operatives, but it is a misconception to think these indigenous Indian groups worked directly for LeT. In some cases, Pakistanis from LeT provided IED training and other expertise to Indian militants who carried out attacks, but these groups, while linked to the LeT network, maintained their autonomy. The most recent attacks in India — Sept. 7 in Delhi and July 13 in Mumbai — probably have direct ties to these networks.
Between 1993 and 1995, LeT received its most substantial state support from Pakistan, which helped build up LeT’s military capability by organizing and training its militants and providing weapons, equipment, campaign guidance and border-crossing support in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. LeT operated camps on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border as well as in Kashmir, in places like Muzaffarabad.
At the same time, MDI built up a major social-services network, building schools and hospitals and setting up charitable foundations throughout Pakistan, though centered in Punjab. Its large complex in Muridke included schools, a major hospital and a mosque. Some of its funding came through official Saudi channels while other funding came through non-official channels via Saudi members of MDI such as Abdul Rahman al-Surayhi and Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq, who reportedly facilitated much of the funding to establish the original Muridke complex.
As MDI focused on dawah, or the preaching of Islam, it simultaneously developed an infrastructure that was financially self-sustaining. For example, it established Al-Dawah schools throughout Pakistan that charged fees to those who could afford it and it began taxing its adherents. It also became well-known for its charitable activities, placing donation boxes throughout Pakistan. The group developed a reputation as an efficient organization that provides quality social services, and this positive public perception has made it difficult for the Pakistani government to crack down on it.
On July 12, 1999, LeT carried out its first fidayeen, or suicide commando, attack in Kashmir. Such attacks focus on inflicting as much damage as possible before the attackers are killed. Their goal also was to engender as much fear as possible and introduce a new intensity to the conflict there. This attack occurred during the Kargil war, when Pakistani soldiers along with its sponsored militants fought a pitched battle against Indian troops in the Kargil district of Kashmir. This was the height of Pakistani state support for the various militant groups operating in Kashmir, and it was a critical, defining period for the LeT, which shifted its campaign from one focused exclusively on Kashmir to one focused on India as a whole.
State support for LeT and other militant groups declined after the Kargil war but fidayeen attacks continued and began to occur outside of Kashmir. In the late 1990s and into the 2000s, there was much debate within LeT about its targeting. When LeT was constrained operationally in Kashmir by its ISI handlers, some members of the group wanted to conduct attacks in other places. It’s unclear at this point which attacks had Pakistani state support and which did not, but the timing of many in relation to the ebb and flow of the Pakistani-Indian political situation indicates Pakistani support and control, even if it came only from factions within the ISI or military. The first LeT attack outside of Kashmir took place on Dec. 22, 2000, against the Red Fort in Delhi.
The Post-9/11 Name Game
In the months following 9/11, many Pakistan-based jihadist groups were “banned” by the Pakistani government. They were warned beforehand and moved their funds into physical assets or under different names. LeT claimed that it split with MDI, with new LeT leader Maula Abdul Wahid al-Kashmiri saying the group now was strictly a Kashmiri militant organization. Despite these claims, however, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi was still considered supreme commander. MDI was dissolved and replaced by Jamaat-ul-Dawa, the original name used by Saeed and Iqbal’s group. Notably, both al-Kashmiri and Lakhvi were also part of the Jamaat-ul-Dawa executive board, indicating that close ties remained between the two groups.
In January 2002, LeT was declared illegal, and the Pakistani government began to use the word “defunct” to describe it. In reality it wasn’t defunct; it had begun merely operating under different names. The group’s capability to carry out attacks was temporarily limited, probably on orders from the Pakistani government through Jamaat-ul-Dawa’s leadership.
At this point, LeT’s various factions began to split and re-network in various ways. For example, Abdur Rehman Syed, a senior operational planner involved in David Headley’s surveillance of Mumbai targets, left LeT around 2004. As a major in the Pakistani army he had been ordered to fight fleeing Taliban on the Durand Line in 2001. He refused and joined LeT. In 2004 he began working with Ilyas Kashmiri and Harkat-ul-Jihad e-Islami. Two other senior LeT leaders, former Pakistani Maj. Haroon Ashiq and his brother Capt. Kurram Ashiq, had left Pakistan’s Special Services Group to join LeT around 2001. By 2003 they had exited the group and were criticizing Lakhvi, the former LeT military commander.
Despite leaving the larger organization, former members of the MDI/LeT still often use the name “Lashkar-e-Taiba” in their public rhetoric when describing their various affiliations, even though they do not consider their new organizations to be offshoots of LeT. The same difficulties observers face in trying to keep track of these spun-off factions has come to haunt the factions themselves, which have a branding problem as they try to raise money or recruit fighters. New names don’t have the same power as the well-established LeT brand, and many of the newer organizations continue to use the LeT moniker in some form.
Operating Outside of South Asia
Organizations and networks that were once part of LeT have demonstrated the capability to carry out insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, small-unit attacks in Kashmir, fidayeen assaults in Kashmir and India and small IED attacks throughout the region. Mumbai in 2008 was the most spectacular attack by an LeT offshoot on an international scale, but to date the network has not demonstrated the capability to conduct complex attacks outside the region. That said, David Headley’s surveillance efforts in Denmark and other plots linked to LeT training camps and factions do seem to have been inspired by al Qaeda’s transnational jihadist influence.
To date, these operations have failed, but they are worth noting. These transnational LeT-linked plotters include the following:
The Virginia Jihad Network.
Dhiren Barot (aka Abu Eisa al-Hind), a Muslim convert of Indian origin who grew up in the United Kingdom, was arrested there in 2004 and was accused of a 2004 plot to detonate vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices in underground parking lots and surveilling targets in the United States in 2000-2001 for al Qaeda. He originally learned his craft in LeT training camps in Pakistan.
David Hicks, an Australian who was in LeT camps in 1999 and studied at one of their madrassas. LeT provided a letter of introduction to al Qaeda, which he joined in January 2001. He was captured in Afghanistan following the U.S.-led invasion.
Omar Khyam of the United Kingdom, who attended LeT training camps in 2000 before his family brought him home.
The so-called “Crevice Network,” members of which were arrested in 2004 and charged with attempting to build fertilizer-based IEDs in the United Kingdom under the auspices of al Qaeda.
Willie Brigette, who had been connected to LeT networks in France and was trying to contact a bombmaker in Australia in order to carry out attacks there when he was arrested in October 2003.
While these cases suggest that the LeT threat persists, they also indicate that the transnational threat posed by those portions of the network focused on attacks outside of South Asia does not appear to be as potent as the attack in Mumbai in 2008. One reason is the Pakistani support offered to those who focus on operations in South Asia and particularly those who target India. Investigations of the Mumbai attack revealed that current or former ISI officers provided a considerable amount of training, operational support and even real-time guidance to the Mumbai attack team.
It is unclear how far up the Pakistani command structure this support goes. The most important point, though, is that Pakistani support in the Mumbai attack provided the group responsible with capabilities that have not been demonstrated by other parts of the network in other plots. In fact, without this element of state support, many transnational plots linked to the LeT network have been forced to rely on the same kind of “Kramer jihadists” in the West that the al Qaeda core has employed in recent years.
However, while these networks have not shown the capability to conduct a spectacular attack since Mumbai, they continue to plan. With both the capability and intention in place, it is probably only a matter of time before they conduct additional attacks in India. The historical signature of LeT attacks has been the use of armed assault tactics — taught originally by the ISI and institutionalized by LeT doctrine — so attacks of this sort can be expected. An attack of this sort outside of South Asia would be a stretch for the groups that make up the post-LeT networks, but the cross-pollination that is occurring among the various jihadist actors in Pakistan could help facilitate planning and even operations if they pool resources. Faced with the full attention of global counterterrorism efforts, such cooperation may be one of the only ways that the transnational jihad can hope to gain any traction, especially as its efforts to foster independent grassroots jihadists have been largely ineffective.
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Afghan Assassination Raises Questions As Negotiations Begin
On Tuesday, Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of the High Peace Council in Afghanistan, was assassinated in a suicide attack at his residence. While local and foreign officials confirmed his death, the details surrounding his assassination remain unclear. According to the head of the criminal investigation division of the Kabul police, Mohammad Zahir, Rabbani was meeting two Taliban representatives who were escorted by senior members of the peace council for talks at Rabbani’s residence. The Afghan interior ministry confirmed that one of the suicide attackers was arrested. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for Rabbani’s assassination approximately three hours after the attack. He said that two Taliban suicide bombers had met Rabbani under the pretext of talks and added that the attack killed the other suicide bomber, along with four of Rabbani’s guards. Mujahid typically claims militant Taliban attacks and reportedly has links with the Haqqani network, an autonomous branch of the Taliban.
“The U.S.-Taliban negotiating track is still in its developing phases, and now is the time to shape it.”
Significant gaps remain, however, in the Taliban claims and in the official Afghan statements. The most pressing preliminary unknown is the identity of the attackers. Taliban suicide bombers do not typically rise above the rank of foot soldiers — far short of negotiators with private access to Rabbani. Nor do we know how the two attackers infiltrated the strong layer of security that surrounds Rabbani’s residence in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood.
The attack comes as U.S.-Taliban negotiations, mediated by Pakistan, are in their initial phases. While we are currently seeing greater coordination between the Pakistan, Taliban and Haqqani triad, several factions within each group may be attempting to derail negotiations to work in their favor.
This calls into question why Rabbani would be targeted for an attack. Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, was the president of Afghanistan from 1992-1996. He was overthrown by the Taliban and assumed political leadership of the Northern Alliance, in league with legendary Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. Afghan President Hamid Karzai made Rabbani chairman of the High Peace Council for good reason: Rabbani was well respected as one of the leading mujahideen leaders during the Soviet days. More importantly, as an influential representative of the minority Tajik community, Rabbani could counter resistance from Afghan Tajiks who were opposed to dealing on any level with their Taliban rivals. Rabbani also had his fair share of enemies — he was allegedly deeply involved in the Afghan drug trade, and as one of the main U.S. financial conduits in Afghanistan, he was reportedly taking more than his share of commission from money flows out of the United States.
The circumstances of Rabbani’s death remain unclear, but we can’t help but be reminded of the al Qaeda assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud two days prior to 9/11. Massoud was killed in an intimate setting by a two-man Arab team carrying an explosives-laden video camera under the pretext of conducting an interview. Massoud was a resilient Northern Alliance leader, capable of standing up to the Taliban’s political authority — an obstacle that al Qaeda needed to get rid of.
Rabbani, who was filling Massoud’s shoes as the lead representative of the Tajiks, posed a strategic hurdle to the Taliban. The U.S.-Taliban negotiating track is still in its developing phases, and now is the time to shape it. Rabbani’s assassination creates a power vacuum within the factions in the North and allows the Taliban to push their demands for political dominance in any postwar political arrangement. If this is what the Taliban were actually calculating in assassinating Rabbani (and if the Taliban actually carried out this assassination), it leaves the United States in a highly uncomfortable position. As Marine Gen. John Allen, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force put it, the Rabbani assassination represents “another outrageous indicator that, regardless of what Taliban leadership outside the country say, they do not want peace, but rather war.”
The biggest question moving forward is the assassination’s impact on negotiations. The United States has to wonder whether Mullah Omar is a credible negotiator — and whether it can feel safe sending a representative to negotiate with the Taliban. Yet at the end of the day, the United States has no choice but to engage in an unsavory negotiation with the Taliban — and this may be what the Taliban were calculating all along.
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US bomb warning to Pakistan ignored
American commander asked Pakistan's army chief to halt truck bomb two days before an explosion wounded 77 near Kabul
Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Jon Boone in Kabul
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 September 2011 17.32 EDT
Article history
Pakistan intelligence accused of ignoring warnings about a truck bomb that wounded 77 and killed five.
The American commander of Nato in Afghanistan personally asked Pakistan's army chief to halt an insurgent truck bomb that was heading for his troops, during a meeting in Islamabad two days before a huge explosion that wounded 77 US soldiers at a base near Kabul.
In reply General Ashfaq Kayani offered to "make a phone call" to stop the assault on the US base in Wardak province. But his failure to use the American intelligence to prevent the attack has fuelled a blazing row between the US and Pakistan.
Furious American officials blame the Taliban-inspired group the Haqqanis – and, by extension, Pakistani intelligence – for the 10 September bombing and an even more audacious guerrilla assault on the Kabul US embassy three days later that killed 20 people and lasted more than 20 hours.
On Thursday the US military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqanis as "a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency". He earlier accused the ISI of fighting a "proxy war" in Afghanistan through the group.
Pakistan's defence minister, Ahmed Mukhtar, rejected the American accusations of Haqqani patronage as "baseless". "No one can threaten Pakistan as we are an independent state," he said.
The angry accusations lift the veil on sensitive conversations that have heretofore largely taken place behind closed doors. On 8 September, General John Allen, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, raised intelligence reports of the impending truck bomb at a meeting with Kayani during a visit to Islamabad.
Kayani promised Allen he would "make a phone call" to try to stop the attack, according to a western official with close knowledge of the meeting. "The offer raised eyebrows," the official said.
But two days later, just after Allen's return to Kabul, a truck rigged with explosives ploughed into the gates of the US base in Wardak, 50 miles south-west of Kabul, injuring 77 US soldiers and killing two Afghan civilians.
Afterwards the US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, blamed the Haqqanis. "They enjoy safe havens in North Waziristan," he said, referring to the Haqqani main base in the tribal belt.
Allen's spokesman said Nato "routinely shares intelligence with the Pakistanis regarding insurgent activities" but he refused to confirm the details of the conversation with Kayani.
The Pakistani military spokesman, General Athar Abbas, said: "Let's suppose it was the case. The main question is how did this truck travel to Wardak and explode without being checked by Nato? This is just a blame game."
US allegations of ISI links to Haqqani attacks stretch back to July 2008, when the CIA deputy director, Stephen Kappes, flew to Islamabad with intercept evidence that linked the ISI to an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
But American disquiet has never been so uncompromisingly expressed as in recent days. The issue dominated three hours of talks between the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar.
On Tuesday Mullen said he had asked Kayani to "disconnect" the ISI from the Haqqanis. In Washington the CIA chief, David Petraeus, delivered a similar message in private to the ISI chief, General Shuja Pasha. Even the soft-spoken US ambassador to Islamabad, Cameron Munter, has joined the chorus of condemnation, delivering a hard-hitting message through an interview on Pakistani state radio.
"We've changed our message in private too," one US official said. "Before, we used to make polite demands about the Haqqanis. Now we are saying 'this has to stop'."
The new mood is driven by a combination of climbing casualties and brazen attacks. The Haqqanis were also blamed for a recent assault on the InterContinental Hotel, while August was the deadliest month for US forces in Afghanistan, with 71 deaths.
Nato is now investigating whether the Haqqanis had a hand in Tuesday's assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, President Hamid Karzai's peace envoy to the Taliban. Rabbani was killed at his home by a suicide bomber wearing an explosives-packed turban. A bloodstained four-page letter he was carrying at the time of the attack, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, insisted that "Pakistan is not our boss".
American officials have vowed to act unilaterally if Pakistan fails to comply with their demands over the Haqqanis. But it remains unclear how far they are willing to go against Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country that still provides vital counter-terrorism support.
There was some hope of resuscitating fragile relations between the Pakistani and American intelligence services, which were buffeted by the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden on 2 May. Officials from both countries hailed a joint operation on 28 August to arrest Younis al-Mauritani, a senior al-Qaida operative, in the western city of Quetta. On 5 September the Pakistani military issued a press release that highlighted Pakistani-American co-operation; some viewed the raid as a possible turning point in relations.
But the flurry of Haqqani attacks over the past two weeks seems to have washed away whatever goodwill was generated by the arrest.
US officials say debate is raging inside US policy circles about what to do next. The defence secretary, Leon Panetta, is said to have privately advocated US military incursions into the Haqqani stronghold in Waziristan – a risky gambit other officials reject as dangerous folly, citing the historical record of failure of western armies in the tribal belt.
Other US officials say Washington could slash non-military aid such as the $7.5bn five-year Kerry-Lugar-Berman package, which was approved in 2009.
There is also debate about the exact nature of the ISI's relationship with the Haqqanis. One western official said it was not a puppetmaster scenario. "It's not like they have a chain of command, with the Pakistanis handing down XOs [executive orders]," he said. Neither are the Pakistanis necessarily providing logistical support, he added: "It's murkier than that."
But, the official added, the US believes Pakistan is "actively tolerating" the Haqqanis. And the ISI could, if it wanted to, seriously disrupt their activities.
He warned that Pakistan was heading towards international isolation. "If it keeps going like this, it could end up like Syria – before the Arab spring."
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Routes into Afghanistan...the easiest is through Iran (Chabahar), but relations are bad with Iran.
(http://i55.tinypic.com/2cxagxt.jpg)
(http://i54.tinypic.com/33dcw95.png)
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Ummm , , , correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the departing McMullen, now free to speak plainly, and other elements of the military who are leading the way on this, not Baraq?
Anyway, as our YA has been leading the way around here, Pakistan's true nature is becoming clearer to the American people.
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America's most impossible foreign relationship just got worse. The U.S. on Thursday publicly accused Pakistan's intelligence service of aiding the terrorist Haqqani network in northern Pakistan. This remarkable public accusation came after last week's attack by the Haqqani clan on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
Pakistan's tolerance for the Haqqani family and its pro-Taliban terrorist army in northern Pakistan is the sort of behavior that makes the Pakistanis, as a top Obama security official once put it to us, "the most difficult people in the world to deal with." No one has worked harder to make the relationship work than soon-to-depart Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday, Admiral Mullen said, "The government of Pakistan and most especially the Pakistani army and ISI [the Inter-Services Intelligence agency]" have decided "to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy."
Admiral Mullen added that the Haqqani network "with ISI support" had carried out the truck bombing on September 10 in Kabul that wounded 77 NATO troops and killed five Afghans. Lest anyone miss the message, Admiral Mullen said bluntly that the Haqqani network "acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency."
These statements walk right to the edge of accusing Pakistan, a nominal ally, of committing acts of war against the United States. To be sure, the U.S. didn't say the ISI had actually planned the Haqqani raids but that the spy agency was abetting the operations of the group, whose goal is to kill U.S. troops on the way to overthrowing the Afghan government.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said as well, "We've made clear that we are going to do everything we have to do defend our forces."
In short, earth to Pakistan: Clear out this threat in your northern provinces, or the U.S. will do it alone, either with drone attacks or cross-border raids.
The Haqqanis, along with the Quetta Shura of Mullah Omar in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, pose the most significant threat to the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Both groups provide crucial support to the Afghan Taliban operations against American and NATO forces. The Afghan government this week said the Quetta Shura was behind the suicide-bomber assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani in Kabul.
In Islamabad yesterday, Pakistan's foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, tried to play the indispensable-ally card, suggesting that the U.S. "cannot afford to alienate Pakistan."
No doubt it would be in the long-term strategic interests of both countries to remain allies. But there is a larger reality. The U.S. cannot be seen before the world, or more especially by the American people, turning a blind eye to Pakistan's complicity in the murder of U.S. citizens serving in Afghanistan.
The U.S. now has a range of options available, from designating the Haqqani network a foreign terrorist organization (as a prelude to hitting its finances); withholding $1 billion in military aid to Pakistan in the absence of antiterrorist cooperation; or hitting the Haqqanis ourselves. Pakistan's leadership, among its myriad delusions, believes its status as a nuclear power somehow frees it to reduce its relationship with the U.S. to the same crude and cynical status as its relations with the homicidal Haqqanis.
That's false, and the Obama Administration deserves credit for publicly putting Pakistan's impossible-to-tolerate behavior on the table.
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The question is what to do about it.
Some suggest continue drone attacks and covert operations. Half assed without any end.
Some ala Huntsman suggest retreat. Probably better than half assed drones and covert shit. Either take care of the problem properly and militarily or stop doing it with one buttock in and one buttock tied back.
Another is to start all out war using nucs to f* up their nuc capability.
Teach them a lesson once and for all. Sure it would cause generational hatred of the US but don't we have that anyway.
Doesn't history teach it is better to be feared and respected than loved?
That said it will never happen.
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All this makes quite clear the well-targeted relevance of YA's most recent post.
The interface of the military and the domestic political issues presents EXTREMELY challenging problems.
The American people are understandably weary of a ten years of a seemingly pointless and endless war and understandably dubious of the political process that has led us along the way.
Anyone here think Bush led well on this?
Anyone here want to deny that a reasonable argument can be made that Bush took his eye off the ball in Afpakia? Michael Yon was writing 3-4 years ago that we were losing and about to lose badly.
Anyone here think Baraq has led well on this?
The point being the American people are understandably rather cynical on the competence of our leadership-- so suggesting we should go to war with Pakistan just when people saw the "Unsurge" winding things down is a tough sell.
And there is the little detail of what that war would look like and what it would lastingly accomplish-- not to mention the apparent looming bankruptcy of the USA.
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http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/09/23/next-drone-strikes-on-pakistans-isi/
September 23, 2011
Next: Drone Strikes on Pakistan’s ISI?
Walter Russell Mead
If you read recent statements by senior US officials on the relationship between Pakistan’s ISI and attacks on US and NATO interests, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that a state of war exists between an agency of the government of Pakistan and the United States of America.
As the FT reports this morning,
Adm [Mike] Mullen, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a US congressional committee on Thursday that the Haqqani network, regarded as perhaps the deadliest component of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, “planned and conducted” an assault on the US embassy in Kabul this month with support from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
An article in the NYT underlined the significance of Admiral Mullen’s remarks:
The United States has long said that Pakistan’s intelligence agency supports the Haqqani network, based in Pakistan’s tribal areas, as a way to extend Pakistani influence in Afghanistan. But Admiral Mullen made clear that he believed that the support extended to increasingly high-profile attacks in Afghanistan aimed directly at the United States.
One should be clear about this; attacks on embassies and on military personnel and positions are acts of war. They are not college pranks, they are not “signals”, they are not robust statements of policy disagreement and they are not bargaining chips in an extended negotiation. They are acts of force in violation of international law and they can legitimately be met by acts of force and war in return.
Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Wikimedia)
I have had the opportunity to meet retired senior officials of the ISI at different times, and they make no bones about their attitudes toward the United States. They are our enemies and they are not ashamed to say so. They believe they have grounds: the US in their view is a treacherous ally which has never fully backed Pakistan in what they believe to be an existential conflict with India, and that today the US is openly in India’s camp, supporting its nuclear program, its global ambitions, and pursuing an Afghan policy which increases Indian influence in direct opposition to Pakistan’s efforts to ensure a friendly government in Kabul when the Americans leave. Moreover they believe that America is a power that is fundamentally hostile to Islam, and that our invasion of Afghanistan was an act of wanton mayhem which threatens the sovereignty and security of Pakistan and which has cost Pakistan untold billions of dollars, far exceeding any US aid.
While these views are not universally held in the Pakistani military and government, they are prominent — perhaps central — in ISI strategy, and it is clear that the rest of the Pakistani government either cannot control the ISI or does not wish to. On the other hand, it appears that the ISI prefers to operate under a veil on implausible deniability; the government can claim and perhaps mean that it has no responsibility for what “rogue elements” in the ISI are up to.
Pakistan must operate in this clandestine and indirect manner; otherwise its use of terror groups to commit acts of violence well beyond its frontier would land the country in a frightful nest of crises and lead to its total international isolation. The right hand shakes yours; the left hand plants a bomb.
The United States has generally also tried to run its Pakistan policy in ways that allow a split consciousness. On the one hand, we know much of what the ISI is up to while US forces seek to kill people that the ISI regards as colleagues and allies. On the other hand, we push the Pakistani military command to limit the space in which the ISI is permitted to operate and to collaborate with us on those areas where collaboration remains possible. There are, after all, some groups we both want to defeat. In a sense we try to exact the highest price possible for our willingness to turn a blind eye to ISI activities of which we disapprove.
**Read it all.
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"The point being the American people are understandably rather cynical on the competence of our leadership-- so suggesting we should go to war with Pakistan just when people saw the "Unsurge" winding things down is a tough sell.
And there is the little detail of what that war would look like and what it would lastingly accomplish-- not to mention the apparent looming bankruptcy of the USA."
Therefore, and I am not being facetious here, Huntsman may be correct in his conclusion.
I am all for that and yet...
Without bold military action further proliferation among the unstable Muslim world of nuclear weapons is inevitable.
This to me is the most haunting issue. Off the top of my head history has repeatedly demonstrated that strength not appeasement or weakness is the best answer.
Even the cold war was decided by pursuing a level headed policy of strength and power and determination with a policy of mutually assured destruction. Why not a clear cut policy of unilateral assured destruction of any Muslim state using any nuclear device?
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Because that is not what would happen!
See e.g. my post earlier today in the Nuclear War thread-- and this is a point which has been raised in this forum previously (including test missile launches from tanker ships in the Caspian Sea IIRC).
Scenario: Crappy missile with crude nuke device put on some Panamanian or Libyan tanker ship. Maybe throw in some three card monte shuffling of cargoes between in and some other ships to make it difficult to use satellite intel after the fact to figure out who the F did it-- then launch an blast that EMP's over the continental US.
Who would we blame?
BTW, the Chinese have put A LOT of thought into how to bring down our electronic-cyber capabilities, seeing them as the our Achilles Heel of our military dominance. If we were hit with an EMP our capabilities might be so dramatically downgraded that the subsequent cranial rectal interface might tempt the Chinese to act-- e.g. go after Taiwan.
Indeed, someone might even tip off the Chinese that such an attack was imminent.
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The Soviets could be managed through MAD doctrine, as officially they were atheist. On the other hand, the jihadis believe in jihad and martyrdom as the gateway to paradise. The koran has lots of verses that speak of the enemies of allah burning in hellfire.
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Well we can't help those who are willing to die and have their entire country wiped out.
I still think we make it clear of dire consequences to even try.
I guess a dirty bomb could go off and we don't know who did it or the claimant is not technically a state sanctioned entity.
Do our enemies have the capability to cause an EMP that can knock out our military hardware?
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The Iranians have, or will soon have missiles that can reach a goodly portion of Europe, hence the importance of ABM in east Europe and/or Turkey. The Iranians are working on acquiring nukes. The Paks HAVE something like 100 nukes AND a history of rogue nuke activities. The Norks are testing nukes and have a history of rogue nuke actiivities. As I mentioned in my previous post, bad actors have been testing the capability to launch missiles from tanker vessels.
Connect the dots.
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It is my understanding that most military electronics are built to withstand EMP, but the civilian electronics that runs our society are not. It's my understanding that the bad actors Crafty mentioned do not have a single nuke that could EMP the whole country, not yet anyway. However they do have nukes that could toast the west and east coast with EMP, causing serious problems for our ports and most populated cities.
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From B.Raman's blog...
The United States has turned on Pakistan with such dizzying speed over the past few weeks that it is difficult to keep pace. Yet what is clear after Admiral Mike Mullen’s extraordinarily blunt statement that the Haqqani militant network is a “veritable arm” of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency is that it now has the Pakistan army very firmly in its sights.
Mullen accused the ISI, which is effectively a wing of the Pakistan army, of supporting the Haqqani network in a truck bomb attack on a U.S. base in Afghanistan and an assault on the U.S. embassy in Kabul which led to a 20-hour siege. “We also have credible intelligence that they (the Haqqani network) were behind the June 28 attack against the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations,” he said.
It was the most forthright assertion yet by the Americans that the Pakistani military is not merely turning a blind eye to militant groups based on its border with Afghanistan but actively encouraging them to attack American interests. The Pakistan army says it is overstretched as it is tackling militant groups which target Pakistan without creating new enemies by attacking Afghan militants and denies it retains links with the Haqqani network.
Just one month ago in a report titled “Pakistan, the United States and the End Game in Afghanistan” a group describing themselves as “the foreign policy elite” laid out what Pakistan wanted to happen in Afghanistan. Among their suggestions were that both the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Mohammed Omar and the Haqqani network be included in talks on a political settlement in Afghanistan. The report was heavily criticised by those who saw it as an attempt by Pakistan to maintain its old policy of “strategic depth” – using militant proxies to stamp its influence on Afghanistan and counter India.
It looks like the United States is having none of it. I dislike the expression “end-game” applied to either Afghanistan or Pakistan (or Britain for that matter) with its implication that the people living in those countries come to an end when outside powers lose interest. But it is worth considering the expression just to show how much has changed. The so-called “end-game” is now in Pakistan.
That is not to say there are not worsening problems in Afghanistan itself, especially with the assassination of peace council chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani “laying open again the fracture lines” of civil war, as Kate Clark wrote at the Afghanistan Analysts Network. Nor is to suggest that anyone disputes the need for a political settlement in Afghanistan. Nor indeed that American tactics and strategy in Afghanistan are not open to criticism – Pakistan repeatedly says it is being used as a scapegoat for U.S. failures in Afghanistan. And nor would it be fair to dismiss Pakistan’s own concerns that by going after the Haqqani network – with its links to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and other militant groups – it would face even greater violence on its own soil. Those are all subjects which merit separate and serious discussion.
But it is to say that the particular end-game going on now is between the United States and the Pakistan army. Look closely at the proposition being made by Washington. According to Mullen’s testimony Pakistan – and specifically its army – must give up support for the Afghan Taliban (the so-called Quetta shura Taliban) and the Haqqani network. In return the United States will help Pakistan find “an increasing role for democratic, civilian institutions and civil society in determining Pakistan’s fate.”
Whatever language you couch that in, that is quite a difficult proposition for the Pakistan army. First it is being asked to turn on old militant proxies which for decades it saw as its main leverage against both India and a hostile Afghanistan and which for the ISI in particular were a considerable source of power. Second the army – an institution which is used to being the most powerful in Pakistan – is being asked to relinquish its dominance and cede its place to a civilian democracy. Third, even if it were willing to give up some of its power – and the considerable economic advantages that go with it – it would need to make a leap of faith that Pakistan’s warring and often corrupt politicians could get their act together to govern the country effectively.
Yet the message that appears to be being delivered by the Americans with increasing force is that if it resists, it will lose. Unlike during the Cold War when Pakistan was able to exploit U.S.-Soviet rivalry to maintain its position against India, Pakistan is looking very isolated right now. In the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s it had American and Saudi support. This time around it is hard to find any country which will help it.
In Afghanistan ordinary people are opening blaming the ISI for the country’s troubles. Russia is worried about instability in Afghanistan spilling over into the former Soviet Central Asia and about drug smuggling pushing up the numbers of heroin addicts whose growth is already gnawing away at its economy. Moscow has been more resistant even than the United States to the idea of taking former Taliban off a UN sanctions list to create a better climate for talks. Relations with neighbouring Iran tend to go up and down, but are not helped by a spate of killings of Shi’ites by Sunni extremists in Pakistan. China is interested only in stability and securing its access through Pakistan to oil supplies and raw materials. For all Pakistan’s “deeper than the oceans” faith in Chinese friendship, it is unlikely to ride to its rescue in a confrontation with the United States over Afghanistan.
Ironically, India is being projected as a way out of the quagmire with the prospect of regional trade offered as a solution to Pakistan’s deepening economic gloom. But India – indeed far more than the United States – has tended to be more suspicious of the Pakistan military and the government has justified to its domestic critics the current peace process as a way of supporting civilian democracy in Pakistan.
So the question we need to ask is this. Will the Pakistan army fold? Institutions do not give up power easily and arguably the Pakistan army as an institution is more powerful than the individuals who lead it.
In many ways this is like a rerun of the Kargil war writ large. In 1999, the Pakistan army occupied mountain positions in the Kargil region on the Line of Control separating the Indian and Pakistani parts of the former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir – its troops encroaching on part of the territory that was supposed to be under Indian control. In doing so, it breached a 1972 agreement with India that neither side would attempt to change the Line of Control, or ceasefire line, by force.
There was in fact an underlying – though heavily contested – logic to Pakistan’s actions in Kargil. Pakistan considered India’s occupation of Siachen (in the Karakoram mountains beyond the Line of Control) in 1984 as a similar breach of the 1972 Simla agreement. Since the late 1980s – or so I have been told by one of the generals involved – it had thought about occupying the heights above Kargil as a way of training its artillery on the main road from Kashmir towards Siachen, thereby cutting off the Indian army’s supply route.
Yet the Pakistan army had over-reached. It first denied that it had any troops in Kargil at all, saying that mujahideen and irregulars had moved into positions in the mountains as part of their campaign to free Indian Kashmir from what it calls Indian occupation. In an odd foreshadowing of the current situation in Afghanistan, it chose to launch its Kargil war at a time when India and Pakistan were engaged in peace talks. After a brief and bitter war with India, the Pakistan army was forced by international pressure — especially from the United States but more discreetly from China – into a humiliating retreat.
This time around the Pakistan army appears to have over-reached in a way which could prove to be its undoing. It has taken on the United States – a declining but still superpower – in Afghanistan. The issue here is not really who is right or wrong but rather which country can bring the greater force to bear and the greater international leverage.
The other possibility is that the confrontation between the Pakistan army and the United States could become more and more dangerous. But with its very public comments on the Haqqanis and the ISI, the United States has just rolled a dice that it hopes and believes is weighted in its favour.
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Why Pakistan Is Getting Cocky
Sep 23, 2011 1:21 PM EDT
Pakistan’s Army and intelligence service are behaving ever more provocatively—with potentially drastic ramifications for the war in Afghanistan. Bruce Riedel on the ISI’s psyche.
Admiral Mullen's candid and stunning testimony that directly links Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, to recent attacks on NATO forces and the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan puts America and Pakistan on a collision course.
Why are the ISI and the Pakistani Army making such risky moves? What is the calculation in the generals’ minds? Short answer is, they believe we are on the run in Afghanistan and they want to push us out faster. Mullen has been Pakistan’s strongest advocate inside the White House situation room since President Obama took office in 2009. He prudently argued for patience and tolerance with the ISI’s duplicity for years, rightly stressing Pakistan’s critical importance on many vital issues like the nuclear-arms race, counterterrorism, and the Afghan war. This makes his remarks linking ISI to the Afghan Taliban’s Haqqani network attacks on our forces this month all the more stunning. Mullen labeled the Haqqani Taliban a “veritable arm” and “proxy” of the ISI. Afghan sources have said the Taliban suicide team that attacked our embassy was in constant contact by cell phone with their masters back in Pakistan during the firefight.
More questions are coming about ISI. The assassination last Tuesday of former Afghan president Rabbani, who was leading Afghanistan’s effort to develop a peace and reconciliation process with the Taliban, dealt a literal death blow to any hope of a peace settlement between NATO, the Karzai government, and the Taliban insurgency. Rabbani was murdered by a suicide bomber who allegedly brought a message from the Taliban’s top authority, the Quetta Shura, which has long been directly linked to the ISI as well. We still don’t know enough about the assassination plot, but it is highly unlikely the Taliban leadership in Quetta would have blown up the reconciliation process without a green light—or at least an amber one —from the ISI leadership.
These are incredibly provocative actions for the ISI. Over the past three decades it has developed a well-deserved reputation for sponsoring terror, like the 2008 Mumbai attack. It is accountable only to the Army and chief of Army staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. The civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari and his ministers has zero control over the spies and live in fear of them. It is not a rogue agency; it is a state within the state. The generals who run ISI have worked with the Taliban for more than 15 years. They provide critical sanctuary for its leaders like Haqqani and Mullah Mohammed Omar. Without direct and substantial Pakistani help, the Taliban could not have recovered from its defeat in Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 and become the threat it is today.
Pakistan feels they hold a lot of aces, maybe more than they should.
But now the generals feel increasing heat from the U.S. and sense a growing chance that America and NATO are looking to cut and run from Afghanistan, hence their willingness to take risks to accelerate America’s departure from their doorstep and help their clients win. The stepped-up drone operations and especially the May 1 SEAL raid in Abbottabad have humiliated the generals deeply. They also know Osama bin Laden’s success in hiding out for six years in eyesight of the Army’s premier academy has raised profound suspicions in America about whether the ISI was clueless or complicit in his hideout.
So the heat was rising well before Mullen’s testimony. Yet the ISI also knows American and European support for staying in Afghanistan is dropping. Canada has already left. Obama has started withdrawing faster than his generals wanted. The Pakistani officers want to accelerate this process—the sooner NATO is gone, the better for them. So their advice to their Afghan proxies is to carry out operations designed to impact the home audience in America and Europe. Make the war look unwinnable and hopeless. Make Kabul appear chaotic and unsafe. Kill any hope for a political process. The darker Afghanistan appears on TV screens, the sooner the foreign armies will be called home.
Reality is less important than image in this war. The Army leadership also feels it can weather any blowback from Washington. The generals assume U.S. military aid will be cut or eliminated by Congress sooner rather than later, and they are confident that the Saudis and Chinese will fill the gap. They also know NATO’s logistical supply line to Kabul runs through Karachi (more than half of everything NATO eats, drinks, and shoots arrives via Karachi despite intense efforts to find alternatives). They have leverage and they know it. And of course, they have the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world with a developing tactical nuclear capability. They feel they hold a lot of aces, maybe more than they should. Cocky poker players are dangerous.
Bruce Riedel, a former longtime CIA officer, is a senior fellow in the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. At President Obama’s request, he chaired the strategic review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009. He is author of the new book Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad and The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
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A Change in the Afghan War
Related Link
• Foundations: Pakistan’s Muslim Identity Crisis
In an interview published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen reiterated his view that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate provided support for the Haqqani network. And he continued to juxtapose Haqqani attacks on American troops and American targets with the ISI’s “strategic support” for the group.
The interview was released as Mullen’s final testimony before Congress last week continued to elicit reactions. It was during this testimony — not a setting in which casual comments usually slip out — that he explicitly connected the ISI to Haqqani. During Mullen’s tenure as America’s top military officer, he traveled to Pakistan more than two dozen times and maintained close relations with Islamabad’s senior military leadership. Despite attempts in Washington to moderate his testimony, and anger and denials from Pakistan, we can be sure that Mullen chose his words carefully — a point that Wednesday’s interview further underscores.
“The U.S.-Pakistani relationship has begun to change in a fundamental way.”
The U.S.-Pakistani relationship has begun to change in a fundamental way. The United States and its allies are leaving Afghanistan. The peak of military operations there — itself intended as an attempt to shape the circumstances for a withdrawal — has already passed. A new officer, U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, has been put in charge of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan not to perpetuate the counterinsurgency-focused strategy of David Petraeus.
The move to an exit from Afghanistan is not immediate, but it is inexorable. Washington’s only long-term strategic interest in Central Asia is to deny it as sanctuary to transnational terrorist groups like al Qaeda. Al Qaeda has been defeated in Afghanistan and Washington is moving from a position of needing Pakistani territory to logistically facilitate a surge and ongoing military operations, to one where it requires Pakistan to ensure that Afghanistan will never again serve as a staging ground for attacks against American interests.
Mullen did not recently discover Pakistani connections with Haqqani, or the Taliban in general. They have always existed — Pakistan was instrumental in creating the Taliban and ensuring their ascendancy — and it was never in Islamabad’s interest to sever them. Those ties served as a fundamental means of ensuring Pakistani leverage in Afghanistan. What changed is what the United States needs from Pakistan. The United States’ willingness to overlook Pakistani actions against its interests, in exchange for the cooperation necessary for operational expediency, has ended.
Already, the United States has quietly moved its logistical burden onto the Northern Distribution Route — an astonishingly long and tedious alternative traversing Russia and Central Asia to Pakistan — so much so that only about a third of supplies and fuel continue to reach Afghanistan via the port of Karachi and Pakistani refineries. But as the total number of foreign troops continues to decline, excess stockpiles are burned through, austerity measures take effect and the tempo of combat operations declines, the point at which the war in Afghanistan can be sustained independent of Pakistan is fast approaching.
This is a remarkable inflection point. Washington’s logistical vulnerability and reliance on Islamabad has left combat operations in Afghanistan hostage to Pakistan, which has been a defining dynamic of the war. To sustain the large-scale combat operations, the United States had been forced to tolerate Pakistani support for hostile forces in Afghanistan. Mullen’s testimony last Thursday and the interview this Wednesday reflect a change in the rules.
Whether Pakistan is capable of adjusting course and satisfying new American demands — even if it wants to — is unclear. But with the American exit on the horizon and the twilight of logistical reliance on Pakistan at hand, the rules of the game have undergone perhaps their most fundamental change since the beginning of the war.
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This seems to be the first salvo...by the US to bring Pak to heel.
Pakistan: NATO Fires Rockets Into North Waziristan
September 29, 2011 | 0712 GMT
NATO forces fired 12 rockets on the Ghulam Khan area of Pakistan’s North Waziristan, Karachi Dawn News reported in a screen caption at 0433 GMT Sept. 29. Another screen caption reported that government sources said Pakistan retaliated by firing 15 mortar rounds. Another caption reported sources claiming that Pakistani helicopters were flying along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
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In the ongoing search of this forum for Truth, I note that some of us (e.g. me) have made snarky comments about Baraq welching on basing ABM missiles in eastern Europe so as to suck up to the Russians-- which included using them as an alternative supply route for our efforts in Afghanistan. At the moment it looks like I need to acknowledge that it appears that this is enabling us to change our dealings with the Paks.
Your thoughts YA?
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I think Baraq is weak, that's the real reason we dont base missiles in eastern europe. Those decisions were taken at a time of "hope & change".
re: Af-Pak, any gains in obtaining additional supply routes from throwing europe under the bus were likely factored into the calculations and used as a justification to chicken out from placing missiles in europe. Now this analysis would be faulty, if Bama does something about tightening the screws on Haqqanis and Pak, for that would imply that the gain of additional supply routes was part of the planned end game in Pak. There is some evidence to suggest that after Mullen's testimony pakis are in a panic that the US may bomb Pak or send boots on the ground. After Nato rocketed N.Waziristan, they have had a corps commanders meet, an all party conference, their media is full of jingoistic war songs, eg http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SsFGA5qblms (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SsFGA5qblms)
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Working the levers of patriotism
Ayaz Amir
Friday, September 30, 2011
No one can work the engines of patriotism better than the army and its ideological wing, the ISI. In actual combat their performance may invite questions. But in ideological combat their skill is unsurpassed.
In the annals of Pakistani democracy no fiction is more endearing than that of parliamentary sovereignty. The army and ISI set the score and music of national security. Civilian governments and politicians perform vigorously to this music and call it parliamentary sovereignty.
The corps commanders led the national outrage over the Kerry-Lugar bill, the jihadi media taking its cue from there. We know what deft hands first generated and then dissipated the hype over the Raymond Davis affair. Left to itself the federal government might have handled matters differently. But then the ISI wouldn’t have been the ISI if it had allowed this to happen.
When Sheikh Osama’s hideout was busted in Abbottabad, the first reaction of both President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani was sensible. But they weren’t counting on the deep sense of humiliation felt in General Headquarters. Realising their error they changed tack and hurriedly joined the national chorus of patriotism which had begun belting out lines about wounded sovereignty.
Few people paused to ask whether the sharper blow to national pride was dealt by the Americans or the Sheikh who, with his computers and disk drives, had installed himself in Abbottabad for close on five years. Where lesser mortals might have directed their anger at Al-Qaeda we went blue in the face denouncing America.
No praise is too high for Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the ISI chief, for playing the subsequent in-camera session of parliament the way he did. Towards its end most of the parliamentarians seemed to be eating out of his hands, all speaking the same language of honour and national pride with which he had prefaced his briefing.
Now in the latest outbreak of patriotic fever in the wake of Admiral Mike Mullen’s excoriating remarks about the Haqqani group and its real or presumed linkages to the ISI, it is again the army and ISI orchestrating the national response, and the government and much of the political class following suit and reading from the script prepared by the supreme guardians.
The corps commanders met first and Prime Minister Gilani swung into action later, calling up the assorted characters who presume to speak on behalf of the Pakistani people, and inviting them for an all-parties conference (APC). If past experience is any guide, there are few activities more pointless than this gathering of the good and the not-so-great. It is safe to say – these lines being written before this momentous event – that the emphasis will be on verbosity and beating the drums of national honour. At the end will come the refrain, the nation stands united.
The Pakistani nation caught up in the throes of patriotism is usually a dangerous sight – mostly a prelude to something bizarre and foolish. What a mood of excitement we built up in 1965, closing our eyes to the reality that our rulers of the time, for no rhyme or reason, had started the whole blooming adventure. No one punished them but the country is still, in myriad ways, living the consequences.
In 1971 every vehicle in Lahore carried the sticker “Crush India”. We know who was crushed and who wasn’t in that conflict. The Afghan jihad, the conflict in Kargil, our predilection with managing the affairs of Afghanistan, when everything points to the conclusion that we are far from able to manage our own....the list of our militant follies is endless.
The US may be using too broad a brush and putting too thick a coat of paint on our warped strategic theories, but there is a growing body of opinion in Pakistan itself that the time for our strategic games is up. Mike Mullen did not say the ISI was attacking Kabul. We should read his testimony more dispassionately. He was saying the culprits were from the Haqqani group and that this group had strong links with the ISI.
Who the intrepid soul who would deny this last point? Don’t the Haqqanis have havens on this side of the border? The ISI doesn’t micro-manage them, it has no operational control over them. But in the name of all that is profane, don’t they have a presence there and here?
They are assets for the future, our strategic grandmasters will say. Haven’t we played enough of Afghan games and isn’t it time to let that unfortunate country be on its own? No one should wish more misfortunes upon the Afghan people but if they must fight their own internecine wars what drives us to the necessity of being a part of them, directly or indirectly?
Not only is it high time the army redrew its priorities, it is also time it stopped forcing its theories on hapless civilian governments. Every malevolent adjective in the world this government – indeed the entire political class – richly deserves. We have a set of ineffectual people at the helm, their capacity and competence no secret to anyone. But, I would venture to suggest, that even these clowns, if left to do their own bit, would manage relations with the US better than our brilliant army commanders.
There is no more difficult negotiating partner in the world than the MQM. He who can handle the MQM can deal with anyone, even the spirits of the dark and the deep. If we settled for cheap terms and low wages in 2001, broad-chested generals were in charge of national affairs not weak-kneed civilians. When the time was for negotiating something sensible and equitable with the Americans our army command blew it. Now when events have moved on and a new dynamic is in play, the army command just refuses to dismount from the high stallion of national honour and inviolable sovereignty.
What kind of a country are we? After India tested its nuclear bombs in 1998 Lal Kishan Advani only had to make a few threatening statements for Pakistan to go into panic mode and rush into its own tests. Israel hasn’t carried out any nuclear tests. Is its nuclear arsenal any less effective because of this? What, if exercising better judgment – admittedly, a tall order – we hadn’t tested in May 1998. Would our bombs have melted or just disappeared? And would Indian tanks have invaded Pakistan?
Here we are bedevilled by the wages of terrorism and a falling economy and yet we speak the language of Prussia at the height of its military power.
And now Mullen’s congressional testimony and some tough talk by the US secretary of defence Leon Panetta have thrown us into a panic in 2011. The corps commanders, forsaking their beloved golf, meet on a Sunday and the good and the patriotic get together for the Pakistani variant of that all-time farce called the APC.
Philip, Alexander the Great’s father, held out this threat to Sparta: “If I enter Laconia (Sparta’s other name), you shall be exterminated.” The reply was a single word, “If”. It’s too much to hope that Pakistan can emulate such brevity but at least our response to real or imagined challenges could be less windy and extended than they often tend to be.
Why should the Americans attack us when a few statements can so thoroughly unnerve us? We are already talking again – the Americans and us – and let no one say that American pressure, calculated or fortuitous, hasn’t worked. The corps commanders hurriedly called to meet and the pantomime of the APC are reminders less of a nation united than a nation easily jolted.
But more than semantics and the right tools of verbiage we have to put a rein on our strategic theories. The threat to us is from within, from the cumulative consequences of past follies. India is an elephant. Living cheek-by-jowl with an elephant is always a problem. But can we please get out of the calculus of India posing some kind of an existential threat to us? From the realm of dreams and fantasies, and imagined threats, isn’t it time we stepped into the real world?
http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=70104&Cat=9
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(http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/20110930/large-p-1-a.jpg)
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YA:
Your comments in response to my question make sense-- I was simply seeking to make sure that we were being fair and not letting our loathing of Baraq cloud our judgment. I would add the implication that naturally arises from McMullen awaiting his retirement before making his candid comments-- that he was free of consequences from the White House.
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By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
Outside Jalalabad, Afghanistan, 25 years ago this week, an angry young man named Abdul Wahab Quanat recited his prayers, walked onto a farm field near a Soviet airfield, raised a Stinger missile launcher to his shoulder and shot his way into history.
It was the first time since the Soviet invasion seven years earlier that a mujahedeen fighter had destroyed the most feared weapon in the Soviet arsenal, a Hind attack helicopter. The event panicked the Soviet ranks, changed the course of the war and helped to break up the USSR itself.
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A mujahedeen fighter fighter aims a Stinger missile at a passing airplane in 1988.
.Today, Mr. Wahab is general manager of the Afghan central-bank branch near the Khyber Pass, a middle-age man who carries tinted bifocals in his vest pocket and chooses Diet Pepsi over regular. Mr. Wahab and the two other Stinger gunners at the airfield that day—Zalmai and Abdul Ghaffar—have now joined the post-jihad establishment. Mr. Zalmai is sub-governor of Shinwar District, and Mr. Ghaffar is a member of parliament.
They nurse a gauzy nostalgia for the joys of being young jihadists. "Those were good, exciting times," Mr. Wahab says. "Now I'm a banker. It's boring."
The Soviet invasion touched off three decades of violent swings in Afghanistan, from socialism to warlordism to Islamic fundamentalism to today's flawed democracy. Amid this tortured history, the U.S. makes occasional appearances—including its mid-1980s decision to supply the mujahedeen with Stingers—the consequences of which often weren't apparent until much later.
At the time, the Soviets and their Afghan allies were on the offensive, thanks to the Hinds. Heavily armored, the helicopters were indifferent to ground fire as they strafed and rocketed mujahedeen and civilians alike. In 1986, the Reagan administration and its congressional allies put aside qualms about dispatching missile launchers. The move likely contributed to the Soviet withdrawal. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, faced with an imploding domestic economy, was already seeking an exit from a costly war.
There's no straight line from the U.S. move to arm the mujahedeen to 9/11 and the 2001 American invasion, but the decision has echoed through the subsequent decades of turmoil. After Kabul's fall, and with American attention elsewhere, the mujahedeen fell on each other. Messrs. Ghaffar and Zalmai squabbled over money and weapons.
Enlarge Image
CloseMichael M. Phillips for The Wall Street Journal
AAbdul Wahab Quanat shows how he fired the first Stinger missile at a Soviet Hind helicopter 25 years ago.
."I disarmed his men, and he disarmed my men," says Mr. Zalmai. (They have since reconciled, and Mr. Ghaffar's daughter married Mr. Zalmai's nephew.)
The Taliban emerged on top, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency spent years trying to recover 600 unused Stingers, including 53 that found their way to Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader who hosted Osama bin Laden during the 9/11 attacks, according to the book "Ghost Wars" by Steve Coll.
Key figures from that era, including those who received U.S. support, have ended up on the other side. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the ruthless head of the fundamentalist Hezb-e-Islami mujahedeen, provided the Stinger gunmen. Among Mr. Hekmatyar's other backers was bin Laden, who paid Arab militants to fight in the Afghan jihad and in doing so earned the trust of the Taliban.
As Mr. Wahab remembers, the Pakistani officials who were acting as a conduit between the U.S. and the Afghan fighters packed him and nine other Hekmatyar fighters into the back of a truck, covered it in a tarp so they wouldn't see where they were going, and took them to a training camp in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
For a month, they practiced with dummy Stingers aimed at a hanging light. Pakistani officers then handed over real missiles to the eight successful graduates. One team headed to Kabul to shoot down troop-transport planes. The other, headed by Mr. Ghaffar, an engineer by training, was dispatched to go after the Hind helicopters.
As they parted, one Pakistani instructor tearfully called Mr. Wahab a "holy warrior" and reminded him to hit the switch that arms the missile's heat-seeking device. After a two-day walk, the fighters spent the night of Sept. 25 in an abandoned village on the outskirts of Jalalabad. The next afternoon, Mr. Ghaffar and his men knelt down for prayers and then made their way into a farm field, where they spotted about 10 helicopters returning to the airfield.
The best student at Stinger camp, Mr. Wahab took the first shot. The missile made a whirring noise that changed tone as it locked onto a Hind. Mr. Wahab recited a prayer. "In the name of Allah, the supreme and almighty, God is great." He recalls the Hind's tail rotor breaking off, while the front section burst into flames and plummeted to earth, cockpit first.
"I'll never forget that moment," he says now. "Those helicopters had killed so many people, left so many orphans."
Messrs. Ghaffar and Zalmai fired next. Mr. Wahab says neither missile hit a Hind; Mr. Ghaffar's, he says, hit the ground, while Mr. Zalmai forgot the heat-seeker-arming switch.
Mr. Ghaffar remembers one missile hitting a helicopter, but says it could have been either one. Mr. Zalmai says he can't recall for certain but admits he's not a great marksman. (The CIA reported that three helicopters had gone down.)
What is certain is that Mr. Ghaffar then shouldered a spare Stinger and this time sent a Hind crashing to earth. Mr. Wahab recalls mujahedeen cheering when the helicopters went down. Terrified that the Soviets would send tanks after them, the three scampered back to Pakistan.
Mr. Ghaffar dined out on his success for months, meeting with the CIA and having tea in Peshawar with Rep. Charlie Wilson, the late Texas Democrat and relentless champion of the mujahedeen.
The Ghaffar team had proved the Stingers so effective that the CIA sent some 2,300 more. Soon the mujahedeen were shooting down helicopters, transport planes and jets in large numbers. "If we hadn't used them correctly, they probably wouldn't have provided any more Stingers for the Afghan jihad," says Mr. Ghaffar. One Soviet squadron lost 13 of 40 planes in the year that followed, 10 to Stingers. The final Soviet troops retreated from Afghanistan in 1989, and the mujahedeen took Kabul in 1992.
"We wrote history—I miss those days," says Mr. Ghaffar, now 54. A member of parliament, he denies accusations by some locals that he has become a land-grabbing power broker.
Mr. Zalmai, who estimates his age at 50, barely had a beard when he took to the mountains in 1980. He smiles when he remembers blowing the tracks off of Soviet tanks. "I was good at it," he says. He admits that his memories are filtered through the haze of age and two brain-jarring attempts on his life during the current insurgency.
As a local administrator, Mr. Zalmai spends a good deal of time these days complaining that the Americans failed to consult him about plans to raze one government office to build another.
"When you're young, you're emotional about everything," Mr. Zalmai says of his days as a jihadist. "When you're old, everything can be solved by talking."
After the Taliban takeover, Mr. Wahab fled to Pakistan, where he ran a fabric shop. After the Taliban fell, he returned to Afghanistan and landed the central-bank job. Now 49, he supervises commercial banks adjacent to the Khyber Pass, through which mujahedeen weapons and fighters once flowed.
"When I was a mujahedeen on a mountaintop, I'd see the lights of Jalalabad and wish I were there," Mr. Wahab says. "Now when I'm in Jalalabad, I miss being in a stone hideout in the mountains with the mujahedeen."
Mr. Wahab has little patience for today's insurgents. "We had an enemy—the Russians," he says. "These suicide bombers today attack Americans and Muslims. What's the point?"
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Marc: I'm guessing we got a goodly amount of intel out of the raid that killed OBL.
KABUL, Afghanistan – NATO says it has captured a senior leader of the Al Qaeda - and Taliban-allied Haqqani terror network operating inside Afghanistan .
NATO announced on Saturday that the coalition forces seized Haji Mali Khan during an operation in eastern Paktia province, which borders Pakistan. The alliance called it a significant milestone in the fight against the terror group.
NATO identified Khan as an uncle of Siraj and Badruddin Haqqani, two of the son's of the network's aging leader Jalaludin Haqqani. The Pakistan-based network is affiliated to both the Taliban and Al Qaeda and has been described as the most serious security threat in Afghanistan.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/10/01/nato-captures-senior-haqqani-leader-in-afghanistan/#ixzz1ZWseTCOB
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Marc: I'm guessing we got a goodly amount of intel out of the raid that killed OBL.
KABUL, Afghanistan – NATO says it has captured a senior leader of the Al Qaeda - and Taliban-allied Haqqani terror network operating inside Afghanistan .
Wait, did we get a search warrant before we seized that intel? Was Khan arrested with a valid warrant and provided legal representation before questioning? :roll:
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http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N41/pakistan.html (http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N41/pakistan.html)
Opinion: Turning to the Haqqanis, Pakistan has made its choice
The ISI’s ties to an insurgent network undermine any hope of real cooperation with the US
By Keith Yost
STAFF COLUMNIST
September 30, 2011
It’s difficult for me to add more than what I’ve already written in “While Karachi Slowly Burns” (Sept. 10, 2010), or “Mission Accomplished” (May 6, 2011). Pakistan is a state with a major security problem — India — and two mutually-exclusive strategies to deal with that problem: a stable security partnership with the United States, or an increasing reliance on jihadi proxies. The former is a realistic path, as Pakistan and the United States have considerable mutual interests, while the latter is a monumental blunder, built on the quixotic notion that terrorists and guerrillas can somehow bleed India down to parity despite its seven to one advantage in men and materiel.
We have long hoped that Pakistan would choose America, not terrorists, as the guarantors of its security, but that hope has been in vain. Now, Admiral Mullen, Pakistan’s greatest remaining booster in the U.S. foreign policy establishment, has delivered what amounts to an ultimatum: either Pakistan severs its connection with the militant groups that are attacking NATO forces in Afghanistan, or America will sever its connection with Pakistan. The Pakistanis have refused to abandon the Haqqanis, and so the die is cast. The dissolution of the relationship between the United States and Pakistan is a fait accompli; it is inconceivable that the U.S. Congress will renew billions of dollars of aid for a country that is actively (and now publicly) engaged in the killing of U.S. troops.
The decision by the Obama administration to deliver the ultimatum to our nominal ally is not without its downsides. Our counter-terrorism efforts, as well as our war-fighting in Afghanistan, rely a great deal on Pakistan’s cooperation. However, in the long run, given Pakistan’s behavior, long-term U.S. interests in South and Central Asia are best served by a realignment toward India. The Obama administration deserves praise for its execution of this realignment. Years have been spent carefully setting the stage, giving the Pakistanis every opportunity to edge themselves back from their suicidal geopolitical strategy while simultaneously testing the waters of a U.S-India partnership. And the choice of timing is impeccable: U.S. forces in Afghanistan are higher than they have ever been before, giving the U.S. its maximal leverage against Pakistan, but the president’s political capital to remove those forces is also at its zenith, which undercuts Pakistan’s main source of leverage over the U.S. — namely, its supply routes to Afghanistan.
It is important that Obama (or the next president of the United States) appreciates the gravity and finality implicit in Pakistan’s rebuff of Mullen’s ultimatum. Already, some pundits are selling the cutesy notion of the U.S. being “frenemies” with Pakistan, as if international relations followed a script out of some Hollywood high school drama. But there is no intermediate status between friends and enemies to be found here — as the U.S. withdraws its support from Pakistan, Pakistan will compensate for this loss by relying even more strongly on militant groups like the Haqqanis to provide for its national security. The break-up, once initiated, can only accelerate.
In the long run, the U.S. playbook on Pakistan should grow to resemble that of India’s. The way to neuter an enemy is to carve them up into multiple states — such was Germany’s treatment by the allies after World War II, as well as the Soviet Union’s fate after its fall. India has already cut Pakistan in half, dividing it between modern Pakistan and Bangladesh. It seeks to do so again, exploiting the ethnic fault lines in Pakistani society to carve it up even further. With its parting shots in Afghanistan, the U.S. should use its military might to aid in this strategy. In its least extreme form, this strategy might merely ensure that Baloch-dominated provinces within Afghanistan retain a high degree of autonomy from the Afghan federal government. In its most extreme form, the U.S. could funnel arms to Baloch nationalists in southern Pakistan or take direct action in support of a free Balochistan. Where the U.S. should fall on this spectrum of policy choices is open to debate — what must be avoided is the naive optimism that Pakistan will have a Damascene moment and suddenly become the ally that the U.S. requires. Now is the time to restructure Afghanistan in the way that makes Pakistan weakest, not to dither in a nonexistent middle ground.
History will look upon Pakistan’s embrace of jihadists as one of the greatest geopolitical missteps of the 21st century. To prevent itself from appearing with Pakistan in history’s list of blunderers, the U.S. must make its break with Pakistan a decisive one and resist the urge to force nuance into a situation that deserves none.
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-02/rabbani-killer-was-pakistani3a-karzai/3206138?section=world (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-02/rabbani-killer-was-pakistani3a-karzai/3206138?section=world)
ISI has been implicated...
Afghan president Hamid Karzai says a Pakistani was responsible for last month's assassination of former president and High Peace Council chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Mr Karzai released a statement blaming an insurgent from Pakistan for the murder of Professor Rabbani as he reviewed Afghanistan's peace process.
It added that the death was plotted in Quetta and the killer had been living in Chaman, a Pakistani border town near Quetta.
The statement also quoted investigators as saying: "Documents and evidence together with the biography, address and phone numbers of suspects involved in the incident have been submitted to the government of Pakistan in order to arrest and hand them [other suspects] over."
Many Afghans are suspicious of Pakistan's connections to the Taliban-led insurgency in their country but the statement was the strongest yet to suggest a Pakistani link to Professor Rabbani's killing.
Professor Rabbani, chairman of Mr Karzai's High Peace Council, was killed by a turban suicide bomber at his home in Kabul on September 20.
He had thought that he was meeting a representative carrying a special message from the Taliban.
The statement came hours after Mr Karzai was reviewing his strategy for peace with the Taliban in the wake of Professor Rabbani's killing.
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With Baraq backpeddalling about Mullen's testimony...
http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=385235&catid=37 (http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=385235&catid=37)
Gilani claims 'victory' in stand-off with USA
2 October 2011
Press Trust of India
ISLAMABAD, 2 OCT: Prime Minister Mr Yousuf Raza Gilani has claimed “victory” in the recent stand-off with the USA, saying he has received a message from Washington that America needs Pakistan's support to win the war on terror.
Mr Gilani made the remarks while addressing a gathering in Bili Wala near his hometown of Multan in Punjab province yesterday, amidst tensions between Islamabad and Washington over ISI-Haqqani network links.
“It is due to the all parties' conference as well as the unity of Pakistan's political leaders that the USA has sent a message that they need Pakistan and that they cannot win the war (against terrorism) without Pakistan,” he said.
“They have also distanced themselves from the statement of (former US military chief Admiral Mike) Mullen. This is the victory of the Pakistani nation, political parties and the government's policy of reconciliation,” he said.
He did not say when the message was conveyed to Pakistan.
The successful holding of the meeting of all political parties on Thursday was testimony to the fact that the people are united on the issue of Pakistan's security and defence, he remarked.
“We will never allow anyone to harbour bad thoughts about Pakistan's security. We do not desire war and want peace in the country and beyond. Pakistan can play an important role in peace and we will do it,” Mr Gilani said.
Pakistan is ready to hold talks with everyone for peace and can go to any extent to achieve this objective, he said.
“All the country's political forces stand shoulder to shoulder for Pakistan's security interests,” he said. Pakistan-US ties had plunged to a fresh low after Mullen accused the ISI of backing the Haqqani network in carrying out terror attacks in Afghanistan.
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Life is cheap, electricity is expensive.. :-D
'Good' Taliban leader threatens suicide attacks against electric company
By BILL ROGGIOOctober 5, 2011 8:20 AM
A so-called "good Taliban" leader in North Waziristan threatened to carry out suicide attacks against two officials from Pakistan's Tribal Electric Supply Company if the utility does not turn the power back on in the tribal agency. The report, from The News, is republished in full below:
A senior Taliban commander and administrator of a religious seminary in North Waziristan, Maulana Abdul Khaliq Haqqani, on Monday threatened to send suicide bombers to eliminate two officials of the Tribal Electric Supply Company (Tesco) if they did not restore power supply to Waziristan within 48 hours.
The Taliban leader issued a strong-worded statement to media against the Tesco officials and also warned tribal journalists of dire consequences if his statement did not appear in their respective papers.
Maulana Abdul Khaliq Haqqani, the administrator of Gulshan-e-Ilm Madrassa in Miramshah, directed his fighters to kidnap the two officials, Tesco regional chief Pervaiz Khan and Executive Engineer Jamshed Ali Khan, and bring them to North Waziristan where they would be given exemplary punishment for their failure to ensure power supply to Waziristan.
He directed the Taliban of Darra Adamkhel and Mohmand Agency, led by Commander Tariq Afridi and Maulvi Omar Khalid, respectively, to kidnap the two senior Tesco officials.
Taliban operating in Darra Adamkhel and Mohmand Agency are known for their brutality and ruthlessness among their fellow tribal militants.
Haqqani said he would then send his suicide bombers to eliminate them if they did not restore power supply to the tribal region.
He said he had obtained complete details and addresses of the two officials and his fighters would soon target them there.
I would give cash rewards to my fighters if they kill Pervaiz Khan and Jamshed Ali Khan in front of their house and I will claim responsibility for their killings, the Taliban commander said in the statement that he personally delivered to reporters here, with a warning of serious consequences if his statement was not given space in the newspapers.
Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2011/10/good_taliban_leader_threatens.php#ixzz1ZxipMLOC
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2011 STRATFOR.COM Diary Archives
U.S. Makes Complex Moves in Afghanistan
In an interview with Reuters published Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States was open to the idea of a peace agreement with the Afghan Taliban movement that involved the controversial Haqqani network – the subset of the Afghan jihadist movement active in eastern Afghanistan. In response to a question about whether the Haqqanis constituted reconcilable elements of the Taliban, Clinton said the United States views the Haqqanis and others of their ilk as being adversaries and very dangerous to Americans, Afghans and coalition members inside Afghanistan. However, Clinton said Washington will not shut the door on trying to determine whether there is some path forward.
“The United States realizes that it needs Pakistani assistance to reach a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan, and any settlement will involve talking to the Haqqanis.”
These are extraordinary comments. It was only a few weeks ago that U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen accused Pakistan’s foreign intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, of officially supporting the Haqqani network (as it is popularly referred to), including its targeting of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Sept 13. Those remarks led to a spike in tensions between the United States and Pakistan.
Clinton’s statement is markedly different from the ones that have been coming from U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration. Obama himself, less than a week ago, warned Islamabad that if it continued to have relations with anti-American militants in Afghanistan, it was jeopardizing long-term relations with Washington. Today, however, Clinton said that the United States had no choice but to work with Pakistan in its efforts to resolve the problems of Afghanistan.
Why is the Obama administration slowly opening up to the idea of talking to the Haqqanis via Pakistan? The answer has to do with the fact that the United States realizes that it needs Pakistani assistance to reach a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan and any settlement will involve talking to the Haqqanis. Clinton’s comments highlighting the complexity of U.S. dealings with the Haqqanis stems from the fact that the United States does not want to engage from a position of relative weakness.
Additionally, Clinton reiterated that U.S. forces in Afghanistan are still actively trying to kill, capture or neutralize Haqqani militants, adding that the Haqqanis are still trying to attack as many American, Afghans and coalition members as they can. She said an ongoing conflict will have many instances of combatants trying to fight while also looking to talk. Clinton added that the progression involves combatants both fighting and talking, then perhaps agreeing to a ceasefire and just talking. Her remarks come after Haqqani network leader Siraj Haqqani said Sept. 17 that he was prepared for talks. They also follow a report published in The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 5 that said Pakistan’s ISI mediated talks between the Haqqanis and U.S. officials.
In circumstances where one side is unable or unwilling to impose a military reality on its adversary, it must either withdrawal unilaterally or try to seek a negotiated settlement. The decision to seek or explore a settlement does not itself end the fighting on the ground — considerable negotiations must take place to reach a ceasefire. During these discussions, the fighting continues on the ground as each side attempts to press its advantage both to improve its negotiating position and leverage but also to ensure that if talks break down, it does not cede any ground on the battlefield.
Afghanistan is no exception to this rule but the situation there is much more complex given the fact that the Afghan insurgent landscape comprises a number of different stakeholders. Added to this mix is Pakistan and its regional interests and those state and non-state actors who oppose the Talibs and their Pakistani supporters.
Therefore, the United States has no choice but to engage in a complex set of moves that may appear contradictory but are probably sincere attempts to navigate a complicated situation.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/war-zones/pakistan-leans-toward-talks-with-taliban/2011/10/14/gIQAq3PjpL_story.html
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Pakistan is a state with a major security problem — India — and two mutually-exclusive strategies to deal with that problem: a stable security partnership with the United States, or an increasing reliance on jihadi proxies.
Why is reaching out to China not a viable option?
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Pakistan is a state with a major security problem — India — and two mutually-exclusive strategies to deal with that problem: a stable security partnership with the United States, or an increasing reliance on jihadi proxies.
Why is reaching out to China not a viable option?
What sort of outreach/deal would you suggest?
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Pakistan is a state with a major security problem — India — and two mutually-exclusive strategies to deal with that problem: a stable security partnership with the United States, or an increasing reliance on jihadi proxies.
Why is reaching out to China not a viable option?
What sort of outreach/deal would you suggest?
I'm not suggesting anything.
Pakistan has seemingly been cozying up to the Chinese as of late. China would certainly seem to have an interest in having Pakistani ports available to them. China and India are not buddies.
I don't see Pakistan as exclusively having a USA or jihadist security enhancement choice.
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No, Pakistan has been using China as a counterweight to us. Nothing new there. As I recall, we funned money to the ISI in the 70's/80's that was used to buy Chinese weapons and PLA military advisors to train the Afghan mujhadeen to kill Soviets. Amongst the other interesting things done in our semi-covert proxy war at that time....
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The pakis characterize chinese friendship as "deeper than oceans and higher than mountains". The Chinese are however quite smart and keep the pakis at a distance. I remember reading somewhere that they are now India's largest trading partner (overtaken the US) with further increases in trade every year. The Chinese are not going to jeopardize that for Pak.
Unlike the US, the Chinese dont believe in providing the pakis with free $$. All their projects go to Chinese companies, who then install eg power stations, build railways, tunnels etc. So the money indirectly comes back to the Chinese in a significant way. Just as pak extorts protection money from the western world and India, it does the same from the chinese (muslim separatists). Pak providing the Chinese access to Gwadar port is meaningless because the security of transit of goods to China cannot be ensured.
China supports Pak, so that India is kept bleeding, but nothing serious. All this Chinese support of Pak has resulted in India strengthning its airforce, military and navy. China has the next year or two to attack India, but after that the window closes as India's military is modernizing quite rapidly.
Furthermore, if Pak is adopted by the Chinese, the result will be to drive India into US arms, something the Chinese fear.
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That includes some variables which had not occurred to me and seems quite sound.
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The Haqqani Factor in a Post-Withdrawal Settlement
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Oct. 12 that the United States would be willing to include the Haqqani network in a peace deal defining Afghanistan’s political arrangement following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country. Clinton made the statement in an interview with Reuters, marking the first explicit official acknowledgement that the United States is open to the Haqqanis’ becoming party to an eventual settlement.
The Haqqani network is one of the most powerful militant factions in the country (and one the United States had previously described as “irreconcilable,”) and cannot be ignored in any deal if the agreement is to last. The announcement by Clinton, therefore, acknowledges what STRATFOR already believed to be a reality. However, the timing of the announcement is important, as it comes amid an intensified coalition offensive against the militant group. The United States and its allies are attempting to erode the Haqqani network’s eventual negotiating position in peace talks by taking out some of the organization’s significant leaders. Though this has increased violence in the short term, it may limit the militant group’s ability to extract concessions from the coalition and the Afghan government during negotiations.
In early July, as he was preparing to leave his post as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus announced the war effort would be moving farther east, and on July 31, then-U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen emphasized the need to crack down on the Haqqani network by preventing the flow of militants from Pakistan through Khost province and into Kabul. The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) appears to have since moved to do both.
In the last several weeks, U.S. and allied forces have captured or killed a number of Haqqani operatives that Washington claims were high-ranking members of the organization. Haji Mali Khan, one of the highest ranking members of the group and the uncle of Haqqani network leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, was captured Sept. 27 in Jani Khel, Paktia province, along with his bodyguard and deputy. One week after his capture, a militant known only by the name Dilawar, who served as a principal subordinate to Khan, was killed in an airstrike in Musa Khel, Khost province. On Oct. 13, NATO claimed to have killed four militants, including Jan Baz Zadran aka Jalil Khan, a logistical and financial coordinator as well as a top aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani, in an unmanned aerial vehicle strike outside Miran Shah. And on Oct. 14, a strike on a car near Miran Shah resulted in the deaths of four militants connected to the Haqqani network — including one Egyptian who allegedly played a key role in financing the group.
(click here to enlarge image)
The aggressive campaign against Haqqani leadership coincides with the Oct. 16 shift of hundreds of U.S. troops, helicopters and heavy arms to the area in eastern Khost province, bordering Pakistan’s North Waziristan province, where the Haqqani network is based and where Petraeus earlier suggested the war effort would increase its focus. U.S. and Afghan troops have enforced a curfew in the border area and cut off some cross-border movement, according to reports, but NATO otherwise has not made clear the aims of this deployment or its expected duration. It may however be connected to the recent increase in pressure on the Haqqani network.
Clinton’s statement on the willingness to include the Haqqanis in a peace settlement must be viewed in the context of these recent claimed gains by NATO against the Haqqani network. Senior Pakistani military officers as recently as Aug. 18 said they could bring the Haqqanis to the negotiating table, though Sirajuddin Haqqani said Sept. 17 that his group would only participate if the Taliban also agreed to talks. Discussions between the United States and the Taliban are well known to be taking place, so Clinton’s comments could indicate that the U.S. government no longer views the Haqqani network as irreconcilable.
Given the Haqqani network’s influence, the group’s eventual involvement is necessary to reach a practicable power-sharing agreement. The offensive against the group is intended to grind away at its capabilities and reduce the threat it can pose — and thus its leverage in negotiations if and when the Haqqani network begins participating.
The United States is currently trying to address its interest to include in peace negotiations a group it recognizes will play a role in post-withdrawal Afghanistan, while avoiding the appearance of easing up on an entity it holds responsible for several attacks on U.S. and coalition forces. If the killed and captured Haqqani militants were as operationally significant as purported, the tactic may have the intended effect of not only giving the United States an edge in negotiations, but creating a possible leadership vacuum in the Haqqani network — a goal that ISAF forces have pursued from the start.
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http://pak-watch.blogspot.com/2011/10/us-pakistan-conundrum.html (http://pak-watch.blogspot.com/2011/10/us-pakistan-conundrum.html)
An excellent if longish post on the US-Pak history/relationship.
The US-Pakistan Conundrum
A conundrum is a paradoxical, insoluble or a difficult problem, a dilemma. The relationship that the US has had with Pakistan for sixty years now fits that description perfectly like a T. When the arch-enemy, the Indian Government, paradoxically said on October 20 that the US and Pakistan must heal their rift, it spoke volumes of how much that relationship has deteriorated. That also reminded one that the wheel had come a full circle since the mid 1950s. Today, there is talk of the US sending its soldiers inside Pakistan to take the fight into the den of the terrorists. Ms. Clinton has openly said in Kabul that it would happen if needed. She has backed-up her threat by amassing troops across the border in Afghanistan. In Pakistan itself, she said, "you cannot keep snakes in your backyard and expect they will only bite the neighbours". She has also demanded that Pakistan take action “not [in] months and years, but days and weeks", thus setting a deadline which has hitherto not been the case. In turn, Gen. Kayani threatens the US with nuclear weapons and warns the US that it should think ten times before making any such decision. For his part, the Pakistani Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar warns the US of 'Pakistani patience with the US running out' ! Whether these are the usual Pakistani bluster to appear brave before the masses or not will be known shortly.
Leading think-tanks and strategic analysts in the US have asked their President to freeze aid to Pakistan and to recognize the fact that the obstacle to peace in the region is indeed Pakistan. The continuing and intensifying war of words between the two countries mean only one thing. A flurry of meetings in the last one year between military and political head honchos of both the countries has been unable to narrow, let alone seal, the rift. On the other hand, the rift has only widened further this year due to incidents such as Raymond Davis, Osama bin Laden, revelation of identities of CIA station chiefs in Pakistan, assassination of Rabbani, Kabul embassy attack, Wardak Chinook attack, proof of collusion between the ISI and Haqqani, tipping off the Taliban engaged in bomb-making activities after receiving intelligence from the US etc. Even a very indulgent US - indulgent towards Pakistan, that is - has been forced to take a serious note of these developments. Why should there be such a downturn in their relationship ? After all, the US military and economic aid to Pakistan since the 1950s is mind-boggling. Let us look at the quantum of this aid to realize what we are talking about.
Pakistan’s sole obsession from Aug. 14, 1947 has been India. With this in mind, Pakistan approached the US for arms support as early as October, 1947, but the Truman administration already weighed down by developments in Europe and Korea could not accede to the request. In May 1950 during the state visit by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan to the US, the request was revived. In the late 40s and during the 50s, it was the expedience of preventing the scourge of communism from spreading that prompted the Baghdad Pact (later to become SEATO in c. 1954) and CENTO (signed in c. 1955)to be formulated. Pakistan was a member of both and also had a special "Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement" with the Eisenhower administration in the US in 1954. It was, inter alia, to "preserve and maintain the integrity of Pakistan" and agreed to take "appropriate action, including the use of armed forces, as may be mutually agreed upon . . . in order to assist the Government of Pakistan at its request.". While the US was led to believe that that clause was needed with Communism knocking at the doors of Pakistan from Sinkiang (Xinjiang) in the East and a weak and troubled Afghanistan in the West, Pakistan's calculus was to use this friendship in its fight against India. The US ambassador to Pakistan, James Langley, said in c. 1957, “The present military program is a hoax, the hoax being that it is related to the Soviet threat”. As India feared, the arms were indeed used against India and there was no single occassion to use them against the Communists. Similarly, Pakistan never helped the US in its anti-Communism drive. When Gen. McArthur demanded a brigade of Pakistani troops to be deployed in Korea under the US command after the Armistice was signed there, Pakistan cleverly avoided that.
India deeply resented this arrangement and the US spurned India’s justified concerns through subterfuge and diplomatese. Gen. Ayub Khan wanted to completely equip the existing five-and-a-half Divisions of the Pakistani Army with modern US weapons and looked up to a largesse from the US for the same. He also wanted to add more strength by recruiting an additional 56000 soldiers, comprising of an additional Infantry division, a new para Brigade, conversion of the Independent Armoured Brigade into a Division. During the period between c. 1954 and 1965, the US completely equipped the five-and-a-half divisions of Pakistani Army besides gifting it with six squadrons of fighter aircraft, twelve ships to the Pakistani Navy, modernization of Karachi and Chittagong ports, and technical support and training for the Pakistani armed forces. In the 60s, the US gifted Pakistan with the then state-of-the-art M-47/M-48 Patton tanks, F-104 Starfighters, B-57 bombers, and F-86 Sabre fighters (about a hundred and later augmented by another 70 received through West Germany over a token US objection and flown in via Iran), long-distance radars, helicopters, frigates and the submarine Ghazi. Emboldened, Pakistan immediately attacked India in c. 1965. Thirty four years later, the same Pakistani-US scenario played all over again in Kargil, when arms that were supplied to Pakistan under the garb of fighting terror on Pakistan’s western front were used against India instead.
The same US-Pakistan supply-demand scenario re-appeared after 9/11 when the US entered into a new defence relationship with Pakistan by designating that country as a ‘Major Non-NATO Ally’ (MNNA) in c. 2004. Under this rubric, it then supplied arms to Pakistan ostensibly to fight the Taliban/Al Qaeda terrorists who were operating out of mud houses and caves in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. This was so even in circa 2008 by which time the US-Pakistan co-operation in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) steam had run out and the US was attacking inside Pakistan at will. Only this time, most of the kind of arms supplied were not usable against these terrorists. These were items like 250 Armour piercing TOW 2A Anti-tank missiles, Excalibur Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs), eight Aerostat radars, six AN-TPS77 surveillance radar, 5600 military radio sets, 500 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, 200 AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles, 36 F-16 Block 52s, mid-life upgrade to 34 existing F-16 A/Bs to C/D block 50/52, 8 P-3C maritime reconnaissance aircraft, mid-life upgrade to existing P-3 fleet, modernization of the Shahbaz Airbase (Jacobabad), 26 Bell 412 helicopters, 39 T-37 military trainer jets, 150 submarine/surface/air launched Harpoon Block II missiles, six Phalanx Close In Weapon Systems (CIWS) for the Navy, five refurbished SH-2I Super Seasprite maritime helicopters etc. The US is also to provide Pakistan with three additional P-3 aircraft that will be configured with the E-2C HAWKEYE airborne early warning electronics suite. Later, in c. 2009, the US complained that its P-3C and Harpoon missiles have been converted for attacking India. Since the start of Afghan operations in c. 2002, the US had supplied other arms like 115 155mm Self-propelled M109A5 howitzers, 20 AH-1 Cobra Attack helicopters, upgrades to existing older versions of AH-1 Cobras, 6 C-130Hs, transfer of 8 Perry-class guided missile Frigates upgraded with anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability, five fast patrol boats, 450 vehicles for Frontier Corps, hundreds of NVGs, thousands of protective vests, 12 Shadow drones, Harris high frequency communication sets, and undisclosed special weapons. In c. 2010, it gave Pakistan 18 new F-16 aircraft which the US Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jeffry Glenn said “would give the Pakistan Air Force greatly expanded capabilities in its fight against ‘radical elements’ in the border region.” The US also delivered 1,000 MK-82 500-pound bombs to Pakistan which were later outfitted with 700 GBU-12 and 300 GBU-10 Paveway laser-guided bomb kits built by Lockheed and Raytheon, allowing the country’s air force a better targeting of the weapons. In addition, the International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme had been revived after c. 2002, and significant number of officers from Pakistan Army have attended these programmes. “We must continue to reassure Pakistan that as it combats the terrorist threat, it is not exposing itself to increased risk along its eastern border,” said Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Michele Flournoy while explaining why the United States needed to strengthen Islamabad’s conventional defence systems as well. “Although extremist attacks have led to the repositioning of substantial Pakistani forces, Pakistan’s strategic concerns about India remain pre-eminent”. The import of these statements was revealed by an exposed cable by the WikiLeaks wherein the US Ambassador in Pakistan, Ms. Anne W Patterson justified another USD 1.5 Billion to Pakistan to provide for its ‘national defense’ against the ‘threat from India’. In October 2010, the US decided to grant USD 2 Billion worth of arms to Pakistan, spread over a five year period.
The economic aid is equally mind-boggling. Even at the official level, the US-Pakistan relationship is contingent upon the massive aid that the Pakistanis have received ever since Eisenhower decided to establish a close relationship with that country. In the period between circa 1954 and 2002, the US had provided Pakistan with overt aid amounting to USD 12.6 Billion. In the period after 9/11, between circa 2002 and 2007, the US aid was over 9 Billion USD (USD 4.586 billion as reimbursement for assistance to Op Enduring Freedom (launched Oct. 7, 2001) and USD 4.422 Billion as economic and military assistance). The Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act (or PEACE Act, 2009 or Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement Act or also known as Enhanced Partnership Act 2009), assured USD 1.5 Billion of economic aid every year for five years. All these are in addition to the Direct Military Aid from the Pentagon which is on top of the equipment that Pakistan receives through normal foreign military sales (FMS) overseen by the State Department. Those sales vary year to year but generally total around $300 million annually. A special counterinsurgency fund approved by Congress earlier in c. 2009 gave the Pentagon the authorisation to speedily deliver military equipment to the Pakistan Army. In addition, Pakistan gets reimbursed annually USD 1.6 Billion for the logistical and military support it provides to the US (the Coalition Support Fund). The US also offers Pakistan annually another aid of USD 700 million to fight Al Qaeda and Taliban on its soil (the Counter Insurgency Capability Fund). It later emerged that all these funds were misused by the Government of Pakistan. Besides these two funding options, the US offers a series of other funds: Foreign Military Financing (FMF), International Military Education and Training (IMET), International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement, Non-proliferation Anti-Terrorism, De-mining & Related. The US uses the FMF to maintain close contacts with the Pakistani military and as a ‘foundation for bilateral security relationship’. After 26/11, the US decided to increase its FMF assistance to Pakistan to USD 400 Million a year for five more years. This was expected to demonstrate the US commitment to Pakistan and affirm its reliability as a partner. This was also expected to address, among other security needs, its “growing conventional disadvantage vis-à-vis India,” in order to secure its cooperation in the “war on terror.” ‘ Pakistan also owes the various lending organizations directly controlled by the US such as IMF, IBRD, ADB etc. over 20 Billion US Dollars. Overall, by 2006, Pakistan’s foreign debts had declined from US$ 47.8 Billion to US$ 30.3 Billion, solely due to US waivers and other interventions. Only in c. 2009, did the Americans attach stringent conditionalities on how these funds were to be spent by Pakistan. One of the conditions was to make sure that the funds were not squandered or diverted to affect the “balance of power in the region”. In any case, the total US overt aid to Pakistan in c. 2010 amounted to well over USD 4.5 Billion.The quantum of the covert aid is unknown.
Apart from military and economic aid, the political and diplomatic support given by the US to Pakistan has been phenomenal. The US took a hostile stand against India in the J&K issue in the United Nations. Later, the US extended a similar support to Pakistan's policies with respect to Afghanistan after the 1989 Geneva Accord. The US also turned a blind eye to Pakistan's overt and covert support to jihadi terrorists against India. In fact, the US even helped Pakistani terrorism against India in the Punjab when its Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) helped these terrorists. The US has also baled out Pakistan from tight spots it brought upon itself in pursuit of its truculent and obstreperous hostility with India, such as in Kargil or Op. Parakram or the 1993 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, for example. Above all these, the US allowed Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons and their delivery platforms through China and North Korea and allowed Pakistani scientists and engineers to shop for critical dual-use components all over Europe and the US, by turning a blind eye and even lying to its own Congress much against accumulated intelligence. This single act, more than anything else, has been a monumental folly of the US Administrations. Ms. Clinton's reference yesterday in Islamabad to 'snakes in the backyard', while true for Pakistan, is also therefore true for the US because the very same Pakistan that it nurtured with tactical brilliance and strategic stupidity is now threatening the US with nuclear attacks !
No other nation has given so much aid to Pakistan keeping its head bob over the swirling waters without drowning, for six decades now. Not even their extremely wealthy ummah brethren, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The 'taller-than-the-tallest mountain, sweeter-than-the-sweetest-honey and deeper-than-the-deepest-ocean all weather friend' China does not dispense with hard cash and helps Pakistan only on a project-by-project basis and when that would be beneficial to it also. And, yet, Pakistan has been singularly ungrateful to the US. It was petulant when the US decided to offer a moderate amount of military aid to India after the Chinese aggression in c. 1962. It abused the US when the US decided to cut-off military aid to Pakistan [and India too] in c. 1965 after war broke out between the two countries following Pakistani aggression. The mobs attacked the US consulates in Karachi and Lahore as a result of state orchestrated campaign against the perceived US betrayal. The US Embassy in Islamabad was burned down in November 1979 on a mere rumour of US forces occupying Makkah even as Gen. Zia-ul-Haq deliberately delayed rushing any assistance to the trapped Americans inside. He also accused the Americans themselves by saying, "according to some international radio transmissions, the Americans had inspired the attack" !
A discussion of Pakistan is utterly incomplete without talking about India because of the equation that Pakistan had unsuccessfully sought to make with its 'motherland' after the partition and the paranoia about India that the Pakistani establishment has successfully created in the minds of Pakistanis and until recently in Western minds as well. That obsession with India alone can explain the 'ungratefulness' of the whole nation of Pakistan to the US after receiving so much aid and support spread over six decades. The US, after its WW II success, has followed the 'with us or against us' policy ruthlessly. It has also always acted according to the inputs of the UK in matters pertaining to the Indian subcontinent assuming that the British knew the best about this region. A major reason for that was Sir Olaf Kirkpatrick Caroe who was the Governor of NWFP and later the last foreign secretary of the British Raj. He was very hostile to the Congress government in NWFP and reportedly organized the opposition to Nehru when he visited there and ensured NWFP’s joining with Pakistan. Olaf Caroe told the Americans in the 1950s that the operations in Mesopotamia (Iraq) in WW I and in Iran in WW II were made possible from bases in Imperial India and with the independence of India he suggested replacing Imperial India with Pakistan. The British really expected India to fragment and so needed a stable country to thwart the southward expansion of communism and protect the oilfields of the Middle East. Francis Tucker, the last General Officer-Commanding of the British Indian Eastern Command, believed that the creation “of a new Muslim power supported by the science of Britain” would “place Islam between Russian Communism and Hindustan.” Hinduism was thought too weak because of its “superstition and formalism” and therefore an easy prey to a "philosophy such as Communism”. It was therefore deemed necessary by the British to place “Islam between Russian Communism and Hindustan”. They also needed a fuelling/transit point for flights to Far East. The British also had little faith that Indian leaders will accept the British hegemony after Independence whereas a Pakistan created with the goodwill of the British, will remain grateful to them. They also wanted to protect the ‘wells of power’ as Sir Olaf Caroe called the discovery of oil in the Middle East.
Thus, the Great Game was continued by the USA which promptly co-opted a more than willing Pakistan into various defence treaties by c. 1955. India, which refused to be drawn into superpower politics and wished to remain non-aligned with either power block, was alarmed by the axis of Pakistan and the USA and sought to restore the balance by seeking and getting help from the USSR even though it neither subscribed to Communism nor it joined the Soviet-bloc of countries. India's non-alignment was characterized as 'immoral' by Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles of the Eisenhower administration. This perception continued throughout the Cold War and was accentuated by India's counter moves to court the Soviet Union to balance the deep nexus US-Pakistan. Also, Nehru’s attempts at forging third world solidarity and his unmasked revulsion of the United States added fuel to the American (f)ire. Nehru declared in c. 1960, “The future destiny of the world cannot be decided by two or three great powers. We stand looking at the crest of tremendous changes in the world. We are not mere onlookers there. We are actors in this drama and we propose to be actors in it in our own way”. In addition to all these factors, two more important factors helped shape the US policies in the region: cultural and religious. The Indians were characterized as 'effeminate Hindus' while the Pakistanis were thought of as belonging to 'martial race' and fiercely passionate about their religion.
One can easily see therefore that the alliance between Pakistan and the US was flawed right from the beginning because there was never a convergence of fundamental strategic interest between the two nations; it was based on a faded Imperial power's spurious visions for itself; it was transactional because the exigencies of situations demanded that and when these exigencies disappeared the US-Pakistan relationship also quickly fell apart only to be revived all over again when the next situation arose; Pakistan always wanted the US-Pakistan relationship to be directed against India as a zero-sum game which a superpower could not accede to against a large democracy and a powerful country like India.
If only the US would do two things now, Pakistan would immediately put its relationship with the US back on the rail. They are, accord primacy to Pakistan in evolving a solution to the Afghanistan issue accepting it unquestioningly, and curtail Indian involvement in Afghanistan drastically, nil if possible.
Posted by Pak-Watch at 8:18 PM
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Post by V.Sood, ex Chief of India's spy agency.
The Nature of Our Neighbour
One was reasonably sure many years ago that Osama was hiding in Pakistan, most probably in the Abbottabad area. Pakistan authorities, however, consistently denied Osama's presence in their country.
But, as it embarrassingly turned out, Osama was living with his family, along with an entire terrorist and communication paraphernalia. This was despite the country's ubiquitous intelligence machinery with its close contacts with the terrorist underworld.
If Islamabad did not know, then its is clear that the terrorists there are running out of control. If Islamabad did know, then it obviously chose not to disclose the information and assist the US in its effort against terrorism. This was either a strategic decision of the rulers for use of assets later, or a tactical decision to keep the ultra radicals at bay. Both underscore a natural desire to play the terror card.
House of terror: Pakistan authorities had repeatedly denied Osama's
presence in their country, even as he lived a short distance away from
the country's capital.
Pakistan is to try Dr Afridi, who is suspected to have given information to the US, which led to the famous SEAL assault on May 2 and the subsequent death of Osama. Is it treason to help the US find the world's most wanted terrorist? It was rather a service that he did to the US and the world. Yet, the attitude is that not helping the US find Osama was an act of supreme loyalty by the ISI and the Pakistan Army.
These are unfortunate directions Pakistan is taking, egged on by an increasingly intolerant section that is strident, violent, and at times vicious. Just looking at photographs of thousands of Islamists protesting against the sentencing of Salman Taseer's killer, juxtaposed with the news that 13 innocent Shias were taken off a bus, lined and killed in cold blood by Sunni radicals, has a chilling effect. It is not that radicalism spreads in one massive tsunami. It creeps in slowly and all it takes is a few good men to keep quiet for the virus to spread. It happens when a small child is accused of blasphemy for misspelling, when Ahmedi children are banned from attending school, or when religious laws that discriminate against women are espoused.
Why is it that Pakistan chooses to behave in a manner that has made it an international pariah with a broken economy and a rundown social structure that can't give its young the gift of modern education, but subjects them to the medieval obscurantism of many madrassas? Soon after its birth, Pakistan was naturally anxious to make its formation a success. Its mistake was to perennially seek equality with India. Since then it has boxed above its weight. It decided to play its locational card with the West. It offered its territory for US Cold War objectives, then for the Afghan jihad and then again, ostensibly against terrorism. Pakistan's leaders also learnt that delinquency could be rewarding, so they either played the victim or spread terror, assured protection by the country's status as a nuclear power.
The West, especially the US has continued its policy of coddling Pakistan. What were considered startling accusations by the outgoing American Chief of Joint Staff Admiral Mullen 10 days ago, are already being watered down. True, there are many Pakistani men and women who shudder at the direction their country is taking. It is also true that there are far more in Pakistan who believe in the ideology of the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba that promises ultimate and global Islamic dominance.
The only thing they dislike is violence against Pakistanis. The main worry in India is not that Pakistan will use the nuclear bomb; the main worry is that it will continue to use militias like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba as a veritable arm of the Pakistan Army whose own motto is 'jihad f'isb illah' (jihad in the name of Allah). Our fear should be that hordes of militant believers could be let loose by their mentors. If a country's rulers can be duplicitous with their benefactor there is very little reason to believe they will not do likewise or worse with their 'sworn enemy'.
The writer is former chief of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)
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Here's a solution to pak (that I have proposed earlier!), by B.Raman.
US: TIME FOR A NEW STRATEGY ON PAKISTAN
B.RAMAN
The indicators from reliable sources in Pakistan are that the just-concluded visit ( October 21,2011) of Mrs.Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, to Pakistan at the head of a high-power delegation including the new incumbents to the important posts of Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),David Petraeus, failed to have the necessary impact on the military as well as civilian leadership.
2. What she was expecting was a clear commitment from the Pakistani leadership with a time-bound plan of operation to neutralise the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda and the Haqqani network, an arm of the Afghan Taliban, in the Pashtun belt in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)---particularly in North Waziristan.
3. The Pakistani civilian and military leaders were as evasive as ever and the Army headed by Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), avoided making any commitment on this issue despite cautions emanating from identified and unidentified sources in Washington regarding the likely punitive consequences of continued Pakistani inaction against the terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistani territory from which, according to the US, attacks are launched against NATO and Afghan targets in Afghan territory.
4. As the US moves towards the Presidential elections next year, the counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations of the US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan have been stalling on the ground. Spectacular decapitation strikes against high-value targets through pilotless Drone aircraft and commando actions such as the one that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2 last have not produced any major qualitative change in the ground situation.
5. Successful decapitation strikes need time to produce results on the ground situation. The Obama Administration wants quick results that would enable it to start thinning out the US troop presence in Afghanistan well before next-year’s elections when Mr.Obama will be seeking re-election.
6. Such quick results in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations come only from successful strikes against terrorist sanctuaries and other infrastructure on the ground through a mix of air and ground actions. Such a mix facilitated the elimination of OBL in Abbottabad, but it is difficult to repeat it against widely-scattered terrorist infrastructure.
7. The US faces a dilemma because it does not have the stomach for sustained ground operations by its forces in Pakistani territory. Any ground operation by the US forces that is confined to North Waziristan alone would not produce enduring results because the entire Pakistan---its tribal belt as well as the non-tribal hinterland--- provides a strategic depth to the Afghan Taliban, including its Haqqani network.
8. The cruel reality is that without the co-operation of the Pakistan Army, the US is not in a position to mount a successful counter-sanctuary operation in Pakistani territory. The Pakistan Army has a clear understanding of the limitations to the ground action capabilities of the US in Pakistani territory. Such limitations do not arise from Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal as it is generally presumed. They arise from the nature of the tribal belt and the vast non-tribal hinterland.
9. There are no quick answers to the operational dilemma faced by the US in Pakistan. The US has to realise that Pakistan as constituted presently will continue to keep coming in the way of the over-all strategic objectives of the US in the Af-Pak region. Unless the Pakistani capabilities are weakened, there is going to be no enduring solution to the US dilemma in Pakistan. Economic and military sanctions alone will not weaken Pakistan’s capabilities in view of the assistance that would be forthcoming to Pakistan from China and Saudi Arabia.
10. The only enduring way of weakening the capability of Pakistan is to work strategically for changing the very nature of Pakistan as it is constituted presently by identifying friendly elements in Pakistan such as the Balochs, the Mohajirs and the Shias and helping them in achieving their objective of freeing themselves from the control of the Pakistani Army. What he is saying is that Balochistan, Sindh, and some Parts of Pashtoonistan should be encouraged to become free !
11. These three elements have been struggling on their own, but they have not made much headway due to lack of external support and absence of strategic unity amongst them. If they can be persuaded to come together in a Southern Alliance and struggle jointly and if their political objectives are supported by the outside world---the US particularly—one may see the beginning of the process of weakening the capability of the Pakistani Army to stand in the way of peace and stability in the region.
12. The time has come for a clear realisation that Pakistan as constituted presently is the problem in the region and that unless the non-radical sections of the Pakistani society are helped to assert themselves, no enduring solution would be possible. ( 23-10-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com.
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Karzai Says Afghanistan Would Back Pakistan if U.S. Attacks
Published October 23, 2011
| Associated Press
AP
Oct. 20: US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, shakes hands with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai during their meeting in Kabul.
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said if the United States and Pakistan ever went to war, his country would back Islamabad, drawing a sharp rebuke Sunday from Afghan lawmakers who claimed the country's top officials were adopting hypocritical positions.
The scenario is exceedingly unlikely and appears to be less a serious statement of policy than an Afghan overture to Pakistan, just days after Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Islamabad must do more to crack down on militants using its territory as a staging ground for attacks on Afghanistan.
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"If fighting starts between Pakistan and the U.S., we are beside Pakistan," Karzai said is an interview with private Pakistani television station GEO that aired Saturday. "If Pakistan is attacked and the people of Pakistan need Afghanistan's help, Afghanistan will be there with you."
He said that Kabul would not allow any nation, including the U.S., to dictate its policies.
Both Washington and Kabul have repeatedly said Pakistan is providing sanctuary to militant groups launching attacks in Afghanistan.
The comments set off a firestorm of criticism in the country. Afghan lawmakers argued they were particularly hypocritical coming just weeks after the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani by a suicide bomber.
While it is unclear who masterminded Rabbani's killing, the Afghan government has said it was planned in the Pakistani city of Quetta, the Taliban leadership's suspected base. In addition, the Afghan interior minister accused the Pakistani intelligence service of being involved -- a claim that has not been substantiated.
"Pakistan has never been honest with Afghanistan, and the nation of Afghanistan will never forget those things that happen here" because of Pakistan, Shah Gul Rezaye, a lawmaker from Ghazni province told The Associated Press, citing Rabbani's death and other incidents of violence.
"They make deal with terrorists, and then with the international community ... to get $1 billion from the U.S. under the name of the struggle against terrorism," she said.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said it was up to the Afghan government to explain Karzai's remarks.
"This is not about war with each other," Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall told the AP. "This is about a joint approach to a threat to all three of our countries: insurgents and terrorists who attack Afghans, Pakistanis, and Americans."
Following her stop in Kabul, Clinton flew to Pakistan to deliver the blunt message that if Islamabad is unwilling or unable to take the fight to the al-Qaida and Taliban-linked Haqqani network operating from its border with Afghanistan, the U.S. "would show" them how to eliminate its safe havens.
Even so, she said the U.S. has no intention of deploying U.S. forces on Pakistani soil, and that the favored approach was one of reconciliation and peace -- an effort that needed Islamabad's cooperation.
Pakistan has been reluctant to move more forcefully against the Haqqani, arguing such an act could spark a broader tribal war in the region.
While it weighs its options, NATO pressed ahead with its operations.
The U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces on Saturday concluded two operations aimed at disrupting insurgent operations in Kabul, provinces south of the Afghan capital and along the eastern border with Pakistan -- all places where the Haqqani network has launched attacks.
NATO did not release further details about the operations, but Army Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a coalition spokesman, said Sunday that "a number of Haqqani affiliated insurgents plus additional fighters have been either detained or killed in the course of operations."
During her visit to Pakistan, Clinton said Haqqani fighters were among those killed and captured during the operations.
"Many dozens, if not into the hundreds, have been captured or killed on the Afghan side of the border," she said in Islamabad.
The push comes as NATO plans to pull out its combat forces by the end of 2014 and hand over full security responsibility to the Afghans.
But the attacks and assassination attempts continue.
In the latest such incident, bodyguards for Afghan Interior Minister Bismullah Khan Mohammadi shot and killed a would-be suicide bomber who was waiting for the minister's convoy Sunday in Sayyed Khel district of Parwan province, north of Kabul, the ministry said. The minister was not in the convoy at the time.
NATO also said three of its service members were killed separate clashes with insurgents in the south and east of the country. The coalition did not provide additional details, but the deaths, which occurred Saturday and Sunday, raised to 474 the number of NATO service members killed so far this year in Afghanistan.
Also, five villagers were killed while trying to remove a roadside mine planted by the Taliban in the western province of Herat, the provincial governor's spokesman, Mohyaddin Noori, said Sunday.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/10/23/karzai-says-afghanistan-would-back-pakistan-if-us-attacks/#ixzz1beyUKKMu
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I listened to the original video. karzai clearly makes those statements in hindi/urdu. After making those statements, he abruptly switches to english for the remainder of the interview. I think Karzai is panicking, the rabbani and other assasinations are striking home, the US will leave soon, he has signed security accords with India, he needs to get on the right side of the ISI, afterall many still remember the fate of najibullah.
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http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue=20111028&page=4 (http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue=20111028&page=4)
Some snippets...
The ghosts that haunt Kayani
The military is not committed to this conflict. But it's not because of "strategic-depth" brinksmanship, nor the endgame "hedging" of the Haqqanis, not even due to India's "Cold Start" doctrine. It is because it has serious emotional baggage.
An extraordinary number of young officers killed in action since 2001 has severed the command and control structures of several frontline units for the Pakistan Army.
So let the hawks romanticise the SSG. Or the rest of the Army. Or the Rangers or the Levies or the FC or even the Coast Guards. It really doesn't matter, for the Pakistani military does not want to fight this war.
That's right. It's not news that the military is not committed to this conflict. But it's not because of "strategic-depth" brinksmanship, nor the endgame "hedging" of the Haqqanis, not even due to India's "Cold Start" doctrine. No, those are official reasons for public consumption and posturing diplomacy. They're good enough motives to influence the Pakistani military's strategic calculus, at least from its own perspective. But still, all of them are constructed and contrived reasons, conceived by khaki strategists to convince themselves, as well as others, about how things really ought to be. Thus, these are talk-show reasons. Or drawing-room reasons. Or conference-hall reasons. Not intrinsic ones.
The 'real' types of reasons - especially in paranoid, semi-failed and irrational security states - that drive or mitigate war are, always, intuitive and emotional. And the Pakistani army has serious emotional baggage when it comes to fighting this war, for it is evident all over Cherat.
This army was never ready for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations before it jumped into them, because deployment in that type of combat requires small, dynamic formations that can think independently and "on their feet"
It is in that remote mountainous cantonment where one glimpses the slivers of this Army's confused raison d'etre: A sign that points to the direction of Srinagar as well as Jerusalem; a memorial dedicated to the war-dead from 1965, embarrassingly smaller than the one dedicated to 1971; Coats of Arms of various Raj-era units, that once conquered and killed locals here, chiselled along the face of the mountains; and of course, emblazoned quotes from the Quran. And then, at the far edge of the camp, past a 30-foot mural of an SSG warrior who is declaring in Farsi,"Mun Janbaz Um" (that he is ready to give up his life), there is the Officer's Mess: A single-story structure with a view more befitting of a millionaire's Swiss chalet than the haunt of men who command an elite, third-world military formation.
But once inside, along the walls of the main hall, all you see are the ghosts of battles past.
Photographs, of each and every SSG officer killed in action, adorn the rich teak panelling. The pictures go around the room, about the size of any upper-class Pakistani foyer, covering almost three of the four walls. A few of the images, from the early wars, are black and white. The rest of them, from newer, more familiar conflicts, are in colour. Among the artificial swords, antique rifles, and a cheap oil landscape of Shaitan Taikri (a jagged outpost in the Ali-Barangsa sector on the Line of Actual Control in Siachen) there are a whole lot more of these fresh, framed fatalities.
Image analysts would have a field day in this SSG shrine. Some of the officers lost in earlier battles are clean-shaven, with a debonair and dapper English country-gentleman look to them. Then come the moustaches of the '70s. Then the beards of the Siachen era. But then, a notable pattern begins. Younger officers. Older officers. Lots of them. All killed in the War on Terror. Very, very recently.
In his phantom punching that aimed at preempting the Clinton visit's agenda, General Kayani said many things in his GHQ meeting with our parliamentarians last week. He postured: "They [the US] will have to think ten times [before attacking] because Pakistan is not Iraq or Afghanistan". He bluffed: "If anyone convinces me that everything will be sorted out if we act in North Waziristan, I will take immediate action". He even got to play statesman-in-chief: "For short-term gains, we cannot lose [sight of] our long-term interests [in Afghanistan]".
But then, the general appealed.
Citing a staggering statistic, Gen Kayani let us into what's really beginning to haunt his institution: That the army has suffered 12,829 casualties since 2001, including 3,097 killed, with what the New York Times reports as an "unusually high ratio of one officer killed for every 16 soldiers since it [the Pakistan army] began fighting the Taliban".
This is critical. Like him or not, agree with him or not, but if you just believe Gen Kayani's math, then it means the Pakistan Army has lost almost 194 officers in this conflict. As the average strength of a Pakistani infantry battalion (primarily the type of unit deployed in forward areas and that most prone to casualties) is about 900 men, with around 10 or so of them being officers, then Kayani's accounting means his army has lost enough enlisted men to completely wipe out more than three entire battalions (that's one brigade) and incapacitate 14 or so battalions (almost 5 brigades). But the real problem is that the army has lost enough officers to decapitate around 20 battalions; a shocking, disturbing statistic, especially for an institution that has been documented to be thoroughly weaved together through fraternal, kinship, tribal and legacy connections, and where the officer calls all the shots - on and off the field.
If they have weren't already been briefed by Munter's defence analysts about this on their trip, then Clinton, Petraeus, Dempsey et al should think hard what they dealing with. Sure, the intransigence to not commit to combat from the Pakistan Army has many 'larger' reasons, but the root cause may well be morale - the toughest factor to quantify for battle - or lack of it.
In an elitist army where many officers are related to each other, and where the commander-centric modules of conventional training ensure that units are highly dependent on officers to lead them, it's a safe bet to assume two things: One, that almost all of Pakistan's top brass have lost an officer they know and/or are related to, or work directly with someone in uniform who has. And two, that Pakistan's undertrained and underequipped soldiers are increasingly leaderless in battle.
After due sympathies and respect for such a tremendous loss, it must be stressed that this is the Army's own fault. The policy decision to commit troops in FATA etc has been debated too often, so let it be a forgone conclusion that the Pervez Musharraf/ Ehsan-ul-Haq/ Ashfaq Kayani/ Nadeem Taj/ Shuja Pasha-led GHQ-ISI combine made some questionable strategic and operational decisions in the last decade.
Just focus on what really went wrong in FATA operations for the army: a top-heavy institution that has for decades trained for conventional war with India, expecting its officers to mostly lead all formations - small and large - into battle, and thus (much like it's colonial-era predecessor) heavily invested in the "thinking and doing" capacity of its officers versus just the "doing" potential of its soldiers.
That is where the army's extraordinarily high officer-to-soldier losses have come in. This army was never ready for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations before it jumped into them, for deployment in that type of combat requires small, dynamic formations that can think independently and "on their feet". As our enlisted men have always been treated for the initiative-lacking, "Allah-u-Akbar" swearing, soldiers that they essentially are, the need to achieve viable objectives has forced the army to thrust its officers to over-commit in frontline deployments they've never trained for either. As more of these ranks have been killed - over-exposed by 'leading from the front' operations and/or increasingly 'target killed' by selective snipers - internally, for the Army's officer corps, this means more brothers, cousins, nephews and in-laws are also dead.
So, for the Pakistan Army, this war is questionable. Not just strategically. Nor economically. Not even religiously. But more than any other reason, existentially. Thus, the SSG warrior's mural in Cherat lied: He might be ready to give life in battle...But he doesn't really want to fight this war.
The writer is a former Shorenstein Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a broadcast/online journalist. He can be reached at wajahat_khan@hks.harvard.edu and @wajskhan on Twitter
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stats..http://www.longwarjournal.org/pakistan-strikes.php (http://www.longwarjournal.org/pakistan-strikes.php)
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Pakistan's nuclear weapons vulnerable to theft: report
(AFP) – 6 hours ago
WASHINGTON — Pakistan has begun moving its nuclear weapons in low-security vans on congested roads to hide them from US spy agencies, making the weapons more vulnerable to theft by Islamist militants, two US magazines reported Friday.
The Atlantic and the National Journal, in a joint report citing unnamed sources, wrote that the US raid that killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in May at his Pakistani compound reinforced Islamabad's longstanding fears that Washington could try to dismantle the country's nuclear arsenal.
As a result, the head of the Strategic Plans Divisions (SPD), which is charged with safeguarding Pakistan's atomic weapons, was ordered to take action to keep the location of nuclear weapons and components hidden from the United States, the report said.
Khalid Kidwai, the retired general who leads the SPD, expanded his agency's efforts to disperse components and sensitive materials to different facilities, it said.
But instead of transporting the nuclear parts in armored, well-defended convoys, the atomic bombs "capable of destroying entire cities are transported in delivery vans on congested and dangerous roads," according to the report.
The pace of the dispersal movements has increased, raising concerns at the Pentagon, it said.
Pakistan has long insisted its nuclear arsenal is safe and the article quotes an unnamed official from the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency saying: "Of all things in the world to worry about, the issue you should worry about the least is the safety of our nuclear program."
The Pentagon declined to comment on the article but a senior US military official told reporters in Washington Friday that the United States remains confident Pakistan's nuclear weapons are secure.
"I believe the Pakistan military arsenal is safe at this time, well guarded, well defended," said the military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The article, based on dozens of interviews, said the US military has long had a contingency plan in place to disable Pakistan's nuclear weapons in the event of a coup or other worst-case scenario.
The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has for years trained for a potential "disablement campaign" that its forces would lead and that would require entering more than a dozen nuclear sites and seizing or defusing atomic weapons, it said.
The operation would use sensitive radiological detection devices that can pick up trace amounts of atomic material and JSOC has even built mock Pashtun villages with hidden mock nuclear-storage depots at a site on the East Coast to train elite Navy SEAL and Delta Force commandos, the report said.
Although Pakistan has suggested it might shift towards China and forsake its ties to Washington, Chinese officials have reached an understanding in secret talks with US representatives that Beijing would raise no objections if the United States opted to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons, said the report, citing unnamed US sources.
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John Crosbie, a former Canadian federal cabinet minister and currently lieutenant-governor of Newfoundland and Labrador, joking..
"This fellow said, 'I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, social security, retirement funds, etc., I called a suicide hotline and got a call centre in Pakistan. When I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck.' "
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That has been floating around for a couple of years now, but in light of your preceding post you have me looking like a Jewish Don King. :-o
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There has been long term concerns about the security of the Pak-nukes. It appears it's getting worse.
Or, the ISI is setting up their alibi for a "whoopsie" when a Pak-nuke detonates CONUS.
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Now there is an unpleasant thought.
Of course, just the fact/rumor that something had disappeared could have an intimidating effect all of its own.
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Now there is an unpleasant thought.
Of course, just the fact/rumor that something had disappeared could have an intimidating effect all of its own.
And a new approach for funds to ensure the Pak-nukes remain secure.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/04/great-news-pakistani-intel-driving-around-in-lightly-defended-vehicles-in-traffic-with-nuclear-weapons/
Great news: Pakistani intel driving around in lightly defended vehicles in traffic with nuclear weapons
posted at 5:33 pm on November 4, 2011 by Allahpundit
Something light from Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder to start the weekend on an upbeat note.
One method the SPD uses to ensure the safety of its nuclear weapons is to move them among the 15 or more facilities that handle them. Nuclear weapons must go to the shop for occasional maintenance, and so they must be moved to suitably equipped facilities, but Pakistan is also said to move them about the country in an attempt to keep American and Indian intelligence agencies guessing about their locations.
Nuclear-weapons components are sometimes moved by helicopter and sometimes moved over roads. And instead of moving nuclear material in armored, well-defended convoys, the SPD prefers to move material by subterfuge, in civilian-style vehicles without noticeable defenses, in the regular flow of traffic. According to both Pakistani and American sources, vans with a modest security profile are sometimes the preferred conveyance. And according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, the Pakistanis have begun using this low-security method to transfer not merely the “de-mated” component nuclear parts but “mated” nuclear weapons. Western nuclear experts have feared that Pakistan is building small, “tactical” nuclear weapons for quick deployment on the battlefield. In fact, not only is Pakistan building these devices, it is also now moving them over roads.
What this means, in essence, is this: In a country that is home to the harshest variants of Muslim fundamentalism, and to the headquarters of the organizations that espouse these extremist ideologies, including al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, and Lashkar-e-Taiba (which conducted the devastating terror attacks on Mumbai three years ago that killed nearly 200 civilians), nuclear bombs capable of destroying entire cities are transported in delivery vans on congested and dangerous roads. And Pakistani and American sources say that since the raid on Abbottabad, the Pakistanis have provoked anxiety inside the Pentagon by increasing the pace of these movements. In other words, the Pakistani government is willing to make its nuclear weapons more vulnerable to theft by jihadists simply to hide them from the United States, the country that funds much of its military budget.
That’s the tastiest morsel from a long, horrifying piece chronicling 20 years of Pakistani paranoia, treachery, and jihadism. The big takeaways aren’t surprising: It isn’t “rogue” elements of ISI that support terrorism, it’s the whole establishment; our “alliance” is a complete fraud held together by mutual fear of what would happen if it collapsed; as Pakistani society slowly crumbles, their nuclear deterrent becomes more important to them as a matter of national pride and as a sword/shield against India, etc. If you follow news about Pakistan, you learned those lessons long ago and re-learn them every week. Case in point: If you missed it last month, enjoy this NYT report on rockets being fired at U.S. troops in Afghanistan from across the border in Pakistan over the past six months — coincidentally, ever since the Bin Laden raid that embarrassed our “ally” so much. Ten days later after it was published, a U.S. general accused Pakistani foot soldiers in the area of either looking the other way at jihadis firing the rockets or outright collaborating with them in the attacks. If that story’s not to your taste, try this one from a few days ago about leaders of the Haqqani network — the single most dangerous jihadist outfit in Afghanistan — moving freely about Pakistan with ISI’s blessing, even to the point of visiting military facilities in Rawalpindi. (And yet they’d have you believe they didn’t know where Bin Laden was.) Pakistani hostility isn’t an open secret anymore; it’s simply not secret at all in any meaningful sense.
Why read the Goldberg/Ambinder piece, then, when you already know all this stuff? Well, for details like this. What happens if there’s a coup or the army fractures and suddenly Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is in play? Quote:
JSOC [U.S. Special Operations Command] would take the lead, however, accompanied by civilian experts, and has been training for such an operation for years. JSOC forces are trained to breach the inner perimeters of nuclear installations, and then to find, secure, evacuate—or, if that’s not possible, to “render safe”—any live weapons. At the Nevada National Security Site, northwest of Las Vegas, Delta Force and SEAL Team Six squadrons practice “Deep Underground Shelter” penetrations, using extremely sensitive radiological detection devices that can pick up trace amounts of nuclear material and help Special Operations locate the precise spot where the fissile material is stored. JSOC has also built mock Pashtun villages, complete with hidden mock nuclear-storage depots, at a training facility on the East Coast, so SEALs and Delta Force operatives can practice there.
At the same time American military and intelligence forces have been training in the U.S for such a disablement campaign, they have also been quietly pre-positioning the necessary equipment in the region. In the event of a coup, U.S. forces would rush into the country, crossing borders, rappelling down from helicopters, and parachuting out of airplanes, so they could begin securing known or suspected nuclear-storage sites. According to the former senior Special Operations planner, JSOC units’ first tasks might be to disable tactical nuclear weapons—because those are more easily mated, and easier to move around, than long-range missiles.
In a larger disablement campaign, the U.S. would likely mobilize the Army’s 20th Support Command, whose Nuclear Disablement Teams would accompany Special Operations detachments or Marine companies into the country. These teams are trained to engage in what the military delicately calls “sensitive site exploitation operations on nuclear sites”—meaning that they can destroy a nuclear weapon without setting it off. Generally, a mated nuclear warhead can be deactivated when its trigger mechanism is disabled—and so both the Army teams and JSOC units train extensively on the types of trigger mechanisms that Pakistani weapons are thought to use. According to some scenarios developed by American war planners, after as many weapons as possible were disabled and as much fissile material as possible was secured, U.S. troops would evacuate quickly—because the final stage of the plan involves precision missile strikes on nuclear bunkers, using special “hard and deeply buried target” munitions.
Just one minor problem with this strategy: Pakistan knows we have standby plans to seize their arsenal if things turn desperate, which is why they’ve resorted to insane tactics like driving operational nukes around in civilian vehicles and, of course, why they’ve been ramping up production of their nuclear trump card for the past two years. They’d rather risk a catastrophic accident or the atomic version of the great train robbery by Al Qaeda than lose face by letting the U.S. know where its nukes are — which, ironically, only increases the odds of an emergency that’ll require American intervention. (The fact that this cat-and-mouse game is already being played explains why, I assume, Goldberg and Ambinder felt free to delve into detail. They’re not telling either side here anything it doesn’t already know; in fact, I wonder if U.S. intel deliberately outed Pakistan’s reckless transport of “mated” nukes to force them to take greater precautions.)
So what’s our next move in dealing with a paranoiac armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons? Why, there is no next move: Goldberg and Ambinder conclude, correctly, that the only option is to maintain the “alliance” and keep U.S. military aid flowing since that gives us marginally more leverage in averting disaster than we’d otherwise have. Imagine a lunatic wired with a bomb who’s holding a bunch of people hostage. You’ve got only two options — either shoot him or, if you can’t do that, keep talking talking talking and hope that eventually his attitude changes. That’s the only way to understand our surreal new strategy of inviting ISI to join peace talks in Afghanistan while simultaneously accusing them of sponsoring terrorists. Exit question: It seems taken as a given on our side that a nuclear Iran would be the most dangerous country in the world. But why? Pakistan is filthy with jihadists too, they’ve already got a huge stockpile of weapons, and their command and control seems much dicier than the Revolutionary Guard’s. And needless to say, if Iran’s regime crumbles, we won’t have to worry as much about what replaces it the way we do with Pakistan.
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From 2001:
http://www.isis-online.org/publications/terrorism/stanleypaper.html
According to a variety of media reports, Pakistan's nuclear weapons are implosion-type designs and are stored with their fissile cores separated from the non-nuclear components.7 This arrangement may reflect safety limitations in the weapons, rather than be a fundamental method to provide better access control over the weapons as in the case of South Africa. Pretoria designed its weapons to have front and back sections that were stored separately.
The simplest interpretation of the available information is that the fissile core and the rest of the device are stored separately in vaults. However, it is also possible that the weapon minus the fissile core is mounted on a delivery vehicle, and the fissile core is stored separately.
Pakistan's nuclear weapons are not thought to be "one-point safe" or equipped with permissive action links (PALs), at least as defined by the United States.8 PALs are often viewed broadly as devices to prevent the unauthorized use of a nuclear weapon. The more effective ones, however, are integral to the warhead and require the entry of a code before the weapon can be armed and fired. A box and a lock could under some definitions be called a PAL. The problem, however, is that such a system is not integral to the weapon, and should be more appropriately considered as a physical protection device rather than a PAL. Similarly, a system applied after the weapon is built, such as a control over the electronic firing systems, could also be bypassed in a straightforward manner. Here, PALs are thus defined narrowly as a system incorporated in the design of the weapon that prevents unauthorized access.
It is unknown if Pakistan has coded switch devices integral to its delivery systems (as opposed to the actual warheads). Such switches would act as hardware "gatekeepers" for ballistic missiles or aircraft. The need for a special code to arm and fire the missile or drop a gravity bomb would impede the ability of unauthorized personnel to carry out a nuclear strike. Such devices may be easier to master than PALs.
Pakistan appears to emphasize the need to keep its storage locations secret. This strategy is different from the situation in the United States and Russia, where nuclear storage sites are relatively distinctive because of the elaborate security arrangements. These sites have extensive security, including fences, towers, guards, and bunkers, that is visible in overhead surveillance.
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Thought this titbit is revealing, India unilaterally granted MFN status to Pak 17 years ago. Apparently the paki army is against it, for increased trade and increased export of Indian goods might be destabilizing.
Pakistan: India Not Granted Most Favored Nation Status - PM
November 5, 2011
Pakistan has not granted most favored nation status to India, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, stated, adding that the Cabinet approved the Commerce Ministry to proceed with the issue during bilateral negotiations, PTI reported Nov. 5. Pakistan will move forward only if the situation is favorable and in the national interest, Gilani said.
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Probable Future Paki leader...Imran Khan
Imran Khan and his Tehreek-e-Insaf held a mammoth rally at the Minar-e-Pakistan Lahore on 30 October 2011 - estimated by the ISI to be two-lakh strong - and put the fear of God in both the PMLN and the PPP that Imran Khan had been targeting. He pushed the familiar buttons: challenged India on Kashmir, vowed to replace the US with China as Pakistan's ally, threatened corrupt politicians with civil disobedience 'in a few months', and foresaw midterm general election after March 2012.
Imran Khan has taken big strides in putting the country on notice about his party's political potential. He says he can win elections and form governments. That is what he should say as a politician, but the fact is that a lot of people have joined him in his rallying call to get rid of both the parties more or less settled into the groove of Pakistan's bipartisan system. Imran Khan is without the usual blemish of corruption; and his charity work places him above every other politician in the country.
He has an extreme posture, or at least he had before the party profile improved and he became conscious that Insaf may get more breakaway votes than he had counted on. In one of his latest TV shows he seemed more moderate than before about relations with India and the US, about tackling terrorism and the economy. Some of the recipes were romantic but that is quite forgivable in a person who has no experience of governance, doesn't know in depth how capitalist economics works, and is simply practising the pre-election hyperbole of the normal politician.
Yet his insistence that he would extend the tax net is the right thing to say although the number of people paying income tax in India is proportionately not much bigger and that takes nothing away from India's success a country with a high growth rate. Corruption and money stashed away abroad too has not distracted positive attention to India's law and order and a much better educational system.
Will Imran Khan embrace the more aggressive version of Islam which the Taliban have showcased in the Tribal Areas by cutting hands and stoning people to death? Will he oppose hudood the way Allama Iqbal did in his Sixth Lecture? Above all will he fight the Taliban if they reject him?
Bad governance in Pakistan is not linked to corruption and the Zardari Factor; it is clearly linked to terrorism and the presence of Al Qaeda in Pakistan with its Taliban followers fighting the state. Law and order is linked to the writ of the state which is non-existent in over 50 percent of the country and in cities like Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi. Imran Khan is opposed to the US presence in the region and Pakistan's collaboration with it in Afghanistan. The solution he has in mind is that the moment the US leaves and he comes to power, terrorism will stop in 90 days because the Taliban - Pakhtun and Punjabi - will simply return to being normal non-terrorist citizens of Pakistan. He is capitulatory to the Taliban; he is denunciatory of the political parties in power.
People who are scared of Al Qaeda and Taliban don't believe Imran Khan can bring peace in 90 days. They don't believe he can collect income tax to the level he promises - one trillion rupees extra in the first year in power - and his utopian governance through 200 perfect men seems too dreamlike. The pledge of gouging money from the corrupt and putting it back in the state kitty and getting politicians to bring their money back from foreign banks has been made in the past and has been belied by reality. Today money flees and comes back if the country has a soft image and there is law and order. Will Imran Khan give Pakistan a soft image?
Bad governance in Pakistan is not linked to corruption and the Zardari Factor; it is clearly linked to terrorism and the presence of Al Qaeda in Pakistan with its Taliban followers fighting the state. Law and order is linked to the writ of the state which is non-existent in over 50 percent of the country and in cities like Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi
In his book Pakistan: A Personal History (Bantam Press 2011), Imran Khan has handed us a clue about how his mind works and that could also be the reason why his party has been organisationally so neglected. Imran imbibed a strong sense of personal destiny. He recalls: 'Pir Gi from Sahiwal said I would be very famous and make my mother a household name' (p.89). Imran had announced his first retirement when he met another clairvoyant: 'Baba Chala, lived in a little village just a few miles from the Indian border. He certainly had not heard bout my retirement...the man looked at me and said I had not left my profession...It is the will of Allah; you are still in the game' (p.93).
The man who stood by him as his spiritual mentor was Mian Bashir (d.2005) who shocked him by naming the Quranic ayat his mother used to read to baby Imran and predicted that Allah had turned the tables in his favour in the Lamb-Botham libel suit whose reparations would have pauperised Imran (p.189). Mian Bashir also disarmed a sceptical Jemima by accurately guessing her three secret wishes (p.120).
From his sense of predestination comes his risk-taking character. But he says: 'The difference between a good leader and a bad one is that the former takes huge risks while fully grasping the consequences of failure. Leaders of a country shaping policies out of fear of losing power have always proved to be disastrous. Great leaders always have the ability to resist pressure and make policies according to their vision, rather than fear' (p.113).
One wonders how he will negotiate peace with the terrorists who have an ideology and say clearly that their aim is not only to get Pakistan out of the clutches of the US but also to impose the true sharia on Pakistan. And if warlords like Maulvi Faqir and Fazlullah and Mangal Bagh don't give ground, what will he do? We know Imran Khan's view of religion apart of the deeply spiritual clairvoyants he has been relying on. But will he embrace the more aggressive version which the Taliban have showcased in the Tribal Areas by cutting hands and stoning people to death? He is clearly wedded to the vision of Allama Iqbal. Will he oppose hudood the way the Allama did in his Sixth Lecture? Above all will he fight the Taliban if they reject him?
Probably shaken by a gallup survey that puts Imran Khan at the top of the popularity roster in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Maulana Fazlur Rehman has not been able to contain himself. Quoted in daily Jinnah (29 October 2011) he has lashed out at what he thinks is an un-Islamic 'walking together' by Imran with his divorced wife Jemima Khan who joined Imran in Islamabad in his campaign against drone attacks in the Tribal Areas. He said, 'Islam forbids mixing with one's divorcee wife; and it seems as if Imran Khan's future is still linked to Jemima Khan'.
If the MMA wants to make a comeback in KPK, Imran Khan definitely is not the favourite son of the religious parties. He was once roughed up by the Jamiat although the Jamaat Islami under Qazi Hussain Ahmad looked at him with favour. (Qazi Sahib said the funeral prayer for his late father.) But it is perhaps clear that no one - in addition to the PMLN - wants Imran Khan treading on their turf. The youth Imran Khan is attracting will probably take him further away from the religious parties and force him to distance the party from the pre-modern prescriptions that are so popular in the Muslim world. (His party already believes in joint electorates.) He was ignoring the non-Muslim minorities before the big Lahore rally but the fact is that they are a vote-bank waiting for him on the sidelines. The Christian backing to Shahbaz Sharif's show in Lahore on 28 October could be the writing on the wall.
Pakistan's top Urdu columnist Haroon Rashid, who is a bit of a loose cannon when it comes to analysing 'Captain' Imran Khan, and may share with him nothing more than his passion for 'desi murghi', wrote in Jang (29 October 2011) that if Imran Khan and his companions are true (sachay), they will do vigil (riyazat) and will place their trust in Allah who will give them the blinding (kheera-kun) conquest. The decisions, he wrote, were not taken on earth but in Heaven.
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As always, very appreciative of the informative posts from ya! Very interesting to learn about the leading candidate. Most unusual to have a most favored nation trade status one way but not mutual.
As a flippant aside, must say I am jealous of the regions of Pakistan that are completely outside the power of their central government.
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Karachi fashion week: male burkha coming to a street near you..
(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lspbzm2DbT1r47mnto1_500.jpg)
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Kinda cool. :-)
Who is the designer?
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For those of you wondering what this Strat snippet means...see the article below.
"Pakistan: Ambassador To U.S. Offers To Resign
November 16, 2011 | 2109 GMT
Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Hussain Haqqani wrote a letter to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in which he offered to resign from his post because of his involvement with a memo allegedly sent from Zardari to former U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, The News International reported Nov. 16."
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/tarek-fatah/pakistan-news_b_1095960.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1999054,b=facebook (http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/tarek-fatah/pakistan-news_b_1095960.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1999054,b=facebook)
Is a Palace Coup Unfolding in Pakistan?
Posted: 11/16/11 10:36 AM ET
A palace coup could be in the offing in nuclear-armed Pakistan as pro-Taliban army generals try to undermine democratically elected civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari.
First indications that something foul was afoot in Islamabad came on the weekend when Pakistan's top four military officials, including powerful Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani became conspicuous by their absence at a state banquet hosted by President Zardari for the visiting President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov of Turkmenistan.
For Pakistan watchers, the presence or absence of the top military leadership at events organized by a civilian government is an indication of the state of relations between the Pakistan's poweful power-hungry military and the weak civilian administration in Islamabad.
The obvious boycott of a state dinner hosted by Pakistan's president by his top generals and admirals, who are supposedly answerable to him, was not the only signal that something sinister was taking place. The absence was followed by the resignation from the ruling party by the former foreign minister, which too was suspected to have come after prodding by the military.
The latest tug of war between the government of president Zardari and his generals erupted on October 11, 2011 when the Financial Times ran an op-ed titled "Time to take on Pakistan's Jihadis."
In the article, Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American businessman, claimed he was contacted by a senior Pakistani diplomat close to President Zardari and asked to contact Admiral Mullen to prevent a military coup from taking place in Pakistan. The military was outraged and wanted heads to roll. Ijaz wrote:
"Early on May 9, a week after US Special Forces stormed the hideout of Osama bin Laden and killed him, a senior Pakistani diplomat telephoned me with an urgent request. Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, needed to communicate a message to White House national security officials that would bypass Pakistan's military and intelligence channels.
The embarrassment of bin Laden being found on Pakistani soil had humiliated Mr Zardari's weak civilian government to such an extent that the president feared a military takeover was imminent. He needed an American fist on his army chief's desk to end any misguided notions of a coup - and fast."
Ijaz further claimed that a memo was drafted and delivered to Admiral Mullen on May 10.
"In a flurry of phone calls and emails over two days a memorandum was crafted that included a critical offer from the Pakistani president to the Obama administration: 'The new national security team will eliminate Section S of the ISI charged with maintaining relations to the Taliban, Haqqani network, etc. This will dramatically improve relations with Afghanistan.'"
The pro-military media in Pakistan suggested the diplomat in question was Pakistan's ambassador the U.S., former Boston University professor, Husain Haqqani --a man not liked by his country's Jihadis, whether civilian or military.
Both Admiral Mullen and Islamabad denied that any such back door diplomacy had taken place, but the denials could not put out the fire. What was ostensibly written as a critique of Pakistan's jihadi extremists in fact turned out to have the exact opposite effect. In a country where anti-Americanism is rife, the elected civilian government was made out to appear as lackeys of the U.S.
Could the writer have intended to weaken the government and strengthen the military? Mansoor Ijaz is not new to controversy. According to the International Herald Tribune's Pakistan edition, "a deeper look into Ijaz's background provides evidence that this hasn't been the first time the influential businessman has raised controversy concerning his alleged role as a secret international diplomat."
The IHT discloses that :
"In 1996, he was accused of trying to extort money from the Pakistani government in exchange for delivering votes in the US House of Representatives on a Pakistan-related trade provision. Ijaz, who runs the firm Crescent Investment Management LLC in New York, has been an interlocutor between U.S. officials and foreign government for years, amid constant accusations of financial conflicts of interest. He reportedly arranged meetings between U.S. officials and former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. He also reportedly gave over $1 million to Democratic politicians in the 1990s and attended Christmas events at former President Bill Clinton's White House. Ijaz has ties to former CIA Director James Woolsey and his investment firm partner is Reagan administration official James Alan Abrahamson."
Anywhere else a civilian diplomat warning directly or indirectly against a military coup would not be deemed wrong in itself. But in Pakistan, a civilian Prime Minister was toppled and arrested (Nawaz Sharif, in 1999 by General Musharraf) for simply trying to assert civilian control over the military. Even if Zardari and his diplomat had, as Ijaz claims, asked Ijaz to contact the American government to use its influence against a military coup, there was nothing unlawful or unconstitutional in what he did. But in Pakistan, Ijaz's claims have provoked circumstances that are threatening at least the sacking of a respected ambassador and possibly undermining civilian rule.
Knowing the workings of Pakistan's intelligence services, Ijaz's article could have been part of a plan by the ISI to destabilize Pakistani democracy once again.
On Monday, the moves by the military triggered a closed-door meeting between President Asif Ali Zardari and the country's dour Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani followed by another meeting between Zardari and the Chief of Army Staff Gen. Kayani.
The generals are adamant. President Zardari has being asked to summon his ambassador to the U.S. back to Islamabad for a full dressing down by the junta. According to the Pakistani newspaper The News, President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani decided on Monday to call Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan's Ambassador to Washington, to Islamabad to brief the country's leadership on a host of issues impacting on Pak-U.S. relations and recent developments."
Long before Haqqani was appointed as Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., he had exposed the close links between the Pakistan military and the country's Islamist jihadis in his book, Pakistan: Between Mosque and the Military. For that sin, the men in boots have never forgiven the man they cannot control.
Haqqani, described by Bloomberg as the "hardest working man in DC," has been in the sights of the Pak Army and its intelligence wing, the ISI, who do not trust the academic. They fear he has exposed their attempts to double-cross the USA and as such want his skin as a price for allowing Zardari to stay in power.
The developments in Islamabad and the demand by the army to fire Haqqani should also be seen in light of the sudden rise in the profile of Pakistan's leading pro-Taliban politician, former cricketer Imran Khan. The establishment in Pakistan has run a brilliant campaign to project Khan as both a patriotic Islamist as well as a liberal. Using his Oxford background, he cultivates the ultimate anti-American modernist who has charmed the urban middle classes as the 'non-politician.'
Because of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, the army cannot overthrow an elected government as it used to do in the past, but the generals and the ISI are propping up a Khan and demanding the firing of the liberal Haqqani.
The sad part is that Islamist influence inside the U.S. State Department may result in a nod of approval to the Khakis to trigger a civilian coup. If Ambassador Haqqani is fired, can president Zardari be far behind?
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YA et al:
Thoughts on this?
Marc
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By MICHAEL O'HANLON AND PAUL WOLFOWITZ
The American debate on Afghanistan seems to be framed by two diametrically opposed definitions of success. One says that we have effectively won the war already—that the death of Osama bin Laden and the increase in targeted drone attacks have achieved the goal of preventing transnational terrorists from once again using sanctuaries in Afghanistan to attack the United States. The other view holds that success is impossible—that the goal of a stable Afghan government in control of its own territory is beyond our reach.
Both views lead to the same result: a premature abandonment of Afghanistan that could return it to the control of the Taliban and allow al Qaeda and other extremists to regain sanctuaries. Even targeted drone strikes would be much less effective without the human intelligence needed to support them.
But there is an alternative: the"Colombia standard" of success. It's probably unrealistic to think that the Afghan government can completely control Afghan territory by 2014 or even some later date. But, like the Colombian government, it could achieve success short of complete victory.
After decades of struggle against its armed insurgency, Colombia has substantially reduced the territory held by the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Fatality rates and kidnappings have been cut roughly in half over roughly a decade, and key FARC leaders have been killed. Assassinations of judges and other government officials were once frequent but now are much less so.
Crucially, nearly all of the fighting has been done by Colombian armed forces, with the U.S. providing advisers, intelligence and military equipment. Even today the homicide rate in Colombia remains high—much higher than violent civilian deaths in Afghanistan. But 10 years after Colombia seemed headed to collapse, it has achieved something that is widely regarded as a victory.
In Colombia's jungles as in Afghanistan's mountains, the guerillas can always find sanctuaries. Both countries' guerillas also enjoy sanctuaries across the border—and Pakistan probably gives more support to the Taliban than Venezuela gives the FARC. Guerilla movements that enjoy sanctuaries can never be completely defeated. But the important thing, from an American point of view, is that in Colombia it is Colombians, not Americans, who are fighting for their own country.
In Afghanistan our goal should be an Afghan government and security forces able to control the country's major cities and most of its territory with only modest outside help. Substantial territory, mostly in the rural South and East, would remain contested or even partly insurgent-controlled. But any large concentrations of extremists would be vulnerable to drone strikes or commando raids by Afghan and American forces. And over time, Afghan government forces could gradually reduce the remaining enemy strength.
A Colombia standard of success cannot be taken as an excuse for hasty withdrawal. For one thing, Afghanistan's security forces are two years away from being fully built. And while enemy-initiated violence is down about 25% from a year ago, and progress has been made in Helmand and Kandahar, additional American and NATO effort in the more densely populated East—as planned for 2012 and 2013—is needed before the Afghan army can take over primary responsibility. This may require keeping 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan through the 2013 fighting season, before cutting forces further.
While Colombians deserve most of the credit for success, they depended on a long-term U.S. commitment that was limited in scale but not in time. Afghanistan will need that even more. With a desperately poor economy (one-sixteenth the size of Colombia's), Afghanistan cannot sustain the army it needs without help. The country will need some $3 billion annually in foreign military assistance for an extended period after 2014, as well as a continuing military presence in the range of 10,000 U.S. and other NATO troops in a supporting role.
A U.S.-led commitment to provide that funding in the future would help the current situation. Making clear that we will not abandon the country the way that we did after the defeat of the Soviets in 1989 would reassure our friends, discourage our enemies, and induce the Pakistanis to cooperate.
It would also give the U.S. valuable leverage in the current Afghan debate about post-2014 security arrangements. Instead of appearing as the supplicant—seeking to use Afghan territory for our own purposes—and allowing Afghan President Hamid Karzai to burnish his nationalist credentials by imposing conditions, we should make it clear that the help the Afghans need will be forthcoming, provided our conditions are met. One condition should be a process of consultation that extends beyond Mr. Karzai's hand-picked loya jirga.
We should certainly ask other countries to share the burden in both military and economic assistance, but the annual cost of this commitment would be roughly 10% of what we are currently expending—and Afghanistan's neighborhood remains central to American national security.
Even these costs would be too high if the cause were indeed lost. But success is possible if we think in terms of Colombia. Giving up now—or declaring victory prematurely—would be a grave mistake when, despite the challenges, three-fourths of Afghanistan is now reasonably secure and the Afghan armed forces are well over halfway toward achieving the capabilities they will need.
Our current exit strategy of reducing American troops to 68,000 by the end of next summer and transferring full security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014 is working. In a war where the U.S. has demonstrated remarkable strategic patience, we need to stay patient and resolute.
Mr. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is co-author of its Afghanistan Index and author of "The Wounded Giant: America's Armed Forces in an Age of Austerity" (Penguin, 2011). Mr. Wolfowitz, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is a former U.S. deputy secretary of defense.
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Anything that leaves the Pakistan problem unaddressed is doomed to fail.
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The piece makes some sense to me, to spend 10% of what we spend now instead of nothing. Who knows from here what the strategy on the ground should be, but it seems to me that to leave Iraq and Afghanistan in total whether calling it success or failure will be a mistake very difficult to correct. We didn't have that type of false confidence leaving other conflict zones of Japan, Germany or Korea and we didn't launch the bin Laden operation or drone strikes in Pakistan from Tampa.
Keeping US power in the region and strengthening our cooperation with India is the foundation of a Pakistan plan IMO.
As the 3 am question goes, what as President would you do if the call says that forces of al Qaida just took over Pakistan and took control of all their nukes. If we have gutted our intelligence, our defense and readiness budgets, if we end our presence on their doorstep and our influence and contacts on the inside, if we have moved what remains of our personnel and equipment home, the response of the President of the US will be the same as the head of the UN, the head of the EU or the President of Haiti or Ghana - like everyone else, we would be in a position to do nothing about it. Maybe we could call our superpower 'friends' in Russia and China.
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Afghanistan’s interminable war
Looking for the exit
A bleak but authoritative assessment of foreign intervention
Nov 19th 2011 | from the print edition
Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battleground. By Jonathan Steele. Counterpoint; 437 pages; $26. Portobello; £25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
ON TAKING office in 2009, President Barack Obama found a longstanding request from the army on his desk, asking for more troops for the war in Afghanistan. He soon acceded, though not in full. According to Bob Woodward’s book, “Obama’s Wars”, which came out in 2010, the late Richard Holbrooke, Mr Obama’s envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, reminded his boss that Lyndon Johnson had faced similar demands during the Vietnam war. “Ghosts”, whispered Mr Obama. They haunt him still, as he seeks to bring most American troops home before 2015, without leaving Afghanistan prey to a new extremist Taliban regime or an intensification of its three-decade-long civil war.
“Ghosts of Afghanistan” is a good title for this fine modern history by Jonathan Steele, a British journalist. This is not just because of the many people who have died in its wars, but because “the spectres of past mistakes” still complicate decision-making by the NATO-led, American-dominated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
These include both the quagmire in Vietnam and the Soviet Union’s disastrous nine-year occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, which was cheered by Western cold warriors as “the Soviet Union’s Vietnam”. An experienced writer and commentator for the Guardian, Mr Steele has visited Afghanistan in every phase of the civil war and is well placed to compare the end of the Soviet era and the present “transition”, the favoured common euphemism for foreign withdrawal.
He demolishes some Western myths about Afghanistan that betray short memories and government spin. The Soviet years, for example, tend to be portrayed as a period of bitter repression under a puppet regime, which was defeated by a popular, Islamist uprising, backed by America and Pakistan, and which crumbled as soon as the Soviet Union withdrew its occupation forces in 1989.
There is another way of looking at the same history. At no stage did the Soviet Union have as many troops in Afghanistan as America and ISAF do now. It was never defeated. It withdrew because Mikhail Gorbachev realised the Soviets could never win. The regime they left behind was quite resilient. Only as the Soviet Union began to unravel in 1991 and withdraw its aid did the regime collapse shortly after. The mujahideen boast of having brought down the Soviet Union. The reverse is just as true: it was the collapse of the Soviet Union that brought the mujahideen to power.
There are some uncanny echoes between the two interventions. The Soviets and the Americans both allocated 15 times as much to military spending in the country as to civilian spending. Soviet resentment at the ingratitude of the client regime is matched in America. This month ISAF had to sack an American general for voicing it. Neither the West nor the Soviet Union is predominantly Muslim, enabling their enemies to decry the “infidel” regimes they back. Both wars became very unpopular at home. ISAF, like the Soviet army, has established solid-looking structures in the north, which is largely inhabited by smaller ethnic groups, such as Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. But it still faces a serious insurgency in the Pushtun-dominated south and east, fuelled from Pakistan.
With the war in stalemate now, as it was 20 years ago, Mr Steele argues for peace talks with the Taliban and the regional powers. That, of course, is how wars end. But it is hard when the enemy, known in convenient shorthand as “the Taliban”, is fragmented and ISAF is trying to kill or co-opt as many of its fighters as possible. Moreover, America has committed itself to a timetable for withdrawal—an invitation to its enemies to play a long game.
In one respect the Soviet precedent is not encouraging. That withdrawal was preceded by years of ultimately fruitless diplomacy. But the foreign presence is not the only reason Afghans fight. So the lesson some ISAF strategists draw from the Soviet experience is less to do with the necessity for peace talks than about the durability of the post-occupation Afghan government until its plug was pulled from a socket in Moscow. If the West can commit enough in military and civilian assistance, the present government should muddle through, at least in the cities.
That is not a very encouraging outcome, measured against the high hopes after the swift toppling of the Taliban in 2001. But Mr Steele gives almost the last word in his book to an even gloomier scenario, spelled out by Francesc Vendrell, a wise diplomat formerly with the UN and the EU: “Having failed dismally to make the Afghan people our allies, we will inevitably abandon them to a combination of Taliban in the south and the warlords in the north, and (having somehow redefined success) we will go home convinced that it is the Afghan people who have failed us.” Mr Steele and Mr Vendrell are not the only ones to be haunted by the ghosts of Afghanistan’s future.
from the print edition | Books and arts
.Recommend21
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Ummm , , , nothing in there that I can see addressing the fact that after helping them drive out the Russian Empire and then leaving them alone that they gave sanctuary to AQ to attack us. Nor is there anything about Pakistan or the greater realities of Afpakia.
Other than that , , ,
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1. Whoever coined the term "Af-Pak" deserves a lot of credit. It holds the key to a solution for the region, which the authors of the above articles seem to miss. ie the role of Pak in the afghan mess. Unless we are willing to deal with Pak, no point wasting time/money in Afghanistan. Also the person who coined "Fk-Ap", deserves a lot of credit, for elegantly explaining the situation.
2. We worry a lot about paki nukes getting into the hands of the taliban and AQ types. But in all honesty, is the paki army not already a jihadi force (their motto: Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabilillah ) to some extent, with a fraction of it being hardcore jihadi. So the real worry should be what if we have a jihadi general holding the football, or what if that person has a death wish and wishes to pay back the Big Satan before collecting his 72 houris. I recently met someone who knows a lot about these matters, he thought that there was zero chance that the bomb could be hijacked by outside groups, but an insider could do it.
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Perhaps tis a moment of vanity and hubris combined, but IIRC twas me that came up with the term , , , or maybe I read it somewhere and forget that :lol:
YA makes a very powerful point about the Pak army already being jihadi, including extreme elements.
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Strat reports "An outpost, located near the Afghan border in the Mohmand Agency of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, was struck in the early morning hours of Nov. 26, reportedly by U.S. attack helicopters. The incident is remarkable for the number of deaths it caused and comes at a time of increasing tensions between the United States and Pakistan — tensions that are likely now to get worse, regardless of the results of Pakistan’s investigation into the incident.".
The paki generals have their knickers in a twist. I dont think this will die down very quickly. Pakistani H&D has been violated again, as was their sovirginity (pronounced sovereignty in USA). Looks like US forces have been given the right to retaliate hostile fire.
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From B.Raman's blog..http://ramanstrategicanalysis.blogspot.com/ (http://ramanstrategicanalysis.blogspot.com/)
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2011
PAKISTAN: DANGERS OF A SUBALTERNS’ COUP
B.RAMAN
Appearing in a talk show hosted by Suhasini Haidar of CNN-IBN on November 26,2011, I said that I never believed a coup was likely in Pakistan as a result of the Army’s anger over the so-called Memogate affair . I added that Pakistan had an independent judiciary today and that, hence, the Army would not have the confidence that it could get a coup validated by the judiciary post-facto.
2.If Suhasini were to ask me the same question today in the light of the outrage in the Pakistan Army over the reported death of 28 Pakistani troops due to a mistaken NATO airstrike on two Pakistani military posts about two kms from the Afghan border in the Mohmand Agency of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on November 26, my reply would be a little more nuanced.
3. I would still rule out a coup by senior officers headed by Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), who are quite capable of rational thinking regarding the legal and other consequences of a coup, but I would not rule out a coup by subalterns and middle level officers enraged over the failure of their senior officers and the political leadership to protect the honour of the Pakistan Army against repeated infringements by the US and other NATO forces.
4. One saw reports of such anger in the barracks over the failure of the senior military leadership to prevent the US Commando raid to kill Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad on May 2,2011.Kayani managed to control this anger with great difficulty by undertaking a tour of important military cantonments.
5. Reports received by me from Pakistani sources, who are not known to have misled me in the past, claim that one could see similar anger over the latest incident spreading across the barracks. The anger is against the US as well as against the senior leadership of the Army. The reports indicate that organisations such as the Hizbut Tehrir have been trying to fan this anger.
6.If this anger doesn’t subside, there is a danger of a successful or attempted coup in Pakistan organised by officers at middle level, who would not be bothered about the legal consequences of a coup. The Pakistan Army is a disciplined force. In its history, there has never been a successful coup by junior officers. However, there were two instances of attempted junior officers’ coup, the preparations for which were detected in time by the senior military leadership and crushed.
7. The last of them was in 1995 when Benazir Bhutto was the Prime Minister and Gen Abdul Wahid Kakkar was the COAS. A group of middle level officers headed by Brig. Zahir-ul-Islam Abbasi, fromer Defence Attache to India, joined hands with the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and planned to capture power after killing Benazir and the COAS. The plans for the coup were accidentally detected and the officers concerned arrested and court-martialled.
8. When Gen.Pervez Musharraf was in power we had seen reports of individual junior officers of the Army and the Air Force, who were angry over Musharraf’s co-operation with the US, joining hands with Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda elements in a conspiracy to have Musharraf assassinated. Their role came to notice during the investigation into the two attempts to kill Musharraf in December,2003, allegedly orchestrated by Abu Faraj at-Libbi of Al Qaeda now in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre of the US.
9. The anti-US anger in the lower and middle ranks of the Pakistan Army after the Abbottabad raid has till now been kept under control by Kayani. If the anger over the killing of 28 troops, including two officers, allegedly by NATO air strikes on Pakistani military posts in the Momand Agency is not carefully and tactfully handled by the US and the Pakistani civilian and military leadership, there is a danger of this anger getting out of control leading to a conspiracy of the junior officers.
10. If such a conspiracy is successful with the co-operation of jihadi elements, there would be a real threat of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal coming under their control. Senior Pakistani Army officers are responsible people who are quite capable of ensuring that there is no misuse of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. I do not have the same confidence about the junior officers.
11. The US-Pakistan relations are going from bad to worse--- particularly the military-military and intelligence-intelligence relationship. There is a lot of glee among many Indian analysts over it. This need not necessarily be a beneficial development for India. It is in our interest that the US retains the ability to influence the behaviour of the Pakistani military leadership.
12. The situation in Pakistan needs very close monitoring. (27-11-11)
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http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/11/09/19_true_things_generals_cant_say_in_public_about_the_afghan_war_a_helpful_primer (http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/11/09/19_true_things_generals_cant_say_in_public_about_the_afghan_war_a_helpful_primer)
As a public service, Best Defense is offering this primer for generals on their way to Afghanistan.
Here is a list of 19 things that many insiders and veterans of Afghanistan agree to be true about the war there, but that generals can't say in public. So, general, read this now and believe it later-but keep your lip zipped. Maybe even keep a printout in your wallet and review before interviews.
My list of things to remember I can't say
1.Pakistan is now an enemy of the United States.
2. We don't know why we are here, what we are fighting for, or how to know if we are winning.
3.The strategy is to fight, talk, and build. But we're withdrawing the fighters, the Taliban won't talk, and the builders are corrupt.
4. Karzai's family is especially corrupt.
5. We want President Karzai gone but we don't have a Pushtun successor handy.
6.But the problem isn't corruption, it is which corrupt people are getting the dollars. We have to help corruption be more fair.
7.Another thing we'll never stop here is the drug traffic, so the counternarcotics mission is probably a waste of time and resources that just alienates a swath of Afghans.
8.Making this a NATO mission hurt, not helped. Most NATO countries are just going through the motions in Afghanistan as the price necessary to keep the US in Europe.
9.Yes, the exit deadline is killing us.
10.Even if you got a deal with the Taliban, it wouldn't end the fighting.
11.The Taliban may be willing to fight forever. We are not.
12.Yes, we are funding the Taliban, but hey, there's no way to stop it, because the truck companies bringing goods from Pakistan and up the highway across Afghanistan have to pay off the Taliban. So yeah, your tax dollars are helping Mullah Omar and his buddies. Welcome to the neighborhood.
13.Even non-Taliban Afghans don't much like us.
14.Afghans didn't get the memo about all our successes, so they are positioning themselves for the post-American civil war .
And they're not the only ones getting ready. The future of Afghanistan is probably evolving up north now as the Indians, Russians and Pakistanis jockey with old Northern Alliance types. Interestingly, we're paying more and getting less than any other player.
Speaking of positioning for the post-American civil war, why would the Pakistanis sell out their best proxy shock troops now?
15.The ANA and ANP could break the day after we leave the country.
16.We are ignoring the advisory effort and fighting the "big war" with American troops, just as we did in Vietnam. And the U.S. military won't act any differently until and work with the Afghan forces seriously until when American politicians significantly draw down U.S. forces in country-when it may be too damn late.
17.The situation American faces in Afghanistan is similar to the one it faced in Vietnam during the Nixon presidency: A desire a leave and turn over the war to our local allies, combined with the realization that our allies may still lose, and the loss will be viewed as a U.S. defeat anyway.
Thanks to several people who contributed to this, from California to Kunar and back to DC, and whose names must not be mentioned! You know who you are. The rest of you, look at the guy sitting to your right.
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YA:
That resonates quite strongly with me.
What do you make of the airstrike by the US on the two Pak outposts? I get a sense that our generals may be looking to influence/manipulate/force the our CiC to places he may not otherwise wish to go.
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What do you make of the airstrike by the US on the two Pak outposts? I get a sense that our generals may be looking to influence/manipulate/force the our CiC to places he may not otherwise wish to go.
Strat says that the location of the outposts was well known to the US, so its very likely a response to hostile fire. I think the US govt is quite pi$$ed at pak, so they are having a pi$$ing match. Pakis shoot across the border with pak army support, and the US decides to pulverize them.
I dont think the US has as yet reached a stage where a decision has been made to get tough with Pak. Govt officials are still confused about Pak, eg Michelle Bachman who is on the House Intelligence Services committee (I think), said wrt Pak at the last republican debate, that we need mollycoddle them and fund them because of their nukes, and that they can descend into chaos etc. We dont even have the guts to stop funding Pak, there is no question of Obama starting a new war.
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Not for the first time I get the impression that (some of?) the generals rather disgusted with the CiC and are looking to give him options he cannot refuse. I get the impression that at least some of our military folks are coming to similar conclusions to those of the sources that YA brings to our attention.
To the extent that this is true, then , , , what conclusions do we draw from this attack on the Pak outposts?
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"said wrt Pak at the last republican debate, that we need mollycoddle them and fund them because of their nukes, and that they can descend into chaos etc. We dont even have the guts to stop funding Pak, there is no question of Obama starting a new war."
With regards to the first part of this post what do the generals think we ought to do? We can keep doing what we are doing and tread water, we can perhaps get tougher with (what) results, or perhaps we pull out altogether.
What do the military experts think is best? I would guess they may have divergent opinions and may be unsure as well?
With regards to the latter part of the post are you saying Obama is starting a new war?
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Obama wont be starting a new war, this close to the elections. I think there are many in the military who know what needs to be done, but the political will is lacking. One of the reasons that the admin does not take action is because of the cold war mentality when the US sided with Pak and the USSR/Russia with India, another has to do with maintainence of parity between India and Pak. Now that China is becoming a challenge for the US, very grudgingly the US is supporting India at the expense of China (again trying to maintain balance of power).
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http://www.thenews.com.pk/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=27459&title=We-do-not-accept-Nato-apology:-Pak-Army (http://www.thenews.com.pk/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=27459&title=We-do-not-accept-Nato-apology:-Pak-Army)
NATO regret not enough: Army
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Army while expressing its disgust over the NATO attacks has said that it does not accept NATO's apology and that this action can lead to serious consequences, Geo News reported Monday.
According to Army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas, NATO’s regret over the attack is not enough.
In a pre-dawn attack on November 26 NATO attacked a Pakistani check posts in the Mohmand Agency in which 24 soldiers were killed.
Pakis want $$, how difficult is that to understand :-D
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Here's much I can agree with..
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MK29Df03.html (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MK29Df03.html)
Blazing Saddles in Pakistan
By Spengler
In Mel Brooks' 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles, a welcoming committee for a new sheriff turns into a lynch mob when it discovers the man is black. He points his gun at his own temple and says, ''One step closer and the [N-word] gets it!'' The townspeople back off, rather like the American government every time it catches Pakistan supporting the Taliban or other enemies of the United States. Pakistan menaces the United States with the prospect of its own failure. Pak also holds a gun to its own head, gimme money or I pull the trigger
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum summed up the Washington consensus at last week's national security debate, ''Pakistan must be our friend'' because it has nuclear weapons. America can't do without Pakistan, that is, because if Pakistan breaks up, nuclear weapons might reach the hands of terrorists. The flaw in this argument is that Pakistan itself is governed by terrorists. That is why it has been so successful. It scares its neighbors. American policy, instead, should force the burden of uncertainty onto Pakistan. Remember the paki army is jihadi
Last week's North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air strike on Pakistani frontier outposts prompted Islamabad to stop resupply of NATO forces in Afghanistan, leaving Washington to apologize for the ''unintended tragic'' deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers. Rather than calling Pakistan to account for the attack on the American embassy in Kabul by the al-Haqqani network, which outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen September 22 called ''a veritable arm'' of Pakistan's ISI, America finds itself on the defensive. If the Pakistanis fired on NATO forces before the latter called in an air strike, as the Afghan government claims, we should infer that Pakistan provoked the incident in order to wrong-foot the United States. Typical paki behaviour
Considering that the United States wants Pakistan to pursue military operations against a largely Pashtun insurgency in Afghanistan, while Pashtuns comprise a fifth of the Pakistan's people, friendship seems an odd choice of words. its called frenemiesAmerican policy threatens to tear Pakistan apart, and Islamabad's double-dealing is understandable under the circumstances. The only way to make Pakistan behave is to convince Islamabad that it will be torn apart if it does not accommodate American demands. Absent the threat of encirclement and dismemberment, Pakistan will do everything to avoid exacerbating what already amounts to a low-level civil war. America's strategic objective in the region - eradicating Islamist terrorists - poses an existential threat to the Pakistani state. The only way to force Pakistan to accommodate itself to American objectives is to pose an even worse existential threat.
Pakistan's pursuit of ''strategic depth'' - projecting its influence through support for Islamist groups in Afghanistan, and Kashmir, as well as terror attacks inside India - stems from weakness. As Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi writes in the Winter 2012 issue of Middle East Quarterly, ''Pakistan itself is an artificial state composed of diverse ethnic groups that are united solely by religious affiliation. Hence, fear of Pashtun and Baloch (Pakistan's largest provinces geographically) desires for autonomy or independence, together with concern about India's influence, also provides a basis for pursuing Pakistani strategic depth. For example, to suppress Baloch nationalism, the Pakistani military and intelligence have engaged in human rights abuses including the arrest and disappearance of some 8,000 Baloch activists in secret prisons.''
After three years of American strategic disengagement under the Obama administration, that has become a difficult proposition. Involving the Indian military in Afghanistan with a limited by open-ended mandate would have served notice to Islamabad that America was serious. Two years ago, Pakistani websites fluttered with rumors that India would deploy 120,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, staking a claim as America's strategic partner. It is doubtful that any such offer was on the table, but India at the time was prepared for a smaller deployment. Under present circumstances, New Delhi wants no part of an adventure that the Americans are preparing to abandon.
India simply does not trust the Obama administration to stand up for American interests in the region. China has moved into the vacuum left by American policy in Pakistan, deploying 11,000 soldiers in the Gilgat-Baltistan region of southern Kashmir. Ostensibly the Chinese are there to secure high-speed road rail links between the Chinese-built ports on Pakistan's coast and Western China, but their presence also reinforces Pakistan's control over a rebellious region. The small Chinese force, moreover, raises the stakes in any potential confrontation over Kashmir between India and Pakistan; if Chinese troops were to get in the middle of a fight, China might be drawn in on Pakistan's side. Pakistan now has two air force squadrons flying China's JF-17 ''Thunder'' jet and shortly will add a third.
After the September 13 attack on the American embassy in Kabul, the United States made belated and tentative gestures to India, including the first formal offer to sell India the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. As M K Bhadrakumar argued in this space (see Hindu art of double hedging against China, Asia Times Online, November 10), New Delhi must weigh the advantages of its strategic alignment with the United States against the fact of American strategic disengagement under the Obama administration. Whether India takes up the American offer for the F-35's depends on a number of factors, including the disappointing pace of progress in its joint development of a Fifth Generation fighter in cooperation with Russia. The F-35's though, will not change the perception that Washington is guarding its rear as it withdraws from the region.
The Obama administration has painted itself in to a corner. It cannot cajole or threaten Pakistan. On the contrary, Pakistan is threatening Washington. China's growing presence in Pakistan reduces America's capacity to punish Pakistan, for example, by withdrawing support for American-built fighter aircraft. India remains understandably cautious. And the Afghan war, as Mr. Al-Tamimi wrote in the Middle East quarterly, ''will prove at best a massive drain on US resources and lives, possibly reaching a cost of up to $100 billion a year, all for killing a few dozen al-Qaeda militants in a country whose annual gross domestic product is a mere $13 billion.''
To persuade India to align itself decisively with American interests, and China to lower its profile, the United States would have to execute a 180-degree turn. It would have to repudiate Obama's disengagement and declare its intent to remain the world's unchallenged superpower, and make this credible by investing in strategic superiority. That would require major investments in aircraft carriers, fighter aircraft, drone technology, and theater missile defense.
That is expensive, but there are other ways to economize. At the same time, America should renounce nation-building in Afghanistan and settle instead for a prolonged, if not perpetual, war of attrition against its enemies. By historical analogy, Washington should handle Afghanistan the way that Cardinal Richelieu dealt with the German Empire during the Thirty Years' War. Rather than fund a corrupt and ineffective Afghan army dominated by Tajiks, the United States should acquire Pashtun capabilities of its own; perhaps it should quietly support Pashtun and Balochi separatists operating inside Pakistan. Among other things, this is cheaper than maintaining an army of occupation. Cutting off aid to the corrupt Karzai government, moreover, will drastically reduce the cost of hiring local armies.
America's misguided attempt to stabilize Afghanistan allows Islamabad to blackmail the United States by threatening to promote instability. If the United States accepts Afghan instability as a permanent condition and uses its in-country capability to wear down its enemies in a standing civil war, it can turn the tables by threatening to export the instability to Pakistan. Pakistan has been truncated before, when it lost Bangladesh. It could happen again. The object is not to dismember Pakistan, but rather to persuade Islamabad to behave. If this seems harsh, it is worth recalling that Washington has done this sort of thing before. The Reagan administration did its best to prolong the Iran-Iraq war.
China has a general interest in limiting American power, but it also has a specific interest in forcing Pakistan to crack down on Islamist terrorism. The 100 million Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang constitute the greatest threat of a breakaway province within China's borders, and Beijing has complained that Pakistan's intelligence services are training Uyghur terrorists for infiltration into China. Islamabad, once again, is not in control over radical Islamists in its own military.
If America puts a figurative gun to the head of the Pakistani government and orders it to extirpate the radical Islamists in the military, two outcomes are possible. One is that Islamabad will succeed. The second is that it will fail, and the country will degenerate into chaos. That is the scenario the American policy is supposed to avoid at all costs, but it is hard to see why America would be worse off. If the elements of Pakistani intelligence that foster terrorism cannot be suppressed, it is clear that they are using resources of the central government to support terrorism. In the worst case, they will continue to foster terrorism, but without the resources of the central government. From America's vantage point, a disorderly collapse of Pakistan into a failed state is a better outcome than a strong central government that sponsors terrorism. At worst, a prolonged civil conflict between American-backed elements of the Pakistani military and Islamist radicals would leave the radicals weaker than they are now.
The simplest solution to the problem of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is to frighten the Pakistani army into eliminating the prospective terrorists who might use them. The second-best solution is to send the American army into Pakistan and take the nuclear weapons away. I believe Jeffrey Goldberg's and Marc Ambinder's report in The Atlantic Monthly that if the United States were to deploy troops in Pakistan to secure the country's nuclear weapons, China would raise no objections. If Islamist terrorists were to get hold of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, China would be at the top of their list of prospective targets.
Much as China might enjoy America's discomfiture in the region, American and Chinese interests converge around terrorism (and especially nuclear terrorism). Given America's present weakness, it may take some effort to iterate towards convergence with China. Threats to China's territorial integrity, though, have Beijing's undivided attention, and if America makes clear that draining the Pakistani swamp reflects support for China's efforts to preserve territorial integrity, rational self-interest will assert itself.
Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. His book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) was published by Regnery Press in September 2011. A volume of his essays on culture, religion and economics, It's Not the End of the World - It's Just the End of You, also appeared this fall, from Van Praag Press.
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This is another Strat like US agency reporting..
http://www.kforcegov.com/Solutions/IAO/NightWatch/NightWatch_11000235.aspx (http://www.kforcegov.com/Solutions/IAO/NightWatch/NightWatch_11000235.aspx)
Pakistan-US: Comment: The news accounts are reasonably consistent that a NATO helicopter attack killed two dozen or more Pakistani paramilitary forces. The NATO account insists that Pakistani officers cooperated in the attack. Another story says that Afghan officers called in the air attack, which occurred inside Pakistan's Mohmand Agency. Another account says US forces were far into Pakistani national territory.
The Torkham border crossing, near Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan, has been closed to truck traffic to Afghanistan. The border crossing point at Spin Buldak in the south, evidently, remains open. The Islamabad government has ordered the CIA to vacate a remote air base that is used for drone attacks but supposedly had been ordered to vacate six months ago.
None of that matters much. All of it is for public consumption because the Pakistani civilian government and military leadership are involved in some fashion. This incident will be covered up. None of the stake holders perceive any benefit from making this incident a cause celebre, an international sensation. The logistics supply line for Afghanistan is much less dependent on Pakistani roads than on central Asian railroads.
On the other hand, Pakistani public hostility for the US will spike.
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STRATFOR
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November 29, 2011
PAKISTAN, RUSSIA AND THE THREAT TO THE AFGHAN WAR
By George Friedman
Days after the Pakistanis closed their borders to the passage of fuel and supplies
for the NATO-led war effort in Afghanistan, for very different reasons the Russians
threatened to close the alternative Russia-controlled Northern Distribution Network
(NDN). The dual threats are significant even if they don't materialize. If both
routes are cut, supplying Western forces operating in Afghanistan becomes
impossible. Simply raising the possibility of cutting supply lines forces NATO and
the United States to recalculate their position in Afghanistan.
The possibility of insufficient lines of supply puts NATO's current course in
Afghanistan in even more jeopardy. It also could make Western troops more vulnerable
by possibly requiring significant alterations to operations in a supply-constrained
scenario. While the supply lines in Pakistan most likely will reopen eventually and
the NDN likely will remain open, the gap between likely and certain is vast.
The Pakistani Outpost Attack
The Pakistani decision to close the border crossings at Torkham near the Khyber Pass
and Chaman followed a U.S. attack on a Pakistani position inside Pakistan's tribal
areas near the Afghan border that killed some two-dozen Pakistani soldiers. The
Pakistanis have been increasingly opposed to U.S. operations inside Pakistani
territory. This most recent incident took an unprecedented toll, and triggered an
extreme response. The precise circumstances of the attack are unclear, with details
few, contradictory and disputed. The Pakistanis have insisted it was an unprovoked
attack and a violation of their sovereign territory. In response, Islamabad closed
the border to NATO; ordered the United States out of Shamsi air base in Balochistan,
used by the CIA; and is reviewing military and intelligence cooperation with the
United States and NATO.
The proximate reason for the reaction is obvious; the ultimate reason for the
suspension also is relatively simple. The Pakistani government believes NATO, and
the United States in particular, will fail to bring the war in Afghanistan to a
successful conclusion. It follows that the United States and other NATO countries at
some point will withdraw.
Some in Afghanistan have claimed that the United States has been defeated, but that
is not the case. The United States may have failed to win the war, but it has not
been defeated in the sense of being compelled to leave by superior force. It could
remain there indefinitely, particular as the American public is not overly hostile
to the war and is not generating substantial pressure to end operations.
Nevertheless, if the war cannot be brought to some sort of conclusion, at some point
Washington's calculations or public pressure, or both, will shift and the United
States and its allies will leave Afghanistan.
Given that eventual outcome, Pakistan must prepare to deal with the consequences. It
has no qualms about the Taliban running Afghanistan and it certainly does not intend
to continue to prosecute the United States' war against the Taliban once its forces
depart. To do so would intensify Taliban attacks on the Pakistani state, and could
trigger an even more intense civil war in Pakistan. The Pakistanis have no interest
in such an outcome even were the United States to remain in Afghanistan forever.
Instead, given that a U.S. victory is implausible and its withdrawal inevitable and
that Pakistan's western border is with Afghanistan, Islamabad will have to live with
-- and possibly manage -- the consequences of the re-emergence of a
Taliban-dominated government.
Under these circumstances, it makes little sense for Pakistan to collaborate
excessively with the United States, as this increases Pakistan's domestic dangers
and imperils its relationship with the Taliban. Pakistan was prepared to cooperate
with the United States and NATO while the United States was in an aggressive and
unpredictable phase. The Pakistanis could not risk more aggressive U.S. attacks on
Pakistani territory at that point, and feared a U.S.-Indian entente. But the United
States, while not leaving Afghanistan, has lost its appetite for a wider war and
lacks the resources for one. It is therefore in Pakistan's interest to reduce its
collaboration with the United States in preparation for what it sees as the
inevitable outcome. This will strengthen Pakistan's relations with the Afghan
Taliban and minimize the threat of internal Pakistani conflict.
Despite apologies by U.S. and NATO commanders, the Nov. 26 incident provided the
Pakistanis the opportunity -- and in their mind the necessity -- of an exceptional
response. The suspension of the supply line without any commitment to reopening it
and the closure of the U.S. air base from which unmanned aerial vehicle operations
were carried out (though Pakistani airspace reportedly remains open to operations)
was useful to Pakistan. It allowed Islamabad to reposition itself as hostile to the
United States because of American actions. It also allowed Islamabad to appear less
pro-American, a powerful domestic political issue.
Pakistan has closed supply lines as a punitive measure before. Torkham was closed
for 10 straight days in October 2010 in response to a U.S. airstrike that killed
several Pakistani soldiers, and trucks at the southern Chaman crossing were
"administratively delayed," according to the Pakistanis. This time, however,
Pakistan is signaling that matters are more serious. Uncertainty over these supply
lines is what drove the United States to expend considerable political capital to
arrange the alternative NDN.
(click here to enlarge image)
The NDN Alternative and BMD
This alternative depends on Russia. It transits Russian territory and airspace and
much of the former Soviet sphere, stretching as far as the Baltic Sea -- at great
additional expense compared to the Pakistani supply route. This alternative is
viable, as it would allow sufficient supplies to flow to support NATO operations.
Indeed, over recent months it has become the primary line of supply, and reliance
upon it is set to expand. At present, 48 percent of NATO supplies still go through
Pakistan; 52 percent of NATO supplies come through NDN (non-lethal); 60 percent of
all fuel comes through the NDN; and by the end of the year, the objective is for 75
percent of all non-lethal supplies to transit the NDN.
Separating the United States yields a different breakdown: Only 30 percent of U.S.
supplies traverse Pakistan; 30 percent of U.S. supplies come in by air (some of it
linked to the Karakoram-Torkham route, probably including the bulk of lethal
weapons); and 40 percent of U.S. supplies come in from the NDN land route.
Therefore, Dmitri Rogozin's threat that Russia might suspend these supply lines
threatens the viability of all Western operations in Afghanistan. Rogozin, the
Russian envoy to NATO, has been known to make extreme statements. But when he makes
those statements, he makes them with the full knowledge and authorization of the
Russian leadership. Though he is used to making statements that the leadership might
want to back away from, it is not unusual for him to signal new directions in
Russian policy. This means the U.S. and NATO militaries responsible for sustaining
operations in Afghanistan cannot afford to dismiss the threat. No matter how small
the probability, it places more than 100,000 U.S. and allied troops in a vulnerable
position.
For the Russians, the issue is the development and deployment of U.S. ballistic
missile defenses in Europe. The Russians oppose the deployment, arguing it
represents a threat to the Russian nuclear deterrent and therefore threatens the
nuclear balance. This was certainly the reason the Soviets opposed the initial
Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s. Carrying it forward to the 2010s,
however, and the reasoning appears faulty. First, there is no nuclear balance at the
moment, as there is no political foundation for nuclear war. Second, the
U.S.-European BMD scheme is not designed to stop a massive launch of nuclear
missiles such as the Russians could execute, but only the threat posed by a very
small number of missiles such as might be launched from Iran. Finally, it is not
clear that the system would work very well, though it has certainly proven far more
capable than the turn-of-the-century predecessor systems.
Nevertheless, the Russians vehemently opposed the system, threatening to deploy
Iskander short-range ballistic missiles and even tactical nuclear weapons in
Kaliningrad and other locations in response. The Russian concern is obviously real,
but it is difficult to believe it is the nuclear balance they are concerned about.
Rather, it is the geopolitical implications of placing BMD infrastructure in Central
Europe.
Opposition to a Second Containment
Elements of the weapons, particularly radars and interceptors, are being deployed
around the periphery of Russia -- in Poland, Romania, Turkey and Israel. From the
Russian point of view, the deployment of radars and other systems is a precursor to
the deployment of other military capabilities. They are extremely valuable
installations that must be protected. Troops therefore will be deployed along with
air defenses, and so on. In other words, the deployment of the BMD infrastructure
itself may have no practical impact on the Russians, but the indirect consequences
would be to set the stage for more expansive military deployments. The Russians must
assume this could entail a return to containment, the principle employed by the
United States during the Cold War to limit Soviet power.
The Russians see the inclusion of other military forces at the locations of the
interceptor and radar deployment as creating a belt of nations designed to contain
Russia. Given the uncertain future of Europe and the increasing relative power of
Russia in the region, the United States has an interest in making certain any
disruption in Europe doesn't give the Russians opportunities to extend their
political influence. While the extent to which American planners chose the sites
with the containment of Russia in mind isn't clear, from the Russian point of view
the motive doesn't matter. Planning is done based on capability, not intent.
Whatever the U.S. intent, the move opens the door for containment if and when U.S.
policy planners notice the opportunity.
The Russians have threatened actions for years, and in the past few weeks they have
become increasingly vocal on the subject of BMD and on threats. Rogozin obviously
was ordered to seize on the vulnerability created by the Pakistani move and
introduced the now-indispensible NDN as a point where the Russians could bring
pressure, knowing it is the one move the United States cannot tolerate at the
moment. Whether they intend to shut down the supply line is questionable. Doing so
would cause a huge breach with the United States, and to this point the Russians
have been relatively cautious in challenging fundamental U.S. interests. Moreover,
the Russians are worried about any instability in Afghanistan that might threaten
their sphere of influence in Central Asia. However, the Russians are serious about
not permitting a new containment line to be created, and therefore may be shifting
their own calculations.
It is a rule of war that secure strategic supply lines are the basis of warfare. If
you cannot be certain of supplying your troops, it is necessary to redeploy to more
favorable positions. The loss of supply lines at some point creates a vulnerability
that in military history leads to the annihilation of forces. It is something that
can be risked when major strategic interests require it, but it is a dangerous
maneuver. The Russians are raising the possibility that U.S. forces could be
isolated in Afghanistan. Supply lines into the landlocked country never have been
under U.S. or NATO control. All supplies must come in through third countries (less
than a third of American supplies come by air, and those mostly through Russian
airspace), and their willingness to permit transit is the foundation of U.S.
strategy.
The United States and NATO have been exposed as waging a war that depended on the
willingness of first Pakistan and now increasingly Russia to permit the movement of
supplies through their respective territories. Were they both to suspend that
privilege, the United States would face the choice of going to war to seize supply
lines -- something well beyond U.S. conventional capacity at this time -- or to
concede the war. Anytime a force depends on the cooperation of parties not under its
control to sustain its force, it is in danger.
The issue is not whether the threats are carried out. The issue is whether the
strategic interest the United States has in Afghanistan justifies the risk that the
Russians may not be bluffing and the Pakistanis will become even less reliable in
allowing passage. In the event of strategic necessity, such risks can be taken. But
the lower the strategic necessity, the less risk is tolerable. This does not change
the strategic reality in Afghanistan. It simply makes that reality much clearer and
the threats to that reality more serious. Washington, of course, hopes the
Pakistanis will reconsider and that the Russians are simply blowing off steam. Hope,
however, is not a strategy.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to
www.stratfor.com.
Copyright 2011 STRATFOR.
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STRATFOR
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December 1, 2011
A DEADLY U.S. ATTACK ON PAKISTANI SOIL
By Nate Hughes
In the early hours of Nov. 26 on the Afghan-Pakistani border, what was almost
certainly a flight of U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and an AC-130
gunship killed some two dozen Pakistani servicemen at two border outposts inside
Pakistan. Details remain scarce, conflicting and disputed, but the incident was
known to have taken place near the border of the Afghan provinces of Kunar and
Nangarhar and the Mohmand agency of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(FATA). The death toll inflicted by the United States against Pakistani servicemen
is unprecedented, and while U.S. commanders and NATO leaders have expressed regret
over the incident, the reaction from Pakistan has been severe.
Claims and Interests
The initial Pakistani narrative of the incident describes an unprovoked and
aggressive attack on well-established outposts more than a mile inside Pakistani
territory -- outposts known to the Americans and ones that representatives of the
NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had visited in the past. The
attack supposedly lasted for some two hours despite distressed communications from
the outpost to the Pakistani military's general headquarters in Rawalpindi.
(click here to enlarge image)
The United States was quick to acknowledge that Pakistani troops were probably
killed by attack aircraft providing close air support to a joint U.S.-Afghan patrol
near the Kunar border, and while U.S. Marine Gen. James Mattis, the head of U.S.
Central Command, promised a high-level investigation, the United States and NATO
seemed to be more interested in smoothing relations with Islamabad than endorsing or
correcting initial reports about the specifics of the attack.
What has ensued has been a classic media storm of accusations, counteraccusations,
theories and specifics provided by unnamed sources that all serve to obscure the
truth as much as they clarify it. Meanwhile, no matter what actually happened,
aggressive spin campaigns have been launched to shape perceptions of the incident
for myriad interests. Given the longstanding tensions between Washington and
Islamabad as well as a record of cross-border incidents, stakeholders will believe
exactly what they want to believe about the Nov. 26 incident, and even an official
investigation will have little bearing on their entrenched views.
The Framework
While statements and accusations have often referenced NATO and the ISAF, it is U.S.
forces that operate in this part of the country, and this close to the border the
unit involved was likely operating under the aegis of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan (the
U.S. command in Afghanistan) rather than under the multinational ISAF. Indeed, many
American allies have also expressed frustration over the incident, convinced that it
undermines ISAF operations in Afghanistan.
Reports indicate that a U.S. special operations team (likely a platoon-sized
element, but at least a 12-man detachment) accompanied by Afghan commandos
(generally a seven-man squad accompanies a U.S. platoon, but 25- to 30-man platoons
sometimes accompany 12-man U.S. teams) were involved in an engagement and called for
close air support. It now seems clear that both sides opened fire at some point. At
least one unidentified senior Pakistani defense official told The Washington Post
that it had been the Pakistanis who fired first, opening up with mortars and machine
guns after sending up an illumination round. However, most Pakistani sources
continue to deny this.
Given that Washington has been trying to smooth over already tense relations with
Islamabad, such an aggressive attack taking place without provocation seems
unlikely. In any event, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operated by the CIA
essentially have free rein in Pakistani airspace over the border area and are often
used for targeted assassinations, meaning that the involvement of attack helicopters
rather than UAVs does lend credence to the close air support claim. (The principle
of hot pursuit, which is understood and often exercised by U.S. patrols along the
border, might also have been applied.)
The Border
The "border" between Afghanistan and Pakistan in this area is part of the Durand
Line agreed upon between the Afghan monarch and the colonial authority of British
India in 1893. Not only is the border poorly marked, it also divides extraordinarily
rugged terrain and essentially bisects the Pashtun population. And from the British
perspective, the agreement was intended to establish a broad buffer between British
and Russian interests in Central Asia by establishing a line along the distant,
outer frontier of British India. British priorities had little to do with the
day-to-day realities of a fixed linear boundary, and to this day the specific border
exists primarily on paper.
The border is characterized by a string of outposts -- often little more than
prepared fighting positions and some crude shelters that are difficult to
distinguish between military, government or civilian structures -- manned by the
paramilitary Frontier Corps on the Pakistani side. These positions presumably are
selected for their tactical value in monitoring and dominating the border, and the
troops occupying those positions invariably know the general location of the border
before them. Similarly, U.S. special operations teams are well trained and practiced
in land navigation at night, regularly conduct operations in the area and are there
to patrol that very border. Both sides know full well their general positions
relative to the border.
Reuters
A post-attack image of the Pakistani outpost involved in the Nov. 26 cross-border
incident
The point is that, whatever the specifics of the Nov. 26 incident, it appears
largely consistent with and governed by the underlying tactical realities of the
border. A small Pakistani outpost that perceives a threatening, armed entity will
take advantage of its position and heavier weaponry in engaging the force rather
than let it slip any closer -- and this will be more true the smaller and more
isolated the garrison. Under fire, a U.S. interdiction patrol (as distinct from a
reconnaissance patrol, for which breaking contact is proscribed if feasible) will
move quickly to advantageous terrain dictated by the direction of fire and the
immediate geography around it, regardless of the border. If the situation dictates,
the patrol may engage in hot pursuit across the border after being attacked.
The border is a highway for insurgents (both those who use Pakistan as a sanctuary
for their fight in Afghanistan and those who are doing the reverse), other militants
and supplies. That's why the border outposts are manned and U.S.-Afghan teams
conduct patrols -- to interdict both types of insurgents. But it also means that
there are plenty of armed formations moving around at night, and from the
perspective of both a Pakistani outpost and a U.S. patrol, none of them is friendly.
Close Air Support
Pakistani forces have regularly shelled targets on the Afghan side of the border,
and on a number of occasions U.S. forces have killed Pakistani troops -- in
firefights, with artillery, with UAVs and with attack helicopters. Indeed, standard
U.S. operating procedures allow Pakistani troops and militants alike to know the
probable American response in a given tactical scenario -- including what it takes
to get close air support called in.
Any dismounted American foot patrol that takes fire from both mortars and heavy
machine guns is going to call for whatever fire support it can get. And given the
frequency of incidents and the rugged terrain near the border, special operations
teams operating near the border are likely to have a flight of Apaches close by
ready to provide that support.
The forward-looking infrared sensor mounted on the nose of the AH-64 Apache is
capable of remarkable resolution -- sufficient to make out not only adult
individuals but the shapes of weapons they may be carrying. But the history of the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is also rife with incidents where aircrews, acting on
the information available to them (and with the context of being called in to
support friendly forces under fire), engaged targets only later to find that the
activity or weaponry had not been as it appeared -- a reporter with a long,
telephoto lens on a camera rather than a rocket launcher or children picking up
pinecones instead of insurgents emplacing an improvised explosive device.
Particularly on the border, the pilot and gunner are making the same distinction
Pakistani outposts and American patrols are likely to make in the area: Armed
individuals and groups not known to be friendly are probably hostile. The position
of friendly forces will be communicated by the air controller in contact with the
aircrew and also generally by infrared strobes or other means. Though the air
controller will indicate the immediate threat, any non-friendly position could
quickly be judged hostile. Any unit firing or maneuvering with what appears to be
weaponry may quickly be deemed hostile in the exigency of the moment and the
uncertainty of the environment based on limited information. And while ISAF has
tightened its rules of engagement and added additional oversight for close air
support in Afghanistan in response to domestic outrage over collateral damage, there
is still going to be an enormous difference between the restraint exercised in, say,
Marjah, where a population-centered counterinsurgency campaign is actively under
way, and an isolated special operations patrol near the Pakistani border in an area
known to be frequented by militants.
The Big Picture
In a way, the Afghan-Pakistani border is a microcosm of the U.S.-Pakistani
relationship. The U.S. patrols and the Pakistani outposts are there for entirely
different and in some cases directly opposing reasons. The Pakistanis are spread
thin in the FATA and are focusing their efforts on the Pakistani Taliban, which have
their sights set on Islamabad. Not only are they less interested in confronting the
Afghan Taliban as a matter of priority, but Pakistani national interest dictates
maintaining a functional relationship with the Afghan Taliban as leverage in dealing
with the United States and as a way to control Afghanistan as the United States and
its allies begin to withdraw.
Hence, elements of the Pakistani military and the Inter-Services Intelligence
directorate are actively engaged in supporting the Afghan Taliban and have in some
cases come to see common cause with them -- not only in supporting the Afghan
Taliban but also in actively undermining U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and disrupting
Pakistani cooperation with the United States. Indeed, the timing and magnitude of
the Nov. 26 incident -- which was entirely plausible under a number of scenarios --
calls into question whether it may have been staged or intended to provoke the
response it did. Some reports have indicated that the Taliban may have staged an
initial attack intended to draw the Pakistani positions and the American patrol into
a firefight with each other.
Whatever the case, factions that benefit from a greater division between Pakistan
and the United States will be aided by the incident and subsequent public outcry --
as will the Pakistani state, which is now holding its own cooperation hostage for
better terms in its relationship with Washington.
Ultimately, however, there is a reason for the long, established history of
cross-border incidents and skirmishes. The United States and Pakistan are playing
very different games for very different ends on both sides of the border and in
Afghanistan. They have different adversaries and are playing on different
timetables. The alliance is one of necessity but hobbled by incompatibility, and
near-term American imperatives in Afghanistan -- lines of supply, political
progress, counterterrorism efforts -- clash directly with the long-term American
interest in a strong Pakistani state able to manage its territory and keep its
nuclear arsenal secure. The near-term demands Washington has made on Islamabad
weaken the state and divide the country. Obviously, the Pakistani government intends
to retain its strength and keep the country as unified as possible.
The reality is that as long as the political objectives that dictate U.S. and
Pakistani military strategies and tactics are generally at odds, there will be
tension and conflict. And as long as Pakistani and American forces are both
patrolling a border that exists primarily on paper, they will be at odds.
Tactically, this means armed groups with many divergent loyalties will be circling
one another.
The Fallout
What actually happened early on Nov. 26 is increasingly irrelevant; it is merely a
symptom of larger issues that remain unresolved, and the fallout has already taken
shape. Pakistan is leveraging the incident for everything it can and is already
demonstrating its displeasure (both for political leverage and to satisfy an enraged
domestic populace) by doing the following:
Closing the crucial border crossings at Torkham near the Khyber Pass and Chaman to
the south
Giving the CIA 15 days to vacate the Shamsi air base in Balochistan from which it
conducts UAV operations (though Pakistani airspace reportedly remains open to such
flights)
Reviewing its intelligence and military cooperation with the United States and NATO
Boycotting the upcoming Dec. 5 Bonn conference on Afghanistan, though there are
some hints already that it may reconsider; it is difficult to imagine what a
conference on Afghanistan without Pakistan might achieve, but Islamabad would face
other risks in not attending such a conference.
The larger question is whether the calculus for an alliance of necessity between the
United States and Pakistan still holds. As the American and allied withdrawal from
Afghanistan accelerates, without a political understanding between Washington,
Islamabad, Kabul and the Afghan Taliban, there is little prospect of American and
Pakistani interests coming into any closer alignment. The United States and its
allies are moving for the exits while the Pakistanis try to ensure optimal
circumstances surrounding the withdrawal and at the same time ensure maximum
leverage to manage whatever ends up being left behind. The two countries still have
numerous incentives to continue cooperation, but all the ingredients for
cross-border incidents and skirmishes -- as well as the opportunity to stage,
provoke and exploit those incidents and skirmishes -- remain firmly in place.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to
www.stratfor.com.
Copyright 2011 STRATFOR.
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Pakiness, 101: Pakistan cannot be understood, without understanding pakiness. Hoping to repeatedly point out examples of typical paki behaviour...which needs to be recognized as it is a recurring pattern. If our govt understood these behaviours, we could have saved ourselves billions in treasure and lost lives.
Key word: Down hill skiing: First they will take an extreme position (ie will boycott Bonn meeting), then when suitable pressure is applied, will back down under flimsy excuses.
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/article2676191.ece (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/article2676191.ece)
Pakistan budges on Bonn meet
ANITA JOSHUA
Pakistan on Wednesday hinted at the possibility of participating in the coming Bonn Conference on Afghanistan but ruled out any high-level representation on the ground that Afghan soil had been used by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to attack the country in what the Army calls a “deliberate” act of aggression.
Agreeing to consider German Chancellor Angela Merkel's repeated requests for Islamabad's participation, Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani said he would refer the suggestion of having Pakistan's Ambassador in Germany attend the deliberations to the Parliamentary Committee on National Security.
Ms. Merkel called Mr. Gilani to impress upon him the importance of Pakistan's participation at the meeting to make it meaningful. As Mr. Gilani was unwilling to budge on high-level participation, she suggested the Ambassador be permitted to represent Pakistan so that its seat at the table was not left vacant.
In view of bilateral relations and the fact that the German Foreign Minister was among the first to personally call his Pakistani counterpart to express solidarity with Pakistan and condole the death of 24 Pakistan Army soldiers in the NATO firing at Pakistani outposts on Saturday morning, Mr. Gilani agreed to refer the request to the Parliamentary Committee.
Meanwhile, the formal communication to the U.S. asking it to vacate the Shamsi airbase has been sent with December 11 set as the deadline.
Pakistan has released footage of two posts which came under fire from helicopters of the coalition forces in Afghanistan and wanted to know where the NATO casualties were in case there was firing from the Pakistani side.
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http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/proto-indian/2011/12/04/why-i-find-us-attacks-on-pakistan-satisfying/ (http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/proto-indian/2011/12/04/why-i-find-us-attacks-on-pakistan-satisfying/)
Why I find US attacks on Pakistan satisfying
What goes around comes around… The US military has spanked the Pakistani army and humiliated its leadership by attacking outposts on the Af-Pak border and killing 24 soldiers.
Normally, I feel strongly against such blatant violations of the sovereignty of independent nations. But, and only as an exception, I must confess, the US action is giving me immense pleasure.
Adding to my satisfaction, even unconcealed glee, is the decision of US President Barrack Obama not to tender an apology for the attack.
A respected colleague is aghast at my reaction. He accuses me of being intrinsically anti-Pakistani.
I’m not.
But I also don’t believe, even for a minute, that it is a friendly country; that engagement with it is the best way forward for us; that a strong and stable Pakistan is in our best interest; and that we must do our bit to strengthen its democratically elected government and the civil society from which it draws its authority.
And that’s why I feel vindicated when the US gives Pakistan a solid hiding and a very visible black eye – something that the Indian government seems singularly incapable of doing.
For decades, India and its citizens have been at the receiving end of a well-documented, highly visible but never publicly acknowledged war declared by the rulers of Islamabad.
For decades, Indians have been chaffing at the impunity with which the perpetrators of terror from across the border have been plying their craft in this country and the brazenness with which their political masters in Islamabad and Rawalpindi have been denying their complicity and even defending them as so-called freedom fighters, social workers and heroes.
So, it comes as a delicious irony to see Pakistan at the receiving end of its own medicine; to see Pakistani sovereignty violated with impunity by a “friendly nation”, which refuses even to apologise for the havoc it caused.
And how have the Pakistanis reacted – to this attack as well as the one six months ago that killed terror mastermind Osama bin Laden right under the noses of his hosts in that country’s establishment?
“We will not tolerate this.”
“Next time, we will hit back.”
“We will retaliate.”
The impotent rage ringing out from those words is music to my ears.
We’ve heard our leaders repeat them thousands of times in the past. We know them for just what they are: false bravado.
There’s nothing the Pakistani government or military can do about it. The Pakistani leadership knows it, too. They’ve heard it for decades from their Indian counterparts – and chuckled.
Now, they’re being forced to parrot these same lines. And I can bet my bottom dollar that they’re not chuckling this time.
The Indian government is also not chuckling – at least not publicly. Officially, India wants the US and Pakistan – “two friendly powers” – to resolve their differences.
All right… we may not have the means to punish Pakistan for being the neighbourhood delinquent, but we can at least call a spade a spade!
What amazes me is the continued belief across the Indian political spectrum – right, left and centre – in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, that peace with Pakistan is possible on respectable terms and that India must somehow try and help that country’s civilian government consolidate its grip on power.
Complete tosh.
Look at the evidence:
* Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a civilian, reneged on the Simla Pact as soon as India returned 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war;
* Gen Zia ul Haq, his successor, began exporting thousands of jehadi fighters into India to bleed this country to death by a thousand cuts;
* Bhutto’s daughter Benazir, despite publicly wanting peace with India, set the Kashmir valley in flames in 1989;
* Kargil happened during the reign of Nawaz Sharif;
* Gen Parvez Musharaf, who overthrew Sharif in a coup, is widely believed to be the author of Kargil; and
* Pakistan planned and executed the 26/11 attack on Mumbai when Benazir’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, was (and remains) President. Indian home minister P Chidambaram complained only last week that Pakistan continues to protect the perpetrators of that attack even as it continues to stonewall Indian demands to bring them to justice.
So, no Pakistani ruler over the last 40 years – whether civilian, military or civilian-backed-by-the-military – has seriously pursued peace with India.
And the peace overtures by every Indian leader – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh – have been rebuffed with asymmetric warfare, political doublespeak, diplomatic grandstanding and brazen deceit.
Pakistan’s bottom line has always been: give us Kashmir, or else…
It has not budged from this position since Independence.
All the concessions, it has demanded overtly and covertly, have to come from India. Regrettably, successive rulers in New Delhi have, in their eagerness for peace, willingly suspended disbelief and fallen into the Pakistani trap.
Tell me: which book of strategy, which master of real politick, which treatise on international relations has ever said: It is in your best interest to strengthen your enemy.
Even the US, without whose military and financial support Pakistan will collapse, has not been able to make Pakistan behave like a responsible member of the international community.
Then, Pakistan’s foundational premise was anti-Indian and it continues to define its existence on an anti-India paradigm.
So, New Delhi’s hopes of responsible behaviour and neighbourliness from Pakistan is nothing but the victory of irrational expectation over experience.
Already, many influential circles around the world consider Pakistan a failed state. It may be in India’s best interest to let it fail completely. And if its constituent parts – Sindh, Balochistan, Northwest Frontier Province and Punjab — want to go their own way, let them.
My respected colleague is getting very agitated, almost on the verge of having a fit. How can you consider Pakistan an enemy? he demands. That is the language of 19th century geopolitics.
And that, to me, is the language of post-modern denial.
Friendly, it isn’t; neutral, it can’t be… I’m sorry, but I can’t find any other word to describe Pakistan. Let’s face it, the Allies didn’t win the Second World War by calling Nazi Germany a friend; the West didn’t win the Cold War by describing Soviet Bloc inhabitants as comrades; and the Indian Army didn’t liberate Bangladesh by being buddies with General Niazi’s hordes.
That still leaves the main question unanswered: how do we deal with our troublesome western neighbour?
War is not an option, India lacks the capability for covert action and talks have not yielded any results.
The honest answer is, like the Indian government and, indeed, the rest of the world, I don’t know.
But I do know this: the first step towards resolving the problem of Pakistan is to acknowledge that Pakistan is, indeed, a problem. And considering Pakistan a friend is not a step in that direction.
Meanwhile, I continue to savour the quiet satisfaction of seeing Pakistan getting what it had coming for a long, long time.
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Tactical Analyst Ben West discusses the characteristics and significance of the Dec. 6 attacks in Afghanistan.
TRANSCRIPT:
Related Links
• Attacks on Shiites in Afghanistan
• The Afghanistan Campaign, Part 2: The Taliban Strategy
Today’s bombings in Afghanistan targeting Shiites have been condemned by the Taliban. Meanwhile, a Pakistani militant group has claimed them. These attacks pose a challenge to the Taliban and undermine their claim of control.
Three bombings across Afghanistan have targeted Shiites celebrating Ashura. Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (also known as LeJ) has claimed responsibility for the attack in Kabul that killed 55 people. Smaller attacks in Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar appear to be linked due to their similar timing and targeting. Sectarian violence like this is rare in Afghanistan. LeJ has been highly involved in attacks against Shiites in Pakistan, but has not engaged in high profile militant attacks in Afghanistan.
In Kabul, a man wearing a suicide vest maneuvered his way into a group of Shiites waiting to enter a shrine. The resulting explosion has killed at least 55 people and injured over 100 more. In Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar, bombs planted on a bicycle and motorbike, respectively, targeted processions of Shia on the streets. These attacks were far less deadly though — four were killed in Mazar-i-Sharif, while nobody was killed in Kandahar. The similar timing and targeting of the three attacks strongly suggests coordination between the attackers. So even though LeJ did not claim responsibility for the attacks outside of Kabul, it is very likely that they were responsible for these coordinated attacks.
High profile sectarian attacks like these are rare in Afghanistan. The Taliban has focused its effort on NATO forces and Afghan government officials in collusion with them. Inciting more violence by attacking Afghanistan’s Shiite minority does not fit into their strategy. In Pakistan however, the opposite is true. Extremist groups have long adopted sectarian violence as a tactic in trying to destabilize the government.
It is not surprising then that the Taliban has condemned these attacks while a Pakistani militant group has claimed them. LeJ has engaged in numerous sectarian attacks across Pakistan. For example, just in September, LeJ claimed responsibility for an armed assault on a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims in Quetta, Pakistan. In a similar attack earlier in July, gunmen killed 11 Shiites travelling in a van in Quetta. The LeJ promptly claimed responsibility for it as well.
However, it is significant that LeJ appears to be moving its attacks across the border into Afghanistan. Pakistani militant groups are known to support the Taliban by providing things such as fighters, supplies, training and even conducting the occasional attack. But these attacks today do not support the Taliban’s goal of forcing foreign military presence out of the country and assuming control.
Today’s attacks work against the Taliban strategy and highlight a breach in Taliban control over the various militant groups active in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, militant groups are trying to weaken the government by causing insecurity, but in Afghanistan, the Taliban is trying to prove that it is the more competent governing force – and that means providing security. The fact that the LeJ was able to establish a presence in these areas and conduct these attacks undermines the Taliban’s governing capability. The Taliban has verbally condemned the attacks, but we are watching for more direct retaliation from the Taliban in an effort for them to prove they can control these areas and punish those who trespass.
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http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/06/president_zardari_suddenly_leaves_pakistan_is_he_on_the_way_out (http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/06/president_zardari_suddenly_leaves_pakistan_is_he_on_the_way_out)
President Zardari suddenly leaves Pakistan -- is he on the way out?
Posted By Josh Rogin Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - 5:34 PM Share
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari left Pakistan suddenly on Tuesday, complaining of heart pains, and is now in Dubai. His planned testimony before a joint session of Pakistan's parliament on the Memogate scandal is now postponed indefinitely.
On Dec. 4, Zardari announced that he would address Pakistan's parliament about the Memogate issue, in which his former ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani stands accused of orchestrating a scheme to take power away from Pakistan's senior military and intelligence leadership and asking for U.S. help in preventing a military coup. Haqqani has denied that he wrote the memo at the heart of the scheme, which also asked for U.S. support for the Zardari government and promised to realign Pakistani foreign policy to match U.S. interests.
The memo was passed from Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz to former National Security Advisor Jim Jones, to then Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen on May 10, only nine days after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani military town of Abbottabad.
Ijaz has repeatedly accused Haqqani of being behind the memo, and Ijaz claims that Haqqani was working with Zardari's implicit support.
Early on Tuesday morning, Zardari's spokesman revealed that the president had traveled to Dubai to see his children and undergo medical tests linked to a previously diagnosed "cardiovascular condition."
A former U.S. government official told The Cable today that when President Barack Obama spoke with Zardari over the weekend regarding NATO's killing of the 24 Pakistani soldiers, Zardari was "incoherent." The Pakistani president had been feeling increased pressure over the Memogate scandal. "The noose was getting tighter -- it was only a matter of time," the former official said, expressing the growing expectation inside the U.S. government that Zardari may be on the way out.
The former U.S. official said that parts of the U.S. government were informed that Zardari had a "minor heart attack" on Monday night and flew to Dubai via air ambulance today. He may have angioplasty on Wednesday and may also resign on account of "ill health."
"This is the ‘in-house change option' that has been talked about," said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, in a Tuesday interview with The Cable. Nawaz said that this plan would see Zardari step aside and be replaced by his own party, preserving the veneer of civilian rule but ultimately acceding to the military's wishes to get rid of Zardari.
"Unfortunately, it means that the military may have had to use its muscle to effect change yet again," said Nawaz. "Now if they stay at arm's length and let the party take care of its business, then things may improve. If not, then this is a silent coup with [Pakistani prime minister Yousaf Raza] Gilani as the front man."
In Islamabad, some papers have reported that before Zardari left Pakistan, the Pakistani Army insisted that Zardari be examined by their own physicians, and that the Army doctors determined that Zardari was fine and did not need to leave the country for medical reasons. Zardari's spokesman has denied that he met with the Army doctors.
One Pakistani source told The Cable that Zardari was informed on Monday that none of the opposition party members nor any of the service chiefs would attend his remarks to the parliament as a protest against his continued tenure. This source also said that over a dozen of Zardari's ambassadors in foreign countries were in the process of being recalled in what might be a precursor to Zardari stepping down as president, taking many of his cronies with him.
Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported that before leaving, Zardari met separately with Gilani, Chairman of the Senate Farooq H Naik, and Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
This past weekend, the Memogate scandal worsened for Zardari when Ijaz alleged in a Newsweek opinion piece that Zardari and Haqqani had prior knowledge of the U.S. raid to kill bin Laden, and may have given permission for the United States to violate Pakistan's airspace to conduct the raid.
On May 2, the day after bin Laden was killed, Wajid Hasan, Pakistan's high commissioner to the United Kingdom, said in an interview with CNN that Pakistan, "did know that this was going to happen because we have been keeping -- we were monitoring him and America was monitoring him. But Americans got to where he was first."
In a statement given to the Associated Press of Pakistan Monday, White House spokesperson Caitlin Hayden said that information on the actual operation to kill bin Laden was not given to anyone in Pakistan.
"As we've said repeatedly, given the sensitivity of the operation, to protect our operators we did not inform the Pakistani government, or any other government, in advance," she said.
Zardari lived in self-imposed exile in Dubai from 2004 through 2007 after being released from prison, where he had been held for eight years on corruption charges. His three children live there, but his 23-year son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the chairman of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), is in Pakistan now.
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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2011 STRATFOR.COM Diary Archives
Attacks a Reminder of Afghanistan's Sectarian Tensions
Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) claimed responsibility for one of three improvised explosive device attacks that targeted Afghan Shiite shrines and Ashura mourner processions Tuesday. The attacks hit targets hundreds of kilometers apart but occurred within 75 minutes of each other. Investigations have yet to confirm LeJ’s claim. The attacks were almost certainly timed to spark sectarian violence, and whichever militant group carried them out required resources in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar.
That kind of sectarian violence, which for years has affected Iraq, has not played a great role in the war NATO has led in Afghanistan since 2001. The Afghan Taliban have for the most part directed their actions at Western, Indian and NATO targets, along with Afghan security forces and government posts. While they do not indicate the stirring of a new trend, Tuesday’s attacks do spotlight the potential for a rise in sectarian and tribal violence in the country.
“While they do not indicate the stirring of a new trend, Tuesday’s attacks do spotlight the potential for a rise in sectarian and tribal violence in the country. “
Foreign powers have occupied Afghanistan for about two decades since 1979. In the period between these occupations, Afghanistan was embroiled in a civil war. Foreign occupiers tend to divide the country along artificial lines, co-opting some elements of society and thereby alienating others. Those groups that do not benefit from patronage — or worse, see their traditional rivals gain strength — turn to insurgency. Other parts of society, even when attempting to maintain neutrality, are often dragged into conflict. While foreign intervention puts a temporary hold on underlying tribal, ethnic and sectarian tensions, it does not permanently solve them. In the long run, occupation tends to exacerbate those rivalries and even creates new ones. When the artificial force is removed from the equation — as was seen in the 1990s — long-repressed tensions quickly return to the fore. This is the key geopolitical reality of a country with arbitrary borders that has been colonized time and again.
The artificial force directed by the U.S. and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has only recently begun to lift, and will affect the reality on the ground for years to come. But as Washington attempts to work with Kabul and Islamabad to forge a political accommodation with the Taliban, opportunities for rival groups to take part in an eventual settlement will open, while others will close. While the Taliban have appeared reticent to negotiate, it is fully within their interest — their participation depends on terms and timing.
If such progress occurs, transnational jihadists with no stake in national politics or in political reconciliation in Afghanistan and Pakistan fear they will be negatively affected. Many of them do have past associations with parts of the Afghan Taliban, so some jihadists may choose to move toward negotiations. But the most hardline groups fear that the settlement will fall far short of their ideological expectations, or that they may actually end up the subject of crackdowns.
In a fairly quick response, Zabihollah Mojahed, an Afghan Taliban spokesman, criticized the attacks and blamed them on foreign enemies. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the head of the Taliban, recently instructed his fighters to avoid attacking civilians and to focus on foreign targets and Afghan collaborators. While that has not been strictly carried out in practice, one possibility these events open is for the Taliban — if they so choose — to openly criticize transnational jihadists. While they may have aligned over the last two decades, the Taliban’s interests are not perfectly or permanently tied to those of foreign jihadists.
Tuesday’s attacks appear to indicate that LeJ, which has close ties to al Qaeda and foreign jihadists, is attempting to ignite new types of infighting and to disrupt any movement toward a negotiated settlement between Washington, the Afghan government, Pakistan and the Taliban. If so, it represents a highly visible and significant break between LeJ and the Taliban. Washington demands that the Taliban eliminate support of transnational jihadists as a precondition to any settlement. In this context, the attacks’ potential significance as a break between the two entities, and the distinction publicly made afterward by the Taliban, are both noteworthy.
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From the web..
"Everyone seems to wonder why Pak terrorists are quick to line up for suicide attacks. Lets have a look at the evidence: No Christmas,No tv,No nude women,No football,No pork chops,No hotdogs, No burgers, No beer, No bacon, Rags for clothes, Towels for hats, Constant wailing from some asshole in a tower, More than one wife, More than one mother in law, You can't shave, Your wife can't shave, You can't wash off the smell of donkey, You cook over burning camel shit, Yr wife smells worse than your donkey.
Then they tell you "when you die, it all gets better"....!!"
Seasons Greetings.
P.S.Pl. delete if offensive..
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Note the Dec 15, deadline...that will likely determine whether Zardari comes back. If the army blames Zardari for "memogate", the PPP prime minister may resign, and create chaos in Sindh state of pak.
http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue=20111209&page=1 (http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue=20111209&page=1)
President Asif Zardari's sudden departure for Dubai last Tuesday, reportedly for a "routine medical check-up", has provoked much speculation. One report claims he may resign for reasons of bad health. Others say he has fled the country to avoid impeachment or conviction on account of "treasonable" involvement in "Memogate". The government says he is fine and should be back in a few days after the medical checkups are done, "provided his doctors give him the all-clear". If he is fine, why qualify it thus? If he isn't back soon, then he must be seriously ill. These contradictory statements have fueled rumours of a creeping "soft coup" against him.
Mr Zardari, to be certain, hasn't been in the best of health. He suffers from an assortment of ailments, including diabetes, hypertension, blood pressure and coronary disease. But the truth is that the tensions of Memogate and NRO must be weighing on him in more ways than one. Consider.
The opposition, Supreme Court, military and sections of the media are gunning for President Asif Zardari. Of late, Mr Nawaz Sharif has also been screaming "Go Zardari Go". He gave the government ten days to set up a credible commission on Memogate but then petitioned the SC in four days to take matters in hand. Imran Khan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi have been blasting him in rallies, the latter thundering that Pakistan's nuclear assets and Mr Zardari cannot co-exist, an ominous charge that those close to the military are inclined to make of politicians who are accused of being a "national security risk" and then scuttled.
The SC also seems to have decided to go for Mr Zardari's jugular. The NRO review petition has been revived and rubbished swiftly. The PM has been ordered to write to the Swiss authorities to reopen the money laundering cases against Mr Zardari, regardless of his presidential immunity. Now the SC has hastily held that there is, prima facie, a case to be made out against Husain Haqqani, former ambassador to Washington, and President Zardari, and ordered them, plus the prime minister, army chief and DG ISI, to send their comments, remarks and evidence to the SC by 15 December.
The military, in the meanwhile, is leaking like a sieve with stories of the "nefarious and treasonable" activities of both Mr Haqqani and President Zardari.
All these "stakeholders" have personal, political or institutional grudges against Mr Zardari. According to Imran Khan, the plan to "get Zardari" was ready in November last year but the military backed off at the last minute following the extensions in service granted by him to both the army chief and DG ISI. Now there is no such hurdle.
December is a critical month. If the government balks at obeying SC orders, the SC may seek recourse to Article 190 of the Constitution and order the army to implement them. Once such an order is made, Mr Zardari will be as good as in the net. He won't be able to flee.
Under the circumstances, it makes good sense to be ill (thereby deriving public sympathy) and be out of the country (thereby denying the SC and military a chance to nab him and put him in the dock) until the road is clear of the present danger. Alternatively, if the plans are there for all to see, he can guide his besieged party and prime minister from the safety of Dubai and London to resist, like Altaf Hussain continues to do and like Nawaz Sharif did for ten years from Saudi Arabia. It is learnt that the prime minister and party have girded their loins to face the conspiracies afoot against them.
Mr Zardari will not resign and the PPP will not throw in the towel without a fight. Instead, they will go down fighting, charging the "Punjabi establishment" of martyring two Sindhi prime ministers and scuttling three PPP governments to date, thus reclaiming collective martyrdom and another chance to rise like a Phoenix from the ashes.
Mr Zardari can pend his decision to stay or return on the basis of how the SC proceeds in the next month or so. If the omens are not good, his illness could take a turn for the worse, compelling him to stay put in a hospital abroad. Or he might return in the next few days and see how the army and ISI respond to the notice of the SC. Much will rest on whether they send an adverse view of him on Memogate directly via the Judge Advocate General of the army or a favourable view of him via the Defense Ministry which comes under the federal government. He has already set a precedent for exiting the country unannounced and suddenly on account of health reasons. He can do so again should an emergency arise. But the dice is loaded against him and the conspirators will not be easily thwarted this time round.
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The game certainly has more than the usual number of levels in Afpakia!
BTW, I just noticed that this thread too has passed the 100,000 level-- a goodly portion of the credit I think must go to our YA and the quality of the posts and intel he brings.
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Woof,
Not a friendly move on Pakistan's part.
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/10/9352886-pakistan-says-us-drones-in-its-air-space-will-be-shot-down
Pakistan says U.S. drones in its air space will be shot downBy NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news service reports
Updated at 8 p.m. EST
ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan will shoot down any U.S. drone that intrudes its air space per new directives, a senior Pakistani official told NBC News on Saturday.
Pakistani security personnel examine a crashed US surveillance drone inside Pakistan in August.
According to the new Pakistani defense policy, "Any object entering into our air space, including U.S. drones, will be treated as hostile and be shot down," a senior Pakistani military official told NBC News.
The policy change comes just weeks after a deadly NATO attack on Pakistani military checkpoints accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, prompting Pakistani officials to order all U.S. personnel out of a remote airfield in Pakistan.
Pakistan told the U.S. to vacate Shamsi Air Base by December 11.
A senior military official from Quetta, Pakistan, confirmed to NBC News on Saturday that the evacuation of the base, used for staging classified drone flights directed against militants, “will be completed tomorrow,” according to NBC’s Fakhar ur Rehman.
Pakistan's Frontier Corps security forces took control of the base Saturday evening after most U.S. military personnel left, Xinhua news agency reported. Civil aviation officials also moved in Saturday, Xinhua said.
Pakistani Military Chief Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani had issued multiple directives since the Nov. 26 NATO attack, which included orders to shoot down U.S. drones, senior military officials confirmed to NBC News on Saturday.
It was unclear Saturday whether orders to fire upon incoming U.S. drones was part of the initial orders.
Supporters of opposition political party Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (Movement of Justice) carry a mock US drone as they listen to a speech by the party founder Imran Khan, during a protest rally against the United States drones attacks.
The Pakistani airbase had been used by U.S. forces, including the CIA, to stage elements of a clandestine U.S. counter-terrorism operation to attack militants linked to al-Qaida, the Taliban and Pakistan's home-grown Haqqani network, using unmanned drone aircraft armed with missiles.
President Barack Obama stepped up the drone campaign after he took office. U.S. officials say it has produced major successes in decimating the central leadership of al-Qaida and putting associated militant groups on the defensive.
Since 2004, U.S. drones have carried out more than 300 attacks inside Pakistan.
Pakistani authorities started threatening U.S. personnel with eviction from the Shamsi base in the wake of the raid last May in which U.S. commandos killed Osama bin Laden at his hide-out near Islamabad without notifying Pakistani officials in advance.
NBC News' Fakhar ur Rehman, msnbc.com's Sevil Omer and Reuters contributed to this report
P.C.
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Pakistan's military said Sunday that Washington has met its demand to pull U.S. equipment and personnel from an air base in the southwest of the country.
US army vacates airbase in Pakistan, as angry demonstrators burn the American flag in protest at a NATO air strike that killed 24 soldiers. Deborah Lutterbeck reports.
.Pakistan demanded the U.S. withdraw from Shamsi air base in Baluchistan province as a retaliatory measure after a North Atlantic Treaty Organization strike late last month killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
The U.S. had used Shamsi to operate drone strikes against Taliban militants sheltering in the tribal regions on the frontier with Afghanistan, according to Pakistani defense officials.
The U.S. already had scaled back operations at the base this summer due to Pakistani demands to do so, these officials said.
.The expulsion from Shamsi is more symbolic than a meaningful attempt to halt the drone attacks, which have killed scores of Taliban and al Qaeda militants.
The U.S. has continued the covert program, which is run by the Central Intelligence Agency, from bases in Afghanistan, despite the wind-down at Shamsi begun this summer.
But another Pakistan retaliatory measure for the NATO air strikes — shutting key NATO supply routes through Pakistan — is likely to pose a greater threat to U.S. interests in the region, U.S. officials say.
Pakistan has given no indication of when it will lift the blockade. NATO sends about half of its supplies for its soldiers in Afghanistan via two Pakistani land routes.
If the shut-down lasts much longer, affecting key supplies of fuel, it could begin to hurt NATO's campaign in Afghanistan, U.S. officials have said.
Anti-U.S. sentiment has been on the rise this year due to the drone program, which is unpopular with many people, and the covert U.S. raid on a Pakistani garrison town in May that killed Osama bin Laden.
After the NATO raid on Nov. 26, Pakistan gave the U.S. 15 days to fully vacate Shamsi. The "last flight carrying leftover US Personnel and Equipment departed Shamsi Base today and the Base has been completely vacated," Pakistan's military said in a statement Sunday. "The control of the Base has been taken over by the Army."
Attempts to contact a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad were not successful.
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Pak 101: key word: Honor& Dignity (H&D)
The previous 2 posts are all about maintaining H&D...amongst the beards. Never mind that Shamsi airbase was winding down ops over the last several months.
The post about basing paki air assets near the border is harder to evaluate...for it could lead to a confrontation with the US, or will likely involve down-hill skiing (keyword discussed earlier!) from their decision later. Paki generals are under pressure to do something in response to the 24 killed in the cross border attack by the US. I suspect that the US jammed some paki radio communications during the couple of hrs that the attack took place. Since pakis cannot admit that the US can jam all radio communications at will, as in this attack, and also previously in the OBL killing, Gen.Kiyani recently ordered that the front line troops need not wait for orders from their senior commanders, and can take matters into their own hands. This statement will calm down the rank and file, since they can now shoot down the reviled US helis and drones, but in their tactical brilliance they forget that the US can pulversise them with a devastating counter attack. I very much doubt that the US is shutting down the drone programme (the only thing that has worked in the Af-pak theater).
Another possibility is that the "anointed one" (Fox terminology), is withdrawing from Af-pak, and pakis are taking advantage of that to show that they forced the US to withdraw. Interesting times ahead..
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Paki behaviour 101: Blame everyone else, but self
From Stratfor..
Pakistan: Islamabad Will Fight Terrorism On Its Own Terms - FM
December 15, 2011
Pakistan will fight terrorism on its own terms rather than those of the U.S. Congress, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said in a Dec. 15 meeting with the Pakistani National Security Commission, The Express Tribune reported. She said the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is on hold and will be restored on a mandate from Pakistan’s parliament and people that clearly defines the partnership so that it can be pursued more vigorously. Khar added that although Pakistan should not be worried by the freeze on U.S. aid to Islamabad, the United States will be responsible if Pakistan loses its war on terrorism, NDTV reported.
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Zardari has returned to Pak, suggestion a deal has been reached with Kayani...all's well for now. He still has issues with the judiciary..
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011\12\19\story_19-12-2011_pg1_1 (http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011\12\19\story_19-12-2011_pg1_1)
Back in the saddle
By Masroor Afzal Pasha and Hussain Kashif
KARACHI/LAHORE: President Asif Ali Zardari, who was in Dubai for nearly two weeks for medical treatment, returned to country late on Sunday night.
The president arrived in a special plane that landed at the PAF base Masroor in Karachi. The plane was equipped with medical facilities, and the president’s personal physician and medics were on board. The president was accompanied by his daughter Asifa Bhutto Zardari. Senior Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leaders welcomed him at the airport.
The medical team accompanying the president declared him completely fit, allowing him to resume his official activities. Security from airport to the Bilawal House had already been beefed up in anticipation of president’s arrival. Earlier, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said that the ‘situation’ had neutralised after army chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani’s meeting with him and direct telephonic talk with President Zardari on Saturday, Daily Times learnt.
Well-placed sources in the PPP, speaking on the eve of the hearing of the memo case in the Supreme Court, said that the ice has been melted after former US national security adviser General James Jones, who delivered the memo to the then chief of US military Admiral Michael Mullen, filed a statement in the Supreme Court regarding the memo scandal, clearing the confusion on the matter.
Sources had earlier said that the president’s core team had made a decision for his return homeland. The sources also said that President Zardari had also rejected the suggestion of a welcome gathering from the party at the airport on his return to the country. The sources further informed that the party heads have also decided that Zardari would stay in the Bilawal House and take rest till December 26 avoiding work and meetings, but he would appear in the public meeting at Garhi Khuda Baksh on the eve of Benazir Bhutto’s death anniversary where he would deliver a special speech and take the nation in confidence regarding conspiracies against him and his party’s government. The PPP sources also said that some party leaders had been in favour of the president’s return on Benazir Bhutto’s death anniversary to prevent any move against him. They were of the view that the party was showing its strength and all the activists and followers of Bhuttos would be united at Garhi Khuda Baksh.
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By BILL KELLER
Published: December 14, 2011
As an American visitor in the power precincts of Pakistan, from the gated enclaves of Islamabad to the manicured lawns of the military garrison in Peshawar, from the luxury fortress of the Serena Hotel to the exclusive apartments of the parliamentary housing blocks, you can expect three time-honored traditions: black tea with milk, obsequious servants and a profound sense of grievance.
Talk to Pakistani politicians, scholars, generals, businessmen, spies and journalists — as I did in October — and before long, you are beyond the realm of politics and diplomacy and into the realm of hurt feelings. Words like “ditch” and “jilt” and “betray” recur. With Americans, they complain, it’s never a commitment, it’s always a transaction. This theme is played to the hilt, for effect, but it is also heartfelt.
“The thing about us,” a Pakistani official told me, “is that we are half emotional and half irrational.”
For a relationship that has oscillated for decades between collaboration and breakdown, this has been an extraordinarily bad year, at an especially inconvenient time. As America settles onto the long path toward withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistan has considerable power to determine whether the end of our longest war is seen as a plausible success or a calamitous failure.
There are, of course, other reasons that Pakistan deserves our attention. It has a fast-growing population approaching 190 million, and it hosts a loose conglomerate of terrorist franchises that offer young Pakistanis employment and purpose unavailable in the suffering feudal economy. It has 100-plus nuclear weapons (Americans who monitor the program don’t know the exact number or the exact location) and a tense, heavily armed border with nuclear India. And its president, Asif Ali Zardari, oversees a ruinous kleptocracy that is spiraling deeper into economic crisis.
But it is the scramble to disengage from Afghanistan that has focused minds in Washington. Pakistan’s rough western frontier with Afghanistan is a sanctuary for militant extremists and criminal ventures, including the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, the notorious Haqqani clan and important remnants of the original horror story, Al Qaeda. The mistrust between Islamabad and Kabul is deep, nasty — Afghanistan was the only country to vote against letting Pakistan into the United Nations — and tribal. And to complicate matters further, Pakistan is the main military supply route for the American-led international forces and the Afghan National Army.
On Thanksgiving weekend, a month after I returned from Pakistan, the relationship veered precipitously — typically — off course again. NATO aircraft covering an operation by Afghan soldiers and American Special Forces pounded two border posts, inadvertently killing 24 Pakistani soldiers, including two officers. The Americans said that they were fired on first and that Pakistan approved the airstrikes; the Pakistanis say the Americans did not wait for clearance to fire and then bombed the wrong targets.
The fallout was painfully familiar: outrage, suspicion and recrimination, petulance and political posturing. Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the army and by all accounts the most powerful man in Pakistan, retaliated by shutting (for now and not for the first time) the NATO supply corridor through his country. The Pakistanis abruptly dropped out of a Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan and announced they would not cooperate with an American investigation of the airstrikes. President Obama sent condolences but balked at the suggestion of an apology; possibly the president did not want to set off another chorus of Mitt Romney’s refrain that Obama is always apologizing for America. At this writing, American officials were trying to gauge whether the errant airstrike would have, as one worried official put it, “a long half-life.”
If you survey informed Americans, you will hear Pakistanis described as duplicitous, paranoid, self-pitying and generally infuriating. In turn, Pakistanis describe us as fickle, arrogant, shortsighted and chronically unreliable.
Neither country’s caricature of the other is entirely wrong, and it makes for a relationship that is less in need of diplomacy than couples therapy, which customarily starts by trying to see things from the other point of view. While the Pakistanis have hardly been innocent, they have a point when they say America has not been the easiest of partners.
One good place to mark the beginning of this very, very bad year in U.S.-Pakistani relations is Dec. 13, 2010, when Richard C. Holbrooke died of a torn aorta. Holbrooke, the veteran of the Balkan peace, had for two years held the thankless, newly invented role of the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The antithesis of mellow, Holbrooke did not hit it off with our no-drama president, and his bluster didn’t always play well in Kabul or Islamabad either.
But Holbrooke paid aggressive attention to Pakistan. While he was characteristically blunt about the divergent U.S. and Pakistani views, he understood that they were a result of different, calculated national interests, not malevolence or mere orneriness. He was convinced that the outlooks could be, if not exactly synchronized, made more compatible. He made a concentrated effort to persuade the Pakistanis that this time the United States would not be a fair-weather friend.
“You need a Holbrooke,” says Maleeha Lodhi, a well-connected former ambassador to Washington. “Not necessarily the person but the role.” In the absence of full-on engagement, she says, “it’s become a very accident-prone relationship.”
On Jan. 27, a trigger-happy C.I.A. contractor named Raymond Davis was stuck in Lahore traffic and shot dead two motorcyclists who approached him. A backup vehicle he summoned ran over and killed a bystander. The U.S. spent heavily from its meager stock of good will to persuade the Pakistanis to set Davis free — pleading with a straight face that he was entitled to diplomatic immunity.
On May 2, a U.S. Navy Seals team caught Osama bin Laden in the military town Abbottabad and killed him. Before long, American officials were quoted questioning whether their Pakistani allies were just incompetent or actually complicit. (The Americans who deal with Pakistan believe that General Kayani and the director of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, were genuinely surprised and embarrassed that Bin Laden was so close by, though the Americans fault the Pakistanis for not looking very hard.) In Pakistan, Kayani faced rumbles of insurrection for letting Americans violate Pakistani sovereignty; a defining victory for President Obama was a humiliation for Kayani and Pasha.
In September, members of the Haqqani clan (a criminal syndicate and jihadi cult that’s avowedly subservient to the Taliban leader Mullah Omar) marked the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with two theatrical attacks in Afghanistan. First a truck bomb injured 77 American soldiers in Wardak Province. Then militants rained rocket-propelled grenades on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, forcing our ambassador to spend 20 hours locked down in a bunker.
A few days later the former Afghan president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, spread his arms to welcome an emissary from the Taliban to discuss the possibility of peace talks. As they embraced, the visitor detonated a bomb in his turban, killing himself, Rabbani and the talks. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, without any evidence that American officials are aware of, accused Pakistan of masterminding the grotesque killing in order to scuttle peace talks it couldn’t control.
And two days after that, Adm. Mike Mullen, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took to Capitol Hill to suggest that Pakistani intelligence had blessed the truck bomb and embassy attack.
His testimony came as a particular shock, because if the turbulent affair between the United States and Pakistan had a solid center in recent years, it was the rapport between Mullen and his Pakistani counterpart, General Kayani. Over the four years from Kayani’s promotion as chief of the army staff until Mullen’s retirement in September, scarcely a month went by when the two didn’t meet. Mullen would often drop by Kayani’s home at the military enclave in Rawalpindi, arriving for dinner and staying into the early morning, discussing the pressures of command while the sullen-visaged general chain-smoked Dunhills. One time, Kayani took his American friend to the Himalayas for a flyby of the world’s second-highest peak, K2. On another occasion, Mullen hosted Kayani on the golf course at the Naval Academy. The two men seemed to have developed a genuine trust and respect for each other.
(Page 3 of 9)
But Mullen’s faith in an underlying common purpose was rattled by the truck bombing and the embassy attack, both of which opened Mullen to the charge that his courtship of Kayani had been a failure. So — over the objection of the State Department — the admiral set out to demonstrate that he had no illusions.
The Haqqani network “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency,” he declared. “With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck-bomb attack as well as the assault on our embassy.”
Several officials with access to the intelligence told me that while the Haqqanis were implicated in both attacks, there was no evidence of direct ISI involvement. A Mullen aide said later that the admiral was referring to ISI’s ongoing sponsorship of the Haqqanis and did not mean to say Pakistan authorized those specific attacks.
No matter. In Pakistan, Mullen’s denunciation led to a ripple of alarm that U.S. military “hardliners” were contemplating an invasion. The press had hysterics. Kayani made a show of putting the Pakistani Army on alert. The Pakistani rupee fell in value.
In Washington, Mullen’s remarks captured — and fed — a vengeful mood and a rising sense of fatalism about Pakistan. Bruce O. Riedel, an influential former C.I.A. officer who led a 2009 policy review for President Obama on Pakistan and Afghanistan, captured the prevailing sentiment in an Op-Ed in The Times, in which he called for a new policy of “containment,” meaning “a more hostile relationship” toward the army and intelligence services.
“I can see how this gets worse,” Riedel told me. “And I can see how this gets catastrophically worse. . . . I don’t see how it gets a whole lot better.”
When Gen. David H. Petraeus took over the U.S. military’s Central Command in 2008, he commissioned expert briefing papers on his new domain, which sprawled from Egypt, across the Persian Gulf, to Central Asia. The paper on Afghanistan and Pakistan began, according to an American who has read it, roughly this way: “The United States has no vital national interests in Afghanistan. Our vital national interests are in Pakistan,” notably the security of those nuclear weapons and the infiltration by Al Qaeda. The paper then went on for the remaining pages to discuss Afghanistan. Pakistan hardly got a mention. “That’s typical,” my source said. Pakistan tends to be an afterthought.
The Pakistani version of modern history is one of American betrayal, going back at least to the Kennedy administration’s arming of Pakistan’s archrival, India, in the wake of its 1962 border war with China.
The most consequential feat of American opportunism came when we enlisted Pakistan to bedevil the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The intelligence agencies of the U.S. and Pakistan — with help from Saudi Arabia — created the perfect thorn in the Soviet underbelly: young Muslim “freedom fighters,” schooled in jihad at Pakistani madrassas, laden with American surface-to-air missiles and led by charismatic warriors who set aside tribal rivalries to war against foreign occupation.
After the Soviets admitted defeat in 1989, the U.S. — mission accomplished! — pulled out, leaving Pakistan holding the bag: several million refugees, an Afghanistan torn by civil war and a population of jihadists who would find new targets for their American-supplied arms. In the ensuing struggle for control of Afghanistan, Pakistan eventually sided with the Taliban, who were dominated by the Pashtun tribe that populates the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier. The rival Northern Alliance was run by Tajiks and Uzbeks and backed by India; and the one thing you can never underestimate is Pakistan’s obsession with bigger, richer, better-armed India.
Page 4 of 9)
As long as Pakistan was our partner in tormenting the Soviet Union, the U.S. winked at Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program. After all, India was developing a nuclear arsenal, and it was inevitable that Pakistan would follow suit. But after the Soviets retreated, Pakistan was ostracized under a Congressional antiproliferation measure called the Pressler Amendment, stripped of military aid (some of it budgeted to bring Pakistani officers to the U.S. for exposure to American military values and discipline) and civilian assistance (most of it used to promote civil society and buy good will).
Our relationship with Pakistan sometimes seems like a case study in unintended consequences. The spawning of the mujahadeen is, of course, Exhibit A. The Pressler Amendment is Exhibit B. And Exhibit C might be America’s protectionist tariffs on Pakistan’s most important export, textiles. For years, experts, including a series of American ambassadors in Islamabad, have said that the single best thing the U.S. could do to pull Pakistan into the modern world is to ease trade barriers, as it has done with many other countries. Instead of sending foreign aid and hoping it trickles down, we could make it easier for Americans to buy Pakistani shirts, towels and denims, thus lifting an industry that is an incubator of the middle class and employs many women. Congress, answerable to domestic textile interests, has had none of it.
“Pakistan the afterthought” was the theme very late one night when I visited the home of Pakistan’s finance minister, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh. After showing me his impressive art collection, Shaikh flopped on a sofa and ran through the roll call of American infidelity. He worked his way, decade by decade, to the war on terror. Now, he said, Pakistan is tasked by the Americans with simultaneously helping to kill terrorists and — the newest twist — using its influence to bring them to the bargaining table. Congress, meanwhile, angry about terrorist sanctuaries, is squeezing off much of the financial aid that is supposed to be the lubricant in our alliance.
“Pakistan was the cold-war friend, the Soviet-Afghan-war friend, the terror-war friend,” the minister said. “As soon as the wars ended, so did the assistance. The sense of being discarded is so recent.”
A Boston University-educated economist who made his money in private equity investing — in other words, a cosmopolitan man — Shaikh seemed slightly abashed by his own bitterness.
“I’m not saying that this style of Pakistani thinking is analytically correct,” he said. “I’m just telling you how people feel.”
He waved an arm toward his dining room, where he hung a Warhol of Muhammad Ali. “We’re just supposed to be like Ali — take the beating for seven rounds from Foreman,” he said. “But this time the Pakistanis have wised up. We are playing the game, but we know you can’t take these people at their word.”
With a timetable that has the United States out of Afghanistan, or mostly out, by the end of 2014, Pakistan has leverage it did not have when the war began.
One day after 9/11, Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, summoned the head of Pakistani intelligence for a talking to. “We are asking all of our friends: Do they stand with us or against us?” he said. The following day, Armitage handed over a list of seven demands, which included stopping Al Qaeda operations on the Pakistani border, giving American invaders access to Pakistani bases and airspace and breaking all ties with the Taliban regime.
The Pakistanis believed from the beginning that Afghanistan had “American quagmire” written all over it. Moreover, what America had in mind for Afghanistan was antithetical to Pakistan’s self-interest.
“The only time period between 1947 and the American invasion of Afghanistan that Pakistanis have felt secure about Afghanistan is during the Taliban period,” from 1996 to 2001, says Vali Nasr, an American scholar of the region who is listened to in both academia and government. Now the Bush administration would attempt to supplant the Taliban with a strong independent government in Kabul and a muscular military. “Everything about this vision is dangerous to Pakistan,” Nasr says.
Page 5 of 9)
Pakistan’s military ruler at the time, Pervez Musharraf, saw the folly of defying an American ultimatum. He quickly agreed to the American demands and delivered on many of them. In practice, though, the accommodation with the Taliban was never fully curtailed. Pakistan knew America’s mission in Afghanistan would end, and it spread its bets.
The Bush-Musharraf relationship, Vali Nasr says, “was sort of a Hollywood suspension of disbelief. Musharraf was a convenient person who created a myth that we subscribed to — basically that Pakistan was on the same page with us, it was an ally in the war on terror and it subscribed to our agenda for Afghanistan.”
But the longer the war in Afghanistan dragged on, the harder it was to sustain the illusion.
In October, I took the highway west from Islamabad to Peshawar, headquarters of the Pakistan Army corps responsible for the frontier with Afghanistan. Over tea and cookies, Lt. Gen. Asif Yasin Malik, the three-star who commanded the frontier (he retired this month) talked about how the Afghan war looked from his side of the border.
The official American version of the current situation in Afghanistan goes like this: By applying the counterinsurgency strategy that worked in Iraq and relying on a surge of troops and the increasingly sophisticated use of drones, the United States has been beating the insurgency into submission, while at the same time standing up an indigenous Afghan Army that could take over the mission. If only Pakistan would police its side of the border — where the bad guys find safe haven, fresh recruits and financing — we’d be on track for an exit in 2014.
The Pakistanis have a different narrative. First, a central government has never successfully ruled Afghanistan. Second, Karzai is an unreliable neighbor — a reputation that has not been dispelled by his recent, manic declarations of brotherhood. And third, they believe that despite substantial investment by the United States, the Afghan Army and the police are a long way from being ready to hold the country. In other words, America is preparing to leave behind an Afghanistan that looks like incipient chaos to Pakistan.
In Peshawar, General Malik talked with polite disdain about his neighbor to the west. His biggest fear — one I’m told Kayani stresses in every meeting with his American counterparts — is the capability of the Afghan National Security Forces, an army of 170,000 and another 135,000 police, responsible for preventing Afghanistan from disintegrating back into failed-state status. If the U.S. succeeds in creating such a potent fighting force, that makes Pakistanis nervous, because they see it (rightly) as potentially unfriendly and (probably wrongly) as a potential agent of Indian influence. The more likely and equally unsettling outcome, Pakistanis believe, is that the Afghan military — immature, fractious and dependent on the U.S. Treasury — will disintegrate into heavily armed tribal claques and bandit syndicates. And America, as always, will be gone when hell breaks loose.
General Malik studied on an exchange at Fort McNair, in Washington, D.C., and has visited 23 American states. He likes to think he is not clueless about how things work in our country.
“Come 2015, which senator would be ready to vote $9 billion, or $7 billion, to be spent on this army?” he asked. “Even $5 billion a year. O.K., maybe one year, maybe two years. But with the economy going downhill, how does the future afford this? Very challenging.”
American officials will tell you, not for attribution, that Malik’s concerns are quite reasonable.
So I asked the general if that was why his forces have not been more aggressive about mopping up terrorist sanctuaries along the border. Still hedging their bets? His answer was elaborate and not entirely facile.
First of all, the general pointed out that Pakistan has done some serious fighting in terrorist strongholds and shed a lot of blood. Over the past two years, Malik’s forces have been enlarged to 147,000 soldiers, mainly by relocating more than 50,000 from the Indian border. They have largely controlled militant activities in the Swat Valley, for example, which entailed two hard offensives with major casualties. But they have steadfastly declined to mount a major assault against North Waziristan — a mountainous region of terrorist Deadwoods populated by battle-toughened outlaws.
Page 6 of 9)
Yes, Malik said, North Waziristan is a terrible situation, but his forces are responsible for roughly 1,500 miles of border, they police an archipelago of rough towns in the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, and by the way, they had a devastating flood to handle last year.
“If you are not able to close the Mexican border, when you have the technology at your call, when there is no war,” he said, “how can you expect us to close our border, especially if you are not locking the doors on your side?”
Americans who know the area well concede that, for all our complaints, Pakistan doesn’t push harder in large part because it can’t. The Pakistan Army has been trained to patrol the Indian border, not to battle hardened insurgents. They have comparatively crude weaponry. When they go up against a ruthless outfit like the Haqqanis, they tend to get killed. Roughly 4,000 Pakistani troops have died in these border wars — more than the number of all the allied soldiers killed in Afghanistan.
“They’re obviously reluctant to go against the Haqqanis, but reluctant for a couple of reasons,” an American official told me. “Not just the reason that they see them as a potential proxy force if Afghanistan doesn’t go well, but also because they just literally lack the capability to take them on. They’ve got enough wars on their hands. They’ve not been able to consolidate their gains up in the northern part of the FATA, they have continued problems in other areas and they just can’t deal with another campaign, which is what North Waziristan would be.”
And there is another, fundamental problem, Malik said. There is simply no popular support for stepping up the fight in what is seen as America’s war. Ordinary Pakistanis feel they have paid a high price in collateral damage, between the civilian casualties from unmanned drone attacks and the blowback from terror groups within Pakistan.
“When you go into North Waziristan and carry out some major operation, there is going to be a terrorist backlash in the rest of the country,” Malik told me. “The political mood, or the public mood, is ‘no more operations.’ ”
In late October, Hillary Clinton arrived in Islamabad, leading a delegation that included Petraeus, recently confirmed as C.I.A. director, and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, Mullen’s successor as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Petraeus used to refer to Holbrooke as “my diplomatic wingman,” a bit of condescension he apparently intended as a tribute. This time, the security contingent served as diplomacy’s wingmen.
The trip was intended as a show of unity and resolve by an administration that has spoken with conflicting voices when it has focused on Pakistan at all. For more than four hours, the Americans and a potent lineup of Pakistani counterparts talked over a dinner table.
Perhaps the most revealing thing about the dinner was the guest list. The nine participants included Kayani and Pasha, but not President Zardari or Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who provided the dining room at his own residence and made himself scarce. The only representative of the civilian government was Clinton’s counterpart, the new foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, a 34-year-old rising star with the dark-haired beauty of a Bollywood leading lady, a degree in hospitality management from the University of Massachusetts and, most important, close ties to the Pakistani military.
For a country that cherishes civilian democracy, we have a surprising affinity for strong men in uniform. Based on my conversations with American officials across the government, the U.S. has developed a grudging respect for Kayani, whom they regard as astute, straightforward, respectful of the idea of democratic government but genuinely disgusted by the current regime’s thievery and ineptitude. (We know from the secret diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks that Kayani has confided to American officials his utter contempt for his president and “hinted that he might, however reluctantly, have to persuade President Zardari to resign.”) Zardari, whose principal claim to office is that he is the widower of the assassinated and virtually canonized Benazir Bhutto, has been mainly preoccupied with building up his patronage machine for elections in 2013. The Americans expect little from him and don’t see a likely savior among his would-be political challengers. (As this article goes to press, Zardari is recovering from chest pains in a hospital in Dubai; there are rumors he won’t return.) So, Kayani it is. The official American consensus is less enamored of Kayani’s loyal intelligence underling, General Pasha, whose agency consorts with terrorists and is suspected of torturing and killing troublemakers, including journalists, but Pasha is too powerful to ignore.
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The day after the marathon dinner, Clinton’s entourage took over the Serena Hotel for a festival of public diplomacy — a press conference with the foreign minister, followed by a town meeting with young Pakistanis and then a hardball round-table interview with a circle of top editors and anchors.
Clinton’s visit was generally portrayed, not least in the Pakistani press, as a familiar ritual of America talking tough to Pakistan. In the town meeting, a woman asked why America always played the role of bossy mother-in-law, and that theme delighted editorial cartoonists for days.
But the private message to the Pakistanis — and a more careful reading of Clinton’s public performance — reflected a serious effort to reboot a troubled relationship. Clinton took care to pay tribute to Pakistani losses in the war against terror in the past decade — in addition to the military, an estimated 30,000 civilian dead, the equivalent of a 9/11 every year. She ruled out sending American ground troops into Pakistani territory. She endorsed a Pakistani plea that U.S. forces in Afghanistan do a better job of cleaning up militant sanctuaries on their own side of the border.
Questioned by a prominent television anchor, she repudiated Mullen’s testimony, not only disavowing any evidence of ISI complicity in the attack on America’s embassy in Kabul but also soft-peddling the spy agency’s coziness with terrorists.
“Now, every intelligence agency has contacts with unsavory characters,” she said. “I don’t think you would get any denial from either the ISI or the C.I.A. that people in their respective organizations have contacts with members of groups that have different agendas than the governments’. But that doesn’t mean that they are being directed or being approved or otherwise given a seal of approval.”
That particular riff may have caused jaws to clench at the C.I.A. compound in Langley, Va. The truth is, according to half a dozen senior officials with access to the intelligence, the evidence of Pakistan’s affinity for terrorists is often circumstantial and ambiguous, a matter of intercepted conversations in coded language, and their dealings are thought to be more pragmatic than ideological, more a matter of tolerating than directing, but the relationship goes way beyond “contacts with unsavory characters.”
“They’re facilitating,” one official told me. “They provide information to the Haqqanis, they let them cross back and forth across the border, they let this L.E.T. guy (the leader of the dangerous Lashkar-e-Taiba faction of Kashmiri terrorists) be in prison and not be in prison at the same time.”
And yet the Pakistanis have been helpful — Abbottabad aside — against Al Qaeda, which is America’s first priority and which the Pakistanis recognize as a menace to everyone. They have shared intelligence, provided access to interrogations and coordinated operations. Before the fatal border mishap Thanksgiving weekend, one U.S. official told me, anti-terror cooperation between the C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence had been “very much on the upswing.”
The most striking aspect of Clinton’s trip, however, was her enthusiastic embrace of what is now called “reconciliation” — which is the polite word for negotiating with the Taliban.
Pakistan has long argued that the way to keep Afghanistan from coming to grief is to cut a deal with at least some of the Taliban. That would also mean Afghanistan could get by with a smaller, cheaper army. The notion has been anathema to the Americans tasked with killing Taliban; a principled stand against negotiating with terrorists is also a political meme that acquires particular potency in election seasons, as viewers of the Republican debates can attest.
Almost unnoticed, though, reconciliation has moved to a central place in America’s strategy and has become the principal assignment for U.S. officials in the region. Clinton first signaled this in a speech to the Asia Society last February, when she refocused Afghanistan strategy on its original purpose, isolating the terrorists at war with America, meaning Al Qaeda.
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The speech was buried beneath other news at the time, but in early October, Tom Donilon, Obama’s national security adviser, met Kayani in Abu Dhabi to stress to skeptical Pakistani leaders that she was serious. Clinton’s visit to Islamabad with her generals in tow was designed to put the full weight of the U.S. behind it.
Clinton publicly acknowledged that the ISI (in fact, it was General Pasha in person) had already brokered a preliminary meeting between a top American diplomat and a member of the Haqqani clan. Nothing much came of the meeting, news of which promptly leaked, but Clinton said America was willing to sit down with the Taliban. She said that what had once been preconditions for negotiations — renouncing violence, shunning Al Qaeda and accepting Afghanistan’s constitution, including freedoms for women — were now “goals.”
In diplomacy, no process is fully initiated until it has been named. A meeting of Pakistani political parties in Islamabad had adopted a rubric for peace talks with the Taliban, a slogan the Pakistanis repeated at every opportunity: “Give peace a chance.” If having this project boiled down to a John Lennon lyric diminished the gravitas of the occasion, Clinton didn’t let on.
Within the American policy conglomerate, not everyone is terribly upbeat about the prospect of reconciling with the Taliban. The Taliban have so far publicly rejected talks, and the turban-bomb killing of Rabbani was a serious reversal. There is still some suspicion — encouraged by Afghanistan and India — about Pakistan’s real agenda. One theory is that Pakistan secretly wants the Taliban restored to power in Afghanistan, believing the Pashtun Islamists would be more susceptible to Pakistani influence. A more cynical theory, which I heard quite a bit in New Delhi, is that the Pakistani Army actually wants chaos on its various borders to justify its large payroll. Most Americans I met who are immersed in this problem put little stock in either of those notions. The Pakistanis may not be the most trustworthy partners in Asia, but they aren’t idiots. They know, at least at the senior levels, that a resurgent Taliban means not just perpetual mayhem on the border but also an emboldening of indigenous jihadists whose aim is nothing less than a takeover of nuclear Pakistan. But agreeing on the principle of a “stable Afghanistan” is easier than defining it, or getting there.
After Clinton left Islamabad, a senior Pakistani intelligence official I wanted to meet arrived for breakfast with me and a colleague at Islamabad’s finest hotel. With a genial air of command, he ordered eggs Benedict for the table, declined my request to turn on a tape recorder, (“Just keep my name out of it,” he instructed later) and settled into an hour of polished spin.
“The Taliban learned its lesson in the madrassas and applied them ruthlessly,” he said, as the Hollandaise congealed. “Now the older ones have seen 10 years of war, and reconciliation is possible. Their outlook has been tempered by reason and contact with the modern world. They have relatives and friends in Kabul. They have money from the opium trade. They watch satellite TV. They are on the Internet.”
On the other hand, he continued, “if you kill off the midtier Taliban, the ones who are going to replace them — and there are many waiting in line, sadly — are younger, more aggressive and eager to prove themselves.”
So what would it take to bring the Taliban into a settlement? First, he said, stop killing them. Second, an end to foreign military presence, the one thing that always mobilizes the occupied in that part of the world. Third, an Afghan constitution framed to give more local autonomy, so that Pashtun regions could be run by Pashtuns.
On the face of it, as my breakfast companion surely knows, those sound like three nonstarters, and taken together they sound rather like surrender. Even Clinton is not calling for a break in hostilities, which the Americans see as the way to drive the Taliban to the bargaining table. As for foreign presence, both the Americans and the Afghans expect some long-term residual force to stay in Afghanistan, to backstop the Afghan Army and carry out drone attacks against Al Qaeda. And while it is not hard to imagine a decentralized Afghanistan — in which Islamic traditionalists hold sway in the rural areas but cede the urban areas, where modern notions like educating girls have already made considerable headway — that would be hard for Americans to swallow.
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Clinton herself sounded pretty categorical on that last point when she told Pakistani interviewers: “I cannot in good faith participate in any process that I think would lead the women of Afghanistan back to the dark ages. I will not participate in that.”
To questions of how these seemingly insurmountable differences might be surmounted, Marc Grossman, who replaced Holbrooke as Clinton’s special representative, replies simply: “I don’t know whether these people are reconcilable or not. But the job we’ve been given is to find out.”
If you look at reconciliation as a route to peace, it requires a huge leap of faith. Surely the Taliban have marked our withdrawal date on their calendars. The idea that they are so deeply weary of war — – let alone watching YouTube and yearning to join the world they see on their laptops — feels like wishful thinking.
But if you look at reconciliation as a step in couples therapy — a shared project in managing a highly problematic, ultimately critical relationship — it makes more sense. It gives Pakistan something it craves: a seat at the table where the future of Afghanistan is plotted. It gets Pakistan and Afghanistan talking to each other. It offers a supporting role to other players in the region — notably Turkey, which has taken on a more active part as an Islamic peace broker. It could drain some of the acrimony and paranoia from the U.S.-Pakistan rhetoric.
It might not save Afghanistan, but it could be a helpful start to saving Pakistan.
What Clinton and company are seeking is a course of patient commitment that America, frankly, is not usually so good at. The relationship has given off some glimmers of hope — with U.S. encouragement, Pakistan and India have agreed to normalize trade relations; the ISI has given American interrogators access to Osama bin Laden’s wives — but the funerals of those Pakistani troops last month remind us that the country is still a graveyard of optimism.
At least the U.S. seems, for now, to be paying attention to the right problem.
“If you stand back,” said one American who is in the thick of the American strategy-making, “and say, by the year 2020, you’ve got two countries — 30 million people in this country, 200 million people with nuclear weapons in this country, American troops in neither. Which matters? It’s not Afghanistan.”
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The above article does not mention this, but wrt to relations with the USA, in moments of clarity, Pakistanis often refer to themselves as a condom which is discarded after use, a most perceptive description IMHO.
The above article also exemplifies everything that is wrong with US policy. What do the pakis need to do before the US govt will cut aid ?. The reality is that pakiland is on a downhill course (somewhat like the Euro), you can slow the descent but not the trajectory.
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H&D alert: It seems to me that the pakis fired first, and then got their a$$ handed to them....but ofcourse that cannot be admitted...so blame India!.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/12/19/pakistan-blames-%E2%80%9Cafghan-commander%E2%80%9D-for-nato-attack-bbc.html (http://www.dawn.com/2011/12/19/pakistan-blames-%E2%80%9Cafghan-commander%E2%80%9D-for-nato-attack-bbc.html)
KARACHI: According to a BBC report, Pakistan’s military officials on Monday blamed an Afghan commander for the November 26 Nato strike on Salala check post in Mohmand agency, DawnNews reported. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that the accused Afghan commander conspired on the instructions of Indian and Afghan intelligence to dismantle Pakistan’s ties with US and Nato.
See also this article http://tribune.com.pk/story/308841/afghan-commander-orchestrated-nov-26-attack-report/ (http://tribune.com.pk/story/308841/afghan-commander-orchestrated-nov-26-attack-report/)
The probe report – parts of which have been shared with Nato forces in Kabul – states that no US soldier was involved in the airstrike on the Salala check post in the Mohmand Agency that left two dozen border guards dead.
Investigators are convinced that an Afghan National Army (ANA) officer conspired with India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security in prompting the Nato airstrike, an officer privy to the probe told the BBC.
Islamabad has shared the evidence of his involvement with Nato, saying that the evidence warrants action against him.
Islamabad has long suspected that archrival India is using Afghan soil to foment trouble in Pakistan’s border regions.
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NEW YORK: The New York Times said on Monday that President Asif Ali Zardari may have come back to Pakistan only for a “cameo appearance” for the death anniversary (Dec 27) of Benazir Bhutto and “then go on permanently to London or Dubai”.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/12/20/us-daily-talks-of-cameo-appearance.html (http://www.dawn.com/2011/12/20/us-daily-talks-of-cameo-appearance.html)
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Pak 101: keyword: Down-hill skiing...slowly pak is withdrawing from all the tough talk...very soon drone strikes will resume, as will the opening of highways. Afterall, stopping transport of US goods thro Pak, hurts the pakis equally, they dont get paid!.
Pakistan: Afghan Border Centers Restored
December 19, 2011
Pakistan restored liaisons to coordination centers on the Afghan border, a NATO official said, Reuters reported Dec. 19.
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/solve-the-pakistan-problem-by-redrawing-the-map/article2278388/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=World&utm_content=2278388 (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/solve-the-pakistan-problem-by-redrawing-the-map/article2278388/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=World&utm_content=2278388)
Solve the Pakistan problem by redrawing the map
M. CHRIS MASON
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011 2:00AM EST
Relations between the United States and Pakistan have reached an all-time low. The Khyber Pass is closed to NATO cargo, U.S. personnel were evicted from Shamsi airbase and Pakistani observers have been recalled from joint co-operation centres.
Much more importantly, senior officials in Washington now know that Pakistan has been playing them false since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and understand that Pakistan was sheltering Osama bin Laden a few hundred yards from its version of West Point. The recent shelling of Afghan troops inside Afghanistan by the Pakistani army, and the NATO counterstrike, cleared in error by Pakistan, has further embarrassed the Pakistani military.
It should be obvious by now that Pakistan has no intention of doing what the United States has wanted for the past decade. The combination of wishful thinking, admiration for the emperor’s new clothes and $10-billion in payments to the Pakistani military have accomplished nothing. Admiral Michael Mullen was not wrong when he testified recently that the terrorist Haqqani network is operating as an arm of the Pakistani army. He might have added that the Taliban is the Pakistani army’s expeditionary force in Afghanistan. Pakistan shelters, funds, trains, supplies and advises the Taliban. The simple fact is that Pakistan is the world’s No. 1 state supporter of terrorism.
In Afghanistan, Pakistan will never be happy unless it has a puppet regime in Kabul and can run the country like a colony. Islamabad does not intend to allow the current Afghan constitution to remain in effect, and as soon as NATO pulls out, it will push the Taliban into an all-out civil war in Afghanistan designed to return it to power. All of which has led to a lot of hand-wringing in Washington, accompanied by a revolving-door procession of senior U.S. officials going to Islamabad to read a toothless riot act the Pakistanis can now recite by heart.
The permanent solution to the Pakistan problem is not more of this chest-beating appeasement. The answer lies in 20th-century history. In 1947, when India gained independence, a British Empire in full retreat left behind an unworkable mess on both sides of India – called Pakistan – whose elements had nothing in common except the religion of Islam. In 1971, this postcolonial Frankenstein came a step closer to rectification when Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, became an independent state.
The answer to the current Pakistani train wreck is to continue this natural process by recognizing Baluchistan’s legitimate claim to independence. Baluchistan was an independent nation for more than 1,000 years when Great Britain notionally annexed it in the mid-19th century. The Baluchis were never consulted about becoming a part of Pakistan, and since then, they have been the victims of alternating persecution and neglect by the Pakistani state, abuse which escalated to genocide when it was discovered in the 1970s that most of the region’s natural resources lie underneath their soil. Since then, tens of thousands of Baluchis have been slaughtered by the Pakistani army, which has used napalm and tanks indiscriminately against an unarmed population.
Changing maps is difficult only because it is initially unimaginable to diplomats and politicians. Although redrawing maps is the definition of failure for the United Nations and the U.S. State Department, it has, in fact, been by such a wide margin the most effective solution to regional violence over the past 50 years that there is really nothing in second place. Among the most obvious recent examples (apart from the former Soviet Union) are North and South Sudan, Kosovo, Eritrea, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, East Timor and Bangladesh.
An independent Baluchistan would, in fact, solve many of the region’s most intractable problems overnight. It would create a territorial buffer between rogue states Iran and Pakistan. It would provide a transportation and pipeline corridor for Afghanistan and Central Asia to the impressive but underutilized new port at Gwadar. It would solve all of NATO’s logistical problems in Afghanistan, allow us to root the Taliban out of the former province and provide greater access to Waziristan, to subdue our enemies there. And it would contain the rogue nuclear state of Pakistan and its A.Q. Khan network of nuclear proliferation-for-profit on three landward sides.
The way to put the Pakistani genie back in the bottle and cork it is to help the Baluchis go the way of the Bangladeshis in achieving their dream of freedom from tyranny, corruption and murder at the hands of the diseased Pakistani military state.
M. Chris Mason is a retired diplomat with long service in South Asia and a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Defence Studies in Washington.
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This group of 3 interrelated reports, suggests trouble is brewing between PPP (Zardari's party, of which Gilani is also a member) the army and the judiciary. It appears that the army and the judiciary are ganging up on Zardari. Interesting times ahead..
Strat reporting:
Pakistan: No Control Over ISI, Army – Defense Ministry
December 22, 2011 | 0540 GMT
In a written reply to the Supreme Court of Pakistan, the Pakistani Defense Ministry said it has no control over any operation conducted by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency or the Pakistani Army, Geo New TV reported Dec. 22, citing unnamed sources close to the matter. The ministry said it only handles administrative affairs for the ISI and the army, and therefore it was not in a position to answer or explain anything on behalf of the Pakistani Army.
Pakistan: Army Answers To Government - PM
December 22, 2011 | 1450 GMT
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani reminded the army that it, like all state institutions, answers to the parliament and the prime minister, Associated Press of Pakistan and AFP reported Dec. 22. He added that the army is under the Defense Ministry and could not consider itself its own state within Pakistan without taking lawmakers’ sovereignty. Gilani said there are conspirators plotting against the elected government and that he would fight for Pakistani rights whether he remains in the government or not.
Pakistan: Army Wants President Legally Removed - Source
December 22, 2011 | 1509 GMT
Pakistan’s army wants President Asif Ali Zardari to leave office through legal means rather than a rumored coup, military sources said Dec. 22, Reuters reported. The sources added that no military coup is being planned because it would be unpopular with the people, it would have national and international consequences and the government’s mistakes already create discontent. Any action taken must come from the Supreme Court rather than the military.
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The WSJ carries an article today, essentially indicating that the US accepts blame for the killing of 24 pakis. Looks like appeasement of paki H&D by the Obama admin to me. The DOD release is more nuanced in accepting blame...
http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=14976 (http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=14976)
Department of Defense Statement Regarding Investigation Results into Pakistan Cross-Border Incident
The investigation into the 25-26 November engagement between U.S. and Pakistani military forces across the border has been completed. The findings and conclusions were forwarded to the Department through the chain of command. The results have also been shared with the Pakistani and Afghan governments, as well as key NATO leadership.
The investigating officer found that U.S. forces, given what information they had available to them at the time, acted in self defense and with appropriate force after being fired upon. He also found that there was no intentional effort to target persons or places known to be part of the Pakistani military, or to deliberately provide inaccurate location information to Pakistani officials.
Nevertheless, inadequate coordination by U.S. and Pakistani military officers operating through the border coordination center -- including our reliance on incorrect mapping information shared with the Pakistani liaison officer -- resulted in a misunderstanding about the true location of Pakistani military units. This, coupled with other gaps in information about the activities and placement of units from both sides, contributed to the tragic result.
For the loss of life -- and for the lack of proper coordination between U.S. and Pakistani forces that contributed to those losses -- we express our deepest regret. We further express sincere condolences to the Pakistani people, to the Pakistani government, and most importantly to the families of the Pakistani soldiers who were killed or wounded.
Our focus now is to learn from these mistakes and take whatever corrective measures are required to ensure an incident like this is not repeated. The chain of command will consider any issues of accountability. More critically, we must work to improve the level of trust between our two countries. We cannot operate effectively on the border -- or in other parts of our relationship -- without addressing the fundamental trust still lacking between us. We earnestly hope the Pakistani military will join us in bridging that gap.
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Thursday, Dec 22 2011 12AM Secret talks with Taliban reach critical juncture as U.S. considers transfer of Gitmo prisoners to Afghan custodyU.S. officials held meeting with Haqqani network
Currently, fewer than 20 Afghan citizens detained at Guantanamo Bay
'End conditions' they want Taliban to embrace include renouncing violence, breaking with al-Qaeda, and respecting Afghan constitution
Senior Taliban official denies meetings occurred
By Reuters Reporter
After ten months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents, stakes could not be higher.
Senior U.S. officials say the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to end the Afghan war.
Failure would likely condemn Afghanistan to continued conflict, perhaps even civil war, after Nato troops finish turning security over to Afghan president Hamid Karzai's weak government by the end of 2014.
Negotiations: The U.S. has been in talks with the Taliban for ten months to release Afghan detainees at Guantanamo Bay
Success would mean a political end to the war and the possibility that parts of the Taliban - some hardliners seem likely to reject the talks - could be reconciled.
The effort is now at a pivot point.
As part of the accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy, Reuters has learned, the United States is considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison into Afghan government custody.
It has asked representatives of the Taliban to match that confidence-building measure with some of their own. Those could include a denunciation of international terrorism and a public willingness to enter formal political talks with the government headed by Mr Karzai.
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The officials acknowledged that the Afghanistan diplomacy, which has reached a delicate stage in recent weeks, remains a long shot. Among the complications: U.S. troops are drawing down and will be mostly gone by the end of 2014, potentially reducing the incentive for the Taliban to negotiate.
Still, the senior officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity to share new details of the mostly secret effort, suggested it has been a much larger piece of President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy than is publicly known.
U.S. officials have held about half a dozen meetings with their insurgent contacts, mostly in Germany and Doha with representatives of Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban's Quetta Shura, the officials said.
In talks: According to senior U.S. officials, has been one talk with a member from the Haqqani group, who was responsible for a deadly attack in Kabul this fall
'We imagine that we're on the edge of passing into the next phase. Which is actually deciding that we've got a viable channel and being in a position to deliver' on mutual confidence-building measures, said a senior U.S. official.
While some U.S.-Taliban contacts have been previously reported, the extent of the underlying diplomacy and the possible prisoner transfer have not been made public until now.
There are slightly fewer than 20 Afghan citizens at Guantanamo, according to various accountings. It is not known which ones might be transferred, nor what assurances the White House has that the Karzai government would keep them in its custody.
SENIOR TALIBAN COMMANDER DENIES SECRET TALKS WITH U.S.
A senior Afghan Taliban commander on Monday denied that the group held secret talks with U.S. officials which had reached a turning point.
'How can talks be at a critical point when they have not even started,' the commander told Reuters by telephone.
The Taliban have publicly maintained they will not enter into any negotiations while foreign troops are in Afghanistan, so even if they are participating, they might be reluctant to admit that.
Commanders might also worry about morale among fighters on the ground, if their believed their leaders were in talks.
'Our position on talks remains the same. All occupying forces have to leave Afghanistan.
'Then we can talk,' said the commander from an undisclosed location.
Guantanamo detainees have been released to foreign governments - and sometimes set free by them - before. But the transfer as part of a diplomatic negotiation appears unprecedented.
The reconciliation effort, which has already faced setbacks including a supposed Taliban envoy who turned out to be an imposter, faces hurdles on multiple fronts, the U.S. officials acknowledged.
They include splits within the Taliban; suspicion from Mr Karzai and his advisers; and Pakistan's insistence on playing a major, even dominating, role in Afghanistan's future.
Mr Obama will likely face criticism, including from Republican presidential candidates, for dealing with an insurgent group that has killed U.S. soldiers and advocates a strict Islamic form of government.
But U.S. officials say that the Afghan war, like others before it, will ultimately end in a negotiated settlement.
'The challenges are enormous,' a second senior U.S. official acknowledged. 'But if you're where we are ... you can't not try. You have to find out what's out there.'
Mr Obama is expected to soon sign into law the 2011 defence authorization bill, including changes that would broaden the military's power over terror detainees and require the Pentagon to certify in most cases that certain security conditions will be met before Guantanamo prisoners can be sent home.
Ten years after the repressive Taliban government was toppled, a hoped-for political resolution has become central to U.S. strategy to end a war that has killed nearly 3,000 foreign troops and cost the Pentagon alone $330billion.
While Mr Obama's decision to deploy an extra 30,000 troops in 2009-10 helped push the Taliban out of much of its southern heartland, the war is far from over. Militants remain able to slip in and out of lawless areas of Pakistan, where the Taliban's senior leadership is located.
Bold attacks from the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network have undermined the narrative of improving security and raised questions about how well an inexperienced Afghan military will be able to cope when foreign troops go home.
In that uncertain context, officials say that initial contacts with insurgent representatives since U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly embraced a diplomatic strategy in a February 18, 2011, speech have centred on establishing whether the Taliban was open to reconciliation, despite its pledge to continue its 'sacred jihad' against Nato and U.S. soldiers.
Denied: A senior Taliban commander denied such talks, possibly because of a resolve not to go into talks while foreign troops are in the country
'The question has been to the Taliban, 'You have got a choice to make. Life's moving on,' the second U.S. official said.
'There's a substantial military campaign out there that will continue to do you substantial damage ... Are you prepared to go forward with some kind of reconciliation process?'
U.S. officials have met with Tayeb Agha, who was a secretary to Mullah Omar, and they have held one meeting arranged by Pakistan with Ibrahim Haqqani, a brother of the Haqqani network's founder.
They have not shut the door to further meetings with the Haqqani group, which is blamed for a brazen attack this fall on the U.S. embassy in Kabul and which U.S. officials link closely to Pakistan's intelligence agency.
U.S. officials say they have kept Mr Karzai informed of the process and have met with him before and after each encounter, but they declined to confirm whether representatives of his government are present at those meetings.
Officials now see themselves on the verge of reaching a second phase in the peace process that, if successful, would clinch the confidence-building measures and allow them to move to a third stage in which the Afghan government and the Taliban would sit down in talks facilitated by the United States.
'We imagine that we're on the edge of passing into the next phase. Which is actually deciding that we've got a viable channel and being in a position to deliver' on mutual confidence-building measures.
-Senior U.S. official
'That's why it's especially delicate -- because if we don't deliver the second phase, we don't get to the pay-dirt,' the first senior U.S. official said.
Senior administration officials say that confidence-building measures must be implemented, not merely agreed to, before full-fledged political talks can begin. The sequence of such measures has not been determined, and they will ultimately be announced by Afghans, they say.
Underlying the efforts of U.S. negotiators are fundamental questions about whether - and why - the Taliban would want to strike a deal with the Western-backed Karzai government.
U.S. officials stress that the 'end conditions' they want the Taliban to embrace - renouncing violence, breaking with al Qaeda, and respecting the Afghan constitution - are not preconditions to starting talks.
Encouraging trends on the Afghan battlefield - declining militant attacks and a thinning of the Taliban's mid-level leadership - is one reason why U.S. officials believe the Taliban may be more likely now to engage in substantive talks.
They also cite what they see as an overlooked, subtle shift in the Taliban's position, based in part on statements this year from Mullah Omar that, despite fiery rhetoric, indicate some openness to talks. They also condemn civilian deaths and advocate development of Afghanistan's economy.
End of mission: U.S. troops are slated to leave Afghanistan in 2014
In July, the Taliban reiterated its long-standing position of rejecting talks as long as foreign troops remain. In October, a senior Haqqani commander said the United States was insincere about peace.
But U.S. officials say the Taliban no longer wants to be the global pariah it was in the 1990s. Some elements have suggested flexibility on issues of priority for the West, such as protecting rights for women and girls.
'That's one of the reasons why we think this is serious,' a third senior U.S. official said.
Yet as it moves ahead the peace initiative is fraught with challenge.
At least one purported insurgent representative has turned out to be a fraud, highlighting the difficulty of vetting potential brokers in the shadowy world of the militants.
And it as dealt a major blow in September when former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who headed Mr Karzai's peace efforts, was assassinated in an attack Afghanistan said originated in neighbouring Pakistan.
Since then, Mr Karzai has been more ambivalent, ruling out an early resumption in talks. He said Afghanistan would talk only to Pakistan 'until we have an address for the Taliban.'
Words of caution: Afghan president Hamil Karzai warned U.S. officials to be sure of the Taliban's authenticity for seeking peace
The dust-up over the unofficial Taliban office in Qatar, with a spokesman for Karzai stressing that Afghanistan must lead peace negotiations to end the war, suggests tensions in the U.S. and Afghan approaches to the peace process.
Speaking in an interview with CNN aired on Sunday, Mr Karzai counselled caution in making sure that Taliban interlocutors are authentic -- and authentically seeking peace.
The Rabbani killing, he said, 'brought us in a shock to the recognition that we were actually talking to nobody.'
Critics of Mr Obama's peace initiative are deeply sceptical of the Taliban's willingness to negotiate given that the West's intent to pull out most troops after 2014 would give insurgents a chance to reclaim lost territory or nudge the weak Kabul government toward collapse.
While the United States is expected to keep a modest military presence in Afghanistan beyond then, all of Obama's 'surge' troops will be home by next fall and the administration - looking to refocus on domestic priorities -- is already exploring further reductions.
Another reason to be circumspect is the potential spoiler role of Pakistan, which has so far resisted U.S. pressure to crack down on militants fuelling violence in Afghanistan.
Such considerations make for a divisive initiative within the Obama administration. Few officials describe themselves as optimists about the peace initiative.
Only a handful left: There are less than 20 Afghans being detained at Guantanamo Bay. It is unclear how many would be released back to the Afghan government
At the State Department, formally leading the talks, senior officials see the odds of brokering a successful agreement at only around 30 per cent.
'There's a very real likelihood that these guys aren't serious ... which is why are continuing to prosecute all of the lines of effort here,' the third senior U.S. official said.
While Nato commanders promise they will keep up pressure on militants as the troop force shrinks, they are facing a tenacious insurgency in eastern Afghanistan that may prove even more challenging than the south.
Still, with Obama committed to withdrawing from Afghanistan, as the United States did last week from Iraq, the administration has few alternatives but to pursue what may well prove to be a quixotic quest for a deal.
'Wars end, and the end of wars have political consequences,' the second official said. 'You can either try to shape those, or someone does it to you.'
THE NEXT STEPS OF NEGOTIATION
If the effort advances, one of the next steps would be more public, unequivocal U.S. support for establishing a Taliban office outside of Afghanistan.
U.S. officials said they have told the Taliban they must not use that office for fundraising, propaganda or constructing a shadow government, but only to facilitate future negotiations that could eventually set the stage for the Taliban to re-enter Afghan governance.
On Sunday, a senior member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council said the Taliban had indicated it was willing to open an office in an Islamic country.
But underscoring the fragile nature of the multi-sided diplomacy, Afghan president Hamid Karzai last week announced he was recalling Afghanistan's ambassador to Qatar, after reports that nation was readying the opening of the Taliban office. Afghan officials complained they were left out of the loop.
On a possible transfer of Taliban prisoners long held at Guantanamo, U.S. officials stressed the move would be a 'national decision' made in consultation with the U.S. Congress.
P.C.
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Pakistan and the Future of the Civil-Military Balance of Power
Related Links
• Foundations: Pakistan’s Muslim Identity Crisis
• Foundations: A Pre-Partition Pakistan
• Foundations: Pakistan’s Economy and Resources
• Foundations: Pakistan and Religious Conflict
• Foundations: Pakistan, Kashmir and South Asia
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Thursday issued some unprecedented remarks against the country’s military and premier intelligence service. During a speech before parliament, Gilani said that the army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate cannot be a “state within a state” and must “be answerable to this parliament.” Responding to reports that the defense ministry had told the Supreme Court that it had no control over the armed forces or the ISI, the prime minister told lawmakers that “if [the military and ISI] say that they are not under the ministry of defense, then we should get out of this slavery, then this parliament has no importance, this system has no importance, then you are not sovereign.”
“The larger question concerns the future of the civil-military balance of power in Pakistan and by extension the nature of the republic itself.”
Gilani’s statements are perhaps the toughest remarks made against the country’s powerful security establishment that has directly ruled the country for 33 of its 64 years. That the current civilian government, which came to power in March 2008, has decided to take such a tough stance against the generals illustrates just how influential civilians have become within the Pakistani political system. More important is the timing chosen by the governing Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to take such a strong position: It is currently the subject of a Supreme Court inquiry into a memo seeking U.S. assistance in reining in the country’s military allegedly written by Islamabad’s former envoy to Washington with approval from Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
The PPP’s confidence comes from the current situation where the army is no longer in a position to threaten the government with a coup. The PPP government also realizes that it would be difficult for the army-intelligence complex to support its ouster via constitutional means. Most opposition forces, particularly the largest one led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, are not willing to empower the army despite its rivalry with the governing PPP.
The larger question concerns the future of the civil-military balance of power in the country and by extension the nature of the republic itself. Political developments since the fall of former President Pervez Musharraf’s regime have led to a situation where civilians are increasingly becoming stakeholders in a system where the army has historically enjoyed a near monopoly.
Over the past four years, Pakistan has indeed witnessed the rise of civilian forces, but this doesn’t mean that the locus of power has definitively shifted away from the armed forces. Civilian supremacy over the military is a generational process to say the least. It assumes uninterrupted and successive electoral cycles, which have never happened in the South Asian nation.
Pakistan’s traditionally powerful security sector is facing a considerable challenge from civilian forces in terms of its influence over policymaking. But civilian governments must demonstrate their competence in managing the country’s political economy before they can really assert themselves vis-à-vis the military. The current government has not been able to do so and the ability of its successors remains questionable as well — which means it will be a while before political forces can really gain the upper hand over the military.
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With ref to Pak, its always about the money :-D
US offers solatia payments to Pak
PTI Dec 23, 2011, 01.21PM IST
WASHINGTON: In keeping with its practice in Afghanistan, the US is willing to offer solatia payments to the families of Pakistani soldiers killed in a cross-border NATO strike last month as it tries to resolve the crisis generated in its aftermath, a Pentagon spokesman said today.
The airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and hit the fragile US-Pakistan ties hard, following which Pakistan shut down its NATO supply routes to Afghanistan in protest.
"In keeping with our normal practices in Afghanistan, the United States is willing to offer solatia payments as a sign of our regret for the loss of life," Pentagon Press Secretary George Little told PTI.
"This is not necessarily a legal form of compensation, but it is a sign of regret for the loss of life," Little said in response to a question, adding that an offer has to be made and accepted in accordance with the normal practice for payments be made to each of the 24 families.
He said the US had accepted responsibility for the "mistakes" and admitted "shortcomings" after a thorough investigation.
"We have expressed our deepest regret for loss of life and extended our condolences," Little said when asked about the Pakistani demand that US should issue a formal apology.
"We have expressed our regret," he said. Earlier at a news conference, the Pentagon Press Secretary said the findings of the report would soon be shared with the Governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan, both of whom have already been briefed about it.
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=38819&tx_ttnews[backPid]=7&cHash=d955a8fdd5bffc0a7b8a6e380d68347f]http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=38819&tx_ttnews[backPid]=7&cHash=d955a8fdd5bffc0a7b8a6e380d68347f (http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news)
Former Pakistan Army Chief Reveals Intelligence Bureau Harbored Bin Laden in Abbottabad
Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 9 Issue: 47December 22, 2011 04:19 PM Age: 2 days
By: Arif Jamal
In spite of denials by the Pakistani military, evidence is emerging that elements within the Pakistani military harbored Osama bin Laden with the knowledge of former army chief General Pervez Musharraf and possibly current Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. Former Pakistani Army Chief General Ziauddin Butt (a.k.a. General Ziauddin Khawaja) revealed at a conference on Pakistani-U.S. relations in October 2011 that according to his knowledge the then former Director-General of Intelligence Bureau of Pakistan (2004 – 2008), Brigadier Ijaz Shah (Retd.), had kept Osama bin Laden in an Intelligence Bureau safe house in Abbottabad. In the same address, he revealed that the ISI had helped the CIA to track him down and kill on May 1. The revelation remained unreported for some time because some intelligence officers had asked journalists to refrain from publishing General Butt’s remarks. [1] No mention of the charges appeared until right-wing columnist Altaf Hassan Qureshi referred to them in an Urdu-language article that appeared on December 8. [2]
In a subsequent and revealing Urdu-language interview with TV channel Dawn News, General Butt repeated the allegation on December 11, saying he fully believed that “[Brigadier] Ijaz Shah had kept this man [Bin Laden in the Abbottabad compound] with the full knowledge of General Pervez Musharraf… Ijaz Shah was an all-powerful official in the government of General Musharraf.” [3] Asked whether General Kayani knew of this, he first said yes, but later reconsidered: “[Kayani] may have known – I do not know – he might not have known.” [4] The general’s remarks appeared to confirm investigations by this author in May 2011 that showed that the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden was captured and killed was being used by a Pakistani intelligence agency (see Terrorism Monitor, May 5). However, General Butt failed to explain why Bin Laden was not discovered even after Brigadier Shah and General Musharraf had left the government.
General Butt was the first head of the Strategic Plans Division of the Pakistan army and the Director General of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) under Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1990 to 1993, and again from 1997 to 1999. Sharif promoted General Ziauddin Butt to COAS after forcibly retiring General Pervez Musharraf on October 12, 1999, but the army’s top brass revolted against the decision and arrested both Prime Minister Sharif and General Butt while installing Musharraf as the nation’s new chief executive, a post he kept as a chief U.S. ally until resigning in 2008 in the face of an impending impeachment procedure.
Brigadier Shah has been known or is alleged to have been involved in several high profile cases of terrorism. The Brigadier was heading the ISI bureau in Lahore when General Musharraf overthrew Prime Minister Sharif in October 1999. Later, General Musharraf appointed Shah as Home Secretary in Punjab. As an ISI officer he was also the handler for Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was involved in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. [5] Omar Saeed Sheikh surrendered to Brigadier Shah who hid him for several weeks before turning him over to authorities. In February 2004, Musharraf appointed Shah as the new Director of the Intelligence Bureau, a post he kept until March 2008 (Daily Times [Lahore] February 26, 2004; Dawn [Karachi] March 18, 2008). The late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto accused Brigadier Shah, among others, of hatching a conspiracy to assassinate her (The Friday Times [Lahore], February 18-24).
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the Pakistani top military brass had serious differences on several issues. One of the most serious of these concerned Pakistan’s relations with Osama bin Laden. However, the disastrous1999 Kargil conflict in Kashmir overshadowed all of these. General Butt says that Prime Minister Sharif had decided to cooperate with the United States and track down Bin Laden in 1999. [6] According to a senior adviser to the Prime Minister, the general staff ousted Sharif to scuttle the “get-Osama” plan, among other reasons: “The evidence is that the military regime abandoned that plan.” [7] General Butt corroborates this. In his latest interview, he says that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had constituted a special task force of 90 American-trained commandos to track down Bin Laden in Afghanistan. If the Sharif government had continued on this course, this force would likely have caught Bin Laden by December 2001, but the plan was aborted by Ziauddin Butt’s successor as ISI general director, Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmed. [8]
Arif Jamal is an independent security and terrorism expert and author of “Shadow War – The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir.”
Notes:
1. Author’s telephone interview with an Islamabad journalist who requested anonymity, November 16, 2011.
2. Altaf Hassan Qureshi, “Resetting Pak-U.S. relations” (in Urdu), Jang [Rawalpindi], December 8, 2011. Available at http://e.jang.com.pk/pic.asp?npic=12-08-2011/Pindi/images/06_08.gif
3. See “Government – Army - America on Dawn News – 11the Dec 2011 part 2,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4bYHC2_ito&feature=youtu.be
4. Ibid
5. Author’s interview with a security officer who requested anonymity, Islamabad, May 2000.
6. “Government – Army - America on Dawn News –December 11, 2011, part 1,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4WLtaxxPPw.
7. Author’s interview with a former government minister who requested anonymity, Rawalpindi, February 2006.
8. “Government – Army - America on Dawn News –December 11, 2011, part 1,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4WLtaxxPPw.
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Comments, especially from YA?
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — With the United States facing the reality that its broad security partnership with Pakistan is over, American officials are seeking to salvage a more limited counterterrorism alliance that they acknowledge will complicate their ability to launch attacks against extremists and move supplies into Afghanistan.
The United States will be forced to restrict drone strikes, limit the number of its spies and soldiers on the ground and spend more to transport supplies through Pakistan to allied troops in Afghanistan, American and Pakistani officials said. United States aid to Pakistan will also be reduced sharply, they said.
“We’ve closed the chapter on the post-9/11 period,” said a senior United States official, who requested anonymity to avoid antagonizing Pakistani officials. “Pakistan has told us very clearly that they are re-evaluating the entire relationship.”
American officials say that the relationship will endure in some form, but that the contours will not be clear until Pakistan completes its wide-ranging review in the coming weeks.
The Obama administration got a taste of the new terms immediately after an American airstrike killed 26 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border last month. Pakistan closed the supply routes into Afghanistan, boycotted a conference in Germany on the future of Afghanistan and forced the United States to shut its drone operations at a base in southwestern Pakistan.
Mushahid Hussain Sayed, the secretary general of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, an opposition political party, summed up the anger that he said many harbored: “We feel like the U.S. treats Pakistan like a rainy-day girlfriend.”
Whatever emerges will be a shadow of the sweeping strategic relationship that Richard C. Holbrooke, President Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, championed before his death a year ago. Officials from both countries filled more than a dozen committees to work on issues like health, the rule of law and economic development.
All of that has been abandoned and will most likely be replaced by a much narrower set of agreements on core priorities — countering terrorists, stabilizing Afghanistan and ensuring the safety of Pakistan’s arsenal of more than 100 nuclear weapons — that Pakistan will want spelled out in writing and agreed to in advance.
With American diplomats essentially waiting quietly and Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes on hold since Nov. 16 — the longest pause since 2008 — Pakistan’s government is drawing up what Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani called “red lines” for a new relationship that protects his country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Said an American official: “Both countries recognize the benefits of partnering against common threats, but those must be balanced against national interests as well. The balancing is a continuous process.”
First, officials said, will likely be a series of step-by-step agreements on military cooperation, intelligence sharing and counterterrorism operations, including revamped “kill boxes,” the term for flight zones over Pakistan’s largely ungoverned borderlands where C.I.A. drones will be allowed to hunt a shrinking number of Al Qaeda leaders and other militants.
The C.I.A. has conducted 64 missile attacks in Pakistan using drones this year, compared with 117 last year and 53 in 2009, according to The Long War Journal, a Web site that tracks the strikes.
In one of the most visible signs of rising anti-American sentiment in this country, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Lahore and Peshawar this month. And on Sunday in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, at least 100,000 people rallied to support Imran Khan, a cricket celebrity and rising opposition politician who is outspoken in his criticism of the drone strikes and ties with the United States.
Some Pakistani officers talk openly about shooting down any American drones that violate Pakistani sovereignty. “Nothing is happening on counterterrorism right now,” said a senior Pakistani security official. “It will never go back to the way it was.”
Any new security framework will also require increased transit fees for the thousands of trucks that supply NATO troops in Afghanistan, a bill that allied officials say could run into the tens of millions of dollars.
Officials from Pakistan and the United States anticipate steep reductions in American security aid, including the continued suspension of more than $1 billion in military assistance and equipment, frozen since the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May.
Page 2 of 2)
The number of American military officers, enlisted troops and contractors in Pakistan has dropped to about 100, from about 400 more than a year ago, including scores of American trainers who have all been sent home. Pakistan is also restricting visas to dozens of other embassy personnel, from spies to aid workers.
Of the nearly two dozen American, Western and Pakistani officials interviewed for this article, a few sought to put the best face on a worsening situation. With Pakistan taking a seat on the United Nations Security Council for two years beginning next month, these officials argued that too much was at stake to rupture ties completely. “It is better to have a predictable, more focused relationship than an incredibly ambitious out-of-control relationship,” said one Western official.
But another Western diplomat put it more bluntly: “It’s a fairly gloomy picture.”
Just two months ago, a visit here by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director; and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seemed to begin to thaw relations that had been nearly frozen since Raymond Davis, a C.I.A. security contractor, shot and killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January and Navy Seals killed Bin Laden in May.
Pakistani manufacturers of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a component of homemade bombs used against American soldiers in Afghanistan, tentatively agreed to dye it for easier tracing, American officials said. Interior Ministry officials pledged to track large, unexplained purchases of the substance.
At the same time, Pakistani officials indicated that they would help rein in attacks by the Haqqani network, an insurgent group that is the main killer of allied troops in Afghanistan, and there were hints that Pakistan would pave the way for peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But the fatal airstrike on Nov. 26 erased that preliminary progress, dealing the most serious blow to reconciliation talks involving Pakistan. “It’s not happening,” said Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, a former interior minister.
All of this comes as the Pakistani economy is in a free fall, civilian and military leaders are clashing over purported coup plots, and 150,000 Pakistani troops are stuck in a stalemate fighting a witches’ brew of militants along the Afghan border.
“These people are stuck there very badly,” said Javed Ashraf Qazi, a retired lieutenant general and a former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, Pakistan’s main spy agency.
The number of attacks from homemade bombs throughout the country, but mostly focused in the border areas, skyrocketed to 1,036 through November this year, compared with 413 for all of 2007, according to the Pakistani military. More than 3,500 Pakistani soldiers and police have been killed since 2002.
The Obama administration is desperately trying to preserve the critical pieces of the relationship. General Dempsey asked the Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a phone call on Wednesday if the relationship could be repaired, a person briefed on the conversation said. General Kayani said that he thought it could, but that Pakistan needed some space.
The State Department this month quietly dispatched a senior diplomat and South Asia specialist, Robin Raphel, to canvass a wide spectrum of Pakistanis. She returned with a sober assessment and the view that many Pakistanis will not move forward without a formal apology from President Obama for the airstrike, which White House aides say is not in the offing.
Still, administration officials held out hope. “We’ve been very forthright in acknowledging that this is a relationship that needs to work,” a State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said on Friday
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I think this image shows a Freudian slip of sorts...Gilani offering to shake Kiyani's hand (thinking Kiyani may not salute him)...and perhaps Kiyani thought that Gilani would not extend his hand, so he salutes :-D
Overall, it captures the state of relations between Pak leadership and army.
(http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/6657/gilakiyanahi.jpg)
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As discussed earlier, some in Pak have described the US behaviour towards them, as analogous to that of a used condom. Its a transactional relationship, there is no love lost between them. The US has decided to withdraw/reduce activities in Afghanistan, which means Pak is losing leverage. pak had the most leverage when US troops needed to be supported in Afghanistan which has been reduced due to the availability of alternate supply routes, Another area of paki leverage was in negotiations with taliban and haqqani group. The US seems to not care too much about negotiations these days, infact we just seem to want out. Karzai too has not been greatly supportive of the US. All of this is happening because the end game is near, and the players are jockeying politically to position themselves in a post US world (after the withdrawl).
Kiyani and his army has suffered tremendous loss of H&D in the last year (raymond davis affair, PNS Mehran base, OBL, killing of 24 pak soldiers etc). Each of these incidents resulted in tremendous damage to paki H&D, cumulatively this loss of H&D is quite serious and dont know if western commentators fully appreciate the significance or seriousness of this loss of face that the paki army has suffered. Kiyani needs to recoup, and the only way he can do so is by being tough on the US. So as the US ready's to withdraw, he has asked the US to withdraw from Shamsi base, shut down the border crossing of US goods, no more help in negotiating with the taliban etc. All of these actions help him pacify the rank and file of the army, who are greatly disturbed by all that has happened. This is one part of the story.
In reality, pak needs US money and they are not about to give that up. So based on Paki 101, they will next hold a gun to their head, and claim to blow themselves up if money is not provided (they can always threaten islamist radical take over, lose a few nukes etc). In a light hearted manner, the concept is illustrated below.
(http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/2348/picture1yt.png)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/opinion/can-russia-help-us-withdraw-from-afghanistan.html?_r=2 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/opinion/can-russia-help-us-withdraw-from-afghanistan.html?_r=2)
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS
Can Russia Help Us Withdraw From Afghanistan?
Yarek Waszul
By DOV S. ZAKHEIM and PAUL J. SAUNDERS
Published: December 1, 2011
AMERICA’S relations with Pakistan have been steadily deteriorating ever since a Navy Seals team killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad in May. Matters became still worse in September, when Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency of supporting an attack on the American Embassy in Kabul. And on Saturday, the relationship hit a new low when a NATO airstrike mistakenly killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers, and Pakistan retaliated by shutting down supply routes to Afghanistan that crossed its territory.
Instead of relying heavily on Pakistan as a supply corridor, the United States should expand its cooperation with Russia, which has been playing an increasingly important role in military transit to and from Afghanistan. This would serve as both a hedge and a warning to the generals who control Pakistan.
True, this proposal might seem ironic, as Afghanistan was the site of a nearly decade-long struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union toward the end of the cold war. (During that time, America cooperated with Pakistan to support Afghan mujahedeen fighting the Soviets.) But working with Russia today is in fact the key to preventing the United States from becoming a hostage to Pakistan’s dysfunctional politics and its ambitions in Central Asia.
Expanding transit routes into and out of Afghanistan is a critical American national interest, and it would improve security for NATO forces while signaling that Washington was not beholden to Islamabad. It might also cause Pakistan to reassess its policy of providing sanctuary and support to terrorist networks operating against American forces.
In the last two years, the Northern Distribution Network through Russia and Central Asia has evolved from a peripheral component of American wartime logistics to the principal path for non-combat supplies into Afghanistan. These routes — which traverse Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Azerbaijan and Georgia — carry approximately 52 percent of all coalition cargo into Afghanistan. And under a 2009 air transit deal with Russia, 225,000 Americans have traveled there through Russian airspace on more than 1,500 military flights.
These northern routes are far less dangerous than the supply routes that go through Pakistan, where militants often attack American and NATO convoys. As the Obama administration’s surge in Afghanistan draws to a close and we begin to reduce our military presence there, these routes will become even more significant. Indeed, the United States might be able to draw down its forces from Afghanistan safely, rather than subjecting American convoys to attacks while passing through Pakistan.
Negotiations to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan through Russia will not be easy; thus far, Moscow has allowed only the shipment of non-combat supplies. Nevertheless, Russia agreed earlier this year to let certain types of armored vehicles cross its territory into Afghanistan, and Washington should pursue further cooperation.
Facilitating the American drawdown from Afghanistan would allow Russian leaders to make an important contribution to regional security; successful American-Russian cooperation, with help from other countries along the northern routes, could also help maintain regional stability.
Russia remains deeply conflicted about America’s wider role in Central Asia. However, the prospect of an American withdrawal has helped a number of Russian officials appreciate the security benefits of the American presence there. Indeed, during a Nov. 11 meeting outside Moscow, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia stated clearly that NATO played a “positive” role in Afghanistan and expressed concern about the consequences of a premature withdrawal.
Many Americans forget that Mr. Putin was the first world leader to call President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks to offer his assistance, and Moscow quickly agreed to permit American bases in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia to support the war effort in Afghanistan. And even before 9/11, during the Clinton administration, Mr. Putin proposed United States-Russian cooperation against the Taliban; Washington turned down the offer for political reasons — a mistake we should not repeat.
Critics may worry that relying on the northern routes to supply our troops in Afghanistan and withdraw them as we reduce our presence there will make the United States overly dependent on Russia. But because of Afghanistan’s location, we have no choice but to depend on others for access to its territory.
The choice is between Pakistan on one hand, and Russia and Central Asian nations on the other. And Russia, unlike Pakistan, has not hosted militants who are killing Americans on the battlefield.
Dov S. Zakheim, an under secretary of defense from 2001 to 2004, is vice chairman of the Center for the National Interest, where Paul J. Saunders is executive director.
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WASHINGTON — A nearly two-month lull in American drone strikes in Pakistan has helped embolden Al Qaeda and several Pakistani militant factions to regroup, increase attacks against Pakistani security forces and threaten intensified strikes against allied forces in Afghanistan, American and Pakistani officials say.
The insurgents are increasingly taking advantage of tensions raised by an American airstrike in November that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers in two border outposts, plunging relations between the countries to new depths. The Central Intelligence Agency, hoping to avoid making matters worse while Pakistan completes a wide-ranging review of its security relationship with the United States, has not conducted a drone strike since mid-November.
Diplomats and intelligence analysts say the pause in C.I.A. missile strikes — the longest in Pakistan in more than three years — is offering for now greater freedom of movement to an insurgency that had been splintered by in-fighting and battered by American drone attacks in recent months. Several feuding factions said last week that they were patching up their differences, at least temporarily, to improve their image after a series of kidnappings and, by some accounts, to focus on fighting Americans in Afghanistan.
Other militant groups continue attacking Pakistani forces. Just last week, Taliban insurgents killed 15 security soldiers who had been kidnapped in retaliation for the death of a militant commander.
The spike in violence in the tribal areas — up nearly 10 percent in 2011 from the previous year, according to a new independent report — comes amid reports of negotiations between Pakistan’s government and some local Taliban factions, although the military denies that such talks are taking place.
A logistics operative with the Haqqani terrorist group, which uses sanctuaries in Pakistan to carry out attacks on allied troops in Afghanistan, said militants could still hear drones flying surveillance missions, day and night. “There are still drones, but there is no fear anymore,” he said in a telephone interview. The logistics operative said fighters now felt safer to roam more freely.
Over all, drone strikes in Pakistan dropped to 64 last year, compared with 117 strikes in 2010, according to The Long War Journal, a Web site that monitors the attacks. Analysts attribute the decrease to a dwindling number of senior Qaeda leaders and a pause in strikes last year after the arrest in January of Raymond Davis, a C.I.A. security contractor who killed two Pakistanis; the Navy Seal raid in May that killed Osama bin Laden; and the American airstrike on Nov. 26.
Pakistan ordered drone operations at its Shamsi air base closed after that airstrike, but C.I.A. drones flying from bases in Afghanistan continue to fly surveillance missions over the tribal areas. The drones would be cleared to fire on a senior militant leader if there was credible intelligence and minimal risk to civilians, American officials said. But for now, the Predator and Reaper drones are holding their fire, the longest pause in Pakistan since July 2008.
“It makes sense that a lull in U.S. operations, coupled with ineffective Pakistani efforts, might lead the terrorists to become complacent and try to regroup,” one American official said. “We know that Al Qaeda’s leaders were constantly taking the U.S. counterterrorism operations into account, spending considerable time planning their movements and protecting their communications to try to stay alive.”
C. Christine Fair, an assistant professor of political science at Georgetown University who just returned from a month in Pakistan, put it more bluntly: “They’re taking advantage of the respite. It allows them to operate more freely.”
Several administration officials said Saturday that any lull in drone strikes did not signal a weakening of the country’s counterterrorism efforts, suggesting that strikes could resume soon. “Without commenting on specific counterterrorism operations, Al Qaeda is severely weakened, having suffered major losses in recent years,” said George Little, a Defense Department spokesman. “But even a diminished group of terrorists can pose danger, and thus our resolve to defeat them is as strong as ever.”
Analysts say the hiatus coincides with and probably has accelerated a flurry of insurgent activity and new strategies.
In the past week, leaflets distributed in North Waziristan announced that the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda had urged several Pakistani militant groups to set aside their differences and some commanders have reportedly asked their fighters to focus on striking American-led allied forces in Afghanistan.
Page 2 of 2)
The Pakistani groups include the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella group led by Hakimullah Mehsud that has mounted attacks against the Pakistani state since the group was formed in 2007. The new council also includes the Haqqani network and factions led by Maulvi Nazir of South Waziristan and Hafiz Gul Bahadur of North Waziristan, which already target NATO soldiers and have tacit peace agreements with the Pakistani military.
In telephone interviews, some Pakistani militants said the purpose of the agreement was to settle internal differences among rival factions and improve the image of the Taliban, which has been tarnished because of the increasing use of kidnapping and the rise in civilian killings.
Other analysts say that the Afghan Taliban are also feeling the pinch of American-led night raids and other operations across the border. They said the Taliban needed the militants in Pakistan’s tribal region to focus more on helping to launch a final offensive in Afghanistan, in hopes of gaining leverage before any peace talks and the ultimate withdrawal of most American forces from Afghanistan by 2014.
One of the main drivers of the accord was Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the Haqqani network, prompting some Pakistani analysts to reason that the Pakistani Army had also prodded the creation of the council, or shura, to maintain its leverage in any peace negotiations. Last summer Adm. Mike Mullen, who was then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the Haqqanis “a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s main military spy agency.
“No agreement is ever permanent in frontier politics, and it’s all very complicated,” said one American government official with decades of experience in Pakistan and its tribal areas.
Stuck in a stalemate in the lawless borderlands with this array of militants are 150,000 Pakistani troops. A recent report by an Islamabad-based research organization, the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, said that militant-based violence had declined by 24 percent in the last two years. But it also concluded that terrorist attacks in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province increased 8 percent in 2011 from the year before.
“The security situation remained volatile as militants dislodged from their strongholds constantly managed to relocate to other parts of the FATA,” the report said.
In a sign of the shifting insurgent tactics, the number of suicide bombings in the country declined to 39 through November, compared with a high of 81 in all of 2009, according to the Pakistani military.
The number of attacks from homemade bombs, however, increased to 1,036 through November, compared with 877 for all of 2009. More than 3,500 Pakistani soldiers and police officers have been killed since 2002.
One senior Pakistani Army officer with experience in the tribal areas said that insurgents had devised increasingly diabolical triggers and fuses for bombs.
Unlike Americans, Pakistani soldiers still drive in pickups or carriers with little protection. “The effects are devastating,” said the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Vehicles are basically vaporized.”
“The Pakistani Army is overstretched, and that’s clearly had an impact on morale,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. “But we have to maintain the pressure on the militants.”
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MIRANSHAH: After a lull of about 55 days, the valleys of Pakistan’s tribal region reverberated once more with missile fire from stealthy US air borne drones.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/319683/us-drone-attack-kills-four-militants-in-pakistan-officials/ (http://tribune.com.pk/story/319683/us-drone-attack-kills-four-militants-in-pakistan-officials/)
Looks like we are back in business... :-D
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Things are heating up in pak...Allah-O-Akbar
Coup fears resurfaces in Pakistan as Gilani-Kayani spat turns ugly
TNN | Jan 12, 2012, 01.50AM IST
Tensions between the Pakistan civilian government and the military have risen since a memo seeking US help to prevent a military coup in May and rein in the country’s powerful khaki establishment came to light in November 2011.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan army on Wednesday warned of "grievous consequences" over accusations by the country's prime minister that the top military brass had violated the constitution.
Yousaf Raza Gilani also sacked the defence secretary, considered close to the military, in an apparent tit-for-tat move that worsened ties between the wobbly civilian government of Asif Ali Zardari and the powerful military that has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its existence.
Tensions have risen since a memo seeking US help to prevent a military coup in May and rein in the country's powerful khaki establishment came to light in November. Pak-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz had claimed to have delivered the memo to the Americans that former envoy to US Husain Haqqani had allegedly authored at Zardari's behest. Zardari can face impeachment if his links to the memo are established.
Shortly before news that defense secretary Naeem Khalid Lodhi had been sacked, the military released a statement saying allegations leveled against the army chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and director-general Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Ahmed Shuja Pasha were very serious and will have grave consequences.
"There can be no allegation more serious than what the PM has leveled against the chief of army staff and the DG ISI and has unfortunately charged the officers for violation of the constitution of the country. This has very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the country," a statement released by the military said.
The handout stated that PM Yousaf Raza Gilani gave an interview to the People's Daily Online when Kayani was on an official visit to China. Gilani had said that replies of Kayani and Pasha in the SC without the prior approval of the government in connection to the alleged memo controversy were unconstitutional and illegal.
The army has confronted the government over the memo in the SC that has constituted a three-member commission to probe the scandal that threatens to implicate Zardari. The government had asked the court to dismiss a plea seeking a judicial probe into the memo, while Kayani and Pasha in their statements took the opposite position, saying the memo was a conspiracy against the army.
The statement, issued after Kayani returned from China, maintained it had passed its response through the defence ministry to the court in accordance with the law.
Naeem Khalid Lodhi, a retired general seen as an army representative within the civilian setup, was dismissed for the "misunderstanding" between Gilani and the top brass. "PM has terminated the contract of defence secretary for gross misconduct," said an official. Lodhi was fired for his role in submitting the statements to the court.
Lodhi was regarded to be more powerful than the defence minister because of his direct ties to the army high command. Nargis Sethi, considered close to Gilani, would replace Lodhi. The PM needs the defence secretary on his side if he sacks the army or intelligence chiefs.
Analysts said the removal of Lodhi and Sethi's appointment shows the government is not in a defensive mode. "Firing Lodhi may be a first step by the government in removing the chief of army staff and the DG ISI," political analyst Ikram Sehgal said.
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Woof,
This will bring our troops home. Not a good day for America if it proves to be a legitimate video.
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/F6lR3ZGFwvI?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
P.C.
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Speaking only as a humble civilian my sense of things is that these things have always happened, that we do them far, far less than others, and the new technologies make covering them up harder and give them mass dissemination in an instant. Who amongst the greater public knows that Abu Graib was expossed through internal Army procedures and released to the press by the Pentagon?
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The Pakistani military issued a press release Wednesday criticizing remarks that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani made to China’s People’s Daily Online. Pakistan’s Supreme Court is probing allegations that the civilian government sent a memo seeking U.S. assistance to reverse the military’s domination over the state. In an interview with the newspaper, Gilani had said the chief of the country’s army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, and the head of the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, acted unconstitutionally in statements they submitted to the court. The statement from the military’s public relations directorate warned that Gilani’s comments to the Chinese newspaper entailed “very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the country.”
On the same day, Gilani fired the Defense Ministry’s senior-most bureaucrat -- a retired three-star general with close ties to military leadership -- accusing him of “gross misconduct” and illegal action.
These two events, the latest in a standoff between the country’s civilian and military leaders that began when the memo controversy surfaced last October, are being read internationally as signs that the military is working once again to force a civilian government out of office. Since Pakistan’s first coup in 1958 -- a mere 11 years after independence -- three more have followed, in 1969, 1977 and 1999, and have ushered in long periods of military rule. Even during the longest period of civilian rule, from 1988 to 1997, the security establishment constitutionally ousted three elected governments, in 1990, 1993 and 1996.
Considering that history, it is not unusual that the military would try to get rid of the current government. That said, much has changed since the last coup, which brought former Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to power a little more than 12 years ago. Since that time, it has been difficult for the military to dispose of a government it does not like. The proliferation of private media and rise of civil society during Musharraf’s rule, the popular uprising that helped bring about the military dictator’s fall from power, and the judiciary’s emergence as a power center have greatly complicated matters for Pakistan’s military-intelligence complex.
The current military leadership knows that present domestic and international circumstances make a classic coup unviable. And at any rate, the military does not wish to seize power and with it inherit the responsibility for addressing the social, economic and security issues plaguing the country. The military would much rather see the government ousted through constitutional means.
The constitutional option is also not presently viable. In the past, the military would align with the presidency and opposition parties in parliament to counter the government. But Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari leads the ruling Pakistan People’s Party. And while opposition parties in parliament would like to reap the benefits of a weakened ruling party, they are unwilling to see the army gain the upper hand.
That leaves the Supreme Court, which has taken a clear stance against the civilian administration and is pressing the president and others in the government on corruption charges.
However, even a Supreme Court ruling against it would not necessarily bring about the government’s ouster. For that to happen, parliament needs to vote down both the prime minister and the president -- and the arithmetic of such a theoretical vote right now favors the ruling party. So even as it retains a great deal of power, the military cannot oust governments as easily as it has done in the past.
Even if the government is forced to call early elections and is unable to complete the term set to expire in about a year, a shift in the civil-military power dynamic is undeniably in the making in Pakistan. Given the historical trend, the military will not become subordinate to civilians anytime soon -- while the country’s political parties have yet to demonstrate they are a coherent lot capable of effective governance. That said, the military’s ability to dominate the polity is no longer what it once was.
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Woof,
This will bring our troops home. Not a good day for America if it proves to be a legitimate video.
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/F6lR3ZGFwvI?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
P.C.
"Not a good day for America" in more ways than one. It's front page center. And it seems to be legitimate. The fallout is just beginning.
What a disaster...
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/12/us/video-marines-urinating/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
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I feel like it is kind of strange that this video suddenly is a big deal. I've seen a ton of this kind of stuff on the internet. Best quote I've heard, "We've been fighting here for 3 days, but in a few minutes, all these people are going to learn to stop worshiping Allah and start worshiping the GBU 24 (or whatever)... boom!
"Go kill the people that you will learn to hate because they killed your co-workers, but don't hate them openly, gloat, or do any grave dancing." It isn't that realistic. If you don't want you people grave dancing, don't send them to fight to the death for years.
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I recall it was reported Hillary Clinton laughed out loud when they told her Khadaffi was killed.
I wonder if that was before of after the videos of him being dragged out of drain pipe beaten, stabbed and basically shot in the face at point blank range.
Certainly I don't feel sorry for him but I thought her gloating seemed telling abouther.
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I recall it was reported Hillary Clinton laughed out loud when they told her Khadaffi was killed.
I wonder if that was before of after the videos of him being dragged out of drain pipe beaten, stabbed and basically shot in the face at point blank range.
Certainly I don't feel sorry for him but I thought her gloating seemed telling abouther.
Gloating or laughter may be inappropriate, but this is much MUCH worse. And then to film it? :-o These guys will be lucky if they are not sent to jail.
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"deplorable" seems to be the agreed upon adjective from Panetta, Clinton, etc.
I will be shocked if they are not court martialed. I don't feel it is as bad as Abu Graib. Surely this is sad to see but I agree with Crafty - we have seen far worse. Now if those corpses were innocent farmers or herders, or civilians who were murdered that is a complete different story.
We accept the idea of dead people lying there presumably killed in war but we are to get all bent out of shape when the bodies are desecrated?
Just odd about the rules - politically correctness in war and as in anything else I guess.
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I recall it was reported Hillary Clinton laughed out loud when they told her Khadaffi was killed.
I wonder if that was before of after the videos of him being dragged out of drain pipe beaten, stabbed and basically shot in the face at point blank range.
Certainly I don't feel sorry for him but I thought her gloating seemed telling abouther.
Gloating or laughter may be inappropriate, but this is much MUCH worse. And then to film it? :-o These guys will be lucky if they are not sent to jail.
The marines just shot a whole bunch of people.
What have those men gone through? Maybe it was cathartic. Maybe pissing on an object, a pile of meat they already shot dead, released the emotional energy they need to stay sane. Pissing on corpses might save lives.
Perhaps the military shouldn't be sent to set up a culture fighting for Americans to wade in for a decade.
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I've never been known to believe in authority or trust the military, police, or government, but this is one case where I think the wrong doers are getting a raw deal. I can not, at all, identify with a sniper. I can't judge this. All I know is that the events leading up to it should have been avoided. It's time for them to come home.
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Given the incoherence of our strategy the emotion is quite understandable.
Question: Given its rogue history and given what our YA has brought to our attention about increasing Jihadi sentiment in the Pak army, what to do about the Pak nuke program, what do you think will happen after we leave?
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Given the incoherence of our strategy the emotion is quite understandable.
Question: Given its rogue history and given what our YA has brought to our attention about increasing Jihadi sentiment in the Pak army, what to do about the Pak nuke program, what do you think will happen after we leave?
I think that if the legitimate authority loses power in Pakistan, we will use the cover of the turmoil to disarm them forcefully.I think the location of their 100 or so weapons is known and those sites will be quickly targeted.
I heard a military suit talking about it on T.V. a while ago. I don't know if it is naive or not.
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If we are gone from Afpakia, do you think it will be harder or easier to keep track of WTF the situation is and to accomplish that mission should it be necessary?
Just to be perfectly clear, do you support the concept of that mission?
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I am not really educated on the details. Obama has been to India quite a few times and they have a lot of interest in this as well. Nuclear weapons require an awful lot of expensive maintenance. It isn't like hiding an old man in the basement. I would imagine that with India and US intelligence and satellite monitoring, they must have a pretty good idea where they are.
A fundamentalist takeover is even more an Indian problem than its ours, and I'm pretty sure they would help us / give us access to that long boarder to take care of it. Not to mention, when their government goes into exile, if it does, they will probably become our allies as a ticket back to regaining power later. They could tell us where the bombs are.
I don't believe either Iran or any other Islamic fundamentalists should be allowed to get a nuclear bomb right now. The idea that Iran is seeking nuclear power for peaceful means seems a little unnecessary given the amount of oil they are sitting on and how much more money they could possible make just by willingly giving up the pursuit. It is suspicious and crazy.
In any case, yes I would support that sort of action. It would save millions of lives in New Delhi alone. I'm not sure that we need Afghanistan to do it.
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FYI (and YA or anyone correct me if I don't have this quite right) Pakistan is the world's 4th largest nuclear power with some 100 bombs or so. Along with the Norks they have a proven history of rogue dissemination of nuclear bomb capabilities (Libya, Syria, Iraq all come to mind-- can someone confirm or deny?) If you read further back in this thread or the Nuclear War thread, you will see that they have been doing their best to hide their nukes from us, including moving them around in unguarded trucks :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o Not only is the Pak army and or ISI Jihadi-ridden, indeed arguably Jihadi controlled, but the ease with which AQ and its ilk could seize one or more nukes is :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
I understand you questioning the need for us to be in Afg. to stay on top of the situation in Pak., especially with our strategy as incoherent as it is, and yes, as YA posts from Indian sources show, the Indians have a far superior understanding of Pak to our understanding and yes they too have great motive to be concerned, but to think they can do it for us when Pak developed 100 nukes principally for the purpose of countering India's conventional superiority is, IMHO, wishful thinking.
With the substantial risk of AQ et al getting one or more nukes, either through a deniable handoff or by AQ theft, presents a profound danger to the US homeland. To put one or more of these things on a boat and sail it in to a US harbor and set it off is not that difficult. Yes I know we have some measures in place, but they are not something I want us to have to depend on.
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There are a lot of factors. I just wish the government didn't burn up public trust like rain forests so that they could deal with these sorts of things in a less political way.
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I know what you mean.
President Obama ran saying the Afghanistan was an essential war of national self-defense. Once elected he put in his own general and ignored him for six months :-o until the poor man had to leak to the press that he had spoken with the President once in six months. He and his staff leaked that he needed more troops. The White House leaked that they better not here of needing more troops. Public pressure built on Obama to pay attention. The generals said they wanted 40-60k. After several months of Hamlet-like indecision, Obama gave them 30k and told the enemy and us that they would leave in 18 months leaving this essential war of national self-defense in the hands of Karzai, the Afghani Army, and the Afghani police. Given the time of year of the announcements, this amounted to one summer season of fighting.
Now we can't understand why everyone is focused on what happens when we leave.
Not to mention the failure to speak Truth that the Pak govt/ISI hid OBL from us and other similar deeds which some would call Acts of War. In that the real issue IS Pakistan and not Afghanistan, the cranial-rectal interface here is profound.
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Pete Hegseth, founder of Vets For Freedom, is now posted to Afghanistan, where he has been training Afghans as well as American and coalition troops. His reports on the situation there are as knowledgeable as any you can find. Here is his final dispatch [addressing the difficult issues and choices we face] before he heads home next month:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/01/endgame-in-afghanistan.php
The Endgame in Afghanistan
My first email from Kabul was entitled “First Impressions” and the caveats I used in that email remain unchanged. Afghanistan is such a dynamic place—layered with umpteen complexities, contradictions, mysteries, and unknowns—that a holistic understanding of the country, let alone the conflict (overt and covert), is nearly impossible. That said, over the past eight months I’ve had the opportunity to challenge my first impressions, test hypotheses, and attempt to understand the true nature of the conflict. This section represents my modest—if declarative—initial attempt at distilling what I’ve learned and making some observation about America’s eventual endgame in Afghanistan.
Rather than break down my assessment categorically as I did in previous emails, I will instead look at the war through a lens provided by an insurgency expert who visited us this past summer. His name is Gérard Chaliand and the day we spent with him was fascinating. In addition to authoring over 40 books on guerilla warfare, he has also been a participant/observer of over a dozen insurgencies around the world—including Afghanistan in the 1980s, and again during the current conflict. Listening to him was like sitting in a semi-circle around Yoda himself, absorbing the insight and knowledge of a rare specimen.
Mr. Chaliand visits Afghanistan yearly, but said his 2011 trip was his last. When asked why, he said, “Because I know how it will end. The Taliban control the countryside and are growing in support throughout the country by providing an effective underground government structure. The seeds of their return were planted long ago—much before Gen. McChrystal’s 2009 counterinsurgency strategy—and their ascension is now inevitable. International forces started doing the right things at ‘half past eleven’ and now it’s too late.”
While I certainly didn’t share his pessimism then, I’ve come begrudgingly to agree with his assessment today. The Taliban—by mitigating their negatives (brutality, ethnic exclusion, and overt association with al Qaeda) and accentuating their perceived positives (swift justice, longevity, and ideological cohesion)—have gained, and maintained, a psychological grip on the Afghan population. While most Afghans, especially non-Pashtuns, do not want the Taliban to return (“hearts”), they are grappling with—and calculating accordingly—the looming reality that the Taliban will outlast U.S. forces (“minds”) and eventually challenge a weak, corrupt, and fractured Afghan Government for control of the country.
This isn’t to say that we couldn’t achieve a more advantageous outcome for the United States; of course if we got rid of the 2014 withdrawal deadline completely, were truly willing to remove Taliban and Haqqani safe-havens in Pakistan (we know where they are!), and purged the Afghan government of its most corrupt nodes we could “change the game” of this conflict. But for various reasons—be they domestic politics, a nuclear-armed Pakistan (a lesson for Iran, I would suggest), and a trepidation with undermining corrosive “Afghan sovereignty”—it is highly unlikely we will make the hard choices necessary to level the playing field. A bad outcome in Afghanistan isn’t inevitable, but in light of current realities, it is likely.
However, the policies we pursue in the coming years will impact the degree to which the outcome here is bad, or less-bad. Our commitment to training and mentoring Afghan security forces will be central to determining the future of this country. If we do it right—truly creating a multi-ethnic force that will defend the interests of most Afghans—it could be a vanguard against total Taliban control and a buffer against outright civil war. If we do it wrong or hurriedly, we’re merely indiscriminately (and heavily!) arming different elements of an Afghan army that will eventually turn its guns on each other. In my opinion the later outcome is most likely, but not inevitable.
If you know me, I’m not one for pessimism, and certainly not interested in undermining the efforts of our troops in harm’s way. Afghanistan is nowhere near a John Kerry-esque “who will be the last American to die for a mistake?” situation. Our effort is noble, our cause just, and our military sharp. But at the same time, my sentiments are in keeping with most Coalition members over here—even if they’re unwilling to say it. We soldier on. We will fight until the end. But with our ear to the ground and our boots in the snow, we can feel the undercurrent in Afghanistan. As the clock ticks to 2014, we become more irrelevant as Afghans make decisions (hoarding, segregating, and hedging) regarding a post-American future in their country.
While I don’t like acquiescing to a “non-victory” in Afghanistan, we will have nonetheless achieved an outcome in Afghanistan that is an exception to the rule in the so-called “graveyard of empires.” From a historical perspective, whenever we “leave” we will be the first “invader” that left on our own terms—a not insignificant accomplishment. Thankfully, and necessarily, I’m fairly certain our commitment to Afghanistan will continue on a smaller and enduring scale—and in doing so we will have done everything we can to create the conditions for a friendly and capable (at least on paper) Afghanistan government to determine their own future. It may not end well, but it won’t be for a lack of U.S. effort, courage, and ingenuity.
As supporting evidence for these heavy-hearted assertions, I would first submit my previous two emails (here and here). My feelings on the fundamentally corrupt Afghan government, Pakistan safe-haven, the 2014 deadline, Taliban capabilities and more are clearly stated in those emails—along with facts and financial figures. However, I’d like to take one more broad look at our mission in Afghanistan, as it currently stands in January of 2012. In doing so, I’ll use Mr. Chaliand’s closing statement to us as a framework for examination. He said, when looking at a counterinsurgency conflict, we must: “Never believe your propaganda, always re-asses the facts, challenge assumptions, and don’t rely on wishful thinking.” Wise words, and a useful filter for analyzing our mission in Afghanistan.
“Never believe your propaganda…”
The Coalition narrative (I don’t consider it “propaganda,” because we’re beholden to the truth—unlike our enemies) in Afghanistan is as follows: the “surge” summer of 2011 has inflicted serious damage on the Taliban, especially in the south; and at the same time, we are aggressively pushing Taliban re-integration programs, training increasingly capable Afghan security forces, and working to improve local governance. But, as I’ve said before, only half of this is grounded in reality. Yes the “surge” has allowed U.S. troops to push the Taliban out of traditional strongholds in the south, significantly disrupting their operations. However, there is also evidence that, despite heavy casualties, the Taliban have been able to regenerate themselves quickly, maintain their military and shadow-governance networks, and are waiting us out.
More troubling is the fact that we have not seen the ripple affects we needed the surge to induce (as it did in Iraq). While re-integration numbers (fighters giving up the fight) are increasing, they still include very few Pashtuns, especially Pashtuns from the south. Most of the re-integrated fighters are from the north and west, places not known for Taliban support. Second—and more importantly—Afghan governance at the local and national level has not decisively taken advantage of the surge environment to improve capability and legitimacy. While there are great programs (like Village Stability Operations and the Afghan Local Police) working to create the conditions for local governance, there hasn’t been—nor will there be—an Anbar-style tribal awakening like we saw in Iraq, largely because of the segmented and fractured nature of Pashtun society in modern Afghanistan. And without a legitimate government in Kabul and in the provinces, the chances for a stable outcome are minimal.
Another aspect of our narrative is that the 2012 “fighting season” (April to October) will be a decisive moment for our forces. We will increase our gains in the south, and degrade the Taliban enough to create the space for increasingly capable Afghan forces and a burgeoning government. There are three big problems with this. First, the idea of a “fighting season” is misleading. While violence is higher in the summer months, the non-violent aspect of this conflict doesn’t stop. When we’re not fighting (and sitting snug on our FOBs for the holidays), the Taliban continues to spread their influence through local dispute resolution, mobile Sharia courts (seen as increasingly legitimate by the people), and propaganda. Second, while we have achieved a critical mass of soldiers in the Afghan National Army, their ability and motivation to continue the fight when we’re not in the lead is still suspect (more on this below). Finally, it’s hard to overstate how damaging the 2014 deadline is in creating these outcomes. As the perception of 2014 gets closer, our influence—by point of fact—will diminish. The Taliban can stand back and wait us out because we told them how long to wait.
“Always reassess the facts…”
The fact is: facts are sticky in Afghanistan. And, depending on whom you’re talking to—especially amongst Afghans—they are always different, and oftentimes contradictory. So, rather than only talk “facts” now, I’d like to do a quick comparison between old facts and new realities.
Fact: In 2004, President Hamid Karzai was elected the President of Afghanistan, and seen as legitimate by wide swaths of Afghans as well as around the world. Reality today: Not only is the Karzai government corrupt and dysfunctional, it is already seen as illegitimate by most groups inside Afghanistan and as a complete money-pit to international donors. In fact, by any fair assessment, it can barely be called a “government” by traditional standards; it’s more like a ruling mafia. Bribery, nepotism, and blatant disregard for the rule of law and their own constitution are off the charts. The ruling elite are getting rich off international aid while regular Afghans scarcely see their lives improve. All-the-while, the Taliban exploit this fact through piercing propaganda. The end result is that we continue to prop up an Afghan government that is seen as increasingly illegitimate by the people, all the while hoping “peace talks” with the Taliban will provide an exit ramp for the war. The Taliban doesn’t want to work with the Afghan government, they want to replace it.
Fact: Since 2001 the United States has spent $456,000 an hour, every hour, on non-military developmental aid alone, and has spent even more on the military. Reality today: Afghanistan is an international donor state, almost completely reliant on international aid money to function. They have almost no tax base (save import taxation and…untaxed opium) and 97% of Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product is linked to foreign aid. We pay for their government and military, and have created financial realities that are completely unsustainable. Take, for example, the Afghan Army. This year we will spend $13 billion on training and equipping the Afghan Army, while the Afghan government will take in less than $2 billion in revenue. Some tough financial realities loom: either we cut spending and reduce the size of their Army or we continue to pay for it. The former would mean—for certain—the Afghan Army would eventually capitulate to the Taliban; the later that we continue to pump billions into Afghanistan’s Army while we downsize our own (a bad idea, by the way). Not not only is Afghanistan’s current situation unsustainable, but spending in the country for the past decade has distorted their economy and government more negatively than positively.
Final fact: In 2001, the U.S. was attacked by al Qaeda from Afghanistan, where the Taliban granted them safe-haven. Reality today: Bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda is on the ropes, and the Taliban are wary of their association with al Qaeda. Yes the groups still coordinate, but it’s not the rock solid alliance it was ten years ago. Vice President Biden recently said that “the Taliban is not our enemy.” I respectfully and adamantly disagree (as would, I suspect, the families of those U.S. troops killed by the Taliban). Any group openly fighting and killing our soldiers is our enemy. But the more important question is—does the Taliban pose an existential threat to America and our interests? They might tell us during negotiations that they will swear off association with Al Qaeda, but just like the Iranian denial of nuclear weapons—we should not believe them. There isn’t a scenario where a radical and violent Islamic group taking control of Afghanistan is a good outcome; however, we can still salvage conditions where the Taliban are not able to utilize, or provide, substantial haven for radical Islamists with global ambitions.
“Challenge assumptions…”
The largest and most dangerous assumption we make is that there is a nation called “Afghanistan” and a collection of people called “Afghans.” Neither is correct, but that assumption continues to fuel our push for a multi-ethnic military and government that holds sway inside the arbitrary boundaries of Afghanistan. Having spent time with Afghans from multiple backgrounds—Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras—it’s painfully clear that beneath the surface of the “we are Afghans” talk are true feelings of ethnic and tribal affiliations that supersede an “Afghan” identity. History, language, violence, custom, mistrust, and animosity separate these groups—and a flag, a national anthem (only in Pashto, which angers Dari speakers) a “government” and a western-style Army are not enough to create a nation where none exists. I could tell story after story about this, but suffice it to say—this country is fragmented, and won’t unite in time to fight an ideologically cohesive, Pashtun-based Taliban movement.
In regards to the western-style Army I mentioned above, the assumptions we make with this force will have lasting, and potentially positive or negative impacts. Not only have we attempted to create a multi-ethnic institution that will represent all Afghans, but we’ve also built an Army in our image—with strong conventional capabilities and a Non-Commissioned Officer Corps, where none has existed before. We are producing new units at a rapid rate, recruiting from all backgrounds and then sending them to the Consolidated Fielding Center (CFC) in Kabul where multi-ethnic units are established and trained, before being sent to the field. There’s nothing wrong with that; but the problem is what happens after that, on three fronts:
First, each new unit is given millions of dollars of brand new weaponry and equipment, with minimal actual accountability. The kandak (battalion) commander is responsible for the equipment, some/much of which eventually ends up missing (and sometimes on sale in Pakistan). For example, a heavy weapons kandak leaves the CFC with approximately eighteen brand-new 50-caliber machine guns, and dozens of smaller-caliber heavy weapons and RPGs. I challenge you to walk into any National Guard armory in the States and ask how many functioning 50-caliber machine guns they have. They’ll probably pull out four beat-up 50-cals with rusting barrels, likely dated back to Vietnam. If things don’t end well, someone will use these weapons—and it might not be our friends.
Second, while units are formed as multi-ethnic entities, once they get to the field a slow, but deliberate, self-segregation is starting to occur. Soldiers from the north try to get back to the north, and likewise for soldiers in the south. A Tajik ultimately wants to fight alongside Tajiks from his area, and likewise for Pashtuns and other groups. What you could end up having is a series of regional armies with more commitment to their area then to “Afghanistan.” If things don’t end well, they will end up fighting each other—with weapons we have supplied them. On the flip side, if things move forward as we plan, these units will be a bulwark for the state. There are certainly many multi-ethnic units in the field, fighting bravely together and doing great things. The question is—will this be the rule, or become the exception?
Third, even once the units are fielded—and assuming they are fighting for “Afghanistan”—we are currently making big assumptions about their capability to eventually independently operate and sustain their activities. With U.S. support—which includes things like logistical resupply, air support, and medical evacuation—many units currently do well in the fight. But if we take that away in 2013, 14, or 15—will they sustain the fight? And will they push into enemy territory? Many Afghan units have become accustomed to U.S. support, and may not be willing to fight an emboldened Taliban without the robust U.S. support they receive. They’re also accustomed to being paid well, while their Taliban counterparts fight for nothing. Our brave soldiers will mentor and train them to make them as capable as possible, but if they don’t develop their own systems soon, the Afghan Army house of cards could come falling down more quickly than anyone would like to admit.
Finally, I came to Afghanistan with the assumption that this battlefield is central to defending the United States. In the realm of perception and international opinion it is still very important; how we “finish” in Afghanistan will send strong signals to the rest of the world about whether we finish what we start. Recent events in Iraq make this plainly clear. However, the question is whether the cost in Afghanistan is worth the outcome? As my British colleague says, “is the juice worth the squeeze?” I think seeing this through, while gradually drawing down, is worth doing. That said, larger and more strategically significant issues staring us in the face need to take a higher priority. We need to muster our political courage and confront our crippling domestic debt. (Did you know that, by 2015, just the interest payments on our debt to China will pay for its entire military?). We need to ensure our force posture and military might is capable of deterring a rising China. And we need to do what is necessary—including military action—to prevent a nuclear Iran (the fact that we can’t do anything in a nuclear-armed Pakistan should demonstrate that). There are obviously plenty of other challenges as well (especially at home), and spending money the way we are today in Afghanistan prevents us from confronting these challenges.
“…and don’t rely on wishful thinking.”
If you’ve read the previous two sections (and my previous emails), then I hope most of your “wishful thinking” has been stripped. That’s the point—we can’t wish our way to victory (as we say, “hope is not a strategy”). But we can look at the world the way it is and craft strategies to effect a more-desirable outcome. From where I’ve been sitting in Afghanistan, thankfully it’s clear that General Allen understands this; and as a result we’ve already seen (and will continue to see) a shift in our strategy from counterinsurgency to security force assistance. It’s a subtle, but important change. Instead of U.S. units taking the military lead in the field and trying to “partner” with Afghan units in the process, the lead responsibility will now fall to Afghans. Our soldiers will serve as embedded advisors, with 12-16 man teams embedded inside every Afghan unit—pushing the Afghan Army (and Police) to the point where they can defeat the enemy on their own. U.S advisors will start with infantry units trained to clear and hold areas of insurgents and gradually shift toward support units, including helicopter units, logisticians and other support personnel. This change makes complete sense and is the best strategy to securing a less-bad outcome for us.
At the same time, General Allen continues to talk about a post-2014 presence for NATO and the United States. This is extremely important as well. The Afghan Army, and the Taliban, need to be convinced that we won’t just leave in 2014—but will instead maintain an enduring, and strategically significant, presence. The perception (as opposed to the reality) of 2014 is what is most damaging to our effort—and from General Allen and all elements of command, there is a clear effort to erode this perception. It won’t change overnight, but we must aggressively pursue a counter-narrative.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the ongoing “peace talks” with the Taliban (aptly placed in the “wishful thinking” section). It appears that both the U.S. and the Afghan government have approved a Taliban “office” in the country of Qatar, from which they can hold peace talks. Right now the Taliban is only talking to the U.S., which angers President Karzai. In fact, the Taliban’s most recent pronouncement on negotiations rejected Karzai, his government and the Afghan constitution—which is not a promising starting point. From our side, there are talks of a prisoner exchange from Guantanamo, as well as ceasefires, etc. The U.S. insists that the Taliban would have to forswear violence, stop harboring international jihadists, and recognize the Afghan government and constitution. It is highly unlikely they will agree to all three; therefore, which one would we be willing to cave on? If they keep their weapons, they’ll keep fighting; if they continue to harbor terrorists, then our entire effort is for naught; and if they won’t recognize the Afghan government, then they’re never join it.
I honestly don’t have the slightest idea how these talks will unfold, but we’re being shortsighted and “wishful” if we think they will provide a silver bullet for this conflict. I’m fearful the beltway intelligencia, out of options and desperate for a rapid solution, will seize on this idea—regardless of underlying realities. The Taliban will not be content to share power in good faith; and since they think they’re “winning,” they’re not likely to capitulate to our demands. Their negotiation strategy is based on (again) waiting until 2014 when the United States could be forced to compromise on the most important aspects of the post-2001 order in Afghanistan.
In the end, we clearly cannot abandon Afghanistan—pulling our troops out now would be a disaster. On the other hand, maintaining our effort at the current scope and cost is not commensurate with the benefits. The surge, led by the finest generals the American military has to offer, was the right approach; however, it was undercut from the outset—when we told the enemy when we were going to leave. Having tried “more troops” (albeit, half-heartedly) and in light of political realities, the best course of action now is to continue drawing down our troops, bolster our advising mission, and emphasize our continued—if much scaled down—commitment to the outcome in Afghanistan. Despite our mistakes, we cannot abandon this mission—lest we invite larger problems in the future. Going forward, a robust advising mission, along with continued targeted special forces raids, could be sustained in perpetuity with minimal cost and most of the benefit of our current presence.
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As I’ve said before, it remains the honor of my life to serve our great country—first in Guantanamo Bay, then Iraq, and finally in Afghanistan. I can think of no greater privilege than to wear our nation’s uniform, and to defend the ideals we all hold dear.
I’ll close by reiterating something I wrote in July. I urge you to remember the guy—dirty, tired, sweaty, and hungry—on patrol somewhere in no-man’s-land Afghanistan. He is fighting as I type this, and as you read this. We must always remember that, and remember him in our prayers. He is the linchpin of this effort, and the one who bears the brunt of all the policies we execute.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-appears-to-acknowledge-talks-about-transferring-taliban-prisoners-from-guantanamo/2012/01/11/gIQAQHgHrP_story.html
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration appeared Wednesday to acknowledge discussions about transferring some Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as part of U.S. efforts to jumpstart peace talks with the Taliban after 10 years of inconclusive fighting.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said no decision about releasing any Taliban detainees has been made. But in answering a question about whether Washington was ready to transfer Guantanamo detainees, possibly to Qatar, in exchange for talks with the Afghan insurgents, Clinton did not dispute that such a trust-building measure was under consideration.
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Washington Post, opinion piece, Jan 9, 2010, Marc Theissen:
Don’t let these Taliban leaders loose
President Obama is reportedly considering releasing several senior Taliban leaders from Guantanamo Bay as an enticement to get the Taliban to the peace table. If he does so, he will do tremendous harm to American national security — and to his prospects for reelection this fall.
To understand why, consider the individuals White House is considering setting free. Last year WikiLeaks released a trove of documents it dubbed the “Gitmo Files” with assessments of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees — including the five Taliban leaders reportedly under consideration for release. Here is the U.S. military’s assessment of them:
Mullah Mohammed Fazl, deputy defense minister. Fazl is “wanted by the UN for possible war crimes while serving as a Taliban Army Chief of Staff and … was implicated in the murder of thousands of Shiites in northern Afghanistan during the Taliban reign.” He has “operational associations with significant al-Qaida and other extremist personnel,” was “involved in Taliban narcotics trafficking,” and is so senior in the Taliban hierarchy that he once threatened the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar. Military officials assess that Fazl wields “considerable influence throughout the northern region of Afghanistan and his influence continued even after his capture” adding, “If released, [Fazl] would likely rejoin the Taliban and establish ties with anti-Coalition militias (ACM) participating in hostilities against US and Coalition forces in Afghanistan.”
Abdul Haq Wasiq, deputy minister of intelligence. Wasiq “was central to the Taliban’s efforts to form alliances with other Islamic fundamentalist groups to fight alongside the Taliban against US and Coalition forces.” He “utilized his office to support al-Qaida and to assist Taliban personnel elude capture…. arranged for al-Qaida personnel to train Taliban intelligence staff in intelligence methods” and “assigned al-Qaida members to the Taliban Ministry of Intelligence.” If released “he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.”
Mullah Norullah Noori, governor-general of Afghanistan's northern zone. Noori “is considered one of the most significant former Taliban officials detained at JTF-GTMO” who “led troops against US and Coalition forces” and “was directly subordinate to Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Omar.” He “is wanted by the UN for possible war crimes,” is “associated with members of al-Qaida,” and is assessed “to be a hardliner in his support of the Taliban philosophy.” He “continues to be a significant figure encouraging acts of aggression and his brother is currently a Taliban commander conducting operations against US and Coalition forces…. (Analyst note: Detainee would likely join his brother if released.”)
Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa, Herat governor and acting interior minister. Khairkhwa is “directly associated to Usama Bin Laden (UBL) and Taliban Supreme Commander Mullah Muhammad Omar” and was “trusted and respected by both.” After 9/11 he “represented the Taliban during meetings with Iranian officials seeking to support hostilities against US and Coalition forces” and “attended a meeting at the direction of UBL, reportedly accompanied by members of HAMAS.” He is “one of the premier opium drug lords in Western Afghanistan” and was likely “associated with a militant training camp in Herat operated by deceased al-Qaida commander (in Iraq) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.”
Mohammad Nabi, multiple leadership roles. Nabi is “a senior Taliban official” who was “a member of a joint al-Qaida/Taliban ACM cell in Khowst and was involved in attacks against US and Coalition forces.” He “held weekly meetings” with “three al-Qaida affiliated individuals” to discuss anti-coalition plans, “maintained weapons caches,” and “facilitated two al-Qaida operatives smuggling an unknown number of missiles along the highway between Jalalabad and Peshawar,” which intelligence officials believe contributed to the deaths of two Americans.
All have close ties to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups. All been assessed by our military as posing a “high risk” of returning to the fight if released. And we know from painful experience what happens when hardliners like these are released from Gitmo. In 2007, the Bush administration released a Taliban leader named Mullah Zakir to Afghan custody. Unlike these five, he was assessed by our military as only “medium risk” of returning to the fight. They were wrong. Today, Zakir is leading Taliban forces fighting U.S. Marines in Helmand province, and according to former intelligence officials I spoke with, he has provided the Taliban with an exponential increase in combat prowess.
Releasing more like him would be disastrous for national security. And it would also be politically disastrous for Obama. His likely opponent, Mitt Romney, has already blasted the administration for even considering such releases, declaring “We do not negotiate with terrorists. The Taliban are terrorists, they are our enemy, and I do not believe in a prisoner release exchange.”
If Obama goes through with these releases, expect Romney to make a major issue of it in the fall campaign. Every time the president has picked a fight over terrorist detention at Guantanamo during the past three years, he has lost. He will lose again if he raises it in 2012. The last thing Obama should want is to have Americans discussing his decision to release dangerous terrorists in November. If Obama won’t keep these brutal men locked up for the national interest, perhaps he will for his political self-interest.
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Cowboys and Indians, paki style
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISLNKXD7tJU&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
The country is paying a price for their tactical brilliance in encouraging terror, it will take atleast 2 generations to forget these games...
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Mansoor Izaz, the guy who caused memogate in Pak is on the video, may have some nudity.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0QvR1eP2yg[/youtube]
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Cowboys and Indians, paki style
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISLNKXD7tJU&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
The country is paying a price for their tactical brilliance in encouraging terror, it will take atleast 2 generations to forget these games...
When I was a kid we had two games I was especial fond of. One was called "Submarine War." It's one of those games your parents wouldn't let you play if they were home. One kid gathers up all the baseballs, soft balls and skate boards he can find. Then all the other kids get on their bikes and ride around back and forth on the street making fun of the kid with the "torpedos." The kid on the side then rolls the crap at your tires. If you get hit directly, your out. Of course, the real goal was to lodge a skate board in front of the tire and knock the kid off his bike.
Another game was "Assassin." It was basically hide and seek, but you needed a lot of people. Around 15 kids would go hide and two others would team up and with toy guns in hand, go looking for them. Bushes and trees count for cover. If the assassin ever could see you with nothing in the way, you were out. The game took a long time because we would use the whole neighborhood for the battle ground.
Anyway, if the Pakistanis or the Iranians had video of us playing those games or could hear what we were saying, I'm sure they would have found it creepy. Especially sense we really are sending assassins after their people now.
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:roll:
What do you make of the fact that they are modelling commiting suicide?
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:roll:
What do you make of the fact that they are modelling commiting suicide?
Never too early to prepare them for the only growth industry in the muslim world.
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:roll:
What do you make of the fact that they are modelling commiting suicide?
Nothing really. Their game has a more blunt message but most kids understand the concept of killing yourself for the greater good.
I remember winning a game of capture the flag when I was in summer camp. It was a 20 on 20 game and the other team had 3 of the fastest kids guarding their flag. I told kids on my team, "I'll run past and get them to chase me. Then you get the flag." So I run in, "kill myself" and draw the guard's attention so that my friend can get the flag and run off with it. As the guy who kills yourself, you never get the glory like the guy who grabs the flag and wins, but you do get some of the glory and people know you helped. Games like that really instilled the idea of sacrificing for the group, because it is fun to have the group be proud of you for helping.
Suicide bomber pretend is sort of the ultimate in your face version of that, but its the same thing. It is a natural out growth of just how incredibly successful suicide bombing has been. Personally, I wish those kids had peace and a sense of safety so that they could have some distance between their play time and the reality of where they live, but unfortunately for them, their entire lives they have lived in the shadow of an invading, nearly indestructible foreign army.
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:roll: Reality check. We helped Afg throw the Russians out and left them along until they hosted an attack on our homeland. As for Pak, I'll wait and see if YA jumps in, but until then would note that there are lots of seriously tough places on the planet that do not teach their children to commit suicide. Only Iran, the Palestinian territories, and Afpakia come to mind.
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"The sukuk market is the fastest growing part of Islamic finance. Indeed it is one of the fastest growing segments in the global financial market. Having attracted interest from the business community worldwide, it has helped place Islamic finance as a viable industry and as an asset class that is not confined to Muslim countries but as part and parcel of the international financial market," says Muhammad Al-Bashir Muhammad al-Amine, who is currently group head of Shariah compliance at Bank Al-Khair (formerly Unicorn Investment Bank) in Bahrain, in the introduction of his book titled “Global Sukuk and Islamic Securitisation Market - Financial Engineering and Product Innovation”.
Sorry, you were talking about growth in the Islamic world but it came off as mean spirited or maybe even racist, so I fixed your post for you. Maybe you could copy and paste this back.
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Islam is a totalitarian expansionist political ideology disguised as a religion, not a race. There4fore, it's not racist, as those that murder others and themselves while screaming "allah akbar" come from a whole range of racial/ethnic backgrounds, as do their victims.
Meanspirited? The horrors of islamic barbarism deserve nothing but contempt. As does your spinelessness and lack of attachment to your culture and nation.
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:roll: Reality check. We helped Afg throw the Russians out and left them along until they hosted an attack on our homeland. As for Pak, I'll wait and see if YA jumps in, but until then would note that there are lots of seriously tough places on the planet that do not teach their children to commit suicide. Only Iran, the Palestinian territories, and Afpakia come to mind.
Sorry, I forgot. Our culture is totally superior to theirs. We would never teach them to play suicide bomber.
We might blow 60 bucks on this: one of the best selling entertainment items of all time, mostly played by kids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXBDkevx5lM
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"Our culture is totally superior to theirs."
Hey, you got something right!
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Islam is a totalitarian expansionist political ideology disguised as a religion, not a race. There4fore, it's not racist, as those that murder others and themselves while screaming "allah akbar" come from a whole range of racial/ethnic backgrounds, as do their victims.
Meanspirited? The horrors of islamic barbarism deserve nothing but contempt. As does your spinelessness and lack of attachment to your culture and nation.
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. You do nothing look for vengeance that leads to a vicious cycle of further vengeance.
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Islam is a totalitarian expansionist political ideology disguised as a religion, not a race. There4fore, it's not racist, as those that murder others and themselves while screaming "allah akbar" come from a whole range of racial/ethnic backgrounds, as do their victims.
Meanspirited? The horrors of islamic barbarism deserve nothing but contempt. As does your spinelessness and lack of attachment to your culture and nation.
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. You do nothing look for vengeance that leads to a vicious cycle of further vengeance.
Well, I guess we shouldn't have fought that civil war and ended slavery, right? I guess that explains why the Germans and Japanese are still fighting us, right?
P.S. Yoda was just a puppet.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5346968.stm
How Pakistan's rape reform ran aground
By Barbara Plett
BBC News, Islamabad
Pakistan's government has put a controversial women's rights bill on hold, throwing into turmoil efforts to reform hardline Islamic laws on rape.
President Musharraf had seemed keen to reform the law for women
Secular parties are furious after the draft law was amended to appease Pakistan's ultra-conservative Islamic parties.
Now the authorities are scrambling to reach a broader consensus before trying for a fourth time to present the bill in parliament.
The imbroglio has been branded by human rights activists as a disaster for Pakistani women.
It is also seen as further evidence that the government of President Gen Pervez Musharraf remains dependent on the Islamists, despite his claims of promoting an Islam of "enlightened moderation".
Un-reported rapes
In Pakistan, rape is dealt with under Islamic laws known as the Hudood Ordinances. These criminalise all sex outside marriage.
So, under Hudood, if a rape victim fails to present four male witnesses to the crime, she herself could face punishment.
This has made it almost impossible to prosecute rape cases.
According to the country's independent Human Rights Commission, a woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours in Pakistan.
These figures are probably an under-estimation as many rapes are not reported.
Government panic
Until his ruling party caved in, President Musharraf had seemed determined to reform the Hudood Ordinances.
Women allied to the Islamist opposition protested against the bill
Despite vociferous objections from the Islamic parties - an alliance known as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) - the bill had been approved by a parliamentary committee with the support of the main secular opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
The committee proposed removing rape from religious law and putting it instead in the secular penal code, where normal rules of evidence would apply.
The MMA cried foul, threatening to resign en masse from parliament if the bill was passed.
And in a panic the government set up an extra-parliamentary committee of religious scholars to pacify the Islamists.
This said that rape should fall under both religious and secular law. It introduced a new, very broadly defined, category of "lewdness" into the penal code, and reinstated a clause giving the Hudood Ordinances pre-eminence over any law with which they might come into conflict.
Political isolation
Liberal political parties, civil and human rights activists and lawyers said these changes essentially eviscerated the reform, and allowed powerful religious lobbies to manipulate what is seen as a weak judicial system.
The case of rape victim Mukhtaran Mai heightened reform calls
They also denounced the government for bypassing parliamentary procedures.
Gen Musharraf must have known any changes to the Hudood Ordinances would raise the ire of the Islamists. Why then did his government collapse so rapidly before them?
Commentators suggest two reasons.
One is that his ruling party is divided, between those who want to keep a tacit alliance with the MMA, and those willing to push for a reform agenda in alliance with the opposition PPP, led by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
The other is that rarely have President Musharraf and his military-led regime been so isolated.
They are now opposed by all save one of the secular and nationalist parties, with even the Islamists threatening street protests.
Alliance intact
The president has been condemned at home for using excessive force against nationalist rebels in the restive province of Balochistan, and abroad for striking a peace deal with pro-Taleban tribesmen in the tribal area of North Waziristan.
Assailed on all sides, the president's only certain support is the military - and the Pakistani army is not prepared to take on the Islamists over women's rights.
So after a week of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary shenanigans, the alliance of military and mullah that has governed Pakistan for the last seven years appears shaken but intact.
Women remain at the mercy of fundamentalist legislation.
And Gen Musharraf's message of "enlightened moderation" seems intended more for foreign than local consumption.
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Well, I guess we shouldn't have fought that civil war and ended slavery, right?
Oh no! Logic I can't emote my way out of (;
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Well, I guess we shouldn't have fought that civil war and ended slavery, right?
Oh no! Logic I can't emote my way out of (;
Hey, slavery was part of the south's culture. How dare the abolitionists impose their beliefs on them, right? No culture is better than any other, right? This is why we have all those endless attacks by neo-confederates prolonging the cycle of violence first started by Lincoln.
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I have called out both Bush and Baraq's policies in Afpakia for incoherence. I have done my best to draw attention to the insightful intel and analysis brought our way by our YA. I have done my best to apply what I understand from what he has shared to offer better strategies-- the essence being that the true problem is to be found in Pakistan. As best as I can tell there is essentially zero chance of an intelligent policy eminating from any of the possible candidates. I have listened to Romney talk tough on Afghanistan and wondered if he really would produce any better. I have seen our troops bravely and loyally stay the course through year after year of piss-poor leadership in Afpakia. I cannot say I disrespect what this man is saying here, though I think he gravely underestimates the consequences of our leaving, especially in conjunction with Baraq's clueless and politically motivated dash for the exits, but I think the thoughts worth sharing here and worth our discussion.
www.captainsjournal.com
Withdraw From Afghanistan
BY Herschel Smith
1 hour, 20 minutes ago
Michael Yon has written a short note entitled Time To Leave Afghanistan. I concur, but for somewhat different reasons, or at least, I will state my reasons somewhat differently. I had been pondering going public with my counsel to withdraw from Afghanistan, and then I read possibly the most depressing entry on Afghanistan I have ever seen, from Tim Lynch. Some of it is repeated below.
Ten years ago, Afghans were thrilled to see us and thought that finally they could live in peace and develop their country …
Five years ago they watched us flounder – we stayed on FOBs and shoveled cash by the billions into the hands of a corrupt central government that we insisted, despite clear evidence to the contrary, was a legitimate government – one that had to be supported at all costs. We raided their homes at night and shot up civilians who got too close to our convoys, we paid for roads that did not exist and, because of the “force protection” mentality, most Afghans thought our soldiers were cowards because they never came to the bazaar off duty and unarmored to buy stuff like the Russians did. In fact, every bite of food our soldiers consumed was flown into country at great expense, so in a land famous for its melons and grapes our troops ate crappy melon and tasteless grapes flown in by contractors from God knows where.
Now, they want to shoot us in the face. Except for the klepocratic elite who want us to give them billions more and then shoot us in the face.
There it is; Afghanistan is toast, and what the last 10 years has taught us is we cannot afford to deploy American ground forces. Two billion dollars a week (that’s billion with a B) has bought what? Every year we stay to “bring security to the people,” the security situation for the people gets worse and worse, deteriorating by orders of magnitude. Now the boy genius has announced a “new strategy”. A strategy that is identical to the “strategy” that resulted in a hollow ground force getting its ass kicked by North Korea in 1950; a mere five years after we had ascended to the most dominant military the world had ever known.
Tim goes on to say things about Iraq and national defense policy with which I don’t entirely agree. My views on Iraq are complicated, as my readers know, and I will recapitulate (and summarize) them soon. But if anyone would know that Afghanistan is toast, Tim Lynch would.
Listen well. This is no anti-war cry. If have argued virtually non-stop for increasing troop levels, staying the course, and increased (and different) lines of logistics for support of our troops. But I have watched with dismay and even panic over the course of the last six years as we haven’t taken the campaign seriously, and good men have suffered and perished because of it.
I have watched as different members of NATO carried different strategies into the campaign without being united at the top level. I have argued for recognizing the resurgence of the Taliban, while General Rodriguez argued against even the possibility of a spring offensive in 2008. I watched as that same general micromanaged the Marines as they surged into the Helmand Province, issuing an order requiring that his operations center clear any airstrike that was on a housing compound in the area but not sought in self-defense.
We have seen General McChrystal issue awful and debilitating rules of engagement, along with personal stipulations that modified them to be even more restrictive. “If you are in a situation where you are under fire from the enemy… if there is any chance of creating civilian casualties or if you don’t know whether you will create civilian casualties, if you can withdraw from that situation without firing, then you must do so,” said McChrystal.
Those disastrous rules and McChrystal’s disastrous management played a critical role in the shameful and immoral deaths of three Marines, a Navy Corpsman and a Soldier at Ganjgal, the firefight where Dakota Meyer earned his MoH. Read the comments of the families of those warriors who perished at Ganjgal, and let the sentiments wash over you.
Study again my writing on Now Zad. I was the only writer or blogger anywhere who was following the Marines at Now Zad – how they brought more trauma doctors with them than usual due to the massive loss of limbs and life that Marine command knew they would sustain, how they lived in so-called Hobbit holes in Now Zad, two or three Marines to a hole in distributed operations, hunting for Taliban fighters who had taken R&R in Now Zad because we didn’t have enough troops to prevent them from doing so.
While I was arguing for more Marines in Now Zad, I watched as a Battalion of infantrymen at Camp Lejeune (the class entering after my own son returned from his combat deployment in Iraq) entered the Marines expecting to go to Afghanistan or Iraq. At that time we were heading for the exits in the Anbar Province of Iraq, and instead of focusing on Marines losing their legs and screaming for help in Now Zad, Afghanistan, that Battalion went on a wasteful MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit). No MEU has ever been used by a President for anything in the history of doing MEUs except for humanitarian missions.
So that Battalion didn’t deploy to Iraq, went on a MEU, and then weren’t on rotation for Afghanistan. Instead of helping their brothers in Now Zad, the Marine Corps Commandant had them playing Iwo Jima, as if we’re ever going to launch a major, sea-based forcible entry again. A full Battalion of infantry Marines with two wars going on – and no deployment to Iraq, and no deployment to Afghanistan in a four year enlistment.
I argued against night raids by the so-called “snake eaters,” with them flying back to the FOBs that night, totally absent from the locals to explain what happened and why. In addition to pointing out the wrong way to do it, I pointed out the right way to do it in lieu of night time raids by snake eaters. I have argued for following and killing every single Taliban fighter into the hinterlands of Afghanistan, while the strategists under General McChrystal withdrew to the population centers just like the Russians did.
I pointed out that withdrawal from the Pech River Valley would invite the return of of al qaeda, Haqqani and allied fighters, and that’s exactly what happened. I have been in the thick of this with my advocacy for the campaign, but again and again, it has become clear that we aren’t going to take this campaign seriously. I have advocated against nation building, and by now I think it has become clear that population-centric counterinsurgency and nation building won’t ever work in Afghanistan. Staying long enough with enough troops to find and kill the enemy has its problems, of course, including the fact that we may have to go back in eight or ten years later and do it all over again.
But that’s the Marine way. Do now what has to be done, do it quickly and violently, achieve the mission, and leave. At least I have been consistent, while always acknowledging that we cannot possibly achieve anything permanent, and will probably have to return at some point. As it is, it isn’t clear that we’ve achieved anything at all.
The Wise family from Arkansas has lost their second son in Afghanistan. For all those warriors who have given their all, and those families still suffering today because of that, America isn’t worthy of their sacrifices. To be sure, if we continue the campaign there will still be magnificent warriors who answer the call. But it’s our duty to take seriously the war to which we’re calling them if we let them go. We’re heading for the exits, releasing insurgents from prisons in Afghanistan, and instead of trying to develop better lines of logistics, we’re trying to figure out how to get all of our equipment out of Afghanistan.
Regardless of who calls for what, the President will ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff what can be done to withdraw. They will ask the flag and staff officers, and the staff officers will ask the logistics officers. Logistics will decide how and when we can withdraw from Afghanistan. No one else.
But within that framework, I am calling for the full, immediate and comprehensive withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan, and that we focus exclusively on force protection until that can be accomplished. It’s time to come home.
UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the attention.
UPDATE #2: Thanks to Michael Yon for the attention.
Afghanistan,Featured
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http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/ColumnsOthers/A-fractured-policy/Article1-800719.aspx (http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/ColumnsOthers/A-fractured-policy/Article1-800719.aspx)
A fractured policy
Brahma Chellaney, Hindustan Times
January 22, 2012
With the stage set for secret US-Taliban talks in Qatar, the White House strategy for a phased exit from war-ravaged Afghanistan is now couched in nice-sounding terms like 'reconciliation' and 'transition to 2014'. These terms hide more than they reveal. In seeking a Faustian bargain with the
medieval Taliban, President Barack Obama risks repeating the very mistakes of US policy that have come to haunt regional and international security.
Since coming to office, Obama has pursued an Afghan War strategy summed up in just four words: surge, bribe and run. The military mission has now entered the 'run' part, or what euphemistically is being called the 'transition to 2014'.
The central objective at present is to cut a deal with the Taliban so that the US and its Nato partners exit the "Graveyard of Empires" without losing face. This deal-making is being dressed up as 'reconciliation', with Qatar, Germany and Britain getting lead roles to help facilitate a settlement with the Taliban.
Yet what stands out is how little the US has learned from past mistakes. In some critical respects, it is actually beginning to repeat the past mistakes, whether by creating or funding new local militias in Afghanistan or striving to cut a deal with the Taliban. As in the covert war it waged against the nearly nine-year Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, so too in the current overt war, US policy has been driven by short-term interests.
To be sure, any president must work to extricate his country from a protracted war. Obama thus is right to seek an end to the war. He, however, blundered by laying out his cards in public and emboldening the enemy.
Within weeks of assuming office, Obama publicly declared his intent to exit Afghanistan, before he even asked his team to work out a strategy. A troop surge that lasted up to 2010 was designed not to militarily rout the Taliban but to strike a political deal with the enemy from a position of strength. Yet even before the surge began, its purpose was undercut by the exit plan. This was followed by a publicly unveiled troop drawdown, stretching from 2011 to 2014.
A withdrawing power that first announces a phased exit and then pursues deal-making with the enemy undermines its regional leverage. It speaks for itself that the sharp deterioration in US ties with the Pakistani military has occurred after the drawdown timetable was unveiled. The phased exit has encouraged the Pakistani generals to step up support to the Taliban. Worse, there is still no clear US strategy on how to ensure that the endgame does not undermine the interests of the free world or further destabilise the region.
US envoy Marc Grossman, who visited New Delhi last Friday for consultations, has already held a series of secret meetings with the Taliban over more than a year. Qatar has been chosen as the seat of fresh US-Taliban negotiations so as to keep the still-sceptical Afghan government at arm's length (despite the pretence of 'Afghan-led' talks) and to insulate the Taliban negotiators from Pakistani and Saudi pressures. Meanwhile, even as a civil-military showdown in Pakistan compounds Washington's regional challenges, the new US containment push and energy sanctions against Iran threaten to inject greater turbulence into Afghanistan.
In truth, US policy is coming full circle again on the ISI-fathered Taliban, in whose birth the CIA had played midwife. The US acquiesced in the Taliban's ascension to power in 1996 and turned a blind eye as that thuggish militia, in league with the ISI, fostered narco-terrorism and swelled the ranks of the Afghan war alumni waging transnational terrorism. With 9/11, however, the chickens came home to roost. In declaring war on the Taliban, US policy came full circle.
Now, US policy, with its frantic search for a deal with the Taliban, is coming another full circle. The Qatar-based negotiations indeed highlight why the US political leadership has deliberately refrained from decapitating the Taliban. The US military has had ample opportunities (and still has) to eliminate the Taliban's Rahbari Shura, or leadership council, often called the Quetta Shura because it escaped to the Pakistani city.
Yet, tellingly, the US has not carried out a single drone, air or ground strike in or around Quetta. All the US strikes have occurred farther north in Pakistan's tribal Waziristan region, although the leadership of the Afghan Taliban or its allied groups like the Haqqani network and the Hekmatyar band is not holed up there.
When history is written, the legacy of the Nato war in Afghanistan will mirror the legacy of the US occupation of Iraq - to leave an ethnically fractured nation. Just as Iraq today stands ethnically partitioned in a de facto sense, it will be difficult to establish a government in Kabul post-2014 whose writ runs across Afghanistan. And just as the 1973 US-North Vietnam agreements were negotiated by shutting out the Saigon regime - in consequence of which South Vietnam unintentionally disappeared - the US today is keeping the Afghan government out of the talks' loop even as it compels President Hamid Karzai to lend support and seems ready to meet a Taliban demand to transfer five incarcerated Taliban leaders out of Guantanamo Bay.
Afghanistan, however, is not Vietnam. An end to Nato combat operations will not mean the end of the war, because the enemy will target Western interests wherever they may be. The fond US hope to regionally contain terrorism promises to keep the Af-Pak belt as a festering threat to regional and global security. This is a chilling message for the country that has borne the brunt of the rise of international terrorism - India.
Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research. The views expressed by the author are personal.
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Complications Along the NDN Supply Route
January 27, 2012
As the blockage of NATO supply lines from Pakistan into Afghanistan continues, the primary alternative lines -- those crossing through former Soviet states -- are also once more threatened. Pakistan started to blockade NATO supplies in November after U.S. airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Islamabad is still considering whether to reopen the routes into landlocked Afghanistan. In the meantime, NATO is heavily dependent on the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), whose lines run through former Soviet states.
The NDN has various routes, though the main ones run from Russia down through Central Asia, with the majority of NATO supplies into Afghanistan traversing Uzbekistan. In summer 2011, the United States struck a series of deals with Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to expand the use of the NDN. By the end of the year, the NDN was carrying approximately 75 percent of ground cargo (and 40 percent of all cargo) into Afghanistan. After the troubles in Pakistan, the NDN has become a cornerstone for NATO operations in Afghanistan, with plans to heavily increase supplies by mid-2012. However, in running a supply-route network through the former Soviet states, Washington now finds itself affected by those states' political issues, including problems that could threaten the majority of the NDN's lines.
Most recently, Uzbekistan has begun to realize that it can leverage its large role in the NDN to help it prepare for major security challenges on its horizon. Uzbekistan feels it needs a stronger, expanded military and increased security capabilities. As it prepares for a power succession, Tashkent is concerned with the possibility of another uprising in the Fergana Valley. Tashkent is also becoming more worried about a possible security vacuum on its border with Afghanistan when the United States withdraws.
Lastly, Tashkent feels pressured by the recent military buildup in the region by its former ruler, Russia. Uzbekistan has long resisted Russian domination, striving to remain independent from Moscow during the days of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and Russia's recent resurgence into Central Asia. Russia sees Uzbekistan as the heart of Central Asia and knows it cannot comfortably control the region until it commands Uzbekistan. Thus far, Tashkent has had little means of resisting Moscow, primarily because Uzbekistan cannot count on an outside power for aid or protection.
Washington's increased reliance on the NDN has given Tashkent an opportunity to try to change this. In agreeing to an expansion of the NDN in summer 2011, Tashkent demanded that sanctions against military aid to Uzbekistan be lifted; Washington complied in September. Tashkent assumed this would naturally lead to negotiations on the provision of military supplies, but Washington never intended to actually transfer weapons to Uzbekistan once the embargo was lifted.
Washington's relationship with Uzbekistan has long been controversial. The State Department and human rights groups have accused the country of a string of human rights violations, many of which were connected to the violent crackdown on the Andijan uprising in 2005. Many within U.S. defense circles are also wary of relying on Uzbekistan: The country has shown that it will cut ties, having ejected Washington from its military bases in 2005. Lastly, Washington has been cautious not to cross Russia, which has facilitated the negotiations for an expanded NDN, in its relationships with Central Asian states.
The United States had assumed that lifting sanctions on military supplies to Uzbekistan was a good way to demonstrate improved relations, but Tashkent wants more. According to Stratfor sources, in October the Uzbek government started to threaten the NDN supply route, citing a disagreement over the price of transit. But the sources said that behind the scenes, Tashkent was really demanding military aid and weapons.
Providing military aid and weapons to Uzbekistan would not only stir up criticism in Washington among those wary of Uzbekistan, but it would also draw a reaction from Moscow. Still, the United States cannot afford to have the only other major supply route into Afghanistan cut off like the line through Pakistan. So this week, the U.S. State Department waived its assessment on human rights against Uzbekistan, which opened the door for a military aid deal to be struck. Now Washington is proposing to help Uzbekistan by training its border guards, which is similar to a U.S. arrangement with Uzbekistan's neighbor, Tajikistan. The United States says the deal does not arm Uzbekistan in any manner that could facilitate internal crackdowns or be used against Russia. The question now is whether Tashkent will be satisfied with this arrangement, since Uzbekistan knows the deal only addresses a fraction of the country's many security problems.
The more important question is whether Russia sees even this small security tie between the United States and Uzbekistan as a step too far. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake said Wednesday that the military assistance to Uzbekistan would be non-lethal. Moreover, Blake repeatedly confirmed that Washington understood Russia's dominance in the region and that "the Russians are in such a position that they could block what we do if they want." The United States is attempting to balance Uzbekistan's demands for military assistance with Russia's demand that the United States not meddle in Central Asian affairs. A slight miscalculation by the United States in either regard could threaten supply lines into Afghanistan, placing further pressure on the United States in the Afghan war theater.
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Pl. listen to video in the link.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/louie-gohmert-afghan-strategy-balochistan-pakistan-taliban_n_1232250.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/louie-gohmert-afghan-strategy-balochistan-pakistan-taliban_n_1232250.html)
Louie Gohmert Afghan Strategy: Carve Out Balochistan From Ally Pakistan To Beat Taliban
WASHINGTON -- President Obama is losing the war in Afghanistan to the Taliban, argued Rep. Louie Gohmert after listening to Tuesday's State of the Union address. So he proposed one way to win: create a new, friendly state within the borders of neighboring Pakistan.
The Texas Republican took issue with Obama's assertion that "the Taliban's momentum has been broken." He said he had just visited Afghanistan and came away with a very different sense from talking to members of the Northern Alliance, a multiethnic confederation of warlords and other forces who led the U.S.-backed ouster of the Taliban in 2001.
Gohmert argued that, far from being broken, the Taliban are feeling powerful enough to demand that members of the Northern Alliance apologize before the United States leaves in 2013. "If you look at the objective facts ... they're not on the run," Gohmert said.
His solution was first to supply more arms to the Northern Alliance. But then, he said, the Afghan border with Pakistan needs to be shored up.
"Let's talk about creating a Balochistan in the southern part of Pakistan," Gohmert told The Huffington Post, referring to a region of Pakistan that constitutes nearly half that vital if troublesome ally.
"They love us. They'll stop the IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and all the weaponry coming into Afghanistan, and we got a shot to win over there," said Gohmert, who accused Obama's national security advisers of giving the president bad intel on Afghanistan.
"His strategy of working from ignorance and thinking we have them on the run is no way to go through life, son," Gohmert said. "I'm about to borrow from an 'Animal House' line, but anyway, that's no way to go through life when you're that ignorant of what's really going on."
The White House did not answer a request for comment, and Gohmert's office did not elaborate on how the United States could even discuss carving off Balochistan from a country that is both an ally and a nuclear power.
The United States recently has been talking about a truce with the Taliban. Gohmert, a member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, characterized such efforts as begging, backed by an offer to "let all these Taliban murderers" go free.
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,650264,00.html (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,650264,00.html)
Islamists in Pakistan Recruit Entire Families from Europe
By Yassin Musharbash and Holger Stark
The German government is trying to secure the release of a group of suspected German Islamists who were arrested by Pakistani authorities while making their way to a jihadist colony in the Waziristan region along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Entire families from Germany are moving to the region to join the jihad.
The young speaker, who calls himself "Abu Adam," praises the stay in the mountains -- almost as if he were shooting an ad for a family holiday camp. "Doesn't it appeal to you? We warmly invite you to join us!" Abu Adam says, raising his index finger. He lists all the things this earthly paradise has to offer: hospitals, doctors, pharmacies as well as a daycare center and school -- all, of course, "a long way from the front." After all, they don't want the children to be woken up by the roar of guns.
The latest recruitment video from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) is a half-hour in length and is addressed to our "beloved" brothers and sisters back in Germany. The video is presented by, among others, Mounir Chouka, alias "Abu Adam," who grew up in the western German city of Bonn.
The video shows shacks erected against a backdrop of lush greenery and craggy rock formations. Women wearing blue burqas are seen surrounded by their children. One small girl is holding an artillery gun.
Welcome to the wild world of Waziristan, the region along the Afghan-Pakistani border controlled by Pashtun tribes, al-Qaida and other splinter groups which has become a regular target of US drones and their remote-controlled missiles.
Islamists Recruiting Entire Families
The ad for Waziristan appears to be finding fertile ground in Germany. Security officials here believe the IMU is currently the largest and most active Islamic group recruiting in the country. But there's an unusual development here, too -- militants don't normally recruit women and children as the IMU appears to be doing. The families move to mujahedeen villages in the rough terrain which are used as bases for supporting the battle against the US troops and the Afghan army.
The German government in Berlin is also examining the propaganda offensive. For several weeks, diplomats in the German Foreign Ministry have been negotiating with Islamabad over the fate of a group of suspected Islamists from Germany's Rhineland region who have been held in custody in Pakistan for several months now. The group includes a young Tunisian and six Germans, including Andreas M. of Bonn, a Muslim convert, and his Eritrean wife Kerya.
A Child in Custody
The case is being viewed with concern by the federal government. The married couple's four-year-old daugher has been held in custody together with her parents since May and has suffered particularly in the tough conditions. Germany's Foreign Ministry has made several attempts to negotiate a swift return to Germany for the mother and her daughter at least, but Pakistani authorities have so far refused.
The travelers, who apparently met each other in a Bonn prayer room, left Germany in several small groups in March and April. They traveled through Turkey to the Iranian city of Zahedan. Located close to the border with Pakistan, Zahedan is notorious for its jihad tourism -- hotels even set aside entire room allotments for radical foreigners making their way to the city.
From Zahedan, most take taxis to Pakistan. For the group of Germans, though, that's where the problems started. After crossing the border, the Germans were captured by police and taken to a jail in Peshawar. The prisoners claim they were handled roughly by Pakistani officials. When German consular officials finally got access to the prisoners, several of the men claimed, in mutually corroborating statements, that they had been beaten.
Initially, the detainees claimed they were from Turkey and had lost their identification papers -- leaving authorities with little information to start with. In August, however, the Pakistani ISI intelligence service got involved in the case, moving the prisoners to Islamabad and confirming to the German government that the detainees were Germans. During the first visit by a consular employee from the German Embassy, two of the group's members, identified as Azzedine A. and Bilal Ü., openly admitted that they had wanted to join "the jihad."
Security officials believe that the goal of Mounir Chouka and the IMU was to strengthen the German "colony" in Waziristan. The detainees also include Chouka's brother-in-law, the German-Libyan Ahmed K.
Release Could Be Imminent
"I hope that Ahmed will come home soon," says Ahmed K.'s father Mohamed.
It appears that hope might soon come true. The Pakistani government has signalled that it might not prosecute the group for entering the country illegally or for supporting a terrorist organization and instead put the Germans on a plane back to Frankfurt.
But one of the travelers won't be part of the group if that happens: Atnan J., a Tunisian from the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In a development similar to that of Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen raised in Germany who was wrongly imprisoned by the United States at Guantanamo, the German Interior Ministry wants to prevent Atnan J. from returning to Germany because his residence permit has expired. Officials in Berlin have asked Islamabad to deport the man to Tunisia.
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From the web..
Islam most misunderstood ...
1) Moro "Islamic" front misunderstood in Phillipines;
2) Jemehiah "Islamia" misunderstood in Indonesia;
3) Bodo's "Islamic" front misunderstood in Thailand;
4) Party se "Islam" misunderstood in Malaysia;
5) Hizbul Tahrir misunderstood in Australia;
6) Uighur Islamic front misunderstood in China;
6) Lashkar Mohammed misunderstood in India;
7) Taliban misunderstood in Afghanistan;
6) Laskah e Toiba misunderstood in Pakistan;
7) Khomenie and gang misunderstood in Iran;
8 ) Moqtada Al Sadr misunderstood in Iraq;
9) Hezbollah misunderstood in Lebanon;
10)Hamas misunderstood in Jordan;
11) Whole of Saudi and GCC are misunderstood;
12) Nour party and Muslim brotherhood misunderstood in Egypt;
13) NLF in Libya is misunderstood in Libya;
14) Boko Haram is misunderstood in Nigeria;
15) Whole of Sudan is misunderstood;
16) Chechens are misunderstood in Russia;
17) Kosovars are misunderstood in Balkans;
18) Assorted Imams are misunderstood in Europe;
19) Assorted Imams are misunderstood in US; and
20) Not to mention Somalia
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The usual slander against the French is that they have no stomach for fighting. Not so: From the first Battle of the Marne to the last stand at Dien Bien Phu to recent commando operations in Afghanistan, French troops have proved their mettle against every adversary. Too bad their civilian masters don't always share the soldierly courage.
That's the story again as Nicolas Sarkozy announces that he'll speed France's withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2013, a year earlier than planned. The French President doubled France's troop presence in 2008, and he has called the Afghan war "the central issue for relations between Islam and the West." But now he has had a change of heart.
The proximate cause seems to be the recent killing of four French troops by a rogue Afghan army soldier, though Mr. Sarkozy insists that's not the reason he wants out. Probably true. The President faces an uphill battle in April's presidential election, and the French public is overwhelmingly opposed to the Afghan deployment.
As a military matter, the accelerated departure of 4,000 French troops makes little difference to the overall effort against the Taliban. But Mr. Sarkozy says he will use next month's NATO summit to convince the rest of the coalition to follow his lead. The Obama Administration set the tone for the Afghan slink-out last summer, when it announced that 33,000 U.S. surge troops will leave by this September. Washington is now quietly considering an even earlier withdrawal.
Still, it would be unfair to lay too much blame on Mr. Sarkozy, who is only trying to get ahead of the coming stampede for the exits. That was bound to happen the moment President Obama announced a timetable for the surge and a date-certain for withdrawal, thereby giving the Taliban hope that they could bide their time while giving America's coalition partners no good reason to stay. Mr. Sarkozy may not be the bravest of politicians, but in the matter of Afghanistan he is merely one of the herd.
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The President faces an uphill battle in April's presidential election, and the French public is overwhelmingly opposed to the Afghan deployment.
The American public is also becoming overwhelmingly opposed to the Afghan deployment. The will of the people....
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It might be different if we had been offered a coherent policy , , ,
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/world/asia/afghans-fear-economic-downturn-as-foreigners-leave.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha22
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Of course, there's no chance that domestic US politics could be playing a role here , , ,
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NATO meetings in Brussels this week had been expected to center on France's recent attempts to shorten its commitment to NATO's mission in Afghanistan (with the important repercussion of the potential for other European allies to follow the French lead). But U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, while en route to Brussels on Wednesday, announced that combat operations in Afghanistan would transition to a "training, advise and assist" role before the end of 2013 -- rather than the long-held 2014 deadline. The shortened time frame Panetta proffered would be consistent with what French President Nicolas Sarkozy now desires. But the mission in Afghanistan does not depend on the presence of the French contingent -- or even on the cumulative contributions of European countries that might follow the French in reducing their commitments. Concern about the durability of the French commitment to the war effort is insufficient to understand Panetta’s announcement.
When in 2001 the Northern Alliance -- supported by American airpower and special operations forces -- seized Kabul, Stratfor argued that the Taliban had not been defeated, but had declined combat on American terms and conceded the capital. Washington’s attention quickly shifted to Iraq. As the war in Iraq intensified and then settled, the war in Afghanistan underwent a significant shift. The old al Qaeda core that orchestrated the 9/11 attacks moved to Pakistan and was increasingly degraded, culminating in the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden. Pursuing that al Qaeda core is what originally motivated the United States to invade Afghanistan. But today, the principal military adversary of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force is a diffuse and decentralized group -- the Taliban. And even the peak of NATO's combined forces -- almost 150,000 between the United States and allied personnel -- would not be sufficient to pacify the country within the remaining time.
Washington consequently has an incentive to seek a political accommodation in Afghanistan. The United States wants to negotiate a settlement that allows it to gracefully withdraw from the country while ensuring Washington's long term goal: that Afghanistan not serve as a sanctuary for transnational jihadists.
Thus, looking beyond the alliance's shaky commitment to the war in Afghanistan, the underlying inability of committed troops to defeat the Taliban has led to the current reality, within which the circumstances of American defeat in Afghanistan are being negotiated.
This is not as radical as it sounds. The nature of American global military power is expeditionary. Any power in this position -- British, American or otherwise -- will be involved in spoiling attacks and limited interventions that are intended to protect its national interests at minimal cost. As such, the United States is now seeking a framework in which it can withdraw from Afghanistan. And as Stratfor has argued, there have been more visible signs of progress in facilitating such negotiations in 2012 than in the rest of the history of the war in Afghanistan combined. Panetta’s statement must be viewed in this context.
Stratfor has long argued that this is not a simple, two-way talk between the United States and Mullah Muhammad Omar, the senior leader of the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan, the regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and even India, Iran and Russia, all have serious interests in the outcome of any such negotiated settlement. Still, the importance of Panetta's statement is in its relation to Taliban demands.
Each side in a negotiation will open with far more hardline conditions than they are ultimately willing to settle with. The Taliban has long insisted on complete withdrawal as a precondition for talks. But Stratfor sources indicate that talks have long been ongoing, even though they have not necessarily involved negotiations on specific points of contention. In announcing that 2013 is now the deadline for the completion of combat operations, the United States has taken a very visible step toward political accommodation.
This step should be viewed in the appropriate context. Since Panetta made his announcement in January 2012, "next year" actually leaves a two-year time frame, which seasonally entails two full campaign seasons in non-winter months. And the United States demonstrated quite well in 2010-2011 that it can push its advantage in the seasonal winter lull. What’s more, Panetta’s deadline can always be extended. "Conditions dependent" has been the caveat of American strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan, meaning the United States ultimately did not really concede that much.
But it remains true that Panetta conceded ground on a key parameter of an American withdrawal consistent with Taliban demands. Whatever the status of negotiations, it is clear that the United States is talking to the Taliban. And in this context, Panetta put something substantial on the table. Long-term American national interests are not as far apart as they once were from those of the Afghan Taliban. And there has been too much movement between Washington and the Afghan Taliban in the last month to ignore. A negotiated settlement is not inevitable, but both sides seek such an understanding for their own reasons. Panetta’s statement Wednesday is perhaps the strongest indication yet that substantive negotiations may take place in the years ahead.
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What a generous guy...gave up 8 ministries...
Caving to opposition demands: Shahbaz Sharif relinquishes control of 8 ministries
By Abdul Manan
Published: February 3, 2012
The Punjab chief minister still retains seven portfolios. PHOTO: NNI/FILE
LAHORE: After much criticism from the opposition, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Thursday finally handed over eight ministries to cabinet members, special assistants and advisers.
Shahbaz, who had been holding 15 portfolios, still maintains seven additional departments including health; home; chief minister inspection team; services and general administration; social welfare; special education; and mines and minerals.
According to statistics of the Punjab government, after the 18th Amendment there were 39 portfolios in the Punjab Cabinet which were being catered by only 16 ministers till March 2011. Out of the 16 ministers, nine were held by the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) and seven by Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) ministers — under a 60 to 40 proportion as mentioned in the Charter of Democracy.
Initially, the chief minister tried to run the departments through a task force but after criticism from the opposition and media, he handed over the ministries but did not increase the number of ministers in the Cabinet.
In the last budget, the Punjab chief minister had abolished four departments out of the 39 and emerged them into different departments as part of an austerity drive.
In March 2011, after the removal of PPP’s seven ministers from the Punjab Cabinet, Shahbaz added another three departments to his portfolio, giving him a total of 15 portfolios.
Technically after the 18th Amendment, the chief minister is authorised to appoint five advisers and two special assistants with the seat of senior adviser being abolished from the Constitution.
At present, Shahbaz has a total five advisers including Senior Adviser Zulfiqar Khosa, Jehazaib Khan Burki, Zakia Shahnawaz, Raja Ishfaq Sarwar and Saeed Mehdi. He also has two special assistants Senator Perveiz Rashid and Manshaullah Butt.
Under the law, advisers and special assistants are not part of the Cabinet. Despite the fact that they cannot attend the official Cabinet meetings, Shahbaz has been inviting his advisers to these meetings.
Official in the Cabinet section said that though the advisers had been assigned portfolios, the main power remained with the chief minister himself. “The major decisions will be taken by the CM himself,” sources said.
Shahbaz’s Seven
Eight departments were devolved on Thursday and assigned to the following seven ministers:
Malik Nadeem Kamran has the portfolio of Zakat and Ushr
Provincial Minister for Excise and Taxation Department Mian Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman has the additional charge of Transport, School Education, Literacy and NFBE and Higher Education
Human Rights and Minority Affairs Minister Kamran Michael has the additional portfolio of Women Development and Finance
Planning and Development Minister Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor has the Energy Department
Agriculture Minister Malik Ahmad Ali Aolakh has the Live Stock and Dairy, Forestry Fisheries and Wildlife, Irrigation Department, Communication and Works Department
Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan has the Board of Revenue, Local Government Department
Auqaf and Religious Affairs Minister Haji Ehsanuddin Qureshi has the additional Labour and Human Rights Housing and Urban Development, and Public Health Engineering Department
Published in The Express Tribune, February 3rd, 2012.
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http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/18/the_fog_of_peace (http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/18/the_fog_of_peace)
The Fog of Peace
By Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - 4:03 PM Share
Afghanistan policy, like Vietnam policy before it, has taken on a life of its own, impervious to ground truth. The simple reality is that "peace talks" with the Taliban have no chance whatever of a positive outcome from the perspective of U.S. policy. Just as it did in Vietnam, the United States has been fighting the wrong war in Afghanistan with the wrong strategy from the very beginning.
In Vietnam, the United States was ideologically hell-bent on fighting a war against communism, and shaped its strategy accordingly. For nearly a decade in Afghanistan, the United States has insisted on fighting a secular war, a counterinsurgency, against a religious movement. However, our enemy in North Vietnam was not fighting a war for communism, and in Afghanistan our enemies are not fighting an insurgency. They are fighting a jihad, and no South Asian jihad in history has ever ended in a negotiated settlement. And this one will not either. There is no overlap between the way insurgencies and charismatic religious movements of this archetype in the Pashtun belt end. Insurgencies by definition have both political and military arms. Regardless of what they have learned to say, the Taliban does not. One hundred percent of the movement's leaders are Muslim clerics. After fighting a second war in Asia the wrong way for almost a decade, the United States is now again desperately seeking a way out of the quagmire from within the wrong set of potential outcomes.
The primary reasons why "peace talks" are delusional are three fold: First, there is no"Taliban" in the sense the proponents of talks envision it. To believe so is cultural mirroring at its peak. Second, the enemy is interested in pre-withdrawal concessions, not a settlement, in an alien culture in which seeking negotiations to end a war is surrender. To believe otherwise is simply wishful thinking. And third, no understanding with senior clerics in the Taliban movement has ever out lived the airplane flight back to New York. Like a second marriage, trusting the "Taliban" to keep a bargain is a victory of hope over experience.
First, the best way to understand the "Taliban" is not as a political entity that can carry out negotiations, but as an event in time analogous to the First Crusade. It is a loose network of military-religious orders which share a common goal, quite similar to the Crusader orders, which included the Knights Templar, Knights of Malta, and the Knights Hospitaller. The "Taliban" is comprised of similar military-religious orders, including, to name a few, the Haqqani network, the Quetta Shura, the Tora Bora Front, the Tehrik-i-Taliban, the Lashkar-i-Taiba, Hisb-i-Islami Khalis, and Hisb-i-Islami Gulbuddin. Like the crusaders, who shared a common purpose and owed allegiance to the Pope in Rome, the "Taliban" groups share a common purpose and acknowledge the religious supremacy of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Amir-ul-Mumaneen, or "Leader of the Faithful," in Quetta. And like the crusader groups, the "Taliban" groups have no real "political wing," because in the jihadist mindset now ascendant in the Pashtun region, Islam and governance are not separate entities. The church and the state cannot be disaggregated in this way.
Just as the Knights of Malta did not agree on policy matters with the Knights Templar, and carried out radically different strategies in the Holy Land, so the various groups of the jihad often fundamentally disagree with one another on how to achieve their common goal of establishing religious rule over disputed territory. Each jihadist group has, just as each crusader group had, its own unique and complex internal dynamics. And, just as the Pope was distant from the Holy Land, Mullah Omar is distant physically and operationally from the central battlefields in Afghanistan. The course of events in Afghanistan, as were those on the ground in Acre, Tyre, or Jerusalem, are decided by local dynamics, events, and power struggles -- not by the Pope, and not by Mullah Omar. Just as the Vatican had no practical control over the behavior of the Knights Templar on the ground in Jerusalem, the Quetta Shura has none over the operational activities of the Haqqani Network, the Tehrik-i-Taliban, or even its own local commanders fighting in Afghanistan. Even if one could find bonafide representatives of the Quetta Shura, and not a conartist Quetta cobbler as was the case last time, the Quetta Shura cannot control events in Afghanistan any more than the Vatican could control events in the Holy Land in the eleventh century.
Second, the motives of any such representatives simply do not now and will never coincide with our own. The Quetta Shura has no genuine interest whatsoever in any "peace talks" or negotiations except to gain concessions such as the release of their comrades in Guantanamo Bay. They have fought for almost 20 years for control of Afghanistan and are now within two years of the withdrawal of foreign troops. As the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) makes unequivocally clear, they have not in anyway changed their intent to retake control of Afghanistan and reestablish their Islamist state. If they had any interest in genuine talks, they would hardly have assassinated Berhanuddin Rabanni, head of the Afghan High Peace Council and the Karzai regime's lead negotiator, last year.
Furthermore, although the Pentagon has added the imaginary golden fabric of "progress" and the imaginary significance of the "attrition of mid-level leadership" to the emperor's new clothes of peace talks in Afghanistan, both of these are simply fictitious. The reality is, despite all the Pentagon smoke and mirrors, the new NIE shows there has been no sustainable progress in Afghanistan, and the enemy still has a virtually unlimited supply of soldiers and leaders. There are hundreds of thousands of recruits waiting to join the cause in Pakistan, every village has a mullah to lead them on the battlefield, and the madrassas of Pakistan produce hundreds of new militant mullahs every year. They have extensive direct and indirect military support from the Pakistani government and army. And just as the Saigon government was in Vietnam in 1970, the Karzai kleptocracy in Kabul is illegitimate, incompetent, and utterly unpopular in Afghanistan today. As the desertion of a third of the tiny Afghan National Army each year proves, almost no one except Americans and Britons are willing to die for it. On a good day, the Afghan National Army has perhaps 100,000 men under arms. In a sobering comparison, the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) had more than a million men under arms, including a large, modern air force, in a country one quarter the size of Afghanistan, and it collapsed in three weeks of fighting in 1976. The Taliban, who have studied American military history, fully understand this calculus.
Finally, the last nail in the coffin for "peace talks" is simply pragmatic. The Taliban in its original, unsplintered form, was a notoriously unreliable partner in discussions. In seeking to mediate with its elements between 1996 and 2001, foreign groups representing every interest from health care to oil pipelines to preservation of antiquities found that every "understanding" with the Taliban had completely unraveled before the foreign negotiators had even landed back in New York or London. The Taliban of 1996-2001, which was infinitely more centralized and controllable than it is today, never kept a single such agreement for more than a week.
In summary, wishful thinking aside, there is no central, political entity called the "Taliban" with whom to negotiate. The enemy is not interested in "peace talks" when they are convinced they have already won a complete victory against a hated and infidel puppet regime and an American puppeteer they now see as weak. And even if all that were not true, today's disaggregated jihadist groups would not and could not keep any bargain which a few members of one crusader order might make in any case. "Peace talks" and hopes of a negotiated solution in Afghanistan are delusional, and American policy-makers should be devoting their time and efforts to managing the coming civil war in Afghanistan rather than weaving any more new clothes for the emperor. In the next phase ofthe war, which will certainly begin when NATO has removed most of its combat power from the country, the United States will face stark political and military choices in determining the modality and extent of its support to the non-Pashtun ethnic groups who will oppose the Taliban's restoration.
Thomas H.Johnson is a Research Professor in the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Director of the Program for Culture & Conflict Studies. M. Chris Mason is a retired Foreign Service Officer with long experience in South Asia and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, DC.
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That seems dead on to me-- no surprise to those here who have read my posts of the last several years commenting on the incoherence of our policy.
The incoherence of that policy began under President Bush. In the beginning, it was quite understandable, but I think it not unjust to think that Bush should have recognized the inapplicability of the original ad hoc policy. I also think it reasonable to respect the assertion of those who opposed the initiation of the Iraq War because Afpakia was still unfinished business. By the end of the Bush years, hobbled as he was by the vicious and not infrequently unpatriotic opposition to the Iraq War, the political capital simply was not there for him to even contemplate any changes.
Enter Baraq, who campaigned on Afpakia as the good war of essential national self-defense. Of course it was a lie, and neither side, here at home or over there, believed him.
Given the incoherence and the two-facedness of our policy and our discourse about it, it is not surprise whatsoever that at this point the American people, as JDN has noted, are fed up with an incoherent war explained in incoherent terms.
Mitt Romney IMHO has a tin ear to all of these variables, and says what he thinks conservatives want to hear. While conservatives and other patriotic Americans are discontent with the President, including the way he places his personal political benefit above that of our country, it does not mean that what Romney says here resonates.
I have warned here more than once that Republicans currently lack coherence and message on foreign policy. Some of you have commented, in effect, so what? The economy sucks and the Reps will win on that. Wesbury argues, and in the last 9 months his track record as a prognosticator exceeds that of our GM, the economy is improving and the meme of the Pravdas goes in the same direction. At the moment, it looks to me that Baraq will win.
Bringing this back to the subject of this thread, it appears that we are going to get run out of Afpakia, the Pak nuke program will return to full rogue status, which as the Iranians go nuke, means that the Pak Saudi connection will yield the nuclearization of the Arab world. The feckless weakness of President Baraq certainly will deserve responsibility that it almost as certainly will not be given, but so too do the Republicans for also not getting the points that YA's article makes and coming up with something coherent of their own to put in front of the American people.
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By DION NISSENBAUM
KABUL—U.S. taxpayers paid Afghan entrepreneur Ajmal Hasas millions of dollars as part of a plan to win over villages in the country's insurgent heartlands.
WSJ's Dion Nissenbaum reports a three-year U.S.-led project to build roads in Afghanistan has little to show after three years and nearly $300 million in funding. Photo: Mali Khan Yaqubi
.Instead, Mr. Hasas' seven-mile road construction project went so awry that his security guards opened fire on some of the very villagers he was trying to woo on behalf of his American funders.
Mr. Hasas was a point man in a $400 million U.S. Agency for International Development campaign to build as much as 1,200 miles of roads in some of Afghanistan's most remote and turbulent places.
Three years and nearly $270 million later, less than 100 miles of gravel road have been completed, according to American officials. More than 125 people were killed and 250 others were wounded in insurgent attacks aimed at derailing the project, USAID said. The agency shut down the road-building effort in December.
As the American involvement in Afghanistan is winding down ahead of the pullout of most forces in 2014, the USAID roads saga stands as a reminder of the limited progress the U.S. and its allies have achieved here over the past decade—and at how high a cost.
"You can find programs and projects that have been successful, but for me it is quite obvious that huge amounts of money have been misspent," says Kai Eide, the Norwegian diplomat who headed United Nations operations in Afghanistan in 2008-2010. "There has been no clear strategic thinking on development assistance."
With USAID's road project cut short, special internal auditors from the agency have been trying to figure out what went wrong. Afghan construction companies are still seeking millions of dollars for unpaid bills from the American nonprofit, International Relief and Development, or IRD, that ran the program. And remote Afghan villages that were supposed to benefit from the U.S. initiative have been left with unfinished roads and unfulfilled promises. USAID officials say the program fell short of its goals, which is why they canceled it.
Enlarge Image
CloseInternational Relief and Develop
Another stretch of road completed as part of a U.S. effort to win over Afghan civilians.
.The road-building efforts began a decade ago, as Washington began transforming USAID into a tool in its military counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, shifting the agency's focus from promoting long-term development to shorter-term initiatives meant to attract community support in insurgent-saturated areas.
"I call it hijacking," said one USAID official formerly stationed in Afghanistan. "Aid as a weapons system has never been tested—and they are putting it into the field with no evidence that it works."
J. Alex Thier, Washington-based director of USAID's Afghanistan and Pakistan program, disagrees. He said the strategy can help stabilize regions of the country—if used when security is improving and local leaders are cooperating.
"What USAID does in these districts can at best have an impact if the other things are also pulling in the right direction," he said.
USAID was established 50 years ago by President John F. Kennedy. It became America's key economic tool to help developing nations.
The Bush administration overhauled the agency's mission after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, aligning USAID more closely with military objectives as America invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
In Iraq, U.S. officials embarked on the largest rebuilding project since the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. But the $53 billion initiative was hobbled by the spreading insurgency, massive security costs that sometimes ate up more than half of contract costs, uncooperative government leaders and constantly shifting priorities, according to Stuart Bowen, America's special inspector general for reconstruction in Iraq.
After concluding that at least $4 billion in U.S. aid had been squandered in Iraq, Mr. Bowen warned American officials in 2009 that they were making the same mistakes in Afghanistan. State Department officials said at the time that they had learned lessons from Iraq and were working to better coordinate military and civilian efforts in Afghanistan.
Enlarge Image
Close.As part of America's $85 billion reconstruction program in Afghanistan, USAID has spent more than $15 billion since 2002, more than in any other country. As in Iraq, the program in Afghanistan has been repeatedly disrupted by the spread of the insurgency across the country, poor oversight, an overreliance on outside contractors, cost overruns and corruption, according to U.S. officials and government investigative reports.
A $260 million effort to upgrade southern Afghanistan's Kajaki hydroelectric dam has repeatedly faltered and remains incomplete. Meanwhile, a $300 million contract to build a major power plant outside Kabul cost more than twice the original estimate and remains largely idle as Afghanistan relies on cheaper power from its neighbors.
But road projects have received the single largest slice of USAID money—more than $2 billion. One of the biggest beneficiaries has been IRD, founded in 1998 by Arthur Keys.
From the start, President Barack Obama's administration saw road construction as key for winning support from Afghans by making it easier to travel, by opening up new trade routes—and by connecting remote villages to Afghan government institutions and services.
Officials at USAID and IRD say that the Afghanistan Strategic Roads Project wasn't a roads program in the usual sense. They said building roads was, in many ways, a secondary goal; the main objective was spreading jobs and money to win over rural communities that harbor insurgents.
"As a grant, this was never intended to be a major road construction project," says Jeff Grieco, a former USAID official who now serves as communications director at IRD. "It was intended to be a capacity building program. We have dramatically improved Afghan capacity to build roads and to do community development work."
It certainly wasn't the cheapest way to get roads built. A typical gravel road in Afghanistan is supposed to cost about $290,000 per mile, according to USAID. It cost American taxpayers about $2.8 million for each mile of gravel road completed by IRD, making them the most expensive miles of road ever built by the U.S. government in Afghanistan.
Less than half the $269 million spent on the project went to actual road construction, IRD officials say. A quarter of the funds were paid to IRD administration and staff. About 15% was spent on security, and 8% was allocated to the community-development projects IRD said were central to the success of the project.
As part of the Strategic Roads Project, USAID set aside millions of dollars in the contract to set up small soap factories, run reading programs for illiterate villagers, dig wells and teach sewing to Afghan women—all with the expectation that it would win American troops good will.
But the community program was hobbled when IRD put a halt to awarding grants in southeastern Afghanistan for eight months after discovering that IRD staff were falsifying reports and exaggerating the impact of the development projects, according to former IRD workers. After revamping the staff and project, IRD resumed handing out grants for things like "flower literacy" programs that taught Afghan women how to make flower arrangements.
Then, after conferring with USAID, IRD tried to press ahead with construction without setting up new community projects, said U.S. officials.
"You had these villages with no community ownership or buy in and they just made the situation worse," said one USAID official. "That's when things really started going sour."
In Khost, the volatile eastern province along the Pakistani border where Mr. Hasas was paid $3 million to build seven miles of gravel road, tensions flared soon after he began work in 2008.
Ajab Noor Mangal, a local construction-company owner hired to work on the project, said Mr. Hasas alienated the community by only hiring workers from two of the five local clans.
Afghans excluded from the project looted Mr. Hasas's construction sites and stripped them bare. At one point, Mr. Hasas said, four men affiliated with the project were kidnapped, killed and dumped in public with a warning note signed by insurgents. The deaths brought construction to a halt.
"We couldn't find a single person to work on the road," Mr. Hasas recalls.
Under the IRD contract, Mr. Hasas and the other Afghan firms working on their roads were responsible for providing their own security. So Mr. Hasas said he cobbled together nearly 100 gunmen and armed them with rented rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns.
Things reached a nadir in the fall of 2010, when around 100 angry Afghans, including a small number of suspected insurgents, tried to storm the construction site, according to Messrs. Hasas and Mangal.
Mr. Mangal, who was in Kabul at the time, says he ordered the contractor's gunmen to open fire on the demonstrators, including some armed protesters who he said shot at the security team. Mr. Mangal says he is still paying for the wounded villagers' medical treatment.
Villagers who took part in the demonstration told a different story. Two men involved in the protest said IRD security sparked a larger confrontation after opening fire on a dozen unarmed men protesting IRD's refusal to move staff from an office overlooking homes where outsiders could see into private family compounds—a major slight in the conservative culture.
"All the villagers criticize the construction company because they were just here to earn money and they did not care about the quality of the road," said Najib, a local resident who worked on the road project and had two relatives injured during the protest.
IRD officials say they never heard about the conflict between the contractor and the villagers.
The project was part of the ongoing "Afghan First" initiative meant to support Afghan companies instead of the international firms that have received the lion's share of the billions in aid that have flooded Afghanistan.
But IRD is still embroiled in payment disputes with Afghan subcontractors who say that the company has failed to pay its bills. Now that the project is shut down, IRD said it has told contractors final payment decisions rest with USAID. USAID said it couldn't comment on the question of payments.
The animosity escalated in 2010 when embittered Afghan subcontractors secured arrest warrants for two IRD officials. Afghan police briefly detained one of the Westerners in Kabul who oversaw the project, according to officials familiar with the incident.
Faced with more arrest threats during the spring, IRD hid another top manager in the back of an SUV, flew her to Kandahar and quietly spirited her out of the country before she, too, could be detained, according to former IRD employees familiar with the controversy. IRD declined to comment on the incident.
USAID officials say the agency moved swiftly to scale back and shut down the IRD roads project as it became clear in 2010 that it was foundering. "How quickly can you stop a dump truck?" said one USAID official. "You get the momentum going and one thing we committed to doing isn't stopping it and creating a wreck."
Mr. Thier said his agency has learned important lessons from the problems in the IRD project and has changed the way it operates. USAID tripled its Afghanistan-based staff, beefed up its screening of Afghan partners, established new independent monitoring procedures and added more people to directly oversee such programs, he said.
The steep drop-off in U.S. reconstruction funds for Afghanistan has also prompted USAID to shift its focus from big ticket stabilization projects to more modest proposals, including agricultural development programs, that can be successfully taken over by Afghan officials.
In November, as part of a wider shift at the State Department, USAID established a new Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations that is meant to address some of the long-standing coordination and strategic problems with America's reconstruction missions abroad.
Still, the project's failures appeared to have no impact on USAID's confidence in IRD. Last year, as construction delays mounted and American officials moved to shut the program down, USAID awarded IRD nearly $140 million to launch three new projects in Afghanistan, though none involved roads. USAID officials said they still had confidence in IRD's ability to carry out big projects in Afghanistan.
Afghan entrepreneur Delawar Faizan, meanwhile, says that IRD still owes him nearly $4 million for his work in constructing roads in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province. He said that IRD gave him a check last fall to settle some of his claims, but it bounced because the company's bank account was frozen. Now, he said, IRD has told him he has to wait for approval from USAID to get paid.
"Where has the money gone?" he asked.
—Ziaulhaq Sultani, Habib Khan Totakhil and Mali Khan Yaqubi contributed to this article.
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By AMRULLAH SALEH
Washington's olive branch to the Taliban—no matter the excuses or justifications—amounts to the management of failure, not the mark of victory. Negotiating with the Taliban after more than 10 years of fighting means giving legitimacy and space to militant extremism.
The objective of NATO's post-9/11 intervention in Afghanistan was to starve militant extremism by defeating the nexus of al Qaeda and the Pakistan-backed Taliban. That now seems like a dream.
With support from Pakistan, the Taliban has managed to protract the fighting and create a strategic deadlock. The U.S. military surge in 2010 weakened the Taliban, but it hardly pressured their strategic support across the Durand line in Pakistan. So the deadlock remains—chiefly because of Pakistan's unwillingness to cooperate fully with NATO, coupled with the fractured state of Afghan politics since the fraud-marred 2009 presidential elections.
Pakistan and the Taliban have no interest in producing quick positive results from talks. The Taliban has already gained certain advantages, including the possible transfer or release of their commanders from U.S. custody, the opening of an office in Qatar, and the legitimacy to enter into mainstream politics at the time of their choosing. They will definitely use these preliminary gains to further their psychological influence over the Afghan populace. And they won't likely bargain away the gains they have earned by suicide bombings, ambushes and the marginalization of civil society. Now that the Taliban has guaranteed its basic survival, it will fight for domination.
Washington's talks with the Taliban—taking place, on and off, in Qatar—come at a time when most anti-Taliban Afghan civil-society leaders have deserted President Karzai. He is head of a heavily subsidized state whose pay master (Washington) is now largely bypassing his government to negotiate with the enemy. This raises the question: Who and what does President Karzai represent?
In a bid to make himself relevant, President Karzai has adopted a strategy of meddling. He has demanded that NATO halt night raids, hand over the Bagram detention facility, and place strict restrictions on security companies. He has also refused to echo NATO's mission goals and justifications, and he wanted the Taliban to open an office in Saudi Arabia, not Qatar.
In return, NATO has accused Mr. Karzai of corruption, of committing abuses of human rights, and of being detached from reality. Successful counterinsurgency work requires international troops and the host nation to be seen as unified; that is simply not the case here. Pakistan and the Taliban are more coordinated in their approaches than are NATO and Afghanistan.
This is one of the key reasons why concerned anti-Taliban Afghans are creating a third force to ensure their rights and interests are represented and protected. They no longer see either President Karzai or NATO committed to those rights and interests. Though fragmented in their approach, these forces share a common goal: to counterbalance the growing influence of the Taliban and to fill the vacuum created by the declining relevance of Afghanistan's democratic institutions.
Certainly no Afghan political coalition can stop Washington from talking to the Taliban—but those talks won't bring stability. Talks and a potential ceasefire may provide the U.S. and its NATO allies their justification for a speedy withdrawal, but it won't change the fundamentals of the problem in Afghanistan. Striking a deal with the Taliban without disarming them will shatter the hope of a strong, viable, pluralistic Afghan state.
The absolute majority of the Afghan people are against the Taliban and the domination of our country by militant extremism. They have wholeheartedly supported and participated in the democratic process, but they are now marginalized both by President Karzai, who controls massive resources with no accountability, and the international community, which is focused disproportionately on transition, withdrawal and the Taliban.
Afghanistan's neglected majority can provide a political alternative for the military mission in Afghanistan. Its inclusion, which the U.S. could secure by pursuing reconciliation in a way that pressures President Karzai to respect the role of parliament and independent judges, would contain or push back the Taliban, increase the cost of war for Pakistan, and provide hope for post-transition Afghanistan.
By contrast, should that majority remain outside the strategic calculus, we'll see further fragmentation of political power and legitimacy in Afghanistan. That will weaken Washington's position and endanger the entire mission.
Mr. Saleh, who directed Afghanistan's national security directorate from 2004 to 2010, is now an opposition political activist.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZYEctbGSkkw#![/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZYEctbGSkkw#!
My new heroine of the interwebs!
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Krauthammer on Baraq's apology:
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It has now been nearly a week since it was discovered that Korans and other Islamic material had been burned at Bagram Air Field. Violence flared in response to it. Most recently, a car bomb exploded at the gate of Jalalabad airport -- essentially a military air base -- killing at least nine people, while three others were killed in Oruzgan province. The Taliban claimed responsibility and described both events as revenge for the burning of the Koran. This follows the death of two U.S. officers inside the Afghan Interior Ministry in Kabul, apparently by an Afghan colleague working with the officers in the ministry.
There is no question that the burning of the Koran, accidental or not, generates rage in Afghanistan. But there is also a war being waged and a negotiation being carried out and while the rage might be genuine, a week of violence serves a strategic purpose. This is particularly true in the ministry killings, where the point was driven home that even in a place regarded as secure by Americans and working with people who are seen as allies, the fact is that Americans are not safe, the building is not secure and their allies are not as reliable as they might think.
There are intense negotiations going on between the Taliban, the United States and the Afghan government. They also involve elements in Pakistan. These negotiations are structurally even more complex than the four-way negotiations at the end of the Vietnam War. The Taliban goals include securing a rapid U.S. withdrawal with no remaining residual force and a new coalition government that is dominated by Taliban. The United States also wants to withdraw combat forces, but allow a residual force to remain behind for training, protect the Kabul government and provide an enduring guarantor against Afghanistan serving as sanctuary for transnational terrorism. It is prepared to have the elements join this government as junior coalition partners. The Pakistanis want to make sure that whatever the final agreement, it creates a sufficiently stable Pakistan so that violence will not spill over into Pakistan nor draw Pakistani forces into Afghanistan.
The Taliban understands that any U.S. withdrawal will be staged over time. The Americans are aware that the Taliban is not going to be playing a junior role in the current regime. The Pakistanis know that they are going to have to become involved in Afghanistan in the wake of an American withdrawal. While all of this may be known, the precise details of when the United States withdraws, how much of a residual force remains and where, and what sort of political arrangement will be made, are uncertain.
The negotiations appear to have entered a fairly intense stage, and winter will end soon, signaling the beginning of the traditional campaign season. For the Taliban, it is important to demonstrate to the Americans not only that they continue to have capabilities, but also that U.S. forces are far less secure than the past two years of tactical successes might imply. The Taliban imperative is to make it known that the tempo of violence is in their hands, and the United States can do little to control it. The more the Taliban can demonstrate this, the more eager the United States will be to leave. In addition, this is an election year in the United States. There is not overwhelming political pressure for an early withdrawal, but an increase in casualties and instability could possibly generate that pressure.
It therefore makes sense, with or without the burning of the Korans, for the recent attacks to have been carried out. The killings in the ministry generated a particular psychological atmosphere of insecurity throughout the system where U.S. and allied troops interact with and train indigenous officials, officers and soldiers. From a negotiation standpoint, the prospect of increased instability coupled with the ability to conduct further small unit attacks as the spring thaw approaches creates a favorable negotiating situation for the Taliban. Casualties have been low by recent terms so far, but the prospect is what matters, given the psychological component. Violence and insecurity could cause the United States to become more flexible in the negotiations.
The rage over the Koran burnings might well be genuine and intense, but it also opened the door for a series of actions that could enhance the Taliban’s negotiating position. It is in the Taliban’s interest to ensure that it is the dominant factor in determining the tempo of violence in the coming months. Any meaningful increase in violence and casualties would leave the United States with the option of increasing their own operations beyond what they expected to have to do, or to reach out to the Pakistanis to facilitate a settlement. Either option puts the United States at a disadvantage and reduces the chance of achieving the solution it wants, but simply absorbing increasing punishment does not seem an option.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203753704577255531768384866.html?mod=world_newsreel
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Max Boot makes his case:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204653604577249363870929358.html?grcc=1d0d539c7b9bc62d88ee7050a09124fdZ11&mod=WSJ_hps_sections_whatyoumissed
MAX BOOT
Violent Afghan protests over the burning of Qurans have strengthened the hand of those in Washington who argue for a faster reduction of U.S. troops. Especially galling was an incident of violence within Afghanistan's Interior Ministry, in which a disaffected driver shot and killed two American advisers.
Many Americans seem to be saying that if the Afghan people don't want us there, why should we stay? That's dubious logic because we are not in Afghanistan as a favor to the Afghan people. We are there to protect our own self-interest in not having their territory once again become a haven for al Qaeda.
Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Max Boot on how the U.S. drawdown will empower the Taliban and al Qaeda.
.It's also a fallacy to assume that most Afghans are anti-American. The protests, which tapered off Tuesday, have involved a few thousand people out of a population of 30 million. The attacks on Americans have been carried out by a handful of assailants. President Hamid Karzai has accepted President Obama's apology over the Quran-burning incident, condemned the violence and called for restraint. His security forces have policed the protests and suffered heavier casualties than our own.
While no doubt most people in Afghanistan are outraged over the desecration of their holy book, they are not anti-American. The most recent survey of Afghan views, conducted by ABC/BBC/ARD in November 2010, found that 62% of Afghans support the U.S. military presence while only 11% support the Taliban. That's considerably higher than the share of Americans who back the mission—35%. Another poll, conducted by the Asia Foundation last year, found that only 21% of Afghans blame foreign troops for the war waged by the Taliban and other insurgents. Most Afghans think the Taliban are fighting to gain power, make money, or for other selfish motives.
One can always question opinion polls in a country where illiteracy and insecurity are rampant. But Afghans also demonstrate with their actions where their sympathies lie. More than 350,000 Afghan men have joined the security forces and more would sign up if there were money to pay them. Estimates of the insurgency's strength are generally under 30,000 men. That's far below the number of mujahedeen—an estimated 100,000 out of a smaller population—who took up arms against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
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Afghans protesting against Quran desecration in Kunduz province, Afghanistan, on Saturday.
.There is considerable resentment of the United States in Afghanistan, as you would expect from any proud people who are compelled to deal with a foreign military presence. But the biggest reason Afghans are wary is because the NATO mission has not delivered what they most want—freedom from fear. In the Asia Foundation poll, 46% said the country was moving in the right direction but pervasive insecurity was their greatest concern.
The U.S. and its allies have been taking important steps to address insecurity, especially in Kandahar and Helmand provinces where most surge troops have gone. Commanders had hoped to pivot the focus of operations this year to eastern Afghanistan, where insecurity continues to lap at the outskirts of Kabul. But that plan has been put in serious jeopardy by President Obama's decision to bring home 32,000 troops by September.
Further troops cuts are rumored for announcement in May—as are cuts in the Afghan Security Forces. The U.S. is pushing to reduce the size of the Afghan army and police to just 230,000 by 2014 from 352,000 today to save a few billion dollars out of a federal budget of nearly $4 trillion.
Contrary to popular impression, the Afghan Security Forces are not a hotbed of anti-Americanism. Major Fernando Lujan, a Dari-speaking Special Forces officer, spent 14 months in Afghanistan, mostly embedded as the lone American in Afghan units, and came away impressed by their fighting spirit.
What the Afghan forces lack is logistics, equipment and intelligence. Most have to drive over IED-strewn roads in unarmored pickup trucks. The support they need to fight effectively is provided by NATO units, but Afghan fighting quality will suffer if we start withdrawing. So will their morale, because they'll feel abandoned to face an insurgency that retains Pakistan support.
The woes of the Afghan forces will surely multiply if, as currently envisioned, 120,000 troops and cops are demobilized with little prospect of a civilian job. Many could join the insurgency or the drug traffickers simply to make a living. This could be the reverse of the surge in Iraq, when 100,000 formerly hostile Sunnis joined with coalition forces to fight insurgents.
All of the problems today in the Afghan Security Forces—including Taliban infiltrators—will be aggravated by a rapid American drawdown. That will make it impossible to secure even our most basic interests and will likely consign Afghanistan to another civil war. We saw how the last such conflict played out in the 1990s with the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Why risk a repeat?
Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present," due out next January.
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****Leave Afghanistan now
By Cal Thomas
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Most wars have a turning point that either signals the road to victory or the ditch of defeat. In Vietnam, the 1968 Tet Offensive by communist troops against South Vietnamese and American forces and their allies is regarded as the turning point in that conflict. Though communist forces suffered heavy losses, which would normally define defeat, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite and others in the U.S. media, portrayed the operation as an allied loss, thus encouraging not only the anti-war movement, but North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops who believed all they had to do was hang on until America grew tired of the war and quit.
Since the Obama administration appears to care more about not offending those Afghans who want to kill Americans and since it has announced the deadline for the withdrawal of surge-level troops in Afghanistan for later this year, despite the fact that they have stymied the efforts of Taliban insurgents to destabilize the country, maybe it's time to pull all U.S. forces out and leave our puppet, Hamid Karzai, to his fate.
The latest affront comes courtesy of the burning of Korans by U.S. soldiers on a military base near Kabul. Military officials maintain the Korans were being used by imprisoned jihadists to pass messages to other prisoners and were confiscated and destroyed. A spokesman for the NATO-led force said the troops, "...should have known to check with cultural advisers to determine how to dispose of religious material properly." For this unintended action, however, Karzai wants the soldiers to be put on trial and has asked NATO commanders to allow it. If they do, they will have disgraced their uniform.
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Does writing in a Koran desecrate it? One might expect it would, but the outrage is over the burning, not the writing. More than 1,700 Americans have died in and around Afghanistan and more than 14,000 have been wounded since the United States invaded shortly after September 11, 2011. And this is the thanks we get? How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless puppet.
When do jihadists apologize for mass murder or religious persecution? Two years ago in Rasht, Iran, Youcef Nadarkhani, a Christian pastor who converted from Islam, was arrested on charges of apostasy. He has been sentenced to hang for his religious conversion. Anyone hear any apologies from "moderate" Muslims about that, much less attempts to shame the ayatollahs, or label them apostates?
The New York Times reported recently that President Obama's three-page apology letter to President Karzai contained these sentences: "I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies." This will only serve as further evidence to our enemies in Afghanistan of America's weakness and lack of resolve in what is likely to be a very long and global war. American impatience, fatigue and a desire not to offend, does not bode well for an American victory or for Afghan liberation. No one worried about offending our enemies during World War II. That's why the forces for good won.
Can Afghanistan be stabilized so as not to pose a threat to America and American interests? Probably not, if the surge forces pull out on schedule and America continues to fight under restrictive and self-imposed rules of war while the enemy does not.
So what's the point? Are we to stay only until after the election so President Obama won't be asked, "Who lost Afghanistan?" If our troops are coming out anyway and if the administration can't define victory, or commit the resources necessary to achieve it, waiting longer only ensures more casualties. As with Vietnam, that is a waste of blood and treasure. Ask the ghosts of the more than 58,000 fallen whose names appear on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, or the ghosts of the politicians who are responsible for putting them in their graves.****
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I have been away...just too exhausted with Af-Pak..at some point the Baloch battlefield will become important...
http://soodvikram.blogspot.com/ (http://soodvikram.blogspot.com/)
The Baloch battlefield
March 7, 2012
From the West’s perspective, while Syria has to be destabilised to get at Iran, Balochistan must be kept stable in order to keep Pakistan happy
.The killing of Zamur Domki along with her 13-year-old daughter Jaana on January 31 in Karachi was a new low in that violence-prone city. It may have been routinely described as yet another criminal act except that Zamur was the granddaughter of slain Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti and the sister of Brahamdagh Bugti. Brahamdagh is wanted by the Pakistani authorities for rebelling and waging war against Pakistan. This brutal murder was a ruthless message to Brahamdagh. There was immediate retaliation by the Baloch Liberation Army, which killed 15 Frontier Corps men and injured 12 others in attacks on four posts.
Balochistan has been in perpetual revolt ever since Pakistan became independent — there were four other campaigns after 1948. The current rebellion gained momentum after the assassination of Nawab Bugti in August 2006 and the murder of Balaach Marri, son of Nawab Khair Bux Marri, one of the two surviving leaders of the famous 1973 Baloch uprising. The other survivor is Sardar Ataullah Khan Mengal. Among younger leaders of a possible Baloch revolt, Brahamdagh Bugti lives in exile in Switzerland, while Hyrbair Marri (Khair Bux’s son) is in London. But there is no totem pole in Balochistan around which the Baloch nationalists can rally.
The constant Baloch grievances against Islamabad have ranged from deprivation of profits from its contribution to the national exchequer to inequitable sharing of the province’s abundant natural resources with the Baloch people (which are siphoned off, mainly to Punjab). The Baloch also resent the fact that they are outnumbered by outsiders (mostly Punjabis), and that prime arable land is being parcelled out to these “outsiders” and the Army, which, in many cases, is double jeopardy. The nationalists probably echo Ataullah Mengal’s warning last year — “Balochistan will not remain with you.”
There are other problems for the Baloch. The Baloch lack centralised leadership in the campaign for their rights. There are as many as six Baloch insurgent organisations that have been banned by Islamabad, including the Baloch Liberation Army, Balochistan Republican Army and Baloch Liberation Front. In the absence of reliable data, conservative estimates assess that there have been at least 180 attacks since 2005.
While the West may fret over events in Syria, very little attention has been paid to what has been happening in Balochistan. From the West’s perspective, while Syria has to be destabilised to get at Iran, Balochistan must be kept stable in order to keep Pakistan happy and maybe helpful in Afghanistan. Balochistan provides access to Kandahar and borders the predominantly Sunni province of Sistan-Balochistan in Iran. It is not in America’s interest, therefore, to make any noise about killings and disappearances in Balochistan. The province is thrice the size of Syria in area, located on the borders of Iran and astride the Strait of Oman, and not far from the Strait of Hormuz. Balochistan was a base for drones, and Pakistan remains far too important for America’s global calculations to allow anything more than congressional hearings. The deliberations of the US House foreign affairs committee on February 8 upset the Pakistan government as much as it elated the Baloch nationalists. The US simultaneously has been making moves to “normalise” relations with Islamabad.
There is also considerable long-term Chinese interest in having access to the port of Gwadar, which would shorten the route for China from and for its African and Gulf interests to Xinjiang. The Chinese have considerable interests in the Saindak copper mines, in mineral resources, Sui gas and the possibility of participating in the Iran-Pakistan pipeline if and when it materialises. The Iranians have alleged that Mujahideen-e-Khalq as well as Jundullah are sectarian Sunni-US proxies operating from Balochistan against Iranian interests.
Having learnt from the tactics used in the Arab Spring protests last year, the Baloch nationalists — many of whom are outside Pakistan — have been using Internet platforms such as Twitter to spread their message rather effectively. Almost every day one reads about killings, abductions and kidnappings both by the state and the nationalists; there are reports of explosions but very little is reported outside the province. There have been a few brave articles in Pakistan’s English-language press, but the Baloch anger at years of discrimination, deprivation and suppression — at the hands of Pakistan’s Punjabis — continues to manifest itself.
The reaction from Islamabad to all this has been predictable. It has been a policy of kill and dump bodies of young Baloch nationalists as a warning to others. Human Rights Watch, in its 2012 World Report, documented that 200 Baloch nationalists had disappeared or were killed in the previous year. The Asian Human Rights Commission report says at least 56 bullet-ridden bodies of “disappeared persons” had been found in Balochistan. An estimated 200 extra-judicial killings had taken place since 2010. There were a total of 711 killings in 2011 — comprising 122 SF personnel, 47 militants and 542 civilians.
The situation is further complicated because, along with Baloch insurgents, there are Pushtun Islamists and sectarian mafia. The Quetta Shura of Mullah Omar, which is present in the midst of a strong Afghan Pushtun population, is another complication and cause for ethnic tension. Sectarian militant outfits like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi have repeatedly targeted the Shias. It is suspected that this has the blessings of Islamabad/Rawalpindi. Over 50 Hindus have also been kidnapped for ransom in Balochistan in a bid to discredit the nationalists, which gives a clear indication of the lawlessness in the province. And last year around 12,000 Persian-speaking Hazaras had to leave Quetta, fearing for their lives. All this is a form of Wahabi ethnic cleansing.
The best way out for Pakistan would be to negotiate with Baloch leaders in good faith; but possibly it feels the jackboot is the better option. The world will continue to ignore Balochistan, while the Baloch will continue their lonely struggle, which the Pakistan government will try to suppress through force, and innocents will continue to die.
The Asia Age New Delhi and the Deccan Chronicle March 7 2012
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YA:
What is your opinion of where things stand, what the US should be doing right now? Please include Balochistan in your analysis.
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A U.S. soldier is suspected of killing 16 Afghan civilians in a solitary shooting spree early Sunday. These attacks followed by a few weeks the killing of two U.S. officers at the hand of an Afghan soldier working in Kabul's secure Interior Ministry. Earlier still, Korans and Islamic religious materials were burned at Bagram Air Field.
Soldiers caught under the pressures of war sometimes engage in acts of stunning brutality against enemy soldiers and civilians. As anyone with a cursory knowledge of the history of war knows, some soldiers commit crimes against the very civilians they are fighting for.
However, these killings must also be understood for their psychological and political impact. The psychological pressure on every side of the Afghanistan conflict has become enormous. The war has gone on for more than 10 years, and while the Taliban have always opposed U.S. and NATO troops, supporters of the regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai now distrust them as well. The United States is looking for a way out, and Karzai supporters understand what this might mean to them personally.
The United States and its allies now face both the Taliban and the growing dissatisfaction of other Afghans. This marks an important inflection point, given that a key effort of the American-led "surge" was to win Afghan "hearts and minds." While winning the trust of a local population is an enduring objective of counterinsurgencies throughout history, cultural incompatibilities between locals and an occupying power make it a challenging task. When the effort starts to lag, it becomes difficult to negotiate with parties whose attitudes run from hostile to sullen. The task of nation building becomes vastly more complicated.
Meanwhile, there is substantial pressure on foreign troops, who are at once drawing down and attempting to craft the perception of strength to force a negotiated settlement. We know little about the Afghan who reportedly killed two Americans in Kabul and about the American soldier in custody for the shootings of Afghan civilians, but we do know that the pressure on all sides is growing.
Politically, the killings have serious consequences. As we have argued, the ability of U.S. and allied forces to coordinate with indigenous forces is central to the overarching strategy of “Vietnamization” and increases in importance as the drawdown of Western forces accelerates. But the Vietnamization strategy entails a number of risks related to infiltration and to the surfacing of cultural animosity. The recent burning of Korans and Islamic materials from a detention facility in Bagram Air Field, and this weekend's rampage, reflect deep cultural incompatibilities and tensions.
But the incidents also create a political opening for the Taliban, who can exploit the killings as proof of the Americans' unreliability and hostility and spread unfounded rumors that the killings were the result of a planned operation, not the action of an unbalanced soldier. True or not, this message will resonate with people who need little additional motivation to be terrified of the American troops seeking their trust, especially as the inevitable drawdown of Western troops leaves locals vulnerable to whatever forces remain in their location.
Peace talks may also be affected. There is a clear division within the Taliban: Some are ready to reach a settlement that leaves a coalition government while the Americans withdraw, while others feel that extending the fight will allow them to achieve their goals without compromise. The second faction will use the the Koran burnings, the killings of Afghan civilians and other recent controversies to try to delegitimize the talks with the Americans.
The two recent sets of killings are politically significant because they strike at the heart of two claims central to the U.S. and NATO war effort. First, the idea that there is close coordination between Western and Afghan forces is undermined by the killings in a secure area of the Afghan Interior Ministry. Second, recent controversies undermine Western efforts to win the trust of local Afghan populations. In fact, neither proposition ought to be disproven by what happened, especially if the acts were committed by a single murderer in Kabul and a single soldier on a rampage in a village. But in this war, we are well past proofs. The conflict's inherent contradictions are being laid increasingly bare, and what might have passed with little notice five years ago will now be taken as justification, by those opposed to a settlement, for sowing further distrust.
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Well, Karzai the Corrupt is now calling for US troops to pull back from the country side and stay in the barracks and the Taliban no longer thinks it needs to even pretend to bargain with us. The chances of a YA strategy are zero. US Marines are disarmed before listening to SecDef Panetta speak.
Is there anything left to our efforts there?
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Well, Karzai the Corrupt is now calling for US troops to pull back from the country side and stay in the barracks and the Taliban no longer thinks it needs to even pretend to bargain with us. The chances of a YA strategy are zero. US Marines are disarmed before listening to SecDef Panetta speak.
Is there anything left to our efforts there?
I like to call it "The Ripley plan".
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q
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Well, so much for those little school girls who have risked their lives to go to school , , ,
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Well, so much for those little school girls who have risked their lives to go to school , , ,
It obviously was not the will of allah! Buraq be praised!
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/01/us-afghanistan-idUSTRE8100E520120201 (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/01/us-afghanistan-idUSTRE8100E520120201)
Taliban vows to retake Afghanistan: report
(Reuters) - The Taliban, backed by Pakistan, remains confident despite a decade of NATO efforts that it will retake control of Afghanistan, NATO said in a new classified report that raises more questions about Afghanistan's future as foreign forces withdraw.
"Taliban commanders, along with rank and file members, increasingly believe their control of Afghanistan is inevitable. Though the Taliban suffered severely in 2011, its strength, motivation, funding and tactical proficiency remains intact," according to an excerpt of the report, published by the Times of London and the BBC.
"While they are weary of war, they see little hope for a negotiated peace. Despite numerous tactical setbacks, surrender is far from their collective mindset. For the moment, they believe that continuing the fight and expanding Taliban governance are their only viable courses of action," the published excerpts said.
Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, confirmed the existence of the document, but military officials downplayed it as a depiction of the views of thousands of Taliban detainees who were interviewed by NATO officials.
"The classified document in question is a compilation of Taliban detainee opinions," Cummings said. "It's not an analysis, nor is it meant to be considered an analysis."
Still, the published excerpts paint a troubling picture of the Afghan war more than 10 years after the Taliban government was toppled, and as foreign forces begin to go home in earnest.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Wednesday the United States was aiming to complete its combat role in Afghanistan by mid- to late 2013, shifting to a training role.
The report's findings - including assertions that the Taliban had not formally split from international extremists - could also reinforce the view of Taliban hard-liners that they should not negotiate with the United States and President Hamid Karzai's unpopular government while in a position of strength.
Hours after the Times report, the Afghan Taliban said that no peace negotiation process had been agreed to with the international community, "particularly the Americans."
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that before any negotiations, confidence-building measures must be completed, putting pressure on Washington to meet demands for the release of five Taliban in U.S. custody.
The hard-line Islamist movement also said it had no plans to hold preliminary peace talks with Afghanistan's government in Saudi Arabia, dismissing media reports of talks in the kingdom.
Britain's Kabul ambassador, William Patey, wrote on his Twitter feed that "if elements of the Taliban think that in 2015 they can take control of Afghanistan they will be in for a shock." He did not say if he was referring to the NATO report.
"We really do believe that militarily we are making an impact on the Taliban," said Captain John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.
PAKISTAN LINK
The published excerpts of the report also gave further indication of the Taliban's reliance on neighboring Pakistan, where elements of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency has long had links to the Taliban.
"Reflections from detainees indicate that Pakistan's manipulation of Taliban senior leadership continues unabated. The Taliban themselves do not trust Pakistan, yet there is a widespread acceptance of the status quo in lieu of realistic alternatives," another excerpt published by the Times read.
The report overshadowed a visit to Kabul by Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar designed to repair ties and raise the issue with Karzai of peace talks with the Taliban.
"I can disregard this as a potentially strategic leak. ... This is old wine in an even older bottle," she told reporters, repeating Pakistan's denials it backs militant groups.
Khar, whose visit was the first high-level meeting in months between officials from both countries, added the neighbors should stop blaming each other for strained cross-border ties.
The Times said the "highly classified" report was put together by the U.S. military at Bagram air base, near Kabul, for top NATO officers last month. It was based on interrogations of more than 4,000 Taliban and al Qaeda detainees, it said.
Kirby declined to comment on the specifics of the report, but did acknowledge "long-standing concerns about the ties between elements of the ISI and the Taliban. This is not a new notion."
Large swathes of Afghanistan have been handed back to Afghan security forces, with the last foreign combat troops due to leave by the end of 2014. While some foreign soldiers will stay, likely to conduct counterterrorism operations, many Afghans doubt their security forces can stave off insurgents.
NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu, speaking in Brussels, played down the implications and said a surge offensive had seen the Taliban suffer "tremendous setbacks."
"We know that they have lost a lot of ground and a lot of leaders, and we also know that support for the Taliban is at an all-time low," she said.
As of January 1, 889 U.S. soldiers had been killed in a conflict that was launched after the September 11, 2001, attacks and has drained almost half a trillion dollars from U.S. coffers.
'WRONG POLICIES'
New accusations of Pakistani collusion with the Taliban could further strain ties between Western powers and Islamabad.
Critics say Pakistan uses militants as proxies to counter the growing influence of India in Afghanistan. The belief that Pakistan supports the insurgents is widely held in Afghanistan.
"It would be a mistake now for the international community to leave Afghanistan, and drop us in a dark ocean," said Afghan telecommunications worker Farid Ahmad Totakhil.
Pakistan is reviewing ties with the United States, which have suffered a series of setbacks since a U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in May last year humiliated Pakistan's powerful generals.
A November 26 cross-border NATO air attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers deepened the crisis, prompting Pakistan to close supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is seen as critical to U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. Yet Islamabad has resisted U.S. pressure to go after insurgent groups like the Taliban, and argues Washington's approach overlooks complex realities on the ground.
Pakistan says the United States should attempt to bring all militant groups into a peace process and fears a 2014 combat troop exit could be hasty, plunging the region into the kind of chaos seen after the Soviet exit in 1989.
"They don't need any backing," Tariq Azim, of the Pakistani Senate's Defence Committee, told Reuters, referring to the Taliban. "Everybody knows that after 10 years, they (NATO) have not been able to control a single province in Afghanistan because of the wrong policies they have been following."
The Taliban announced this month it would open a political office in Qatar to support possible reconciliation talks. There has been talk of efforts to hold separate talks in Saudi Arabia.
U.S. lawmakers also pressed the Pentagon on Wednesday to step up measures to ensure Western soldiers are not attacked by Afghan forces or employees of security firms working with NATO.
France said it would withdraw its troops completely by the end of 2013 after four of its soldiers were killed by a rogue Afghan soldier, the latest such "insider" attack.
The U.S. Defense Department said that over 40 similar attacks on foreign personnel had taken place since mid-2007, some of them by people working with private security contractors.
"We ... owe it to our military personnel to do everything we can to reduce this sort of risk," said Representative Adam Smith, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
Pentagon officials said NATO took extensive steps to vet Afghans working with foreign troops and was exploring ways to prevent future attacks.
(Additional reporting by Dan Magnowski, Rob Taylor and Amie Ferris-Rotman in KABUL, David Brunnstrom in BRUSSELS, Qasim Nauman in ISLAMABAD, Missy Ryan in WASHINGTON; Writing by Michael Georgy and Rob Taylor; Editing by Robert Birsel and Peter Cooney)
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My views on what the US needs to do have been relatively constant. The US needs leverage over Pak. There are 2 levers, 1.Independent Pashtoonistan (also a lever over Karzai), 2. Independent Balochistan (leverage over Pak and Iran). Incidentally, none of these areas ever belonged to Pak. Each of these plays will likely have different outcomes, but both will cut Pak down to size and seriously motivate them to stop terrorism and give up their nukes.
I prefer the Independent Pashtoonistan option, or even better support the breakdown of the Durrand line and allow the NWFP/FATA to join Afghanistan. Such a move will have the support of the Afghans, Pashtoons and the Taliban. The paki army will have a hard time fighting the pashtoon, their writ does not run in most of those areas anyway.
Once Pashtoonistan is freed, further leverage can be applied on Pak to give up its nukes and wrap up any remaining AQ types, or that they loose Balochistan next.
The long term outcomes would be greatly increased influence in Afghanistan and Central Asia, as well as access to the seaports of Balochistan.
P.S.
- Cutting aid is useful, currently around 1-2 Billion/year, but not enough, because China will pick up some of the slack. Also there is no real pain, because the army appropriates its share of the national wealth as needed, any left overs go for public welfare.
- I still struggle to understand the geopolitics and rationale of the US supporting Pak, especially vis a vis India. The old concept of maintaining balance of power between the two does not apply anymore. India is far ahead in technology and GDP, and only spends 1.9% of GDP on the military. The new balance of power game is between India and China. I am seeing a small tilt towards India, but the umbilical cord to Pak is frayed but intact.
- The US would be wise to team up with India in achieving the above two aims. India has excellent relations with Karzai and Balochistan, and even Iran for that matter. Something that has not been discussed so far is the Indus water treaty between India-Pak. The terms have been unsually favorable to pak, considering that its the lower riparian. India can abrogate the treaty and start afresh. Water wars between India-Pak and India-China will likely occur in the future. There are also some rivers that originate in Afghanistan that flow to Pak. Already Pak has taken India to court over water rights (lost every time), because as I said the terms are unusually favorable at the moment.
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More kills by an infiltrator: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/31/world/asia/afghan-militia-member-drugs-kills-colleagues.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120331
Businesses beginning to flee
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/31/world/asia/businesses-may-flee-afghanistan-after-troop-withdrawal.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120331
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A Passage to Indian-Pakistan Peace
A free trade agreement would give each country a stake in the other's success.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304444604577338170624567022.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN
With their sizable nuclear arsenals and tensions over territory, water and terrorism, India and Pakistan pose staggering risks to South Asia. But they also offer outsize economic potential for their citizens, the region and the world. Leaders in both nations seeking peace, stability and a prosperous future should seize on free trade as the best way to further these goals. The time has come for an India-Pakistan free trade agreement.
Free trade would substantially increase trade and investment flows, incomes and employment, and it would give the citizens of both countries a far greater stake in the other's success. Economists of varying backgrounds agree that free trade is a positive-sum economic activity for all involved. In the seven years following Nafta, trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico tripled and real wages rose in each country.
More at the link...
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The news of American soldiers "posing" with dead enemy. I don't get it. I really don't recall ever seeing anything like this from WW1, WW2, or Korean wars. I don't recall any WW2 photos of US troops "posed" in a way humiliating or showing off prisoners dead or alive like trophies. Am I missing something here? Is it just because everyone carries cameras now?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-afghan-photos-20120418,0,5032601.story
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They didnt have the access to cheap cameras that we have now. I have a very good friend who was in Viet Nam and has ears from his kills over there. It happens in every war.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/17/us-afghanistan-women-idUSBRE83G0PZ20120417
About 150 Afghan schoolgirls were poisoned on Tuesday after drinking contaminated water at a high school in the country's north, officials said, blaming it on conservative radicals opposed to female education.
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The news of American soldiers "posing" with dead enemy. I don't get it. I really don't recall ever seeing anything like this from WW1, WW2, or Korean wars. I don't recall any WW2 photos of US troops "posed" in a way humiliating or showing off prisoners dead or alive like trophies. Am I missing something here? Is it just because everyone carries cameras now?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-afghan-photos-20120418,0,5032601.story
Yes it happened in the past. War is ugly. It should be avoided because of the bad press but I personally could give a rat's ass about jihadist remains. Piss on them, feed them to pigs, whatever.
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BD: Michael Yon has something about the poisoning on his site but I haven't had the time to read it yet.
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As noted on Drudge complete silence from the MSM. I remember quite well during Vietnam hearing EVERY single day the death and injury count on the networks. Remarkable hypocracy. When W was President we heard constant daily baggering about Guatanomo and water boarding as torture including from the phoney American in the WH. We have our own people dying and near silence. I heard the ex CIA guy on Hannity speaking last night how he was offended about the he and others being accused of torturing people at the same time I hear the jerk in chief running around taking credit for essentially murdering Bin Ladin in cold blood. Not that I care about Bin Laden but why is one politically correct but not the other - answer - politics.
http://www.unknownsoldiersblog.com/2012/05/bigger-than-day.html
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Both the NYT and the USA Today have fallen troops section of their front section. That isn't silence or ignoring. And, the thing about news is the "new." Old news is an oxymoron, though I think we should debate/discuss the wisdom of this situation.
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Both the NYT and the USA Today have fallen troops section of their front section. That isn't silence or ignoring. ...
This is an interesting point and a credit to those publications missed by those of us who read around on the internet.
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Last night on the Brett Baier Report on FOX one of its senior foreign correspondents (woman with really short greying hair) made some interesting comments.
She spoke about how the ISI came to support the Taliban as Afg. was sinking into war lord anarchy after the Soviet withdrawal in hope of promoting stability and building alliance with the Pashtuns (and Pathans?) and that its original intention included building a gas pipeline from central Asia to the Indian Ocean.
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Well Bigdog perhaps you are not old enough to remember Vietnam.
I agree with Doug. Good for the NYS(limes) and USA today. As for cable and internet yahoo news I don't see much.
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Well Bigdog perhaps you are not old enough to remember Vietnam.
I agree with Doug. Good for the NYS(limes) and USA today. As for cable and internet yahoo news I don't see much.
You may not have noticed that since the mid-1970's there has been a bit of change in the media environment. Moreover, as I noted, two of the largest newspapers (for whatever that is worth these days) covers exactly what you said isn't covered in their front sections. Here, let's take a quick look at some websites:
Here is the Huffington Post ignoring the casualty rate: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/obama-afghanistan-_b_1470191.html
Here is the Washington Post ignoring the casualty rate, with pictures even: http://apps.washingtonpost.com/national/fallen/
And Fox, in an AP article: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/05/01/us-military-deaths-in-afghanistan-at-1828/
If only I could that data: http://icasualties.org/oef/
Also, remember all the pissed off conservatives talking about how the constant coverage of the body count in Somalia and then later in Iraq and Afghanistan undermined the mission? I'll see if I can find some footage of bodies being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu as reminder. Talk about hypocrisy...
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'This week with
David Brinkley George Stephanopolous' ABC Sunday mornings also has kept their feature of naming and honoring the dead. A credit to them.
I don't watch evening network news but it would be interesting to know if there is consistency. My selective memory recalls it being the lead if not only story every day from Iraq under Bush until they finally had a bad economy to crow about.
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"Better in the Afpakia thread , , ," Okay, so moved.
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I had to read to the end of a good piece, critical of the President, to find out the word missing was "victory".
http://news.investors.com/article/609958/201205020818/obama-visits-afghanistan-to-talk-troop-withdrawal-speech-text.htm?p=full
...
"the document he signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a meaningless basic agreement to talk later about forging a real agreement."
...
"Tuesday night's speech from Kabul emphasizing withdrawal was his first substantive statement in eleven (11!) months. Nothing to the nation from its leader on an ongoing war for nearly one year, while finding time for 124 campaign fundraiser speeches, more golf games and vacations."
...
"One little-noticed provision of the agreement Obama and Karzai signed Tuesday, however, is that American troops will remain in Afghanistan for not one, not two, not even three more years. They will be there for 12 more years, until 2024, helping. So, John McCain was correct after all about lengthy U.S. troop stationings."
(More plus full text of the President's remarks at the link.)
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"You may not have noticed that since the mid-1970's there has been a bit of change in the media environment."
Yes that is true. There were newspapers, some radio and 6 oclock and 11 oclock news. So maybe the 24/7 news, media, internet cycle results in stories "blending" in or getting lost in the blitz.
" Also, remember all the pissed off conservatives talking about how the constant coverage of the body count in Somalia and then later in Iraq and Afghanistan undermined the mission?"
No actually, I don't.
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" Also, remember all the pissed off conservatives talking about how the constant coverage of the body count in Somalia and then later in Iraq and Afghanistan undermined the mission?"
No actually, I don't.
Vietnam: "The correspondents' reports began to reflect the popular doubts that had been rising among the American public, primarily because of the increasing numbers of casualties.... Because of the effort to reveal the truth from correspondents, many Americans began to doubt the government and the war. The media and the American people alike began losing hope in the government and war." (http://voices.yahoo.com/how-media-coverage-vietnam-war-changed-america-667863.html)
Somalia: "Horrifying footage of Somalis dragging the body of a dead American soldier through the streets followed, prompting U.S. officials to withdraw." (http://www.brookings.edu/events/2002/0123media_journalism.aspx) By the way, here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbSuBZLlSr8
Afghanistan/Iraq: "...the military's fears that the news media only focuses on deaths and not the other, more positive aspects of military operations...". (http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA435124)
“Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of US soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped coffins,” wrote the Post’s White House reporter Dana Milbank. “To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers’ homecomings on all military bases.”
"This local coverage of US military deaths "actually has a bigger affect on public opinion than the overall trends," said Matt Baum, an associate professor of politics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
But with the US military death toll hitting 2787 today, analysts said even local media coverage struggles to overcome the numbing affect of the steady flow of deaths." (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1723374/posts)
"On October 25, 2005 the Department of Defense announced the 2,000th U.S. death from the war as Staff Sergeant George T. Alexander Jr., who was killed when a roadside bomb detonated near his M2 Bradley in the city of Samarra.[54] In response, Senators including Dick Durbin made statements opposing the war, and activists held six hundred anti-war protests and candlelight vigils across the United States.[55] In contrast, the Pentagon downplayed the death — Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, chief spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, told the Associated Press that "the 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives."[56][57][58]" (must have been the media, and not the administration and/or military) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War)
A soldier's view of the media coverage: "Roche also addresses media coverage of U.S. military casualties in Iraq:
I don't know why the media insists on trumpeting the idea that all of us are tired and worn out and just want to stop fighting. I don't, and I am not alone. The fact is that we are not experiencing casualty rates anywhere near past conflicts, nor for that matter as bad as during peacetime. There were weeks in Vietnam when 350-400 Americans died, and in other wars thousands would die in single battles. Nothing like that is happening now." (http://www.nationalcenter.org/PRRocheIraqCasualtiesMorale805.html)
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BG,
Are you saying the coverage of the wars is not different during W's Presidency and O's Presidency?
Are you saying the MSM is not going after O the same way they went after W?
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I am saying that we, as a people, are tired of war coverage. New casualties, unfortunately, don't resinate like they used to. I am also saying that on the one hand, conservatives (including an entire presidential administration) wanted to avoid coverage of the casualty rate, and now that the media have moved on and aren't reporting on it (as requested), those same folks are pissed about it.
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http://fredthompsonsamerica.com/2012/05/03/afghanistan-a-lost-cause/
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http://www.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2012/05/03/us-credibility-on-afghanistan-is-dubious-and-suspect
Bigdog writes:
"I am saying that we, as a people, are tired of war coverage" True. Other differences were the 60's culture which included a youth backlash to the war with the drugs, the antiestablishment thing, civil rights, look "what we did to the Indians" thinking. Most probably the draft at that time pissed of a lot of people. Now of course the military is all volunteer. I presume that made a big difference.
I remember growing up as a kid in the 60's getting tired of the daily counts on the 6 or 11 oclock news at that time. But then again I never had to worry about the draft and I knew no one "over there". OTOH I didn't get the concept of bashing of our country and troops at the time. I thought we were there to fight communism and it seemed like a noble cause. Our troops were risking life limb and their livelihoods and I could not understand the disrespect they got from the people who are now OWS and in power as the IVY elites now.
BDG I think you and I agreed in previous posts we would like our troops home. IN Vietnam in retrespect while our intentions were good it was not worth the costs.
I am dubious about whether this war is either.
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ccp, I agree with much of what is said here, by you and by others... and we largely agree here. However, I many of my posts are intended to be either thought provoking or to add clarity or nuance to a thought. In this case, the clarity I sought came from this line: "As noted on Drudge complete silence from the MSM. I remember quite well during Vietnam hearing EVERY single day the death and injury count on the networks. Remarkable hypocrisy." It simply isn't true that MSM outlets completely ignore the death count. Moreover, to the extent that it isn't front page (or lead story stuff), I wanted to point out that the Bush administration didn't want it on the front pages, and so for Drudge (or you) to call this hypocrisy also isn't true.
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While I think BD has a fair point, FWIW my sense of things is that the extent and the tone of the death coverage tends to be guided by whether it is good or bad for the Reps or Dems.
I for one would like to see LOTS of coverage of battlefield heroics, of which there is virtually none.
Returning to the merits of the Afpakia War; at this point it has become so fg conceptually muddled that I find it hard to say what the hell to do. The complete conceptual changes advocated here have zero chance of coming into being and without ti or something like it, what the hell are we doing?
I think Sen. Fred Thompson's assessment of Baraq which I posted the other day rather accurate. OTOH I also think that Michael Yon's assessment that Bush had us on a losing trajectory also to be accurate. I cannot say the argument that the Iraq War (which I actively supported) became a distraction from a proper follow-up and finish to Afpakia is implausible or irrational. Putting these two together it is not irrational for the American people to conclude after ten years that for whatever the reasons, this war is not getting lead by either party very well and that therefore we may as well come home.
Further discussion really needs to address the deeper questions of American foreign policy, but for now for this thread I will say that IMHO Baraq has thrown away the last chance to get it right and that a truly heavy price will be paid much sooner and much more costly than is generally realized.
Pakistan has the world's fourth largest nuke stockpile and it is already a quasi-jihadi state. With Iran on its trajectory and the Russians threatening to take out our missile defenses in eastern Europe and Iran and Russia cozying up to the Chavez narco state in Venezuela and various accumulating Chinese moves in Latin America and the Carribean, we may be getting to Ron Paul's Fortress America much sooner than anyone realizes or cares for , , ,
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/opinion/finish-off-al-qaeda-stop-trying-to-fix-afghanistan.html?_r=3&hp
OSAMA BIN LADEN’S death a year ago Wednesday, at the hands of a Navy SEAL team, revealed that America has been fighting two wars in Afghanistan. One is against Al Qaeda, and is clearly in America’s national interest; the other war, to fix Afghanistan, is much more questionable. We must take lessons from the way we fight terrorism in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere: Focus more on finishing the fight against Al Qaeda, and less on bringing good government to a failing state.
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In which case too bad that the foto op agreement signed between Baraq and Karzai now blocks our as yet unquantified troops to be left in Afghanistan from launching attacks against anyone in Pakistan , , , or Iran.
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http://www.dickmorris.com/afghanistan-is-not-worth-a-single-american-life-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/
Morris flogs his new book. Says it is a narco state. Forget the Taliban. Focus drone attacks on AQ. Misses that the Agreement that Baraq just signed with mega-corrupt Karzai, blocks us from launching drone attacks into Pakistan.
In contrast Romney seems to have a very tin ear on this subject-- he accurately notes that CiC Baraq has ignored our generals terribly and winds up sounding like he wants us to get in deeper. This is a losing proposition in domestic American politics. Across the spectrum few one believe in the Afg mission as currently conceived-- and understandably so.
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By DAVID FEITH
Washington, D.C.
'The distant rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to judge correctly what is going on in front."
The words are from Ulysses S. Grant's recollections of the Battle of Shiloh. But they are being quoted to me by H.R. McMaster, arguably the Pentagon's foremost warrior-scholar, to stress that the increasingly common American perception that the Afghan War is lost doesn't jibe with what he witnessed during his recent 20-month deployment to Afghanistan.
"The difficulties are apparent," says the two-star Army general, "but oftentimes the opportunities are masked."
For a sense of those opportunities, consider some of the metrics of battle. When Gen. McMaster arrived in Afghanistan in July 2010—as President Obama's surge reached full strength—enemy attacks numbered 4,000 a month. A year later, they had dropped to 3,250. In March, there were 1,700. Every month from May 2011 through March 2012 (the latest with available data) had fewer attacks than the same month the year before, the longest sustained reduction of the war.
Meanwhile, Afghan security forces will number 350,000 this summer, up from 240,000 when Gen. McMaster arrived. Afghans now lead nearly half of all combat operations. Eight million Afghan children attend school, including three million girls, compared to one million and zero girls in 2001. Where finding a telephone 10 years ago often required traveling a full day, now more than 12 million Afghans own cellphones (out of 32 million total).
"Our soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors, working alongside Afghans, have shut down the vast majority of the physical space in which the enemy can operate," says Gen. McMaster. "The question is, how do we consolidate those gains politically and psychologically?"
The political and psychological dimensions of warfare have long fascinated the general, who first became famous in the Army when he led his vastly outnumbered tank regiment to victory at the Battle of 73 Easting in the first Gulf War. Six years later, he published "Dereliction of Duty," based on his Ph.D. thesis indicting the Vietnam-era military leadership for failing to push back against a commander in chief, Lyndon Johnson, who was more interested in securing his Great Society domestic agenda than in doing what was necessary—militarily and politically—to prevail in Southeast Asia. For 15 years it's been considered must-reading at the Pentagon.
But Gen. McMaster really earned his renown applying the tenets of counterinsurgency strategy, or COIN, during the war in Iraq. As a colonel in 2005, he took responsibility for a place called Tal Afar. In that city of 200,000 people, the insurgents' "savagery reached such a level that they stuffed the corpses of children with explosives and tossed them into the streets in order to kill grieving parents attempting to retrieve the bodies of their young," wrote Tal Afar's mayor in 2006. "This was the situation of our city until God prepared and delivered unto them the courageous soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment."
Gen. McMaster's troops fought in Tal Afar with the understanding that victory would not be achieved by using maximum violence to hunt and kill insurgents. Instead, the key tasks were to secure and improve life for the local population, establish reliable local government, and project determination and staying power.
Before long, President George W. Bush was citing Tal Afar as a model. It helped inspire the strategy shift that turned around the Iraq War under David Petraeus, Gen. McMaster's mentor and a fellow West Point graduate with a Ph.D. and a penchant for quoting theorists like Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), the Prussian officer who famously defined war as the continuation of politics by other means.
Enlarge Image
CloseKen Fallin
.Now Gen. McMaster has been attempting to apply counterinsurgency strategy in another war most Americans have written off.
As the head of Task Force Shafafiyat—the word means "transparency" in Pashto—his job was to identify how U.S. and Afghan funds flow not only as payments to contractors, subcontractors and local Afghan officials, but as kickbacks or protection money to criminal networks and insurgents. Since August 2010, the coalition says, it has vetted some 1,400 American, Afghan and foreign companies, barring or suspending more than 150 firms and individuals from doing business with the U.S.
Trying to stop corruption in Afghanistan is often seen in the West as akin to trying to stop the tides. Gen. McMaster calls that view "bigotry masquerading as cultural sensitivity."
But there is little doubt that corruption is a formidable problem. The abuse of official positions of power for personal gain, the general said last year in Kabul, "is robbing Afghanistan of much-needed revenue, undermining rule of law, degrading the effectiveness of state institutions, and eroding popular confidence in the government."
In 2010, Kabul Bank—Afghanistan's largest, and the main source of payment for Afghan security forces—nearly brought down the country's financial system when almost $1 billion in reserves apparently disappeared into the briefcases and Dubai villas of Afghan elites. In another case, Gen. McMaster's investigators found evidence that Afghanistan's former surgeon general had stolen tens of millions of dollars worth of drugs from military hospitals.
Though corruption charges have dogged senior officials and intimates of Afghan President Hamid Karzai for years, not a single person with high-level political connections has been convicted of wrongdoing. In many cases, Mr. Karzai appears to have personally blocked or hampered efforts at accountability.
Staying politic, Gen. McMaster notes that Mr. Karzai and other senior officials have at last acknowledged the problem publicly. "Now, have they matched that with decisive action? No. But is [public acknowledgment] a first step? Yes it is."
Perhaps Gen. McMaster is reluctant to pin too much blame on Mr. Karzai because he thinks the root of Afghanistan's corruption problem goes deeper, to three decades of "trauma that it's been through, the legacy of the 1990s civil war . . . [and] the effects of the narcotics trade." Add to that the unintended consequences of sudden Western attention starting in 2001: "We did exacerbate the problem with lack of transparency and accountability built into the large influx of international assistance that came into a government that lacked mature institutions."
Yet the Afghan War's most important factor, in his view, could be the Afghan people's expectations for the future. "Why did the Taliban collapse so quickly in 2001?" he asks. "The fundamental reason was that every Afghan was convinced of the inevitability of the Taliban's defeat."
Today it's not clear who the strong horse is, so many Afghans are hedging their bets. "What you see in Afghanistan oftentimes," the general says, "is a short-term-maximization-of-gains mentality—get as much out of the system as you can to build up a power base in advance of a post-[NATO], post-international-community Afghanistan."
In this respect, the Strategic Partnership Agreement signed last week by President Obama and Mr. Karzai may help, since it pledges some American military and diplomatic commitments through 2024. Gen. McMaster calls it "immensely important." Still, it doesn't erase the record of Obama administration rhetoric to the effect that American withdrawal is inevitable even if the enemy's defeat is not.
Gen. McMaster steers far clear of any such political criticism. Instead, he argues that the Afghan people can be convinced to bet against the insurgency—and in favor of their government—if they see a crackdown on public corruption.
Some of the signs are good. Afghan civil society, he says hopefully, has a growing number of "groups that don't want to see the gains of the past 10 years reversed, that want a better future for their children, and that are demanding necessary reforms from their leaders." Last year saw the launch of the Right and Justice Party, with an anticorruption message and multiethnic leadership of Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras.
One of the general's historical models is Colombia, where a few years ago many people believed the government couldn't stand up to the narco-terrorist FARC insurgency. "What was the problem of Colombia in the late '90s? It was political will to take [the FARC] on," he says, adding that U.S. counternarcotics and other efforts helped lay the groundwork that Álvaro Uribe built on after winning Colombia's presidency in 2002.
We could see such an outcome again, says Gen. McMaster, especially given "the innate weakness of Afghanistan's enemies."
"What do the Taliban have to offer the Afghan people?" he asks. They are "a criminal organization, criminal because they engage in mass murder of innocent people, and criminal because they're also the largest narcotics-trafficking organization in the world. Are these virtuous religious people? No, these are murderous, nihilistic, irreligious people who we're fighting—we along with Afghans who are determined to not allow them to return."
Taliban groups, he adds, are increasingly seen by Afghans "as a tool of hostile foreign intelligence agencies. These are people who live in comfort in Pakistan and send their children to private schools while they destroy schools in Afghanistan." He notes, too, that indigenous Afghan fighters are wondering where their leadership is: "One of the maxims of military leadership is that you share the hardships of your troops, you lead from the front. Well they're leading from comfortable villas in Pakistan. So there's growing resentment, and this could be an opportunity to convince key communities inside of Afghanistan into joining the political process."
As a tool for this, Gen. McMaster praises the U.S. military's "village stability operations," which send small teams of Special Forces to live among Afghans in remote villages vulnerable to Taliban intimidation.
Still, it's easy to get carried away by the glimmers of hope, and the general is very much a realist. For one thing, Pakistan remains a haven for insurgency, and Gen. McMaster says little more than that it "remains to be seen" whether Pakistan's leaders will conclude that their interests lie in defeating the Taliban.
Just as worrisome, though far less noticed, is the influence of Iran, which is pressuring Kabul to reject the Strategic Partnership Agreement.
"Many of the media platforms that operate in Afghanistan—television, radio, print media—are either wholly captured and run, or owned by hostile organizations or entities," Gen. McMaster says. The Iranian government has about 20 television stations operating in Western Afghanistan. Another disheartening hearts-and-minds metric: Iran and other foreign entities run more schools in Herat City than does the Afghan government.
Near the end of our interview, we turn to the future of American warfare. U.S. troops are scheduled to end combat operations in Afghanistan in 2014, perhaps sooner. Focus is turning from the Middle East to East Asia, and to the air and sea power required in the Pacific.
Does that mean that for the foreseeable future the U.S. won't "do" another Afghanistan or Iraq? "We have a perfect record in predicting future wars—right? . . . And that record is 0%," says the general. "If you look at the demands that have been placed on our armed forces in recent years, I think the story that will be told years from now is one of adaptability to mission sets and circumstances that were not clearly defined or anticipated prior to those wars."
That's fortunate, Gen. McMaster makes clear, in light of Clausewitz's 200-year-old warning not "to turn war into something that's alien to its nature—don't try to define war as you would like it to be."
Mr. Feith is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.
A version of this article appeared May 12, 2012, on page A13 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Warrior's-Eye View of Afghanistan.
===============
Thoughts?
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North Waziristan and the U.S. Strategy for Afghanistan
May 16, 2012 | 1244 GMT
U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in Seoul on March 27
U.S. and Pakistani officials have been intensely negotiating the reopening of a NATO supply route that has been closed for almost six months. On May 14, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said Pakistan needed to close the supply route to make a point, but Islamabad is now ready to move forward. Washington welcomed her comments but cautioned that the two sides are still working on a deal.
After months of hard bargaining a new agreement will probably lead to the reopening of the supply route. The agreement will not resolve every issue, especially since Pakistan wants to redefine the nature of its cooperation with the United States on Afghan security. Pakistan will continue to demand that Washington end its unilateral unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strikes, which largely target militants in Pakistan's North Waziristan. Pakistan could use the U.S.-Taliban negotiations to extract concessions from the United States on this issue.
Analysis
North Waziristan is the only tribal agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that Pakistan has excluded from its ongoing offensive against Taliban rebels and their transnational allies. Pakistan has avoided attempts to bring North Waziristan under state control. Any such effort would be complicated by the intricate relationships among the area's tribes and militant groups, the region's difficult terrain, Islamabad's lack of resources and other domestic constraints.
.Control of North Waziristan is split between tribal warlord Hafiz Gul Bahadur and the Taliban's Haqqani faction. Neither entity is hostile toward Pakistan. Bahadur is based in the southwestern stretches of North Waziristan, and his militiamen fight NATO and Afghan security forces across the border in Afghanistan. The Haqqanis use their base in the northeastern end of the agency to attack eastern Afghanistan and Kabul. Transnational jihadists such as al Qaeda and its Pakistani allies also sustain themselves in the region by working with Bahadur and the Haqqanis.
Islamabad will have to manage the situation on its Afghan border long after NATO has withdrawn; Pakistan cannot afford belligerent relations with Bahadur or the Haqqanis. Because of this, Pakistan is reluctant to expand its counterinsurgency operations in North Waziristan, but does not consider the area to be permanently outside of state control.
Islamabad's FATA Strategy
Islamabad has tried since the spring of 2009 to retake northwestern areas that fell under Taliban control in great part due to the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Currently the focus is on clearing and holding areas, but eventually Islamabad wants to integrate the tribal areas into the state better than their historically autonomous status would allow.
Pakistan's strategy for North Waziristan is linked to U.S.-Taliban negotiations and the withdrawal of NATO forces. As an integral wing of the Taliban, the Haqqanis would participate in any power-sharing agreement coming out of U.S.-Taliban negotiations and would no longer need to operate out of North Waziristan. Islamabad could then recognize Bahadur's territory and formalize his status. In return, Bahadur and the Haqqanis might assist in isolating and dealing with al Qaeda and its allies in the region.
Islamabad has always preferred this long-term and rather vague counterinsurgency strategy. Pakistan would rather avoid further aggravating the insurgency and being drawn into a protracted fight in the tribal areas that could reverse the modest gains made in the other six agencies. This strategy directly conflicts with Washington's need for the Pakistanis to crack down on both al Qaeda and the Haqqanis. As a result, the United States focused its unilateral UAV strike campaign on North Waziristan, which has caused increased anger in Pakistan over the past five years.
Negotiating With the United States
U.S.-Pakistani relations fell to their lowest point in 2011 after a critical series of events. Meanwhile, the country's civilian leadership experienced an unprecedented surge in power relative to the historically powerful security establishment, leading to a democratization of policymaking. These trends collided on Nov. 26, 2011, when U.S. aircraft killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at a paramilitary outpost on the Afghan border. Islamabad reacted sharply to the incident, shutting down the supply route and linking its reopening to a renegotiated security cooperation relationship.
A key demand in the negotiations has been Pakistan's call for the United States to end unilateral UAV strikes, which have come to symbolize general U.S. unilateral capabilities in the country. Islamabad is especially worried about a repeat of last year's U.S. Special Operations Forces raid that killed al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in a major urban area in the country. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exacerbated those concerns during her visit to India in May when she said that Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second most important figure, is hiding in Pakistan.
The Pakistanis realize that an end to UAV strikes will be tough to extract from the United States. On May 4, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani asked legislators to keep in mind that all foreign fighters should be expelled and that Pakistani territory should not be used against any other country. Gilani added that his government will discuss these issues with the Obama administration.
Gilani was signaling to Pakistan's political and security stakeholders that the Pakistanis have a strong incentive to consider expanding their ongoing counterinsurgency offensive to North Waziristan. Such a move could negate Washington's justification for unilateral UAV strikes. But before his government can negotiate with the Obama administration on this matter, Gilani needs majority support, which is why a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry told reporters May 3 that Islamabad is looking into alternatives to the UAV strikes.
However, such a move is not certain to lead Washington to actually halt its UAV strikes. The Pakistanis have another option in this regard. The U.S.-Taliban negotiations offer Islamabad an opportunity to tie North Waziristan's main militant forces into the United States' attempts to craft a political settlement in Afghanistan.
The Diplomatic Route
Washington has long demanded that Afghan insurgents part ways with al Qaeda as a key condition for a political settlement with the Afghan Taliban. The Taliban intend to comply, but enforcement capabilities on both sides of the border are questionable, especially since most of the remnants of the old al Qaeda core are actually in Pakistan. In October 2011, Clinton said the Obama administration sought negotiations with the Haqqanis. Clinton confirmed that Pakistani officials arranged a meeting with representatives of the insurgent faction in the summer of 2011. If Pakistan can bring the Haqqanis and Bahadur to the negotiating table with the United States, Islamabad might stake out a key role in the shaping of a post-NATO Afghanistan.
This arrangement could help the Pakistanis re-establish control over North Waziristan and thus significantly reduce Washington's need for unilateral action on Pakistani territory. Not only does this sync with the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, but it also addresses Pakistan's need for cooperation from North Waziristan's two principal players to drive out al Qaeda and other hostile militants.
To get Bahadur and the Haqqanis to cooperate, Pakistan would build upon existing understandings. This is very similar to how Islamabad worked with Maulvi Nazir, the pro-Pakistani warlord in South Waziristan, when it launched its limited offensive in that area in the fall of 2009. Any undertaking to rid North Waziristan of hostile militant factions would require Pakistan to take a careful approach that avoids tampering with the interests of Bahadur and the Haqqanis.
What North Waziristan Stands to Gain
The Afghan Taliban, the Haqqanis, Bahadur and other smaller factions have always known that at some point they would have to move away from the transnational jihadists -- but they wanted to gain power first. Over the years, however, the situation was complicated by the rise of an anti-Pakistan insurgency and the souring of U.S.-Pakistani relations. These actors know that Pakistan can help them realize their goals only when it is internally secure and on decent working terms with the United States.
Both North Waziristani groups are interested in working with Pakistan, the only state actor that can facilitate a deal with the United States. The Haqqanis are eyeing a future role as the main political force in eastern Afghanistan and want to gain major representation in Kabul. Bahadur is interested in expanding his territory in North Waziristan. He wants to secure his political and economic interests across the border and he wants formal recognition as a pre-eminent stakeholder in the tribal agency.
Well aware that their interests are best served when the Pakistani side of the border is secure, the Haqqanis and Bahadur have in fact been trying to prevent Pakistani Taliban rebels from fighting Islamabad. These efforts have been largely unsuccessful, but they suggest that both players are willing to do more for the right price, though both factions oppose a major ground offensive in their areas because it could undermine their authority.
To justify turning against other militants, Bahadur and the Haqqanis would also need to show their constituencies that they gained something substantial. If tribes and jihadists in their territory see the factions as having turned against them, they could resort to violence. But just as Islamabad appreciates the need to adjust its policy toward North Waziristan, Bahadur and the Haqqanis realize they need to shift gears. Their ability to take advantage of negotiations and to gain more power in the post-NATO period depends on it.
As was the case when the United States cut a deal with Iraq's Sunni tribes in 2007 to end the anti-U.S. insurgency and fight al Qaeda, both North Waziristani factions know that they will have to end any support to the hostile militants, or at least not oppose the Pakistan army when it moves to flush those militants out. They will only do so if they gain international recognition as legitimate political actors, which requires considerable progress in U.S.-Pakistani talks.
However, the United States will not negotiate with either player until it knows that Pakistan will actually engage in sanctuary denial efforts -- and more critically, that Bahadur and the Haqqanis will actually sever their ties with irreconcilable jihadists. There is a strong view within Washington that the North Waziristanis are too close to al Qaeda to truly cut their jihadist ties and that Pakistan cannot be trusted either. The Pakistanis are caught between Washington's need for Islamabad to bring the insurgents to the table and the Taliban's need to stage attacks to shape U.S. behavior in negotiations.
Before Pakistan can effectively mediate between the United States and the North Waziristanis, Islamabad and Washington have to sort out their issues and then agree that the Haqqanis and Bahadur constitute reconcilable insurgents. It is not clear whether this can be accomplished, but any agreement on North Waziristan will have to involve deals with the tribal and militant forces that operate there -- similar to the deal that the Obama administration is seeking with the Afghan Taliban.
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Its only money :-D, so the lossses that Pak suffered by stopping transit for 6 months needs to be compensated for....sort of like the IRS, penalty fees apply.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pakistan-seeks-5000-transit-fee-for-each-nato-container/2012/05/16/gIQAU8gkUU_story.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pakistan-seeks-5000-transit-fee-for-each-nato-container/2012/05/16/gIQAU8gkUU_story.html)
Pakistan seeks $5,000 transit fee for each NATO container
By Richard Leiby and Karen DeYoung, Updated: Wednesday, May 16, 7:19 PM
ISLAMABAD — Pakistani negotiators have proposed a fee of about $5,000 for each NATO shipping container and tanker that transits its territory by land into and out of Afghanistan.
The amount is a key sticking point in discussions about the terms of a deal that would allow the traffic to resume, about six months after Pakistan closed its border crossings, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.
The two countries are allies but their relationship has been plagued by mistrust over the last 50 years.
Officials said Tuesday that a deal was imminent, after they reached agreement in principal on reopening the transit corridors. But the details are being negotiated.
“The framework is ready, but we are now looking at rates,” a Pakistani official said.
A U.S. official emphasized that the United States has not agreed to any figure.
According to officials from both countries, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the closed-door negotiations here, Pakistan proposed the figure after calculating its total outlays for damaged infrastructure — primarily wear and tear on its roads from the heavy vehicles — as well as security costs and a newly imposed tariff.
Pakistani officials said they had also taken into account their belief that NATO, by using alternative, far longer transport routes through Central Asia, is paying at least double the amount they have requested.
Nonetheless, payment for what are known as the Pakistani GLOCs, for Ground Lines of Communication, has been difficult for the Pentagon to swallow, because access previously was considered free. But other U.S. officials have pointed out that the United States has given Pakistan billions over the past decade as compensation for its counterterrorism efforts. That money is expected to be discontinued as the new arrangements are put in place.
Pakistan says it is still owed more than $3 billion for past operations; the United States puts the figure at about $1.3 billion.
The transport agreement is being considered as a matter separate from other aspects of the bilateral security relationship, including Pakistan’s rejection of U.S. drone attacks on militants inside its borders. Discussions on that issue are continuing between senior intelligence officials.
Pakistan closed its borders to the shipments after a U.S. air raid in November along the Afghan border left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead. A U.S. military investigation concluded that both sides were at fault, and the United States expressed regret. But Pakistan called it an unprovoked attack and demanded an apology.
Before the closures, more than 70 percent of NATO’s supplies in Afghanistan — largely paid for and utilized by the United States — traveled over land from the Pakistani port of Karachi. The route has become even more important to U.S. and coalition forces as they begin the combat troop withdrawal scheduled for completion by the end of 2014.
The pullout will be discussed at a NATO summit in Chicago this weekend. The alliance invited Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to the summit this week once it became clear that a transit agreement was near.
Some analysts here speculated that Zardari might wait to announce in Chicago any new deal with NATO. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s unwieldy cabinet — 53 ministers in all — took up the matter but ended the day with no decision except to reinforce the Parliament’s recommendation that shipments contain no weaponry or lethal supplies.
U.S. officials noted that the parliamentary recommendations being debated referred only to nonlethal supplies traveling into Afghanistan but proposed no such restriction on outgoing goods.
Although Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told reporters after the Wednesday meeting that “no decision on NATO supplies will be made under any pressure,” the government here is eager to resolve the issue, which has left thousands of containers sitting in lots near two border crossings and countless Pakistani transport and other workers idle.
DeYoung reported from Washington.
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Looks like the paki govt has upped the tolls, from 250$/car toll to 5000$/car.
'Hafta' discord: US, Pak squabble over transit fee
Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN | May 20, 2012, 09.30PM IST
Article
WASHINGTON: The United States is all too familiar with Nafta - the North Atlantic Free trade Agreement - but it is now learning the meaning of 'hafta', the subcontinental expression for protection money collected by gangsters.
On the eve of the Nato summit in President Barack Obama's hometown Chicago to discuss the future of Afghanistan, Washington is locked in a bitter wrangle with Islamabad over the so-called ''transit fees'' for US/Nato containers carrying supplies through Pakistan to landlocked Afghanistan. Pakistan is demanding $5000 per container; the US says it is too much and expressions such as price-gouging and blackmail are being bandied around.
The scrap is getting ugly. Over the weekend, even as Pakistan's survivalist President Asif Ali Zardari arrived in Chicago as a late invitee, US defense secretary Leon Panetta stepped into the dispute raging in the lower level bureaucracy of both sides, ruling out the $ 5000 per container that Pakistan is demanding.
"Considering the financial challenges that we're facing, that's not likely," Panetta told Los Angeles Times of the Pakistani demand.
The US was paying Pakistan $250 per container till late last year before a rash of crises starting with the Raymond Davis episode and culminating with the Salala incident, with the Abbottabad raid to kill Osama bin Laden in between, brought the tormented ties between the two sides to a bitter pass. Pakistan has upped the ante and the price of cooperation since then, enhancing its reputation as a rentier state that uses self-generated crises to extract money. Islamabad's argument purportedly is that $5000 per container is still less than what the US is having to spend on the alternative Northern Distribution Network.
In Washington, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States Sherry Rehman told CNN that Pakistan is looking at a 'positive' conversation about reopening of Nato supply routes but it will be pre-mature to say when the trucks will resume supply. She also maintained that Pakistan is still demanding an apology from Washington for the death of Pakistani soldiers in a U.S attack on the Salala checkpoint.
But the US has hardened its stance on the issue after much debate within the administration about an apology. According to one account, the Obama administration was on the verge of issuing an apology on several occasions but backed off each time in the face of Pakistani depredations, including one episode involving Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when it was aborted midflight. The prevailing sentiment in Washington is now veering around to: When will Pakistan apologize to the world for harboring terrorists who have attacked targets across the world?
The US is now reconciled to the issue not being resolved before or during the summit, and in yet another snub to Pakistan, it has declined to announce any bilateral meeting between President Obama and Zardari. "We're not anticipating necessarily closing out those negotiations this weekend," Obama aide Ben Rhodes said on Saturday, adding, "A lot of it is happening, frankly, at the working level between our governments." The working level, as it turns outs, isn't working very well.
The spat between the two sides is bound to get uglier. Last week, the US Congress approved an amendment to a bill under which Washington could block up to $650 million in proposed payments to Pakistan unless Islamabad lets coalition forces resume shipments. The vote was an overwhelming 412-1 in favor of the amendment, indicative of the mood in Congress. The US also has various other levers to bring Pakistan to heel, including squeezing bilateral and multilateral aid, which it has so far been reluctant to use.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/us/obamas-journey-to-reshape-afghanistan-war.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120520
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 19, 2012
It was just one brief exchange about Afghanistan with an aide late in 2009, but it suggests how President Obama’s thinking about what he once called “a war of necessity” began to radically change less than a year after he took up residency in the White House.
Not long before, after a highly contentious debate within a war cabinet that was riddled with leaks, Mr. Obama had reluctantly decided to order a surge of more than 30,000 troops. The aide told Mr. Obama that he believed military leaders had agreed to the tight schedule to begin withdrawing those troops just 18 months later only because they thought they could persuade an inexperienced president to grant more time if they demanded it.
“Well,” Mr. Obama responded that day, “I’m not going to give them more time.”
A year later, when the president and a half-dozen White House aides began to plan for the withdrawal, the generals were cut out entirely. There was no debate, and there were no leaks. And when Mr. Obama joins the leaders of other NATO nations in Chicago on Sunday and Monday, the full extent of how his thinking on Afghanistan has changed will be apparent. He will announce what he has already told the leaders in private: All combat operations led by American forces will cease in summer 2013, when the United States and other NATO forces move to a “support role” whether the Afghan military can secure the country or not.
Mr. Obama concluded in his first year that the Bush-era dream of remaking Afghanistan was a fantasy, and that the far greater threat to the United States was an unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan. So he narrowed the goals in Afghanistan, and narrowed them again, until he could make the case that America had achieved limited objectives in a war that was, in any traditional sense, unwinnable.
“Just think how big a reversal of approach this was in just two years,” one official involved in the administration debates on Afghanistan said. “We started with what everyone thought was a pragmatic vision but, at its core, was a plan for changing the way Afghanistan is wired. We ended up thinking about how to do as little wiring as possible.”
The lessons Mr. Obama has learned in Afghanistan have been crucial to shaping his presidency. Fatigue and frustration with the war have defined the strategies his administration has adopted to guide how America intervenes in the world’s messiest conflicts. Out of the experience emerged Mr. Obama’s “light footprint” strategy, in which the United States strikes from a distance but does not engage in years-long, enervating occupations. That doctrine shaped the president’s thinking about how to deal with the challenges that followed — Libya, Syria and a nuclear Iran.
In interviews over the past 18 months, Mr. Obama’s top national security aides described the evolution of the president’s views on Afghanistan as a result of three rude discoveries.
Mr. Obama began to question why Americans were dying to prop up a leader, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who was volatile, unreliable and willing to manipulate the ballot box. Faced with an economic crisis at home and a fiscal crisis that Mr. Obama knew would eventually require deep limits on Pentagon spending, he was also shocked, they said, by what the war’s cost would be if the generals’ counterinsurgency plan were left on autopilot — $1 trillion over 10 years. And the more he delved into what it would take to truly change Afghan society, the more he concluded that the task was so overwhelming that it would make little difference whether a large American and NATO force remained for 2 more years, 5 more years or 10 more years.
The remaking of American strategy in Afghanistan began, though no one knew it at the time, in a cramped conference room in Mr. Obama’s transition headquarters in late 2008. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, who had spent the last two years of the Bush administration trying to manage the many trade-offs necessary as the Iraq war consumed troop and intelligence resources needed in Afghanistan, arrived with a PowerPoint presentation.
The first slide that General Lute threw onto the screen caught the eye of Thomas E. Donilon, later President Obama’s national security adviser. “It said we do not have a strategy in Afghanistan that you can articulate or achieve,” Mr. Donilon recalled three years later. “We had been at war for eight years, and no one could explain the strategy.”
So in the first days of his presidency, Mr. Obama asked Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer with deep knowledge of the region, to lead a rapid review. At the time, the president was still speaking in campaign mode. He talked about remaking “an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs” in Afghanistan and a “civilian surge” to match the military effort. But he said little about the Riedel team’s central insight: that Pakistan posed a far greater threat.
Page 2 of 2)
“If we were honest with ourselves, we would call this problem ‘Pak/Af,’ not ‘Af/Pak,’ ” Mr. Riedel said shortly after turning in his report. But the White House would not dare admit that publicly — even that rhetorical reversal would further alienate the Pakistanis.
Mr. Obama agreed with Mr. Riedel, but thought the review did not point clearly enough toward a new strategy. To get it right, the president ordered up a far more thorough process that would involve everyone — military commanders and experts on civilian reconstruction, diplomats who could explore a negotiation with the Taliban, and intelligence officials who could assess which side of the war the Pakistanis were fighting on.
But he also began to reassess whether emerging victorious in Afghanistan was as necessary as he had once proclaimed. Ultimately, Mr. Obama agreed to double the size of the American force while training the Afghan armed forces, but famously insisted that, whether America was winning or losing, the drawdown would begin in just 18 months.
“I think he hated the idea from the beginning,” one of his advisers said of the surge. “He understood why we needed to try, to knock back the Taliban. But the military was ‘all in,’ as they say, and Obama wasn’t.”
The president’s doubts were cemented as the early efforts to take towns like Marja in Helmand Province took months longer than expected. To Mr. Obama and his aides, Marja proved that progress was possible — but not on the kind of timeline that Mr. Obama thought economically or politically affordable.
“Marja looks a lot better than two years ago,” one senior official said at the end of last year. “But how many Marjas do we need to do, and over what time frame?”
The tight group of presidential aides charged with answering questions like that — of redefining the mission — began meeting on weekends at the end of 2010. The group’s informal name said it all: “Afghan Good Enough.”
“We spent the time asking questions like: How much corruption can we live with?” one participant recalled. “Is there another way — a way the Pentagon might not be telling us about — to speed the withdrawal? What’s the least we can spend on training Afghan troops and still get a credible result?”
By early 2011, Mr. Obama had seen enough. He told his staff to arrange a speedy, orderly exit from Afghanistan. This time there would be no announced national security meetings, no debates with the generals. Even Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton were left out until the final six weeks.
The key decisions had essentially been made already when Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his last months as commander in Afghanistan, arrived in Washington with a set of options for the president that called for a slow withdrawal of surge troops. He wanted to keep as many troops as possible in Afghanistan through the next fighting season, with a steep drop to follow. Mr. Obama concluded that the Pentagon had not internalized that the goal was not to defeat the Taliban. He said he “believed that we had a more limited set of objectives that could be accomplished by bringing the military out at a faster clip,” an aide reported.
After a short internal debate, Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton came up with a different option: end the surge by September 2012 — after the summer fighting season, but before the election. Mr. Obama concurred. But he was placing an enormous bet: his goals now focus largely on finishing off Al Qaeda and keeping Pakistan’s nuclear weapons from going astray. Left unclear is how America will respond if a Taliban resurgence takes over wide swathes of the country America invaded in 2001 and plans to largely depart 13 years later.
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Several questions occur to me. One of them is this: If Pakistan is the greater problem, why did Obama just sign an agreement with Karzai agreeing to support him for many more years AND that we would not launch drone strikes etc on Pak from Afg?
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Second post of the day
Here's what Stratfor was saying three years ago-- how does it measure up?
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Summary
There is no doubt that the Taliban currently have the initiative in Afghanistan, but the movement has a long way to go before it can effect a decisive victory. While the Taliban need not evolve from insurgent group to conventional army to achieve that goal, they must move beyond guerrilla tactics, consolidate their disparate parts and find ways to function as a more coordinated fighting force.
Analysis
The United States is losing in Afghanistan because it is not winning. The Taliban are winning in Afghanistan because they are not losing. This is the reality of insurgent warfare. A local insurgent is more invested in the struggle and is working on a much longer time line than an occupying foreign soldier. Every year that U.S. and NATO commanders do not show progress in Afghanistan, the investment of lives and resources becomes harder to justify at home. Public support erodes. Even without more pressing concerns elsewhere, democracies tend to have short attention spans.
At the present time, defense budgets across the developed world -- like national coffers in general -- are feeling the pinch of the global financial crisis. Meanwhile, the resurgence of Russia's power and influence along its periphery continues apace. The state of the current U.S.-NATO Afghanistan campaign is not simply a matter of eroding public opinion, but also of immense opportunity costs due to mounting economic and geopolitical challenges elsewhere.
This reality plays into the hands of the insurgents. In any guerrilla struggle, the local populace is vulnerable to the violence and very sensitive to subtle shifts in power at the local level. As long as the foreign occupier’s resolve continues to erode (as it almost inevitably does) or is made to appear to erode (by the insurgents), the insurgents maintain the upper hand. If the occupying power is perceived as a temporary reality for the local populace and the insurgents are an enduring reality, then the incentive for the locals -- at the very least -- is to not oppose the insurgents directly enough to incur their wrath when the occupying power leaves. For those who seek to benefit from the largesse and status that cooperation with the occupying power can provide, the enduring fear is the departure of that power before a decisive victory can be made against the insurgents -- or before adequate security can be provided by an indigenous government army.
Let us apply this dynamic to the current situation in Afghanistan. In much of the extremely rugged, rural and sparsely populated country, a sustained presence by the U.S.-NATO and the Taliban alike is not possible. No one is in clear control in most parts of the country. The strength of the tribal power structure was systematically undermined by the communists long before the actual Soviet invasion at the end of 1979. The power structure that remains is nowhere near as strong or as uniform as, say, that of the Sunni tribes in Anbar province in Iraq (one important reason why replicating the Iraq counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is not possible). Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the unique complexity of the ethnic, linguistic and tribal disparities in Afghanistan.
The challenge for each side in the current Afghan war is to become more of a sustained presence than the other. "Holding" territory is not possible in the traditional sense, with so few troops and hard-line insurgent fighters involved, so a village can be "pro-NATO" one day and "pro-Taliban" the next, depending on who happens to be moving through the area. But even village and tribal leaders who do work with the West are extremely hesitant to burn any bridges with the Taliban, lest U.S.-NATO forces withdraw before defeating the insurgents and before developing a sufficient replacement force of Afghan nationals.
Today, the two primary sources of power in Afghanistan are the gun and the Koran -- brute force and religious credibility. The Taliban purport to base their power on both, while the United States and NATO are often derided for wielding only the former -- and clumsily at that. Many Afghans believe that too many innocent civilians have been killed in too many indiscriminate airstrikes.
So it comes as little surprise that popular support for the Taliban is on the rise in more and more parts of Afghanistan, and that this support is becoming increasingly entrenched. For years, U.S. attention has been distracted and military power absorbed in Iraq. Meanwhile, a limited U.S.-NATO presence and a lack of opposition in Afghanistan have allowed various elements of the Taliban to make significant inroads. This resurgence is also due to clandestine support from Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, as well as proximity to the mountainous and lawless Pakistani border area, which serves as a Taliban sanctuary.
But the Taliban still have not coalesced to the point where they can eject U.S. or NATO forces from Afghanistan. Far from a monolithic movement, the term "Taliban" encompasses everything from the old hard-liners of the pre-9/11 Afghan regime to small groups that adopt the name as a "flag of convenience," be they Islamists devoted to a local cause or criminals wanting to obscure their true objectives. Some Taliban elements in Pakistan are waging their own insurrection against Islamabad. (The multifaceted and often confusing character of the Taliban "movement" actually creates a layer of protection around it. The United States has admitted that it does not have the nuanced understanding of the Taliban’s composition needed to identify potential moderates who can be split off from the hard-liners.)
Any "revolutionary" or insurgent force usually has two enemies: the foreign occupying or indigenous government power it is trying to defeat, and other revolutionary entities with which it is competing. While making inroads against the former, the Taliban have not yet resolved the issue of the latter. It is not so much that various insurgent groups with distinctly different ideologies are in direct competition with each other; the problem for the Taliban, reflecting the rough reality that the country’s mountainous and rugged terrain imposes on its people, is the disparate nature of the movement itself.
In order to precipitate a U.S.-NATO withdrawal in the years ahead, the Taliban must do better in consolidating their power. No doubt they currently have the upper hand, but their strategic and tactical advantages will only go so far. They may be enough to prevent the United States and NATO from winning, but they will not accelerate the time line for a Taliban victory. To do this, the Taliban must move beyond current guerrilla tactics and find ways to function as a more coherent and coordinated fighting force.
The bottom line is that neither side in the struggle in Afghanistan is currently operating at its full potential.
To Grow an Insurgency
The main benefits of waging an insurgency usually boil down to the following: insurgents operate in squad- to platoon-sized elements, have light or nonexistent logistical tails, are largely able to live off the land or the local populace, can support themselves by seizing weapons and ammunition from weak local police and isolated outposts and can disperse and blend into the environment whenever they confront larger and more powerful conventional forces. In Afghanistan, the chief insurgent challenge is that reasonably well-defended U.S.-NATO positions have no problem fending off units of that size. In the evolution of an insurgency, we call this stage-one warfare, and Taliban operations by and large continue to be characterized as such.
In stage-two warfare, insurgents operate in larger formations -- first independent companies of roughly 100 or so fighters, and later battalions of several hundred or more. Although still relatively small and flexible, these units require more in terms of logistics, especially as they begin to employ heavier, more supply-intensive weaponry like crew-served machine guns and mortars, and they are too large to simply disperse the moment contact with the enemy is made. The challenges include not only logistics but also battlefield communications (everything from bugles and whistles to cell phones and secure tactical radios) as the unit becomes too large for a single leader to manage or visually keep track of from one position.
In stage-three warfare, the insurgent force has become, for all practical purposes, a conventional army operating in regiments and divisions (units, say, consisting of 1,000 or more troops). These units are large enough to bring artillery to bear but must be able to provide a steady flow of ammunition. Forces of this size are an immense logistical challenge and, once massed, cannot quickly be dispersed, which makes them vulnerable to superior firepower.
The culmination of this evolution is exemplified by the battle of Dien Bien Phu in a highland valley in northwestern Vietnam in 1954. The Viet Minh, which began as a nationalist guerrilla group fighting the Japanese during World War II, massed multiple divisions and brought artillery to bear against a French military position considered impregnable. The battle lasted two months and saw the French position overrun. More than 2,000 French soldiers were killed, more than twice that many wounded and more than 10,000 captured. The devastating defeat was quickly followed by the French withdrawal from Indochina after an eight-year counterinsurgency.
The Taliban Today
In describing this progression from stage one to stage three, we are not necessarily suggesting that the Taliban will develop into a conventional force, or that a stage-three capability is necessary to win in Afghanistan. Not every insurgency that achieves victory does so by evolving into the kind of national-level conventional resistance made legendary by the Viet Minh.
Indeed, artillery was not necessary to expel the Soviet Red Army from Afghanistan in the 1980s; that force faced and failed to overcome many of the same challenges that have repelled invaders for centuries and confront the United States and NATO today. But in monitoring the progress of the Taliban as a fighting force, it is important to look beyond estimates of "controlled" territory to the way the Taliban fight, command, consolidate and organize disparate groups into a more coherent resistance.
The Taliban first rose to power in the aftermath of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and before 9/11. They were not the ones to kick out the Red Army, however. That was the mujahideen, with the support of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States. The Taliban emerged from the anarchy that followed the fall of Afghanistan’s communist government, also at the hands of the mujahideen, in 1992. In the intra-Islamist civil war that ensued, the Taliban were able to establish security in the southern part of the country, winning over a local Pashtun populace and assorted minorities that had grown weary of war.
This impressed Pakistan, which switched its support from the splintered mujahideen to the Taliban, which appeared to be on a roll. By 1996, the Taliban, also supported by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were in power in Kabul. Then came 9/11. While the Taliban did, for a time, achieve a kind of stage-two status as a fighting force, they have never had the kind of superpower support the Viet Minh and North Vietnamese received from the Soviet Union during the French and American wars in Vietnam, or that the mujahideen received from the United States during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
But elements of the Taliban continue to enjoy patronage from within the Pakistani army and intelligence apparatus, as well as continued funding from wealthy patrons in the Persian Gulf states. The Pakistani support underscores the most important of resources for an effective insurgency (or counterinsurgency): intelligence. With it, the Taliban can obtain accurate and actionable information on competing insurgent groups in order to build a wider and more concerted campaign. They can also identify targets, adjust tactics and exploit the weaknesses of opposing conventional forces. The Taliban openly tout their ties and support from within the Afghan security forces. (Indeed, a significant portion of the Taliban's weapons and ammunition can be traced back to shipments that were made to the Afghan government and distributed to its police agencies and military units.)
Moreover, while external support of the Taliban may not be as impressive as the support the mujahideen enjoyed in the 1980s, the Karzai government in Afghanistan is far weaker than the communist regime in Kabul that the mujahideen took down. In addition, as a seven-party alliance with significant internal tensions, the mujahideen were even more disjointed than the Taliban. Indeed, the core Taliban today are much more homogeneous than the mujahideen were in the 1980s. The Taliban are the pre-eminent Pashtun power, and the Pashtuns are the single largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. In addition, the leadership of Taliban chief Mullah Omar is unchallenged -- he has no equal who could hope to rise and meaningfully compete for control of the movement.
While the Taliban continue to exist squarely in stage-one combat, the movement is increasingly becoming the established, lasting reality for much of the country’s rural population. For ambitious warlords, joining the Taliban movement offers legitimacy and a local fiefdom with wider recognition. For the remainder of the population, the Taliban are increasingly perceived as the inescapable power that will govern when the United States and NATO begin to draw down.
On the other hand, the Taliban's ability to earn the loyalty of disparate groups, coordinate their actions and command them effectively remains to be seen. Monitoring changes in the way the Taliban communicate -- across the country and across the battlefield -- will say much about their ability to bring power to bear in a coherent, coordinated and conclusive way.
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Read more: Afghanistan: The Nature of the Insurgency | Stratfor
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as posted on Michael Yon's website:
Statement From Taliban
Next >
The Taliban sent this statement. There is a great deal of false information here but good to know what they are saying:
Statement of Islamic Emirate regarding the NATO summit in Chicago
According to news reports, NATO is going to hold a diplomatic summit in the city of Chicago from May 20-21 where Afghanistan will be the most important agenda on the table. Therefore the Islamic Emirate, in order to fulfill its historical obligation, wants to declare the below points to the participants of this conference:
1. The invasion of Afghanistan by America and its allies under the banner of ‘war of terror’ was an unjustified and tyrannical action which was only carried out for political and economical gains. Terrorism and ground realities had nothing in common. No Afghan had a hand in military operations in other countries and neither are there any proofs hence the occupation of Afghanistan by America is neither sound legally or logically.
2. As a result of this occupation, the invasive America imposed upon the Afghan Muslim nation a few war criminals that were cast offs, whose hands were red with the blood of innocent humans and who were involved in transgressing against the life, wealth and honor of the ordinary people. The Afghans have been facing torment from their brutality and crimes for the past decade while the invaders have just turn a blind eye to them.
3. The American intelligence networks including the CIA state that members of Al-Qaida have all left Afghanistan and that there are not more than fifty left therefore the military presence of America is not for its own security but a long term strategy for turning our country and the region into its colony. The declaration of the new president of France, Francois Hollande, that all its troops will be removed from Afghanistan at the end of this year is a decision based on realities and a reflection of the opinion of its nation. We call upon all the other NATO member countries to avoid working for the political interests of American officials and answer the call of your own people by immediately removing all your troops from Afghanistan.
4. The invading soldiers in Afghanistan martyr the defenseless children, women, elderly and other people of Afghanistan in their night raids and blind bombardments without having to worry about the consequences. The perpetrators of these violations are all criminals. The claimants of Human Rights must not condone them. Similarly, the occupying forces have created local militias under the title of ‘Arbakis’ who transgress against the life, wealth and honor of ordinary people and martyr innocent Afghans even though they cannot confront the Mujahideen physically. If the invaders want to fund and equip such groups and continue their blind bombardments then the responsibility of civilian losses caused in Afghanistan will rest squarely upon the shoulders of these forces.
5. We want to declare to the whole world the stooge Kabul administration tortures innocent prisoners, extracts false confessions and hands out long term prison sentences. The security apparatus of Kabul regime discriminates and treats them with prejudice. Ending this oppression is the obligation of every human being.
6. The invading forces have destroyed whole villages along with their inhabitants (Tarako Kalacha as example) in Afghanistan with twenty five ton bombs. They have razed entire bazaars with hundreds of shops in Helmand and Uruzgan. They have also uprooted the greenery and orchards in Panjwai and Zhari districts of Kandahar and similarly in Band-e-Sarda of Ghazni province. All this savagery is committed under the slogans of war on terror. Today’s international community which touts tolerance, justice and human rights, how can it justify this savagery in Afghanistan at the hands of these self proclaimed civilized men?
7. In order to brainwash the public and to vilify the Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate, various networks in Afghanistan headed by the invading forces commit some acts such as the destruction and burning of bridges and schools, carrying out explosions amongst civilians, targeting of specific people for vile purposes and others, the Islamic Emirate declares its complete disavowal from them.
8. The occupying American forces have created secret prisons inside all of their airbases in Afghanistan where they keep innocent Afghans and carry out various forms of torture on them which has resulted in the martyrdom of many. Besides this, thousands of innocent Afghans are being held prisoners in Kandahar and Bagram airbases without any charges. These are all people who have no knowledge of the New York incident but are been held captives under its pretext for years and are languishing in unbearable conditions.
9. A survey conducted in April by CBS news and New York Times showed that 69 percent of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan and want their troops out of Afghanistan. Similarly, the people of nations allied with America have also shown their opposition to the occupation of Afghanistan. So the NATO member countries who claim to be the elected representatives of its people and consider their government the peoples government, by the people, for the people; how will they answer the call of their people in this summit?
10. The Islamic Emirate once again declares that it holds no agenda of harming anyone nor will it let anyone harm other countries from the soil of Afghanistan hence there is no reason for the occupying countries including America to continue the occupation of Afghanistan under the pretext of safeguarding its own security.
11. The occupation of Afghanistan by America through the use of force is a clear violation of a sovereign state which is not justified under any international law. Those Afghans that are fighting against this violation are independence seeking Mujahideen who demand their due rights and putting up resistance to this occupation is their legal right. This armed struggle will only come to an end when the Afghans acquire their independence and a government of their choice. Imposed agreements and international conferences are not the solution to the Afghan quandary. The solution lies in giving the Muslim Afghan nation their complete legitimate and natural right.
12. The Islamic Emirate has left all military and political doors open. It wants to obtain the rights of the Muslim Afghan nation through all possible ways and as a responsible force, is prepared to accept all it announces however the invaders are utilizing a one step forward, two steps backwards tactic. They are conjuring artificial excuses to prolong the occupation of Afghanistan, are wavering in their stance and do not seem to have a clear strategy for a political solution. The Islamic Emirate considers the claims of the invaders of finding a political solution as meaningless until they come out of their fluctuating unstable state.
13. The occupation of Afghanistan by America and its allies is the fundamental problem. If this matter is solved, the Afghans understand each others language and share a common culture therefore they can reach a resolution regarding the country. The foreigners should forgo prolonging and complicating the Afghan issue for their colonialist objectives.
To end, we must reiterate that the Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate will keep proceeding with their ongoing Jihad until it attains its goal. The terrorism and savagery of the invaders and their stooges will not be able to stop it. We call upon the leaders of the NATO member countries to realize the ground realities of Afghanistan and acknowledge the natural rights of the Afghans which are an independent nation and establishment of a government of its own choice. Similarly, they should stop the gross human right violations ongoing in Afghanistan and the desecration of the sanctities of Afghans committed by their troops. But if they still refuse to pay attention to the consequences of their criminal actions, then they will also be erased along with their oppression and terror on this blessed soil just like the previous imperialists and only their stories shall remain.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
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Since Osama bin Laden met his demise in the garrison town of Abbottabad last May, Pakistani officials say they haven't found anyone who helped him hide out for most of a decade in their backyard. But our supposed allies have spared no effort to hunt down the people who helped the U.S. find the al Qaeda mastermind.
Soon after the successful American raid, the Pakistani army picked up locals suspected of supplying fuel to SEAL Team Six's helicopters and firing flares to guide them to the bin Laden compound. Their biggest catch was Shakil Afridi, who on Wednesday was convicted of treason in Pakistan and sentenced to 33 years in prison.
His case, as Senators John McCain and Carl Levin noted, is "shocking and outrageous." Dr. Afridi helped the U.S. track down bin Laden by running a hepatitis B vaccination program in the area around Abbottabad. He collected DNA that the CIA hoped to use to verify bin Laden's presence in the city. Dr. Afridi never got samples from any of bin Laden's family members, but he did gain access to the terrorist's compound. U.S. officials say Dr. Afridi didn't know who the U.S. was looking for.
Part of the mess-up here is that the U.S. failed to get Dr. Afridi out of Pakistan before or soon after the raid. During the Cold War, the CIA tried to get any endangered operative behind the Iron Curtain out of the country. Dr. Afridi's identity was leaked to the press and he ended up in a military prison.
The Obama Administration says the leak came from the Pakistanis, but this is still woeful spycraft by the U.S. and a deterrent to those who might want to help America in the future. Congress should ask how it happened.
The Pakistanis are supposed to be America's partners in the war against al Qaeda, pocketing $1 billion a year in aid. But Pakistan also provides safe haven to the Taliban and other Islamist terrorist groups. The Senate on Thursday symbolically cut $33 million from Pakistan's aid budget next year—$1 million for each year of Dr. Afridi's sentence. More cuts are coming if something doesn't change in Pakistan.
America's larger strategic goals in South Asia have justified engagement with a difficult partner in Islamabad, but Pakistan would be foolish to take America's support and patience for granted. The U.S. has other options in the region. With very few friends, Pakistan does not.
A version of this article appeared May 25, 2012, on page A12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Our Man in Pakistan.
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Pakistan's Dangerous Anti-American Game: It's unwise to needle a superpower that you need for resources and global credibility.
By SADANAND DHUME
Last week a Pakistani court sentenced Shakil Afridi—the doctor who helped the CIA track Osama bin Laden last year—to 33 years in prison after he was accused of treason or possible ties with militants. In response, the U.S. Congress docked a symbolic $33 million from Pakistan's annual aid budget, or $1 million for every year of the doctor's sentence.
U.S. anger is understandable. In the year since bin Laden was discovered in the garrison town of Abbottabad, Pakistan has done little to dispel the widespread belief that the world's most wanted terrorist was sheltered by elements in the country's army and its spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence. Nobody has been punished for aiding bin Laden. Neither has the rogue nuclear-weapons scientist A.Q. Khan or Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
As U.S.-Pakistani relations continue to nosedive, the risks for Islamabad run deeper than a mere PR disaster. For the first time since the country came into being in 1947, Pakistan is in danger of being seen as implacably hostile to the West. Should the U.S. switch from a policy of engagement to active containment, Pakistan's economic and diplomatic problems, already acute, may become unmanageable.
Dr. Afridi's punishment is only the most recent example of Pakistan's slide away from its founding pro-Western moorings. Earlier this month, Islamabad annoyed NATO countries at a summit on Afghanistan in Chicago by refusing to reopen overland supply routes that it shut after the U.S. mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a border clash last November. Pakistan's negotiators are reportedly demanding upward of $5,000 per supply truck.
And last week Pakistan's Supreme Court suspended Farahnaz Ispahani, a close aide to President Asif Ali Zardari and an outspoken defender of human rights, from the lower house of the legislature. Her alleged crime: having acquired a U.S. passport in addition to the Pakistani one she was born with.
Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center survey released last month shows that only 55% of Pakistani Muslims disapprove of al Qaeda. In Lebanon and Jordan that figure is 98% and 77%, respectively.
Many Pakistani elites think their compatriots' loathing of America is somehow Washington's problem, not theirs. They see Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal and proxy terrorist groups, as too big to fail. In the final analysis, their view holds, the U.S. will always be there to prop up Pakistan's ailing economy with aid and support from multilateral agencies such as the International Monetary Fund.
A superficial reading of U.S.-Pakistani history supports this view. For the most part, Washington has not allowed episodic disagreements to get in the way of the larger relationship. Even Islamabad's clandestine acquisition of nuclear weapons in the 1980s, and proliferation to Iran and North Korea in the 1990s, did not lead to a complete rupture in ties.
Even now, only a handful of hotheads in Washington are calling for all assistance to Islamabad to be scrapped. Most responsible Pakistan-watchers, both inside and outside the U.S. government, would rather fix the relationship than scrap it.
Nonetheless, Pakistanis who expect the future to faithfully echo the past forget that their nation has never confronted the West in the fashion it is today.
The country's founders were drawn largely from the ranks of Indian Muslims who embraced Western learning and acknowledged Western power. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the father of Pakistan, instinctively understood that he could better advance his interests by coming to terms with the West than by opposing it.
Successive generations of Pakistani leaders, from Ayub Khan to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to Gen. Zia ul-Haq to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, stayed true to this belief. Even when they pursued policies at odds with U.S. interests—Gen. Zia's nuclear bomb or Gen. Musharraf's double-dealing in Afghanistan—they were careful to avoid sustained public confrontation. They knew it was counterproductive to needle a superpower that they depended on for both resources and global credibility.
Pakistan's current rulers, especially the powerful army that calls the shots on national security policy, forget this lesson at their peril. The U.S. cannot be expected to be endlessly patient.
Pakistan's dismal favorability rating in America means there's no real political cost to bringing Islamabad to heel by stepping up drone strikes, giving it a diplomatic cold shoulder and withholding financial support—all at the same time. Washington may even choose to add targeted sanctions against top ISI officials directly implicated in supporting terrorism.
Pakistan is playing a game of chicken without fully grasping the consequences of losing. The shrewd and practical Jinnah would have recognized the folly of this course. His successors have already betrayed his message of religious tolerance at home, and now they're on track to subvert his legacy abroad.
Mr. Dhume is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a columnist for WSJ.com.
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http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-614
Highlights below, but the full 27 page report is downloadble from the site provided above.
What GAO Found
Multiple U.S. agencies and international partners are engaged in efforts to assist Pakistan in countering improvised explosive devices (IEDs) but face a variety of ongoing challenges. The agencies providing counter-IED assistance to Pakistan are primarily the Departments of State (State), Defense (DOD), Homeland Security (DHS), and Justice (DOJ). The following table identifies the types of assistance these U.S. agencies have provided and the corresponding objectives of Pakistan’s National Counter-IED Strategy. According to U.S. officials, U.S. agencies have encountered ongoing challenges to their efforts to assist Pakistan, such as delays in obtaining visas and in the delivery of equipment. U.S. officials have also identified broader challenges to Pakistan’s ability to counter IEDs, including the extreme difficulty of interdicting smugglers along its porous border with Afghanistan. In addition, though Pakistan developed a National Counter-IED Strategy in June 2011, it has yet to finalize an implementation plan for carrying out the strategy.
The U.S. fiscal year 2013 Mission Strategic and Resource Plan (MSRP) for Pakistan includes a new performance indicator to track some of Pakistan’s efforts to counter IEDs, but the indicator and targets used to measure progress do not cover the full range of U.S. assisted efforts. The performance indicator focuses on cross-border activities, specifically on Pakistan’s efforts to prevent illicit commerce in sensitive materials, including chemical precursors used to manufacture IEDs in Afghanistan. As such, progress of U.S. counter-IED assistance efforts not specifically linked to cross-border smuggling are not covered, such as counter-IED training and/or equipment, a counter-IED public awareness campaign, and legal assistance for laws and regulations to counter-IEDs and IED precursors. Consequently, effects of key U.S. assisted counter-IED efforts are not tracked under the existing performance indicator and related targets. The absence of comprehensive performance measures that reflect the broad range of U.S. assisted counter-IED efforts limits State’s ability to track overall progress in Pakistan to counter IEDs and to determine the extent to which these counter-IED efforts are helping to achieve the U.S. goals.
Why GAO Did This Study
Improvised explosive devices have been a significant cause of fatalities among U.S. troops in Afghanistan. About 80 percent of the IEDs contain homemade explosives, primarily calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) fertilizer smuggled from Pakistan. U.S. officials recognize the threat posed by the smuggling of CAN and other IED precursors from Pakistan into Afghanistan, and State and other agencies are assisting Pakistan’s government to counter this threat. This report (1) describes the status of U.S. efforts to assist Pakistan in countering IEDs and (2) reviews State’s tracking of U.S. assisted efforts in Pakistan to counter IEDs. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed agency strategy and programmatic documents, including State’s fiscal year 2013 MSRP for Pakistan. GAO also met with U.S. officials in Washington, D.C., Arlington, Virginia, and Tampa, Florida; and met with U.S. and Pakistani officials in Islamabad, Pakistan.
What GAO Recommends
To improve State’s ability to track progress of efforts in Pakistan to counter IEDs, GAO recommends that the Secretary of State direct the U.S. Mission in Pakistan to enhance its counter-IED performance measures to cover the full range of U.S. assisted efforts. State concurred and committed to look for ways to broaden the scope of existing metrics in order to better reflect and evaluate interagency participation in counter-IED efforts.
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I'm on pain medication at the moment, so perhaps my analytical skills at the moment are off-center, but my reaction to this is that sure we can measure more accurately, but we already know the bottom line. The question presented is what to do about it-- and spending more time measuring the various manifestations of Pak perfidy is but a procrastination.
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Your analytical skills are on the ball....the question is what are we going to do about pak perfidy. The one guy in Pak who did something, Shakil Afriidi (OBL fame), has been hauled in for treason. Apparently helping get OBL is treason. Allah help Shittistan.
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YA: Would love to get your analysis of the US-India quasi-alliance on the now nearby India thread.
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KABUL, Afghanistan — The United States declared Afghanistan a major, non-NATO ally on Saturday, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton personally delivering the news of Afghanistan’s entry into a club that includes Israel, Japan, Pakistan and other close Asian and Middle Eastern allies.
The move, announced as Mrs. Clinton stood with President Hamid Karzai amid the rose beds and towering trees on the grounds of the presidential palace here, was part of a broad strategic partnership deal signed by the United States and Afghanistan in May, she said. The pact went into effect last week.
“Please know that the United States will be your friend,” she told Mr. Karzai. “We are not even imagining abandoning Afghanistan. Quite the opposite. We are building a partnership with Afghanistan that will endure far into the future.”
The designation by the United States grants a country special privileges, like access to American military training and excess military supplies, Mrs. Clinton said.
In a separate statement, the State Department said Afghanistan would also be able to obtain loans of equipment from the United States and financing for leasing equipment. The agreement does not, however, “entail any security commitment” by the United States to Afghanistan, the State Department said.
Iraq was never given the status of a major ally, and American troops withdrew last year.
Afghanistan’s designation as a formal ally was the latest in a series of recent American moves that have eased — though not erased — Afghan fears of being abandoned at the end of NATO’s combat mission in 2014.
The moves also appear to have already yielded one dividend for the United States: Mr. Karzai has not recently lashed out at his backers, as he has in the past, at one point calling Americans “demons.”
On Saturday, he welcomed Mrs. Clinton, calling her “my old American friend” in his remarks. “We appreciate your concern and good will toward Afghanistan,” he said.
Later, as Mrs. Clinton said she was sorry to have to leave so soon, Mr. Karzai offered what he said was an old saying in Persian: “When a friend is alive, they will meet again.”
American and Afghan officials say they now must turn to working out a deal that would keep a residual American force here to continue training Afghan soldiers and tracking down insurgents after 2014. Talks on the arrangement have not yet begun, American officials say. Estimates of the number of troops that could stay vary from as little as 10,000 to as many as 25,000 or 30,000.
But Mrs. Clinton reiterated on Saturday that Washington did envision keeping American troops in Afghanistan, where they would provide the kind of air power and surveillance capabilities needed to give Afghan forces an edge over the Taliban.
“This is the kind of relationship that we think will be especially beneficial as we do the transition and as we plan for the post-2014 presence,” she said. “It will open the door to Afghanistan’s military to have a greater capability and a broader kind of relationship with the United States and especially the United States military.”
Mrs. Clinton made a short stop in Kabul en route to Tokyo, where an international conference will be held to raise money to support the Afghan government after 2014. At the American Embassy, she praised the work done by civilians in the war. State Department officials said that her remarks were intended to rebut what many in the State Department consider unfair criticism of their work in Afghanistan, where they have often been portrayed as not carrying their weight compared with the military.
But American soldiers and civilians alike have faced one common struggle: assuaging Afghan fears of abandonment. Many here fear that the country is headed toward a repeat of the early 1990s, when the fall of the Soviet-backed government, coupled with an American pullback from the region, left Afghanistan mired in a brutal civil war.
The Taliban grew out of the chaos, and they quickly took over much of the country.
Along with reassuring Afghans, Mrs. Clinton made clear that she was also sending a message to the Taliban.
The alliance and other American commitments to Afghanistan “should make clear to the Taliban that they cannot wait us out,” she said, according to a copy of her prepared remarks. “They can renounce international terrorism and commit to an Afghan peace process, or they will face the increasingly capable Afghan national security forces, backed by the United States.”
At the same time, Washington remains committed to the stalled Afghan peace process, she said. The insurgents suspended talks in March — halting negotiations before they really began — over delays in a proposed prisoner swap that would have the United States release five Taliban prisoners from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American soldier known to be held by the insurgents.
Designating Afghanistan an ally, however, has the potential to raise awkward issues for the United States. There is Afghanistan’s hot-and-cold relationship with Pakistan, also an ally, and the possibility the two neighbors could have a falling-out, especially if Afghan officials believe in the years after 2014 that their Pakistani counterparts continue to aid the Taliban.
Afghanistan, one of the 10 poorest countries in the world, is also the least developed of America’s major, non-NATO allies by a wide margin. Other allies — like South Korea, Argentina, Australia and Thailand — are far more capable of defending themselves and policing their own territory; Afghanistan is capable of doing that now and for the foreseeable future only with ample American help.
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By MARIA ABI-HABIB
DAHANE SANGHA, Afghanistan—Abdul Samad, a Taliban fighter turned pro-government security chief, has a problem: The Afghan state isn't paying his men, raising the risk they will rejoin the insurgency.
This, in turn, complicates matters for the U.S. special-operations forces troops who recently spent four nights on Abdul Samad's floor, living and fighting alongside his men in a valley filled with Taliban fighters.
Abdul Samad is a 43-year-old commander of the Afghan Local Police, a fighting force tasked with guarding far-flung villages such as Dahane Sangha. He says he has met with Afghan government officials only four times since he quit the Taliban in February to lead an unruly band of former insurgents.
Bill Mesta
Abdul Samad, a former Taliban fighter turned local police commander.
.Read More
Afghan President Fires Intelligence Chief
."I don't know who my boss is," roared Abdul Samad as he received visitors at his home this month. Around him, nine of his fighters balanced AK-47s on their knees. "But I know I'm in contact with him for everything," he said, motioning toward a 28-year-old U.S. special-forces captain with a sunburned face.
Afghan Local Police commanders such as Abdul Samad—a small but increasing number of whom are former Taliban—work closely with U.S. special-operations officers and the regular Afghan national police. With scant support from the Afghan government, Abdul Samad said, he has little choice but to rely on the special-forces captain for guidance and logistical support.
The challenge that poses to the U.S. was on display recently when a team of U.S. special forces, led by U.S. Navy SEALs, paid a visit to Abdul Samad's village in Uruzgan province's Khas Uruzgan district, one of Afghanistan's most dangerous and Taliban dominated areas.
As the U.S. prepares to wind down its troop presence in Afghanistan, forces here are moving on two tracks. Special operations teams, hoping to win local populations away from the insurgency, are trying to build reliable local police forces in part by paying insurgents to switch sides. But with the clock ticking on the pullout of tens of thousands of conventional troops by 2014, the special forces must also shift local police leaders' dependence away from them and toward nascent local governing bodies.
Red tape slows the reintegration program for former insurgents, reducing many Taliban fighters' willingness to sign up. Also, the governments to which local police report are often weak and split by ethnic conflict. Many Afghan government branches don't function outside Kabul without U.S. protection: Police, army and government officials often rely on U.S. helicopters to get around.
Afghanistan's regular police, who are charged with overseeing the Afghan Local Police, or ALP, say it can be hard to track local forces in remote and dangerous areas whose job is to provide security but aren't empowered to enforce Afghan law. "We don't have access to those areas, and we need the coalition to come with me to put those areas under control," says Uruzgan province police chief Matiullah Khan. "Until foreign forces leave, we'll keep asking them for help. When they leave, we'll have to find our way."
Mr. Khan blamed the paycheck delay on the slow process of registering new ALP members.
Critics of the local police program—which include human-rights advocates and several Afghan officials—say the U.S. is funding militias over which it has little control, energies that could be focused on building the national police and army. They see a danger that men like Abdul Samad could become Afghanistan's next warlords once U.S. forces leave, much as some of the U.S.-armed Mujahedeen of the 1980s became some of the country's biggest power brokers and human-rights violators, with many remaining in government today.
Enlarge Image
Close.Special-operations forces who are mentoring Abdul Samad's men say the ALP has the potential to grow into an effective force because they understand their local communities.
The close relationship between special-operations forces and their Afghan counterparts has come under additional scrutiny in recent months, as a growing number of international troops have been killed by their Afghan police and army counterparts. The latest came Wednesday, when the coalition said a man in an Afghan army uniform killed three coalition members in southern Afghanistan. At least five of the 10 U.S. troops killed this month by Afghan police or soldiers were special-operations forces, an unusually high count among this group.
In Khas Uruzgan—some 190 miles southwest of Kabul, the capital—elite U.S. troops are battling to make Abdul Samad's ALP unit independent so they can set up others elsewhere.
On a recent day, a Chinook helicopter flew government officials from Tarin Kot, Uruzgan province's capital, to Abdul Samad's home in a valley surrounded by orchards and mountains. They were there to pay long-awaited salaries. Minutes after the meeting, Abdul Samad emerged to say money had been offered for only 12 of his 32 men. He "threw the cash back" at the officials and demanded payment in full, he recounted.
"I had three groups of Taliban call me and ask how [reintegration] is going, he told the officials and SEALs in attendence. "I replied that my men are not getting paid and they said, 'Why should we join the government and get nothing?' At least the Taliban pay on time."
The government's long reintegration process for onetime insurgents is behind the delay, one SEAL explained. To join the ALP, such fighters must have their fingerprints taken and retinas scanned. On the recent day, one of the rare Afghan biometrics professionals was unable to make the trip to Abdul Samad's village, the latest in a month of failed attempts.
Abdul Samad says he receives $180 per month now, compared with $300 when he fought with the Taliban. Many of Abdul Samad's men say that if they don't get paid—and some haven't since May—they will leave to seek laborer jobs in Pakistan or Iran, or to rejoin the insurgency.
"What's driving them to fight for the Taliban? Economics. Steady paychecks," said Cmdr. Mike Hayes, the commander of Special Operations Task Force South East, which covers the Uruzgan, Daikundi and Zabul provinces. "The ALP program is taking military-aged fighters away from the insurgency."
Cmdr. Hayes's team arrived in Uruzgan in January, kick-starting a reintegration program that for two years had failed to attract any Taliban fighters in the province.
Promising paying ALP jobs to fighters, Cmdr. Hayes approached then-Taliban fighter Abdul Samad through an interlocutor in January. Now, he says, the team has attracted 84 former insurgents, offering them three-month stipends and hoping to lure more villages into the program by offering development projects such as well-digging and school building. Twelve of the former fighters are in the ALP. Another 20 are waiting to be registered.
"Nations are really good at starting wars and really bad at ending them. There will always be a political settlement needed," Cmdr. Hayes said of the reintegration process. "My hope is if we get this right, it's a kernel, and it spreads."
The reintegration program is part of a broader U.S.-supported push for reconciliation with the Taliban that could see the insurgency rolled into government as part of a peace deal. At the same time, U.S. and allied troops continue to fight the Taliban to pressure them to the negotiating table.
As the majority of conventional coalition troops begin to withdraw, the U.S. special-operations forces are taking on a more prominent role. The elite forces are considered to be the best-equipped to fight an insurgency that thrives in remote areas in Afghanistan, and they are training more Afghan commandos and ALP to take on the Taliban.
That involves missions like the one recently conducted by the 28-year-old special forces captain, who spent four nights sleeping, eating and fighting alongside Abdul Samad's men.
The captain, who by military rules couldn't be identified, said he and his team came to reinforce the ALP unit during the summer fighting season. Insurgents would frequently climb the mountains surrounding Abdul Samad's home or sneak through the thick orchards to fire on the men, the captain said. When engaged, the Taliban usually fled, the captain said.
As in much of Afghanistan, ethnic tensions in Uruzgan run deep, fueling suspicions among many locals of the men that the SEALs and the Afghan government have enlisted to protect them.
The ALP's recruits in Uruzgan are largely drawn from the minority Hazara community. Pashtuns, who make up around half the Afghan population and form the bulk of Taliban fighters, have largely spurned the force.
Last month, the leader of Khas Uruzgan's largest ALP unit, who goes by the single name Shujayee, faced accusations that his men killed civilians in retaliation for a Taliban attack that left two of his men beheaded. Shujayee, who commands 120 ALP fighters, allegedly took his men to a Pashtun village and killed nine people, including civilians, in retaliation.
The majority of Khas Uruzgan's district government officials are Pashtun. In interviews before an investigation was launched, these officials spoke of Shujayee's guilt without offering evidence.
Abdul Samad, one of the few Pashtuns among the area's ALP recruits, used to fight against Shujayee's men. But after a falling out with Taliban commanders in the area, he says he has become an ally.
"I know the Taliban tactics. They wrongfully blamed Shujayee for civilian deaths to scare people," Abdul Samad said. "If we lose the Hazara ALP, it will be a huge problem. The Pashtuns aren't stepping up…I'm done if Shujayee is. The road to my village will be open for the Taliban."
Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com
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Moving Obj.'s post to this thread:
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Obama’s Big Afghanistan Lie
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On September 5, 2012 - www.frontpagemag.com
David Plouffe, Obama’s former campaign manager and current senior advisor, claimed this week that the Romney campaign is built “on a foundation of absolute lies.” Speaking of absolute lies, there is the lie being put out that the War in Afghanistan has been won by the Obama administration.
Under the category of “TAKING THE FIGHT TO AL-QAEDA,” the Obama campaign website boasts that Obama refocused efforts on defeating Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. This would have proven surprisingly easy as Al Qaeda in Afghanistan had already been defeated by the Bush Administration.
As documented in my Freedom Center pamphlet, “The Great Betrayal”, Obama’s campaign promise in the last election to go after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was false because Al Qaeda had already shifted its operations away from there.
In 2009, General Petraeus, while serving as head of U.S. Central Command under Obama, said that Al Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan. Intelligence estimates before that and afterward put the possible number of Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan at around 100. Obama’s surge of 100,000 troops was clearly not needed to fight 100 Al Qaeda terrorists at a ratio of 1,000 soldiers to each Al Qaeda terrorist.
The National Security page of the Obama campaign repeatedly talks about Al Qaeda, but it makes no mention of the Taliban at all. This is a strange omission as American soldiers have spent the past few years taking severe casualties fighting the Taliban, not Al Qaeda. Still it is natural for Obama not to want to talk about the Taliban because his goal of pushing them back with the Afghanistan Surge failed.
Obama is running on Bush’s successes in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda, while completely ignoring his own failures against the Taliban. It is as if Dewey had won the 1944 Presidential election and then taken office in 1945, after the liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulge, and insisted on taking credit for the defeat of Germany while ignoring the existence of the Japanese front.
Obama had always presented his Afghanistan Surge in the most dishonest of ways. In his West Point address in 2010, he had claimed that the Surge was necessary to stop Al Qaeda from seizing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
“Since 9/11, al Qaeda’s safe-havens have been the source of attacks against London and Amman and Bali. The people and governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan are endangered. And the stakes are even higher within a nuclear-armed Pakistan, because we know that al Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them.”
Al Qaeda was no longer capable of launching global attacks out of Afghanistan and the odds of it getting its hands on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, without the cooperation of Pakistani authorities, were slim to none. But the same media crowd that worked itself up into a frenzy over Iraqi WMDs never mentions Obama’s claim that the Afghanistan Surge was necessary to keep Al Qaeda from getting its hands on Pakistani nuclear weapons.
Two years later in his address at Bagram Air Base, Obama insisted that the entire mission was there to deny Al Qaeda the opportunity to use Afghanistan as a base for further attacks. “The goal that I set to defeat al Qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild,” he said, “is now within our reach.”
Al Qaeda had of course rebuilt and was operating around the world. It was massacring dozens on a monthly basis in an Iraq abandoned by Obama. It had gotten its hooks into Africa and its Boko Haram allies had murdered over a thousand people in Nigeria. Al Qaeda’s lone wolf operatives guided out of Yemen had tried to carry out several attacks in America. But Al Qaeda was not a serious threat in Afghanistan.
The soldiers that Obama was addressing knew it and knew what a worthless lie his boast of defeating Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was.
A few days ago, Obama appeared at Fort Bliss in Texas, and claimed, “We pushed the Taliban back. We’re training Afghan forces. The transition to Afghan lead is underway.” In the real world, the Taliban have been pushing forward and the training of Afghan forces has been aborted because of multiple shooting incidents.
Shortly after Obama flew out of Afghanistan, the Taliban carried out a major attack in Kabul and shortly after his speech at Fort Bliss, the Taliban carried out more attacks near a US base only forty miles from the Afghan capital. This is not anyone’s definition of having “Pushed the Taliban back.” The soldiers on the ground know it. The voters still don’t.
Upping the ante, Obama bizarrely decided to attack Romney for not mentioning Afghanistan. “I put forward a specific plan to bring our troops home from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. We are in the process of doing that right now. And when I say I’m going to bring them home, you know they’re going to come home. “
But we don’t actually know any such thing. Obama had promised to bring the troops home out of Iraq, but when the deadline came, he renamed the mission and declared that the remaining 50,000 soldiers were only there in an advisory capacity. As even Politico pointed out, Obama’s Afghanistan plan is not specific and does not bring all the soldiers home.
Obama and his people have been saying that the War in Afghanistan is over. It’s not over in the sense that it has been won or that anything has been accomplished. Just like in Iraq, it’s over because Obama has decided that it’s politically convenient to pull out now or at least to claim to be pulling out now.
Two American soldiers have already died in Afghanistan in September. Thirty-eight died in August. Two hundred forty-five have died so far this year. Taliban attacks have taken place close to NATO bases. By the end of this year twice as many soldiers will have died during the drawdown phase this year alone than were killed in Afghanistan in the last year of the Bush administration.
There have been 34 “friendly fire” attacks by Afghans this year. Twelve such attacks in August alone. Karzai continues to treat international forces as the enemy and denounces the United States at every turn.
Obama’s attempts to make peace with the Taliban failed. The Strategic Partnership Agreement being touted by his campaign is completely meaningless and is nothing but a placeholder for a Bilateral Security Agreement that does not yet exist. What it really does is continue funneling money to the untrustworthy Afghan National Security Forces while barring the United States from using Afghan territory to launch attacks into Pakistan—a concession that his campaign is naturally not touting.
The War in Afghanistan has been lost. Obama’s Surge was a horrifying disaster that cost nearly 1500 lives and isn’t through yet. American soldiers were dispatched without proper support for a task that could not be accomplished without decisive air and artillery support. Now after bleeding them for years and while bombs are going off in Kabul, Obama is retreating and claiming victory.
The dead and their families deserve better than Obama’s Afghanistan lie. So do the living.
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http://www.radicalislam.org/blog/dying-over-truth-why-afghan-army-killing-our-soldiers/#fm
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/world/asia/afghans-wary-as-efforts-pick-up-to-tap-mineral-riches.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120909
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Coordinated Taliban Raid Penetrates Base .
By NATHAN HODGE
Afghans gathered around trucks carrying bodies of civilians killed in a coalition strike in Laghman province.
KABUL—The Taliban's weekend assault on a major coalition base was one of the most determined and effective in the Afghan war, according to details released Sunday, resulting in the biggest single-day loss of U.S. combat aircraft since the Vietnam War.
In addition to the Taliban raid, which killed two U.S. Marines after it began Friday night, two separate insider attacks by Afghan service members elsewhere claimed the lives of six coalition troops. A lethal coalition airstrike that caused a number of civilian casualties, meanwhile, raised tensions between Washington and Kabul.
The Taliban said their audacious raid on Camp Bastion/Camp Leatherneck, a massive complex in southern Helmand province that serves as the main base for U.S. Marines and British forces, was in retaliation against a U.S.-produced video insulting Islam. It wasn't clear whether the separate insider attacks by Afghan service members were also linked to the controversial video, which has sparked days of deadly protests across the Muslim world.
The coordinated Taliban attack destroyed six Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier jump-jets and "significantly" damaged two others, as well as some hangars, the coalition said. The Taliban also destroyed three refueling stations. Harrier jets cost an inflation-adjusted $30 million to $40 million apiece when they were acquired in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Military operations continued through Saturday morning to flush out the insurgents, who were armed with automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and suicide vests. The full extent of the damage at Camp Bastion became evident only later in the weekend. "The insurgents, organized into three teams, penetrated at one point of the perimeter fence," said a coalition statement released Sunday. "The insurgents appeared to be well-equipped, trained and rehearsed."
According to the coalition, 14 insurgents were killed. The lone surviving insurgent, wounded in the assault, was taken into custody.
A person familiar with the base's operations said the attack would have required advance scouting and perhaps inside assistance.
Comparing the attack to a less successful suicide assault on Kandahar Air Field in 2010, the person said: "When they tried to come up there [in 2010], they were completely shut down before crossing the gate. Obviously, this was a much more successful attempt. They're learning how to defeat the base defenses."
The Taliban were quick to seize on the propaganda value of the raid, releasing photos and video that showed billowing smoke from Camp Bastion's flight line.
The militants focused their attack on the runway area of Camp Bastion, the British-run side of the base, where the U.K.'s Prince Harry recently arrived to begin a tour as an Apache attack-helicopter pilot. While coalition officials said the attack didn't affect coalition military operations, the destruction of the aircraft represents a major loss of combat power, around half a Harrier squadron.
Harriers, which are no longer in production, are unique aircraft that operate from short runways and can hover to land. The jets belonged to the Marine Attack Squadron VMA 211, nicknamed "the Avengers," which is based in Yuma, Ariz. The squadron is part of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, based at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, said coalition spokesman Marine Lt. Col. Stewart Upton.
Early Sunday, four coalition service members were killed by an Afghan police officer in southern Zabul province. Zabul Police Chief Ghulam Jilani Farahi said the attack occurred in Zabul's Meezana district and involved an Afghan opening fire on U.S. troops.
On Saturday, two British soldiers were shot and killed in Helmand by a man wearing the uniform of the Afghan Local Police, a village self-defense force that is being mentored by coalition special-operations troops. The U.K. Ministry of Defense identified them as soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment.
Such "green-on-blue" killings spiked earlier this year, following riots caused by the inadvertent burning of Qurans by U.S. troops at the Bagram Air Field north of Kabul.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a coalition airstrike in eastern Laghman province drew sharp criticism from the Afghan government after several civilians were killed in the attack. Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a strong condemnation of the strike, which the Afghan government said claimed the lives of eight women who were gathering firewood.
Sarhadi Zwak, a spokesman for the provincial governor's office, said the airstrike in the mountainous Alingar district killed both Taliban and civilians, although details were still emerging. The Afghan government has ordered an official investigation of the incident, which drew an apology Sunday from the U.S.-led coalition.
"A number of Afghan civilians were unintentionally killed or injured during this mission which was undertaken solely with the intent of countering known insurgents," said a statement from the International Security Assistance Force. "ISAF takes full responsibility for this tragedy," it said.
The incident is likely to exacerbate relations between the U.S. and Afghan governments, already under strain over the U.S. maintaining custody of some 600 Afghan nationals after the formal handover of the main U.S. military prison at Bagram to Afghan control last week.
Following a meeting Sunday with U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Marc Grossman, Mr. Karzai issued a statement condemning the delayed handover as "a serious violation" of an agreement concluded between the two countries six months ago.
That agreement, along with a deal restricting night raids by coalition forces, helped pave the way for the signing of a Strategic Partnership Agreement between the countries in May. That agreement came into question in an Afghan parliamentary session Saturday, amid the furor over the video that mocked the Prophet Muhammad.
Addressing parliamentarians, Latif Pedram, a lawmaker from northern Badakhshan province, said Afghanistan should cancel the deal because of the video. There were also protests Sunday over the video in Kabul and the western Afghan city of Herat. They ended peacefully.
—Habib Khan Totakhil and Ziaulhaq Sultani contributed to this article.
Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge@wsj.com
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Taliban Targeted by Local Uprisings .
By HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL
ANDAR, Afghanistan—The paved road to this district is controlled by government troops. The alternate route, a dirt track, is under Taliban sway. Both ways are perilous for the local villagers who have taken up arms in the first of several anti-Taliban uprisings spreading in Afghanistan.
Two of these Andar rebels, escorting a reporter to their stronghold on a recent day, were stopped by jumpy Afghan soldiers, who cocked their American-furnished M-16s and briefly seized the villagers' weapons. The fighters were allowed to proceed only after long negotiations.
The Afghan soldiers' fears are easy to understand: Andar's band of fighters, who wear traditional dress and carry Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, are hard to distinguish from the Taliban. Until a few months ago, many were Taliban.
But now, they may be America's best hope for a decisive blow to the Taliban, especially as relations with President Hamid Karzai's administration deteriorate and a spate of insider killings led to an end, this week, to most joint operations between U.S. and Afghan forces.
U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the top coalition commander, has publicly compared the Andar revolt—which to a great degree pits local Pashtuns against the largely Pashtun Taliban—to the so-called Anbar Awakening, a rebellion of Iraq's Sunni tribes against al Qaeda-linked Sunni insurgents that became a turning point in the Iraq war.
Whether Andar will go the way of Anbar is far from certain. Outgunned by the Taliban, Andar's local fighters urgently need weapons and ammunition—something the U.S.-backed Afghan government would be eager to provide. Yet the Afghan rebels also know that any open backing by Mr. Karzai's unpopular administration is likely to backfire, denting their movement's credibility.
"We want support for the uprising. But we want the people to maintain ownership of this uprising," said Faizanullah Faizan, the leader of the Andar rebels, sitting among fighters in a house in Payendai village, where the first fighting between the rebels and Taliban took place. Neighboring lands are still controlled by the Taliban.
For the villagers here, the stakes are even higher. "If this uprising fails, the people's only hope dies," said Sarwar Khan, a resident of Andar, one of the most dangerous districts in the volatile province of Ghazni, in Afghanistan's southeast. "If the Taliban return, we think they will even execute our women and children."
As in Iraq's Sunni belt, there is little love here for either the central government or the Americans. Village men—mostly former local Taliban, or members of the Hezb-i-Islami group of warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—say they rose up against harsh new edicts by Taliban commanders who moved here this year from Pakistani madrassas, banning government education and imposing a more austere brand of Islam that defied local customs.
"Schools, clinics and the bazaar were closed. People were deprived of their basic rights. The Taliban would blindfold and execute anybody they wanted," said Ubaidullah Patsoon, one of the Andar uprising's leaders and a former Taliban fighter himself. "We asked the Taliban to let the people live their lives, let the schools, clinics and bazaar reopen but they responded with more killings."
The Andar uprising began shortly after the Taliban closed down government schools in March. The Taliban made the move to retaliate against a government order banning the use of unregistered motorcycles, the insurgents' favorite mode of transportation. A group of about a half-dozen villagers demanded that the schools be reopened.
In response, insurgents kidnapped the brother of one of the movement's leaders. He remains in their custody, confirmed Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
"We tried to negotiate with the Taliban," said Mr. Patsoon, one of the movement's founders. "But they sent a message saying surrender, abandon Andar and join the infidels—or get ready to fight."
In May, Taliban fighters surrounded the movement's members as they met in a house in Payendai village. One of the rebels, Abdul Samad, the son of a tribal elder, went outside holding a Quran as a symbol of peace and asking the insurgents to negotiate. He was shot dead instead, villagers say, fueling local anger with the Taliban.
In the fighting that ensued, Andar's rebels prevailed. The Taliban fled, empowering other villagers to join the movement, its followers say. The anti-Taliban rebels say their 250 fighters control some 50 of Andar's 400 or so villages and are in active pursuit of 50 more. Similar uprisings have taken place in eastern Kunar, Laghman and Nangarhar provinces, as well in southeastern Paktia and central Logar provinces, say local and provincial officials.
The Andar rebels benefit from their inside knowledge of the enemy. One of them, Abdullah Andar, said he used to be a Taliban explosives expert. "I defused a bomb the day before here," Mr. Andar said, pointing to an unpaved road. "Their tactics are not working on us. We know how they fight—once I was one of them."
Mr. Andar, who hails from the area, said he defected from the insurgency after he witnessed what he said was the Taliban's collusion with Pakistani forces. He said he initially took refuge in Iran, then returned home after the uprising began.
The Taliban are trying to crush this challenge, ramping up executions of the movement's supporters and planting more homemade bombs on roads and in bazaars, Mr. Faizan said, the movement's leader. Mr. Faizan was recently wounded in an assassination attempt, according to the rebels.
In villages the Taliban still control, they have banned groups of more than three men from gathering and barred travel to neighboring villages, villagers say. A series of battles with the Taliban in the district claimed scores of lives on both sides and among local civilians.
Mr. Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, confirmed the Taliban had restricted villagers' movements in Andar. He also dismissed the rebels, characterizing them as a U.S.-backed militia. "They are directly under Americans' supervision," said Mr. Mujahid. "We have been telling them since the beginning to put an end to the turbulence. The schools are reopened… The bazaar was banned because people would use it for spying."
Top U.S. military officials in Kabul say they aren't providing any support to the Andar movement but are watching whether they can help without damaging its organic development.
Mr. Faizan, the Andar uprising's leader, flatly denies having received any official Afghan government or coalition military help. His men carry old weapons, he says—rusty Kalashnikovs of the kind found in most Afghan homes—as well as some guns captured from the Taliban.
However, Asadullah Khalid, the former governor of Ghazni who became chief of the country's National Directorate of Security intelligence agency this month, said in an interview that he is supporting the rebels with what he said are his own personal funds.
When Mr. Faizan, the uprising's commander, gave a wad of some 50,000 afghanis—about $1,000—to the father of the slain Mr. Samad on a recent day, he said the money had been provided by Mr. Khalid. Such aid notwithstanding, Mr. Khalid said: "This isn't a government-planned uprising, but a popular uprising initiated by the oppressed people of Ghazni against the Taliban."
The local wish for self-determination could make the Andar movement a longer-term challenge for the central government's authority. Afghan and coalition officials have yet to determine what role such unregulated local militias would play in the future.
Juma Gul, the tribal elder whose son was killed in the uprising's first day, says his three other sons and two grandsons have now taken up arms against the Taliban—to fight not for Mr. Karzai, but for the right to live without outside interference.
"The Taliban don't let us live our lives and we fight to regain that right," Mr. Gul said. "We're fighting for freedom."
—Nathan Hodge and Maria Abi-Habib contributed to this article.
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MARIA ABI-HABIB And HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL
KABUL—U.S. and Afghan troops turned their guns on each other over the weekend, leaving two Americans and three Afghan soldiers dead in an incident that highlighted the breakdown of trust following a recent spate of insider attacks.
Afghan officials said Sunday that a Taliban rocket landed near U.S. troops on patrol Saturday afternoon in eastern Wardak province. In response, they said, American forces—thinking they had come under attack from Afghan troops—fired on a nearby Afghan army post. The Afghan army returned fire, resulting in a fierce gunbattle that lasted about 10 minutes, officials said.
The U.S.-led coalition in Kabul acknowledged that insurgent fire was involved in the attack but didn't confirm or deny whether U.S. forces opened up on the Afghan army first. "After a short conversation took place between [Afghan army] and [coalition] personnel, firing occurred which resulted in the fatal wounding of a [coalition] soldier and the death of his civilian colleague. In an ensuing exchange of fire, three [Afghan army] personnel are reported to have died," a coalition statement read.
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Saturday's incident came days after the U.S.-led coalition said it was easing its suspension of full-scale cooperation with Afghan forces. The coalition said in mid-September it was curbing joint operations with Afghan forces on levels below battalion command after a U.S. video insulting Islam enraged Muslims across the world and led to attacks on U.S. missions in the Middle East.
So far this year more than 50 coalition troops—most American—have been gunned down by Afghan police or soldiers, or nearly one out of every seven coalition fatalities.
The weekend incident pushed U.S. military deaths in the Afghan war to 2,000, according to a tally by the Associated Press. At least 1,190 more coalition troops from other countries have also died, according to iCasualties.org, an independent organization that tracks the deaths, the AP said.
Related Reading
Afghan Bomber Kills 14 10/1/2012
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Following the latest incident, Western military officials said there is no trust deficit between Afghan forces and their international allies. "If you visit the people in the field who are working together closely with thousands of interactions every day you see strong, trusting relationships resulting in cooperative operations delivering success," the coalition's deputy commander, British Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, said at a news conference Sunday.
The Taliban didn't take responsibility for Saturday's attack. They reported the incident on their website, saying that the Wardak gunbattle was for "reasons which are still not determined."
The U.S.-led coalition is building up the Afghan army and police so it can pull out most foreign forces by the end of 2014.
But some analysts say insider attacks against international forces perpetrated by Afghan soldiers and police have already deeply damaged the military mission.
"It's obviously concerning that the trust deficit has emerged and that even the smallest of incidents can set off a firestorm," said Candace Rondeaux, a senior analyst based in Kabul for the International Crisis Group think-tank. "At this stage, with morale being so low within the Afghan security forces, each of these insider attacks opens the pathway for copycat attacks."
Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com
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On Patrol With Bravo Company in Afghanistan
A 4-foot cobra slithered across the patrol's path. The Marines shrugged—a snake couldn't blow off their legs..
By BING WEST
Last Thursday the Pentagon announced that joint patrols between U.S. and Afghan troops had resumed after a 10-day hiatus. During that time, our commanders are said to have completed security reviews and beefed up measures to prevent more deadly "green-on-blue" attacks by Afghan forces on U.S. personnel. Yet over the weekend another green-on-blue incident killed another American, pushing the U.S. military death toll in the 11-year war to 2,000.
These joint patrols are crucial if we are to leave behind a secure Afghanistan in 2014, as the president intends. But we must make certain that their resumption isn't merely a face-saving measure for a policy decided in Washington that fails to address the reality on the ground in Afghanistan. Joint patrols cannot substitute for Afghan troops who must believe in their own cause. Nothing is gained by "jointness" if the Afghan forces are getting ready to cut local deals and pull back as we leave.
A few weeks ago, I visited Sangin District in Helmand province, the most violent district in Afghanistan, and got a taste of the challenges facing those who actually carry out these joint patrols.
The first patrol I accompanied was typical of thousands. In 95-degree heat, 10 Marines of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment slogged through the stifling cornfields, careful to stay in the footsteps of the point man sweeping for IEDs with his mine detector. At one point, a 4-foot cobra slithered across the patrol's path. The Marines shrugged—a snake couldn't blow off their legs.
The patrol emerged from the cornfield in front of a small madrassa, or Islamist school. A black-turbaned mullah quickly herded the schoolboys inside the courtyard, while outside a dozen farmers glared at the Marines. In five years, the coalition hadn't made a favorable impression in the hamlet.
The patrol continued on to a tiny outpost named PBR, or Pabst Blue Ribbon, on the edge of a Taliban-controlled hamlet. A roving gang of about 40 Taliban had engaged the Marines in a firefight a few days earlier, and the Marines were searching for their hideout.
"We're at war out here," Lt. Col. David Bradney, the 1-7 Battalion commander said. "That means patrolling aggressively from the first to the last day of our deployment. The Taliban will cut us no slack, and we return the sentiment."
The soldiers in the Afghan army in the district didn't take part in the search. They were staying inside their bases until the corn stalks had withered and the Taliban couldn't spring close-in ambushes. There were 46 such Afghan bases across the district; to the Marines, these static defenses guaranteed isolation and defeat.
"When we leave, they'll pull back," Sgt. Eric Johnson, who was stationed at PBR, said. "They won't stay out here alone."
Combat in Sangin has claimed the lives of more than 100 British and American troops since 2005. Battalion 1-7 controlled the district with half the number of Marines it had taken to seize it. Like similar progress across Helmand province, the achievement was due to an American offensive mind-set.
The Marines returned the next day, picked up four locals armed with AKs, and probed deeper into the Taliban-controlled area. When they reached a section of a narrow path that had been swept clean of footprints, they called up their explosives experts. In six months, Bravo Company had uncovered 60 IEDs in their 30-kilometer zone.
Scratching the dirt with his fingers, Staff Sgt. Edward Marini uncovered first one and then another wooden pressure plate attached to yellow plastic jugs filled with ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer produced in Pakistan. He blew both up in an explosion more powerful than an artillery shell.
"Those IEDs would cut a Marine in half," he said.
The leader of the local police then insisted that a nearby compound be blown up because enemy snipers used it. The Bravo Company platoon commander, Lt. Kurt Hoenig, explained that only the Afghan district chief could make that decision. In that case, the local leader retorted, his men would not patrol anymore.
There was a perverse logic to his threat. Over the past decade, an attitude of entitlement has taken hold among Afghans, many of whom believe the Americans need them more than they need the Americans. This explains how an obscure hamlet leader could demand that the Marines do his bidding.
Lt. Hoenig handled the situation perfectly. He agreed that the local police didn't have to patrol with the Marines. They could stay behind in Taliban territory, without Marine protection, instead. The police rejoined the patrol.
"The Afghans knew where the IEDs were," Lt. Hoenig said. "If we weren't here, they'd dig them up and dump them in a canal. Sometimes I think we're shoveling in a snowstorm. You see progress for a minute, then the hole is filled with snow again."
Day after day, thousands of American patrols leave the wire. The average grunt in Bravo Company strapped on 95 pounds of armor and ammo and made 100 patrols over a seven-month deployment. Last year in this sector of Sangin, Marines cinched tourniquets around their legs before going on patrol. Expecting to step on a pressure plate, they were ready to tie off their own bloody stumps. A year later, most carry tourniquets in their pockets and say they have it easier than those who preceded them.
That's true. Throughout Helmand, the progress has been remarkable. Roads are open, markets are bustling, schools are full. The reason has been the gritty persistence of our Marines, deployment after deployment. One hundred patrols per man—one million footsteps, with tourniquets at the ready. The infantryman has done his job. It's time for the Afghans to shovel the snow from their own doorsteps.
Mr. West, a former assistant secretary of defense and Marine, is the co-author with Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Dakota Meyer of "Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War," out this month from Random House.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/world/asia/teen-school-activist-malala-yousafzai-survives-hit-by-pakistani-taliban.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121010
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NOT ALL Muslims shot her in the head! Massive protests of this by the vast majority of peaceful muslims in 3...2...never
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/world/asia/teen-school-activist-malala-yousafzai-survives-hit-by-pakistani-taliban.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121010
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Ummm , , , you might need to back up a bit GM
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/10/teenaged-activist-shot-by-pakistan-taliban-undergoes-surgery-out-of-danger-.html
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Ummm , , , you might need to back up a bit GM
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/10/teenaged-activist-shot-by-pakistan-taliban-undergoes-surgery-out-of-danger-.html
"Across Swat, private schools were closed to protest the Taliban’s actions. The attack drew condemnation from virtually every corner of Pakistani society, from politicians and the media to civil society organizations."
You were impressed by this? :-o What does this mean, the Talibs only get half the usual hugs and kisses from the ISI when the weekly supply run gets sent in? Wake me when we see something similar in the muslim world as the violent protests and killing that accompany a koran getting thrown away or touched by an infidel impolitely.
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I get all that AND we need to acknowledge that this happened TOO. We need to allow ourselves to see that such people exist. We need to appreciate that taking such a stand in such a culture and environment requires a certain level of courage given the pervasive presence of Islamo-fascist killers.
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The majority of muslims ruin it for the few who wish to leave the 7th century. Those that take a visible stand tend to get shot, stabbed or killed in some other manner. Somehow this will be spun as our fault
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/world/asia/afghan-armys-high-turnover-clouds-us-exit-plan.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121016
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U.S. Sees Shift for Afghan Special Ops
Elite Forces Will Take Noncombat Roles, Says Commander, as Troops Withdraw.
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
SARKANI, Afghanistan—Elite U.S. special-operations troops are preparing to shift to a rear-guard role in Afghanistan when the main allied forces withdraw at the end of next year, according to their commander.
U.S. Army Special Forces and other elite American troops expect to stay but will shift from the battlefield to rear positions such as the defense and interior ministries, helping improve Afghan command-and-control capabilities, said U.S. Maj. Gen. Tony Thomas, who commands U.S. and coalition Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, in an interview.
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Michael M. Phillips/The Wall Street Journal
A coalition Special Forces soldier from Hungary checks the marksmanship of member of Afghanistan's SWAT-like units.
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His remarks are some of the most detailed yet about the U.S. military's expectations of its role after most conventional troops leave. Special operations units are currently advisers to their Afghan counterparts and they fight alongside each other, a situation many expected to prevail after the drawdown.
Pulling back from the front lines would likely reduce the risk of U.S. casualties in a war that has already claimed more than 2,000 American lives and might make a long-term presence in Afghanistan more palatable to a war-weary American public.
This thinking is one reason the U.S. is urgently pushing to prepare Afghan special operators—police SWAT teams, army commandos and special-forces strike teams—to conduct night raids, capture top-level insurgent leaders and defend against Taliban terror attacks with an ever-decreasing need for U.S. assistance.
"Two years from now, they better be a lot better," Gen. Thomas said by telephone. "If they are better, we can afford to be at a more detached level."
Such a scenario would return the Afghan war closer to the way it was fought in 2001, when elite U.S. troops assisted Afghan rebels in overthrowing the Taliban, by coordinating U.S. airstrikes and providing battlefield advice. The large influx of conventional allied forces came later, culminating in the troop surge that President Barack Obama ordered in 2009, bringing the U.S. presence to more than 100,000 troops.
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The U.S. and its allies have already announced plans to withdraw tens of thousands of conventional forces by the end of 2014. What happens to those left behind—and whether there will be troops left behind at all—is now the subject of U.S.-Afghan talks on a long-term bilateral-security agreement, which will likely hinge on whether Kabul grants U.S. troops immunity from Afghan law. Failure to reach such a deal scuttled plans to keep some forces in Iraq after the U.S. withdrawal last year.
Assuming the talks are successful, Western officials have talked of an enduring U.S. presence between a few thousand and 20,000 troops, not all of them special-operations forces. While Gen. Thomas oversees elite units from Hungary, Norway and other coalition partners, these countries will negotiate their own deals with the Afghan government.
Presidential elections in the U.S. next month and Afghanistan in 2014 could also complicate the outcome. Republican nominee Mitt Romney has endorsed the 2014 timetable, but said the precise extent of the withdrawals should be based on local conditions, so as not to signal an exact timeline to the Taliban. He has criticized the U.S. for not leaving a residual counterterrorism force in Iraq, suggesting he would push for that in Afghanistan.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, is planning for its preferred outcome. Elite coalition forces no longer conduct missions on their own, according to their commander; missions include Afghan counterparts.
In Sarkani in eastern Afghanistan, Green Berets and Hungarian special operators are training an Afghan paramilitary SWAT unit called the Provincial Response Company, one of 19 nationwide that conduct hostage rescues, high-risk arrests and weapons seizures. The government has some 4,000 such special police officers.
This month, the Sarkani SWAT team captured an alleged insurgent named Saidullah, who is accused of providing supplies to the Taliban. Based on U.S. intelligence, Maj. Sayeed Afandi, the unit commander, knew that Saidullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, was in the nearby town of Asadabad. The major found him in a restaurant, sent his driver inside in civilian clothes to confirm his identity, and then arrested Saidullah himself.
When the Afghans spotted 15 to 20 insurgents on the ridgeline above their base this month, however, it was the Americans who fired artillery at the fighters' positions.
Elite units in general are especially useful because of the tactics of insurgents. It is uncommon for large groups of fighters to try to take over entire districts or overrun allied positions. Massed fighters draw coalition airstrikes and risk large insurgent casualties. who tend to operate in small teams, planting bombs and conducting hit-and-run or suicide attacks. "Overall, the insurgency is a small force operating in small groups," said the commander of the Afghan Crisis Response Unit, a paramilitary SWAT team in Kabul. "Their strategy to do blitzkrieg operations failed."
In April, the Crisis Response Unit was called in to clear insurgents who had taken over three buildings in Kabul. The Afghans swept the buildings and killed the insurgents, with close support from their Norwegian advisers, who assisted with intelligence, communications and coordination.
"It's like walking your kid to school and holding his hand," said Australian Brig. Gen. Mark Smethhurst, a senior commander of allied special-operations troops. "We're still holding their hands."
Cooperation with Afghans has been tested by a recent surge in attacks on coalition forces by local troops, known as green-on-blue attacks. The decision whether or not to continue them was left up to the discretion of local commanders.
Allied and Afghan commanders say they are seeing improvements that should allow elite Afghan units to conduct battlefield operations on their own after 2014, even if they need foreign assistance at higher levels, including air support and resupply.
Last month, special police units conducted 299 missions, 80% of which were led by the Afghans, while the foreign advisers led the rest, according to allied and Afghan commanders. Some 15% to 20% of elite police operations involved no foreign assistance, a senior Afghan commander said.
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http://abcnews.go.com/International/taliban-accidentally-reveal-identities-mailing-list-members/t/story?id=17737950#.UKakHGcT1nA
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/wo...an-prison.html
Karzai Orders Takeover of Prison at Bagram
By ROD NORDLAND
Published: November 19, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai has ordered Afghan forces to take control of the American-built Bagram Prison and accused American officials of violating an agreement to fully transfer the facility to the Afghans, according to a statement issued by his office on Monday.
The move came after what Mr. Karzai said was the expiration of a two-month grace period, agreed to by President Obama in September, to complete the transfer of the prison, at the Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. The Afghan president convened a meeting Sunday of top officials to report on the prison’s status, which led to Monday’s statement, officials said.
Particularly at issue were 57 prisoners held there who had been acquitted by the Afghan courts but have been held by American officials at the prison for more than a month in defiance of release orders, Aimal Faizi, the spokesman for President Karzai, said in an interview.
Afghan officials were also concerned with the status of new prisoners being captured on the battlefield by American troops, who the Afghans feel should be transferred to their control under the prison transfer agreement signed by the two countries this year.
Mr. Faizi said hundreds of new prisoners are being held by American authorities in a closed-off section of the Bagram Prison, which the American military calls the Detention Facility in Parwan. American military forces, mainly Special Operations troops carrying out night raids, have been arresting suspected insurgents at the rate of more than 100 a month, according to Afghan officials.
“We expect the Americans to respect the agreement according to the memorandum of understanding signed between the two countries,” Mr. Faizi said.
The American military did not respond to specific complaints from Afghan officials, but United States Forces-Afghanistan released a statement saying, “The United States fully respects the sovereignty of Afghanistan, and we are committed to fulfilling the mutual obligations incurred under the Memorandum of Understanding on Detentions.” American officials have said that the agreement on detention left open to further negotiation how to handle new prisoners captured by American forces on the battlefield. Those negotiations have stalled, however, over disputes about the release of some earlier prisoners that the Americans have refused to let go.
Tensions over detainee transfers have been on the front-burner since the Memo of Understanding was signed in March, setting a six-month timeline for full transfer of Parwan to Afghan authority. That deadline lapsed with the central issues of a prison transfer still unresolved, leading to a two-month extension agreed to in a videoconference between Mr. Karzai and Mr. Obama in September.
Now, the continued disagreement threatens to complicate an even larger issue: the two countries began negotiations last week on a status of forces agreement that would govern the sort of American military presence that would remain in Afghanistan after the 2014 withdrawal deadline.
The status quo was “a serious breach of the Memorandum of Understanding”, In the statement by Mr. Karzai’s office on Monday, he was quoted as saying the Americans were in “serious breach” of the prison transfer agreement and ordered Afghan officials, including the commander of the Bagram Prison, to take “urgent measures to ensure a full Afghanization of the prison affairs and a complete transfer of its authority.”
American officials, however, say it’s not so simple. One American official, speaking on condition of anonymity because a formal response to Mr. Karzai had not yet been prepared, said: “It’s an issue of sovereignty for the government of Afghanistan, and to General Allen it’s a matter of security for the coalition troops. You can’t just bring these guys in and let them go.” Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of American and NATO troops here, is still in Washington, D.C., after a scandal erupted over numerous e-mails he sent to a woman in Florida.
The American military’s statement maintained that the agreement “contains reciprocal commitments to provide for the security of Afghan citizens, the A.N.S.F. and coalition forces by keeping captured enemy combatants from returning to the battlefield.” It added that the military was confident of working out a solution with Afghanistan on that issue.
Mr. Faizi said there would not immediately be a change in actual control over the Bagram facility, despite the Afghan president’s strongly worded statement. He said Afghan judicial, defense and prison officials would hold urgent discussions with American officials and report back to President Karzai in the next couple days about how to actually implement his order. After that, Mr. Karzai would hold a news conference to announce his government’s next steps.
The Bagram Prison, which has a capacity for more than 3,000 detainees, lies within the much larger, American-controlled Bagram Air Base and is surrounded by American-manned checkpoints as well as being heavily staffed by American guards.
Human rights advocates welcomed President Karzai’s move. Tina Foster, a lawyer with the International Justice Network, who represents some Bagram detainees, met recently with Afghan officials in a still-unsuccessful effort to visit her clients in Bagram. Afghan officials approved the visits, but the United States military blocked them, she said.
“When we met with Karzai’s staff it was clear that the Afghans are tired of being treated like servants in their own country,” Ms. Foster said. “Symbolic gestures are not going to cut it anymore. They want the keys to the prison, and the ability to determine the fates of the prisoners held there.”
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Jake Tapper's 'The Outpost' Raises Vital Questions on U.S. Afghanistan Strategy
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by Kurt Schlichter 22 Nov 2012, 2:30 AM PDT
The Army uses the term “BLUF” – bottom line up front. The BLUF on Jake Tapper’s new book on Afghanistan, The Outpost, is that you need to read it.
If you are a civilian, you need to do so to see and understand something of what you ask America’s warriors to do in your name. If you are one of those warriors, especially if you presume to lead American soldiers, you need to do so for the sake of your fellow troops.
Jake Tapper is an unusual mainstream journalist, one who movement conservatives respect. That’s not because he’s a conservative himself – he’s not – but because he seems to embody the kind of objectivity that the mainstream media has almost completely abandoned in favor of outright partisanship. And he’s a stickler for accuracy – I once clashed with him over some long-forgotten article in Big Journalism where he took offense over my questioning of his reporting. His stubborn dedication shows here; the lawyer in me appreciates the thorough documentation at the back of the book.
The subtitle of The Outpost is An Untold Story of American Valor, and it’s a crime that this is true. You don’t know the story. America doesn’t know the story. That is something of the point. This is the story of the tactics that derive from a strategy that, if more Americans understood it, might not be the strategy at all. We just had an election and the only discussion of Afghanistan focused on who would pull out fastest. That’s not strategy.
The focus of The Outpost is not the men who fight the engagements over the several years that the ill-fated Combat Outpost (“COP”) Keating existed in a remote corner of Afghanistan but COP Keating itself. This is significant. The book orients on terrain, just like classic warfare. When you talk about conventional fighting, you are necessarily talking terrain, or (less frequently) the enemy itself. But the war in Afghanistan is not traditional warfare.
Tapper’s story is really one of men at the unit level – the troopers in various Infantry Brigade Combat Teams’ (“IBCT”) reconnaissance (i.e., cavalry) squadrons – trying to come up with effective tactics in support of a non-traditional strategy, counter-insurgency (“COIN”). COIN doesn’t try to dominate particular key terrain or destroy the enemy (though these things play a supporting part). Rather, the decisive effort is oriented at the populace. COIN assumes that if you win over the populace – the people's “hearts and minds” – the insurgency is defeated.
COP Keating – named after a lieutenant killed in an painfully unnecessary vehicle accident – lay at the base of towering mountains near a road and a village that the IBCT command was determined to engage and convert to the government’s cause. Tactically, the location was a disaster waiting to happen – as various soldiers rotate into COP Keating over the years, Tapper records, to a man, they are baffled at the decision to locate the post there.
In a traditional war, it would be insane. But in COIN, it makes a kind of twisted sense. You have to be where the people are, and the people don’t choose to locate their villages based on the teachings of Fort Benning’s Infantry School.
This is a story of the consequences of America’s choice of strategies. Strategy, the Army War College teaches the senior officers selected for that coveted course, consists of a symmetry between the means available (resources) and the possible ways (courses of action) and the desired ends. The Outpost illustrates a strategy out of sync. The ends are vague – there is a lot of talk about supporting the central government and “development” but the end really seems to be just keeping the locals from fighting the allies. Moreover, the ways are very constrained; the awesome firepower of the American forces is limited by restrictive rules of engagement.
The means are limited as well – a single IBCT for several provinces. An IBCT is about 4000 soldiers. What struck me is the lack of troops for the mission – the job is just too big for the number of troops dedicated to it. As a result, it’s a stalemate.
We see, graphically, the effect on our troops. We, of course, have the power to completely pulverize any target in Afghanistan. We could, if we chose, clear the villages and place the populace in “protective custody” then proceed to wipe out everyone else, who would presumably be the enemy. But we won’t do that because we aren’t savages.
Yet by constraining ourselves, we ensure that the fighting is roughly even – that is, units of insurgents with small arms engaging often smaller units of Americans with small arms. The equation changes when air power and artillery are available – when either is actually in range and when it can be used without killing innocents – but the bottom line is that COIN forces Americans to do something no soldier ever wants to do: give the enemy a fighting chance. In Desert Storm, the last conventional war, we annihilated the Iraqi forces before they saw us by air, by artillery, and by tank guns that outranged them. We had the initiative. It was utterly lopsided – and therefore better for all involved.
COIN gives the enemy the ability to hold its own because, in a macro sense, we have to hold our heaviest fire and largely duke it out man to man. And they have the initiative because we only have the strength to hold the ground we stand on while they can range through the rest of the battlespace – therefore giving them the initiative since they can start (and end) combat when and where they choose.
The Outpost therefore chronicles a series of inconclusive firefights set against a backdrop of desperate attempts to convert the wary locals to our cause – locals who, as Tapper points out, have seen invaders come and go over the ages and see Americans as just another one that will eventually depart. The enemy initiates the fights and chooses when to end them. The Americans, contrary to everything they have even been taught, are left to react.
The valor of these cavalrymen is unquestioned, and their skill and courage in battle against a brave and cunning foe is ably depicted in Tapper’s lean, clear prose. Tapper has a rare sense for what’s important, probably as much as one can expect from a civilian. There are a couple minor technical errors military folks will pick out, but they are of no import. Tapper gets it.
He draws the real-life characters vividly; we get to know them as people, not just grades and military occupational specialties. I wish Tapper had talked a little about the unique cavalry culture – no mention of Stetsons, spurs or Garry Owen? Also worth mentioning is that, except for a cav squadron’s C Troop, which is infantry (as Tapper points out), cavalry troopers are not infantrymen yet they were fighting that way.
My authenticity test for military books is whether I recognize the characters from my own career, albeit with different names. I did, starting with the military intelligence specialist right at the beginning who thinks he knows more than his officers – and may, in fact, be right, at least in a non-COIN war. There’s always a bright E4 in every S2 shop who thinks he’s got it all figured out. Always.
Tapper’s interest is in the cavalry troopers, with only a few mentions of the full colonels and generals in the first half of the book. More come later as distant figures, seemingly disconnected to the reality on the ground. That’s a challenge for the reader, because from where the rubber meets the road things look very different from the driver’s seat.
I get that; in some form, I’ve held many of the officer leadership positions described in the book. A commander’s action that looks to a lieutenant as callous indifference may well be the result of a battalion commander having to make tough calls. Your platoon doesn’t get priority of fire during a mission? It’s probably not because the commander doesn’t care but because he does; he just thinks he can better support the mission and protect soldiers’ lives by making the tough choice to give priority to someone else. I wish I knew as an angry lieutenant what I know today as a former cavalry squadron commander.
The civilian reader is exposed to a completely new world which, for various reasons, the mainstream media has utterly failed to make familiar. For military readers, there are practical takeaways. You get an idea of enemy tactics, the challenges of COIN, and the nature of Afghans and the Afghan forces. Not (yet) having been to Afghanistan, I found myself taking copious mental notes.
The last part of the book chronicles a massive, coordinated enemy assault on COP Keating and the courageous actions of the 50-some soldiers who held out against all odds. You swell with pride at our warriors, then wonder how the men could have ever been put there.
But under the strategy we as citizens have validated, COP Keating was bound to happen. It’s not merely a result of commanders trying to do their already nearly-impossible job with far too few troops. Of course their decisions put soldiers at greater risk – COIN is all about risking (hopefully wisely) soldiers’ lives to achieve victory by deemphasizing kinetic effects (firepower) in favor of engaging the population. COIN is America’s strategy, and that strategy is validated by our elected representatives. For better or worse, it is America’s strategy – though Tapper raises the question of whether what was happening there at the end was still COIN at all and not just bureaucratic inertia. Regardless, if you want to know who is to “blame” for Afghanistan, find a mirror.
The Outpost is a worthy addition to any bookshelf next to the two gold standard texts of modern war – Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down and Sean Naylor’s Not a Good Day To Die. But it won’t be on mine. A number of my friends who I served with over the last two decades on deployment and in natural disasters will soon depart for Afghanistan. I’m passing on my copy of The Outpost to them in the hope it will help them win the fight and bring their people back.
Kurt Schlichter commanded a National Guard IBCT cavalry squadron in the United States from 2006 to 2008. The views expressed here are solely his own.
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WASHINGTON—American soldiers should brace for a "social-cultural shock" when meeting Afghan soldiers and avoid potentially fatal confrontations by steering clear of subjects including women's rights, religion and Taliban misdeeds, according to a controversial draft of a military handbook being prepared for troops heading to the region.
The proposed Army handbook suggests that Western ignorance of Afghan culture, not Taliban infiltration, has helped drive the recent spike in deadly attacks by Afghan soldiers against the coalition forces.
Excerpts: 'Do Not Discuss Religion'
Below, read excerpts from "Insider Threats – Afghanistan: Observations, Insights, and Lessons," a draft handbook prepared for U.S. and coalition forces serving in Afghanistan:
Green-on-blue incidents provoke a crisis of confidence and trust among [coalition forces] working with [Afghan troops]. As a means of illuminating this insider threat, those [coalition] personnel working on Security Force Assistance Teams during 2012 that live alongside and mentor [Afghan security forces] have about 200 times the risk of being murdered by an [Afghan security force] member than a U.S. police officer has of being murdered in the line of duty by a perpetrator.
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Preventive tools:
Understand that they may have poor conflict resolution skills and that insults cause irrational escalation of force.
Do not discuss religion
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Cultural Awareness:
Flashpoints/Grievances Some U.S. Troops Have Reported Regarding Afghanistan National Security Forces:
To better prepare [coalition forces] for the psychologically challenging conditions in Afghanistan, familiarize yourself with the following stressors some U.S. troops have reported concerning [Afghan security forces] behavior during previous deployments. Bear in mind that not all [coalition] troops have reported such experiences or beliefs.
Some ANSF are profoundly dishonest and have no personal integrity
ANSF do not buy-into war effort; far too many are gutless in combat
Incompetent, ignorant and basically stupid
Bottom line: Troops may experience social-cultural shock and/or discomfort when interacting with [Afghan security forces]. Better situational awareness/understanding of Afghan culture will help better prepare [coalition forces] to more effectively partner and to avoid cultural conflict that can lead towards green-on-blue violence.
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Etiquette Violations Best Avoided by [coalition forces] Taboo conversation topics include:
Anything related to Islam
Mention of any other religion and/or spirituality
Debating the war
Making derogatory comments about the Taliban
Advocating women's rights and equality
Directing any criticism towards Afghans
Mentioning homosexuality and homosexual conduct
Bottom line: Try to avoid highly charged and emotional issues.
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"Many of the confrontations occur because of [coalition] ignorance of, or lack of empathy for, Muslim and/or Afghan cultural norms, resulting in a violent reaction from the [Afghan security force] member," according to the draft handbook prepared by Army researchers.
The 75-page manual, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, is part of a continuing effort by the U.S. military to combat a rise in attacks by Afghan security forces aimed at coalition troops.
But it has drawn criticism from U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the top military commander in Afghanistan, who aides said hasn't—and wouldn't—endorse the manual as written. Gen. Allen also rejected a proposed foreword that Army officials drafted in his name.
"Gen. Allen did not author, nor does he intend to provide, a foreword," said Col. Tom Collins, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. "He does not approve of its contents."
Gen. Allen hadn't seen the proposed foreword until a portion of the handbook was called to his attention by the Journal, Col. Collins said. Military officials wouldn't spell out his precise objections. But the handbook's conclusion that cultural insensitivity is driving insider attacks goes beyond the view most commonly expressed by U.S. officials.
The version reviewed by the Journal—marked "final coordinating draft" and sent out for review in November—was going through more revisions, said Lt. Gen. David Perkins, commander of the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., whose Center for Army Lessons Learned wrote the manual.
The proposed foreword was prepared by Army staff for Gen. Allen's eventual consideration, and the general's concerns will be taken into account as the military moves ahead with more revisions, he added.
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The proposed handbook embraces a hotly debated theory that American cultural ignorance has sparked many so-called insider attacks—more than three dozen of which have claimed the lives of some 63 members of the U.S.-led coalition this year. The rise in insider attacks has created one of the biggest threats to American plans to end its major combat missions in Afghanistan next year and transfer full security control to Afghan forces in 2014.
Afghan leaders say Taliban infiltrators are responsible for most insider attacks. U.S. officials say the attacks are largely rooted in personal feuds between Afghan and coalition troops, though not necessarily the result of cultural insensitivity.
Last year, the U.S.-led coalition rejected an internal military study that concluded that cultural insensitivity was in part to blame for insider killings, which it called a growing threat that represented "a severe and rapidly metastasizing malignancy" for the coalition in Afghanistan.
The study was reported last year by The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. military at the time said the study was flawed by "unprofessional rhetoric and sensationalism."
The 2011 report—"A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility"—is now a centerpiece of the draft handbook's advice to soldiers heading to Afghanistan, and it is listed under the draft's references and recommended reading. The report's findings also informed the current manual for troops in Afghanistan, which was released in February, according to Gen. Perkins.
U.S. Army officials didn't make the current version of the manual available for review.
The Army officer who headed up the 2011 study, Maj. Jeffrey Bordin, now is serving as the Army center's liaison to Gen. Allen's coalition headquarters in Kabul.
More
Manual Brings Pashtun Population Into Focus
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Maj. Bordin's work was included in the manual as part of a broader assessment of the insider threat in Afghanistan, said Gen. Perkins.
"We are very serious in trying to solve this problem, so we are not discounting any insights that we think are useful," he said. "We are pulling out all the stops to do everything we can to gather lessons learned."
Maj. Bordin didn't respond to email requests to comment, and the military didn't make him available for an interview.
The study, based on interviews with 600 members of the Afghan security forces and 200 American soldiers, painted a grim portrait of opposing cultures with simmering disdain for their counterparts.
The draft handbook uses Maj. Bordin's conclusions to psychologically prepare troops for serving in Afghanistan. A summary includes views of some U.S. soldiers that Afghan forces engage in thievery, are "gutless in combat," are "basically stupid," "profoundly dishonest," and engage in "treasonous collusion and alliances with enemy forces."
The draft handbook offers a list of "taboo conversation topics" that soldiers should avoid, including "making derogatory comments about the Taliban," "advocating women's rights," "any criticism of pedophilia," "directing any criticism towards Afghans," "mentioning homosexuality and homosexual conduct" or "anything related to Islam."
"Bottom line: Troops may experience social-cultural shock and/or discomfort when interacting with" Afghan security forces, the handbook states. "Better situational awareness/understanding of Afghan culture will help better prepare [troops] to more effectively partner and to avoid cultural conflict that can lead toward green-on-blue violence."
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Bottom line, if a muslim does something bad, it's always someone else's fault.
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So, what are we doing there?
After a tremendous success in overthrowing the Taliban, Bush established strategic incoherence and multiplied it with neglect. Obama ran on it being the right war and once in, surprise! decided to posture for a while and then cut and run.
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I dunno, so we can say we gave it a good shot before we decide to nuke it flat?
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Ummm , , , ignoring for the moment the rather significant issue of massive collateral damage to the innocent, Pakistan is the world's fourth largest nuke power, yes?
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So, we make it a joint US-India operation to pacify SW asia.
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In Pakistan, Mixed Results From a Peshawar Attack
December 20, 2012 | 1103 GMT
by Ben West
The Pakistani Taliban continue to undermine Pakistan's government and military establishment, and in doing so, they continue to raise questions over the security of the country's nuclear arsenal. :-o :-o :-o On Dec. 15, 10 militants armed with suicide vests and grenades attacked Peshawar Air Force Base, the site of a third major operation by the Pakistani Taliban since May 2011. Tactically, the attack was relatively unsuccessful -- all the militants were killed, and the perimeter of the air base was not breached -- but the Pakistani Taliban nonetheless achieved their objective.
The attack began the night of Dec. 15 with a volley of three to five mortar shells. As the shells were fired, militants detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device near the perimeter wall of the air base. Reports indicate that all five militants inside the vehicle were killed. The other five militants engaged security forces in a nearby residential area and eventually were driven back before they could enter the air base. The next day, security forces acting on a report of suspicious activity confronted the militants, who all died in the resultant shootout.
Pakistani security forces came away from the incident looking very good. They prevented a large and seemingly coordinated team of militants from entering the confines of the base and thus from damaging civilian and military aircraft. Some of Pakistan's newly acquired Chinese-Pakistani made JF-17s, are stationed at the air base, and worth roughly $20 million each, they were probably the militants ultimate targets.
Another reason the militants may have chosen the base is its location. Peshawar Air Force Base is the closest base to the northwest tribal areas of Pakistan, where Pakistani and U.S. forces are clashing with Taliban militants who threaten Islamabad and Kabul. The air base is most likely a hub for Pakistan's air operations against those militants. The Dec. 15 attack killed one police officer and a few other civilians, but it did no damage to the air base, the adjacent civilian airport or their respective aircraft. Flights were postponed for only a couple of hours as security forces cleared the area.
Tactics and Previous Attacks
Major military bases in Pakistan have been attacked before. In May 2011, Pakistani Taliban militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and firearms destroyed two P-3C maritime surveillance aircraft and killed 10 soldiers during an attack on Mehran Naval Air Base in Karachi. The militants entered the base by cutting through the fence.
More recently, seven Pakistani Taliban militants scaled the walls of Minhas Air Force Base in Kamra before killing a soldier and damaging a Ukrainian transport aircraft. They were pushed back before they could damage the squadron of F-16 fighter aircraft stationed at the base.
The Dec. 15 attack was not nearly as destructive as these other attacks, probably because half the militants were killed immediately in the explosion at the perimeter. Their deaths suggest the device detonated earlier than expected or that they were not far enough from the device when it exploded. It is unclear why they died, but the device could have detonated prematurely for several reasons. There could have been a glitch in the construction or detonation of the device. Otherwise, it could have been the result of the security forces' countermeasures (something officials have not yet claimed). Had the militants survived the explosion and breached the perimeter, they might have been more successful against security.
The Dec. 15 attack also differs from the previous two attacks tactically. Whereas militants stealthily entered the bases in Kamra and Karachi, the militants who attacked the base in Peshawar used mortars and explosives because the wall -- roughly eight feet high and topped with barbed wire -- could not be cut or climbed easily. These tactics are much more aggressive than the two previous air base attacks, and therefore they immediately caught the attention of security forces. Indeed, security forces in the vicinity would have heard mortar shells and explosions. But just as important, mortar shells and explosions create flames that security forces can use to pinpoint the attack and respond quickly.
It is hard to say whether the combination and coordination of mortar fire, explosives and a direct ground assault with firearms would have resulted in a successful attack even if half the militants had not died in the initial explosion. They certainly would have been greatly outnumbered. The few mortar shells fired at the base may have suppressed forces momentarily, but the militants did not sustain their indirect cover fire, which eventually allowed security forces more mobility in responding. In any case, breaching the wall with an explosion sacrifices the element of surprise too early -- outside the base rather than inside -- reducing the amount of time the assailants have to find their targets before security could respond.
A final reason the attack failed may have been the fact that the threat was known about weeks earlier. In late November, authorities apprehended a would-be suicide bomber and his handler entering Peshawar on a motorcycle. The suspect later confessed that they were targeting the airport. Peshawar airport was already on high alert after the attack on the Kamra base in August. The November arrests heightened security, which lessened the militants' chance of surprise. Moreover, the arrests were made publicly available in open-source materials, so the militants should have known that security forces were on high alert.
As for the security forces, the protective intelligence available was obvious, and the attack came when they were most prepared to repel it. Yet they benefited greatly when the explosion did half their work for them. It appears that they just got lucky.
Strategic Value
The Dec. 15 attack appears to have been carried out by militants who intended to replicate the damage caused by their comrades' attacks in Karachi and Kamra. Tactically, they failed.
But that does not mean the operation wasn't valuable. Like previous attacks on Pakistani military installations, the Peshawar attack grabs headlines because of its high profile. Put simply, the sensitivity of the target demands media attention.
As in the Karachi and Kamra attacks, the Dec. 15 attack involves the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. There are no indications that there are nuclear weapons stored at the Peshawar base, and there is no evidence that the nuclear weapons that may have been stored at the Karachi and Kamra bases were compromised. But the attack nonetheless raises questions about the security of Pakistan's military installations and by extension their nuclear arsenal. For the United States and India, such attacks compel lawmakers to revisit debates over whether the United States should intervene to protect the weapons.
These headlines and discussions benefit the Pakistani Taliban because they call into question Islamabad's ability to rule. Meanwhile, the Pakistani Taliban will continue to try to destabilize the military, one of the strongest pillars of the state, and provoke fear of external involvement from the United States.
In fact, the Pakistani Taliban would benefit from U.S. involvement, which would create huge public backlash and chaotic conditions in which the militants could thrive. The Pakistani Taliban do not necessarily need to destroy aircraft or kill military personnel to raise these doubts in Pakistan and the wider world. From the perspective of the insurgents, all the coordination and firepower they brought to the attack was a strategic success if this attack nurtures that doubt, even if it wasn't as tactically successful as previous attacks.
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Read more: In Pakistan, Mixed Results From a Peshawar Attack | Stratfor
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/world/asia/betrayed-while-they-sleep-afghan-police-are-dying-in-numbers.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121228&_r=0
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/world/asia/drone-war-in-pakistan-spurs-militants-to-deadly-reprisals.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121230&_r=0
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Kabul expects the U.S. to help modernize the Afghan military, including a higher-end air force. Above, soldiers shown recently at a northern Afghan base.
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KABUL—Afghan President Hamid Karzai is set to depart Monday for Washington to meet President Barack Obama in a visit that promises tough talks over the U.S. military presence here after the American mandate ends in 2014.
The leaders will also discuss Kabul's wish list of military gear.
In an address Wednesday to Afghan lawmakers, Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul outlined Kabul's expectations for the talks, which he said would define the two nations' relations after the U.S.-led coalition leaves.
"This is one of the most important visits of the president to the United States of America," Mr. Rassoul said, adding that it "will cast new light on the future relations."
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the White House and the State Department didn't respond to requests to comment.
The discussions in Washington are expected to touch on everything from post-2014 U.S. military and financial assistance to wider regional security issues. Officials in both countries hope the meeting will smooth the way for a U.S. drawdown after more than a decade of war, while preserving hard-won security gains.
Washington and Kabul late last year launched talks over a long-term bilateral security accord on a residual U.S. force. The White House has yet to officially disclose the number of troops it seeks to keep in Afghanistan, but U.S. officials have described a White House preference for up to 10,000 troops in the post-2014 period. Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander, has recommended a range of between 6,000 and 15,000 troops.
The two presidents are scheduled to meet as the fragile peace process with the Taliban appears to be showing new promise after last month's meeting between envoys from the Islamic insurgency and senior Afghan politicians near Chantilly, France.
Ashraf Ghani, Mr. Karzai's adviser on the security transition, said Washington and Kabul were building a "comprehensive agenda" for Mr. Karzai's U.S. visit around several issues, including peace talks, the bilateral security accord, military equipment and financial support beyond 2014. "Both sides have been preparing intensely—this is a very well-prepared trip," he said.
Top Afghan officials in recent days have made clear they expect the U.S. government and its allies to help modernize the Afghan military. The officials say they want a higher-end air force that can defend the country's airspace, something their U.S. and coalition counterparts are skeptical the country can afford. Afghanistan largely depends on foreign aid to pay for its army and police, but international donors expect the country to foot an increasing share of the bill for its security over the longer term.
Afghanistan now has a relatively primitive air force, equipped largely with Russian-made transport helicopters, small cargo planes and training aircraft, and Afghan officials have been frustrated by slow progress in building up a more modern fleet. Maj. Gen. Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said the Afghan military wanted aircraft for "external defense."
Afghan officials refer privately to the potential threat posed by the country's powerful neighbors, Iran and Pakistan, but take care in public to avoid bellicose rhetoric.
Afghanistan's defense ministry prepared a weaponry wish list well in advance of the Washington meeting that includes better intelligence and surveillance equipment, longer-range artillery and equipment to detect and clear roadside bombs. Mr. Karzai's spokesman, Aimal Faizi, said discussions about military equipment would be "the most important part of the negotiation" in Washington.
"The Americans know Afghanistan's needs and they have been given a list of the equipment Afghanistan needs," Mr. Faizi said.
Less clear is how Afghan negotiators will tackle some of the touchier issues of sovereignty. In the past, Afghan officials have made demands to curtail immunity for U.S. forces, and Mr. Karzai has railed against U.S.'s detention of Afghan citizens. Afghan officials would wait to see what kind of troop presence the U.S. is seeking before negotiating conditions, Mr. Faizi suggested.
"Until it is clear how many Americans troops will stay in Afghanistan, how many bases they will have…this issue can't be raised," he said.
Another question is how the Obama-Karzai meeting will play into the continuing peace contacts that top Afghan leaders have had with the Taliban.
In his Wednesday speech, Mr. Rassoul, the Afghan foreign minister, delivered the strongest official endorsement to date of the Chantilly talks, saying that all parties now recognized that fighting would not end the Afghan conflict. But he added that the Taliban—who routinely describe Mr. Karzai's administration as an illegitimate puppet of the U.S.—must talk directly to Kabul.
Abdul Hakim Mujahid, deputy chairman of the High Peace Council, a body created by Mr. Karzai to negotiate with the insurgency, who served as the Taliban envoy to the United Nations and the U.S. in 2001, expressed hope that the talks in Washington would help speed the nascent peace process.
"I think the United States government is supportive, it's very positive toward Afghan national dialogue," he said, adding. "But what counts are the key statements of the country."
—Ziaulhaq Sultani contributed to this article.
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Woof All:
Do we have any thoughts on residual forces in Afpakia?
YA?
TAC,
Marc
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Choices on Afghanistan
Published: January 6, 2013
President Obama will soon make critical choices on Afghanistan, including how fast to withdraw 66,000 American troops and whether to keep a small residual force there once the NATO combat mission concludes at the end of 2014. His talks with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, this week will be an important marker in that process.
A lot has happened since the two men met in Kabul last May and signed a strategic partnership agreement. Some developments, like signs of an incipient peace process between the Taliban and the Afghan government, are promising. But many are not. The Afghan Army and police forces have taken responsibility for securing larger and larger swaths of the country, but the Pentagon has admitted that only 1 of 23 NATO-trained brigades can operate without American assistance. The recent alarming rise in fatal attacks by Afghan forces on their American military mentors has crushed whatever was left of America’s appetite for the costly conflict.
Ideally, the 66,000 American troops would already be leaving, and all of them would be out as soon as safely possible; by our estimate, that would be the end of this year. The war that started after Sept. 11, 2001, would be over and securing the country would be up to Afghanistan’s 350,000-member security force, including the army and police, which the United States has spent $39 billion to train and equip over a decade.
But there is a conflict between the ideal and the political reality. Mr. Obama has yet to decide how fast he will withdraw the remaining troops, and the longer he delays, the more he enables military commanders who inevitably want to keep the maximum number of troops in Afghanistan for the maximum amount of time.
Another matter of concern is that Mr. Obama is seriously considering keeping a residual military force for an indefinite period after 2014. He needs to think carefully about what its mission would be and make his case to the public. Gen. John Allen, the commander in Afghanistan, had provided the White House with options for an enduring presence that went as high as 20,000 troops. That was an alarmingly big number, but fortunately now seems to be a nonstarter. American officials on Saturday said the administration is considering a much smaller force of 3,000 to 9,000.
If Mr. Obama cannot find a way to go to zero troops, he should approve only the minimum number needed, of mostly Special Operations commandos, to hunt down insurgents and serve as a deterrent against the Taliban retaking Kabul and Al Qaeda re-establishing a safe haven in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama will want to discuss all these issues with Mr. Karzai. The United States cannot go forward if Afghanistan opposes a residual force or puts undue restrictions on those troops.
Mr. Karzai, a deeply flawed leader who is expected to leave office next year, has his own agenda, which includes requests for updated American aircraft, surveillance equipment and longer-range artillery to modernize his army. Those requests cannot be taken seriously when Afghan security forces are increasingly murdering Americans and the Afghan government remains so profoundly corrupt.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/world/asia/in-old-taliban-strongholds-qualms-on-what-lies-ahead.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130109
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Well, gents (especially YA), where do we come down on the matter of leaving US troops in Afg?
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Zero Dark Afghanistan
Karzai's dysfunction meets Obama's detachment..
Afghan President Hamid Karzai visits the White House on Friday, and he was given an early welcome this week with a statement that the U.S. may withdraw all of its troops from the country in 2014. If both sides aren't careful, that's exactly what will happen and the result won't be pretty for anyone but the Taliban, al Qaeda and Pakistan's Islamists.
The ever-truculent Mr. Karzai is, among other things, coming to negotiate a status-of-forces agreement beyond the scheduled handover to Afghans of total military control in 2014. Until recently, the U.S. has said it wants to maintain some military presence in the country past that date. But suddenly the White House is floating the "zero option" that if the terms aren't right, Mr. Karzai can go hang—which he might end up doing, from a lamppost.
This may be part of President Obama's negotiating strategy, and Speaker John Boehner knows how that goes. Mr. Karzai has played the role of ungrateful nationalist for several years, and he is still resisting adequate immunity safeguards for U.S. troops. His intention to release several hundred Taliban-linked prisoners is not encouraging. The U.S. threat to pack up and leave may be a slap to get Mr. Karzai to consider what life would be like on his own.
Then again, you never know with Mr. Obama. It's possible this is the start of a drama intended to get the U.S. out while blaming Mr. Karzai for failed negotiations. Mr. Boehner knows how that goes too.
That's what happened in Iraq in 2011, when the White House kept saying it wanted a permanent presence but made Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki an offer he couldn't accept. U.S. commanders recommended a force of up to 18,000, but the White House whittled that down to so few troops—3,000—that they could barely defend themselves much less make a difference to Iraq's security.
Mr. Maliki concluded the feeble presence wasn't worth the criticism he'd take from domestic nationalists, and now the U.S. has only a few dozen troops riding in black SUVs in Baghdad. This may have been Mr. Obama's goal all along, letting him fulfill his 2008 promise to end the war and mollify his critics on the left who disliked his Afghan surge. The result is that the U.S. has little remaining influence in Iraq, while Iran's leverage grows.
The White House seems to be repeating the same pattern in Afghanistan. U.S. commanders recommended a range from 6,000 to 20,000 troops (from the current 66,000), with more risks the fewer the troops, but the White House asked for options with even fewer. The latest word is that many in the White House now prefer as few as 2,500 troops past 2014.
As in Iraq, that would barely be enough to protect their own perimeter, much less train Afghan forces and pursue counterterrorist operations. Special forces raids require intelligence and backup that would be harder to acquire or provide.
Drone strikes in the al Qaeda sanctuary along the Afghan-Pakistan border could continue, but from a greater distance and without key posts close to the border. The U.S. presence would largely be confined to bases in Kabul and Kandahar, which would themselves be vulnerable to rocket attack.
The question is whether Mr. Obama is trying to make an offer that Mr. Karzai will find isn't worth the political heat he will take at home for keeping any foreign troops. If Mr. Karzai rejects a U.S. presence, Mr. Obama could blame the Afghan leader for what happens after America leaves. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama could wash his hands of a now-unpopular intervention, further cut the Pentagon budget to fund ObamaCare, and continue his pursuit of America's global retrenchment.
A total U.S. withdrawal doesn't make a Taliban return inevitable, and much depends on the progress that Afghan forces make in the next two years. Afghan troops have slowly improved their ability to fight, and as they take on more responsibility they are now dying in greater numbers than are NATO forces. But they also lack the logistics, air power, intelligence and other resources that U.S. troops can provide.
The U.S. strategic interest is to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming an al Qaeda sanctuary, while keeping terrorists under pressure along the Pakistan border. This interest will be compromised if the Taliban is able to retake huge swaths of the country because the U.S. leaves prematurely.
Mr. Karzai's willful sense of entitlement may lead him to make foolish choices that put his country's future at risk. But after so much American sacrifice, Afghanistan's fate is also Mr. Obama's responsibility. If Kabul falls to the Taliban, or the country descends into renewed civil war, it will also be an American defeat—and President Obama's.
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"where do we come down on the matter of leaving US troops in Afg?"
Hard to believe that after all the investment in Iraq and Afghanistan that we would not want to negotiate to ability to keep some kind of military base and premise on the ground in both places, slightly over the horizon, from where we can take take actions like taking out future terror training camps etc before they rise again to pre-9/11 levels.
The downside might be our own vulnerability and the resentment a permanent US presence might foster.
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http://www.michaelyon-online.com/last-to-die.htm
17 January 2013
[Authored by a Marine Field Grade Officer]
Over the weekend, I received an order from Higher Headquarters to ask for volunteers for 2013 and 2014 deployments to Afghanistan. Their mission: train and fight with Afghan National Security Forces during the same time that America is leaving Afghanistan.
This is not the first time we have asked for volunteers to deploy. In the reserve community, we have done this since at least 1995 when I volunteered to deploy during humanitarian operations to deal with the Haitian and Cuban refugee crisis. During the Global War on Terrorism, we routinely asked reservists to volunteer for deployment. When I returned to the reserve community after active duty in 2006, I witnessed this practice first hand, this time for combat deployments.
When directed, our job is to augment the active duty force. But many of our servicemen and women are not actually deploying because they have been recalled to active duty; they have elected to stay at a unit and have volunteered to deploy. These Marines are usually called “non-obs” or “non obligated” and can, at their convenience, drop to the inactive ready reserve or transfer to another unit. Once a unit is slated for deployment, there is usually a decision point for these individuals; they must leave the unit or deploy.
It has been my experience that the vast majority of Marines will volunteer to deploy if their unit is activated. Their professionalism, dedication and patriotism compel them to go into harm’s way with the Marine on their right and left.
When I decided not to deploy to Iraq with my unit because of a serious family illness, I felt like I was abandoning my brothers. It was my company commander who sat me down and provided sage counsel: your family is your priority. Our Marines will be OK without you.
His leadership helped me understand that it was perfectly acceptable to decide not to go. I was grateful for his honesty.
This past weekend one of my Marines, a young father with a new baby, sought my counsel. He is a Marine with several combat deployments and he and I had served together in Afghanistan. He had always wanted to deploy with a mentor/training team and was interested in volunteering. I told him unequivocally that he should not volunteer.
At virtually the same time we were collecting the numerous names of Marines who had volunteered, the following exchange occurred between George Stephanopoulos and the Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass on the Sunday ABC news show “This Week”:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Richard Haass, the president also addressed our overall success in Afghanistan on Friday…Is he right about that and is it sustainable after 2014?
HAASS: The short answer is no. What we started in Afghanistan after 9/11 was a warranted war of necessity. We expanded it over the years, particularly under President Obama in 2009, when we tripled our forces, we decided to go after the Taliban, essentially join Afghanistan's civil war and nation build.
The idea that we're going to be able to leave behind a self-sustaining, capable Afghanistan able to -- or a government that's able to keep control of its territory, we are not going to be able to do it. It was a mistake to try. We are not going to achieve that result. Essentially what we're going to fall back to I would think is what we could have fallen back to years ago, a limited counterterrorism mission with trainers and advisers on the ground. And when we have to, we'll send in special forces or drones to deal with if there are, for example, remnants of al Qaeda to ever come back into the country.
So in other words, Afghanistan is lost.
The ethics of asking for volunteers to wade into the problem that is Afghanistan is simple: asking Marines to volunteer prays on their loyalty and dedication in order to satisfy requirements from HHQ.
It is an abdication of responsibility and leadership to commit to a flawed [course of action] that has no hope of success. Our leaders are transferring the burden of mission accomplishment to a group of volunteers; dedicated men and women who haven’t been read in on the current friendly situation and have no idea of the enemy’s most probable course of action. They don’t even have the tools to do a simple METT-T in order to assist them in making an informed decision.
Its one thing if a unit is assigned the mission and Marines are ordered to go, but these volunteers are making a decision to go to combat with people they don’t know at a time when political imperatives overwhelm tactical considerations and our Afghan “friends” are ambushing American Soldiers and Marines.
In the end – those who volunteer will go because they feel that it is their duty as Marines to share the burden of combat.
I have a responsibility to provide my Marines with a frank and honest assessment of the situation; if they want to volunteer, they need to know what they are getting into.
I am not confident that other leaders are doing the same and that is an absolute travesty.
Semper Fidelis.
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Hello!...after a long time. This is an old article from 2010, Plan B was proposed then...which I think is still a good idea. See how the alternatives have turned out...
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-12-21/edit-page/28217106_1_qaida-al-qaida-taliban (http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-12-21/edit-page/28217106_1_qaida-al-qaida-taliban)
Plan B in Afghanistan
ROBERT D BLACKWILL, Dec 21, 2010, 12.00am IST
US policy toward Afghanistan involves spending scores of billions of dollars and suffering several hundred allied deaths annually largely to prevent the Afghan Taliban from controlling the Afghan Pashtun homeland.
But the United States and its allies will not defeat the Taliban militarily. President Hamid Karzai's corrupt government will not significantly improve. The Afghan National Army cannot take over combat missions from ISAF in southern and eastern Afghanistan in any realistic time frame. And on December 15, the New York Times assessed that "two new classified intelligence reports offer a more negative assessment and say there is a limited chance of success unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating from havens on its Afghan border". That won't happen.
With these individual elements of US Afghanistan policy in serious trouble, optimism about the current strategy's ability to meet its objectives reminds one of the White Queen's comment in Through the Looking Glass: "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
De facto partition offers the Obama administration the best available alternative to strategic defeat. The administration should stop setting deadlines for withdrawal and instead commit the United States to a long-term combat role in Afghanistan of 35,000-50,000 troops for the next 7-10 years.
Concurrently, Washington should accept that the Taliban will inevitably control most of the Pashtun south and east and that the price of forestalling that outcome is far too high for Americans to continue paying. The United States and its partners should stop fighting and dying in the Pashtun homeland and let the local correlation of forces take its course - while deploying US air power and Special Forces to ensure that the north and west of Afghanistan do not succumb to the Taliban. The United States would make clear that it would strike al-Qaida targets anywhere, Taliban encroachments across the de facto partition line, and sanctuaries along the Pakistani border using weapons systems that were unavailable before 9/11.
Accepting a de facto partition of Afghanistan makes sense only if the other options available are worse. They are.
One alternative is to stay the current course in Afghanistan. The United States deploys about 1,00,000 troops in Afghanistan, yet there are now only 50-100 al-Qaida fighters there. That is 1,000-2,000 soldiers per al-Qaida terrorist at $100 billion a year - far beyond any reasonable expenditure of American resources given the stakes involved. And even if many of the roughly 300 al-Qaida fighters now in Pakistan did move a few score miles north across the border, it would not make much of a practical difference - surely not enough to justify an indefinite major ground war.
Another alternative is for the United States to withdraw all its military forces from Afghanistan over the next few years. But this would lead to a probable conquest of the entire country by the Taliban. It would draw Afghanistan's neighbours into the fighting. It would raise the odds of the Islamic radicalisation of Pakistan, which would in turn call into question the safety and security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. It would weaken the budding US-India strategic partnership, undermine Nato's future, and trigger a global outpouring of support for Islamic extremist ideology and increased terrorism against liberal societies. And it would be seen around the world by friends and adversaries alike as a failure of international leadership and strategic resolve by an ever weaker America.
A third alternative is to achieve stability in Afghanistan through successful negotiations with the Taliban. As CIA director Leon Panetta has said, however, so long as the Taliban think they are winning, they will remain intransigent. Despite the major intensification of drone attacks, the US cannot kill the Taliban into meaningful political compromise.
The analogy most cited to justify the current Afghanistan policy is the 2007 "surge" in Iraq. Yet as former US envoy to Afghanistan James Dobbins has pointed out, by 2007, the Sunni Arab minority in Iraq had been decisively beaten by majority Shia militias, and it was only after this defeat that the Sunni Arabs turned to American forces for protection. The Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, in contrast, is rooted in that country's largest ethnic group, not its smallest.
These Pashtun insurgents have been winning their civil war for the last several years, not losing it. In Iraq, by 2007 al-Qaida had made itself unwelcome among its Sunni Arab allies. In Afghanistan, al-Qaida is hardly present, and presents no comparable threat to the Afghan Taliban leadership. Pashtun elders are less influential than the Iraqi sheiks that brought their adherents over with them when they decided to switch sides. In short, the Iraq surge has little application to Afghanistan.
Historians may puzzle over why the president, despite his deep agonising as described in Bob Woodward's book on the war, deployed 1,00,000 troops into Afghanistan nearly 10 years after 9/11, why US policy makers spoke as if the fate of the civilised world depended on the pacification of Marja and Kandahar. Accepting the de facto partition of Afghanistan is hardly an ideal outcome in Afghanistan. But it is better than the alternatives.
The writer is a senior fellow at the US Council on Foreign Relations and former US ambassador to India. A longer version of this essay appeared in the December/January issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.
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Glad to see you back, ya.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21566295
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21566295
I dunno, us trying to win left with W.
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http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/02/15/the-5-biggest-insults-to-american-manhood-by-the-rules-of-engagement-in-afghanistan/?singlepage=true
The 5 Biggest Insults to American Manhood by the Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan
Bing West and Vince Flynn make the case against the castration of our military.
by
David Forsmark
America’s muddle in Afghanistan is not merely an unwise policy. Two prominent American authors — one a serious analyst (and former badass warrior), the other a bestselling novelist (who created one of our biggest badass heroes) — worry that it is an affront to American manhood as well.
For years Bing West has argued that our carrot with no stick approach to counterinsurgency and nation building in Afghanistan is sapping the “martial spirit” of our armed forces. Recently, he even wrote a column titled “We’re Too Nice to Win in Afghanistan,” detailing how a wimpy approach to a truly savage enemy is making victory impossible.
West proposes we change from a counterinsurgency protocol (winning hearts and minds in order to recruit allies against the terrorists while building a civil society) to a counter-terror strategy (kill them whenever and wherever we can find them and let the Afghan government build its own society).
Vince Flynn, in his new book The Last Man, has his fictional alter ego, Mitch Rapp, take a very direct approach. Upon being introduced to a former Taliban official the CIA has recruited to be part of the Afghan security infrastructure as America prepares to leave the country, and who is certainly playing both sides, he sees only one incentive structure that can work:
Pistol-whip the sneaky bastard and threaten to kill him if he doesn’t cooperate.
So, based on West’s superb book on the war in Afghanistan, The Wrong War, and Flynn’s best thriller to date, here are 5 ways that Obama’s approach to Afghanistan is an affront to American manhood.
5. Sets a Date Certain to Give Up
From the time Americans males are little boys — at least for those who have real men for fathers — we are instructed in the virtues of perseverance. Sports gives a prime example. NFL coaches stress “playing for 60 minutes,” and NBA coaches for 48.
Winning is about how you finish, not how you start. Just ask Admiral Yamamoto.
Now George W. Bush had his problems with how he conducted the war, adopting a counterinsurgency strategy of nation-building; but he drew the line at drawing this line. You don’t tell the enemy “Just hold out until 2014, and we will be out of your hair.”
Even if you think that nation-building is good, and merely letting SEALs, Delta, and the like play whack-a-mole with the bad guys to their hearts’ content is insufficient, this is just plain stupid. Telling the people whose support you need that you are outta here soon, but the enemy will stay forever, is not exactly what an economist would call a good incentive.
Mitch Rapp adds that incentive through pistol whipping.
Bing West explained in a Wall Street Journal column last October that the deadline loomed over everything the Marines he was with were trying to accomplish:
Joint patrols cannot substitute for Afghan troops who must believe in their own cause. Nothing is gained by “jointness” if the Afghan forces are getting ready to cut local deals and pull back as we leave.
It will just be great for morale, and for recruiting soldiers with a warrior spirit, if the greatest military the world has ever seen is just admitting they are tired, even though they are not being beaten on the battlefield.
4. It Doesn’t Inflict Justice on the Guilty
In The Wrong War, West uses a history of modern guerrilla warfare and counter-insurgency to point out that the United States is trying to do something that has never been done before anywhere in how it is trying to bring civilization to Afghanistan, rather than merely punishing the enemy:
Following the First World War, Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for the colonies, approved of summary executions of Irish insurgents in retaliation for the deaths of British soldiers occupying southern Ireland. The foremost scholar on counterinsurgency, David Galula, described his experience as a French officer in the Algerian War in the 1950s in these terms: “We searched the suspect’s house thoroughly and found the missing shotgun. I phoned my battalion commander and asked him if he agreed that the man should be shot on the spot. He did. The harkis executed him.” On another occasion, Galula threatened to bake a man in an oven. The man co-operated.
During the Second World War — the “good war”— the esteemed journalist Eric Sevareid stood by as U.S. soldiers shot German troops and Italian civilians. “As the weeks went by and this experience was repeated many times,” Sevareid wrote, “I ceased even to be surprised.” In his book Citizen Soldiers, the historian Stephen Ambrose devoted a chapter to prisoners of war, citing numerous instances when American soldiers shot prisoners. The press never reported one instance.
In The Village, a chronicle of my Combined Action Platoon in Vietnam, I wrote, “The Marines watched as Thanh beat his prisoners. When one woman refused to talk, he rubbed a wet cloth with lye soap and pressed it against her face. The woman struggled to breathe and sucked into her throat the stinging lye.”
Such stories had no effect at the time they were written; in 2011, they would all be sensations to the press. Today, the U.S. Congress would not tolerate deportation, sanction a $500-million bribe, approve of retaliatory executions, or ration food. Galula would be portrayed as a war criminal. Sevareid, the face of CBS, would be excoriated for not reporting the killings of prisoners, as would I for complicity in waterboarding.
Afghanistan was singularly different from any prior insurgency. Far from employing sticks of coercion of any sort, the Western coalition offered only aid and sympathy to hostile villagers. The United States possessed precision firepower, with sensors that tracked any individual out of doors. Yet in 2010, less than 5% of aircraft sorties dropped a single bomb, despite over 100 reports of troops in contact daily. This forbearance was without historical precedent. The coalition imposed upon itself the strictest rules in the history of insurgent warfare.
Forget the hoary clichés about the British and the Russians failing to rule Afghanistan. Afghanis (whatever they are) have never ruled the region named Afghanistan — basically a border drawn around the leftovers as the British Empire contracted.
3. It Doesn’t Protect the Innocent
The first manly virtue is to protect the weak. Women and children first may be considered chauvinistic in some circles, but… good. Who cares about those circles, anyway? More from West in The Wrong War :
However, coalition and Afghan rules covering crime and punishment lacked purpose, consistency and reliability. A few kilometres south of Jakar, an 11-year-old boy often waved at passing patrols. The Marines took to chatting with the boy, who pointed out a trail the Taliban occasionally used. A few weeks later, the Taliban executed him and his brothers, sisters, mother and father. Although shocked neighbours knew the identities of the gang that had gone to the farm in the middle of the day, no one would testify.
The tragedy illustrated a disquieting truth: American military doctrine didn’t know how to confront evil. On the one hand, the Taliban were portrayed as extremists who stoned women to death, burned schools and whipped men. On the other hand, the generals indicated that most Taliban were misguided youths.
“In the Taliban ranks,” Gen. Stanley McChrystal said, “there’s a tremendous number of fighters and commanders who would like to come back in.” Among the fighters who might come back in were the local Taliban farm boys who murdered the 11-year-old and his family. The American military and judicial systems were so tied up in political knots that in Afghanistan there were no coalition trials for murderers or terrorists. If they renounced the insurgency, the coalition would give them jobs.
Worse, Afghans as a society denied that fellow Afghans were capable of evil. The locals knew the killers. But there was no penalty for murder if committed in the name of Islam.
(By the way, the above quote is worth considering before conservatives like Sean Hannity put McChrystal on a pedestal just because he is critical of Obama.)
Our only concern for the innocents in Afghanistan seems to be the politically motivated desire to avoid collateral civilian deaths. But by instituting the most restrictive rules of engagement since Vietnam, we have given the Taliban and al-Qaeda incentive to use human shields.
And by making American soldiers, Marines, and airmen stand around and let this happen, we murder their martial spirit, and ask them to be less than the men they are.
2. It Spoils Them Rotten
As West spells out in frustrating detail, the nation-building policies of the last two administrations have made welfare clients rather than allies out of Pakistani villages. Even if you think that counterinsurgency programs rather than counterterrorist missions are a wise policy, all carrot and no stick is doomed to fail.
Thus, our military became a gigantic Peace Corps, holding millions of shuras, drinking billions of cups of tea, and handing out billions of dollars for projects. Risk in battle was avoided because generals proclaimed that killing the enemy could not win the war. Senior officials fantasized that the war would be won by protecting and winning over the population. The tribes however, were determined to remain neutral, while the Afghan president tolerated corruption and ineffectiveness. The futile effort to build a democracy diverted the energies of our soldiers and weakened their martial spirit.
For years, Pakistan was in the hunting-bin-Laden business, to the tune of $2 billion a year. If they actually had “found him” it would have been nice publicity, but that would have ended that particular gravy train.
Of course, as Flynn details in The Last Man, the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, was neck deep with bin Laden from the beginning — and the location of his ultimate hiding place only adds to the suspicion that that association did not end after 9/11.
Our policy now is of continuous handouts to tribal leaders whose hands are constantly out, but who will do nothing to help us against the Taliban because they know there is a date certain where we will be gone and they will be on their own. All the while we do nothing to make them regret coddling the terrorists.
1. It Requires Negotiation Where a Good Pistol Whipping Would Do
Mitch Rapp to the rescue!
Vince Flynn’s latest Mitch Rapp novel is about a rescue mission in Afghanistan, but it’s also a mission of mercy to thriller readers at the end of a tepid year for red-blooded American heroes.
In fact, from the summer on, I’m not sure I can think of two adult-oriented suspense novels I enjoyed as much as PJM contributor Andrew Klavan’s two “young adult” actioners in 2012.
But while Flynn targets action-starved readers with his latest book, he also targets the Obama administration’s policy of reintegration, re: not only granting amnesty to former Taliban members, but making them members of the security forces in Afghanistan.
Flynn does a nice job of detailing what is wrong with the policy and its various dangers and complications — but his hero Mitch Rapp registers his disgust minutes after landing on the ground, without needing all that.
In fact, pretty much the first thing Rapp does when he lands in Kabul on a rescue mission is to pistol whip a former Taliban official that CIA officers have recruited.
As any real American man would like to.
The Last Man is not only one of the year’s best thrillers, it’s also Vince Flynn’s most politically sophisticated work to date. The plot — while it features Mitch Rapp’s signature methods as the Dirty Harry of international espionage — has the currency, and nearly the complexity, of an Alex Berenson novel.
The Last Man plunges Mitch Rapp into America’s current exercise in nation-building in Afghanistan — a situation so muddled and confused that even our favorite bull-in-the-china-shop hero can stop and smell the ambiguity.
Joe Rickman, the head of CIA clandestine operations in Afghanistan, has been kidnapped in a bloody raid on his quarters in Pakistan, and presumably spirited across the porous border into a Taliban camp. For Irene Kennedy, concerns are two-fold. First, Rickman is one of those operators whose every move and contact are not necessarily known to his superiors, and he knows everything the Agency is doing in Afghanistan… and should be doing.
Second, she remembers all too well the Hezbollah capture of William Buckley, the Beirut station chief in the 1980s, and the damage done to networks in the Middle East — but also the regular taunting videos of his torture sent to Langley by the terrorist group.
Mitch Rapp is sent to Kabul with his favorite kind of orders — get the job done at any cost. Rickman is important enough that even the delicate balancing act of the “alliance” with Pakistan takes a back seat.
Pakistani officials, after the embarrassment of the Osama bin Laden raid, are not only suspicious of American operatives inside their borders but of each other. Adding to Rapp’s headaches — and outrage — is the fact that the CIA station chief and his top aide are heavily investing in the policy of “reintegration,” the policy of recruiting former Taliban into the Afghan police and security forces.
Rapp promptly pistol whips a corrupt former Taliban and current police commander into working for him under the threat of death—drawing the ire of the CIA officials on scene.
But his impatience at what he considers the wimpy policy of coddling enemies really takes a beating when Rapp is forced to accept the help of the assassin who killed his wife.
Meanwhile, Rapp is not so convinced that Rickman’s disappearance is merely a Taliban operation. A coordinated attack on the clandestine division—including evidence going to the FBI, and egged on by a liberal senator that implicates Rapp in the theft of millions in black bag mission money—smacks of state involvement more reminiscent of a Cold War-class operation than of something the Taliban or even the Pakistanis could pull off.
But the title also refers to the attempt by liberals to weed real men out of the CIA. The ultimate bad guy of the book (a twist I can’t reveal here) is not merely afraid of Rapp because he is talented, smart, or dangerous. It is he who dubs Rapp “the last man” at the CIA.
What the villain fears most about Rapp is that while all the other bureaucrats around him are caught up in the weeds of their complicated calculations and alliances, Rapp’s all-American sensibilities will be offended enough that his B.S. detector will cut through the policy he despises and straight to the real solution.
Through Rapp, Flynn continuously expresses manly contempt for the various schemes the United States has concocted in Afghanistan in order to conduct the war in a way that is acceptable to wimpy modern sensibilities. He fully adopts Bing West’s point in The Wrong War that America has bought temporary allies with our largess, but that the bad guys we don’t kill are a permanent fixture, just waiting for us to leave.
Flynn is contemptuous of the notion that complicated is always smarter than simple and that believing in shades of gray in the name of pragmatism is successful. Some ideas really are so absurd that only “smart” people can convince themselves they will work. Evil is evil, and it can only be defeated or accommodated in the long run. It is never bought off.
The Last Man is a welcome return to the present day for Mitch Rapp, after a couple of so-so origin stories from Flynn.
Now if only a foreign policy worthy of the American males who do the fighting and dying for it would return, also.
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/04/what_went_right
From the article:
Forget what you hear from some of the more vocal critics of U.S. President Barack Obama's drawdown plans -- the chances of the Taliban coming back to run Afghanistan are now vanishingly small. Favorable views of the Taliban in polling across Afghanistan over the past several years are consistently no more than 10 percent. There is nothing like experiencing life under the Taliban to convince Afghans that the group cannot deliver on its promises of an Islamist utopia here on Earth. And if the Taliban have scant chance of returning to power, their al Qaeda buddies have even less chance of returning to Afghanistan in any meaningful way. Few Muslim countries harbor a more hostile view of al Qaeda and its Arab leaders than Afghanistan.
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One notes there are plenty of other places for AQ/Islamo-fascist groups to hang out and prepare, the prevention of which in Afpakia was a major leg of our justification for being there, , , ,
No time to read the piece right now on the hotel lobby connection-- perhaps later this week.
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai made a slight adjustment to a time-tested strategy March 10 when he publicly stated that the United States was colluding with the Taliban in order to justify a post-2014 troop presence. The claim coincided with new U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's first visit to Afghanistan. The remarks were mostly expected -- similar verbal attacks have accompanied other public visits by high-profile officials because of the publicity they generate. What was unexpected, however, was the harshness of the claim.
Though the statement seems illogical and inflammatory, it illustrates the two main constraints that Karzai has consistently had to deal with. First, he must placate a domestic populace hostile to cooperation with the United States. Second, he must prevent direct negotiations between Washington and the Taliban for fear that they could leave him and his allies with little to no power. Despite the bluster, the United States and its allies will not dramatically shift their course.
Analysis
U.S. and International Security Assistance Force officials have categorically denied Karzai's claim and even expressed confusion as to the reasoning of the accusations since they seem to run counter to Karzai’s security imperatives. In his visit to the United States earlier this year, Karzai expressed his gratitude for and acceptance of a long-term security presence and funding to be provided by various International Security Assistance Force members.
Karzai's public about-face is rooted in the extreme constraints under which he must operate and the undermining effects those constraints have on each other. On one hand, he has his security imperatives, which require a security apparatus that far outstrips his country's resources. Therefore, he must rely on foreign security forces just so his government may exist and operate -- a role the International Security Assistance Force has fulfilled. The force's presence has helped prevent the Taliban from regaining power.
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On the other hand, there is the fractured Afghan public that, while generally hostile to the Taliban, is on the whole nearly as hostile to the decadelong foreign security presence and anyone seen as directly linked to it. The challenge for Karzai is that he must rely on the intervention force but not be seen as a tool of it. The result over the years has been Karzai's sharp and public criticisms of specific unpopular U.S. and International Security Assistance Force tactics, such as U.S. special operations forces night raids.
With the official drawdown of foreign forces in Afghanistan under way, Karzai's criticisms and demands have begun to evolve. First, he fought for and gained control of all private security companies operating in Afghanistan. He also moved to consolidate control of the International Security Assistance Force detention facilities, with the facility at Bagram Air Field being the notable exception. (The handover of the facility, scheduled for March 9-10, was canceled after Karzai balked at some of the exemptions.) More recently, Karzai has accused Afghan units attached to U.S. special operations forces of abuses in Wardak province and has demanded that all U.S. forces leave the province. He also recently limited the ability of Afghan security forces to call for and use U.S. airpower.
Karzai's escalating public rebukes are in many ways symbolic, since troop reductions and the assumption of a supporting role have already limited foreign forces' direct combat role. It is the Afghan National Security Forces that have shouldered much of the burden and that enable Karzai to seemingly challenge the foreign powers without shifting the balance of power on the ground.
At the same time, the claim is an attempt to undermine direct bilateral talks that the United States has taken up with the Taliban without including Kabul. The talks are particularly unnerving for the Karzai government, which fears a deal that could include power sharing with the Taliban and that could sideline Karzai and his allies. By claiming that the two sides are cooperating to prolong the foreign security presence in Afghanistan, Karzai is hoping to discredit their negotiations and bolster his nationalist qualifications.
The domestic pressure on Karzai is intense and diverse, coming from several different ethnicities, powerful warlords, foreign interlopers and multiple tribes and clans. In order for Karzai -- or his successor after the 2014 elections -- to succeed, he must constantly maneuver between these groups. The West recognizes these challenges, and a major shift in their approach in Afghanistan is unlikely in response to Karzai's comments.
Read more: The Afghan President's Strange Public Statements | Stratfor
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RDqu6dxcwEQ#!
Enjoy the Harlem Shake af-pak style.... :-D
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/world/asia/afghan-villages-rise-up-against-taliban.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130321&_r=0
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second post
The mountains of Afghanistan are among the most hazardous terrains for military operations. This topography has long enabled Afghans to successfully resist much more powerful conventional armies, as it did when Alexander the Great tried to conquer Afghanistan in the fourth century B.C. and again when Europeans undertook conquest attempts in the 1800s. After the Taliban were removed from power, they retreated to these mountains to stage their resistance against the new Afghan government and NATO forces.
Analysis
Afghanistan's mountains, which run east to west through the country, are the westernmost extension of the Himalayan mountain system. The mountains consist of extremely elevated mountain ranges, such as the Safed Koh range along the Pakistani border and the Hindu Kush range to the north, which contain some of the highest peaks in the world and very rugged, steep topography. Though the desert climate means there is little vegetation to limit visibility, the complexity of the topography makes it difficult to observe or strike at militants hiding there, whether by ground or from the air.
The mountains that dominate central and northeastern Afghanistan break up the plains in the north and south of the country. While the Taliban have been active across Afghanistan, the mountain region along the Pakistani border is where most militant activity persists. This activity is mostly concentrated in Wardak, Logar, Paktia, Nangarhar, Kunar and Laghman provinces, south and east of Kabul. Militancy has also been on the rise in Badakhshan province in the northeastern corner of the country. Until around 2010 the main threat of Taliban forces was in the southern plain, in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, but the lack of complex terrain allowed NATO forces there to be much more effective than those in the mountains during the U.S. troop surge. Since the mountains provide more protection for the Taliban than the plains, NATO troops have had to focus their operations in this area, though they remain active throughout Afghanistan, including in its southern provinces.
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This mountainous terrain is also important due to its proximity to the Pakistani border. Political borders can cause a major interdicting factor in military operations against militants. The need to coordinate operations with separate actors, as well as the inability to operate across the border in the territory of an allied sovereign state without causing diplomatic incidents, affects operations on the ground and can create areas of lesser resistance that allow militants to seek refuge or supplies across borders. Militants' seeking refuge in Pakistan is one of the main factors behind U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle operations across Afghanistan's borders.
Pashtun tribes and other Afghan ethnic groups on both sides of the border also help make the Pakistani border a haven for militants. This population can support militant activity across the border and enables those that cross from one side to the other to easily blend into the local population. On the Pakistani side of the border, there are also a number of large refugee camps that have been a great source for Taliban recruitment and shelter or medical care for militants. The ability to execute precise unmanned aerial vehicle strikes against suspected militant leaders, such as those of the Haqqani network, is greatly limited by the militants' ability to take cover or hide among the population. This also allows them to set up bases and operate in populated areas, where they can depend on familial and logistics support.
The prime target of Kabul is also located within these mountains, allowing militants to operate in and around the city. Since many targets are within the same terrain that protects the militants, they can attack their adversaries without leaving cover. In addition, the mountainous provinces south and east of Kabul, where Taliban militants are currently concentrated, make up the main supply line leading directly from Pakistan into Kabul. However, this area also presents a challenge to the Taliban because it forces them to maneuver tribal relations in order to guarantee access throughout the region. For this they need to work with and often pay tolls to local tribes, whose allegiances can change over time. As many advantages as the mountainous terrain may provide, militants and local governments still must navigate the intricate web of tribal relations in the region.
Winter adds an extra element of hardship to the Afghan mountain terrain. From December to April, the temperature in much of this area drops below freezing and snowfall limits movement during part of the winter, reducing supply lines in the central and northern regions of Afghanistan. After the winter period, thawing snows and storms can cause flash floods. The region's extremely limited transportation infrastructure makes it especially vulnerable to these natural phenomena.
These meteorological constraints are as applicable to the NATO forces as they are to the Taliban militants. Taliban forces disperse and, while some do remain in the mountains, others go home to farm or cross the border into Pakistan, returning in the spring to recommence the insurgency around late March and April. NATO forces become static throughout the winter season, due to the difficulty of conducting patrols or maneuvers. During the winter usually only special operations forces conduct offensive actions, but even these slow down because the militants are less active.
Though the value of this terrain is similar to other mountainous regions used by militants in other countries, the great area of the Afghan mountains enhances their ability to provide refuge for militants. The region's elevation and distance from the equator causes it to have a harsh winter that introduces temporal constraints in addition to the spatial constraints on operations against militants. The downtime during the winter gives the Taliban an opportunity to reorganize and continue the insurgency. The combination of protective physical geography and temporal constraints enhances the ability of a guerilla-styled Taliban force to resist, and continue to remain effective against, the conventional armed forces trying to dislodge them
Read more: The Taliban's Mountain Hideout in Afghanistan | Stratfor
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Second post of the day
Summary
At the same time that Pakistan has experienced an increase in religious extremism and terrorism, the country has been on a path toward democratization. March 17 marked the first time since the country's founding in 1947 that a democratically elected Pakistani parliament has completed a full term. The outgoing government has been in talks with the opposition to nominate a caretaker prime minister, whose interim administration is expected to hold fresh elections in May.
Pakistan is likely to continue democratizing, which could help the country deal with its social, economic and security problems. The rise of civilian rule in Pakistan might also help on the foreign policy front, especially with regard to post-NATO Afghanistan.
Analysis
Pakistan is not a country that would be expected to be making progress toward democratization. It is the global headquarters of al Qaeda transnational jihadist forces and has experienced a massive Islamist insurgency. Thousands of attacks have occurred in Pakistan over the past decade, killing at least 40,000 citizens, including the leader of the country's largest political party and former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, in 2007. The country's economy is in shambles, a situation made worse by collapsing infrastructure in its power and energy sectors and high levels of insecurity. Since the 1980s, it has experienced a growth in religious extremism and radicalism. And, most important, Pakistan has been ruled by its military-intelligence establishment for most of its history.
Nevertheless, the government's completion of a full five-year elected term on March 17 could be significant turning point. In accordance with the constitution, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf has dissolved the parliament and Cabinet and will remain in his position for a few days, until the government and the opposition agree on a caretaker prime minister. The democratic transfer of power is not complete and will not be until after elections are held in May, but this is a time of many unprecedented developments in Pakistan's history -- developments made all the more significant by the many ills that are plaguing and will continue to plague the country in the near term.
The Paradox of Pakistan's Democracy
How is it possible that Pakistan can democratize at the same time that it is facing unprecedented challenges?
First, the constitutional process has been ingrained in Pakistan since its inception. Even though military autocrats have long ruled the country, it was created as the result of a constitutional process in which the demand for Muslim separatism from the founders of Pakistan led to the partition of British India in 1947. Second, the country's 1973 constitution is resilient, having survived two long periods of military rule: the regimes of Muhammad Zia ul-Haq (1977-88) and Pervez Musharraf (1999-2008). Third, for the first time the two main parties, the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, looked beyond their differences and, recognizing that it was always a loss for both sides, did not collaborate with the military to topple the other's government.
But most important, the military's ability to run the country has been reduced, largely due to the manner in which Musharraf, the country's last military ruler, governed the country. It was under Musharraf's rule that Pakistan saw an exponential growth of civil society, the rise of the private media and the country's judiciary asserting itself as an actor independent of the military. Certainly Musharraf did not intend for his doctrine of "enlightened moderation" to undermine his own government, but it did.
It was under Musharraf that Pakistan, in the wake of 9/11, was forced to revise its decades-old policy of using Islamist militants as instruments of foreign policy in relation to India and Afghanistan. That policy had allowed Islamist militants to establish deep roots in society and the state, especially the security establishment. This is why when Pakistan aligned with the United States in the war against jihadism, many of Islamabad's former proxies and their local and international allies responded by launching an insurgency that has worsened in the past seven years. Largely, Pakistan suffered because of the Taliban and al Qaeda spillover in the aftermath of the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
The Military's Weakening Political Role
Until early 2007, the Musharraf-led military regime had things mostly under control -- there were still hundreds of terrorist attacks, but they targeted foreigners and religious minorities instead of the state. Musharraf's decision to sack the chief justice in March 2007 and the military raid to flush out extremists from a major mosque in the heart of the capital in July created a twin crisis for the regime. As a major pro-democracy movement began, jihadists dramatically increased their attacks, largely against police, military and intelligence targets.
Eventually, the military could no longer manage the situation. Musharraf was forced to resign as military chief in November, and one month later, Bhutto was assassinated. Bhutto's party and other secular parties then won most of the seats in the February 2008 elections. Six months later, Musharraf was forced to step down from the presidency.
Since the fall of Musharraf, the army and the country's main intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, have increasingly been off-balance -- in great part because they could not simultaneously deal with the jihadist insurgency and the growing demands for civilian rule. The position of the Pakistani military was further undermined when relations between Islamabad and Washington imploded in 2011, due largely to the May 2 killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by U.S. commandos.
Considering the overall situation of the country, military rule would only aggravate matters. Most social and political forces are no longer willing to tolerate the military in government. If the military tried to intervene, it would risk a major public uprising, which the jihadists would exploit. The United States and the international community could also impose sanctions. In fact, the $7.5 billion Kerry-Lugar aid package that the United States approved for Pakistan specifically states that the aid will be given to Pakistan only if there is a civilian government.
Agreement Is Key
All these factors have enabled civilian rule to grow in Pakistan. It should be noted that the military may not be in a position to intervene in politics, but it retains significant influence in policymaking, especially when it comes to foreign policy and national security matters. What has kept the democratic process going is that the men in uniform and their civilian counterparts so far have been more or less on the same page on most issues.
Of course, the performance of the outgoing government has been dismal, especially on the security and economic front. There is growing public dissatisfaction with the main parties, as seen in the rise of Imran Khan's movement and the recent popular march and sit-in organized by cleric-turned-politician Tahir-ul-Qadri. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that there will be enough public outrage for Khan's movement to make a strong showing in the May elections.
The major parties will retain considerable support from their core constituencies. In fact, according to two recent polls (especially the one organized by the independent democracy promotion group Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency), Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz seems to have the most support. Regardless of which party comes out on top, a more divided parliament is likely to emerge, meaning policymaking will be a struggle.
But as long as the political process moves forward, Islamabad will probably be able to continue to manage the country's numerous crises. The most significant challenge for the next government will be to deal with the effects of a U.S. and NATO drawdown from Afghanistan, something that threatens to worsen militancy in Pakistan. Washington and Islamabad are both hoping that a democratic government will produce enough political stability that the situation can be managed.
Ultimately, whether Pakistan continues on this path of democratization depends largely on the ability of the civilian forces to get along with one another.
Read more: The Unlikely Democratization of Pakistan | Stratfor
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/world/asia/afghan-army-learning-to-fight-on-its-own.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130408&_r=0
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Afghanistan and Pakistan After the 2014 NATO Drawdown
April 15, 2013 | 1045 GMT
Summary
Pakistan has been simultaneously grappling with a complex political transition and a domestic Taliban insurgency for many years. Now, Islamabad is under pressure to weaken its Taliban insurgency before NATO withdraws from Afghanistan since U.S.-Afghan Taliban talks are not going well and the Afghan Taliban could emerge in a position of power in 2014. A dominant Taliban in Afghanistan would represent a nightmare scenario for Islamabad because it could embolden the Pakistani Taliban and thwart Pakistan's desires to take control of its northern territories.
Analysis
In the latest violence in Pakistan's tribal belt along the Afghan border, up to 25 Pakistani soldiers and some 125 militants have been killed in a new counterjihadist offensive. Pakistani ground and air forces for the past week have sought to dislodge Taliban fighters from key heights in the Tirah Valley in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, one of the seven districts that make up the country's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. This represents the biggest offensive in the region over the past two years against fighters from Pakistan's main Taliban rebel grouping, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and their allies from Laskhar-e-Islam, a local Taliban grouping.
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Islamabad launched a major counterjihadist offensive nearly four years ago to try to regain control of its northwest, a region that since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan increasingly has fallen under the control of Pakistani Taliban rebels aligned with al Qaeda. The Pakistani armed forces have struggled to hold these areas long enough to build up civilian governance and pursue development projects to integrate its northwestern Pashtun periphery into the core. Civilian governance, however, has a long way to go before it can establish itself in the core of the country, and thus it is unlikely that peripheral areas affected by the Taliban insurgency will fall under Islamabad's writ anytime soon.
Pakistani Interests in Afghanistan
Pakistan has hoped a negotiated settlement between the United States and the Afghan Taliban ending the insurgency in Afghanistan would eventually help Islamabad deal with militants on Pakistani side of the border. But with just a little more than a year until the NATO drawdown concludes, talks between Washington and the Afghan jihadist movement have produced little in the way of results.
Exacerbating the uncertainty in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai -- who has been at the center of the post-Taliban Afghan state since its inception 11 years ago -- will be leaving office due to term limits. From Islamabad's perspective, a post-NATO Afghanistan that fails to include the Taliban in a political understanding would be disastrous.
An Afghan Taliban insurgency unencumbered by Western forces poses a direct national security threat to Pakistan because it offers the Pakistani Taliban havens in Afghanistan and could even reverse the dwindling fortunes of al Qaeda prime, which is headquartered in Pakistan. Already, Pakistani Taliban rebels displaced from the greater Swat region have found sanctuary in northeastern Afghan provinces such as Kunar, from where they periodically mount attacks in Pakistan. For this reason, the outgoing Pakistani government has spent the last few years trying to improve its relations with the Karzai administration. It also has reached out to anti-Taliban factions among Afghan ethnic minorities not represented in the central government. Both steps are meant to build additional checks on the Taliban.
The latest example of this outreach was the April 10 inauguration of the $18 million Liaquat Ali Khan Engineering University, built by Pakistan in Afghanistan's Balkh province. The province is a major stronghold of Afghanistan's second-largest ethnic community, the Tajiks, who have long been at odds with Islamabad given the latter's historical support for their enemies, the Taliban.
Though Pakistan has an incentive to continue building such ties, there has been a reversal in the move toward improved Kabul-Islamabad relations in recent weeks as both sides have accused the other of undermining the peace efforts. To a great extent, this souring of ties is due to the uncertainty in Kabul regarding who will assume power after Karzai in next year's presidential election. Progress in NATO-Afghan Taliban talks remains elusive, and the Afghan state could destabilize even before NATO forces depart.
Pakistan's Transition
Meanwhile, Pakistan is going through a historic transition of its own. Its first democratically elected government recently completed its five-year term and the country's first democratic transfer of power is expected to take place after May 11 elections. While Pakistan is slowly moving toward consolidating its democracy, the coming elections are expected to produce an even more fragmented parliament than before. Right-wing nationalist political forces, including former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League and Imran Khan's Pakistani Tehrik-i-Insaf, could make major gains at the expense of the center-left Pakistan People's Party, which led the coalition government until last month.
An even more divided parliament will complicate matters regarding the cross-border Taliban insurgencies on Pakistan's western flank. A fragmented legislature will complicate policymaking, and a right-wing government would create room for the Pakistani Taliban to exploit. These right-wing parties rely heavily on Islamists and the broader group of conservative voters -- many of whom do not favor what is perceived as a U.S. war that has undermined Pakistani security. The Pakistani political right has argued that if a superpower like the United States is being forced to talk to the Afghan Taliban, then Pakistan should be able to negotiate with its own citizens who have shifted toward supporting the Taliban in order to bring them back into the mainstream.
While this might seem logical, the bulk of the Pakistani Taliban subscribe to al Qaeda's transnational jihadism -- unlike the Afghan Taliban, who are nationalist jihadists and thus have self-imposed limits on their political goals for the state. Accordingly, the Pakistani Taliban wish to see Pakistan serve as a launchpad for the creation of an international caliphate. However, it could still be possible to negotiate with some elements within the Pakistani Taliban landscape and bring them into the political mainstream.
Many among Pakistan's strategic planners had hoped a settlement in Afghanistan would help Islamabad tackle its own Taliban problem. The thinking is that a withdrawal of U.S. forces and a power-sharing deal that empowers the Afghan Taliban would eliminate much of the basis for the militancy in Pakistan. The entry of the Afghan Taliban into the political mainstream would then create fissures within the Pakistani Taliban landscape, making the group much more militarily and politically manageable.
But there are two major factors that will likely prevent this outcome. First, the talks with the Afghan Taliban have stalled. Second, many among the Pakistani Taliban are fighting not because of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, but to topple the Pakistani state because they deem it "un-Islamic." This makes them unlikely to end their insurgency in the event of a breakthrough in Afghanistan.
An intensified civil war in post-NATO Afghanistan would only make matters worse for Pakistan because it would provide strategic depth for the Pakistani Taliban to operate more freely. A politically dominant Taliban in post-NATO Afghanistan would also embolden the Pakistani Taliban to act against Islamabad.
If the Afghan Taliban are not part of a broad-based coalition government in Kabul, Pakistan will face serious difficulties in getting a handle on its own Taliban rebels. This explains why Pakistan has been pushing for a balance of power between the Taliban and anti-Taliban forces. Islamabad cannot hope to integrate its own Taliban and tribal areas into the federation if the main Taliban movement in Afghanistan is not brought into a post-NATO coalition government. Pakistan's own political transition is thus in many ways linked to political stability in Afghanistan. Ultimately, Pakistan will need to exert its energies to encourage the Afghan Taliban to reach a settlement with their opponents in the Afghan state and society. It must also continue to reach out to reconcilable elements among its own Taliban rebels through the help of neutral warlords. The key question is to what degree Afghan and Pakistani Taliban forces will be willing to accept the current constitutional setups in both countries.
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Read more: Afghanistan and Pakistan After the 2014 NATO Drawdown | Stratfor
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By MICHÈLE FLOURNOY AND MICHAEL O'HANLON
Afghanistan has held two presidential elections since 2001. Hamid Karzai won both, but the most recent (in 2009) was marred by irregularities such as stuffed ballot boxes and acrimony between Mr. Karzai and the international community. The Afghan constitution demands that Mr. Karzai step down next year, and by most accounts that is his intention. Who will succeed him?
On a recent trip to Afghanistan, almost everyone we spoke to highlighted next April's presidential election as a make-or-break event for the country—including its ability to fend off the Taliban and avoid backsliding into civil war.
What should be the international community's role over the next 12 months? Although the United States and other key outside nations shouldn't and won't try to pick a winner, they should do what they can to ensure that the next elections are freer and fairer than the last. Since the U.S. has promised at least $5 billion a year in future aid (for half a decade or more) and is considering spending $10 billion a year or more on a post-2014 military presence, Americans in particular have a stake in the electoral process and outcome.
Put more bluntly: If Afghans either hold a fraudulent election or elect a corrupt future leader, the odds of the U.S. Congress providing the expected aid are slim to none. This is also the case for other countries. The U.S. should, therefore, voice its views now rather than simply cut off aid later if the election goes badly.
As Afghans remember all too well, the Soviet-installed government of Mohammad Najibullah fell not when the Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1989 but when Moscow cut off the money three years later. When the Taliban overran Kabul in 1996, Najibullah was tortured and murdered. All too aware of this history, Afghan reformers, opposition politicians and members of civil society are asking Americans and others to help them make their election a success.
No Afghan has yet announced a candidacy for next year's election, but many names are being floated. They include current or former chiefs of staff to the president, Mr. Karzai's brother Qayum, Minister of Education Ghulam Farooq Wardak, Minister of Finance Omar Zakhilwel, Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul, former Foreign Minister and presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, and former minister Haneef Atmar.
There is much talk in Kabul these days about the desirability of finding a "consensus" candidate or slate. The idea here is to use Afghanistan's consultative traditions to avoid a divisive election while the country's democracy is so fragile.
In principle, this is a reasonable and even appealing idea. In practice, it risks having President Karzai play the role of kingmaker, since it is hard to see how a consensus would otherwise develop in a place with such strong political rivalries and with so many people clearly angling to be president. The devil will be in the details of a consensus candidate if one emerges.
Against this confusing backdrop, the international community can help by focusing on a few goals:
First, remind Afghans that Americans and others will exercise their own sovereign rights to determine future aid levels once Afghanistan exercises its sovereign right to choose a new leader. The quality of the election process and the quality of the new president's leadership will both affect decisions on aid. This is just common sense and should be conveyed as a matter of fact, not a menacing threat.
Second, help ensure the independence and integrity of the Afghan watchdog groups charged with overseeing the electoral process. For all the criticism of past Afghan elections, it was these Afghan groups—the Independent Electoral Commission and the Electoral Complaints Commission—that uncovered the fraud and threw out the bad ballots. Whether or not they include foreigners, future appointees to the commissions should be selected with the input of parliament, and Mr. Karzai shouldn't be able to dismiss them once appointed. This issue is more important than many others currently being debated in Kabul, including redoing voter registration and issuing new voter cards.
Third, watch how the campaigns play out starting later this year. Afghan state media need to give reasonable time to all candidates, including the opposition. Vote-buying and voter intimidation need to be deterred and prevented through timely investigations of allegations. The electoral commissions will do the investigating, but outside forces must stand behind them.
Fourth, give technical, moral and if necessary financial support to fledgling Afghan political parties—provided they have multiethnic memberships and platforms, and promise to eschew violence. When U.S. officials visit Afghanistan, they should meet not only with members of the executive branch but also with a broad range of next-generation Afghan politicians and civil-society members who are the real hope for the country's future.
American passivity in the coming Afghan elections could be just as counterproductive as American assertiveness (including some nasty public spats with Mr. Karzai) was last time around. The verdict on the war in Afghanistan may be settled less on the country's battlefields than at its polling stations next spring. That election is already sneaking up on us—there is little time to lose.
Ms. Flournoy, a co-founder of the Center for a New American Security, was under secretary of defense for policy from 2009-11. Mr. O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
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I must confess, I am not at all clear at what the point is for the US , , ,
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Karzai Ensures a Continued U.S. Presence in Afghanistan
May 9, 2013 | 1518 GMT
Summary
JOHN MOORE/Getty Images
U.S. soldiers in Kunar province, Afghanistan, in 2011
It appears the United States will maintain a robust military presence in Afghanistan well after its withdrawal in 2014. In a speech at Kabul University on May 9, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he would be willing to allow the U.S. military to keep nine bases in Afghanistan. The details are not set, but this would indicate that Karzai sees that he must have U.S. security support in order to keep shaping his desired outcome in Afghanistan.
Analysis
The essence of the announcement is not surprising, but the timing and the large number of bases mentioned is telling of Karzai's strategy. Currently, his attention is split between upcoming elections, for which he must choose a successor, and the multiparty peace negotiations that so far have made almost no progress. These bases would give the United States the option to leave a sizable and geographically dispersed force in the country as long as it continues to work with Karzai -- and that is the key. Karzai is making himself indispensable to the United States so that Washington cannot push him aside and work through someone else.
The proposed bases will initially anger the Taliban and pose a serious obstacle to negotiations. However, the talks are already stalled, and the large number of bases means that Karzai's government and the United States will have a point to negotiate down from. Karzai can use the bases' potential existence as leverage to get some concessions from the Taliban in ongoing talks.
Lastly on the political front, the announcement rebuffs several of the other third-party actors that have a stake in the country and that are clamoring for influence, such as Pakistan, Iran and China. Karzai clearly stated that the United States will continue to have sway in the system, unlike in Iraq, where the absence of an agreement led to a full withdrawal, creating an opportunity for Iran to step in and assume an influential role. Karzai is avoiding a similar outcome in Afghanistan by cementing the U.S. presence now.
From the Pakistani point of view, U.S. bases have benefits and drawbacks. Islamabad has been hoping that the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from its Western neighbor would eliminate some of the justification for the Taliban to continue fighting -- a situation that could help Pakistan regain control over its own Taliban rebels. U.S. bases in Afghanistan undermine that objective, but they help mitigate the vacuum that the Pakistanis were afraid would further undermine their security, especially if there is no negotiated settlement with the Afghan Taliban.
The announcement means that the Taliban will have to show that these bases will not help the Afghan state establish security, and an escalated offensive on their part can be expected. It also gives the Taliban fuel for their claims that the United States does not intend to give up its occupation of the country.
On the security front, Karzai is acknowledging that a U.S. military presence is absolutely necessary for his government's survival. The Afghan National Security Forces have taken the lead in all operations and will soon assume responsibility for the entire territory of the country, but the fact remains that they still require massive support from U.S. firepower in order to be combat-effective. Losing this support at the end of 2014 would be a security nightmare. International funding, predominantly from the United States, is also a critical reason that the Afghan National Security Forces are even able to exist. If the United States were summarily rebuffed from the country, it would have little incentive to continue this funding for long.
Karzai is weak on his own, and given the country's fractures, anyone who wants to control it needs a great deal of military strength. A U.S. commitment to Afghanistan lends U.S. strength to Kabul. Without that, the fight for political pre-eminence in the country would continue.
Read more: Karzai Ensures a Continued U.S. Presence in Afghanistan | Stratfor
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Op-Ed Contributor
Pakistan’s Tyrannical Majority
By MANAN AHMED ASIF
Published: May 10, 2013
JUST after the stroke of midnight on Aug. 14, 1947, the Peshawar broadcast station of All India Radio crackled to life: “This is Pakistan Broadcasting Service.” Next came the words of the Urdu-language poet Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi: “Pakistan bananay walay, Pakistan Mubarak” — “Oh, maker of Pakistan, congratulations on Pakistan.”
On Saturday, Pakistanis will head to the polls to choose a new government; for the first time in 66 years, a democratically elected administration has completed its term. Given Pakistan’s tumultuous past, this is an impressive achievement, but it should not prevent citizens from asking the candidates vying for their votes: what kind of Pakistan have you made?
The makers of Pakistan were peasants and laborers. In 1940, they passed a resolution in Lahore to demand a separate homeland for Muslims and an end to British colonial occupation. In 1946, their votes brought a political party, the Muslim League, to power. They chose Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a modernist technocrat, as their leader.
Jinnah asked his party’s legislators to focus on the well-being of the “masses and the poor” and demanded that “every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his color, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations.” Men like Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (an Ahmadi diplomat) and Raja Amir Ahmad Khan (a Shiite noble) had worked alongside Jinnah for decades to fulfill this dream of equality.
Yet the birth of Pakistan was not auspicious for minorities. The original claim of Pakistan — religious equality — was the first claim proved false. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, though he became the first foreign minister, was hounded by religious conservatives, who branded him an apostate because of his Ahmadi faith. Ahmadis, followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), consider themselves part of the Muslim tradition but have faced stern resistance from Sunni Muslims, who accused them of following a false prophet.
In 1974, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto passed an amendment to the Pakistani Constitution declaring anyone who did not believe that Muhammad was the last prophet a non-Muslim. And in the 1980s, the military dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq passed punitive laws that defined the practice of the Ahmadi faith as a “blasphemous” criminal offense. Ahmadis are allowed to vote only for parliamentary seats reserved for non-Muslims, effectively disenfranchising them. Since they refuse to declare themselves non-Muslims, they don’t vote.
Shiites have not fared much better. Raja Amir Ahmad left Pakistan, soon after 1947, fearing for the safety of his community. In the last five years, more than 1,000 Shiites, belonging to the Hazara community, have been targeted and killed in the city of Quetta. In February, when 84 Shiites were killed in a bombing attack, Quetta’s Hazaras refused to bury their murdered kin, demanding that the government ensure their safety. The corpses, wrapped in burial shrouds in coffins, were kept on the streets and mourned by thousands. This act of civic protest shook the nation, but it did little to prompt action from the state.
Today, tolerance is under siege from all directions. Even Imran Khan, the sports star turned politician — who enjoys a near-divine status among young, urban Pakistanis — has contributed to the marginalization of minorities. On May 4, he said at a rally that he did not regard Ahmadis as Muslims and would not campaign for their votes. Mr. Khan has based his campaign on a message of “change” reminiscent of President Obama’s in 2008. His statement on Ahmadis was therefore particularly damaging and chilling.
As a candidate marketing himself as a political outsider, he could have opened up a national conversation on equality of citizenship and reached out to all voters, including Ahmadis, Hindus and Christians. Instead he reaffirmed the political exclusion of minorities and legitimized intolerance in the eyes of his millions of idealistic young followers, who quickly echoed his dismissal in online networks.
Over the last five years, hundreds of Ahmadis have been targeted and killed in Pakistan’s cities. In 2010, 94 were killed in a terrorist attack in Lahore, and since then their burial grounds, mosques and homes have been under assault. There has been no response from the government, which still refuses to grant them equal status as citizens of Pakistan. Christian communities have also been targeted, and prominent Christian leaders, like Shahbaz Bhatti, the minister of minorities, have been assassinated. While the state has done little to punish these acts, various militant organizations have brazenly claimed credit for them.
The candidates campaigning in this election, rather than arguing for the rights of all Pakistanis, have further marginalized religious minorities and given license to those who attack them.
Despite the rise of satellite television and online media that have allowed mass participation in politics outside of old patronage networks, a new form of majoritarian tyranny has taken hold. It is built on the classic anxieties of the rising middle class: the fear of the other, the conspirator among us.
Today, the verses of another poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who was imprisoned and exiled by Pakistan’s military dictators, seem more appropriate: “Chalay chalo kay woh manzil abhi nahin aaye” — “Keep on walking, for we are not at the destination yet.”
Manan Ahmed Asif, an assistant professor of history at Columbia, is the author of “Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination.”
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghanistan-uprising-20130602,0,877331.story
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http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2013/05/31-successful-outcome-afghanistan-flournoy-ohanlon-allen
From the report summary:
The United States can still achieve its strategic objectives in Afghanistan if it maintains and adequately resources its current policy course – and if Afghan partners in particular do their part, including by successfully navigating the shoals of their presidential election and transition in 2014. The core reasons for this judgment are the impressive progress of the Afghan security forces and the significant strides made in areas such as agriculture, health and education, combined with the promising pool of human capital that is increasingly influential within the country and that may be poised to gain greater influence in the country’s future politics. However, the United States and other international security and development partners would risk snatching defeat from the jaws of something that could still resemble victory if, due to frustration with President Hamid Karzai or domestic budgetary pressures, they were to accelerate disengagement between now and 2014 and under-resource their commitment to Afghanistan after 2014
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The Reality of Afghanistan
Geopolitical Weekly
Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - 04:39 Print Text Size
Stratfor
By George Friedman
The United States made a decision to withdraw from Afghanistan several years ago. That decision carried with it an inevitable logic. Once the United States resolved itself to leave at any cost, its failures up to that point were laid bare, as were the vulnerabilities of the government it had spent more than a decade building. The door was opened for the enemies of the regime of President Hamid Karzai -- the man who has been synonymous with the post-Taliban government. All that was left to do was wait for the American pullback.
U.S. Failures
Elements within the U.S. government have not been shy in their criticisms of the Afghan government and the Afghan military as being corrupt and incompetent. Some units have been effective, but it is well known that the Taliban created a program designed to penetrate post-Taliban institutions shortly after those institutions were created. At the most senior level, the Taliban paid, through family members, substantial sums to buy the loyalties of individuals. These bribes worked partly because there was a lot of money involved and partly because people realized that once the United States left, government loyalists would be on their own. This is not a phenomenon unique to Afghanistan -- people would prefer to live, and those in question were hedging their bets.
Separately, there was a significant enlistment of Taliban sympathizers into the incipient Afghan military. This trend was less formal but even more effective. Soon there were Taliban supporters at several levels of the military, something we saw during the wave of unexpected assassinations of NATO personnel by people believed to be loyal to the regime. These are what came to be called green-on-blue attacks.
Therefore, Afghan forces are fundamentally unreliable. Not everyone has to be in contact with the Taliban to render the force unusable; a single person prepared and able to signal planned operations renders any operation either useless or disastrous.
When it created the Afghan force, the United States was extraordinarily lax in monitoring recruitment. Of course, the defense is that most of the trainers had no way to distinguish the loyal from the subversive. This was widely experienced in Vietnam. There was a bartender at a favorite American hangout in Saigon who turned out to have been a colonel in the North Vietnamese Army for years.
But this brings us to one of the most serious U.S. failures in Afghanistan: a cultural contempt for the Taliban. As it did in Vietnam, Washington failed to understand that the absence of U.S.-style bureaucracy and technology didn't mean that the enemy could not identify opportunities or that it lacked the will to take advantage of them.
The Taliban have suffered heavy losses, but in the end what matters on the battlefield is not the absolute size of the force but the correlation of forces. The problem with the Afghan force is that while there are some reliable units, it is impossible to identify them. Moreover, Karzai's ability to cleanse the force of Taliban sympathizers was thwarted by the fact that his own bureaucracy was seen as unreliable. As the United States learned from the South Vietnamese army and the Vietnamization program, the penetration of your force makes your operations ineffective. It gives the enemy insight into your tactical organization and strategic thinking and, most important, it sows uncertainty and distrust.
In a civil war, the viability of the government is not a function of ideas such as legitimacy or international recognition. It is a function of your ability to reliably assert your presence in regions. There are tribes and other groups in Afghanistan that have a high degree of coherence. It is these entities -- not the Afghan government -- that can and will challenge the Taliban. There are a few possible outcomes, including total fragmentation, but the creation of a sustainable national government by the Karzai regime isn't one of them. More important, the United States doesn't believe it is a possibility either.
U.S. Strategy
The American strategic priority is to end the war, leaving some forces to fight al Qaeda but abandoning any attempt to pacify the country. The United States understands that the Karzai government -- or the one that succeeds it -- will be weak and fragmented, but it would prefer that it at least relegate the Taliban to being merely a faction, enabling a transition to occur within the existing framework. The Taliban might well consider this strategy, but the coalition would be a sham. It is unlikely that Karzai could have built a viable force to counter the Taliban. But it is certain that he failed to counter the Taliban. He has no options left, and many of his senior aides know it. They are making their own plans to leave the country or are reaching their own secret accommodations with the Taliban.
I would guess that the United States knows this is going on, but it has no intention of policing Karzai's house. The United States has stated plans to maintain a sizable military presence through 2014, but its ultimate goal is to leave. Washington understands that the Taliban are the single-most powerful force in Afghanistan but also that there are other factions that could block them. However, the United States is not prepared to plunge into the complexities of Afghan politics. Its failures leading up to this moment have left it with no confidence in its ability to do so -- and with no interest in trying.
The U.S. decision to negotiate openly with the Taliban followed more than two years of relatively secret talks. Many issues have already been discussed, and there is an understanding in Washington of the Taliban and what matters to them, and vice versa. When Karzai got upset over the apparent embassy in Qatar, the Taliban lowered the flag. This is highly significant; the Taliban do not want to make it more difficult for the United States to bring Karzai to the negotiating table. Having made their point, they retreated at America's request.
In many ways, the United States is more comfortable with the Taliban than with the other tribes in the country because secret negotiations have left Washington with a better understanding of the Taliban. But Washington's main objective is to leave. It would like to do so gracefully, but graceful or not, it's happening. However, I would argue that the United States believes the Taliban have sufficient coalition partners to wield the most influence in a post-U.S. Afghanistan.
International legitimacy and U.S. recognition are of secondary importance to everyone. What matters is the military reality on the ground. Karzai does not have a reliable force, and soon there will be virtually no U.S. presence in the country. The Karzai regime's fate is sealed. What may be open is the degree to which the Taliban control the country after the U.S. exit, and whether the pretense that there is such a thing as a Karzai government is maintained. The United States will make some cosmetic concessions to Karzai, but there will be no strategic adjustment.
The United States is on its way out. In this negotiation, Karzai is a military cripple. The Taliban are weaker than they were but stronger and more coherent than anyone else in the country. And there are other factions. This is the reality in Afghanistan.
Read more: The Reality of Afghanistan | Stratfor
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Posted without comment...
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http://blogs.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/8/afghanistans-looming-partition/?page=all#pagebreak
CHELLANEY: Afghanistan’s looming partition
It may be time to think outside the borders
by Brahma Chellaney
Monday, July 8, 2013
The United States, still mired in a protracted Afghan war that has exacted a staggering cost in blood and treasure, has agreed to formal peace talks with the Taliban, its main battlefield opponent. With the Obama administration already reducing U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan after almost 12 years of fighting, the talks in Doha, Qatar, are largely intended to allow it to do so “honorably.”
How the end of U.S.-led combat operations shapes Afghanistan’s future will affect the security of countries nearby and beyond. Here the most important question is whether the fate of Afghanistan, which was created as a buffer between czarist Russia and British India, will be — or should be — different from that of Iraq and Libya (two other imperial creations where the United States has intervened militarily in recent years).
Foreign military intervention can effect regime change, but it evidently cannot re-establish order based on centralized government. Iraq has been partitioned in all but name into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish regions, while Libya seems headed toward a similar tripartite, tribal-based territorial arrangement. In Afghanistan, too, an Iraq-style “soft” partition may be the best possible outcome.
Afghanistan’s large ethnic-minority groups already enjoy de facto autonomy, which they secured after their Northern Alliance played a central role in the U.S.-led ouster of the Taliban from power in late 2001. Having enjoyed virtual self-rule since then, they will fiercely resist falling back under the sway of the Pashtuns, who ruled the country for most of its history.
For their part, the Pashtuns, despite their tribal divisions, will not be content with control of a rump Afghanistan consisting of its current eastern and southeastern provinces. They will eventually seek integration with fellow Pushtuns in Pakistan, across the British-drawn Durand Line — a border that Afghanistan has never recognized. The demand for a “Greater Pashtunistan” would then challenge the territorial integrity of Pakistan (itself another artificial imperial construct).
The fact that Afghanistan’s ethnic groups are concentrated in distinct geographical zones simplifies partition and makes the resulting borders more likely to last, unlike those drawn by colonial officials, who invented countries with no national identity or historical roots, lumping together disparate ethnic groups. Afghanistan’s ethnic divide also runs along a linguistic fault line, with the Pashto language of the Pashtuns pitted against the more widely spoken Dari (a Persian dialect). Indeed, both geographically and demographically, Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun groups account for more than half of the country, with Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras alone making up close to 50 percent of the population.
After waging the longest war in its history, at a cost of tens of thousands of lives and nearly $1 trillion, the United States is combat-weary and financially strapped. The American effort, pursued in coordination with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to cut a deal with the Pashtun-based, Pakistan-backed Taliban is stirring deep unease among the non-Pashtun groups, which suffered greatly under the Taliban and its five-year rule. (The historically persecuted Hazaras, for example, suffered several large-scale massacres.)
The rupture of Mr. Karzai’s political alliance with non-Pashtun leaders has also aided ethnic polarization. Some non-Pashtun power brokers continue to support Mr. Karzai, but most others now lead the opposition National Front.
These leaders are unlikely to accept any power-sharing arrangement that includes the Taliban. In fact, they suspect that Mr. Karzai’s ultimate goal is to restore Pashtun dominance throughout Afghanistan.
Their misgivings have been strengthened by the “Peace Process Road Map to 2015,” a document prepared by the Karzai-constituted Afghan High Peace Council that sketches several potential concessions to the Taliban and Pakistan, ranging from the Taliban’s recognition as a political party to a role for Pakistan in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. The road map dangles the carrot of Cabinet posts and provincial governorships to prominent Taliban figures.
The most serious problem today is that the country’s ethnic tensions and recriminations threaten to undermine the cohesion of the fledgling, multi-ethnic Afghan army. Indeed, the splits today resemble those that occurred when Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, an exit that led to civil war and the Taliban’s eventual capture of the capital, Kabul.
This time, the non-Pashtun communities are better armed and prepared to defend their interests after the U.S. withdrawal. Thus, in seeking to co-opt the Taliban, the United States is not only bestowing legitimacy on a thuggish militia, it also risks unwittingly reigniting Afghanistan’s ethnic strife, which would most likely tear apart the country for good.
This raises a fundamental question: Is Afghanistan’s territorial unity really essential for regional or international security?
To be sure, the sanctity of existing borders has become a powerful norm in world politics. Yet this norm has permitted the emergence of ungovernable and unmanageable states, whose internal wars spill across international boundaries, fueling regional tensions and insecurity.
With a war-exhausted United States having run out of patience, outside forces are in no position to prevent Afghanistan’s partition along Iraqi or post-Yugoslav lines, with the bloodiest battles expected to rage over control of ethnically mixed strategic areas, including Kabul. In this scenario, Pakistani generals, instead of continuing to sponsor Afghan Pashtun militant groups such as the Taliban and their allies such as the Haqqani network, would be compelled to fend off a potentially grave threat to Pakistan’s unity.
A weak, partitioned Afghanistan may not be a desirable outcome, but a “soft” partition now would be far better than a “hard” partition later, after years of chaos and bloodletting — and infinitely better than the medieval Taliban’s return to power and a fresh reign of terror. Indeed, partition may be the only way to prevent Afghanistan from sliding into large-scale civil war and thwart transnational terrorists from re-establishing a base of operations amid the rubble.
Brahma Chellaney, a geostrategist, is the author of “Water, Peace and War” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013).
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Who could have seen this coming? :roll: That said, it must be said that Bush left the US in really bad shape in Afpakia.
U.S. Considers Faster Pullout in Afghanistan
By MARK MAZZETTI and MATTHEW ROSENBERG
Published: July 8, 2013 514 Comments
WASHINGTON — Increasingly frustrated by his dealings with President Hamid Karzai, President Obama is giving serious consideration to speeding up the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan and to a “zero option” that would leave no American troops there after next year, according to American and European officials.
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Larry Downing/Reuters
The Obama-Karzai relationship has cooled recently.
Mr. Obama is committed to ending America’s military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and Obama administration officials have been negotiating with Afghan officials about leaving a small “residual force” behind. But his relationship with Mr. Karzai has been slowly unraveling, and reached a new low after an effort last month by the United States to begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.
Mr. Karzai promptly repudiated the talks and ended negotiations with the United States over the long-term security deal that is needed to keep American forces in Afghanistan after 2014.
A videoconference between Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai designed to defuse the tensions ended badly, according to both American and Afghan officials with knowledge of it. Mr. Karzai, according to those sources, accused the United States of trying to negotiate a separate peace with both the Taliban and their backers in Pakistan, leaving Afghanistan’s fragile government exposed to its enemies.
Mr. Karzai had made similar accusations in the past. But those comments were delivered to Afghans — not to Mr. Obama, who responded by pointing out the American lives that have been lost propping up Mr. Karzai’s government, the officials said.
The option of leaving no troops in Afghanistan after 2014 was gaining momentum before the June 27 video conference, according to the officials. But since then, the idea of a complete military exit similar to the American military pullout from Iraq has gone from being considered the worst-case scenario — and a useful negotiating tool with Mr. Karzai — to an alternative under serious consideration in Washington and Kabul.
The officials cautioned that no decisions had been made on the pace of the pullout and exactly how many American troops to leave behind in Afghanistan. The goal remains negotiating a long-term security deal, they said, but the hardening of negotiating stances on both sides could result in a repeat of what happened in Iraq, where a deal failed to materialize despite widespread expectations that a compromise would be reached and American forces would remain.
“There’s always been a zero option, but it was not seen as the main option,” said a senior Western official in Kabul. “It is now becoming one of them, and if you listen to some people in Washington, it is maybe now being seen as a realistic path.”
The official, however, said he hoped some in the Karzai government were beginning to understand that the zero option was now a distinct possibility, and that “they’re learning now, not later, when it’s going to be too late.”
The Obama administration’s internal deliberations about the future of the Afghan war were described by officials in Washington and Kabul who hold a range of views on how quickly the United States should leave Afghanistan and how many troops it should leave behind. Spokesmen for the White House and Pentagon declined to comment.
Within the Obama administration, the way the United States extricates itself from Afghanistan has been a source of tension between civilian and military officials since Mr. Obama took office. American commanders in Afghanistan have generally pushed to keep as many American troops in the country as long as possible, creating friction with White House officials urging a speedier military withdrawal.
But with frustrations mounting over the glacial pace of initiating peace talks with the Taliban, and with American relations with the Karzai government continuing to deteriorate, it is unclear whether the Pentagon and American commanders in Afghanistan would vigorously resist if the White House pushed for a full-scale pullout months ahead of schedule.
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As it stands, the number of American troops in Afghanistan — around 63,000 — is scheduled to go down to 34,000 by February 2014. The White House has said the vast majority of troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of that year, although it now appears that the schedule could accelerate to bring the bulk of the troops — if not all of them — home by next summer, as the annual fighting season winds down.
Talks between the United States and Afghanistan over a long-term security deal have faltered in recent months over the Afghan government’s insistence that the United States guarantee Afghanistan’s security and, in essence, commit to declaring Pakistan the main obstacle in the fight against militancy in the region.
The guarantees sought by Afghanistan, if implemented, could possibly compel the United States to attack Taliban havens in Pakistan long after 2014, when the Obama administration has said it hoped to dial back the C.I.A.’s covert drone war there.
Mr. Karzai also wants the Obama administration to specify the number of troops it would leave in Afghanistan after 2014 and make a multiyear financial commitment to the Afghan Army and the police.
The White House announced last month that long-delayed talks with the Taliban would begin in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban opened what amounts to an embassy-in-exile, complete with their old flag and a plaque with their official name, “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
But the highly choreographed announcement backfired, with Afghan officials saying the talks gave the insurgents undeserved legitimacy and accusing the Obama administration of negotiating behind Mr. Karzai’s back.
To the surprise of American officials, Mr. Karzai then abruptly ended the negotiations over a long-term security deal. He has said the negotiations would not resume until the Taliban met directly with representatives of the Afghan government, essentially linking the security negotiations to a faltering peace process and making the United States responsible for persuading the Taliban to talk to the Afghan government.
The Taliban have refused for years to meet directly with Afghan government negotiators, deriding Mr. Karzai and his ministers as American puppets.
There have been other points of contention as well. Meeting with foreign ambassadors recently, Mr. Karzai openly mused that the West was to blame for the rise of radical Islam. It was not a message that many of the envoys, whose countries have lost thousands of people in Afghanistan and spent billions of dollars fighting the Taliban, welcomed.
The troop decisions are also being made against a backdrop of growing political uncertainty in Afghanistan and rising concerns that the country’s presidential election could either be delayed for months or longer, or be so flawed that many Afghans would not accept its results.
Preparations for the election, scheduled for next April, are already falling behind. United Nations officials have begun to say the elections probably cannot be held until next summer, at the earliest. If the voting does not occur before Afghanistan’s mountain passes are closed by snow in late fall, it will be extremely difficult to hold a vote until 2015.
Of potentially bigger concern are the rumors that Mr. Karzai, in his second term and barred from serving a third, is trying to find a way to stay in power. Mr. Karzai has repeatedly insisted that he plans to step down next year.
The ripple effects of a complete American withdrawal would be significant. Western officials said the Germans and Italians — the two main European allies who have committed to staying on with substantial forces — would leave as well. Any smaller nations that envisioned keeping token forces would most likely have no way of doing so.
And Afghanistan would probably see far less than the roughly $8 billion in annual military and civilian aid it is expecting in the coming years — an amount that covers more than half the government’s annual spending.
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"it must be said that Bush left the US in really bad shape in Afpakia"
It was said, if you break it you must fix it. But Iraq and Afghanistan were already broken. We had a right of self defense in Afghanistan and Pakistan to take out the elements that were attacking us. Then we had unrealistic hopes of bridging together a peaceful modern democracy that we could leave behind. In war, there are always mistakes and miscalculations. The challenge is how quickly you recognize them and adjust the strategy. If the end result after 12 years is disaster, the answer in hindsight was to only take out the hostile elements and not try to re-shape the society.
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Col. Ralph Peters advocated kicking ass and leaving. By staying and not following through (and choosing an utterly incoherent strategy), Bush left behind the worst of all possible worlds. Michael Yon, the first to report from the field the success of the Surge in Iraq, was reporting back in 2006 that we were losing and losing badly.
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"Col. Ralph Peters advocated kicking ass and leaving."
As was my thought on Iraq. Had we used a large stick and left, we leave with a perception of strength (and hatred, criticism, etc.). In the current plan, facing trouble and then leaving, we leave with a perception of weakness. Either way, American military resources and personnel had better have a clear mission and justification for being in harm's way.
Unfortunately all choices are always current tense, not hindsight. What do we do now?
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Too late now, too much of a clusterfcuk, no coherent strategy in sight, and our credibility-- both with the American people and with the people of Afpakia-- is gone.
I would not want to be there on behalf of the US, nor would I want my son there.
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I like Brahma Chellaney's article above...but pl. note he is an India hawk!. It is quite possible that the Northern Alliance will rule N Afghanistan and the Pashtuns the border area with Pak. Elimination of the Durrand line will occur in due time...with loss of territory to pak. Things will get interesting, once the US leaves next year!.
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YA:
Your views on Afpakia carry considerable weight with most of us around here. Your thoughts on the apparent coming US bug-out?
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/afghan-judges-free-sahar-guls-torturers
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Afghan Women Worry as the U.S. Departure Looms
Speeding up the U.S. pullout endangers gains that were hard-won.
By Martha Roby And Niki Tsongas
In many ways, Herat University is like any other college campus. Located in an active commercial center, the institution has helped create opportunities for thousands of young people. But unlike most college students, almost half of Herat's student body learns and lives knowing that their access to education—and most of the basic freedoms they enjoy— could be suddenly ripped away.
The bustling city of Herat, Afghanistan, near the Iranian border, has become a haven for youthful energy and modern thinking. Here, young women especially have thrived, taking advantage of previously nonexistent opportunities in the city and at the university, where they make up 40% of the student body, studying for careers including medicine and academia. It is a far cry from the historic and widespread subjugation of Afghan women by the Taliban.
This week the White House announced that it is considering several options in preparation for the departure of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, which range from leaving a residual advisory force to full troop withdrawal. As the administration works to bring home our servicemen and women, Afghan women find themselves at a critical juncture. The pullout has many dangers for Afghans and for the legacy of American sacrifice, but leaving millions of Afghan women exposed to a possibly resurgent Taliban would be especially lamentable.
The gains in women's equality were achieved by several means: Afghan officials who bucked fundamentalist hardliners; courageous Afghan women who braved reprisal to enter the male-dominated political, military, business and academic worlds; and dogged support from U.S. and international coalition forces to help build up women's confidence and create opportunities.
After more than a decade of war, the U.S. and its allies can point to significant progress toward equal rights for women as a remarkable achievement in Afghanistan. Female leaders have risen to positions of power in the Afghan parliament and government agencies. Girls are being educated in droves and looking ahead to college and careers. And in 2009, President Hamid Karzai signed legislation criminalizing violence against women and establishing basic legal protections for them.
But even now, there are reports of an anti-equality movement gaining traction in the Afghan government. Concern is mounting that the drawdown of coalition forces will leave a vacuum in which Afghan women in Herat and elsewhere see their rights vanish. One of America's biggest successes would quickly spiral into failure.
That's why Afghan and American women leaders are working to prevent backsliding.
In May, our bipartisan group of six U.S. congresswomen visited several locations around Afghanistan. We were the first congressional delegation ever to spend time in Herat. There and elsewhere our delegation met with an impressive group of Afghan women, including cadets at the country's military academy, staffers at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, university students, government officials and community leaders.
Their stunning accounts of life in Afghanistan before and after Taliban rule helped to personalize something we already knew: Afghan women are vital to the stability of their country. Countless studies have demonstrated that gains for women have a direct positive effect on sustainable development, economic growth and peace. Women's equality is more than a moral issue: The investment in women and girls is a matter of national security for Afghanistan and America.
The U.S. military and the Obama administration must formulate a comprehensive action plan for the preservation of women's rights after the pullout. America must utilize its influence to support free and fair elections, with women fully participating. We must also support the expansion of opportunities for Afghan women, especially in government.
In addition, U.S. and international monetary contributions to Afghanistan should be set aside for programs and organizations that promote women's rights. The Afghan government does not allocate much funding to these efforts, so reinforcement from the outside is a worthwhile cause.
Ultimately Afghanistan must carry the baton on this issue. But having elevated women's place in Afghan society—anathema to the Taliban—the U.S. must depart the country in a responsible way that secures these gains. When history grades America's involvement in Afghanistan, the status of Afghan women in the coming years will weigh heavily on that judgment.
Ms. Roby (R., Ala.) and Ms. Tsongas (D., Mass.) are the chairwoman and ranking member, respectively, of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
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http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139584/daniel-markey/a-new-drone-deal-for-pakistan?page=show
(Sidebar: Guro, given the variety of threads where drone articles have been placed, would you mind if I started a "drone/UAV/UAS" thread so that these could be centralized?)
From the article:
For all its successes, the U.S. drone program in Pakistan is unlikely to survive much longer in its current form. Less than a week after his election on May 11, Pakistan’s new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, reportedly declared to his cabinet that “the policy of protesting against drone strikes for public consumption, while working behind the scenes to make them happen, is not on.” This fall, Pakistan’s national and provincial assemblies will elect a new president, likely a Sharif loyalist, and the prime minister will also select a new army chief. It is safe to say that these men are unlikely to follow their predecessors in offering tacit endorsements of the United States' expansive counterterrorism efforts.
In other words, the United States is going to have to hammer out a new drone deal with Pakistan in the years ahead, one that is sensitive to Pakistan's own concerns and objectives. This will likely mean that Washington will face new constraints in its counterterrorism operations. But managed with care, a new agreement could put the targeted killing campaign against al Qaeda on firmer political footing without entirely eliminating its effectiveness.
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Sure, good idea, go ahead.
May I suggest you bring your previous posts on the subject over to it? This would make for one-stop shopping for those looking to research the subject.
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Commander Cautions Against Full Afghan Pullout
U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford Calls Talk of 'Zero Option' Unhelpful
By NATHAN HODGE and MARGHERITA STANCATI
KABUL—The U.S.-led coalition's commander in Afghanistan cautioned against withdrawing all troops from the country next year, arguing that discussions of the so-called zero option, gaining currency in Washington and Kabul, were damaging to the mission.
U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford told The Wall Street Journal that he didn't see a total military exit from Afghanistan as an option, but as a possible outcome should Washington and Kabul fail to reach an agreement on a post-2014 U.S. military presence.
The U.S. has yet to work out its presence in Afghanistan after 2014. Here, a U.S. soldier in Ghazni province.
"Anyone who reinforces this idea of December 2014 as being Y2K or a cliff that the Afghan people are going to fall off is actually being unhelpful," he said in the interview.
"An option to me is something you plan against," he said. "And we are not planning against the zero option."
For months, administration officials have said President Barack Obama might consider a complete pullout from Afghanistan, a posture many Afghan officials view as a negotiating tactic in the sensitive talks about the post-2014 American military role here.
Winding Down
May 2012 Presidents Obama and Karzai sign Strategic Partnership Agreement, signaling long-term U.S. security commitment.
January 2013 Amid discussions over post-2014 troop levels, U.S. officials first float the possibility of the 'zero option' of pulling all forces from Afghanistan.
June 18 Afghan forces formally take over responsibility for security in the country from the U.S.-led coalition. On the same day, the Taliban open a political office in Doha, Qatar, as a way to facilitate peace talks.
June 19 Karzai, angered by high-profile opening of Taliban office, halts planned peace negotiations and suspends talks with the U.S. about a long-term American military presence in Afghanistan.
Feb. 2014 U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan are expected to roughly halve current levels, to around 32,000.
April 2014 National elections set to take place to pick a successor to Karzai.
Dec. 31, 2014 The mission of the U.S.-led international military coalition formally ends. A follow-up support mission is expected to follow.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently suspended the talks to protest the American involvement in the Taliban's opening of an office in Qatar, and U.S. officials have suggested more strongly that the administration's patience with Mr. Karzai was wearing thin. The failure of similar security talks with Iraq led the U.S. to withdraw all troops from that country in late 2011.
Gen. Dunford suggested that the mere prospect of a complete American withdrawal was already damaging morale in the country. Without a clear signal from leadership at all levels, he said, Afghans will continue to worry about the international community's wavering support for their country.
While the mandate for the U.S.-led military coalition doesn't expire until the end of 2014, Gen. Dunford said advance planning would have to begin in earnest by this fall if there is to be a post-2014 North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission.
A new mission, which would focus on training and advising Afghan security forces, is supposed to take over from the International Security Assistance Force that Gen. Dunford commands—provided the suspended security talks between Washington and Kabul resume and succeed.
"By the late fall, you've got to know what the size of the force is going to be in the fall of 2014 when you deploy the force in the summer of 2014," he said.
Further complicating matters is a logistics bottleneck. Afghan officials are demanding customs fines for moving containers of U.S. military hardware out of the landlocked country, slowing the pace of withdrawal.
The cash-strapped Afghan government has also assessed hundreds of millions in taxes and fees on U.S.-funded reconstruction projects, despite what the U.S. said are broad agreements that exempt such assistance from taxation.
Gen. Dunford said top Afghan officials had recently given assurances such issues would be resolved. "It's really just a question of leadership, of working through it and of making sure that the agreement we already have…is enforced, and that's what the leadership has promised me," he said.
According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a U.S. watchdog agency, the Afghan government has improperly assessed more than $150 million in fines since 2009 on U.S. military shipments for inadequate customs documentation, in addition to nearly $1 billion in taxes and penalties improperly imposed by the Afghan government on contractors supporting U.S. operations.
The Afghan government didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the customs and taxation issues.
In June, the Afghan government and its allies marked the formal handover of security responsibilities from the U.S.-led coalition to Afghanistan's 350,000-strong military and police, a high-profile ceremony that was upstaged by the announcement of the opening of the Taliban office in Qatar a few hours later.
The security transition comes as Afghanistan is preparing for presidential elections in April 2014 that, if successful, will mark the first democratic transfer of power in its modern history.
Afghan and coalition military officials are already deeply involved in security planning for next spring's election. Violence and instability is highest in the country's southern and eastern provinces, leading to fears that the Pashtuns, Afghanistan's single largest ethnic group, could be excluded from the vote.
Gen. Dunford said U.S. and coalition forces—which will be in the midst of withdrawal next spring—"won't be visible at all" in providing security around Afghan polling stations, but added that the Afghans would deploy forces to protect population centers to allow a more credible vote.
"You've got to make sure that the Pashtun belt across the south is engaged and has access to the polls," he said. "You're not going to disregard the rural areas, but the challenge is being in some of the more populated areas, particularly where they are heavily Pashtun."
There are currently 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, according to the coalition, and the exit of international forces has raised considerable anxieties in Afghanistan about diminished central government control, a potential collapse of Afghan security forces or even civil war.
To facilitate a smooth political transition and to prevent instability in Afghanistan after 2014, some argue the country's new government will need vigorous international support.
"In 2014 there should be a weak opposition, a strong government, a weak Taliban," said Amrullah Saleh, the former head of Afghanistan's intelligence agency and now a leading opposition politician. "But if it is a strong Taliban, a noisy opposition and a very weak government in between, I'm not saying Afghanistan will collapse, I'm saying that to finance a government under siege you have to increase aid and military assistance, not reduce it."
Public support for the protracted military involvement, however, has waned in both the U.S. and Europe. While Afghanistan's international backers have made pledges to provide billions of dollars in military aid and civilian development assistance after 2014, donors have also made it clear that Afghanistan must hold credible elections and make serious efforts toward reducing corruption if aid is to continue.
The Obama administration recently said that a decision on post-2014 troop levels wasn't imminent.
"The issue isn't a number," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, adding: "It's the fulfillment of our policy objectives"—namely countering the remnants of al Qaeda and continuing to train and equip Afghanistan's security forces.
Gen. Dunford acknowledged the importance of public perceptions in both Afghanistan and the U.S.
"This whole war at this point is about the intangible factors," he said. "There is no question about it. It's about perception, it's about trust, it's about confidence, it's about commitment, it's about hope, it's about all those things."
Next spring's political transition, he added: "is the most important event in the campaign."
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http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/wests-blame-it-on-india-afghan-plan.html (http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/wests-blame-it-on-india-afghan-plan.html)
Some interesting view points from the Indian sub-continent..
WEST’S ‘BLAME IT ON INDIA’ AFGHAN PLAN
Friday, 19 July 2013 | G Parthasarathy | in Edit
The US and its allies are looking for scapegoats. They will target India for their failure to contain the Pakistani Army's support to the Taliban. Self-styled historians like William Dalrymple are willing accomplices in the act
Bruce Riedel, arguably one of the best informed and most experienced American analysts on the AfPak region, recently wrote an interesting analysis titled, ‘Battle for the Soul of Pakistan’. Mr Riedel noted: “Pakistan also remains a state sponsor of terror. Three of the five most-wanted on America’s counter-terrorism list live in Pakistan. The mastermind of the Mumbai massacre and head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hafeez Saeed, makes no effort to hide. He is feted by the army and the political elite, and calls for the destruction of India frequently and Jihad against America and Israel”. Mr Riedel adds: “The Head of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Omar shuttles between ISI safe houses in Quetta and Karachi. The Amir of Al Qaeda Ayman Zawahiri is probably hiding in a villa not much different from the one his predecessor (Osama bin Laden) was living in, with his wives and children, in Abbotabad until May 2011.”
Despite these realities, a new narrative seems to be creeping in, as uncertainties grow in Western capitals over how the much touted ‘end game’ will play out. American combat operations are progressively ending and Afghan Forces assuming full responsibility to take on the Taliban. There is uncertainty over whether Afghanistan’s presidential election scheduled in April 2014 will be free and fair and whether the new President will enjoy support cutting across ethnic lines, as President Hamid Karzai, a Durrani Pashtun, currently enjoys. As Pakistan remains an integral part of Western efforts to seek ‘reconciliation’ with the Taliban and for pull out equipment by the departing Nato forces, there appears to be a measure of Western desperation in seeking to persuade themselves and the world at large that there has been a ‘change of heart’ on the part of the Pakistan Army, which is now depicted as having given up its larger aim of seeking ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan through its Taliban protégés, led by Mullah Mohammed Omar.
As Mr Riedel notes, Mullah Omar remains an ISI protégé housed in ISI safe-houses in Pakistan. Pakistan’s real aim as a ‘facilitator’ of ‘reconciliation’ in Afghanistan became evident when Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz suggested to the Afghan Ambassador that the Taliban should be allowed to take control of provinces in Southern Afghanistan, as the process of ‘reconciliation’ commences. The Americans have only encouraged such thinking and added to the confusion by their over-anxiety to directly engage the Taliban, discarding earlier conditions for dialogue. Such obvious over-anxiety prompted the Taliban to up the ante and infuriate President Karzai by converting their premises in Doha to the Office of a virtual Government in exile.
The Americans and their Nato allies are evidently looking for scapegoats in case their ‘exit strategy’ fails, as it did in Vietnam. India now appears to be the new scapegoat in the event of such failure, as the US and its Nato allies seem to be bent on blaming India for their failures to deal with the Pakistani Army’s support for the Taliban, which could lead to an ignominious exit for them from Afghanistan. In this effort, British writers like the self-styled historian, William Dalrymple, seem to have become willing and enthusiastic accomplices. In a recent paper published by the Washington-based Brookings Institution, Mr Dalrymple avers: “While most observers in the West view the Afghanistan conflict as a battle between the US and Nato on the one hand and the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the other, in reality the hostility between India and Pakistan lies at the heart of the conflict in Afghanistan”.
As a self-styled historian, Mr Dalrymple conveniently forgets that the present AfPak tensions flowed from British colonial policies advocated by imperialists like Lord Curzon, whose ‘forward policy’ aimed to check growing Russian influence in Central Asia and also give the British undisputed and unchallenged control over the oil resources of the entire Persian Gulf. It was Imperial Britain that changed historical borders, depriving the Pashtuns of moving across their historical homeland by the imposition of the Durand Line in 1893. The problems between Pakistan and Afghanistan since the birth of Pakistan have been primarily because of past actions of Imperial Britain, as no Afghan Government has ever recognised the borders imposed by Imperial Britain. It is this border dispute that has bedevilled relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan since August 14, 1947, when Pakistan was born.
India has never taken sides on this Pakistan-Afghanistan dispute — a creation of British imperialism. The Afghans, in turn, have never taken sides on differences between India and Pakistan, except during the Taliban rule. In a recent paper I received, written by a former Director General of the ISI, the author noted, while referring to past Pakistan-Afghanistan relations: “The message from Kabul both in 1965 and 1971 (India-Pakistan conflicts) was that we could move all our troops from the Durand Line to the Eastern borders, where we needed them. We did precisely that and the Afghans ensured for the duration of the crises there was all quiet on the western front. The two countries have their good neighbourly troubles, but their stakes in each other’s security and stability are so high that neither would do anything deliberately to hurt the other’s interests”.
The likes of Mr Dalrymple and his American and European friends should remember that the religious extremism and violence that ail and afflict Pakistan and Afghanistan today, are direct outcomes of the backing given by the ISI, joined by the CIA and MI6, to armed fundamentalist groups, to wage jihad against the Soviet Union on Afghan soil and beyond. This, in turn, encouraged the ISI to believe that promotion of ‘militant islam’ is the ideal means to build influence within Pakistan, ‘bleed’ India and carry the forces of ‘radical Islam’ to Afghanistan and beyond. The US and the CIA paid the price for their earlier follies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, when attacks like those of 9/11 and the London bombings were planned and executed from safe havens in Afghanistan and along the Durand Line.
India will have to keep these realities in mind when fashioning its policies in Afghanistan. While we have played along with the Americans and complemented their policies in Afghanistan, there is need for New Delhi to be prepared to build new bridges in relations with its old partners like Russia, Iran and the Central Asian Republics, given the uncertainties and unpredictability in emerging American policies.
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http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-07-13/india/40553601_1_indian-army-russian-origin-mi-35-helicopter-gunships-afghan-national-army (http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-07-13/india/40553601_1_indian-army-russian-origin-mi-35-helicopter-gunships-afghan-national-army)
US exit: India steps up Afghan army training
Rajat Pandit, TNN Jul 13, 2013, 01.56AM IST
(Defence ministry sources…)
NEW DELHI: India is stepping up training of Afghan National Army (ANA) in a major way, even as it also considers supply of military equipment to the fledgling force, in the backdrop of the US-led coalition preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014.
Defence ministry sources say "a major Indian effort has been launched for capability enhancement of the ANA" to ensure it can handle the internal security of Afghanistan after the progressive exit of the 100,000 foreign soldiers from there by end-2014.
India is worried about the stability of the strategically-located Afghanistan after the withdrawal because it is likely to witness a concomitant surge in the activity of the Taliban and its deadly arms like the Haqqani network, which have long worked in league with the Pakistani Army against Indian interests.
Defence minister A K Antony, in fact, recently warned the Indian military brass to be on guard to tackle "any spillover effect" in Jammu & Kashmir and elsewhere due to Pakistan's continuing support to the Taliban and its inroads into Afghanistan.
Though India has worked largely on re-construction and developmental projects in the war-ravaged country over the last decade, it is now also boosting the "capacity-building" of ANA. If 574 ANA personnel were trained in different Indian Army establishments in 2012-13, for instance, the number will be "well over 1,000" in 2013-14.
The training includes counter-terrorism operations, military field-craft, signals, intelligence, counter-IED, information technology, battle-field nursing assistance and, of course, the English language. Afghan personnel are also being "attached" to the Infantry School at Mhow, Artillery School at Devlali and Mechanised Infantry Regimental Centre at Ahmednagar for specialized courses.
India has also posted some Army officers in the central Asian nation teach basic military and English skills as well as military doctors to help at hospitals in Kandahar and elsewhere. The training of Afghan pilots and technicians in operating Russian-origin Mi-35 helicopter gunships is also on the anvil.
A joint Indian military-civilian team had also gone to Kabul earlier this month after Afghan President Hamid Karzai submitted "a wish list" of military equipment to India during a visit here in May. The 17-page list includes armoured vehicles, 105mm artillery guns, utility helicopters, trucks, communication equipment and the like.
Sources said the visit of an ANA "Strategic Group", with 10 high-ranking officers, was also planned to India from September 1 to 13. The delegation will hold talks with the top military brass here, part from visiting military establishments in Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore.
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http://www.dawn.com/news/1028773/taliban-ban-tight-mens-clothing-in-waziristan (http://www.dawn.com/news/1028773/taliban-ban-tight-mens-clothing-in-waziristan)
Its only fair....
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BOA5T1-CcAAxFQ_.jpg:large)
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http://www.businessinsider.com/one-marines-views-on-afghanistan-2012-8
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Alana Goodman writing in the Washington Free Beacon, Aug. 7:
Four years ago, an Afghan translator known as "Hafez" charged into enemy fire to help Marine Corporal Dakota Meyer rescue wounded American soldiers during one of the most famous battles in the Afghanistan war.
Meyer received the Medal of Honor for his courage in the battle of Ganjgal—the first living Marine to receive the honor since the Vietnam war.
But Meyer says his friend Hafez is still waiting to receive a U.S. visa he applied for years ago. The former translator remains in Afghanistan under daily threat from the Taliban while his application is caught in the bureaucratic limbo of the State Department.
"He stood next to me, by my side pretty much the entire time [during the Battle of Ganjgal]," Meyer, 25, said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon on Monday. "He helped me carry my guys out."
"If we can't help get this guy back who sacrificed so much to bring these Americans home, I'm sure he'll be killed," he said. . . .
Gen. Joseph Dunford, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, signed off on Hafez's application. The visa was also green-lighted by U.S. Embassy officials in Kabul, said West. The application then went to the U.S. State Department's visa department for "vetting," according to West, where it has remained ever since.
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This relates more to India, but Narendra Modi is the man to watch in India. He is the leader of the hindu nationalist party, BJP. He has a lot of momentum to become the next PM of India. the guy is strong on defense, not corrupt, has made his home state one of the best in terms of economic development. The guy uses Obama style drives to mobilize the youth, but is not a socialist, more of a nationalist. Only downside is that a few years ago when Pakis burnt a train full of Hindus, he did not bat an eyelash to hold back the hindu response against muslims. However, the courts have not found anything incriminating, though the US refuses to give him a visa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narendra_Modi
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I hope no one minds some interesting pictures from pakiland. Anyone know the long term effects of oxygen depravation ?
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BQl78iwCEAIubSh.jpg:large)
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I hope no one minds some interesting pictures from pakiland. Anyone know the long term effects of oxygen depravation ?
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BQl78iwCEAIubSh.jpg:large)
It hides the bruises well.
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:cry: :cry: :cry:
PS: Ya, would you please post about Modi on the India thread?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/world/asia/us-soldiers-find-surprise-on-returning-to-afghan-valley-peace.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130831
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Taliban attacks U.S. consulate in Afghanistan
Published by: Dan Calabrese
Taliban calls AP to claim responsibility.
We're basically just going to give you a few graphs from the AP report, because that's all we have - and apparently all U.S. personnel are safe - but I do find it curious that the Taliban simply gets on the phone to the AP and says, yeah, we did it. In this part of the world, the AP typically uses regional stringers for reporting in the field - and while it's probably not fair to conclude anything about the stringers from their names (Amir Shah and Nahal Toosi) - I think it's fair to ask if the AP really has any way of knowing the backgrounds or associations of these stringers it hires.
Are the Taliban and the AP's regional reporters on each other's speed dials? Did some of these guys know each other growing up?
Anyway, here are the details:
Taliban militants unleashed car bombs at the U.S. Consulate in western Afghanistan on Friday morning, triggering a firefight with security forces in an attack that killed at least two Afghans. The U.S. said all its personnel from the mission were safe and that American forces later secured the site.
The attack in the city of Herat — along with a suicide truck bombing in the country's east that wounded seven Afghans — underscored the perilous security situation here as U.S.-led troops reduce their presence ahead of a full withdrawal next year. It was also a rude return to reality for Afghans who had spent a day and a half celebrating their nation's first international soccer championship.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi took responsibility for the Herat attack in a phone call with The Associated Press. Afghan and U.S. officials, meanwhile, offered slightly different accounts of what happened — differences which could not immediately be reconciled.
According to Gen. Rahmatullah Safi, Herat province's chief of police, the attack began around 6 a.m. when militants in an SUV and a van set off their explosives-laden vehicles while others on foot fired on Afghan security forces guarding the compound in the city, 1,000 kilometers (625 miles) from Kabul.
An Afghan police officer and an Afghan security guard were killed, though it was not clear whether they died in the explosions of the two vehicles or in the gunfire, Safi said. At least seven attackers were killed, including the two drivers of the explosives-laden vehicles, he said, and several people were wounded.
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Taliban Claim Killing of Pakistani General
Roadside Bombing May Threaten Proposed Peace Talks
By SAEED SHAH
ISLAMABAD—The Pakistani Taliban stepped up their confrontation with the country's government Sunday, killing a general in a roadside bomb attack and issuing new demands as a condition to opening peace talks.
Pakistan army Maj. Gen. Sanaullah Niazi was killed when his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in Dir district, an area of northwestern Pakistan close to the Afghanistan border, the Pakistani military said. A lieutenant colonel and a soldier were also killed in the attack and two soldiers were injured, it added.
In two other bombings over the weekend, in and around North Waziristan in the tribal areas, three paramilitary troops were killed, the military said.
Gen. Niazi was the officer in charge of the Swat Valley, an area in Pakistan's northwest that had been taken over by the Pakistani Taliban until an army operation drove them out in 2009. He was on his way back from spending two days visiting posts in Dir along the border with Afghanistan when his convoy was struck, the military statement said.
Taliban militants led by a commander named Fazlullah are still active in Dir, and are believed to operate from a safe haven across the border in Afghanistan. The border posts that Gen. Niazi was inspecting had been beefed up over the last two years to counter raids by Fazlullah's group, security officials said.
Senior Pakistani officers often travel by helicopter to the Afghan border area. The attack on Gen. Niazi's convoy appeared to indicate precise intelligence, including which vehicle in the convoy to hit.
The Pakistani Taliban, a group closely linked with al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack. The group demanded Sunday that the government withdraw the army from the insurgents' strongholds in the country's tribal areas and free its prisoners before it would agree to enter into peace talks.
The Pakistani Taliban spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, said that they targeted the general "to show that there is no cease-fire" with the government in Islamabad. "The government has to show that it is serious and sincere first," said Mr. Shahid. "Then we'll talk to them."
Mr. Shahid said the Taliban had put the conditions on the talks after three days of internal meetings to discuss the government's unconditional offer of talks, discussions presided over by the Pakistani Taliban leader, Hakimullah Mehsud.
Last week, Pakistan's parliamentary parties endorsed the strategy of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to hold peace negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban, who operate independently of the Afghan Taliban.
The attack on the general's convoy and the new demands raise the stakes for peace talks. The Pakistani Taliban have formulated a raft of far-reaching demands in response to the government's offer, militant commanders say, and the two conditions announced Sunday are the only ones their spokesman has made public.
According to militant commanders, the Pakistani Taliban have prepared a list of 4,752 members who are currently in the country's jails. A spokesman for Pakistan's interior ministry said Sunday there was no official response so far to the demands.
Separately, Pakistan's top foreign-policy official, Sartaj Aziz, suggested Saturday that Islamabad would use its contacts with the Afghan Taliban to help persuade the Pakistani Taliban to come to the negotiating table.
In a related development, a member of the Afghan Taliban's top decision-making body, known as the Quetta shura, made a rare appearance on television, giving an interview to Pakistan's Geo News channel.
Hassan Rehmani, who was the last serving governor of the southern province of Kandahar before the fall of the Taliban government, hit out at the U.S. for "breaking its promises" about allowing the group to have a negotiating office in the Gulf emirate of Qatar.
The Qatar office was closed in June this year following objections from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was infuriated by the Taliban office's trappings of a government-in-exile. Mr. Rehmani confirmed that the Taliban weren't prepared to talk to the Afghan leader.
"Contacts with Kabul cannot happen in the presence of American forces, and foreign forces [in Afghanistan], because the Americans have the power there at the moment," Mr. Rehmani said.
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/09/16/Top-policewoman-shot-in-Afghanistan-has-died
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http://www.michaelyon-online.com/afghanistan-a-bigger-monster.htm#comments
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http://www.michaelyon-online.com/afghanistan-a-bigger-monster.htm#comments
All as Buraq planned.
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I don't think the US would give up Mossad agents but I don't trust the Obama led US not give up Israel plans for an attack on Iran"
****Turkish Betrayal’ Is the Talk of Israel
By Karl Vick and Aaron J. Klein / Tel Aviv @karl_vickOct. 18, 201320 Comments
Israeli newspapers were dominated Friday morning by a Washington Post report that Turkey betrayed Israeli spies to Iran. “Turkey Blows Israel’s Cover for Iranian Spying Ring, “ was the headline on columnist David Ignatius’ Thursday piece, quoting “knowledgeable sources” who described how the Turkish government disclosed to Iran the identities of 10 Iranians who had been meeting in Turkey with Israeli intelligence case officers. The Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth noted a “thunderous silence” from the Israeli government in its article, headlined “The Turkish Betrayal” and including numerous quotes from unidentified officials reinforcing the premise of the story. The Post column followed an Oct. 10 Wall Street Journal profile of Turkey’s intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, that included a broader charge that he had passed Israeli secrets to Iran.
Turkey’s foreign ministry dismissed the reports as a “smear campaign” intended to further damage Turkey’s fraught relations with Israel, which Ignatius is in a position to appreciate better than most. He was the moderator at the 2009 World Economic Forum panel featuring Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli President Shimon Peres, when Erdogan pulled off his microphone and stormed off the stage over the 2008-2009 conflict in Gaza. “When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill,” Erdogan told Peres.
Beyond tightening tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem, the new reports also add to the narrative of the secret war between Israel and Iran that has been emerging in bits and pieces. In January 2012, intelligence sources acknowledged to TIME that a young man who appeared on Iranian state television in 2011 confessing he had been working for the Mossad, had, in fact, been an asset for the Israeli intelligence agency. The chagrined intelligence officials said 24-year-old Majid Jamali Fashi, who was executed in May 2012 as a “Mossad spy”, had been betrayed to Iran’s security services by a third country, which TIME did not identify. A subsequent Israeli investigation concluded that Turkey had not overtly identified the Mossad agents, but rather permitted them to be discovered by Iranian state security, either by possibly through their movements between Iran and Turkey, according to an intelligence official.
Three months after Fashi was hanged, the Iranian government paraded another 14 Iranians on primetime television, all describing their roles in the assassinations of scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran blames the killings on the Mossad – and correctly so, Western intelligence officials said. The officials acknowledged the loss of more operatives, Iranian nationals paid to provide logistics and other support for the Mossad operation. The officials said the assassinations were intended both to deter Iranian scientists from joining the nuclear effort, and as part of a broader covert campaign aimed at delaying Iran’s program. Before scaling back the level of covert operations later in 2012, Israel’s secret campaign ranged from silent attacks such as the Stuxnet computer virus, to very loud ones, like the massive Nov. 2011 blast at a missile base outside Tehran, which intelligence officials acknowledged to was Israeli sabotage.
Iran attempted again and again to strike back at Israel, in a fast-moving “shadow war” that involved attempts on the lives of Israeli diplomats and expatriates, from Bangkok to Baku to Nairobi. But it did not fare well. The Israelis or other governments thwarted every attack until July 2012, when agents of Hizballah – which Iran created and has a history of partnering with in terror attacks – bombed a bus in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas, killing five Israeli tourists, a Bulgarian bus driver and a Hizballah operative who may not have meant to die.
Karl Vick @karl_vick
Karl Vick has been TIME's Jerusalem bureau chief since 2010, covering Israel,the Palestine territories and nearby sovereignties. He worked 16 years at the Washington Post in Nairobi, Istanbul, Baghdad, Los Angeles and Rockville,
Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/10/18/turkish-betrayal-is-the-talk-of-israel/#ixzz2iDhwVzJk****
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Why is this article here and not in the Israel thread on the Mid-East FUBAR thread?
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WSJ
By
Margherita Stancati in Kabul and
Rachel Pannett in Makassar
connect
Updated Oct. 15, 2013 12:51 a.m. ET
Thousands of Afghans have fled their homes for refugee camps in and around Kabul. Many are hoping to get asylum in Australia and elsewhere.
Wazira, a 37-year-old mother of six, abandoned her home and apple orchard in Afghanistan's rural Wardak province last year and moved with her whole family into a single room on the fringes of the Afghan capital.
"We didn't have any choice but to come to Kabul," she says. "The Taliban were forcing us to prepare food for them. But if we did, the government would harass us. We were stuck in the middle."
More than 590,000 Afghans had been displaced from their homes by fighting and Taliban threats by late August, according to the United Nations, a 21% increase since January and more than four times the number in 2006, when the insurgency began in earnest. Wazira, who like many Afghans goes by one name, is one of more than 12,000 displaced people from Wardak province alone who now share homes around Kabul, according to the U.N.
U.N. officials worry that widening violence could kick off an exodus abroad when American-led forces leave the country next year.
For those trying to leave Afghanistan altogether, the first stop often is neighboring Iran or Pakistan. Some who are wealthy or lucky enough head for Europe or Australia, which already is coping with an influx of Afghan boat people. Some 38,000 people from Afghanistan have managed to get into industrialized nations to apply for asylum last year, more than from any other country, according to the U.N., and the highest figure since the U.S. invasion in 2001.
"The desperation is incredible," says Richard Danziger, the Afghanistan head of the International Organization for Migration, a U.N. affiliate that is helping resettle the refugees.
A confidential preliminary report drafted by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal describes a scenario that would see some 200,000 Afghan refugees fleeing to Pakistan and Iran next year.
"If we keep on the current trajectory, there will be one million displaced people over the next two or three years," says Aidan O'Leary, the Afghanistan head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
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Sabir Shah is trying to reach Australia but has gotten no farther than a hotel in Indonesia, where he has been for months. Rachel Pannett
Afghanistan's displacement and refugee problem stretches back over three decades of warfare. The number of displaced Afghans and asylum seekers initially peaked in 2001 when the Taliban government was toppled, then declined during the first few years of the U.S.-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. But as the insurgency gained momentum from 2007, the numbers rapidly climbed.
Afghan troops are sustaining record casualties this year in the fight against the resurgent Taliban. Many Afghans are worried that the security situation will deteriorate sharply next year, as the U.S. completes its withdrawal and an election to choose President Karzai's successor fuels political instability.
"We are expecting emigration to increase," says Jamahir Anwari, Afghanistan's minister of refugees, whose own family is split between Turkey and Sweden. "This worries us."
Faced with a rising tide of displaced people, the Afghan government recently drafted a policy to help resettle them inside the country, which is awaiting cabinet approval.
A U.S. government official familiar with the issue said: "We are concerned about levels of internal displacement.…Providing humanitarian assistance to this displaced population is a priority, and remains challenging because of high levels of insecurity."
Many Afghans caught in the crossfire between government and Taliban forces leave behind everything when they flee their villages. The situation is especially bad in the district of Sayedabad, a battlefield on a crucial highway between Kandahar and Kabul.
That is the region from which Wazira, the mother of six, fled. Her home and orchard had sustained damage from heavy fighting. "We are scared," she says. "The Taliban told us that if we went to Kabul, we wouldn't be able to go back."
Some of the displaced say the violence there is as bad as it has been since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. "I've lived through decades of war and never left my village," says a 70-year-old tribal elder who fled his home and now lives on the outskirts of Kabul. "If there's security, I won't stay in Kabul for one more hour."
There are few good prospects for occupants of the displaced persons' camps and informal settlements ringing Kabul and other relatively safe Afghan cities. Many are hatching plans to get out of the country.
Pakistan and Iran are often steppingstones for journeys to Europe or Australia.
The bulk of Afghan migrants aim for Western Europe, according to U.N. data. Last year, about 7,500 Afghans applied for asylum in Germany, followed by Sweden, which received 4,750 applications, and Turkey, which got 4,400. Only 204 Afghans applied for asylum in the U.S.
Australia is regarded by many Afghans as a land of especially good opportunity. The number of Afghan refugees showing up on Australian beaches hit 4,256 last year, up from 118 in 2008, according to the Australian government.
"In our village, people are mainly talking about Australia: Who reached it from our village? Who sent money from Australia? How is the route?" says Ali Shah, a 60-year-old baker from the Muqur district in Ghazni province, a Taliban stronghold.
Last year, Mr. Shah fled his home with 10 family members. "Muqur is not safe," he says. "The Taliban run their own government. They control checkpoints and administer justice." Mr. Shah is now jobless and living in a different district. His 25-year-old son, Sabir, left Afghanistan this spring, hoping to reach Australia.
The journey to Australia often begins with a smuggler in Kabul. One such operative, who uses the name Hadi, told a Journal reporter that he charges up to $10,500 for visa and travel to Indonesia. It would cost another $5,000 to attempt to reach Australia by boat, he said. The cost means that many would-be migrants are, by Afghan standards, relatively affluent, such as small-business owners.
Many who head for Australia, including Mr. Shah's son, belong to the ethnic Hazara minority that has been persecuted by the Taliban, and that has the most to lose should the Taliban return to power after the American withdrawal.
"All the people are worried about what will happen after 2014, and so are the Hazaras," says Afghan Hazara leader Mohammed Mohaqeq, who is running for vice president in next year's national elections. He survived an assassination attempt in June. "Security is getting worse everywhere," he says.
Hayatullah Saadat, 28, an English-speaking management graduate from an Indian university, says he hopes to get to Australia next spring, by boat if necessary. "I came back from India and thought: 'I have to help Afghanistan,' " he says. "But then I lost hope. Nobody is sure about their income. Nobody is sure about their life."
The journey to Australia typically takes refugees through Pakistan or India, then Malaysia and Indonesia. Some have died on the last leg when the Indonesian fishing boats they were traveling in sank.
After Australia tightened its immigration policy, many refugees now are stranded in Malaysia and Indonesia. Prime Minister Tony Abbott's conservative coalition, elected in September, is promising to use the Australian Navy to intercept and forcibly return refugee boats to other countries' waters. His predecessor, Kevin Rudd, had instituted a policy to remove asylum-seekers to poorer countries such as Papua New Guinea to be processed and resettled there.
As a result, the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, which has long served as the starting point for the sea crossing to Australia, is becoming packed with Afghans. Some 80 refugees are living in the dilapidated Mahkota Hotel in the Sulawesi town of Makassar, one of scores of rundown residences filled with Afghans. The International Organization for Migration is paying for the housing.
Sabir Shah, the son of the displaced baker from Muqur, made it to the Mahkota Hotel. He left Kabul carrying a small bag with pair of jeans and a shirt, a traditional Afghan outfit, a shaver and a mobile phone. He flew to Malaysia on a fake student visa in early May, after paying a smuggler the first half of an $8,000 fee.
"There was a fear of Taliban," he says. "Almost every day we heard that a Hazara interpreter or schoolteacher had been killed by Taliban."
He traveled from Malaysia to Indonesia's Sumatra island on a wooden fishing boat one night with about 20 Afghans. The crossing was rough. He has been at the Mahkota Hotel for months, awaiting a chance to resettle in Australia or elsewhere. He spends his time studying English and working out at a local gym.
Jawad Heidari, 29, a resident of the same hotel, says he sold a second-hand-car dealership in Kabul and his Toyota Lexus luxury sedan to raise $36,000 for a smuggler to transport him, his wife and two sons.
A former customs officer, he says he fled Afghanistan in April after receiving Taliban threats. "I would do anything to get to Australia," he said recently from a dingy hotel room.
Nearby, Afghan women fried eggs over a camp stove to augment food deliveries from the international aid organizations. A group of girls played with Barbie dolls on the narrow balcony.
Samrin is one of the girls at the Mahkota Hotel. Her father, Noor Ahmad, entered Australia as a refugee in June after more than two years in immigration detention in Indonesia and two failed attempts to reach Australia by boat.
"After 12 days in the sea, our boat encountered a storm," recalled Mr. Ahmad, a Hazara from Ghazni province, from his new home in Dandenong, a migrant suburb in Australia's second-largest city, Melbourne. "Everyone was scared and we had no hope anyone would survive."
His wife, Zeba Ahmad, 24, and daughter Samrin set out seven months ago to join him, but remain in limbo at the hotel in Indonesia. Every time Samrin sees a plane in the sky, her mother says, she asks whether it will take her to her father.
—Ehsanullah Amiri and Habib Khan Totakhil in Kabul contributed to this article.
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fghanistan: A Battleground for Iranian and Saudi Interests
Geopolitical Diary
Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - 19:34 Text Size Print
Many observers have overlooked some of the ancillary regional consequences of the U.S.-Iran deal. As the United States and Iran reached the agreement, Washington encountered trouble with Iran's eastern neighbor, Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai would not sign the bilateral security agreement that would authorize a residual American force in Afghanistan after 2014. The standoff will be short-lived, but in light of the U.S.-Iran deal, battles will continue to take place in Afghanistan between two historic rivals: Saudi Arabia and Iran, which is now poised to play an unprecedented role in the region.
U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice left Kabul on Tuesday after warning Karzai that if he did not sign the bilateral security agreement Washington would have to withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan by the end of next year. That probably will not come to pass; Karzai is simply posturing to get additional concessions from Washington, many of which involve Karzai trying to remain relevant once a successor takes office after presidential elections in April 2014. Considering that Afghanistan needs U.S. support to deal with the Taliban insurgency after NATO completes its drawdown next year, Karzai will sign the agreement sooner or later.
The bilateral security agreement aside, Afghanistan may have just become a key battleground between Saudi Arabia and its regional rival, Iran. This geopolitical struggle has played out along the northern rim of the Middle East and across Iran's western flank, but the U.S-Iran deal may have aggravated the situation. Saudi Arabia became wary of Iran's ascendance when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, and now Riyadh fears that Tehran will become even more powerful -- not as an unpredictable actor pursuing a radical foreign policy agenda, but as a rehabilitated member of the international community.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman explains.
No longer a pariah of the international community, Iran will be able to project power with greater ease than before, especially on its eastern frontier, where Afghanistan represents a potential security threat, because of long-standing Saudi influence. In fact, the Iranians believe that the recent surge of attacks by ethnic Sunni Islamist militants in southwestern Sistan and Baluchestan province, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the work of Saudi proxies that were reactivated after the U.S.-Iranian rapprochement.
But Afghanistan could also provide an opportunity for Iran. Given its historic ethnic, linguistic and sectarian ties, Iran has a great deal of influence in the country. In recent years, Tehran has enhanced its influence in Afghanistan through the Persian-speaking minority communities, by supporting the Karzai regime and by developing ties to elements within the Taliban. As Washington moves toward a drawdown from Afghanistan and improves ties with Tehran, the Americans and Iranians are likely to coordinate on containing Sunni Islamist militancy in the southwest Asian nation.
Washington had hoped that Pakistan would help manage Afghanistan after 2014. However, Pakistan has been severely weakened by the war and is now struggling with its own domestic jihadist insurgency. Simply put, it has lost a lot of its leverage in Afghanistan.
However, the Pakistanis are unlikely to sit back and allow the Iranians to fill the void. The Saudis, who have an especially close relationship with the current government in Islamabad, will come in and exploit Pakistani vulnerabilities to further their own strategic imperative: countering a rising Iran. For its part, Pakistan, having been disaffected by a long history of supporting Islamist militants and having become a major battleground for anti-Shia violence, would want to avoid a firm alignment with Saudi Arabia.
But there is reason to believe Islamabad would cooperate somewhat. Economically, Pakistan is in dire straits, and its relationship with Saudi Arabia, a fellow Sunni state, keeps it within Riyadh's sphere of influence. Already, the Saudis are working closely with the Pakistanis to support Sunni rebels in Syria, especially after the United States backed away from the idea of regime change in Damascus. And because Saudi-Pakistani cooperation against Iran would very likely take place in Afghanistan, Sunni Islamist militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan could increase dramatically.
Such an outcome is unlikely to help Saudi Arabia undermine Iran. In fact, Washington and Tehran could become even closer if this threat ever materializes. The ensuing proxy war would lead to a greater rise in Islamist extremism and terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Read more: Afghanistan: A Battleground for Iranian and Saudi Interests | Stratfor
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Hagel Urges Pakistan to Reopen Afghan Supply Route
U.S. Defense Secretary Meets With Sharif on Reopening Critical Border Checkpoint
by Julian E. Barnes
Updated Dec. 9, 2013 9:33 a.m. ET
ISLAMABAD—U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel pressed Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to help restart the flow of equipment across the Afghan border, saying a key element of American aid could be cut off if the main route from Kabul was not reopened to coalition supply convoys.
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For his part, Mr. Sharif pushed Mr. Hagel on the issues of drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas, counterterrorism operations which Pakistan wants ended.
Washington is keen to get the often difficult relationship with Pakistan back on track and American officials repeatedly insisted that despite the difficult issues on the table the talks were amicable. Defense officials said Mr. Hagel didn't threaten to cut off aid, but instead explained to Pakistanis that it would be politically difficult to reimburse them for military expenses if Islamabad can't reopen the highway linking Kabul to the port of Karachi.
Protesters affiliated with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party of former cricket star Imran Khan blocked the road around the city of Peshawar to coalition convoys last month, demanding an end to U.S. drone attacks. While PTI sits in opposition to Mr. Sharif in the federal parliament, the stridently anti-American movement controls the Peshawar-based provincial government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on the Afghan border. If Mr. Sharif were to use force to disperse these protests, it could cause a dramatic political crisis in the country.
The PTI protests have led U.S. officials to halt the transport of MRAPs and other military equipment out of Afghanistan. American officials said they believe drivers bringing the American equipment across the Afghanistan border could be threatened. Of the 50,000 vehicles the U.S. wanted to remove from Afghanistan as part of the drawdown of international forces, 10,000 of the trucks remain in the country, according to U.S. military officials.
U.S. defense officials said Mr. Sharif was sympathetic, and pledged to help get goods flowing through the border crossing as soon as possible. Pakistan's troubled economy is highly dependent on the fees the U.S. pays to transport equipment across the border as well as American military aid. As part of the Coalition Support Funds program, the U.S. reimburses some of the cost of Pakistani military operations. The U.S. in the past has tried to use the reimbursement as a form of leverage.
"This was an issue the secretary raised, particularly in connection with continued Coalition Support Funds being distributed to Pakistan," said a defense official.
The U.S. stopped reimbursing Pakistan's military operations after the border was closed following an incident when an American airstrike killed members of Pakistan's military in November 2011.
The U.S. resumed the reimbursements after the border opened in July 2012, paying Pakistan $1.118 billion for operations between July 2010 and May 2011. The U.S. paid about $688 million in December 2012 and another $322 million this October for operations that took place before September 2012.
The Pentagon is currently reviewing a request by Pakistan to help pay for military operations that took place between October 2012 and the end of that year.
There was less agreement on counterterrorism issues. Pakistani officials said Mr. Sharif raised the issue of drone strikes, which U.S. officials confirmed. For their part, U.S. officials said they remain concerned Pakistan isn't taking action against the Haqqani Network, a group affiliated with the Afghan Taliban, and other militant groups that threatened U.S. and Afghan forces.
The Haqqani Network has long enjoyed support from elements of the Pakistani security establishment.
The drone strikes are a key political issue in Pakistan. Pakistani officials say civilians are regularly injured or killed in strikes meant to target militant leaders. U.S. officials have disputed many of the charges that the strikes regularly create collateral damage.
While no meaningful concessions were made by either side, the defense official said Mr. Hagel only hoped to begin a discussion of the two countries' counterterrorism operations.
"These meetings are intended to flesh out what are the areas we can narrow our differences," the official said.
Mr. Hagel is the first defense secretary to visit Pakistan in four years. But his trip lasted only a few hours as part of a day of whirlwind defense diplomacy that began in Afghanistan and included stops in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In addition to Prime Minister Sharif, Mr. Hagel also met with Pakistan's newly appointed Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Raheel Sharif. The meeting with Gen. Sharif in Rawalpindi was the first between him and a senior American since Pakistan's army chief was appointed in late November.
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http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2014/01/03/obamas-afghanistan-mess-n1771182?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
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http://www.ijreview.com/2014/01/107873-cnn-died-nothing-navy-seal-lone-survivor-confronts-jake-tapper-senseless-deaths-comment/
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What do we think of this? Would it suffice to tell a man, a parent, a nation why we were sending their son there/why her/her son had died there?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/world/asia/afghanistan-exit-is-seen-as-peril-to-drone-mission.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140127&_r=0
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/17/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban/index.html
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second post
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303277704579345982269968544.html?mod=WSJ_hppMIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond
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Obama Flirts With Losing the 'Must Win' War
Withdrawal from Afghanistan will be a defeat for America and a victory for al Qaeda.
By Frederick W. Kagan
Jan. 27, 2014 7:27 p.m. ET
The Soviet-installed government of Najibullah fell three years after the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan—and mere months after the Soviets stopped supporting it financially. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved against his Sunni political opponents within 24 hours of the departure of the last American soldier, starting to set the conditions for the loss of all the gains purchased with much American and Iraqi blood. Yet Washington is full of leaks that the Obama administration is planning to end America's military presence in Afghanistan in 2016. And Congress has already slashed U.S. financial assistance to the fifth-poorest country in the world.
It seems we are about to repeat the mistakes of the past vainly hoping for a different outcome. We will be disappointed.
Candidate Barack Obama declared in 2008, "we will not repeat the mistake of the past, when we turned our back on Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. As 9/11 showed us, the security of Afghanistan and America is shared." He was right about the urgency. He was a poor prophet of his own future policy.
Our security remains tied to Afghanistan's. Al Qaeda leadership remains battered but defiant (and still operational) in Pakistan despite Osama bin Laden's death. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) are enormously larger and more competent than they were when Obama took office, but they are still unable to function independently against an insurgency that remains lethal and determined. Afghanistan remains unable to survive financially without massive infusions of international support. It is preparing for its first peaceful transition of power in many decades. It is impossible to argue for withdrawal on the grounds that Afghanistan no longer needs help.
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Afghan children play in the outskirts of Herat, Jan. 23. aref karimi/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Many Americans think Afghanistan no longer wants our help. President Hamid Karzai fuels that belief almost every time he speaks, ranting about American abuses, reviling the U.S., and refusing to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement that would give legal basis to continued U.S. presence. Who could possibly want to help a man like that or the country for which he pretends to speak?
But Mr. Karzai is not Afghanistan. On the contrary, the gathering of influential elders and leaders he convened in November to consider the Bilateral Security Agreement emphatically endorsed it and called on him to sign it quickly. Almost every major candidate running to succeed Mr. Karzai has supported signing the agreement. Advertisements are running on Afghan television stations calling on Mr. Karzai to sign.
Mr. Karzai's refusal to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement has virtually no support among Afghans. He does not speak for them. And in a few months he will not be leading them. It would be worse than folly to base policies touching long-term American interests on the outbursts of a jaded politician fading gracelessly from the scene.
The only reason that remains for abandoning Afghanistan is the belief that the cause there is simply lost. It is clear that many advisers to the president such as Douglas Lute have long thought so, opposing a counterinsurgency strategy on the grounds that it cannot succeed and is not necessary. Possibly President Obama himself has come to the conclusion that the strategy he endorsed and partially resourced in 2009 was mistaken.
The facts do not support this belief. Eight years of a very light-footprint, development-oriented, targeted-strike-focused strategy in Afghanistan left the Taliban on the verge of seizing Kandahar City and almost all of Southern Afghanistan in 2009. Mr. Karzai then was in reality little more than the mayor of Kabul, whose approaches the Taliban controlled or contested. There were fewer than 100,000 members in the ANSF—police and army combined—for a country of 32 million. They were equipped with rifles and pickup trucks. The Afghan Air Force did not fly a single aircraft.
Five years on things are very different. The Taliban have failed to regain their former positions in and around Kandahar despite the withdrawal of most of the international forces. They are fighting hard to regain positions in Helmand that had formerly been their fortified strongholds—and Afghans are fighting back. The ANSF numbers over 350,000, with increasingly modern vehicles, artillery and even its own helicopter support. Some Taliban strongholds around Kabul have been disrupted, although the premature withdrawal of the surge forces has left lethal foes too close to Afghanistan's capital (and international airport). Complaints that Mr. Karzai controls too much of Afghanistan are valid—but more promising in some respects than when he controlled nothing at all. Corruption and hyper-centralization can be corrected, albeit with great difficulty. Anarchy is infinitely harder to cure.
And Afghanistan still matters to American national security. Mr. Obama was right in 2008 when he called Afghanistan "a war that must be won." The al Qaeda franchises growing around the world threaten the U.S. more imminently than their confederates in Afghanistan or possibly even Pakistan. But they are all looking expectantly to the defeat of another superpower in South Asia. They intend to re-establish themselves in the land where bin Laden founded their organization and from which he hurled planes like thunderbolts at the American foe. History matters to these people and it should matter to us.
Withdrawal from Afghanistan, whether financial or military or both, will be a defeat for the U.S. and a victory for al Qaeda. It really is that simple.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle can speechify and expound arguments about how we are winning and losing simultaneously, and how, either way, we should leave now. They may persuade themselves and the American people. But they will be just as wrong as George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were to ignore Afghanistan in the 1990s, to our great pain and suffering.
We have seen many times what will happen if the U.S. adopts the policy now being leaked. We can be sure that it will end very badly for us.
Mr. Kagan is director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.
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I am not unsympathetic to the points being made, but I have substantial doubts which have their roots in:
1) Bush did a hideous job with Afpakia, after the initial success with overthrowing the Taliban. Even the success was tainted with our using the drug lord riddled Northern Alliance as part of the overthrow. In hindsight Col. Peters call for leaving right then and there seems to have had considerable merit.
2) The strategy chosen was, as I have vigorously commented here for several years now (educated in great part by our YA) spectacularly incoherent; I trust I have no need here and now to restate my thinking in this regard;
3) Topping off this incoherence was the inattention paid to this war by Bush (as predicted by many critics of going into Iraq who said we needed to finish what we started in Afpakia). Michael Yon was reporting as early as 2006 that the we were losing the war, perhaps irreparably so.
4) As deftly analyzed by Stratfor, our coalition/alliance was riddled with spies-- the trust necessary for success would have been, and indeed was, suicidal-- witness the attacks on our troops by Taliban in the Afghani Army.
In short, Obama entered into office facing a truly hideous situation. We need to be honest about this.
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IMHO, there are a couple of things going on in Af-Pak.
1. Karzai: Karzai has seen the writing on the wall. He also wants to have his cake and eat it too. The US is leaving, which means the Taliban will be ascendant soon. When he refuses to sign the agreement for US forces to stay, he looks good with the Taliban. He does not want to suffer the fate of Najibullah (castration +hanging). If OTOH, he can convince US forces to stay, he will have a role to play with any US mediated negotiation with the Taliban and Pak. Win-Win for him.
2. Pak: The US wants to appease them, so that there may be an orderly withdrawl. Pak wants the US to withdraw pronto, so that they get money (I read somewhere they had only 2 Bill$ in foreign reserves!), gain strategic depth (their long standing strategy against India). Paki's in their wisdom have become an IT hub (not Information Technology but Islamic Terrorism). Export of IT is a money making business (note the Saudi's offer to Putin to holdback IT from Sochi Olympics). Unfortunately, IT is getting out of hand, even for the paki's. They have lost control and their country is mired with daily bomb blasts. The only solution out for them is to redirect these battle hardened IT towards India (Kashmir cause), otherwise their own country goes up in flames.
3. US: I have always said the state sponsored terror hub is Pak, that's where they get their nourishment. The main reason that the US humors Pak is the possibility of export of nukes to the west, and secondly to keep India checkmated (the US doctrine is to maintain balance of power within nations). So occasionally, the US also supplies India with arms etc to keep China checkmated. I dont think we have major strategic interests in Afghanistan that we can work on, the geography and logistics gives Iran, Russia and China the upperhand. The US should not stay any longer in Afghanistan, because no clear aim is present. Nor can the US maintain forces for long, if the host nation does not want them there. Terrorism will not come from afghanistan, but from Pak which has the hardliner imams preaching IT.
4. India: is quite worried that these battle hardened taliban will wage jihad in India. India has a lot of experience with counterinsurgency, perhaps the most experience thanks to the pakis. So as a counter to this Pak strategy, India supplies some arms and training to Afghans. Most of the Afgh military officers train in India, which irritates the Pakis no end. So its a kind of circle within a circle with interlinked cause and effects.
Future: So based on the above, the US will leave Afghanistan, which will leave a vacuum. This vacuum will be filled by Islamic hardliners. They will command the southern parts of Afghanistan and the Northern Forces will retain the northern parts of Afghanistan. Pakistan will support the taliban in achieving their goals, but these fighters need to stay employed, and will be directed towards India. The question is will the taliban devour the NWFP pashtoon region of Pak too. I do not think that terrorism in Pak can be controlled, unless they agree to become a hardline islamic state. Pak may even have to initiate a war with India, ostentabily over the allocation of Indus river waters. India gives a lot of water to pak at the moment (beyond what the treaty requires), the International courts recently agreed that pak should get only about 9 mcusec (some unit of water), whereas they had gone to court asking a 100!.
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How to Understand the Not-So-Crazy Karzai
His mistrust of the White House runs deep, and he wants to keep whatever leverage he can.
WSJ
By Haroun Mir
Feb. 5, 2014 6:46 p.m. ET
Many Afghanistan observers are struggling to understand why President Hamid Karzai is refusing to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement between Afghanistan and the United States, which would ensure an American military presence in Afghanistan after 2014 to combat terrorism and train Afghan forces. The security agreement should be a closed case: Last year the agreement was finalized by both countries, and the Loya Jirga assembly overwhelmingly approved it. Yet Mr. Karzai, to the dismay of Washington, wants to renegotiate its terms. Why?
Some wrongly believe that Mr. Karzai is seeking personal advantage, such as political immunity for himself and his family. Others think that by making controversial statements critical of NATO forces and the Obama administration, he is trying to appease the Taliban, and thus guarantee himself an important political role in post-2014 Afghanistan. There are even some who naively accuse him of being a stooge of neighboring countries such as Pakistan and Iran.
None of these explanations would make sense to the majority of Afghans, who consider President Karzai a devoted nationalist, deeply concerned about the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Afghanistan. While he has been harshly criticized for his failure in managing the country, which is crippled by widespread corruption and bad governance, he enjoys relative respect among ordinary people. In large part, that's because he is willing to stand up to the U.S.—which gets to the real reasons he isn't signing the BSA.
Mr. Karzai has had a strained relationship with Washington ever since Mr. Obama was elected in 2008. His first disagreement began over the White House's flawed counterinsurgency strategy, which avoided going after terrorist havens in Pakistan. Mr. Karzai repeatedly insisted that the war on terror should not be fought in Afghan homes, but in North Waziristan, Quetta and Peshawar, where al Qaeda and Taliban leaders have been hiding.
But the U.S. refused to reconsider its policy, which pushed Mr. Karzai to question America's true intentions, even suggesting that America is secretly orchestrating insurgent attacks with the ultimate aim of weakening his position. Intelligence provided by his friends in the region, like former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, no doubt strengthened this belief.
Mr. Karzai's mistrust of the Obama administration deepened further after the 2009 Afghan presidential election, when he accused the U.S. of attempting to undermine his legitimacy by discounting his initial win and pushing for a runoff. That accusation was backed up in Robert Gates's recent memoirs, in which the former defense secretary writes that the late Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, tried to manipulate the election.
Adding to Mr. Karzai's frustration was his failed peace initiative, which he launched in 2010. He genuinely believed that it would bear fruit, especially because he received the endorsement of countries in the region and major NATO powers. But the plan never picked up momentum despite Mr. Karzai's unilateral concessions, such as removing the Taliban from the United Nations sanctions list and releasing hundreds of their members from Afghan prisons.
Adding insult to injury, the Taliban have refused to negotiate with Mr. Karzai, even as they have negotiated directly with the U.S. These secret meetings between the Taliban and officials from the U.S. and other Western countries, beginning in 2010, led to the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar in 2012. This infuriated Mr. Karzai and reinforced his theory about a secret American agenda.
Mr. Karzai knows that the Taliban are strongly opposed to joining the current political process by accepting positions in the government because they question its legitimacy. However, there are rumors that during their secret meetings with U.S. officials, the Taliban showed interest in administering the territories in the southern part of the country under their control. Even they might honor the BSA and accept the presence of U.S. military forces in exchange for administrative autonomy.
Either because of his fear of a conspiracy, or on the basis of intelligence available only to him, President Karzai is opposed to a U.S.-Taliban deal that would make him politically irrelevant. In addition, he is worried that such a deal—though the U.S. adamantly denies its existence—would guarantee the loss of his political base in the south, and even his own village, which might be administered by the Taliban. Ultimately, Mr. Karzai is worried that he might be remembered as the leader who contributed to a de facto partition of his country.
At this point, President Karzai's resistance to signing the BSA is his only leverage over the U.S. As a rational person who has less than three months left in power, this move makes good sense: He desperately wants to save his legacy and his future political relevance.
Mr. Mir is a political analyst based in Kabul.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/world/asia/karzai-has-held-secret-contacts-with-the-taliban.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140204&_r=0 (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/world/asia/karzai-has-held-secret-contacts-with-the-taliban.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140204&_r=0)
Karzai Arranged Secret Contacts With the Taliban
By AZAM AHMED and MATTHEW ROSENBERGFEB. 3, 2014
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has refused to sign a deal he brokered for security after Western troops leave. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has been engaged in secret contacts with the Taliban about reaching a peace agreement without the involvement of his American and Western allies, further corroding already strained relations with the United States.
The secret contacts appear to help explain a string of actions by Mr. Karzai that seem intended to antagonize his American backers, Western and Afghan officials said. In recent weeks, Mr. Karzai has continued to refuse to sign a long-term security agreement with Washington that he negotiated, insisted on releasing hardened Taliban militants from prison and distributed distorted evidence of what he called American war crimes.
The clandestine contacts with the Taliban have borne little fruit, according to people who have been told about them. But they have helped undermine the remaining confidence between the United States and Mr. Karzai, making the already messy endgame of the Afghan conflict even more volatile. Support for the war effort in Congress has deteriorated sharply, and American officials say they are uncertain whether they can maintain even minimal security cooperation with Mr. Karzai’s government or its successor after coming elections.
Frustrated by Mr. Karzai’s refusal to sign the security agreement, which would clear the way for American troops to stay on for training and counterterrorism work after the end of the year, President Obama has summoned his top commanders to the White House on Tuesday to consider the future of the American mission in Afghanistan.
Western and Afghan officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the peace contacts, said that the outreach was apparently initiated by the Taliban in November, a time of deepening mistrust between Mr. Karzai and his allies. Mr. Karzai seemed to jump at what he believed was a chance to achieve what the Americans were unwilling or unable to do, and reach a deal to end the conflict — a belief that few in his camp shared.
The peace contacts, though, have yielded no tangible agreement, nor even progressed as far as opening negotiations for one. And it is not clear whether the Taliban ever intended to seriously pursue negotiations, or were simply trying to derail the security agreement by distracting Mr. Karzai and leading him on, as many of the officials said they suspected.
As recently as October, a long-term agreement between the United States and Afghanistan seemed to be only a few formalities away from completion, after a special visit by Secretary of State John Kerry. The terms were settled, and a loya jirga, or assembly of prominent Afghans, that the president summoned to ratify the deal gave its approval. The continued presence of American troops after 2014, not to mention billions of dollars in aid, depended on the president’s signature. But Mr. Karzai repeatedly balked, perplexing Americans and many Afghans alike.
Peace Contacts Fade
The first peace feeler from the Taliban reached Mr. Karzai shortly before the loya jirga, Afghan officials said, and since then the insurgents and the government have exchanged a flurry of messages and contacts.
Aimal Faizi, the spokesman for Mr. Karzai, acknowledged the secret contacts with the Taliban and said they were continuing.
“The last two months have been very positive,” Mr. Faizi said. He characterized the contacts as among the most serious the presidential palace has had since the war began. “These parties were encouraged by the president’s stance on the bilateral security agreement and his speeches afterwards,” he said.
But other Afghan and Western officials said that the contacts had fizzled, and that whatever the Taliban may have intended at the outset, they no longer had any intention of negotiating with the Afghan government. They said that top Afghan officials had met with influential Taliban leaders in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in recent weeks, and were told that any prospects of a peace deal were now gone.
The Afghan and Western officials questioned whether the interlocutors whom Mr. Karzai was in contact with had connections to the Taliban movement’s leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, whose blessing would be needed for any peace deal the group were to strike.
Though there have been informal contacts between Afghan officials and Taliban leaders since the very early days of the war, the insurgents’ opaque and secretive leaders have made their intentions difficult to discern. Afghan officials have struggled in recent years to find genuine Taliban representatives, and have flitted among a variety of current and former insurgent leaders, most of whom had only tenuous connections to Mullah Omar and his inner circle, American and Afghan officials have said.
Western Outreach
The only known genuine negotiating channel to those leaders was developed by American and German diplomats, who spent roughly two years trying to open peace talks in Qatar. The diplomats repeatedly found themselves incurring the wrath of Mr. Karzai, who saw the effort as an attempt to circumvent him; he tried behind the scenes to undercut it.
Then, when an American diplomatic push led to the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar, Mr. Karzai lashed out publicly at the United States. Afghan officials said that to them, the office looked far too much like the embassy of a government-in-exile, with its own flag and a nameplate reading “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” Within days, the Qatar initiative stalled, and Mr. Karzai was fuming at what he saw as a plot by the United States to cut its own deal with Pakistan and the Taliban without him.
In the wake of the failure in Qatar, Afghan officials redoubled their efforts to open their own channel to Mullah Omar, and by late autumn, Mr. Karzai apparently believed those efforts were succeeding. Some senior Afghan officials say they did not share his confidence, and their doubts were shared by American officials in Kabul and Washington.
Both Mr. Karzai and American officials hear the clock ticking. American forces are turning over their combat role to Afghan forces and preparing to leave Afghanistan this year, and the campaigning for the Afghan national election in April has begun. An orderly transition of power in an Afghanistan that can contain the insurgency on its own would be the culmination of everything that the United States has tried to achieve in the country.
“We’ve been through numerous cycles of ups and downs in our relations with President Karzai over the years,” Ambassador James B. Cunningham said during a briefing with reporters last week. “What makes it a little different this time is that he is coming to the end of his presidency, and we have some very important milestones for the international community and for Afghanistan coming up in the next couple of months.”
Mr. Karzai has been increasingly concerned with his legacy, officials say. When discussing the impasse with the Americans, he has repeatedly alluded to his country’s troubled history as a lesson in dealing with foreign powers. He recently likened the security agreement to the Treaty of Gandamak, a one-sided 1879 agreement that ceded frontier lands to the British administration in India and gave it tacit control over Afghan foreign policy. He has publicly assailed American policies as the behavior of a “colonial power,” though diplomats and military officials say he has been more cordial in private.
Mr. Karzai reacted angrily to a negative portrayal of him in a recent memoir by the former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, and he is still bitter over the 2009 presidential election, when hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots were disqualified and, as he sees it, the Americans forced him into an unnecessary runoff against his closest opponent.
Domestic Interests
In some respects, Mr. Karzai’s outbursts have been an effort to speak to Afghans who want him to take a hard line against the Americans, including many ethnic Pashtuns, who make up nearly all of the Taliban. With the American-led coalition on its way out and American influence waning, Mr. Karzai is more concerned with bridging the chasms of Afghan domestic politics than with his foreign allies’ interests.
If the peace overture to the Taliban is indeed at an end, as officials believe, it is unclear what Mr. Karzai will do next. He could return to a softer stance on the security agreement and less hostility toward the United States, or he could justify his refusal to sign the agreement by blaming the Americans for failing to secure a genuine negotiation with the insurgents.
Mr. Karzai has insisted that he will not sign the agreement unless the Americans help bring the Taliban to the table for peace talks. Some diplomats worry that making such a demand allows the Taliban to dictate the terms of America’s long-term presence in Afghanistan. Others question Mr. Karzai’s logic: Why would the insurgency agree to talks if doing so would ensure the presence of the foreign troops it is determined to expel?
The White House expressed impatience on Monday with Mr. Karzai’s refusal to sign the agreement. “The longer there is a delay, the harder it is for NATO and U.S. military forces to plan for a post-2014 presence,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. “This is a matter of weeks, not months.”
The military leaders expected to attend the planning conference at the White House on Tuesday include Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the commander of American forces in Afghanistan; Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the former Iraq commander now serving as head of the United States Central Command; and Adm. William H. McRaven, head of the United States Special Operations Command.
In recent statements, Mr. Karzai’s office in Kabul has appeared to open the door to a resolution of the impasse over the security agreement. The presidential spokesman, Mr. Faizi, has said that if one party is obstructing the American efforts to get talks going, the United States need only say so publicly.
“Once there is clarity, we can take the next step to signing” the agreement, he said.
Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/world/asia/taliban-attack-afghan-army-base-killing-soldiers-in-their-sleep.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140224
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RAWALPINDI, Pakistan—Each day, Cpl. Hamid Raza helps strap Cpl. Mohammed Yakub to a physiotherapy bench, lifts it and wipes the sweat off his bewildered comrade's forehead. Eyes darting, Cpl. Yakub often screams and grunts through the procedure, flailing his hands.
"Traumatic head injury," Cpl. Raza says softly. "He realizes it's me, and he tries to speak, but he can't. He can't eat, he can't talk, he can't remember the words."
Both men are fortunate to be alive. A year ago, a Taliban roadside bomb hit a truck ferrying Pakistani soldiers from Cpl. Raza's 18th Punjab Battalion after a troop rotation in the North Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan frontier. Seventeen men were killed, and only a handful survived. It was their first home leave.
The Pakistani army has lost roughly twice as many soldiers in the conflict with Taliban fighters as the U.S. It is a toll that keeps rising as American forces prepare to withdraw from next-door Afghanistan by December amid an intensifying war on both sides of the border.
In Washington and Kabul, officials often accuse Pakistan of being a duplicitous and insincere ally, charges fueled by alleged covert aid to the Afghan Taliban from some elements of the Pakistani security establishment. In 2011, the then-chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, described the Haqqani network, a group of insurgents operating from bases in North Waziristan who are affiliated with the Afghan Taliban, as a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Pakistan's government denied the accusation.
Murky as this war is, one fact is clear: The price ordinary Pakistani soldiers pay in the struggle against Taliban fighters is real and high. Since Pakistan's army began moving into the tribal areas along the Afghan border to confront the Pakistani Taliban in 2004, more than 4,000 Pakistani soldiers have been killed and more than 13,000 injured, according to military statistics.
By comparison, the U.S. has lost 2,315 service members, just over 1,800 of them killed in combat, in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.
Many Pakistanis complain that their efforts aren't sufficiently appreciated by the U.S. " 'Pakistan is not sincere, Pakistan is not doing enough'—these are buzzwords that I hate so much. They don't see the sacrifices that are being made," says retired Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan's former national-security adviser and ambassador to Washington. "It's a heavy toll. We have not lost so many military people in any other war before this."
Just last month, the Taliban executed 23 Pakistani troops they had captured, prompting the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to suspend tentative peace talks with the militants. That bloodshed followed several deadly attacks in January, including a bombing of a convoy heading to North Waziristan that killed 26 and a blast that killed eight soldiers here in Rawalpindi, just a few hundred yards from the army's headquarters.
Though the Pakistani Taliban, known formally as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, recognize the spiritual authority of Afghan Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, they operate separately. The ISI, an arm of Pakistan's military, provides considerable support to the Afghan Taliban, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. The Pakistani Taliban, by contrast, consider the Pakistani state as their main enemy and attack military and ISI targets.
Much more closely aligned with al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban have also attempted attacks on U.S. soil, such as a 2010 failed car bombing on New York City's Times Square.
Both the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani network are based in North Waziristan, the only one of Pakistan's seven tribal regions on the Afghan border that has yet to be cleared by the military. The U.S., which provides billions of dollars to fund the Pakistani military, has repeatedly pressured Pakistan to launch an operation against both groups in the area.
The Pakistani Taliban's recent spate of deadly attacks on army targets is making a military operation to retake North Waziristan increasingly likely once the snows in the mountainous region melt in the spring, diplomats and analysts say. If it happens, the Pakistani army would face a formidable enemy there.
Lt. Aqib Nawaz, 23, had his shoulder and back peppered by shrapnel from a Taliban mortar that targeted his outpost in the tribal areas. "They were very persistent, and tactically, they were very sound," he says, with grudging respect.
Though the Pakistani army is present in bases in North Waziristan—some just a few hundred yards from Taliban compounds—soldiers rarely leave the bases except for resupply convoys. Officials say they currently don't have enough manpower in the region to mount offensive missions.
The convoys, such as the one Cpl. Yakub and Cpl. Raza rode in last year, are regularly ambushed or hit with improvised explosive devices and land mines.
"Every day, without fail, the Taliban would attack—with snipers, with rocket launchers. There is no guarantee that you go to these areas and come back alive," Cpl. Raza says.
The luckier victims of such attacks arrive in the halls of the Armed Forces Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in Rawalpindi. The Wall Street Journal was provided rare access to the modern hospital, its rooms packed with amputees, some missing as many as three limbs.
In addition to their physical wounds, Pakistan's injured soldiers, like U.S. Vietnam veterans in an earlier era, must deal with a society that doesn't always appreciate their service. The conflict with the Taliban pits soldiers against fellow Muslims and fellow Pakistanis, and against a sizable segment of the public that views the war in the tribal areas as imposed by the U.S. and counter to Islamic values.
"The soldiers are very obedient, very patriotic, but at some level, they are conflicted as to why they are killing Muslims, why they are killing their own people," says Rizwan Taj, a psychiatrist who often treats patients from tribal areas that teem with Taliban. Pakistan's army is focused mainly on India, Dr. Taj says, and its soldiers "are not psychologically, mentally trained for internal disturbances."
In November, Munawar Hassan, the leader of a major Islamist political party that sits in the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, said that Pakistani soldiers killed in battle against the Taliban couldn't be considered martyrs because they fought on America's behalf. He described as a martyr instead Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, who was killed that month in a U.S. drone strike. The Pakistani military denounced Mr. Hassan, demanding an apology but getting none.
"I was very hurt by his statement," says Pvt. Mohammed Ali, a patient in the Rawalpindi military hospital. "What we are doing is protecting our country, putting our lives on the line for our mothers and sisters."
A soldier with Pakistan's Northern Light Infantry, Pvt. Ali, 28, lost his right leg during a clearing operation in the Kurram tribal area in 2012. He has had three surgeries since then.
"The Taliban would fire rocket-propelled grenades and attack at night, never showing themselves," he says. Following one of the patrols, which involved a gunfight, Pvt. Ali was returning to his base. He stepped on a freshly planted Taliban mine.
"I didn't lose consciousness after the blast, and the other soldiers carried me down on a stretcher," he recalls.
A fellow amputee, Pvt. Ali Rehman, 21, had just arrived in the Kurram area when his unit was sent to retrieve the body of a soldier killed by the Taliban higher up in the mountains. "We were going through the valley in an open-backed vehicle, and that's when we struck an IED," he recalls. The explosion sheared off his right leg.
Amputees are usually able to serve in a desk job in the military once fitted with prosthetic limbs. The military hospital in Rawalpindi provides some of the most sophisticated such devices, says Maj. Zaheer Gill, its specialist of rehabilitative medicine.
If an army offensive in North Waziristan kicks off this spring, the hospital is likely to deal with a fresh wave of patients. Despite their numbers, the men treated here are just a fraction of the toll. "The most seriously injured rarely survive," Maj. Gill adds, "and never even reach over here."
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/03/13/the-real-reason-why-the-obama-administration-has-not-released-pictures-of-osama-bin-ladens-corpse/
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/24/afghanistan-jim-gant-american-spartan_n_5008520.html
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Democracy Dividends from the Afghanistan Investment
American sacrifices of 13 years paid off in a successful election. By late summer we may know how well.
By David H. Petraeus and Michael E. O'Hanlon
April 8, 2014 6:35 p.m. ET
WSJ
With an enthusiastic election turnout on Saturday, the Afghan people took a major step toward electing a new president—a crucial step for a young democracy seeking to demonstrate that it can peacefully pass power from one leader to another. This will be a first for Afghanistan, a country where most transitions have been violent. But we need to be patient and realistic as we watch and support this process as it plays out over the spring and summer.
To be sure, the show of democracy in action on Saturday was impressive. When one of us commanded coalition forces during the last major elections there, the parliamentary vote of 2010, security efforts were led by the International Security Assistance Force. Afghans had somewhat more than 200,000 uniformed personnel of varying degrees of preparation, and the Taliban carried out some 500 acts of violence. About five million Afghans voted; more than a million of those votes were ultimately disqualified. Similar figures characterized the 2009 presidential vote, when Hamid Karzai won his second term.
This time, foreign troops, only one-third the number deployed in 2010, played a decidedly secondary role. Afghan forces, now 350,000 strong, provided security, and violent incidents declined to 150—still too many, but a big improvement. More than seven million Afghans appear to have voted, after a vigorous campaign that included debates and large rallies across the country, and extensive media coverage.
But as well as the election went, this was just the start. Here are the steps that lie ahead:
1) Vote counts must be officially certified. This is the stage where fraud is uncovered, and remedial steps taken, by independent election authorities within Afghanistan. The formal and final results should come in a few weeks.
2) Assuming that no candidate gets more than 50% of the initial vote, the top two finishers will contest a runoff election. The third-place finisher will have to accept that, despite his high hopes, he will not lead the country into the future, and ask his followers to calmly accept the result.
3) Runoff ballots will have to be printed and distributed, mostly by Afghans, and a second vote held, probably in June. Security could be an even bigger challenge then, as the weather will be warm and the fighting season will be well under way.
4) After the runoff election, vote-counting and certification will take place all over again. With former finance minister Ashraf Ghani and former foreign minister (and 2009 presidential runner-up) Abdullah Abdullah leading in polls before and on election day, the stage could be set for a close race, so the stakes will be higher and the work of independent bodies even more important.
5) Again, the losing candidate will face a crucial test of his character in accepting the result of the runoff. If the vote is tainted by massive cheating, we cannot fairly counsel the loser to passively accept the result, but the more likely scenario is some degree of irregular activity occurring on both sides. In other words, the result—likely to come in late July or August—may be somewhat uncertain, but as good as can realistically be hoped.
6) Since the vote itself will be imperfect, and since Afghanistan remains a divided and tense nation, the winner will have to gain legitimacy in part from how he reaches out to the loser and to President Karzai and how he builds a new governing coalition. The formation of the cabinet will be crucial. It must be as multiethnic and inclusive—and willing to act inclusively—as the cabinets Mr. Karzai built. The new administration must also be poised to improve Afghanistan's governance and make at least modest quick strides against corruption, a plague within this young nation.
Inauguration day is likely to be in late summer. That would give the new president time to sign the Bilateral Security Accord with the U.S., as all candidates have said they would, and then to sign similar documents with other foreign governments. These agreements will allow a crucial international military presence of advisers and so-called enablers to continue past Dec. 31, albeit at much lower numbers of troops than at present.
All of this can work, and there is good reason to be hopeful. Ashraf Ghani is a brilliant economist well poised to lead a campaign against corruption, and Abdullah Abdullah has been promoting political reform including direct election of governors (now appointed by the president) and a stronger parliament. But none of the remaining process will be easy or unblemished, and it definitely won't be fast.
That's all right. We can wait. Coalition forces have demonstrated patience and resoluteness for 13 years. This has been a tough, frustrating war for the U.S., but our men and women in uniform and their coalition and Afghan partners have served valiantly and with impressive staying power. We may not be headed for a classic victory, but with continued commitment the prospects for an acceptable outcome in Afghanistan look fairly good.
Gen. Petraeus, commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011, is a professor at CUNY's Macaulay Honors College and the University of Southern California. Mr. O'Hanlon, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, is the author of "Healing the Wounded Giant: Maintaining Military Preeminence While Cutting the Defense Budget" (Brookings Institution Press, 2013).
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WSJ
By Sadanand Dhume
April 10, 2014 6:59 p.m. ET
In the 13 years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, $1 trillion has been spent, and 3,400 foreign soldiers (more than 2,300 of them American) have died. Despite our tremendous loss of blood and treasure, Afghanistan remains—even as we prepare to exit the country—"a weak state, prey to the ambitions of its neighbors and extremist Islamists," as Carlotta Gall notes in "The Wrong Enemy."
Could we have avoided this outcome? Perhaps so, Ms. Gall argues, if Washington had set its sights slightly southward.
The neighbor that concerns Ms. Gall—the "right" enemy implied by the book's title—is Pakistan. If you were to boil down her argument into a single sentence, it would be this one: "Pakistan, supposedly an ally, has proved to be perfidious, driving the violence in Afghanistan for its own cynical, hegemonic reasons." Though formally designated as a major non-NATO U.S. ally, and despite receiving more than $23 billion in American assistance since 9/11, Pakistan only pretended to cut links with the Taliban that it had nurtured in the 1990s. In reality, Pakistan's ubiquitous spy service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), foments
jihad against NATO in Afghanistan much as it did against the Soviets in the 1980s.
At this point, accusations of Pakistani perfidy won't raise the eyebrows of anyone with even a passing familiarity with the region. For years, a chorus of diplomats, analysts and journalists have concluded that the Taliban and its partners in jihad would be incapable of maintaining an insurgency without active support from across the border. In 2011, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, called the Haqqani network—the group responsible for some of the worst violence in Afghanistan, including an attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul that year—"a veritable arm" of the ISI.
The Wrong Enemy
By Carlotta Gall
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 352 pages, $28)
Ms. Gall's long years of reporting for the New York Times NYT -1.98% from the front lines of the war are clear in this book, particularly in her vivid reconstruction of how things went rapidly downhill after the easy U.S.-led victories over the Taliban at the end of 2001. The West's handpicked leader, Hamid Karzai, turned out to be a lot better at politicking than at running the country. As aid dollars poured in, corruption in the Afghan government soared. The Bush administration, distracted by preparations for the war in Iraq, took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan, argues Ms. Gall. Most important, reassured by Pakistani assistance in nabbing key al Qaeda figures, the U.S. was slow to realize that Islamabad was playing both sides of the street.
Only in 2007, more than five years after the war began, did the CIA begin to pay attention to the deep ties between the ISI and the Taliban. By then, the fundamentalist group, which had all but disappeared in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion, had made an impressive comeback in its original stronghold of southern Afghanistan, reclaiming freedom of movement and seemingly able to strike targets at will. Even today, despite some gains against the Taliban following President Obama's decision to send additional troops in 2009, the group remains a powerful force. Just last month, Taliban fighters attacked Kabul's Serena Hotel, killing nine people, including an AFP photographer and a former Paraguayan diplomat. As Ms. Gall notes, the Taliban's refuge across the border in Pakistan, where it recruits from militant madrassas and where fighters recuperate between battles, makes the group awfully hard to vanquish.
And what of Pakistan's relationship to al Qaeda and its founder? The book offers significant revelations about the ISI's alleged role in hiding Osama bin Laden for nearly a decade until Navy SEALs finally caught up with him in 2011. Ms. Gall points out the absurdity of the official Pakistani claim that nobody in the government was aware that the world's most wanted man was living in a high-walled compound a stone's throw from Pakistan's equivalent of West Point. "In a Pakistani village, they notice even a stray dog," a former intelligence chief tells Ms. Gall.
Based on interviews with anonymous high-ranking Pakistani officials, the book pieces together how the ISI protected bin Laden. The spy agency apparently assigned a special desk to the al Qaeda chief. To ensure plausible deniability for higher-ups, the officer in charge made his own decisions. Ms. Gall reckons that those who knew about this arrangement included, among others, Gen. Shuja Pasha, then chief of the ISI, and his boss, then Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani. Ms. Gall also says that, after the raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Washington learned of Mr. Pasha's role in protecting bin Laden but hushed it up in order not to hurt ties with the nuclear-armed Muslim nation.
But while the author does a fine job of reporting, she doesn't seriously grapple with U.S. policy options. What alternatives did the U.S. have? Should it have cut off aid? Or extended drone strikes to the ISI's jihadist madrassas that act as recruiting agents for the Taliban? Or should it simply have accepted Pakistan's desire to wield a veto over Afghanistan's foreign policy as a fact of life in the region?
To her credit, Ms. Gall gets the most important thing right. She underscores the danger of the U.S. turning its back on Afghanistan, which, while still fragile, shows more signs of modernity than ever before. The repercussions of the U.S. drawdown "are already inspiring Islamists, who are comparing it to the withdrawal of the Soviet Union" after its defeat at the hands of the mujahedeen. Unlike the Obama administration, Ms. Gall recognizes that radical Islam can't be ignored or wished away.
Mr. Dhume is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a columnist for WSJ.com. Follow him on Twitter TWTR -2.71% @dhume.
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http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304810904579511623875694900?mod=World_newsreel_1
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Several months old, but worth noting:
fghanistan: A Battleground for Iranian and Saudi Interests
Geopolitical Diary
Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - 19:34 Text Size Print
Many observers have overlooked some of the ancillary regional consequences of the U.S.-Iran deal. As the United States and Iran reached the agreement, Washington encountered trouble with Iran's eastern neighbor, Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai would not sign the bilateral security agreement that would authorize a residual American force in Afghanistan after 2014. The standoff will be short-lived, but in light of the U.S.-Iran deal, battles will continue to take place in Afghanistan between two historic rivals: Saudi Arabia and Iran, which is now poised to play an unprecedented role in the region.
U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice left Kabul on Tuesday after warning Karzai that if he did not sign the bilateral security agreement Washington would have to withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan by the end of next year. That probably will not come to pass; Karzai is simply posturing to get additional concessions from Washington, many of which involve Karzai trying to remain relevant once a successor takes office after presidential elections in April 2014. Considering that Afghanistan needs U.S. support to deal with the Taliban insurgency after NATO completes its drawdown next year, Karzai will sign the agreement sooner or later.
The bilateral security agreement aside, Afghanistan may have just become a key battleground between Saudi Arabia and its regional rival, Iran. This geopolitical struggle has played out along the northern rim of the Middle East and across Iran's western flank, but the U.S-Iran deal may have aggravated the situation. Saudi Arabia became wary of Iran's ascendance when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, and now Riyadh fears that Tehran will become even more powerful -- not as an unpredictable actor pursuing a radical foreign policy agenda, but as a rehabilitated member of the international community.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman explains.
No longer a pariah of the international community, Iran will be able to project power with greater ease than before, especially on its eastern frontier, where Afghanistan represents a potential security threat, because of long-standing Saudi influence. In fact, the Iranians believe that the recent surge of attacks by ethnic Sunni Islamist militants in southwestern Sistan and Baluchestan province, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the work of Saudi proxies that were reactivated after the U.S.-Iranian rapprochement.
But Afghanistan could also provide an opportunity for Iran. Given its historic ethnic, linguistic and sectarian ties, Iran has a great deal of influence in the country. In recent years, Tehran has enhanced its influence in Afghanistan through the Persian-speaking minority communities, by supporting the Karzai regime and by developing ties to elements within the Taliban. As Washington moves toward a drawdown from Afghanistan and improves ties with Tehran, the Americans and Iranians are likely to coordinate on containing Sunni Islamist militancy in the southwest Asian nation.
Washington had hoped that Pakistan would help manage Afghanistan after 2014. However, Pakistan has been severely weakened by the war and is now struggling with its own domestic jihadist insurgency. Simply put, it has lost a lot of its leverage in Afghanistan.
However, the Pakistanis are unlikely to sit back and allow the Iranians to fill the void. The Saudis, who have an especially close relationship with the current government in Islamabad, will come in and exploit Pakistani vulnerabilities to further their own strategic imperative: countering a rising Iran. For its part, Pakistan, having been disaffected by a long history of supporting Islamist militants and having become a major battleground for anti-Shia violence, would want to avoid a firm alignment with Saudi Arabia.
But there is reason to believe Islamabad would cooperate somewhat. Economically, Pakistan is in dire straits, and its relationship with Saudi Arabia, a fellow Sunni state, keeps it within Riyadh's sphere of influence. Already, the Saudis are working closely with the Pakistanis to support Sunni rebels in Syria, especially after the United States backed away from the idea of regime change in Damascus. And because Saudi-Pakistani cooperation against Iran would very likely take place in Afghanistan, Sunni Islamist militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan could increase dramatically.
Such an outcome is unlikely to help Saudi Arabia undermine Iran. In fact, Washington and Tehran could become even closer if this threat ever materializes. The ensuing proxy war would lead to a greater rise in Islamist extremism and terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Read more: Afghanistan: A Battleground for Iranian and Saudi Interests | Stratfor
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I've no opinion on this-- maybe YA will comment.
How to Safeguard Afghan Progress
A follow-on force of no fewer than 10,000 U.S. troops is essential.
by Max Boot
April 28, 2014 7:12 p.m. ET
The U.S. could use a win abroad—something it arguably hasn't had since Osama bin Laden's demise in 2011. Hopes for a peace accord between the Israelis and Palestinians have been dashed, the civil war continues to rage in Syria, chaos engulfs Libya, Russia has invaded Ukraine and China's aggressive behavior in the South China Sea has leaders in Japan and the Philippines drawing analogies to the 1930s.
Amid these storm clouds, Afghanistan is a rare ray of sunshine, and an opportunity.
While the country remains desperately poor and its government much too weak and corrupt, Afghanistan has made striking progress since 2001. U.S. military figures track some of the changes: the miles of road have increased to 26,190 from 11,184; cellphone subscribers are up to 17.5 million from 25,000; the number of schools has increased to 14,034 from 1,000 and there are now 7.9 million primary and secondary students, up from 700,000; and the number of health-care facilities is up to 2,136, serving 85% of the population, from 498 facilities serving 8%.
The April 5 presidential election ratified Afghanistan's progress. More than seven million voters turned out, over 30% of them women, and the two leading vote-getters— Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani —are both pro-Western technocrats whose appeal transcended ethnic boundaries. The election campaign, which featured 400 major rallies, was largely free of violence despite Taliban attempts to disrupt the balloting. The Afghan National Security Forces, 370,000 strong, provided secure voting with virtually no coalition help on the ground. Afghanistan is likely to soon see the first peaceful transfer of power in its history.
Ironically, however, the success of the election could spur the White House to slash the number of troops assigned here next year on the erroneous assumption that Afghanistan doesn't need much more help. This risks jeopardizing all of the progress made so far and raises the prospect that Afghanistan could go the way of Iraq. That country was relatively stable when U.S. troops left in 2011. Now violence is back to 2008 levels, and the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (as al Qaeda in Iraq is now called) flies over Fallujah.
President Obama risks a similar outcome in Afghanistan if, as recent press leaks suggest, he decides to maintain 5,000 or fewer U.S. troops in Afghanistan next year, instead of the 10,000 requested by the NATO commander, U.S. Marine Gen. Joe Dunford.
That 10,000 figure is itself a bare-bones estimate of what is required—20,000 to 30,000 troops would be a more realistic figure. But U.S. commanders knew there was no chance Mr. Obama would approve such a robust deployment, even though it would greatly enhance the chances of long-term success.
The generals also unwisely attached a timeline to make it more palatable to the White House, promising that all U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan no later than 2018. This risks repeating the same error as the troop surge of 2010, whose impact was limited by an 18-month timeline which made it impossible to pacify much of the eastern part of the country and which encouraged the Taliban to wait out the offensive. U.S. commanders, moreover, agreed that, in order to limit casualties, U.S. advisers after this year would no longer accompany Afghan troops on missions and the U.S. Air Force would no longer provide close-air-support and medical evacuation to Afghan troops.
But even a time-limited, mission-circumscribed follow-on force of 10,000 could make a critical difference, especially if the U.S. and its allies provide the full $5.1 billion a year in funding the Afghan National Security Forces need to maintain their present strength.
As I heard repeatedly during a visit to Afghanistan last week, Afghan troops are showing growing combat prowess, which allowed them to keep the Taliban from recapturing strongholds in the south last summer. But they still need lots of help with logistics, planning, budgeting, acquisition, high-tech intelligence tools and air power—all sophisticated areas where NATO soldiers remain the essential "enablers." Afghanistan won't have a fully functioning air force until 2017; for providing fire support to troops on the ground, all it has is five Russian-made Mi-35 Hind gunships.
Gen. Dunford's plan would allow Americans to continue working with the Afghans at the six Afghan Army Corps headquarters scattered around the country. But fewer than 10,000 troops would make it impossible for American advisers to maintain a presence at regional hubs such as Kandahar and Jalalabad near the front lines. Instead they would have to consolidate in Kabul where their ability to track and influence battlefield developments in this vast country would be limited. "A number below 10,000 makes the mission here untenable," one U.S. general bluntly told me.
It would be extremely foolish to risk allowing Afghanistan to return to its chaotic pre-9/11 state over a mere matter of 5,000 troops. (At the peak of the U.S. commitment there were 100,000 U.S. troops and even today 33,000 remain.) If Mr. Obama wants a foreign-policy victory in his second term, he will need to puncture this misbegotten trial balloon.
Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present" (Liveright, 2014).
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I would like to cite some work by Mr.Chellaney, from a Indian geopolitical perspective. I personally think the US will not be succesfull by keeping a small force in Afgh, some of the reasons are discussed below. Russia has started to make inroads into Afghanistan, ie things are moving full circle. The Russians are expanding their influence at the periphery (Crimea, Ukraine) and now Afghanistan. It is very difficult for the US to support a physical presence, when most supplies come thro Pak. The fact that Afgh. could have elections suggests that the Taliban did not interfere/could not interfere. One theory is that the Taliban have been bought off and are in negotiations with various political groups, a second is that Pak was bought off, to not interfere in the elections. Of course, its always possible that the Taliban are a spent force (which seems extremely unlikely)....YA
Why the U.S. must cut Afghanistan loose
BRAHMA CHELLANEY
Afghanistan’s presidential election, now apparently headed for a runoff stage, will mark the first peaceful transition of power in the history of that unfortunate country, ravaged by endless war since 1979. Displaying courage in the face of adversity, Afghans braved Taliban attacks and threats to vote in large numbers on April 5.
After almost 35 years of bloodletting, Afghans are desperate for peace. President Hamid Karzai’s successor will have his work cut out for him, including promoting national reconciliation by building bridges among the country’s disparate ethnic and political groups; strengthening the fledgling, multiethnic national army; and ensuring free and fair parliamentary elections next year.
The role of external players, however, overshadows these internal dynamics. Two external factors will significantly influence Afghanistan’s political and security transition: the likely post-2014 role of U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces; and interference by Pakistan, which still harbours militant sanctuaries and the command-and-control structure for Afghan insurgency.
Pakistani interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs can only be made to stop if U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration finally makes that a condition for continuing its generous aid to cash-strapped Pakistan – a remote prospect.
Mr. Obama, meanwhile, has made a U-turn on the U.S. and NATO military presence in Afghanistan and is now seeking bases there for a virtually unlimited period. He had declared in Cairo in 2009, “We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there.” But in a change of heart, he now wants bases there to house a fairly sizable U.S.-led NATO force armed with the authority to “conduct combat operations.”
The U.S. President is under political attack at home for having failed to persuade Mr. Karzai to sign a bilateral security agreement, which is to provide the legal basis for keeping U.S. bases. The fact that the U.S. left no residual forces in Iraq when it ended its decade-long occupation of that country has made the appeal particularly strong to maintain bases in Afghanistan, where America is seeking to terminate the longest war in its history.
Although Kabul and Washington have finalized the terms of the bilateral agreement, Mr. Karzai withstood intense U.S. pressure to sign, leaving that critical decision to his successor. In truth, Mr. Karzai was afraid that if he did, he could go down in Afghan history as the second Shah Shuja. A puppet ruler installed by the British in 1839, Shah Shuja was deposed and assassinated three years later, but not before precipitating the First Anglo-Afghan War.
Mr. Obama now has little choice but to wait and try to persuade the next Afghan president to sign the accord. He has not, however, grasped the main reason why his country’s war has foundered – failure to reconcile military and political objectives. From the time it invaded in 2001, America pursued a military surge in Afghanistan, but an aid surge to the next-door country harbouring terrorist havens and the “Quetta Shura,” as the Afghan Taliban leadership there is known. The war was made unwinnable by Washington’s own refusal to target Pakistan for actively abetting elements killing or maiming U.S. troops.
Terrorism and insurgency have never been defeated in any country without choking transboundary sustenance and support. Afghans have borne the brunt from two fronts – U.S. military intervention and Pakistan’s use of surrogate militias.
Mr. Obama’s basing strategy could presage a shift from a full-fledged war to a low-intensity war, but without fixing the incongruous duality in American policy. Indeed, a smaller U.S. force in Afghanistan would only increase Washington’s imperative to mollycoddle Pakistani generals and cut a deal with the Quetta Shura in order to secure its bases.
Washington plans to gift Pakistan its surplus military hardware in Afghanistan, including several hundred mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. It has also agreed to taper off drone strikes in Pakistan.
Even more revealing is what the drones have not targeted. To preserve the option of reaching a Faustian bargain with the Afghan Taliban, the U.S. has not carried out a single air, drone or ground attack against its leadership, which is ensconced in Pakistan’s sprawling Baluchistan province. U.S. drone strikes have been restricted to the Pakistani tribal region to the north, Waziristan, where they have targeted the Pakistani Taliban – the nemesis of the Pakistani military.
To make matters worse, the U.S. plans to start significantly cutting aid to Kabul beginning next year, which threatens to undermine Afghan security forces, a key part of keeping the Afghan Taliban at bay.
Last May, Mr. Obama recalled the warning of James Madison, America’s fourth president: that “no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Yet he now seeks a long-term military engagement in Afghanistan, which is good news for the Pakistani generals but not for U.S., Afghan or regional interests.
Admittedly, there are no good options. But an indefinite role for foreign forces would be the equivalent of administering the same medicine that has seriously worsened the patient’s condition.
It is past time for Afghanistan to be in charge of its own security and destiny. Outside assistance should be limited to strengthening the Kabul government’s hand.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/27/obama-wants-9800-troops-afghanistan-beyond-2014/
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Compared to 32000 presently. I think he is saying that it will be 9800 this year, with complete withdrawl by 2016.
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YA:
You are a saavy observer of Afpakia. What is your take on this?
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Also, any comments on this? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/world/asia/major-faction-splits-from-pakistani-taliban.html?emc=edit_th_20140529&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/28/when_9800_doesn_t_equal_9800
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/29/obamas-afghanistan-pullout-may-end-domination-of-d/
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I think the pak taliban split reflects the major power shifts and realignments that are happening in the region. Players are adjusting to what they perceive as the new power equation and realities.
1. Afghan elections: Abdullah Abdullah a Tajik with pashtun blood vs Ghani a pashtun. Karzai put up his candidate Rassoul, whose main function was to split the vote, with that out of the way, Karzai, I believe is supporting Abdullah. Or in other words, Ghani is Pak supported, whereas Abdullah is likely to be more friendly with India.
2. India is providing weapons to Afghans (karzai govt), combine this with India's newly elected nationalist strongman Modi, during whose swearing in ceremony pak supported taliban attacked the Indian embassy in Herat Afghanistan to create a hostage crisis (and failed), the situation does not look favorable for Pak. India recently selected Ajit Doval as NSA, someone who spent years in pak as an undercover agent. http://www.firstpost.com/politics/why-ex-ib-chief-ajit-doval-is-the-best-nsa-india-could-ever-get-1550847.html (http://www.firstpost.com/politics/why-ex-ib-chief-ajit-doval-is-the-best-nsa-india-could-ever-get-1550847.html).
3. US withdrawl or decrease in forces will have major consequences in the region, how it will play out is hard to predict. The Indian strategy will be to deny pak strategic depth in Afghanistan, partly by providing weapons to Afghans.
4. After OBL's killing, the paki army was on the backfoot, but its now back in control. Together with the mullahs the army has weakened the political class. I think the mullahs and radicals are winning...ie pak continues to go down the tubes.
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AS always, cogent observations YA-- much appreciated. Amongst various points, your comments make me aware of how little India is on our radar screen with regard to Afpakia.
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Columnist Charles Krauthammer: "What is the world to think when Obama makes the case for a residual force in Afghanistan ... and then announce a drawdown of American forces to 10,000, followed by total liquidation within two years on a fixed timetable regardless of circumstances? The policy contradicts the premise. If you want not to forfeit our terribly hard-earned gains ... why not let conditions dictate the post-2014 drawdowns? Why go to zero -- precisely by 2016? For the same reason, perhaps, that the Afghan surge was ended precisely in 2012, in the middle of the fighting season -- but before the November election. A 2016 Afghan end date might help Democrats electorally and, occurring with Obama still in office, provide a shiny new line to his resume. Is this how a great nation decides matters of war and peace -- to help one party and polish the reputation of one man?"
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http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/negotiating-with-terrorists-inside-the-capture-and-release-of-sgt-bowe-bergdahl/
Negotiating With Terrorists: Inside the Capture and Release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl
Jun. 1, 2014 1:29pm
Brad Thor
Brad Thor is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of "Black List," "Full Black," "Foreign Influence," "The Apostle," "The Last Patriot" (banned in Saudi Arabia), "The First Commandment," "Takedown," "Blowback," "State of the Union," "Path of the Assassin," "The Lions of Lucerne," and his New York Times bestselling spinoff series, The Athena Project. He has appeared on FOX News Channel, CNN, CNN Headline News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS programs to discuss terrorism. He has served as a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Analytic Red Cell Unit and shadowed a Black Ops team in Afghanistan to research "The Apostle."
U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl has been released from captivity. That’s the good news. Every American and every freedom-loving person in the world should rejoice. The reunion with his family will be a major media moment and a major moment for the president. The bad news is that President Obama has now placed a target on the back of every single American – civilian and military alike.
For more than 200 years, the United States has had a policy of not trading prisoners for American hostages. That policy has been shredded and international travel to even cities like London, Paris, and Amsterdam will now pose an exceptional danger for Americans.
And as Americans, we must all ask: at what price was Sgt. Bergdahl’s freedom purchased?
According to reports, Sgt. Bergdahl was under the influence when he walked off his base in Paktika Province, Afghanistan and into the arms of the Haqqani terrorism network.
It is important to note that the Haqqanis are not the same thing as the Afghan Taliban. The two are different groups. They each have their own distinct and separate leadership council, or “Shura” that they report to. The Haqqanis are heavily tied to both Al Qaeda (providing them safe passage and support) and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, also known as the ISI. The Haqqanis are a heavily criminal enterprise sowing and feeding off of the chaos in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region. Envision Al Qaeda crossed with the Sopranos and you begin to get the picture of what these thugs are like.
When news of Sgt. Bergdahl’s release broke, I reached out to intelligence contacts who have operated in the Af/Pak region and are familiar with the situation. I wanted to discuss what was being reported – and more importantly – what wasn’t. The following is what they told me.
When Sgt. Bergdahl was picked up by the Haqqanis, he was described as diwana – the Pashtu word for intoxicated. He was with two or three Afghan soldiers he had walked off his Forward Operating Base with. It is believed the group was en route to indulge in further intoxicants.
Once the Haqqanis had stumbled onto Sgt. Bergdahl, they moved quickly to secure him and move him out of Afghanistan into Pakistan.
This information was passed on to U.S. Special Operations Command, who contacted the powers that be in Kabul, who in turn reached out to Sgt. Bergdahl’s Forward Operating Base. According to my sources, the F.O.B. had not even noticed that Sgt. Bergdahl had failed to appear for muster that morning.
Until they could spirit Sgt. Bergdahl out of Afghanistan, the Haqqanis decided to hide him nearby among the nomads known locally as the ‘Koochi.’ And while the soldiers of Task Force 82 passed by, frantically searching for Sgt. Bergdahl, shouting “Bowe! Bowe!” not a single Koochi tent flap was lifted or even investigated. Had that been done, Bergdahl might have been discovered and rescued before the Haqqanis could sneak him into Pakistan.
The Haqqanis took Bergdahl into the Showal area of Northern Waziristan where he fell under the control of a man named Mullah Sangeen Zadran, the chief of operations for Siraj Haqqani – head of the Haqqani terror network.
Mullah Sangeen’s brother, Bilal oversaw the logistics of Sgt. Bergdahl’s day-to-day captivity. Sgt. Bergdahl was kept lightly guarded – in order not to draw attention – and moved often. To his credit, Bergdahl attempted more than one escape.
Contrary to press reports, the Afghan Taliban – aka the Quetta Shura – never had their hands on Sgt. Bergdahl. He was always under the control of the Haqqani network.
As more intelligence was developed, it was put into the reporting stream and fed up the chain of command. The Obama Administration seemed either unable or unwilling to put forth any attempt to rescue Sgt. Bergdahl – especially as it would mean violating Pakistani sovereignty, something similar to the bin Laden raid, which would require a presidential decision.
Some of those I spoke with suspected that the U.S. wanted to write Bergdahl off. “If he had been a Tier One guy, from Delta or DEVGRU,” one contact told me, “they would have gone into Pakistani in a heartbeat to get him back.”
Accidentally, something similar may have happened. In early August 2013, a U.S. military unit – operating on intercepted signal intelligence – stumbled across the confusing Durand Line and conducted a raid on the Pakistani side of the border.
They hit a house believed to have been holding Sgt. Bergdahl. Unfortunately, he wasn’t there. They did, though, take a man named Gehangir, into custody. It was a smart move. Intelligence would later reveal that the house was indeed a Haqqani safe house, Sgt. Bergdahl had been there (though recently moved) and Gehangir was a Haqqani operative who ran the safe house for the Haqqani network..
On or about September 5, 2013, Mullah Sangeen was killed in a drone strike. Though he was Siraj Haqqani’s chief of operations, tensions between the two men had been mounting for some time and there are those who suggest Sangeen’s location was purposefully leaked in order to get him out of the way.
It was expected that Siraj Haqqani would now consolidate things and move to take tighter control of Sgt. Bergdahl. He did so by putting Bergdahl under the control of one of his deputies, Ahmad Jan – while Sangeen’s brother, Bilal still maintained custodial control and saw to the day-to-day details of guarding Sgt. Bergdahl and moving him from place to place.
Not longer after taking over for Sangeen, Ahmad Jan was droned.
Through all the intrigue, escape attempts, constant movement, and subterfuge, Sgt. Bergdahl was allegedly never transported outside Showal. The Haqqanis had kept him in the same general area. We could have gotten to him, and we should have gotten to him much sooner.
The habit of leaving men behind has become an alarming hallmark of the Obama Administration. We have never before done that as a nation. I can’t imagine the Special Operations community, the intelligence community, or the military in general are very happy right now. President Obama knew for too long where Sgt. Bergdahl was and did nothing to get him back. The Pakistanis, who also knew, haven’t been sanctioned for their culpability in this outrage, much less for the sanctuary they provided for Osama bin Laden.
According to the Associated Press, any effort to free Sgt. Bergdahl suffered from “disorganization and poor communication among numerous federal agencies.” Nevertheless, whether it was the “shrinking U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan” or a need for a stage-maganed win to distratct from the scandals and failed foreign policy plaguing the Obama Administration, someone decided to redouble efforts to secure Sgt. Bergdahl’s release. But as history has shown, when negotiating with the Haqqanis you need to sharpen your pencil and bring a big checkbook.
The Haqqanis care first and foremost about the Haqqanis. To my previous example, they are 80% Sopranos and 20% terrorists. It always comes down to the money with them, always, which makes the terms of Sgt. Bergdahl’s release so curious.
Why would the Haqqanis ever hand over a hostage (referred to locally as “Golden Sparrows’) as valuable as Sgt. Bergdahl without getting anything in return?
Four of the Gitmo prisoners being released by the United States are not Haqqanis, but rather Afghan Taliban. In fact, only the fifth, Nabi Omari, has any significance for the Haqqanis. Omari allegedly has family in the Haqqani network and is a “favorite/lover” of Raschid Hafiz, a member of the inner circle around Siraj Haqqani.
It is almost incomprehensible that the Haqqanis would not demand the release of Haji Mali Kahn, a major Haqqani commander. Kahn was captured in 2011 and is known not only as the “brain” of the Haqqani network, but also as a “revered elder of the clan,” and “the uncle of the network’s leader, Siraj Haqqani,” who was “in charge of suicide attacks, other attacks, money, finance and operations” and “served as an emissary between the Haqqanis and Baitullah Mehsud, the former head of the Pakistani Taliban.”
If the Haqqanis are going to do a prisoner swap, Haji Mali Kahn is unquestionably the person they’d ask for. They have been working day and night to get him returned. Yet his name wasn’t mentioned in regard to releasing Sgt. Bergdahl?
Perhaps they did ask for him. Maybe Kahn is such a bad guy that even the Obama Administration said, “absolutely no way.” If that were the case, the Haqqanis would simply default to asking for more money. That’s what they do. Eventually a price would be reached and a deal would be struck. So then why release the Afghan Taliban prisoners from Gitmo at all? Better yet, why was the U.S. even negotiating with the Quetta Shura when it was the Haqqanis who had Sgt. Bergdahl?
None of this make any sense- unless something else was going on.
If the Obama Administration did pay a ransom to the Haqqanis – through the Quetta Shura, the Pakistani ISI, or via a wealthy Middle Eastern Haqqani supporter acting as a middleman – the United States would have knowingly funded a terrorist organization. The United States would need a big fig leaf to hide that funding from the public and the Afghan Taliban/Quetta Shura would have gladly played along. They would have also made the United States pay through the nose for that cooperation. Judging by the list of terrorists the U.S. was forced to release, that’s one possible interpretation of what happened.
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s release raises many more questions than it answers. But will anyone in the mainstream media ask those questions? Will any of them discuss the recidivism rate of Gitmo detainees who, once released back into the wild, return to terrorism? How about the lives and limbs lost in the effort to capture those Gitmo detainees in the first place? What about the possibility that the Obama Administration may have directly funded a terrorist organization responsible for slaughtering American military personnel and countless innocent civilians?
Only time will tell. For now, one thing is clear – it is open season on American civilians and American military personnel around-the-world.
Where President Obama failed to close Gitmo, America’s enemies may just do it for him. All they need to do is kidnap enough Americans, and they’ll have the place cleaned out in no time.
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Second post
From a FB post on the page of a forner SEAL-- reliability unknown:
I WAS THERE. I'm sick of all the lies. Here is the TRUTH, from someone on the ground. We were at OP Mest, Paktika Province, Afghanistan. It was a small outpost where B Co 1-501st INF (Airbone) ran operations out of, just an Infantry platoon and ANA counterparts there. The place was an Afghan graveyard. Bergdahl had been acting a little strange, telling people he wanted to "walk the earth" and kept a little journal talking about how he was meant for better things. No one thought anything about it. He was a little “out there”. Next morning he's gone. We search everywhere, and can't find him. He left his weapon, his kit, and other sensitive items. He only took some water, a compass and a knife. We find some afghan kids shortly after who saw an american walking north asking about where the taliban are. We get hits on our voice intercepter that Taliban has him, and we were close. We come to realize that the kid deserted his post, snuck out of camp and sought out Taliban… to join them. We were in a defensive position at OP Mest, where your focus is to keep people out. He knew where the blind spots were to slip out and that's what he did. It was supposed to be a 4-day mission but turned into several months of active searching. Everyone was spun up to find this guy. News outlets all over the country were putting out false information. It was hard to see, especially when we knew the truth about what happened and we lost good men trying to find him. PFC Matthew Michael Martinek, Staff Sgt. Kurt Robert Curtiss, SSG Clayton Bowen, PFC Morris Walker, SSG Michael Murphrey, 2LT Darryn Andrews, were all KIA from our unit who died looking for Bergdahl. Many others from various units were wounded or killed while actively looking for Bergdahl. Fighting Increased. IEDs and enemy ambushes increased. The Taliban knew that we were looking for him in high numbers and our movements were predictable. Because of Bergdahl, more men were out in danger, and more attacks on friendly camps and positions were conducted while we were out looking for him. His actions impacted the region more than anyone wants to admit. There is also no way to know what he told the Taliban: Our movements, locations, tactics, weak points on vehicles and other things for the enemy to exploit are just a few possibilities. The Government knows full well that he deserted. It looks bad and is a good propaganda piece for the Taliban. They refuse to acknowledge it. Hell they even promoted him to Sergeant which makes me sick. I feel for his family who only want their son/brother back. They don’t know the truth, or refuse to acknowledge it as well. What he did affected his family and his whole town back home, who don’t know the truth. Either way what matters is that good men died because of him. He has been lying on all those Taliban videos about everything since his “capture”. If he ever returns, he should be tried under the UCMJ for being a deserter and judged for what he did. Bergdahl is not a hero, he is not a soldier or an Infantryman. He failed his brothers. Now, sons and daughters are growing up without their fathers who died for him and he will have to face that truth someday.Found the article !!! I am glad he's released but 5 top Detainees were released to cause more death
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Third post
Trading With the Taliban
Other Americans will pay the price for the terrorist hostage swap.
Updated June 1, 2014 9:06 p.m. ET
The return of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl from the clutches of the Taliban is cause for relief for his family and all Americans. But there's no denying that the price of his recovery is high. The Obama Administration swapped five of the hardest cases at Guantanamo in a fashion that will encourage terrorists to kidnap more Americans to win the release of more prisoners.
This does not mean we agree with Republicans who say President Obama broke the law by failing to inform Congress 30 days in advance of the prisoner release from Gitmo. Presidential power is never stronger than in the role of Commander in Chief. Congress did not attempt to use its comparably strong power of the purse. Instead Congress's Gitmo language sought bluntly to constrain Mr. Obama's wartime decision-making.
Enlarge Image
Private First Class(Pfc) Bowe Bergdahl, before his capture by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
This is unconstitutional, as the President averred in a statement at the time he signed the bill. That Mr. Obama—and his liberal friends—denounced George W. Bush for similar signing statements is one more antiterror irony of this Presidency. Readers should watch to see if the same politicians and newspapers that assailed Mr. Bush are more forgiving when a Democratic President is using the same war powers.
The real problem with this prisoner swap is the message it conveys about American weakness, especially in the context of Mr. Obama's retreat from Afghanistan and elsewhere. The world's bad actors have long perceived that the U.S. doesn't negotiate over hostages, in contrast to, say, France or Italy. This has made American soldiers and civilians less promising targets.
The Taliban swap will change that perception and increase the likelihood that more Americans will be grabbed, not least in Kabul. Don't be surprised if 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shows up on a list of future prisoner-swap demands.
It's true that Israel has also traded Palestinian prisoners, sometimes hundreds at a time, for its captive soldiers. One difference is that Israel conducts those swaps in the context of an otherwise tough antiterror policy. This includes unilateral targeting of Hamas and periodic military operations against terrorist havens. No one doubts Israeli resolve.
The same isn't true of the Obama Administration, and the Taliban swap will only underscore the perception that the U.S. is tiring of its antiterror fight. Mr. Obama announced last week that the U.S. will withdraw all of its military forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2016, no matter the facts on the ground. The U.S. hasn't used drones to hit a terror target in Pakistan since December. The prisoner swap sends a similar message of retreat.
All the more so because the five freed Taliban killers are likely to return to the battlefield. Though they will supposedly have to stay in Qatar for a year, that means little to men who have been in Gitmo for a decade. They'll probably spend their year boning up on Taliban and al Qaeda war plans.
The reason these five weren't previously released is because they were deemed "high" security risks by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo. They are the most senior Taliban commanders remaining in U.S. custody, and even the Obama Administration approved them for indefinite detention.
Two of them— Mohammed Fazi and Mullah Norullah Nori—were present at the fortress in northern Afghanistan in November 2001 when Taliban prisoners revolted against their captors in the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. CIA operative Johnny Michael Spann died in the melee, the first American casualty of the Afghan war. The duo are also suspected of war crimes for the mass murder of Shiites in Afghanistan before September 11.
Fazi was a close adviser to Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader who has escaped U.S. capture and is believed to be living near Quetta in Pakistan. Soon they will be back in business plotting new attacks.
The release of these Taliban killers also undercuts U.S. complaints against the Afghan government's release of its dangerous Taliban captives. U.S. officials rightly objected to President Hamid Karzai's February release of 65 prisoners after the U.S. military turned them over to Afghan control. The Afghan military and police who will have to fight these five Taliban also have reason to be upset.
Mr. Obama said in a statement on Saturday that he hopes the prisoner swap will lead to a resumption of peace talks with the Taliban, but this reverses the usual order. In Vietnam and most other wars, the prisoner releases were part of a peace deal. In this case the Taliban can continue the war with their ranks enhanced.
If the Taliban now negotiate, it won't be because Mr. Obama's Guantanamo release has changed their intentions. It will be because they sense they can gain more by talking than by fighting. More likely, the success of their hostage-taking and Mr. Obama's 2016 withdrawal pledge will convince them that they can keep fighting while they talk and still
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Like for many other things, Americans will pay a long time for Obama.
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Five Jihadis For One Deserter
Posted By Robert Spencer On June 3, 2014 @ frontpagemag.com
When he announced the exchange of five Guanatamo detainees for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held by Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan since 2009, Barack Obama declared that the swap was “a reminder of America’s unwavering commitment to leave no man or woman in uniform behind on the battlefield.” However, as ever more damning information came to light about both the deal and Bergdahl himself, it became increasingly clear that the prisoner exchange was actually a reminder of Barack Obama’s unwavering commitment to appeasing and aiding jihadis.
Many people have questioned the wisdom of this deal that sends five seasoned, committed, and ruthless jihadis back to Afghanistan, where they will undoubtedly resume their jihad against the American troops there. The freed jihadis include, according to the Associated Press, “Abdul Haq Wasiq, who served as the Taliban deputy minister of intelligence”; “Khairullah Khairkhwa, who served in various Taliban positions including interior minister and had direct ties to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden”; and “Mohammad Fazl, whom Human Rights Watch says could be prosecuted for war crimes for presiding over the mass killing of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001.”
Even more disturbing, however, are the questions swirling around Bowe Bergdahl himself. Former infantry officer Nathan Bradley Bethea, who served with Bowe Bergdahl, wrote in the Daily Beast on Monday that “Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.” Refuting reports that Bergdahl got separated from his unit while on patrol, Bethea declared: “Make no mistake: Bergdahl did not ‘lag behind on a patrol,’ as was cited in news reports at the time. There was no patrol that night. Bergdahl was relieved from guard duty, and instead of going to sleep, he fled the outpost on foot. He deserted. I’ve talked to members of Bergdahl’s platoon—including the last Americans to see him before his capture. I’ve reviewed the relevant documents. That’s what happened.”
Corroborating this was an Associated Press report that was also published on Monday, stating that “a Pentagon investigation concluded in 2010 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his unit, and after an initial flurry of searching the military decided not to exert extraordinary efforts to rescue him, according to a former senior defense official who was involved in the matter.” This official said that the evidence that Bergdahl had deserted was “incontrovertible.”
Why might Bergdahl have deserted? A clue may lie in the fact that the Taliban claimed in 2010 that Bergdahl had converted to Islam and was teaching bomb-making to its jihadists. His father, Robert Bergdahl, appears to be a convert to Islam, as during the ceremony with Obama in the Rose Garden announcing the exchange, he proclaimed: “Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim” – the phrase, “In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful,” which is the heading of 113 of the Qur’an’s 114 chapters. (Journalist Neil Munro noted in the Daily Caller that “although Bergdahl quoted the Quran verse, the White House transcript did not translate it or even include the Islamic prayer. Instead, the transcript simply said Bergdahl spoke in the Pasho language, which is the language of the Pushtun tribe, which forms the vast majority of the Taliban force. In fact, ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim’ is Arabic.” The lavishly-bearded Robert Bergdahl has also called for the release of the jihadists in Guantanamo and has implied that American troops are killing Afghan children in a tweet he concluded with “ameen,” the Arabic form of “amen.”)
What’s more, it was also revealed Monday that in an email to his father just days before he deserted, Bergdahl wrote: “I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid.” He thundered: “I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools. I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.”
His father thundered back: “OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!”
Apparently he did, by walking away from his unit and seeking out the Taliban. Nor was his action entirely unexpected. James Rosen reported at FoxNews.com Monday that Bergdahl — “both in his final stretch of active duty in Afghanistan and then, too, during his time when he lived among the Taliban — has been thoroughly investigated by the U.S. intelligence community and is the subject of ‘a major classified file.’” In conveying as much, the Defense Department source confirmed to Fox News that many within the intelligence community harbor serious outstanding concerns not only that Bergdahl may have been a deserter but that he may have been an active collaborator with the enemy.”
It strains credulity to imagine that Barack Obama was not apprised of the existence of this file and these suspicions about Bergdahl. In any case, high-level officials appear to have been aware of them and embarrassed by them for quite some time, as they have enforced a gag order on the members of Bergdahl’s unit, threatening legal action against them if they revealed what happened on the night Bergdahl disappeared.
Why the cover-up? Were Obama Administration officials afraid that the story of a Muslim soldier (if the Taliban claim is true) deserting his post and joining up with the enemy would have negative repercussions for Obama’s disastrous fantasy-based policies in Afghanistan and elsewhere? Did they think that such news would provide a fresh basis to challenge the “diversity” in the military that military brass value more than life itself – as Army chief of staff George Casey demonstrated when he said right after the Fort Hood jihad massacre that “as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse”?
Whatever his reasoning may be, Obama has now traded five battle-hardened jihad warriors for someone he was in a position to know was a deserter and possibly a traitor, who had said that he was ashamed to be an American. If the mainstream media and the Democratic Party covers for the President in this, the latest in his long string of insults to the American people, it will be an outrage. But there is no doubt that they will do so. And quickly this incident will be forgotten, like all of Obama’s earlier insults. But if there are any free people left in America, they will not let this incident be forgotten – and will use it as the linchpin to begin the massive change we so desperately need in the political and media culture.
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After Bergdahl disappeared, “IEDs started going off directly under the trucks. They were getting perfect hits every time.”
Robert Spencer Jun 3, 2014 at 6:33pm - jihadwatch.org
Bergdahl should be tried for treason. Obama should be investigated in order to determine how much of this he knew before he traded the Taliban jihadis for Bergdahl, and if necessary, tried as well. But that won’t happen. A teary-eyed Boehner will explain that the five jihadis just had to be traded for Bergdahl, and while he would have preferred to send back just four, he will settle.
“Bergdahl’s team leader: Intercepted radio chatter said he sought talks with the Taliban,” CNN, June 3, 2014 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
(CNN) – Former Army Sgt. Evan Buetow was the team leader with Bowe Bergdahl the night Bergdahl disappeared.
“Bergdahl is a deserter, and he’s not a hero,” says Buetow. “He needs to answer for what he did.”
Within days of his disappearance, says Buetow, teams monitoring radio chatter and cell phone communications intercepted an alarming message: The American is in Yahya Khel (a village two miles away). He’s looking for someone who speaks English so he can talk to the Taliban.
“I heard it straight from the interpreter’s lips as he heard it over the radio,” said Buetow. “There’s a lot more to this story than a soldier walking away.”
The Army will review the case of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl “in a comprehensive, coordinated effort,” Secretary of the Army John McHugh said Tuesday.
The review will include speaking with Bergdahl “to better learn from him the circumstances of his disappearance and captivity,” he said.
The night Bergdahl disappeared, says Buetow, the platoon was at a small outpost, consisting of two bunkers and a perimeter of military trucks. Buetow was in one of the bunkers, and Bergdahl was supposed to be in a tent by one of the trucks.
Then a call came through on the radio.
“I’ll never forget that line, ‘Has anyone seen Bergdahl?’” says Buetow.
Firsthand accounts from soldiers in his platoon say Bergdahl disappeared while he was on guard duty.
Buetow says Bergdahl was about to go on guard duty, but when a fellow soldier went to wake him, he was not in his tent. He had left behind his weapons, his bullet-proof vest, and night vision gear.
“I immediately knew, I said, ‘He walked away. He walked away,’” said Buetow.
Bergdahl walked off the observation post with nothing more than a compass, a knife, water, a digital camera and a diary, according to firsthand accounts from soldiers in his platoon.
Read: Fellow soldiers call Bowe Bergdahl a deserter, not a hero
Buetow was involved in the immediate search for Bergdahl, pushing a patrol into a nearby local village.
“Immediately as we left the base, two small boys walked up to us, and they told us that they saw an American crawling in the weeds by himself,” said the former Army sergeant. The search followed that lead, and others, for months.
“For 60 days or more, I remember, just straight, all we did was search for Bergdahl,” said Buetow, “essentially chasing a ghost because we never came up with anything.”
At least six soldiers were killed in subsequent searches for him, according to soldiers involved in those operations.
The Pentagon was not able to provide details on specific operations in which any soldiers were killed during that time were involved.
Buetow says even though those operations were not “directed missions” to search for Bergdahl, there was an underlying premise of acting on intelligence to find the missing soldier.
“The fact of the matter is, when those soldiers were killed, they would not have been where they were at if Bergdahl hadn’t left,” says Buetow. “Bergdahl leaving changed the mission.”
Many soldiers in Bergdahl’s platoon said attacks seemed to increase against the United States in Paktika province in the days and weeks following his disappearance.
“Following his disappearance, IEDs started going off directly under the trucks. They were getting perfect hits every time. Their ambushes were very calculated, very methodical,” said Buetow.
It was “very suspicious,” says Buetow, noting that Bergdahl knew sensitive information about the movement of U.S. trucks, the weaponry on those trucks, and how soldiers would react to attacks.
“We were incredibly worried” that Bergdahl was giving up information, either under torture, or otherwise, says Buetow….
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We traded five Taliban for one Taliban.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/4/congress-twice-rejected-release-of-taliban-from-gi/
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second post
Bergdahl Walked Away Before, Military Report Says
A classified military report detailing the Army’s investigation into the disappearance of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in June 2009 says that he had wandered away from assigned areas before — both at a training range in California and at his remote outpost in Afghanistan — and then returned, according to people briefed on it.
The roughly 35-page report, completed two months after Sergeant Bergdahl left his unit, concludes that he most likely walked away of his own free will from his outpost in the darkness of night, and it criticized lax security practices and poor discipline within his unit. But it stops short of concluding that there is solid evidence that Sergeant Bergdahl intended to permanently desert.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/world/asia/bowe-bergdahl-walked-away-before-military-report-says.html?emc=edit_na_20140605
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Some what humorous comments from the web..as to whether bergdahl deserted!
"Meanwhile, a classified Army report on the soldier’s desertion, leaked to the New York Times, says that the Army concluded he had walked off of his own free will, but could not conclude he intended to desert. Editor thinks America had better do something about the way its Army functions before the entire Republic goes down the sewers. It does not matter what the soldier intended. He left his post in a combat zone with no intention to return. That’s called desertion. How do we know he did not intend to desert. Oh dear. To keep this simple, you have exchanges with his father saying the soldier did not like the situation, and his father saying the son must follow his conscience. We have son saying that the Army and America were lies. The son checked with his leader how much cash money he could obtain, and if he walked off what could he take or not take. The items he could not take – eg, his weapon – he carefully left behind. He had his belongings mailed back to the States. If the Army was unable to conclude he did not intend to come back, the Army is composed of fools and idiots that need to be handcuffed and handed over to the Taliban, AQ, Islamic groups everywhere, Assad, Kim III, and so on. This way they can destroy our enemies from within, instead of destroying us from within.
· And – dear US Army – when a soldier abandons his post in the face of the enemy after considerable thought and preparation, what do you think he intends? To go down to the local drag, shoot a little pool with the Taliban, have a few beers, gamble a few rounds, and pick up a local girl for some joy, and then return in the morning? If Army cannot conclude he intended to desert, it’s probably too much to expect the Army to conclude that the world is round. Or are we setting the bar too high with that question? How about “does the Army realize if it holds its breath till it dies it is, well, dead?” Something like that. Make up your own absurd example, Editor cant do the thinking every day and make sense."
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There has been immense pressure on the army to spin this the way the administration wants it spun.
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Secret documents: Bergdahl converted to Islam, declared himself a “mujahid”
Robert Spencer Jun 5, 2014
This is getting worse by the minute. Will Obama ever backtrack and apologize at any point, or will he keep on digging in and insisting that obtaining back this traitorous deserter was the right thing to do? Will the mainstream media continue to cover for him, or will it finally hold him accountable? Is the cover-up of what really happened here a result of the Administration’s desire not to have news out there about another Muslim soldier turning traitor?
“EXCLUSIVE: Bergdahl declared jihad in 2010, secret documents show,” by James Rosen, Fox News, June 5, 2014 (thanks to Marisa):
U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a “mujahid,” or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News.
The reports indicate that Bergdahl’s relations with his Haqqani captors morphed over time, from periods of hostility, where he was treated very much like a hostage, to periods where, as one source told Fox News, “he became much more of an accepted fellow” than is popularly understood. He even reportedly was allowed to carry a gun at times.
The documents show that Bergdahl at one point escaped his captors for five days and was kept, upon his re-capture, in a metal cage, like an animal. In addition, the reports detail discussions of prisoner swaps and other attempts at a negotiated resolution to the case that appear to have commenced as early as the fall of 2009.
The reports are rich in on-the-ground detail — including the names and locations of the Haqqani commanders who ran the 200-man rotation used to guard the Idaho native — and present the most detailed view yet of what Bergdahl’s life over the past five years has been like. These real-time dispatches were generated by the Eclipse Group, a shadowy private firm of former intelligence officers and operatives that has subcontracted with the Defense Department and prominent corporations to deliver granular intelligence on terrorist activities and other security-related topics, often from challenging environments in far-flung corners of the globe.
The group is run by Duane R. (“Dewey”) Clarridge, a former senior operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1980s best known for having been indicted for lying to Congress about his role in the tangled set of events that became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. He was pardoned by the first President Bush in December 1992 while on trial. A New York Times profile of Clarridge published in January 2011 disclosed the contractual relationship Eclipse had with the Pentagon, through subcontractors, and reported further that Clarridge’s activities had included efforts to help find Bergdahl.
Clarridge told Fox News his group enjoyed a subcontract from U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, from November 2009 through May 31, 2010, and that after the contract was terminated, he invested some $50,000 of his own money to maintain the network of informants that had yielded such detailed accounts of Bergdahl’s status.
Clarridge further told Fox News that by the end of 2010, he had furnished at least 13 of these detailed SITREPs, or situation reports, that his network generated about Bergdahl to Brigadier General Robert P. Ashley Jr., who in April 2010 was named director of intelligence, at the J-2 level, at CENTCOM. Clarridge said Eclipse SITREP # 3023, dated Aug. 23, 2012 — in which a member of the Haqqani network, said to be close to Bergdahl’s captors, reported that the American prisoner had declared himself a “mujahid” — was among the reports provided to Ashley.
The latter is now commanding general at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence and Fort Huachuca, where a message left with the public affairs office was not immediately returned.
The documents obtained by Fox News show that Eclipse developed and transmitted numerous status reports on the whereabouts of the errant American soldier, spanning a period from October 2009, roughly three months after Bergdahl reportedly walked off his base in Afghanistan and fell into custody of the Haqqani network, up through August 2012.
At one point — in late June 2010, after Bergdahl succeeded in one of his escape attempts — the Haqqani commanders constructed a special metal cage for him, and confined him to it. At other points, however, Bergdahl was reported to be happily playing soccer with the Haqqani fighters, taking part in AK-47 target practice and being permitted to carry a firearm of his own, laughing frequently and proclaiming “Salaam,” the Arabic word for “peace.”
Reached by telephone, retired U.S. Marine Corps General James N. Mattis, a 45-year service veteran who served as CENTCOM commander from August 2010 to August 2012, told Fox News he may have received bits and pieces of the intelligence generated by Eclipse, but said Ashley, with whom he maintained a close working relationship, had not forwarded on to him the specific SITREPs cited by Fox News.
Mattis was also adamant that no one at CENTCOM or within the broader U.S. military or intelligence community — despite intensive investigation of such allegations — ever learned of anything to suggest Bergdahl had evolved into an active collaborator with the Haqqani network or the Taliban. “We were always looking for actionable intelligence,” Mattis said. “It wasn’t just the IC [intelligence community]. We had tactical units that were involved in the fight. We had SIGINT. Any collaborators who were on the other side and who came over to our side. We kept an eye on this. … There was never any evidence of collaboration.”
Fox News reported on Monday that Bergdahl was the subject of a “major classified file” prepared by the U.S. intelligence community, and that many members of that community harbored concerns that Bergdahl, during his period of captivity, may have engaged in collaboration with the enemy.
Experts consulted by Fox News said that SITREP # 3023 presents a picture of an American captive who, if not an active collaborator, may have succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome — the dynamic by which hostages can become enamored of their captors and join their cause — or simply feigned allegiance in order to survive. The report cited a source new to Eclipse — a member of the Haqqani network said to be close to Mullah Sangeen, the Haqqani commander charged at all points over the last five years with operational custody and control of Bergdahl — whose trustworthiness had not been fully vetted by the group. However, the report stated, the informant “does have plausible access to the information reported below, and claims to have seen Bergdahl personally in Shawal,” in North Waziristan.
“In the early stages Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s captivity,” the report states, “he was held at Palasin, Naurak, FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas], under the control of Mullah Sangeen and under the direct supervision of Haji Mursaleem, Sangeen’s father. Conditions and locality changed after Mursaleem died [in September 2010], and Bergdahl was kept under tight guard after his attempted escape from his new place of detention in Shawal.
“As of August 2012,” the report continues, “the person with responsibility for Bergdahl’s captivity is Sangeen’s brother, who has delegated the actual guarding of Bergdahl to Abubakr Asadkhel, a Burra Khel Wazir loyal to Sangeen, and whose sub-tribe lives in Shawal. Abubakr leads approximately 200 armed men from his tribe and operates from five bases (markaz) in Shawal. … Abubakr’s tribe is one of the prosperous branches of the Wazir and owns lots of trucks. Abubakr circulates his prisoner between schools in the area he controls, and his different insurgent bases.”
Conditions for Bergdahl have greatly relaxed since the time of the escape. Bergdahl has converted to Islam and now describes himself as a mujahid. Bergdahl enjoys a modicum of freedom, and engages in target practice with the local mujahedeen, firing AK47s. Bergdahl is even allowed to carry a loaded gun on occasion. Bergdahl plays soccer with his guards and bounds around the pitch like a mad man. He appears to be well and happy, and has a noticeable habit of laughing frequently and saying ‘Salaam’ repeatedly….
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/06/lone-survivor-marcus-luttrells-response-when-asked-if-he-wouldve-wanted-the-u-s-government-to-trade-taliban-prisoners-to-free-him/
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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/06/13/family-first-american-killed-in-afghanistan-learns-freed-taliban-leader-was/
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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/06/13/family-first-american-killed-in-afghanistan-learns-freed-taliban-leader-was/
Obama supports his troops. Unfortunately, they aren't our troops.
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http://www.clarionproject.org/news/taliban-cuts-ink-stained-fingers-voters-afghanistan
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A Religious Scholar Returns to Pakistan
Geopolitical Diary
Monday, June 23, 2014 - 20:09 Text Size Print
Just days after watching a much-awaited counteroffensive against jihadists in North Waziristan, Islamabad finds itself distracted by the homecoming of populist religious scholar-turned-politician Tahir-ul-Qadri, who returned Monday from Canada to lead a "revolution" against what he considers a corrupt political order. His arrival has grave implications for one of the world's largest Muslim countries.
Pakistan falls into the perilous category of countries where military rule is no longer viable but where the public has grown disenchanted with democracy. As in Iraq and Egypt, the military can no longer impose order, but public frustration with democracy has seen attempts at armed uprising to bring change extralegally.
In countries that have only recently seen the decline of military regimes or single-party rule, the public typically sees democracy as a means to attain its expectations from the ruling class. Having such a large portion of the population lose faith in the democratic process, as has happened in Pakistan, is unusual.
Pakistan's first democratic transition happened in 2013, when now-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League won the general elections and succeeded the elected government of Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan People's Party. The Pakistan Muslim League's victory in large part resulted from popular anger at perceptions of corruption and incompetence within the former ruling party. Just one year later, Sharif finds himself on the defensive against Qadri's Pakistan Awami Tehrik.
What is a Geopolitical Diary? George Friedman Explains.
The movement Qadri leads has broad appeal among the middle class. But as is the reality in such situations, Qadri also enjoys the support of powerful quarters, including a well-oiled political machine. A large cross-section of the business community is underwriting his movement to protect and enhance their financial interests. Meanwhile, his fatwa against jihadists has garnered support from many abroad and especially in the military establishment, which hopes to use his movement to curb the decline of military influence.
But Qadri is promising a future his movement cannot deliver. Meanwhile, his promotion of revolution is weakening the constitutional order. Ideally, he would like to create a situation in which the government -- and for that matter, the entire system -- simply resigns. But in the likely event that his movement cannot adequately fill the resulting vacuum, the military would be in no position to step in and stabilize the situation, given its current weakness.
This means that if Qadri manages to remove the current order, anarchy would likely ensue. Only the Taliban are in a position to benefit from such a scenario. They are far more powerful than Qadri and would be delighted to exploit the opening he is trying to create.
This is not just the story of Pakistan. It also describes the state of affairs in the Middle East, where old military-dominated orders are collapsing, democracies are struggling to be born and the masses are using their newfound freedom to mount disruptive protests that hamper the emergence of a new democratic order. This opens the door for jihadist non-state actors to step up and take advantage of the situation.
Read more: A Religious Scholar Returns to Pakistan | Stratfor
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bq6PfAXCMAEudNL.jpg:large (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bq6PfAXCMAEudNL.jpg:large)
Weather in Af-Pak
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/28/world/asia/taliban-mount-major-assault-in-afghanistan.html?emc=edit_th_20140628&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
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Looks like AQ is feeling envious of ISIS, what with all the beheadings...
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/Al-Qaida-announces-India-wing-renews-loyalty-to-Taliban-chief/articleshow/41640746.cms (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/Al-Qaida-announces-India-wing-renews-loyalty-to-Taliban-chief/articleshow/41640746.cms)
This branch of AQ will be for south asia...
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/22/pakistan-to-execute-500-militants-in-light-of-pesh/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TD8PA4IZao
This video is making the rounds on the paki circuit. It has a TTP (Tehreek-e-Pakistan) mullah (bad taliban) vs pak army person debating the TTP policy of war against the state of pak and the paki army. Its in Urdu, but the TTP person is actually quite impressive and clear in his religious thinking, and runs circles around the paki army guy. It does have english subtitles, but the effect is lost. Anyway, the guy with the turban is the TTP person and Pak general's pict is shown when the army person speaks. Its a long video, but it provides the TTP pov.
1 hr of this video gives you more insight on the TTP way of thinking, than anything else. Looks like the paki army is in deep doo doo. Its hard to win against someone whose criteria for success is either shariah in pak, or martyrdom.
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Folks:
This is REALLY good. I am almost through (12 minutes to go) and glad I have invested the time.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/world/asia/exploring-a-new-role-peacemaker-in-afghanistan.html?emc=edit_th_20150114&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
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http://imams.mashalbooks.org/?p=746 (http://imams.mashalbooks.org/?p=746)
Incase, you wonder what exactly the jihadi imams preach....this is a paki site which catalogs the sermons, which the imams give...best of all its in english. Pakiland is moving into the modern age.. :-D
A random sample is below....YA
Maulana Mufti Saeed Ahmed
Posted in Ahl-e-Hadith, America, India, Jihad, Morality, Nuclear, Politics on July 11, 2010
Speaker: Maulana Mufti Saeed Ahmed
Place: Jamia Masjid Mittranwali, Sialkot
Sect: Ahle Hadith
Language: Urdu
Let us not be spectators but get together to swear that we will avenge the making of cartoons about our Beloved Prophet PBUH. O Muslims, get up and take in hand your arrows, pick up your kalashnikovs, train yourselves in explosives and bombs, organise yourselves into armies, prepare nuclear attacks and destroy every part of the body of the enemy.
The Quran instructs us but since we have not followed it the Europeans have published the cartoons. Former ruler President Farooq Leghari arrested Aimal Kansi from Dera Ghazi Khan and handed him over to the US. And merciless America put him on the electric chair and handed over his corpse to Pakistan.
Supplier of women (dalla!) Musharraf and his shameless khaki clad army-men handed over the daughter of the nation Aafiya Siddiqi to the Americans. He kept quiet on Afghanistan and put a stop to Kashmir jihad. He also destroyed the Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad.
In Musharraf’s book more betrayals are narrated. He sold the Arab mujahideen, sold Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, and earned dollars by doing this. This group of kanjars (pimps) and clowns (bhaand) have got hold of the Two Nation Theory and have become dominant on us.
Allah has got us rid of Musharraf but who has been imposed on us in his place, Mr Ten Percent Zardari. Prime Minister Gilani who proclaims he is a Syed is lying because in his rule women are being freely raped and there is no remedy. And India in the name of friendship is interfering in Balochistan.
It is only yesterday that Lahore suffered seven explosions after similar explosions at Aabpara in Islamabad, the Wah Factory, and the Islamic University. There are suicide bombers all over the place and Americans, Indians and Jews are crawling all over disguised and hidden in cars with windows covered in black tint. Today India has blocked our water by building 62 illegal dams on our rivers. Under the Indus Waters Treaty, Indus, Sutlej and Jhelum belonged to Pakistan, but India was opposed to the situation and has built dams on them.
Hafiz Saeed has called a large rally of protesters against water-stealing India on the Mall in Lahore to open the eyes of the media. The Hindus are dissemblers, they say something and do something else. Manmohan Singh said there was no water issue and Pakistan should get hold of Hafiz Saeed. The Hindus have rejected Jamaat Ali Shah the Water Commissioner of Pakistan and other delegates. My brothers, the answer to water thieves, cartoon-makers and drone fliers is only jihad in the name of Allah.
Today Pakistan is at an important crossroads. The hatred among the people against the kafirs has reached a new height. Remember the ambassador of America had come to Lahore trying to pin a medal on the chest of a boy who had won distinction but the boy refused to accept the medal from the ambassador saying America was not friend of Pakistan and Muslims. The hands of America are red with the blood of Muslim women and children. We will not receive medals from these people.
This year in February eight FATA leaders were going to America on the invitation of the US embassy but once there they were subjected to humiliating body search and scanning (jama-taladshi) But when it came to scanning, the eight refused to be subjected to insult and turned back saying if the Americans don’t invite us again it does not matter, what matters is our honour.
May America the rebel of Allah be destroyed. We will not go to America after being made naked (nanga). A big change is upon us and there is revolution in the air. Look the Americans have come and located themselves in our country. They will not leave unless we impose jihad on them. The experts of jihad are predicting that America will be subjected to a lot of drubbing before it decides to leave. We will have to create a graveyard of the Americans like the one created in Vietnam.
In America 172 banks have gone bankrupt. The G-20 hooligans get together and hold consultations to strengthen the IMF with funds. Until yesterday only Hafiz Said was asking for contributions. And the mujahideen have thrashed the Americans so much that they are now forced to beg for contributions.
Now the Americans go to Saudi Arabia begging it for an arranged meeting with Mullah Umar and peace talks with the Taliban. The big slap was delivered on the cheek of Hindus in Mumbai by Deccan Tigers and although the Hindus have done bigger mischief in Pakistan, they can’t for get forget the slap of Mumbai.
I tell the generals and the establishment in the country that if you want to relieve the pressure and want to bring peace to your country then give a bloodbath to Indian and American diplomats in Kabul and Kandahar. The Hindu will stop blocking your water after that.
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And why its hard to figure out, whats happening in pakiland
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The Islamic State Reaches Into Afghanistan and Pakistan
Analysis
January 16, 2015 | 10:15 GMT Print Text Size
A Pakistani man holds a pamphlet purportedly distributed by the Islamic State in Peshawar. (A MAJEED/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
The establishment of the Khorasan chapter of the Islamic State in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region strengthens the group's image as a phenomenon with global reach. But the new chapter's links to the Islamic State are fragile, and it owes its existence more to the fragmentation of the cross-border Taliban movement than to anything the Islamic State has done. The Khorasan chapter, like other Islamic State affiliates beyond the Syrian-Iraqi battlespace, will be met with local resistance from jihadist forces and al Qaeda who see groups friendly toward the Islamic State as a challenge to their authority.
Analysis
According to The News International, the largest English-language daily in Pakistan, the Islamic State announced the creation of a Khorasan chapter in a video released Jan. 13. (Khorasan theoretically includes Iran and Central Asia, in addition to Afghanistan and Pakistan, but so far the chapter is only functioning in the latter two countries.) In the video, a former Pakistani Taliban spokesman by the name of Shahidullah Shahid announced the names of the Islamic State commanders responsible for various parts of Afghanistan and revealed the chapter's new leader, a former Pakistani Taliban figure named Saeed Khan. Lending credibility to the announcement of the group's establishment, Afghan government officials have in recent days told Afghan media of the Islamic State's growing presence in several eastern and southern provinces, saying the group is fighting both Afghan security forces and Taliban militiamen.
In response to those reports, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi sent an email to the Afghan Islamic Press agency, denouncing the reports as propaganda put forth by Kabul and Western governments. He denied that the Islamic State's black flags were flying in several areas where the Taliban are usually active, and insisted that all the "mujahideen" were fighting under the white flag of the Taliban movement and asserted that there was no infighting within the movement.
Taliban Fragmentation
Despite Ahmadi's claims to the contrary, there is growing evidence that elements from the Pakistani and, to a lesser extent, the Afghan Taliban have defected. It is understandable that the Pakistani Taliban would fracture; the group has tended toward transnationalism since its inception, and more recently it has suffered significant losses and struggled with internal dissension. Moreover, the Islamic State has eclipsed the Pakistani Taliban's erstwhile ally, al Qaeda, so alliance with the group seen as the rising star would be reasonable. The Pakistani Taliban have also been far more sectarian than their Afghan counterparts, and the Islamic State's blatant and aggressive anti-Shiite doctrine appeals to them.
While the Afghan Taliban are not hemorrhaging as badly as their Pakistani counterparts, they have had their share of fragmentation over the years. Initially, the source of the frictions was the absence of the group's founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, who has been in hiding since 9/11. The separation has meant considerable autonomy for field commanders. The Haqqani faction best represents this trend.
But ever since the Taliban acknowledged that they were in talks with the United States in 2011, the group, whose hard-line elements oppose the talks, has become even less cohesive. Al Qaeda has tried for years to exploit this discord but it has had only moderate success. Besides, the talks have not produced much — only a political bureau in Qatar and a few tactical agreements.
However, with improved relations between Kabul and Islamabad, China's emergence as a key international interlocutor and the coming to power of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, the peace talks have been revived. These renewed efforts come at the same time that the Islamic State is gaining support among jihadists and sectarian militants on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The key is the Islamic State expansion in Southwest Asia — to the degree that it is actually happening — is taking place because of divisions among existing jihadists.
If the existing divisions in the Taliban movement become more acute, it still does not mean the Islamic State will take over the jihadist landscape in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Instead, it will be just one more name in an already saturated jihadist market. The ensuing competition will be bloody and will contribute to the overall weakening of jihadism, which is already under a great deal of pressure given the paradigm shift that has been in the making in Pakistan for a few years now and the fact that the Afghan Taliban want to be internationally recognized as an Afghan national force.
Afghan Taliban Position
Already the Afghan Taliban have been portraying themselves as a national jihadist force and distancing themselves from al Qaeda's transnational agenda. While al Qaeda did not challenge the Taliban — and in fact paid allegiance to its chief — the Islamic State, with its professed caliphate, poses a direct threat to the Taliban. Since Mullah Omar claims only to lead the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, he is theoretically lesser in stature than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who claims to be caliph of all Muslims. The Islamic State was also critical of Mullah Omar and the Afghan Taliban in the latest edition of its Dabiq magazine.
Pledging allegiance to al-Baghdadi would weaken Mullah Omar's position and that of his movement. The Islamic State is unlikely to supplant the Afghan Taliban. However, the Islamic State's spread does create divisions in the jihadist landscape that undermine the position of the Taliban. Furthermore, the sectarian agenda of the Islamic State complicates the negotiations that the Taliban are having with the Afghan government and threatens to draw Iran into the country.
As groups aligned with the Islamic State grow in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in large part recruiting from the Taliban movement, we can expect jihadists in the region to fight back to retain their own influence. Eventually an intra-jihadist struggle could emerge far more intense than what is currently underway in Iraq and Syria, but the Islamic State will not dominate the area as it has in the Levant and Mesopotamia.
Read more: The Islamic State Reaches Into Afghanistan and Pakistan | Stratfor
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The question is who is the greenest of them all...and IS wins hands down....and so the jihadi flight to "quality".
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/world/asia/taliban-justice-gains-favor-as-official-afghan-courts-fail.html?emc=edit_th_20150201&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
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How Not to Squander Hard-Won Gains in Afghanistan
The woes are well-known, the strengths too often forgotten. Major cities and roads, for example, are increasingly safe.
By
Michael O’Hanlon
Feb. 4, 2015 7:15 p.m. ET
7 COMMENTS
As President Obama prepares to pull all U.S. combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of next year, the recent news coverage of America’s longest war is depressingly violent and familiar. Suicide bombings and insider attacks in Kabul, Taliban comebacks in parts of Helmand and Kunduz provinces (in the south and northeast respectively), continued insurgent activity throughout much of the east, and high casualties to Afghan soldiers and police.
But after my systematic survey in consultation with the U.S. command in Afghanistan, unclassified reporting and other information, I would argue that the security situation is on balance stressed but generally holding. It has deteriorated somewhat over the past couple of years, as NATO forces have dramatically downsized, from a high of nearly 150,000 in 2010-11 to about 15,000 today. But thanks largely to the hard work and sacrifices of Afghan security forces as well as recent political compromise in Kabul, Afghanistan is by no mean a failing state.
The core Western requirement of preventing a large-scale extremist sanctuary on Afghan soil continues to be met. This central fact should guide Mr. Obama, Congress and the 2016 presidential hopefuls. The war is not won, but those who base their thinking on the premise that the war is lost need to reconsider.
More Opinion
Hamilton Foundation President Christian Whiton on reports the Obama administration wants to talk with Kim Jong Un, only weeks after Pyongyang’s cyberattack on Sony Pictures. Photo credit: Getty Images.
While Afghanistan’s woes are well known, its strengths are often forgotten. The country has a security force of 350,000 that, unlike the Iraqi army in 2014, has not dissolved in the face of battle or split along ethnic lines. President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah have fashioned a workable political compromise out of last year’s tortured election process, bridging major ethnic and power-broker divides and this January beginning to forge a cabinet.
This political reconciliation makes it likely that the security forces will continue to respect central-government authority. The nation’s citizenry remains strongly anti-Taliban, partly due to a much-improved quality of life since 2001, and evinces much greater political awareness and participation.
Consider recent security trends:
• Most major cities remain safer for Afghan citizens than they were even four or five years ago. There has been some worsening on balance over the past one to two years, in Kabul particularly, and some smaller cities in the south and northeast. But on balance the country’s largest cities after Kabul—Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif—are not becoming more violent or anarchic. Kandahar, where the Taliban movement originated, is probably safer than at any time in the past seven or eight years. Of the country’s 34 provinces, no capital cities are inaccessible to the government.
• Many rural areas remain contested and not in government hands. Most have not benefited in a lasting way from the “clear, hold, build” paradigm recommended by standard counterinsurgency logic and advocated by Gens. Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus . Yet there are only a few significant swaths of territory where the central Taliban organization truly controls an area, as in parts of Helmand, Kunduz, Wardak, Kunar, Nangahar and Khost provinces.
• Most major roads in Afghanistan remain usable and well traveled. A majority, even if only a small majority, of citizens in recent polls report feeling truly safe on the nation’s highways, according to data provided by the U.S. command in Kabul. The so-called ring road, including the key section from Kabul to Kandahar, generally fits this description.
An Afghan laborer pulls a cart carrying mattresses on a street in Kabul, Afghanistan. ENLARGE
An Afghan laborer pulls a cart carrying mattresses on a street in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo: Associated Press
A useful way to put today’s security picture in perspective is to ask what kinds of events or dynamics could plausibly produce a collapse of Afghanistan, and then to compare these to current conditions.
If Congress and other donors like Japan and European countries cut off funds for the Afghan army and police, Afghan security forces could face the dilemmas they did when the Soviet Union dissolved and ended financial support for the Najibullah government in the early 1990s. But even as Western parliaments chip away at aid, they are wisely sustaining flows of several billion dollars a year.
If Messrs. Ghani and Abdullah and other key actors stopped cooperating and sent their followers onto the streets in zero-sum political showdowns, civil war could erupt along ethnic lines. Yet this is not happening, partly due to the stabilizing presence of even much-reduced numbers of NATO forces.
If Pakistan went all out in supporting the Afghan Taliban, it is not clear that Kabul could fend off the challenge. But Islamabad’s interest seems less in destroying Afghanistan than in exercising continued leverage. This is regrettable and short-sighted but it is not an all-out proxy war.
And if Afghanistan’s youth stop joining the army and police, losses from battle could not be replaced. Yet in a country where national pride is greater than we in the West acknowledge—and where other economic opportunities are limited—army and police recruiting hasn’t been a problem despite combat fatalities of about 5,000 annually over the past two years.
While U.S. policy makers may feel discouraged, they should not be despondent or fatalistic. If Congress sustains financial help for the Afghan state, and especially if President Obama rethinks his plan to zero out U.S. combat forces in Afghanistan by the end of 2016, something resembling partial success in this very long and costly war is still possible.
Mr. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is co-author with Hassina Sherjan of “Toughing It Out in Afghanistan” (Brookings, 2010).
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/magazine/the-hardest-job-in-afghanistan.html?emc=edit_th_20150308&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
The Hardest (and Most Important) Job in Afghanistan
A week on the front lines with the Afghan National Police.
By AZAM AHMEDMARCH 4, 2015
Early one cold January morning on the high plains of eastern Afghanistan, Maj. Mohammad Qasim and a few of his officers gathered in the rundown barracks that serve as a district headquarters for the Afghan National Police in Baraki Barak. Qasim and his officers were the only government security available to the 100,000 people living in a district roughly twice the size of Manhattan, and about half of the district was now controlled by the Taliban. Kabul is just 40 miles away, but the Afghan National Army had not been to Baraki Barak in two years. The ceiling in Qasim’s office leaked when it rained, and the electricity was out indefinitely, so the men had taken to sitting on floor cushions around the wood stove in Qasim’s bedroom, drinking green tea from smudged glass mugs and dealing with the problems of the day. This morning, the first problem was the death of Hajji Khalil.
He had been one of the wealthiest men in Chiltan, a small village about eight miles from the district headquarters. He farmed apples and apricots, and he owned a grocery store hundreds of miles away in the Pakistani city of Quetta. He also ran a hawala, an informal money-transfer business, through which Afghan workers in Iran sent money home to their families. Khalil was deeply troubled when, a little more than a year ago, he saw Taliban insurgents walking openly in Chiltan, pressing young men to join them and questioning anyone who seemed connected to the government. His status earned him the respect of the Taliban — “hajji” is an honorific for Muslims who have completed the hajj; like many Afghans, he has only one name — but it also obliged him to respond to their harassment of his neighbors. With Qasim’s help, he organized about 50 of his neighbors, including two of his brothers, into a militia — one of a few dozen such groups, referred to as “uprisers,” who have joined the government in battling the Taliban. Armed with secondhand rifles, the militia helped Qasim’s men in a firefight in the next village over. After that, the Taliban knew they could no longer walk freely in Chiltan.
Now Khalil was dead, murdered a few days earlier on his way home from a meeting with Qasim right here at the district headquarters. Three Taliban gunmen had fired into his car, exploding a propane canister in the trunk and incinerating the vehicle, along with Khalil and two passengers. A third passenger who survived, and even managed to shoot and kill one of the fleeing insurgents, was now recovering at a hospital in Kabul. But Qasim needed to compensate Khalil’s family for his death, and quickly, before the remaining uprisers of Chiltan — farmers, shepherds and unemployed men, maybe 17 in all — decided that the fighting was no longer worth the effort.
Photo
Qasim during a visit to Shah Aghasi, a village on a front line in the fight against the Taliban. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
One officer had drafted a diagram of the attack to attach to the death-payment requisition for the Interior Ministry, and Qasim, who is just over 50, squat and potbellied with an unruly beard, now peered down at it. “This is all wrong,” he said, shaking his head. Landmarks were missing, distances miscalculated. The river went the wrong way.
The author of the map was unabashed: What did it matter? Who in Kabul would even know the difference?
In answer, Qasim put the drawing aside and, with a clean sheet of paper and a ruler, began drawing a new diagram. He drew a compass, then he sketched the roads, the footpaths, the farmland, the water and all the other landmarks. Eight minutes passed. Qasim placed the two maps side by side and looked at the officer.
“Your drawing is fine,” he said. “But this map explains itself.”
In a district shadowed by constant violence, it was seemingly left to Qasim, and to him alone, to prevent a slide into anarchy. A week earlier, masked men dragged the district judge, Ghulam Hassan, from his car and pummeled him unconscious, leaving him on the side of a dirt road. Now, as another officer who had just rushed into Qasim’s bedroom was explaining, the judge had sent word from his hospital bed that he no longer felt safe working in Baraki Barak. He wanted to move the courts to Pul-i-Alam, the provincial capital. Qasim saw where such a move would lead. No one would use the courts if they were in Pul-i-Alam, a half-hour drive by the safer of two roads. The prosecutor would leave next, forced to abandon the district, having nowhere to work. Then, with every other civil service absent, the district governor, who rarely spent time here anyway, would probably disappear. It would amount to a Taliban takeover. A single beating could collapse what little civil society remained in the district.
Qasim picked up his cellphone, a punch-button Nokia relic, and began making calls to local politicians, arguing that they should use all their influence to prevent the judge from fleeing. “The district governor should be doing this,” Qasim told me. “But he’s hiding.” As it happened, the governor’s office was just on the other side of the compound. After a few calls, Qasim tore a scrap of paper from a notebook, scribbled on it and handed it to an officer. I asked him what the scrap was for. He said it was an i.o.u.: $3 for cellphone refill cards from the shopkeeper in the bazaar across the street. “We haven’t been paid our salaries in two months,” he said.
Armed with pledges of support from his political connections, Qasim decided to walk over to the governor’s office. The governor, Mohammad Rahim Amin, rose to embrace Qasim, who in turn introduced me. We sat near the window, in the sunlight that was the main source of heat in the office. Amin, a tall man with carefully combed hair, understood the situation. Qasim had brought a reporter; better behave. The chief made his pitch — “If we lose the courts, we lose the people,” he concluded — and Amin leaned back in his chair, a practiced look of concern spreading across his face. He looked at me, then looked at his cellphone, an iPhone 6, for several moments.
“We will keep the courts here,” he said finally. “If the judge refuses, he can quit. We’ll find someone else who is willing to stay.” What little government there was would remain, at least for a few more days.
The Afghan Police are on the front lines of both fights that matter in Afghanistan: one to defeat the Taliban, the other to gain the loyalty of the people. It is the same conundrum faced by the police in conflict zones from Iraq to El Salvador: To deliver services, there must be security; to deliver security, there must be services. And in too much of Afghanistan today, there is neither. In Baraki Barak, 30 of Qasim’s 200 officers were killed in the last year, representing one of the highest police death rates in all of Afghanistan.
Nationwide, of the 5,588 security personnel who died in 2014 — the deadliest year on record — 3,720 were police officers, double the number of soldiers killed on the job, according to an internal report that a Western official provided to me. (He asked to remain anonymous because he did not want to publicly contradict the lower numbers published by the Afghan government.) Civilian casualties, meanwhile, surpassed 10,000, the highest number since the United Nations began tracking them in 2009. No one expects 2015 to be any less violent. As the American military continues to scale back — declining air support, almost zero combat missions, fewer advisers and mentors to aid battle planning — the situation will most likely deteriorate further.
Members of the Afghan National Police are largely illiterate, widely reputed to be on the take and in some cases actively working with the Taliban they are charged with defeating. A nationwide drug screening in 2009 found that more than a fifth of the force tested positive for drug use, primarily hashish. Physical abuse is commonplace: The United Nations interviewed 300 detainees held by the police over the course of the last two years, and roughly a third of them provided credible evidence that the police had tortured them, using electric shocks, asphyxiation and other methods to extract confessions. In a country where police work and military work are nearly identical, some police officers have engaged in, as a 2013 State Department report put it, “arbitrary or unlawful killings.”
The victims of the killings are often other police officers. In early February, two officers with unknown motives helped arrange a Taliban assault on a police checkpoint, leading to the deaths of 11 fellow officers. Last summer, one officer in southern Afghanistan knocked out five others with a sedative, then invited the Taliban into the police compound to execute them. On the same day at another base, an officer let six Taliban assassins creep past the security perimeter and kill six of his comrades as they slept. These betrayals are just one facet of the complex local power struggles that define postwar Afghanistan. A war for peace begets compromise. The quiet release of insurgents is common, as are tacit cease-fires observed for the sake of the people.
The 157,000-man Afghan National Police operates in nearly every one of Afghanistan’s 364 districts. Recently it has been supplemented by the Afghan Local Police, a group of roughly 30,000 men who live and work in their own remote villages and try to keep the Taliban at bay; the local officers are paid less, enjoy an even worse reputation and die at higher rates than the national police. Together, these two forces have been left to deliver whatever services the state has to offer. They battle the Taliban, but they also investigate robberies, issue identification cards, settle land disputes and manage traffic. Just resolving a simple domestic dispute can require driving roads seeded with bombs.
The Taliban, hoping to regain control of Afghanistan, recognize that the police pose far more than a military threat. They are, in fact, direct competitors for the support of the people. Victory will go not to the side with more bullets but to the side that delivers better services. The Taliban strike many as ascetic and brutal, but they also promise rule of law (Islamic law), less corruption (than the government) and above all peace.
I had come to Baraki Barak with a photographer, Tyler Hicks, to see how the police in an especially violent district would deal with their many challenges. When I asked Brig. Gen. Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai, the Afghan National Police commander who oversees all of Logar, the province that is home to Baraki Barak, who his best police chief was, he told me without hesitation that it was Qasim. He was older; he understood the importance of connecting with the people; his sons worked with him in the district, where he grew up; and for a short time, he had even been a schoolteacher there. He was rooted in the community, Ishaqzai said. Qasim’s most trusted deputy, a widely respected local police chief named Sabir Khan, was also one of his closest friends.
As any beat cop knows, the ability to police an area is predicated on a relationship with the people. But the beat cop’s greatest asset is also his greatest vulnerability. Being more approachable — driving soft-skin FordRangers, not wearing body armor, establishing checkpoints without heavy concrete barriers — means the Taliban can target the police with greater ease. That has forced the police to militarize and has made it even harder to deliver the services that Afghans need. “Unfortunately, this will be the case for years to come,” the Afghan national security adviser, Hanif Atmar, told me in a rare interview. It’s not that the police wanted to fight. They had no choice. Better munitions, including heavy weapons like artillery, might prevent casualties. “Only after there is peace can we try to demilitarize the police and build a truly civilian force,” he said.
This is no longer an American war, regardless of how many United States Special Operations forces continue to sweep the mountains for insurgents or how many American warplanes fire missiles into remote desert camps. That war, by most accounts, has been lost. In the face of endless violence, the Taliban have not been killed off. The nation is not pacified, the political future remains deeply uncertain and the death toll has never been higher. For the central government in Kabul, the real fight is to persuade the population, not to kill insurgents. And the police, local and national, are the only ones who can win it.
When we returned from the governor’s office, two of Hajji Khalil’s brothers, Farhad and Abdul Wakil, were there to discuss the future of the Chiltan uprising. Farhad was an engineer; he graduated from college in Jalalabad and ran a construction company that built roads, schools and clinics in Kabul and Pul-i-Alam. Abdul Wakil worked at Farhad’s company. They were covered from head to toe in a layer of fine dust. Neither had done much construction since the uprising began, and now they were the movement’s de facto leaders. Qasim offered them tea, and we all sat down on the cushions near the stove.
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Farhad barely greeted Qasim. He hadn’t slept in days and seemed to harbor little warmth for the police. But he acknowledged that the Chiltan militia was in chaos. Hajji Khalil had been a popular leader. When local families fell on tough times, he helped pay for their children’s marriages. He bought lunch for the construction crews that turned up to build roads, at least before the Taliban put a stop to such development. If a man like him could be killed in the middle of the day, less than a mile from Qasim’s own headquarters, who was safe? Without Khalil’s leadership, the uprisers were no longer patrolling the roads. Some were even refusing to leave their homes. At the same time, Farhad had told me, funding from the National Directorate of Security in Kabul had dropped significantly, as budgets sank in the wake of the American withdrawal. Qasim was all they had now. They needed support, Farhad said to the chief. They needed a plan, and they needed bullets.
“Don’t worry,” Qasim said, leaning forward, hands out, palms down. “We will be with you.” He knew that if the uprisers of Chiltan gave up, the repercussions would be felt all the way to Kabul. Hajji Khalil’s work in Chiltan had interrupted an important Taliban smuggling route. Qasim promised the brothers that this effort would be recognized, that justice would be served. An informer had named five young people from a village near the site of the ambush who acted as spies for the Taliban by providing Khalil’s location that day.
Abdul Wakil, who had said almost nothing, now spoke: “Leave those men to us.” He looked directly at Qasim.
“No,” Qasim said. Vigilantism would not do. “We are collecting evidence, and once we have enough, we will arrest them.”
There was a final bit of business. Farhad had heard a rumor: The Afghan National Army was returning at last to Baraki Barak. As the Americans closed bases and international military support receded, the army had for two years been falling back, especially from rural areas — too many losses for too little gain. In some regions, the army knew that this was tantamount to a retreat, that the territory would fall to the Taliban. But what was the alternative? With fewer forces on the ground and their international partners no longer around to fight, the army’s focus shifted by necessity from remote areas like this to roads and population centers.
For more than a year, Qasim had campaigned to get soldiers deployed to his district. For more than a year, he was ignored. But the death of Hajji Khalil might have finally rattled some of the decision makers in Kabul. If this was true, Farhad said, he wanted assurances that the army would not simply reoccupy its abandoned base and leave the men of Chiltan to fend for themselves. He need the soldiers. “They must set up a check post in Chiltan,” he said.
Qasim had heard the same rumors, but he could make no promises for the army. He sent two officers to an ammunition locker, and they returned with five boxes of AK-47 ammunition and three rocket-propelled grenades, drawn from his own dwindling supply. There would be more to come, he promised — more men, perhaps even a Humvee. Farhad said nothing. The brothers loaded the weapons into the back of their station wagon and left.
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The next day, Qasim sent a young detective, Zulfaqar, fresh from the four-year police academy, to the village of Deh Sheikh. His assignment was to track down one of the five young people Qasim suspected of acting as spies for the Taliban. We set out in a convoy of two Ford Rangers, along the same route Khalil had taken a few days before, and parked near the blackened tract of sand where he died. Three local police officers joined us for the remaining half-mile trek to the mud home where Syed Mahboob, 19, lived with his parents. Zulfaqar announced that we would enter the village with caution.
We set off on foot down a dirt path, racing through patches of slender trees, then crouching through the openings to stay out of sight. We crossed a river on a meager bridge of logs and branches, the officers’ assault rifles dangling over the water. The men appeared to know every field, every path and road, every irrigation canal. The night before, in complete darkness, Qasim’s officers had taken me on a two-hour night patrol through Zaqumkhil, a village a few miles west of their headquarters. They navigated the trails without night vision or flashlights, walking in a single-file line through a depthless black into hostile areas where a few months earlier they had been in open firefights.
Now I followed Zulfaqar into the front yard of a mud house, the home of Syed Mahboob. No one was home, so we waited. After 10 minutes, an old man ambled into the compound.
“Where is Syed Mahboob?” Zulfaqar asked.
The man was his father. He said Mahboob was at college, in Pul-i-Alam.
Zulfaqar had more questions. What about the day Hajji Khalil was murdered? Where was he that day?
The old man wrinkled his face, shifted his weight between feet and took a guess. “He must have been at school then, too,” he said.
Mahboob was little more than a name to the police, picked up from sources within the insurgency, all of whom had their own competing agendas. Zulfaqar couldn’t say for sure that Mahboob was really a student, and he had no clear theory about why Mahboob might want to help the Taliban. The men called Qasim to ask if they should arrest the father. “No,” he said. “He will bring his son to us.”
We retraced our steps back to the trucks. It had been a fruitless trip, but Qasim radioed the officers with better news: A separate detachment of officers had arrested the other four suspects. Zulfaqar would interview them back at headquarters.
When we returned, the suspects were seated on a wooden bench outside. The youngest was 15, the oldest 23. Zulfaqar ushered them one by one into a closet-size office, into which he had somehow squeezed a filing cabinet, a small desk and three rusted chairs. The first of the four, an 18-year-old with short black hair, recounted his activities on the day of Khalil’s death while Zulfaqar scribbled notes onto a single sheet of white paper, repeating the words aloud as he wrote: I was at home when the shooting began at noon. I climbed onto the roof and saw black smoke curling into the sky. Later I left the house to get a snack from the store. Two local police officers were there. They said this is the work of the people of Deh Sheikh. As he talked, the young suspect tucked his socked foot beneath his thigh.
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It was the same with the next two suspects. No one admitted a thing. Zulfaqar’s technique appeared unpracticed. The police academy enrolls roughly 600 students a year; many seem to be accepted simply because they can read, placing them in the top tier of the Afghan National Police. The army had a vast deployment of fellow soldiers from around the world to train them in the best practices of their profession. The police had very little in comparison, so they, too, learned from the coalition forces, instruction that prepared them better for firefights than for detective work. For Zulfaqar, “What else?” was a favored demand, along with “Did anyone tell you who did it?” More than once he looked over at me, seated along the wall of his office, and asked whether I had any questions for the suspects. I said I didn’t.
A knock on the door interrupted the third interview. The old man from Deh Sheikh entered with a red-faced teenager dressed in black. It was Syed Mahboob. Zulfaqar dismissed the suspect seated in his office and told Mahboob to sit.
He asked Mahboob for his national identification card, which the young man did not have. Well, what about a student ID? the detective asked. Mahboob did not have that either.
Zulfaqar slapped his desk. What kind of a person would come to the police station with no identification?
After a long pause, Zulfaqar moved on. Let’s talk about Jan. 4: What time did you get out of bed? Whom did you speak to on the phone? Whom did you meet later in the day?
Mahboob looked up. “I was in Pul-i-Alam for an exam that day,” he said. “I missed the entire incident. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you anything about it.”
Zulfaqar glared at him.
“Give me your thumb,” he said finally, pulling Mahboob to his desk to fingerprint his statement, convinced he was lying. “I know who you are, and you are not a student.” Watching Zulfaqar’s bombast and the young man’s befuddled reaction, it was difficult to believe that Mahboob had anything to do with the attack.
That night, Zulfaqar organized his evidence and stamped his statements. The next morning he would send all five suspects, including Mahboob, to Pul-i-Alam for processing.
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Qasim checking in with the local police force in Shah Aghasi. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Qasim preferred to focus on community problems. Amid all this activity, he had scheduled a large meeting immediately north of the district headquarters, in the Sang-i-Mamar Desert, to settle a land dispute. The police drove 30 of us — Qasim, the district governor, the plaintiffs, several other local officials and a delegate from the Ministry of Agriculture in Kabul — in a convoy to the disputed area, an undifferentiated dirt field near a dry concrete canal. More than a dozen police officers arranged themselves on the banks of two hills facing north, establishing a security perimeter. The land, brown and wide open, stretched to a line of mountains on the horizon.
The argument was fundamental. “This is the land under my control,” Syed, in a leather coat and white cap, said to the Kabul delegate. “No, it’s not,” said Shirin, who had crept up from behind to listen. The delegate from the Ministry of Agriculture, Syed Alam, silenced them.
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“Don’t use the word ‘control,’ ” he said, unfurling a roll of maps stuffed into a tube. Control signified ownership, and ownership was the subject of the dispute. “Right now, we’re trying to determine whom it belongs to.”
Two aides to Alam held the edges of the maps open. Each parcel of land was delineated with a tidy, hand-drawn stroke from the cartographer. The two landowners agreed about who owned all the parcels but one, a plot over a hill to the east. To orient themselves, the group decided to hike to the disputed parcel. Qasim, wearing his winter police uniform of gray fleece, scurried behind the taller members of the party.
The group climbed the hill to the east for a better view of the terrain. Bits of shale shifted beneath their feet as they scrambled up. Now the entire district lay before us, interlocking tracts of farmland, corrugated tin bazaars, mud homes and leafless forests.
“You two are brothers who are trying to play a trick on me,” Qasim said to them. He placed one arm around the shoulders of Shirin, another around the shoulders of Syed. “One of you says, ‘Oh, the land belongs to me.’ The other says, ‘No, it is mine.’ What you’re really trying to do is increase your holdings, knowing neither of you own this little piece of extra land. But I’m not that stupid. I called Kabul for help!”
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F. Van Antwerp
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Its not clear if Mr. Ahmed came across details of the existence of local community councils in Afghanistan, but an Afghan Government program...
Pete
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A well written, but disturbing article, which raises the question of what was the point of the lives lost, the lives damaged, and the...
donald surr
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And our leaders still entertain the illusion that WE can transform Afghan society into something that resembles Norman Rockwell's vision of...
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Shirin and Syed laughed. We continued our hike, sliding down the opposite side of the hill. Alam paused to review one of the maps. The edge of the disputed parcel was marked by a concrete chute built to funnel water from a natural spring. Nearby, four flags were buried in the ground, the graves of Taliban fighters killed by the police over the summer, Qasim said.
Alam produced a ledger with the names of the landowners. He slid his finger along the entries until he found the parcel. Mir, a forebear of Syed, owned the land, he announced. But he continued reading and discovered a footnote, stating that the family of Ghulam, the grandfather of Shirin, also held a claim on the land.
Alam sighed, handed the ledger to an aide and addressed the two men. There would be no resolution today. He warned the pair not to use or sell the land until the government made a decision. It would take up to a year to determine the true owner of the property. This appeared to be sufficient to hold the peace. “Eight years have passed since this dispute began,” Syed said. “I can wait another year.”
The next morning, news came: The army had arrived. A small company of 40 soldiers from the Fourth Brigade of the 203rd Corps had assumed control of a base in Baraki Rajan, a cluster of villages just a short drive from Qasim’s headquarters. As soon as Qasim heard, he headed out to his Ford Ranger to make the trip over. Because he outranked the army captain, he could have insisted that the meeting happen at his headquarters, Qasim explained. This journey was a gesture of good will. Fifteen minutes later, a guard directed us to a concrete building, where the soldiers were settling in. Captain Zabiullah, round-faced and stocky, greeted us warmly. He apologized for not visiting Qasim first. It was nothing, Qasim said, and shook his hand.
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Like Qasim, Zabiullah had also decided to make his bedroom the center of activity. The two sat side by side on the captain’s ancient steel-spring cot, exchanging war stories. Qasim claimed to have once fired 36 mortars in less than 30 minutes. Zabiullah boasted that the Taliban could not fight his forces for 20 minutes.
“Would you believe I have not spent more than four days at my house in four months?” Qasim asked.
The captain laughed. It was clear that Qasim was working the young captain, angling. He needed the army to send troops when the police came under fire.
He also wanted help for the uprisers in Chiltan. The Fourth Brigade was responsible for security in this province and another near Kabul, but it seemed picky about when and where it helped. The police complain, almost constantly, that the army — with its many airplanes, helicopters and sophisticated armored vehicles — sits in large, fortified bases while the police and the uprisers do all of the fighting and dying. (It didn’t help that a relatively inexperienced police officer earned $210 a week, while an equivalent soldier earns up to $280.) The uprisers wanted the soldiers’ help building fortifications and also some heavier weapons, maybe some .50-caliber mounted guns or even an armored vehicle. Qasim wanted to deliver them, but he needed a better approach. Once again deploying flattery, he told the captain that his officers would be very happy to help the soldiers with anything they needed.
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A police raid at a compound in Deh Sheikh, where officers were looking for a villager suspected of being involved in the death of Hajji Khalil, a wealthy businessman who organized a militia to fight the Taliban. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
“Listen, one of your men is worth 10 of our people, because you are the ones being targeted,” Zabiullah said.
Qasim bowed his head an inch or two, accepting the counter-compliment. He then tried a more direct approach: Was it true what he had heard? Were the army special forces coming here specifically to aid the uprisers in Chiltan? It was unclear to me whether Qasim had actually heard this or was simply improvising.
Zabiullah said nothing.
“The morale there is very low,” Qasim said. “We are going there now to check on them.”
This was an invitation for the captain to join him. The entreaty sat between the men for a full 30 seconds, understood yet unexpressed.
“Any time you need, call me,” the captain finally said. “We will be there in minutes.”
Qasim gave the captain a hug before departing for Chiltan, alone.
The following evening, Qasim made good on his promise to take more men and a Humvee to the uprisers — but they were police officers, not soldiers, and it was a police Humvee. On the edge of the Chiltan bazaar, Farhad waved our convoy past, his machine gun slung over his right shoulder. The corrugated gates of a compound swung open, and the convoy sped through. Here was the home of Hajji Khalil, painted foam green, with yellow windowsills. To its west and south was open land that ran into Taliban country. It was the literal front line in the district: Beyond the porch, as far as the eye could see, the government had no control.
A crowd was gathered by the home’s entrance, an assembly of men and boys in various states of disarray. Some wore uniforms, but others did not. They clutched their ancient assault rifles like crutches. A few of them smoked hashish on the raised porch, their faces little more than red eyes and yellowed teeth. This was the uprising in Chiltan.
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Ainuddin, a 17-year-old rookie we met five days earlier, was among the police officers selected to join the uprisers. As first jobs go, his had to rank among the worst. He smiled at me, ignoring the hash scent wafting through the air, and entered the house before I could ask him what he thought of the assignment. An upriser, wearing soiled tan pants pulled up to his chest, followed us as we conducted interviews, asking questions of his own with a cigarette pursed between his lips. Where were we from? Whom did we work for? Why were we there? We ignored him. The vibe was not hostile, but neither was it welcoming. Our comfort was beside the point, though. Qasim and the others used the uprisers because they would fight the Taliban, adopting the same stance the Americans did when they ran the war.
The green Humvee sat near the gate, a symbol of Qasim’s good will. It would probably never amount to more than that. The vehicles require so much fuel and so much maintenance that entire Afghan army battalions struggle to keep them on the road. The uprisers, who slept in a secondhand tent on their mountain outpost and borrowed bullets from Qasim, would be fortunate to get more than a week of use out of theirs. Farhad received the gift without a word. The sun receded farther behind the mountains, etching them in pink. It would be dark soon. Qasim shook hands with a few of the uprisers and gave Farhad an unreciprocated hug. His men were eager to leave. The older men among the uprisers followed the police out, waving goodbye in a cloud of dust kicked up by the departing trucks.
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A few dozen groups, referred to as ‘‘uprisers,’’ have joined the government in battling the Taliban. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Policing in Afghanistan is unpredictable. In Pul-i-Alam, Syed Mahboob was arrested, questioned, then released by the same provincial police commander, Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai, who first recommended our trip to Baraki Barak. Ishaqzai explained the problem to me as I sat on a sagging, overstuffed sofa in his large fluorescent-lit office at his provincial headquarters. There simply was not enough evidence against Mahboob to file charges, so they had to let him go.
A month after our last visit to Ishaqzai’s office, Taliban suicide bombers stormed the compound. Ishaqzai was away, but the attack killed more than 20 of his men, many of whom were eating lunch in the cafeteria, the most devastating single assault on the police in more than a year. Soon afterward, Qasim stopped answering his phone. I called Ishaqzai. What happened? He said officials from the Interior Ministry in Kabul had arrested Qasim. They suspected that he was involved in the assault.
The ministry, Ishaqzai explained, had accused three of Qasim’s closest lieutenants of using Qasim’s car to drive the suicide attackers through the initial police checkpoints around the compound. In another startling development, Farhad had also accused Qasim of colluding in the assassination of his brother. A group of officers from Kabul and Pul-i-Alam arrested Qasim and the three lieutenants in Baraki Barak on Feb. 23, the day Qasim stopped answering my calls.
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He was in Pul-i-Alam now, under the supervision of the police and the National Directorate of Security. The prosecutor had not filed charges, but Ishaqzai told me that in Qasim’s bedroom, the police had found a kind of wiring that was often used to make improvised explosive devices and a tracking device used by insurgents that tells them when a car is approaching.
The thought that Qasim could be guilty of these crimes was jarring, to say the least. He had hosted us in his district, where we slept, ate and traveled with him and his men into the unmapped depths of the district for a full week. It was hard to imagine why, if Qasim was working with the insurgents, he had not tried to kidnap me and Tyler Hicks and sell us to the Taliban. He could have easily staged an incident with the insurgents. Hicks and I asked him shortly after we arrived whether we could spend the night in a remote outpost with the local police; arranging a kidnapping there would have been easy. Qasim refused to let us, though. He said it was too dangerous. The insurgents had even kidnapped his son, back when he was the head of counternarcotics in the district.
And yet truth in Afghanistan, where allegiances shift on a daily basis, is never easy to pin down. Could Qasim have helped killed Khalil? Could he have facilitated the murder of more than 20 of his fellow officers in Pul-i-Alam? Just as his true motivations were unknowable, so, too, were the motivations of those who accused him. Arrests for political reasons occurred all the time. The police and the intelligence service were interrogating him now, and they could just as easily release him as charge him with murder. As Mahboob’s father told me, the police had also arrested Mahboob again, just 10 days after they released him, and on the same charges.
Ishaqzai said he couldn’t tell me much else. He wasn’t in charge of the investigation, but he doubted that Qasim was involved in Khalil’s death. He was less certain about whether Qasim could have helped the insurgents attack the Pul-i-Alam headquarters. Such things happen, Ishaqzai said. He had known Qasim well, considered him his finest police chief. But, he reminded me, “people can change their minds in minutes.” Ishaqzai had already replaced Qasim with a younger chief from a neighboring district, he told me before we hung up.
I wanted to hear someone defend Qasim, or reflect the camaraderie and loyalty I thought I saw when I was there. I called Sabir Khan, his good friend and deputy, his most esteemed colleague. Khan told me that the men in Baraki Barak didn’t know how to feel. Even he wondered whether Qasim was involved in the Pul-i-Alam attack. You never know, he said. “I cannot trust him now.”
Azam Ahmed is the Kabul bureau chief for The New York Times.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imgtrYXDz30
This 5 min video, provides worthwhile clarity on Af-Pak relations
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Daesh is way too cool for the jihadis!...YA
http://tribune.com.pk/story/864853/afghan-taliban-release-mullah-omar-biography-amid-growing-frustration-within-ranks/ (http://tribune.com.pk/story/864853/afghan-taliban-release-mullah-omar-biography-amid-growing-frustration-within-ranks/)
Afghan Taliban release Mullah Omar biography amid growing frustration within ranks
By Tahir Khan
Published: April 5, 2015
ISLAMABAD:
The Afghan Taliban released on Sunday a biography of their reclusive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
In hiding for 13 years, the Afghan Taliban supremo disappeared after US airstrikes dislodged the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001.
The biography comes amid rising speculation over the elusive leader’s whereabouts and whether he is still alive and able to lead the militant group. Further, there have been reports of growing frustration within Taliban ranks over the lack of leadership by Omar, particularly in light of Islamic State’s growing popularity.
The Afghan Taliban chief who has not been seen in public for more than a decade was last heard in 2007 – eight years ago.
However, if there were any doubts regarding his role in the Afghan Taliban, the biography cleared them.
“Mullah Mohammad Omar (Mujahid) is still the leader in the present hierarchy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” the biography asserts.
“His deputy, the leading council, judiciary, nine executive commissions and three other administration organs are active under his leadership which form the warp and woof of the present setup of the Islamic Emirate,” it added.
The Afghan Taliban chief’s biography was released on April 4, 2015 — the 19th anniversary of the organisation’s rule. Around 1,500 Taliban scholars who declared Mullah Omar as “Amir-ul-Momineen” (Leader of pious people) were present at the gathering.
“Under present conditions of regularly being chased by the enemy, no major change and disruption has been observed in the routine works of Mullah Mohammad Omar (Mujahid) in following and organising the Jihadi activities as the leader of the Islamic Emirate,” the biography said.
The biography which was issued in English, Urdu, Pashto and Dari further claimed, “He (Omar) keenly follows and inspects the Jihadi activities against the infidel and brutal foreign invaders.”
“In organising and reshuffling the Jihadi and military issues, he delivers his orders in a specific way to Jihadi commanders.”
Further elaborating on how the elusive leader runs the organisation, the biography added, “He regularly follows Jihadi publications and other international media resources to judge his victories and likewise other issues against the foreign invaders. In this way, he remains in touch with the day to day happenings of his country as well as the outside world. These activities form his basic daily life in the present circumstances.”
Mullah Omar’s whereabouts are unknown though Afghan intelligence officials have on a number of occasions claimed Omar is hiding in Karachi. Meanwhile, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai has long claimed the Taliban supremo has been hiding in Quetta. However, the claim has been denied by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Afghan Taliban officials.
Though, the Taliban initially routinely issued Omar’s traditional “Eid” messages, his voice was last heard eight years ago.
His last audio message in 2007 addressed his commanders, ordering them to expel Taliban commander Mansoor Dadullah for killing Taliban men on suspicion of them spying on his brother Mullah Dadullah.
The feared commander Mullah Dadullah was killed by foreign and Afghan forces in southern Afghanistan in 2007.
Earlier it was reported that a growing number of militant commanders in Afghanistan and Pakistan were beginning to look towards Islamic State (IS) for inspiration, frustrated by Mullah Omar’s lack of leadership.
In Afghanistan, one militant commander said many have turned to IS. “Look, we have been fighting for years but we don’t have an inch of land in our possession in Afghanistan,” said the senior commander, who spoke from the province of Kunar.
“We have serious doubts about whether he (Omar) is alive at all … Abu Bakr al Baghdadi is visible and is leading his people,” the commander said, referring to the IS leader.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) which considered Mullah Omar as their “Ameer” switched loyalties to the Islamic State of Dai’sh a few days ago. The leader of the group in a video said Mullah Omar has not been seen in years and that it is declaring allegiance to Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi.
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Did we say business? Pakistan wants to buy 15 AH-1Z Viper Attack Helicopters and 1,000 Hellfire II missiles from the U.S. in a deal that would be worth about $952 million if the U.S. Congress signs off on it. The sale would up Pakistan's precision firepower in places like the "North Waziristan Agency, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and other remote and mountainous areas in all-weather, day-and-night environments" the Department of Defense wrote on April 6. The deal would also make some money for U.S. defense contractors Textron, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin.
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If you think the police are heavily militarized in the US, the pakis claim that strafing their populace in the frontier regions with F-16's is not very effective and they need helicopters and missiles. However, the beggars cant afford anything, one way or the other its US aid being recycled back to US arms merchants.
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http://www.dawn.com/news/1175284/uae-minister-warns-pakistan-of-heavy-price-for-ambiguous-stand-on-yemen (http://www.dawn.com/news/1175284/uae-minister-warns-pakistan-of-heavy-price-for-ambiguous-stand-on-yemen)
Saudis want Pak participation in Yemen war.....chickens come home to roost.
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By
Husain Haqqani
April 19, 2015 5:51 p.m. ET
41 COMMENTS
The Obama administration’s decision this month to sell almost $1 billion in U.S.-made attack helicopters, missiles and other equipment to Pakistan will fuel conflict in South Asia without fulfilling the objective of helping the country fight Islamist extremists. Pakistan’s failure to tackle its jihadist challenge is not the result of a lack of arms but reflects an absence of will. Unless Pakistan changes its worldview, American weapons will end up being used to fight or menace India and perceived domestic enemies instead of being deployed against jihadists.
Competition with India remains the overriding consideration in Pakistan’s foreign and domestic policies. By aiding Pakistan over the years—some $40 billion since 1950, according to the Congressional Research Service—the U.S. has fed Pakistan’s delusion of being India’s regional military equal. Seeking security against a much larger neighbor is a rational objective but seeking parity with it on a constant basis is not.
The AH-1Z Viper. ENLARGE
The AH-1Z Viper. Photo: Getty Images
Instead of selling more military equipment to Pakistan, U.S. officials should convince Pakistan that its ambitions of rivaling India are akin to Belgium trying to rival France or Germany. India’s population is six times as large as Pakistan’s while India’s economy is 10 times bigger, and India’s $2 trillion economy has managed consistent growth whereas Pakistan’s $245 billion economy has grown sporadically and is undermined by jihadist terrorism and domestic political chaos. Pakistan also continues to depend on Islamist ideology—through its school curricula, propaganda and Islamic legislation—to maintain internal nationalist cohesion, which inevitably encourages extremism and religious intolerance.
Clearly, with the latest military package, the Obama administration expects to continue the same policies adopted by several of its predecessors—and somehow get different results. It’s a mystery why the president suddenly trusts Pakistan’s military—after mistrusting it at the time of the Navy SEAL operation in May 2011 that found and killed Osama bin Laden living safely until then in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.
One explanation is that selling helicopters and missiles is easier than thinking of alternative strategies to compel an errant ally to change its behavior. This is a pattern in U.S.-Pakistan relations going back to the 1950s. Between 1950 and 1969, the U.S. gave $4.5 billion in aid to Pakistan partly in the hope of using Pakistani troops in anticommunist wars, according to declassified U.S. government documents. Pakistan did not contribute a single soldier for the wars in Korea or Vietnam but went to war with India over the disputed border state of Kashmir instead in 1965.
During the 1980s, Pakistan served as the staging ground for the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and received another $4.5 billion in aid, as reported by the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations to Congress. Pakistan diverted U.S. assistance again toward its obsessive rivalry with India, and trained insurgents to fight in the Indian part of Kashmir as well as in India’s Punjab state. It also violated promises to the U.S. and its own public statements not to acquire nuclear weapons, which it first tested openly in 1998—arguing that it could not afford to remain nonnuclear while India’s nuclear program surged ahead.
Since the 1990s, Pakistan has supported various jihadist groups, including the Afghan Taliban. After 9/11, the country’s military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, promised to end support for the Islamic radicals. Based on that promise, Pakistan received $15.1 billion in civil and military aid from the U.S. until 2009. In February, Gen. Musharraf admitted in an interview with the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper that he continued to support the Afghan Taliban even after 9/11 because of concerns over close relations between Afghanistan and India. Thus the U.S. was effectively arming a country that was, in turn, arming insurgents fighting and killing American troops in Afghanistan.
After the Dec. 16, 2014, attack on a Peshawar school, where the Taliban massacred 160 people, including many schoolchildren, Pakistan claimed it had changed its policy toward terrorist groups and would no longer distinguish between “good” and “bad” Taliban. The Pakistani military has since sped up military action against terrorist groups responsible for mayhem inside Pakistan. But the destruction, demobilization, disarmament or dismantling of Afghan Taliban and other radical groups is clearly not on the Pakistani state’s agenda. There has been no move against Kashmir-oriented jihadist groups.
Given Pakistan’s history, it is likely that the 15 AH-1Z Viper helicopters and 1,000 Hellfire missiles—as well as communications and training equipment being offered to it—will be used against secular insurgents in southwest Baluchistan province, bordering Iran, and along the disputed border in Kashmir rather than against the jihadists in the northwest bordering Afghanistan.
If the Obama administration believes Pakistan’s military has really changed its priorities, it should consider leasing helicopters to Pakistan and verify where they are deployed before going through with outright sales.
With nuclear weapons, Pakistan no longer has any reason to feel insecure about being overrun by a larger Indian conventional force. For the U.S. to continue supplying a Pakistani military that is much larger than the country can afford will only invigorate Pakistani militancy and militarism at the expense of its 200 million people, one-third of whom continue to live at less than a dollar a day per household.
Mr. Haqqani, the director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., 2008-11.
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Hussein Haqqani the author of the above piece is one of the few sane pakis (I know its an oxymoron). He would not last a day, if he went back to Pak.
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While this is only wishful thinking at present....YA
ISIS claims it could buy its first nuclear weapon from Pakistan within 12 months
Heather Saul,The Independent | May 23, 2015, 01.08 PM IST
The finances of the ISIS have been estimated by some to be in the $2billion area, though it is impossible to verify how much money it actually has access to.
LONDON: ISIS has used the latest issue of its propaganda magazine Dabiq to suggest the group is expanding so rapidly it could buy its first nuclear weapon within a year.
The hyperbolic article, which the group attributes to the British hostage John Cantlie, claims ISIS has transcended its roots as "the most explosive Islamic 'group' in the modern world" to evolve into "the most explosive Islamic movement the modern world has ever seen" in less than twelve months.
Photojournalist Cantlie is regularly used in the terror group's propaganda and has appeared in a number of videos, including a YouTube series called "Lend Me Your Ears". He has been held a hostage by ISIS for more than two years.
The piece, entitled "The Perfect Storm", describes militant Islamist groups such as Boko Haram, which recently pledged allegiance to ISIS, uniting across the Middle East, Africa and Asia to create one global movement.
The article claims this alignment of groups has happened at the same time as ISIS militants have seized "tanks, rocket launchers, missile systems, anti-aircraft systems," from the US and Iran before turning to the subject of more extreme weapons the group is not in possession of — such as nuclear weapons.
"Let me throw a hypothetical operation onto the table," the article continues. "The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilayah in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region."
It admits that such a scenario is "far-fetched" but warns: "It's the sum of all fears for Western intelligence agencies and it's infinitely more possible today than it was just one year ago.
"And if not a nuke, what about a few thousand tons of ammonium nitrate explosive? That's easy enough to make."
An attack launched by ISIS against America would ridicule "the attacks of the past".
"They'll [ISIS] be looking to do something big, something that would make any past operation look like a squirrel shoot, and the more groups that pledge allegiance the more possible it becomes to pull off something truly epic.
"Remember, all of this has happened in less than a year. How more dangerous will be the lines of communication and supply a year on from today?"
The capacity of ISIS to acquire such a device is certainly beyond the group at the moment.
But ISIS is indeed a well funded group having secured a number of oilfields in Syria and Iraq. The group also sells artefacts looted from historic areas seized during its insurgency, sometimes for six figure sums, as well as imposing taxes on civilians trapped in its self-declared caliphate and other methods of extortion.
The finances of the group have been estimated by some to be in the $2billion area, though it is impossible to verify how much money it actually has access to.
The threats come against a mixed backdrop of successes and losses in both countries; the group has been driven out of Tikrit in Iraq but has overrun Ramaldi and the Syrian ancient city of Palmyra.
A recent call to arms from its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi also appeared to suggest it may be overstretched in some areas, with his speech urging supporters from across the world to travel to its territories in the Middle East.
In September last year, the home secretary, Theresa May, warned that the militant group could become the world's first "truly terrorist state".
"We will see the risk, often prophesied but thank God not yet fulfilled, that with the capability of a state behind them, the terrorists will acquire chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons to attack us," she said.
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By
Margherita Stancati
May 24, 2015 12:56 p.m. ET
1 COMMENTS
KABUL—Afghanistan’s most prominent peace envoy held secret talks with former Taliban officials in China last week, accelerating regional efforts to bring the insurgency to the negotiating table, according to individuals briefed on the matter by the warring parties.
The two-day meeting, which took place in the northwestern Chinese city of Urumqi, was aimed at discussing preconditions for a possible peace process, those people said.
“These were talks about talks,” one diplomat said.
The meeting was significant for another reason: It was facilitated by Pakistan’s intelligence agency in an apparent show of goodwill aimed at a negotiated solution to the insurgency.
People familiar with the meeting said Chinese officials and representatives of Pakistan’s spy agency—the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI—also attended the talks on May 19 and 20 in Urumqi, the capital of China’s western Xinjiang region. Chinese and Pakistani officials weren’t immediately reachable for comment.
Members of Afghanistan’s peace-negotiating body frequently hold informal meetings with the Taliban, but such high-level interactions are unusual.
The meetings come after a monthslong diplomatic outreach led by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to reset ties with Pakistan after years of frosty relations in a bid to revive talks aimed at ending Afghanistan’s 13-year war.
Pakistan’s support is widely seen as critical for a peace process to work. Much of the Taliban leadership has been based in Pakistan since 2001, and its fighters have used the lawless border areas between the two countries as an operational base.
Afghan and Western officials have long accused Pakistan of effectively controlling the Taliban insurgency, an allegation Islamabad has repeatedly denied even as it acknowledges it has some influence over the movement.
The location of the meeting is also key. In recent months, China has moved closer to the role of mediator in the Afghan conflict, interacting more with the Kabul government and the Taliban insurgency to discuss the possibility of starting peace talks. The Urumqi meeting signals the Chinese diplomatic outreach may be gaining traction.
Past efforts to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table have failed. In June 2013, the Taliban opened a political office in the Gulf emirate of Qatar as part of a U.S.-backed effort to start formal talks. That effort collapsed after the Taliban opened an office with the trappings of a government-in-exile, infuriating then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The Afghan delegation in China was led by Mohammad Masoom Stanikzai, who until last week was the most prominent member of the High Peace Council, the country’s peace-negotiating body. Mr. Stanikzai was nominated on Thursday as minister of defense, a position that needs parliamentary approval. He wasn’t immediately available to comment on the meeting in China.
Mohammad Asem, a former lawmaker and associate of Mr. Ghani’s coalition partner, Abdullah Abdullah, also participated in the Urumqi meeting.
The three former senior Taliban officials who attended—Mullah Abdul Jalil, Mullah Mohammad Hassan Rahmani and Mullah Abdul Razaq— are based in Pakistan and they are close to the Taliban’s Quetta-based leadership council.
Maulvi Qalamuddin, a former top Taliban official, said the meeting represented a very-high level effort to discuss peace.
“These people are more important than those in Qatar,” said Mr. Qalamuddin, who is now a member of the High Peace Council. “These talks are held secretly, and only a few people know about it.”
It is far from clear, however, whether the talks in Urumqi could lead to formal negotiations. In an official communication on Sunday evening, the Taliban denied the meeting took place. But the group frequently makes public denials about peace overtures, while privately confirming outreach.
People familiar with the movement said the three Taliban who attended the China talks have strong ties to Pakistan’s spy agency, and that they are not authorized to speak on behalf on the insurgency about reconciliation.
“They are all very close to the ISI and they have no mandate from the leadership to talk about peace,” said a person briefed on the meeting.
The Taliban have previously said that only the members of the group’s Qatar-based political commission are allowed to participate in peace-related efforts. Earlier this month, members of the commission held informal discussions with Afghan officials and civic activists in Qatar, an effort that participants said could eventually pave the way to a formal peace process.
A peace deal is still distant, however. The Taliban are pressing a countrywide offensive that is causing high casualties on both sides, and the fighting is unlikely to end soon. The insurgency still insists that all foreign troops should leave Afghanistan as a precondition for negotiations to begin.
The Urumqi meeting took place days after the ISI signed an agreement aimed at improving intelligence cooperation with Afghanistan’s spy agency, the National Directorate of Security.
But Pakistan—and its intelligence apparatus in particular—is viewed with deep mistrust by Afghans.
News of the deal provoked a dramatic backlash in Afghanistan, dividing the country’s political leadership and leading to accusations the Kabul government had sold out Afghanistan’s national interest to an enemy.
—Nathan Hodge contributed to this article.
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Summary
After nearly 15 years of war, the Taliban are far from exhausted in their struggle for power. Against old enemies and new threats, the Taliban continue to maneuver for a better position in Afghanistan's conflict. While the Taliban are not capable of securing an outright victory against the Afghan government, the group is also unlikely to be sidelined, either by coalition efforts or by the entrance of a new rival for territory and influence: the Islamic State.
Analysis
Since the start of their spring offensive earlier this year, the Taliban have focused on the country's northern provinces, a marked departure from their previous emphasis on their traditional strongholds in the south and east. These efforts have been fruitful: After seizing two key districts adjacent to the vital northern crossroads city of Kunduz over the past month, the Taliban are now positioned less than 7 kilometers (approximately 4 miles) from the city itself.
With Afghan military reinforcements from Kabul heading toward Kunduz, it is possible the Taliban may yet be pushed back. Still, the group's gains over the spring and summer thus far have preserved its role as the primary opposition faction in the Afghan conflict, even as concerns about the Islamic State's emergence in the region are growing.
The Islamic State's Afghan Faction
In the months following the January debut of the Islamic State's Khorasan wing, which operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the organization has steadily increased its presence in Afghanistan. While the Islamic State still has only small groups of fighters spread across eastern Afghanistan, it has been at least partially successful in attracting new recruits, particularly from the ranks of disillusioned former Taliban. The Islamic State's presence is cause for alarm for the Taliban. They see the group as a potentially powerful rival that espouses a different ideology and vision for Afghanistan.
For the most part, clashes between the Islamic State and the Taliban have been relatively rare. The Islamic State has tried to keep a low profile while it seeks out new recruits, and the Taliban have been concentrating on launching attacks against the U.S.-backed Afghan government. But in the past few weeks the Taliban have begun cracking down on the Islamic State. For example, a large clash on May 24 between the two groups in Farah province left 13 Islamic State fighters and nine Taliban dead, and the Islamic State has vowed to seek revenge for the attack. With the Islamic State looking to cement its presence in the region and the Taliban moving to counter the group, such clashes are likely to continue in the months ahead.
Though the emergence of the Islamic State in Afghanistan has alarmed the Taliban, it has also created an opportunity to raise the Taliban's status. In response to neighboring and foreign powers' reaction against the Islamic State, the Taliban have used their position — as a group that all players are willing to negotiate with — to establish their role as the primary bulwark against the Islamic State.
Perhaps more important, the Taliban have been able to leverage the Islamic State's rise to gain greater support from Iran. According to a June 11 report by the Wall Street Journal, Iran has increased its support for the Taliban. The U.S. military has even accused Tehran of providing aid to the Taliban in their war against the United States in Afghanistan. Iran's latest uptick in support, which included the transfer of mortars, small arms and cash, appears to correspond with the Islamic State's growing presence in the country and its success in poaching disillusioned Taliban fighters, in part by offering better salaries.
It is possible that as part of their effort to counter the Islamic State's climb, the Taliban provided Pakistan (and by extension, the United States) with the coordinates of Mullah Abdul Rauf, a key Islamic State leader in Afghanistan. Abdul Rauf, formerly a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, reportedly broke with the Taliban to join the Islamic State as its deputy governor in Khorasan. A few weeks later, he was killed in a drone strike, though the Afghan National Directorate of Security claims he died during an operation by the Afghan army's special operations forces. Either way, the possibility that the Taliban funneled his whereabouts to the authorities conducting the operation cannot be ignored.
A Manageable Threat
The Afghan Taliban are aware that there is only so much support they can get from neighboring and foreign powers involved in the country's conflict. They will likely continue to try to leverage the Islamic State threat to enhance their strategic position among these powers. As the Afghan government becomes increasingly alarmed about Islamic State aggression in the country as well, the Taliban could attempt to improve their negotiating position by portraying themselves as the more reasonable opposition force.
The Islamic State poses a substantial threat to the Taliban as they continue to wage war against Kabul. Of course, the Taliban have seen much darker days over the course of the 15-year conflict and, at least in the short to medium term, they will likely manage the Islamic State threat successfully. Ideological and tribal differences will continue to impede the Islamic State's expansion in Afghanistan, and the Taliban will use international attitudes against the group to boost their own military capabilities and bargaining power.
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Let the dominoes fall. Launching strikes against Taliban targets has become all but off-limits for the handful of American special operators still working in Afghanistan, FP’s Sean Naylor reports, though commanders have recently added the Islamic State to their shrinking hit list.
The number of missions that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducts in Afghanistan have been slashed in recent months thanks to restrictive new targeting rules which specify that the Taliban can’t be hit unless a specific target poses a direct threat to U.S. interests or allies.
Limiting the strikes against Taliban operatives doesn’t mean that the war is winding down, however. Late last week, a spokesman for the Defense Department said that since January, a staggering 4,302 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed in action along with 8,009 wounded in what has by far been the bloodiest year for Kabul’s security forces since the ouster of the Taliban in 2002. Overall, 13,000 Afghan security forces have been killed over the past three years.
Not all Taliban-related groups are in the clear, however. The Haqqani Network continues to be hunted by JSOC, though only after a thorough scrubbing of of the details of each mission by military leadership. It remains to be seen whether the recent naming of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the network, as the Taliban’s new deputy commander will further complicate JSOC’s ability to target the group.
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Let the dominoes fall. Launching strikes against Taliban targets has become all but off-limits for the handful of American special operators still working in Afghanistan, FP’s Sean Naylor reports, though commanders have recently added the Islamic State to their shrinking hit list.
The number of missions that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducts in Afghanistan have been slashed in recent months thanks to restrictive new targeting rules which specify that the Taliban can’t be hit unless a specific target poses a direct threat to U.S. interests or allies.
Limiting the strikes against Taliban operatives doesn’t mean that the war is winding down, however. Late last week, a spokesman for the Defense Department said that since January, a staggering 4,302 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed in action along with 8,009 wounded in what has by far been the bloodiest year for Kabul’s security forces since the ouster of the Taliban in 2002. Overall, 13,000 Afghan security forces have been killed over the past three years.
Not all Taliban-related groups are in the clear, however. The Haqqani Network continues to be hunted by JSOC, though only after a thorough scrubbing of of the details of each mission by military leadership. It remains to be seen whether the recent naming of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the network, as the Taliban’s new deputy commander will further complicate JSOC’s ability to target the group.
Enemies are just friends we haven't properly appeased yet. See Iran.
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Nursery class in Pak. In a way this is not a joke..they learn things like A for AK-47, B for bomb etc...stuff they identify with!
(http://i.imgur.com/SVbumFl.jpg)
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Here's real life kiddy play in pak http://www.dawn.com/news/1203417/fake-guns-real-terror (http://www.dawn.com/news/1203417/fake-guns-real-terror)
Fake guns, real terrorism
Syed Muaz Shah — Updated about 3 hours ago
These real-looking guns in the hands of our children must not being taken lightly. —AP
This last Eid, as I was walking through the dusty old alleys of Nazimabad 5-C – paying visits to age-old community members and families from the time of my grandfather’s era – I couldn’t help but notice one striking change in these slow-paced streets. It wasn’t the droning of generators in the occasional house or the new trend of lego-block flats towering over smaller housing plots.
It was a “click”; an insistent sound coupled with the voice of children.
Every corner I turned, I heard it one after the other – this clicking sound was occasionally followed by the complaint of a kid who had been 'hit'. In the short walks on these streets, I noticed more replica guns than I had seen in real, just about everywhere.
I could swear I saw every next kid on that street with a “charray” (pellet) pistol in his hand, firing away – click! click! click! As I dodged the occasional misfire, I was struck by this show of blatant disregard for life – a lack of compassion and empathy passed on from parent, teacher, society to child.
We, ourselves, are encouraging a gun culture around us. And yet, we complain about it with a staggering hypocrisy.
I cannot recall seeing such sophisticated toy guns before. It was one thing to play ‘cowboys and Indians’ with rainbow-coloured plastic toys or pump-action water guns. But these real-looking military-like guns in the hands of our children must not be taken lightly.
Earlier this year, two young boys were shot at (one of whom died) while taking a selfie with a toy gun by a trigger-happy police in Punjab. The bitter irony of this tragic incident epitomised a sickness that the closeness to guns can bring on a society.
The boys were fond of replica guns, the police mistook them for real ones and shot them (a reaction which may be unjustified even if the guns were real), in the process exposing their own tendency of firearm abuse.
What a cruel joke.
Another occasion our doomed proximity with weapons manifested itself in, was the move to allow teachers in K-P to carry firearms. It ultimately resulted in what many of us feared from the beginning: the accidental death of a schoolchild in Swat.
That is why I welcomed the resolution tabled in Sindh Assembly earlier this month, which sought to enforce a ban on toy guns. Lawmakers and civil society members have implemented or are seeking similar bans in Punjab and K-P.
One might chide these moves as irrelevant and useless to our very real terrorism problems, wrought with real guns. But, the fact is, we have now seen target killers emerge from even the more educated and affluent sections of our society, and that the 'real terrorism' is happening in the same streets that our kids play in.
The lines are further blurred thanks to the dark times we live in; when even the 'good side' is not seen without a huge cache of weapons of their own. That makes it all the more important to teach our kids that guns exist only as a necessary evil and are not a normal way of life. The culture of violence and aggression should not be glorified.
Otherwise, we are essentially desensitising the concept of death by firearm – making our children’s minds numb to the loss of life in a very subtle way.
Let us not be passive about this matter. Our kids should have a childhood that is violence-free – even in their make-believe worlds – so that they are allowed to grow up into peace-loving adults.
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http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2015/09/09/remembering-ahmad-shah-masoud/
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This is disturbing:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies’-abuse-of-boys
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http://pamelageller.com/2015/09/isis-to-take-capital-of-afghanistan-within-days-of-us-departure.html/
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This is disturbing:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies’-abuse-of-boys
Is Obama's new pick to run the army going to fly to A-stan to check on this firsthand?
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Unfortunately, that is funny. :lol: :cry: :cry:
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The Iraq Model for Afghanistan?
By Paul Albaugh
U.S. forces should be allowed to stay and do good
Recent events in Afghanistan indicate that Barack Obama seriously needs to reconsider his plans to withdraw all U.S. forces from the country over the next 16 months. (Not that he will reconsider...) Several major cities that were once held and governed by Afghan forces have been captured by the Taliban. All is not well and it would be foolish and irresponsible for the United States to withdraw too soon. Need evidence? Just look at Iraq.
On Monday, the city of Kunduz, Afghanistan’s sixth largest city, was overrun by the Taliban — the first city taken by the Taliban since it was ousted from Kabul in 2001. Afghan forces mounted a counteroffensive with the aid of U.S. airstrikes and special forces. Afghan forces have retaken the police station, but are still facing fierce resistance from approximately 500 Taliban fighters.
“Obviously, this is a setback for the Afghan security forces," said Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. "But we've seen them respond in recent weeks and months to the challenges they face, and they're doing the same thing in Kunduz right now.” The fact that Afghan forces are fighting to take back Kunduz is a good thing — they are doing what the U.S. military trained them to do. But that's all the more reason why pushing to draw down forces too soon would be catastrophic. Afghan forces still need U.S. backing if they are to be successful.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), chairman of the House Armed Services committee, noted, “The fall of Kunduz to the Taliban is not unlike the fall of the Iraqi provinces to ISIL. It is a reaffirmation that precipitous withdrawal leaves key allies and territory vulnerable to the very terrorists we’ve fought so long to defeat.”
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is optimistic about the Afghan forces' success, but noted a particular problem that has plagued operations for the last 14 years. During a recent news conference Ghani said, “The treacherous enemy is using civilians as a human shield.” That's why the government of Afghanistan cannot and will not simply bombard the cities.
Indeed, no responsible government would want to harm its own citizens in the quest for destroying the enemy, which is precisely why the U.S. military has been limited to targeted airstrikes and ground forces have been operating in a training and advisory role. To make matters even more difficult, the Taliban has taken to the streets and the mosques and told residents of Kunduz that they are safe. The residents are of course terrified — and torn between whether to trust the Taliban or risk being caught in the urban gun fire that will be coming soon.
The situation is more complex though. On the one hand we have the Taliban, which is notorious for looting, killing, enslaving and terrorizing the Afghan people. On the other hand, we have a morally bankrupt culture that is causing significant problems for our troops. One recent example is the revelation that there have been instances of “Bacha Bazi” — translated as “boy play” — being perpetrated by members of the Afghan armed forces.
Yes, sadly, the same Afghan forces that Americans have trained.
So what exactly is to be expected of U.S. military personnel who witness or discover the heinous act of a man raping a boy? Is the service member to do nothing, or is he to intervene?
One particular Green Beret, Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, chose to intervene — and was discharged from the Army for body slamming and beating an alleged child rapist. Martland’s team leader, Capt. Daniel Quinn, was also stripped of his command for being involved in the same incident.
We don't know all of the facts about this incident — whether direct orders were disobeyed or whether these soldiers went too far (if there is such a thing when dealing with a child rapist). So what is U.S. policy for its service members to respond to such egregious acts?
One recent report reveals that U.S. Marines and Soldiers have been instructed not to intervene in cases of sexual abuse. Yes, you read that right.
Which brings up another point. Sharia law, which is practiced in Afghanistan, forbids sodomy and sex before marriage. Yet it's happening and even being tolerated by the very people we have helped to put in positions of power. Is it any wonder the Afghan people can’t quite decide who to trust? The Taliban has cracked down on anyone engaging in “Bacha Bazi," but the Taliban cracks down on everything to the point of severe oppression.
So our troops are put in harm’s way to fight the Taliban while simultaneously being asked to ignore child rape coming from those we are supposed to be fighting alongside. Quite the dilemma.
Where are Obama and the top brass in the military on this? Why are they turning a blind eye to those who have been punished for intervening on behalf of young boys? For a sitting commander in chief who frequently speaks out against human rights violations, he certainly has not backed up his words with decisive action. Nope, he is still more concerned about fighting climate change and making sure homosexuals can serve openly.
Perhaps the main question should be this: Where do we go from here? Do we continue to fight the Taliban while simultaneously propping up morally bankrupt officials? This president certainly hasn’t shown any indication that he is willing to intervene, which is why he wants to withdraw all troops before he leaves office. It’s better for him to leave it to the next guy. Thanks, Obama — said no Afghan citizen ever.
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I wonder what the group thinks, should we keep back a significant force in Afg ?. Perhaps I hold the minority opinion, I think we should withdraw completely. My reasoning is as follows.
1. The US cannot keep a force there indefinitely, at some point we have to withdraw. Afg managed quite well without US forces in the past and will survive in the future too. Do we have any clear objectives that need to be met before we withdraw ?.
2. Its not clear to me, what our mission might be. At present even though we may control Kabul and a few big cities, the Talibs control much of the countryside. So apart from possibly providing law and order in Kabul, its not clear what else we are doing.
3. Training the Afg military seems silly to me. The indigenous Taliban do quite well without any US military training, who BTW we are unable to beat with all our superior training and weapons. Similarly, training the Afg military is not much use, unless we plan to give them advanced weapons or technology. The Afg rag tag army is no worse than the Taliban. The wars in that part of the world are fought with simple weapons and grit.
4. The only one who benefits from US presence are the Pakistanis, who extort protection money.
5. If the US withdraws, and another attack on the homeland is traced back to Afg, that would be the time to consider all options again.
6. The fear that the US vacuum will be filled by undesirable characters is to me a bogus. There are already undesirable characters in Afg/Pak, whom we don't control. Let them fight it out. Our current presence is not likely to prevent any undesirables from getting a foothold. ISIS is already making inroads and the Taliban are fighting them. So unless we plan to align with the talibs, we should get out.
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[youtube]https://youtu.be/aCbfMkh940Q[/youtube]
https://youtu.be/aCbfMkh940QQ
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http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/16/the-definition-of-insanity-is-u-s-afpak-strategy/ (http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/16/the-definition-of-insanity-is-u-s-afpak-strategy/)
The Definition of Insanity Is U.S. AfPak Strategy
The central problem confronting the United States in the region is no longer al Qaeda or the Taliban. It’s the Pakistan Army.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
October 16, 2015
The Definition of Insanity Is U.S. AfPak Strategy
Donald Trump is right: America’s leaders are stupid. They’re nothing but a bunch of losers. Well, at least when it comes to Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s the only conclusion to be reached following two big developments this week.
The first was President Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States will decelerate its military drawdown from Afghanistan. Instead of preserving only a small force of about 1,000 troops, the new plan will station 9,800 in the country until 2016 and 5,500 into 2017. Their mission will be limited to training Afghan forces and supporting counterterrorism operations. This will help promote, in Obama’s words, an “Afghan-led reconciliation process” leading to a “lasting political settlement” that will make Kabul “a stable and committed ally.”
If that sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. The new policy is at best a band-aid and — given the likely cost in blood and treasure — not a pain-free one. David Galula, the French military scholar who is the ideological godfather of the U.S. counterinsurgency, understood years ago that support from a neighboring country could easily sustain an insurgency. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan cannot succeed as long as the Pakistan Army continues to tolerate and sponsor the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other terrorist groups. The U.S. intelligence community has been saying precisely that for years.
At one level, Obama appreciates the problem. “Sanctuaries for the Taliban and other terrorists must end,” he said on Oct. 15, adding that he would discuss the matter with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif when he visits Washington next week. The White House and the U.S. foreign-policy establishment still believe that Islamabad just needs to be convincingly persuaded about the merits of cracking down on terrorist organizations.
But let’s cut the crap. The central problem confronting the United States in the region is no longer al Qaeda or the Taliban. It’s the Pakistan Army, which has always pursued its own objectives over those of the country it is meant to defend. The Army has a 40-year history of supporting terrorists against Afghanistan, India, and (more recently) Americans. Even in the absence of a smoking gun, there is little doubt that the Army and its intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, sheltered Osama bin Laden and protected Taliban leader Mullah Omar. This policy of supporting terrorism has been driven by a warped ideology, political imperatives, and corporate interests. The Army has long used Islamism and imagined foreign threats to consolidate its political primacy and shore up its commercial interests, which range from cement to telecommunications.
Sharif offers little help. Anti-government protests engineered by the Army in 2014 forced him to relinquish foreign and security policy to the military, in what many Pakistani commentators described as a “soft coup.” Today, few seriously believe that the prime minister calls the shots in Islamabad.
Why does the United States shy away from confronting Pakistan about its continued export of terrorism? The simple answer is nukes.
Why does the United States shy away from confronting Pakistan about its continued export of terrorism? The simple answer is nukes. Pakistan has been steadily increasing fissile material for its nuclear stockpile and now produces enough for between 16 and 20 warheads per year. Its justification was initially New Delhi’s nuclear program, except that India produces material for only around 5 warheads per year. India has a stockpile of an estimated 90 to 110 warheads in reserve; Pakistan is thought to have between 110 and 130 (though some experts believe it’s possible “to calculate a number twice this size”). But it’s not an arms race if only one party is racing.
Since seeking nuclear parity with India now has little credibility as an excuse, Pakistan has resorted to several flimsy reasons to justify its nuclear expansion. The one that gained the most traction blames an Indian Army doctrine, Cold Start, which would have involved punitive incursions into Pakistan following a terrorist attack. The Indian Army certainly considered Cold Start in 2004 — but the Indian military or government never formally adopted it. Pakistani strategists, many with ties to the military, have also blamed India’s defense spending, military modernization, and even its purportedly belligerent rhetoric as reasons for Islamabad to rely on nuclear weapons to compensate for the growing disparity between the two countries. These have never been more than convenient pretexts for a Pakistani nuclear arms buildup.
The real reason for Pakistan’s nuclear expansion isn’t India — it’s for blackmailing the United States. So fearful has Washington been of Pakistan’s nukes being sold, stolen, lost, sabotaged, or accidentally used that during George W. Bush’s administration, it reportedly spent as much as $100 million trying to secure the arsenal. Since 2001, the Pakistan Army has also received more than $20 billion in military support from the United States, even as it has continued to support groups like the Haqqani network that have killed hundreds of Americans. This is the greatest shakedown in history.
What makes this ploy all the more brilliant is that the blackmail victim doesn’t even realize it. Take the second major AfPak development of the week. According to the Washington Post’s David Ignatius and the New York Times’s David Sanger, the White House is considering relaxing controls on Pakistan’s access to civilian nuclear technology, equipment, and fuel in exchange for promises that it will limit its nuclear weapons program. (The White House has publicly downplayed the possibility of a deal.) As Ignatius hints, such an agreement is closely linked to Pakistani cooperation on Afghanistan, possibly a sweetener for Pakistan to bring the Taliban back to the negotiating table.
But even dangling the offer of “nuclear mainstreaming” — as advocates of the policy have described it — is an awful idea. Its the Iran deal part IIForget for a moment that Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism or that such a deal risks incentivizing bad behavior. The deal also continues the long track record of the United States raising Pakistani expectations and then not delivering, a history of disappointment that has long fanned anti-Americanism in the country. A nuclear agreement of this kind will face resistance from within the U.S. government, not to mention Congress, given Pakistan’s history of duplicitous nuclear proliferation. Even then, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the powerful 48-nation international nuclear cartel of which the United States is a member, will almost certainly veto it.
Furthermore, there is no guarantee that Islamabad will keep its end of the bargain. Washington would be helping Pakistan in the near term in exchange for a long-term commitment to limit its nuclear program, a promise that Islamabad has shown no prior interest in keeping. Ultimately, energy-starved Pakistan has far more to lose from its continued nuclear isolation than the international community has to gain from such a deal. The onus therefore is on Pakistan to show its bona fides — come clean about its past proliferation activities, stop supporting terrorism as a state policy, and adopt a stabilizing nuclear posture — before nuclear mainstreaming can even be considered. Finally, if such an agreement were to be realized, it would rock U.S. relations with India, which — despite a far better proliferation track record — had to jump through a number of legal, procedural, and political hoops between 2005 and 2008 to be allowed to import civilian nuclear technology, fuel, and equipment. The immense goodwill for the United States in India that was generated by that deal would be lost overnight.
The proposed agreement to mainstream Pakistan’s nuclear program and the failure to address the Pakistan factor in Afghanistan are, in Trump’s parlance, just dumb, dumb, dumb. The White House seems completely removed from South Asia’s political and security realities. It’s quaint, almost funny, that U.S. officials and experts still worry about a “rogue commander” with “radical sympathies” seizing control of a Pakistani nuclear bomb. The Pakistan Army radicalized and went rogue many years ago.
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I wonder what the group thinks, should we keep back a significant force in Afg ?. Perhaps I hold the minority opinion, I think we should withdraw completely. My reasoning is as follows.
1. The US cannot keep a force there indefinitely, at some point we have to withdraw. Afg managed quite well without US forces in the past and will survive in the future too. Do we have any clear objectives that need to be met before we withdraw ?.
2. Its not clear to me, what our mission might be. At present even though we may control Kabul and a few big cities, the Talibs control much of the countryside. So apart from possibly providing law and order in Kabul, its not clear what else we are doing.
3. Training the Afg military seems silly to me. The indigenous Taliban do quite well without any US military training, who BTW we are unable to beat with all our superior training and weapons. Similarly, training the Afg military is not much use, unless we plan to give them advanced weapons or technology. The Afg rag tag army is no worse than the Taliban. The wars in that part of the world are fought with simple weapons and grit.
4. The only one who benefits from US presence are the Pakistanis, who extort protection money.
5. If the US withdraws, and another attack on the homeland is traced back to Afg, that would be the time to consider all options again.
6. The fear that the US vacuum will be filled by undesirable characters is to me a bogus. There are already undesirable characters in Afg/Pak, whom we don't control. Let them fight it out. Our current presence is not likely to prevent any undesirables from getting a foothold. ISIS is already making inroads and the Taliban are fighting them. So unless we plan to align with the talibs, we should get out.
I don't know what we should do. It would seem that from lessons learned elsewhere, we should maintain a residual force. Before the abandonment in Iraq there was talk of keeping a base or two 'over the horizon' where we would have the ability to maintain some intelligence gathering and also respond more quickly as new threats emerge. We didn't do that and we were blindsided by predictable, subsequent events.
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One should probably not apply the lessons from Iraq/Libya to Afgh. After Saddam or Gaddafi, we left a power vacuum in governance, in Afghanistan there is unlikely to be any significant power vacuum. The Taliban and the Northern Alliance will remain, interference from Pak will continue with or without the US. Similarly ISIS is making inroads, with/without the USA.
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A highly reliable and very well informed friend tells me this is plausible:
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001577.html
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https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/21/the-afghanistan-land-bridge-is-finally-here-tapi-pipeline/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks
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The paki media often talks about sharing the bomb with Saudis, because its rumored that they funded the islamic bomb...Israel is not mentioned too often in paki media.
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I imagine not!
What do you think of the Tapi Pipeline?
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https://www.facebook.com/US.PoliceOfficers/videos/1521651484829723/
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India just built a new parliament bldg for the Afghans...., cost 90 million $
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/the-photo-blog/before-and-after-photos-of-afghanistans-parliament-building-that-india-has-rebuilt/ (http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/the-photo-blog/before-and-after-photos-of-afghanistans-parliament-building-that-india-has-rebuilt/)
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TAPI is tricky...perhaps China will invest and ensure security. The Chinese are already investing billions in Pak to develop Gwadar port, so as to have a back up to the Malacca straits for transport of oil. There are too many competing interests. India is however unlikely to support anything funded by China which develops Pak.
Something less well known is the plan for an undersea pipeline between Iran and India, bypassing the security issues of TAPI.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/539701/with-nuclear-deal-india-looks-to-iran-for-natural-gas/
(http://opstatic.com/img/usermedia/GQnwePeJjEmZZpyXsdibyA/w645.png)
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That is quite interesting!
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http://sofrep.com/45772/special-forces-soldiers-left-flapping-in-the-breeze-in-marjah-afghanistan/
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http://sofrep.com/45772/special-forces-soldiers-left-flapping-in-the-breeze-in-marjah-afghanistan/
Until we are ready to start winning wars, we need to stay out of them.
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ON Feb. 29 — a bad day for anniversaries — Pakistan executed my father’s killer.
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My father was the governor of Punjab Province from 2008 until his death in 2011. At that time, he was defending a Christian woman who had fallen afoul of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which are used by the Sunni majority to terrorize the country’s few religious minorities. My father spoke out against the laws, and the judgment of television hosts and clerics fell hard on him. He became, in the eyes of many, a blasphemer himself. One January afternoon his bodyguard, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, shot him dead as he was leaving lunch.
Mr. Qadri became a hero in Pakistan. A mosque in Islamabad was named after him. People came to see him in prison to seek his blessings. The course of justice was impeded. The judge who sentenced him to death had to flee the country. I thought my father’s killer would never face justice.
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Pakistan Braces for Violence After Execution of Governor’s KillerFEB. 29, 2016
But then, in the past few months, it became possible to see glimmers of a new resolve on the part of the Pakistani state. The Supreme Court upheld Mr. Qadri’s death sentence last October. Earlier this year, the president turned down the convict’s plea for mercy — which, at least as far as the law goes, was Mr. Qadri’s first admission that he had done anything wrong at all. Then on the last day of last month came the news: Pakistan had hanged Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri. How would the country — not the state, but the people — respond?
I spoke to my sister in Lahore and for a moment we dared to hope that Pakistan, which had suffered so much from Islamic terrorism, might turn a corner. A lot had happened in the five years since Mr. Qadri killed our father. There was attack after hideous attack. In December 2014, terrorists struck a school in Peshawar, killing 132 children. Was it possible that Pakistan was tired of blood and radicalism? Had people finally begun to realize that those who kill in the name of a higher law end up becoming a law unto themselves? Had the horrors of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria done nothing to dampen enthusiasm for Islamism? Perhaps. I hoped.
But when a BBC interviewer asked me about this, something made me equivocate. I said it was too early to say and that we should be careful not to confuse the hardening resolve of the Pakistani government with the will of its people. Mr. Qadri’s funeral was the next day. That would give a better indication of the public mood.
And so it did.
An estimated 100,000 people — a crowd larger than the population of Asheville, N.C. — poured into the streets of Rawalpindi to say farewell to Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri. It was among the biggest funerals in Pakistan’s history, alongside those of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the father of the nation, and Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister, who was assassinated in 2007. But this was no state funeral; it was spontaneous and it took place despite a media blackout.
As pictures emerged of the sea of humanity that coalesced around the white ambulance strewn with red rose petals that carried Mr. Qadri’s body, a few thoughts occurred to me: Was this the first funeral on this scale ever given to a convicted murderer? Did the men who took to the street in such great numbers come out of their hatred of my father or their love of his killer? They hardly knew Mr. Qadri. The only thing he had done in all his life, as far as they knew, was kill my father. Before that he was anonymous; after that he was in jail. Was this the first time that mourners had assembled on this scale not out of love but out of hate?
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And finally, I wondered, what happens when an ideology of hate is no longer just coming from the mouths of Saudi-funded clerics but has infected the body of the people? What do you do when the madness is not confined to radical mosques and madrasas, but is abroad among a population of nearly 200 million?
The form of Islam that has appeared in our time — and that killed my father and so many others — is not, as some like to claim, medieval. It’s not even traditional. It is modern in the most basic sense: It is utterly new. The men who came to mourn my father’s killer were doing what no one before them had ever done. As I watched this unprecedented funeral, motivated not by love for the man who was dead but by hatred for the man he killed, I recognized that the throng in Rawalpindi was a microcosm of radical Islam’s relationship to our time. It drew its energy from the thing it was reacting against: the modernity that my father, with his condemnation of blasphemy laws and his Western, liberal ideas, represented. Recognizing this doesn’t pardon the 100,000 people who came to grieve for Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, but it reminds us that their existence is tied up with our own.
Aatish Taseer is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Way Things Were” and a contributing opinion writer.
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http://intpolicydigest.org/2015/09/09/remembering-ahmad-shah-massoud/
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Foreign Policy is definitely a Democrat sympathizer, so , , ,
http://features.foreignpolicy.com/first-helmand-then-afghanistan/
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The last 2 weeks have been a time of tremendous national outpouring of support to the Modi govt in India. After decades of suffering from Pak mediated terrorism, Mumbai bombings, Parliament attack, and recently Pathankot and Uri bombings, India finally responded by carrying out textbook surgical strikes in Pak occupied Kashmir. Previous Indian govts have been timid because of Paki nuclear sabre rattling over everything. This is a game changer for the Indian govt and people, Pak's nucklear bombast will no longer deter, and the Paki generals have suffered a severe loss of face.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/india-pakistan-tensions-expanded-toolkit (https://www.csis.org/analysis/india-pakistan-tensions-expanded-toolkit)
India-Pakistan Tensions: India’s Expanded Toolkit
September 29, 2016
On September 28, the Indian Army initiated a military strike against terror camps along the Line of Control in Kashmir. The exact nature of this action, as well as its location, remains vague. But the “surgical strike,” as termed by India’s director general of Military Operations, has been embraced across India. This news comes a week after terrorists targeted an Indian Army base in Kashmir, leaving 19 Indian soldiers dead. It is unclear whether India’s military strike will lead to a further escalation of tensions with Pakistan. Even before the strike, however, India had been displaying an expanded set of options for dealing with Pakistan, compared to previous times of escalated tension such as 1999 and 2002.
In recent decades, both sides employed a fairly standard set of tools when tensions boiled over—ranging from expelling diplomats, cutting off transportation linkages, triggering troop mobilizations at the border, all the way up to combat operations such as the brief Kargil War in 1999. The usual barbs were traded in speeches during the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, though this is to be expected even during periods of relative calm between India and Pakistan.
However, following a number of recent provocations that India has linked to Pakistan-based militant groups, the government of prime minister Narendra Modi has employed a different set of tools to respond to these incitements. These tools may not be altogether new, but the fact that they have been the focus of India’s response to Pakistan’s incitements marks a different approach—one that surely has Islamabad on its toes.
First, India has shown a willingness to pull South Asia away from the traditional convening group, the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Founded in 1985, SAARC has never quite lived up to its potential, largely because its two largest members, India and Pakistan, have rarely been in a political position to work together. Earlier this week India announced it would withdraw from an upcoming SAARC meeting in Pakistan. India has refocused its regional connectivity efforts on sub-groupings that do not involve Pakistan, such as the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) Program, the Bay of Bengal Initiative on Multi Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), and the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) Initiative. To varying degrees, these groups have been able to move forward with new agreements that should increase connectivity and cooperation among interested South Asian nations. Several South Asian nations have conveyed concerns about Pakistan’s role in the recent attacks against India. Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Afghanistan joined India in announcing they would not join the SAARC summit in Pakistan in November.
Third, India has shown resurgent interest in strengthening ties with Afghanistan, creating a stronger link with the nation on Pakistan’s other major border. India has provided crucial development assistance to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. But over the last year India has looked to expand its work in new areas. Late last year, India agreed to provide four Mi-25 attack helicopters to the Afghan army—India’s first direct military assistance to Afghanistan. India has also re-committed to the development of Iran’s Chabahar Port, which will augment India’s connectivity to Afghanistan. The United States and India have also recently agreed to revive the moribund U.S.-India-Afghanistan trilateral discussions.Second, India has shown its increased capability to initiate strikes against militant groups outside its borders. In June 2015, Indian troops reportedly crossed into Myanmar to conduct a raid on a militant camp, less than a week after the militant group killed 18 Indian soldiers. While there has been some reasoned speculation that the raid may not have involved crossing into Myanmar territory, the signal to Pakistan was pretty clear—India had the ability to take a limited fight to militant camps.
Fourth, India is engaging the United States more aggressively than ever before on security cooperation. Recent highlights include the January 2015 “ U.S.-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region,” progress under the Defense Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI), the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), and the June 2016 “ Framework for the U.S. India Cyber Relations.” Engaging the United States has helped strengthen those American voices that have been calling for a reduction in military support to Pakistan based on our interest in strengthening relations with India. Such calls were far easier for Washington to ignore when we had little progress in our security relationship with India.
Fifth, India is reviewing its “Most Favored Nation (MFN)” trade policy towards Pakistan, in place since 1996. Despite positive noises, Pakistan has never reciprocated by granting India MFN. A cabinet decision on revoking Pakistan’s MFN status has been postponed, but is on the cards as another modest tool against Pakistan. As the Atlantic Council pointed out in its 2014 report, India and Pakistan: The Opportunity Cost of Conflict, most bilateral trade already takes place via third countries such as Dubai and Singapore. Still, revoking existing agreements is a fairly significant measure.
Sixth, India has hinted that it would consider altering the terms of its water sharing agreement with Pakistan under the 56-year old Indus Water Treaty. The Indus Water Treaty has often been highlighted as a rock of relative stability in India-Pakistan ties even when other aspects of the relationship hit various peaks and valleys. As we have seen within India’s own borders recently, restricting water can be a trigger for violence. So unilaterally altering a water sharing arrangement may be viewed as a particularly powerful escalation tool in a water-starved region. Still, India has signaled that such an action is under review.
While the Indian Ministry of Defence has stated it does not plan additional strikes, it is not clear whether the current tensions between India and Pakistan will escalate further. There is certainly little expectation that Pakistani militants, under varying degrees of control by Pakistan’s military, will be deterred from initiating further attacks. But the costs to Islamabad of supporting terrorism are increasing, and taking different forms than before.
Richard M. Rossow is a senior fellow and holds the Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
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arrested:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/afghan-girl-pakistan-arrest-identity-fraud_us_5810ca6ee4b08582f88d12cf
They use her cover shot as their flagship photo.
By the way, I wonder how she got green eyes. From a Russian or earlier British ancestor?
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My understanding is that Afghais, Iranians are caucasion (sp?) hence e.g. the name Iran "Aryan".
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I was discussing this here several years ago:
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Forecast
Until the Taliban and the government in Kabul arrive at a settlement to end the war, building the Afghan portion of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline will be difficult.
So long as India and Pakistan are at loggerheads over the contested Kashmir region, the pipeline will fail to improve relations between the two countries.
Even if the pipeline reaches fruition, the funds it generates will do little to boost Afghanistan's economic development.
Analysis
Afghanistan has found itself wedged between competing powers throughout its history. In the 19th century, the country became the playing field for the "Great Game," as the United Kingdom tried to defend its colonial holdings in India against Russia's creeping influence in Central Asia. Today, though the British and Russian empires have long since fallen, Afghanistan is still caught in the middle. But this time, its position presents an opportunity. At the country's eastern border, Pakistan and India are in the midst of an energy shortage that is hindering their economic growth. Meanwhile, just north of Afghanistan lies a wealth of natural gas deposits in energy-rich Turkmenistan.
Enter the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) project, a proposed 1,735-kilometer (1,078-mile) pipeline running from the Galkynysh natural gas field in southern Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. Once complete, the pipeline will transport a total of 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas each year (5 bcm to Afghanistan and 14 bcm each to Pakistan and India). At the same time, it could offer Kabul a rare chance to develop its economy — that is, if it ever gets off the ground. TAPI has been sidelined time and again since its conception in 1995, stymied in large part by Afghanistan's intransigent security problems. So long as these factors and other regional conflicts endure, TAPI will be little more than a lofty goal.
A Long History With the Taliban
The single biggest factor undermining the pipeline's progress is the Taliban insurgency. Still, despite their role in delaying the project, the Taliban have also lent their support to the pipeline over the years. After taking power in September 1996, the group began pursuing the endeavor as a way to boost economic growth. The Taliban started negotiations with Argentina's Bridas and the United States' Unocal, two international oil companies vying for the contract to build the pipeline across Afghanistan. As part of that process, the group sent a delegation to the United States on behalf of Unocal in 1997, making stops in Texas and the U.S. capital. President Bill Clinton's administration returned the visit, dispatching the assistant secretary of state for South Asia to Afghanistan, as well as Turkmenistan, to make the case for TAPI. For Washington, the pipeline represented an opportunity to challenge Russia's dominance in the newly independent Central Asian states by diverting the region's energy deposits away from Moscow and toward Europe and South Asia.
Kabul and Washington's plans soon went awry, however. Following al Qaeda's attacks on the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, Clinton launched Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan, which was harboring the jihadist organization. The project was derailed, if only temporarily. U.S. troops toppled the Taliban government in 2001, and the next year, the Afghan, Pakistani and Turkmen presidents signed a memorandum of understanding to begin work on a pipeline from Dauletabad gas field in Turkmenistan to Pakistan's Gwadar Port. (The project expanded to include India in 2008.)
Nearly 15 years after the agreement was signed, TAPI is still far from reaching fruition, though it has made some intermittent progress. The four countries behind the pipeline — slated to come online in 2022, four years behind schedule — held a long-awaited groundbreaking ceremony in Turkmenistan in December 2015. Then in November, the Asian Development Bank, along with Saudi Arabia's Islamic Development Bank, offered a combined total of $1.5 billion to finance the pipeline, easing the burden on Turkmenistan, which is footing 85 percent of TAPI's $10 billion bill. (The pipeline is particularly important to the former Soviet country now that Russia has stopped transiting Turkmen gas and China will not increase its imports.) Now, the TAPI Pipeline Co. — a consortium made up of Turkmengaz, Afghan Gas Enterprise, Pakistan's Inter State Gas Systems and GAIL India — is organizing roadshows in the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and London to raise additional funding.
A Self-Serving Proposal
In its current iteration, TAPI will skirt the edges of the Hindu Kush mountains in southern Afghanistan, crossing through the Taliban's strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar provinces. Though that course might seem to bode poorly for the pipeline's security, the Taliban have offered to help. On Nov. 29, the group announced that it would be willing to guard the TAPI pipeline in an effort to promote similar projects in Afghanistan's national interest. First, however, the Taliban's 15-year war with the Afghan National Army, backed by NATO forces, would have to come to an end. Judging by the spate of attacks that the group has launched around the country since September, peace appears to be a distant prospect.
Notwithstanding their long history with the pipeline, the Taliban likely had ulterior motives for offering their protective services. The group is strapped for cash. Though the sources of the Taliban's funding are hazy, it is generally accepted that they derive most of their revenue from drug trafficking and protection rackets. In addition, they receive as much as $200 million annually from charities and private donors in the Persian Gulf region. But as the war drags on into its 16th year, the civilian casualties of the Taliban insurgency are piling up, thanks to an increase in targeted killings, suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices. More than 11,000 Afghans were killed or injured in 2015 — more than in any other year since the United Nations began tracking civilian casualties in 2009 and a 4 percent rise from 2014. (The uptick correlates with the NATO drawdown in 2014, which enabled the Taliban to make considerable gains the following year, driving hundreds of thousands of Afghans out of the country in the process.) Disillusioned by the bloodshed, many of the Taliban's Gulf patrons are cutting down on their donations, straining the organization's finances. By proposing to guard TAPI, the Taliban were probably hoping to project a more moderate image to win back their donors.
But the group, which has attacked several other transnational projects through the years, would be just as apt to sabotage TAPI to gain leverage against the Afghan government as it would be to protect it. In 1999, the organization cut off the Helmand River's flow to Iran, causing a crisis in Iran's Hamun Lake region, and at the beginning of this year, Taliban militants attacked Kabul's main power supply, originating in Uzbekistan. Nonetheless, the group's involvement in TAPI will probably continue one way or another: The war will most likely end through a political settlement, whereby the Taliban would share power with the Afghan government.
Further Complications
Even if the fighting stops and the pipeline gets underway, the transit fees it generates will not be enough to boost Afghanistan's economic development as intended. Apart from its security problems, Kabul struggles with rampant corruption. Much of the almost $115 billion in reconstruction funding that the United States has funneled into Afghanistan since its invasion has vanished into the pockets of corrupt officials, according to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. The widespread government graft has aggrieved the public and, in turn, fueled the Taliban's recruitment campaigns. Beginning in 2008, the United States redoubled its efforts to combat corruption, but the problem continues. In fact, the United States' ambassador to Afghanistan listed corruption as the war's biggest failure. To ensure that funding for the pipeline — whether financing for its construction or transit fee payments — is properly allocated, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah must push through long-stalled reforms to strengthen the country's institutions.
Afghanistan's troubles are not the only factor stalling progress on the TAPI pipeline, though. Despite their mutual interest in the project, India and Pakistan are no closer to reconciling their differences, chief among them the contested Kashmir region. So long as that dispute goes unresolved, the simmering hostilities between Islamabad and New Delhi will spill over onto transnational projects such as TAPI. Since relations between India and Pakistan began to sour anew in July, for instance, India has repeatedly threatened to increase its water usage under the Indus Waters Treaty. Pakistan, meanwhile, has blocked its trade routes with Afghanistan twice this year, leaving hundreds of cargo trucks to pile up on both sides of the border for as long as two weeks. In light of these incidents, it is easy to imagine Islamabad using the TAPI pipeline to antagonize New Delhi or, for that matter, Kabul threatening to cut off Pakistan's natural gas supply.
TAPI has come a long way since it was first proposed, but it still has a long way to go. The countries involved in the project will need to address the problems that have held it up over the past 20 years if they hope to get it up and running by 2022. Otherwise, TAPI will be relegated to the realm of ambitious ideas.
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Bush badly handled Afghanistan. He left Obama a genuine fustercluck and Obama, who called Iraq the wrong war and Afghanistan the right war, if anything made it worse.
At this point I have no fg idea as to what we should do. I certainly would not be willing to put my ass there nor would I want my son there, but at the same time the costs of leaving seem to be huge.
http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/afghanistan-america%E2%80%99s-new-vietnam
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ISLAMABAD—Pakistan, often in the headlines for terrorism, coups and poverty, has developed something else in recent years: a burgeoning middle class that is fueling economic growth and bolstering a fragile democracy.
The transformation is evident in Jamil Abbas, a tailor of women’s clothing whose 15 years of work has paid off with two children in private school and small luxuries like a refrigerator and a washing machine.
For companies like the Swiss food maker Nestlé SA, such hungry consumers signal a sea-change.
“Pakistan is entering the hot zone,” said Bruno Olierhoek, Nestlé’s CEO for Pakistan, saying the country appears to be at a tipping point of exploding demand. Nestlé’s sales in Pakistan have doubled in the past five years to $1 billion.
Although often overshadowed by giant neighbors India and China, Pakistan is the sixth most-populated country, with 200 million people. And now, major progress in the country’s security, economic and political environments have helped create the stability for a thriving middle class.
More at https://www.wsj.com/articles/pakistans-middle-class-soars-as-stability-returns-1485945001
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ISIS recruits background in India...YA
IS suspects had formal schooling’
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT NEW DELHI: JANUARY 20, 2017 00:00 IST
UPDATED: JANUARY 20, 2017 04:25 IST
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The National Investigation Agency (NIA) said on Thursday that 80% of the persons arrested for alleged links to the Islamic State (IS) went to formal schools and only 20% had studied at madrasas (Islamic seminaries).
In one of the biggest crackdown in 2016, NIA arrested 52 persons for allegedly plotting terror attacks and being part of the banned outfit.
NIA said nearly half of the suspects were followers of Ahle Hadith (or Salafis/Wahabis who follow the puritan form of Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia) and 30% followed Tablighi Jamaat (Sunni Islamic movement). Only 20% were Deobandis (Islamic school based in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh) and none of them was from the Barelvi sect.
The NIA also said that 47 of the accused were from the Sunni sect of Islam and five had converted from Hinduism and Christianity.
Elaborating, an NIA official said four persons converted from Christianity to Islam and one converted from Hinduism to join the Islamic State.
All the five accused belong to Kochi in Kerala.
Twenty-eight of the 52 arrested persons were aged between 18 and 25, twenty were in the 25-40 age bracket and four were aged 40 and above.
An analysis of their educational qualification indicated that 20 were graduates and had professional degrees, 12 were diploma holders, 13 had done their matriculation, four studied till the senior secondary level and three were post graduates.
Thirty were from the middle income group, nine from upper middle income group and 13 from the lower income group.
The highest number — twelve each — belonged to Maharashtra and Telangana. Eleven were from Kerala, five from Karnataka, four from Uttar Pradesh, two from Rajasthan, three from Tamil Nadu and one each from Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.
Of the 52 persons arrested for plotting terror attacks, only 20% had studied at madrasas, says NIA
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Analysis
Editor's Note: The following piece is part of an occasional series in which Fred Burton, Stratfor's chief security officer, reflects on his storied experience as a counterterrorism agent for the U.S. State Department.
By Fred Burton
When it comes to combating terrorism, Pakistan is an indispensable ally for the United States. But as the two countries' checkered history shows, it is also an unreliable one.
Pakistan seems to be a constant center of terrorism and chaos. The Taliban and al Qaeda have long been present in the country. Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden even hid out in his compound in Abbottabad, a stone's throw away from a military training compound, before Navy SEAL Team 6 took him out in a 2011 raid. Pakistani officials have denied that they knew about bin Laden's presence. But for those of us who have spent time in the world of counterterrorism, it's hard to believe that one of the world's most wanted people lived in the city for years without being detected by the Pakistani government or its intelligence agencies.
The raid took place only when CIA suspicions about the terrorist leader's whereabouts were confirmed by a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi. He used a fake vaccine campaign to obtain samples of the bin Laden family's DNA, pointing U.S. forces to the compound. For his role in the affair, Afridi was convicted by Pakistan of treason and is currently serving a long prison sentence. Afridi became a cause celebre after U.S. President Donald Trump made a campaign promise to have him freed. But when Pakistan reacted angrily to the suggestion, it became another bone of contention between uneasy allies.
Pakistan's turbulent history also includes a pattern of violence toward its leaders, who have been targets of numerous assassination attempts. In 1988, the mysterious crash of a U.S.-made C-130 claimed the life of President Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq and many of his top generals, along with U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Herbert Wassom and U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel. Over a decade later, President Pervez Musharraf survived several attempts on his life. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was not so lucky; she was killed in a bombing in late 2007.
In the late 1980s, I was part of a small U.S. team sent to investigate the crash of Zia-ul-Haq's C-130, a tricky case made more complex by the atmosphere we found in Pakistan. First, Zia-ul-Haq belonged to the Pakistani army, but the country's air force was the branch tasked with coordinating our investigation. As in any nation's armed forces, interbranch rivalries ran deep there. From the first briefing with Pakistani officials, it was clear that they had preconceived notions about the cause of the crash, creating immediate friction with our small team. To make an uncomfortable situation even worse, they closely watched our every move.
As an investigator, I strove to rule in or out the variables that could have caused the crash, such as sabotage, catastrophic mechanical failure or weather. Granted, the event was traumatic to Pakistan; after all, it had lost its president. But it was also unnerving for the Diplomatic Security Service. We had lost our ambassador and a brigadier general. In fact, before Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed in Benghazi, Raphel was the last U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty.
Pakistan's cooperation with the United States on that case and others has not stopped militant groups from festering in the country, despite Islamabad's campaign against them. Pakistan's hard-line Islamist factions and long-running disputes with India provide a breeding ground for militancy, and Islamabad has even had a hand in fostering groups that later committed acts of terrorism.
The recent house arrest of Hafiz Saeed demonstrates the duality of Pakistan's relationship with the United States when it comes to terrorism. As Pakistan's competition with India over Kashmir heated up in the 1990s, its intelligence services supported the development of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the armed wing of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa Islamic charity Saeed had founded. Since being turned loose in Kashmir to harass Indian troops, Lashkar-e-Taiba has pursued its jihadist agenda in other regions as well, targeting Americans among other victims.
Saeed himself is the accused mastermind of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which killed 166 people, including six U.S. citizens. The U.S. government offered a $10 million reward for his arrest and conviction for the attacks, which targeted several hotels. Despite the price on his head, Saeed continued to live openly in Pakistan, even giving occasional press conferences. That is, until he was placed under house arrest by Pakistani authorities in late January.
Why the change of heart? It could be to ensure that the new U.S. administration continues to funnel military aid to Pakistan, or to avoid being added to the list of countries with a U.S. travel ban. It could also be a sign of a larger shift in Pakistani politics. Islamabad's reasons are rarely straightforward. Either way, it's unlikely that the Pakistani government is motivated by the prospect of the reward, offered through the State Department's Rewards for Justice program, since states are not eligible to cash in on it.
The one constant I've learned over the years is that Pakistan is key to our silent and sometimes violent war on terrorism. The success of the fight also depends on the continued cooperation of men and women with Afridi's courage. I trust that the Trump administration is working behind the scenes to secure his release. Because if anyone deserves a State Department reward for helping run a terrorist to ground, it's him.
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Fred Burton spelled enemy wrong.
Analysis
Editor's Note: The following piece is part of an occasional series in which Fred Burton, Stratfor's chief security officer, reflects on his storied experience as a counterterrorism agent for the U.S. State Department.
By Fred Burton
When it comes to combating terrorism, Pakistan is an indispensable ally for the United States. But as the two countries' checkered history shows, it is also an unreliable one.
Pakistan seems to be a constant center of terrorism and chaos. The Taliban and al Qaeda have long been present in the country. Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden even hid out in his compound in Abbottabad, a stone's throw away from a military training compound, before Navy SEAL Team 6 took him out in a 2011 raid. Pakistani officials have denied that they knew about bin Laden's presence. But for those of us who have spent time in the world of counterterrorism, it's hard to believe that one of the world's most wanted people lived in the city for years without being detected by the Pakistani government or its intelligence agencies.
The raid took place only when CIA suspicions about the terrorist leader's whereabouts were confirmed by a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi. He used a fake vaccine campaign to obtain samples of the bin Laden family's DNA, pointing U.S. forces to the compound. For his role in the affair, Afridi was convicted by Pakistan of treason and is currently serving a long prison sentence. Afridi became a cause celebre after U.S. President Donald Trump made a campaign promise to have him freed. But when Pakistan reacted angrily to the suggestion, it became another bone of contention between uneasy allies.
Pakistan's turbulent history also includes a pattern of violence toward its leaders, who have been targets of numerous assassination attempts. In 1988, the mysterious crash of a U.S.-made C-130 claimed the life of President Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq and many of his top generals, along with U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Herbert Wassom and U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel. Over a decade later, President Pervez Musharraf survived several attempts on his life. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was not so lucky; she was killed in a bombing in late 2007.
In the late 1980s, I was part of a small U.S. team sent to investigate the crash of Zia-ul-Haq's C-130, a tricky case made more complex by the atmosphere we found in Pakistan. First, Zia-ul-Haq belonged to the Pakistani army, but the country's air force was the branch tasked with coordinating our investigation. As in any nation's armed forces, interbranch rivalries ran deep there. From the first briefing with Pakistani officials, it was clear that they had preconceived notions about the cause of the crash, creating immediate friction with our small team. To make an uncomfortable situation even worse, they closely watched our every move.
As an investigator, I strove to rule in or out the variables that could have caused the crash, such as sabotage, catastrophic mechanical failure or weather. Granted, the event was traumatic to Pakistan; after all, it had lost its president. But it was also unnerving for the Diplomatic Security Service. We had lost our ambassador and a brigadier general. In fact, before Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed in Benghazi, Raphel was the last U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty.
Pakistan's cooperation with the United States on that case and others has not stopped militant groups from festering in the country, despite Islamabad's campaign against them. Pakistan's hard-line Islamist factions and long-running disputes with India provide a breeding ground for militancy, and Islamabad has even had a hand in fostering groups that later committed acts of terrorism.
The recent house arrest of Hafiz Saeed demonstrates the duality of Pakistan's relationship with the United States when it comes to terrorism. As Pakistan's competition with India over Kashmir heated up in the 1990s, its intelligence services supported the development of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the armed wing of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa Islamic charity Saeed had founded. Since being turned loose in Kashmir to harass Indian troops, Lashkar-e-Taiba has pursued its jihadist agenda in other regions as well, targeting Americans among other victims.
Saeed himself is the accused mastermind of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which killed 166 people, including six U.S. citizens. The U.S. government offered a $10 million reward for his arrest and conviction for the attacks, which targeted several hotels. Despite the price on his head, Saeed continued to live openly in Pakistan, even giving occasional press conferences. That is, until he was placed under house arrest by Pakistani authorities in late January.
Why the change of heart? It could be to ensure that the new U.S. administration continues to funnel military aid to Pakistan, or to avoid being added to the list of countries with a U.S. travel ban. It could also be a sign of a larger shift in Pakistani politics. Islamabad's reasons are rarely straightforward. Either way, it's unlikely that the Pakistani government is motivated by the prospect of the reward, offered through the State Department's Rewards for Justice program, since states are not eligible to cash in on it.
The one constant I've learned over the years is that Pakistan is key to our silent and sometimes violent war on terrorism. The success of the fight also depends on the continued cooperation of men and women with Afridi's courage. I trust that the Trump administration is working behind the scenes to secure his release. Because if anyone deserves a State Department reward for helping run a terrorist to ground, it's him.
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Thanks, the question that needs to be asked is: what advantage is there for Pak to reform themselves ?, it will be a big loss for them.
Why Pak does not want reform:. If there was no worldwide terrorism emanating from Pak, their importance to the US would diminish, Coalition Support Funds would go down, and the paki army cant have that. The paki army is perhaps the only army in the world which does everything except fight and win wars. They run sugar mills, flour mills, textiles most aspects of Pak business. When the Army Chief retires he gets a huge land allottment for building a farm house ofcourse. Land allottments are not just for the Chief, but lower ranks too, just smaller size land plots. So pak plays truant and the US obliges by becoming their sugar daddy. US support for Pak has a historic basis from the time, when India was aligned with Russia and the US wanted to support Pak to maintain balance of power. I think the US is getting tired of this game and support to Pak is declining, iron brother China is becoming their new sugar daddy. US interests align with those of India, especially to maintain balance of power with China. I expect this trend to continue.
Why there can be no peace with India: Traditionally Pak army has created the India bogey, because without India as an enemy, there is really no reason for them to exist, and their budget would be in the 1.5% range. So with the constant threat of India they have a huge budget (no one knows how much, perhaps 15-20 % with all their businesses). The problem with this is, the pak army sucks most of the money away and there is nothing left for education, health and infrastructure investment. So every year the country becomes more backward, foreign investment falls and the Paki army needs a bigger share to maintain their lifestyle.
Changes with new pak army chief, Bajwa: The outgoing pak army chief, raheel shareef had a congenital hatred of India, he was a sunni muslim. Fortunately he did not get an extension (that's another story), in the power play with prime minister nawaz shareef. Nawaz Shareef played a master card by making Bajwa the new army chief. The rumour is that Bajwa is not a sunni muslim, but a qadiani (Ahmedi sect of Islam, which is not recognized as muslim by Pak, its a blasphemy to be an Ahmedi). Infact, some of his relatives are known qadianis and perhaps even his father was a qadiani. However, a qadiani cannot be army chief, so Bajwa claims to be sunni muslim. Sort of like Obummer being a closet muslim with sympathies towards the religion of peace. What ever the truth, he seems to be moderate and right from the start has made peace overtures to India. Recently he put the terrorist Hafeez saeed under house arrest (mumbai blast master mind). It is not clear, why he is doing that. Is it a genuine peace overture ?, concern that Trump might ban Paki muslims, or perhaps pressure from China (since Indo-China relations are going downhill because of terror from Pak, and the Chinese blocking India's entry to NSG). What ever the reason, no one in India believes in reformation by Pak. We have been down this road too many times to know that paki good behaviour never lasts. Infact if relations start to improve, the ISI arranges for a bomb blast in India, which immediately suts down any peace overtures. China's interest in ensuring paki good behaviour is their 50 Billion $ investment in the CPEC project which goes through Pak occupied Kashmir (territory claimed by India), for India can certainly create mayhem there. So interesting times ahead, a lot of plots with subplots in the story.
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http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/chinese-troops-afghanistan?utm_content=bufferd5e2d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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http://ijr.com/2017/03/822619-i-had-dinner-with-the-afghanistan-ambassador-what-he-said-about-the-differences-between-trump-obama-is-stunning/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Owned&utm_term=ijamerica&utm_campaign=ods&utm_content=Politics
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/29/us-gen-votel-russia-providing-weapons-support-tali/
I know that at some point the majority of our supplies to Afghanistan went through Russia. I'm guessing this is still the case.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/13/pentagon-us-dropped-largest-non-nuclear-bomb-in-af/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWTJNd05HRTFNRFl4TWpZMCIsInQiOiI5RXcxR3pTaWJVd1wvY1wvZ3NGZU5kTWlFeWYxamZua3hrNDk3bG9lXC8xZTRaZU8yNmVuU1NkcFlGMld2TWFjcjBjNkk4VXZucGNyNEt1dlN2Zm1xYlFxTloxc2NXbnE2VllDU1wvYklBbkFuZFBoVTU4TE05MUg5RGZWR2pObTRCVngifQ%3D%3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17lkdqoLt44&feature=youtu.be
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https://www.thebalance.com/cost-of-afghanistan-war-timeline-economic-impact-4122493 (https://www.thebalance.com/cost-of-afghanistan-war-timeline-economic-impact-4122493)
Cost of Afghanistan War: Timeline, Economic Impact
The Ongoing Costs of the Afghanistan War
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By Kimberly Amadeo
Updated March 14, 2017
The Afghanistan War was a military conflict that lasted 14 years (2001 - 2014) and cost $1.07 trillion. The Bush Administration launched it in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by al-Qaida. The United States attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan for hiding al-Qaida's leader, Osama bin Laden. It was the kick-off to the War on Terror.
The war's $1.07 trillion cost had three main components. First is the $773 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations funds specifically dedicated to the Afghanistan War.
Second is the increase of $243 billion to the Department of Defense base budget. Third is the increase of $54.2 billion to the Veterans Administration budget. Some of these costs are also attributable to the War in Iraq. But the true cost of the Afghanistan War should include the addition to these departments, even if some of the funds went toward both wars. For more on how to determine the actual cost of defense, see the U.S. Military Budget.
Timeline of Afghanistan War Costs
Here's a timeline of what happened each year. A table that summarizes these costs is below.
FY 2001 - $37.3 billion: Osama bin Laden authorized 9/11 attacks. President Bush demanded that the Afghanistan Taliban deliver bin Laden or risk U.S. attack. Congress appropriated $22.9 billion in emergency funding. On October 7, U.S. jets bombed Taliban forces. On December 7, the Taliban abandon Kabul, the capital. Hamid Karzai became interim administration head.
That same month, ground troops pursued bin Laden into the Afghan foothills. He escaped to Pakistan on December 16, 2001.
FY 2002 - $65.1 billion: In March, the U.S. military launched Operation Anaconda against Taliban fighters. Bush promised to reconstruct Afghanistan, but only provided $38 billion between 2001 and 2009.
Bush turned attention to Iraq War.
FY 2003 - $56.7 billion: In May, the Bush Administration announced that major combat ended in Afghanistan. NATO took over control of the peacekeeping mission. NATO added 65,000 troops from 42 countries.
FY 2004 - $29.6 billion: On January 9, Afghanistan created a new Constitution. On October 9, the U.S. military protected Afghans from Taliban attacks for their first free election. On October 29, bin Laden threatened another terrorist attack.
FY 2005 - $47.4 billion: On May 23, Bush and Karzai signed an agreement allowing U.S. military access to Afghan military facilities in return for training and equipment. Six million Afghans voted for national and local councils. Three million voters were women.
FY 2006 - $29.9 billion: The new Afghanistan government struggled to provide basic services, including police protection. Violence increases. The United States criticized NATO for not providing more soldiers.
FY 2007 - $57.3 billion: Allies assassinated a Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah.
FY 2008 - $87.7 billion: Violence escalated in Afghanistan after U.S. troops accidentally killed civilians.
FY 2009 - $100 billion: President Obama took office. He sent 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan in April.
He promised to send another 30,000 in December. He named Lt. General McChrystal as the new commander. Obama's strategy focused on attacking resurgent Taliban and al-Qaida forces on the Pakistan border. That added $59.5 billion to Bush's FY 2009 budget. He promised to withdraw all troops by 2011. Voters reelected Karzai amidst accusations of fraud.
FY 2010 - $112.7 billion: NATO sent surge forces to fight the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. NATO agreed to turn over all defense to Afghan forces by 2014. Obama replaced McChrystal with General Petraeus. Afghanistan held parliamentary elections amidst charges of fraud.
FY 2011 - $110.4 billion: Special Forces took out Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011. Obama announced he would withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and 23,000 by the end of 2012.
The United States held preliminary peace talks with Taliban leaders. (Source: Amy Belasco, "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11," Table A1. Congressional Research Service, March 29, 2014.)
FY 2012 - $105.1 billion: Obama announced the withdrawal of another 23,000 troops from Afghanistan in the summer, leaving 70,000 troops remaining. Both sides agreed to hasten U.S. troop withdrawal to 2013. Their presence had become unwelcome. The Taliban canceled U.S. peace talks.
FY 2013 - $53.3 billion: U.S. forces shifted to a training and support role. The Taliban reignited peace negotiations with the United States, causing Karzai to suspend his U.S. negotiations.
FY 2014 - $80.2 billion: Obama announced final U.S. troop withdrawal, with only 9,800 remaining at the end of the year. (Source: "Afghanistan War," Council on Foreign Relations. "Major Events in the Afghanistan War," The New York Times.)
FY 2015 - $60.9 billion: Troops trained Afghan forces. (Source: DoD 2015 OCO Amendment)
FY 2016 - $30.8 billion: The DoD requested funds for training efforts in Afghanistan as well as training and equipment for Syrian opposition forces. It also included support for NATO and responses to terrorist threats. (Source: DoD 2016 OCO Amendment)
FY 2017 - $5.7 billion: The DoD requested $58.8 billion for Operation Freedom Sentinel in Afghanistan, Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq and the Levant, increased European support and counterterrorism. (Source: DoD 2017 OCO Amendment.)
[RP1]I agree it’s okay not to spell this out.
Afghanistan War Costs Summary Table (in billions)
FY Cost of Afghanistan War DoD Budget Increase VA Budget Increase Total Boots on Ground* Comments
2001 $29.3 $6.5 $1.5 $37.3 9,700 9/11. Taliban falls.
2002 $22.8 $40.8 $1.5 $65.1 9,700
2003 $68.4 $36.7 $2.6 $56.7 13,100 NATO enters.
2004 $92.1 $11.6 $2.6 $29.6 18,300 1st vote.
2005 $99.8 $23.6 $3.1 $47.4 17,821 Karzai agreement.
2006 $114.7 $10.5 $0.7 $29.9 20,502 Violence rises.
2007 $161.9 $20.9 $5.3 $57.3 24,780
2008 $182.9 $47.5 $1.2 $87.7 32,500
2009 $149.1 $34.2 $9.8 $100.0 69,000 Obama surge.
2010 $158.9 $14.7 $3.9 $112.7 96,900 NATO surge.
2011 $153.3 $0.3 $3.3 $110.4 94,100 Bin Laden killed.
2012 $120.9 $2.2 $2.3 $105.1 65,800 Troop drawdown.
2013 $93.3 -$34.9 $2.6 $53.3 43,300
2014 $82.2 $0.8 $2.0 $80.2 32,500 Troops leave.
2015 $63.1 $1.0 $1.8 $60.9 9,100 U.S. trains Afghan troops.
2016 N/A $24.3 $6.5 $30.8 8,370
2017 N/A $2.2 $3.5 $5.7 N/A
TOTAL $773.0 $243.0 $54.2 $1,070.2
*Boots on Ground is the number of troops in Iraq. From 2001 through 2013, it's as of December of that year. 2014 - 2017 is as of May. (Source: "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11," Table A-1. Amy Belasco, Congressional Research Service, March 29, 2014.) Boots on Ground for 2015 is for the fourth quarter and 2016 is from the second quarter. (Source: Heidi M. Peters, "Department of Defense Contractor and Troop Levels in Iraq and Afghanistan: 2007-2016," Table 3. Congressional Research Service, August 15, 2016. "Historical Tables," OMB.)
Cost of the Afghanistan War to Veterans
The real cost of the Afghanistan War is more than the $1.06 trillion added to the debt. First, and most important, is the cost borne by the 2,350 U.S. troops who died, the 20,092 who suffered injuries, and their families. (Source: "Total Deaths KIA," Department of Defense, January 13, 2017.) For details on these casualties, see iCasualties.org.
Improvements in battlefield medicine meant that more than 90 percent of soldiers wounded in Afghanistan survived. That's better than the Vietnam War's 86.5 percent track record. Unfortunately, that also means these veterans and their families now must live with the effects of permanent and grave damage. More than 320,000 of soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq have Traumatic Brain Injury that causes disorientation and confusion. Of those, 8,237 suffered severe or invasive brain injury. In addition, 1,645 soldiers lost all or part of a limb. More than 138,000 have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They experience flashbacks, hypervigilance and difficulty sleeping.
On average, 20 veterans commit suicide each day according to a 2016 VA study. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) found that 47 percent of its members knew of someone who had attempted suicide after returning from active duty. The group considers veteran suicide to be its number one issue. (Source: "A Guide to U.S. Military Casualty Statistics: Operation New Dawn, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom," Congressional Research Service, Hannah Fischer, February 19, 2014. "Veterans Group to Launch Suicide Prevention Campaign," Washington Post, March 24, 2014.)
The cost of veterans’ medical and disability payments over the next 40 years will be more than $1 trillion. That's according to Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “The cost of caring for war veterans typically peaks 30 to 40 years or more after a conflict,” Bilmes said. (Source: "Costs of War," Watson Institute at Brown University, September 2016. "Iraq War Lives on as Second-Costliest U.S. Conflict Fuels U.S. Debt," BusinessWeek, January 3, 2012. "Final U.S. Troops Leave Iraq," Bloomberg, March 19, 2013).
Cost to Economy
The Afghanistan War cost more than the $738 billion inflation-adjusted dollars spent on the Vietnam War. It's second only to the $4.1 trillion inflation-adjusted dollars spent during World War II.
Unlike earlier wars, most American families did not feel impacted by the Afghanistan War. Unlike the Vietnam War and World War II, there was no draft. There was no tax imposed to pay for the war.
As a result, those who served and their families bore the brunt. It will cost them at least $300 billion over the next several decades to pay for their injured family members. That doesn't include lost income from jobs they quit to care for their relative.
Future generations will also pay for the addition to the debt. Researcher Ryan Edwards estimated that the United States incurred an extra $453 billion in interest on the debt to pay for the wars in the Middle East. Over the next 40 years, these costs will add $7.9 trillion to the debt. (Source: "Costs of War," Watson Institute, September 2016.)
Companies, particularly small businesses, were disrupted by National Guard and Reserve call-ups. The economy has also been deprived of the productive contributions of the service members killed, wounded or psychologically traumatized.
There's also the opportunity cost in terms of job creation. Every $1 billion spent on defense creates 8,555 jobs and adds $565 million to the economy. That same $1 billion in tax cuts stimulate enough demand to create 10,779 jobs and puts $505 million into the economy as retail sales. The same $1 billion in spent on education adds $1.3 billion to the economy and creates 17,687 jobs.
Causes
Why did the United States start a war in Afghanistan? The Bush administration wanted to eliminate the terrorist threat of al-Qaida's leader, Osama bin Laden. It also wanted to remove the Taliban from power since they provided refuge for bin Laden.
Al-Qaida had been in Afghanistan since the Taliban came to power in 1996. Before that, al-Qaida had operated in Pakistan's mountainous western border. It returned to Pakistan when the United States ousted the Taliban in 2001. (Source: "Al-Qaida Backgrounder," Council on Foreign Relations, June 6, 2012.)
The Taliban grew out of Muslim opposition to the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. They came from the thousands of mujahedeen (holy warriors) that arrived from all over the world to fight the Soviets. Ironically, the United States supplied anti-aircraft missiles to the mujahedeen to stop the spread of communism in the Middle East. (Source: "The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan," PBS Newshour, October 10, 2006.)
When the war ended, these mujahedeen battled each other for control of the country. An Afghan contingent joined with Pashtun tribesmen to create the Taliban. They practiced a fundamentalist version of Islam called Wahhabism. The Taliban (which means student) had attended schools funded by Saudi Arabia.
The Taliban promised peace and stability. They controlled 90 percent of the country by 2001. They also imposed strict sharia law, such as requiring women to wear burqas. The United Nations Security Council issued resolutions urging the Taliban to end oppressive treatment of women. (Source: "The Taliban in Afghanistan," Council on Foreign Relations, July 4, 2014.)
Al-Qaida shared a similar fundamentalist Sunni Muslim ideology. The Sunnis believe that Shiites want to revive Persian rule over the Middle East. This Sunni-Shiite split is the driving force of tensions in the area. It is also an economic battle. Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran both want to control the Straits of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's oil passes.
The Taliban's support of al-Qaida came at a cost. It caused the UN Security Council to issue sanctions against Afghanistan. These sanctions, along with the Afghanistan War, led to the Taliban's downfall from power.
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:-o :-o :-o
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I read that the Russians are now supplying the Taliban.
With things as they are between the Russians and America now, I wonder what has happened to Russia being a route for us to supply our troops in Afghanistan?
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https://www.dawn.com/news/1335574/defence-budget-set-at-rs9202bn-for-fy2017-18 (https://www.dawn.com/news/1335574/defence-budget-set-at-rs9202bn-for-fy2017-18)
Pak discloses 19.7 % military spend in budget....its probably much higher....if you spend 20 % on the military, you need to create a few bogies, namely India and terrorism, ISIS etc to justify the spend.
Defence budget set at Rs920.2bn for FY2017-18
Dawn.comUpdated about 10 hours ago
1329 82
Pakistan's defence expenditure in the next financial year will be around 7 per cent higher than it was in the outgoing year to Rs920.2 billion, the government announced in Friday's Budget 2017-18 speech.
The PML-N government's total budget outlay for 2017-18, possibly its last year in power, was Rs4.75tr, out of which 19.36pc has been kept aside under the Defence Affairs and Services head.
The operating expenses for the armed forces have been allocated Rs225.5bn, while almost Rs322bn will be sent on salaries and renumeration. The armed forces will get Rs244bn for 'physical assets' and Rs128.35bn for 'civil works'.
The government will separately pay nearly Rs180bn in pensions to retired military officials and jawans. This does not count in the budget allocated to defence services.
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who presented the budget in Parliament, also announced a 10pc increase in the pay of all armed forced personnel as a 'special allowance' in recognition for their sacrifices in the ongoing conflicts across the country.
"I announce today that a 10pc will be given on the pay of all officers and jawans as special allowance. This allowance will be in addition to the increase in pay that will be announced," Dar said as he presented the Federal Budget 2017-18.
The Frontier Constabulary's jawans will also be given a fixed allowance of Rs8,000 per month, the government said. The special allowance and the fixed allowance are both separate from the defence budget.
The 'special allowance' was also topped up with a 10pc ad hoc increase in salaries for army personnel, along with other government employees.
Dar additionally said during his budget speech said the National Security Committee had recommended that 3pc of the provinces' Gross Divisible Pool should also be allocated to defence expenditures; however, the provinces have yet to get on board with this proposal.
"Large operations like Zarb-i-Azb require vast sums. This is our national duty against terrorism for which provision of resources is the responsibility of the entire nation," Dar urged during his Friday budget speech.
The government will also be launching a new scheme through the Central Directorate of National Savings (CDNS) for the welfare of families of martyrs.
Under this scheme, a guaranteed and enhanced profit will be given as a means of support for martyrs' families.
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The Pentagon's move to deploy more troops to Afghanistan, should U.S. President Donald Trump approve it, would be aimed at empowering the Afghan National Security Forces to eventually inflict enough casualties on the Taliban to encourage them to negotiate.
Until the factors that contribute to the conflict — including the Afghan forces' weakness and Pakistan's support for the Taliban — have been addressed, the prospects for ending the war will be dim.
Lax border enforcement between Afghanistan and Pakistan will ensure that militants continue launching attacks into both countries from the border regions, further complicating efforts to end the war.
The invasion routes into Afghanistan are well worn at this point in history. The pathways leading out of the country, on the other hand, are far less clear. This is the predicament U.S. President Donald Trump faces as he weighs the Pentagon's proposal to send up to 5,000 troops to Afghanistan to support the struggling Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in their 15-year war against the Taliban. If Trump approves the measure, Washington will escalate its involvement in a conflict that has so far lasted through two presidencies. The move would entail granting U.S. troops greater authority on the battlefield, and may well invite a commensurate personnel contribution from Washington's allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
But as much as the Afghan military could benefit from reinforcements — the Taliban are intensifying their attacks as part of the group's annual spring offensive — Washington understands that more troops will only accomplish so much. The reasons for the war's endurance are much deeper and more complicated than the number of boots on the ground. And until these underlying factors are addressed, peace will continue to elude Afghanistan.
Enfeebled Forces
One of the biggest issues preventing a resolution to the conflict is the Afghan military's weakness. The ANSF lost a key source of support in 2014 when President Barack Obama ordered NATO troops to draw down from Afghanistan. In the years since, the country's forces have struggled to contain the Taliban insurgency on their own while simultaneously grappling with organizational problems such as corruption, defections and a lack of leadership. The Taliban wasted no time in capitalizing on the security vacuums that resulted, and today the group claims some 40 percent of Afghan territory.
In light of the Taliban's gains, Gen. John Nicholson, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, requested a few thousand more troops in February. The Trump administration, which has so far been willing to delegate greater authority to the Pentagon to prosecute the war, looks likely to approve the request. Yet the president must also consider the political consequences of re-engaging the United States in a distant war when much of the U.S. electorate would rather focus on domestic affairs. Consequently, the troop increase, if approved, will be a modest one.
The measure aims to turn the stalemate in the ANSF's favor to keep it from losing the war altogether, even if it can't win. At the same time, the Pentagon hopes that more U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan will help the ANSF inflict a high enough cost on the Taliban that negotiations become a more appealing option for insurgent leaders than continued fighting. But as history has demonstrated, troops alone will not guarantee progress toward peace. After all, the presence of more than 100,000 U.S. military personnel on the ground in Afghanistan in 2010 couldn't persuade the Taliban to come to the negotiating table.
Internal Struggles
In some ways, additional U.S. forces in the country could further undermine the ANSF. The Taliban use the presence of foreign troops on Afghan soil to advance the narrative that their country is under occupation and to recruit new fighters to their cause. The group has also made the withdrawal of foreign forces a precondition for participating in peace talks. Despite the dangers of staying in the country, however, NATO forces understand that withdrawing troops from Afghanistan would be riskier still. The Taliban would likely take more territory — perhaps eventually claiming enough land to effectively reconquer the country. Though the United States is open to a power-sharing agreement that includes the Taliban in the interest of ending the war, it won't tolerate a government led by the group. After all, the last Taliban administration abetted transnational extremist organizations such as al Qaeda by hosting them on Afghan territory.
Afghanistan's mountainous terrain, meanwhile, defies unified governance and economic development alike, posing additional challenges to the peacemaking effort. The dearth of tax revenues makes it even harder for the central government in Kabul to project power in the country's hinterlands or, for that matter, to adequately fund its military. The country's complex milieu of ethnic groups, meanwhile, adds to the difficulties of governing. The current National Unity Government, for example, rests on a shaky compromise between President Ashraf Ghani, a member of Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, an ethnic Tajik. The Taliban have skillfully exploited Kabul's limited reach by installing shadow governors in provinces across the country and establishing courts to mete out justice in accordance with Islamic law. Until the central government has addressed its shortcomings, the Taliban will continue to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan as they wage their insurgency.
Friends in High Places
The Taliban, moreover, has a powerful ally on their side — and just across the border. Pakistan has admitted to hosting elements of the Taliban's leadership on its territory and even nurtured the organization during its infancy, helping the group sweep across southern Afghanistan on its way to conquer Kabul in September 1996. Islamabad's long-standing support for the Taliban reflects its own national security interests: Installing a government in Afghanistan that shares some of its priorities would enable Pakistan to guard against potential encirclement by its archrival, India.
Islamabad's strategy derives in part from its experience with the Bengali independence movement of 1971. India intervened in the conflict that ensued to help East Pakistan achieve its independence as Bangladesh. In the process, Pakistan lost a chunk of its territory and half its population. Islamabad is determined to keep the episode from repeating in its restive western territories along the Afghan border, including Balochistan in southwest Pakistan. The province is home to a secessionist movement whose exiled leaders have sought India's assistance in their campaign against Pakistan's government. Cultivating a relationship with the Taliban offers Islamabad a way to keep neighboring Afghanistan from falling into India's orbit by ensuring that it will have a say in the country's post-war future.
Crossing the Line
The Durand Line, the 2,430-kilometer (1,510-mile) border that separates Pakistan and Afghanistan, has historically facilitated this effort. The border, which cuts through the inhospitable terrain of the Hindu Kush mountains, is porous, enabling Islamabad to project influence into Afghanistan through its support for the Taliban. But after 15 years of war on the other side, the boundary's permeability has become more of a liability than a selling point for Pakistan. Militant inflows into the country have aggravated Pakistan's own internal security problems, prompting Islamabad to try to secure the border. As Islamabad clears the way for a merger between its Federally Administered Tribal Areas and neighboring Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, it is even putting up fencing along the Durand Line so that it can devote greater military attention to India.
But effective border management will require Afghanistan's cooperation — something that Pakistan is unlikely to secure. For one thing, the ANSF is already stretched thin in its nationwide fight against the Taliban. For another, by guarding the border, Afghanistan would be recognizing the Durand Line's legitimacy, which it has long contested. Enforcement along the boundary will remain lax, giving militants the continued leeway to launch attacks from the border regions into both countries — and further complicating efforts to end the war.
Beyond the number of soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, a complex set of factors underpins the conflict there. Even if a troop increase alters the stalemate in the Afghan government's favor, the ANSF and the Taliban will keep hammering away at each other until one of them relents. As the Taliban reportedly once put it, the United States has "the watches and we have the time." Trump will have to consider these factors as he decides whether to recommit his country to its longest-running war.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/world/asia/pakistan-prime-minister-nawaz-sharif-removed.html?emc=edit_na_20170728&nl=breaking-news&nlid=49641193&ref=cta&_r=0
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This article was written before NS got booted out, amazing nation...YA
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/219584-Not-a-single-PM-completed-five-year-term-in-Pakistan (https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/219584-Not-a-single-PM-completed-five-year-term-in-Pakistan)
Not a single PM completed five-year term in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: Will history repeat itself? Not a single prime minister in Pakistan has been allowed to complete his tenure since the country’s inception 70 years ago. All eyes are on the Supreme Court which is to announce one of the most important decisions of Pakistan’s history today regarding the fate of democratically-elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. History might repeat itself.
The political situation in Pakistan has had a bumpy ride ever since 1947, as four times democratic governments were thrown away by military dictators, one prime minister was murdered while another was hanged by judiciary, while many were sent home by presidents and one was dismissed by the Supreme Court. Another one awaits a decision of the apex court. However, never in the history of Pakistan, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has sent home a PM under Article 184-3 of the constitution which is the suo moto jurisdiction.
Pakistan’s first prime minister was murdered in Rawalpindi on October 16, 1951. He had assumed the charge of the premier on August 15, 1947. Then the second PM Khawaja Nazimuddin was sent home by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad on April 17, 1953. Nazimuddin knocked the doors of the Supreme Court where Justice Munir had to invent the doctrine of necessity to validate Ghulam Muhammad’s illegal act. Then came Muhammad Ali Bogra who too was dismissed by Ghulam Muhammad in 1954 but later was again appointed as PM but he did not enjoy majority in the Constituent Assembly therefore Governor General Iskender Mirza dismissed his government in 1955. Chaudhary Muhammad Ali succeeded in becoming the PM in 1955 but because of his conflict with Iskender Mirza who had become president as a result of 1956 constitution, Muhammad Ali resigned on September 12, 1956. Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy was the leader of Awami League and led the party through a victory in the 1954 elections for Constituent Assembly. He was the first person from another party than Muslim League to be appointed as a Prime Minister in 1956. He was deposed in 1957, due to differences with Iskander Mirza.
Ibrahim Ismail Chundrigar was appointed by Iskander Mirza after the resignation of Suhrawardy. He remained prime minister for almost two months. Chundrigar resigned from the post in December 1957. Then Mirza appointed Feroz Khan Noon as the seventh prime minister of Pakistan. He was dismissed after Martial Law was declared in 1958 by Ayub Khan.
After thirteen years of Martial Law, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto succeeded to power. Bhutto remained President under special arrangement till 1973 Constitution was passed. He resigned as president to become the prime minister of Pakistan after the 1973 Constitution. He went in to elections in 1977 and succeeded but was deposed the same year through coup d'état by General Muhammad Ziaul Haq in July 1977. He was hanged in 1979 by all powerful military-judicial nexus.
In 1985 non-party elections, Muhammad Khan Junejo was elected as PM of Pakistan under the worst dictators of Pakistan. As he was a political breed, he remained a threat to the dictator therefore his government was dismissed on May 29, 1988, just days after Junejo announced to probe the Ojhri Camp incident in Rawalpindi in which military’s weapons depot was exploded killing around 100 people and injuring thousands.
As a result of 1988 general elections, Benazir Bhutto came into power as PM on December 2, 1988. An impeachment move was shot down by PPP in 1989 but President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed Ms Bhutto’s government on August 6, 1990 using the notorious presidential powers of Article 58 (2)b. Mian Nawaz Sharif followed Ms Bhutto and become PM for the first time in 1990. His government was dismissed by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1993 but the Supreme Court restored it later. However, the famous Kakar formula came into play when the then Army Chief Waheed Kakar forced both, Mian Nawaz Sharif and Ghulam Ishaq Khan to resign on July 18, 1993.
Ms Benazir Bhutto again became PM of Pakistan in 1993 but her second government also could last three years and his own handpicked loyal president Farooq Laghari conspired against her and dismissed her government in November 1996 using Article 58(2)b. Mian Nawaz Sharif again became PM of Pakistan as a result of February 1997 election but on October 12, 1999, General Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency in the country and threw Nawaz Sharif out of the power.
Then three PMs under the dictator Musharraf served the office, of which Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali could hold the office for 19 months only and was sent home by Musharraf. Chaudhary Shujaat acted as a stopgap arrangement for two months before Musharraf’s friend Shaukat Aziz became PM in August 2004.
As a result of 2008 general elections, PPP succeeded to secure majority in the National Assembly and Yusuf Raza Gilani was elected as the PM. It was all well for Mr Gilani until he was convicted in a contempt of court case in Supreme Court for not writing a letter against the sitting president to the Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases. Gilani remained PM of Pakistan from March 25, 2008 to June 19, 2012. The remaining term of PPP government was completed by Raja Pervaiz Ashraf who held the office from June 2012 to March 2013.
Mian Nawaz Sharif became the PM for the third time in 2013 but as he entered the last year of his tenure, he has been engulfed by Panama Papers case in Supreme Court. The SC will announce an important judgment on Friday (today) which will decide the fate of Nawaz Sharif. Will the history repeat itself and no PM in the past 70 years would be able to complete his tenure? The answer is yet to come. Fingers are crossed.
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As the newest administration in Washington hammers out a strategy for the war in Afghanistan, a rift has opened among U.S. policymakers about how to proceed. On one side is the Pentagon, which has proposed sending up to 3,900 troops to the conflict-ridden country. If approved, the move would escalate the United States' involvement in the war, which began over 15 years ago. On the other side of the debate is the White House, where reports have emerged of calls to draw down the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. War fatigue, spurred by an unwillingness to wade deeper into a feud whose resolution eluded the administrations of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, is clearly setting in.
Acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Central Asia Alice Wells will lead a delegation to the capitals of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India on Aug. 2 to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump's South Asia strategy. It will be the second American delegation to visit these areas in the past month, after U.S. Sen. John McCain led a congressional delegation to Islamabad and Kabul in early July. Despite expectations that its Afghanistan strategy would be revealed in mid-July, it appears that the Trump administration is still mulling its options.
A troop increase would help the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, which currently number 352,000 troops, break their ongoing stalemate with the resilient Taliban. If deployed, the U.S. forces would support Washington's two ongoing missions in Afghanistan: Operation Resolute Support, which is led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and focuses on training, advising and assisting the Afghan military, and Operation Freedom's Sentinel, a counterterrorism mission targeting al Qaeda and the Islamic State's Khorasan chapter. By contrast, a troop decrease would satisfy U.S. lawmakers eager to pull out of the conflict. But with the Afghan army already straining to keep the Taliban in check on its own, withdrawing U.S. troops without compensating for their removal in some way would tip the scales in the Taliban's favor.
Regardless of which path the Trump administration takes, one thing is clear: The Taliban are winning. The militant organization continues to control or contest up to 40 percent of the territory in Afghanistan — a level of dominance that has spurred the Pentagon's request for more troops in hopes of inflicting enough damage to force the insurgents to lay down their arms and negotiate.
How Did We Get Here?
In December 2014, Obama ordered the end of Operation Enduring Freedom — the mission Bush launched in October 2001 in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and with it formal combat operations in Afghanistan. The decision moved the United States, along with its NATO and coalition allies, into a smaller supporting role for the Afghan military, which became responsible for fighting the war. But in the year following the drawdown, the diminished international troop presence had serious consequences on the battlefield. The Taliban conquered 24 district centers in 2015, compared with only four in 2014. Moreover, casualties (defined as deaths and injuries) saw a 37 percent increase in 2015 over 2014 — an uptick that particularly affected civilian women. 2015 was also the year that the Islamic State's Khorasan chapter formed in Afghanistan, injecting a new and destabilizing element of transnational jihadism into the conflict. Finally, September 2015 saw the Taliban briefly overrun Kunduz, marking the first time since 2001 that the group had taken control of a city.
These clear signs of trouble factored into Obama's decision in October 2015 to keep 9,800 troops in the Resolute Support and Freedom's Sentinel operations through January 2017. (This number was later modified to 8,400 troops.) In doing so, the president reneged on his promise to end the war before leaving office, passing the conflict on to his successor instead. So while Trump said little about Afghanistan on the campaign trail, his new administration has been paying attention to the moves of Gen. John Nicholson, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan. And during a congressional testimony in February, Nicholson requested a few thousand more troops, hoping to break the ongoing stalemate.
Washington is now weighing its options to determine whether it will fulfill that request. If it does, most of the U.S. troops deployed would join Operation Resolute Support to train, advise and assist the Afghan military. But they would do so at the brigade level rather than the higher corps level, meaning they would be closer to ground-level operations in Afghanistan. This move takes its cue from the Afghan Special Security Forces, which boast only 12,000 personnel and yet are considered the most effective of Afghanistan's combat forces. (They take advice from NATO down to the tactical level.) Fresh U.S. troops would also help to advance Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's military road map. His four-year plan, which includes strengthening the Afghan air force, calls for nearly doubling the number of Afghan special operations forces and placing them at the center of offensive operations, supported by conventional forces. The new U.S. troops would likely arrive during the summer fighting season that commenced on April 28 under the name Operation Mansouri, named for the slain Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour.
At its highest, the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan reached over 100,000.
The Pakistan Problem
The Pentagon's most recent six-month review of the war in Afghanistan revealed that Pakistan is yet another complicating factor in Washington's efforts to make real progress in the conflict. The report cited Nicholson as saying that the sanctuary Pakistan has given to the Taliban and Haqqani network presents the greatest external threat to NATO's counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan. Washington and Kabul have accused Islamabad of playing both sides in the conflict: While Pakistani forces continue to attack militant outposts in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan, Islamabad also has a reputation for hosting insurgents. In fact, Pakistan has admitted to harboring Taliban leaders before, and in 1994 the country was instrumental in nurturing the jihadist group during its infancy, supporting its eventual conquest of Kabul in September 1996.
Pakistan's rationale for helping the Taliban highlights its fundamental divergence from the United States on the matter of Afghanistan. Washington, for its part, remains committed to its goal of stabilizing the country so that extremist organizations cannot use it as a base for launching attacks against the United States or its allies. The White House supports an Afghan-led peace process, which would end the war by forging a political settlement between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Islamabad, however, views Afghanistan through the prism of its relationship with Pakistan's archrival, India. Islamabad's support for the Taliban rests on the expectation that if the group enters a power-sharing agreement with the Afghan government, it will serve Pakistan's interests by limiting India's presence in the country.
Of course, Pakistan is aware that India could respond by encouraging Pakistani secessionists in the borderland province of Balochistan, which would jeopardize the construction of Islamabad's flagship economic project, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. But Islamabad also believes that an Afghan government including the Taliban would naturally prioritize religious motivations and would not be interested in spurring the unification of the ethnic Pashtun regions on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. (In the 1970s, Kabul floated the idea of merging these regions into one state called Pashtunistan, an initiative that would carve a sizable chunk out of Pakistan's western territories.)
Aware of Pakistan's motives in Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis is pushing a strategy that would pressure Islamabad, by withholding aid and launching more drone strikes in and beyond the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, to take a more serious stance against jihadist sanctuaries. But there are limits to how much the United States can afford to alienate Pakistan, since it cannot resolve the Afghan conflict without Islamabad's help. Indeed, Washington's ultimate goal is to use Islamabad's cooperation to bring Taliban leaders to the table. But Pakistan, whose strategic imperative is to limit India's influence in Afghanistan, will keep supporting the Taliban and frustrating the United States' plans. As a result, an eventual end to the insurgency will largely depend on the Afghan military's ability to rein in the Taliban on its own.
A Murky Future
In the wake of more pressing foreign policy challenges, including North Korea's missile program and the Syrian civil war, the war in Afghanistan has become a lower priority for the United States. Should Washington give in to its war fatigue and pull its troops out of Afghanistan, it's unclear just how big the drawdown would be. Either way, the presence of fewer troops will force the United States to turn to other measures, such as a greater emphasis on special operations forces and drone strikes, to maintain in its missions in Afghanistan. If, on the other hand, the Pentagon succeeds in sending more troops, the increase will still be only modest, suggesting the United States is interested in conflict management rather than conflict resolution. Regardless of the path the Trump administration chooses, none seem designed to successfully end the war as it rapidly approaches its 16th year.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/05/world/asia/iran-afghanistan-taliban.html?emc=edit_ta_20170805&nl=top-stories&nlid=49641193&ref=cta&_r=0
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https://www.michaelyon-online.com/afghanistan-trump-going-in-circles.htm
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I am in no position to challenge Michael Yon's thinking, as he has ground experience. With that out of the way, I think he is giving too much credence to the multiple tribes as to why Trump cannot solve Af-Pak. Afghans have a few major ethnicities, eg Pashtun, Uzbek, Tajik and Hazaras. Each can have multiple tribes. For the most part, Pashtuns are the main ethnicity we need to be focussed on. For the first time an American President is listening to his generals, who identified the problem, i.e. Pakistan. He also got the second important part right, he has threatened to let India into Afghanistan (what pakis fear most). Trump can win this , if he does what he has threatened to do. If he fails it will be because he did not do what he said and listened to Pak supporters in the State department (Robin Raphael). The reason the US has failed is the sanctuary that Taliban get in Pak. Look at the picture below, its obvious, you need to get access to the underground sanctuaries (Pak), if you wish to solve the problem. So far the US has been playing whacka mole with the Talibs....YA
(http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/7/g/s/3/Whack-A-Taliban.jpg)
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A fair and reasoned opinion YA, to which I would add my particular refrain about peeling off Pashtunistan from both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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A fair and reasoned opinion YA, to which I would add my particular refrain about peeling off Pashtunistan from both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I also like Michael's analysis. I'm wondering if the Pashtuns are the good guys, the bad guys or just a separate group.
Bacha Bazi
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/an-afghan-tragedy-the-pashtun-practice-of-having-sex-with-young-boys-8911529.html
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To win in Afghanistan, we will need to do things differently, for several decades the US has supported Pak perfidies, Trump can be the agent of change, but I am not yet convinced that he will do what he threatens to do. The US will also need to change a few things, depending on what is important to the country in the long term. The Taliban can only hide, if they have access to sanctuary cities :-D in Pak, without that they are mince meat. Here are a few pain points for Pak.
1. $ aid, weapons aid needs to be stopped. Let them rely on Chinese weapons. CPEC will destroy Pak, there is no way that Pak can ever hope to pay back China. Watch what happened in Hambatonta port (Sri Lanka), which was built by Chinese aid. We have probably not discussed CPEC (Colonizing Pak to Enrich China) much, a major disaster for Pak in the offing. Pak will end up ceding land in Gwadar as a warm weather military port.
2. Take away major Nato ally status. That will hurt their H&D (honor and dignity) and continue to drone them as necessary.
3. Pak provides access to US military supply routes: This can be dealt with in two ways, direct rapproachment with Iran or a back channel negotiation with India who built Chabahar port and route to Afghanistan, for a direct and safer supply line to Afghanistan. This is an alternative to using Karachi or Gwadar port (Chinese built) in Pak. See map below. News reports suggest that the Chabahar route is now open.
(http://www.livemint.com/r/LiveMint/Period2/2016/05/24/Photos/G-iraqmap(modi)web.jpg)
4. Declare Pak as major terror sponsoring nation. They deserve that accolade more than any other nation. As of today, Pak's green passport is not welcome anywhere and there are only a few islands in the pacific which allow them visa free entry.
5. Finally, if the problem persists a decision needs to be made as to should Pak keep its nuclear weapons. Based on the risk of radicals getting traditional nukes or more likely small mass produced battle field nukes (tactical weapons that no one talks about), Pak needs to be broken (split). Pak has been broken once (1971 creation of Bangladesh), it needs to happen once more, for its far too powerful in its current configuration. The threat to break up Balochistan (independent country occupied by Pak) should be credible. Again not many are aware of the independence movement in Balochistan (topic for another day).
6. The previous US thinking of supporting Pak vis a vis India originates from the days of the cold war. Now China is the main competitor for India and the US and both countries interests converge. Pak is anyway under Chinese influence and has moved away from the US. Already their generals have shifted allegiance to China.
The US has a lot of pressure points in Pak, should Trump decide to use them...YA
P.S. I love the use of the word "Baccha bazi" by westerners...its a cute word thats very hard to translate in the cultural sense, even though its literal meaning is well understood by all.
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This is a longish report by ex-Pak ambassador to the US, Mr. Hussein Haqqani and Lisa Curtis from the Hudson Institute, as to how the US should deal with Pak. I note the very similar suggestions that I outline in my post above. The good ambassador is however no longer welcome in Pak!. In essence he suggests the stick when dealing with Pak and he commits the cardinal sin of recommending that Pak should forget inciting terrorism in Kashmir and instead focus on getting their own house in order. The only country that can save Pak, is India (via trade), but if they trade with India and peace reigns, why would they need the Pak army ?....and so the cycle of terror continues under the tutelage of the Pak army.
https://www.hudson.org/research/13305-a-new-u-s-approach-to-pakistan-enforcing-aid-conditions-without-cutting-ties (https://www.hudson.org/research/13305-a-new-u-s-approach-to-pakistan-enforcing-aid-conditions-without-cutting-ties)
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When rulers seek unslayable dragons to destroy, they should remember Elba. This tranquil, idyllic isle off the coast of Tuscany was, from May 1814 to April 1815, home to Napoleon Bonaparte. The British and their allies had exiled him there, leaving him to govern the island's 12,000 souls. The emperor, a title he was allowed to keep, enjoyed two splendid houses, a magnificent library, servants, a small army and the company of family and retainers. This was a life for a king, but small recompense for a man who sought to rule the world.
Rather than write memoirs of one of history's greatest dramas, Napoleon escaped. But, wrote biographer Philip Dwyer, "Napoleon left Elba not to save France, but to save himself from oblivion." As we now know, his decision to resume the fight against Britain proved to be a mistake. His country's humiliation followed at Waterloo, leaving thousands of his countrymen and their opponents dead or mutilated and forcing him to abdicate again. He ended his days, not in the congenial splendor of Elba, but on another island, Saint Helena, in the icy waters of the south Atlantic. He died there in 1821.
As I explored the grounds of Napoleon's Palazzina dei Mulini, I thought of U.S. President Donald Trump's recent decision to send another 4,000 American troops to Afghanistan. The United States' battles began there in 2001, ostensibly with the limited objective of removing Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda followers from the country. That was 16 years ago. Sending more soldiers to risk their lives in the South Asian quagmire would make sense if Trump's strategy differed from the doomed policies of the past. But it doesn't.
A Not-So-New Strategy
No one but a fool — and Trump is no more foolish than his predecessors in the long Afghan war — believes in a magic formula for the use of armed forces to win the war. The Taliban's members are Afghans. They have long received help from neighboring Pakistan and, recently, from its Shiite enemies in Iran. Thanks to geography, culture and language, Iran and Pakistan understand Afghan dynamics better than "the best and the brightest," as David Halberstam put it, from the Ivy League and Mar-a-Lago. I remember how Syria and Iran ran rings around the United States and Israel in Lebanon in the 1980s, to the point that Washington, which abominated Damascus, begged it to send troops back into Beirut in 1987.
Trump outlined a "new strategy" in his Aug. 21 speech. It consists, he said, of not mentioning "numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities"; integrating "all instruments of American power — diplomatic, economic and military"; and changing "the approach in how to deal with Pakistan." His disdain for complexity and diplomacy, which requires dealing with everyone involved on Afghanistan's plains — Pakistan, Iran, India, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, NATO and the Afghans themselves — does not bode well for peace. Most soldiers I've known who have served in Afghanistan contend that military victory, which means eliminating the Taliban, is not viable.
Pentagon sources recently told The Wall Street Journal that around 12,000 American military personnel are based in Afghanistan. Trump's 4,000 will raise that figure to 16,000. Afghanistan's population totals 34 million, 40 percent of whom are from the Pashtun community that dominates the Taliban. Will an additional 4,000 young men and women from the American heartland really make a difference in a country of 34 million people?
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, an old friend and former classmate, has worthwhile ambitions for his country. But it is unlikely that 4,000 more foreign troops will help him to achieve them. Ghani, as hardworking and honest a man as anyone I know, has multiple, potentially Sisyphean, tasks before him: unifying a land that has resisted unity for ages; elevating women to the status of full citizens; cleansing Afghan life of the corruption that cripples the nation's economy and society; and, most importantly, ending the state of war that has persisted there since the Soviet invasion of December 1979. He cannot do this without the cooperation of neighboring states, an understanding with the Taliban insurgents his army is battling and a consensus among his people.
A Path That Has Already Ended in Defeat
America, like Napoleon in 1815, is overstretched. It is engaged in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, while providing arms to governments to repress their populations in some countries and to rebels to overthrow their leaders in others. At home, Americans are confronting one another over history, race and class in ways that should alarm the White House but don't. In 1931, eight years before the Second World War broke out in Europe, Sir Leo Chiozza Money wrote a book called Can War Be Averted? Whether or not war could have been averted, it wasn't and 50 million people died. Money wrote, in words that we might recall today as wars engage the United States around the world and the threat of a nuclear holocaust looms from North Korea, "And just as within a nation social justice must be done before social peace can be attained, so in the world some better approach to equality of opportunity must be made if we wish for peace."
As I watch sailboats riding at anchor off Elba, I wish that Napoleon's confidants had persuaded him to stay on the island, govern it well, cultivate his garden and write books. The failed emperor, however, was unlikely to heed anyone who told him that the same strategy, the same tactics, the same army and the same enemies would produce the same outcome: defeat. In Afghanistan, Trump's "new strategy" looks a lot like the old: counterinsurgency, reliance on unreliable local informants to discover who is and who isn't a member of the Taliban, drone attacks, torture and search and destroy. It hasn't succeeded, and the president gave no reason to believe that an extra brigade on the ground will make it work. My generation remembers Lyndon Johnson's and Richard Nixon's assurances that new approaches would reveal the elusive "light at the end of the tunnel" in Vietnam. We didn't see it until April 1975, when helicopters evacuated the last Americans from Saigon.
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Very nicely written article/post, complete withdrawal for the US is an option (probably the wise thing to do), but if the decision has been made to stay in Afghanistan to avoid a power vacuum (like in Iraq, Libya), following the old strategy would guarantee failure (as it has not worked for the last 16 years). I personally do not think Trump will succeed, not because his plan is bad, but because he will not have the guts to execute it. The US has the option to apply incredible pressure on Pak, a country which has now become a Chinese proxy...but for some reason does not. Pak is a failed state, they are bankrupt, IMF keeps propping them up. Their news reports suggest they have money for like 2 weeks of gas and will need to borrow to payoff loans!.The Chinese under CPEC build coal plants in Pak where the guaranteed return is like 18-30 % using foreign coal, chinese prison labor and Chinese equipment. Final cost of electricity is between 2-3 x what it costs in India, which means Paki industry can never be competitive, so the loans will not be paid. Pak will end up giving up territory to China.
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Trump should stop feeding pak peanuts!, they might get a stomach ache.
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/08/31/pakistan-lawmaker-denies-billions-islamabad-peanuts/
Pakistani Lawmaker Denies ‘Billions’ in U.S. Aid to Islamabad: It’s ‘Peanuts’
Chaudary Nisar Ali KhanAP/B.K. Bangash
by EDWIN MORA31 Aug 201791
A leader of the ruling party in Pakistan has reportedly denied that the United States has provided about $30 billion in American taxpayer funds for security and economic aid to Pakistan since the war started in neighboring Afghanistan 16 years ago.
“It’s not billions of dollars, it is peanuts,” claimed Chaudhry Nisar, a Pakistani lawmaker who until recently served as the country’s interior minister, reports Dawn.
He urged Islamabad to carry out an audit of U.S. aid it has received in the last decade.
Since the war in neighboring Afghanistan broke out in October 2001, the United States has provided “nearly $30 billion” in American taxpayer money for security and economic aid to Pakistan, revealed the U.S. National Defense and Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2015.
Nisar argued that the United States has provided funds to its Coalition Support Fund (CSF) for “services rendered by Pakistan” in the fight against Islamic terrorism.
“If our bill [for military services] is $500 million, they [US] sit on it for months … and end up giving us $200 million,” complained the Pakistani politician.Well they bill twice the original amount
CSF refers to U.S. aid that is eligible to be used to reimburse coalition partners for logistical and military support to American military operations.
In recent years, the United States has withheld millions of dollars in reimbursement payments to Pakistan, with plans to cut more, over its refusal to take action against the Afghan Taliban and its ally the Haqqani Network.
Most recently, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration decided to cut about $50 million in 2016 CFS payments to Pakistan.
The Trump administration has also decided to withhold $400 million in 2017 CFS funds to Pakistan, according to the NDAA for that year.
In total, the U.S. has provided $14 billion in CFS funds alone to Pakistan, reported the Washington Post, citing the Pentagon.
While announcing his Afghan war strategy last week, U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged recently that the United States has been “paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars” while the Muslim country has been “housing the very terrorists we are fighting” in neighboring Afghanistan.
The leader of the ruling PML (N) party in Pakistan, Nisar, denounced Trump’s accusation that Islamabad is providing shelter to Islamic terrorists, echoing other officials from his country.
Last week, President Trump accused Pakistan of providing “safe havens to agents of chaos and terror,” to the ire of Islamabad.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/16/world/asia/kabul-green-zone-afghanistan.html?emc=edit_th_20170917&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
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https://conservativetribune.com/mattis-rules-of-engagement/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=AE&utm_campaign=can&utm_content=2017-10-04
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The ravages of a seemingly endless war have kept the United States mired in South Asia for over 16 years. In August, U.S. President Donald Trump proposed a new solution to the intractable conflict in Afghanistan. The new strategy would focus not on meeting a specific deadline but rather on achieving the conditions necessary to bring peace to the war-torn country. To that end, Trump urged India to play a greater role in Afghanistan's economic development. He also had a few choice words for Pakistan.
The president took the large nuclear power, home to more than 200 million people, to task for continuing to harbor militant groups such as the Taliban and the Haqqani network. To compel a change in Islamabad's behavior, the Trump administration has threatened to revoke Pakistan's non-NATO major ally status and withhold more of the billions of dollars in aid that the United States has given the country each year since 2002. But the threats aren't working. On Nov. 9, NATO commander Gen. John Nicholson said Pakistan is still offering haven to militants. And even if Washington takes harsher punitive action toward Islamabad, it won't achieve the results it's hoping for. Militancy isn't the only enemy in Afghanistan; the United States is also fighting against the basic forces of geopolitics.
The Struggle for Survival
The foundations of geopolitics lie in the assumption that all nations are trying to survive and that to do so, they employ strategies based on the resources they have available to them. For Pakistan, the fight for survival dates back to its very birth as a country. Just two months after gaining independence in the partition of the British Raj in 1947, Pakistan was embroiled in its first war with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Pakistan's founder and first leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was acutely aware that some circles in India expected their fledgling neighbor state to collapse and began diverting resources away from development to national defense. In the process, he bestowed unrivaled power on the Pakistani army. An ineluctable principle soon emerged that guides Pakistan's foreign policy to this day: India is the enemy.
Tempting as it may be to accuse Pakistan of paranoia, it's important to consider the country's position. Pakistan already shares one border with its archrival. The last thing it wants is to have to contend with New Delhi along its western border — an area whose ethnic and linguistic diversity has given rise to unrest and insurgency — as well. With that in mind, Pakistan must keep New Delhi from establishing a presence along the Afghan border, while working to forge friendly ties with the government in Kabul. (India, likewise, uses development funding to try to buy influence with the Afghan administration.)
Bequeathing a Strategy
After the Soviet-Afghan war began in 1979, the United States helped Pakistan project power into Afghanistan through proxy forces as part of its wider struggle against communism. The CIA, along with Saudi Arabia, funneled money and arms to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to train, arm and dispatch the mujahideen, a motley crew of religious and nationalist warriors, against the Soviets. Eager to destroy the godless ideology of communism — which in their view had no place in the devoutly Muslim country — the mujahideen eventually prevailed. The Soviets, beleaguered after a decadelong counterinsurgency war in unforgiving terrain, withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. Washington soon followed suit, leaving the rival mujahideen to vie for control of Afghanistan. The ensuing civil war paved the way for a new fundamentalist movement known as the Taliban to rise to power in southern Afghanistan in 1994.
For Pakistan, which had grown frustrated backing the mujahideen parties, the Taliban presented an opportunity. By supporting the organization, Islamabad could try to stabilize Afghanistan and to use the country as a conduit for energy from neighboring Turkmenistan. Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's administration began funding the Taliban, helping the group take control through its conquest of Kabul in September 1996. That's where Islamabad's interests in Afghanistan started to conflict with those of Washington.
The Taliban played host to Osama bin Laden and his organization, al Qaeda. From the mountains in Afghanistan, bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that prompted the United States to invade in October 2001. The Pentagon's main objective in Afghanistan was to prevent militant groups from using the country as a base for launching transnational attacks. Pakistan, meanwhile, maintained its links to its proxies in the Taliban to keep its stake in Afghanistan.
The Limits of Power
More than a decade and a half later, the intransigence of the United States' longest-running war has compelled the Trump administration to reassess Washington's relationship with Islamabad. By every measure, the United States is more powerful and influential than Pakistan is. It boasts the mightiest military in the history of the world along with an $18 trillion economy. Pakistan, by contrast, is a poor country, and its military — though a formidable fighting force — is no match for the U.S. armed forces. Despite the disparity, however, Washington has failed to coerce Islamabad into cutting ties with the Taliban.
The United States' own cost-benefit calculation is partly to blame for this failure. Consider, for instance, bin Laden's discovery in 2011. Finding the world's most wanted man in Abbottabad, a garrison town in northeastern Pakistan, doubtless raised questions in Washington about the Pakistani army's ties with the militants. Nevertheless, the United States continued its aid to Islamabad, which totals $33 billion to date. The Pentagon concluded that the benefits of a security partnership with Pakistan, including access to critical supply routes and help flushing out al Qaeda operatives seeking refuge in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, outweighed the costs of Islamabad's selective ties with militants. Neither President George W. Bush nor his successor, Barack Obama, would risk jeopardizing those benefits.
That may change under Trump. His administration so far has shown a willingness to question long-standing conventions in U.S. foreign policy as the United States takes a step back from global affairs to focus instead on domestic issues. Washington's alliance with Islamabad could be one of them. But even if Trump and his generals follow through on their threats to punish Pakistan, they are unlikely to change its behavior. So long as the country's survival is at stake in the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan will bear the costs of the United States' rebuke and probably seek alternative sources of funding, namely China. And from Islamabad's perspective, the resurgence of Hindu nationalism in India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an existential threat. The movement's hard-line factions, after all, have never reconciled themselves to Pakistan's statehood and still regard it as an affront to their country's territorial integrity. Should Modi win a second five-year term in office in 2019, as he is expected to, his victory would strengthen Islamabad's desire to keep New Delhi from gaining a foothold in Afghanistan — and, by extension, its support for the Taliban.
The View Ahead
Pakistan's actions in Afghanistan derive from the same quest for survival that underlies any country's foreign policy. Ironically, Washington encouraged the very behavior that so vexes it today by helping Islamabad refine its strategy for proxy warfare in Afghanistan during the Cold War. But geography is the real culprit. Even if the last NATO soldier were to vanish from the desolated Afghan landscape tomorrow, Pakistan and India's imperatives to deny each other a space in the land known as "the graveyard of empires" would continue as before.
As part of that mission, the Pakistani army is currently sharpening its country's territorial contours by building a fence along the border with Afghanistan. The initiative is part of a plan to pacify and fully absorb the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which have defied governance since at least the colonial period, so the army can turn more of its attention toward India. The army has also sponsored a proposal to start giving militants an outlet in mainstream politics as a way to exert greater control over them. (The backlash that the creation of the new Milli Muslim League party inspired from Pakistan's Ministry of the Interior suggests, however, that the effort will be yet another source of contention between the country's military and civilian institutions.) And so, as the United States mulls more serious measures to try to weaken Pakistan's support for the Taliban, it will probably only weaken its partnership with Islamabad instead.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/world/asia/kabul-explosion-police.html?mc=adintl&mcid=facebook&mccr=subscribers&subid2=orange&ad-keywords=GlobalTruth&subid1=TAFI
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Paki humor from ZH. They think they are a superpower, same air marshall said pakis will land on the moon in 2 years.
Pakistan Air Force Ordered To Shoot Down US Military Drones
Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Dec 8, 2017 7:35 PM
The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) has just been ordered to shoot down any foreign drones that violate the country’s airspace including attack drones operated by the United States, Chief Marshal Sohail Aman said on Thursday.
The announcement is a complete change from the air force’s previous view, of which foreign drone strikes on its soil were condemned but the air force never threatened to shoot them out of the sky. “We will not allow anyone to violate our airspace. I have ordered PAF to shoot down drones, including those of the US, if they enter our airspace, violating the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman told an audience in Islamabad.
The statement was made about two weeks after a US drone strike targeted a militant compound in Pakistan’s tribal region along the border of Afghanistan, leading to multiple casualities, The Times of India reported.
This is the first time, the Pakistani government has taken a hard stance against foreign drones, especially the ones operated by US forces based in Afghanistan. The comment from Aman was shocking despite the US has been launching missiles into Pakistan and violating the country’s sovereignty since about 2004. The CIA was responsible for most US drone strikes in Pakistan until November 30, 2017, said The Times of India.
It’s believed, senior members of terrorist groups have been killed over the years in drone strikes, but it has come at a cost of “hundreds of civilian” deaths in the form of collateral damage.
After every drone strike, the Pakistan foreign office issues a condemnatory statement claiming that it will not allow such strikes on its territory.
Hundreds of civilians, according to media reports, including women and children, as well as many senior members of terrorist groups have perished in these attacks. The status of many more people remains unknow
There has been no official response from the White House concerning this radical shift of how the ‘war on terror’ just got a little more complex over the skies of Pakistan.
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December 4, 2017
Pakistan’s Disunion Puts Investment at Risk
By Kamran Bokhari
Jihadism has been radiating out of Pakistan for decades and causing problems for the country’s relationships with other governments. Lately, however, it’s been Pakistan itself that is suffering from its homegrown Islamism. The country was founded on a contradiction between secularism and Islamism, and though it has covered up its incoherence, it has never overcome it. The contradiction is finally catching up to the country, and things in Pakistan will get worse before they get better.
Warning Signs
Evidence that things in Pakistan are reaching their boiling point came, paradoxically, from the outside. A Nov. 22 report by a Pakistani daily said that a Chinese delegation visiting Pakistan had expressed concerns that political instability could adversely affect the tens of billions of dollars that China was investing in the South Asian nation. The report said that on Nov. 21, a joint committee on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor—part of China's One Belt, One Road initiative—approved the broad parameters of a long-term plan for the CPEC but failed to agree on development projects and financing for special economic zones. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, a Pakistani minister who serves as the country’s point man on the CPEC acknowledged that political unrest since 2014 was undermining the mega-development project.
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Pakistan has grown more unstable since the United States invaded neighboring Afghanistan after 9/11. In fact, over the past decade, Pakistan has been the target of a vicious jihadist insurgency that has claimed as many as 80,000 lives. Yet the Chinese still went ahead with the CPEC in 2013. Four years later, China, usually a stalwart ally, is beginning to second guess its investment plans for Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's relations with its historical ally, the United States, have also hit an all-time low. The incoherence in Islamabad is preventing the country from working effectively with the US to address common concerns about the insurgency in Afghanistan. The top American commander in Afghanistan said Nov. 28 that he had not seen a change in Pakistani support for Afghan militants even though the administration of President Donald Trump has taken a tougher line against Islamabad. US Defense Secretary James Mattis is currently visiting the Pakistani capital, where he has said he will try “one more time” to work with Islamabad before taking “whatever steps are necessary” to address its alleged support for Afghan militants.
India, Pakistan's archrival, has expressed its own concerns about Islamist militants operating from Pakistan. In 2008, terrorists from Pakistan carried out one of the worst attacks in India’s history, killing 164 people and wounding over 300 more in Mumbai. Under intense pressure from India and the US, Pakistan vowed to crack down on Jamaat-ud-Dawah, the group responsible for the attack.
Almost a decade later, however, Jamaat-ud-Dawah is more entrenched than ever in Pakistan. It recently formed a political party, and its founder and leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, was released from house arrest on Nov. 23. The United Nations Security Council designated Saeed a terrorist in December 2008, but his political movement has only gained ground in Pakistan, and Saeed himself recently announced his intention to run for public office in next year’s elections.
Finally, Pakistani relations with Iran have also been tense. Iran, which shares a border with Pakistan, has been the target of Islamist militancy emanating from sanctuaries in Pakistan’s southwest. Iran has warned Pakistan several times over the past few years that it will conduct raids across the border in Pakistan if Islamabad does not rein in anti-Iran groups on its soil. Already it has shelled groups across the border.
Political Decay
Pakistan has been incoherent since its inception in 1947. It has never settled the debate over whether it ought to be a secular or an Islamist state. Tensions have only gotten worse since the 2011 assassination of Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer at the hands of his own bodyguard. Taseer’s killer said the governor was guilty of blasphemy for criticizing laws prohibiting individuals from speaking out against religion. Many Pakistanis deemed the assassin a hero, and a team of lawyers enthusiastically defended him. It took the state five years to convict and execute him for the murder. The assassination and trial spawned an entire social movement and is now represented by a new political party, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan.
In early November, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan organized a sit-in at the capital to protest a perceived softening of the government’s stance on blasphemy. The army was finally called in on Nov. 26 to broker a deal, and in the end, the protesters got what they wanted. But even the military, which has ruled Pakistan intermittently for close to half of the country’s 70-year history and is still its strongest institution, can’t control what’s happening to the country.
Pakistan, moreover, used to boast a two-party political system that has since devolved into a patchwork of ideologically rigid groups, many of which are Islamist or otherwise right-wing. One such party is Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, led by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan. PTI is itself not an Islamist party, but its allies are Islamists. The party is likely to benefit in next year’s federal election from a major corruption scandal that has weakened the current ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League, and forced its leader, Nawaz Sharif, to step down as prime minister. But whether Islamists or secularists control the government, the fight for Pakistan’s soul will not go away.
Neither will its economic struggles. Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves hover around $14 billion, enough to cover only about three months’ worth of imports. Its reserves are falling because its exports are falling. Debt servicing stands at 29% of export earnings. Markets are speculating about a depreciation of the Pakistani rupee. And Pakistan’s population is exploding. It exceeded 200 million people this year, according to a 2017 census, and has increased by 57% since the last census nearly 20 years ago. At the same time, educational standards have been declining, with the literacy rate down to 58%. A third of the population lives in poverty.
For Pakistan to recover, it needs outside investment to fund things like the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. But to secure such investment, the country must overcome the present situation, where multiple powerful factions have paralyzed the government.
George Friedman
Editor, This Week in Geopolitics
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What even the pakis have not realized is that they are rapidly becoming part of China....sinification of pakistan is becoming a way of life. Secondly, the Chinese govt is now engaging in a soft coup by wanting to deal directly with the army wrt to their CPEC project. Due to the corrupt Nawaz Sharif, the army now has the upper hand and runs everything from foreign policy to defense to sugar mills. Pakistan will likely default, and the Chinese will get a 100 year lease on Gwadar port. The Srilankans learnt it the hard way, when they could not pay the Chinese back, they had to give away Hambatonta port for a 100 years.
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What even the pakis have not realized is that they are rapidly becoming part of China....sinification of pakistan is becoming a way of life. Secondly, the Chinese govt is now engaging in a soft coup by wanting to deal directly with the army wrt to their CPEC project. Due to the corrupt Nawaz Sharif, the army now has the upper hand and runs everything from foreign policy to defense to sugar mills. Pakistan will likely default, and the Chinese will get a 100 year lease on Gwadar port. The Srilankans learnt it the hard way, when they could not pay the Chinese back, they had to give away Hambatonta port for a 100 years.
Heh. Yes.
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• Pakistan, U.S.: U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to sever aid to Pakistan. In response, Pakistan is reportedly “reviewing” its ties with the U.S., threatening to cease all cooperation and making noise about cozying up to the Chinese and Russians. How easily can U.S. aid be replaced? Pakistan has been drifting from the U.S. for some time; what’s the strategic logic holding things together at this point?
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What if Pakistan shuts down US logistical flows supporting war in Afghanistan? (again?)
What is sit rep with alternative route(s) through Central Asia (Russia)?
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Stratfor's take on it:
Forecast Update
In our 2018 Annual Forecast, we wrote that the U.S. administration would continue to increase pressure on Pakistan over the country's continued support for militants in Afghanistan. We also wrote, however, that Pakistan's need to prevent India from gaining a foothold in Afghanistan would cause it to continue offering support for the Taliban. Despite a harsh tweet from U.S. President Donald Trump and subsequent high-level meetings taking place in Pakistan, we maintain our analysis.
See 2018 Annual Forecast
An end to America's longest running war isn't getting any closer. The antagonism between the United States and Pakistan — the two most consequential foreign actors in Afghanistan — continues to grow. On Jan. 1, U.S. President Donald Trump fired off his first tweet of 2018, saying that the United States has received nothing but "lies & deceit" in return for the over $33 billion in aid it has provided to Pakistan over the past 16 years. Later that day, the White House announced it would continue withholding $255 million in foreign military financing that had been designated for Pakistan in 2016, but not delivered.
Both the tweet and the withheld funding are designed to punish Pakistan for its behavior in Afghanistan, where the United States has now been at war longer than anywhere else in its history. The United States has accused Pakistan of failing to take sufficient action against the militants on its side of the border, and thus beyond the reach of U.S. and NATO ground forces fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The United States highlighted its concerns over Pakistan in its latest National Security Strategy, suggesting their bilateral partnership cannot survive if Pakistan continues its strategy. Currently, Pakistan influences neighboring Afghanistan through militant proxies to ensure the country's government remains friendly to Pakistani interests and an arm's-length away from Indian influence.
But Pakistan is also responding to U.S. pressure. On Jan. 2, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and the chief of the country's army, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, chaired a high-level meeting of officials under the National Security Committee to discuss Pakistan's response to Trump's tweet. The meeting is intended to show a unified front between the country's often bickering civilian and military leadership. The back and forth nature of international diplomacy makes it necessary for Pakistan to respond to the United States, regardless of whether Islamabad plans on abandoning its current strategy. After the meeting, the committee released a statement emphasizing Pakistan's sacrifices in the fight against terrorism and expressing dismay over Trump's comments.
Despite the hardened rhetoric, the two countries will likely continue to begrudgingly cooperate in 2018. Their relationship will continue sliding toward animosity, but neither side is interested in abandoning it. Washington knows it cannot wind down the war in Afghanistan without using Islamabad's influence to push the Taliban toward negotiations. Pakistan, for its part, doesn't want to face the global stigma of a diplomatic breach with the world's most powerful country, though its strategy of supporting militant proxies has already sullied Islamabad's reputation. Though Pakistan may threaten to take retaliatory measures of its own — such as restricting access to NATO forces transporting equipment through Pakistan into Afghanistan — it will take a gradual approach that will allow space for the relationship to fluctuate.
At the same time, Pakistan will increase its diplomatic outreach to China and Russia as part of a regional strategy to ensure it still has powerful friends it can rely on should its relationship with the United States continue to deteriorate. But regardless of how their relationship changes, the antagonism between Washington and Islamabad will give the war in Afghanistan little chance of slowing down in 2018.
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A Game of Chicken With Pakistan
The high stakes in Trump’s Twitter spat with Islamabad.
Jan. 3, 2018 7:15 p.m. ET
Donald Trump opened the new year with a tweeted accusation that Pakistan “gives safe haven to agents of chaos, violence and terror” and has repaid U.S. aid with “lies and deceit.” The Islamabad government held an emergency meeting and officials fired back on Twitter . But Mr. Trump was telling the truth, and raising the public pressure on Pakistan forces an important issue. The U.S. can’t win the war in Afghanistan as long as Pakistan continues to sponsor terrorist groups such as the Taliban and Haqqani network.
Mr. Trump’s tweet hardly came out of the blue. He said much the same in a speech announcing a new Afghan policy in August, albeit in more diplomatic language. Vice President Mike Pence echoed the message during a trip to Afghanistan last month. His audience of U.S. troops cheered, since their lives are endangered by Pakistan’s double game.
Despite being a U.S. ally and receiving $33 billion in aid since 2002, Pakistan’s aid to terror groups operating in Afghanistan is well documented. Last week a U.S. drone killed a leader of the Haqqani network on the Pakistani side of the border. The week before drones hit a compound belonging to the Taliban.
The U.S. suspended $255 million in aid to Pakistan in August to signal its frustration. Past Administrations took the same step but backed down in the end.
Aid is only one part of the leverage the U.S. can use to persuade Pakistan to change. An interagency policy review is considering the more potent step of rescinding Pakistan’s status as a major non-NATO ally. That would have serious consequences for the country’s military as it would lose access to U.S. military equipment, training and intelligence-sharing.
The U.S. could even designate Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism, which would bring sanctions. Already the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, a multilateral organization, has warned Pakistan it could be placed on a watch list for failing to stop terrorism funding.
Such steps are not to be taken lightly. The U.S. relies on Pakistani ports and roads to move heavy equipment in and out of Afghanistan, and rising U.S. tensions with Russia and Iran make alternate routes through Central Asia unfeasible. China gives Islamabad unconditional support and has promised to invest $57 billion in Pakistan’s infrastructure. If it is forced to rely more on Beijing, Islamabad might give the People’s Liberation Army Navy greater access to the Gwadar Port and other strategic advantages.
But the best argument for not severing relations with Pakistan is that it could backfire and help religious fanatics take power. As former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton wrote in these pages in August, “Just as America must stay engaged in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban and other terrorists from retaking control, it is also imperative to keep Islamabad from falling under the sway of radical Islamicists.”
That doesn’t mean Mr. Trump is wrong to take a tougher line. The U.S. should use its leverage to prod Pakistan to change its terror-supporting ways. The country’s generals may resent U.S. pressure, but they must recognize that a rupture in relations would be dangerous, or worse, for both sides.
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The End of the US-Pakistan Alliance
Jan 8, 2018
By George Friedman
The U.S.-Pakistan alliance is over. The Pakistani prime minister said as much during a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, a statement made in response to the announcement that the U.S. would cut off all aid to Pakistan for its failure to suppress jihadists in Afghanistan and, according to some, for its role in aiding them. There is reason to believe the statement is not just politics as usual. The interests of Pakistan and the U.S. are profoundly different, and though it is possible for them to reconcile them, it is unlikely.
Structures in South Asia
The U.S.-Pakistan alliance began in the early days of the Cold War, shortly after the Partition of India created Pakistan in 1947. India and Pakistan, now distinct countries, were immediate enemies. The Indians claimed to be neutral but were ideologically and strategically aligned with the Soviet Union. The alliance concerned the United States but terrified Pakistan, which saw it could not survive a war against India if India were backed by the Soviets. An alliance with the United States was therefore inevitable.
But the alliance structures of South Asia quickly became more complex. China, another major player in the region, was initially aligned with the Soviets after World War II but would, over the course of the next two decades, slowly break away from Moscow and informally align with Washington. China viewed both the Soviet Union and India as potential threats, making Beijing a natural ally to Pakistan. Washington may not have been thrilled with this newfound relationship, but the alliance did not undermine U.S. interests in containing the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union, in an effort to stabilize its southern border, invaded Afghanistan in 1980 and, in doing so, established a presence near Pakistan’s border – a presence that pleased India. The Soviet invasion frightened the United States, which had just been kicked out of Iran by the revolution in 1979. Washington thought the Soviets would use Afghanistan as a base from which to move on the Persian Gulf. Far-fetched though that may have been – there are easier ways to move into Iran than through Afghanistan – the United States was still compelled to contain the Soviets.
Military engagement against Moscow was not an option, given the distance and the terrain. Instead, Washington armed Muslim forces to wage war on its behalf. And it did so with the help of Pakistan, which likewise wanted to block Soviet expansion, and Saudi Arabia, which had been under pressure from Moscow to break its alliance with Washington since the 1950s. A three-party strategy was thus created. The Saudis would recruit what were called mujahedeen fighters, who would be trained in Pakistan and controlled by the CIA and Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.
But the war had an unintended consequence: It galvanized the more radical elements in Afghanistan and in the ISI. Pakistan is, after all, a highly religious country. These elements framed the battle against the Soviets in religious terms, not political ones, and so jihadism was institutionalized not just in the untamed reaches of Afghanistan but also in Pakistani intelligence. (Ethnicity also complicated the situation. One major ethnic group, the Pashtuns, lived in both Pakistan and Afghanistan and, along with the jihadists, would be the object of U.S. retribution after 9/11.)
The United States lost interest in Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet Union. Iran and Iraq, not Afghanistan, were the new threats to the Persian Gulf. But Pakistan could not afford to lose interest in Afghanistan, a country with which it was bound ethnically, religiously and, in light of the years spent fighting the Soviets, martially. It had a strategic interest in any threat that materialized there.
The threat that would eventually materialize there was jihadism, the adherents of which would use Afghanistan as a base to launch the 9/11 attacks against the United States. The United States invaded Afghanistan, in concert with various factions that were available for alliance for various reasons. Washington expected the ISI to share intelligence on al-Qaida and the Taliban. But this was difficult for Pakistan to do, considering the ISI had spent the 1990s using its anti-Soviet allies to create an Islamic state under the Taliban. The Pakistanis did not want al-Qaida to attack the United States, but neither did they want to bring down the entire political structure they had fought the Soviets to create.
Looking for an Endgame
Geopolitically, this created new realities in South Asia. The Soviet Union no longer existed, so India was no longer allied with it. China, for its part, was much more interested in economic growth than it was in supporting Pakistan against the U.S. and India, which had begun to enhance relations. In other words, Pakistan was isolated. The government in Islamabad knew that helping the U.S. would destabilize Pakistan because the Islamists within its borders would resent it. But Pakistan could not face a hostile United States and India, especially with limited Chinese help.
In this context, Pakistan crafted a strategy of cooperating with the U.S. in Afghanistan without going so far as to anger its Islamist elements. It walked a very fine line, and the government frequently went too far one way or the other. The United States understood the Pakistani dilemma and saw a stable and vaguely pro-American Pakistan as more important than a total commitment of Pakistan to the American war. Each was forced to get less than it needed from the other.
At this point, the United States is looking for an endgame in Afghanistan. It has spent 16 years fighting a war but has not yet achieved its goals. The U.S. will no longer devote large numbers of troops because large numbers of troops failed before. It is instead creating smaller, highly focused units designed to cripple certain factions of the Taliban and force some sort of politically acceptable outcome. The more tactical the approach, the more the U.S. needs Pakistani cooperation. Pakistan is not prepared to do that, since a U.S. departure would leave Pakistan facing strong hostile forces on its border.
Meanwhile, India has more actively participated in a U.S.-led alliance with Japan and Australia meant to counter Chinese naval power. Caught between the U.S. and India, and cognizant of India’s rise, Pakistan must either get the U.S. to ease up or persuade China to become its ally again. This is the last thing the U.S. wants to see.
The U.S. has learned what many powers before it have come to know: that engagement in this volatile region is sometimes necessary, but rarely is the outcome pleasant. Washington now finds itself still at war with the Taliban and increasingly at odds with a hostile Pakistan, which may soon reactivate its relationship with China. The end of the U.S.-Pakistan alliance should not be taken lightly.
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http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/10/china-may-have-just-brokered-an-iran-pakistan-accommodation/
Caroline Glick comments:
Exceedingly interesting article about China's apparent brokering of a strategic alliance between Pakistan and Iran. It represents, if true, a major blow to Saudi Arabia.
But if this is correct, it also may provoke India to get off the fence on Iran and join the anti-Iran alliance, led by the US. If that happens, it would be a major shift.
The information in the article provides a rational context for the Trump administration's decision to end its assistance to Pakistan. If Pakistan has now aligned itself with China and Iran against the US and Saudi Arabia, then clearly the US cannot continue to arm it or otherwise support Pakistan.
All of this amplifies my sense that Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to India next week is a critical one.
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China's Increasing Security Buffer on Its Western Frontier
Uighur militants have been one driving force behind China's interest in Central Asia.
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An increasingly important component of Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative can be found in the Central Asian corridor that connects China and Afghanistan. China has been expanding its economic and security cooperation in Central Asia in recent years. Reports this week that China plans to build a military base for Afghanistan's armed forces in the northeastern province of Badakhshan suggest that the strategic yet perennially unstable country is quickly following through on the plan.
Forging Plans for a New Base
Afghan defense officials reportedly discussed plans for a base in Badakhshan during a visit to Beijing in December. The two sides agreed to "deepen pragmatic cooperation in various fields including anti-terrorism operations, and push forward the state and military relations between the two countries," according to Afghan Gen. Dawlat Waziri on Jan 7. China will supply the base with "weapons, uniforms for soldiers, military equipment and everything else needed for its functioning," and it will move military vehicles through Tajikistan to Afghanistan, since China's small border with Badakhshan is too rugged for most military vehicles to pass through.
The exact location and size of this military base remain unknown. Chinese and Afghan officials have reportedly set up a special commission to work out such details. But from a broader perspective, a military base fits in with China's growing security ties with and presence in Afghanistan and Central Asia. China's increased economic cooperation with Afghanistan and the region — the latter of which is an important component of Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative — and China's security concerns about Uighur militants in the area have been driving forces behind Beijing's increased focus on the region.
(Stratfor)
Beijing has long been concerned about smuggling through Badakhshan's narrow passes and with Uighur fighters using them to return from Syria, Iraq and other war zones. Patrols of the Chinese People's Armed Police Force have crossed into Afghanistan repeatedly over the past year to conduct missions in the Wakhan corridor, the fingerlike strip of land that extends toward China's Xinjiang province, with Tajikistan to its north and Pakistan to the south. Plans for a new military installation in Badakhshan thus signals continued Chinese interest and security investment in the area.
Tajikistan also has played an important role within China's security strategy in Afghanistan and Central Asia. The country has a long and porous border with Afghanistan, more than half of which is shared with the Badakhshan province. Tajikistan also has had its own problems with militancy, and China has agreed to finance and build outposts on the Tajik-Afghan border. It also has increased the pace and scope of counterterrorism exercises with Tajikistan to bolster the government's counterterrorism capacity. What's more, Tajikistan has served and can continue to serve as a logistical hub for China to transport military supplies into Afghanistan, given the difficult terrain and poor infrastructure of China's border with Afghanistan via the Wakhan corridor.
Factoring In the Presence of Others
Supporting a new Afghan base in Badakhshan, which has come under increased pressure from both the Taliban and the Islamic State in recent months, makes a great deal of sense for China. However, Beijing will have to factor in the interests and presence of other countries in Afghanistan as it moves forward with building and supporting a base in Badakhshan. One is the United States. While the U.S. military presence is far lower than its peak levels in the early to mid-2000s, U.S. and NATO military operations are an important factor in China's security strategy in Afghanistan. Indeed, China prefers to have the United States bear most of the security burdens in Afghanistan. China is unable and unwilling to entangle itself too much in the country, and its overall security presence in Afghanistan, while it has increased in recent years, remains relatively marginal. In essence, China is interested in building up a security buffer in Afghanistan to protect itself, but it isn't interested in having too much responsibility for Afghanistan's internal security issues.
Another country that China must consider — and one that has become increasingly active in Afghanistan — is Russia, which has a large military presence in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as historical ties to Afghanistan because of the Soviet occupation of the country from 1979 to 1989. Russia's significant interests in Afghanistan have been on display via Moscow's ties to the Northern Alliance, which was instrumental in overthrowing the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks, and Russia's logistical support for U.S. and NATO military operations by way of the Northern Distribution Network. While the network has not been used since 2015, Russia has developed connections into Afghanistan in other ways, including hosting numerous rounds of talks aimed at jump-starting negotiations on the Afghan war, as well as reportedly offering financial and weapons support to the Taliban.
Despite overlapping spheres of influence in Central Asia and Afghanistan, Russia and China have largely worked to cooperate rather than compete in these areas. Moscow and Beijing appear to have arranged an informal division of labor in Central Asia, with Russia focusing on military matters while China concentrates on the economic realm. Even where China has chosen to increase its security activities, it has done so seemingly in tacit agreement with Russia, which is in line with Beijing's emphasis on avoiding unilateral engagement in contested areas. This consideration can be seen in joint military exercises between Russia and China, both on a bilateral level and also in a multilateral context via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which has included Central Asian states in military drills. China also has backed off pursuing unilateral security initiatives with Central Asian states such as Tajikistan, putting plans to launch a counterterrorism center in the country on the back burner, quite possibly to placate Russian concerns. China's plans to build a base for Afghan units in Badakhshan are similarly likely to have come with a quiet understanding — if not coordination — with Russia.
Ultimately, such basing plans are in line with China's strategy to contain the spillover of militancy from Afghanistan and broaden its security presence beyond its borders as it deepens its economic involvement in Afghanistan and the broader Central Asian region. While Afghanistan has long been and continues to be a source of geopolitical competition among external powers, such powers — including the United States, Russia and increasingly China — actually have a shared interest in containing the spread of militancy and in cooperating to undermine such transnational elements as the Islamic State. Beijing, as is the case with many other involved parties, is concerned about the future of Afghanistan if the United States and NATO eventually withdraw, so China is working to set up a limited buffer ahead of that a possible outcome. The United States is well aware China is in Badakhshan and does not view its presence there as a threat.
Furthermore, as ties between the United States and Pakistan worsen, China has an opportunity to deepen its already heavy influence with Islamabad, but it needs the United States to manage most of the security burden in Afghanistan. So, while China works closely with Pakistan, Beijing is still going to be following through on these measures, such as the Badakhshan base, to mitigate any fallout from Afghanistan. Therefore, as long as China pursues security cooperation with the Afghan National Security Forces and does not include cooperation with Russia in a way that harms U.S. security interests, then the limited but growing Chinese presence in the area will be a net benefit to the overall U.S. security mission.
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Joshua Boyle: The Taliban-Admiring Freed Hostage's Case Keeps Getting Stranger
by Scott Newark
Special to IPT News
January 18, 2018
https://www.investigativeproject.org/7249/joshua-boyle-the-taliban-admiring-freed-hostage
The bizarre case of Joshua Boyle and his family is back in the news in Canada as a result of two strange recent developments.
Boyle and his American wife Caitlan Coleman made headlines in October 2012 when they were apparently taken hostage by the Haqqani network in a region of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban. According to Boyle, he and his seven-month pregnant wife were backpacking when they were kidnapped. His story shifted several times since then, saying they were mistakenly in Afghanistan, that they were there as 'pilgrims' to help the local Afghans, and that they were kidnapped because the terrorists thought his wife's pregnancy could be leveraged for ransom from the U.S.
Most intriguing is Boyle's apparent continuing support for the Taliban, a legally designated terrorist entity under Canadian law. Boyle continues to refer to the Taliban by their preferred title of 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,' and has even gone so far as to explain that the Taliban refused to cooperate with the Haqqani network in the hostage taking and that the Haqqani thugs tried to recruit him to join with them. Boyle's seeming support of the Taliban remains unchallenged.
As strange as this sounds, Boyle has an activist history in Canada that suggests this may have been his real motivation. Boyle was born into a well-to-do, devout Christian family, and his father was a Canadian Federal Tax Court judge.
Boyle first came to public attention in Canada during 2008 protests at Parliament Hill demanding suspected terrorist Omar Khadr's release from Guantanamo Bay. The Khadr family organized the protests, including Omar's niqab-wearing sister, Zaynab. She infamously stated in an interview that the U.S. deserved the 9/11 attacks and dismissed her brother Omar's killing of a U.S. soldier by snorting "big deal."
"Canada's first family of terror" is supported by their close connections to al-Qaida (AQ) in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the fact that Osama bin Laden and current AQ leader Ayman al Zawahiri actually attended Zaynab Khadr's previous wedding in Afghanistan.
Boyle became the Khadr family's spokesman and, in 2009, he married Zaynab Khadr. The marriage only lasted 18 months. He reconnected with Caitlan Coleman after his 2011 divorce. The bizarre trip to Afghanistan and abduction took place the following year. The couple had three children while in captivity, claiming that one other died following a forced miscarriage.
This connection to Zaynab Khadr is revealing because an Alberta judge refused to allow Omar Khadr – now back on the streets in Canada – unsupervised visits with her because of her continuing Islamist extremist views and connections.
Meanwhile, new information from Khadr family associates indicates that, contrary to what Boyle has said, he had actually met Zaynab and her family in 2006 when he joined them at court appearances in support of the just arrested Toronto 18 terrorists. Remember that 2006 date.
We now know that the Boyle's rescue occurred in October after U.S. Special Forces located the family and told the Pakistanis to secure their release or the U.S. forces would do it themselves. Canada was advised of the operation once it had commenced. Boyle's oddity started immediately when he refused to allow his family to board a U.S. plane, apparently because he feared his Khadr links would send him to Gitmo. After a short delay, the family took commercial flights and returned to understandably huge media attention.
Since his return, Boyle has given multiple interviews which can be summed up in this revealing comment: "In the final analysis, it is the intentions of our actions, not their consequences, on which we all shall eventually be judged."
In late December, Canadians learned that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had met with the Boyle family in his official office at Boyle's request. Strangely, this fact was not revealed by the PM but rather through a tweet from Boyle's account that included photos and the comment:
"Incidentally, not our first meeting with @JustinTrudeau, that was '06 in Toronto over other common interests, haha."
Why would the Canadian PM meet with a supporter of a legally designated terrorist entity that has killed Canadian soldiers? What does that say to Canadians, including family members of other Canadian hostages murdered by Islamists, with whom he has refused to meet? And what is the 'common interest' from 2006 that Boyle is referencing? Did Trudeau meet with members of the Khadr family, including Zaynab, during the protests that year? If so, is another $10.5 million payoff coming for the Boyles?
Less than two weeks later another bombshell dropped. Ottawa Police announced that they had arrested Joshua Boyle and charged him with 15 criminal offenses committed since he was freed. Charges include eight counts of assault, two counts of sexual assault and two counts of unlawful confinement, and single counts of uttering threats, administering a noxious substance, and obstruction of a peace officer.
The alleged crimes began a day after the family returned to Canada and lived with his parents, and continued through the end of December, when Ottawa police responded to a complaint. Reportedly, 14 of the charges involve an adult woman, while a child also is an alleged victim. Interestingly, Boyle's wife's parents were in Ottawa visiting with their daughter and grandchildren when the complaint that led to the charges was made. Boyle has had four court appearances but has yet to enter a plea as his lawyers are apparently trying to arrange an acceptable bail release. He'll be back in court Jan. 26. Is this case going to be resolved by a plea bargain?
This strange case has understandably attracted significant attention. Hopefully, elected officials will learn to exercise greater caution in grabbing photo ops with sketchy people, and our secular court system will now deal appropriately with Joshua Boyle, including protecting his own children from harmful influence. One thing is certain: there will be more to come. Stay tuned.
Scott Newark is a former Alberta Crown Prosecutor who has also served as Executive Officer of the Canadian Police Association, Vice Chair of the Ontario Office for Victims of Crime, Director of Operations for Investigative Project on Terrorism and as a Security Policy Advisor to the governments of Ontario and Canada. He is currently an Adjunct Professor in the TRSS Program in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-kabul-attacks.html?emc=edit_ta_20180128&nl=top-stories&nlid=49641193&ref=cta
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I found this article interesting
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/456165/us-should-maintain-military-afghanistan?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202018-02-07&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
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https://clarionproject.org/pressure-pays-trumps-threats-pakistan/
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43500299
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Stratfor Worldview
May 8, 2018 | 10:00 GMT
Pakistan Finds a Friend in Russia
Waving Pakistani and Russian flags
As the United States intensifies its pressure against Pakistan over the latter's continued support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, Islamabad will deepen its outreach to Moscow in a counterbalancing effort.
Russia and Pakistan will focus on building a security partnership based on counterterrorism cooperation to combat the threat of transnational jihadism posed by the Islamic State's Khorasan chapter in Afghanistan.
While the depth of Russia's connections with Pakistan's archrival, India, suggest that the Russo-Indian relationship will endure, the growing U.S.-India defense partnership will drive Moscow increasingly toward Islamabad.
Three decades provides a lot of time for a rethink: Pakistan and Russia were the bitterest of enemies during the Cold War, but a convergence of strategic interests has brought Islamabad and the Kremlin closer than ever before. In recent months, Pakistan's foreign minister, national security adviser and army chief have journeyed to Moscow to explore a security partnership focused on combating the threat of transnational jihadism emanating from Afghanistan. And in a bid to formalize these engagements, Islamabad even expressed interest in forging a strategic partnership with Moscow on May 1.
The developments are taking place at a time when Pakistan's relationship with the United States — a Cold War ally, no less — is steadily deteriorating due to Islamabad's continuing support for militant proxies battling NATO-backed forces in Afghanistan. And as Washington puts greater pressure on Islamabad due to its links to militant networks, Pakistan will intensify its own efforts to strengthen its regional partnership with countries like Russia — making it even less likely that it will abandon its militant proxy strategy in Afghanistan.
The Big Picture
In our 2018 Annual Forecast, Stratfor noted that the slow deterioration of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship over their differences in Afghanistan would push Islamabad to develop stronger relationships with Tehran and Moscow, while Washington would consolidate its partnership with New Delhi. Pakistan's recent offer to forge a strategic partnership with Moscow points to this trend amid the shifting geopolitics of South Asia.
Changing Foes
The historical antagonism between Pakistan and Russia is tied to the role of great power politics and the fate of Afghanistan. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded the landlocked country to shore up the tottering Marxist regime in Kabul. That incursion, however, created an opportunity for the United States to open another proxy front against Moscow as part of its wider anti-communist struggle across Asia. Because of its 2,410-kilometer (1,510-mile) border with Afghanistan, Pakistan became a frontline state toward the end of the Cold War; the CIA oversaw a massive covert operation campaign in tandem with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to support the anti-Soviet movement sweeping across the Afghan countryside. From Pakistan's perspective, however, the Soviet-Afghan War simply represented Moscow's latest attempt to reach warm waters through Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea. A century earlier, the British Empire — then ruling over modern-day Pakistan, the critical northwestern approach to the Indian jewel in the British crown — had sought to fend off czarist Russia's southward advance across the Central Asian steppe by transforming Afghanistan into a buffer state.
Today, times have changed. Now, the United States is the great power at war in Afghanistan — where it is suffering from the effects of the very jihadist proxy strategy it helped Islamabad perfect. For Islamabad, the need to ensure a friendly regime in Kabul and secure its disputed western border with Afghanistan is part of its grand strategy to ensure internal unity in the face of external aggression. Pakistan need look no further than 1971 to observe the consequences of its failure to maintain this grand strategy. In that year, India's military intervened on behalf of the Bengali independence movement, leading to eastern Pakistan attaining statehood as Bangladesh. Pakistan has accordingly supported the Taliban as part of its strategy, resulting in a sharply deteriorating relationship with the United States, which is struggling to advance negotiations with the militant group to finally end 40 years of conflict in the country. Washington has severely restricted the amount of aid it doles out to the South Asian country, extending a suspension of $1.9 billion in aid in January.
Calling on the Kremlin
At the same time, the United States has set its sights on a much bigger challenge: addressing China, which happens to be Pakistan's strongest ally. And because Beijing's rise equally worries New Delhi, the United States and India have begun cultivating a defense-oriented partnership. This burgeoning Indo-American cooperation is naturally a cause for concern for Russia, which has shared deep historical links with India since the Cold War.
Thus, as intensifying U.S. pressure compels Pakistan to reach out to Russia, the Kremlin is providing a receptive audience. For Islamabad, the outreach is part of a well-honed strategy. As a middle-ranking power with limited global and economic clout, Pakistan has an interest in developing a closer relationship with a great power like Russia, whose seat on the U.N. Security Council and ability to offer arms, investment and energy could help the former diversify its energy supplies while bolstering its clout in multilateral organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (the latter of which Islamabad is trying to join with Moscow's backing).
A timeline of Pakistan and Russia's Changing Relationship
And in forging links with Islamabad, Moscow not only seeks to counterbalance the Indo-American partnership but also recognizes the pivotal role Pakistan will play in the future of Afghanistan due to its support for the Taliban. Because the organization will likely feature in any power-sharing agreement that ends active hostilities, Moscow wishes to cultivate links with the group – an area in which Islamabad can be of assistance. Already, some have accused Moscow of supporting the Taliban by shipping fuel tankers across Uzbekistan's Hairatan border crossing for the group to resell, thereby earning the militants $2.5 million per month. Pakistan also shares Russia's deep concern about transnational militant groups such as the Islamic State. (Although the Taliban is an Islamist organization, its ideological horizons are largely limited to Afghanistan). In recent years, the Islamic State has staged attacks in Pakistan, and it also threatens to spill over into Central Asia, a strategically important buffer area for Russia on its southern flank. Accordingly, Moscow and Islamabad have been pursuing counterterrorism cooperation as part of Russia's broader efforts on the front with Central Asian states and China.
The budding Russian-Pakistani relationship has been years in the making.
The budding Russian-Pakistani relationship has been years in the making. Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan's then-President Pervez Musharraf visited Moscow in 2003 while Russia's then-Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov returned the favor four years later. The relationship, however, truly started to gain traction in 2014 — the year the United States incidentally completed the NATO drawdown in Afghanistan. During that year, Russia lifted an arms embargo against Pakistan, paving the way for the two countries to sign a defense agreement that included a $153 million deal to sell Mi-35M attack helicopters, as well as an agreement to directly buy the Klimov RD-93 engine from Russia for use in its domestically manufactured JF-17 fighter jet. Moscow also inked a deal with Islamabad to construct the $2 billion North-South pipeline linking Karachi and Lahore at a time when U.S. sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine forced the Kremlin to explore other energy export markets. Russia and its new South Asian partner have since inked other energy deals, as Gazprom and Pakistan's Oil and Gas Development Company signed a joint venture deal in July 2017 to aid in exploration and development.
In 2016, Russia and Pakistan conducted Druzhba, the pair's first joint military drills, in spite of anger from India, which registered its unease at the war games in the wake of an attack on the Uri army base in Indian-controlled Kashmir that it blamed on Pakistani militants. At the end of that year, Moscow and Beijing also hosted a trilateral summit on Afghanistan with Islamabad, the first of four international conferences involving Russia.
Farewell India?
But the Kremlin's overtures to Islamabad are not harbingers of any fundamental breach in its links with New Delhi. India is too big a country and too important an arms customer for Russia to ignore — a reality that will also limit the scope of Russia's arms sales to Pakistan, as New Delhi has no desire to see its archenemy incorporate the same weapons systems it relies upon, such as the T-90 tank. Still, India's protestations are unlikely to preclude Moscow from finding at least some opportunity to sell weapons to Islamabad. Tellingly, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov elected to highlight such sales to Pakistan in January during the Raisina Dialogue event — India's most important foreign policy conference — in New Delhi. The message was not lost on New Delhi.
As U.S. President Donald Trump takes an ever-harder line against Islamabad and the threat from groups like the Islamic State grows, Pakistan is cementing its ties with its powerful neighbor to the north. For Moscow, good ties with Islamabad present an opportunity to counter New Delhi's new understanding with Washington. And with the former foes both getting something out of the relationship, it's a newfound partnership that might be more than just temporary.
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As the United States intensifies its pressure against Pakistan over the latter's continued support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, Islamabad will deepen its outreach to Moscow in a counterbalancing effort.
Russia and Pakistan will focus on building a security partnership based on counterterrorism cooperation to combat the threat of transnational jihadism posed by the Islamic State's Khorasan chapter in Afghanistan.
While the depth of Russia's connections with Pakistan's archrival, India, suggest that the Russo-Indian relationship will endure, the growing U.S.-India defense partnership will drive Moscow increasingly toward Islamabad.
Three decades provides a lot of time for a rethink: Pakistan and Russia were the bitterest of enemies during the Cold War, but a convergence of strategic interests has brought Islamabad and the Kremlin closer than ever before. In recent months, Pakistan's foreign minister, national security adviser and army chief have journeyed to Moscow to explore a security partnership focused on combating the threat of transnational jihadism emanating from Afghanistan. And in a bid to formalize these engagements, Islamabad even expressed interest in forging a strategic partnership with Moscow on May 1.
The developments are taking place at a time when Pakistan's relationship with the United States — a Cold War ally, no less — is steadily deteriorating due to Islamabad's continuing support for militant proxies battling NATO-backed forces in Afghanistan. And as Washington puts greater pressure on Islamabad due to its links to militant networks, Pakistan will intensify its own efforts to strengthen its regional partnership with countries like Russia — making it even less likely that it will abandon its militant proxy strategy in Afghanistan.
The Big Picture
In our 2018 Annual Forecast, Stratfor noted that the slow deterioration of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship over their differences in Afghanistan would push Islamabad to develop stronger relationships with Tehran and Moscow, while Washington would consolidate its partnership with New Delhi. Pakistan's recent offer to forge a strategic partnership with Moscow points to this trend amid the shifting geopolitics of South Asia.
Changing Foes
The historical antagonism between Pakistan and Russia is tied to the role of great power politics and the fate of Afghanistan. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded the landlocked country to shore up the tottering Marxist regime in Kabul. That incursion, however, created an opportunity for the United States to open another proxy front against Moscow as part of its wider anti-communist struggle across Asia. Because of its 2,410-kilometer (1,510-mile) border with Afghanistan, Pakistan became a frontline state toward the end of the Cold War; the CIA oversaw a massive covert operation campaign in tandem with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to support the anti-Soviet movement sweeping across the Afghan countryside. From Pakistan's perspective, however, the Soviet-Afghan War simply represented Moscow's latest attempt to reach warm waters through Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea. A century earlier, the British Empire — then ruling over modern-day Pakistan, the critical northwestern approach to the Indian jewel in the British crown — had sought to fend off czarist Russia's southward advance across the Central Asian steppe by transforming Afghanistan into a buffer state.
Today, times have changed. Now, the United States is the great power at war in Afghanistan — where it is suffering from the effects of the very jihadist proxy strategy it helped Islamabad perfect. For Islamabad, the need to ensure a friendly regime in Kabul and secure its disputed western border with Afghanistan is part of its grand strategy to ensure internal unity in the face of external aggression. Pakistan need look no further than 1971 to observe the consequences of its failure to maintain this grand strategy. In that year, India's military intervened on behalf of the Bengali independence movement, leading to eastern Pakistan attaining statehood as Bangladesh. Pakistan has accordingly supported the Taliban as part of its strategy, resulting in a sharply deteriorating relationship with the United States, which is struggling to advance negotiations with the militant group to finally end 40 years of conflict in the country. Washington has severely restricted the amount of aid it doles out to the South Asian country, extending a suspension of $1.9 billion in aid in January.
Calling on the Kremlin
At the same time, the United States has set its sights on a much bigger challenge: addressing China, which happens to be Pakistan's strongest ally. And because Beijing's rise equally worries New Delhi, the United States and India have begun cultivating a defense-oriented partnership. This burgeoning Indo-American cooperation is naturally a cause for concern for Russia, which has shared deep historical links with India since the Cold War.
Thus, as intensifying U.S. pressure compels Pakistan to reach out to Russia, the Kremlin is providing a receptive audience. For Islamabad, the outreach is part of a well-honed strategy. As a middle-ranking power with limited global and economic clout, Pakistan has an interest in developing a closer relationship with a great power like Russia, whose seat on the U.N. Security Council and ability to offer arms, investment and energy could help the former diversify its energy supplies while bolstering its clout in multilateral organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (the latter of which Islamabad is trying to join with Moscow's backing).
A timeline of Pakistan and Russia's Changing Relationship
And in forging links with Islamabad, Moscow not only seeks to counterbalance the Indo-American partnership but also recognizes the pivotal role Pakistan will play in the future of Afghanistan due to its support for the Taliban. Because the organization will likely feature in any power-sharing agreement that ends active hostilities, Moscow wishes to cultivate links with the group – an area in which Islamabad can be of assistance. Already, some have accused Moscow of supporting the Taliban by shipping fuel tankers across Uzbekistan's Hairatan border crossing for the group to resell, thereby earning the militants $2.5 million per month. Pakistan also shares Russia's deep concern about transnational militant groups such as the Islamic State. (Although the Taliban is an Islamist organization, its ideological horizons are largely limited to Afghanistan). In recent years, the Islamic State has staged attacks in Pakistan, and it also threatens to spill over into Central Asia, a strategically important buffer area for Russia on its southern flank. Accordingly, Moscow and Islamabad have been pursuing counterterrorism cooperation as part of Russia's broader efforts on the front with Central Asian states and China.
The budding Russian-Pakistani relationship has been years in the making.
The budding Russian-Pakistani relationship has been years in the making. Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan's then-President Pervez Musharraf visited Moscow in 2003 while Russia's then-Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov returned the favor four years later. The relationship, however, truly started to gain traction in 2014 — the year the United States incidentally completed the NATO drawdown in Afghanistan. During that year, Russia lifted an arms embargo against Pakistan, paving the way for the two countries to sign a defense agreement that included a $153 million deal to sell Mi-35M attack helicopters, as well as an agreement to directly buy the Klimov RD-93 engine from Russia for use in its domestically manufactured JF-17 fighter jet. Moscow also inked a deal with Islamabad to construct the $2 billion North-South pipeline linking Karachi and Lahore at a time when U.S. sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine forced the Kremlin to explore other energy export markets. Russia and its new South Asian partner have since inked other energy deals, as Gazprom and Pakistan's Oil and Gas Development Company signed a joint venture deal in July 2017 to aid in exploration and development.
In 2016, Russia and Pakistan conducted Druzhba, the pair's first joint military drills, in spite of anger from India, which registered its unease at the war games in the wake of an attack on the Uri army base in Indian-controlled Kashmir that it blamed on Pakistani militants. At the end of that year, Moscow and Beijing also hosted a trilateral summit on Afghanistan with Islamabad, the first of four international conferences involving Russia.
Farewell India?
But the Kremlin's overtures to Islamabad are not harbingers of any fundamental breach in its links with New Delhi. India is too big a country and too important an arms customer for Russia to ignore — a reality that will also limit the scope of Russia's arms sales to Pakistan, as New Delhi has no desire to see its archenemy incorporate the same weapons systems it relies upon, such as the T-90 tank. Still, India's protestations are unlikely to preclude Moscow from finding at least some opportunity to sell weapons to Islamabad. Tellingly, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov elected to highlight such sales to Pakistan in January during the Raisina Dialogue event — India's most important foreign policy conference — in New Delhi. The message was not lost on New Delhi.
As U.S. President Donald Trump takes an ever-harder line against Islamabad and the threat from groups like the Islamic State grows, Pakistan is cementing its ties with its powerful neighbor to the north. For Moscow, good ties with Islamabad present an opportunity to counter New Delhi's new understanding with Washington. And with the former foes both getting something out of the relationship, it's a newfound partnership that might be more than just temporary.
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Gen. Miller has an outstanding resume, but , , , what the hell is our strategy at this point? Stay because , , , leaving would be worse?
New U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Emerges from Elite Units
Lt. Gen. Scott Miller will take charge as the Taliban renews a push into major cities
Lt. Gen. Scott Miller headed some of America’s most-secretive missions, pursuing suspected terrorists around the world.
By Jessica Donati and Nancy A. Youssef
Updated May 22, 2018 5:32 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON— Lt. Gen. Scott Miller has been chosen as the next commander of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, according to senior military officials, after two years in charge of the military’s secretive Joint Special Operations Command.
Gen. Miller, a decorated special-operations soldier, will be the ninth U.S. general in 17 years to take charge of the war in Afghanistan and the first to be appointed under President Donald Trump. The Pentagon declined to comment until the decision is formally announced.
As JSOC commander, Gen. Miller headed some of America’s most-secretive missions, pursuing suspected terrorists around the world with drones and elite units that included the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team Six.
Among those operations, he was a captain in charge of a contingent of Delta Force in the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, recounted in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.” He was awarded a Bronze Star for his service there and later served multiple combat deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.
If all goes as expected, Gen. Miller will take over the Afghan war at a time when a fragmented, Taliban-led insurgency remains in control of swaths of the countryside and is renewing a push into major cities, despite the arrival of thousands of additional U.S. forces.
Last week, the Taliban overran the capital of Farah province, taking over key government buildings before being driven out by U.S. fighter jets in support of local forces. It was the first near-loss of an Afghan provincial capital since the Taliban overran the city of Kunduz in 2016.
Mr. Trump decided last year to send about 4,000 additional troops, bringing the number of American personnel to approximately 14,000. The emphasis on Afghanistan is part of a broader shift that ultimately is expected to shrink America’s military footprint in the Middle East as it refocuses its capabilities in East Asia.
Gen. Miller has served in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and now will head a mission that is now heavily dependent on American special-operations forces that are backing local Afghan army and police units. The Afghan government took over the war against the Taliban in 2014, but it continues to rely on the U.S. for most of its funding and extensive military support.
Gen. Miller is known for aggressively stepping up operations in Iraq while at the helm of Delta Force, a senior military official said. He faces a complex job in Afghanistan, where the war has grown more complicated in recent years, as Washington accused rival countries such as Russia and Iran of backing the insurgency, charges that both Moscow and Tehran deny.
Even with the deployment of additional forces, the war in Afghanistan is showing few signs of progress, according to a new report by the multiagency Lead Inspector General-Overseas Contingency Operations this week. It said the declining Afghan security-force numbers are renewing concerns about high casualties and staffing rates, and the overall effectiveness of the army and police.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said last month that civilian casualties remained near a record at more than 2,250 in the first quarter of 2018, and that suicide bombings and complex attacks by insurgents were twice as deadly as in the previous year.
Despite the sustained violence, the departing commander of U.S.-led forces, Gen. John Nicholson, told reporters earlier this year that prospects for reconciliation are improving. The U.S. military bulked up its presence in Afghanistan at the start of 2018, reallocating drones and other hardware and sending in around 1,000 new combat advisers.
Gen. Nicholson began his tour in charge of the Afghan war in March 2016.
—Michael Phillips contributed to this article.
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U.S. Attacks Taliban’s Source of Funds in Afghanistan
Shifting strategy, military turns the air war against insurgent money, not just fighters
A man extracts raw opium from poppy seed pods in Kandahar province, Afghanistan. EPA/Shutterstock
Link copied…
By Michael M. Phillips
May 30, 2018 5:30 a.m. ET
55 COMMENTS
KABUL, Afghanistan—The U.S. has retooled its aerial bombing campaign in Afghanistan to target the Taliban’s sources of money, not just its fighters.
Since the strategic bombing campaign began in November, U.S. aircraft have conducted 113 strikes aimed at cutting off revenue the Taliban allegedly receive from opium poppies and roadside taxes, a major shift in war strategy intended to drive the insurgents to the negotiating table.
The strategy is to “go after the Taliban in a way that they had never been pressured before,” said U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Lance Bunch.
The air campaign is modeled on the successful fight waged in recent years against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, where U.S. aircraft regularly attacked refineries, tanker trucks and other infrastructure that provided the militants millions of dollars in oil revenue. It even harks back to World War II, when Allied bombers went after German and Japanese industry.
In a typical recent strike, a pair of F-16s took off from Bagram Air Field and flew south to Helmand province, the heart of Afghan poppy production. The target was a drug lab housed in a mud-walled compound perhaps 100 feet by 100 feet, according to the military.
Once airborne, the lead pilot was able to use electronic sensors to spot buildings and piles of plants in the open yard. Both planes dropped bombs on the compound. “The buildings were completely destroyed,” said the pilot.
President Donald Trump’s South Asia strategy, announced in August, loosened restrictions on American operations in Afghanistan, an effort to break the stalemate in a war now in its 17th year. Under previous rules, for instance, U.S. aircraft could target militants if they were threatening or fighting allied troops. (Special-operations forces also direct airstrikes at key figures in insurgent and terror groups, such as Islamic State.)
Under the new strategic-bombing policy, U.S. jets can attack insurgents wherever they are found, and attempt to destroy Taliban weapons caches, command facilities and revenue sources.
“Anywhere in the country where they previously thought they felt safe or could have freedom of movement, we now had the authorities to go and target,” Gen. Bunch said in an interview.
U.S. aircraft have hit road checkpoints where insurgents collect money from passersby. And American officers say they may add illegal mining operations to the target list.
But most counter-revenue airstrikes—which still make up a small portion of overall U.S. air missions—are aimed at labs that process the raw opium produced by Afghanistan’s vast poppy fields. Afghan military aircraft conduct strikes as well, and Afghan counternarcotics troops on the ground raid drug bazaars.
The Taliban deny any connection to the drug trade.
“At the time of our government, poppy cultivation was down to zero,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the group, which ruled Afghanistan with its own harsh interpretation of Islamic law before the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. “With the arrival of the invaders, this phenomenon was reborn. American generals and senior intelligence officials, along with Kabul government ministers and lawmakers, are involved in opium trafficking and are keeping the trade going.”
The U.S. military, however, estimates the Taliban get 50% to 60% of their revenue from narcotics, according to Gen. Bunch. That represents about $320 million a year in funds the insurgent group uses to pay fighters and purchase weapons, he said.
The bombing campaign so far has deprived the Taliban of $44 million, he said.
“You’re not just going to bomb [the Taliban] into submission,” U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. James Hecker said in February, during the early days of the strategic-bombing campaign. “But it is another pressure point that we can put on them.”
Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, which is refined into morphine and heroin.
Since 2001, the U.S. has pursued a variety of policies toward Afghanistan’s drug growers and traffickers. Early on, U.S. forces teamed up with warlords who were themselves involved in the narcotics trade, according to a report by the independent Afghanistan Analysts Network.
The U.K., which led initial antidrug efforts for the alliance, emphasized paying farmers to eradicate their own crops. In 2008, the U.S. persuaded allies to authorize troops to kill traffickers linked to insurgents, the report said.
During the height of the American troop commitment, from 2010 to 2012, frontline troops prioritized the war on insurgents over the war on drugs; U.S. Marines routinely patrolled through Helmand province largely ignoring the sprawling fields of pink and white poppies around them.
Ironically, those farms were watered by the Kajaki Dam and the expansive irrigation system downstream from it—projects built with U.S. agricultural aid money in the 1960s.
The allies came to embrace both interdiction and eradication, provoking worry among troops on the ground that the campaign was alienating local farmers and creating recruits for the Taliban.
“Destroying poppy harvests won’t help unless an alternative is provided to the poor and vulnerable farmers,” Mr. Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, told The Wall Street Journal.
Despite years of efforts, poppies grew on a record 328,000 acres of Afghanistan last year, a 63% jump from the previous year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
American commanders argue that maintaining the flow of drug revenue has become the Taliban’s major preoccupation. “There’s not much politics in the Taliban anymore—it’s all about moving the drugs,” said one senior U.S. special-operations commander in Afghanistan.
Johnny Walsh, lead Afghanistan expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says the Taliban are a complex combination of drug gang and religiously inspired insurgency. The group has managed to extend its influence across large swatches of the country, in part by adapting its hard-line views to local conditions.
“The Taliban are both extremely ideological, and they benefit to the extreme from the drug trade,” said Mr. Walsh, a former U.S. diplomat. “They can’t raise money with ideology, and they can’t recruit with drugs.”
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As Afghan Clerics Label Suicide Bombs a Sin, One Explodes Among Them
An attacker blew himself up outside a meeting of religious leaders, who also declared the 17-year war there illegal under Islamic lawsobhani/Reuters
By Craig Nelson,
Habib Khan Totakhil and
Ehsanullah Amiri
June 4, 2018 7:26 a.m. ET
5 COMMENTS
KABUL, Afghanistan—A suicide bomber struck a meeting of Afghanistan’s top clerics and religious scholars in the capital on Monday, killing seven people shortly after the large gathering declared such suicide attacks a sin and the country’s 17-year war illegal under Islamic law.
The Taliban, Afghanistan’s largest insurgency, issued a statement denying involvement in the bombing. The blast occurred at an exit from Kabul Polytechnic University, where the convocation of the Afghan Ulema Council was winding up.
Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, which has asserted responsibility for a spate of attacks in the Afghan capital in recent months, had no immediate comment.
One of those injured in the attack, center. The gathering of clerics and religious scholars declared suicide attacks a sin.
One of those injured in the attack, center. The gathering of clerics and religious scholars declared suicide attacks a sin. Photo: stringer/Reuters
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Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai said the seven people killed in the blast included a police officer. Nine other people were also wounded, he said. Other Afghan security officials put the death toll as high as 12.
Shortly before the attack, the estimated 2,000 religious figures attending the gathering from across Afghanistan had issued an Islamic ruling, or fatwa, declaring suicide attacks forbidden.
“Suicide attacks, explosions for killing people, division, insurgency, different types of corruption, robbery, kidnapping and any type of violence are counted as big sins in Islam and are against the order of the Almighty Allah,” they said.
Suicide bombings are a relatively recent phenomenon in Afghanistan, having been rejected as a form of combat during the uprising against the occupation of Soviet forces in the 1980s and the takeover by Taliban forces in the mid-1990s.
Rather, they became a feature of the Afghan war in the mid-2000s, as the tactics used by Islamist militants against U.S. forces in Iraq rebounded here.
The clerical gathering also denounced the 17-year war in Afghanistan as illegal under Islamic law, calling it nothing but “shedding the blood of Muslims,” and urged the Taliban to take up the Kabul government’s offer of unconditional peace talks.
In perhaps the most public peace overture since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to remove the Taliban from power, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in late February offered political recognition to the Taliban in exchange for a stop to the fighting.
The Taliban hasn’t replied formally to the bid. It has said it will only negotiate with the U.S. since, it says, America is the main engine of the war and the Kabul government is illegitimate.
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What Lies Beneath the Enduring Stalemate in Afghanistan
An Afghan soldier on patrol in southern Afghanistan, Dec. 11, 2014.
(ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)
The stalemate in Afghanistan endures, with the Afghan government continuing to control the country's urban areas while the Taliban command large areas of the countryside.
Foreign support, the Afghan government's failures and the Taliban's deep ties within Afghanistan's rural social fabric are central to the persistence of the Afghan insurgency.
Negotiations are the only real alternative toward ending the conflict in the short term, but myriad obstacles stand in the way.
Almost 17 years after the start of the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban insurgency rages on with no end in sight. And despite the launch last summer of a new strategy and a considerable ramp-up in air power, the United States appears no closer to breaking the stalemate, in which the central government in Kabul continues to control Afghanistan's urban areas and the Taliban exerts influence over wide swaths of the countryside. Foreign support and the failure of the Afghan state are central to the continued endurance of the Afghan insurgency. Another key element — often overlooked — is the Taliban's success in establishing deep ties within Afghanistan's rural social fabric.
The Big Picture
As the first half of 2018 comes to a close, Stratfor's forecast on the war in Afghanistan is on track. In our 2018 Annual Forecast, we said the addition of a few thousand U.S. troops would be insufficient to break the stalemate between Kabul and the Taliban, while U.S.-Pakistan relations would deteriorate. Both have borne out thus far. Even as U.S. defense policy shifts toward a focus on great power politics, the threat of transnational jihadism emanating from Afghanistan remains a serious threat that will continue to require U.S. and NATO resources for the foreseeable future.
See South Asia section of the 2018 Annual Forecast
Foreign Support for the Taliban
The Taliban have benefited greatly from foreign support over the course of the Afghan war. In particular, the Taliban's relationship with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency has allowed the insurgency to develop a relative sanctuary within Pakistan where it could recuperate and regenerate and from where certain leadership elements of the Taliban continue to direct parts of the war effort. Recently, there also has been considerable evidence that factions of the Taliban are receiving substantial assistance from Iran and Russia. Assistance from Iran has likely played a role in facilitating the Taliban's recent gains in western Afghanistan, particularly in Farah province. The Taliban, through their links to the outside world, have also been able to import everything from fertilizer for their improvised explosive devices to night vision gear, which has enabled them to conduct a growing number of nighttime operations.
The National Unity Government between President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, ridden with corruption and mismanagement, has also failed to provide rural Afghans an enticing enough alternative to the Taliban. Corruption exacerbates the systemic problems besetting the central government in Kabul, which include not only a heavy reliance on external sources of funding but also the historic difficulty of bringing the mountainous and demographically diverse country under effective central rule. Afghanistan's fragmentation affects the Taliban, too. The movement is broken into different factions, which greatly complicates peace negotiation efforts.
The Taliban's Shadow Government
While the Afghan government struggles to extend its authority over the country, the Taliban have their own significant problems gaining popular support. Polling over the past decade has consistently highlighted the Taliban's weak popularity in Afghanistan. Annual polls by the Asia Foundation routinely find that more than 90 percent of Afghans fear the Taliban because of their extremist views. Nevertheless, these figures mask the significant support for the Taliban in the Pashtu-dominated rural areas of the country. Further, the Taliban increasingly have recognized the need for even greater popular support before they can ever hope to make long-lasting gains in Afghanistan's urban and minority-populated areas and have bolstered their efforts in this regard. In February, for example, the Taliban offered to guard the construction of the Afghan portion of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline. More recently, the movement's main branch, the Pakistan-based Quetta Shura, implemented an unprecedented three-day cease-fire against the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces in response to Ghani's own cease-fire in honor of the Eid holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Over the past several years, the Taliban have increased their efforts to establish their movement in the north and recruit from the minority Uzbeks and Tajiks who live there under its Shura of the North, another of its main branches operating in Afghanistan. The group has also conducted large-scale food distribution campaigns, which it has heavily publicized as part of its propaganda efforts.
Ethno-linguistic groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Underpinning these efforts is the Taliban's deep-rooted social presence in Afghanistan through its local shadow governments. A detailed study published June 21 by the Overseas Development Institute highlights how the Taliban have been able to build a significant governance structure in practically all of the significant districts that they contest in Afghanistan. The study depicts how the Taliban have moved away from attempting to coerce people into falling into line and instead are attempting to build influence by providing functional services, particularly in health, justice and even in education.
These findings underline how the Afghan government is in many ways its own worst enemy. Fed up with the pervasive corruption in the Afghan governance system, local Afghans have long turned toward the Taliban to provide alternative services. Recognizing this dynamic, the Taliban have begun to capitalize on this advantage over the past few years by attempting to build up a widespread, accountable and effective alternative governance structure in the areas it contests. The success of the Taliban's shadow government system undercuts Kabul's attempts to extend its authority over much of Afghanistan's conservative rural terrain, reinforcing the underlying stalemate between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
Maintaining Local Support
One of the greatest challenges for any insurgency is financial sustainability. Insurgents usually need multiple funding streams, both for the sake of redundancy in case one avenue gets cut off as well as to sustain the high costs of the war effort. Invariably one of the most important sources of funding for an insurgency is taxation. In pursuing this approach, however, the insurgents must be careful to not alienate the local population by demanding too much and must also seek to provide a service in return.
This is another area where the Taliban's shadow government has been quite successful. The sustainability of the Taliban's taxation model is clear; after almost two decades of war, the Taliban is still able to extract considerable funding from the local population. Again, the Taliban have been greatly aided by the fact that the Afghan government is seen as highly corrupt in the particularly important area of opium cultivation — and is even seen as a threat to the local livelihood. Despite their previous opposition toward opium cultivation in the 1990s, the Taliban have long since altered their stance on the issue and have worked to extend their governance and taxation over its cultivation. In fact, in the last few years the Taliban have even begun to process opium syrup into heroin themselves, setting up some 500 makeshift labs across Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's opium poppy cultivation and opium production, 2008-2017
In contrast, the Afghan government's poppy eradication efforts have been notoriously ineffective. Opium production remains at record levels. Moreover, the government's eradication efforts, often done with the urging of its foreign supporters, like the United States, have often backfired by driving local cultivators toward the Taliban. Government corruption once again exacerbated the problem, with corrupt local officials siphoning off large amounts of funding that had been earmarked to pay farmers for the destruction of their crops. Further complicating the government's eradication efforts is the fact that it has struggled to offer farmers alternative sources of livelihood to opium cultivation, part of the ongoing challenge of diversifying the $19.4 billion economy while simultaneously waging a war.
With international forces backing the Afghan National Security Forces, and with the Taliban deeply unpopular in urban and minority areas, it will be very difficult for the insurgency to seize and hold Afghanistan's cities. On the flip side, however, the Afghan government is not in a position to restore its authority over much of the Afghan countryside. The resulting stalemate, in which the Taliban's deep bond within the rural social fabric of the country plays a key part, is unlikely to be broken by military force alone. That leaves negotiations as the only real alternative toward ending the conflict in the short term — negotiations that remain highly vulnerable to the byzantine interests within the country and the shifting positions of external parties.
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https://www.westernjournal.com/army-general-trumps-complete-reversal-obamas-strategy-working/
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I confess I'm not impressed with how things are going in Afpakia.
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"I confess I'm not impressed with how things are going in Afpakia."
where is your friend who used to post about AFghanistan?
did he finally get out of there?
he would know how things are going
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Pakistan is beginning to understand just how isolated it really is. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford are in Islamabad today for a tense meet and greet with Pakistan’s new government. Earlier this week, Pompeo said the U.S. would cancel some $300 million in military aid to Pakistan because of the country’s alleged support for terrorist groups. (The U.S. withheld $500 million in assistance earlier this year.) Islamabad is still searching for a way out of its debt crisis. On Monday, it promised that no funds from a new bailout under consideration from the International Monetary Fund – a bailout the U.S. opposes – would be used to pay off the tens of billions of dollars it owes to China. China is a welcome ally for Pakistan, but without more options, Islamabad is at risk of becoming overly dependent on Chinese aid – and is thus becoming something Beijing can use against India to slow its orientation toward the U.S. It’s notable, then, that senior Pakistani leaders have been quietly trying to open talks with India on easing tensions in Kashmir, reportedly to little avail, according to The New York Times. Islamabad has too much on its plate to feel good about the risk of finding itself going it alone.
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https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/09/05/heres-the-blueprint-for-erik-princes-5-billion-plan-
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Afghanistan: Russia Attempts to End America's Longest-Running War
(Stratfor)
The Big Picture
The United States is working to extricate itself from the long-running war in Afghanistan, but Washington's repeated failures to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table has created a diplomatic opening for Russia. As Moscow forges a stronger security partnership with Pakistan, the Taliban's principal external backer, Russian attempts to mediate peace talks will only increase.
What Happened
As it seeks advantage in its long-running standoff with the West, Russia has used a variety of tools, including diplomacy. In its most recent attempt to gain a diplomatic edge against Washington, it has launched a bold attempt to wind down four decades of war in Afghanistan. In Moscow on Nov. 9, the Russian Foreign Ministry hosted a multinational conference on the conflict that included officials from Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the United States and Uzbekistan. Most significantly, however, the roster of attendees included representatives of Afghanistan's Taliban. The insurgent group, which previously had spurned attendance at any multinational conferences dealing with the conflict, sent a five-member delegation to the Moscow meeting. While details of the meeting have yet to be released, the Taliban unsurprisingly rejected calls from Afghan representatives to start peace talks without preconditions.
Why It Matters
Participation in the Moscow talks is the latest sign of the Taliban's desire to emphasize their legitimacy as a political movement. The group wants to demonstrate that it is capable of rubbing shoulders with diplomats in faraway capitals, even as it spearheads a campaign of violence against NATO-backed Afghan forces in a bid to reconquer the country it had ruled during the 1990s. Even as the conference was underway, Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan continued their campaign against Afghan security forces, reportedly killing at least 17 officials over the past two days alone.
The talks also demonstrate Russia's desire to insert itself into Afghan negotiations as a peace broker and prove it can succeed where Washington has failed. Currently, the United States maintains backchannel communications with the Taliban through Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy for Afghan reconciliation who is currently on a tour of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to push for negotiations. But although the United States has backed various multinational dialogue formats — including the Quadrilateral Coordination Group, which included Afghanistan, China and Pakistan — it failed to convince the Taliban to participate.
Background
Russia's current interest in Afghanistan marks the latest chapter of its involvement in the landlocked country of 35 million. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support the tottering Marxist government in Kabul, resulting in a nearly decadelong occupation that pitted Soviet and Afghan troops against the U.S.- and Pakistani-sponsored mujahideen. After that conflict ended, Afghanistan entered another phase of instability that led to the Taliban's rise and subsequent conquest of the country in 1996. With Afghanistan under its control, the group hosted al Qaeda, enabling Osama bin Laden to plot the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States. In retaliation, the United States led the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 that ousted the Taliban from power.
Today, Moscow's interest in Afghanistan stems from its concerns that the Islamic State's Khorasan group could use the country as a base from which to threaten Russia. Moreover, Russia's relationship with Pakistan, the most significant external actor in Afghanistan, has begun to warm as the increasing pressure that the United States has put on Islamabad has prompted it to seek allies elsewhere. In 2019, Russia will continue to deepen its security relationship with Pakistan, which will facilitate Moscow's contacts with the Taliban. The United States, on the other hand, will maintain its current strategy of applying diplomatic pressure against Pakistan while reinforcing Afghan forces on the battlefield.
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Trump Orders Big Troop Reduction in Afghanistan
About half of the 14,000 U.S. forces will return home in the coming weeks, the start of a total pullout that could take at least man
By Gordon Lubold and
Jessica Donati
Updated Dec. 20, 2018 7:29 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—A day after a contested decision to pull American military forces from Syria, officials said Thursday that President Trump has ordered the start of a reduction of American forces in Afghanistan.
More than 7,000 American troops will begin to return home from Afghanistan in the coming weeks, a U.S. official said. The move will come as the first stage of a phased drawdown and the start of a conclusion to the 17-year war that officials say could take at least many months. There now are more than 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Mr. Trump announced Wednesday that he would pull all of the more than 2,000 American troops from Syria.
Taken together, the Syria withdrawal and the likely Afghan drawdown represent a dramatic shift in the U.S. approach to military engagement in hot spots around the world, reflecting Mr. Trump’s aversion to long-running military entanglements with their high costs and American casualties.
“I think it shows how serious the president is about wanting to come out of conflicts,” a senior U.S. official said of how the Syria decision affects his thinking on Afghanistan. “I think he wants to see viable options about how to bring conflicts to a close.”
The shifts may have proven too drastic for some in the administration. On Thursday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis submitted a letter expressing his intent to leave, saying, “you have the right to have a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”
Mr. Mattis’s unexpected departure raises questions about whether Mr. Trump’s plans will proceed as he directed.
The plans for troop withdrawals also reflect Mr. Trump’s campaign promises and his “America First” approach to overseas involvements. In a Twitter message on Thursday, he wrote, “Time to come home & rebuild.”
In both the Afghan and Syrian conflicts, Mr. Trump earlier this year voiced an interest in bringing troops home within the year or less, moves that were widely opposed within the U.S. national security establishment.
But Mr. Trump’s impatience has deepened, and in recent days, the debate has grown more pointed, according to those familiar with the discussions. The Pentagon over the last weekend fended off a push by Mr. Trump to start bringing troops home from Afghanistan starting in January, officials said.
Mr. Trump’s decision on Syria, like earlier foreign-policy decisions including his decision to leave the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, was made without a formal consultative process within his cabinet, officials and lawmakers said, cementing his inclination to make key national security decisions on his own or in small groups that include national security adviser John Bolton and a few others. He also apprised few international leaders of his intentions.
The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command declined to comment on the Afghanistan plans. The move to reduce U.S. military involvement in the Middle East and Africa comes alongside a new national security strategy that designates geopolitical competitors such as Russia and China greater threats than terrorists or failed states.
Mr. Trump’s decision on Syria was widely criticized by Democrats and Republican alike in Congress and national security experts across the government, an outcome that also is likely to greet his decision on Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, the U.S. is part of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission that includes dozens of other countries. Unlike the withdrawal ordered in Syria, the Afghanistan drawdown is expected to be more deliberative because of the presence of treaty allies.
The NATO force has enforced a longstanding view that deploying troops overseas is necessary to prevent a repeat of the plot that led to the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The disclosure of the Afghan troop reductions comes as U.S. officials had begun to voice greater confidence about negotiations to end to the war with the Taliban. The Trump administration has made negotiating a deal with the Taliban a priority, appointing former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, as the top envoy for talks.
The preemptive move to withdraw troops before a deal is reached to the Taliban risks endangering that process. But it was also possible the Taliban might reciprocate with a goodwill gesture, said a person familiar with the talks.
Commanders consider Afghanistan a military stalemate, and officials have long feared that Mr. Trump could at any time tweet the end to the war in Afghanistan. There have been six American troop deaths in the last two months, marking the deadliest period of the year. In all, the U.S. has lost 14 troops in Afghanistan this year.
As an allied military campaign has ratcheted up, Mr. Khalilzad has shuttled between Qatar, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan to jump-start a peace process. This week, Mr. Khalilzad’s moves appeared to bear fruit with a high-profile round of talks with the Taliban in Abu Dhabi, joined by delegations from Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.
The meetings concluded without a final agreement, but people familiar with the discussions said that talks included the possibility of a cease fire in exchange for a U.S. commitment on troops. A second round of meetings is expected to take place in early January, around the time U.S. troops are expected to start the withdrawal. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is also due to visit the region around the same time.
“No agreement on cease fire,” said a person who attended the talks. “Right now, only discussion.”
On Thursday, Saudi Arabia’s top envoy to the U.S., Khalid bin Salman, echoed the January timeline, tweeting that the Afghan talks in Abu Dhabi were “productive” and that “we will start to see very positive results by the beginning of next year.”
Mr. Khalilzad has been under pressure to reach an agreement with the Taliban before the Afghan presidential elections in April, a process that U.S. and Western officials fear may fail to due the risk of fraud and insecurity, propelling the country into a deeper and potentially irretrievable state of uncertainty. But the January deadline makes the task even more urgent.
U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan reached a peak of more than 100,000 in 2010. In 2014, President Obama announced the end of major combat operations there, drawing down troops to under 10,000 by 2015. As part of his 2017 Afghanistan strategy, Mr. Trump said he would send roughly 3,000 more U.S. troops, putting the current level at just over 14,000.
—Nancy A. Youssef in Washington and Craig Nelson in Kabul contributed to this article.
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https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/12/21/pakistan-defends-ally-chinas-crackdown-muslims-foreign-media-sensationalized-issue/
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Editor’s note: We will be off tomorrow for Christmas, but the Daily Memo will resume on Wednesday. We wish those celebrating a wonderful Christmas.
Pakistan’s balance of payment crisis continues. Pakistan’s talks with the International Monetary Fund are going poorly, according to Finance Ministry officials who spoke with Dawn, an English-language Pakistani newspaper. The crux of the disagreement is the IMF’s belief that Pakistan has not fulfilled its commitments in prior IMF agreements. The organization is asking for large cuts to current, rather than future, expenditures, including defense spending. Pakistan doesn’t believe this is feasible. The IMF is also requesting that Pakistan raise interest rates, which would make borrowing and servicing debts more expensive for both the government and private sector. The IMF is also pushing the government to float the Pakistani currency, but Pakistani officials claim that the currency market isn’t large enough to make that happen. In the meantime, Pakistan received a loan package from Saudi Arabia and is awaiting further Saudi investment in its Gwadar Port. Abu Dhabi committed to depositing $3 billion in Pakistan’s state bank (Pakistan hopes part of this will be a deferred payment for an oil program), and Pakistan is hoping to strike a similar deal with China, worth $2.2 billion. Islamabad is also discussing liquefied natural gas exports with Qatar.
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second post
Marines Deployed Abroad Seek Answers Amid Washington’s Turmoil
Commandant faces questions on the troop drawdowns. His answer: ‘I have no idea.’
Gen. Robert Neller greets Marines deployed to southern Afghanistan during the Marine Corps commandant’s holiday visit to troops abroad.
Gen. Robert Neller greets Marines deployed to southern Afghanistan during the Marine Corps commandant’s holiday visit to troops abroad. Photo: Ben Kesling
255 Comments
By Ben Kesling
Dec. 23, 2018 9:00 a.m. ET
BOST AIRFIELD, Afghanistan—On a holiday visit to American troops overseas, Gen. Robert Neller, the Marine Corps commandant, was asked by a Marine about President Trump’s orders to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
What, the Marine wanted to know, did the orders mean for those on combat deployments?
“That’s a really good question,” the commandant said. “And the honest answer is I have no idea.”
At every stop on his tour, Gen. Neller has faced questions about what the recent drawdown orders and the resignation of Defense SecretaryJim Mattis mean for Marines and for the broader U.S. military strategy in the Middle East.
The questions have come from Marines bundled in parkas while training in Norway as well as those sweating in the heat of Afghanistan, who are eager to know how the turmoil in Washington affects them.
“Are your families asking if you’re leaving?” he questioned a group of Marines in Helmand province. Many nodded yes.
“You’re not leaving,” he deadpanned, to laughs from troops midway through a months-long deployment.
At this point, commanders regardless of their rank have few details on Mr. Trump’s plans—with no timelines, hard numbers or orders to Pentagon brass about the matter. During the trip, Gen. Neller has worked to quash scuttlebutt and motivate troops, warning them to avoid complacency and homesickness.
Earlier
Trump’s Envoy in War Against Islamic State Resigns
In Shift, Trump Orders U.S. Troops Out of Syria
Trump Orders Big Troop Reduction in Afghanistan
James Mattis to Depart as Defense Chief
U.S.’s Mideast Pullout, Mattis Exit Alarm Europeans
Mattis Was Blindsided by Trump’s Syria Decision
The Marines have laughed with their leader and his honesty, but it belied a frustration among officers and personnel about the lack of details from Washington: If Gen. Neller, one of the highest-ranking officers in the American military doesn’t know what’s happening, who does?
Navy Secretary Richard Spencer joined Gen. Neller in Afghanistan for a leg of the holiday visit and in an interview said he had received no order from the White House or Pentagon on drawing down troops.
“Nothing formal, just tweets,” he said Saturday, adding that he might be in the dark because he’s been on the road for three days.
The head of U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin Miller, hadn’t been issued orders about the drawdown, according to multiple officers familiar with the matter. Morning intelligence briefings for days had focused on publicly available news stories because no official information was available internally.
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“I don’t think anybody really knows exactly what’s going to happen,” Gen. Neller told one gathering of Marines, on Friday. “I’ve read the same stuff in the newspaper you did, I have a little more knowledge than that, but not a whole lot more.”
Mr. Trump last week tweeted that Islamic State in Syria had been defeated and ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops there. A day later, officials said he also had ordered the start of a withdrawal of approximately 7,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, about half the U.S. troops in the country.
In an interview Friday, the Marine Corps’ top officer said he wasn’t in a position to comment on the announced plans for troop withdrawals but said “the best military advice was offered and a decision was made.”
“I don’t make policy, I execute orders,” he added, not specifying what advice was given.
He likewise had little to say about Mr. Mattis’ resignation.
“He wrote a letter, I’m not going to comment on it,” Gen. Neller said. “I understand and respect his decision.”
Gen. Neller said the defense secretary isn’t scheduled to step down until late February, which can allow time for a successor to be appointed and confirmed by the Senate, and for adequate continuity at the top of the department.
At Bagram Air Field in northern Afghanistan, Gen. Neller spoke to a relatively small contingent of approximately 60 U.S. Marines, a fraction of the estimated 14,000 U.S. troops in the country. The Marines here advise, train and support hundreds of soldiers from the country of Georgia, who provide base security.
They also illustrate the complexity of troop withdrawals. While the few dozen Marines here seem like they might be able to be sent home with relative ease, the reality is more complicated.
The more than 500 Georgians here don’t just stand guard, but conduct routine patrols around the base, and need Marines or other U.S. troops to call in air support if they find themselves under attack. The U.S. relationship with the Georgian forces is part of a broader bilateral relationship. An abrupt U.S. pullout could sour an alliance with strategic repercussions as the U.S. faces down an ever-more aggressive Russia.
Maj. Richard Bates, the Marine contingent’s officer in charge, said that all they have heard about the drawdown has come from media reports.
“It was a surprise, but I’m sure it was a surprise for the guys who withdrew from OIF,” he said referring to the abrupt announcement by then-President Barack Obama in 2011 that most U.S. troops would leave Iraq and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Georgian troops have likewise had no word on what to expect, according to a person familiar with the matter.
For many, a withdrawal could mean a welcome end of a long overseas deployment. Marines across Afghanistan said family members have asked them when they’re coming home. Maj. Bates said the word of Mr. Mattis’ resignation was the bigger news to him, seeing that the defense secretary, a retired Marine general, is held in high esteem by his fellow service members.
“His resignation is more devastating than the troop drawdown,” Maj. Bates said. “It’s going to be hard to fill those shoes.”
Write to Ben Kesling at benjamin.kesling@wsj.com
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I would not say our mission is not "clearly defined" per se , as many phrase the problem.
It is defined by holding back Jihadists and their terror campaign
The problem is while we are holding them down we are not defeating them.
We do not simply kill them all so we cannot eradicate them and thus there are no foreseeable end to our missions :
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/now-pull-the-plug-on-afghanistan/
That said suppose we did leave .
we would be exposing those who helped us.
we could well see a resurgence in terror.
but is it worth being there for many years or decades with out clearly winning ? We could wait it out like the cold war which could mean another 30 yrs ..........
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Editor's Note
With the current conflict in Afghanistan in its 18th year, the United States has yet to find a way to escape its longest war. The United States and its NATO allies are but one component invested in Afghanistan's future, as the country finds itself once again a focal point for great power competition. Despite the rhetoric of the current U.S. administration and a revised strategic approach relying more heavily on air power, the stalemate on the ground has yet to be broken. The NATO-backed central government in Kabul continues to control the country's urban areas while the Taliban exerts influence over wide swaths of the countryside.
On the diplomatic front, Russia has made more significant gains — seeking to needle its Western opponents — while Pakistan continues to muddy the waters. All the while, China watches and waits. As we take stock of what transpired in 2018, two late developments have the potential to affect the trajectory of the embattled country in 2019: the impact of a proposed 50 percent reduction of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and a new U.S. secretary of defense, replacing James Mattis.
In our 2018 Annual Forecast, we wrote that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump would continue to increase pressure on Pakistan over the country's continued support for militants in Afghanistan. Less than 24 hours into the new year, the White House made clear its intent to punish Pakistan for its perceived meddling in one of South Asia's most enduring conflicts.
On Jan. 1, U.S. President Donald Trump fired off his first tweet of 2018, saying that the United States has received nothing but "lies & deceit" in return for the over $33 billion in aid it has provided to Pakistan over the past 16 years. Later that day, the White House announced it would continue withholding $255 million in foreign military financing that had been designated for Pakistan in 2016, but not delivered. Read the full article: Pakistan: The Subtext of Trump's New Year's Tweet.
This is not the first time Islamabad has found itself in Washington's sights, accused of not taking sufficient action against militants on the Pakistani side of the border. For Pakistan, though, it's an intentional strategy because it can exert influence over its neighbor, using militant proxies to ensure Kabul remains amenable to Islamabad's interests and, more importantly, isolated from Indian influence.
Despite harsh rhetoric from the United States and Pakistan, both countries are seeking to balance cooperation with coercion as they advance their respective strategies in Afghanistan. Recently, Islamabad revealed that it had been in discussions with NATO officials hoping to use Pakistan's southwestern port of Gwadar — a Chinese-built facility in the insurgency-wracked Balochistan province and a key element of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, itself part of China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative — to ferry supplies for the war effort in Afghanistan. For NATO convoys, Gwadar serves as a faster, cheaper alternative for transporting supplies than the port they currently use, Karachi. Read the full article: U.S., Pakistan: A Carrot-and-Stick Approach to Ports.
In a year of great power competition, China's interest in South Asia encapsulates both Pakistan and Afganistan, something that was very clear in early 2018 when China announced plans to build a military base for Kabul's armed forces in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, confirming a deal that was discussed during an Afghan military visit to Beijing in December 2017.
Afghanistan has long been a locus of geopolitical competition among external powers, great and small. Countries such as the United States, Russia and, increasingly, China have a shared interest in containing the spread of militancy and securing their own imperatives.
An increasingly important component of Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, Afghanistan is part of the Central Asian corridor that runs all the way to China. Beijing is in the process of expanding its economic and security cooperation in Central Asia. As we noted in our assessment on China's Increasing Security Buffer on Its Western Frontier:
Ultimately, such basing plans are in line with China's strategy to contain the spillover of militancy from Afghanistan and broaden its security presence beyond its borders as it deepens its economic involvement in Afghanistan and the broader Central Asian region. Beijing, as is the case with many other involved parties, is concerned about the future of Afghanistan if the United States and NATO eventually withdraw, so China is working to set up a limited buffer ahead of that a possible outcome. The United States is well aware China is in Badakhshan and does not view its presence there as a threat.
As if a reminder was needed about the poor security situation in Afghanistan, the Taliban claimed credit for the Jan. 20-21 storming of a hotel in Kabul that saw four gunmen kill 18 people, including 14 foreigners, and injure 22 others.
Afghan security forces inspect the site of an attack on the office of the British charity Save the Children in Jalalabad on Jan. 24, 2018.
Just days after the attack in Kabul, militants associated with the Islamic State attacked the Jalalabad office of British charity Save the Children on Jan. 24, 2018. Gunmen blasted their way into the British aid group's compound, killing three people and wounding 24.
(NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AFP/Getty Images)
Bookending the violent month, on Jan. 31, the BBC released a detailed study on the extent of militant presence and control over Afghanistan. According to the report, the Taliban possessed full control over 14 districts and maintained an open presence in 263 more. In other words, jihadist insurgents were active in 70 percent of Afghanistan's 398 districts. The situation is exacerbated by endemic corruption and mismanagement in Afghanistan's National Unity Government, which has failed to provide rural Afghans with an enticing alternative to the Taliban. In turn, the success of the Taliban's shadow government system undercuts Kabul's attempts to extend its authority over much of Afghanistan's conservative rural terrain, reinforcing the underlying stalemate between the Afghan government and the insurgency.
The Taliban have also benefited greatly from foreign support over the course of the Afghan war. As a result of the organization's links to the outside world, the Taliban has been able to import everything from fertilizer for improvised explosive devices to night vision gear. Among the Taliban's powerful backers is Iran, which has long been involved in Afghan affairs. For instance, the Islamic republic recruited fighters from Afghanistan's Shiite Hazara community — and from Iran's own 3 million-strong Afghan refugee population — to fill out the Fatemiyoun Brigade Tehran has deployed alongside government forces in Syria. Iran's support for the Taliban is unlikely to dwindle in the coming years, as we noted in our March 8 assessment on why Iran is backing the Taliban:
Supporting the Taliban offers Iran a way to counter the Islamic State's expansion to its east, and Tehran will feel justified in backing the insurgents so long as the transnational jihadist group has a presence in Afghanistan. Beyond counterterrorism, though, Iran wants to maintain contact with the Taliban to be in their good graces if they eventually assume a role in the Afghan government. Even the United States, which has been battling the Taliban for more than a decade and a half, has admitted that a power-sharing deal in Afghanistan likely would involve the Taliban. In that case, Iran will be well-placed to expand its reach in the South Asian country, having kept its ties with both the Taliban and the government's NATO-backed components.
In May, the Taliban kicked off its annual spring offensive. Besides staging attacks across the country, the movement directed its energies toward capturing the provincial capital of Farah province in an effort to replicate its brief takeover of Kunduz in 2015. Despite the movement's stated intent to reconquer Afghanistan, the Taliban could pragmatically enter prospective peace negotiations from a strong position should they continue to make gains. However, despite the organization's deepening hold over large swathes of Afghanistan, internal divisions threaten the cohesion of the Taliban as an entity. At least four main branches exist, whose relations range from pragmatic cooperation to active hostility. As we explored in our March 23 assessment, For Afghanistan, a Divided Taliban Poses an Obstacle to Peace:
The fragmented nature of the Taliban will complicate the chances of success in any peace negotiations, as assent from all factions is a prerequisite for any lasting deal. Given that fissures within the group are forging rival centers of power, Pakistan is likely to bolster its support for the Haqqani network in the hopes of bringing other factions to heel. But because the United States has designated the network as a terrorist organization, Islamabad's support for the faction is likely to drive a greater wedge between itself and Washington.
Despite intense fighting during the 2018 spring offensive, neither side achieved meaningful gains, as we explored in our assessment, What Lies Beneath the Enduring Stalemate in Afghanistan:
With international forces backing the Afghan National Security Forces, and with the Taliban deeply unpopular in urban and minority areas, it will be very difficult for the insurgency to seize and hold Afghanistan's cities. On the flip side, however, the Afghan government is not in a position to restore its authority over much of the Afghan countryside. The resulting stalemate, in which the Taliban's deep bond within the rural social fabric of the country plays a key part, is unlikely to be broken by military force alone. That leaves negotiations as the only real alternative toward ending the conflict in the short term — negotiations that remain highly vulnerable to the byzantine interests within the country and the shifting positions of external parties.
Afghan Taliban militants took to the street to celebrate an unprecedented cease-fire on the second day of Eid in the outskirts of Jalalabad, June 16, 2018.
Afghan Taliban militants celebrate an unprecedented cease-fire on the second day of Eid in the outskirts of Jalalabad, June 16, 2018.
(NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AFP/Getty Images)
Beyond the conflict between Kabul and the Taliban, Afghanistan provides fertile ground for other groups, such as the Islamic State's Khorasan chapter and Chinese Uighur militants. The prospect of transnational extremist groups using Afghanistan to launch attacks into other parts of Central Asian was enough to draw closer attention from another great power, Russia, which shares Pakistan's concern over creeping militancy:
For Russia, its deepening relations with Pakistan overlap with growing attempts to involve itself as a mediator in Afghanistan. Beginning in December 2016, Moscow hosted the first of several conferences aimed at jump-starting talks between Kabul and the Taliban. Although the Taliban did not attend any of these gatherings, they have accepted Moscow's invitation to take part in an upcoming conference; that acceptance is a sign of the movement's desire to elevate its diplomatic profile by positioning itself as a serious political actor. If Russia succeeds in bringing both Kabul and the Taliban to the same table, the accomplishment would heighten President Vladimir Putin's leverage over negotiations to end a NATO-backed conflict that Washington has failed to resolve. Read the full assessment here.
Moscow seeks a diplomatic victory to strengthen its leverage while its relations with Washington remain tense, as we mentioned in our 2018 Fourth-Quarter Forecast. This plays into the Taliban's desire to become a serious political actor, with Russia's help to elevate the organization's diplomatic profile.
Parliamentary elections played out in October, another key component of Afghanistan's war-ravaged path to democracy. The polls — to elect members for the lower house of parliament — were originally scheduled for 2015 but were repeatedly delayed by the inability of the National Unity Government to implement key electoral reforms. Because of this failure and other infighting, presidential elections set for April 2019 will be a complicated affair. As we wrote in our assessment, For Afghanistan, Parliamentary Elections Are Another Step on the Rocky Road to Democracy:
At the core of Afghanistan's political instability is an unresolved debate involving ethnic competition, regional intervention and the structure of the state. With 42 percent of the population, the Pashtun and their many tribes account for the largest and most dominant ethnic group in the country. But they are outnumbered by the non-Pashtun populations as a whole, which include the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks. The Pashtun favor a centralized form of government under a strong president wielding sweeping powers to enable rapid and controlled political and economic reform. This, in their view, is the key to maintaining the unity of the country — under Pashtun rule. The non-Pashtuns favor a federalized model that hinges on a prime minister elected by the parliament who — along with provincial governors elected by the people — can function as checks on the president. The Pashtuns fear the decentralization model will erode their power, weaken the unity of the state and enable regional powers to have greater leverage in domestic affairs.
Meanwhile, Pakistan welcomed in its newly elected prime minister, Imran Khan. Khan's hands-off approach to the country's military means little change for Pakistan's foreign and defense policies on Afghanistan, which will remain under army control.
On Nov. 9, Russia launched a bold attempt to wind down four decades of war in Afghanistan, hosting a multinational conference on the conflict. Hosted by the Russian Foreign Ministry, the conference included officials from Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the United States and Uzbekistan. Most significant among the roster of attendees, however, was a five-member delegation from the Afghan Taliban. That group, unsurprisingly, rejected calls from Kabul's representatives to start peace talks without preconditions.
As 2018 concludes, we look ahead to what the coming year will hold for Afghanistan. As we wrote in our 2019 Annual Forecast:
U.S. pressure will continue to drive Pakistan toward a stronger security partnership with Russia and Iran as part of its regional foreign policy pivot. And Islamabad, Moscow and Tehran will use the threat of the Islamic State to strengthen their security partnership. As the United States runs out of medium-pressure tactics (such as cutting off funding, revoking Pakistani officer training and curbing defense sales), it is more likely to impose harsher measures such as revoking Pakistan's non-NATO major ally status. The Taliban will express more serious interest in negotiations, but talks will only begin if NATO commits to a drawdown.
We considered a drawdown unlikely given concerns that the Afghan army isn't strong enough to handle security on its own. But taking into account the unexpected Dec. 20 announcement from the White House to slash U.S. personnel in Afghanistan by half, 2019 could be the year that the Taliban take their seat at the negotiating table.
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Why Washington's Foes Won't Welcome a Quick U.S. Pullout From Afghanistan
By Omar Lamrani
Senior Military Analyst, Stratfor
Afghan commandos patrol the Achin district of Nangarhar province during a U.S.-Afghan military operation against Islamic State militants on Jan. 3, 2018.
(NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AFP/Getty Images)
Although the Taliban has welcomed the prospect of a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the group will have to decide whether to press for a greater advantage after the pullout or pursue a deal out of fear of a growing Islamic State.
Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia might not like having U.S. troops on their doorstep, but they worry about the implications of any rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces.
Because no neighboring country can assume the United States' mantle in Afghanistan, each will seek to guarantee only a modicum of stability in their areas of interest in the country.
U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement late last month about the imminent withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria grabbed all the headlines, but it wasn't his only notice about a coming pullout. According to reports, Trump has also ordered the withdrawal of half of the 14,000 American forces in Afghanistan. Although the White House subsequently contradicted the reports on Dec. 28, Trump has made no secret of his distaste for the long U.S. involvement in the country. What's more, Washington's current efforts to reach a peace deal with the Taliban highlight its increasing impatience with the enduring war in Afghanistan and its desire to leave the conflict.
While the Taliban and the Afghan government will celebrate and bemoan, respectively, a big reduction in U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the pullout will force regional neighbors Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia to weigh their options and consider their strategies in an Afghanistan with few or no American forces. Their differences notwithstanding, all these countries have a significant stake there, yet none is likely to adopt a significant, on-the-ground presence in the wake of an American withdrawal. Instead, they are all likely to enhance their ties with Afghanistan's various dominant actors and carve out zones of influence in the country to promote their interests and insulate themselves from the scourge of transnational terrorism.
The Big Picture
After more than 17 years of conflict, the White House has signaled its intent to withdraw from Afghanistan. But in the absence of any regional power willing — or able — to step into the breach left by departing U.S. forces, neighbors such as Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia will have to develop strategies to manage a post-American Afghanistan.
See 2019 Annual Forecast
See South Asia section of the 2019 Annual Forecast
The Taliban's Choice
Afghanistan's war is currently locked in a stalemate. The Taliban dominate large swaths of the countryside while the U.S.-backed government holds the urban areas. Meanwhile, the Islamic State maintains a small but dangerous presence, frequently clashing with both the Taliban and the central government. International forces assisting Kabul, including the 14,000 U.S. troops and smaller NATO and other allied contingents, are indispensable to the government. While a significant drawdown or outright withdrawal of these forces would not necessarily prompt the immediate collapse of the Afghan security forces, there is little doubt that a pullout would allow the Taliban to seize and maintain the initiative and gradually capture ever more territory.
Washington remains especially critical to Kabul's security operations, because it provides much-needed air power, logistics and training. The United States also conducts the lion's share of strikes and special operations raids on key Taliban targets, often at night. Critically, the Western presence in Afghanistan also brings in desperately needed funding that foots most of the bill for the Afghan security forces, as well as the wider Afghan economy. The cessation of such funding would deal an even bigger blow to Kabul than the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
It is little surprise, then, to read that the reports of a U.S. drawdown have shaken and dismayed many Afghan government and security officials. In contrast, Taliban social media accounts erupted in jubilation at the news. Although the Taliban have yet to formally enter peace talks with Kabul, any withdrawal could harm the chances of an end to hostilities because the militant group might withhold concessions in the hopes of waiting Washington out. At the same time, the Taliban might be more amenable to a transition deal with the United States due to their concerns about the growing strength of the Islamic State and other more radical extremist groups. Regardless of how a drawdown occurs, it is clear to all concerned that the Taliban will remain a pivotal political player in the future of the country.
As the United States signals its intention to leave Afghanistan — at least partially — neighbors such as Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia will have to develop their own strategies to deal with the vacuum. For all their critical differences with the Washington, none will be particularly happy to see the United States leave, especially since they all lack the desire and, in some cases, the capability to deploy a replacement force. Instead, the foursome will focus on building influence with key Afghan actors while placing a special emphasis on securing the areas that abut their territory.
As the United States signals its intention to leave Afghanistan — at least partially — neighbors such as Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia will have to develop their own strategies to deal with the vacuum.
Pakistan: Taking Care of Imperatives
Islamabad's overarching goal in Afghanistan is to ensure that Pakistan does not become encircled by India and a hostile government in Kabul, although it also wishes to convince any post-conflict Afghan administration to renounce its territorial claims to Pakistani soil. To this end, Pakistan has long cultivated its ties with the Taliban as a relatively friendly force to counter the emergence of a more India-aligned Afghan government. Pakistan has also been loath to sever its support for the Taliban, even at the cost of harming its wider relationship with the United States. For Islamabad, securing its northern front from potential threats is simply more urgent.
Even so, Pakistan's differences with the United States do not mean that a rapid U.S. withdrawal will please Islamabad. It would prefer to see a methodical, negotiated drawdown that ensures its preferred Afghan factions retain a significant stake in Kabul. This preference is driven by increasing concerns over the emergence of radical transnational forces such as the Islamic State, which would likely grow in strength if a vacuum emerges in Afghanistan.
As a result, Islamabad will likely encourage the Taliban to engage in negotiations while attempting to maintain its own seat at the table so it may advance its interests. But to the United States' likely chagrin, Pakistan won't sever its ties with the Taliban when the group is on the cusp of acquiring an even more pivotal role in Afghanistan's future — a development that would certainly help insulate Pakistan from threats from the north.
Iran: Shifting Sands
Even before the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Iran had to contend with threats from its eastern neighbor varying from spillover fighting to drug trafficking. In 1998, Iran even came close to invading Afghanistan after Taliban forces murdered 10 Iranian diplomats after they seized the Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. At the time, Tehran largely backed the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which eventually partnered with the United States to remove the Taliban from power. But their ties have since shifted. Iran has begun supporting certain factions of the Taliban in recent years to gain more traction and influence in western Afghanistan amid an increasingly tense standoff with the United States.
Tehran will be somewhat relieved to see Washington leave Afghanistan, if for no other reason that it would eliminate a possible staging post for an American attack on Iran. (A U.S. RQ-170 spy drone that crossed over into Iran in December 2011, for instance, reportedly departed from a base in Afghanistan.) Still, Tehran will also harbor worries about a quick U.S. pullout, because that would elevate the risk of Afghanistan's instability spilling over into Iran. Tehran's previous enmity with the Taliban aside, Iran has suffered a number of high-profile Islamic State attacks, meaning it is keen to insulate itself from such a threat as much as possible. Accordingly, Iran will likely work to expand its influence in western Afghanistan and pursue closer ties with Pakistan in the aftermath of a U.S. withdrawal.
China: Worried About a Spillover
China's primary interests in Afghanistan relate to its concern over militancy, especially in relation to the wider unrest in its Xinjiang region, as well as how instability in the country could complicate its Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing is already alarmed at the growing strength of the Turkistan Islamic Party in northwestern Syria, where the group has acquired significant combat experience and has also amassed a powerful arsenal of weapons. China fears that members could end up closer to home in a place such as Afghanistan if they are pushed out of the Middle East. Militants in both Afghanistan and Pakistan have already attacked Chinese interests, meaning Beijing will be apprehensive that a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will provide room for extremist groups to develop and eventually launch cross-border attacks in China proper.
Fearful of such a prospect, China will likely accelerate its security involvement in northeastern Afghanistan, particularly in Badakhshan province, whose Wakhan corridor borders China. The People's Armed Police has been conducting patrols in the corridor, while Beijing has reached agreements with Kabul to train mountain troops for the Afghan security forces. In such a situation, China is likely to be receptive to strengthening its ties with the Taliban if it emerges as a dominant player in the northeast that can keep transnational extremist groups at bay.
None of Afghanistan's neighbors is willing or, in some cases, even able to assume the U.S. mantle.
Russia: Hedging Bets
Russia is another country that, despite significant tensions and adversity with the United States, would be alarmed by a hasty U.S. pullout on its southern front. Although it does not directly border Afghanistan, Russia harbors deep concerns about the robust drug trade there, as well as the threat from terrorist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and, more recently, the Islamic State. The Kremlin had previously supported the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, especially during the first decade of the war, when the aftermath of the invasion effectively crippled the IMU. Russia provided logistical support to the U.S. effort through the Northern Distribution Network, assisted in the establishment of the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan and provided military equipment to Afghan government forces.
In recent years, however, Russian actions have increasingly challenged the U.S. mission there. These moves, in part, reflect the increasingly acrimonious ties between the two countries, but they are also tied to Russian concerns about growing Afghan instability and the potential for spillover into Central Asia. While the United States continues to focus on bolstering the central government, for instance, Russia's fears that it could lose significant strength — or see a collapse — have led it to hedge its bets by fostering ties with the Taliban and perhaps even provide the group with weapons and funding. A U.S. withdrawal would galvanize Russia into solidifying its security presence in neighboring countries such as Tajikistan in an attempt to insulate Central Asia from any spillover. At the same time, Moscow would look to strike up ties with a number of other groups in northern Afghanistan in addition to the Taliban, as well as former strongmen from the Northern Alliance, such as the Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum.
Band-Aid Solutions
Although they don't see eye to eye with Washington on many things, Afghanistan's neighbors have relied upon the long U.S. presence in the country to limit spillover from the conflict. Whether this has worked remains a topic of debate, because drug production has exploded over the past decade and dangerous transnational terrorist groups such as the Islamic State have established a foothold in the country. But there is a real possibility that these threats will only worsen if the United States withdraws hastily, leading Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia to brace themselves to engage more actively with Afghanistan. None of these countries is willing or, in some cases, even able to assume the U.S. mantle, but they hope to maintain a strong enough buffer on their respective borders by establishing relationships with various powerful local groups. Such action, however, might be little more than a cosmetic solution — if not a cause of greater problems down the road — as Afghanistan continues to come apart at the seams.
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This interview drew attention for other reasons but as they moved to foreign policy, part of Graham's approach to Afghanistan is to get more help from Pakistan so we can reduce our own footprint. What do people here think of that? Isn't Pakistan part of the problem?
https://www.theblaze.com/news/lindsey-graham-explodes-on-cnn-anchor-who-defends-obamas-iraq-strategy-thats-a-bunch-of-bulls-t?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=mixi&utm_campaign=theblaze
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Several years ago YA posted a very interesting piece (by someone of Indian intel background?) suggesting a strategy of
Working from memory:
a) giving the Pashtuns their own country (i.e. peeled off in equal part from Afghanistan and Pakistan) i.e. an end to the Durand line;
b) fomenting the Baluchs with similar intent to peel off from Pakistan and Iran
c) seizing Kashmir and Jammu (?)
d) seizing Pak nukes
essentially a strategy of dismembering Pakistan.
Would be wonderful if someone could help dig it up.
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FWIW, my quickie sense of the timeline:
2001: We gloriously kick ass and overthrow the Taliban, but then hesitate and OBL escapes.
Bush could have left at this point with a "Don't do it again" but instead hang around with vague neocon nation building noises AND decide to go to Iraq as well.
2006: Michael Yon reports we are losing in Afghanistan. I agree. On this forum I repeatedly pound the table, asking "What is our strategy?"
2008-16: Obama takes over a very unenviable situation. He tries ignoring it too, and then pretends to Surge while announcing timeline for withdrawal. I continue to ask "What is our strategy?"
2016: Trump wants out but generals persuade him to stay, at least minimally.
2019: No good options and all are getting worse. Globally we are overextended and there is no prospect for success, let alone victory, in Afghanistan.
Maybe we can hand it off to India to manage the situation? Surely they are motivated, willing, and able to fukk with Pakistan , , ,
YA?
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The surrender in Afghanistan is a major signpost in the end of America. AQ/ISIS and whatever new global jihad entity will be back in business. Our enemies globally have seen that our massive military still can't win a war, even against savages 10 minutes out of the stone age. The PLA generals mock our weakness.
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That was said after Vietnam too.
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That was said after Vietnam too.
Do you remember when the NVA/ Vietcong butchered 3000 Americans in NYC?
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Right-- they didn't come after us even though we left in defeat-- and within eight years or so we elected President Reagan, who went on to defeat the Soviet Empire.
What I am contesting here is your assertion that exiting Afg inherently means we are done.
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Why did we go into Afghanistan? Did we accomplish the mission?
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To overthrow the Taliban for having hosted OBL and to get OBL and his posse.
The former was done in mere months-- magnificent victory! Then we flinched at going into the caves to go after OBL.
Col. Ralph Peters called for declaring victory and leaving-- with a "Fukk up again and we will be back."
Instead we stayed to nation build, , , , and then went off to Iraq with Afghani nation building on the back burner. Now, some 15 years later, there is no victory to be had-- either eternal "mowing the lawn" so we don't have to admit we lost, or handing the problem off to India-- it would appear they are in a mood to non-nuclear fukk with Afghanistan. BTW, this would free up about $60 plus free up the assets in play for playtime elsewhere.
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To overthrow the Taliban for having hosted OBL and to get OBL and his posse.
The former was done in mere months-- magnificent victory! Then we flinched at going into the caves to go after OBL.
If we are negotiating with them, we sure didn't overthrow them, did we? Once we leave, they will rule and it will be as if we were never there. Oh, except for at least 2,400 dead and thousands of our troops horrifically maimed. Oh and 2.4 trillion debtbucks spent, at the minimum.
The constant thread that applies here and most every other topic of concern is the rotting of our institutions. The rot of the institutions is downstream of the rot in our culture.
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I have been reading a lot about bitcoin, and one of the central ideas is that it is decentralized and cannot be shut down or controlled. Sort of reminds me of the taliban and their related islamic franchises. Very difficult to kill a decentralized enemy. We could knock out Saddam/Gaddafi etc, but these were centralized. Might be time to think in terms of centralized and decentralized enemies.
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I have been reading a lot about bitcoin, and one of the central ideas is that it is decentralized and cannot be shut down or controlled. Sort of reminds me of the taliban and their related islamic franchises. Very difficult to kill a decentralized enemy. We could knock out Saddam/Gaddafi etc, but these were centralized. Might be time to think in terms of centralized and decentralized enemies.
You can kill a decentralized enemy. You have to possess both the means and the will to do so.
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GM: Isn't that what the Russians tried to do in Afghanistan?
YA: I remember you posting here several years back a fascinating piece (of Indian provenance if I remember correctly) suggesting dismembering Pakistan by offering the Pashtuns their own country (half peeled away from Afghanistan, half from Pakistan i.e. getting rid of the Durand line) fomenting the Baluchs (including eastern Iran) with India kicking ass over the remainder and while the Paks were distracted we would seize their nukes , , , or something like that.
Maybe I'm missing something, but that still seems like an interesting idea to me.
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These days with a nationalist and non-corrupt govt in India, the thinking is that war is to be avoided, as the Indian economy will be in the top 3 within the decade. Once its a 10 Trillion economy, Pak can be easily dealt with, if it has not self destructed by then. Current approach is to shut down the water flowing into Pak. So India is building a lot of dams and reservoirs to reduce the flow of river water into Pak. The Indus water treaty allows for waters from 3 rivers to India. Once this is done, India might abrogate the treaty and renegotiate it as the upper riparian and claim even more river waters. Nehru the peacenik gave substantial amount of river waters to Pak! and many in India consider that as a big blunder.
This does not preclude the govt from slapping Pak periodically and humiliating them. If Pak continues to support terror, I see the Indian govt increasing support to independence movements and Pashtuns inside pak. The Indian NSA (Mr.Ajit Doval) is a very smart and strategic thinker, who is also a hawk. He has openly said that if there is a large terror attack in India, Pak will loose Balochistan. It is essential that Modi win a second term. If he wins big, he could get rid of some artificial restraints that Indians have put on themselves, eg Article 370 etc, which do not allow other Indians to settle in Indian Kashmir!. Once these restraints are removed Kashmir valley can be controlled. The so called "Kashmir" area is actually several regions, Jammu, Leh and Kashmir. Of these Jammu and Leh are very peaceful and majority hindu/buddhist. Even in Kashmir, its only a small area of sunni muslims which is problematic, the Shia areas are very pro-India.
Pakis are brilliant at scoring self goals, one can count on that. Imagine that the US leaves Afgh and the talibs take over. Nature abhors a vacuum. What stops them (Pashtun) from getting all nationalistic and abolishing the Durand line and turning on Pak ?. Pakis are however hoping the Pashtun can be turned against India/Kashmir. This is unlikely to happen as even today Indians are liked very much in Afghanistan while Pakis are not. India has civilizational links with Afghans, in recent times they have constructed dams, parliament building, hospitals, military and educational training, etc and there is a lot of goodwill for India.
I think the US has made its point in Afghanistan, and can bring the soldiers home. Let the afghans and the pakis duke it out...and inshallah the taliban may reclaim the Durand line.
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Great information and insights as always YA. I will be pulling for Modi to win reelection beginning April 11.
Some background perspective here on Pashtun, Durand Line, Taliban, etc.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/taliban-and-changing-nature-pashtun-nationalism-41182?page=0%2C1
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Thanks, by the way I am super impressed as to how you and other forum contributors keep up with a gazillion topics and at a very high level of understanding.
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Great information and insights as always YA. I will be pulling for Modi to win reelection beginning April 11.
Some background perspective here on Pashtun, Durand Line, Taliban, etc.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/taliban-and-changing-nature-pashtun-nationalism-41182?page=0%2C1
I agree with Doug. I really appreciate your posts.
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Tail wags for the kind words YA, they are much appreciated.
"Some background perspective here on Pashtun, Durand Line, Taliban, etc.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/taliban-and-changing-nature-pashtun-nationalism-41182?page=0%2C1 "
Do we have to subscribe to see this?
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...
"Some background perspective here on Pashtun, Durand Line, Taliban, etc.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/taliban-and-changing-nature-pashtun-nationalism-41182?page=0%2C1 "
Do we have to subscribe to see this?
Sorry, I think I gave you the link to page 2 which identified the author as a Professor at Michigan State. Try this:
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/taliban-and-changing-nature-pashtun-nationalism-41182
With American withdrawal from Afghanistan distinctly on the cards, it is imperative that one makes an objective assessment of the future of Afghanistan by factoring in the variable of Pashtun nationalism now primarily represented, even if in distorted fashion, by a resurgent Taliban. What has given the Taliban’s appeal potency is its ability to couch in religious terminology traditional Pashtun aspirations for dominance in Afghanistan as well as the tribes’ aversion to foreign interference in their land. Both these factors have been constants in Afghan politics going back at least to the nineteenth century. They are likely to continue to assert themselves with great vigor following the American withdrawal.
Most Pashtuns, who comprise over forty percent of the population of Afghanistan, believe that they are the rightful rulers of the country based on the history of the past three hundred years when Pashtun dynasties ruled Afghanistan most of the time. While the Persian-speaking Tajiks, who form around a quarter of the population, are more urban and educated than the Pashtun tribes and staffed a substantial portion of the Afghan bureaucracy, the ruling dynasties were invariably Pashtun.
What many Pashtuns considered to be the “natural” political order in Afghanistan was radically altered, first by the Soviet invasion of 1979 and then by American assault in 2001 that was aided by the largely Tajik Northern Alliance that became the de facto ruler of the country in the initial period after the invasion. These events rankled the Pashtun tribes and the elites representing them and were in part responsible for the emergence of the Pashtun Taliban in 1994. The immediate causes for the advent of the Taliban were a reaction to the fear of Tajik domination and the mayhem and anarchy produced by the “mujahedin” factions fighting each other for control of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. The Taliban imposed a degree of order and ruled approximately three-quarters of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Despite their distorted interpretation of Islam and violent behavior, they succeeded in providing a degree of dignity to the Pashtuns who appeared in control of the country’s destiny once again.
Pashtun resentment against foreign intervention, which drove their opposition to the Soviet invasion and now fuels antipathy towards American military presence, has a long history going back to their resistance to British intrusion during the nineteenth century. It was heightened by the British success in dividing the Pashtun lands in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan by drawing the Durand Line that attached a large portion of Pashtun populated territory to British India, now Pakistan. This drastically reduced the Pashtun demographic superiority in Afghanistan. Opposition to the Durand Line was the principal reason why Afghanistan cast the lone vote against Pakistan’s admission to the United Nations in 1947.
Traditionally, Pashtun nationalism in Afghanistan was based on ethnicity, tribal loyalties and the commitment to Pashtunwali, the traditional tribal code of ethics. It was not driven primarily by religious beliefs. This explains Afghanistan’s antagonism toward fellow-Muslim Pakistan in the first three decades of the latter’s existence. Before the Daoud coup of 1973 that overthrew the monarchy, the government was normally restrained in its hostility toward Pakistan, which was mostly limited to bouts of anti-Pakistani rhetoric. However, Pashtun parties, such as the Afghan Millat, were far more uninhibited in their expressions of animosity toward Pakistan over the irredentist “Pashtunistan” issue. Nonetheless, the two countries came to the verge of armed conflict several times, especially after Sardar Daoud Khan, who represented a much more Pashtun nationalist position, took power in Kabul in 1973.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 fundamentally changed the nature both of Pashtun nationalism and its relationship with Pakistan. It led to American and Saudi support for the Afghan insurgency with Pakistan acting as the conduit for American arms and Saudi financial support to the tribes fighting the Soviets and their proxy government in Kabul. It also led to the import of Saudi-Wahhabi ideology through madrasas set up with Saudi funding for refugee children on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Taliban (literally students) were products of these madrasas. These madrasas preaching the Wahhabi form of Islam infused Pashtun nationalism with an extremist version of political Islam that combined with Pashtun fears and aspirations came to define the Taliban phenomenon. This had far reaching implications for the nature of Pashtun nationalism in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Simultaneously, the Soviet invasion altered the nature of Pakistan’s relationship with Pashtun nationalism, turning it from hostility to support and sustenance. Pakistan’s support to the tribal insurgency against the Soviet invasion made the Pashtun tribes dependent on Pakistani goodwill and also changed Pakistan’s image among Pashtuns from potential enemy to reliable friend. Pakistan saw the mayhem in Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal as a great strategic opportunity and extended military and political aid to the Pashtun Taliban that emerged from Kandahar in 1994. This strategy culminated in the installation of the Taliban regime in Kabul with Pakistan’s military help in 1996.
The Taliban in power provided Pakistan with strategic depth in the event of a future conflict with India that Pakistan had been seeking since its dismemberment by Indian arms in 1971. It also offered Pakistan the opportunity to use Afghan territory and tribal manpower to establish and train terrorist organizations that were used in Indian-administered Kashmir that has been in turmoil since 1990. Equally important, Pakistan’s support to this religiously inspired manifestation of Pashtun nationalism largely solved the problem of Pashtun sub-nationalism within Pakistan by portraying Islamabad not as a suppressor of Pashtun ethnic aspirations but as the natural ally of Pashtun political ambitions.
Although Pakistan ostensibly changed course under American pressure in 2001 and joined Washington’s “War on Terror”—thus once again alienating the Pashtuns—it clandestinely kept supporting Taliban factions within Afghanistan that were combating American and allied forces thus keeping some of its credibility among the Pashtuns intact. It also gave refuge to the Taliban leadership who made Quetta in Baluchistan its new headquarters. Despite American anger at Islamabad’s duplicity, this strategy paid Pakistan good dividends that are likely to increase with the anticipated American withdrawal. Pakistan is likely to end up as the primary power broker in Afghanistan in the wake of the American departure.
Although polls show that the majority of Afghans do not support the Taliban, the divided and infirm nature of the nominally ruling dispensation and its corruption and inefficiency has helped the Taliban gain renewed support among parts of the Pashtun population. Added to this is the vicarious satisfaction that many Pashtuns feel at the Taliban’s defiance of what they consider to be the American installed government in Kabul. This makes the Taliban a viable political force in Afghanistan.
The resurgent Taliban are driven only partly by religion. They are motivated equally, if not more, by the search for Pashtun dignity and revenge. While they are not in a position to rule over the entire country, and certainly not the urban areas, they do control large swaths of the rural areas in the predominantly Pashtun provinces of eastern and southeastern Afghanistan. In other words, they are in a position to make the country ungovernable and indefinitely continue the civil war especially because of their control of the drug trade that finances their military activities and helps them buy acquiescence if not active support. The withdrawal of American forces will provide the Taliban greater opportunity to expand their area of operations and will give them larger bargaining clout within the fractured Afghan polity.
Therefore, it is important that the Taliban must be consulted and included in the construction of any future dispensation in Afghanistan if it is to remain viable. The Trump administration is cognizant of the fact that the Taliban cannot be wished away and that a durable peace in Afghanistan can only be constructed on the basis of their participation. Washington has reached this conclusion both on the basis of the Taliban’s demonstrated staying power and its ability to disrupt any political order that does not satisfy at least some of its goals.
Consequently, the U.S. president’s special envoy for Afghan Peace, Zalmay Khalilzad, has met with representatives of the Taliban in Qatar twice in recent months. Whether these meetings will bear fruit is anybody’s guess. But it is a healthy sign that Washington has finally woken up to the fact that the Taliban is an indispensable part of the Afghan political landscape and must be included in the fashioning of the country’s political future. However, the U.S. administration has to go beyond merely recognizing the disruptive capacity of the Taliban and realize that they do genuinely express the political goals of a substantial segment of the Pashtun population, by far the largest ethnic formation in Afghanistan, and that Afghanistan cannot be ruled effectively without adequately satisfying Pashtun aspirations.
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Thank you Doug. Good article.
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-kashmir-crisis-insight/india-pakistan-threatened-to-unleash-missiles-at-each-other-sources-idUSKCN1QY03T
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https://www.defenseone.com/news/2019/04/its-getting-harder-track-us-progress-afghanistan/156513/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl
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Pakistan Puts Out Feelers for Dialogue With India
What Happened
Without getting ahead of themselves, rivals India and Pakistan are testing the waters for a revival of talks. On May 23, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted his congratulations to his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, on the latter's landslide victory in India's general election; Modi returned the favor, expressing his gratitude to Khan for the gesture. Three days later, the two leaders spoke by phone.
Also last week, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi reshuffled officials in 18 diplomatic posts. As part of the changes, Qureshi shifted the country's ambassador to France, Moin-ul-Haque, to the vacant post of high commissioner to India — indicating Khan's desire to inject fresh energy into a position that is critical for dialogue with India. This week, Qureshi also exchanged pleasantries with Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization ministerial meeting in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
The Big Picture
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India and Pakistan's decadeslong dispute over Kashmir has the potential to trigger a war between the nuclear rivals. Following a February flare-up, the United Nations sanctioned Masood Azhar, a Pakistan-based militant who has been a bete noire for New Delhi for over two decades. Now, as Pakistan contends with a slowing economy, its need to offer a safe investment environment will run up against its enduring support for anti-Indian rebels in Kashmir.
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The India-Pakistan Rivalry
Diplomatic niceties notwithstanding, Pakistan's army did test the Shaheen II medium-range ballistic missile on May 22 — just a day before the announcement of India's election results. Without question, Pakistan's military conducted the test to communicate that India should not interpret Islamabad's overtures as a sign of weakness. And there was also a warning from the other side of the divide, as India's ambassador to the United States, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, said talks with Pakistan could not occur until the country ceased to use terrorism as an instrument of state policy.
Why It Matters
Khan's outreach comes in the wake of a crisis in bilateral relations. On Feb. 26, Indian warplanes entered Pakistani airspace to bomb what India claimed was a camp belonging to militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), which had killed dozens of Indian soldiers in a convoy in Indian-administered Kashmir on Feb. 14. On Feb. 27, Pakistan retaliated by launching its own airstrikes across the Line of Control, the de facto boundary that divides Kashmir between the two countries, capturing an Indian pilot during an ensuing dogfight. Khan, however, prevented the standoff from escalating further when he ordered the pilot's release and repatriation on March 1.
More recently, the United Nations voted last month to impose a travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo against the JeM's leader, Masood Azhar. The vote passed because China — Pakistan's major international ally — finally acceded to a decade of Indian demands for the international community to move against the senior militant. The U.N. vote represented a success for India's strategy to diplomatically isolate Pakistan by publicly censuring the country. Meanwhile, in an effort to seem like it's taking a more robust line on militancy, Pakistan acquiesced to the U.N. measure — as long as the international body decoupled Azhar from the wider Kashmir issue.
The latter provision is because Pakistan's army and intelligence services have supported anti-Indian rebels in Kashmir as part of a decadeslong campaign of asymmetric warfare aimed at achieving a balance against a larger adversary. However, the timing of JeM's attack on the Indian forces in Kashmir suggests that the army's senior leadership doesn't control all militant behavior; the raid took place just two days before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman's visit to Islamabad, producing the kind of negative press Pakistan's civilian and military leaders would prefer to avoid. (As it is, the attack forced the crown prince to delay his visit by a day.) At the same time, Pakistan's army is aware of the danger of pushing Kashmiri rebels too hard, as it could spark a backlash and open yet another front in its war on militants, which includes battles with armed groups along the mountainous frontier with Afghanistan and separatist Balochi rebels who threaten one of the country's economic lifelines, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Pakistan's support for talks with India also comes against the backdrop of an economic slowdown. Growth in the $300 billion economy is expected to slow from 5.8 percent in the last fiscal year, which ended in June 2018, to 2.9 percent in the current fiscal year. And with Pakistan redoubling its efforts to attract foreign investment, Khan and powerful army chief Gen. Qamar Bajwa have even more reason to offer a safe destination for foreign investment. Indeed, Pakistan assented to sanctions against Azhar amid its continuing talks with the Financial Action Task Force, a global anti-money laundering watchdog, to demonstrate its desire to disrupt militant financing networks after the body gave Islamabad a rating that would threaten investments.
Islamabad will have to tread carefully as it seeks to maintain its proxy strategy while distancing itself from militancy to project a stable investment environment.
What to Watch Going Forward
Will state elections in Jammu and Kashmir shape Modi's outreach to Pakistan? State assembly elections in the contested Indian state are due by year's end. According to last week's general election results, Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) improved its vote share in the state from 34 percent in 2014 to 46 percent. The figures indicate that the party's hard line on Pakistan is reaping electoral rewards and that Modi, whose posture on Pakistan is intimately linked to developments in Kashmir, might be wise to wait until after those elections to publicly engage in talks with Pakistani officials (though private, backchannel talks are always a possibility). More immediately, Modi has chosen not to invite Khan to his inauguration ceremony on May 30, unlike the leaders of Bangladesh, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Mauritius and Kyrgyzstan.
Will Pakistan implement the sanctions against Azhar? Pakistan may have cut the militant leader loose, but it's highly unlikely that this single gesture heralds a strategic shift in Islamabad's strategy of cultivating militant proxies. It will be important to monitor Pakistan's implementation of the sanctions and whether Azhar retains freedom of movement. And because the sanctions against Azhar are occurring against the backdrop of economic problems and the Financial Action Task Force review, Islamabad will have to tread carefully as it seeks to maintain its proxy strategy while distancing itself from militancy to project a stable investment environment.
How will India respond in the event of future attacks in Kashmir? New Delhi and Islamabad's dispute over Kashmir could trigger a war in which Pakistan stages a tactical nuclear strike against India's superior conventional forces. The next time there's a major militant attack in Kashmir, India could — if the past is any guide — respond more forcefully in an effort to chip away at the deterrence capacity of Pakistan's tactical atomic weapons, albeit not to the degree that it would actually trigger a nuclear strike. Following a militant attack on India's Uri army base in 2016, New Delhi launched a ground-level "surgical strike" across the Line of Control into Pakistan. And in the wake of JeM's attack in February, India escalated its response by launching airstrikes in Balakot, a Pakistani town outside of disputed Kashmir, in an effort to demonstrate the vulnerabilities of Islamabad's air defense. If India delves further into Pakistan after a future attack, the ensuing tit-for-tat responses will only heighten the prospect of a bigger conflict between the neighbors.
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Modi is quite clear, Pak must show verifiable action against terrorists. So far Pak is still playing games, house arrest of terrorists, freezing of bank accts etc. The terrorist organizations just change their names and things go on as before. Pressure to respond forcefully to any pak inspired terror attacks is also building.
Something that might happen (keeping fingers crossed) is that the status of Kashmir will change. Articles 370 provides autonomous status to Kashmir and article 35A prevents other Indians from settling in Kashmir, even though Kashmiris can settle anywhere in India. If any of these articles are repealed, BJP wins again. More importantly, Pak will no longer have any business with respect to Kashmir. To accomplish this, Modi needs a majority in the Senate (Rajya Sabha), they already have a majority in the House (Lok sabha). It is expected that in about 2 years, Modi will get a majority in the Senate.
Another approach that Modi is taking is to first use up all the water that is allowed under the Indus Valley waters treaty to India and prevent anything from flowing into Pak. Once that is done, the bargaining chip will be that the entire Indus Waters treaty will be renegotiated, since the peacenik Nehru was very generous to Pak in the distribution of water. India has pak over a barrel, most of the rivers originate in India. One originates in Afghanistan, and India is building dams on it and canals to redirect water.
Overall, Pak is a beggar nation, no money, no water....at some point in the future, India might even get back POK (Pak Occupied Kashmir)...but first things first.
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Pakistan is a master of pretending to fight terrorism.
Modi is quite clear, Pak must show verifiable action against terrorists. So far Pak is still playing games, house arrest of terrorists, freezing of bank accts etc. The terrorist organizations just change their names and things go on as before. Pressure to respond forcefully to any pak inspired terror attacks is also building.
Something that might happen (keeping fingers crossed) is that the status of Kashmir will change. Articles 370 provides autonomous status to Kashmir and article 35A prevents other Indians from settling in Kashmir, even though Kashmiris can settle anywhere in India. If any of these articles are repealed, BJP wins again. More importantly, Pak will no longer have any business with respect to Kashmir. To accomplish this, Modi needs a majority in the Senate (Rajya Sabha), they already have a majority in the House (Lok sabha). It is expected that in about 2 years, Modi will get a majority in the Senate.
Another approach that Modi is taking is to first use up all the water that is allowed under the Indus Valley waters treaty to India and prevent anything from flowing into Pak. Once that is done, the bargaining chip will be that the entire Indus Waters treaty will be renegotiated, since the peacenik Nehru was very generous to Pak in the distribution of water. India has pak over a barrel, most of the rivers originate in India. One originates in Afghanistan, and India is building dams on it and canals to redirect water.
Overall, Pak is a beggar nation, no money, no water....at some point in the future, India might even get back POK (Pak Occupied Kashmir)...but first things first.
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https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/pak-fails-to-fulfil-25-of-27-fatf-points-downgrading-by-imf-world-bank-to-continue/articleshow/69811158.cms (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/pak-fails-to-fulfil-25-of-27-fatf-points-downgrading-by-imf-world-bank-to-continue/articleshow/69811158.cms)
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https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n14/owen-bennett-jones/one-screw-short
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"Some of his messages are intriguing: ‘I have to admit that a machine learning start-up based in Pakistan that I have angel-invested in was tasked to manipulate Russian elections in favour of Vlad Putin. The team did a great job I must say. Kudos. Congrats Putin.’ Other tweets show his admiration for nationalist, authoritarian leaders (with the inevitable exception of India’s Narendra Modi): Kim Jong-un, he suggests, might make a good UN secretary general."
:-o
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https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-korea/2018-01-31/long-shadow-aq-khan
his confession 2004 :
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/feb/05/pakistan.jamesastill
One could argue he should get the Nobel Prize for *war and terror*.
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From time to time, one reads reports that the Saudis may have been delivered the islamic bomb (by pak) , since they are the ones who finance pak. Dont know enough about bombs to judge the veracity of such reports. Pak does everything they can to monetize the know-how and the danger of proliferation increases everytime they near bankruptcy. I would watch iran-pak relations carefully in the future. Saudi Barbaria needs to keep funding pak....
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Sounds plausible to me , , , this possibility has been raised here a couple of times over the years.
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Sounds plausible to me , , , this possibility has been raised here a couple of times over the years.
The Saudis have the money. What would stop them from obtaining nukes from Pakistan?
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Ties with Afghanistan go back to supporting the mujahadeen against the Russians.
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With a hardliner home minister and with full support from Modi and people of India, Paki intrusions have gone down and separatist leaders are behaving. The carrot and stick always works...but you need a big stick and ability to use it. This has some parallels for the USA where Trump is trying to stop illegal immigration but does not fully control govt (House) and thus is unsuccesful....YA
https://www.dailyo.in/politics/amit-shah-kashmir-politics-militancy-in-kashmir-kashmiri-dynasts-hurriyat/story/1/31477.html
For someone acclaimed as Bharatiya Janta Party’s ‘Chanakya’, who drove the party to a historic landslide victory in the 2019 Parliament elections, getting the crucial assignment to head the Home Ministry was supposed to be the next big challenge.
But for Amit Shah, his Chanakya-neeti as the country’s Home Minister seems to have worked out even better.
If well-begun is half-done, Shah looks already halfway through — at least with regard to how politics in Kashmir has changed since the day he assumed office on June 1, 2019.
From mainstream to separatist camps, some of the most vociferous faces have transformed.
The winds of change started blowing from the historic Jamia Masjid, Nowhatta in Srinagar — otherwise seen as the hotbed of the “Azadi” sentiment. Addressing devotees from the mosque's pulpit, Kashmir’s head parson and senior separatist leader, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, now dedicates his Friday sermons mainly to social and environmental issues.
On June 15, 2019, addressing the Jamia gathering, the Mirwaiz, who heads the Hurriyat (M), highlighted how people and government were responsible for frequent threats of flooding in Kashmir. The next Friday, he dedicated his weekly sermon to highlighting drug abuse.
As per the national media, this change is now perceptible across all such mosques in the restive region.
“Kashmir mosques that blared ‘Azadi’ slogans will now launch a war on drugs” read the headline of a Hindustan Times report published on July 3, 2019. “Mosques across the Kashmir Valley, which blared slogans for “Azadi” (independence) in the early nineties, amplifying a separatist movement, will soon be using their loudspeakers to spread a message against the use of drugs, rapidly becoming a huge problem in the state of Jammu & Kashmir,” the report said.
While Mirwaiz was already seen as a moderate face of separatism, even his hardliner counterpart from the Hurriyat (G), Syed Ali Geelani, now sounds a bit soft.
It was for the first time in the last 30-odd years of militancy, that when the Home Minister made his maiden visit to Kashmir on June 26, 2019, there was no strike call from Geelani or his colleagues. In another significant development, separatist leaders have joined hands with Kashmiri Pandits to find ways to facilitate the latter’s return to the homeland. As per a news report published in India Today on July 6, 2019, “This is the first such effort in 30 years after thousands of Kashmiri Pandits were forced to flee the state after facing widespread violence.”
Keeping the situation under control on July 8, 2019 — the death anniversary of Hizbul Commander Burhan Muzafar Wani — was supposed to be another challenge. However, as compared to last year, Burhan’s death anniversary this year passed off peacefully, and the public response to a hartal call was debatable.
As per news reports, despite a customary hartal call, traffic jams were witnessed on the Boulevard as many used the strike as an opportunity to visit the Mughal Gardens and Dal Lake.
This time, even social media wasn’t that provocative.
Otherwise, on Burhan’s second anniversary, the separatists had tweeted this:
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq
✔
@MirwaizKashmir
Amidst severe restrictions imposed all over #Kashmir today remembers #BurhanWani his associates & over 200 civilians Killed By Armed Forces since then. Great sacrifices rendered by our #Martyrs is firmly impressed on our collective memory and moves us forward in our mission
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1:37 AM - Jul 8, 2018
The change in regional mainstream parties is similarly palpable.
The National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) — who had otherwise championed the “Kashmir cause” — have gone for posturing. Out of power, the Abdullahs and Muftis would usually sound no different from separatists. But now, the ‘pampered dynasts' seem to be behaving more responsibly.
During the previous ban on civilian movement on the national highway after the Pulwama suicide bombing on February 14, both the Abdullahs and the Muftis had personally led roadside protests to publicly defy the curbs, bravely asking people to do the same.
For the security of the Amarnath Yatra, a similar ban is again in place. However, this time, the senior leaders from both parties have refrained from taking the law in their hands.
main_omar-abdullah-m_071319064414.jpg
Dynasts of Kashmir: They are now busy tweeting about flowers and cricket jerseys, and not the 'burning Kashmir question'. (Photo: Reuters)
Instead of the NC and PDP, this time, such roadside protests have mainly been organised by the Peoples United Front (PUF), an alliance between Engineer Rashid’s Awami Etihad Party (AEP) and Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Movement (JKPM), led by Shah Faesal.
But then, it is no more of the traditional anti-India ranting by Engineer Rashid. His protests have reduced to serenading demonstrations — he either walks barefoot outside the Civil Secretariat or brings along drummers, who play the dhol.
Such musical demonstrations are constant reminders of a scene from the Shahrukh Khan-starrer Mohabattein wherein Shahrukh Khan’s character, Raj Aryan, protests by singing the song “Duniya Mein Jitni Hain Nafratein”.
For around a month, Omar Abdullah’s tweets are more on issues like his cabin baggage and pictures of blooming flowers in Gulmarg than the “Kashmir-issue”. His firebrand colleagues also sound equally softened.
Omar Abdullah
✔
@OmarAbdullah
Lupin season in Gulmarg. Courtesy @highlands_park https://www.instagram.com/p/BzsRGDOlv_W/?igshid=1rjt8am4vp90m …
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Controversial NC leader and former Speaker of the J&K Assembly, Muhammad Akbar Lone, who won the Baramulla Parliament seat, is yet to stoke any new controversy. Known for his reportedly controversial statements previously, especially an appreciation for Pakistan and use of abusive language, Lone is largely silent in Parliament.
Forget politicians, even the Srinagar-based media houses have reformed.
Previously, a section of influential newspapers would use phrases like “government forces” and “troopers”. Now, they have switched to “security forces”.
But then, though for Amit Shah, it is a well-begun moment, it is only a halfway point.
The other half is an altogether different story.
And that half is not about politicians pampered by New Delhi and Islamabad to be beneficiaries of the Kashmir conflict — the other half is about the Kashmiri youth, who either pick up guns or take to the streets.
And the dissent of this youth matters.
main_kashmir-protest_071319064720.jpg
Out on the street: The dissent of the Kashmiri youth remains a big challenge for Amit Shah. (Photo: Reuters)
On the one hand, the killing of the poster-boy of new-age militancy, Burhan Wani, led to months of unrest in the state and prompted New Delhi to appoint Dineshwar Sharma as Interlocutor. On the other, on February 14, 2019, a 20-year-old lesser-known local militant, Adil Dar, pushed India and Pakistan to a nuclear flashpoint through his suicide bombing in Pulwama.
Since killing the militants has failed to kill militancy, Shah’s Chanakya neeti is expected to be beyond Operation All Out.
And then, in a state where 70 years of corruption — allegedly fueled by the regional dynasts — has been among the reasons for alienation, things haven’t improved much during the last one year of Governor's Rule either.
On June 12, 2019, Raj Bhawan called an interaction with accredited journalists. I was one of the invitees. Five of the 10-odd questions were on complaints of rampant corruption, prevalent during the Governor’s rule, with the Raj Bhawan unable to give convincing replies.
So, though halfway there, Shah has bigger challenges ahead. But then, there is hope.
And this hope is strengthened by his historic speech on Kashmir in Parliament on June 28, 2019.
Shah said that taking the people of Jammu and Kashmir into confidence was the top priority of the Modi government “even if it means giving more.”
Call him a new-age Chanakya or Sardar Patel’s avatar, the strongman who brought perceptible change in Kashmir in just a month is expected to perform even better hereon.
All the best, Amit Shah!
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News is hafeez saeed is under arrest
https://twitter.com/i/status/1151894069011816448 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1151894069011816448)
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/07/trump-says-us-troops-shouldnt-be-policemen-afghanistan-so-why-are-they-there/158602/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/07/22/trump-says-he-has-a-plan-to-win-the-afghanistan-war-in-10-days/?fbclid=IwAR1upiJJt6-hjkeOUdvFmwooYNrZSi0AwaaeFzLEYIAAaYLHI00BH_MIz28
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Even though I support Trump, the prez does suffer from foot in mouth disease. For 70 years India has not tolerated mediation by outsiders in Kashmir, always considered it a bilateral matter between India and Pak. Suddenly Pak becomes the golden boy, Trump offers mediation between India-Pak and then tops it with possibility of destruction of Afghanistan! It is no wonder, he is treated like a buffoon in most countries. Complaints about not treating allies well, suddenly seem all too real.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/how-trump-sold-kabul-and-new-delhi-down-the-river/articleshow/70352190.cms
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As a rule, ignore what he says, watch what he does.
Even though I support Trump, the prez does suffer from foot in mouth disease. For 70 years India has not tolerated mediation by outsiders in Kashmir, always considered it a bilateral matter between India and Pak. Suddenly Pak becomes the golden boy, Trump offers mediation between India-Pak and then tops it with possibility of destruction of Afghanistan! It is no wonder, he is treated like a buffoon in most countries. Complaints about not treating allies well, suddenly seem all too real.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/how-trump-sold-kabul-and-new-delhi-down-the-river/articleshow/70352190.cms
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Brett Baier did a very long and I thought thoughtful interview with the Pak PM. Thanks to YA's posting here I felt like I saw what a shameless lying sneaky bastard he is.
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Pakistan, U.S.: Bilateral Ties Improve as Islamabad Helps Washington in Afghanistan
(Stratfor)
The Big Picture
The United States has turned to Pakistan in its bid to wind down the 18-year war in Afghanistan. As long as Pakistan cooperates and pushes the Afghan Taliban to cooperate, Islamabad's ties with Washington will improve. But Pakistan's own strategy in the region will limit how much pressure it is willing to apply on the Taliban.
What Happened
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House struck a positive tone July 22 despite bilateral relations long beset by rancor and suspicion. Khan later thanked Trump on Twitter for his warm and gracious hospitality. Trump meanwhile offered to help mediate Pakistan and India's long-running dispute over Kashmir, a suggestion that Khan welcomed but New Delhi criticized. The cordial exchanges stand in sharp contrast to the jabs the two leaders traded on the social media platform in 2018, when Trump accused Islamabad of lies and deceit and Khan pointed to Washington's "failures" to win the war in Afghanistan.
Why It Matters
The meeting highlights a shift from the previously harsh U.S. approach to extracting cooperation in the Afghan peace process from Pakistan. In August 2017, for example, Trump publicly chastised Pakistan for offering a haven to militants operating in Afghanistan, such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network. The United States also used punitive measures, such as cuts to security assistance and threats to revoke the country's non-NATO major ally status, to elicit Pakistani cooperation.
Since then, Pakistan — where some of the Afghan Taliban's leadership indeed shelters — has pushed the insurgents to join multiple rounds of talks with the United States aimed at finalizing a peace deal. Seeking to build on this momentum, Trump has dangled the prospect of improved relations with Pakistan, hoping to induce Islamabad to use its influence to push the Taliban into accepting a permanent cease-fire and engaging in talks with the NATO-backed government in Kabul.
Trump has dangled the prospect of improved relations with Pakistan, hoping to induce Pakistan to use its influence to push the Taliban into accepting a permanent cease-fire and engaging in talks with the NATO-backed government in Kabul.
But any Pakistani support for the Afghan peace process will not come at the expense of Islamabad's ultimate aim of shaping a friendly government in Kabul respectful of Pakistan's strategic concerns. These prominently include preventing Afghanistan from building a stronger relationship with archrival India, and compelling Afghanistan to renounce any claims to Pakistani territory by acknowledging the legality of their de facto 2,640-kilometer (1,640-mile) shared border. Because Pakistan wants the Taliban to advance these interests in a post-conflict Afghanistan, it will be careful not to pressure the Taliban to accede to U.S. wishes to the extent that it alienates the Taliban.
Background
The health of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship hinges on the extent of Pakistan's security cooperation in the war in Afghanistan. The United States has relied on access to Pakistani territory for its overland military convoys to landlocked Afghanistan. But Pakistan has played a double game and also backed the Taliban. Since October, the United States and the Taliban have held seven rounds of talks centering on four issues: a U.S. troop withdrawal, a Taliban pledge not to permit transnational extremist groups to operate in Afghanistan; a permanent cease-fire; and a commitment to dialogue with the central government in Kabul aimed at reaching a power-sharing agreement between Kabul and the Taliban.
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'As long as Pakistan cooperates and pushes the Afghan Taliban to cooperate, Islamabad's ties with Washington will improve."
Yes but better relations with Pak equals worse relations with far more strategic partner India.
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I think it was in his interview last night with Sean that the President spoke of looking to dramatically lower our footprint in Afg.
We have A LOT of demands on our bandwidth right now, and I can't say that the President is wrong in seeing if he can pull this off. Certainly the man is capable of changing his tactics-- he is very Boydian.
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It is wishful thinking that Pak will change their spots. As long as American moolah flows to Pak, they will provide a few tid bits of help. If somehow the Afghan problem is solved, free money stops as the US exits Afghanistan. The taliban may next turn their focus on Pak!. It is therefore not in Pak's interest to solve the Afghan problem for the USA.
(https://www.thefridaytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/tft-26072019-2-750x493.jpg)
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Within days of Taliban Khan meeting Trump, the US plans F-16 sales to Pak. In the convoluted article below, the sales program is called "Peace Drive I". It once again shows that the US has a transactional/maximum pressure relationship with India, which is the reason, India will always keep a foot on the Russian side and buy the best weapons from both sides.
WASHINGTON: Days after the meeting between President Donald ..
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/us-approves-sales-to-support-paks-f-16-fighter-jets-for-24x7-end-use-monitoring/articleshow/70405143.cms
The US currently wants India to set up F-16 manufacturing line in India (called F-21!, US marketing at its best). India is reluctant for two reasons. First, the Pakis have the F-16, second the F-16 while a significant force is considered outdated, as compared to the F-35. India will not invest billions in an older technology.
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"It once again shows that the US has a transactional/maximum pressure relationship with India, which is the reason, India will always keep a foot on the Russian side and buy the best weapons from both sides."
Very frustrating! It would seem a close relationship would be very good for each side.
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Pakistan Struggles to Make Good on a Golden Opportunity in Balochistan
This Landsat photograph from 1972 shows the Pakistani-Iranian border.
(SSPL/Getty Images)
Highlights
Until Pakistan and the Tethyan Copper Co. settle their dispute, development of the country's Reko Diq gold and copper mine will languish, leaving a potentially abundant revenue stream dry.
Growing foreign investment in the sector will heighten the need for an effective dispute resolution mechanism.
Unless Pakistan implements the necessary reforms to attract foreign investment, the country's mining sector will not grow beyond its current 3 percent contribution to Pakistan's gross domestic product.
In a remote and arid corner of southwestern Pakistan, Islamabad has found itself embroiled in a difficult battle: a multibillion-dollar dispute with a global mining company over one of the world's richest untapped deposits of copper and gold. In July, the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ordered Pakistan to pay $5.9 billion in damages to the Tethyan Copper Co., a joint venture between Canada's Barrick Gold Corp. and Chile's Antofagasta PLC. The ruling stems from a 2012 case that Tethyan lodged at the ICSID against Islamabad for failing to issue a license to mine gold and copper at the Reko Diq site.
The case draws attention to the rich resources of Balochistan, Pakistan's rugged southwestern frontier in which Reko Diq is located, as well as the tug of war between domestic Pakistani law and international arbitration in resolving investor disputes. But above all, the Reko Diq affair shines a light on Pakistan's numerous underground resources and its broader failure to exploit them — something that will continue to haunt the country if it is to fulfill Prime Minister Imran Khan's goal of rapidly ramping up foreign investment.
The Big Picture
Pakistan's Balochistan province plays a vital role in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor because of its location on the Arabian Sea. It's also known for its resource riches that include an abundance of gold and copper deposits. But a longstanding dispute between the government and a mining company point to the need for reforms, without which mining's contribution to Pakistan's economy won't exceed 3 percent.
A Strategically Significant Frontier
Pakistan possesses large deposits of gold, copper, chromite, bauxite, iron ore, rubies, emeralds, topaz, mineral salt and coal, many of which are — like Reko Diq — located in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province. Accounting for nearly 40 percent of the country's landmass, Balochistan's 347,000-square-kilometer area (134,000 square miles) makes it equal in size to Germany. Its strategically located coastline faces vital shipping lanes in the Arabian Sea, including traffic destined for the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, Balochistan is the site of a variety of projects as part of the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which aims to create a direct overland route linking western China and the Arabian Sea through Balochistan's port of Gwadar. At the same time, however, Balochistan is also home to an insurgent movement that seeks independence from Pakistan on cultural and economic grounds; indeed, Chinese investment in Balochistan has exacerbated long-standing separatist grievances of foreign exploitation in the province.
The mine itself is located in Chagai, Pakistan's largest and westernmost district. According to Tethyan, Reko Diq contains 2.2 billion metric tons of mineable ore that could yield 200,000 metric tons of copper and 250,000 troy ounces of gold annually for over half a century. To extract the precious metals, the company must shovel, crush and grind the ore into a fine powder before converting it into a slurry concentrate for transport through a 682-kilometer underground pipeline to Gwadar. At the port, the company plans to dry the concentrate before loading it onto ships for smelting abroad.
Pakistan Misses a Golden Opportunity
But for all of its lucrative potential — $353 million annually at current gold and copper rates — the development of Reko Diq has stagnated because of the long-running legal battle that culminated in last month's $5.9 billion fine. A key element of the dispute centers on the validity of a decades-old pact called the Chagai Hills Exploration Joint Venture Agreement (CHEJVA). Signed in 1993 between the Balochistan Development Authority and BHP, the Australian firm that initially offered its capital and technical expertise to explore Reko Diq, CHEJVA later became the subject of a case at the Balochistan High Court. There, the petitioner argued that the agreement granted unfair advantages to BHP in the form of bigger blocks with more time for exploration than permitted under the law governing mining in the province. The Balochistan High Court ruled against the plea in 2006, declaring that the CHEJVA was valid.
This map showing the location of the Reko Diq mine within the rest of Pakistan.
In the meantime, Balochistan's provincial government begged to differ with the local high court. First, the government terminated the exploration agreement in 2009 and then, two years later, it refused to grant a mining license to BHP's successor, Tethyan. But because the company had already invested $220 million for exploration, it lodged cases at the ICSID and the International Chamber of Commerce in 2012, invoking international arbitration by circumventing the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which claimed that it — and not the ICSID — had jurisdiction over the case. Ultimately, the Supreme Court of Pakistan overturned the Balochistan High Court's verdict on appeal in 2013, ruling that the CHEJVA had been void from the beginning because of its violations of Pakistani law. Accordingly, the Supreme Court also ruled that Tethyan had no investor rights, including that of international arbitration, under the bilateral investment treaty between Pakistan and Australia (where Tethyan is incorporated). The ICSID, however, claimed jurisdiction in the case, ruling in favor of Tethyan in March 2017 before finally announcing last month the total fine, which includes a $4 billion penalty and $1.9 billion in interest charges.
Turning Promise Into Reality
The future of the mine will depend on how Tethyan and Pakistan choose to proceed. The mining company has offered to discuss a negotiated settlement with Islamabad — a gesture the government has welcomed — but it remains unclear whether the company will subsequently maintain its involvement in Reko Diq. Other mining companies from China and Saudi Arabia have expressed interest in the project, while the country's politically powerful military has noted it could help manage the project through its construction firm, the Frontier Works Organization.
The case of Reko Diq points to the fundamental problem in Pakistan's mining sector: the potential offered by the country's abundance of resources and the reality of its inability to efficiently exploit these minerals.
More broadly, the case of Reko Diq points to the fundamental problem in Pakistan's mining sector: the potential offered by the country's abundance of resources and the reality of its inability to efficiently exploit these minerals. If Pakistan wants to successfully exploit its mineral resources, it must attract overseas firms. But as the case of Reko Diq demonstrates, foreign investment requires effective investor dispute mechanisms — to say nothing of roads and other infrastructure to transport the resources from their often remote locations.
Khan, whose top domestic challenge is tackling the structural constraints that are hindering the economy, has ordered the formation of a committee to investigate the Reko Diq debacle and learn lessons for the future. What's more, the Planning Ministry has listed seven reform areas for mining pertaining to regulation, resource mapping, infrastructure, upgrading technology, access to finance and skills development. Pakistan's best-laid plans notwithstanding, the disagreement with Tethyan proves that developments taking place above ground will always affect the riches that lie in the earth below. And unless Islamabad can find a way to finally remove the obstacles to business, the Reko Diq affair appears to be one that it is likely to repeat.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/afghanistan-war-taliban-waiting-game-about-to-pay-off/
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As always Andrew McCarthy is intelligent and astute. Yet the piece does not really address the key question posed by what he says-- what does victory look like?
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It is obvious that the US needs to withdraw from Afghanistan. We wont call it surrender, because we will sign an agreement with the Taliban and spin it as a peace deal. I actually think there is a good chance that it will all turn out fine, because the Taliban of today are not the same as the blood thirsty taliban of 20 years ago. They are much more media savvy, note their recent statesman like press release, advising Pak (posted elsewhere). The Taliban want to rule Afghanistan, and they will in co-operation with the warlords of northern Afghanistan. For this to happen, Pak must not be part of the negotiations. The only reason to involve Pak is that the US thinks that Pak will provide them a better deal with the Taliban, thats wishful thinking. It is not in Pak's interest to shut down the gravy train. Why does the US government not understand this ?. Below is some artwork (loved the expressions, even if stereotyped), paki terror mongers protesting because they think the gravy train is being shut down.
People worry too much about Al-Qaeda. AQ is an arab construct, Af-Pak is not their natural habitat. It would not be in the Taliban's interest to provide them a foot hold, once they gain power. If we have to go back to Afghanistan, that is OK, but staying there for 18 years + is not the answer.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBmMQbhUYAAFwPT?format=jpg&name=medium)
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YA:
As always, I really dig the level of your analysis and insight on all this. Very pithy, very penetrating.
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YA:
As always, I really dig the level of your analysis and insight on all this. Very pithy, very penetrating.
They are lucky I don’t have launch authority for American ICBMs. Af-pak would be an ocean of glass. That would be my peace settlement.
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Some insights into the background machinations.
India, Pakistan, Afghanistan: The new great game
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/afghanistan-taliban-india-kashmir-us-zalmay-khalilzad-5895132/ (https://indianexpress.com/article/india/afghanistan-taliban-india-kashmir-us-zalmay-khalilzad-5895132/)
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As always Andrew McCarthy is intelligent and astute. Yet the piece does not really address the key question posed by what he says-- what does victory look like?
I agree. McCarthy expresses the frustration we all have but doesn't present a better alternative.
Endless war is what our enemy is waging. It wasn't our idea.
I like what YA wrote on Afghanistan. The Taliban has changed some and al Qaida is an Arab construct. If Afghans don't want foreigners attacking and occupying their country, don't host or tolerate terrorists. If they do, we (the US) will be back.
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Below is I believe a very nice summary of how Pak got to where it is.
https://majorgauravarya.wordpress.com/2019/03/12/medusa/ (https://majorgauravarya.wordpress.com/2019/03/12/medusa/)
MEDUSA
On 14 August 1947, a part of the British Indian Army separated from its mother organisation and became the Pakistan Army. It retained the flavour of its British creator; the parties, the spit and polish, the gin in the afternoon and whiskey in the evening, the ‘hard as hobnailed leather’ ethos and the drill square. Its officers were Pakistani in skin-tone but British in thinking. “Brown Sahibs” would have been an apt description.
We were no different.
The Indian Army has seen a strong and consistent democratic dispensation since independence. Yes, our political leaders have made mistakes. But it is also true that the Indian Army is the better for never having tasted the fruits of unquestioned power.
India ratified its Constitution on 26 November 1949 and gave itself a Constitution on 26 January 1950.
The Pakistan Army saw a political leadership vacuum from the very beginning, something they could take advantage of. While India’s socialist democracy moved towards economic justice, the power center in Pakistan remained the landowner, the redoubtable Wadera. In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the relationship of the ruler and the ruled has always been that of the Chaudharys and Haaris, the landowner and the landless tiller. And the biggest Chaudhary of them all has always been the Pakistan Army.
Pakistan’s first Constitution was approved in 1956 but abrogated in 1958, after a military coup. The 1962 Constitution was suspended in 1969. It was abrogated in 1972. In 1973, Pakistan framed a new Constitution. It was again held in abeyance in 1977, after a coup. This Constitution was restored in 1985.
Each time it was a Pakistan Army General who tore up the Constitution of Pakistan. When it wasn’t a General, it was a civilian who was all too willing to dance to the tune of whoever was the pied piper in Rawalpindi. Governor General Ghulam Mohammad, Major General Iskander Mirza, General Ayub Khan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, General Zia ul-Haq, General Parvez Musharraf, Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif…not all Pakistani autocrats have worn the uniform.
Gen Ayub Khan midwifed the political career of the greatest of all Pakistani democrats, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. In 1983, another military dictator General Zia-ul Haq appointed a young industrialist to the very important position of Finance Minister of Punjab. That young industrialist was Nawaz Sharif. Before 2013, there was no one more liberal and secular than Imran Khan. He baited the Army and called out the fundamentalists. After losing every election and looking down the path of political oblivion, Imran Khan understood that without the three A’s of Pakistan, he was dust. Allah, Army and America have always been the pillars of Pakistan.
Imran saw that the national mood was against America. So, he embraced Islamic fundamentalism, and suddenly the Pakistan Army was Teflon coated. The elite soon renamed him “Taliban Khan”. In 2018, General Qamar Javed Bajwa manipulated the Pakistan General Elections and Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi became the twenty-second Prime Minister of Pakistan. Incidentally, Imran belongs to the same clan of Mianwali Niazis that gave Pakistan another historical gem, Lt Gen AAK Niazi.
But I digress.
Strategic depth is the Holy Grail that the Pakistan Army has always sought. You need land to fight wars and Pakistan is not more than 400 kms wide, at an average. No nation wants to fight wars on its own land. It is avoidable. So, the Pakistan Army creates “zones of influence”. In Iran, it is the Sunni terror outfits perpetually at war with a Shia state. In Afghanistan, it is the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, amongst many others. In India, it is Kashmir. Earlier, it was Punjab. There are other geographies involved, within India. What I mention here is the tip of the iceberg. There are circles within circles. Pakistan’s attack on India is asymmetric. And it is mind-bogglingly sophisticated.
No one can accuse the Pakistan Army of not having a sense of humor. When the elected Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was overthrown by General Zia ul Haq, the coup was called Operation Fair Play.
Zia irreversibly changed both Pakistan and the Pakistan Army. It was under him that mainstreaming of radical Islamists started. When he appointed various ultra-conservative Ulema to the all-powerful Council of Islamic Ideology, an unknown Sargodha born cleric found a special place in Zia’s heart. General Zia-ul Haq created Hafiz Mohammad Saeed.
This was the time when the boundaries between the Pakistan Military and the self-styled Mujahideen who had fought in the Afghan Jihad, started blurring. Unity, Faith and Discipline, the motto given by Jinnah was dumped. Its place was taken by the freshly minted ‘Iman Taqwa Jihad fi-Sabilillah’. Jihad became the avowed aim of the Pakistan Army. Its soldiers were no longer simply professionals. They became Ghazis, devout Muslims who were at a state of perpetual war with non-Muslims.
Officers and men were graded by how ‘pious’ they were. Outward signs of this piety were namaz, the obligatory beard and frequent references to the Holy Quran. Liquor was banned. Music was declared ‘haram’.
From the day it was born, Pakistan’s journey to being a security state started. This required money. So, agreements were signed with US and later with China. It was easier for US to deal with Pakistan, than with India, notwithstanding India’s socialist leaning towards the USSR. India was a messy democracy and work in progress. In Pakistan, US had always dealt with one man, the Army Chief. It was always about convenience. Nothing has changed. Pakistan Army has always had serious mercenary tendencies. That too has not changed.
Soon, the ISI had its own political wing, used for keeping tabs on politicians. They blackmailed, harassed and pressurized. They created and destroyed governments. They were instrumental in assassinations and disappearances of political rivals. They say that the ISI has closed down its political wing. But then, they say a lot of things.
The Pakistan Army was the self-proclaimed savior of the nation. But to be the savior, an enemy was needed. So, the Pakistani population was told how India had never accepted partition and how the Constitution of India did not acknowledge the existence of Pakistan. India, five times the size, would gobble up Pakistan. The Hindu was to be reviled and looked upon with suspicion. Incidentally, Pakistan’s school textbooks have some of the most hateful literature you can find in any school curriculum in the world. The hate for India was thus institutionalized.
Four wars were fought, three over Kashmir. Countless acts of terror later, Pakistan is no closer to getting Kashmir than it is to speaking a coherent sentence in front of a global audience. But once you are the self-appointed Fortress of Islam and the only ‘Muslim nuclear power’, you have an inflated sense of importance.
Today, the business interests of the Pak military are worth over USD 100 billion. Fauji Foundation, Shaheen Foundation, Baharia Foundation, Army Welfare Trust and the Defence Housing Authorities own about fifty different businesses. From cement to real estate, from custard to diapers, the Pakistan Army manufactures every consumable you can think of.
Pakistan Army breeds terrorists because they are cheaper to maintain and arm, than a regular army. It also breeds them because of the huge advantage of plausible deniability. And who can argue with the fact that Pakistani Generals are far better at making money than fighting wars? Pakistan has outsourced its wars with India to the likes of Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar.
Post Pulwama, a few things have changed irreversibly. One, Pakistan has upped the ante by introducing suicide bombing to Kashmir. Two, India’s response by launching air strikes into Pakistani territory not just in PoK but also Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has raised the bar for anti-terror response. This message that the air strikes gave was not what politicians thought it was. They were busy counting bodies. Bodies are not important because to get bodies, we could have used MBRLs or medium artillery. We could have done it from the safety of our country. The simple act of launching fighter jets into enemy territory is an incredible statement.
It is not about Kashmir. Pakistan will remain in a state of perpetual war with India, until we are ‘cut to size’. Imagine how we must look to an insecure nation; five times the size, huge geographical area, an economy that has left Pakistan in the dust, a military that dwarfs its own and the blue passport that is respected worldwide. We are everything that Pakistan wanted to be, but never could. Jealousy breeds hatred.
After 1989, Pakistan convinced itself that it was the sole reason for the defeat of USSR in the Afghan War. It forgot that it was just a paid middleman between the CIA and the Afghan Mujahideen. Lt Gen Hamid Gul was the man who fanned this mad fantasy of ill equipped Holy warriors who won on the strength of their faith alone. All this is helium, off course. It was massive CIA slush funds and the infusion of weapons, including the redoubtable stingers that caused Soviet fatalities. All that welded with the Afghan warrior spirit was a little too much for the Red Army.
The more Hamid Gul lied, the more this fantasy took firm hold. If Pakistan could defeat the USSR, India would be a cakewalk. It would fall in two or three years, at the most. With this plan firmly in place, the Kashmir Jihad was launched in 1989. Flush with initial success, the ISI could almost smell the apples in Kashmir. Then, something happened that wrecked their insane plans of conquest. They ran into the Indian Army.
A Kargil and hundreds of terror attacks later, Pakistan has not gained an inch of land in Kashmir. And I will say it again and again; much as Pakistan may like to weave this wobbly narrative around Kashmir, this battle has little to do with the Valley. But one thing Pakistan Army has done, with some degree of brilliance. It has convinced a vast majority of its population that there are good and bad terrorists. And, terrorism is a legitimate tool when the enemy is India.
1947-48, 1965, 1971, 1993, 1999, 26/11, Punjab, Kashmir, Parliament attacks, and Akshardham temple attacks…I can go on and on. 42,000 Indian deaths later, we are no closer to peace, than we were when we gained independence.
Imagine a weird, hypothetical scenario, never possible in a million years. But humor me. Let us say we give Kashmir to Pakistan. Only the extremely naïve, in moments of absolute lack of lucidity, will believe that this will buy peace. It will not.
A full-fledged conventional war with Pakistan will have consequences that are avoidable. There are other ways to punish Pakistan, militarily. What India lacks is a coherent and consistent policy of dealing with a rogue neighbor. It is important that we don’t lose the momentum gained by the Balakot air strikes. We must keep our foot on the accelerator. The Pakistan Army must be in a constant state of pressure. It cannot strengthen both its Eastern and Western fronts. It is this dilemma for Pakistan that we must always seek.
The Pakistan Army is the Pakistani State. Of this I am convinced. It will have its ups and downs, its ebbs and flows. But it is also true that since 1947, it has defined the idea of Pakistan. It is the self-proclaimed guardian of Pakistan’s ideological frontiers.
There can never be peace with Pakistan unless Pakistan becomes a democracy in the truest sense. For that, the Pakistan Army will have to cease to be the center of gravity of that nation.
Greek legend speaks of a female monster called Medusa, whose stare would turn men into stone and who had snakes in place of hair. This terrifying being destroyed everything in her path. The only way to end her terror was to behead her. Perseus, the Greek warrior, did this. By this act of beheading Medusa, he brought peace to Sarpedon.
It is time to cut off the head of Medusa.
Major Gaurav Arya (Veteran)
17th Battalion, The Kumaon Regiment
#MajorGauravArya #Medusa #adgpi #IndianArmy
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" the Taliban of today are not the same as the blood thirsty taliban of 20 years ago. They are much more media savvy"
This might sound like a naive question from an armchair American but I don't understand this statement.
Who exactly are we fighting in Afghanistan then?
I thought the Talis are protecting the remaining Isis and Al Qaida Islamists.
If they are not then why can't we simply crush them?
All because they are running back and forth being protected in Pakistan ?
Like Bin Ladin?
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Yes, they get protection in Pak by crossing the border. This includes, rest, money, medical care, intelligence etc.
Over the last 18-19 years the US has made mistakes, but also the taliban have made mistakes and each side has learned. The Taliban realize that the US does not care what they do in Afghanistan as long as the US homeland is not threatened by any AQ remnants. Ongoing AQ activity in Afghanistan means the survival of the Taliban regime is threatened, the Talibs will push out AQ for self preservation once they get power. My understanding is that the taliban want to rule Afghanistan with their brand of ideology, not fight with the US. All that flying, business class to Doha for talks has an impact. Their leaders dont live in caves any more, they release statements which seem sane https://alemarahenglish.com/?p=49828 (https://alemarahenglish.com/?p=49828), they sit around a table and actually discuss stuff
https://www.memri.org/reports/doha-agreement-%E2%80%93-paving-way-talibans-takeover-afghanistan-and-enforcement-sharia-based (https://www.memri.org/reports/doha-agreement-%E2%80%93-paving-way-talibans-takeover-afghanistan-and-enforcement-sharia-based). 20 years ago, the leaders of the taliban were mysterious individuals, that no one had seen. Lots of things have changed.
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At this point, the US is fighting for a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, while at the same time the Afghan government is being sidelined (unfortunately). The US knows that the Afghan govt is not winning their battle with the Taliban. Trump wants out. In Iraq, we left behind a power vacuum, this will not be the situation in Afghanistan. Southern-eastern afghanistan is Talib (pashtun) territory, northern afghanistan is held by non-pashtun tribes. The US does not have the time or perseverance to broker a peace deal amongst the various factions. If I were to guess the pashtun and the non-pashtun will still be arguing for a long time. Once the US leaves, the pashtun may turn their affections towards the Durrand line and Pak! We need to get our troops back home, but leave with the message that we will be back if attacks against the US are traced back to have originated in Afghanistan.
Staying in Afghanistan because we think that AQ will get a foot hold is not realistic, AQ can get a foothold in many other parts of the world, not sure how Afghanistan offers them benefits that are not available in their other strong holds. Besides if 18 years did not get rid of AQ completely, we need to re-evaluate if what we seek is even possible.
(https://media.nationalgeographic.org/assets/photos/000/329/32912.jpg)
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As discussed earlier..pakis are back to their old games. Looks like this strategy has worked for the pakis again and again.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/pakistan-may-redeploy-troops-to-kashmir-border-pak-envoy-to-us/articleshow/70662669.cms (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/pakistan-may-redeploy-troops-to-kashmir-border-pak-envoy-to-us/articleshow/70662669.cms)
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https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2019/08/16/analysis-suggests-warlords-in-afghanistan-are-bracing-for-civil-war-once-us-nato-troops-exit/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Socialflow+ARM&utm_source=facebook.com&fbclid=IwAR31ebLgLILGnKZeaoTVJi4O3y1Esb-HpxhSRHd1xEVk2r3-aaer_xKrBrQ
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Sept. 4, 2019
By George Friedman
The End of the Afghan War?
There is no winning in Afghanistan, only perpetual engagement.
The U.S. seems to be nearing a withdrawal from Afghanistan. After nearly a year of talks, U.S. and Taliban negotiators have in hand a draft agreement for a peace deal to end the 18-year war. The Trump administration, which has long wanted to withdraw forces from the country, still wants to maintain some combat capability there. Reports over the weekend indicate that administration officials have suggested expanding the CIA’s presence in Afghanistan, but Langley is resisting an increased role for the agency there. The CIA, technically speaking, does not represent combat capability. But practically, it could serve as a liaison to factions opposed to the Taliban, providing tactical information for airstrikes and carrying out a range of strategic actions. This suggests that whatever withdrawal the U.S. is considering is a political one.
The U.S. main force will be withdrawn, but the U.S. will still know what’s going on tactically and will retain the ability to launch selective strikes. Uniformed troops will be replaced by ununiformed officials. This is, of course, certainly not the first time the U.S. has used CIA and special operations forces in collaboration with local forces to manage the situation in a country; the U.S. withdrew from Somalia and Lebanon but retained capabilities there. If we’re to learn anything from those instances, it’s that the level of violence will decline, but there will still be deaths, just with far less publicity.
(click to enlarge)
Before the War
In all of this, we need to recall why the United States went into Afghanistan in the first place. On Sept. 10, 2001, the last thing anyone thought would ever happen was a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The United States had backed the mujahideen’s insurgency after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and understood the terrain, the tribal rivalries and the difficulty of operating in that environment. The insurgency turned what the Soviets had expected would be an operation of surgical precision into a decadelong morass. The U.S. may very well have had to go into Afghanistan, but it had no right to be surprised at what happened next.
As the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, a complex civil war broke out in which, essentially, the Northern Alliance waged a war of resistance against the rising Taliban. Pakistan, which has long had a major interest in its northwestern neighbor, got involved; its intelligence service factored into the Taliban’s victory in the civil war. And as the Taliban, led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, deepened its control, it gave sanctuary to al-Qaida.
Still, the United States did not see Afghanistan as being of strategic interest. The Americans had come to see Afghanistan not as a prize but as a swamp. Any of its neighbors – from Iran and Pakistan to Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and even China – could chew off a piece, but trying to conquer the whole would simply bog you down permanently. Each of these countries’ intelligence services might probe here and there, and deals could be made, but nobody could possibly conquer and occupy the entire country. Even the Taliban at the height of its power could not control it all. From the American point of view, anyone who wanted to replicate the Soviet disaster was welcome to do so.
Into the Morass
What U.S. intelligence had missed was not al-Qaida; the U.S. undoubtedly knew its base was in Afghanistan. What it failed to understand was that al-Qaida had a cadre of operatives able to penetrate the U.S., maintain contact with al-Qaida, receive funding and obtain pilot training. That cadre went undetected right up until they executed a spate of planned, simultaneous hijackings and suicide attacks.
The problem for the U.S. was that its intelligence agencies clearly had no idea what else al-Qaida could do, given that the intelligence community did not detect the 9/11 plot. The only way the U.S. saw to disrupt al-Qaida operations was to attack the organization in Afghanistan. Since a full-scale invasion could not be launched in the timeframe imagined, it was the CIA, with its excellent contacts in Afghanistan, that purchased alliances with various groups and, supported by a fairly small force of Marines, conducted the main attack. Osama bin Laden, aware of the force being marshaled, escaped into Pakistan. Al-Qaida command was disrupted but not destroyed.
This was the critical point. Having sent in troops and reinforcements, the U.S. had no clear strategy for Afghanistan. The country was of interest only to the extent that al-Qaida operated from there. The concern, then, became that al-Qaida might return. The CIA, rather than the U.S. military, used its contacts and funds to build up a local force against al-Qaida. To some extent, that narrow operation was a success. But the attempt to occupy Afghanistan made almost no sense. In essence, the U.S. was willingly putting itself in the same position as the Soviets – who had failed.
The fear that al-Qaida would return to Afghanistan was understandable. But al-Qaida was mobile and had a flexible command structure. It didn’t require some massive control center, even for 9/11. To destroy al-Qaida would mean widespread warfare. But the U.S. did not have to occupy countries. As I have argued elsewhere, occupation warfare is the most difficult form of war; even the Nazis, with no limits on brutality, could never defeat Tito’s guerillas.
The defeat of a group like al-Qaida depended on intelligence and special operations forces. The group was built for dispersal because of its sparseness, and at any given time it could operate globally; the occupation of any one country could not destroy al-Qaida. Perhaps the core problem the U.S. had in Afghanistan was not that it forgot the lessons of the Soviet war but that it used the term “invasion” to describe how it dislodged al-Qaida. The U.S. did not disperse al-Qaida; it launched a covert operation that used money to motivate local forces familiar to the United States, backed by U.S. air power. The actual invasion was an attempt to turn sanctuary denial for a terrorist group into a conventional war.
It didn’t work. The U.S. had minimal interest in Afghanistan beyond al-Qaida, and al-Qaida was everywhere and nowhere. The U.S. could not impose its will on Afghanistan no matter how many divisions it brought in. But it was a passionate time in the U.S., and reasonably so. It was also an example of the dangers of passion.
So now we are back to where we began. The military will leave, and the CIA will take over with far more modest goals. The CIA is not going to try to engage in nation-building; rather it will try to maintain the flow of intelligence and carry out covert operations with special operations forces to keep the enemy off balance. As it was in the beginning, so it shall now be again. And, of course, the CIA is resisting. There will be no glory in winning – there is no winning in Afghanistan, only perpetual engagement. But without winning as an option, a much smaller investment is needed.
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1897 Sikhs in Afpakia:
https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/when-21-sikh-soldiers-stood-against-10000-men-the-battle-of-saragarhi/?fbclid=IwAR2BJWELabdu9OCpqW3B_2k_SNsifW2yT_o4ZEkIFCHy0YO_PP38hGW8oqo
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Watch the movie on Amazon Prime
Kesari
2h 33min
2019
Based on an incredible true story of the Battle of Saragarhi in which an army of 21 Sikhs fought against 10,000 Afghans in 1897.
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Cost of the Afghan war
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/afghan-taliban-stronger-than-ever-after-us-spends-900-billion/articleshow/71136845.cms
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Quickie question:
How, when, from whom did Pakistan get its nukes? Looking for a proper citation to shut someone the fuk up.
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My understanding is China..from the Washington Post, when it was known for journalism..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/12/AR2009111211060.html?noredirect=on
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Re the explosions in Afghanistan...important question.
At least 48 people killed in two bombings in Afghanistan. 100s injured. Guess who did it?
Taliban or Taliban Khan?
Islam or Islamabad?
https://twitter.com/TarekFatah/status/1174009663937024005?s=20
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Quickie question:
How, when, from whom did Pakistan get its nukes? Looking for a proper citation to shut someone the fuk up.
AQ Khan and China.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/pakistans-nuclear-weapons-program-5-things-you-need-know-12687
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Thanks YA and Doug-- just what I needed.
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Imran Khan admits the truth
https://twitter.com/i/status/1176186967408697345 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1176186967408697345)
His intent was to give a reason as to why pak is important in the US negotiations with the Taliban...but sometimes there are freudian slips
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Imran Khan admits the truth
https://twitter.com/i/status/1176186967408697345 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1176186967408697345)
His intent was to give a reason as to why pak is important in the US negotiations with the Taliban...but sometimes there are freudian slips
No joke.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/5140603/Pakistan-the-epicentre-of-Islamist-terror.html
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This is why paki army cannot fight. A soft coup has already happened. Army Chief Bajwa now meets business leaders without Imran, they are deeply involved in food processing. A small selection is presented below. Imran should be gone by next year.
Fauji brand=Military
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGHsjToU0AAg3Tn?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
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To End the War in Afghanistan, the U.S. Reaches Out to Its Rivals
7 MINS READ
Oct 30, 2019 | 09:00 GMT
U.S. soldiers look out over the hillsides of an Afghan army checkpoint in Afghanistan's Wardak province on June 6, 2019.
U.S. soldiers look out over the hillsides of an army checkpoint in the Afghan province of Wardak on June 6, 2019.
(THOMAS WATKINS/AFP/Getty Images)
HIGHLIGHTS
The prospects of a U.S. drawdown from Afghanistan has compelled both China and Russia to take a more active role in the peace negotiations.
In doing so, Moscow and Beijing are also forging stronger relations with the Taliban, which the United States will try to leverage to ensure the insurgents uphold their end of an eventual peace deal.
As the United States searches for an exit from Afghanistan, its outreach to China and Russia points to its rivals' growing influence in shaping the endgame to its longest-ever conflict. On Oct. 25, U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad visited Moscow to discuss reviving the Afghan peace process with Russian, Chinese and Pakistani officials. China is also expected to host Taliban and Afghan government officials for talks next month.
A political settlement between the Afghan government and the Taliban remains the ultimate goal of U.S. policy in Afghanistan. And if and when that settlement is reached, it will likely include the insurgents joining a future power-sharing agreement in Kabul, which has, in turn, prompted China and Russia to establish stronger relations with the Taliban as well to advance their own counterterrorism objectives in the country. But as long as the United States maintains a military presence in Afghanistan, the prospects for lasting peace in the war-torn country will ultimately remain in Washington's hands. Though that doesn't mean Moscow and Beijing's growing ties with the Taliban won't come in handy, as it could help the United States build a regional consensus behind its Afghan peace process.
The Big Picture
Outside powers have long played an outsized role in Afghanistan's history. This reality has again come to the fore as China and Russia increasingly insert themselves into the U.S.-led Afghan peace process, fueled by a mutual desire for a lasting political settlement to end the country's 18-year war.
China's Stake: Protecting the Far Western Frontier
From a security perspective, China has long had concerns over Uighur militants plotting attacks abroad from Afghanistan, whose Wakhan corridor borders the country's vast western province of Xinjiang. Despite its proximity, however, Beijing has successfully avoided engaging in combat in Afghanistan over the past 18 years — thanks, in large part, to U.S. counterterrorism operations in the country. But should the United States make a hasty exit from Afghanistan without a robust peace deal in place, it could create a security vacuum for transnational extremists like the Islamic State — thereby leaving China to fend off a jihadist resurgence near its western border.
To ensure against such an outcome, Bejing has pushed for a phased U.S. drawdown. It also has become increasingly involved in efforts to promote peace in Afghanistan. Until 2017, for example, Chinese officials participated with their U.S., Afghan and Pakistani counterparts in the four-nation Quadrilateral Coordination Group to discuss restoring stability in the country. And now, Beijing is slated to host its first intra-Afghan dialogue next month.
This graphic shows U.S. troops levels in Afghanistan since 2001.
With the United States motioning toward an exit from Afghanistan, China has also increased its security presence in and around Afghanistan in recent years. In 2016, Chinese and Tajik forces held a joint military exercise in Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan region, followed by another round this August focusing on counterterrorism. There are also rumors that China has quietly set up a military outpost in the region to monitor the Afghan border. And in 2018, the Afghan Embassy in Beijing confirmed that China is helping the Afghan military raise a mountain brigade to patrol Wakhan as well.
In addition to security implications, however, Afghanistan can also advance China's economic goals under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While Afghanistan is not an official BRI member, its strategic location can still offer more direct overland access for future BRI projects that link western China with Iran, as well as those that link Afghanistan with Pakistan. Beijing also sees Afghanistan as having import potential, as evidenced by the large mineral shipment that was recently transported from northern Afghanistan to China's far eastern coast by cutting through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan via train.
These economic opportunities explain why Beijing invited Kabul to join the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in 2018. But such prospects — as well as Beijing's security — all are dependent on restoring stability in Afghanistan. To protect its borders from terrorists and reap these potential economic benefits, China will thus continue supporting peace negotiations — including facilitating dialogue between Afghanistan and Pakistan — as well as sustaining its security cooperation with Afghanistan, even as it avoids deploying actual troops on the ground.
Russia's Stake: Containing the Islamic State
But China isn't the only U.S. rival with a stake in Afghanistan's future. Indeed, Russia's own security concerns — as well as its long and tumultuous history in Afghanistan — has prompted Moscow to try to take the lead in jump-starting peace negotiations in recent years. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 led to a nearly decadelong occupation pitting the Marxist government in Kabul against the Afghan mujahideen backed by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China. The end of that conflict nearly 10 years later then paved the way for a civil war culminating in the rise of the Taliban and its eventual conquest of Kabul in 1996. During the Taliban's five-year reign, Russia — along with Iran and India — supported the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, and also initially backed the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to dismantle the Taliban government following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
A timeline of U.S.-Taliban peace talks.
But in more recent years, the security implications of a U.S. withdrawal in Afghanistan have compelled Moscow to deepen its leverage in the Afghan peace process. Like China and the United States, Russia recognizes that a stable Afghanistan is key in mitigating the transnational threat arising from the Islamic State and other militant groups. From Moscow's perspective, reestablishing some sense of stability and governance in the country could also help rein in the long-standing flow of Afghan opium into Russia.
In support of these two core interests, Russia's Foreign Ministry has hosted several conferences on Afghanistan since 2016, including a summit in February that involved Taliban officials and former Afghan President Hamid Karzai. As a part of this rekindled interest in Afghanistan's future, Russia has also warmed up to the Taliban's key sponsor and former Cold War enemy, Pakistan. In 2014, Moscow lifted its arms embargo against Islamabad. And in 2016, the two countries launched the first of their now annual joint military drills.
The U.S.'s Goal: A Political Settlement
Despite Russia and China's efforts to influence Afghanistan's fate by cozying up to the Taliban, however, only the United States can grant the insurgents their core desire of a U.S. troop withdrawal. But Khalilzad's outreach nonetheless suggests that Washington can leverage each country's budding relationship with the Taliban to help ensure the insurgents uphold their end of the eventual deal, including a cease-fire, counterterrorism pledge against al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and talks between the Afghan government and Taliban.
The United States will petition China and Russia's help to restart peace talks, knowing that a stable Afghanistan is in its enemies' interests as much as it's in its own.
To secure this comprehensive deal, the United States has pursued talks with the Taliban over the past year. But the dialogue has since stalled following U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to call off the process last month. The Taliban have expressed interest in restarting talks to achieve the withdrawal of U.S. forces, though they have pledged to keep fighting in the meantime. Continued violence in Afghanistan, however, won't necessarily keep the White House from ordering a drawdown from Afghanistan in the coming months, as Trump searches for foreign policy victories ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Indeed, NATO's commanding general confirmed Oct. 21 that the United States has already drawn down 2,000 troops from Afghanistan this year, bringing the total U.S. forces in the country to 12,000 (compared with the 100,000 deployed during the height of the surge in 2011).
But after nearly two decades of combat, the United States has decided that a political settlement is its best bet in restoring stability in Afghanistan, meaning its talks with the Taliban will ultimately restart. And when they do, there's a chance Washington could bring Russia and China into the fold for added support, even as the global powers pursue competing self-interests in one of Asia's longest-running conflicts.
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Michael Yon declared the war a loss back in 2006. For years here I have directly questioned the coherence of our strategy:
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https://nypost.com/2019/12/09/afghanistan-bombshell-report-shows-us-officials-misled-public-about-war-for-nearly-2-decades/?utm_source=facebook_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site+buttons&utm_campaign=site+buttons&fbclid=IwAR1H23-ZRxdgMjCd-wmMfArerA_mueuv8dNJTMLs8JTKsTiziycwHA6I45Q
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Afghanistan Prepares for a Financial Future Without the U.S.
7 MINS READ
Dec 11, 2019 | 10:30 GMT
Afghan laborers work on the exterior renovation of Darulaman Palace in Kabul on Aug. 8, 2019.
Afghan laborers work on the exterior renovation of Darulaman Palace in Kabul on Aug. 8, 2019. As the United States looks to slowly stop funding Kabul, Afghanistan's leaders will need to find a way of raising more of their own funds.
(WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
HIGHLIGHTS
A U.S.-Taliban peace deal will pave the way for intra-Afghan negotiations aimed at ending the country's conflict.
Kabul's lack of domestic revenues will require Washington to continue funding security and reconstruction operations in Afghanistan well beyond 2020.
Accordingly, the United States wishes to end the conflict to grow Afghanistan's $20 billion economy so the country can generate more domestic revenues and gradually wean itself off international funding.
Editor's Note: This assessment is part of a series of analyses supporting Stratfor's 2020 Annual Forecast. These assessments are designed to provide more context and in-depth analysis of key developments over the next quarter and throughout the year.
A year ahead of the U.S. 2020 presidential election, Washington appears to have revived its latest attempt at a peace deal with the Taliban. On Nov. 28, U.S. President Donald Trump visited Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, where he met his Afghan counterpart, Ashraf Ghani, and addressed some of the roughly 12,000 U.S. troops serving in the country, just as American diplomats were busy meeting with Taliban officials in Qatar in a bid to rekindle formal negotiations that the president himself halted in September.
The Big Picture
The United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to topple the Taliban for sheltering al Qaeda. Washington is currently seeking a peace deal with the Taliban, but the wider Afghan conflict will endure until Kabul and the insurgents forge a cease-fire during the next phase of the peace process. What's more, U.S. funding for security and reconstruction will persist until Kabul can generate sufficient domestic revenues.
See South Asia section of the 2019 Fourth-Quarter Forecast
On Dec. 7, U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad did, indeed, revive dialogue with the Taliban. With talks restarting, the two sides will once more seek a deal entailing a partial U.S. drawdown while opening the way for talks between the Taliban and Kabul in support of a political settlement. But regardless of when a U.S.-Taliban deal gets done, the United States will still be footing the bill for Afghanistan's security and reconstruction beyond 2020. Washington, however, doesn't want to fund Kabul's security and reconstruction expenses forever, meaning time is of the essence for Kabul's leaders to get the country onto its own feet financially.
Foreign Funding: The Key to Survival
Throughout Afghanistan's political history, Kabul has relied on external funding. Because the central government has historically struggled to assert its authority over the country's various regions, its ability to generate tax revenues is limited. During the Soviet-Afghan war from 1979 to 1989, Moscow funded the ruling People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), sending 100,000 troops to prevent the collapse of an allied communist government fighting against the mujahideen (whose own survival depended on funding and weapons from the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China). But following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the PDPA lost its key source of funding and suffered its own demise the next year as part of a conflict that eventually facilitated the rise of the Taliban. The militant group, in turn, relied on funding from Pakistan during its time in power from 1996 to 2001. But once Islamabad withdrew its support in the face of U.S. pressure, the Taliban government collapsed within two months of the U.S.-led invasion in October 2001.
Today, the Afghan government and the Taliban rely on external support to sustain their war effort against each other. Since 2002, the United States has spent $809 billion just on security and reconstruction in Afghanistan. The vast majority of these funds have gone toward security, whose exorbitant costs in some years have exceeded the country's $20 billion economy by nearly four times. The United States has a vital interest in funding a robust if diminishing security presence in Afghanistan under the present operation to prevent militants from launching another transnational attack.
This chart shows U.S. spending on security and reconstruction in Afghanistan over the past two decades.
And while the Taliban's sources of external financing are murkier, the movement's leadership receives safe haven in Pakistan and, in all likelihood, some level of material support from Pakistani intelligence, which has supported the movement to help foster an allied government in Kabul that will finally recognize the countries' contested border and keep India at arm's length. At the same time, the group also likely receives funds from wealthy donors in the Gulf (probably facilitated by the Taliban's political office in Doha). Without such funds, the Taliban's own survival would be at stake.
Encouraging Self-Reliance
One of the central aims of the United States' efforts in Afghanistan is thus to encourage Kabul to generate more of its own revenue as Washington gradually withdraws support in the years ahead. Last year, Ghani's government raised $2.5 billion in revenues, roughly two-thirds of which came from taxes. Though this achievement represented a 7 percent increase from the previous year, it accounted for less than half of the government's $5.3 billion in expenses.
The foreign funding topping up the Afghan budget comes in two forms. The first — "on-budget" grants — go through the government and involve three funds for reconstruction, law and order, and security. The second consists of off-budget grants, in which international donors directly fund projects independently of Kabul. Together, grant spending in 2018 equaled $7.3 billion, equaling 37 percent of gross domestic product. The International Monetary Fund projects Afghanistan's domestic revenues will grow from 13.4 percent of GDP in 2018 to 17.1 percent by 2024, while off-budget grants will shrink from 21.9 percent of GDP to 9.7 percent over the same time frame. Nevertheless, achieving these projections will depend on the government's ability to further enhance tax collections and grow the economy faster than the population.
These charts show Afghanistan's GDP per capital and GDP growth over the years.
Boosting revenues explains the importance of investing in roads, electricity and other kinds of infrastructure — all things that Afghanistan has lacked due to war and rural resistance to centrally imposed change — that the country will need to create the backbone of a modern economy. At present, Afghanistan has just 12,350 kilometers (7,718 miles) of paved roads, according to one estimate, and produces only 300 megawatts of electricity domestically, forcing it to import another 1,000 megawatts. Since 2001, Afghanistan's economy has grown from $2.5 billion to $19.6 billion, a nearly eightfold increase that has stemmed from periods of extraordinary growth, including a 21 percent jump in GDP in 2009. Other signs of progress in Afghanistan since the war's beginning include an increase in life expectancy from 56 to 63 years and a fivefold increase in GDP per capita from $117 to $586. Still, the country has the lowest GDP per capita in South Asia. And as external funding has diminished, growth cooled beginning in 2013, trailing population growth in some years. This explains why growth in GDP per capita is stagnant, and why the poverty rate — already at a staggering 55 percent — is failing to improve.
Boosting revenues explains the importance of investing in roads, electricity and other kinds of infrastructure — all things that Afghanistan has lacked due to war and rural resistance to centrally imposed change.
2020 and Beyond
Afghanistan will face severe political challenges in 2020. The moment authorities finally announce official results from the September 2019 presidential election, the losing candidates will almost certainly contest the outcome, portending another contentious transfer of power in the country's evolving democracy. And depending on the winner, vastly different governments could emerge. Ghani, for instance, favors a centralized presidential system (a view that has Pashtun support), while Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah wants a decentralized parliamentary system (a vision that has Tajik backing). Of course, a peace deal between the Taliban and Kabul could ultimately produce a new constitution and more drastic changes to the structure of government.
But the task awaiting Afghanistan's next president is clear: forging a unified front if and when the government enters negotiations with the Taliban following a deal between Washington and the group. But with funding the United States not going to last forever, the president will have to promote security and generate sufficient domestic revenue, create jobs and raise the standard of living beyond 2020. Otherwise, Afghanistan will struggle to develop a modern economy that can stand on its own.
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https://www.insider.com/mike-flynn-interview-afghanistan-papers-report-2019-12
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The U.S. and Taliban Prepare to Take a First Step Toward Peace in Afghanistan
Highlights
• The impending peace deal with the Taliban is just one of the many steps remaining as the United States tries to end its 18-year involvement in the war in Afghanistan.
• Major unresolved issues between the United States and the Taliban include the timeline and scope of a U.S. withdrawal and the status of al Qaeda.
• Factions within both the Taliban and the Afghan government will complicate talks between them, and possibly spawn splinter groups.
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After a weeklong reduction in violence in Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban are set to sign a peace agreement in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 29. Both sides hope the deal will be the first step toward ending U.S. involvement in the Afghan war and bringing peace to a land that has been in an almost constant state of war since 1979. Two of the most important points of the agreement include the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and a promise from the Taliban that it will not allow transnational militant groups to use the country as a base. Once it's signed, the next step will be talks among the Afghan government, the Taliban and other parties to establish a durable cease-fire and eventually end the country's war. But the road ahead will be strewn with pitfalls.
The Big Picture
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The United States' impending peace deal with the Taliban marks an important step in ending its long conflict in Afghanistan. But many steps remain before significant progress toward lasting peace can be achieved. Until that happens, other outside powers with interests in the region — including China, Iran and Russia — are unlikely to be able to have a significant impact in the theater.
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South Asian Militancy
A U.S. Withdrawal
Among the stickiest issues to be addressed that could derail peace talks or cause other complications is the size of the U.S. security footprint in Afghanistan. As a U.S. withdrawal begins, the size and composition of its contingent in the country will be a point of contention. The strength of remaining conventional U.S. military forces, the number of troops devoted to counterterrorism operations and remaining U.S. intelligence assets will be points of contention. The Taliban has firmly maintained a public stance of demanding the withdrawal of all foreign forces, while the United States seems intent on maintaining a presence.
The timeline of the U.S. withdrawal will also be an issue. The Taliban's willingness to accept a gradual drawdown will be tested if the United States delays the date for a full withdrawal or insists on keeping a smaller force on the ground. If the United States decides to unilaterally withdraw regardless of circumstances on the ground, the Taliban would have a freer hand to exert its own power in the country. Regional powers such as China, Russia and Pakistan would likely move to fill the vacuum left behind.
Al Qaeda Concerns
The other major unresolved issue revolves around the Taliban's pledge to not allow militant groups such as al Qaeda and the remnants of the Islamic State to use Afghanistan as a base of operations to launch attacks elsewhere. This will be a paramount issue for the United States, considering the Taliban's role in sheltering al Qaeda when they controlled the country, allowing the group to launch attacks on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001. After all, those events prompted the United States to invade Afghanistan in the first place.
The Taliban's willingness or ability to cut its ties with al Qaeda remains unclear. Their relationship spans decades; many al Qaeda fighters are embedded within the Taliban's ranks, and al Qaeda leaders have pledged loyalty to the Taliban. These ties mean that the group, or some of its constituent factions, may be unwilling to cut the jihadists off. Even if the Taliban is willing to clamp down on al Qaeda, the notoriously rugged landscape of Afghanistan will make it difficult for them to completely root out its members. U.S. officials have also warned that the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan (the Khorasan Province or IS-K) could launch attacks against the West. But since the Taliban view the group as an enemy, that ameliorates U.S. concerns that it would be allowed to operate in the country.
While the Taliban reportedly agreed to a broad reduction in violence, the decentralized nature of the group will make this difficult to fully enforce.
The intra-Afghan talks set to follow this peace agreement have their own significant set of complications, starting with the Taliban's view of the current U.S.-backed government in Kabul as illegitimate. Questions that those talks must address include power-sharing agreements and the potential integration of the Taliban into any future government. The Afghan government itself has been riven by internal strife. After months of delay, incumbent Ashraf Ghani emerged in mid-February as the winner of the presidential election held in September. But his chief opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, has challenged the result and threatened to set up a parallel government. Those fractures will stall peace talks or, potentially more damaging for Washington, give the Taliban a stronger hand at the negotiating table.
While the Taliban reportedly agreed to a broad reduction in violence, the decentralized nature of the group will make this difficult to fully enforce. As seen in September 2019, any attack that results in a U.S. casualty could set the peace talks back to square one. There is also the potential for disgruntled factions who oppose the peace deal to splinter from the main body of the Taliban — which is far from a monolithic entity — to form splinter groups, prolonging violent threats and even creating new ones. The proliferation of weaponry and explosives in the country, plus the absence of centralized controls, create an environment conducive to a continued insurgency. These developments could also prove to be a boon for IS-K. While it saw major setbacks in late 2019, it still commands hundreds of fighters, whose ranks could swell if militants disgruntled by a U.S. peace deal decide to join. After all, Taliban defectors formed the nucleus of IS-K, and it stands well-positioned to resurge. And if it does, the United States could decide to extend its presence, or rely more on other powers to take up counterterrorism operations.
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We pull out, then nuke Af-Pak until they surrender. No one left? Bummer.
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https://link.govexec.com/view/5c36805c95a7a15a6011543bbpgnj.aks/b12e40aa
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/03/us-helping-taliban-fight-isis-top-general/163665/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
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https://thefauxy.com/karachi-terrorist-blows-up-his-own-house-after-work-from-home-advisory-due-to-coronavirus-outbreak/ (https://thefauxy.com/karachi-terrorist-blows-up-his-own-house-after-work-from-home-advisory-due-to-coronavirus-outbreak/) :-D :-D
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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-tells-advisers-u-s-should-pull-troops-afghanistan-covid-n1191761
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Over the last several months the line of control (LOC) between India and pak has been HOT, its almost a war like situation. In the majority of cross border firings Pak gets the worst of it. Indian aggression has increased, India is no longer defensive. India has conducted a surgical strike on Pak Occupied Kashmir (POK), conducted an airstrike in Pak (Balakot air strike with 100's of terrorists dead), Formally announced that Kashmir is no longer a bilateral issue with Pak by removing article 370 etc.
The Prime Minister, Home minister, defense minister, foreign affairs minister have all said in recent times that POK must be returned to India, there is also an older unanimous parliamentary resolution that POK belongs to India etc. The legal case is also clear and in favor in India. By Indian law, there are 24 seats vacant in the Kashmir parliament since independence (1947) for the POK members.
With all this happening, it is a matter of time before India takes back POK and gets a direct border with Afghanistan. Once there is a direct border with Afgh. the geostrategic importance of Pak goes to zero. There might be some support from Trump on this...but it would need a second term for him. Modi's is on his second 5 year term which will complete in 2024. I think 2022 is very dangerous for Pak. That seems to be the best time point to take POK back and Modi/BJP wins a third term.
So when will this happen...
- India is stabilizing the Indian part of kashmir, so that people in POK can see the vastly superior development and infrastructure in Indian held Kashmir and want to join India. Give this 2 years.
- India is updating its military rapidly, 3rd largest weapons buying country in the world. Weapons purchases have been Pak and China centric. Give it 2 years.
- I am sure covert political support is being built in POK. Look at the playbook of how Sikkim was made an Indian state. Give this 2 years.
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What would speed up this timeline, a) If pak conducts a large terror strike in India, b) There is panic and talk in Pak that it will give POK to China for a 99 year lease, they have already given the Shaksgam valley illegally to China.
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Potential stumbling blocks: China has a 65 Billion investment in POK, how they will behave is unclear. In a war with China, it would be difficult for them to maintain supply lines so far out in Kashmir. My guess is India will assure them that their investment will not be in vain and China will stay out.
Also pak's nuclear threats have to be factored in. These are considered empty threats, for if there is nuclear war, Pak is finished and broken up into several countries.
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So the Indian Metereological Dept has now started listing and providing weather services to POK (Gilgit Baltistan and Muzaffarabad). Porkis wont like this. I should add the new weather maps are also discussed on TV and radio.
(https://www.fresherslive.com/assets-images/current-affairs/2020/may/07/imd-subtly-includes-pok-gilgit-baltistan-in-its-weather-forecasts.jpg)
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While some may feel that reporting the weather in POK by India is no big deal, same as a US weather channel reporting weather in Canada, its a big deal after 70+ years. Naturally, Pak had to respond, the geniuses are a bit intellectually challenged...they decide to report the weather in Indian Ladakh.
Radio Pak "In Ladakh, maximum temperature is -4 degree centigrade and minimum temperature is -1 degree centigrade."
http://www.radio.gov.pk/10-05-2020/partly-cloudy-weather-expected-in-most-parts-of-iojk (http://www.radio.gov.pk/10-05-2020/partly-cloudy-weather-expected-in-most-parts-of-iojk) :-D, as you can imagine this results in terrific memes.
In other news, China and India face-off in the time honored manner, mano-o-mano on the Sikkim border. Pl. note with the Chinese, its always mano-o-mano, with bakis, always artillery duels, aerial bombings and surgical strikes.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/face-off-between-indian-and-chinese-soldiers-in-north-sikkim-resolved-6402774/ (https://indianexpress.com/article/india/face-off-between-indian-and-chinese-soldiers-in-north-sikkim-resolved-6402774/)
"There was a face-off Saturday between Indian and Chinese soldiers along the disputed India-China boundary in north Sikkim, which led to minor injuries on both sides.
As per sources, soldiers from Chinese People’s Liberation Army and the Indian Army confronted each other near the Naku La sector, ahead of Muguthang, on Saturday when they came face-to-face with each other. Naku La is a pass in North Sikkim at an altitude of more than 5,000 metres above Mean Sea Level.
Sources confirmed that there was a display of aggressive behaviour and soldiers on both sides sustained minor injuries. The two sides, however, disengaged after an interaction at the local level and dialogue between both the armies.
Sources said that the face-off was “temporary and short duration” in nature and was not a stand-off. Such incidents occur wherever there are some unresolved boundary issues, but this was after a long time. As has been the case, both the armies resolve such issues mutually as per established protocols, sources added."
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I wonder why the hurry :-) Might even have some disinfo in the article, re:delivery time line. I dont think it takes the US 3-4 years to make 21 helicopters!.
"WASHINGTON: The Indian and US governments were in such a hurry to get sub-hunting US helicopters into the hands of the Indian navy that the Americans gave up some of their own helicopters to fill a rushed delivery early next year."
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/us-navy-rushes-its-sub-hunting-helicopters-to-india-eye-on-china/
A second article on delivery of Rafales
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/iaf-to-get-first-batch-of-rafale-jets-by-july-end/story-7MsrcyBC38Jq0twGHmU7zH.html
It is not too difficult to connect the dots..as to where this is leading.
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Some background: As India prepares to take back POK, several measures are being taken, allowing a higher foreign direct investment as well as aiming to ensure that India does not run out of shells, bullets and spare parts. This has been a shortcoming of previous wars, that India ran out of war supplies in about 2 weeks of heavy fighting and had to import on an urgent basis. This can lead to suceptibility to pressures from foreign countries.
http://www.indiandefensenews.in/2020/05/raising-fdi-cap-to-74-in-defence.html (http://www.indiandefensenews.in/2020/05/raising-fdi-cap-to-74-in-defence.html)
RAISING FDI CAP TO 74% IN DEFENCE MANUFACTURING WILL BE 'GAME CHANGER': DEFENCE MINISTER
SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2020 BY INDIAN DEFENCE NEWS
His reaction came after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled a series of long-pending reforms for the defence sector which included making provisions for separate budgetary outlay to procure Indian-made military hardware, increasing the FDI limit and generating a year-wise negative list of weapons which can't be imported
Sitharaman, a former defence minister, also announced corporatisation of the Ordnance Factory Board, a nearly 200-year-old organisation that operates 41 ammunition production facilities across the country.
New Delhi: The government's decision to raise the FDI limit in defence manufacturing to 74 per cent from 49 per cent under the automatic route will prove to be a "game changer" as it will help in realising India's true potential in production of weapons and military hardware, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Saturday.
His reaction came after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled a series of long-pending reforms for the defence sector which included making provisions for separate budgetary outlay to procure Indian-made military hardware, increasing the FDI limit and generating a year-wise negative list of weapons which can't be imported.
Sitharaman, a former defence minister, also announced corporatisation of the Ordnance Factory Board, a nearly 200-year-old organisation that operates 41 ammunition production facilities across the country. The decision is aimed at enhancing efficiency in functioning of the organisation.
"The FDI limit in the defence manufacturing under automatic route has now been raised from 49 per cent to 74 per cent. This decision will unleash the true potential of Indian defence production capabilities through ‘Make in India'. The announcements made today will prove to be a Game Changer," the defence minister tweeted.
It is expected that increasing the FDI cap will encourage global defence majors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Airbus and Dassault Aviation to set up manufacturing hubs in India and bring niche technology without hesitation as the firms will have majority stakes in their Indian subsidiaries.
At present, up to 100 per cent FDI is allowed in the defence manufacturing on a case-to-case basis.
In February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi set a target of USD 5 billion worth of military exports in the next five years and invited global defence majors to set up manufacturing hubs in India.
In another initiative, the government has also decided to encourage domestic production of spare parts of military systems procured from defence majors abroad.
It has been a long-standing grievance of armed forces that supply of critical spares and equipment from several countries including Russia takes a long time affecting maintenance of military systems procured from those countries.
The government has been taking a series of measures in the last four years to promote the domestic defence industry.
In 2017, the government came up with an ambitious policy under which select private firms were to be roped in to build key military platforms like submarines and fighter jets in India in partnership with global defence majors.
Singh said that Saturday's announcements for the defence sector will go a long way in "unshackling" the economy in many ways.
He said corporatisation of the Ordnance Factory Boards (OFB) has been the topmost priority of the government.
"The corporatisation will improve the efficiency of our ordnance supplies and factories," he added.
Sitharaman also said that a list of weapons and platforms will be notified which will not be allowed to be imported, adding the move is aimed at promoting Make in India in the defence sector.
"In defence, we need to be self reliant where we can be. Of course, armed forces required best of equipment, they need some of the latest technology-driven equipment which can be imported," she said.
In her announcement, Sitharaman also said the process for General Staff Qualitative Requirements (GSQRs) will be made realistic. In GSQRs, the armed forces define criteria to procure platforms and hardware.
India was among the world's three top importers of military hardware in the last eight years.
According to a latest report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a leading think-tank on military spending, India's defence expenditure stood at USD 71.1 billion in 2019, which is third highest after the US and China.http://
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India is proposing 3 year tour of duty for civilians in the army.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/army-considers-tour-of-duty-model-to-allow-youth-to-serve-for-3-years/story-OsTsmGdUfthLp1cQ6GW6UM.html (https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/army-considers-tour-of-duty-model-to-allow-youth-to-serve-for-3-years/story-OsTsmGdUfthLp1cQ6GW6UM.html)
While the official reason is to bring discipline to youth, perhaps to respond to the post-COVID state. What is unsaid is (my speculation), that if there is a two front war with China and Pak, the Indian army could be short staffed and these young civilians could take up the slack. The shortest stint in the army is currently 10 years. 3 years seems just enough time to get POK back and stabilize the situation. Connecting the ....
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Baki news..if it were not so humorous.
Two citizens got their COVID results. Both negative. Family joyous, starts firing in air. 5 dead.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYzIWEEUEAIKET9?format=jpg&name=small)
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https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2020/10/all-us-troops-afghanistan-withdraw-christmas-trump-tweets/169105/
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Yesterday many reports of violence in Karachi. What was unusual was it was the army against the police.
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Whoa.
What is that about?
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As you may know things are not going well in Pak. Inflation, COVID, jobless, unhappiness with army (corruption scandals), ineffective Imran K, FATF sanctions. To make matters worse, Pak has tried to raise heat at the LOC on China's request. After that for some reason the baloch have been activated, they are killing Pak soldiers, the NW Frontier with Afghanistan/Taliban is active, they are killing pak soldiers, and same is happening at LOC (India paying back).
So now the opposition's Pak politicians are seeing opportunity. Nawaz Sharif is exiled in UK, but his son in law is free in Pak and was likely raking up trouble in Karachi. He was arrested from a hotel by the army. Following which the army tried to blame it on the inspector General of Police, who offered his resignation. There was also some shooting between police and army. Much of the police leadership has resigned or gone on leave.
I would add that this is happening in Karachi, capital of Sindh, which hates the domination by the Punjabi army. Sindh wants independence.
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Making the case
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/11/better-way-fight-forever-war/170161/
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I'm out of free articles. Could someone please paste it?
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/the-taliban-crime-syndicate-waits-out-trump/
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https://www.newscientist.com/article/2261031-google-earth-reveals-suspected-nuclear-weapons-facility-in-pakistan/
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https://m.startribune.com/court-orders-release-of-man-charged-in-daniel-pearl-killing/600004003/
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Hi Doug,
murderer (beheading of Daniel Pearl )
released
cannot bring up article w/o subscription
I hope there is not something in this article that points out it is Trumps fault?!
if not this will probably not get play on CNN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pearl
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Hi Doug,
murderer (beheading of Daniel Pearl )
released
cannot bring up article w/o subscription
I hope there is not something in this article that points out it is Trumps fault?!
if not this will probably not get play on CNN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pearl
I think they are saying they think he is innocent. It still goes to another court.
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U.S.-Trained Afghan Fighter Pilot Is in Hiding After Being Denied Safe Passage
The case of a top Afghanistan pilot facing death threats from the Taliban has drawn ire from inside U.S. military ranks
Maj. Naeim Asadi was part of Afghanistan's first training program for pilots flying the MD-530 helicopter.
PHOTO: NAEIM ASADI
By Sune Engel Rasmussen
Dec. 25, 2020 11:00 am E
Maj. Naiem Asadi, an Afghan pilot trained by the U.S. military, became known for his bravery during six years of fighting in the country’s war, from battling Taliban and Islamic State fighters to helping rescue a crashed American pilot.
Today, facing death threats from the Taliban, he is in hiding with his wife and 4-year-old daughter, after the U.S. reversed its decision to help him leave Afghanistan and live in America.
In late November, the U.S. military asked Mr. Asadi and his family to leave an American military base in Afghanistan, where he had sought refuge from the Taliban for a month, after the Pentagon withdrew its initial support for his request for protection in the U.S.
“We didn’t expect the U.S. government to leave us halfway,” said Mr. Asadi, who says he has killed hundreds of Taliban and Islamic State fighters during his active duty with the Afghan military.
“After completing a full review of the request, the appropriate officials determined that DoD [the Department of Defense] could not support the request,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Robert Lodewick said.
As the U.S. prepares to extricate itself from Afghanistan, Washington faces a dilemma over whether to help individuals who fought with and even saved Americans to leave the country—something that could deprive the Afghan military of its best fighters, when the survival of a political project the countries built together is at stake.
Mr. Asadi’s case has raised ire inside the U.S. military, with officers who trained and worked with the pilot saying he has done enough for Afghanistan and for the U.S., and that America should honor its initial pledge to protect him.
Army Gen. Mark Milley, the Pentagon’s top officer, met with Taliban officials on Dec. 15 in an attempt to accelerate peace talks between Kabul and the insurgent group that could help end the nearly two-decade-old conflict in Afghanistan.
President Trump has ordered the U.S. military to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan to 2,500 before Inauguration Day, from about 4,500. President-elect Joe Biden has said he wants to withdraw U.S. troops in Afghanistan within his first term.
As the U.S. drawdown continues, retaining Afghan pilots who can provide air power to defend cities is essential for Kabul and Washington alike.
Thirty-two-year-old Mr. Asadi graduated in 2013 as one of the first four Afghan pilots—known by their American advisers as the Fab Four—trained to fly the U.S.-made MD-530 helicopter, now a cornerstone of the Afghan Air Force. He says he logged nearly 3,000 flight hours on hundreds of missions, making him one of the most experienced pilots in the Afghan Air Force.
On his first mission, in 2014, Mr. Asadi was sent to a small town near the eastern city of Jalalabad, which militants had occupied. In 2015, Mr. Asadi was dispatched to help liberate Kunduz city from the Taliban, firing a barrage of rockets against insurgents who had surrounded an army base, forcing them to flee, he said.
He was also commended earlier this year by the U.S. military for providing air protection to an American soldier waiting to be rescued after crashing his attack aircraft in northern Afghanistan.
This year, Mr. Asadi applied for Significant Public Benefit Parole, a temporary protection status for noncitizens in the U.S. He was helped by 12 retired and active U.S. military officers who supported his case. They offered to help him find employment and set him up with a house in New Jersey in preparation for a new life.
U.S. officers who worked with Mr. Asadi say he is particularly vulnerable, largely because the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission featured him in promotional videos for the MD-530 helicopter.
The Pentagon endorsed his application, and a Pentagon official verified a Taliban threat letter to Mr. Asadi. On Oct. 27, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services approved Mr. Asadi’s parole, according to case documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
However, on his way to pick up his travel documents, Mr. Asadi said he received a call from an American officer informing him that they weren’t ready after all. A week later, the U.S. military confirmed that it had withdrawn its support for his request, which effectively ensured its rejection.
“It’s an extremely challenging balance, and one that the Department of Defense strives to get right,” said a Pentagon official. “The bottom line is that the United States, DoD specifically, cannot be the element that facilitates an active duty military officer deserting his duty.”
“It is patently untrue and inaccurate for anyone to say that Asadi would be guilty of desertion if he left the Afghan military. There is no crime of desertion codified in Afghanistan’s Criminal Code,” said Mr. Asadi’s U.S. lawyer, Kimberley Motley.
Ms. Motley said the Afghan government has a history of imprisoning citizens for alleged crimes that aren’t codified in law, and she worried the same might happen to Mr. Asadi. Mr. Asadi himself says he can’t return to the Afghan Air Force for fear that he will be arrested for desertion.
When Niloofar Rahmani, Afghanistan’s first female airplane pilot, sought asylum in the U.S. in 2016 during a training course, citing threats to her life at home, the Afghan Ministry of Defense said she would be arrested if she returned. Ms. Rahmani received asylum in 2018 and now lives in the U.S.
A spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, Fawad Aman, didn’t comment on whether Mr. Asadi would be arrested if he returned to duty.
The spokesman said the Afghan security forces took the threats against Mr. Asadi seriously, but they weren’t providing him with extra protection.
“We are responsible for providing security for him and his family,” said Mr. Aman. “We do it for him, as we do for the rest of our personnel.”
The Pentagon and the U.S. mission in Afghanistan declined to comment further on Mr. Asadi’s case. A spokesperson for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services also declined to comment.
A Pentagon official said that after receiving the initial approval, senior U.S. military officials in Afghanistan approached the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which then conducted another review.
Eventually, the Defense Department concluded that the threats against Mr. Asadi weren’t “greater or more alarming” than those facing other Afghan soldiers, the Pentagon official said.
“The solution of the hundreds and hundreds of people who face security threats can’t be to get on a plane to America,” said the Pentagon official. “It would absolutely gut the Afghan security forces.”
His case has struck a nerve among Afghans wanting to leave the country along with U.S. troops, as well as American soldiers eager to protect partners with whom they fought.
The U.S. promised Mr. Asadi a new beginning, and “we need to honor that,” said Rafael Caraballo, a retired U.S. Army pilot who trained Mr. Asadi. “He has nowhere to go.”
Mr. Caraballo said that years ago, Taliban fighters pulled another Afghan fighter he had trained off a bus, found documents in his luggage tying him to the American pilot-training program and slit his throat.
Mr. Asadi “has done everything he can so effectively for” the Afghan military, Mr. Caraballo said. “He needs to see his child grow.”
The controversy over Mr. Asadi’s case comes amid a wave of assassinations of Afghan government officials. Targeted killings of civilians, including officials, have surged to 531 in the first 10 months of this year from 369 in the same period of 2019, according to the United Nations.
Afghanistan’s national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, said that soldiers who join the Afghan military have to honor their commitments and not use their service as a ticket to leave the country.
“As far as the threat from the Taliban is concerned, every Afghan’s life is threatened,” Mr. Mohib said.
Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the December 26, 2020, print edition as 'Afghan Pilot Is Denied Prot
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“We didn’t expect the U.S. government to leave us halfway,” said Mr. Asad
"Neither did we"-The dead ARVN soldiers and their families, murdered by the communists after we abandoned them.
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“We didn’t expect the U.S. government to leave us halfway,”
- Afghanistan is the US fault? A little hard for me to follow that.
"If you break it, you own it." - Sec. Gen. Powell
- We didn't break Iraq or Afghanistan. It was broken before we got there. We declared a right of self defense - to go in and take out the threat to us. Repeat if necessary. The rest, civil war, nation building, etc. was a nice idea that didn't work out.
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https://gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/061/048/082/original/e8d7cd919ee1ecd1.jpg
(https://gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/061/048/082/original/e8d7cd919ee1ecd1.jpg)
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I was sworn in as U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey on Jan. 17, 2002. Six days later, Daniel Pearl, South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan. Pearl was investigating a story about the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, and had been promised by his kidnappers that they would take him to meet Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani. Pearl believed Sheikh Mubarak had information regarding Mr. Reid, the British terrorist who attempted to detonate an explosive device in his shoe aboard a Paris-to-Miami flight in December 2001. Pearl never met Sheikh Mubarak—the meeting was a setup—and he was never seen again. The killers released a videotape of Pearl’s murder.
The Pearl investigation was my baptism into the world of terrorism. We were all still reeling from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The FBI had set up a command center at the South Brunswick, N.J., headquarters of Dow Jones, the Journal’s publisher. Through the combined efforts of the Justice Department and Pakistani authorities, three men were identified as having taken part in the abduction. Their organization, the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, had been sending ransom demands to the Dow Jones computer servers in New Jersey. Through great computer forensics, the task force of combined American and Pakistani authorities was able to identify and arrest three people, including the mastermind of the abduction, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.
Mr. Sheikh already had a record of terrorism. In 1994, then a member of Harkat ul-Ansar, an Islamic militant organization, he was convicted of kidnapping four people, including an American in India. He was jailed in India but after his terrorist friends hijacked an Indian Airlines flight, Mr. Sheikh was freed in exchange for the passengers. With assistance from the Taliban, he made his way to Afghanistan.
Mr. Sheikh was indicted in March 2002 by a New Jersey grand jury for the kidnapping of Pearl resulting in his murder. The indictment is still viable and it is a case for which the U.S. can seek the death penalty. In announcing the indictment, Attorney General John Ashcroft also announced the unsealing of an indictment charging Mr. Sheikh with the kidnapping of the American tourist in India.
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Mr. Sheikh and his co-conspirators were also charged in Pakistan. They were tried in 2002 and convicted. While his accomplices were given life sentences, Mr. Sheikh was sentenced to death. His appeal languished until April, when a Pakistani court ordered the release of all the defendants on the grounds that there was conflicting testimony at the original trial and insufficient evidence to support the murder charge. The Pakistani authorities have been fighting the release and have kept Mr. Sheikh jailed. But on Thursday the court again ordered his release.
The U.S. and Pakistan don’t have a clear, formal extradition treaty. Attorneys from my former office asked the Justice Department to notify Pakistan officially that the U.S. would like Mr. Sheikh extradited if he is ever released. No such formal request has ever been made. That is an outrage.
In a series of tweets, the State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs has said it is “deeply concerned” about the rulings. Daniel Pearl’s parents, with the assistance of The Wall Street Journal, have been working to have the original sentence reinstated. But the Pearl family shouldn’t have to do this on their own. Mr. Sheikh has twice been indicted in the U.S. for grave terrorist crimes. Washington should do more than express concern. Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo should immediately demand that Pakistan extradite Mr. Sheikh immediately upon his release.
The U.S. cannot again become complacent in the face of terrorism. We did that before 9/11 and paid a grievous price. Instead of being distracted by peripheral issues in the waning days of this presidency, the Trump administration should take this opportunity to stand up against terror. We owe that much to Daniel Pearl and his family.
Mr. Christie served as U.S. attorney for New Jersey (2002-08) and governor (2009-18).
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Also convicted in the Daniel Pearl murder:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Sheikh_Mohammed
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Insert wonder what Faux Pres Biden will do about this here. Slap in the face to America snd the civilized world is not a strong enough expression for the moral depravity here.
https://www.reuters.com/article/pakistan-us-danielpearl-int/islamist-convicted-of-beheading-u-s-journalist-daniel-pearl-to-go-free-victims-family-in-shock-idUSKBN29X0VD
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"Slap in the face to America"
Not according to his base.
Insert wonder what Faux Pres Biden will do about this here. Slap in the face to America snd the civilized world is not a strong enough expression for the moral depravity here.
https://www.reuters.com/article/pakistan-us-danielpearl-int/islamist-convicted-of-beheading-u-s-journalist-daniel-pearl-to-go-free-victims-family-in-shock-idUSKBN29X0VD
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9263103/30-Taliban-militants-killed-explosion-bomb-making-class-Afghan-mosque.html
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ditch-afghanistan-experts
Will Biden withdraw from Afgh as planned ?
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https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/corruption-murder-pederasty-the-afghan-government-is-not-worth-fighting-for/
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The Way Forward in Afghanistan
Meeting Trump’s May 1 withdrawal deadline could lead to a rout.
By The Editorial Board
March 15, 2021 6:47 pm ET
The Biden Administration is scrambling to find a responsible way out of Afghanistan by the May 1 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops set by Donald Trump. Problem is, a prudent withdrawal on such a tight timeline is impossible.
“The United States has not ruled out any option,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote in a recent letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. “I am making this clear to you so that you understand the urgency of my tone.” The U.S. is pushing aggressively for Taliban and Kabul officials to reach a political settlement.
The contents of Mr. Blinken’s letter, along with a more detailed peace plan, don’t give much reason for optimism. Washington has proposed an interim government in which the Taliban shares power with Kabul. Eventually, the country would transition to a democratic government with the current constitution as an “initial template.”
Sounds nice, but the Taliban goal is an Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The group said in 2016 that it “has not readily embraced this death and destruction for the sake of some silly ministerial posts.” Researchers at the Long War Journal have spent years documenting the Taliban’s consistency on this point.
Mr. Blinken called for “a 90-day Reduction-in-Violence” to forestall the Taliban’s spring offensive. The group, last year responsible for around twice as many civilian casualties as Afghan national forces were, has rejected such pleas before. Why would they now, especially with the U.S. eagerly eyeing the door?
The U.S. is hoping to lasso China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia to help negotiate and enforce a peace deal. Is that the same Pakistan that has been the Taliban’s primary benefactor for years? The same Iran that has cooperated with the Taliban despite political and religious differences? The same Russia that has provided the Taliban with diplomatic support and perhaps more?
President Biden will need a Plan B if this diplomatic push fails. His campaign website isn’t a bad place to start: “Biden will bring the vast majority of our troops home from Afghanistan and narrowly focus our mission on Al-Qaeda and ISIS.” The alternative is a full withdrawal that would free up the Taliban to conquer more of the country, and perhaps the collapse of the government and a humanitarian disaster.
One benefit of the Taliban negotiations is that the group largely stopped attacking Americans. Staying means endangering American troops. But the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 to neutralize the threat posed by al Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors. The two groups remain connected as the Taliban fails to comply with its assurances to Mr. Trump.
Remaining in Afghanistan doesn’t require a massive commitment. There are as many as 3,500 U.S. troops in the country today, and allies contribute twice as many. The bipartisan Afghanistan Study Group suggests 4,500 Americans are enough “for training, advising, and assisting Afghan defense forces; supporting allied forces; conducting counterterrorism operations; and securing our embassy.”
This is the best advice we’ve seen. There is no easy exit from Afghanistan, but the worst would be a rushed retreat by May 1 that would serve only the Taliban and its jihadist allies.
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Had an interesting conversation yesterday with two women from Civil Affairs who had spent a lot of time in Afghanistan.
I asked should we stay or should we go.
A pained sigh. They truly felt divided between not wanting to betray the women with whom they had worked and who they knew would be hurt if/when we left, but were left at a loss as to why it would be good for America to stay.
Asked the same question today to an SF who had done three tours over there spread out over a a number of years. He hesitated, but ultimately came down on the side of sticking around and mowing the lawn as necessary from time to time.
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https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/04/petraeus-trashes-biden-decision-quit-afghanistan/173359/
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https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/biden-may-regret-his-afghanistan-decision/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MJ_20210414&utm_term=Jolt-Smart
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Forget about projecting power to defend the US when we don't even have secure borders and import jihadists to live among us.
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/biden-may-regret-his-afghanistan-decision/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MJ_20210414&utm_term=Jolt-Smart
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-slams-biden-troop-withdrawal-deadline-september-11-attacks
Oh , what a lovely story for the MSM
I can see the little history vignettes now about the "20 yrs"
on CNN WP NYT 60 (democrat) minutes
etc.
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April 20, 2021
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Remembering al-Qaida
By: George Friedman
The United States invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago, soon after the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. By 2008, then-President Barack Obama made it a point to disengage from what has become known as the Forever Wars. He failed. His successor, President Donald Trump, pledged likewise but failed all the same. President Joe Biden, too, has said the U.S. would withdraw, this time by the anniversary of the 9/11 attack.
The war in Afghanistan can’t be discussed without discussing al-Qaida, the Islamist group led by Osama bin Laden, the son of an extremely wealthy Yemeni who had moved his family to Saudi Arabia. His goal was to recreate an Islamic caliphate. As I wrote in “America’s Secret War,” his strategy was to unite the Islamic world against its common enemy, the United States. To that end, he would conduct an attack against the United States that generated massive causalities and electrified the world. If the U.S. could be attacked, it would prove the U.S. to be vulnerable. If the United States declined to respond, it would prove Washington to be weak or cowardly, or so the thinking went. Both cases would, bin Laden thought, achieve the same end: Islamic unity.
The attack against the United States was both simple and brilliant. Hijacked aircraft would strike American icons – the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Congress (the latter of which failed). The Islamic world would know these buildings well and would see al-Qaida’s power. What was remarkable was the detailed planning, the deployment of operatives and the movement of money, none of which was fully detected by U.S. intelligence. (There are always those who claim that they predicted such events. I have no idea what they said to whom before the attack, only what they claimed to have said after.) The fear that struck the United States was palpable.
Part of the fear was that Washington did not know what al-Qaida was planning next and what resources it had. The idea that 9/11 was the sum total of its capability was plausible, but there was no evidence for it, and the American public was thinking of all the worst-case scenarios. There was intelligence, necessarily uncertain in nature, that al-Qaida had acquired a single small nuclear device. All reasonable people scoff at such thoughts now, but in the days after the attack, nothing was being dismissed. Lenin said that the purpose of terror is to terrify. The country was terrified, because none of us knew what was next.
U.S. intelligence began connecting dots and acquiring intelligence from allies, and determined that al-Qaida was responsible for the attack. They also determined that bin Laden and his command cell were located in Afghanistan under the protection of its leader, Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar. The desire to lash out at everything was overpowering, but President George W. Bush elected instead to focus on the country that had given al-Qaida sanctuary. This was the beating heart of the movement, and it had to be destroyed or dispersed to prevent, to the extent possible, a follow-on attack on the U.S.
The ultimate objective of the invasion was to destroy al-Qaida’s command. “Invasion” might not even be the right word; there was no invasion planned because one could not possibly be mounted in 30 days. The primary operation was carried out by CIA operatives with contacts in Afghanistan, along with special operations teams, who would carry out any attack mounted on al-Qaida. Occupation and regime change were incidental.
Most of the combat was meant to be carried out by U.S. allies such as the Northern Alliance, which had only recently discovered they were U.S. allies when the CIA delivered them a ton of cash. Among this group there were those who knew where bin Laden was and who claimed to be prepared to find him and turn him over to the Americans. Bin Laden was located in a complex of caves called Tora Bora near the Pakistani border. The allies located him but just missed capturing him (no surprise there). U.S. Special Operations Command moved toward a blocking position between Tora Bora and Pakistan, but the al-Qaida command cell and their families slipped across the border into Pakistan, where they seemed to be welcomed.
The initial operation was impressive for what it was. Though it did not succeed in capturing the enemy, it did disorganize the enemy enough to buy time for U.S. intelligence to gain some clarity, allowing continual harassment of the group and no further attacks on the U.S. Then came the original sin of U.S. military operations: mission creep. Until al-Qaida showed up in Afghanistan, the U.S. could tolerate Mullah Omar and had little interest in his country. The U.S. thought it would withdraw, then hunt down escaped al-Qaida operatives wherever else they went in the world. It was not to be. The idea that, of all the countries al-Qaida might be in, Afghanistan was uniquely important, requiring a multidivisional force to pacify, was unsound. The American force was never large enough or suitable to occupy Afghanistan, which had already broken the Soviets and the British. The Taliban declined to engage in combat head-on, retreated, dispersed and regrouped. They fought the U.S. to a standstill. If the U.S. withdraws, it leaves Afghanistan to the Taliban, the same situation that would have been the case in December 2001.
The argument against withdrawal is that Afghanistan could be used as a base for mounting terrorist attacks. That is true, but recall that 9/11 was mounted mostly inside the U.S. Transnational terrorism is just that – transnational – and even if Afghanistan were its hub, the U.S. simply cannot hold it.
Obama, Trump and Biden all reached a similar conclusion. Their critics on the matter confuse the desirable and the possible. They often argue that Afghanistan poses a unique danger. It doesn’t. Even so, nothing is over so long as something is possible. And since few things are impossible, the people who want to stay tend to win. But it is important to remember what happened to understand the logic that led to a war that wanted to do what no one, not even Alexander the Great at the height of his power, could. You can isolate Afghanistan, but you cannot impose your will on it.
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Friedman's take makes sense to me.
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The bin Laden family was quite prominent in Saudi. I didn't know they were of Yemen origin.
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https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/05/time-crunch-afghanistan-withdrawal-producing-big-trash-pile/174021/
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https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/05/guam-or-bust-americas-helpers-may-need-halfway-destination-afghanistan-pullout-nears/174179/
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The D Brief
May 26, 2021
Afghanistan latest: The Taliban just warned neighboring countries against hosting American troops and equipment as the U.S. considers its so-called "over the horizon" options for how to handle counterterrorism after its Afghan exit.
"Foreign forces are the root cause of insecurity and war in the region and the greatest tragedy is that everyone has witnessed in the last twenty years, especially our afflicted people who have suffered and continue to suffer more than anyone else," the group said in a statement. "We urge neighboring countries not to allow and grant anyone such a concession...
"As we have repeatedly assured others our soil will not be used against anyone's security, we urge others not to use its soil and airspace against our country." Read over the full remarks, which the group posted in English, here.
Pakistan's top diplomat said his country won't be used for any U.S. bases, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told senators Tuesday in Islamabad. "Forget the past, but I want to tell the Pakistanis that no U.S. base will be allowed by Prime Minister Imran Khan so long he is in power," he said.
In case you've been living under a rock for the past two decades, "much of the Taliban's leadership [still] lives in Pakistan," America's top envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, told German news website Der Spiegel in an interview 15 days ago.
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The rapid withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan, combined with the Taliban’s recent territorial gains, will create a power struggle between the Taliban and the Afghan government that will likely cause a civil war and further degrade the regional security environment. The Sept. 11 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops announced by President Joe Biden has become a symbolic timeline. On the ground, more than half of U.S. and NATO troops have left Afghanistan, and reports suggest remaining troops will leave the country as soon as the first week of July. On July 2, U.S. forces finished withdrawing from Bagram, their main military base in Afghanistan. Taking advantage of this strategic opportunity where Afghan troops are solely responsible for the security of the country, the Taliban launched an offensive campaign to capture and control territories, almost as soon as May 1 when foreign troop withdrawal began. The Taliban has since taken control of 157 districts of Afghanistan’s 407 districts in just two months.
On June 29, Taliban fighters launched an attack on Ghazni, a critical city along a highway linking Kabul with the southern province of Kandahar. If the Taliban manages to take over the city, it would mark a second major territorial gain by cutting movement to and from the south to Kabul. First was the capture of Doshi, a district home to the only road linking Kabul to northern parts of the country earlier on June 21st.
The Taliban also has control of checkpoints in the northern Kunduz province bordering Tajikistan, giving it control of a major trade route into Central Asia.
Aside from expanding on-the-ground influence for its own sake, territorial gains give the Taliban strategic bargaining chips to gain more leverage in future negotiations with the Afghan government.
The Stalled Afghan Peace Process
The withdrawal of troops was one of the main conditions in the agreement that the United States reached with the Taliban in February 2020. In exchange, the Taliban agreed to ceasefire and participation in talks with the Afghan government in Kabul in order to reach an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned solution to political and security issues plaguing the country. But those intra-Afghan negotiations have been stalled over the two sides’ conflicting pre-qualifications, with the Taliban demanding that Kabul first release Taliban prisoners and guarantee the group will be fairly represented in a post-war government. The Afghan government, meanwhile, has insisted that it won’t engage in talks with the Taliban until the group agrees to a cease-fire.
Afghan security forces are losing territories due to logistical and political leadership failures. Afghan security forces rely on U.S.-funded contractors to repair and maintain their fleet of aircraft, armored vehicles and other equipment. But those contractors will also leave soon as part of the U.S. withdrawal, leaving Afghan forces unable to maintain dozens of fighter planes, cargo aircraft, U.S.-made helicopters and drones for more than a few more months. This could effectively ground the Afghan Air Force, which is Kabul’s main edge against the Taliban due to its role in supporting Afghan ground operations with effective airstrikes — a capability that the Taliban lacks. There is also a lack of coordination on the ground due to ineffective political leadership in Kabul. Demoralized by limited resources, the U.S. troop withdrawal, low salaries and widespread government corruption, Afghan soldiers have turned over district centers, abandoned military bases and surrendered to the Taliban. They’ve handed over their weapons, vehicles and other war material without a fight due to a lack of numbers and equipment as well. The Taliban offensive in the northern districts also stretched limited Afghan forces across large areas, further weakening them.
The decaying security situation in Afghanistan is likely to incite a chaotic civil war in less than six months after foreign troops withdraw. To help overcome its inability to coordinate an effective Kabul-led military response, the Afghan government recently launched a “national mobilization” campaign, which arms civilians and local militias to counter the Taliban’s advances. But with its structured offensive, the Taliban would still easily defeat local militias due to their relative lack of military training and equipment. Given Afghan militias' long history of shifting loyalties, power struggles and territorial disputes, there’s also no guarantee that local armed groups won’t use the new arms to fight against each other instead of the Taliban, increasing inter-communal violence and unrest. These armed organizations are theoretically linked with the Afghan government, but their organization has the potential to further splinter the war-torn country along ethnic lines and boost the Taliban by default, resulting in a multi-front and multi-party war between the Taliban, Afghan government and local militias.
Warlords heading the militias have provided protection to the ethnic minorities often targeted by Taliban. But while these militia formations have temporarily aided government forces in their fight against the Taliban in many northern regions, they have also bolstered warlord fiefdoms, eroding the government's authority in Kabul that could outlast the current conflict.
Northern Afghanistan could become a fighting ground for Taliban and non-Pashtun groups composed of ethnic minorities like Tajiks and Uzbeks. This violence would further destabilize the country and might lead to migrations and refugee crises in Central Asian countries.
Southern Afghanistan, with a majority Pashtun population, could become a base for al Qaeda and Islamic State militants, as they would have much more operational freedom to conduct a host of activities, including recruitment, training and attack plotting.
An increasingly volatile Afghanistan would also endanger the security of the nearby countries by providing a fertile training ground for regional militant groups. Violent clashes between the Taliban and security forces have resulted in thousands of civilian casualties and internal displacement of people from rural areas to relatively more protected provincial capitals and cities. In the coming months, particularly after the United States and NATO complete their troop withdrawal, major cities could also fall to the Taliban. Such Taliban gains could trigger a regional humanitarian crisis that would be difficult to address amid the violence, thus presenting a sustained threat of unrest. A security vacuum and a stronger Taliban could also foster a revival of training camps of various terrorist groups in the Afghanistan hinterland, further endangering the security of the entire region. In addition, international and regional terrorist organizations could mobilize and operate from the region to threaten the security of South and Central Asia. A strong foothold in Afghanistan could enable al Qaeda and the Islamic State to plan operations against the West as well.
Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region could intensify attacks against Pakistan, which could, in turn, provoke Islamabad to increase its meddling in Afghanistan. There are 5,000 TTP fighters in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, suggesting the group is primed to take advantage of increased Taliban control and scattered Afghan forces focused on operations against the Taliban.
Terrorist groups operating against India like Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) would have more strategic depth to carry out their offensives in the region due to their links with the Taliban. Attacks on India could drive India to intervene against these groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well.
Al Qaeda may reboot in Afghanistan once the Taliban — which it has reportedly maintained close ties with — overwhelms Afghan security forces. An Islamic State resurgence in Afghanistan also cannot be ruled out, as the group has proven resilient and has asserted some level of presence and control in southern parts of the country. Both of these developments would present a significant increase in the terrorism threat to the West, given that al Qaeda and the Islamic State both maintain a strategic intent to use an Afghan safe haven to strike targets abroad.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9755531/China-prepares-Afghanistan-following-Americas-departure-Belt-Road-program.html
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China has a tiny border with Afghanistan.
If China moves into the vacuum created by our departure,
a) is a pipeline for Afghani gas plausible?
b) is a pipeline for oil and gas from Iran plausible?
If yes, then this is a huge geopolitical change for China!!!
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I have not yet read this
https://www.csis.org/analysis/natos-pivot-china-challenging-path
https://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/84798
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July 9, 2021
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The 20-Year War
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman
On Sept. 11, 2001, a special operations team created by al-Qaida attacked the United States, hijacking commercial airplanes to target psychologically significant structures. I call it a special operations team because that’s exactly what it was, not the primitive cabal it was mistakenly made out to be. Its members were fanatical, but they understood their mission and understood the weakness of U.S. intelligence such that they could coordinate multiple, simultaneous attacks, all the while maintaining secrecy.
The purpose of the attack was to be part of a trigger for an uprising in the Islamic world. If the U.S. attacked the Islamic world more broadly, it would be seen as the enemy of Islam. If the U.S. failed to attack, it would be seen as afraid of the power of the Islamic world. Either would, al-Qaida hoped, inspire its brethren to rise up against the U.S.
Washington could neither engage in a regional war nor decline to respond. It properly understood al-Qaida’s strategy, and it knew just enough about al-Qaida to know it didn’t have a good handle on the group’s resources. From this, two things arose. The first was the fear that 9/11 was merely the first of more attacks to come and that U.S. intelligence couldn’t prevent them. The second was the realization that al-Qaida’s command center had to be either disrupted or destroyed.
It was known to be in Afghanistan, so the mission had to be carried out in Afghanistan and, given the uncertainty of the operation, done quickly. But it was not Afghanistan that mattered but al-Qaida. The primary strategy was to contact and recruit or hire Afghan groups the U.S. was familiar with from the Afghan war against the Soviet Union and use them as the ground force to locate and destroy al-Qaida. The Afghan forces accompanied by CIA operatives and U.S. airpower identified the location of the group’s command but could not mount a decisive campaign against the base. The group dispersed and escaped into Pakistan.
At this point, the U.S. made a critical error. The government of Afghanistan, led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, had allowed al-Qaida to operate in its territory. Therefore, the U.S. thought, the government had to be destroyed and replaced. For al-Qaida, Afghanistan was merely a convenience. Other areas might be chosen, and many national or local leaders might have sheltered them or would shelter them in the future. For the U.S., to destroy the government required the destruction of the Taliban, a force that was an integral part of the nation. Washington’s primary strategy was to use airpower on cities that the Taliban occupied, a strategy that minimized U.S. casualties with what was believed to be maximum casualties for the Taliban. The Taliban understood the strategy and withdrew from the cities. The U.S. saw this as evidence that the Taliban had been defeated. But they had merely retreated from an untenable position and regrouped over time, forcing Washington into a war in which the Taliban had persistent tactical superiority. Strategically, neither side could “win” but the Taliban had to continue fighting, while the U.S. could withdraw. It was a question of time, and time was on the Taliban’s side.
The ouster of the Taliban government meant the United States had to create a new one. The U.S. tried to cobble together various elements into a coalition, but it didn’t work. Its members were frequently hostile to each other, many favored the Taliban, and the major force creating and protecting the new government was American. There was a desire to build an Afghan army, but the first volunteers for the new army belonged to anti-American forces. Unlike in, say, Germany and Japan, the U.S. was in no position to impose much punishment. It was impossible.
The United States then entered its final and longest mistake. It was aware that pacifying Afghanistan and creating a pro-U.S. government was impossible. But it also felt that abandoning Afghanistan would “send the wrong signal” to the Islamic world. The message the Islamic world received, however, was that the United States did not have an understanding of its enemy, was unwilling to provide sufficient force to even try to win, and was merely imposing pain on both sides without purpose. The continuation of a war that was unwinnable based on the illusion that continuation impressed anyone is a frequent theme in American post-World War II strategy.
The United States was not led by stupid people. 9/11 stunned and frightened them. They went into Afghanistan primarily to destroy the group that executed the attacks. When al-Qaida slipped into Pakistan, the U.S. could have stopped or could have continued its war against al-Qaida in Pakistan, with or without the help of Pakistani intelligence, and disrupted them sufficiently to make mounting other attacks impossible. Or the U.S. could have taken some time to see whether al-Qaida had any more attacks in store. Instead, Washington gradually shifted the main focus to Afghanistan while carrying out this covert fight against al-Qaida. In doing both, the U.S. began pyramiding strategic goals – leading to the invasion of Iraq, the deployment of forces in North Africa, and so on. It had the personnel to do so, but what it lacked was a coordinated decision-making process. This process operated on the assumption that any effort against any suspect target was imperative. What happened was that U.S. strategic awareness dissipated, followed by the dissipation of U.S. forces. In short, American goals got wider and more ambitious, while it reduced forces and tried to build a nation that looks like the United States in Afghanistan.
War must have a clear and attainable goal. It requires ruthless analysis and honesty. The spasm after 9/11 until the escape of al-Qaida at Tora Bora was rational, if a partial failure. After that, a war was launched without an attainable goal. For this, I do not blame the generals. They were carrying out their orders. I blame the senior civilian officials, particularly those after President George W. Bush who constantly criticized the war and made gestures to end it but let it go on. Even now, with President Joe Biden’s withdrawal, the U.S. is reportedly creating bases in Central Asia to attack Afghanistan if worse comes to worse. American culture finds it difficult to shape efforts to cohere with U.S. interests, and then simply can’t walk away when things go sideways. It’s a sign of strategic immaturity in a country that no longer is permitted to be immature. It’s been 20 years, and we are still readying airstrikes.
There is an argument in foreign policy between idealists and realists. Reality must include ideals because without them, what would be the point of acting as we do? Idealism must understand the limits of power, or it will do awful things while claiming the best intent. War is sometimes necessary, and when it is deemed to be necessary, every life put at risk, on all sides, must be treated as precious, their death both tragic and necessary. Fighting a war based on fantasy and insufficient force is a violation of fundamental moral principles. The U.S. will lose wars as all nations do, but we must understand precisely why we are in that war. Twenty years is a long time to not understand.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/joe-bidens-afghan-withdrawal-folly/#slide-1
Donald Trump was in favor of withdrawal
so one could say this is almost the only thing Biden carried out that Trump wanted
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I would note that the argument about "Look! No casualties for a year!!" arguably ignores that perhaps the Taliban has held off during negotiations with the US and were we to change our mind, that would change dramatically.
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This is a nice short read, with some unique view points by a knowledgeable source as to whats happening between Pak, Haqqanis, Taliban and the US.
https://stratnewsglobal.com/neighbours/afghanistan/taliban-faultlines-pakistans-isi-elevates-haqqani-network-front-and-centre/ (https://stratnewsglobal.com/neighbours/afghanistan/taliban-faultlines-pakistans-isi-elevates-haqqani-network-front-and-centre/)
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uly 12, 2021
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A New Reality Emerges in Afghanistan
Key external players in the country seem to be taking a different approach.
By: Ekaterina Zolotova
The security situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating since the United States and NATO began to withdraw their forces earlier this year. In early July, the Taliban took control of the largest border crossing to Iran in the west and Kandahar in the south. Taliban officials said last week that the group now controls 85 percent of the country’s territory. It also reportedly controls the entire border with Tajikistan.
The situation is concerning not only because of the potential for escalating violence but also because Afghanistan occupies an important geopolitical space connecting the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Its location has long made it the subject of competition between various powers vying for access to its resource-rich land and openings to other critical markets. Today, however, the key external players in the country seem to be taking a different approach. The United States has promised to pull out all of its troops by the end of August. Russia has adopted a wait-and-see approach. And Turkey has stayed out of the fighting, though it has offered to guard the airport in Kabul after the NATO withdrawal. For now, at least, it seems external actors have accepted the limitations of foreign intervention in Afghanistan, meaning a new reality is emerging for the war-torn country.
United States
The United States has seen Afghanistan as an area of interest for decades, but it’s goals there have changed over time. After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. launched an operation to try to overthrow the Taliban, which Washington said had harbored the group responsible for the attacks: al-Qaida. But the United States’ interests in the country were always limited, in part because carrying out operations so far from home carries huge logistical challenges and in part because the United States had more critical goals at that time.
(click to enlarge)
One of Washington’s main geopolitical objectives in Afghanistan was to create a foothold in the region to limit the progress of the Commonwealth of Independent States, an alliance of post-Soviet countries that includes some of Afghanistan’s neighbors. It also wanted control over energy resources and a strategic presence in the region. The United States remembered the Soviets’ miscalculations during their war in Afghanistan and thought it could learn from them.
The U.S.-led coalition managed to overthrow the Taliban government and, by 2013, delivered control of over 70 percent of the country to the new government in Kabul. However, two key factors have compelled the U.S. to retreat now. First, even as the U.S.-backed administration was winning control over a growing portion of Afghanistan, the Taliban still had significant influence in the country. This influence evolved into resistance against the U.S.-led government, and Kabul struggled to hold on to much of the country despite the substantial resources Washington had invested in the longest war in U.S. history. Indeed, it has become clear that maintaining control requires the presence of U.S. troops on the ground, which carries a higher cost than the benefits are worth.
Second, and more important, other foreign powers are too busy elsewhere to get involved in the Afghan quagmire. China is preoccupied with its own economic problems, Russia sees little benefit in entering the fray militarily, and other external actors that might have interests in the country aren’t much of a threat to the U.S. anyway. Plus, Washington is increasingly looking to regional players to share the burden of securing hotspots like Afghanistan while it turns its attention to the Indo-Pacific region. Considering their proximity to the country, China and Russia may be forced to deal with the issue in the future – and since the U.S. sees these two countries as its biggest threats, leaving behind some instability there may actually have some benefits.
Turkey
Ankara has been involved in Afghanistan since the fall of the regime of Mohammad Najibullah, who led the country until 1992. It has several interests in Afghanistan. First, one of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s top goals is to transform Turkey into the political center of the Muslim world, and Afghanistan is one piece of this puzzle, especially because it’s on the doorstep of Central Asia, a region home to many Turkic-speaking populations. Second, expanding Turkish influence in Afghanistan and Central Asia is one way of countering Ankara’s historical rival, Russia. Third, Turkey sees some potential economic benefits. It has promoted the Lapis Lazuli corridor, a project connecting Afghanistan to Turkey through Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia, bypassing Iran, Russia and China. This project could reduce Turkey’s dependence on its neighbors. The Afghan market, especially its construction sector, also has some promise for Turkish business.
(click to enlarge)
The Taliban and external powers do not see Turkey’s presence in Afghanistan as a threat. Turkish involvement there has been limited to Kabul. (It has offered to guard the capital’s airport after the withdrawal of U.S. troops.) Besides, Ankara lacks the resources to carry out its neo-Ottoman agenda in multiple theaters at once. (Turkey is also active in the Syrian conflict, building closer ties in Central Asia and increasing its presence in North Africa.) If anything, the United States is likely glad to see another country step up and help with security and reconstruction efforts.
Turkey’s plan to secure the Kabul airport is more likely an attempt to reap some benefit from the money it’s already invested in the country. For example, 90 percent of the 76 Turkish companies operating in Afghanistan work in the construction and contracting sectors. These companies developed 701 projects between 2003 and 2018, worth a total of roughly $6.6 billion. As a result, the Afghan people have a generally positive perception of Turkey. The Taliban have criticized Turkey’s plan to guard the airport but also expressed hope for close ties with Ankara following the troop withdrawal.
Turkey Afghanistan Trade Relations
(click to enlarge)
Russia
For Russia, the stability of Afghanistan is critical because the country borders Central Asia, an important buffer region to its south.
In the 19th century, Russia and Britain began competing for influence over the country. After World War II, the Soviets saw expanding their influence there as a foreign policy priority, largely because of its need to expand its sphere of influence during the Cold War. After it lost control over its satellite republics following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, Russia no longer saw Afghanistan as a buffer state. Today, it’s focused on maintaining a barrier between its own borders and the threats it sees emerging in Afghanistan.
That barrier is Central Asia. In contrast to the Soviet Union, Russia today has drawn a clear line – at the Turkmen, Tajik and Uzbek border – beyond which it’s not willing to get involved militarily. Thus, its primary interest in Afghanistan is how the instability there could affect Central Asian countries. Spillover of violence, the drug trade and extremist elements from Afghanistan pose a threat to Central Asia and, in turn, to Russia as well.
Though the Kremlin has promised to do what it can to prevent further escalation of the conflict, including using its 201st military base in Tajikistan, it’s hesitant to get involved. The Soviet war with Afghanistan was widely unpopular and resulted in heavy losses – including the deaths of more than 15,000 Soviet troops. The Kremlin doesn’t want to see history repeating itself. Nor does it want to undermine the government’s approval ratings ahead of elections in the fall.
Moscow is now taking a different path forward. It’s negotiating directly with the Taliban, in part to get reassurances that their activities will be limited to Afghan territory and in part to raise its own profile as a mediator. Taliban representatives met with Russia’s special envoy for Afghanistan in Moscow on July 8. The group had previously promised during talks in Tehran not to allow its territory to be used to stage attacks on Russia.
Changing Expectations
These official meetings in Moscow and Tehran are part of the Taliban’s new playbook. In an effort to gain international recognition, they are now more open to negotiation than they have been in the past. External actors, however, recognize that no matter how strong the Taliban grow within Afghanistan, their ability to expand beyond their borders is very limited. Their goal now is simply to maintain their positions, which creates room for negotiation. Russia, for example, has said it may consider removing the Taliban from its list of terrorist organizations. The United States, meanwhile, has said it will continue to provide support economically and militarily.
Global powers see that a new reality is emerging. U.S. and NATO troops are pulling out, and Afghan army troops are demoralized. The Taliban’s power is at its peak since the war began in 2001. The U.S., Turkey, Russia and others seem to have accepted their limitations and the fact that the future of Afghanistan will be determined by the Afghans themselves.
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Pasting this here from the Insurrection thread:
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/07/if-you-cant-fight-weapons-kill-their.html
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9783429/Taliban-fighters-execute-22-Afghan-commandos-surrendering.html
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The article fails to mention that President Trump had already committed America to leaving, yes?
Nonetheless, the issue of China moving in and the consequences thereof are well worth consideration.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17565/afghanistan-withdrawal-china
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https://borepatch.blogspot.com/2021/07/in-decline.html
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Brief: Russia Tries to Block US Plans for Central Asia
The Russian president reportedly proposed coordinating efforts in Afghanistan with the United States.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Background: Since the United States began withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban have been gaining strength and neighboring countries have been increasingly concerned about the potential for violent spillover. But the United States still intends to maintain a presence in South and Central Asia, and has been considering different locations for new military bases in the region. This is a worrying development for Russia, which doesn’t want the United States to form new ties within its buffer zone.
What Happened: Over the weekend, the Russian daily Kommersant reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested to U.S. President Joe Biden that the two countries could coordinate their activities in Afghanistan during the two leaders’ summit in Geneva in June. Putin proposed that their coordination could involve exchanges of information and be organized from Russian military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, according to the report.
Bottom Line: Putin’s proposal isn’t about reconciliation with the U.S.; rather, it’s an attempt to block Washington from gaining a foothold in Central Asia by offering to organize joint efforts on Russia’s own bases. This way, Moscow would have the upper hand: It could, to an extent, oversee the actions of U.S. troops and use joint efforts to combat the emerging threat from Afghanistan. The United States is very unlikely to agree to such an arrangement. Either way, the new focus on Central Asia leaves Russia well positioned to enhance its presence in the region.
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N GEOPOLITICS
Challenging Our Understanding of the Taliban
undefined and Senior VP of Strategic Analysis
Rodger Baker
Senior VP of Strategic Analysis, Stratfor
11 MIN READAug 9, 2021 | 10:00 GMT
Members of the Taliban participate in talks with the Afghan government on July 18, 2021, in Doha, Qatar.
Members of the Taliban participate in talks with the Afghan government on July 18, 2021, in Doha, Qatar.
(KARIM JAAFAR/AFP via Getty Images)
Most assessments of U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as the predicted advances of the Taliban, focus on two key outcomes: 1) the reversal of Western human rights and standards in the country, particularly for women, and 2) the devolution of Afghanistan into a terrorist base for outward strikes against distant foreign powers.
These are not necessarily wrong perceptions, particularly given the history of the Taliban’s first conquest of Afghanistan. In a destabilized Afghanistan, stricken with civil war, the Taliban may again recruit or harbor foreign fighters. Indeed, they are already reportedly working with militant Tajik groups along the Tajikistan border. A drawn-out conflict, or even a limited success in key areas in the south, could very well leave ungoverned space where foreign forces could train, plan and carry out strikes on neighboring countries or internationally. The Taliban’s protection of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda 20 years ago would suggest this pattern may repeat, with Afghanistan once more becoming the likely source of the next 9/11-size attack.
But it is important to also seek alternative historical analogies, even if only to test the currently accepted model. In his 1973 book “Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy, Ernest R. May writes “policy-makers ordinarily use history badly. When resorting to analogy, they tend to seize upon the first that comes to mind. They do not search more widely. Nor do they pause to analyze the case, test its fitness, or even ask in what ways it might be misleading.” Taking May’s words as guidance, the intent here is not to assert an alternative assessment of the Taliban, but rather to offer additional analogies to consider in examining the future of Afghanistan.
Exploring Alternative Frameworks
As the U.S. security mindset shifts from counterterrorism and counter-insurgency conflicts to peer competition with China, the United States will find itself having to reprioritize its attention and military interventions. This will be difficult given that the 9/11 attacks have shaped a generation of U.S. military leaders and thinkers. The fight against terrorism and insurgency has also dominated the training and deployment cycles of U.S. service personnel. It’s natural that this experience is the primary lens through which the United States observes and assesses potential threats. But as the saying goes, when all you have (or think with) is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Assessments based on the Taliban experiences of the late 1990s in Afghanistan, and then the counter-insurgency operations in the first two decades of the 21st century may once have been entirely accurate. But times have changed, as have circumstances and regional power balances. And given this shifting context and the lessons learned by the Taliban itself over the years, I’d argue there’s a need to review those assessments (and the assumptions they’re based on) by approaching the following three basic questions as if new:
What is the Taliban?
What has the Taliban learned from the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria?
What did the Taliban learn from 9/11?
1) What is the Taliban?
This is important as it helps define the movement’s goals, as well as some of its capabilities and vulnerabilities. The common assumption is that the Taliban is a terrorist organization bent on imposing Islamic law in Afghanistan and beyond, and that it has few qualms about hosting foreign international jihadists intent on attacking the United States or Europe. In short, the Taliban is part of a transnational jihadist movement looking to overthrow the Western order globally.
But what if we shift perspectives, and look at the group in the context of other revolutionary movements? In that light, we could describe the Taliban as an ethnographic-religious nationalist movement, intent on rebuilding a perceived past Afghanistan that was strong, self-assured and integrated into limited regional trade and power patterns, as well as capable of defending its own interests. Under this framework, the Taliban would have much more localized goals — perhaps spreading into Pakistan and Iran, or parts of Central Asia — but clearly constrained in its scope and reach. This perspective doesn’t reverse the perception of the Taliban as an entity that will roll back Western norms, nor does it completely eliminate the potential for the Taliban to utilize foreign forces to achieve its goals. But it does put the geography of Afghanistan as the center of the group’s attention, rather than distant Western powers.
The Taliban had nearly achieved this goal in the late 1990s and up to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Its forces had pushed the Northern alliance back, it had begun consolidating power in key parts of Afghanistan, seized control of Kabul. The Taliban had also established diplomatic relations with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and was in discussion with other countries (including China).
Despite the earlier Soviet occupation, the Taliban did not gear its activities toward attacking Russia in revenge. Taliban fighters did periodically engage in clashes along Afghanistan’s regional borders, but those attacks were often more about striking internal opposition forces or asserting claims to a bigger historical Afghanistan, as opposed to trying to attack Russian power. Following its conquest of Kabul in 1996, the Taliban sought U.N. recognition but was repeatedly rejected, driving its attention inward. The group did, however, shield Osama bin Laden against calls for his extradition after the 1998 embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 attack of the USS Cole, and following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which we’ll address further in the last question.
2) What has the Taliban learned from the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria?
The common assertion is that the Taliban, as with its predecessor movements, perceives its long-term strategic advantage in fighting on its own soil. Afghanistan is not called the graveyard of empires for no reason. And the Taliban sees the ongoing withdrawal of U.S. forces as one more example that persistence can drive out foreign forces. History, however, has also shown that such persistence comes at the cost of time, lives, economics and infrastructure. In other words, it weakens Afghanistan, leaving it internally fractured and vulnerable. But part of the mythos of the Taliban or its predecessors is that even with its technological inferiority, it is able to morally overcome “superior” outside power — be it the United States, the Soviet Union or the British Empire. This pattern reinforces a perception of inevitable victory.
But this, coupled with the lessons of Iraq and Syria, may also be one of assessing foreign powers’ priorities. In Iraq and Syria, for example, Turkey’s proximal interests are much greater than the United States’ distant interests, as evidenced by Washington’s shifting attention and force deployment. The U.S. government’s main goal in the Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan conflicts was stopping something, but it had little real interest or commitment to building something new in its place.
The days of post-conflict “nation-building” efforts may have died following World War II, or perhaps survived in part through the Korean War. But there is little U.S. willingness in recent history to take on the monumental cost and responsibility of rebuilding a country in a new image. The U.S. military interventions in the Middle East over the past 20 years haven’t had clear end-games beyond punishing or stopping the development of a particular threat (be it terrorist attacks or fears of nuclear weapons). And even then, the mission creep simply drew the United States into ill-defined, never-ending conflicts. Only with the late recognition of rising peer challengers has the United States begun extracting itself from unending missions, recognizing its limited resources and the waning perception of concrete threat by the American people.
In a similar vein, Russia’s actions in Syria split the difference between the United States and Turkey. Russia is no nation builder, but it has strategic interests in the region — from perceptions of power to facilities outside the Bosporus. But even Russia has found itself nearly stuck in Syria.
The lesson for the Taliban may be that the proximal powers are its biggest concern and that more distant powers are, well, distant. Russia’s interests in Central Asia, along with China’s border with Afghanistan and Belt and Road initiative, give these two big powers more direct interest in the evolution of Afghanistan compared with the United States.
But neither Moscow nor Beijing have any intent or interest in getting drawn into the quagmire of intervention, particularly so soon after the U.S. withdrawal. China has already reached out to the Taliban and laid out its core interests, which include making sure Afghanistan is not a safe haven for Uyghur militants or sympathizers that can strike into China. The Taliban has also reached out to Moscow, and while Russia is reinforcing its relations with its Central Asian neighbors, this is likely to be limited to activities in Central Asia or near the northern border of Afghanistan. The most likely challenges for the Taliban are now places like Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and Iran, where their ethnic and sectarian interests clearly cross the border. For the Taliban, it may have enough on its hands in Afghanistan and along its immediate borders, and thus have little intent to strike far abroad.
3) What did the Taliban learn from 9/11?
If we look at the Taliban as an ethno-religious nationalist movement, even if it is one with political and societal views different from the West, then one potential is that the Taliban sees 9/11 as delaying its consolidation of power in Afghanistan by two decades. In other words, allowing foreign forces to use Afghanistan as a base of operations to plan and carry out strikes against key Western powers (or China or Russia directly) may well push these countries to overcome their reticence of activities in Afghanistan, leading to active opposition and military operations from distant outside powers. And that would once again delay the consolidation of Afghanistan into an idealized unified country and subsequent return to regional significance.
Traditional patterns of limited missile strikes were the norm for U.S. retaliation against bin Laden’s actions from Afghanistan — until they weren't. Striking the U.S. homeland in September 2001 triggered a significant change in Washington’s response. Given this experience, the thought has undoubtedly crossed Taliban leaders’ minds that similar actions toward Russia or China could alter those two countries’ behavior as well.
Currently, China uses economic leverage to try and constrain militant Uyghur fighters in foreign countries. And it may stick to these tools if Afghan-based militants launched attacks only into Xinjiang. But what if those militants began attacking Beijing, or Shanghai? Would China, given its current military developments and global aspirations, feel confident simply letting such an attack go without a strong response? The Taliban must be considering these implications, which may explain its recent talks with Beijing.
Adding Analogies to Test Assumptions
Clearly, these ideas are not definitive. But they do suggest alternative ways to assess the Taliban and its likely actions both inside Afghanistan and beyond. We have seen the Taliban fight against Islamic State spinoffs that represented a competing power center in Afghanistan. It has utilized foreign fighters, but it has also sought to keep them in control or in limited regional operations in the past. The Taliban is already reaching out to gain diplomatic recognition if it overcomes the current Afghan government. This is about demonstrating its legitimacy at home as much as abroad. Living a constant life of fighting may ultimately degrade western intervention, but it does little to provide the services and opportunities to the Afghan people (even if within a narrowly defined set of norms). Without something to show for its actions, the Taliban risks eternally being Afghanistan’s “almost” leaders.
Even taking these alternative approaches into consideration (which require a lot more investigation), more immediate questions remain — namely, can the Taliban or the Afghan government, whether alone or together, assert full authority and control over Afghanistan?
An Afghanistan wracked with sustained civil war may well become the ungoverned space that observers worry about, where other militants can hide, train, and plan as they work toward their either regional or international goals. For all the powers that surround Afghanistan, this appears to be the most immediate fear. For the Taliban, the challenge would be managing the day-to-day governance of the incredibly complex space that is Afghanistan and asserting its nationalistic ideas without provoking immediate threats from big powers like the United States, China and Russia
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Interesting questions and answers. I don't agree with them fully but the conclusion I think is optimistic.
Nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan failed not because we aren't good at it but because it couldn't be done in those times in those places.
Our main interest in Afghan was to prevent another Al Qaida bin Laden attack on out interests. Doesn't that now coincide with Taliban interests? We set them back 20 years. They should have no interest in inviting us back.
From the article:
"Russia is no nation builder (either), but it has strategic interests in the region — from perceptions of power to facilities outside the Bosporus."
I hadn't (lately) thought of that. Bosporus is the Strait that runs through Istanbul. That is a chokepoint of Russia. Too bad (NATO member) Turkey is not our ally. Maybe with Turkey as an enemy it would be easier to close that off in a conflict of that scale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosporus
Anyway, lessons learned: We rid the world of Saddam Hussein and of Osama bin Laden with American air power and American special forces. That is not failure. That is putting two threats out and the rest on notice. After that, the 'you broke it, you have to fix it' mentality was bullsh*t. Removing those powers was our fix, the 'nation building' was on them. Our support was more than generous but didn't take hold. I would love to help all the people of the world build free societies, but not Afghan and Iraq any more so than Cuba and China, or maybe in the USA. )
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So, how long until Kabul falls ?..
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my NJ arm chair guess :
just after they accept they get the money into their accounts that Biden & team is bribing / begging them not to hurt US people
ORANGE MAN'S FAULT says AC on Communist news network:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/former-ambassador-afghanistan-blames-taliban-surge-trump-delegitimizing-afghan-government-075957663.html
on the jornolistor Cooper show
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Daily Memo: Update on Afghanistan
The Taliban are gaining ground, and fast.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Sending reinforcements. The United States announced it would send an additional 3,000 troops to Afghanistan to help protect its embassy staff as they evacuate the country. The Taliban have gained control over several key cities, including Kandahar, and appear to be advancing toward the capital. Meanwhile, NATO is planning to hold an emergency session on the situation on Friday.
Bracing for an influx. The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, in a statement urged the Taliban to resume peace talks with the government of Afghanistan. The EU is worried about an influx of Afghan refugees as the security situation deteriorates in the country. (The bloc’s border agency on Thursday reported that the majority of migrants crossing into the Western Balkans, where the number of illegal crossings increased by 90 percent this year compared to last year, were from Afghanistan and Syria.) Meanwhile, India, too, is reportedly planning to reactive direct talks with the Taliban.
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Good read on Af-Pak
https://chanakyaforum.com/china-pakistan-and-their-secret-wars-in-afghanistan/ (https://chanakyaforum.com/china-pakistan-and-their-secret-wars-in-afghanistan/)
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Quality stuff YA!
This from the WSJ--
A Rescue Plan for Afghanistan
It’s not too late to prevent a bloodbath and total Taliban victory.
By The Editorial Board
Aug. 13, 2021 6:40 pm ET
What an awful, tragic irony. President Biden in April chose Sept. 11 as the deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan. Now it’s possible that, on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban that once protected Osama bin Laden and that the U.S. ousted from power could again rule in Kabul.
Mr. Biden would like to absolve himself of responsibility for this looming defeat, but he cannot. He could have withdrawn U.S. forces in a careful way based on conditions and a plan to shore up Afghan forces or midwife an alliance between regional tribal warlords and the government in Kabul. The President did none of that.
Instead his mid-April decision to withdraw, on the eve of the summer fighting season, triggered the May 1 start of the Taliban offensive. The rapid withdrawal timetable meant U.S. forces would be preoccupied with that task rather than assisting Afghan forces. His decision to abandon multiple military bases, and withdraw all air power, has denied the Afghan army crucial support it relied on.
We are now watching the consequences, as the Taliban captures city after city. Soon the group could control or contest more than 90% of the country, including traditional anti-Taliban strongholds in the north. Insurgents have seized Kandahar and Herat—the second and third largest cities—and an assault on Kabul could come soon. The U.S. is evacuating all but a bare-bones diplomatic staff and may even move them from the U.S. Embassy.
Even now, however, it’s not too late to stop or slow the slaughter. Outside of well-regarded special forces units, Afghan army troops have retreated willy-nilly as they’ve lost confidence in holding off the Taliban. But allied air power and maintenance assistance were a basic part of Kabul’s defense strategy.
Government forces are more likely to fight, and could stand a chance, if Mr. Biden brings U.S. air assets back to the country. The U.S. will also need to deploy enough troops and contractors to keep the planes flying and Bagram air base secure.
The fall of Kabul may look inevitable, but the Taliban isn’t the Wehrmacht. A display of even modest renewed U.S. support would boost Afghan morale and give the Taliban pause on its march to Kabul. Once a rout is stopped, the U.S. can then work on a strategy that assists Afghans who oppose the Taliban to set up a resistance. This means working with friendly regional leaders who can provide areas of operational control. CIA teams, like Team Alpha that helped to topple the Taliban in 2001, could enter the country now and rally pockets against the Taliban with air power support.
The goal would be to impose costs that would give the Taliban reason to doubt it can regain control of the country. It could also give the Afghan government some negotiating leverage in talks with the Taliban.
Sen. Lindsey Graham suggests reconstituting a version of the bipartisan Afghanistan Study Group to offer ideas for the Biden Administration. In February that group laid out a plan for a small residual U.S. force in Afghanistan that could prevent exactly the kind of rout we’re now seeing. This would need to be done quickly, but there is enough retired military and political expertise on Afghanistan to make it happen.
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This would be an admission that Mr. Biden’s withdrawal was a mistake, but that would be a small price to avoid strategic disaster and perhaps a bloodbath that will stain America’s reputation and haunt his Presidency. Even the Democratic media has now picked up the Vietnam metaphor—“Biden’s Saigon”—that we warned about weeks ago.
So far Mr. Biden seems determined to stick with his hell-bent withdrawal, and perhaps he thinks Americans won’t care. But they will care if they see in a few weeks or months the revival of safe havens for al Qaeda or Islamic State. They will care if they think the U.S. homeland is threatened.
And they’ll care if China, Russia and Iran see the U.S. defeated in Afghanistan by a militia like the Taliban and conclude that Mr. Biden will fold if they challenge U.S. friends and interests. Each of them drew that conclusion about Barack Obama and exploited it in the South China Sea, Ukraine and Syria, and the broader Middle East. Mr. Biden’s vision to rally an alliance of democracies will find fewer takers.
We realize that our advice is a long shot given Mr. Biden’s determination to wash his hands of Afghanistan. But the costs of the bloody defeat that now seems likely will be far greater than the President thinks if the Taliban’s flag soon flies over Kabul.
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Scathing review.
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Handover.
Defeat in Afghanistan.
John Ellis
Aug 14, 2021
[Ellis is retired columnist/editor Boston Globe.]
This was originally sent to subscribers only. John Ellis News Items. It generated a lot of response. A number of subscribers urged me to make it freely available. So here it is.
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What do you suppose the chances are that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken thinks the U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan — the “handover to the Taliban,” as Former U.S. Ambassdor Ryan Crocker put it the other day — is a good idea? “None” would be my guess.
What do you suppose the chances are that you could find more than 5 people at the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the National Security Council who think the “handover” is a good idea? My guess would be “none” as well.
Handing over Afghanistan to the Taliban is President Biden’s idea, if that’s the right word, and his alone. It is terrible policy, on any number of levels. “Worse than a crime, a mistake” (Talleyrand’s phrase) describes it best.
Axios reports that the Administration “derives comfort from the fact that the American public is behind them — an overwhelming majority support withdrawal from Afghanistan — and they bet they won’t be punished politically for executing a withdrawal.”
Given events and the likely consequences, the fact that the Administration “derives comfort” from anything regarding its decision to hand over Afghanistan to the Taliban is nauseous. That they’re “betting” they will escape political punishment is perhaps more so. What we’re witnessing, in real time, on the BBC and CNN and on the websites of the world’s great news organizations is the Taliban’s reimagining of The Killing Fields. Mullah Pol Pot comes to Kabul in a Toyota pick-up truck. Prepare your 13-year-old daughters for “marriage.”
The U.S. military, especially the special operators, must be beside themselves. Abandoning the Kurds under Trump was bad enough. But this makes that look like home leave. This is an epic betrayal and strategically foolish to boot.
A few months back, Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former George W. Bush Administration Deputy National Security Advisor Meghan O’Sullivan co-authored an op-ed for The Washington Post which made the case for continuing US operations in Afghanistan. They wrote: “The most basic rationale for continued U.S. military presence is not to bring about a peace agreement or a military victory. Rather, it is to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a terrorist safe haven, something more likely to materialize if the Taliban comes to control much of the country’s territory.”
How long do you suppose it will take for Afghanistan to once again become a “terrorist safe haven?” Mr. Haass and Ms. O’Sullivan provided a plausible timeline: “As outlined in the Afghanistan Study Group report presented to Congress this year (one of us, Meghan, was a member of the study group), experts assess that al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other groups that have operated in Afghanistan could reconstitute and pose a threat to the American homeland 18 to 36 months after a U.S. withdrawal.”
What’s happening in Afghanistan isn’t happening in a vacuum. As noted above, it’s happening on TV. The world is watching and making adjustments accordingly. The question on everyone’s lips is: How’s everyone in Taipei doing today? Any update on America’s “strategic flexibility” regarding Taiwan?
Earlier this year, Haass and others argued that the US policy on Taiwan should shift from “strategic flexibility” (maybe we will come to its defense in the event of an invasion by mainland forces and maybe we won’t) to “strategic certainty,” (we will). America’s “credibility” should not be in doubt, they argued, perhaps anticipating the administration’s abandonment of Afghanistan. No such shift has been forthcoming. “Flexibility” remains, open to interpretation.
If you’re President Xi, you see Afghanistan, clearly, for what it is: a humiliating defeat for the United States. He might call it “flexible humiliation.” And what he knows from history is that defeated nations have little appetite for war in the immediate aftermath of losing one. Taiwan is there for the taking. How and when it happens are variables.
This being modern American politics, there is of course a Trump angle. Axios reports: “West Wing officials reject the notion that they could keep Afghanistan stable indefinitely with a small force of around 3,000 that they inherited from Trump. The Biden team's line is that the only reason the Taliban wasn’t killing Americans last year was because Trump had agreed to leave on May 1 this year. When that deadline passed, they contend, there would be no way to guarantee peace and stability with such a small force.”
Most everything in the world can be blamed (or partially blamed) on former President Trump. We know this from watching MSNBC. But this one is all Biden. What Trump left behind could have been undone with the stroke of a presidential pen. The idea that Trump made them do it is risible.
And just for the record, what Trump left behind was not 3000 US personnel in Afghanistan. That’s not how it works. If you include everyone in (just) the special operations “network,” including the locals, logistics, coordinators, intelligence analysts and air support, the numbers (at least) quadruple. We were spending a lot of money in Afghanistan and spreading it around. It was effective. We had eyes and ears everywhere.
When President Biden first announced that the US would be “leaving” Afghanistan, he set September 11, 2021 as the date when every last one of our people would be out. The announcement was greeted with astonished disbelief around the world. Could it really be possible that the US would officially hand over Afghanistan to the people who made it possible for Al Qaeda to attack it 20 years ago………on the very day of that attack?
The answer was “yes,” although the Administration subsequently tried to walk it back without bringing attention to the fact that they were trying to walk it back.
Remarkably, the American press gave the president a pass on this, which seems to be its default setting when it comes to the Biden administration. “Trump was so much worse,” is the always-applicable rationale.
Not in this case. Not by a long shot.
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The Taliban are taking over city after city in Afghanistan at a stunning speed. But as the U.S. found in 2001, it’s one thing to topple a regime, another to set up a stable new one. Even if the Taliban can negotiate a formal return to power, the country will remain chaotic for a long time, with serious implications for the region, especially for Pakistan and China—in different but geopolitically significant ways.
The impact will be most immediate for Pakistan, which is already feeling it. In the past two decades the Taliban have gone from being a proxy of Islamabad to a threat. When Washington toppled the Taliban in late 2001, Pakistan saw it as a major foreign-policy loss even though it cooperated with the U.S. Islamabad continued to view the Afghan jihadist movement as an ally even in 2007-14, when it faced a major insurgency on its own soil from the Pakistani Taliban rebels. For more than a decade the “good vs. bad Taliban” narrative dominated the national conversation, distinguishing between those who fought in Afghanistan and those who sought to topple the Pakistani state.
It wasn’t until early last month that the country’s top two generals—the army chief and the head of Inter-Services Intelligence—acknowledged, in a rare briefing to opposition members of Parliament, that the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban were “two faces of the same coin.” These remarks underscore that the Pakistani elite now fears its erstwhile proxies because their own country has been deeply penetrated by the Taliban ideology.
The Taliban comeback in Afghanistan will galvanize many Islamist actors in Pakistan to emulate the Afghan jihadist movement. It will be a huge challenge for a terribly weakened Islamic Republic of Pakistan to sustain itself with an Islamic emirate next door. Only a few years ago, and at great cost in blood and treasure, was Islamabad able to take back large swathes of its territory near the Afghan border from Taliban rebels. Those gains are at risk of being lost again.
Since the end of major military operations against Taliban insurgents in 2015, Pakistan has been increasingly dependent on China for its economic recovery. The biggest project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, in which Beijing has invested tens of billions of dollars. The fate of CPEC has increasingly come into question, especially in recent weeks with growing attacks, likely by Pakistani Taliban, targeting Chinese workers in the country. From Beijing’s point of view, a spillover of insecurity from Afghanistan will undermine its investments in Pakistan.
But a post-American Afghanistan also threatens Chinese interests outside Pakistan. For many years Beijing benefited from the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. China pushed ahead with its Belt and Road plans in Central Asia because the U.S. was ensuring that violence was contained within Afghanistan. In March Beijing announced that it would invest as much as $400 billion in Iran over 25 years in anticipation that a new nuclear deal would open Iran for business.
The U.S. decision to withdraw from Afghanistan has plunged China’s business plans in the region into uncertainty. Each of these Chinese projects is at risk of the violence radiating out of Afghanistan. And China isn’t alone in scrambling for solutions. This week Russian troops conducted joint exercises with forces from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on their borders with Afghanistan. But China has far more at stake than Russia, and unlike the Kremlin the People’s Liberation Army has never deployed a multidivisional force to maintain security beyond its borders.
China doesn’t have good options. It will work with Pakistan, Iran, Russia and the Central Asian nations to limit the disruption of its economic interests by the Afghan chaos. But each of these nations will be struggling to protect its own interests. This is why we see the Chinese enhancing their diplomatic ties with the Taliban. On Thursday U.S. News reported that China is prepared to recognize a Taliban regime even if it takes the country over militarily. This is in sharp contrast with the position of most other international and regional players, which have made clear that they would recognize a Taliban-dominated government only if it is formed as part of a negotiated settlement.
As we have seen in so many situations during the past two decades in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, regime change is a terribly messy process. Weak regimes can be toppled; replacing them is the hard part. It is only a matter of time before the Afghan state collapses, unleashing chaos that will spill beyond its borders. All of Afghanistan’s neighbors will be affected to varying degrees, but Pakistan and China have the most to lose.
Mr. Bokhari is director of analytical development at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy and a national-security and foreign-policy specialist at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute.
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The helicopters have improved.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E81BOSlWUAELq--?format=jpg&name=small)
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Spoils of war
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8x1e4pWUAAwKzC?format=png&name=900x900)
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Some questions in my mind:
- The question is which country will first recognize the Taliban govt. China ?
- Currently Pak is rejoicing, but in time there could be blowback in Pak. The Durrand line will get obliterated. Pak will lose territory. For this to happen the Taliban Shuras have to move out of Pak
and into Afghanistan, so Pak's hold on them is now much less. They dont need Pak's protection anymore, only medical care. Hope India builds more hospitals in Kabul.
- Will there be new proxy wars..will Taliban splinter into factions ?
- In the long term, India may benefit. There is good will for India in Afghanistan, Indian investments in dams, new parliament, education etc are likely to be safe.
- Biden handled the withdrawal poorly, its a big setback for the USA in terms of credibility and loss of investment $ and lives. However, we could not stay there for ever. This withdrawal is a bit
like what we did in Iraq, after catching Saddam, we left his trained soldiers out of a role and the vacuum was filled with ISIS etc.
- Russia + Iran or China + Pak, India will likely support any Russian initiatives.
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YA: May I have the URL for that picture please?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYuQekIL_CI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD64kYG-z5I
I always thought of Joe Biden as a horses ass.
Same Obama team Blinken et al who gave us ISIS
leaves in the same vulnerable position - AGAIN!
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YA: May I have the URL for that picture please?
Modified link https://digitalhayat.in/2021/08/15/america-repeating-the-history-of-vietnam-war-in-afghanistan-had-to-leave-saigon-like-this-46-years-ago/ (https://digitalhayat.in/2021/08/15/america-repeating-the-history-of-vietnam-war-in-afghanistan-had-to-leave-saigon-like-this-46-years-ago/)
“There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy" - President Joe Biden (July 8, 21)
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Cost of the Afghan war. Imagine if they had bought BTC instead :-)
https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-business-afghanistan-43d8f53b35e80ec18c130cd683e1a38f (https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-business-afghanistan-43d8f53b35e80ec18c130cd683e1a38f)
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Ya,
I am thinking we see images of Taliban walking through mountain passes carrying their AK 47 s
and RPGs
I assume like ISIS they are advancing in pick up trucks
Why won't the AFghan forces simply use the air power that was supplied to them
and blast them to the land of 100 virgins.
They sound like they have the fire power to annihilate them .
Think if that money went into bitcoin in 2014! :wink:
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Ya,
I am thinking we see images of Taliban walking through mountain passes carrying their AK 47 s
and RPGs
I assume like ISIS they are advancing in pick up trucks
Why won't the AFghan forces simply use the air power that was supplied to them
and blast them to the land of 100 virgins.
They sound like they have the fire power to annihilate them .
Think if that money went into bitcoin in 2014! :wink:
The Taliban was smart, they first took over all the border crossings in to Afghanistan, so they could starve any city they wanted to. Second, its easy to take up outlying areas, just walk in. This is a great morale booster. The big cities just collapsed, after the Americans left, the psychological loss of that support was immense.
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Ashraf Ghani has transferred power and has left the country.
https://stratnewsglobal.com/neighbours/myanmar/ghani-flees-afghanistan-as-taliban-enter-kabul/ (https://stratnewsglobal.com/neighbours/myanmar/ghani-flees-afghanistan-as-taliban-enter-kabul/)
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Biden : it is orange man's fault!
:x
He has been for his entire political career a lying sniffling political coward
who lies like no other.
Dirtball...... :cry:
I am only surprised the MSM is NOT letting off the hook for this .
Even Max Boot was on yesterday saying it is all HIS fault and blaming Trump for this is BS.
WOW!!!
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All badthings are the bad orange man's fault!
Biden : it is orange man's fault!
:x
He has been for his entire political career a lying sniffling political coward
who lies like no other.
Dirtball...... :cry:
I am only surprised the MSM is NOT letting off the hook for this .
Even Max Boot was on yesterday saying it is all HIS fault and blaming Trump for this is BS.
WOW!!!
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Did anyone see Blinken on today ?
he sounded completely in panic mode pointing fingers at everyone but himself
and claiming this is not Saigon
Of course it is not like Saigon
we have updated evacuation helicopters now
This guy should either by fired (doubt Biden will) or resign
he is the worst Sec of State since madams Pantsuit
and Albright and possible of the last 70 - 80 yrs
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The deed is done, on Biden's watch.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8hUF-hXsAQ6SL2?format=jpg&name=small)
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!
- Rudyard Kipling
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Where Are the Taliban and Afghanistan Headed After the Fall of Kabul?
The Taliban is now in Kabul, and negotiating for the peaceful transfer of power from a collapsing Afghan government to the reinstated Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has fled to Uzbekistan, while former President Hamid Karzai, former Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are reportedly in talks with the Taliban to facilitate the transition.
Taliban officials have reportedly told their forces to take up security positions inside Kabul, but not to enter people's houses or engage in revenge attacks, and have offered an amnesty for those who worked with the Afghan government or even with foreign forces. Reports of looting have emerged, and shots fired near the airport reportedly stopped commercial flights. Several Western embassies have closed or evacuated staff, and earlier reports noted that the United States was calling on any remaining citizens in Kabul to shelter in place given the status of the airport. Nonetheless, the Taliban is seeking to shape the narrative that their accession to power is legitimate — a message for both inside Afghanistan and beyond its borders.
The speed of the Taliban's final advance suggests less military dominance than effective political insurgency coupled with an incohesive Afghan political system and security force struggling with flagging morale. In many cases, local officials and forces simply melted away or directly handed power to the Taliban, a pattern that largely seemed to be repeated in the final move on Kabul.
As the Taliban looks to formalize its control over Afghanistan and seeks legitimacy domestically and internationally, we will be considering several questions over the next several days and weeks — the answers to which will shape the next phase of the Afghan situation.
Is Ghani planning to set up some sort of anti-Taliban political or military force in Uzbekistan, and will he be able to gain any international support?
Ghani has come under criticism from several officials who have stayed in Kabul for fleeing, but he refused to step down as president. It is possible that as several Western nations have asserted that they will not recognize Taliban rule, Ghani is positioning himself as the nucleus of an Afghan government in exile. His declining support in Afghanistan may make this moot, but we will also watch the Uzbek government to see if it will allow an opposition force to be established within its borders. Any reconstitution of a Northern Alliance opposition to the Taliban would need to include Uzbek and Tajik militia.
With the collapse of the Afghan police and security forces, where are the former soldiers and police going, and where are their weapons? Are they fleeing Afghanistan, shifting sides, or just reverting to their ethnic and tribal affiliations, and thus becoming the nuclei of numerous localized militia?
The Taliban has taken control of most of Afghanistan, at least nominally. But much of that has been due to the collapse of the Afghan security forces, not necessarily their defeat. Afghanistan remains a complex ethnic and tribal society with local interests, and long-term control requires authority over the use of force. If soldiers and police have retained their weapons and shifted allegiance from the nation to their locality, then this presents a lingering civil war challenge for the Taliban. Such local militia forces may also provide levers for foreign powers to exploit to keep the Taliban off balance.
What sort of negotiated settlement are Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah and former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar likely to forge with the Taliban? In their attempts to gain domestic and international legitimacy, will the Taliban seek to keep aspects of the current bureaucracy or offer political concessions to powerful local leaders to avoid a prolonged civil war?
Insurgency and governance are not necessarily the same skill sets, and the Taliban may find itself struggling to maintain its internal cohesion and manage the complex human landscape of Afghanistan. If the Taliban wants international recognition and engages in at least limited commerce with its neighbors, it will need to set up a functioning bureaucracy. Forging selective power sharing arrangements may give it access to a trained workforce and reduce the likelihood of anti-Taliban insurgency, but it will also require additional political compromises by the Taliban.
Will the Taliban facilitate the peaceful evacuation of foreign personnel from Kabul after they complete the transfer of power?
If they are seeking legitimacy, then they may well do so. It is unclear, however, if the Taliban have complete control over all of their forces and fighters, and there may be some seeking to exploit foreigners caught behind the lines in Afghanistan.
Which countries are likely to recognize the Taliban-led government? Has Taliban outreach to Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and the Gulf paved the way for formal, or even unofficial, recognition?
Pakistan has sent mixed messages, but the apparent inevitability of Taliban control may leave Islamabad and Afghanistan's other neighbors little option but to deal with the Taliban, even if they don't grant formal diplomatic recognition. If China or Russia were to recognize the Taliban, that would be a major victory for the group, as no permanent member of the U.N. Security Council recognized their first government in the late 1990s. China is particularly important to watch in this regard. Beijing has engaged with the Taliban and laid out its expectations of any future government — deny sanctuary for Uyghur militants, protect Chinese business and infrastructure interests, limit the spread of cross-border militancy from spilling into Central or South Asia and compromising China's Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing may well recognize the reality of the Taliban over the preferences of Western powers, just as recently we have seen China reengaging with the new military leadership of Myanmar, effectively accepting the military as the legitimate government. But while Chinese diplomatic recognition would be a major breakthrough for the group, it would require the Taliban to exert more influence or control over foreign militant elements inside Afghanistan, something it may not be fully capable of doing.
What are the implications for other militant groups in Afghanistan, namely, al Qaeda and the Islamic State Khorasan Province?
Unverified reports indicate that the Taliban have freed dozens of prisoners, including some ISKP members. The Taliban have used foreign fighters in its cause, and in the past have sheltered transnational militants. It has also, however, fought the rise of the Islamic State in Afghanistan, seeing it as a competing power center. Numerous prisons have been overrun and emptied, or have seen prison breaks, so the Taliban will not only see its own fighters freed, but potentially competing militants. If the Taliban are serious about gaining some aspect of international recognition, even regionally, it will be forced to act quickly to rein in other militants. This will add to the likely simmering unrest that is likely to plague Afghanistan as the Taliban transitions from insurgency to rule.
-
- Somethings I am wondering about:
- Absolutely no fight by Afghan forces, many of their officers are well trained at the Indian Army Academy.
- It appears that Biden had no clue, July 8 he was saying Taliban cannot take Kabul. Looks like they forgot to inform him. https://twitter.com/i/status/1426729833296506888
- The US military obviously knew, as you can see videos of US military spokesmen tying themselves in knots. It is said that the currency markets know everything, watch the exchange rate of the Afghani to US $, it started spiking up in Jan 2021 and went parabolic the last few months. At the moment its 100 AFN=1 US$ on the black market. The Afghan people will lose all their money...at risk of becoming worthless.
- Several weeks ago, a couple of Afghan security ministers resigned their positions and left the country. The army chief was changed, that was the writing on the wall.
- The US left all its weapons, helicopters for the Taliban once they knew they would evacuate. Perhaps they did not have time ?. Each of those military Humvees cost a lot of $$. Or was that part of the deal with the Taliban, to allow the US to exit safely. No news of the Talib's shooting down aeroplanes taking off from Kabul.
- Pakis are rejoicing and in heaven. They have defeated the US...sort of makes sense in retrospect, because Biden never made the phone call to Imran Khan, Paki Prime Minister. This was a major issue in Pak politics that Biden had ignored Imran Khan. Perhaps, the reason was the inability of the US to extract any concessions out of Pak and hence the absence of a call.
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https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2021/08/15/moment-the-taliban-takes-control-of-kabul-is-captured-on-video-n2594175
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Obviously we didn't give them enough LGBTQPWTF training!
- Somethings I am wondering about:
- Absolutely no fight by Afghan forces, many of their officers are well trained at the Indian Army Academy.
- It appears that Biden had no clue, July 8 he was saying Taliban cannot take Kabul. Looks like they forgot to inform him. https://twitter.com/i/status/1426729833296506888
- The US military obviously knew, as you can see videos of US military spokesmen tying themselves in knots. It is said that the currency markets know everything, watch the exchange rate of the Afghani to US $, it started spiking up in Jan 2021 and went parabolic the last few months. At the moment its 100 AFN=1 US$ on the black market. The Afghan people will lose all their money...at risk of becoming worthless.
- Several weeks ago, a couple of Afghan security ministers resigned their positions and left the country. The army chief was changed, that was the writing on the wall.
- The US left all its weapons, helicopters for the Taliban once they knew they would evacuate. Perhaps they did not have time ?. Each of those military Humvees cost a lot of $$. Or was that part of the deal with the Taliban, to allow the US to exit safely. No news of the Talib's shooting down aeroplanes taking off from Kabul.
- Pakis are rejoicing and in heaven. They have defeated the US...sort of makes sense in retrospect, because Biden never made the phone call to Imran Khan, Paki Prime Minister. This was a major issue in Pak politics that Biden had ignored Imran Khan. Perhaps, the reason was the inability of the US to extract any concessions out of Pak and hence the absence of a call.
-
Obviously we didn't give them enough LGBTQPWTF training!
:-D, but seriously, at this moment our allies Taiwan, Japan, Ukraine are likely having some internal discussions. Can the US be relied on ?. Answer is no, atleast with Biden in place. They will be buying more weapons...am buying military stocks!
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Anyone remember what political and other changes occurred after the fall of Saigon ?...there might be some lessons there.
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How to hitch a ride
https://twitter.com/i/status/1427204628735696898 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1427204628735696898)
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"Obviously we didn't give them enough LGBTQPWTF training!"
but not for lack of trying :
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/15/biden-prioritized-lgbt-agenda-afghanistan-terrorists-took-over/
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https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Letter-to-the-Editor--Critical-Afghanistan-Assessment.html?soid=1114009586911&aid=jB88KLn0uJQ&fbclid=IwAR3Ylgjs-s2vTFxG1mIxD-gRkXd3XVgMAZYGjMxRAfdcnJb3te7RfRiqZHM
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395201.php
The dems once again feed our allies to our enemies.
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https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/16/shocking-footage-shows-afghans-dropping-from-planes-leaving-kabul/
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second
I have previously mentioned these posts by him in 2006:
https://www.michaelyon-online.com/there-be-dragons.htm
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/960566/afghanistan-killing-fields
https://www.burnbarrelpodcast.com/episodes/episode/8fa729d8/michael-yon-on-the-disaster-in-afghanistan-ep-320
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/961122/whining-about-exposing-bill-roggio
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/961136/make-america-what-again
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fourth
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/08/inside-reach-871-us-c-17-packed-640-people-trying-escape-taliban/184563/
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/961374/from-the-afghanistan-archives
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we can find the footage of the C 130 taking off with the Afghans running around it
on MSM
no one mentioned that I saw of them clinging to the jet then falling to their deaths
though
disgusting
not just "heartbreaking"
but mask face can only worry about his political fortunes
watch, while this debacle takes center stage pelosi and crew will be busy ramrodding their socialist agenda down our throats...
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The Taliban’s Challenge of Legitimacy
6 MIN READAug 16, 2021 | 22:22 GMT
After gaining control of Kabul, the Taliban’s desire for international legitimacy will be shaped by their willingness and capability to constrain transnational militants from using Afghanistan as a base of operations. As the Taliban enter final negotiations with representatives of the Afghan government, the group has already engaged in outreach to countries around the region, most notably China and Russia. Both Beijing and Moscow have already set very specific terms for recognition — the Taliban must demonstrate its willingness and capability to limit transnational attacks from its territory. In the case of Chinese Uyghurs, this may be a relatively simple task, both politically and militarily. But that task grows more challenging when considering groups like al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), which will feel empowered to set their sights back on other regional targets amid the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
Taliban officials have promised that they will not allow Afghan soil to be used for operations against other countries, so long as those countries are not engaged in military action against the Taliban.
Moscow and Beijing have said they are willing to engage with the Taliban, but both also noted that they will withhold formal diplomatic recognition until the Taliban demonstrate a capability to constrain foreign militancy in Afghanistan.
The Taliban's Willingness to Contain Militancy
The Taliban’s willingness to contain militants will be dependent on the balance of two opposing drivers: the need to gain international legitimacy and the need to maintain the loyalty of like-minded transnational groups. The Taliban in the past gave shelter to transnational militants (most notably al Qaeda), despite Western condemnation and airstrikes. That support contributed to the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Currently, several foreign fighters and groups operate alongside the Taliban, from al Qaeda and AQIS to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Haqqani Network. While most have been fighting against U.S. and Western forces in Afghanistan, or against the Afghan government and military, AQIS and TTP have directed activities against Pakistan. And despite competing against Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Taliban have also retained relatively close cooperation with more like-minded foreign militants.
The Taliban may be focused on Afghanistan, but they have clear sympathies with many of these other militant movements. An agreement to constrain or control them would, at least on the surface, appear to contradict the Taliban’s ideology and its existing relationships. The Taliban may be willing to constrain specific smaller groups, like the ethnic Uyghur militants that concern China. Managing these other groups, however, will take stronger political will and clearer benefits from constraining rather than shielding. At least on a limited basis, Moscow and Beijing may provide the incentive.
The Taliban will seek international legitimacy to gain access to trade, as well as selective infrastructure and development assistance. Such legitimacy, which was denied to the Taliban in the 1990s, would also reduce potential external support for anti-Taliban movements inside Afghanistan. Russia is a particular concern, given its continuing relations in Central Asia and the history of ethnic conflict in Afghanistan. Recognition from China or Russia would also help shield a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan from U.N. Security Council actions. If these benefits outweigh the perceived benefits of allowing attack planning and training from inside Afghanistan, the Taliban may well be willing to selectively constrain the operations of its current partners, at least over the next year or two.
The Taliban's Capacity to Contain Militancy
The Taliban clearly have interests in gaining international or at least regional legitimacy for its takeover of Afghanistan. But with inherent constraints, it will be difficult for the group to control militant activities both within and beyond its borders, regardless of intent. Political cohesion within the Taliban will be the first and most significant test. Taliban fighters hail from numerous individuals and groups, some with competing ideas about just what the Taliban should be, where they should focus, and whether they should take on a more internationalist role. Whether Taliban leaders are able to retain centralized loyalty and ensure commitment to central goals, rather than local or personal interests, during a transition from an insurgency to status-quo power will offer the first indication of the Taliban’s ability to control transnational militants, as local leaders who have close relations with transnational militants may be more sympathetic to their fighting partners than to a governing body in Kabul. The second test will then be whether the Taliban can exert control over all of Afghanistan, lest risk creating negative space that other groups could occupy outside of Taliban control. And the third and final test will be whether the Taliban can enforce control over groups that have fought on their territory, but now have shifting priorities.
Fighting against a common foreign enemy inside Afghanistan has strengthened ties between the Taliban and their transnational militant partners, but with that enemy gone, the core interests of those individual groups move back to the fore. The Taliban share some common goals and intent with these groups, but they do not align across the board. AQIS and TPP clearly have a foreign focus, and will look at the Taliban victory as a cue to accelerate their attacks in Pakistan and Bangladesh. This risks undermining relations with not only Pakistan but also China, which sees the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a critical economic link. The Taliban may be able to refocus some groups to the consolidation phase that is still necessary to control Afghanistan, as it has with Jamaat Ansarullah, the so-called Tajik Taliban. But this may be short-lived as they focus on their broader goals in Tajikistan.
The Taliban may be willing to use force or expel troublesome leaders or groups from Afghanistan, but their military capacity to do so remains in question. The Taliban did turn their forces against ISKP, as there were clear ideological differences and competition over power. It is possible similar patterns may emerge with the TTP or Jamaat Ansarullah, which have geographically and often ethnically constrained goals. Smaller groups like the remnants of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) may also be relatively easy targets, assuming the Taliban can locate them. But it is difficult to see the Taliban, likely faced with ongoing insurgency and resistance, having the political or military will and capacity to shift their sights against al Qaeda. A split with the Haqqani Network would also trigger a civil war between Taliban fighters.
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wow
Erin Burnett did show. the video of the people falling after the plane
maybe this will wake up /shake up some the dumb ass woke
new phrase:
"WAKE UP the WOKE"
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It will be ORANGE MAN BAD's fault! Oh, and the unvaccinated...
wow
Erin Burnett did show. the video of the people falling after the plane
maybe this will wake up /shake up some the dumb ass woke
new phrase:
"WAKE UP the WOKE"
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I am sure, everyone has seen this..but its a must watch. How can the commander in chief be so wrong on everything.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1426710333264179214 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1426710333264179214)
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I am sure, everyone has seen this..but its a must watch. How can the commander in chief be so wrong on everything.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1426710333264179214 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1426710333264179214)
Well, this is a perfect example of how far the FUSA has fallen.
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made mistake of stomaching
Cuomo
who , now he and brother , are off the front pages
is back on the air
has veteran on and keeps referring to him as "my brother"
and referring to veterans as HIS "brothers and sisters"
yeah right.
the narcissist always somehow has to make it about himself.
-
I am sure, everyone has seen this..but its a must watch. How can the commander in chief be so wrong on everything.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1426710333264179214 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1426710333264179214)
Thank you ya, I had not seen that. It was just noise then, but the context of reality and how wrong he was makes it beyond amazing.
He made a career out of being wrong and rose with the Peter Principle. The man projects weakness in so many ways, his aging frailty is the least of it. His speeches and talking points come from people who are not old or frail but the policies and positions are weak. When he projects fake strength, it turns out to be falsehoods. He blamed all this on the Afghans and he blamed it on Trump. If Trump locked him in to this position, why didn't any other Trump policy lock him in?
Also, he laid out another red line for the Taliban to cross in his talk today:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/08/16/watch_live_president_biden_speaks_on_fall_of_afghanistan.html
After he had doled out more than 200% of the blame, he took full responsibility, "The buck stops here." What's wrong with that math? The buck isn't stopping anywhere, it is spiraling downward and out of control. That's why he had to make the talk and why he had to hide until his writers gave him these words to utter. So he threatens the Taliban. Wow, they fear him, they just took over the country faster than he could get Americans and allies out. If they harm Afghans, they deserve it because they wouldn't fight to defend themselves and if they hurt Americans, he's going to do what? He also said we're leaving and can't/won't change the timetable. Boxed in it seems, but what his words really mean is that his lips are moving because he was taking too much heat for staying silent.
What's left to see is if the Taliban respect the pronoun preferences of American personnel when the terrorists get to the embassy. God help those left behind in this disaster like the 13 year old girls these sickos will be raping in forced 'marriages' as they control everything.
This is what Americans wanted and that's what great leaders do. Follow polls.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17655/turkey-afghan-migrants
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https://washingtontimes-dc.newsmemory.com/?token=f86b0f0f37a03d1da81a99f9da5cc67c_611bb4ff_6d25b5f&selDate=20210817
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China sending a message re: Taiwan
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E86rqFHVIAYi2u8?format=png&name=900x900)
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Important read...
https://ctc.usma.edu/afghanistans-security-forces-versus-the-taliban-a-net-assessment/ (https://ctc.usma.edu/afghanistans-security-forces-versus-the-taliban-a-net-assessment/)
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E88F91_WQAUOUUg?format=jpg&name=900x900)
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So, how long until Kabul falls ?..
August 13 (just last Friday), narrative news was still reporting that a handful of obscure provincial capitals were having issues.
ya knew where this was leading.
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YA:
That is a terrifying meme!
URL pleaes?
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https://www.news18.com/news/world/taliban-afghanistan-kabul-us-india-military-biometric-devices-helicopter-4097888.html
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YA:
That is a terrifying meme!
URL pleaes?
I suppose you mean this...the text is from this article https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1231636.shtml
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In Reply 1746 you have a meme.
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That meme is from the Global Times Editorial listed "Once a cross-Straits war breaks out while the mainland seizes the island with forces, the US would have to have a much greater determination than it had for Afghanistan, Syria, and Vietnam if it wants to interfere." These pop up as "news" headlines and are very hard to track.
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https://www.americanpartisan.org/2021/08/the-pashtun-a-commentary-by-nc-scout/
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TY Ya.
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/82026-bidens-cataclysmic-afghan-failure-2021-08-18?mailing_id=6056&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.6056&utm_campaign=digest&utm_content=body
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Soooooooo
reassuring:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/milley-denies-intel-warned-of-rapid-collapse-says-nobody-predicted-afghan-secuirty-would-evaporate
[perhaps a few weeks or months] but not "11 days"!
Too busy reading and forcing everyone to read CRT books and providing LBTQHIV commercials
He needs to be fired
SOS "Binks" - > out the door by his collar and britches as well
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The Mess that is Afghanistan
Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd)
I chose this title to keep the scope of this essay open ended because the current situation in Afghanistan is too tenuous at present to get any clear cut answers. What we should be getting to look at is the trends and what we make of them. However, there are a few questions which can be clearly answered and the same will provide the clarity we are seeking.
No one can deny the fact that the entire world’s prediction about the unfolding events of a military nature in Afghanistan was wrong primarily because of a failure to understand the unique Afghan way of life. All of us relied upon western parameters of war fighting or applied our own national strategies to draw conclusions about the longevity of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).
We took solace in the fact that they were 350,000 strong. Many were trained in India too and some equipment was provided by us. However, we never took a realistic audit of what the effect of that training was or how the equipment was being employed. We blindly followed all that the US stated. The fact that 8000 ANSF personnel on an average were getting killed every year for the last four years was an eye opener but it hardly pushed us to investigate this more seriously.
Ours was a soft power mission in Afghanistan and we earned considerable goodwill but that did not give us the reality of the picture which could emerge. I expected that just like the battle for Mosul was fought in Northern Iraq or for Raqqa, there would be a professional fight for the built up areas, street by street. However, only a few in India knew the reality on the basis of their experience, among them some high quality diplomats who corrected my perception a few weeks ago stating that battles in Afghanistan do not take place the way they did in Syria and Iraq.
A former senior diplomat informed me that the ANSF was structured on the pattern of US forces and this was alien to them. They usually fought with cluster and not professional loyalties. Money changed hands all the time. Victories in battle were bought and sold by influential commanders. The most amazing thing was the corruption where for some years there were fake rolls of soldiers maintained and payments made to them were pocketed by corrupt officers. Money meant for logistics was swindled leaving soldiers with no food and no supplies even when they fought hard pitched battles.
Thus it was clear that a huge humbug was created by consuming 80 billion USD to set up a 350,000 strong ANSF which could only show the Taliban the way to enter the cities rather than resist it. No wonder the US assessment of ‘Kabul in 90 days’ went wrong by 87 days.
One of the most monumental intelligence failures of the current times occurred even when the US had the technological means never available before. The entire concept that the US projected was that the ground war would be fought by the Afghan forces with total intelligence, information and air support from the US. It failed to build up the right leadership to undertake responsibility without this support. The least that could have been done was air support launched from some fall back air bases in Pakistan over whom the US continues to have leverage.
In retrospect, as stated by many within a social media group, it’s the withdrawal operation of war which is the most difficult to implement. The US is learning it the hard way each time. The over dependence on the military option that Ashraf Ghani adopted was a result of poor appreciation and even worse advice.
The virtual inability of the US to meet its goals, despite what President Biden claims, is clearly sending the message to many smaller nations and organizations that the US may successfully undertake counterterrorism but in counter insurgency it clearly lacks the will, stamina and even skill. While I agree that small wars on large scale, which is what the war against Taliban was, will not be the US forte, I do not agree that this is the end of the US military domination. That is a different domain for discussion.
When and how quickly will the Taliban restore order or will Afghanistan continue to witness anarchy. Failed state or functioning state, the UN and the international community owes it to the people of Afghanistan to prevent a humanitarian crisis developing. The problem is that the Taliban is also a house divided; it’s not a monolith, with lots of ethnic and tribal loyalties owing allegiance to cliques and sectarian trends. The relations that these separate entities may enjoy with different powers would come in the way of keeping unification.
Some external trigger seems to be provided by Russia with an initiative by the Russian Ambassador. The Pakistanis are not yet showing up visibly lest they be blamed for enabling the Taliban. However, statements emanating from Pakistan show as if Afghanistan has been actually liberated to begin a new existence under an evolved and liberal order. That Pakistan bears responsibility for much of what is happening is well known. It will also work overtime to ensure that India plays a minimum or if possible, no role in future working of the Taliban.
Further on normalcy. Taliban has placed no restrictions so far on the exit of Afghan nationals; those who worked for foreign missions or for the government. There are no running reprisals reported. But the news focus is all on Kabul at present; no news is coming out from other cities and the rural areas. Much of this attitude on part of the Taliban is obviously for greater legitimacy, a projection it seems to be putting up for tactical purposes. It does not want paralyzed government machinery without any skilled workers and educated staff. However, sooner than later its own cadres will demand their pound of flesh and that could lead to chaos.
The real issues will come to the head a few months down the line. Most influential nations of the international community have made it known that recognition and legitimacy will come after monitoring the social environment including the treatment of women and the control over reprisals. There are thousands of lethal weapons which are in the hands of the Taliban and the former ANSF. These have to be brought under control even as an official new Afghan National Army is formed. The balance weapons need to be placed under control lest they form a pipeline to other potential turbulent areas where the Taliban may have its interest.
It is quite apparent that replicating the deals that the Taliban probably made with some of the ANSF commanders over the last couple of months, similar deals were also made with many other former elements in the government machinery. Former President Hamid Karzai, former Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabani and former Deputy President Karim Khalili are all among the influential leaders who are overseeing the transition. How much influence they will exercise remains to be seen.
Some former ANSF personnel are apparently already kept in charge of specialist equipment which has been captured / handed over. It does mean that for some time thought has been given to post victory configuration and things may start to fall in place soon if the different cliques can come together.
There are some assumptions being made that the aggregation of transnational terrorists may take place in Afghanistan. It’s not wrong to assume that under conditions of the current mess some Islamist terror groups could find it convenient to move in and establish networks. Taliban is known to have large scale contacts with terror organizations and has shown no proof of having departed from that practice. Yet, it may be an oversimplification to assume that Taliban will immediately get back to the game of terror. It may eventually depend on which factions within it dominate.
It is doubtful that the Taliban would be willing to make itself vulnerable once again by providing safe havens for terror groups. It has been opposed to the Islamic State and some of the Pakistani groups. In this area whatever happens can develop either very soon while control over activities is low, or much later after deliberations on the future strategic course the Taliban would like to follow.
China has welcomed the Taliban as was expected. It has several interests here. Firstly, along with Russia it is concerned about the vulnerability of the contiguous Muslim dominated zone to include Central Asian Republics (72 million Muslims) and the Xinjiang (22 million) area. It would not want the Taliban to undertake anything to compromise the stability and security of this vulnerable area.
Secondly this is supposed to contain some of the lucrative arms of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which in this area has as strategic a connect as economic. It would like to extend its reach into the area now known as the zone of the New Great Game. Thirdly, the availability of minerals (un-quantified) and rare earths is a major temptation for China and will be a great source of wealth for the Taliban.
Fourthly, if the US is denied strategic presence here the Chinese would automatically consider it an advantage for themselves. It is to be seen whether the Chinese will be willing to provide financial assistance to Afghanistan. Not known for providing free lunches and development assistance the Chinese may have to provide the Taliban up to 10 billion USD until more arrangements are made through international funding if the conditions improve.
A nation which will probably emerge extremely influential is Iran. It has its strategic linkages with both Russia and China and has its interests deeply embedded in the safety and security of the Shia minorities. Tajikistan in the north too is an important nation. India must enhance its links with both nations.
There are many other issues which can be under early assessment and the temptation to assess at this stage is high. However, there are two queries put to me on a regular basis. Firstly, what effect will the Taliban takeover have over Pakistan’s strategic behavior and its relationship with India, especially concerning internal security in India and in the Union Territory of J&K in particular. Secondly, should India be engaging the Taliban in view of the fact that nothing majorly negative has emerged in the utterances of Taliban representatives so far. A brief articulation on these is necessary to round up the essay.
For Pakistan much depends on Taliban 2.0’s strategic outlook. If it wishes to consolidate and only then seek its options, Pakistan may receive short shrift to its ambitions of being one of the most influential players. If the Taliban 2.0 is a replica of the 1.0 variety, then Pakistan’s original grand strategies of an Islamized region serving the interests of the larger Ummah could materialize. This strategy was adopted for two purposes; to enhance Pakistan’s status within the Islamic world and to neutralize India’s asymmetric advantage.
It is always tempting to say that India of 1989 and 2021 are poles apart in confidence and capability. India has stabilized J&K but its internal security is yet tenuous on some counts. That is the reason why India will need to be extremely vigilant, ensuring that terror and separatist networks are not allowed to proliferate and its recent achievements in J&K are stabilized to an even greater level.
Lastly, the question is whether India should engage with Taliban 2.0 or not. We have pulled out our embassy staff including the Indian Ambassador from Kabul which is actually a message of no confidence in Taliban 2.0. Perhaps the risk to maintain an official presence in Kabul was excessive especially since there were no indications of emerging normalcy and also because we had taken no line of engagement for all these years.
Perhaps India depended far too much on the US and did not wish to displease it by reaching out to those parties the US considers as adversaries – Iran and Taliban in this context. Yet it was in India’s interests to have maintained some contact for potential future dealings.
Now with the fait accompli a fresh start will have to be made. Fortunately, the common man’s perception of India remains extremely positive and the history of soft power assistance that India has rendered could yet act as a temptation. Care will need to be taken of the fact that Pakistan will work overtime to prevent the emergence of any India-Taliban 2.0 relationship. However, the assistance of Qatar, Iran and Russia would be useful in this regard, when that juncture finally arrives.
*******
Author
Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd), PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, SM, VSM* former Commander of Indian Army’s Srinagar Corps, focuses on trans-national and internal conflicts in Asia and the Middle East with particular emphasis on issues revolving around Radical Islam. He is the Chancellor of Central University of Kashmir and speaks extensively at Indian and international institutions on a wide variety of subjects revolving around strategic affairs and leadership.
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E9FV3d1UUAQcvHx?format=jpg&name=large)
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https://dailycaller.com/2021/08/19/taliban-us-weapons-vehicles-equipment-afghanistan-defense-department/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2680&pnespid=jrNwo_JRChGNVRNq3.HMI7LkjGZjJOTvCS7z_3Te
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Apart from the Talibs now owning a lot of serious weapons with high market value...what about the loss of Intellectual Property ?...am sure the Chinese are paying to get their hands on US weapons.
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A sound and tragic point.
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I have been struggling to understand, why the Afghan army collapsed the way it did. Below is a fantastic interview of a retired Indian Dir.General of Military Intelligence, who worked for decades with the Northern Alliance. The accent may be unclear at times, but it is pure gold IMHO.
- Discusses a major error made by the US (well they listened to the pakis!). A crucial point that was discussed, "Naam, Namak Nishaan" that not everyone will be fully familiar with. It forms the core ethos of the Indian army.
https://defencelover.in/importance-naam-namak-nishan-indian-army-soldier/ (https://defencelover.in/importance-naam-namak-nishan-indian-army-soldier/) This was missing from the Afghan army, even though their officers were trained in India. The US never built an army, but only a counter terrorism force.
- And then lastly, anecdote on Amrullah Saleh, who now claims to be president of Afghanistan, per the constitution.
https://youtu.be/9mlGMaT918I (https://youtu.be/9mlGMaT918I)
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Here's a different take on why the ANA folded https://www.ajaishukla.com/2021/08/explaining-talibans-lightning-victory.html (https://www.ajaishukla.com/2021/08/explaining-talibans-lightning-victory.html)
Explaining the Taliban’s lightning victory
The Afghan style of war involves negotiations and pay-offs, not bloody last stands
By Ajai Shukla
Business Standard, 17th Aug 21
The Taliban’s lightning victory has seen its troops sweep through Afghanistan and capture Kabul in barely a fortnight after US intelligence forecast that the Afghan National Army (ANA) could hold them off for several months.
Analysts are questioning the combat capability of the ANA and waxing lyrical about the warriorship of the hardy Taliban fighters. This analysis of the ANA’s rapid capitulation all across the country only illustrates the hazards of crystal gazing in an unfamiliar context.
Few have pointed out that audio and video coverage of the battlegrounds of Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, Jalalabad and finally Kabul, show no signs of desperate last stands by the ANA; in fact, one has to strain to hear any firing at all. The reason is simple: The Afghan tradition of gaining control of areas does not necessarily involve combat. Most engagements are settled through negotiations and pay-offs before battle is joined. This style of fighting is peculiar to Afghanistan and must be viewed within this framework.
Principle One of warfare in Afghanistan is survival. Battlefield commanders understand well that there is no glory in fighting to the last man, or even to the point of dissipating one’s strength to the point where the next engagement is jeopardised. Centuries of hard experience has proved in Afghanistan that a defeated commander, or one whose army has suffered heavy losses, badly loses credibility. On the other hand, commanders who avoid grave attrition by withdrawing, negotiating with the enemy, or even defecting along with their troops, live to fight another day and avoid damage to their reputation.
The reason for this is realism, not cowardice, in a country where fighting has been almost continuous for almost half a century; and in which some two million Afghans have lost their lives. Conflict has been a reality of life and soldiering, whether part-time or full-time, has been a survival tradition for rural men. In this context, there is no glory in large numbers of fighters laying down their lives in glorious last stands.
Harsh circumstance has already reduced the life expectancy of Afghan men; there is no appetite for making life even shorter. Troops, therefore, expect their commanders to ensure that battlefield aims are achieved with as few casualties as possible. The preferable way to decide the outcome of a battle is to pay off the opposing forces beforehand, to withdraw before the first shot is fired. Naturally, this decides outcomes quickly and bloodlessly. If the ANA is not fighting hard against the Taliban, there are two simple reasons: They realise that the wind has shifted, and the eventual outcome of battle would be to their detriment. The second reason is that money has changed hands.
In November 2001, two days before the Northern Alliance attacked the Taliban and evicted them from Kabul, this reporter attended a negotiation between a Northern Alliance commander and the Taliban commander who held the picquets opposite him. It was calmly decided that, in exchange for a sizeable amount, the Taliban commander would withdraw with his men a few hours before the Northern Alliance attack began. That played out exactly as decided. The Taliban withdrew on schedule and the Northern Alliance advanced towards Kabul without much fighting. Those Taliban fighters might well be the same pragmatic militiamen who are retaking Kabul now.
Afghans perceive their history, not without reason, as a long saga of resisting foreigners, who have meddled in the country, and then abandoned it, often without achieving the purpose for which they had come. In popular folklore, Afghans are a brave and proud people, while foreigners are treacherous meddlers, not to be trusted on any account.
This distrust extends to almost every nationality ¾ Americans, Russians, British, Iranians, and the Pakistanis above all ¾ with Indians one of the few people for which there is palpable goodwill. Within this Afghan worldview, negotiating a defection with another Afghan faction is usually permissible, but capitulating to a foreigner bears the stigma of disgrace. Several feared Afghan generals, such as Rashid Dostum, have defected more than once between various Afghan factions, without loss of reputation.
When Afghan fighters smell victory, all bets are off. On Sunday, when the Taliban had encircled Kabul, analysts and anchors were setting store by the Taliban’s reported promise not to enter the city, “in order to ensure an orderly transfer of power”. But that restraint was short-lived. Enter they did, at the point of their guns, ostensibly to “prevent looting and anarchy.” Interestingly, this was precisely the same reason that the Northern Alliance cited in November 2001 for going back on their promise not to enter Kabul until cleared by the US.
If anyone believed that the Taliban would halt at the gates of Kabul, they displayed a considerable ignorance of Afghan realpolitik. The Taliban would have had little compunction in going back on such a promise, knowing that the capture of Afghanistan’s seat of power would be far more useful than a reputation for sticking to promises.
That said, a negotiated deal in which one side had undertaken not to fight or resist, is taken extremely seriously. A route of withdrawal is always left open for the withdrawal and it is the withdrawing commander’s responsibility to ensure that route is taken. Sometimes, it involves killing one’s own men who are inclined to fight to the finish. In 2001, after the Taliban surrender in the city of Qonduz, the victorious Northern Alliance fighters found the bodies of sixty Chechen fighters who had been shot with their hands tied behind their backs.
What then might have happened to the hardened ANA? Many of them would have calculated that resisting the Taliban would only delay their victory, without changing the outcome of the fighting. These soldiers would have changed out of uniform and headed back to their home villages. Others might have preferred to grow their beards and join the Taliban. Only a handful would have chosen to resist; and they would have been accounted for by the few shots that were heard on international broadcasts.
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The resistance forms..under Amarullah Saleh
https://www.yahoo.com/news/son-anti-taliban-militia-commander-023700028.html (https://www.yahoo.com/news/son-anti-taliban-militia-commander-023700028.html)
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https://nypost.com/2021/08/19/mccains-2014-attack-on-tony-blinken-reemerges-amid-afghan-exit-chaos/
Binks is having us retreat all over the world in Obama style appeasement , making nice to our enemies
and being weak with
nothing but
discussions with "allies and partners "
while we lose all world street cred
who could have guessed this would happen when Biden uses exact same Obama appeasers
:roll:
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Below is a picture of Madarassa Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad with Taliban Flags. Taliban is in Pak, expect trouble. The second thing is that the first prisoners that the Taliban released were TTP (that is the faction of Taliban that is anti-Pak). In otherwords TTP and regular Taliban are buddies. Expect fundamentalism to increase in Pak, soon the Durrand line goes away and the baki fools are celebrating their tactical brilliance.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E9PBYoiVIAIQ7FQ?format=jpg&name=small)
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/billions-of-dollars-in-us-weapons-aircraft-likely-seized-by-taliban_3956556.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-08-20&mktids=6915e925258a10451cc2001be2c0d771&est=c5hSXoVlcEqZ%2FI79D8qKcveG%2BMyD1qocpJ1SZNR8TK%2BfaG73%2FYz75ssfKLpdWeNoW0gb
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https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/20/france-deploying-special-forces-to-evacuate-french-civilians-from-afghanistan/
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A major gap in the analysis is the spectacular incompetence in getting Americans and supporters out and not leaving weaponry for the enemy.
The rest is serious analysis:
====================
When You're Wounded and Left on Afghanistan's Plains
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman
I was shocked by what happened in Afghanistan in the past week or so. Not because I didn’t expect it – President Joe Biden had in fact announced that the military would leave – but because people seemed to expect the withdrawal to be somehow orderly. The Taliban and the United States had fought a war for 20 years. The U.S. was leaving in defeat. The Taliban rapidly retook control, capturing those who collaborated with the enemy with an apparent joy that the war was over and victory was theirs. I was shocked that people didn’t understand that this is what defeat looks like.
Also shocking was America’s decision to go to war in the graveyard of empires, as were the decisions of successive presidents to stay there for two decades. Wars are not gestures. Staying in a war is the most significant decision a leader can make, and losing is a terrible outcome.
The war began before the dead and wounded on 9/11 were counted. It is remarkable that anyone 25 or younger is too young to remember. The rest of us remember that day. It was the Pearl Harbor of our time, an attack by an enemy that we did not think had the cunning to carry out such an attack. The attack, well organized and brilliantly conceived, was executed by men who were willing to calmly perform in the face of certain death. That sort of will was utterly alien to our own sense of duty, and it raised the question of how to stop people who attack like this. Such men, if they plan as carefully as they planned 9/11, could mount more unanticipated attacks.
I know many who claim they were not terrified by 9/11. They are lying to themselves. The nation as a whole was terrified, and those who actually weren’t were out of touch with reality. The worst part was that we didn’t really know what al-Qaida was, or how many more cells it had living among us. We feared that the next attack might be far worse, using chemical or nuclear weapons. If 9/11 could happen, then anything could happen.
This is how the war in Afghanistan began: in a wave of terror that gripped the country. I remember going to a meeting the day the airlines started flying again, sitting and watching my fellow passengers. They, like me, were planning what they might do if someone rose and headed for the cockpit. In those early days, we were all living lives that could not be sustained. We all wanted to do something. Since we are Americans, we went to meetings.
The people demanded action from the president, who, rightly or wrongly, had been blamed for failing to protect the country. So he did the only thing anyone could think of: He tried to capture Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida, who was believed to be in Afghanistan. The U.S. knew a lot about Afghanistan, having worked with the mujahedeen to defeat the Soviets. It picked up bin Laden's tracks and sent in CIA operatives who had been part of the war against the Soviets, some special operations forces, and a few Marines far away from the action. There was no plan for a war, only a raid to get him, dead or alive.
The operation was never going to work. Bin Laden’s intelligence network was better than Washington’s. Warned of the operations against him, he escaped into Pakistan at Tora Bora. That told me two things. The first was that the Pakistani ISI, its intelligence service, was prepared to provide sanctuary to bin Laden. And that told me that a significant part of the Pakistani government would be prepared to influence events in Afghanistan, particularly since the geography of the Pashtun people spilled over the Afghan-Pakistani border. The United States had allied with the Pakistanis to create the mujahedeen to defeat the Soviets. Now that group, still linked to Pakistan, was moving against the United States. Whether the Pakistanis lied to the United States or drifted into opposition to the United States, Washington’s only potential ally, and a critical one at that, was not going to provide its full support.
The second thing it told me was that the U.S., having failed in its primary mission of capturing bin Laden, was not going to do the logical thing and move the fight elsewhere, but would follow its rule book of “nation building.” It worked in Germany and Japan after World War II, the leaders thought, so it would work in Afghanistan too.
When the U.S. goes off on one of these moral reform missions and fails, the logic is to leave. When it leaves, it looks like the United States was defeated – because the United States was defeated. Leaving after losing bin Laden’s trail would have been logical, but then people would be demanding to know how the president lost him, as if presidents are more than onlookers in a covert war. Still, putting the distance of time between the failure at Tora Bora and leaving, the action was transformed from a manhunt into a war of transformation and redemption – of the Afghans.
The media has condemned Biden for his supposed incompetence. Implicit in that is that there was another way to handle ending the war. The thing is, there is no competent way to end a really stupid war. One day you just end it. Ideally, the president makes a rout look like victory. Talking heads like me might marvel at how incompetent he is, without saying how we would have done it differently. In the end, the only way to have avoided the final fiasco was to continue the war. Once it was clear we were leaving, the Taliban were going to open an all-out offensive. What else would they do?
The entire national strategy was each president keeping the war going so the next president had to bite the bullet. After 20 years, the bullet was bitten, and the end looked the only way it could. The chaos of the end was hard-wired into the system. We all believe we could have done better.
The amazing thing is that having made Afghanistan as hard as possible for the Russians, we didn’t grasp that Afghanistan is not a place to devastate and nation-build. The Taliban believe in what they believe and are prepared to die for it. They do not have our moral values, not because they don’t know them, but because they have contempt for them. And beating them on their own turf won’t happen. They live there. They are not going anywhere, not in 20 years or 100. We can cite the fate of women or those who worked for us, but we lost the war, and we don’t get a vote.
Rudyard Kipling would have had fun with American policymakers and their critics. He wrote a basic truth about Afghanistan: “When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.”
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Rudyard Kipling would have had fun with American policymakers and their critics. He wrote a basic truth about Afghanistan: “When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.”
Looks like Stratfor is reading your forum :-)
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Taliban commander Sher Mohammed Stanikzai was trained at the Indian Military Academy..he is now amongst the Taliban leaders. India will likely reach out to him.
https://afghanistanpeacecampaign.org/2021/08/12/who-are-talibans-key-leaders-in-afghanistan/ (https://afghanistanpeacecampaign.org/2021/08/12/who-are-talibans-key-leaders-in-afghanistan/)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E9PpaxjVcAU8eqf?format=jpg&name=small)
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https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/20/trump-administrations-careful-afghanistan-withdrawal-plans-were-ignored-by-biden-regime-former-trump-aide-says/
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/watch-oliver-north-warns-taliban-have-names-addresses-phone-numbers-everyone-who (https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/watch-oliver-north-warns-taliban-have-names-addresses-phone-numbers-everyone-who)
Oliver North, brings up pertinent issues
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https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/08/18/rep-ilhan-omar-weighs-in-on-afghanistan-and-americas-role
no surprise
just blame USA
nothing about fundamentalist jihadist murderers and rapists
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https://twitter.com/i/status/1429004103028416512 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1429004103028416512)
USA picking up children...
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Academics!! :-D :-D
https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Failed-States-Framework-Rebuilding/dp/0195398610 (https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Failed-States-Framework-Rebuilding/dp/0195398610)
Academic career
Following his bachelor's degree, Ghani served on the faculty of Kabul University (1973–77) and Aarhus University in Denmark (1977). Following his PhD degree, he was invited to teach at University of California, Berkeley in 1983, and then at Johns Hopkins University from 1983 to 1991. He has also attended the Harvard-INSEAD and World Bank-Stanford Graduate School of Business's leadership training program. His academic research was on state-building and social transformation. In 1985, he completed a year of fieldwork researching Pakistani madrassas as a Fulbright Scholar.[14]
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This is the group lead by Amarullah Saleh and Masood's son.
Panjshir-Valley of Hope
Dr Waiel S H Awwad
It was in September 2001 in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan where foreign journalists had gathered for almost a month during the war between the Taliban forces and the Northern Alliance. The ‘Lion of Panjshir’, Ahmad Shah Masood was assassinated on 9th September 2001 by two Al Qaeda terrorists claiming to be journalists. They had waited for two weeks till he gave them the interview and then, they assassinated him. Former Afghanistan’s ambassador to India, Masood Khalili who was sitting next to him was lucky to survive.
We were told that we could enter Afghanistan through the Tajikistan border. Therefore, we all hurried to the checkpoints and spent almost 17 hours, before we travelled into the rugged, tough terrain and poorly protected roads. Tajikistan shares a 1300-kilometre-long border with Afghanistan while Uzbekistan shares only 144 kilometres. The important strategic strip of land known as the Panjshir Valley (The valley of five lions) is situated 150 kilometres north of Kabul, near the Hindu Kush Mountain range. This is where the Northern Alliance was still holding on to just about 10 per cent of Afghanistan’s territory, resisting the onslaught of Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorist organizations.
We reached the compound of Khosha Bahaauddin, where late Ahmad Shah Masood was assassinated. I was the only “Arab” journalist in the group working for an Arabic channel in London. I was detained in the compound, for three days. After the intervention of Abdullah Abdullah, I was allowed to carry on with my coverage of the war.
It was a guerrilla war and the Northern Alliance’s fighters showed their skills and steadfastness. The importance of Panjshir Valley is that it is close to the Salang Pass, which connects Kabul to the northern part and further to Uzbekistan. It was Ahmad Shah Masood and his father who led the war against the Soviet Union, during the occupation of Afghanistan and expelled them from the Valley between 1980-1985. The Salang Pass was considered a dangerous area then.
The region has gained attention after the first Vice President of Afghanistan Amrullah Saleh surfaced and declared his legitimacy as the caretaker president of the country after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Saleh called upon the army and fighters to join him in fighting the Taliban takeover of the country.
The Panjshir Valley is known for its defiance against Russia, Britain and France in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries despite these countries employing the deadliest forms of counterinsurgency tactics. They failed as it cannot be an alternative to the will and determination of the Afghani insurgents. It is the house of ethnic Tajik known for their brave hearts, tenacious fighters and defies all internal and external authorities which turned into the heart of the graveyard of invaders.
It was the US who understood the terrain and helped the Mujahedeen to defeat the Soviet Union by supplying them with Stingers to shoot down hundreds of Russian military aircraft in the valley. The strategic importance of Panjshir valley, Hindu Kush Mountain, along Salang highway and Mazar-e- Sharif, makes it the ideal ground for the guerrilla to counter the Taliban offensive.
The son of the late ‘Lion of Panjshir’, Ahmad Massoud along with the Vice President Amrullah Saleh, former Defense Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi and many former security forces fighters, have vowed to fight the Taliban. For sure Ahmad Massoud will lead the resurgent anti-Taliban fighters who will give the terror group a bloody nose. The motivation for the Afghani is their fighting capability with revolutionary ideas and the notion that the Taliban is a foreign enemy. Taliban is for sure not purely Afghani Pashtun.
The success of mobilization of anti-Taliban forces depends on the help of neighbouring countries, degree of military assistance and coordination among different forces and former warlords.
Taliban is trying to give the impression that they are a changed group and have become “Good Taliban”. They want to gain legitimacy among the international community who are watching cautiously another exodus of refugees to Europe. Also, most of the neighbours especially India, Russia and Iran, who wanted a stable, secure, peaceful and independent Afghanistan free of terrorism and are watching nervously and patiently the takeover. A collective stand by neighbours will ensure a smooth transition and end of foreign occupation in Afghanistan. If not, we are looking back to the nineties and the warlords era.
But can the Taliban be trusted? Will the Big Powers leave Afghanistan peacefully and not turn it again into a ground for proxy wars? Or is the cold war era back between the US and Russia-China?
The US spent more than 2.6 Trillion Dollars and lost 2448 marines and had more than 20,000 injured. The US cannot justify this sudden withdrawal. More so because it has left the natural resources of Afghanistan to an ambitious China that is cementing the Economic Corridor with Pakistan and Afghanistan as a party to its Belt and Road Initiative. China is also using its money power to keep the Uighur Islamic party fighting against the Chinese authority, away from its territory.
While Russia is playing a major role in West Asia, the US has now allowed it to fill the security vacuum in Afghanistan and therefore it will be more indulged with the new regime.
Although Pakistan is jubilant for the success of the Taliban and so is the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), it will have a negative implication on the future sovereignty and integrity of Pakistan if ethnic nationalities are activated in this part of the world.
The important part of the outcome of this war in Afghanistan would be the end of foreign occupation. Panjshir Valley remains the only hope to prevent other foreign invaders and an imminent tragedy in South Asia.
***********
Author
Dr Waiel S H Awwad is a West Asia Expert and is a winner of many international awards. Many of his writing has been published in English and Arabic in major news papers and magazines. He is fluent in Arabic, English, Hindi and Persian.
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As always YA, good stuff!
Gratitude!
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Amrullah Saleh on 60 min.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1428057501556101123 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1428057501556101123)
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/980192/danger-grows-in-kabul-with-every-passing-hour
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/980192/danger-grows-in-kabul-with-every-passing-hour
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/taliban-iwo-jima_8-21-21.jpg
(https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/taliban-iwo-jima_8-21-21.jpg)
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That is some seriously vicious trollery.
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/978580/kabul-skies
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/980192/danger-grows-in-kabul-with-every-passing-hour?fbclid=IwAR26feDzFhvdtpAeOYolkturp8RkWnSCvfyKPtX5J-fwcvD_qD8_OpkpKQY
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/977122/rangers-must-seize-bagram?fbclid=IwAR2wWaxPcR-j2eCC6t_wfFtouuGut9F-Bvpejq5tVag-wStnH2gc8EshUlk
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/976946/important-kabul?fbclid=IwAR3G7EyGg6Qipfq_Nj4Xwy1wyWXVJhBfTl_PXd1WC3BiWRH-w6PbFc_lo98
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Since a lot depends on Biden and the decisions he makes...a few lines from Zero Hedge are relevant
"Let this sink in: Joe Biden has only been President for 7 months out of a 4 year term. That means he has at least 39 more months where he needs to get up every single day and make calculated, critically thought out decisions as leader of the free world.
I’d be hard pressed to believe that, at this point, Biden can make a critically thought out decision about whether or not he wants waffles or eggs from the White House chef for breakfast, let alone decisions about foreign policy, how many more trillions of worthless U.S. dollars he wants to print out of thin air and spend under the guise of fighting whatever social cause is trendy this week, or national defense."
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That is some seriously vicious trollery.
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/978580/kabul-skies
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/980192/danger-grows-in-kabul-with-every-passing-hour?fbclid=IwAR26feDzFhvdtpAeOYolkturp8RkWnSCvfyKPtX5J-fwcvD_qD8_OpkpKQY
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/977122/rangers-must-seize-bagram?fbclid=IwAR2wWaxPcR-j2eCC6t_wfFtouuGut9F-Bvpejq5tVag-wStnH2gc8EshUlk
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/976946/important-kabul?fbclid=IwAR3G7EyGg6Qipfq_Nj4Xwy1wyWXVJhBfTl_PXd1WC3BiWRH-w6PbFc_lo98
I think Michael Yon is probably wrong in this instance. This is because, the Taliban want the Americans gone, they are not going to do anything that would make the Americans stay a day longer. Infact, they gain diplomatic points for allowing the foreigners to get out of the country. Once the Americans are gone, they can do what they want. Not only did we leave behind weapons, we also left behind tons of cash. They should be happy with the US...
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https://nypost.com/2021/08/21/hundreds-of-released-gitmo-detainees-back-to-killing-americans/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=com.facebook.Messenger.ShareExtension&fbclid=IwAR3P744JVdmi03Mx-ehQEDQ13OffSxt6ph7xiKA1WJbNgOh23cTYt43-BqU
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In India, the police and army have "Encounters" with terrorists. Prisoners are rarely taken. Seems to work quite well. Not clear, why we hold terrorists for 20 years on a tropical island. Its a public relations nightmare, costs money and when you free them, they join the terror groups as respected Old Goats, only this time they are wiser and smarter having learnt the American ways.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17670/western-diplomacy-imploring-terrorists
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/981491/british-top-general-glowing-assessment-of-taliban
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Would love to have a bullet point assessment of what he gets right, gets wrong, and leaves out:
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Why Biden’s Lack of Strategic Patience Led to Disaster
Aug. 21, 2021
By Ryan C. Crocker
Mr. Crocker served as ambassador to Afghanistan under President Barack Obama.
As Americans, we have many strengths, but strategic patience is not among them. We have been able to summon it at critical times such as the Revolutionary War and World War II, where, for example, Congress did not threaten to defund the war effort if it wasn’t wrapped up by 1944. In Korea, nearly seven decades after an inconclusive truce, we still have about 28,000 troops. But our patience is not the norm. And it certainly has not been on display in Afghanistan as the world watched the Taliban storm into Kabul.
As the enormity of the events in Afghanistan this past week sink in, the questions start. How did this happen? How could we not have foreseen it? Why didn’t Afghan security forces put up a fight? Why didn’t we do something about corruption? The list goes on. There is one overarching answer: our lack of strategic patience at critical moments, including from President Biden. It has damaged our alliances, emboldened our adversaries and increased the risk to our own security. It has also flouted 20 years of work and sacrifice.
The United States’ objective in Afghanistan has always been clear: to ensure that Afghan soil is never again used to plan attacks against the American homeland. It was not about nation building as an end in itself, or building a new democracy, or even regime change. The message from the Bush administration to the Taliban after 9/11 made this clear: If you hand over Al Qaeda leadership, we will leave you alone. The Taliban chose to fight instead. Once the Taliban were defeated, our fundamental mission of ensuring that Afghanistan was never again the base for an attack on the United States did not change. But the means to that end became much more complex. And the development of those means would require patience.
Image
A child walking among destroyed tanks near the road to Bagram Air Base in 2002.
A child walking among destroyed tanks near the road to Bagram Air Base in 2002.Credit...Radu Sigheti/Reuters
When I arrived at Bagram Air Base in January 2002 to take charge of our reopened embassy, Afghanistan had nothing: essentially no government, no institutions, no army, no police — just a yawning vacuum, and vacuums in the greater Middle East tend to be filled by actors who do not wish us well. Hamid Karzai had arrived in Kabul just a few days before me as chairman of the Afghanistan Interim Authority. He and I spent a lot of time together in those initial weeks. He never seemed discouraged by the enormity of the task in front of him. He did not hesitate to make decisions, many good, some not so much. He had a vision of a stable and secure Afghanistan that threatened no one. It would be a long process, but he said he had the patience for it.
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So did we, at least initially. Helping Afghans create a stable, open society could also be the best way to further our own national security objectives. This concept had strong bipartisan support on the Hill, as a wave of congressional visitors to Kabul would attest. The first of that wave was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden. We visited a girls’ school that had just opened thanks to U.S.A.I.D. Chairman Biden was a strong supporter. He understood the importance of societal change, and he understood that it takes time and requires patience. While statistics in Afghanistan have never been reliable, U.S.A.I.D. estimates that when the Taliban were defeated, there were some 900,000 children in school, all of them boys. When I left as ambassador in 2012, a decade after that first school visit, the number of students was nearly 8 million, about 37 percent girls. It is important to note that this progress was not by any means exclusively the result of U.S. or other international efforts. Afghans on their own launched private initiatives in education, especially for girls.
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Clearly, there were also problems, chief among them corruption. Karzai, and later President Ashraf Ghani, presided over governments where corruption was rampant. When vast resources are poured into a country without established institutions and rule of law, corruption is likely to be a significant byproduct. This is not to excuse corrupt officials. It is to recognize the ubiquity of the problem and our role in it. A look at our own history is instructive. Corruption was endemic in New York, Boston and Chicago through much of the 19th and into the 20th centuries. It took us time to grow the institutions and legal structures that would eventually make corruption the exception rather than the norm.
Image
Joseph R. Biden Jr., then chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, waving as he talked to Afghan children on a visit to the Ariana primary school in Kabul in January 2002.
Joseph R. Biden Jr., then chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, waving as he talked to Afghan children on a visit to the Ariana primary school in Kabul in January 2002.Credit...Enric Marti/Associated Press
And that returns me again to the central theme: time and patience. As our own history attests, societal change is a slow process. Witness the 11 years our new country spent moving from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution. Even then, issues like slavery were papered over, only to erupt in a civil war 74 years later. Yet we seem unable to appreciate that other societies will find the challenge just as difficult and even more so if the engine of change is a foreign army.
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I recall the comment attributed to a captured Taliban fighter from a number of years ago: You Americans have the watches, but we have the time. Sadly that view proved accurate — the Taliban outlasted us and our impatience. After the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of U.S.-trained and armed mujahedeen in 1989, training that was facilitated by Pakistan, we decided we were done. We could see the Afghan civil war coming — the only thing holding the disparate Afghan groups together was a common enemy. But that was not our problem — we were leaving. On the way out, we stopped helping Pakistan in a key way: We ended security and economic assistance because of its nuclear weapons program, something we’d exempted before. So Pakistan, in its own narrative, went from being the most allied of allies to the most sanctioned of adversaries. That is why Pakistan threw its support to the Taliban when they started gaining ground in the 1990s: It could end a dangerous conflict along Pakistan’s own unstable borders.
And that is why a decade later after 9/11, Pakistan welcomed the return of the United States — and U.S. assistance. It would work with us against Al Qaeda. But we soon learned that the Taliban were a sticky matter. I was ambassador to Pakistan from 2004 to 2007. I pushed Pakistani officials repeatedly on the need to deny the Taliban safe havens. The answer I got back over time went like this: “We know you. We know you don’t have patience for the long fight. We know the day will come when you just get tired and go home — it’s what you do. But we aren’t going anywhere — this is where we live. So if you think we are going to turn the Taliban into a mortal enemy, you are completely crazy.”
We have again validated their skepticism.
The Washington Post notes that “as the Taliban swept across neighboring Afghanistan, some Pakistanis saw it as a reason to celebrate.” Yet I doubt there are many high fives being exchanged in Islamabad today. The American disaster in Afghanistan that Mr. Biden’s impatience brought about is not a disaster just for us. It has also been a huge boost for the Taliban, whose narrative now is that the believers, clad in the armor of the one true faith, have vanquished the infidels. That is resonating around the world, and certainly next door in Pakistan where the T.T.P. — the Pakistani Taliban, which seeks the overthrow of their government — has certainly been emboldened, as have Kashmiri militant groups created by Pakistan but that threaten Pakistan itself as well as India. Mr. Biden’s strategic impatience has given a huge boost to militant Islam everywhere.
We need to be engaged with Pakistan on ways to assess and deal with this enhanced threat. The prospect of violent destabilization of a country with about 210 million people and nuclear weapons is not a pretty one. The same is true in Iran. It’s always good to see the Great Satan take a kick in the face, and it’s worth a little gloating, but the Islamic Republic and the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate almost went to war in 1998. A region is worried, and it is right to be so.
It was not only the current president showing impatience. President Donald Trump announced that peace talks would convene in Qatar between the United States and the Taliban. But those took place without the Afghan government. We had caved on a longstanding Taliban condition. We therefore delegitimized the government we had pledged to support. The Taliban did eventually allow government representatives into the room, but the talks went nowhere. As that painful process unfolded, we added injury to insult, forcing the Kabul government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners.
That didn’t matter to Mr. Trump. He was done with patience and just wanted out, whatever the consequences. He reached an agreement with the Taliban for that complete withdrawal, but left office before he could execute it.
Enter Mr. Biden. To my shock, he embraced Mr. Trump’s Afghanistan policy. We have betrayed our promises to interpreters, women and children, and others who are now trapped in an Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban. I fear many will lose their lives because of Mr. Biden’s impatience. We had their backs. Until Mr. Biden decided we didn’t. They will pay for it.
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I think Michael Yon is probably wrong in this instance. This is because, the Taliban want the Americans gone, they are not going to do anything that would make the Americans stay a day longer. In fact, they gain diplomatic points for allowing the foreigners to get out of the country. Once the Americans are gone, they can do what they want. Not only did we leave behind weapons, we also left behind tons of cash. They should be happy with the US...
Look at both sides of that: After 20 years, 2.4 trillion dollars and 2400 American lives lost, our enemy has both of these options fully available to them, trap Americans in and slaughter them, or take the diplomatic victory of letting them leave. Our fate is totally in enemy hands. The dictionary doesn't define failure better than that.
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Well we still have their gold deposited in the 1930's or so and their bank accts worth hundreds of millions.
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https://www.foxnews.com/world/afghan-interpreters-veterans-roadmaps-satellite-imagery-taliban-checkpoints?fbclid=IwAR39xcTGIRaFSjZqtNHArI1_0a76knVkiQEIt21YlAs1qmqMYQ5a1KZmZZQ
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https://www.steynonline.com/11628/meltdown-of-a-superpower
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https://hughhewitt.com/former-national-security-ambassador-robert-c-obrien-on-the-catastrophe-in-kabul-and-throughout-afghanistan/
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/984892/small-firefight-at-kabul-airport-expect-more
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/984907/afghanistan-expect-a-serious-fight
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Attack in Pakistan. There was another attack targeting Chinese nationals in Pakistan. The location of the suicide bombing, which also killed two Pakistani children, was particularly significant, as it took place in Gwadar port complex – a key Belt and Road Initiative project with potential military implications. Meanwhile, there’s been a surge of anti-Chinese protests around BRI projects in Pakistan.
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Obviously this is RumInt:
=================
I just got this from Sam Faddis. (Former CIA)
“Folks, for those of you trying to help get people out of Afghanistan. Here is assessment based on information coming out of policy circles and from sources on the ground. Biden is hard over that we will have the last military personnel out of Kabul airport NLT 31 August. We may be gone before then. Drawdown could begin within next 72 hours.
"This is not conditions based. Biden has already disregarded all sound military advice. We can expect him to continue to do so. Anybody not out by the time the last plane leaves gets cut away.
"On the ground in Kabul all processing of Afghans has effectively stopped. Only AmCits being moved. People are finally realizing on the ground that this administration really will do things that are unthinkable.
"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.
"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.
"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.
"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.
"After we are gone the plan is apparently to take down the internet, expel foreign journalists and begin the Afghan version of the killing fields.”
"Sam is former CIA"
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Americans WILL be left behind.
Obviously this is RumInt:
=================
I just got this from Sam Faddis. (Former CIA)
“Folks, for those of you trying to help get people out of Afghanistan. Here is assessment based on information coming out of policy circles and from sources on the ground. Biden is hard over that we will have the last military personnel out of Kabul airport NLT 31 August. We may be gone before then. Drawdown could begin within next 72 hours.
"This is not conditions based. Biden has already disregarded all sound military advice. We can expect him to continue to do so. Anybody not out by the time the last plane leaves gets cut away.
"On the ground in Kabul all processing of Afghans has effectively stopped. Only AmCits being moved. People are finally realizing on the ground that this administration really will do things that are unthinkable.
"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.
"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.
"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.
"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.
"After we are gone the plan is apparently to take down the internet, expel foreign journalists and begin the Afghan version of the killing fields.”
"Sam is former CIA"
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/986460/kabul-situation-collapsing-when-the-moon-sets-watch-out
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pompeo-responds-to-critics-who-blame-taliban-agreement-for-afghanistan-collapse-its-nonsense/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=24837836
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https://hughhewitt.com/ambassador-nikki-haley-on-the-catastrophe-in-kabul-and-the-agony-ahead-for-afghanistan/
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News Update: Nice bit of Trolling.
The Taliban appointed Guantanamo detainee Abdul Qayyum Zakir as the acting defense minister of the Islamic Emirate of #Afghanistan.
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Under Republicans, women won the right to vote for the first time in Afghanistan. Under Democrats, men in Afghanistan won back the right to rape.
Both parties are the same? Until you look at results.
"During an August 2019 campaign Q&A with the Council on Foreign Relations, Harris promised to “protect the gains that have been made for Afghan women.""
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/08/25/kamala_harris_backed_afghan_exit_despite_intel_warning_taliban_would_abuse_women_again_791529.html
"One Afghan woman who painted her nails had her thumb cut off by the Taliban virtue police, according to a report on human-rights abuses."
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The question of the day and the question of our time: How could we get this so wrong?
Two words: Susan Rice. What's her title, domestic policy advisor? That's who you want designing multilateral, global military operations. Also the entire team that brought us Benghazi. When in doubt, go with experience.
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"The question of the day and the question of our time: How could we get this so wrong?
Two words: Susan Rice. What's her title, domestic policy advisor? That's who you want designing multilateral, global military operations. Also the entire team that brought us Benghazi. When in doubt, go with experience."
well susan rice has been there before
I would amend
when it doubt do not go with LOSERS go with people with track record of success
the Obama team has none
other then CRT
But of course Biden brings back all the same american hating racists
that formed obamas team
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Apart from the Talibs now owning a lot of serious weapons with high market value...what about the loss of Intellectual Property ?...am sure the Chinese are paying to get their hands on US weapons.
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/082/960/273/original/3106d9a356870c4b.jpg
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/082/960/273/original/3106d9a356870c4b.jpg)
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/opinion/afghanistan-taliban-army.html?referringSource=articleShare
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/opinion/afghanistan-taliban-army.html?referringSource=articleShare
Paywall. NYT is burying this deeper than a Hunter Biden laptop.
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By Sami Sadat
General Sadat is a commander in the Afghan National Army.
For the past three and a half months, I fought day and night, nonstop, in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province against an escalating and bloody Taliban offensive. Coming under frequent attack, we held the Taliban back and inflicted heavy casualties. Then I was called to Kabul to command Afghanistan’s special forces. But the Taliban already were entering the city; it was too late.
I am exhausted. I am frustrated. And I am angry.
President Biden said last week that “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”
It’s true that the Afghan Army lost its will to fight. But that’s because of the growing sense of abandonment by our American partners and the disrespect and disloyalty reflected in Mr. Biden’s tone and words over the past few months. The Afghan Army is not without blame. It had its problems — cronyism, bureaucracy — but we ultimately stopped fighting because our partners already had.
It pains me to see Mr. Biden and Western officials are blaming the Afghan Army for collapsing without mentioning the underlying reasons that happened. Political divisions in Kabul and Washington strangled the army and limited our ability to do our jobs. Losing combat logistical support that the United States had provided for years crippled us, as did a lack of clear guidance from U.S. and Afghan leadership.
I am a three-star general in the Afghan Army. For 11 months, as commander of 215 Maiwand Corps, I led 15,000 men in combat operations against the Taliban in southwestern Afghanistan. I’ve lost hundreds of officers and soldiers. That’s why, as exhausted and frustrated as I am, I wanted to offer a practical perspective and defend the honor of the Afghan Army. I’m not here to absolve the Afghan Army of mistakes. But the fact is, many of us fought valiantly and honorably, only to be let down by American and Afghan leadership.
Two weeks ago, while battling to hold the southern city of Lashkar Gah from the Taliban, President Ashraf Ghani named me commander of Afghanistan’s special forces, the country’s most elite fighters. I reluctantly left my troops and arrived in Kabul on Aug. 15, ready to fight — unaware how bad the situation already was. Then Mr. Ghani handed me the added task of ensuring the security of Kabul. But I never even had a chance: The Taliban were closing in, and Mr. Ghani fled the country.
There is an enormous sense of betrayal here. Mr. Ghani’s hasty escape ended efforts to negotiate an interim agreement for a transition period with the Taliban that would have enabled us to hold the city and help manage evacuations. Instead, chaos ensued — resulting in the desperate scenes witnessed at the Kabul airport.
It was in response to those scenes that Mr. Biden said on Aug. 16 that the Afghan forces collapsed, “sometimes without trying to fight.” But we fought, bravely, until the end. We lost 66,000 troops over the past 20 years; that’s one-fifth of our estimated fighting force.
So why did the Afghan military collapse? The answer is threefold.
First, former President Donald Trump’s February 2020 peace deal with the Taliban in Doha doomed us. It put an expiration date on American interest in the region. Second, we lost contractor logistics and maintenance support critical to our combat operations. Third, the corruption endemic in Mr. Ghani’s government that flowed to senior military leadership and long crippled our forces on the ground irreparably hobbled us.
The Trump-Taliban agreement shaped the circumstances for the current situation by essentially curtailing offensive combat operations for U.S. and allied troops. The U.S. air-support rules of engagement for Afghan security forces effectively changed overnight, and the Taliban were emboldened. They could sense victory and knew it was just a matter of waiting out the Americans. Before that deal, the Taliban had not won any significant battles against the Afghan Army. After the agreement? We were losing dozens of soldiers a day.
Still, we kept fighting. But then Mr. Biden confirmed in April he would stick to Mr. Trump’s plan and set the terms for the U.S. drawdown. That was when everything started to go downhill.
The Afghan forces were trained by the Americans using the U.S. military model based on highly technical special reconnaissance units, helicopters and airstrikes. We lost our superiority to the Taliban when our air support dried up and our ammunition ran out.
Contractors maintained our bombers and our attack and transport aircraft throughout the war. By July, most of the 17,000 support contractors had left. A technical issue now meant that aircraft — a Black Hawk helicopter, a C-130 transport, a surveillance drone — would be grounded.
The contractors also took proprietary software and weapons systems with them. They physically removed our helicopter missile-defense system. Access to the software that we relied on to track our vehicles, weapons and personnel also disappeared. Real-time intelligence on targets went out the window, too.
The Taliban fought with snipers and improvised explosive devices while we lost aerial and laser-guided weapon capacity. And since we could not resupply bases without helicopter support, soldiers often lacked the necessary tools to fight. The Taliban overran many bases; in other places, entire units surrendered.
Mr. Biden’s full and accelerated withdrawal only exacerbated the situation. It ignored conditions on the ground. The Taliban had a firm end date from the Americans and feared no military reprisal for anything they did in the interim, sensing the lack of U.S. will.
And so the Taliban kept ramping up. My soldiers and I endured up to seven Taliban car bombings daily throughout July and the first week of August in Helmand Province. Still, we stood our ground.
I cannot ignore the third factor, though, because there was only so much the Americans could do when it came to the well-documented corruption that rotted our government and military. That really is our national tragedy. So many of our leaders — including in the military — were installed for their personal ties, not for their credentials. These appointments had a devastating impact on the national army because leaders lacked the military experience to be effective or inspire the confidence and trust of the men being asked to risk their lives. Disruptions to food rations and fuel supplies — a result of skimming and corrupt contract allocations — destroyed the morale of my troops.
The final days of fighting were surreal. We engaged in intense firefights on the ground against the Taliban as U.S. fighter jets circled overhead, effectively spectators. Our sense of abandonment and betrayal was equaled only by the frustration U.S. pilots felt and relayed to us — being forced to witness the ground war, apparently unable to help us. Overwhelmed by Taliban fire, my soldiers would hear the planes and ask why they were not providing air support. Morale was devastated. Across Afghanistan, soldiers stopped fighting. We held Lashkar Gah in fierce battles, but as the rest of the country fell, we lacked the support to continue fighting and retreated to base. My corps, which had carried on even after I was called away to Kabul, was one of the last to give up its arms — only after the capital fell.
We were betrayed by politics and presidents.
This was not an Afghan war only; it was an international war, with many militaries involved. It would have been impossible for one army alone, ours, to take up the job and fight. This was a military defeat, but it emanated from political failure.
Lt. Gen. Sami Sadat commanded the Afghan National Army’s 215 Maiwand Corps in southwestern Afghanistan. Before that, he served as a senior director in Afghanistan’s national intelligence agency. He is a graduate of the Defense Academy of the U.K. and holds a master's degree from King’s College London.
https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?action=post;topic=944.1800;last_msg=137553#
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seconde
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/the-day-afghanistan-died/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202021-08-25&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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America is a weak enemy and a treacherous friend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LARx7M9s15w
By Sami Sadat
General Sadat is a commander in the Afghan National Army.
For the past three and a half months, I fought day and night, nonstop, in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province against an escalating and bloody Taliban offensive. Coming under frequent attack, we held the Taliban back and inflicted heavy casualties. Then I was called to Kabul to command Afghanistan’s special forces. But the Taliban already were entering the city; it was too late.
I am exhausted. I am frustrated. And I am angry.
President Biden said last week that “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”
It’s true that the Afghan Army lost its will to fight. But that’s because of the growing sense of abandonment by our American partners and the disrespect and disloyalty reflected in Mr. Biden’s tone and words over the past few months. The Afghan Army is not without blame. It had its problems — cronyism, bureaucracy — but we ultimately stopped fighting because our partners already had.
It pains me to see Mr. Biden and Western officials are blaming the Afghan Army for collapsing without mentioning the underlying reasons that happened. Political divisions in Kabul and Washington strangled the army and limited our ability to do our jobs. Losing combat logistical support that the United States had provided for years crippled us, as did a lack of clear guidance from U.S. and Afghan leadership.
I am a three-star general in the Afghan Army. For 11 months, as commander of 215 Maiwand Corps, I led 15,000 men in combat operations against the Taliban in southwestern Afghanistan. I’ve lost hundreds of officers and soldiers. That’s why, as exhausted and frustrated as I am, I wanted to offer a practical perspective and defend the honor of the Afghan Army. I’m not here to absolve the Afghan Army of mistakes. But the fact is, many of us fought valiantly and honorably, only to be let down by American and Afghan leadership.
Two weeks ago, while battling to hold the southern city of Lashkar Gah from the Taliban, President Ashraf Ghani named me commander of Afghanistan’s special forces, the country’s most elite fighters. I reluctantly left my troops and arrived in Kabul on Aug. 15, ready to fight — unaware how bad the situation already was. Then Mr. Ghani handed me the added task of ensuring the security of Kabul. But I never even had a chance: The Taliban were closing in, and Mr. Ghani fled the country.
There is an enormous sense of betrayal here. Mr. Ghani’s hasty escape ended efforts to negotiate an interim agreement for a transition period with the Taliban that would have enabled us to hold the city and help manage evacuations. Instead, chaos ensued — resulting in the desperate scenes witnessed at the Kabul airport.
It was in response to those scenes that Mr. Biden said on Aug. 16 that the Afghan forces collapsed, “sometimes without trying to fight.” But we fought, bravely, until the end. We lost 66,000 troops over the past 20 years; that’s one-fifth of our estimated fighting force.
So why did the Afghan military collapse? The answer is threefold.
First, former President Donald Trump’s February 2020 peace deal with the Taliban in Doha doomed us. It put an expiration date on American interest in the region. Second, we lost contractor logistics and maintenance support critical to our combat operations. Third, the corruption endemic in Mr. Ghani’s government that flowed to senior military leadership and long crippled our forces on the ground irreparably hobbled us.
The Trump-Taliban agreement shaped the circumstances for the current situation by essentially curtailing offensive combat operations for U.S. and allied troops. The U.S. air-support rules of engagement for Afghan security forces effectively changed overnight, and the Taliban were emboldened. They could sense victory and knew it was just a matter of waiting out the Americans. Before that deal, the Taliban had not won any significant battles against the Afghan Army. After the agreement? We were losing dozens of soldiers a day.
Still, we kept fighting. But then Mr. Biden confirmed in April he would stick to Mr. Trump’s plan and set the terms for the U.S. drawdown. That was when everything started to go downhill.
The Afghan forces were trained by the Americans using the U.S. military model based on highly technical special reconnaissance units, helicopters and airstrikes. We lost our superiority to the Taliban when our air support dried up and our ammunition ran out.
Contractors maintained our bombers and our attack and transport aircraft throughout the war. By July, most of the 17,000 support contractors had left. A technical issue now meant that aircraft — a Black Hawk helicopter, a C-130 transport, a surveillance drone — would be grounded.
The contractors also took proprietary software and weapons systems with them. They physically removed our helicopter missile-defense system. Access to the software that we relied on to track our vehicles, weapons and personnel also disappeared. Real-time intelligence on targets went out the window, too.
The Taliban fought with snipers and improvised explosive devices while we lost aerial and laser-guided weapon capacity. And since we could not resupply bases without helicopter support, soldiers often lacked the necessary tools to fight. The Taliban overran many bases; in other places, entire units surrendered.
Mr. Biden’s full and accelerated withdrawal only exacerbated the situation. It ignored conditions on the ground. The Taliban had a firm end date from the Americans and feared no military reprisal for anything they did in the interim, sensing the lack of U.S. will.
And so the Taliban kept ramping up. My soldiers and I endured up to seven Taliban car bombings daily throughout July and the first week of August in Helmand Province. Still, we stood our ground.
I cannot ignore the third factor, though, because there was only so much the Americans could do when it came to the well-documented corruption that rotted our government and military. That really is our national tragedy. So many of our leaders — including in the military — were installed for their personal ties, not for their credentials. These appointments had a devastating impact on the national army because leaders lacked the military experience to be effective or inspire the confidence and trust of the men being asked to risk their lives. Disruptions to food rations and fuel supplies — a result of skimming and corrupt contract allocations — destroyed the morale of my troops.
The final days of fighting were surreal. We engaged in intense firefights on the ground against the Taliban as U.S. fighter jets circled overhead, effectively spectators. Our sense of abandonment and betrayal was equaled only by the frustration U.S. pilots felt and relayed to us — being forced to witness the ground war, apparently unable to help us. Overwhelmed by Taliban fire, my soldiers would hear the planes and ask why they were not providing air support. Morale was devastated. Across Afghanistan, soldiers stopped fighting. We held Lashkar Gah in fierce battles, but as the rest of the country fell, we lacked the support to continue fighting and retreated to base. My corps, which had carried on even after I was called away to Kabul, was one of the last to give up its arms — only after the capital fell.
We were betrayed by politics and presidents.
This was not an Afghan war only; it was an international war, with many militaries involved. It would have been impossible for one army alone, ours, to take up the job and fight. This was a military defeat, but it emanated from political failure.
Lt. Gen. Sami Sadat commanded the Afghan National Army’s 215 Maiwand Corps in southwestern Afghanistan. Before that, he served as a senior director in Afghanistan’s national intelligence agency. He is a graduate of the Defense Academy of the U.K. and holds a master's degree from King’s College London.
https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?action=post;topic=944.1800;last_msg=137553#
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https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m-1gcD8K4aw/YSL8c1THoXI/AAAAAAAAtik/85_paPFkz2Y2fp9wrpxpgkkojXYJqrFmgCPcBGAsYHg/s618/Meme%2B-%2Btrade%2Bhelo%2Bfor%2Bgoat.png
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m-1gcD8K4aw/YSL8c1THoXI/AAAAAAAAtik/85_paPFkz2Y2fp9wrpxpgkkojXYJqrFmgCPcBGAsYHg/s618/Meme%2B-%2Btrade%2Bhelo%2Bfor%2Bgoat.png)
Apart from the Talibs now owning a lot of serious weapons with high market value...what about the loss of Intellectual Property ?...am sure the Chinese are paying to get their hands on US weapons.
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/082/960/273/original/3106d9a356870c4b.jpg
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/082/960/273/original/3106d9a356870c4b.jpg)
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https://themichiganstar.com/2021/08/16/exclusive-erik-prince-blames-afghanistan-debacle-on-cosplay-national-security-apparatus-that-believes-their-own-bs/
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395360.php
Americans WILL be left behind.
Obviously this is RumInt:
=================
I just got this from Sam Faddis. (Former CIA)
“Folks, for those of you trying to help get people out of Afghanistan. Here is assessment based on information coming out of policy circles and from sources on the ground. Biden is hard over that we will have the last military personnel out of Kabul airport NLT 31 August. We may be gone before then. Drawdown could begin within next 72 hours.
"This is not conditions based. Biden has already disregarded all sound military advice. We can expect him to continue to do so. Anybody not out by the time the last plane leaves gets cut away.
"On the ground in Kabul all processing of Afghans has effectively stopped. Only AmCits being moved. People are finally realizing on the ground that this administration really will do things that are unthinkable.
"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.
"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.
"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.
"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.
"After we are gone the plan is apparently to take down the internet, expel foreign journalists and begin the Afghan version of the killing fields.”
"Sam is former CIA"
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August 26, 2021
View On Website
Open as PDF
Turkey and Iran Compete Over Afghanistan
Both countries share historical and cultural ties to Afghanistan.
By: Hilal Khashan
Afghanistan is not a country that lends itself to domination by sheer force. Its rugged, mountainous terrain makes it impossible for a foreign military, no matter how powerful, to conquer and occupy the country. Indeed, after 20 years of war, even the United States was unable to effect much lasting change there. However, smaller states that share historical, cultural and religious values with the Afghans are better positioned to achieve their objectives in the country than culturally distinct nations, regardless of how many resources they expend. Thus, in the United States’ absence, Iran and Turkey will compete for influence over Afghanistan, with which both countries share historical and cultural ties. Afghanistan’s fluid political and security situation following the U.S. pullout will present challenges for Iran and opportunities for Turkey. But stability or even a semblance of peace will remain elusive.
Tehran’s Objectives
Relations between Iran and Afghanistan have ebbed and flowed since 1722, when the Afghans invaded Persia and occupied Isfahan, the capital of the Safavid Empire. Even after the Afghans’ defeat in 1730, water issues marred relations between the two countries, until they finally signed the Treaty of Friendship in 1921. Today, Iran and its new hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, seem determined to expand Tehran’s regional influence into Afghanistan as well as Central Asia, the Caucasus, the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.
Tehran is angling to become Afghanistan’s main economic benefactor, hoping to form a relationship with the Taliban similar to Turkey’s relationship with Northern Cyprus. But incompatible religious ideology and Iran’s cooperation in America's 2001 invasion are significant obstacles.
Iran allowed the Taliban to open offices in several Iranian cities and provided living quarters for the families of many Taliban leaders. Afghans, however, view Iran’s behavior with suspicion. A few years ago, Iran tried to pit the Shiite Hazaras against the Taliban to justify the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intervention in Afghanistan. IRGC forces masqueraded as members of an Afghan Shiite militia called the Fatemiyoun Division to try to coerce the militants to establish a Shiite state in Afghanistan – which ultimately failed.
Ethnic Groups in Afghanistan
(click to enlarge)
The Iranians are deeply concerned about the Taliban’s resurgence, despite publicly claiming to be happy about the U.S. departure. Iran wants to see a fragile Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban to obstruct Turkish intervention plans and secure more water supplies from the Helmand River for its water-scarce border areas. A stable Afghanistan would enable the country to protect its own supplies from Iranian interference. Iran does not believe the Taliban will maintain a firm hold over the country and is devising a plan to create a militia loyal to Tehran similar to the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.
Iran has avoided publicly criticizing the Taliban, hoping to play a peacekeeper role in Afghanistan. Tehran has even encouraged local media to praise the group for driving U.S. forces out of the country. It presents itself as a partner of Afghanistan, providing much-needed energy supplies to help ease its economic collapse. There’s at least one opponent of Tehran’s official stance on the Taliban, however. Last month, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Iranian people did not support Tehran’s Afghanistan policy, believing that their country’s meager resources should instead be used for economic development.
Ankara’s Hopes
Unlike Iran, which shares a 900-kilometer (560-mile) border with Afghanistan, Turkey is geographically distant from the war-torn country. Still, it sees an opportunity to influence the outcome there. Despite the Taliban’s warning against Turkey keeping its 500-strong military contingent in Kabul beyond the end of August, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan thinks he can strike a deal with the group through Qatar, which has close ties with the Taliban. And indeed, the Taliban have promised to maintain cordial relations with their near and distant neighbors – except for India because of its human rights record relating to its Muslim minority. On India, Turkey and the Taliban share a common approach. The Taliban support the Islamist insurgency in Indian-controlled Kashmir, and Turkey has strong relations with the Popular Front of India, a militant Islamist movement, and the insurrectionist Jamaat-e-Islami in Kashmir.
Turkey’s involvement in Afghanistan is also part of Ankara’s strategy to repair its strained relations with Washington. It participated in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan since its establishment in 2001. It could also help mediate between the Taliban and Washington as the crisis unfolds. Last week, the Biden administration froze the Afghan central bank’s reserves in the U.S. totaling $10 billion. It also convinced the International Monetary Fund to suspend Kabul’s access to $440 million in funds until the country could meet certain conditions. Given the Taliban’s urgent need for cash, they will likely be open to dialogue with a mediator like Ankara.
For the U.S. and its Western allies, one of their key objectives is containing Russian and Chinese influence in Afghanistan. Washington is keen on slowing down China’s economic progress and preventing Russia from restoring its lost influence in Central Asia. The U.S. considers Russo-Chinese activity in South and Central Asia the most significant threat to its national security. As the rivalry between these major powers accelerates, Afghanistan’s importance as a critical juncture linking China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Iran will increase.
In 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Islamabad and launched the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of Beijing’s massive Belt and Road Initiative, which drew mixed reactions in Pakistan. Given Pakistanis’ skepticism about BRI, Turkey can use its friendship with Pakistan to temper its relations with the United States. The U.S. sees an opportunity in the CPEC controversy to derail Chinese influence in the region and bring Pakistan back into the U.S. fold, using Turkey as an intermediary.
For Moscow, the primary concern in Afghanistan is the potential for the instability there to spill over into Russia – namely Chechnya, Dagestan and Tatarstan – and its neighbors in Central Asia, specifically Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The prospect of establishing Islamic emirates in these countries and regions, similar to the Taliban’s self-proclaimed Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is not far-fetched. Iran has similar fears in its restive Sunni-populated Baluchistan region.
Turkey wants to increase pressure on countries competing for influence in the Middle East and Central Asia – Russia, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia – by influencing the Taliban’s foreign policy, hoping that this will give Ankara an edge. Maintaining a degree of soft power in Afghanistan would increase its prestige in NATO and open a new chapter in relations with the United States. Erdogan has tried to make the case that his country is well positioned to mediate with the Taliban, recently saying that Turkey is “the only reliable country left” that could help stabilize Afghanistan.
Turkey’s involvement in the conflicts of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia has alarmed many Turks, who argue that the country’s resources are being spread too thin. In addition to deploying troops in Libya, Syria and Iraq, Turkey established military bases in Qatar and Somalia and played a game-changing role in last year’s conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The opposition Republican People’s Party has criticized Erdogan’s Afghanistan policy and called for an immediate withdrawal of Turkish troops from the country. Erdogan’s opponents believe he wants to drag Turkey into the Afghan quagmire and replace the United States as the major power in the country. Erdogan seems undeterred, however.
It’s likely that anarchy and civil war will return to Afghanistan. For most Afghans, the idea of the state is nebulous. The fragmentation of the population into tribal ethnicities and sectarian identities makes it difficult to create a unified collective consciousness. What seems to matter most right now is foreign rivalry while the Taliban attempt to construct a pristine Islamic emirate.
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https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/26/biden-officials-gave-the-names-of-americans-and-afghan-allies-trying-to-evacuate-to-the-taliban/
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https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1431026724465258500
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https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1431026724465258500
But Sir, just watch Gen.Milley's medals. He must be a brave man, medals up his sleeve and entire chest. Much better than these guys (https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FM0nSFzI.png&f=1&nofb=1)
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https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2021/08/27/resign-n2594830
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1431026724465258500
But Sir, just watch Gen.Milley's medals. He must be a brave man, medals up his sleeve and entire chest. Much better than these guys (https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FM0nSFzI.png&f=1&nofb=1)
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https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2021/08/27/resign-n2594830
From the link:
(https://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/alg082721dAPR20210826104512.jpg)
Also THIS from the Kurt Schlichter link:
You know what the Sergeant Major of the Army tweeted today, just before about a dozen of our troops were blown apart in exactly the way anyone not rocking in his chair, gulping mush, and staring at his stories on the tee-vee saw coming?
“Diversity is a number - do you have people that don’t look or think like you in the room? Inclusion is listening and valuing those people. #WomensEqualityDay reminds us we’re smarter and more lethal when we come together as an inclusive, cohesive team. Our values demand it.”
https://twitter.com/16thSMA/status/1430875976142106624
[Doug] Inclusiveness was on his mind while enemy set up to attack? Our values demand that our military win our wars, or we have no values.
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But Sir, just watch Gen.Milley's medals. He must be a brave man, medals up his sleeve and entire chest. Much better than these guys (https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FM0nSFzI.png&f=1&nofb=1)
I don't have 10 minutes of military strategy training but would like to know how come we knew and they didn't that stupidity and incompetence would lead to failure, disaster and carnage?
We've gone from can't design a fight to win strategy to can't execute a surrender successfully.
Maybe we should cut these leaders a break. When they were coming up through the ranks, the pre-woke American military probably didn't teach advanced techniques of surrender.
We haven't had this level of casualties in Afghanistan since, um, since Obama was President.
Trapped, bombed, and killed in mass murder fashion, but thankfully "not stranded".
All the same be said about their handling of the economy. The failure is in Washington, not Kabul.
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The greed and corruption of previous Afghan governments set up the rise of the Taliban.
https://www.aier.org/article/economics-explains-the-talibans-rapid-advances/
From the article:
"Previously, different tribal organizations would take sections of this highway, stop all transit, and tax the commercial merchants. With so many taxing organizations taking money from truckers every few miles, it became too expensive for anybody to run their goods along this road. Commerce ground to a halt. Taxes couldn’t be collected. The country’s infrastructure crumbled.
The Taliban, however, could station their militants at key locations on the highway and tax merchants only once while protecting truckers from other bandits along the route. Since devout members of the Taliban proved their loyalty via adherence to strict religious codes, they were unlikely to plunder the trucking caravans in an opportunistic fashion.
Commerce returned, the Taliban collected revenue with a tolerable level of guaranteed taxation, and they used these funds for other infrastructure projects in the country. Not surprisingly, this made the Taliban reasonably popular relative to the chaotic anarchy that had previously reigned. People may not have liked their intense religious views, but at least the roads were operable and the electricity came back.
Additionally, the Taliban proved themselves to be reasonably fair arbitrators of a civil justice system and religious leaders (imams) often heard cases between individual disputants arguing over various contract violations (see Berman book linked above). Ruling on contract disputes (e.g., who owns some goat pasture land) may sound mundane, but such a system is vital for economic activity to occur. If people trust that contracts and property rights can be fairly enforced, they are more likely to make longer-term investments that promote economic growth. Indeed, the Taliban leadership are so trusted among the population to resolve such disputes that they continued to function as a shadow civil judiciary over the past twenty years."
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Here is your previous Afghan "leader":
"Mr Ghani fled Afghanistan with four cars and a helicopter all stuffed full of cash."
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/afghanistan-president-ashraf-ghani-flees-101300495.html
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/27/white-house-biden-not-firing-any-generals-has-full-confidence-in-blinken/
as long as they all talk the woke talk
no one is accountable
buck stops with biden who isn't going anywhere except to California to stump for newsom
and blame trump with the media lackeys following the journolister DNC script:
don't worry a. yr from now we will be thanking the great courageous pres
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It looks like he doesn't know something went wrong, but he really is waiting, hoping for the next shiny object to take this off the front page. Failure was the plan. Hard to be shocked when it happens. After the slaughters, he won't be [make that shouldn't be] quite as boastful at his September 11 20 year commemoration. "I ended the war by surrendering after none of my predecessors had the courage to surrender."
Speaking of shiny objects, Calif recall finish date is Sept 14. If Newsom loses, Biden looks very bad whether he goes there and takes the mask off or not. Democrats will be in panic mode if they lose that.
Maybe we can help them figure out what went wrong.
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This makes my blood boil
https://twitter.com/i/status/1431311800398606338 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1431311800398606338)
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I find this painting quite apt, note the colors of the moon.
(https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/GRAVEYARD%20OF%20WOKE%20EMPIRE.jpg?itok=Ee6qSzth)
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Not in accord with his description of Trump's manuevers, but overall pretty good
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/still-spinning-the-mission-after-all-these-years/
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https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-u-s-special-forces-vets-secretly-rescued-hundreds-of-afghan-allies-left-for-dead-amid-biden-withdrawal?fbclid=IwAR1ZhAhzuqtnjyyHSN-tIpdOTxF3738znrVpiqbcADFUx2QlyKi6yfyYq8E
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1007003/kabul-us-forces-in-swift-retrograde
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From the GAO
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E99RykkX0AUU-ea?format=jpg&name=large)
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From the GAO
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E99RykkX0AUU-ea?format=jpg&name=large)
Beyond words. How do you lose this amount of equipment. I thought the surrender was OUR idea, not like we were backed into a corner. No one should pay one more cent of tax payment to this government until there is explanation and consequence for what happened.
What about THIS:
Taliban is using US equipment and data to hunt down its enemy Afghans.
powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/under-the-horizon.php
https://www.zenger.news/2021/08/28/taliban-team-is-using-us-made-biometric-database-and-scanners-to-hunt-american-and-afghan-enemies/
The Taliban has mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped U.S. and allied forces — and it’s using U.S. equipment and data to do it.
Nawazuddin Haqqani, one of the brigade commanders over the Al Isha unit, bragged in an interview with Zenger News, that his unit is using U.S.-made hand-held scanners to tap into a massive U.S.-built biometric database and positively identify any person who helped the NATO allies or worked with Indian intelligence. Afghans who try to deny or minimize their role will find themselves contradicted by the detailed computer records that the U.S. left behind in its frenzied withdrawal.
The existence of the Al Isha unit has not been previously confirmed by the Taliban; until now the Haqqani Network, a terror group aligned with the Taliban, has not admitted its role in targeting Afghans or its use of America’s vast biometric database. The Haqqani Network is “the most lethal and sophisticated insurgent group targeting U.S., Coalition, and Afghan forces,” according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center.
The power and reach of the U.S. biometric database are breathtaking. Virtually everyone who worked with the Afghan government or the U.S. military, including interpreters, drivers, nurses, and secretaries, was fingerprinted and scanned for the biometric database over the past 12 years.
U.S. officials have not confirmed how many of the 7,000 hand-held scanners were left behind or whether the biometric database could be remotely deleted.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/what-i-learned-while-eavesdropping-on-the-taliban/619807/
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By: Geopolitical Futures
Macron said Paris and London would bring forward a U.N. resolution to create a “safe zone” at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan. On Friday, France’s EU commissioner said the crisis in Afghanistan highlights the need for a European military force.
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This will bring down the govt. Americans take pride in leaving no man behind. Remember the 52 US hostages in Iran, brought down Carter I believe.
(https://media.babylonbee.com/articles/article-9372-1.jpg)
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1014544/the-left-behind-children-and-dogs-to-the-same-fate
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https://twitter.com/i/status/1432639981374386181 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1432639981374386181)
Biden admin is done for..here he says he will get everyone out.
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Enter the Talibs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1432630567628120067 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1432630567628120067)
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https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/inside-the-underground-railroad-out?fbclid=IwAR0ZJ_Qbhrei41Ge_dQ50THvZ1sPsq80twjEkv2h64GYoXFFgWRW4ScJGmo
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/we-are-fking-abandoning-american-citizens-says-livid-army-colonel-leaked-afghanistan
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395360.php
Americans WILL be left behind.
Obviously this is RumInt:
=================
I just got this from Sam Faddis. (Former CIA)
“Folks, for those of you trying to help get people out of Afghanistan. Here is assessment based on information coming out of policy circles and from sources on the ground. Biden is hard over that we will have the last military personnel out of Kabul airport NLT 31 August. We may be gone before then. Drawdown could begin within next 72 hours.
"This is not conditions based. Biden has already disregarded all sound military advice. We can expect him to continue to do so. Anybody not out by the time the last plane leaves gets cut away.
"On the ground in Kabul all processing of Afghans has effectively stopped. Only AmCits being moved. People are finally realizing on the ground that this administration really will do things that are unthinkable.
"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.
"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.
"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.
"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.
"After we are gone the plan is apparently to take down the internet, expel foreign journalists and begin the Afghan version of the killing fields.”
"Sam is former CIA"
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The Free Sh*t Army (Dem base voters) give zero fcuks about this. It's all good as long as they get their stimmies from Uncle Sugar!
This will bring down the govt. Americans take pride in leaving no man behind. Remember the 52 US hostages in Iran, brought down Carter I believe.
(https://media.babylonbee.com/articles/article-9372-1.jpg)
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395443.php
So, will talking about all the weapons and equipment left in A-stan get us on no-fly lists?
From the GAO
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E99RykkX0AUU-ea?format=jpg&name=large)
Beyond words. How do you lose this amount of equipment. I thought the surrender was OUR idea, not like we were backed into a corner. No one should pay one more cent of tax payment to this government until there is explanation and consequence for what happened.
What about THIS:
Taliban is using US equipment and data to hunt down its enemy Afghans.
powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/under-the-horizon.php
https://www.zenger.news/2021/08/28/taliban-team-is-using-us-made-biometric-database-and-scanners-to-hunt-american-and-afghan-enemies/
The Taliban has mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped U.S. and allied forces — and it’s using U.S. equipment and data to do it.
Nawazuddin Haqqani, one of the brigade commanders over the Al Isha unit, bragged in an interview with Zenger News, that his unit is using U.S.-made hand-held scanners to tap into a massive U.S.-built biometric database and positively identify any person who helped the NATO allies or worked with Indian intelligence. Afghans who try to deny or minimize their role will find themselves contradicted by the detailed computer records that the U.S. left behind in its frenzied withdrawal.
The existence of the Al Isha unit has not been previously confirmed by the Taliban; until now the Haqqani Network, a terror group aligned with the Taliban, has not admitted its role in targeting Afghans or its use of America’s vast biometric database. The Haqqani Network is “the most lethal and sophisticated insurgent group targeting U.S., Coalition, and Afghan forces,” according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center.
The power and reach of the U.S. biometric database are breathtaking. Virtually everyone who worked with the Afghan government or the U.S. military, including interpreters, drivers, nurses, and secretaries, was fingerprinted and scanned for the biometric database over the past 12 years.
U.S. officials have not confirmed how many of the 7,000 hand-held scanners were left behind or whether the biometric database could be remotely deleted.
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Good job...Biden.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E9vhV83WUAIFgWX?format=jpg&name=900x900)
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Looks like Biden knew the jig was up...
https://www.reuters.com/world/exclusive-call-before-afghan-collapse-biden-pressed-ghani-change-perception-2021-08-31/ (https://www.reuters.com/world/exclusive-call-before-afghan-collapse-biden-pressed-ghani-change-perception-2021-08-31/)
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/west_asia/37021.stm
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Enjoy the Taliban parade. ..with Suicide bombers, American weapons.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1433375517588303873 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1433375517588303873)
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https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vo7rgEHOouc/YTDGioOxIQI/AAAAAAACDfc/58pffN9TlW4QRQo2DV9rP4Ukb41PGh1GgCLcBGAsYHQ/w663-h526/joe-tzu-biden-meme-brick-suit-.jpg
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vo7rgEHOouc/YTDGioOxIQI/AAAAAAACDfc/58pffN9TlW4QRQo2DV9rP4Ukb41PGh1GgCLcBGAsYHQ/w663-h526/joe-tzu-biden-meme-brick-suit-.jpg)
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395443.php
So, will talking about all the weapons and equipment left in A-stan get us on no-fly lists?
From the GAO
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E99RykkX0AUU-ea?format=jpg&name=large)
Beyond words. How do you lose this amount of equipment. I thought the surrender was OUR idea, not like we were backed into a corner. No one should pay one more cent of tax payment to this government until there is explanation and consequence for what happened.
What about THIS:
Taliban is using US equipment and data to hunt down its enemy Afghans.
powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/under-the-horizon.php
https://www.zenger.news/2021/08/28/taliban-team-is-using-us-made-biometric-database-and-scanners-to-hunt-american-and-afghan-enemies/
The Taliban has mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped U.S. and allied forces — and it’s using U.S. equipment and data to do it.
Nawazuddin Haqqani, one of the brigade commanders over the Al Isha unit, bragged in an interview with Zenger News, that his unit is using U.S.-made hand-held scanners to tap into a massive U.S.-built biometric database and positively identify any person who helped the NATO allies or worked with Indian intelligence. Afghans who try to deny or minimize their role will find themselves contradicted by the detailed computer records that the U.S. left behind in its frenzied withdrawal.
The existence of the Al Isha unit has not been previously confirmed by the Taliban; until now the Haqqani Network, a terror group aligned with the Taliban, has not admitted its role in targeting Afghans or its use of America’s vast biometric database. The Haqqani Network is “the most lethal and sophisticated insurgent group targeting U.S., Coalition, and Afghan forces,” according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center.
The power and reach of the U.S. biometric database are breathtaking. Virtually everyone who worked with the Afghan government or the U.S. military, including interpreters, drivers, nurses, and secretaries, was fingerprinted and scanned for the biometric database over the past 12 years.
U.S. officials have not confirmed how many of the 7,000 hand-held scanners were left behind or whether the biometric database could be remotely deleted.
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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-runaway-general-the-profile-that-brought-down-mcchrystal-192609/
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https://www.captainsjournal.com/2021/09/02/state-department-still-blocking-americans-from-leaving-afghanistan/
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https://archive.fo/HMELF
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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-runaway-general-the-profile-that-brought-down-mcchrystal-192609/
Assuming the details are largely true, that is one hell of an article. It tells the story of the mid-point of the American involvement, 9 years into it, which was pretty much the story of the next 10 years.
I noticed this :
"In the East Room, which is packed with journalists and dignitaries, President Obama sings the praises of Karzai. The two leaders talk about how great their relationship is, about the pain they feel over civilian casualties. They mention the word “progress” 16 times in under an hour. But there is no mention of victory"
- But when Trump sang the false praises of any worthless foreign leader hoping to gain cooperation, he was lying, wrong, stupid.
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https://archive.fo/HMELF
WSJ: Afghanistan Voice of America, Radio Free Liberty/Radio Europe Staff Left Behind
Lawmakers, media groups call on Biden administration to help evacuate journalists at risk of Taliban retribution
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Millie needs to be charged under the UCMJ!
If you sent so much as a penny or technology covered under ITAR or other federal statutes to the Taliban or Iran, you'd face years in federal prison. Millie left them an arsenal.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395460.php
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-announces-convictions-two-us-citizens-conspiring-aid-taliban
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/799
https://www.exportlawblog.com/archives/388
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vo7rgEHOouc/YTDGioOxIQI/AAAAAAACDfc/58pffN9TlW4QRQo2DV9rP4Ukb41PGh1GgCLcBGAsYHQ/w663-h526/joe-tzu-biden-meme-brick-suit-.jpg
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vo7rgEHOouc/YTDGioOxIQI/AAAAAAACDfc/58pffN9TlW4QRQo2DV9rP4Ukb41PGh1GgCLcBGAsYHQ/w663-h526/joe-tzu-biden-meme-brick-suit-.jpg)
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395443.php
So, will talking about all the weapons and equipment left in A-stan get us on no-fly lists?
From the GAO
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E99RykkX0AUU-ea?format=jpg&name=large)
Beyond words. How do you lose this amount of equipment. I thought the surrender was OUR idea, not like we were backed into a corner. No one should pay one more cent of tax payment to this government until there is explanation and consequence for what happened.
What about THIS:
Taliban is using US equipment and data to hunt down its enemy Afghans.
powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/under-the-horizon.php
https://www.zenger.news/2021/08/28/taliban-team-is-using-us-made-biometric-database-and-scanners-to-hunt-american-and-afghan-enemies/
The Taliban has mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped U.S. and allied forces — and it’s using U.S. equipment and data to do it.
Nawazuddin Haqqani, one of the brigade commanders over the Al Isha unit, bragged in an interview with Zenger News, that his unit is using U.S.-made hand-held scanners to tap into a massive U.S.-built biometric database and positively identify any person who helped the NATO allies or worked with Indian intelligence. Afghans who try to deny or minimize their role will find themselves contradicted by the detailed computer records that the U.S. left behind in its frenzied withdrawal.
The existence of the Al Isha unit has not been previously confirmed by the Taliban; until now the Haqqani Network, a terror group aligned with the Taliban, has not admitted its role in targeting Afghans or its use of America’s vast biometric database. The Haqqani Network is “the most lethal and sophisticated insurgent group targeting U.S., Coalition, and Afghan forces,” according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center.
The power and reach of the U.S. biometric database are breathtaking. Virtually everyone who worked with the Afghan government or the U.S. military, including interpreters, drivers, nurses, and secretaries, was fingerprinted and scanned for the biometric database over the past 12 years.
U.S. officials have not confirmed how many of the 7,000 hand-held scanners were left behind or whether the biometric database could be remotely deleted.
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ASSESSMENTS
In Approaching the Taliban, China Will Tread Carefully
4 MIN READSep 3, 2021 | 16:55 GMT
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid addresses media at the Kabul airport on Aug. 31, 2021.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid addresses media at the Kabul airport on Aug. 31, 2021.
(WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
Taliban comments that China is their main partner appear more aspirational than a confirmation of significant Chinese advances in Afghanistan. In an interview in the Italian paper la Repubblica published Sept. 1, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid called China the Taliban government’s “main partner,” expressed confidence in future Chinese investments in infrastructure and mining, and linked Afghanistan to world markets through China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The comments have stirred international attention, appearing to confirm assessments that China has “won” Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal. Beijing, however, is taking a more cautious approach to Afghanistan, and any significant infrastructure development or economic activity will still require the Taliban to provide a more stable environment — something far from certain.
There has been little commitment from the Chinese side, even as the Taliban promised safety inside the country and the stoppage of any outflows of terrorism into China. The readout from a Sept. 2 phone call between Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Wu Jianghao and the deputy head of the Taliban's political office in Qatar, Mawlawi Abdul Salam Hanafi, highlights the gap between the Taliban’s ambitions and Beijing’s caution. Hanafi emphasized the importance of BRI to Afghan development and economic growth, and promised to provide a safe environment for Chinese workers and institutions in Afghanistan. Wu, however, merely highlighted thousands of years of friendship, and said China respected Afghan independence and hoped Afghanistan would rebuild soon.
For the Taliban, China offers a potential opportunity to insulate Afghanistan from Western pressure by accessing foreign aid and development that isn’t tied to democracy or women’s rights. China’s permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council would add another shield for the Taliban government. While China shares a border with Afghanistan, it is small. There are also few territorial or strong ethnic issues along Afghanistan’s border with China, unlike its borders with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Pakistan. China’s BRI initiatives and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) flank Afghanistan and provide potential avenues for economic connections. Beijing’s perceived higher risk tolerance could help the Taliban access vast Afghan mineral deposits, providing a ready source of revenue, even if China is only the consumer. For the Taliban, cozying up to China also plays on Beijing’s international rhetoric, highlighting how China can be a responsible big power, in contrast to U.S. interventionism and attempts to change societies.
Beijing will take a much more cautious approach, as Chinese leadership remains uncertain about the Taliban’s ability to deliver on their promises of stabilizing Afghanistan and stemming outbound terrorism. Beijing sees potential future opportunities to access minerals close to home, and Afghanistan’s location could provide a valuable north-south link in regional transportation infrastructure. Much has been made of China’s concern about ethnic Uyghur militants potentially striking from Afghanistan into Xinjiang. But Beijing’s main concern is the potential for militancy to spread into Central and South Asia, threatening its BRI and CPEC projects. Several militant groups working with the Taliban are either based or have ambitions in neighboring countries. And with the United States out of Afghanistan, these groups may refocus their attention back to their original goals.
Beijing is also reticent to get pulled into Afghanistan, given the history of other great powers. Afghan mineral resources are not vital enough, nor are the transit routes necessary enough, for China to risk either getting caught up in a civil war or being seen as the new foreign invader. On the international front, while Beijing has exploited the U.S. withdrawal to try and score some rhetorical political points, China’s leaders do not want to be seen as responsible for the Taliban and potentially blamed for their failure to quell transnational terrorism. China is unwilling to use military force inside Afghanistan, and thus has minimal real influence beyond promises of aid and investment. After decrying Afghan terrorism and the U.S. intervention for years, Beijing has also had a difficult time convincing its own population that the Taliban are suddenly a reliable partner and that China should take a strong interest in Afghanistan.
In the end, China is more likely to provide aid to help stabilize Afghanistan, while potentially exploring some additional investment or development work — but only if the Taliban can ensure the security of Chinese workers, which may be difficult for some time. For Beijing, and many other regional countries, an unstable Afghanistan is the worst-case scenario, creating pockets of ungoverned space for militants to exploit, while triggering refugee flows and potential cross-border fighting. But while China wants to see a stable Afghanistan, it will avoid any significant entanglements for fear of being held responsible for the Taliban’s actions, as well as becoming the latest in a long line of powers that have found themselves stuck and ultimately defeated in the “graveyard of empires.”
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-bwV0-XMAIVRwy?format=jpg&name=large)
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"The challenge for Pakistan will be in dismounting the proverbial tiger. Pakistan may feel that it can control or tame the Taliban, however, the fact is that the Taliban is an extremely radicalised terrorist organisation, and that makes it a different ball game altogether. The world is likely to witness a call for a more radicalised Pakistan, internal turmoil fuelled by an unstable neighbour. Though Pakistan may have gained strategic relevance in the immediate to near term, the people of Pakistan will lose much more in the near to mid term, as various terrorist organisations are now more emboldened, having tasted victory. Calls for radicalization and Jihad will grow in the region and the most impacted will be Pakistan.
For Pakistan riding the ‘Taliban Tiger’ might be an exhilarating experience but the cost and consequences are likely to plunge the nation into anarchy. As they say you can ride the tiger, but the challenge lies as to when and how to dismount."
https://chanakyaforum.com/pakistan-riding-the-taliban-tiger/ (https://chanakyaforum.com/pakistan-riding-the-taliban-tiger/)
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Osama's AQ security Chief gets a warm welcome in Afgh. Terrorists of the World unite :-)
https://twitter.com/i/status/1432341185922834436 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1432341185922834436)
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Who could have imagined this back on 9/12/2001?
Osama's AQ security Chief gets a warm welcome in Afgh. Terrorists of the World unite :-)
https://twitter.com/i/status/1432341185922834436 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1432341185922834436)
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https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1434126464849428483
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https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1434126464849428483
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395371.php
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https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/06/us-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-is-more-than-90percent-complete.html.
This of course is false because they aren't 90% complete now. They don't know what complete is.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj5QEvOBUCc&t=19s
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17721/erdogan-afghanistan-terrorists
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-ma9AfVQAILLkO?format=jpg&name=medium)
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Taliban cabinet
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-tnGEsWEAUCTo9?format=jpg&name=medium)
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https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/07/former-acting-dni-ric-grenell-gen-milleys-lying-about-who-decided-to-shut-down-bagram/
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If one closes his eyes and hears Blinks speak in this video it is precisely with the technique of the great snake:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2021/09/08/blinken-reverses-yesterdays-position-now-admits-taliban-is-blocking-evacuation-flights-n2595534
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/09/08/taliban-paints-over-george-floyd-mural-in-kabul-with-victory-slogans/
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https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000007963596/us-drone-attack-kabul-investigation.html
https://nypost.com/2021/09/10/kabul-strike-killed-us-aid-worker-and-family-not-isis-bombers/
Killed a US aid worker and his family.
The purpose of the strike was to save face - mitigate falling approval numbers, hence the rush, hence the error.
What did Biden know and when did he know it? He didn't learn of it today I suspect.
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Fk , , ,
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https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000007963596/us-drone-attack-kabul-investigation.html
https://nypost.com/2021/09/10/kabul-strike-killed-us-aid-worker-and-family-not-isis-bombers/
Killed a US aid worker and his family.
The purpose of the strike was to save face - mitigate falling approval numbers, hence the rush, hence the error.
What did Biden know and when did he know it? He didn't learn of it today I suspect.
Contrast it with this statement: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/biden-blasts-americans-eve-9-11-witnessed-violence-america-muslims-true-followers-peaceful-religion-video/
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https://rumble.com/vlw3jx-tu-lam-and-shawn-ryan-talk-over-afghanistan-withdrawal.html
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/taliban-lying-frances-foreign-minister-220903073.html
US White House:
"The White House released a statement Thursday praising the “businesslike” and “professional” Taliban for its cooperation with the departure of U.S. citizens and lawful residents via a charter flight."
Disgustingly the Biden administration is lying at least as much!
From Biden to Blinks to WH spokespeople and our Generals .
True we cannot trust the Taliban but we cannot trust the US leadership either.
They are all lying to us.
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E_Gqa6_WYAUk2lb?format=jpg&name=900x900)
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URL for that YA?
==================
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1058716/must-see-lara-logan-just-messaged?fbclid=IwAR18B7Zvt1zVSVGhORFzHefdbtHUV5bn_q7jmfusok3dgdFc3cRItPft6zA
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1058873/lara-logan-on-appeasement-u-s-weapons-transfers-to-taliban-more
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https://twitter.com/drapr007/status/1437117138720858114/photo/1
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WSJ lead editorial:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/left-behind-afghanistan-immigrant-visas-11631473668?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
Those Still Left Behind in Afghanistan
The U.S. isn’t doing nearly enough to free those who are trapped.
By The Editorial Board
Sept. 12, 2021 5:18 pm ET
Afghan Border National Police personnel stand guard outside the airport in Kabul, Sept. 12.
The Taliban finally let more than 100 Americans, Canadians, Brits, U.S. permanent residents, and others fly out of Afghanistan Thursday and Friday. The State Department said it expects more departures, but the Biden Administration still isn’t doing nearly enough to save thousands of Afghans who earned the right to emigrate to the U.S.
Americans, U.S. residents and endangered Afghans are still scattered throughout the country. The Taliban have effectively taken hundreds hostage at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Some Americans have been told to travel to Kabul, but no one knows how many can do so safely.
“The United States has pulled every lever available to us to facilitate the departure of these charter flights from Mazar,” a State Department spokesman said Thursday, adding that “we were very clear” they should be allowed to leave. This helplessness is humiliating, and across Afghanistan a massive tragedy is unfolding.
The Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program offers a path to U.S. citizenship for Afghans who worked with the American government for at least a year during the war. The process can take years, and hundreds of applicants and family members have been killed over time. A State Department official acknowledged that “the majority” of SIV applicants remained after U.S. forces departed. This is one of the worst wartime betrayals in U.S. history.
“There are about 18,000 so-called principal applicants in the system. Of the 18,000, half are at the very early stages,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in June. “Then there is another 9,000 who are much further along.” Mr. Blinken played down the risk of a quick Afghan government collapse, and Foggy Bottom did little to avert the nightmare now unfolding for thousands of SIV applicants.
James Miervaldis of the nonprofit No One Left Behind says that his organization is aware of some 200 approved SIV applicants and their families hiding throughout the country. Fully vetted with paperwork in hand, they were told by the State Department to remain in place during the chaotic evacuation. Then the last American planes left.
Organizations like No One Left Behind have the financial wherewithal to pay for their flights out of the country, but they’re at the mercy of the Taliban to allow safe passage. Remember these families whenever the White House brags about the scale of the August airlift.
The thousands more still in the 14-step application process should have been evacuated to a secure location months ago. Politicoreports that only 705 SIV applicants left during the evacuation. Some U.S. officials have denied that number but declined to provide their own. Mr. Blinken is testifying before the House and Senate this week, and Congress should demand exact numbers.
The Taliban said last week that it will let only foreign passport- or visa-holders leave the country. Are the thousands of endangered Afghans supposed to wait for the process to play out from Washington? And if they survive long enough to get a visa, who expects the Taliban to grant safe passage? The new government’s security forces are run by a leader of the terrorist Haqqani Network wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The State Department says “we are considering and we are developing additional processing alternatives so that we can continue to deliver important consular services, including to these American citizens, these LPRs, these Afghans at risk.” Consular services? No wonder the Taliban feel free to humiliate the Biden Administration.
The White House needs to tell—not ask—the Taliban that whoever wants to leave can do so at America’s invitation. If the Taliban refuse, the U.S. can oppose the new government economically and diplomatically, as well as assisting the internal opposition. Second, the U.S. needs to take every action possible—overt and covert, overland and in the air—to get people out. The State Department should commend and work with private groups on rescue missions, not treat them as a nuisance.
The Biden Administration wants nothing more than to wash its hands of the debacle in Afghanistan, and it has a political incentive to play down or obfuscate the number of trapped Afghans eligible to come to America. But the world shouldn’t forget that thousands of would-be Americans—men, women and children—face arrest, torture or death because of the White House rush to the Afghan exits.
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Democracy Dies in Darkness
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/12/what-we-still-dont-know-about-americans-afghanistan/
Opinion: What we still don’t know about Americans in Afghanistan
Opinion by Hugh Hewitt
The phrase “credibility gap” was popularized during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas used it to describe his inability to get straight answers from LBJ and his minions on the escalating Vietnam War. To all subsequent presidents has come some charge of a credibility gap.
President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and press secretary Jen Psaki now all suffer from a credibility gap born of obfuscation over the Afghan catastrophe. Though the State Department can count the minimum number of “Americans” — defined by me as all U.S. passport holders, whether citizens or Legal Permanent Residents with “green cards” known to its teams by text, email and phone calls — no one at State or the White House can seem to agree on what that number is.
This past Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told CNN there were “around 100” Americans left in Afghanistan. On Thursday, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said “hundreds” are still stranded. The Post’s Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief Susannah George told my radio audience Friday morning there is simply no way to know, as some passport holders are cut off and most of the country is out of contact with anyone.
We have a right to know the scale of this crisis: the minimum number of U.S. passport holders known by our authorities to be in Afghanistan. And it is a crisis. It is America Held Hostage 2.0, and though a cohort of Americans escaped Thursday, many remain behind. Psaki, with astonishing indifference to the worries of families and friends across the country, said on Wednesday that there were a “handful” of Americans still in Afghanistan.
A “handful.” It is shocking to hear that. Americans do not come in “handfuls.” They come in ones. Each one matters. One American abandoned is a crisis. We need to know the denominator against which the “ongoing efforts” can be measured. We celebrate every American who escapes, but we cannot forget and dare not accept the minimization of Americans left behind.
We must also learn the state of the president’s robustness. I believe my eyes. The president is, in my opinion, infirm. He is old. Soon to be 79, Biden shows his years every time he appears in public.
Biden is not incapacitated. He’s not sidelined. He is simply lacking the “energy in the Executive” that Alexander Hamilton identified in the Federalist Papers as the key ingredient in the president’s competence and the federal government’s success. This isn’t an issue of chronological age, but simply of energy. Biden lacks it. The press fails the people when it refuses, absolutely and repeatedly refuses, to discuss what this means for the country given the urgent issue of hostages, and the menace of emboldened enemies who must see in the president’s infirmity a vast field of opportunities.
On Tuesday, Chris Wallace spoke to me with the sort of candor we need, but his target was Blinken. It is worth quoting Wallace at length.
“I’m very unimpressed by the State operation,” Wallace began. “I’m very unimpressed by Antony Blinken,” he continued. “You know, Blinken had a news conference, I guess it was, well, it was last Friday. It was when he refused to say how many people, Americans and Afghans, had gotten out. And you know, he was speaking with all the passion of somebody reading the telephone book.”
Wallace grew animated. “And you know, it’s not a matter of politics. It’s a matter of presence and gravitas. When Mike Pompeo or Hillary Clinton or, you know, you can go on and on, Colin Powell, spoke for the United States of America, there was, you know, there was a ‘Don’t mess with us, guys, we’re the United States of America.’ Blinken, I think, is a great staff man, but I’m not, I’m very doubtful as to whether he should be … the voice of America’s presence in the world.”
That is a blunt and devastating assessment of American leadership, and if a broadcaster says it, imagine what the Taliban, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping must think. We are in deep, deep trouble.
That trouble is compounded by legitimate questions, all unanswered, about the president’s energy and capacity. Merriam-Webster defines “infirm” this way: “of poor or deteriorated vitality.” The first step to repairing our crisis is a strong secretary of state, one whom the world pauses to watch when he or she speaks. There are many candidates. Time to make a change, Mr. President. American lives depend upon it. As does your credibility with the people.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17760/gifting-afghanistan-to-fundamentalists
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amazing what a pussy he is with our enemies
but with Republicans he treats us like crap , lies , takes zero responsibility
with a straight partisan face
as he and his entourage seriously damaged our standing in the world in several ways.
on him, McCain was more right than ever !
this guy is a great danger and totally incompetent
and a prick to boot
no shame no integrity
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Technology transfer in Afgh,
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/09/how-equipment-left-afghanistan-will-expose-us-secrets/185264/ (https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/09/how-equipment-left-afghanistan-will-expose-us-secrets/185264/)
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Also see: https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?topic=1032.900 :-)
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September 8, 2021
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The Taliban’s Strategic Dilemmas
By: Ridvan Bari Urcosta
As the Taliban once again transition from an insurgency to a political institution, questions surround the kind of government they want to be. Domestic policies are one thing; the nature of their foreign policy, if they even decide to have one, is quite another. Will they, for example, join the regional system of Central Asian autarkies, or become a base for Islamic radicalism worldwide? Either answer will have major implications for regional powerbrokers like Russia, China and, to a lesser extent, India and Turkey. These countries have an interest in maintaining ties to a Taliban government even as they have serious concerns about what an empowered Taliban might mean for their own territories.
The Taliban and the Islamic State
It’s well known that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar ruled Afghanistan in accordance with Shariah prior to the 2001 invasion, but it’s important to remember that Afghanistan at this time was an Islamic state, not the Islamic State. The Taliban never extended their banner much beyond their borders, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. In 1998, Omar said the goal of his movement was, “To end the mischief in the country, to establish peace and security, to protect life, wealth and honor and to enforce the Sharia, do jihad against the leaders who were devoted for power, and endeavor to make the land of Afghanistan an exemplary state.” As an experiment in transnational jihadism, Afghanistan may have failed, but it did become one of the premier havens for terrorist groups throughout the world.
Fast forward to the mid-2010s, when the Islamic State exploded onto the scene in Iraq. Plenty of other Islamist groups existed before it – al-Qaida, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Boko Haram, Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Caucasus Emirate, just to name a few – but none was as systemic a threat as IS. For the other groups, the caliphate was a secondary concern, not because they didn’t want one but because they believed the historical conditions weren’t quite ripe yet. Moreover, many of these groups were formed with geographic and ethnic bases and as such were either less suited or less immediately interested in global dominance. As an extra-ethnic and extra-territorial entity, IS was different and, to those at risk of its attacks, scarier. Now that the Taliban is back in power, groups operating in Afghanistan, such as Islamic State-Khorasan, are reviving those fears.
However, those fears may be a little misplaced. Ties between the Taliban and the Islamic State were icy from the beginning. The Taliban always saw IS as an alien presence in the country and thus as a political opponent, and their ideological differences are such that the Hanafi principles of Islam practiced by the Taliban are considered heretical by the Salafists of IS and other pan-Islamist organizations. Moreover, it’s important for the Taliban to achieve some degree of normalization and stability. That very well may include a readiness to fight IS for what took 20 years to retake.
The new Taliban government thus faces two challenges. The first is to gain international recognition and legitimacy such that they can govern, trade, acquire investment and participate in the global system (if they want to). The second is to prevent extremist groups or other rebels from challenging their rule. What complicates things further is that IS-K sees itself as a constituent part of a future caliphate, and much of its leadership were former Taliban fighters. In other words, some factions from the Taliban share the Islamic State’s global revolutionary agenda and so may be less inclined to building a nation-state.
Like it or not, these challenges may be easier to manage with international recognition and backing. Eurasian powers such as Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and the European Union may well back the Taliban if they believe the group can be trusted to at least maintain stability again, especially if stability can be used as a bulwark again the Islamic State.
Concerns of Eurasian Powers
It wasn’t easy to defeat the Islamic State, but it wasn’t hard to assemble a coalition against it. When it came to power in Iraq, it was close to strategically important places such as Turkey, the North Caucasus, the Balkans and the EU. It was also an existential threat to regional Arab monarchies.
Rightly or wrongly, Afghanistan is less urgent. No one is going to cobble together an international military force to protect or oust the Taliban at this point. But necessity often dictates behavior, and if international powers believe IS to be a more dire threat than the Taliban, they may tacitly endorse the Taliban even if they don’t directly, materially support them.
Each of the major powers in Eurasia has its own set of concerns when it comes to Afghanistan and the Taliban’s resurgence. Let’s begin with Russia. Moscow has a long history of confronting Islamic extremism in the North Caucasus, especially in the restive regions of Chechnya and Dagestan. Throughout the 1990s, it faced significant levels of resistance from non-Slavic Muslim populations there, and the Kremlin even launched a full-fledged war against the Chechens and other groups in the region.
(click to enlarge)
To the east of the North Caucasus, Moscow still has significant influence in the former Soviet states of Central Asia. These countries themselves experienced a struggle between secularist and Islamic extremist forces two decades ago, as newly independent nations. Today, they also have an impact on what happens in Russia, especially considering that millions of migrants from Central Asia and Russians with Central Asian heritage live in Russia. Given that three Central Asian states share borders with Afghanistan, Moscow is concerned that the instability there could spill over into Central Asia and then spread into the North Caucasus.
Central Asia
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Indeed, the profile of terrorists in Russia has changed over the past few years. Terrorists of Central Asian descent have increased in number compared to those originating from the North Caucasus. The Islamic State is also increasingly influential among these groups. According to Russia’s FSB security services, in 2015, 20 percent of the Muslim population in the Far East region of Khabarovsk, mostly consisting of immigrants, shared the views and vision of the Islamic State. Rising tensions between ethnic Russians and immigrants from Central Asia in major Russian cities have also led to further isolation and radicalization of these groups in recent years. For Moscow, therefore, it’s crucial that secular regimes remain in power in Central Asia. These regimes themselves became increasingly concerned with the situation in Afghanistan as the government in Kabul began to crumble. The Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, which has among its members three Central Asian states, launched large-scale exercises in Tajikistan near the Afghan border in recent weeks.
Russia and Central Asian states also closely coordinated their responses with China, whose own concerns about Afghanistan relate to its Uyghur population. The mostly Muslim Uyghurs are concentrated in China’s eastern province of Xinjiang, which gives Beijing an advantage over a place like Russia, where the Muslim population is scattered throughout the country. Still, Xinjiang is linked to Afghanistan through the Wakhan Corridor, meaning extremist elements there still present a danger to Beijing.
India and Pakistan’s concerns about the Taliban’s resurgence relate to the disputed region of Kashmir. Pakistan has drawn criticism from India for its long-standing support for the Taliban and related militant groups. The Taliban’s rise to power strengthened Pakistan’s position in the region and made India hyper-vigilant about an increase in anti-government activity in Muslim-dominated Kashmir. Thus, extremist activity there has the potential to draw Pakistan and India into direct confrontation. Pakistan also has close ties to China, which has territorial disputes with India in the Laddakh region, east of Kashmir. India must therefore consider China’s potential response to any moves it makes against Pakistan.
Kashmir: A Disputed Region
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Turkey is not as well-positioned to act in Afghanistan as the other Eurasian countries, but it has made moves to remain active in the political and diplomatic realms. Ankara is trying to expand its influence in Central Asia through economic investments and by leveraging its cultural ties to other Turkic nations in the region. Its worry in Afghanistan is the potential for extremists to reignite problems closer to home. Hizb ut-Tahrir, a transnational group that aims to establish a global caliphate, is of particular concern because of its attempts to unite the Turkic peoples of Central Asia.
The Eurasian powers have adopted a mostly wait-and-see approach to the Taliban for now. Despite the Taliban declaring the country the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the international community isn’t like to unite a fighting force against it. The coalition against IS was formed not only because of the group’s threat as a terrorist organization but also because the West, Eurasian powers, and secular and moderate Muslim regimes in the Middle East wanted to quash a movement that presented the first serious claim to caliphate status since the Ottoman Empire. But the Taliban are different. Their Islamic revolution is confined to Afghanistan.
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https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/09/blood-on-his-hands.php
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17761/taliban-international-legitimacy
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https://dailycaller.com/2021/09/14/pakistan-taliban-united-states-afghanistan-antony-blinken/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2360&tpcc%3D=newsletter&pnespid=7uQ6VSFIPqBGxfiap2m.EYOI5guuRpR9fbexn_p3shFm2iWoStErnRRQjOgVRIXyoynqravm
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https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/blinkens-hollow-assurances-on-afghanistan/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MJ_20210915&utm_term=Jolt-Smart
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1089930/afghanistan-us-government-still-leaving-americans-behind
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https://www.hoover.org/research/lost-war-conversation-victor-davis-hanson-and-h-r-mcmaster-afghanistans-past-present-and
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https://bigleaguepolitics.com/not-sending-their-best-military-base-families-in-danger-as-afghan-refugees-engage-in-rape-assault-crime/
Magic soil not working!
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https://bigleaguepolitics.com/not-sending-their-best-military-base-families-in-danger-as-afghan-refugees-engage-in-rape-assault-crime/
Magic soil not working!
https://www.wibc.com/blogs/hammer-and-nigel/national-guard-member-makes-shocking-claims-about-camp-atterbury-conditions/
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https://bigleaguepolitics.com/not-sending-their-best-military-base-families-in-danger-as-afghan-refugees-engage-in-rape-assault-crime/
Magic soil not working!
https://www.wibc.com/blogs/hammer-and-nigel/national-guard-member-makes-shocking-claims-about-camp-atterbury-conditions/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ari-j-kaufman/2021/09/22/mayorkas-just-3-percent-of-afghan-evacuees-in-u-s-are-special-immigrant-visa-holders-n1480555
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https://www.hoover.org/research/lost-war-conversation-victor-davis-hanson-and-h-r-mcmaster-afghanistans-past-present-and
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https://bigleaguepolitics.com/not-sending-their-best-military-base-families-in-danger-as-afghan-refugees-engage-in-rape-assault-crime/
Magic soil not working!
https://www.wibc.com/blogs/hammer-and-nigel/national-guard-member-makes-shocking-claims-about-camp-atterbury-conditions/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/two-afghan-refugees-charged-federal-crimes-fort-mccoy-including-engaging-sexual-act-minor-using-force/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ari-j-kaufman/2021/09/22/mayorkas-just-3-percent-of-afghan-evacuees-in-u-s-are-special-immigrant-visa-holders-n1480555
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Imran Khan...professional beggar
https://youtu.be/JmTCME0b0M8 (https://youtu.be/JmTCME0b0M8)
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fghanistan strikes puts spotlight on Ukraine tensions
BY GUY TAYLOR THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Biden administration indicated Tuesday that it is weighing an offer from Moscow to use Russian military bases in Central Asia for future counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan and the region, even as U.S.-Russia tensions soar on other fronts — most notably in Ukraine.
The extent to which the two matters are connected remains to be seen, although there are signs Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to link them, if only to undercut President Biden’s efforts to back Ukraine.
The Putin government on Monday issued fresh warnings about U.S.-backed NATO activity in Ukraine, asserting that any expansion of NATO military infrastructure in the country would cross “red lines.”
The warning came as The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon is weighing offer from Mr. Putin for U.S. forces to use Russian bases Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan for operations in Afghanistan. According to The Journal, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley discussed the issue in a meeting last week with Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov at the request of the White House.
The U.S. has insisted that even after the Afghanistan withdrawal, American drones can strike terrorist targets from “over the horizon,” though military leaders have acknowledged such missions are much more logistically challenging. Permanent American bases near Afghanistan would make the task far easier, but the U.S. so far has not secured an agreement with a nearby nation to house American personnel, planes or vehicles.
Republicans are bristling at the prospect that the Biden administration may put American forces in a position of dependence on Russian military bases, a prospect GOP lawmakers say is unacceptable because of the Kremlin’s military aggression in Ukraine.
“We are deeply troubled to learn from press reports that your administration is in discussions with the Russian Federation to secure access to Russian military installations in Central Asian countries and potentially engage in some form of military cooperation on counterterrorism with the Russians,” a group of top congressional Republicans wrote Monday to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Inviting Russia into discussions will not further vital U.S. counterterrorism goals, nor is it the path to the ‘stable and predictable’ relationship with Russia the Biden administration claims it wants,” stated the letter, whose signers included the four ranking Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees.
Asked about the talks Tuesday, Mr. Austin told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that Gen. Milley merely sought “clarification” about the base offer from his Russian counterpart last week.
Mr. Austin stressed the U.S. isn’t seeking Russia’s approval for counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan, although he acknowledged the two nations now have a dialogue about sharing resources in the region. “I can assure you we are not seeking Russia’s permission to do anything, but I believe ... [Gen. Milley] asked for clarification what that offer was,” the defense secretary said.
Republicans say such cooperation with Moscow is evidence of the difficult spot the U.S. now finds itself in due to the Biden administration’s total military withdrawal from Afghanistan. “They’ve really left us in a terrible position that we have to ask the Russians to be able to protect the United States from terrorists, and we have to ask them to use their installations,” Sen. Deb Fischer, Nebraska Republican, said Tuesday.
The administration’s policy goals in Ukraine may be at risk. Mr. Biden rolled out a new humanitarian and military package for Kyiv in early September, featuring some $60 million worth of Javelin antitank missiles and other aid.
The package outraged the Putin government, which has backed pro-Russian separatist forces inside Ukraine since annexing the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and briefly massed troops on the Ukrainian border earlier this year.
Ukraine is not a NATO member but has spent recent years aligning with the U.S. and NATO. Ukrainian forces recently engaged in joint drills with U.S. and other NATO member troops. The drills occurred at the same time that Russia and nearby Belarus were to hold their own joint exercises.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Mr. Putin, has accused the U.S. of setting up training centers in Ukraine that he says amount to military bases. Mr. Lukashenko was quoted by the RIA news agency as saying he has discussed the issue with Mr. Putin and the two “agreed that we need to take some kind of measures in response.”
A Reuters report on the Belarusian president’s comments said that when asked what joint actions Mr. Lukashenko was referring to, the Kremlin responded: “These are actions that ensure the security of the two of our states.”
“President Putin has repeatedly noted the issue of the potential broadening of NATO infrastructure on Ukrainian territory, and [he] has said this would cross those red lines that he has spoken about before,” the Kremlin said, the news agency reported.
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Ben Wolfgang contributed to this report.
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https://news.yahoo.com/man-u-didnt-mean-kill-131812524.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
Mistakes happen but this is shameful.
Remind me who was fired over this. Biden?
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The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan has created political, economic and security challenges for India. New Delhi’s strategy will focus on preserving some degree of political engagement with Kabul while reaching out to countries like Russia and Iran to influence regional events and try to mitigate the risk of terrorism. Lodged between regional rivals China and Pakistan, Afghanistan has great strategic value for India. India’s relationship with Afghanistan has also helped India with its national security and economic goals for the region. For New Delhi, influence in Afghanistan by means of a strong engagement with the former democratic government has been helpful in keeping its neighboring nemesis Pakistan in check. Over the past 20 years, India has built up large strategic capital through developmental investment and people-to-people ties in Afghanistan.
Economically, Afghanistan has also become an important node for facilitating India’s trade and connectivity with West and Central Asia. But with the Taliban now ruling the country, the soft power New Delhi has spent years building up in Afghanistan now hangs in balance.
Afghanistan is an important piece of the International North-South Transport Corridor, an approximately 4,500 mile-long multi-mode network of ship, rail and road routes for moving freight between India, Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Russia, as well as Central Asia and Europe more broadly. Afghanistan was also envisioned to be a key node for the transport of goods from India to Central Asia.
Over the past 20 years, India spent roughly $3 billion to bolster the now-deposed U.S.-installed regime in Afghanistan. Since 2001, New Delhi has helped build roads, dams, power lines, clinics and schools across the country, and also trained civil servants and Afghan officers, in addition to providing scholarships to thousands of Afghan students.
India entered into a strategic partnership with the former Afghan government in 2011, after which New Delhi engaged heavily in economic reconstruction and building up diplomatic relations in Afghanistan.
India also funded the 135-mile highway connecting the Delaram District in Afghanistan to the border of Iran. The $150-million Zaranj-Delaram highway holds high strategic significance since the road connects India to landlocked Afghanistan via Iran’s Chabahar port bypassing Pakistan.
The Taliban takeover, however, has created geopolitical challenges that will likely erode India’s ties with Afghanistan. The Taliban’s rapid advance in Afghanistan over the summer was as much of a shock to India as it was to the rest of the world. Unlike Russia or China, India never engaged with the Taliban on any level and supported the fragile democracy backed by the United States. Taliban leaders, meanwhile, don’t trust India, given New Delhi’s support to the former Afghan government and ongoing rivalry with the Taliban’s main partner, Pakistan. This will make it hard for India and the new Taliban-led Afghan government to reach even minimal cooperation in the future.
Despite security assurances from the Taliban during and after the fall of Kabul in mid-August, the Indian government decided to go ahead with evacuating all of its nationals from the embassy in the Afghan capital.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the transfer of power to the Taliban for not being inclusive during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit held on Sept. 18 in Tajikistan.
Pakistan, India’s historic rival, will likely work with Afghanistan to further reduce New Delhi’s influence in the country in the coming months. India’s engagement in Afghanistan in the recent decades has fueled concerns in Pakistan of being encircled by India to the east and by the pro-Indian government to the west and north. Pakistan’s historical links to the Taliban — which has included providing Taliban fighters safe havens, indirect arms and financing over the years — had also strained Islamabad’s relationship with the former Afghan government. In this regard, the Taliban victory has opened the door to a more friendly government in Kabul, where Pakistan can increase its influence. As a result, Pakistan will likely try to prevent India’s close engagement with the Taliban to maintain its leverage over Kabul, while also working closely with China and Afghanistan’s other immediate neighbors to spearhead regional cooperation. Pakistan can also now leverage its strategic ties with the Taliban to shift assets in event of a military flare-up on its border with India, effectively limiting New Delhi’s reach to any conflict zones.
The Taliban’s leadership council, known as the "Quetta Shura,” had reportedly been operating from the Pakistani city of Quetta for the majority of the past 20 years leading up to the fall of Kabul in August.
In 1999, during their first reign in Afghanistan, the Taliban gave the hijackers of an Indian passenger jet safe passage to Pakistan after they landed in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. New Delhi also remains deeply wary of the Taliban’s close links to Pakistan’s military spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.
China’s growing influence in Afghanistan poses another challenge for India, considering New Delhi and Beijing's ongoing strategic disputes. In recent weeks, China has been proactively engaging with the Taliban and appears ready to work with them. Now that there is some degree of stability in the country with the formation of a formal caretaker government, China — facilitated by Pakistan — will likely support Afghanistan through both humanitarian and developmental aid.
China, along with Pakistan and Russia, kept its embassy open during the Taliban takeover and the chaotic evacuations that followed.
On Sept. 9, just two days after the Taliban unveiled their internationally controversial caretaker government, China pledged $31 million worth of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.
The Taliban have stated that China is one of the most important neighbors for their economic development and have expressed a willingness to join Beijing’s massive Belt and Road Initiative.
The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan is also creating new security threats for India by raising the risk of cross-border terrorism. Militant groups active in Afghanistan and other nearby countries will likely recruit the thousands of prisoners freed during the Taliban takeover of Kabul. Indeed, there are reports that Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), a militant group that operates from Pakistan, has already begun recruiting fighters from Afghanistan. Pakistani armed forces are likely to indirectly facilitate attacks or militant infiltrations into India. Although the Taliban have assured India that no terrorist groups will operate from Afghanistan against India, there is no guarantee the Taliban even have the capability to keep militancy from spreading across Afghanistan. In addition to JeM, regional Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliates also pose a threat to India. The Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), for example, has close ties with al Qaeda, raising the potential for an increased flow of fighters from Afghanistan to India-Pakistan border regions. Despite lacking a stronghold in India, the Islamic State has also been able to recruit individuals from the southern Indian states of Kerala and Karnataka via propaganda and radicalization campaigns on social media.
The head of JeM visited Afghanistan shortly after the fall of Kabul to congratulate the Taliban and seek their support for JeM’s operations against India in the disputed Kashmir region.
On Aug. 31, the Indian government’s counter-terrorism task force reported it was closely monitoring 25 Indian nationals suspected to be working with the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) in Afghanistan on online efforts to recruit new Indian fighters.
Given its limited options, India’s immediate strategy in Afghanistan will focus on making timid gestures toward political dialogue while trying to mitigate security threats. India now has little control over the situation in Afghanistan due to Pakistan and China’s influence in the country and close relationships with the Taliban. New Delhi will thus likely remain cautious in approaching Afghanistan in the short term, waiting to see how the new Taliban-led governance structure develops while also monitoring for any new terrorist activity in the country.
While it’ll be slow to grant formal recognition to the Taliban government, India will likely attempt to establish relations with Afghanistan’s new leaders in the coming weeks in an effort to keep basic communication channels open. The existing infrastructure developed by India and prospects of regional connectivity projects could be initial avenues of engagement in the country. To deal with the security threat, New Delhi may further increase counterterrorism operations and troop deployments in the Jammu and Kashmir region, as well as other border states like Punjab and Rajasthan. The Indian government has already expressed an urgency to deploy an anti-drone system at the border to effectively deal with threats posed by militants in the region using such technologies to launch attacks on India.
In June, a Qatari official announced that an informal meeting between Indian diplomats and Taliban representatives had taken place in Qatar.
On Aug. 31, India’s ambassador to Qatar officially met with Taliban representatives in Doha after Qatar hosted an informal meeting in June between Indian diplomats and Taliban leaders.
In addition, India will work with other regional countries to protect its interests in Afghanistan and influence developments in the region. Following the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) — which includes Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran and most Central Asian countries — has emerged as the focal group for nearby countries to develop some form of a joint strategy to prevent a wider security crisis in the region. India is likely to use this forum to work with Iran and Russia and, to a lesser extent, Tajikistan on Afghanistan-related issues. If the situation in Afghanistan becomes volatile again and the terrorist threat increases significantly, India may eventually also join Iran and Tajikistan in supporting the Panjshir resistance and/or other anti-Taliban movements that arise in Afghanistan. But this is an unlikely scenario, as such movements are unlikely to fully stamp out the Taliban — resulting in only a severe deterioration of bilateral ties and a worsening of the overall security situation in the region. Supporting resistance forces would also risk triggering a wider civil war in Afghanistan between the Taliban and various local movements, sending more Afghan refugees into nearby countries while exacerbating overall security risks in the region.
Iran has a mixed complex relationship with the Taliban due to their ideological differences and the Taliban’s discriminatory treatment of Hazaras, a mostly Shiite ethnic group in Sunni-dominant Afghanistan. Russia, meanwhile, is keen to restrict any spread of violence and radical ideologies into Central Asian states, which are in Moscow’s own sphere of influence.
Tajikistan is the only country in the region that has criticized the Taliban for excluding ethnic Tajiks from the new Afghan government administration and is believed to be secretly supporting the resistance movement in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley.
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second
GUIDANCE
What to Watch For Amid Reports of an Anti-Taliban Movement in Afghanistan
7 MIN READAug 18, 2021 | 19:16 GMT
Armed men supporting Afghan security forces against the Taliban stand along a road in Panjshir on Aug. 18, 2021.
Armed men supporting Afghan security forces in the fight against the Taliban stand along a road in Panjshir on Aug. 18, 2021.
(AHMAD SAHEL ARMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Several unconfirmed reports indicate former Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, the son of the renowned Afghan resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, are rallying anti-Taliban forces in the former Northern Alliance stronghold of the Panjshir Valley — bringing into question the Taliban’s ability to govern the entire country mere days after seizing Kabul. Saleh declared himself as the “caretaker president” of the legitimate government of Afghanistan on Aug. 15 after former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country in the wake of the Taliban’s capture of Kabul. The following day, photos emerged of Saleh meeting with Massoud in the Panjshir Valley, which has repeatedly proven difficult terrain to conquer and remains outside Taliban control. Some reports suggest Afghanistan’s former defense minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, is also joining Saleh and Massoud, in addition to several other former Northern Alliance fighters and elements of the Afghan security forces. Saleh had close relations with Massoud’s father Ahmad Shah Massoud, who fought from the Panjshir Valley against the Soviet occupation from 1979-89, earning him the name “The Lion of the Panjshir. ” The elder Massoud also served in the Afghan government as defense minister beginning in 1992, before going on to co-lead Northern Alliance forces against Taliban rule. He was assassinated by al Qaeda days before the 9/11 attacks in 2001, in part to shore up support from the Taliban for the expected U.S. reprisal.
Tajiks from the Afghan security forces have allegedly arrived in the Panjshir Valley as well with heavy equipment and vehicles, bolstering potential resistance forces.
The Massoud family name widely resonates in Afghanistan, with the Sept. 9 anniversary of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s death commemorated annually.
While they remain unconfirmed, the reports of a budding anti-Taliban movement would fit a logical pattern in Afghanistan. Some members of the Afghan government and security forces have fled the country, and others have entered into negotiations with the Taliban. However, we would still expect to see others continue to resist Taliban rule through political and military means. The Taliban anticipated resistance, particularly from ethnic Tajiks (Tajik areas of Afghanistan remained largely outside of Taliban control in the 1990s). Taliban forces moved across northern areas of the country before swinging south to surround Kabul in order to disrupt the potential for organized opposition or the reconstitution of a Northern Alliance force. The Taliban reportedly left Jamaat Ansarullah, the so-called Tajik Taliban, in charge of the border with Tajikistan in an effort to split ethnic support for anti-Taliban operations (a tactic seen in many countries, most notably Myanmar, where the military has long pitted ethnic militia against their anti-government compatriots). This also potentially limits any Northern Alliance forces from resupply and recuperation in neighboring Tajikistan.
Taliban forces will continue to focus on the Panjshir Valley, even as they negotiate the final transition in Kabul. There are some reports that the younger Massoud may already be in discussions with the Taliban, which would counter reports of the formation of a new anti-Taliban militia. Massoud, in a recent interview with the Atlantic Council, had raised the potential for some accommodation with the Taliban, and perhaps a federalist structure for rule in Afghanistan. It is possible such ideas are part of the ongoing negotiations in Kabul and Oman regarding the next government of Afghanistan. While this would require some concessions from the Taliban, it would also reduce the likelihood of a continuing civil war, at least in the near term.
What to Watch For
As we monitor the situation, we have several outstanding questions we are addressing to determine the significance of opposition to the Taliban and the likelihood of expanded national conflict:
Is the reported resistance in the Panjshir Valley defensive or offensive?
If the reports of a new resistance movement are true, it poses a significant challenge to the Taliban’s control and its search for international legitimacy. The Panjshir Valley provides a strong redoubt for a resistance movement, and while the Taliban claims to control all border crossings and most of the territory between the valley and the border, it is difficult to quell all movement of personnel and goods along the frontier.
The resistance activity could also be more of a defensive operation, with the Panjshir Valley serving as a gathering place for those fleeing the Taliban or resisting Taliban control. There are reports, for example, of ethnic Hazara Shias moving into the valley to shelter from the Taliban. This would present a persistent problem for the Taliban, but not necessarily an unmanageable one, at least in the near term. While the Panjshir Valley is difficult terrain to conquer, the same strength of limited accessibility can be a liability, enabling the Taliban to largely bottle up the resistance within a single geographic area.
If this is about building a base for future operations against the Taliban, then we are likely to first see anti-Taliban forces move to the north to open up the border with Tajikistan and establish lines of communication outside Afghanistan to ensure resupply and perhaps even personnel and training. It is possible that the Panjshir Valley first provides a defensive position before later becoming a base of operations for the counter-push against the Taliban, at least in the north. From the Taliban’s perspective, it is vital to deny the opposition, either defensively or offensively, the freedom to use the strategic and symbolic Panjshir Valley.
How coherent is this nascent resistance movement?
One of the main challenges of the Afghan government and security forces has been the inability to overcome ethnic, tribal and political differences. The old Northern Alliance was able to coalesce around opposition to a single enemy and the new resistance may be able to do the same against the Taliban. However, it is not certain that all opposition leaders are equally committed to active resistance. Disagreements about an end goal would provide a space for the Taliban to exploit.
At the same time, the Taliban, in losing their single enemy (the United States and other foreign forces) may face their own challenges of internal cohesion, providing opportunities for anti-Taliban forces to exploit. This could be further exacerbated if central Taliban leadership seeks to enforce their promise of not allowing Afghanistan to be used as a base to attack neighboring countries. This could, in turn, pit the Afghan Taliban against their allies in the south — namely, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — shifting their focus away from the northern areas.
What level of external support is there for a militant resistance movement or an Afghan government in exile?
While there is general international criticism of Taliban rule, there is also apparent exhaustion in fighting in the Afghan conflict. Overt foreign support for a resistance movement inside Afghanistan could keep foreign powers on a terrorist attack list, something that would be weighed against the perceived benefits of supporting another Afghan insurgency. Russia and China are both seeking stability in Afghanistan, and the United States is trying to refocus its attention to the Indo-Pacific. Other regional powers like India would also need to weigh the costs and benefits of active support, as would bordering states that would most likely see spillover.
Is active foreign support necessary in the early phases of resistance?
If the new counter-Taliban movement has elements of the Afghan security forces, it also likely has access to sufficient arms and ammunition, at least in the near term. In addition, Afghanistan is notorious for being a haven for arms smuggling, providing another avenue for necessary supplies to move.
The international community may block the Taliban from accessing Afghan monies abroad, but it is not assured that a government in exile or a resistance movement would be allowed access to those funds. Saleh’s recent move to declare himself as the leader of Afghanistan’s legitimate government may be an attempt to ensure access to those accounts.
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https://andmagazine.com/talk/2021/10/02/bagram-lights-up-chinese-military-land-at-bagram-airbase-tonight/
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https://andmagazine.com/talk/2021/10/02/bagram-lights-up-chinese-military-land-at-bagram-airbase-tonight/
We spent 96 million to build that runway the PLAAF just landed on.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/02/us-leaves-bagram-airfield-afghanistan-497784
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probably come to take back, the military goodies we left behind.
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probably come to take back, the military goodies we left behind.
No doubt about that.
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To be fair, the people Biden virtually handed the keys to [Taliban] released Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri, who quickly and massively killed Americans and Afghans, which we avenged by killing more innocent people.
This is something that could not have been anticipated and prevented? Sorry but I don't think releasing terrorists while Americans are still at the airport was in Biden's predecessor's plan, which he was under no obligation to follow anyway.
Did we NOT have room at Guantanamo for more terrorists? No plane to fly them? We left hundreds of aircrafts behind including multiple C-130 Transport planes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-130_Hercules Terrorists and terror, as predictable as a hammer and a nai8l. What is the matter with these people [Biden administration]? They thought the released would take up farming?
THIS IS CNN! And wow do they rip him.
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https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/06/politics/kabul-airport-attacker-prison/index.html
ISIS-K suicide bomber who carried out deadly Kabul airport attack had been released from prison days earlier
By Oren Liebermann and Natasha Bertrand, CNN
Updated 11:38 AM ET, Wed October 6, 2021
(CNN)The ISIS-K suicide bomber who carried out a terrorist attack at Kabul international airport in late August, killing 13 US service members and dozens of Afghans, had been released from a prison near Kabul just days earlier when the Taliban took control of the area, according to three US officials.
Two US officials, as well as Rep. Ken Calvert, a California Republican who said he had been briefed by national security officials, said the suicide bomber was released from the Parwan prison at Bagram air base. The US controlled the base until it abandoned Bagram in early July. It had turned over the prison to Afghan authorities in 2013.
The revelation underscores the chaos around the final days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the struggle of the US to control a rapidly deteriorating situation around the airport as it relied on the Taliban to secure the perimeter of the airport.
The Parwan prison at Bagram, along with the Pul-e-Charkhi prison near Kabul, housed several hundred members of ISIS-K, as well as thousands of other prisoners when the Taliban took control of both facilities hours before taking over the capital with barely a shot fired in mid-August, a regional counter-terrorism source told CNN at the time. The Taliban emptied out both prisons, releasing their own members who had been imprisoned but also members of ISIS-K, which is the terror group's affiliate in Afghanistan.
Eleven days later, on August 26, it was one of those prisoners who carried out the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, killing the 13 US service members, including 11 Marines, one soldier and one sailor. They would be the last US troops killed in Afghanistan as part of America's longest war.
As of Tuesday, one Marine injured in the attack remains in a serious but stable condition at Walter Reed Military Medical Center near Washington, the Marine Corps said in a statement. Another Marine is receiving care at a specialty facility, while 16 others are receiving outpatient treatment.
Two US officials confirmed attacker's identity
ISIS-K took credit for the attack and named the suicide bomber as Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri. Two US officials confirmed the identity of the attacker. FirstPost, an English-language news site based in India, was first to report that he had been released from the Bagram prison.
The rapid transition from released prisoner to suicide bomber highlights the dangers Afghanistan could pose without a US military presence on the ground to monitor the latest developments in the country. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said the threat from Afghanistan is currently lower than it was after the 9/11 attack, but he warned that conditions "could be set" for a reconstitution of al Qaeda or ISIS-K.
"It's a real possibility in the not too distant future -- six,12, 18, 24, 36 months that kind of timeframe -- for reconstitution of al Qaeda or ISIS," Milley said at Capitol Hill hearing last week, "and it's our job now, under different conditions, to protect the American citizens against attacks from Afghanistan."
Five takeaways from senior military leaders' testimony on Afghanistan
Calvert, who serves as the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Defense, represented one of those killed in the suicide attack, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui. In a statement released last month, Calvert said he was briefed by national security officials on the identity of the suicide bomber and his release from Bagram prison.
In the statement, Calvert said the "disastrous" handling of the withdrawal "led to a series of events that culminated with the tragic loss of life on August 26th outside of the Kabul airport. Thirteen Americans, including one of my constituents, were killed because of the poor judgement and execution of our troop withdrawal."
The Biden administration faced widespread criticism for its withdrawal from Bagram, not only because of the decision to abandon a sprawling military complex that was the heart of the US military operations in Afghanistan for nearly 20 years, but also for the way in which it was done.
Some Afghan officials said the US left the base in the middle of the night with little warning. The Pentagon insisted there had been communication and coordination about the handover of the base about 48 hours before the US left, but that the exact time of the final departure from Bagram was never given to the Afghan government.
Majority of Bagram prisoners were terrorists
The US handed Bagram Air Base over to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) on July 1, as the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan neared 90% completion.
At the time, there were approximately 5,000 prisoners at Bagram, an Afghan Ministry of Defense spokesman told CNN. A few hundred were criminals, but the vast majority were terrorists, the spokesman said, including members of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. There were also foreign prisoners from Pakistan, Chechnya, and the Middle East detained there. It was up to the Afghans to secure the compound.
As the US was turning over Bagram to the ANDSF, the Taliban accelerated their sweep across the country, claiming to control 150 of Afghanistan's 407 districts by July 5. It was a sign of things to come, as provincial capitals began falling to the Taliban offensive in rapid succession. By mid-August, the Taliban were on the doorstep of Kabul and the complete collapse of the Afghan military was virtually complete.
On August 15, the day former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani secretly fled the country, the Taliban reached the capital city, taking control of Bagram air base and the Pul-e-Charkhi prison facility.
In releasing the prisoners, the Taliban introduced another threat into an already chaotic environment, just as thousands of Afghans rushed to Kabul international airport in an attempt to flee the country. Military officials warned of the possibility for an attack at the airport and a threat from ISIS-K, and the State Department repeatedly cautioned American citizens to stay from the airport or certain gates
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https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2021/10/movement-of-the-taliban-in-pakistan-ttp-consolidates-power-in-tribal-areas.php
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It was inevitable...The only thing I agreed with Hillary Alahamdullilah Clinton, was with her statement that if you breed snakes in your backyard, you are bound to get bitten!
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https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/10/12/when-pedophilia-became-foreign-policy/#more-250749
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I knew about this. Additional details/insight here.
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/088/228/960/original/dbcbc2cc46f82256.jpg
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/088/228/960/original/dbcbc2cc46f82256.jpg)
Well, they did work with the FBI/DOJ and MI6 to steal the election, so they have that going for them.
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Are you fg kidding me?!?
(In fairness it should be noted that the Ruskis previously have been a supply route for us.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/21/plan-z-afghanistan-lost-us-weighs-help-adversaries/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=nrjLJhuNSRBH1X%2B%2F2O%2ByI%2FvSyjGev1d5Fxm1HUibVlRB8Ku2KvhRWvc45i%2Bt2VXY&bt_ts=1634852408078
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We are beyond the stupidity event horizon.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10117573/Afghan-national-19-arrested-raping-young-woman-met-Montana-bar.html
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/not-sending-their-best-military-base-families-in-danger-as-afghan-refugees-engage-in-rape-assault-crime/
Magic soil not working!
https://www.wibc.com/blogs/hammer-and-nigel/national-guard-member-makes-shocking-claims-about-camp-atterbury-conditions/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/two-afghan-refugees-charged-federal-crimes-fort-mccoy-including-engaging-sexual-act-minor-using-force/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ari-j-kaufman/2021/09/22/mayorkas-just-3-percent-of-afghan-evacuees-in-u-s-are-special-immigrant-visa-holders-n1480555
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17871/afghanistan-withdrawal-terrorist-cocktail
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The US love affair with pak continues
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/politics/us-pakistan-afghanistan-airspace/index.html (https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/politics/us-pakistan-afghanistan-airspace/index.html)
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does US have any kind of relationship with the other "stans" north of Afghanistan?
looking at a map:
https://www.maps.com/products/middle-east-wall-map-political-ljp10032?variant=31067848048693&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIofWu6Ibh8wIV0fbICh3hjwbGEAQYAiABEgJ97fD_BwE
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https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/the-biden-admin-said-it-left-100-americans-in-afghanistan-they-now-admit-its-far-more/
Americans WILL be left behind.
Obviously this is RumInt:
=================
I just got this from Sam Faddis. (Former CIA)
“Folks, for those of you trying to help get people out of Afghanistan. Here is assessment based on information coming out of policy circles and from sources on the ground. Biden is hard over that we will have the last military personnel out of Kabul airport NLT 31 August. We may be gone before then. Drawdown could begin within next 72 hours.
"This is not conditions based. Biden has already disregarded all sound military advice. We can expect him to continue to do so. Anybody not out by the time the last plane leaves gets cut away.
"On the ground in Kabul all processing of Afghans has effectively stopped. Only AmCits being moved. People are finally realizing on the ground that this administration really will do things that are unthinkable.
"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.
"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.
"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.
"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.
"After we are gone the plan is apparently to take down the internet, expel foreign journalists and begin the Afghan version of the killing fields.”
"Sam is former CIA"
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I would be surprised if the Panjshir valley folds, this Taliban does not seem to be a fighting force, but with all the US weaponry, who knows.
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gpf
China woos the Taliban. Following a meeting with Taliban leaders in Doha on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing had vowed to help the Taliban restore stability and rebuild Afghanistan. China’s main concern here is the spillover of militancy from Afghanistan, particularly by ISIS-K, which has been making hay out of the Taliban’s apparent willingness to deport Uyghurs to China. Accordingly, Wang expressed faith in the Taliban’s ability to crack down on such groups, as well as the ethnic Uyghur East Turkestan Islamic Movement.
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gpf
China woos the Taliban. Following a meeting with Taliban leaders in Doha on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing had vowed to help the Taliban restore stability and rebuild Afghanistan. China’s main concern here is the spillover of militancy from Afghanistan, particularly by ISIS-K, which has been making hay out of the Taliban’s apparent willingness to deport Uyghurs to China. Accordingly, Wang expressed faith in the Taliban’s ability to crack down on such groups, as well as the ethnic Uyghur East Turkestan Islamic Movement.
All muslims are brothers! Wait, you will pay me how much per Uighur?
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Imran Khan and Bajwa having a power struggle....something must give.
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https://mobile.twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1456950200660938754
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Imran Khan and Bajwa having a power struggle....something must give.
https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/khan-averts-a-coup-but-remains-in-army-crosshairs/
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https://www.westernjournal.com/bidens-pentagon-literally-erasing-proof-soldiers-sacrificed-afghanistan/
https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?topic=2802.0
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/qatar-u-protecting-power-afghanistan-160633257.html
:roll:
outstanding work the MSM will proclaim
brilliant
strategic
etc.
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https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/the-haqqani-network-afghanistans-new-power-players/
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https://notthebee.com/article/covert-taliban-agents-spent-years-infiltrating-afghan-government-universities-businesses-to-eventually-sieze-kabul-other-afghan-cities?utm_source=jeeng
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ON SECURITY
The Taliban Takeover Ripples Across Cyberspace as Regional Powers Vie for Influence
undefined and Stratfor Senior Global Analyst at RANE
Matthew Bey
Stratfor Senior Global Analyst at RANE, Stratfor
10 MIN READNov 30, 2021 | 10:00 GMT
A computer in Kabul on Oct. 2, 2011, shows a Taliban website.
A computer in Kabul on Oct. 2, 2011, shows a Taliban website.
(ADEK BERRY/AFP via Getty Images)
As regional countries jockey for influence in Afghanistan, a surge in cyberespionage, a flurry of influence and information operations, and the exploitation of databases and hardware left after the U.S. withdrawal can be expected.
China, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia all are very likely to carry out various forms of cyberespionage against Taliban government and private targets, and to exploit the Taliban takeover in cyber influence and information campaigns to portray the United States and the West more broadly as incapable and untrustworthy.
The Taliban will seek to take advantage of valuable information and databases left by the prior government to target opposition and enforce cyber-repression, possibly with the help of foreign countries.
Some U.S. military equipment left behind could have intelligence value and/or digital vulnerabilities that foreign countries, principally China or Russia, could exploit.
In August, Facebook disabled the accounts and blocked the internet domains of a group of Pakistani state-backed hackers that targeted the former Afghan government, military and law enforcement, Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook) announced in a Nov. 16 statement. The Pakistani advanced persistent threat group SideCopy created fictitious personas on Facebook, operated fake app stores and compromised legitimate websites to host malicious phishing pages aiming to harvest Facebook log-in credentials in its attacks. SideCopy sought to convince targets to install Trojanized chat apps containing malware to compromise devices on which the apps were installed.
Although Facebook pulled the plug on SideCopy's campaign prior to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Pakistan's cyberespionage campaign highlights how many regional countries will seek to surge intelligence collection now that the United States has withdrawn and the Taliban government is in power. Four significant cyber trends are likely to continue deep into 2022, if not longer, which could affect Western organizations and individuals in Afghanistan:
A general increase in foreign cyberespionage targeting Afghanistan.
Cyber influence and information campaigns in and out of the country trying to shape narratives about the Western withdrawal.
The Taliban's domestic crackdown on cyber freedoms using information and databases inherited from the previous government and Western states.
Cybersecurity challenges due to equipment left by the United States and NATO.
Regional Governments' Need to Gather Intelligence
SideCopy's attempt to gather information in Afghanistan during the U.S. exit from the country highlights the need by all regional countries to increase intelligence collection to better understand what is happening on the ground and attempt to sway events in their favor. While human assets, signals intelligence and other sources and methods will all play a role, cyberespionage will be a key vector to collect intelligence. Among other advantages, cyberespionage has become an important method because it allows perpetrators to acquire valuable information in bulk (such as emails and communications information), help find appropriate targets for source development, linger unnoticed in computer networks for prolonged periods — and do all of this remotely without fear of exposing personnel to arrest, or worse.
China, Iran, Pakistan and Russia all have particularly able intelligence services with well-developed cybercapabilities. They also aim to play a stronger role in influencing the Taliban’s and Afghanistan's future and managing any fallout to their countries from the recent regime change. China provides an example of what may become more routine in Afghanistan. In September, Recorded Futures' Insikt Group published a report accusing four different Chinese state-sponsored APT groups of targeting the mail server of Roshan, one of Afghanistan's largest telecommunications companies, between June 2020 and September 2021. Notably, one of the APT groups increased its activity in August and September as the Taliban took over and the United States left, suggesting Chinese intelligence services were trying to collect as much information as possible amid the transition and set up a longer intelligence-gathering operation as the Taliban sought to consolidate control over Afghanistan.
As regional countries jockey for influence, there likely will be similar and increasingly successful attempts to digitally compromise the Afghan government, security services and other organizations through a myriad of cybertactics. These include software and hardware exploits, phishing attacks and other social engineering methods, brute force attacks, and insider threats, all of which enable cyberthreat actors to compromise targets to gather intelligence. Certain APT groups are also becoming increasingly savvy at launching attacks through social media as SideCopy tried to do. Given the further decline likely in Afghanistan's already weak cybersecurity standards under the Taliban — whose leaders are unlikely to emphasize rigid cyberdefenses amid much greater competing priorities like pacifying internal dissent and combating the Islamic State Khorasan Province's campaign of violence — cyberthreat actors will probably be more successful in their attacks. Aside from obvious government targets, the Afghan telecommunications sector is likely to be a highly coveted target for foreign intelligence services due to the valuable information (phone calls, text messages, backdoors, etc.) it can provide. Among other uses, such information would help a foreign government better assess the Taliban's intentions on various issues and determine who might be receptive to overtures to spy on their behalf.
Influence and Information Campaigns to Exploit the Western Withdrawal
The chaotic final days before the United States left Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover will be a propaganda boon for U.S. adversaries — like China, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia — that they will use in cyber-enabled influence and information campaigns globally. Already, China's Global Times, a tabloid run by the Chinese Communist Party, ran commentaries in August titled "US leaves chaos, destruction in Afghanistan" and "Afghan abandonment a lesson for Taiwan's DPP [a Taiwanese nationalist party]." These and other cyber influence and information campaigns seek to raise questions about U.S. power and undercut its claims to protect its supposed allies. While Taiwan is an obvious target for such messaging, Chinese APTs will very likely use similar narratives in the rest of Asia, where the United States is trying to boost its influence and counter China in countries like Thailand and Malaysia.
Similarly, Russia will very likely attempt to use the narrative of Western defeat in Afghanistan to sow divisions in Europe by exploiting preexisting fissures within NATO and seeking to generate uncertainty about NATO commitments to protect member states, especially those closest to Russia. Such messaging is also likely to target crucial non-NATO members that Russia seeks to keep outside of the bloc, such as Finland, Sweden and Ukraine. Russian APTs will also likely try to use the narrative of Western defeat to undermine France in sub-Saharan Africa, where the two countries are squaring off for influence in the Central African Republic, Mali and elsewhere. Judging from both countries' past election-related influence and information operations, Russia (and Iran) are even likely to try to exploit the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan to sow social discord in the United States ahead of next year's U.S. midterm elections.
Inside Afghanistan, China, Iran, Pakistan and Russia will all try to shape domestic debate in their own interest through cyber-enabled influence and information campaigns, including posts on social media, misleading or outright false news stories, and fake online accounts or groups emphasizing a specific narrative. Even though some of their interests overlap and they will collaborate pragmatically in certain cases, they are by no means perfectly aligned. Instead, they will constantly seek to vie for influence and outflank one another as they compete to shape Afghanistan's future, with each country having its own potential vulnerabilities that rivals could exploit in messaging campaigns. Hypothetical narratives include exploiting concerns over future Chinese economic exploitation through potential natural resource extraction projects, Iran's status as a Shiite power — something anathema to many Afghans — Pakistan's complex and manipulative historic involvement in Afghanistan, and Russia's invasion of the country during the Soviet era. And while these four countries will drive most of these online influence and information operations, even the Taliban eventually probably will start to partake in such efforts.
Exploiting Leftover Databases and Digital Information to Crack Down
The former Afghan government left behind significant quantities of valuable digital information and databases that the Taliban is likely to exploit to quash dissent. The United States spent much of its time in Afghanistan trying to boost the strength of the Afghan state and institutions. These efforts included support in building databases, including those for voter registration, managing payrolls and human resources at government agencies and other common administrative tasks. Not only do these databases include valuable information on Afghans generally — especially as some databases have iris, face and other biometric information — but some of them housed information about Afghans who worked with the United States and its allies. It is unclear to what extent those databases were destroyed, secured or encrypted prior to the U.S. exit. While U.S. officials said they secured some of the key databases, at least some information is likely vulnerable and the Taliban can probably still make use of even partial information by cross-checking it against other sources, such as that provided by its robust network of human informants.
The Taliban is likely to use the data against rivals to consolidate control over Afghanistan and probably to help jump-start its own cyberstrategy that is likely to involve a heavy-handed crackdown on digital freedoms. The former risk is more acute in 2022, as the Taliban will likely use any exploitable digital information to go after internal critics within their ranks, members of the former government and any sources of social dissent. But if the Taliban remain in power, the group will have access to cybertools that were simply unavailable during its previous reign in the 1990s, potentially allowing it to shape a more organized and purposeful cyberstrategy that would almost certainly focus on enforcing digital control. That said, it will take time for the Taliban to develop those capabilities and the group will likely need to work with foreign governments, potentially even using this as an area of collaboration when trying to win support from countries like China and Russia. Both already employ mass surveillance at home and would likely be sympathetic to Taliban arguments that such systems are needed to stabilize the security situation.
Leftover Equipment, a Trove of Potential Cyber (and Other) Vulnerabilities
Although most of their critical electronic systems have been destroyed or stripped out, the hasty U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in a large amount of U.S. military (and potentially sensitive nonmilitary) equipment being left behind that could enable U.S. adversaries to search for valuable intelligence and cyber vulnerabilities if they can acquire the hardware from the Taliban. According to U.S. military officials, the United States left behind 73 aircraft; about 70 mine-resistant, armored-protective vehicles; 27 Humvees; and the C-RAM air defense system used to protect Hamid Karzai International Airport. Prior to their departure, U.S. personnel demilitarized most of this to prevent the Taliban from using it in combat operations, but foreign countries are likely to try to glean whatever of intelligence value the systems can offer.
With persistence and advanced technical skills, they may still find some vulnerabilities they could exploit in the event of a military conflict with the United States, or even potentially compromise U.S. communications.
Electronic and cyberwarfare will be a critical part of any conflict between the United States and China and Russia, making any intelligence or vulnerabilities gathered from left-behind equipment all the more important to those countries. As two ongoing practitioners of economic espionage, both could also use any recovered hardware to improve their respective military-industrial bases. While Iran and Pakistan have fewer resources to uncover potentially useful intelligence or vulnerabilities, they still present a threat, even if only by potentially facilitating Chinese or Russian access to the hardware. And perhaps most concerningly, it would be difficult for the United States even to know if a foreign rival found useful intelligence or a key vulnerability — let alone to patch one — meaning a risk might not be known until exploited in some future conflict.
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China eyes Afghan resources. Several Chinese mining companies are reportedly in talks with the Taliban on gaining access to copper and lithium deposits in Afghanistan. One site of particular interest for the Chinese is Mes Aynak, one of the world’s largest copper deposits, located southeast of Kabul. A Chinese delegation reportedly visited the eastern provinces of Nangarhar and Laghman to look into other opportunities for resource exploitation.
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https://notthebee.com/article/remember-how-biden-handed-afghanistan-over-to-the-taliban-the-country-is-now-on-the-brink-of-mass-starvation?utm_source=jeeng
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Less than a dozen U.S. citizens remain stuck in Afghanistan
State Department does not reveal exact number
BY STEPHEN DINAN THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Fewer than a dozen U.S. citizens who want to get out of Afghanistan and have all the paperwork are still stuck there, the State Department said Monday, suggesting it has whittled down a number that had been in the hundreds just a few weeks ago.
And more than 74,000 Afghan nationals airlifted out in the waning days of the U.S. war effort have now been relocated to America, with another 3,000 waiting in other countries overseas for their chance to enter.
The State Department, in an update on the situation, said the Biden administration has “surged resources” to try to help Americans and Afghans in the wake of the U.S. troop withdrawal in August, which ended America’s 20-year war effort.
In early September, the State Department indicated there were fewer than 100 Americans left behind. Two months later, officials said there were aware of 439 Americans still in Afghanistan, and 216 of those had said they wanted assistance in fleeing.
Biden administration officials said at the time that the rising number was a good thing, because it meant more people were feeling optimistic enough to come forward and ask for assistance.
But many questions remain. The department, in its statement Monday, did not reveal the total number of American citizens still in Afghanistan.
Neither did it say how many Afghans stuck in the country have indicated they qualify for the special visa offered to those who assisted the U.S war effort.
Refugee groups say tens of thousands of other Afghans also are at risk of mistreatment at the hands of the new government or its proxies, and that the U.S. should be working to assist them.
They are limited by American bureaucracy and the capacity of charter flights out of Afghanistan.
The chaotic August evacuation saw 13 U.S. troops killed defending the Kabul airport, the last holdout of American troops in August, as the government collapsed and the Taliban retook control of the country.
During the chaos, the U.S. said it orchestrated an airlift that brought out more than 120,000 people. It later was revealed that many of those were Americans or citizens of allied nations. The actual total of Afghans evacuated appears to be lower than 80,000.
They were generally brought to sites in a third country where the names they gave were run through databases to try to spot any previous red flags or entanglements with U.S. agencies. But most were brought to the U.S. without the usual interview that would have been done for the special visa or for refugee status.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted them using his special humanitarian parole powers.
They were supposed to go to tent cities set up at military bases where they were to remain while they got medical screenings and communities figured out who could handle them.
The State Department, in its update Monday, saidabout 34,000 people have already been resettled in new communities here.
The Republican National Committee complained about the lack of details, saying Mr. Biden missed a congressionally mandated deadline for informing Congress about who, exactly, was airlifted.
The RNC called the troop withdrawal “an unmitigated foreign policy disaster.”
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Foreign minister: New Taliban deserves support
Says Afghanistan wants good relations with all countries
BY KATHY GANNON ASSOCIATED PRESS KABUL, AFGHANISTAN | Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers are committed in principle to education and jobs for girls and women, a marked departure from their previous time in power, and they seek the world’s “mercy and compassion” to help millions of Afghans in desperate need, a top Taliban leader said in a rare interview.
Facing a deeply skeptical world, Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi also told The Associated Press that the Taliban government wants good relations with all countries and has no issue with the United States, which saw its 20-year combat mission in the country end in ignominious retreat this summer.
Mr. Muttaqi urged Washington and other nations to release upward of $10 billion in funds that were frozen when the Taliban took power Aug. 15, following a rapid military sweep across Afghanistan and the sudden, secret flight of U.S.-backed President Ashraf Ghani.
“Sanctions against Afghanistan would ... not have any benefi t,” Mr. Muttaqi said Sunday, speaking in his native Pashto during the interview in the sprawling pale brick Foreign Ministry building in the heart of Kabul.
“Making Afghanistan unstable or having a weak Afghan government is not in the interest of anyone,” said Mr. Muttaqi, whose aides include employees of the previous government as well as those recruited from the ranks of the Taliban.
Mr. Muttaqi acknowledged the world’s outrage at the Taliban- imposed limitations on girls’ education and on women in the workforce. In many parts of Afghanistan, female students between grades 7 and 12 have not been allowed to go to school since the Taliban took over, and many female civil servants have been told to stay home. Taliban officials have said they need time to create gender-segregated arrangements in schools and the workplace to meet their severe interpretation of Sunni Islam.
When they first ruled from 1996-2001, the Taliban shocked the world by barring girls and women from schools and jobs, banning most entertainment and sports, destroying priceless cultural artifacts as blasphemous, and occasionally carrying out executions in front of large crowds in sports stadiums.
But Mr. Muttaqi said the Taliban have changed since they last ruled.
“We have made progress in administration and in politics ... in interaction with the nation and the world. With each passing day, we will gain more experience and make more progress,” he said.
Mr. Muttaqi claimed that under the new Taliban government, girls are going to school through grade 12 in 10 of the country’s 34 provinces, private schools and universities are operating unhindered, and 100% of women who had previously worked in the health sector are back on the job.
“This shows that we are committed in principle to women participation,” he said.
He also claimed the Taliban have not targeted their opponents, instead announcing a general amnesty and providing some protection. Leaders of the previous government live without threat in Kabul, he said, although most of them have fled.
Last month, the international group Human Rights Watch published a report that said the Taliban summarily killed or forcibly disappeared more than 100 former police and intelligence officials in four provinces. However, there have been no reports of large-scale retribution.
Mr. Muttaqi alleged the government that took power after the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban regime in 2001 carried out widespread revenge attacks against the Taliban. Hundreds disappeared or were killed, with thousands fleeing to the mountains, he said. The Taliban were ousted for harboring al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for masterminding the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S.
The minister acknowledged that the Taliban have made mistakes in their first months in power and that “we will work for more reforms which can benefit the nation.” He did not elaborate on the mistakes or possible reforms.
Mr. Muttaqi pushed back against comments by U.S. Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who told the AP last week that al Qaeda has grown slightly in Afghanistan since U.S. forces left. Gen. McKenzie is Washington’s top military commander in the Middle East.
Mr. Muttaqi said Sunday that the Taliban honored a promise to battle outside jihadi groups, along with a pledge not to attack U.S. and NATO forces in the final phase of the withdrawal, which ended in late August.
“If McKenzie has any proof, he should provide it,” the minister said. “With confidence, I can say that this is a baseless allegation.”
Mr. Muttaqi said he does not envision cooperating with the Biden administration in the battle against the Islamic State group inside Afghanistan.
However, he did express hope that with time, “America will slowly, slowly change its policy toward Afghanistan” as it sees that a Taliban-ruled country standing on its own is a benefit to the U.S.
“My last point is to America, to the American nation: You are a great and big nation, and you must have enough patience and have a big heart to dare to make policies on Afghanistan based on international rules and relegation, and to end the differences and make the distance between us shorter and choose good relations with Afghanistan,” he said.
“Making Afghanistan unstable or having a weak Afghan government is not in the interest of anyone,” Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said
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During years of peace talks with the U.S. and Kabul, Taliban representatives made promises of power-sharing and moderation.
But when the Afghan Republic collapsed, hard-line factions seized power.
America's longest war ended in ignominy and set back 20 years of efforts to build a democratic nation infused with Western values.
How the Taliban Outwitted and Outwaited the U.S.
Islamist movement spoke of moderation as it solidified gains on the battlefield, taking Washington and its Afghan allies by surprise
By Yaroslav Trofimov
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in Kabul and Jessica Donati
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in Washington | Photographs by Kate Brooks/Redux Pictures for The Wall Street Journal
Dec. 24, 2021 10:02 am ET
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588 RESPONSES
Taliban delegates and representatives of the U.S.-backed Afghan republic gathered for a secret retreat in a château north of Paris in December 2012, raising hopes that a peace deal could end their intractable war.
The Taliban, whose fighters had been beaten back by President Obama’s troop surge, dined on pork-free French cuisine with Afghan warlords, civil-society activists and female parliamentarians. At a formal session in the Chantilly hideaway, the emissaries distributed a message on behalf of the movement’s founding leader, the one-eyed cleric Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The Taliban won’t seek to rule Afghanistan on their own anymore, the document assured, and a new constitution “would pave the way for power-sharing in the next government.” When the republic’s delegates returned to Kabul, many enthused about how much the Taliban had evolved from the ruthless regime that ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s.
For the next nine years, the Taliban continued to lull the world with conciliatory messaging as they pursued a bloody war at home in parallel with diplomatic efforts to secure their ultimate goal: an American military withdrawal.
“Monopoly of power is a story of failure. That is why we want to have all on board,” Suhail Shaheen, now the Taliban’s ambassador-designate to the United Nations, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal six weeks before the group seized Kabul, deposed the Afghan republic and monopolized all power. “Past experiences have shown that you will ultimately fail and will not bring durable peace.”
Throughout its history, Afghanistan defied foreign attempts to reshape the country, from the British Empire in the 19th century to the Soviet occupation in the 1980s to the failed American experiment in nation-building.
An examination of why U.S. peace efforts collapsed so spectacularly, setting back the Biden presidency and America’s global standing, reveals the Taliban’s mastery of the diplomatic long game.
America’s increasing impatience with its longest overseas war drove the pace of these talks—removing one by one the Taliban’s incentives to compromise. For President Biden just as for President Trump, the “priority was to get out, not the Afghan settlement,” said Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as chief U.S. negotiator under both administrations. “They made it clear—and that strengthened the Talibs.”
Seeking an exit, U.S. officials found it expedient to paint Taliban behavior in the best possible light while exaggerating the strength of the Afghan republic they had brought to life. Recognizing this opening, the Taliban leadership learned how to obfuscate their true intentions in the comforting language that appealed to foreign diplomats and negotiators.
The question now is whether Western powers can apply lessons from past failures as they try to nudge the Islamist movement into adopting more-moderate policies. Experience suggests that the Taliban won’t readily trade long-held traditions for Western cash and a place in the global community.
Some U.S. and former Afghan officials continue to believe the relatively pragmatic Taliban they dealt with were sincere and that a negotiated solution could have preserved at least some achievements gleaned from the 20-year international effort in Afghanistan. Intransigence by President Ashraf Ghani, they argue, ultimately torpedoed these efforts and bolstered the Taliban’s more hard-line elements.
Unable to fight once American support disappeared, Afghanistan’s armed forces disintegrated in August, allowing the Taliban to seize almost all of the country’s provincial capitals and reach the outskirts of Kabul in just over a week. The collapse of remaining government structures after Mr. Ghani fled the country on Aug. 15 rendered U.S.-backed talks on a peaceful transition moot.
“Monopoly of power is a story of failure. That is why we want to have all on board.” — Suhail Shaheen
The new Afghan government established in September is made up almost exclusively of Taliban clerics prominent in the insurgency. While the new regime has refrained so far from openly hosting terrorist groups or committing the kind of atrocities that earned it world-wide condemnation in the past, it has already sharply curtailed the rights of women, banned girls’ education beyond the sixth grade in most provinces and marginalized ethnic communities that aren’t part of its Pashtun power base.
In continuing talks with U.S. and allies in Doha, Qatar, the new Taliban administration is seeking diplomatic recognition, a removal of American sanctions and the unfreezing of over $9 billion in Afghan central-bank assets abroad. One of Washington’s key conditions is the creation of a more inclusive government in Kabul that respects human rights, one that would fulfill promises that the Taliban have been making since Chantilly.
“The Taliban regime should seek legitimacy within Afghanistan before seeking international recognition,” said Thomas West, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, who is leading these talks.
The Road to Doha
The Taliban sought to negotiate with Washington and other Afghans immediately after a U.S. invasion ousted their government in 2001. Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s American-anointed new leader, wanted the Islamist movement to participate in the Bonn conference that year that established the country’s new political order. Washington, still shaken in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, which Osama bin Laden plotted on Afghan soil, vetoed the plan. Potential Taliban negotiators were hunted down by U.S. special-operations forces and the Central Intelligence Agency, and shipped to detention in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
American and allied attitudes to engaging the Taliban changed as the group bounced back in the ensuing decade. By 2009, the Taliban once again controlled large parts of the countryside. Mr. Obama surged the U.S. military presence to over 100,000 troops to defend the Afghan republic—while also promising to start withdrawing all American forces 18 months later.
Fatima Gailani, one of the members of the Afghan republic’s negotiating team in Doha.
By the time Washington was ready to negotiate, Taliban leaders refused to sit down with Mr. Karzai’s administration, dismissing it as an American puppet with no legitimacy or agency of its own. Mr. Karzai, for his part, objected to the U.S. engaging in talks with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan republic’s democratically elected government. The Obama administration agreed not to discuss Afghanistan’s future without Kabul but also endorsed the idea of creating a Taliban political mission abroad to facilitate diplomatic contacts.
The U.S. and the insurgents began building trust by negotiating tactical deals, such as freeing five senior Taliban leaders who had spent more than a decade in Guantánamo in exchange for the Taliban handing over Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. Army sergeant who walked off his base and was captured by the insurgents. Taliban representatives, some of whom had been living in Doha for years, formally opened a political office there in 2013.
While the Taliban still rejected direct talks with the Kabul government, its envoys based in Doha began to engage in several rounds of so-called track-two meetings with members of the Afghan republic’s political elites. The Chantilly confab was followed by similar events in Europe, Russia and China.
Over the years, the Taliban office in Doha, and the exemption of its members from United Nations travel sanctions, allowed the insurgent movement to reach out to governments world-wide, gaining growing acceptance as a legitimate political force.
“One of the reasons why the Taliban outsmarted Americans is the fact they set up relations with the whole world while negotiating with the Americans—something that the Americans didn’t want to happen,” said Rahimullah Mahmood, a veteran insurgent commander who served as governor of Wardak province after the Taliban takeover and now is deputy head of the Kandahar-based military corps. “They succeeded in convincing the world that the Taliban weren’t the terrorists as depicted by American propaganda.”
In 2018, President Trump, a longtime critic of the Afghan war, scrapped the long-held precondition that the U.S. would only enter into talks with the Taliban that included the Afghan republic’s government. Mr. Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Kabul and to the United Nations, was appointed as special envoy with wide latitude to negotiate a deal.
Born in Afghanistan in 1951, Mr. Khalilzad knew Mr. Ghani since both went to the U.S. as high-school exchange students. The two men later studied at the American University in Beirut and then earned their Ph.D.s in the U.S.—Mr. Khalilzad at the University of Chicago, and Mr. Ghani at Columbia. Mr. Khalilzad’s dealings with the Taliban dated back to the 1990s, when he served as a consultant for the Unocal oil company that explored building a pipeline through Afghanistan.
“His mandate was to figure out a way to enable us to leave quickly and potentially zero out the force, but to be able to call it a victory,” said a senior State Department official who was involved in the effort. “And it wasn’t always understood that those were mostly mutually exclusive.”
Mr. Ghani, a former American citizen who succeeded Mr. Karzai as president in 2014, was alarmed by these negotiations. A co-author of a book called “Fixing Failed States” and a onetime fixture of Washington’s think-tank circuit, he boasted to other Afghan officials about his understanding of American politics. But, until too late, he and senior officials in his administration misread American intentions and clung on to illusions that Washington would never actually pull the plug on Kabul.
The U.S. had been talking about leaving Afghanistan for more than a decade, after all. “There was this notion of Afghanistan being a unique geographical location that would always be an area of interest for global powers,” said Nader Nadery, a senior Afghan peace negotiator who headed the fallen republic’s civil service. “Some of our colleagues believed until the last months that the U.S. forces would never leave.”
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani misread U.S. intentions until it was too late.
PHOTO: KIANA HAYERI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“In Kabul, they were living in an unrealistic world,” agreed Mr. Khalilzad, who left the U.S. government in October. “That was the grand miscalculation.”
That belief that America’s national-security establishment wouldn’t allow Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden to abandon Afghanistan was coupled with another strategic blunder: excessive optimism about the Afghan republic’s own military strength, Mr. Khalilzad added. “They didn’t assess their forces correctly. I don’t know that any of them thought, at the leadership level, that the force would collapse that quickly.”
The combination of these two miscalculations meant that Mr. Ghani slow-rolled peace talks between the Afghan republic and the Taliban on a possible power-sharing agreement that would have inevitably involved him leaving office. It is unclear to what extent the Taliban would have compromised. But, as the insurgents made dramatic military gains, their calculations changed, too. In Doha over the months, discussions moved from possible power-sharing to considering an “inclusive government” dominated by the Taliban to essentially a surrender on Taliban terms.
“Ghani was not flexible, and that is why we are in this dark situation,” said Habiba Sarabi, a member of the Afghan republic’s negotiating team with the Taliban and a former governor of Bamian province. “His mentality was that the Taliban should join his government and he would be on the top. This was not possible in a peace process. He loved power. He was crazy for power.”
Ms. Sarabi, who like most of the Afghan republic’s senior officials and negotiators is now in exile, added that Mr. Khalilzad shared the blame because he consistently stressed the Taliban’s alleged moderation and interest in a peaceful transition. “He wanted to sugarcoat the almond. But at the end the bitter taste appeared,” she said.
“In Kabul, they were living in an unrealistic world. That was the grand miscalculation.” — Zalmay Khalilzad
Mr. Khalilzad, who wrote an op-ed all the way back in 1996 to argue that “the Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism,” said that he believed in the sincerity of Taliban negotiators and that it was the fault of both sides that no political settlement could be found. “They didn’t rise to the occasion,” he said. “I couldn’t blame that one side was more at fault than the other.”
Withdrawal or Peace?
To begin serious talks, Mr. Khalilzad needed a Taliban counterpart with appropriate seniority. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar fit the bill. He was a co-founder of the Islamist organization, served as deputy minister of defense in the previous Taliban regime and coordinated the insurgency’s commanders after the U.S. invasion. A relative pragmatist, Mr. Baradar had tried to open negotiations with the U.S. in 2001, and engaged in secret contacts with Mr. Karzai’s government in 2010. One of the few senior Taliban members from the same aristocratic Popolzai clan as Mr. Karzai, Mr. Baradar was captured by Pakistani and U.S. agents in Karachi later that year, and kept in Pakistani custody since.
In September 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led a delegation to Islamabad to press the need for Pakistan’s cooperation and to demand Mr. Baradar’s release. Pakistan acquiesced and Mr. Baradar moved to Doha weeks later to take the helm of the Taliban political office. The Taliban’s secretive supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who has never been filmed in public, gave his blessing to the negotiations.
The talks faced a constraint from the start: Mr. Trump’s impatience to bring home the troops. American negotiators say they woke up every morning with the fear of seeing what they described as “the tweet of Damocles” in which Mr. Trump would announce an unconditional withdrawal.
As American and Taliban envoys started hashing out a deal in Doha, U.S. ambassador to Kabul John Bass tried for months to push Mr. Ghani to name a broad negotiating team that would be ready to begin Kabul’s own talks with the Taliban. The Afghan president refused, unwilling to dilute his administration’s control over the process.
“President Ghani’s model of negotiation—and that was the essence of his unhappiness—was that he should be the one negotiating with Hibatullah. That he would have his laptop under his arm, sit with Hibatullah, and make a deal,” Mr. Khalilzad said. “And of course that was not realistic from the get-go.”
By the summer of 2019, Mr. Khalilzad’s team hammered out the broad contours of the deal with Mr. Baradar in Qatar. Then, the Taliban suddenly reversed course and demanded prisoner releases, a new, major concession. To break the deadlock, the U.S. yielded and signed off on a clause that required Kabul to free up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners in Afghan custody. Mr. Ghani was allowed to read the draft text but not to keep a copy. He wasn’t given access to the agreement’s secret annexes, either.
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, second from right, was a pragmatic point man for the Taliban in talks with the U.S.
With preparations under way for Mr. Trump to host a grand signing ceremony around the Sept. 11 anniversary, a car bomb went off near the U.S. Embassy and Afghan security compounds in Kabul, killing 12 people, including a U.S. soldier. The Taliban claimed responsibility. A furious Mr. Trump tweeted that he “called off” the talks with the Islamist movement and canceled plans for a meeting with Taliban leaders and Mr. Ghani in Camp David.
Encouraged by the apparent about-turn, Mr. Ghani hoped that Mr. Trump’s rush for the exits would now be restrained. His national-security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, complained that America was “whitewashing the Taliban” because it was tired of the war, and called for reassessing the deal. Mr. Nadery, the peace negotiator, wasn’t as optimistic. That September, he binge-watched a Netflix series on the fall of South Vietnam, noting that the government in Saigon, just as the government in Kabul, had been kept in the dark by the U.S.
In Washington, John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s then-national security adviser, held a similar view. “We were basically selling the government out. The analogy of Vietnam is really true,” said Mr. Bolton, who quit that month over disagreements with Mr. Trump that included Afghanistan policy. “In both cases, everybody, every other interested party could see that the principal U.S. objective was to get out.”
The suspension didn’t last long. Mr. Trump still wanted to leave Afghanistan before the U.S. presidential elections. Within weeks, U.S. diplomats opened talks to swap two professors of the American University in Kabul held hostage by the Taliban in return for Anas Haqqani, the younger brother of the Taliban’s deputy leader Sirajuddin, who was held by the Afghan government. The U.S. has designated the Haqqani network a terrorist organization since 2012 because of its links to al Qaeda.
By February 2020, the Taliban agreed to a brief cease-fire as a show of goodwill and Mr. Trump approved signing the deal. It was officially called the “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan,” even though the Taliban made no commitment to stop military operations against the Afghan government and security forces.
In the text, the U.S. promised a full military withdrawal by May 2021 in exchange for the Taliban pledging to prevent terrorist groups from using Afghan soil to threaten other nations. The Taliban, in a significant departure, also agreed to open peace talks with Mr. Ghani’s government. The U.S. withdrawal wasn’t conditional on the success of these negotiations—in part because Washington didn’t want to give Mr. Ghani a lever to slow down the departure.
Mr. Pompeo flew to Doha to attend the signing ceremony on Feb. 29, 2020. Minutes before his arrival in Qatar, the Taliban staged a victory march with the white flags of their Islamic Emirate, prompting fears among the Qatari hosts that the embarrassment might scuttle the deal at the last moment. The Qataris were prepared to prevent the Taliban from entering the luxury Sheraton resort with the flags. The insurgency’s representatives left them in their vehicles.
Mr. Pompeo grimly shook hands with Mr. Baradar after aides failed to orchestrate his separation from the Taliban in the room. Mr. Khalilzad signed for the U.S. while Mr. Pompeo followed with a somber speech delivered mostly to journalists in another room afterward. Members of Mr. Khalilzad’s team were relieved the day had passed without incident and stayed out until late in Doha, drinking overpriced cocktails.
Mr. Ghani initially resisted the Doha agreement’s commitment, made by the U.S. without his assent, that Kabul release thousands of Taliban prisoners. He also kept rebuffing American pressure to create a negotiating team including his political foes in Kabul, such as Mr. Karzai and his challenger in the 2019 presidential elections, Abdullah Abdullah. Any power-sharing deal with the insurgents would be contingent on Mr. Ghani stepping down, after all. Loath to leave office, the Afghan president instead kept hoping that Washington would reverse the withdrawal decision, especially if Mr. Trump were to fail in his re-election bid.
“We, the Afghan government, should have seen the writing on the wall,” Mr. Mohib, who served as Mr. Ghani’s national-security adviser until both men fled Kabul on Aug. 15, said when asked what was the Afghan administration’s biggest error. “It was a withdrawal, not a peace agreement. Democratic values were not as much of a priority as we thought. The gains of the past 20 years were not as much of a priority as we thought they would be.”
Taliban military commanders were also initially upset with the Doha deal. Mullah Mohammad Fazel, a Taliban negotiator and one of the five former Guantánamo inmates freed in exchange for Sgt. Bergdahl, traveled across front lines from Qatar to a meeting with insurgent commanders from all over Afghanistan to explain its terms.
Mullah Mohammad Fazel, who was released after 12 years in Guantánamo, became a Taliban negotiator.
Some of the men, sporting the Taliban’s black turbans and beards, believed the agreement was naive, according to those present. How were they supposed to trust that the U.S. would in fact leave Afghanistan the following year? Why should they stop hitting American forces even as Washington retained the right to conduct airstrikes against them?
“During the negotiations, many were claiming that the Americans were deceiving us, that it was all a trap for us,” said Mr. Mahmood, then the military commander of the Taliban’s eastern zone, who attended the gathering in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province. “Many military commanders wanted to resume attacks on Americans. The suicide bombers, in particular, were extremely sad: they cried and mourned the fact that they wouldn’t get martyred.”
Yet, the Taliban political negotiators’ argument that Washington would deliver on pledges made in Doha and withdraw from Afghanistan prevailed at the end, said Mr. Mahmood. “It’s a treaty of victory,” was the message that he carried back to his troops.
Shortly after that, the Taliban’s propaganda department published a calendar for the Islamic year 1442 that began in August 2020. It showed an American and a Taliban hand signing the Doha deal—described as “the agreement to end the invasion”—and Afghanistan breaking free from chains of foreign occupation. Below was a quote from the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mr. Hibatullah, pledging: “We don’t want the monopoly on power.”
Drawdown
The lack of progress in Afghanistan ahead of the U.S. presidential election was causing Mr. Trump to get impatient, and in June he ordered a fresh drawdown of troops to 4,500, without any concessions by the Taliban.
At that point, the Taliban hadn’t delivered on any of their major promises except for stopping attacks on American troops. They still refused to meet the Afghan government’s delegation. Trying to gain the prisoner release and break the stalemate, Mr. Baradar made verbal assurances to U.S. negotiators that violence would drop as soon as the 5,000 Taliban inmates were set free.
A buoyed Mr. Khalilzad sent a cable to Washington announcing that Mr. Baradar had promised a near-complete cease-fire. Ross Wilson, who had taken over the role of top U.S. diplomat in Kabul, delivered the message to Mr. Ghani. The promised cease-fire “was part of our selling of what was a very difficult decision for good reasons,” Mr. Wilson said. Grudgingly, Mr. Ghani agreed to a prisoner release in phases in exchange for the Taliban setting free 1,000 government personnel in their custody.
With the release complete in September 2020, Taliban and Afghan republic negotiators finally gathered in Doha’s Sharq Village resort for their own peace talks. The venue spread around a large beachside pool frequented by bikini-clad tourists who lounged under loud pop music that wafted into Taliban negotiators’ rooms. Afghan republic delegates were told by Kabul to stay away from the pool to avoid embarrassing headlines. The Taliban didn’t swim.
The two sides had breakfast in separate halls and rarely socialized. Key Taliban negotiators, who by then spent several years in Qatar and had families and businesses there, only occasionally showed up in the Sharq Village.
Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai headed the Afghan government’s negotiating team with the Taliban in Doha.
As the two Afghan delegations began their discussions, a U.S. military team monitored the levels of violence in Afghanistan to evaluate whether the Taliban were abiding by Mr. Baradar’s assurances. The team documented a rise in insurgent attacks instead. U.S. Army Col. Brad Moses, who served as deputy to the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Scott Miller, briefed about the alarming data on intensifying violence during regular calls with the White House, the State Department, the CIA and other U.S. government agencies.
“It never reduced,” he said. The Taliban would claim to the U.S. that these attacks were either carried out by spoilers or criminals when confronted with the evidence, he added.
The Afghan government, meanwhile, instructed its forces, cooped up in isolated bases and outposts, to stop offensive operations during the talks and engage in what it called “active defense.” The loss of initiative handed over a critical advantage to the insurgents, said Lt. Gen. Imam Nazar Behboud, who commanded the Afghan army’s Kandahar corps.
“This meant that you just had to stand there and wait until the Taliban attacked you. No matter how much you got killed, you just had to wait,” he said. “There were huge casualties. The troops were tired, they were not receiving any backup from Kabul, and they lost their trust in the central government.”
By October, the Taliban had gathered a huge force in the south and launched a wide-scale assault on Helmand’s provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. The U.S. intervened with airstrikes to prevent the city’s collapse. Weeks later, the Taliban moved toward Kandahar, capturing the Arghandab district on the edge of the country’s second-largest city. Another torrent of U.S. airstrikes stopped further advances. Both sides accused each other of violating the Doha agreement.
Nader Nadery, a senior Afghan peace negotiator, once binge-watched a Netflix series on the fall of South Vietnam.
Still, the Taliban stuck to their promise not to strike American targets, showing that they could exercise discipline over their fighters when they wanted to. Despite sustaining heavy casualties in the airstrikes, the Taliban leaders calculated it wasn’t in their interest to disrupt an American withdrawal they viewed as inevitable.
“We convinced our fighters that, as our negotiations with the Americans are under way, we will not fire a single bullet at the Americans. We proved that we can uphold our treaties,” said Mohammad Farouk Ansari, a member of the Taliban’s military commission that united some 50 top commanders from across the country. “We told each other at the time that it was a victory. When the Americans started closing their outposts and evacuating their bases, we knew that the country was ours, today or tomorrow.”
U.S. officials still wonder whether they had been played by Mr. Baradar’s promises or whether the chief Taliban negotiator himself was being used by the insurgency’s real leadership to lull the U.S. and Kabul into complacency.
‘It was always hard to tell if the Taliban were serious about a political settlement or not,” said Carter Malkasian, who was part of Mr. Khalilzad’s team as a representative from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “One possibility is that they never meant it. That they were saying what we needed to hear. We may learn, like we have about the Vietnamese negotiations, that they never had any intention of conceding.”
The U.S. presidential election was held on Nov. 3 and Mr. Trump lost. While fighting to overturn the results, he ordered the Pentagon to pull remaining troops out of Afghanistan and appointed a new defense secretary, Chris Miller, a former Green Beret and vocal war skeptic, to carry out the plan. Mr. Miller, along with other close advisers, convinced the president to keep a downsized force of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan to avoid the country’s collapse, which they said would hurt Mr. Trump if he wanted to run for office again.
Around that time, Mr. Khalilzad circulated proposals for a new interim government that would be equally split between the Taliban and representatives of the republic. The proposal, he said, didn’t specify who would be in charge.
Mr. Miller said the unspoken goal of retaining a small force to keep the Kabul government afloat was to eventually force Mr. Ghani to cut a power-sharing deal. “And let’s be honest, the Taliban probably would have had about 14 seats in the cabinet. And Ghani probably would have had four. He probably would have had sports and recreation. Probably would have had, like, roads and sewers,” Mr. Miller added.
“He loved power. He was crazy for power. ” — Habiba Sarabi of President Ashraf Ghani
The Afghan president hoped the American determination to withdraw from Afghanistan would end with Mr. Trump’s term on Jan. 20. He was so convinced that the new Biden administration wouldn’t follow through on the Doha agreement that he declined to see Mr. Khalilzad when the American envoy came to Afghanistan that January. Mr. Ghani subsequently rejected Mr. Khalilzad’s power-sharing plan, which was promptly leaked to the media, and kept refusing to engage in meaningful talks in Doha.
“It was us, the republic, that were lingering. The Taliban were much more flexible,” said Fatima Gailani, a negotiator for the republic who belongs to one of the country’s most influential families. “Negotiations need a give and take, and an honorable compromise is absolutely fine, but that was not the case at all. It was purposefully lingering and waiting for Biden to come. Why were they thinking that Biden would bring a miracle, I don’t know.”
Mr. Khalilzad gave his proposal to Mr. Baradar, who agreed to consider it but offered no formal response.
By then, Taliban commanders on the ground, emboldened by their military successes and the looming American withdrawal, had little desire to share power with their enemies. “The strategy of a colonizer, when it is forced out of a country, is to leave its offspring behind, so as not to break the chain of colonization. The Americans wanted to keep a parallel government here, for the Taliban and the rest to have equal power,” said Mr. Ansari, the Taliban military commission member who operated southeast of Kabul. “We did not agree with this from the very beginning. We said that we’re the rulers in the country. The country is our home. We don’t accept a second ruler in our home.”
Areas of control by district
No data
Contested
Government control
Taliban control
Oct. 21, 2020
About a month into Afghan-Taliban talks the Taliban launch attacks in the south, violating verbal assurances made to U.S. negotiators to reduce violence
Apr. 13, 2021
The Taliban announce they will not join an international conference the U.S. hoped would create an interim government
June 30, 2021
By the end of June, the Taliban make significant gains in the districts they control
TURKMENISTAN
UZBEK.
UZBEK.
IRAN
TAJIK.
Area of
detail
Kabul
PAKISTAN
Note: Districts classified as unconfirmable claim of Taliban control are included in contested
Source: FDD’s Long War Journal
Mr. Ghani’s hopes about Mr. Biden were quickly dashed. The new president had advocated withdrawing from Afghanistan back when he served as Mr. Obama’s vice president, and showed little inclination to reverse Mr. Trump’s deal.
For months after Mr. Biden took office, interagency officials held an endless series of meetings on how to mitigate risks from the pullout. Abandoning the Doha agreement, the White House calculated, would force the Taliban to resume attacks on American forces, requiring a major troop increase with no end in sight. As for the peace talks shepherded by Mr. Khalilzad in Doha, the White House concluded that chances of progress were too slim to justify delaying the withdrawal.
“There is not a lot of evidence that either side treated those negotiations in Doha in good faith,” said a current senior Biden administration official who was involved in the decision-making.
On April 12, the Taliban refused to participate in a peace conference that the U.S. was trying to convene under the sponsorship of the United Nations in Turkey, fearing that they would be forced to make concessions.
Two days later, Mr. Biden announced that all U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, regardless of whether the Taliban and the Afghan reach a political deal or any other developments on the ground, a move that removed the conditionality attached to the 2020 Doha agreement.
“We will not conduct a hasty rush to the exit. We’ll do it…responsibly, deliberately and safely,” Mr. Biden said in the White House’s Treaty Room that day. “More and endless American military force could not create or sustain a durable Afghan government.”
Kabul was stunned. The following afternoon, Mr. Ghani convened top Afghan security officials to discuss Mr. Biden’s bombshell. The army chief of staff wondered how the Afghan military could continue servicing its aircraft once American advisers and contractors left. Mr. Ghani, according to a person present at the meeting, was calm and said he was working on securing continuing U.S. support.
Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who used to work closely with the CIA, refused to believe that Mr. Biden would actually withdraw all U.S. forces. Could Mr. Biden’s announcement simply be a pressure tactic to force Kabul make concessions to the Taliban in Doha, he wondered, according to people present.
Mr. Saleh, Afghanistan’s former intelligence chief, told the Journal his U.S. interlocutors had been assuring until the last moment that Washington wouldn’t abandon his administration. “There were so many occasions in which I asked the visiting dignitaries, diplomats, intelligence officials, generals and members of the U.S. intelligentsia if the U.S. would hand over Afghanistan to the Taliban,” Mr. Saleh said after Kabul’s fall to the Taliban. “The answer would be outright no, with nuances explained later but still implying no.”
As members of Mr. Ghani’s inner circle continued to cling to illusions, Afghan army and police field commanders drew a different conclusion: The end was nigh. Survival meant striking private deals with the Taliban and preparing for a rainy day meant selling off their units’ ammunition, food and fuel on the black market.
By May, the Taliban started taking one district after another, often without a fight, allowing government troops to go home unharmed and giving them pocket money for the road. Still, in accordance with verbal commitments given to Mr. Khalilzad, the insurgents refrained from seizing any of the country’s 34 provincial capitals. In Doha, Taliban negotiator Mohammad Nabi Omari, another former Guantánamo inmate who is affiliated with the Haqqani network, hashed out a transition proposal with a narrow circle of Afghan republic representatives.
Under the proposed deal, the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mr. Hibatullah, would become Afghanistan’s head of state but the country would turn into a constitutional monarchy of sorts, governed under the 1964 constitution promulgated by King Zahir Shah, with an elected parliament. Ms. Gailani, who was involved in this negotiation, joked that Mr. Hibatullah, who hadn’t been seen in public for years and widely presumed to be dead, was a perfect head of state. Her Taliban interlocutor assured her that Mr. Hibatullah was very much alive. Both sides agreed to keep the planned agreement secret.
“They were not easy. There were things on which they would absolutely not compromise upon. They would never accept the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. They would never accept our constitution,” said Ms. Gailani. “But at least 60% of our values could be rescued. Our flag could be rescued.”
Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, the lead Afghan government negotiator in Doha and a former defense minister and intelligence chief who regularly briefed Mr. Ghani on the talks, said he believed the plan presented by Mr. Omari was just an individual idea and not a solid proposal backed by the entire Taliban leadership.
In late June, Mr. Ghani flew to Washington in a last-ditch effort to persuade the U.S. of the need to keep providing support. Mr. Biden agreed to receive Mr. Ghani in the White House only if he came with Dr. Abdullah, then holding the title of head of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation. “We’re going to stick with you. And we’re going to do our best to see to it you have the tools you need,” Mr. Biden promised in joint remarks.
The American president’s April withdrawal decision “has made everybody recalculate and reconsider,” Mr. Ghani chimed in. “The Afghan nation is in an 1861 moment, like President Lincoln, rallying to the defense of the republic. It’s a choice of values—the values of an exclusionary system or an inclusionary system.”
President Ghani gives an interview in his office in Gul Khana Palace.
PHOTO: KIANA HAYERI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ms. Gailani met Mr. Ghani in Washington during that trip and briefed him on proposals discussed with Mr. Omari and other Taliban negotiators. Mr. Ghani encouraged her to continue the talks, she said. “I thought, good, he decided to be the de Klerk of Afghanistan, not the Saddam or Gadhafi,” she recalled. “It was clear that this was the end, but at least it could have been a decent end. At least the institutions, the army, the police would not have collapsed.”
Yet, in following weeks, Mr. Ghani continued playing for time. “He lingered and lingered, which just made things more difficult,” Ms. Gailani said.
In July, a senior foreign envoy visited Mr. Ghani in Kabul. The Afghan president was defiant, boasting about the strength of government forces massed in the city and saying that the Taliban would suffer 50,000 casualties should they attempt to attack the capital. Still, he added that he instructed his bodyguards to give him a lethal injection should he face the risk of being captured by the Taliban, according to the envoy.
Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, flew to Kabul later that month to meet Mr. Ghani, publicly promising intensified airstrikes in support of Afghan forces. “Taliban victory is not inevitable,” he said at the time. In private, Gen. McKenzie told Mr. Ghani that Mr. Biden was still evaluating options for continuing to provide air support to Afghan forces from bases in the Persian Gulf after the withdrawal.
The Republic Collapses
In early August, the Taliban’s military commission chief, Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, gathered military commanders in the insurgent stronghold of Aryub Zazi in the eastern Paktia province. The time to capture provincial capitals had come, Mr. Zakir announced, but the Taliban should take their time and not rush.
“It was decided that we should enter the cities cautiously, targeting the provinces that fall an easy prey,” said Hajji Qari Osman Ibrahimi, a member of the Taliban military commission who attended the meeting. “And we were told not to enter Kabul, because we had promised so to the Americans.”
As it turned out, almost all the cities were easy prey, and just a week later the Taliban were at the doorstep of the Afghan capital. Dr. Abdullah held another round of meetings in Doha and returned to Kabul to brief Mr. Ghani and other political leaders: A transitional arrangement that would save at least some of the Afghan republic’s institutions was still possible. The Taliban had a strong incentive to cooperate. The U.S. had assured the insurgents that such a transitional government would get diplomatic recognition and would have access to billions of dollars in Afghan central-bank reserves and continued foreign aid.
Dr. Abdullah, Mr. Karzai, Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other Afghan leaders planned to fly to Doha to strike such an agreement but needed Mr. Ghani’s commitment to resign first. Once again, the Afghan president stalled for time, haggling over the composition of the delegation and insisting that close aides such as Mr. Mohib participate. The delegation was tentatively scheduled to leave Aug. 16.
Afghan government representative Abdullah Abdullah, seated third from left, confers with other negotiators at the start of talks with the Taliban in Doha.
Amin Karim, a senior member of Mr. Hekmatyar’s party and a former adviser to Mr. Ghani, went to see the Afghan president in the palace that week.
“It’s game over,” he started the meeting, in English. Mr. Ghani, flustered, accused Mr. Karim of defeatism, saying that Kabul was safe and that tens of thousands of elite troops from all over the country were ready to protect the Afghan capital.
On Aug. 14, Mr. Wilson, the American envoy, also met with Mr. Ghani. By then, the major cities of Kandahar, Herat and Ghazni had fallen to the Taliban. He says he was struck by how calm the Afghan leader appeared. Reporters were invited to cover the meeting, which was unusual. Taliban commanders in the mountains around the city had no inkling that just hours later they would be in control of the Afghan capital.
“We were sure that provinces would fall without any resistance, but we weren’t sure about Kabul. Bluffing by the government had given us a sense that there would be a fight,” said Mohammad Salim Saad, a senior commander of the Haqqani network’s Badri force who oversaw insurgent operations within the capital. “We worried that a battle for Kabul would destroy the city.”
The morning of Aug. 15, some armed Taliban sympathizers started appearing in the city. On Washington’s request, the Taliban issued a statement in Doha that requested all Taliban units to stay away. Mr. Wilson ordered all remaining personnel to move from the U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul’s Green Zone to the airport, then held by the American military.
Remaining staff were told to leave their personal effects behind and were allowed just one suitcase. Mr. Wilson left his suits and shoes at the embassy, and packed the essentials, including a book that had just arrived via Amazon delivery. As he boarded the chopper to leave for the airport, the pilots told him that Mr. Ghani had been spotted fleeing Afghanistan by helicopter about 30 minutes earlier.
“He gave us no hint that he was leaving. Not a scintilla of a hint that he was going to leave the country,” Mr. Wilson recalled. Mr. Ghani, in a statement released weeks later from the United Arab Emirates, where he now resides, said his unexpected departure “was the only way to keep the guns silent and save Kabul.”
In Doha, senior Taliban representatives gathered on the 21st floor of Qatar’s foreign ministry for a meeting with the country’s special envoy who oversaw Afghan affairs, Mutlaq al Qahtani. In disbelief, they watched the news of Mr. Ghani’s escape. Would the U.S. military want to secure Kabul for two weeks, to enable an orderly transition, they asked.
Mr. Baradar, Mr. Khalilzad, Gen. McKenzie and other officials met in Doha that afternoon. “There was a sense of anarchy coming. Law and order was falling apart in Kabul,” Mr. Khalilzad recalled. Following Mr. Ghani’s escape, the rest of the Afghan republic’s ministers, including the minister of defense, also rushed to the airport to flee the country.
The Biden administration wasn’t interested in taking potentially open-ended responsibility for the besieged Afghan capital and its five million residents. “It’s not my job. My job is to safely withdraw my forces,” Gen. McKenzie replied to the Taliban proposal, according to Mr. Khalilzad. “If you attack, we’ll defend ourselves.”
By 8 p.m., Taliban units, mostly those belonging to the Haqqani network, started entering the city, reinforcing the first echelon of clandestine operatives who had seized strategic locations.
Taliban fighters take control of Afghan presidential palace after President Ghani fled the country on Aug. 15.
PHOTO: ZABI KARIMI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Instead of a negotiated transfer of power with international recognition that had been discussed with the U.S., the Taliban found themselves running a government with empty coffers, subjected to American sanctions and denied a United Nations seat.
Mr. Baradar, widely expected to become the Taliban’s new head of government, was marginalized as one of three deputy prime ministers, and later disappeared from view for weeks. His verbal promises to American and other international negotiators, such as a commitment to ensure girls’ education, were no longer binding for Afghanistan’s new regime.
Instead, the Haqqanis and the southern military commanders under Mullah Omar’s son Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob emerged as the factions with real authority in Kabul.
A newly published Taliban calendar, for the Islamic year that began in August 2021, no longer carried Mr. Hibatullah’s promise of not seeking a monopoly on power. Instead, it pledged to enforce a “pure Islamic system.” A pile of wrecked Humvees left behind and a fleet of Chinooks flying away with tattered American flags illustrated the message.
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What say we here?
==========
Taliban resistance forces beg for U.S. support in effort
Effects will be felt beyond borders
BY JOSEPH CLARK THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Pro-democracy fighters in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley may be bloodied but are not bowed in opposing the Taliban, who have claimed victory over the entire country, a resistance leader told The Washington Times.
Ali Nazary, head of foreign relations for the National Resistance Front (NRF), said the pro-democracy fighters in Afghanistan’s fabled valley need foreign nations to back their efforts to turn back the Taliban and the flood of terrorist groups that he says have poured into the country.
“Whatever happens in Afghanistan will impact the international community,” Mr. Nazary said in an interview. “We believe the U.S. and any other country that believes international terrorism is a threat to its security and to its national interests has to assist us because we are the only forces fighting against international terrorism.”
Since the U.S. withdrawal in mid-August, the Biden administration has ignored the scores of fighters backed by ISIS, al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups pouring into the country, he said. And the estimated 50,000 strong Taliban, which has a long history of partnering with terrorist organizations, has no hope of providing security and stability in a country on the cusp of an economic and humanitarian disaster.
“These are facts that haven’t been accepted by the international community, especially the United States,” Mr. Nazary said. “The threat of international terrorism is growing every day that passes — and not only from ISIS but al Qaeda and the Taliban themselves.”
Mr. Nazary says the NRF, armed with an estimated 10,000 former Afghan soldiers, special forces commandos and police, is quickly becoming the U.S.’ last remaining option to counter the Taliban and the scores of terrorist groups flooding Afghanistan. But he says time is running out.
“We are the only forces inside Afghanistan that are militarily challenging all of them,” Mr. Nazary said.
“We cannot do this all alone,” he said. “My main appeal to the administration, to the U.S. Congress, and to others outside of government has been that this is the only option that the U.S. has. But it is not an option that will always persist.”
Led by Ahmad Massoud, the son of the late U.S.-allied Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the NRF formed in mid-August amid the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan.
The 32-year-old Mr. Massoud and his followers decamped to the mountainous region his father had defended amid a constant onslaught of Soviet offensives in the 1980s and later against the Taliban after they gained power in the 1990s. They pledged to stand up against the Taliban’s Islamic fundamentalism and fight for the same pro-democratic platform the Northern Alliance touted decades before.
Mr. Massoud says his forces need more arms for a protracted conflict because Taliban forces have surrounded Panjshir and cut off supply lines to replenish troops and weapons.
Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, met with representatives from the NRF in late August and pledged support for the anti-Taliban resistance.
But neither the White House nor the State Department publicly backed the NRF, and in early September, Taliban fighters posted photos of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s flag raised in over Panjshir — dashing hopes of stalling the fundamentalist government.
Mr. Waltz, a former Army Green Beret on the House Armed Services Committee, said that, from a national security standpoint, it is “grossly irresponsible” for the administration not to engage with the Afghan resistance.
“They’re begging us now to be a partner,” Mr. Waltz said. “If you look at what they stand for, versus what the Taliban are actually doing, what more does the administration need to see?”
Mr. Waltz pledged in September to “take a page out of ‘Charlie Wilson’s War,’” referring to the book and movie about the flamboyant Texas Democratic congressman known for securing millions of dollars for the CIA to arm the Afghans fighting against Soviet occupiers in the 1980s.
Mr. Nazary said such support has yet to materialize, as the NRF’s pleas are met with silence from the Biden administration. “Seeing inaction from this administration is just mind-boggling,” he said.
In Panjshir, both sides claimed to have inflicted heavy casualties throughout weeks of clashes in September, though reports have not been independently verified.
Afghanistan’s former vice president, Amrullah Saleh, who joined the resistance in Panjshir, said the Taliban had blocked humanitarian access and cut phone service and electricity in the region. He also claimed that the Taliban had begun forcing “military-age men” to clear minefields in the area.
Still, Mr. Nazary said the Taliban will struggle to maintain control in the valley.
“Panjshir has never been somewhere where the people have welcomed invaders,” he said. “Anyone who enters that valley throughout history has faced defeat.”
He said the NRF currently controls more than 60% of Panjshir, which is made up of an endless network of sub valleys that branch off of the main artery. The NRF allowed the Taliban to take control of the highly visible thoroughfare, he said, as the group adjusted its strategy to avoid protracted skirmishes with the well-armed Taliban.
Furthermore, Mr. Nazary said support for the NRF is beginning to expand beyond Panjshir as the Taliban fails to deliver stability.
“The resistance is growing now because the population is now facing a humanitarian crisis,” he said.
“They see the Taliban as a disruptive force, a force that is unable to bring stability and security, a force that is unable to deliver services to feed them,” he said. “So they have no other choice and the only reasonable option that they have is the NRF.”
But, Mr. Nazary said, the NRF can only hold out so long without U.S. assistance.
In the absence of constant, on-the-ground reporting, the state of play in Panjshir is difficult to verify. Western media outlets have noted few signs of Taliban opposition in the region in the weeks following the Taliban offensive, and some analysts in Washington maintain a more pessimistic view of the emergence of a formidable challenge to Taliban control.
Nonetheless, Mr. Nazary said supporting the NRF’s resistance may be the U.S.’ only option to thwart the growing threat of international terrorism and keep the Taliban in check.
In September, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley told the House Armed Services Committee that terrorist organizations could regain footing in Afghanistan in as soon as six months.
Gen. Milley also conceded that the pullout damaged the ability to confront potential terrorist threats in the region.
“I think the ends are going to remain the same to protect the American people, but I think the ways and means are going to change,” he said. “I think it is going to become much more difficult now to conduct counterterrorism operations against a reconstituted al Qaeda or ISIS in Afghanistan. Not impossible … but it will be more difficult.”
The Biden administration has lauded its overthe- horizon counter-terrorism strategy, but with no military footprint and degraded intelligence capabilities in Afghanistan and the closest air base from which to fly unmanned intelligence aircraft hours away, many in Washington remain skeptical of the strategy.
The Taliban continues to vie for international recognition and claims that it has distanced itself from al Qaeda and has promised to comply with international standards for human rights.
“It is a false premise from those who believe that they have bargaining chips with the Taliban, that will enable change in the Taliban behavior over the long term,” said Richard Goldberg a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “If anybody has watched the Taliban for the last couple of years, we should be very clear-eyed that any promise or statement from the Taliban is completely worthless.”
Mr. Nazary said he fears international leaders have already begun to cave to the Taliban and says that as long as they remain in power, the threat of terrorism continues to grow.
Last week, the Biden administration announced it was easing some restrictions on humanitarian aid to Afghanistan to help alleviate the worsening economic crisis. More aid organizations will now be able to assist in the Taliban-ruled country without violating sanctions against the Taliban and Haqqani network, a group of Afghan Islamic guerrilla insurgents.
Critics said the move sends the wrong message. “Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s shortsighted decision to offer broad sanctions carveouts could result in using American taxpayer funds to reward, legitimize and enable the same Taliban that took power by force and has shown no interest in abiding by international norms,” said Rep. Michael T. McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Mr. Nazary fears the Biden administration and leaders across the globe are on a slippery slope toward recognizing the fundamentalist government.
“We believe there’s too much being given away to the Taliban, even if they’re not recognized,” Mr. Nazary said.
“The only thing the Taliban know is destruction. That’s what they were made for. They weren’t made for good governance. They weren’t made to become statesmen.”
The White House has reiterated that no country, including the U.S., has recognized the Taliban. Both the Taliban and the Haqqani network remain sanctioned by the U.S. and United Nations.
“We have worked with the United Nations and other international institutions to accelerate the provision of liquidity, as well as resources to ensure that the basic human needs of the people of Afghanistan are being met,” a senior administration official said. “We are getting the relief to people across the country as winter approaches” “Our diplomats will continue to press the Taliban through multiple channels to address basic human rights issues, provide access to education for women and girls, and to fulfill their counterterrorism commitments,” the official added. While Mr. Goldberg did not specifically endorse the NRF, he said it could make sense for the U.S. to look for partners in Afghanistan as a potential check on the Taliban.
“Members of Congress should ask for a series of briefings from the intelligence community to be looking very closely at any opposition that exists,” said Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Mr. Nazary said the NRF’s calls for U.S. support went unheeded by the administration, despite the increasingly dire picture in Afghanistan.
As the NRF waits for its chance to retake Panjshir, it has ramped up efforts to influence powerbrokers outside of Afghanistan. Last month, NRF supporters staged demonstrations in 22 cities around the globe.
“We were able to show that the diaspora communities throughout the globe support the National Resistance Front,” Mr. Nazary said. “We have the popular support whether inside Afghanistan or outside.”
Mr. Nazary said the NRF has mobilized Afghan communities around the globe.
“If the Taliban control the geography, we have the popular support with us,” he said. “We have legitimacy.”
In October, the NRF registered in Washington as a lobbying group.
“If the United States completely ignores the situation inside of Afghanistan and believes that the Taliban will stabilize the situation, we’re going to see many threats in the West, especially in the United States, in the years to come,” Mr. Nazary said.
“The only thing the Taliban know is destruction. That’s what they were made for. They weren’t made for good governance. They weren’t made to become statesmen,” said Ali Nazary of th
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second
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/state-department-actively-impeding-rescue-efforts-as-afghanistan-fades-from-spotlight-vets-say/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=26195841
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Cooperation. Chinese and Afghan government officials met over the weekend to discuss economic reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. In an official statement, Beijing expressed its desire to invest in Afghanistan, support the export of agricultural products and deliver humanitarian assistance. Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum also said the new Taliban government would honor a mining contract between China Metallurgical Group and the previous Afghan government for the Mes Aynak copper mine, where work has been stalled for years
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https://andmagazine.com/talk/2022/01/06/the-taliban-field-a-brigade-of-suicide-bombers-officially-part-of-their-army/
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https://andmagazine.com/talk/2022/01/06/the-taliban-field-a-brigade-of-suicide-bombers-officially-part-of-their-army/
I wonder if these are drafted or enlisted men...
With complete control of the country, they could offer the seventy two virgins in advance of the missions.
No comment from the Klain administration?
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https://andmagazine.com/talk/2022/01/06/the-taliban-field-a-brigade-of-suicide-bombers-officially-part-of-their-army/
I wonder if these are drafted or enlisted men...
With complete control of the country, they could offer the seventy two virgins in advance of the missions.
No comment from the Klain administration?
The United States on Thursday praised the Taliban as businesslike and cooperative in facilitating the first evacuation of Americans from Afghanistan since the US military withdrawal.
The departure from Kabul to Doha on a chartered Qatar Airways flight Thursday marked "a positive first step" with the new regime, National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said.
"The Taliban have been cooperative in facilitating the departure of American citizens and lawful permanent residents on charter flights from HKIA," she said in a statement, referring to Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport.
"They have shown flexibility, and they have been businesslike and professional in our dealings with them in this effort."
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"They have shown flexibility, and they have been businesslike and professional in our dealings with them in this effort."
well I don't know if the Taliban should be described this way
but I know this is not a description of the Biden administration or Dems in the Houses.
:-P
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to keep them from starving to death
good job BB - Blinks/Biden
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-announces-308-million-in-aid-to-afghan-people-/6391862.html
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to keep them from starving to death
good job BB - Blinks/Biden
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-announces-308-million-in-aid-to-afghan-people-/6391862.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya
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yes
we are infidels
led by idiots
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https://bigleaguepolitics.com/not-sending-their-best-military-base-families-in-danger-as-afghan-refugees-engage-in-rape-assault-crime/
Magic soil not working!
https://www.wibc.com/blogs/hammer-and-nigel/national-guard-member-makes-shocking-claims-about-camp-atterbury-conditions/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/two-afghan-refugees-charged-federal-crimes-fort-mccoy-including-engaging-sexual-act-minor-using-force/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ari-j-kaufman/2021/09/22/mayorkas-just-3-percent-of-afghan-evacuees-in-u-s-are-special-immigrant-visa-holders-n1480555
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/leaked-documents-raise-new-questions-about-biden-admins-preparation-for-afghanistan-withdrawal?fbclid=IwAR3_fW5mpR4K12IchA-0l14mMLuutYsaLnB7bW6wyMUXmyyEnkSmpUMtPBY
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Revealed: How Obama and Biden laid groundwork for Afghanistan disaster
By Paul Sperry
February 7, 2022 6:13pm Updated
The Obama administration's 2014 swap of five Taliban prisoners for deserter Bowe Bergdahl helped lead to the current crisis in Afghanistan.
AFP/Getty Images
Paul Sperry
As his hasty Afghanistan exit looms larger as a strategic blunder, President Biden is still blaming his predecessor for the debacle, arguing the former President Trump tied his hands.
It’s Trump’s fault, the administration insists, that Afghanistan has collapsed into a pre-9/11 narco-terrorist state run by medieval mullahs brutalizing women all over again.
“The last president signed an agreement to get out,” Biden reminded reporters during last month’s marathon White House press conference.
But the truth is, it was the other way around.
Trump essentially inherited what Biden started nine years earlier as vice president, according to White House e-mails and U.S. officials who investigated his old office’s secret dealings with the Taliban.
Biden had advocated withdrawing from Afghanistan when he served as President Obama’s vice president. The White House shared a common goal with the Taliban in ending the war, concerned as it was that the long troop deployment looked like the “occupation” of a Muslim nation. And Biden’s then-national security adviser — Antony “Tony” Blinken — spearheaded an effort to achieve that goal, which included as its centerpiece a once-covert plan to spring from the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison basically the entire old leadership of the Taliban captured by U.S. forces after the 9/11 attacks.
“Tony Blinken got the ball rolling long before Trump, undercutting the notion that Biden was boxed in by Trump,” said Christopher Bright, who led a House Armed Services Committee investigation of the Obama administration’s jailbreak of the Taliban honchos.
The shocking 2014 paroling of the so-called Taliban Five, which was sold as a patriotic move to free an alleged Afghan “P.O.W.” — US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl — paved the way for the creation of a shadow Taliban government in Qatar.
That Taliban government in exile was used to formally negotiate the ill-advised U.S. withdrawal agreement.
“The White House just wanted the Taliban Five out to start that process,” Bright said. “That’s now more apparent in hindsight.”
All five former Gitmo inmates ended up sitting across the negotiating table with Biden’s envoys to hammer out details of the troop withdrawal, and all five are now in key posts running the government in Afghanistan, which they’ve renamed the “Islamic Emirate.”
Without their release — orchestrated by Blinken, who is now Secretary of State under Biden — there likely would be no troop pullout or Taliban takeover, and 13 U.S. service members slaughtered while guarding a mass evacuation at the Afghan airport would still be alive today.
As head of the Congressional investigation, Bright obtained administration e-mails that outlined Obama and Biden’s moves.
In 2011, Obama promised to start withdrawing all American forces from Afghanistan. Such a drawdown required engaging with the Taliban in peace talks, Bright noted, and releasing several of their senior leaders would advance the administration’s negotiating position.
Khairulla Said Wali Khairkhwa was one of the "Taliban Five" released by the Obama administration. He is now Afghan minister of information and culture.
Khairulla Said Wali Khairkhwa, one of the “Taliban Five” released by the Obama administration, is now Afghan minister of information and culture.
US Dept of Defense
Absul Haq Wasiq is now the intelligence chief of Afghanistan.
Absul Haq Wasiq is now the intelligence chief of Afghanistan.
US Dept of Defense
Mohammad Fazl Mazloom is the Afghan deputy defense minister and a member of the Afghan negotiating team.
Mohammad Fazl Mazloom is the Afghan deputy defense minister and a member of the Afghan negotiating team.
US Dept of Defense
The next year, Biden’s office floated to the Defense Department and other agencies the idea of trading five Taliban commanders jailed at Gitmo for Bergdahl, the US soldier held by the Taliban. But then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta balked.
“I opposed the swap,” Panetta wrote in his memoir. “I did not believe it was fair to trade five for one.”
But Panetta was soon replaced by Chuck Hagel, who was open to the idea.
Within months of Hagel taking over the Pentagon in February 2013, the swap scheme was resurrected. In June 2013, the exiled Taliban government opened a “political office” in Doha, Qatar, and the Obama administration formed “the interagency Taliban reconciliation group” which made it clear it was interested in releasing the Taliban commanders.
Mullah Norulla Noori is minister of borders and tribal affairs.
Mullah Norulla Noori is minister of borders and tribal affairs.
US Dept of Defense
Mohammad Nabi Omari is the governor of Khost Province.
Mohammad Nabi Omari is the governor of Khost Province.
US Dept of Defense
In December 2013, Hagel personally traveled to Doha to begin the process of drafting a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with Taliban representatives for the Taliban Five.
“Blinken was actively involved in overturning secretary of defense and other objections to the [Gitmo] transfer,” Bright said, “instituting an irregular review and security process, and proceeding nonetheless.”
As negotiations progressed, Blinken and other administration officials used coded language in emails to discuss the secret deal, using “third party” as a euphemism for the Taliban, for example.
“We achieved our immediate objectives: signaling to the third party our interest in pursuing this matter,” Hagel’s top military attorney Stephen Preston briefed Blinken and other officials in a December 2013 e-mail about their trip to Qatar.
By then, Blinken had been promoted to deputy national security advisor under Susan Rice, where he rode herd on finalizing the MOU to secure the still-secret deal. (Jake Sullivan replaced Blinken as then-veep Biden’s security adviser.)
Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly spearheaded the effort to release the "Taliban Five" while he was Obama's deputy national security advisor.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly spearheaded the effort to release the “Taliban Five” while he was Obama’s deputy national security advisor.
Susan Walsh/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
Career military officers, miffed at freeing Taliban commanders the Pentagon classified as too dangerous to release, leaked the scheme to the media.
Furious over the breach, Blinken lashed out in a February 2014 email to Pentagon brass: “I know you share my dismay, and frankly, disgust, at the leak in today’s Washington Post about our Bergdahl efforts.”
But the leaks failed to derail the final deal he negotiated with the Taliban through Qatari intermediaries. A few months later, Blinken authorized Preston to execute the final agreement. “Tony has okayed the signing of the MOU,” according to a May 2014 e-mail circulated by a National Security Council staffer.
SEE ALSO
Main: An internally displaced school teacher wearing a burqa from Takhar province, who identified herself by her first name, Nilofar, left, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press inside her tent in a public park in Kabul, Afghanistan. Inset: Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa
Same as the old barbarous boss
That same month, Obama announced he planned to end US troop presence in Afghanistan by 2016.
To get everybody on board the swap, Blinken had chaired a number of interagency “deputies meetings” in the months leading up to the June 2014 release of the five Taliban fiends. A month prior to the release, he and other officials actually entertained a last-minute Taliban demand to free a sixth Taliban detainee before settling on the original five. Hagel signed their release order.
News of their release sparked a firestorm of outrage. Congress complained it was not consulted about efforts to arrange the swap as required by law.
Others pointed out the Taliban Five were the only “forever prisoners” released without being cleared by the Gitmo parole board, and some of them had been linked by US intelligence to Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda terrorists.
Obama justified their release as a worthy exchange for a war hero. After the Taliban returned Bergdahl, Obama held a Rose Garden ceremony with his parents celebrating their son as a “POW,” a designation the Pentagon never gave him.
“We’re committed to winding down the war in Afghanistan,” Obama said, hinting at the real reason for the deal.
Begdahl eventually pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy in 2017.
Bergdahl eventually pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy in 2017.
AP Photo/Ted Richardson, File
It took years to find out the truth about Bergdahl, who was captured after deserting his post in Afghanistan. He was no hero. He ultimately was court-martialed and pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. In 2017, he was sentenced to a dishonorable discharge.
But Obama, Biden and Blinken, along with Rice and Sullivan — who are now serving Biden as top advisers in the White House — got what they wanted out of the ruse: a major token of good will to start withdrawal negotiations with the Taliban.
At the time, Obama assured a wary public that the dangerous enemy combatants would be transferred to Qatar and kept from causing any trouble in Afghanistan. In fact, they were left free to eventually mastermind last August’s sacking of Kabul. And they did so in luxury. Within months of arriving in Qatar, the Taliban leaders were housed in small palaces inside an exclusive neighborhood in suburban Doha and provided fancy new SUVs to drive.
The Obama-Biden administration pressed ahead with their plan in spite of several red flags. Soon after gaining their freedom, some of the notorious Taliban Five pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan and made contacts with active Taliban militants there. But the administration turned a blind eye to the disturbing intelligence reports, and it wasn’t long before the freed detainees used Qatar as a base to form a regime in exile.
Khairkhwa, member of the Taliban negotiating team, and the Taliban delegation arrive for final Afghan peace talks in Doha, Qatar, Aug. 12, 2021, where they met face-to-face with Biden envoy Khalilzad.
Khairkhwa, a member of the Taliban negotiating team, and the Taliban delegation arrive for final Afghan peace talks in Doha, Qatar, Aug. 12, 2021, where they met face-to-face with Biden envoy Khalilzad.
Photo by KARIM JAAFAR/AFP via Getty Images
Fast-forward to 2021. Last year, the Taliban Five sat across the negotiating table from Biden’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, where they participated as key members of the official Taliban delegation who negotiated the final terms of the US withdrawal. The retreat cleared a path for the Taliban to retake power after 20 years.
Khairullah Khairkhwa and other former Taliban prisoners assured Khalilzad that the Taliban would not launch a military offensive if Biden committed to removing all remaining American troops. In turn, Khalilzad convinced Biden and Blinken that the Taliban would share power with the US-backed government in Kabul.
“I do not believe the government is going to collapse and the Taliban is going to take over,” Khalilzad affirmed, while whitewashing the Taliban as “changed.”
But all the while, Taliban militants were taking large chunks of Afghan territory around the capital Kabul, encircling the US-backed regime there, waiting to take over the moment the last US troops left. Taliban negotiators made it clear they weren’t interesting in any power-sharing and sought to reestablish strict Islamic rule without outside meddling.
US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad at the Doha, Qatar meeting with Taliban officials.
US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad at the Doha, Qatar meeting with Taliban officials.
Photo by KARIM JAAFAR/AFP via Getty Images
As Khairkhwa warned in an al-Jazeera interview conducted during one of Biden’s “peace” summits: “I started jihad [holy war] to remove foreign forces from my country and establish an Islamic government, and jihad will continue until we reach that goal through a political agreement.”
He added that Taliban attacks on Afghan army posts were not off-limits, that they never agreed to a ceasefire with the US-backed Ashraf Ghani administration, and that “the intelligence of Kabul know that they cannot stay in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the foreign forces.”
Meanwhile, Blinken pushed Ghani to capitulate to the Taliban on several issues and even possibly step aside, according to Congressional Research Service analyst Clayton Thomas.
Little wonder the Taliban seized control of Kabul in mid-August and stormed the presidential palace without firing a single shot. Hoping to escape their clutches, thousands of panicked Afghans and foreigners fled to the airport, resulting in a humanitarian crisis lasting weeks.
Former Gitmo inmate Khairkhwa (third from left) with other Taliban leaders negotiating with Biden diplomats last March. All five Taliban commanders released from Gitmo sat on the Taliban negotiating team. “It never occurred to me that one day there would be negotiations with them (American officials), and I would be sitting there with them on one side and us on the other,” Mullah Khairkhwa said.
Former Gitmo inmate Khairkhwa (third from left) with other Taliban leaders negotiating with Biden diplomats last March. All five Taliban commanders released from Gitmo sat on the Taliban negotiating team. “It never occurred to me that one day there would be negotiations with them (American officials), and I would be sitting there with them on one side and us on the other,” Mullah Khairkhwa said.
Photo by ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
It’s plain that Biden and his diplomats got played by the Islamist thugs they assumed were rehabilitated. They thought they were dealing with a more pragmatic Taliban.
They should have known better: During the secret 2014 talks over their release from Gitmo, Taliban representatives used in their messages the abbreviation “IE” — Islamic Emirate — for the name of their shadow Afghan government. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is what the Taliban called the country when they ruled it from 1996 until US forces toppled their regime in 2001.
That old Islamic Emirate flag now flies again over Afghanistan.
President Trump wanted out of Afghanistan just as badly as Obama and Biden did, but he was handicapped by the fact that the Taliban leadership was already free and regrouping — they were bargaining from a position of strength, and deception.
The same five Taliban leaders captured by US troops and sent to Gitmo to rot in jail ended up getting to negotiate the removal of those very troops.
Obama, Biden and Blinken escorted the 9/11 terrorist-harboring creeps from prison cells to palace suites.
Paul Sperry is an investigative journalist and author of several books on the War on Terror including bestseller “Infiltration.”
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second
The more we learn about the administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, the more it becomes clear that its decisions were driven by political considerations and panic.
As the Biden administration’s chaotic and inept withdrawal from Afghanistan was unfolding in August 2021, a suicide bomber murdered 13 American servicemembers, and at least 170 Afghans, at the Abbey Gate outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. It was one of the deadliest attacks on our troops in our 20 years in that nation.
“Know this,” Biden said after the bombing. “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” This turned out to be face-saving political theater. Three days later, an air strike killed ten Afghans, seven of them children. Not one of the dead, as far as we know, was an “ISIS facilitator,” as the administration had alleged.
In fact, the Pentagon now says that the bombing was the work of a lone terrorist rather than a “complex” network, as the Biden administration had initially maintained. At the time, General Mark Milley not only referred to the strike as “valid” and “righteous” — let’s concede for a moment that he was basing this on the best available information — but went further to describe a “secondary explosion” and a supposed plethora of evidence justifying the bombing. None of that, it seems, was true. It seems increasingly likely that Biden was going to blow someone up to project his toughness.
The more we learn about the administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, the more it becomes clear that its decisions were driven by political considerations and panic. Here, for example, is a snippet from ProPublica’s recent investigation into the Kabul suicide bombing:
Days before the final withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, thousands of desperate Americans and Afghan allies seeking to flee the country were using unguarded routes across open fields and through narrow alleys to reach one of the few gates providing access to the Kabul airfield.
Despite intelligence warning of terrorist attacks, U.S. military commanders encouraged use of the routes. Some U.S. officials even provided maps to evacuees trying to bypass Taliban fighters stationed at a checkpoint outside the airport.
The fact that the murderer of 13 Americans “likely” gained access to troops via a path that U.S. officials were encouraging people to use seems quite noteworthy. As does the fact that we were helping evacuees circumvent the Taliban even as the Biden administration was assuring the public that the Islamic militants were facilitating the extraction of Americans.
A World without Rules
These are the same Taliban with whom the Biden administration had reportedly shared a list of “American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies.” When defending his reliance on the militants, the president claimed that, “to the best of our knowledge, the Taliban checkpoints — they are letting through people showing American passports.” In September, the administration declared that the Taliban had “shown flexibility” and were comporting themselves in a “businesslike and professional” manner.
You will recall, as well, White House press secretary Jen Psaki risibly contending that no Americans had been “stranded” in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Antony Blinken would later say that there were “under 200” Americans remaining in Afghanistan who “want to leave.” A new Senate Foreign Relations Committee report from ranking member Jim Risch (R., Idaho), contends that State Department officials estimated that on August 17 there were 10,000–15,000 Americans trapped in Afghanistan. Over the subsequent two weeks, as the Afghan forces the United States had trained and funded for 20 years disintegrated, 6,000 Americans were able to escape. I’m not a math whiz, but that leaves a lot more than zero, or even 200, stranded. How many of those American citizens, green-card holders, or Afghan allies had their names handed to the Taliban? Were the interpreters on that list being hunted down or beheaded by Islamists?
The Pentagon investigation into the bombing — relying on hundreds of witness interviews, drone footage, and reports by medical examiners — also concluded that the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate was “not preventable,” words that recurred in headlines atop reports by the Associated Press and other outlets.
In truth, the attack became unpreventable only after the Biden administration evacuated secure positions without having extracted those who wanted to leave. When George Stephanopoulos asked Biden whether he was warned that adhering to the Taliban’s timeline would put lives in danger, Biden answered: “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.”
This was surely a lie. As the New York Times reported, American intelligence had warned Biden that Afghan security forces would not resist the Taliban for long, and that the American-allied government would not hold Kabul. Anonymous Defense Department officials told the Wall Street Journal that neither Secretary Lloyd Austin nor General Milley had much confidence in “over-the-horizon” counterterror strategy and that both had warned Biden to keep 2,500 troops to cover the withdrawal.
A recently declassified report by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, which was submitted to the Department of Defense in January 2021, also warned the administration that the Afghan air force would quickly collapse. Yet, when asked in July 2021 if a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was inevitable, the president scoffed at the notion, arguing that “Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban.” What with the U.S. military equipment now in the Taliban’s possession, I guess that makes the Taliban as well-equipped as any army in the world.
A yet fuller picture emerges from another Army investigation, released to the Washington Post this week through a Freedom of Information Act:
Military personnel would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” evacuation, Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, the top U.S. commander on the ground during the operation, told Army investigators, “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.” He did not identify any administration officials by name, but said inattention to the Taliban’s determination to complete a swift and total military takeover undermined commanders’ ability to ready their forces.
So, apparently, the only branch of the armed services that didn’t warn the administration was the Coast Guard. Yet none of this advice stopped the president from abandoning the Bagram air base. Nor did it prompt him to set up military safe zones to retrieve stranded Americans or Afghan allies before retreating. His failure to do so caused a bottleneck at the Kabul airport that put troops and civilians in needless danger. Biden maintained that chaos was inevitable even as he promised a “safe and orderly” withdrawal when making his announcement.
Biden was wedded to the Taliban’s timeline. Given that he’s shown reliably disastrous foreign-policy instincts over 50 years in public life, this isn’t exactly surprising. It’s also increasingly clear that the administration ignored warnings because it believed leaving Afghanistan, which was quite popular in polls, would be a political slam dunk early in his term.
That was Biden’s prerogative. The president has no obligation to follow the advice of his generals. Undoubtedly, many of them would have advocated a U.S. presence in Afghanistan in perpetuity. As a policy matter, Biden’s botching of the evacuation is a separate issue from whether the United States should have withdrawn. However, once Biden decided to embrace what the Trump administration had begun, the responsibility to protect American lives was his. There are numerous questions yet to be answered on why he failed to do so.
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https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2022/02/model-afghan-refugee-sexually-assaulted.html
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/not-sending-their-best-military-base-families-in-danger-as-afghan-refugees-engage-in-rape-assault-crime/
Magic soil not working!
https://www.wibc.com/blogs/hammer-and-nigel/national-guard-member-makes-shocking-claims-about-camp-atterbury-conditions/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/two-afghan-refugees-charged-federal-crimes-fort-mccoy-including-engaging-sexual-act-minor-using-force/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ari-j-kaufman/2021/09/22/mayorkas-just-3-percent-of-afghan-evacuees-in-u-s-are-special-immigrant-visa-holders-n1480555
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/feb/28/stranded-us-afghan-allies-wonder-if-helping-was-mi/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=evening&utm_term=evening&utm_content=evening&bt_ee=o1nE5ty%2FBRxxlHV5Pxq6MSEQbZ5wAwIyBZz9EMHLfva%2BdwByQbErvSTwEoOl1hQY&bt_ts=1646169948851
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Mr.Haqqani emerges. Is the 10 mill $ bounty still open ?
https://theprint.in/india/haqqani-networks-sirajuddin-haqqani-makes-rare-public-appearance-struggles-in-reciting-quran/861165/ (https://theprint.in/india/haqqani-networks-sirajuddin-haqqani-makes-rare-public-appearance-struggles-in-reciting-quran/861165/)
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The time has come for Imran Khan to go....
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Afghanistan’s last finance minister, now a D.C. Uber driver, ponders what went wrong
By Greg Jaffe
Yesterday at 2:24 p.m. EDT|Updated today at 7:00 a.m. EDT
Until last summer, Khalid Payenda was Afghanistan’s finance minister, overseeing a $6 billion budget — the lifeblood of a government fighting for its survival in a war that had long been at the center of U.S. foreign policy.
Now, seven months after Kabul had fallen to the Taliban, he was at the wheel of his Honda Accord, headed north on Interstate 95 from his home in Woodbridge, Va., toward Washington, D.C. Payenda swiped at his phone and opened the Uber app, which offered his “quest” for the weekend. For now his success was measured in hundreds of dollars rather than billions.
“If I complete 50 trips in the next two days, I receive a $95 bonus,” he said as he navigated the light Friday-night traffic.
The job was his way of supporting his wife and four children after he had exhausted his modest savings supporting his family. “I feel incredibly grateful for it,” said the 40-year-old. “It means I don’t have to be desperate.” It was also a temporary reprieve from obsessing over the ongoing tragedy in his country, which was suffering through a catastrophic drought, a pandemic, international sanctions, a collapsed economy, a famine and the resurgence of Taliban rule.
Senior U.S. officials had largely moved on from the Afghanistan war, which began 20 years earlier with high-minded promises of democracy, human rights and women’s rights and ended with an American president blaming Afghans, such as a Payenda, for the mess left behind.
“So what’s happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country,” President Biden said as desperate Afghans rushed to the airport the day after Kabul fell, adding: “We gave them every tool they could need. … We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.”
The question of what happened and who was at fault haunted Payenda. He blamed his fellow Afghans. “We didn’t have the collective will to reform, to be serious,” he said. He blamed the Americans for handing the country to the Taliban and betraying the enduring values that supposedly had animated their fight. He blamed himself.
“It eats at you inside,” he said. He felt trapped between his old life and dreams for Afghanistan and a new life in the United States that he had never really wanted. “Right now, I don’t have any place,” he said. “I don’t belong here, and I don’t belong there. It’s a very empty feeling.”
He crossed the Potomac River into D.C. On his right, monuments to America’s democracy and its Founding Fathers shone against the night sky. His Honda rolled to a stop in front of the Kennedy Center, where two George Washington University students were waiting for him.
They settled into the back seat of his sedan and began talking about their day — the sudden drop in temperature, their plans for dinner, a mishap earlier that morning on the Metro train. “I dropped my phone, and it slid down the entire car,” one of the women was saying. “It was the worst moment of my entire life.”
After a few minutes’ drive, Payenda dropped the women at their apartment and quickly checked his phone.
“Four-dollar tip,” he said.
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The time has come for Imran Khan to go....
Its April...Inshallah, tomorrow.
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Imran Khan and Bajwa having a power struggle....something must give.
The time has come for Imran Khan to go....
Its April...Inshallah, tomorrow.
So the signs have been there for long. In the banana republic that is Pak, Imran Khan (IK) has lost the majority and yesterday a no-confidence motion was not allowed to be presented by the speaker. So the govt has now been dissolved and new elections will be needed. No PM in Pak has completed a full 5 year term and IK is no exception. Military-Imran relations have not been good. In recent times, IK made a Russia trip to butter up Putin, whereas the Military has decided that China no longer serves their interests and the US is being buttered up. The Chinese Belt and Road initiative (CPEC) has collapsed due to all the corruption, and Pak needs to pay the Chinese a huge debt.
Pak is also taking advantage of India's neutral position in the Ukraine conflict, which irks the USA. Last week Daleep Singh, deputy US NSA came to India and basically threatened India, PM Modi did not meet him. Being of Indian origin, he missed a huge opportunity to connect with Modi, instead he behaved just as India fears, with threats. Several other state representatives from European countries also made a bee-line to New Delhi re: Ukraine, and Modi did not meet anyone, incl. the Chinese Foreign Minister. But when Russian FM, Lavrov came calling the body language was very friendly and Modi met Lavrov.
New PM will likely be Shahbaz Sharif, brother of Nawab Sharif ex PM, who is exiled in the UK.
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https://twitter.com/real_lord_miles/status/1509863259918290982?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1509863259918290982%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.revolver.news%2F
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Future PM of Pak. Pakis need to be emotional.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1512889808670314496 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1512889808670314496)
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The time has come for Imran Khan to go....
.
I notice that ya has been consistently right on everything in this region. )
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistan-parliament-try-again-vote-oust-pm-khan-2022-04-09/
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I too have noticed 8-) 8-) 8-)
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Future PM of Pak. Pakis need to be emotional.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1512889808670314496 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1512889808670314496)
Now the PM of Pak. Pakis are too predictable.
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two of my doctors colleagues
were Pakistani
at least one was a Republican
it this new PM good for us?
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We have to give him some time. I dont have high hopes.
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Pakistan's New Government Will Struggle Amid Economic and Political Challenges
4 MIN READApr 13, 2022 | 21:30 GMT
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif (R) in Islamabad on April 7, 2022.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif (R) in Islamabad on April 7, 2022.
(AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty Images)
Pakistan's new government will face mounting economic challenges and political instability as it tries to hold itself together and improve ties with the United States and traditional allies. Pakistan's National Assembly on April 11 appointed Shehbaz Sharif as the country's new prime minister after former Prime Minister Imran Khan lost an April 10 vote of no confidence. This happened after the Pakistani Supreme Court on April 7 overruled a decision by the speaker of the National Assembly to cancel the vote against Khan and dissolve Parliament.
Shehbaz Sharif, the brother of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has been the chief minister of Punjab province three times. In 2018, he was elected to the National Assembly, where he was the leader of the opposition.
The new administration will face significant economic and political challenges in the short to medium term that will threaten the government's stability. The new government has inherited a fragile economy and an unstable social and political environment. The Pakistani economy is facing high fiscal and current account deficits and high inflation rates, in part due to the country's dependence on foreign oil, natural gas and other essential imports. The new government is expected to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund for the disbursement of the next tranche of a $6 billion bailout package. The IMF will likely require strict and unpopular economic reforms that will be difficult for the government to implement without generating social unrest. Additionally, Khan will continue to mobilize support for his party ahead of the mid-2023 general elections and will likely double down on his allegations that a foreign conspiracy caused his fall. Unpopular economic reforms could give Khan's party a window of opportunity for mobilizing supporters and bringing them to the streets. It will be difficult for Sharif to gain public support for his administration, because he was accused (though later acquitted) of corruption and belongs to a family that has faced similar accusations. Keeping his supporters together and finishing his term in office could also prove an uphill task, as his government will include different parties like the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and others that have competed before, and whose policy preferences and ideologies could still collide. Early elections could also be called if the different parties that form the government cannot work together, enhancing the country's political instability.
Pakistan's foreign reserves had dropped to $11.3 billion by April 1 from $16.2 billion in the previous month. Pakistan's projected current account deficit is 4% of gross domestic product.
The government is likely to work with the military on national security and foreign policy issues, and to strengthen relationships with traditional allies — including seeking to improve ties with the United States, albeit modestly so. Unlike his predecessor, Sharif is expected to work with the military establishment, which largely directs the country's defense and foreign policy and remains influential in domestic politics, to remain in power. Pakistan's relationship with China could strengthen because Shehbaz Sharif's regional government and Nawaz Sharif's former national government have been instrumental in China's Belt and Road Initiative projects in the country. China will likely be interested in preserving the strategic relationship with Pakistan, though security issues (including the regional militant threat to Chinese projects and workers) could affect the economic aspects of the partnership. Pakistan's relationship with Saudi Arabia is also likely to remain strong, as the Sharif family has a close relationship with the Gulf state, a strategic ally that remains an important development and military partner for Pakistan. Finally, the Sharif government will very likely seek to improve Pakistan-U.S. relations, which deteriorated recently due to Khan's allegations that the United States wanted to remove him from office. Since Pakistan's next general elections are in August 2023, the new government probably will not have enough time to deal with both domestic economic and political priorities, which could limit its reorientation toward the United States. Some form of rapprochement with India is possible under Sharif, as evidenced by recent talk from the Pakistani military about dialogue with India to resolve the Kashmir issue. The dispute over Kashmir will, however, continue to generate bilateral tensions, as could growing discrimination and violence against Muslims in India.
Shehbaz Sharif's provincial government signed many Belt and Road Initiative developmental projects when he was a regional leader, and Pakistan entered the strategic China-Pakistan Economic Corridor deal during the Nawaz Sharif government.
The Sharif brothers enjoyed protection in Saudi Arabia, where they were exiled after a 1999 military coup in Pakistan, and still enjoy a close relationship with the Saudi royal family.
Turkey, China and India were among the first countries to congratulate the new prime minister of Pakistan.
On April 2, Pakistan's chief of army staff stated that all disputes with India should be settled through diplomacy.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/us-embassy-staff-destroyed-passports-as-taliban-took-over-trapping-american-allies-in-afghanistan/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=27364928
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/2051596/thanks-joe-biden-taliban-have-spy-blimp
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https://freebeacon.com/national-security/congress-probes-biden-admin-after-taliban-uses-us-biometric-data-to-target-allies/
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Will Pak implode...
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/40000-factories-risk-closing-pakistans-capital-amid-fuel-crisis
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At least we have great leadership in the US to handle the implosion of a nuclear power!
Will Pak implode...
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/40000-factories-risk-closing-pakistans-capital-amid-fuel-crisis
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https://www.dhs.gov/news/2022/06/14/dhs-and-dos-announce-exemptions-allowing-eligible-afghans-qualify-protection-and
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https://andmagazine.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-the-taliban-gets
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https://andmagazine.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-the-taliban-gets
If you aren't horrified by this article, I'm not sure what will.
At least NYC has started nuke attack PSAs for some reason...
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Move faster. Pakistan will abolish the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Authority, pending Beijing’s approval, in an effort to accelerate implementation of CPEC infrastructure projects. Bureaucratic hurdles have slowed development of CPEC, which involves billions of dollars of transportation projects and special economic zones
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https://www.foreignaffairs.com/afghanistan/what-taliban-really-fear?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=fatoday&utm_campaign=What%20the%20Taliban%20Really%20Fear&utm_content=20220819&utm_term=FA%20Today%20-%20112017
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Reflecting on the Taliban's First Year Back in Power in Afghanistan, Part 1: Exceeding Expectations
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Ekta Raguwanshi
Analyst, Stratfor
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Isaia Galace
Analyst, Stratfor
10 MIN READAug 25, 2022 | 21:01 GMT
Taliban fighters take to the streets during a national holiday celebrating the first anniversary of the group’s takeover on Aug. 15, 2022, in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Taliban supporters take to the streets in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 15, 2022, during a national holiday celebrating the first anniversary of the group’s takeover of the country.
(Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
Editor's Note: This column is the first of a two-part series that explores where the Taliban exceed expectations since retaking control of Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, and the many challenges that still lie ahead for the group as it enters the second year of its second reign over the country.
Although the Taliban have fared better than initially expected at managing certain aspects of governance since seizing power last August, the group continues to face a diverse array of challenges that it appears poorly equipped to resolve amid persistent disunity and the dominance of hard-liners in the movement. Just over a year ago, the Taliban seized control of Kabul following a rapid offensive across Afghanistan. The ensuing chaos saw the collapse of the former Afghan government and the frantic withdrawal of U.S. and U.S.-allied coalition forces from the country. In the immediate aftermath, many observers raised concerns about whether the Taliban would be able to maintain control over Afghanistan and, if so, if they would form a more inclusive and effective government compared with the prior Taliban regime that ruled over Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. But while the group has exceeded expectations in managing certain political, diplomatic and economic issues over the past year, the Taliban face multiple constraints that will continue to threaten their hold on power, including persistent disunity and the continued dominance of hard-liners in shaping domestic policy.
The Taliban's Relative Successes
1. Securing overall political control
The Taliban have been able to successfully secure and maintain broad political control over Afghanistan by implementing the strategic lessons learned from their previous rule and by capitalizing on the current lack of strong resistance. As demonstrated in its 2021 military offensive that ended in the seizure of Kabul, the group recognized early on the importance of establishing and maintaining control of rural areas and border checkpoints, which enabled them to besiege (and eventually seize) government-controlled areas and force the surrender of the Afghan government.
The lack of major foreign support to anti-Taliban resistance forces, combined with the low morale among government troops, also helped the Taliban physically consolidate power. The former Afghan government was already exceptionally fragile, corrupt and widely unpopular, which left its military forces unwilling and unmotivated to stand up to the Taliban after foreign forces pulled out. Meanwhile, the resistance fighters who maintained control over pockets of northern Afghanistan during the Taliban's last reign also lacked the coordination and foreign financial support to put up a serious fight — enabling the Taliban to soundly overtake all of the north this time around.
Over the past year, the Taliban have also put loyal commanders and religious scholars in charge of all Afghan provinces. The big show of loyalty or control by the Taliban was during the so-called "loya jirga," or grand council, meeting in June 2022 in which about 3,000 clerics and religious scholars participated. Although the meeting did not yield any big political and social policy decisions, the event highlighted the Taliban's consolidation of power among community leaders in distant areas of the country.
2. Launching a sophisticated diplomatic campaign
Amid regional countries' interest in stabilizing Afghanistan, the Taliban have sought to legitimize their rule internationally by engaging in more sophisticated diplomacy, which has resulted in more meaningful and productive relations — at least with certain key countries. The Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan remains unrecognized by the international community, including by their closer partners like Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia (all of whom recognized the Taliban as the leader of Afghanistan during the group's prior reign). But more countries have demonstrated a greater willingness to meaningfully engage with the current Taliban regime.
The Taliban have also more effectively crafted and managed their political messaging, at least with regional countries, including through the use of politically-savvy designated spokespersons. For instance, one of the Taliban's spokespersons, Suhail Shaheen, and Cultural Commission member Muhammad Jalal, have used Twitter for both domestic and external messaging over the past year, publicizing good governance and related social achievements, as well as the Taliban's diplomatic meetings and efforts to provide stability and security. According to an Aug. 15 report issued by the D.C.-based think tank Washington Institute, the Taliban have held about 400 meetings with 35 different countries since retaking control of Afghanistan last year, and have also attended several regional conferences. Over the past year, 16 countries have reopened their embassies in Afghanistan as well, and more countries (including Germany and Malaysia) are considering doing the same. The past year has also seen the Taliban reinstate Afghan embassies in China, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.
From negotiating more favorable conditions for the withdrawal of Western forces to maintaining relatively cordial relations with many regional countries, including key partners China and Pakistan, the Taliban have been able to generate pragmatic interest among important regional actors to engage with the group politically and economically. While the West remains reluctant to deal with the Taliban due to the group's poor human rights standards and support for militant groups, regional countries have enhanced their cooperation with the Taliban. Pakistan, for example, has relied on the Taliban to mediate cease-fire negotiations between Islamabad and the anti-government militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, also known as the "Pakistani Taliban"), which is based in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, China has begun economic engagement with the Taliban; private Chinese traders have taken several trips to Afghanistan over the past year to explore opportunities in the South Asian country's mining sector.
At the same time, Uzbekistan and Pakistan are keen on commencing a trans-Afghanistan railway project, while Iran has demonstrated interest in advancing energy cooperation with the Taliban. Finally, the Taliban and the United Arab Emirates are currently in the works of negotiating a contract that would be the Arab Gulf country to operate the Kabul International Airport. These examples suggest that some countries — particularly those with interests either near or in Afghanistan — are willing to strengthen relations with the Taliban. And over time, these countries may eventually be willing to officially recognize the regime.
3. Keeping the economy afloat and maintaining civil services
The Taliban have also been successful in some aspects of economic management (including enhancing revenue collection, continuing mineral exports and preventing a total breakdown of services in the country), despite the withdrawal of budgetary aid from the West that had previously comprised 75%-80% of the Afghan government's budget. The immediate fallout from the Taliban takeover in August 2021 saw Afghanistan's overall GDP contract by a third and pushed many Afghans (further) into poverty and unemployment. But the Taliban have since brought the economy out of total free fall, with the country's GDP stabilizing in recent months (albeit at a lower level than in the pre-Taliban period).
The Taliban claim to have collected an estimated $840 million in revenue from December 2021 to June 2022, with duties on exports accounting for over half (55%) of that revenue. The continuation of mining exports has proven to be particularly valuable, with revenue from Afghanistan's coal shipments to Pakistan having doubled since the Taliban takeover. The Taliban have also selectively enforced the ban on growing and selling opium they imposed shortly after coming to power, allowing opium cultivation to reportedly proceed in some areas as local Taliban officials seek to collect associated taxes and duties. In addition, the Taliban have demonstrated relative success in retaining civil workers and continuing certain government services, as the provision of electricity, water and humanitarian aid have largely continued over the past year.
That said, Afghanistan's economy is still far more fragile and internationally isolated than it was before the fall of Kabul, and it faces a number of significant challenges that will require substantial international assistance to meaningfully counter. Much of the population is experiencing near-extreme poverty and acute hunger, while persistent insecurity, lack of budgetary aid, and recent natural disasters portend a likely further deterioration of the country's economy. This past June, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck the central Afghan provinces of Paktika and Khost, killing an estimated 1,000 people and destroying thousands of homes. In recent weeks, flash flooding across the country has also caused widespread property damage, in addition to killing over 100 people.
But even in the face of these challenges (and the continued lack of Western aid), the Taliban have so far staved off a complete economic collapse. And that in and of itself is a success, as many international observers had feared the group's return to power would serve the final blow to Afghanistan's war-torn economy.
4. Creating relative security
The security situation in Afghanistan has generally improved over the past year, largely because the violence that previously plagued the country was driven by the Taliban themselves. But since taking power in August 2021, the Taliban have also effectively countered attempts by the National Resistance Front and several other armed groups to challenge its territorial control. This is partially due to the Taliban's months-long efforts to build out its security forces, which are now likely larger than the previously assessed 75,000 fighters the group reportedly maintained in the summer of 2021. The group has also repaired and utilized some of the aircraft left behind following the withdrawal of U.S. and U.S.-allied troops, which has likely helped the Taliban counter flare-ups of resistance activity by enabling more expedient transportation and deployment of troops and material. As a result, the Taliban have successfully limited the vast majority of resistance activity to northeast Afghanistan, notably the historically anti-Taliban Panjshir province. In the past year, some anti-Taliban resistance forces have occasionally tried to seize control of villages or districts in the northeast, but the Taliban have generally successfully resisted or quickly retaken contested areas.
Meanwhile, attacks by Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), currently the country's biggest security threat, have thus far proven to be more tactical than strategic threats. ISKP fighters have conducted a number of high-profile attacks — primarily against Taliban commanders and minorities in major cities — that have shown that the country is not completely internally secure. However, the group has not demonstrated the near-term intent or capability to challenge and hold large swathes of territory, and it is not a geographically-wider threat compared with the war between Taliban insurgents and foreign forces in the prior two decades. Indeed, a U.N. report published in July said "targeted [ISKP] attacks" accounted for the bulk civilian casualties in Afghanistan between mid-August 2021 and mid-June 2022, but also acknowledged an "overall, significant reduction in armed violence," as the United Nations recorded 2,106 civilian casualties during this period (which is fewer than in previous years).
Finally, the U.N. Security Council has assessed the Taliban will likely continue to constrain al Qaeda, at least in the near term, to reduce potential disruptions to the Taliban's consolidation of power in Afghanistan. Some level of cooperation and communication between al Qaeda and the Taliban is all but certain, as evidenced by the fact that al Qaeda's former leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been living in Kabul before he was killed in a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle strike earlier this month. But the Taliban have largely sought to reduce the West's perception that their rule will result in an external terrorist threat, and thus curtail the potential for substantial foreign counterterrorism intervention that could threaten the Taliban's control. For now, al Qaeda also likely maintains a similar interest in allowing the Taliban space to govern and consolidate control unhindered, given that al Qaeda's long-term resurgence is significantly helped by having a relative safe haven governed by an ally in Afghanistan.
In the second part of this series, we'll explore daunting challenges that lie ahead for Afghanistan's Taliban leaders as they seek to maintain control over the crisis-stricken, diverse country.
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Reflecting on the Taliban's First Year Back in Power in Afghanistan, Part 2: The Challenges Ahead
12 MIN READAug 26, 2022 | 18:05 GMT
Hundreds of villagers desperate for humanitarian aid wait for hours outside a government center to register on Dec. 6, 2021, in Charikar, Afghanistan.
Hundreds of villagers wait outside a government center to register for humanitarian aid on Dec. 6, 2021, in Charikar, Afghanistan.
(Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
Editor's Note: This column is the second of a two-part series that explores where the Taliban exceeded expectations since retaking control of Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, and the many challenges that still lie ahead for the group as it enters the second year of its second reign over the country. The first part, which focuses on the group's relative successes over the past year, can be found here.
While the Taliban have effectively established themselves as the de-facto government in Afghanistan, they will face considerable challenges to their continued rule, making effective diplomatic partnerships for economic advancement and preventing security threats, both domestically and to external actors, essential. Notably, most challenges are closely related to the accomplishments discussed in the first part of this series — highlighting that what may have been relative successes in the Taliban's first year in power also present longer-term liabilities.
The Taliban's Top Challenges in Year Two
1. Mitigating economic and humanitarian crises
Despite keeping the economy from completely collapsing, the most critical challenge for the Taliban will be improving the country's still-dire economic and humanitarian crises, which recent natural disasters have only exacerbated. The Taliban's opaque budget and policy priorities make it difficult to decipher the group's current economic focus. But in the absence of foreign budgetary aid that made up about 75% of the country's prior budget, the Taliban will be increasingly desperate for financial help to plug a reported $500 million dollar budgetary gap. Meanwhile, about $9 billion belonging to the Afghan Central Bank remains withheld in Western banks — most of it in the United States. Despite calls to unfreeze the assets, these funds may remain unavailable due to the Taliban's hard-line domestic policies, including controversial limits on women's and girls' rights. The recent discovery that al Qaeda's former slain leader had been hiding out in Kabul also suggests a violation of the 2020 U.S.-Taliban agreement (in which the Taliban pledged to keep Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for Islamist extremist groups) — potentially further dimming the likelihood of Washington allowing the Taliban to access these frozen funds. Furthermore, Western sanctions on several Taliban leaders and the group's failure so far to gain international recognition have blocked the Afghan banking system from conducting transactions with other countries.
These more macroeconomic headwinds coincide with others that present immediate challenges to the Afghan populace. For example, thousands of women have lost their jobs due to the Taliban's hard-line restrictions, while overall unemployment has increased due to lack of economic demand, which has caused disruptions in the delivery of essential services like healthcare and education in most areas of the country.
Food insecurity is also worsening in Afghanistan. An estimated 20 million people (50% of the population) are currently food insecure, with women and children being the most severely affected. The risk of crime related to poverty and hunger, as well as people turning to militant groups for monetary safety, thus remains high in the country. The growing humanitarian crisis is deepening Afghanistan's dependence on external aid and raises questions about the Taliban-led government's ability to effectively manage the economy in the long term.
2. Maintaining internal unity
As the Taliban attempt to transition from a violent insurgent movement countering a common enemy to engaging in national governance, internal disunity and hard-line dominance will remain a serious constraint. The Taliban have many internal divisions, including hardliners vs. moderates; local Taliban leaders and commanders vs. Taliban core members who have political power; and ethnic minorities within the Taliban vs. the majority Pashtun Taliban.
The abrupt revocation of the long-expected resumption of older girls' education in March was a particularly prominent example of continued disagreements between more pragmatic members of the Taliban and the group's more hard-line members. The incident highlighted the persistent dominance of hard-liners in shaping domestic policy, despite the subsequent costs to the group's international diplomatic efforts. Though the Taliban's ambitions for official recognition and further international assistance may eventually influence at least limited compromise on certain issues, the group has thus far failed to demonstrate a willingness to do so — even amid the country's deteriorating conditions, suggesting that, overall, hard-line governance and disunity will continue.
Internal discord has also been reportedly triggered by different Taliban elements fighting over control of resources and territory, particularly in high-earning mining regions. Take, for example, the Taliban's recent killing of one of their former commanders. In early July, the group's Kabul-based political leadership started to voice their frustration with Malawi Mahdi, a Taliban intelligence chief in Afghanistan's Bamiyan district. Mahdi, who was ethnic Hazara, had reportedly been locally collecting taxes as opposed to adhering to the Taliban's policy of central, monopolized control of resources. The conflict then took a sectarian turn and escalated into an uprising led by Mahdi, to which the Taliban reacted fiercely — ultimately defeating and reportedly killing the rebel commander in August as he was trying to flee to Iran. This example speaks to Afghanistan's complex geography and demography; the presence of valuable natural resources in ethnic minority-dominated areas could prove a dangerous future threat to the Taliban's power.
Meanwhile, the Taliban have demonstrated increasing distrust of ethnic minorities even within the movement. The group has reportedly replaced Tajik and Uzbek Taliban fighters with Pashtun fighters in certain key areas of Afghanistan. This, along with reported incidents of Taliban violence and discrimination against minority groups, will only likely further reinforce perceived alienation among these minorities, which risks fueling at least localized resistance to Taliban rule that could grow. In a more escalatory scenario, some of these aggrieved Taliban members could even defect to groups like ISKP or other anti-Taliban groups, not only undermining Taliban unity but also creating a security threat as they do so. ISKP has already been observed disseminating propaganda targeting Tajiks and Uzbeks, so there is not merely a notional concern.
One further potential medium-to-long term threat is the newly formed High Council of National Resistance. The anti-Taliban resistance council is comprised of exiled former warlords like Ata Mohammad Noor and Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostum, along with several Hazara leaders, who have demanded ethnic minorities have meaningful influence in governing the country and threatened armed mobilization if their concerns are not heeded. It remains to be seen whether, despite living abroad, these individuals still hold sufficient sway in Afghanistan to influence events on the ground. But they remain well-known figures in the country and still have lots of international contacts, which could one day see some degree of foreign support for their ideas.
Ultimately, these combined challenges — driven by persistent internal disunity and the dominance of hard-liners in the movement — will make it increasingly difficult for the Taliban to effectively govern the diverse country. If the Taliban starts compromising on social and religious hard-line policies, the group would likely alienate many local level commanders, soldiers and others (including key leaders) who believe in the strict implementation of the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic governance. This could lead Taliban members to join groups like ISKP and anti-Taliban resistance movements, thereby fundamentally threatening the Taliban's control over the country.
3. Gaining more international aid and recognition
The continued dominance of hard-liners in the movement will likely continue to limit prospects for greater international assistance and official recognition of the Taliban, particularly by Western countries. Besides limiting women's rights and older girls' ability to access education, the Taliban have continued to limit press freedoms, engage in arbitrary detentions and suppress dissent — sometimes brutally. The Taliban have also failed to credibly demonstrate their intent to form a more inclusive government or draft a new constitution.
The group's hard-line governance has triggered persistent Western criticism of the Taliban and has occasionally driven delays and hesitance on providing more substantive assistance to Afghanistan. For example, after the Taliban banned older girls from returning to school in March, the World Bank temporarily suspended humanitarian aid projects worth $600 million for months that it had initially approved. In recent days, frustrations with the Taliban's hard-line governance (and the restrictions on girls' education, in particular) have reportedly also driven disputes among members of the U.N. Security Council on whether to exempt 13 Taliban officials from a travel ban. If the ban is not lifted, it would further complicate the Taliban's efforts to engage in international diplomacy.
Meanwhile, the Taliban's enduring relationship with al Qaeda may have diplomatic consequences as well. The recent discovery that slain al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was living in Kabul has reminded the world that the Taliban still retain ties with the notorious Islamist extremist group behind the 9/11 attacks against the United States, as well as many other deadly attacks in Europe and elsewhere. This will make it politically difficult for Western leaders to offer more near-term support to the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan — especially when coupled with the controversial hard-line policies it has enacted over the past year. Indeed, the apparent hosting of al-Zawahiri in the Afghan capital reportedly prompted the U.S. government to at least temporarily pause negotiations with the Taliban on unfreezing Afghan central bank funds.
The expected continuation of at least some of the aforementioned issues will sustain challenges to the Taliban's quest for further international assistance and recognition, particularly from Western countries, which in turn will limit the Taliban's ability to counter the country's ongoing economic and humanitarian crises or legitimize their de-facto rule. The continued absence of substantive economic aid that could potentially ease Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis could give space for social unrest or even drive some support for anti-Taliban resistance forces in certain areas of the country. As long as the Taliban remains unrecognized, it will lack the ability to officially represent Afghanistan and pursue the country's interests at the international level, risking the exacerbation of poverty, crime and instability.
4. Managing domestic and regional security threats
Despite consolidating territorial control, the Taliban face a significant legitimacy and security challenge due to domestic and regional threats. In February, the U.N. Security Council assessed that extremist groups generally enjoy significant freedom in Afghanistan following the Taliban's takeover of the country. This indicates the Taliban will likely continue to face challenges in constraining the actions of such groups, both domestically and regionally. Most significantly, ISKP has demonstrated the persistent capability to conduct lethal attacks primarily targeting the Taliban and religious minorities in Afghanistan, despite the Taliban's attempts to counter the group. Though reports about ISKP's recent concern regarding group infiltrations may suggest the Taliban are evolving its counter-ISKP approach from generally ineffective and brutal counterterrorism to a more targeted, espionage-based strategy, the Taliban have thus far failed to limit ISKP's ability to launch attacks. Further persistence of the ISKP threat will allow it to continually undermine confidence in the Taliban's claimed capability and intent to secure the country and protect Afghanistan's religious minorities.
Though the Taliban have demonstrated success in countering anti-Taliban resistance forces, the potential remains for such forces to more effectively coordinate their efforts and potentially gain international support, which could enhance their ability to challenge the Taliban's territorial control. The Taliban's alienation of ethnic and religious minorities may also drive recruitment and support for such groups or even the formation of new ones, which, if substantial enough, could similarly enhance their impact on Afghanistan's security.
In addition, the Taliban will likely continue to occasionally clash with the border forces of neighboring countries given heightened mutual suspicions and the irresolution of certain cross-border disputes — most notably over the legitimacy of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, known as the ''Durand Line.'' While the tactical impacts of these clashes will likely remain localized, their unpredictability and potential for escalation mean that clashes may drive occasional challenges to relations with neighboring countries. Neighboring countries' desire to maintain stability and prevent spillover violence from Afghanistan will likely constrain potential escalations, meaning consequent challenges to the Taliban's regional relationships will likely remain temporary and limited. But flare-ups in tensions with bordering nations could still create challenges for the Taliban, especially if they require the group to reallocate resources from other areas to strengthen border security.
Finally, despite generally securing the country, the Taliban will continue to face challenges constraining militant groups that threaten foreign countries, which will sustain international concern about threats emanating from Afghanistan. Besides ISKP and al Qaeda, other militants — including Pakistani TTP militants, along with Tajik militants and ethnic Uyghur fighters from China — continue to operate in Afghanistan. The Taliban's limited capability — and at times, intent — to constrain the diversity of threats based in the country will likely sustain risks to its diplomatic and economic efforts, particularly if any of these groups successfully conducts a major attack against a foreign country. Though different countries maintain different tolerances to the risks posed by Afghanistan-based militant groups, regional countries in particular (including Russia, China, India and various Central Asian countries) have all stated that their continued engagement with the Taliban is contingent on the Taliban constraining threats from Afghanistan to their countries.
Threats emanating from Afghanistan may also trigger foreign counterterrorism strikes, which risks undermining perceptions of the Taliban's control over the country. Demonstrating the challenges the Taliban face, ISKP has already claimed rocket attacks against Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, while the TTP has attacked Pakistani security forces primarily in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. In response, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan put their military forces on alert, while Pakistan reportedly conducted airstrikes against alleged TTP militants in eastern Afghanistan in April. Propaganda materials released by many of these militant groups have expressed their continued intent to threaten regional countries. Ultimately, the Taliban's failure to meaningfully constrain the activity of Afghanistan-based militant groups will pose a sustained threat to the Taliban's legitimacy and Afghanistan's security.
Going forward, the Taliban will face far more difficult challenges compared to its first year in power as it seeks to maintain control over the crisis-stricken, diverse country. Even given some improvements in stability, Afghanistan remains a cautionary tale.
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Pakistan's Floods: The Economic, Political and Security Fallout
5 MIN READAug 30, 2022 | 20:45 GMT
Unprecedented flooding and associated economic losses will worsen Pakistan's economic and political challenges, and potentially raise the risk of militant activity in certain areas. Pakistan is facing an unprecedented flooding disaster, with most of its provinces experiencing significantly higher than average monsoon rainfall in 2022. Inadequate physical infrastructure and poor disaster preparedness have exacerbated the crisis.
Three of Pakistan's four provinces, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have been severely impacted by the flooding. As of Aug. 29, Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority reports that about 30 million people have been displaced, almost 950,000 houses have been destroyed and more than 1,100 people have been killed. Meanwhile, more than 3,450 kilometers (approximately 2,140 miles) of roads, nearly 150 bridges and more than 170 shops have been damaged.
The province of Balochistan was completely cut off from other parts of the country when flooding closed or destroyed important roads and bridges.
Even though heavy rains have stopped in most parts of the country, the forecast calls for more heavy rainfall in September, which could lead to more damage.
The military has deployed in flood-affected areas for rescue and relief operations.
Ongoing floods come as Pakistan faces a severe economic crisis and brewing instability, and as underlying militant risks persist despite cease-fire negotiations between the government and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. On Aug. 29, the International Monetary Fund approved a resumption of its $1.17 billion bailout program after the government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who took office in April and has since enacted various fiscal measures like increasing fuel, electricity and tax rates and secured foreign financial assistance. Despite this financial lifeline, Islamabad still faces an array of major economic challenges, ranging from foreign exchange reserves at historically low levels ( or only enough to cover about a month of imports), high inflation (approximately 25% in July) and a growing current account deficit (currently at about $17.4 billion). Meanwhile, political polarization is growing as former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was removed from office after a no-confidence vote in April and replaced by long-time rival Sharif, gains popularity. Khan's inflammatory anti-government rhetoric coupled with the country's economic challenges have created great uncertainty in the political landscape and increased the risk of unrest. Meanwhile, although the frequency of TTP attacks has fallen due to ongoing negotiations and a potential cease-fire, sporadic attacks by Islamic State Khorasan Province and other militants have continued, primarily against security personnel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
On top of other challenges, a shortage of liquefied natural gas means that the country has faced power cuts in several regions that have hampered economic activity and drawn popular ire.
In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia and Qatar pledged financial support for the ailing Pakistani economy, helping Islamabad satisfy the IMF demand that Pakistan secure external support to fill its financing gap assessed at $4 billion.
The government's attempts, with the military's support, to block Khan's political ascent through legal investigations and other institutional means have raised the risk of widespread social unrest. Authorities have opened an investigation into Khan for allegedly violating anti-terror laws, sparking protests by his supporters; tensions between the two camps could rise if authorities arrest Khan or take other measures to prevent his political activities.
The Afghan Taliban is currently mediating between the TTP and Islamabad, but a deal has not been finalized and the TTP members who reject negotiating with the government might carry out attacks in Pakistan on their own. Unconfirmed local reports also suggest the TTP may be using local militants as proxies to carry out sporadic attacks against Pakistani security forces in a bid to avoid blowback from Islamabad.
The economic damage of the floods will complicate the government's ongoing efforts to bring economic relief, which could bolster Khan's popularity and cause more political instability. Militants may take advantage of the crisis and exploit the likely slow pace of rehabilitation and resettlement efforts to recruit or conduct attacks. Despite the recent deal with the IMF, cash-strapped Pakistan's dependence on foreign aid will grow, as its precarious finances give it little ability to effectively respond to the flooding crisis. Economic growth will likely be truncated due to the impact of floods, deterring much-needed economic investment in the country. Damaged crops will lead to lower yields of important agricultural exports like rice and cotton, worsening food insecurity and endangering the livelihoods of millions of the country's people. The economic problems and the constraints on the government in dealing with them could bolster Khan's popularity at the expense of Sharif, leading to anti-government protests and potentially to early elections. While near-term security threats are driven by mass displacement, poorly organized and uneven governmental development assistance or redevelopment activity (especially in the restive provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) will likely motivate separatist groups like Balochistan Liberation Army, the TTP and the Islamic State to exploit popular suffering to draw recruits and increase their attacks against the government and the military.
Pakistani Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal on Aug. 30 said redevelopment costs after unprecedented floods could amount to $10 billion.
The TTP on Aug. 26 released a statement criticizing the government's inadequate relief response and blaming it for popular suffering.
On Aug. 3, six commanders died in what Baloch insurgents said was their downing of an army helicopter during flood relief operations. Regardless of whether an accident caused the crash as the army argues, further flood cleanup operations will carry similar security risks.
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Gosh, I sure feel bad about this!
Pakistan's Floods: The Economic, Political and Security Fallout
5 MIN READAug 30, 2022 | 20:45 GMT
Unprecedented flooding and associated economic losses will worsen Pakistan's economic and political challenges, and potentially raise the risk of militant activity in certain areas. Pakistan is facing an unprecedented flooding disaster, with most of its provinces experiencing significantly higher than average monsoon rainfall in 2022. Inadequate physical infrastructure and poor disaster preparedness have exacerbated the crisis.
Three of Pakistan's four provinces, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have been severely impacted by the flooding. As of Aug. 29, Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority reports that about 30 million people have been displaced, almost 950,000 houses have been destroyed and more than 1,100 people have been killed. Meanwhile, more than 3,450 kilometers (approximately 2,140 miles) of roads, nearly 150 bridges and more than 170 shops have been damaged.
The province of Balochistan was completely cut off from other parts of the country when flooding closed or destroyed important roads and bridges.
Even though heavy rains have stopped in most parts of the country, the forecast calls for more heavy rainfall in September, which could lead to more damage.
The military has deployed in flood-affected areas for rescue and relief operations.
Ongoing floods come as Pakistan faces a severe economic crisis and brewing instability, and as underlying militant risks persist despite cease-fire negotiations between the government and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. On Aug. 29, the International Monetary Fund approved a resumption of its $1.17 billion bailout program after the government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who took office in April and has since enacted various fiscal measures like increasing fuel, electricity and tax rates and secured foreign financial assistance. Despite this financial lifeline, Islamabad still faces an array of major economic challenges, ranging from foreign exchange reserves at historically low levels ( or only enough to cover about a month of imports), high inflation (approximately 25% in July) and a growing current account deficit (currently at about $17.4 billion). Meanwhile, political polarization is growing as former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was removed from office after a no-confidence vote in April and replaced by long-time rival Sharif, gains popularity. Khan's inflammatory anti-government rhetoric coupled with the country's economic challenges have created great uncertainty in the political landscape and increased the risk of unrest. Meanwhile, although the frequency of TTP attacks has fallen due to ongoing negotiations and a potential cease-fire, sporadic attacks by Islamic State Khorasan Province and other militants have continued, primarily against security personnel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
On top of other challenges, a shortage of liquefied natural gas means that the country has faced power cuts in several regions that have hampered economic activity and drawn popular ire.
In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia and Qatar pledged financial support for the ailing Pakistani economy, helping Islamabad satisfy the IMF demand that Pakistan secure external support to fill its financing gap assessed at $4 billion.
The government's attempts, with the military's support, to block Khan's political ascent through legal investigations and other institutional means have raised the risk of widespread social unrest. Authorities have opened an investigation into Khan for allegedly violating anti-terror laws, sparking protests by his supporters; tensions between the two camps could rise if authorities arrest Khan or take other measures to prevent his political activities.
The Afghan Taliban is currently mediating between the TTP and Islamabad, but a deal has not been finalized and the TTP members who reject negotiating with the government might carry out attacks in Pakistan on their own. Unconfirmed local reports also suggest the TTP may be using local militants as proxies to carry out sporadic attacks against Pakistani security forces in a bid to avoid blowback from Islamabad.
The economic damage of the floods will complicate the government's ongoing efforts to bring economic relief, which could bolster Khan's popularity and cause more political instability. Militants may take advantage of the crisis and exploit the likely slow pace of rehabilitation and resettlement efforts to recruit or conduct attacks. Despite the recent deal with the IMF, cash-strapped Pakistan's dependence on foreign aid will grow, as its precarious finances give it little ability to effectively respond to the flooding crisis. Economic growth will likely be truncated due to the impact of floods, deterring much-needed economic investment in the country. Damaged crops will lead to lower yields of important agricultural exports like rice and cotton, worsening food insecurity and endangering the livelihoods of millions of the country's people. The economic problems and the constraints on the government in dealing with them could bolster Khan's popularity at the expense of Sharif, leading to anti-government protests and potentially to early elections. While near-term security threats are driven by mass displacement, poorly organized and uneven governmental development assistance or redevelopment activity (especially in the restive provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) will likely motivate separatist groups like Balochistan Liberation Army, the TTP and the Islamic State to exploit popular suffering to draw recruits and increase their attacks against the government and the military.
Pakistani Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal on Aug. 30 said redevelopment costs after unprecedented floods could amount to $10 billion.
The TTP on Aug. 26 released a statement criticizing the government's inadequate relief response and blaming it for popular suffering.
On Aug. 3, six commanders died in what Baloch insurgents said was their downing of an army helicopter during flood relief operations. Regardless of whether an accident caused the crash as the army argues, further flood cleanup operations will carry similar security risks.
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Maybe it didn't go well.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-withdrawal-biden-yet-to-release-after-action-reports/
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We withdrew from Afghanistan? You wouldn't know that if you were watching the MSM.
Maybe it didn't go well.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-withdrawal-biden-yet-to-release-after-action-reports/
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https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1060877256/firing-line-with-margaret-hoover
very good interview without the usual Margaret Hoover leftist tilt who is not a conservative as far as I can tell. it is 46 minutes but worth the listen . I saw on cable last night.
Ackerman puts most of the blame on Biden .
He also gives an insightful view of not only of Afghanistan but US wars in general past and future.
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New route. The first shipment of containers using a new road and rail route through Central Asia arrived in Hairatan, Afghanistan, on Thursday. The corridor starts in the northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang, passes through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and ends in Afghanistan. It’s an alternative to the traditional sea routes, which take longer to traverse.
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The amount that can be transported over the seas is huge and at very low costs.
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But is it subject to constraints by the US Navy and as such requires a Chinese Navy that breaks out of the South China Sea?
What I am seeing here is the beginning of the Belt Road Initiative and preparation for taking hold of Bagram AF Base.
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https://newlinesinstitute.org/afghanistan/what-about-the-boys-a-gendered-analysis-of-the-u-s-withdrawal-and-bacha-bazi-in-afghanistan/
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Pak out of FATF. Reward for getting Zawahiri ?
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FftyE85aEAAo9x6?format=jpg&name=medium)
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After a Rocky Few Years, Pakistan Tries to Mend Ties With the U.S.
7 MIN READNov 2, 2022 | 21:31 GMT
A delegation led by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) meets with a delegation led by Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 26, 2022.
A delegation led by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) meets with a delegation led by Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 26, 2022.
(KEVIN LAMARQUE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
While Pakistan's ongoing push to improve ties with the United States will likely result in a more pragmatic relationship after years of mistrust, cooperation will continue to primarily focus on security issues and a substantial U.S. economic involvement in the country is unlikely. Recent outreach between the United States and Pakistan indicates the two countries are trying to improve their strained diplomatic ties:
On Oct. 9, Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa wrapped up a six-day visit to the United States, where he discussed regional security matters in meetings with senior U.S. defense officials, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines and CIA Director William Burns.
On Sept. 26, Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also visited Washington, where he discussed humanitarian aid for flood relief and other regional issues with his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken.
On Sept. 8, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden provided Pakistan $450 million to upgrade the country's fleet of F-16 fighter jets — indicating a policy reversal from its predecessor, which suspended military aid to Pakistan for failing to clamp down on terrorist groups. The same day, CIA Director William Burns visited Pakistan to discuss the situation in Afghanistan with the country's defense officials.
These developments suggest a mutual desire by both Pakistan and the United States to reset bilateral ties after a rocky few years. Washington's relations with Islamabad have hit several rough patches in recent years amid the latter's ongoing ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Throughout the 18-year Afghan conflict, Pakistan maintained support to both the militant group and the U.S. military. Over the years, this increasingly fueled concerns in Washington that Islamabad was playing a double game by nominally aiding U.S. troops in Afghanistan while simultaneously sponsoring the very enemy those troops were fighting against. Such concerns came to a head under the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who repeatedly accused Pakistan of being deceitful by providing a safe haven for the Taliban and other terrorist groups. In 2018, the Trump administration suspended $1.9 billion in U.S. aid to the country, which in turn made Pakistan all the more distrustful of the United States — worsening the bilateral relationship. Relations then hit another low earlier this year, when former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan accused the United States of orchestrating his ousting from power in April (claims that were never confirmed).
But despite recent political frictions, the two countries' security establishments have remained in close communication. For decades, the U.S.-Pakistan partnership has been rooted in military cooperation, due largely to Pakistan's strategic importance in mitigating threats in neighboring Afghanistan. Islamabad and Washington joined forces to arm the anti-Soviet mujahideen in Afghanistan in a proxy conflict of the Cold War. The two countries then resurrected their alliance in 2001 after the United States invaded Afghanistan to dismantle the Taliban-led government and destroy al Qaeda, the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. The country's landlocked geography forced the United States to rely on Pakistan — the principal sponsor of the Taliban — to provide overland access for ferrying troops and military equipment into Afghanistan. And in exchange for that support, Washington gave Islamabad roughly $33 billion in aid over the next 15 years (until the Trump administration cut off those funds in 2018). Today, the United States and Pakistan's security institutions continue to cooperate in mitigating regional threats.
The CIA's July 31 drone strike that killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul was speculated to have been carried out in coordination with Pakistan, given a 2003 U.S.-Pakistan agreement that allows the United States to use Pakistani airspace to conduct flights into Afghanistan.
By increasing outreach to the United States, Pakistan is seeking to expand this largely security-focused relationship to other areas, such as trade and infrastructure. A combination of political and economic pressures is driving Pakistan to improve ties with the United States. For one, Pakistan's military holds significant influence over the country's security and foreign policy matters, and has been working with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government to mend bilateral ties with the United States. In addition, Sharif's government is hoping to build a more comprehensive partnership with Washington that covers aspects like trade, infrastructure, technology and health at a time when the South Asian country is grappling with the economic fallout from the devastating floods that swept across Pakistan earlier this year, along with the ongoing global energy and food crises. Relatedly, improved ties with the United States could also increase Pakistan's chances of securing financial assistance from various multilateral lending institutions, like the International Monetary Fund, given Washington's influence over such organizations.
Pakistan has repeatedly requested bailouts from the IMF during volatile economic times. Islamabad is currently under a $6 billion IMF bailout plan from 2019 under which it received $1.17 billion in August this year after the seventh and eighth reviews of the program.
Between July and September, Pakistan was hit with a series of massive floods that left millions without homes or food and severely disrupted agricultural production.
Pakistan is also hoping to balance its foreign policy at a time of rising geopolitical tensions between the United States, China and Russia. Pakistan is a part of China's Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which aims to extend China's influence over the world through economic diplomacy and partnership. Pakistan has also taken a neutral stance on Russia's war in Ukraine, which has enabled it to import cheap Russian oil at a time when Western nations are scrambling to find new energy supplies after sanctioning Moscow's exports. The United States cannot quickly replace China as a source of investment, or Russia as a source of energy. But Pakistan will nevertheless seek to establish an independent bilateral relationship with the United States in the hopes that it could eventually serve as a potential balance to Chinese and Russian ties.
But despite Pakistan's efforts to broaden the relationship, the United States will remain primarily interested in security cooperation. The United States will likely avoid reinstalling a direct military presence in the region after withdrawing from Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover in August 2021 and realignment of its foreign policy objectives to counter Chinese influence. Instead, Washington will probably opt to keep some degree of operational capabilities to monitor and act on terrorist threats. But it will still rely on Pakistan's help to gain the access needed to maintain those counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering efforts, given that all of Afghanistan's other neighbors are either directly or indirectly hostile toward the United States. Indeed, the Biden administration's recent move to help upgrade Pakistan's fleet of fighter jets (despite India's protests) shows that U.S. leaders still very much see the country as an important security partner. Still, this continued interest in Pakistan is unlikely to result in a significant increase in U.S. financial aid or private-sector investment in the country. For one, Washington is also seeking to grow its partnership with India (Pakistan's regional archnemesis), which will likely limit the extent to which it can deepen economic cooperation with Islamabad — at least in the short-to-medium term. China's large presence in Pakistan, along with the South Asian country's perennial economic and political instability, will further deter U.S. businesses from getting too involved in Pakistan. The United States thus remains unlikely to significantly expand its relationship with Pakistan beyond the security realm, as the risks of doing so currently outweigh the benefits.
The three Central Asian states to Afghanistan's north — Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan — are heavily influenced by U.S. adversaries China and Russia. And to Afghanistan's west is Iran, which is itself a U.S. adversary. Pakistan thus remains the United States' only practical partner for land access to Afghanistan, which Washington needs to monitor (and prevent) potential threats, like the regrouping of terrorist organizations in the Taliban-controlled country.
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So Imran Khan (IK) ex PM was shot in the leg at a recent rally. IK has been bad mouthing the army and ISI, riling up the crowds against the army. Warning shots have now been fired. Either the army exerts dominance, or Pak implodes (non-zero probability). The army is the glue which holds Pak together. All this democracy is not working very well. Maybe we need a military coup :evil:
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KARACHI, Pakistan—In April, a Pakistani mother of two blew herself up outside the gate of Karachi University’s Chinese language and culture institute, incinerating a minibus and killing three Chinese teachers and a Pakistani driver.
The attack—one of a growing number targeting Chinese nationals working abroad in Asia and Africa—was a sign of China’s deepening challenges as it pours money into the developing world with the aim of extending its influence.
China is the largest lender to the developing world, mainly through Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road infrastructure program. The country has worked to portray itself as a benevolent partner to the countries where it is spending money, in an attempt to draw a distinction with Western powers.
Still, as its global reach expands, China is increasingly grappling with the consequences of projecting power around the world, including corruption, local resentment, political instability and violence. For developing countries, China offers perhaps the best chance of quickly building major infrastructure.
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China has faced Western criticism that it is pursuing lopsided lending arrangements that drive developing nations into heavy debt without necessarily delivering the desired local economic benefits. But Beijing also has confronted significant risks, from defaults to political unrest that endangers Chinese assets and workers in borrowing countries.
“The Chinese have to come to terms with the fact that these are unstable countries with fragile internal politics,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank. “If you are going to operate here, you are going to encounter these problems.”
Beijing accepts a degree of security risk in pursuing its Belt and Road program and is committed to working with partner governments, such as in Pakistan, to mitigate threats to Chinese personnel and assets, Chinese experts say.
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“We couldn’t possibly wait until all terror attacks cease before starting new projects,” said Qian Feng, a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s National Strategy Institute. “We have to keep working, studying the issues, and undertake preventative measures at the same time.”
Passengers in eastern Lahore board a metro line that was built under China’s Belt and Road lending program and opened in October 2020.
PHOTO: ARIF ALI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Chinese businesses and workers in several countries where it is making investments have become favored targets. Chinese nationals are seen as wealthier than most locals and, in some cases, are perceived to be reaping too much of the economic benefits and job opportunities created by Beijing’s investments.
Gunmen in Nigeria abducted four Chinese workers in June during an attack at a mine in the country’s northwest. In October, unidentified “thugs” attacked a Chinese-funded business in Nigeria and killed a Chinese employee there, according to the Chinese consulate in Lagos. The consulate urged Chinese companies to hire private security and fortify their work areas.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Chinese investors dominate the mining industry, Chinese business groups and workers have sounded alarms about armed robberies and kidnappings in recent months. Beijing has urged local authorities to step up security for Chinese assets and personnel.
There were about 440,000 Chinese people working abroad for Chinese contractors in Asia and roughly 93,500 in Africa at the end of last year, according to the China International Contractors Association, a Beijing-based industry group.
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WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains why China’s Belt and Road lending initiative is broken, what a Belt and Road 2.0 might look like, and the challenges such an overhaul could pose for China. Illustration: Adele Morgan
The Oxus Society, a Washington-based think tank, counted about 160 incidents of civil unrest in Central Asia between 2018 and mid-2021 where China was the key issue.
Beijing recognizes the rising threat to its workers in developing countries but doesn’t want to send in its army as it professes noninterference abroad, said Alessandro Arduino, author of “China’s Private Army: Protecting the New Silk Road.” Instead, China is deploying technology such as facial recognition and hiring more private Chinese security contractors, he said.
China chose Pakistan—one of its closest allies, with deep military ties and a common rival in India—as a showcase of its investment in developing nations. Beijing has spent about $25 billion here on roads, power plants and a port.
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This month, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, made his first trip to Beijing since taking office in April. Both leaders committed to their countries’ partnership.
“China views its relations with Pakistan from a strategic and long-term perspective, and Pakistan has always been a high priority in China’s neighborhood diplomacy,” Mr. Xi said, according to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mr. Xi also expressed concern about the safety of Chinese nationals in the country. Islamabad told Beijing it could import armored vehicles for protection and that Pakistan would increase its security at some Chinese projects, Pakistani officials said.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meets Chinese President Xi Jinping during his November visit in Beijing.
PHOTO: PRESS INFORMATION DEPARTMENT/REUTERS
After the April attack at the gate of Karachi University, Beijing sought to bring Chinese private security contractors into Pakistan. Islamabad, which provides 30,000 Pakistani soldiers to guard the Chinese, denied the request, according to Pakistani officials.
The suicide bomber targeted a minibus of teachers returning from lunch to the university’s Confucius Institute, part of Beijing’s global network of schools teaching Chinese language and culture.
One of the teachers killed, Huang Guiping, helped establish the program about a decade ago and just a month earlier had returned for a second stint as director of its language institute.
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“Karachi is my second hometown,” Mr. Huang said at the time, according to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency.
A Chinese teacher who survived but was badly injured, Wang Yuqing, was flown to China to recover. Another 11 teachers in Karachi, who taught at different colleges in Pakistan’s largest city and weren’t in the minibus attacked, returned to China.
“The motherland has brought us back,” said a teacher who flew home in May with the ashes of their deceased colleagues, state-run Xinhua reported.
The Baloch Liberation Army, the deadliest separatist group in Pakistan’s westernmost province of Balochistan, claimed responsibility for the attack.
In September, a gunman raided a dental practice in Karachi run by an ethnic Chinese couple who had grown up in Pakistan. The assailant shot and injured the dentist and his wife, both in their 70s, and killed their ethnic Chinese cashier. The attack was claimed by a militant group.
A gunman shot and injured an ethnic Chinese couple who had grown up in Pakistan and killed their ethnic Chinese cashier in September at a dental clinic in Karachi.
PHOTO: IMRAN ALI/REUTERS
Pakistan is in the throes of a political clash between the current government and its recently ousted prime minister, Imran Khan. The country is facing inflation running at 25%, plus devastating floods, and it recently secured a bailout from the International Monetary Fund as its foreign exchange reserves dwindle to dangerously low levels. China’s investments in Pakistan were supposed to lay the foundation for an economic takeoff, according to both countries.
Prime Minister Mr. Sharif pledged to resume China’s Belt and Road program, after it stalled under his predecessor. Mr. Khan’s ministers questioned the value-for-money of power projects and whether bribes had been paid for some of the road-building—accusations angrily denied by Beijing.
Pakistan’s province of Balochistan is home to the port of Gwadar, a focus of Beijing’s infrastructure program in the country. There are plans to add an airport.
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Only three ships call a week and 28 Chinese nationals, including two chefs, live there, said Zhang Baozhong, chairman of China Overseas Port Holding Company, which runs the port, part of the state-owned China Communications Construction Co. Ltd.
Locals, who don’t have sufficient electricity and drinking water, say they haven’t benefited from the port. Hidayat ur Rehman Baloch, a religious cleric whose party swept local elections this year, led a yearslong and ultimately successful push to convince authorities to drop a plan to expel residents and bulldoze part of the town for a port expansion.
“What does development mean?” he asked, adding that he holds the Pakistani government responsible for what he sees as the lack of local benefits from China’s investments. “We have no electricity, no healthcare available. We are thirsty.”
The port of Gwadar is a focus of Beijing’s infrastructure program in the country. There are plans to add an airport.
PHOTO: AHMAD KAMAL/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS
Locals, who don’t have sufficient electricity and drinking water, say they haven’t benefited from the port.
PHOTO: ASIM HAFEEZ/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Islamabad is hoping to entice the Chinese private sector to follow in the footsteps of state-owned firms and set up factories in the country. After the April bombing in Karachi, many Chinese entrepreneurs interested in bringing industry to Gwadar canceled their plans, said Mr. Zhang.
“The effect is very negative,” the port chief said in an interview at the new U-shaped office complex he built at the port, complete with marble floors and domes. “We still believe that Pakistan is a safe place for Chinese investors, provided you follow guidelines.”
Raffaello Pantucci, co-author of the book “Sinostan,” about China’s influence over its Muslim-majority neighboring nations, said Belt and Road was designed to help countries develop economically and lead to greater stability.
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“The truth is, this doesn’t always resolve peoples’ anger,” Mr. Pantucci said. “Pakistan is a toxic brew for China where they have become enemy No. 1 for an array of militant groups on the ground due to their proximity to the Pakistani state.”
The Baloch Liberation Army are secular insurgents who say the province’s natural resources are being exploited by the rest of the country and often target the Pakistani military. Jihadists from the Pakistani Taliban also have attacked Chinese nationals.
Many insurgents in Pakistan see Beijing as working arm-in-arm with the government they are fighting. “President Xi, you still have time to quit,” a Baloch Liberation Army video released after the Karachi University attack warned.
Last year, in northern Pakistan, militants rammed an explosive-laden car into a bus carrying Chinese construction workers being taken to the site of a dam they were building. The bus was blown off a mountainside, killing nine Chinese and four Pakistanis. This month, authorities said two men belonging to the Pakistani Taliban, a group close to al Qaeda, were sentenced to death for their role. The group hasn’t claimed the attack.
The Pakistani Taliban also tried in 2021 to assassinate the Chinese ambassador, whose car was about two minutes away from arriving at a hotel that was bombed, Pakistani security officials say.
The Pakistani Taliban tried in 2021 to assassinate the Chinese ambassador, whose car was about two minutes away from arriving at a hotel that was bombed.
PHOTO: FAYYAZ AHMED/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
In Karachi, the Baloch militants have attacked the Chinese consulate and the stock exchange, in which Chinese investors have a controlling interest.
“Chinese confidence in our system has been shaken up,” said Mushahid Hussain, a lawmaker with close ties to Beijing, and chairman of the Senate Defense Committee. He said Pakistan has deployed enough security personnel, but needs better intelligence to prevent attacks on the Chinese.
Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan’s planning minister, said that China’s projects in the country were “not dependent on one or two odd security incidents.”
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“It reflects a broader understanding between the two countries to forge a long-term economic partnership,” Mr. Iqbal said.
Shari Hayat, also known as Shari Baloch, was a 31-year-old with a master’s degree in zoology. Moments before she blew up the minibus, she recorded a message for her family: “Be strong. This is a hard path but we have to walk it.”
Baloch is a common surname in the province, especially in separatist circles where it is taken to denote closeness to the struggle.
Ms. Hayat’s family said she had no contact or grievance with the Chinese.
“No one expected anything extreme from her,” said her father, Mohammad Hayat, a 74-year-old retired civil servant.
Human-rights groups say thousands of Baloch men have been picked up by security forces as terrorist suspects under Pakistan’s crackdown on the insurgency, with many tortured or executed. Pakistani authorities acknowledge there are missing Baloch, but deny torture and extrajudicial killings.
Ms. Hayat’s husband, a 32-year-old dentist named Habitan Bashir, also known as Habitan Baloch, said his wife told him two years ago that she would carry out a suicide attack. He is being sought by the Pakistani authorities for alleged involvement in the attack.
She was greatly affected by the Pakistani military’s abduction of youth in the region and the anguish of their families, he said. “She took this step to show Pakistan that not only Baloch men but Baloch women are also ready to sacrifice in defense of their motherland.”
Rachel Liang, Joyu Wang and Waqar Gillani contributed to this article.
Write to Saeed Shah at saeed.shah@wsj.com and Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com
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Lt.Gen Asim Munir is the new Pak Chief of Army. He is known to be a Koran thumping general, has it all memorized. This has happened 2 times before in the past, both times pak army did special ops in India. India was last month appointed as President of the G20, next G20 meeting is in Nov 2023, at which time, world leaders will likely visit Indian Kashmir to see the peace in that region and will be advised about India's claims to POK. After that India has major elections in May 2024, when Modi will seek a new 5 yr term.
Based on these timelines, India will not make the first move in 2023, as it would be inconsistent with leading the G20. Similarly the first half of 2024, will go in electioneering, but once Modi gets a new 5 y term, it will be game on. A big hint will come from the BJP (Modi's party) election manifesto.
Ofcourse Chinese action on Taiwan could change these timelines, as well as any aggression/terrorism by Pak. Many Indian commentators including current military commanders have started to say they are ready to take back POK, just waiting for govt permission to do so.
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December 21, 2022
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Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban Are Heading Toward a Fight
Islamabad cannot defeat its own Taliban rebels without fighting its former proxies on the other side of the border.
By: Kamran Bokhari
Pakistan and Afghanistan cannot coexist. As competing models of Islamic statehood, the two are engaged in a long-term struggle to shape each other through a process of ideological and territorial osmosis. Pakistan, which is in the throes of an unprecedented political and economic crisis, is especially vulnerable now that the Taliban is back in power in Afghanistan. And the government in Islamabad cannot defeat its own Taliban rebels without fighting its former proxies on the other side of the border.
Inevitable Attacks
On Dec. 20, Pakistani security forces launched a nine-hour military operation to retake a counterterrorism facility in the northwestern city of Bannu seized by militants belonging to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group. Four security forces personnel died and 18 were wounded, while 25 militants were killed and 11 surrendered. This is just the latest incident in a sharp uptick in attacks after the TTP ended a cease-fire agreement on Nov. 28. Even the Afghan Taliban have been engaged in cross-border attacks on Pakistani soil. The truce, which lasted a little less than six months, was the outcome of behind-the-scenes talks between Pakistani military officials and the TTP and was mediated by the Afghan Taliban. It followed a rise in militant activity after the Afghan Taliban returned with the departure of U.S. forces in August 2021.
(click to enlarge)
Attacks were all but inevitable. From 2007 to 2015, the TTP waged a ferocious insurgency against the Pakistani state targeting major law enforcement, military and intelligence facilities across the country. Pakistan’s security forces were able to defeat the Taliban rebels and retake large swathes of territory along the border with Afghanistan, but it cost the country 80,000 lives and $150 billion in economic damages. Many TTP militants were either killed or captured in Pakistani counter-insurgency operations, but a great many were forced to sanctuaries across the border.
At the time, Pakistan’s was a complex political and militant landscape. It was home to the country’s own Taliban rebels and a safe haven for Afghan Taliban insurgents fighting U.S.-backed NATO forces in Afghanistan whom Islamabad supported. Pakistan opposed Afghanistan for being allied with its historical rival India – which explains its support for the Afghan jihadists, even as it was fighting their comrades at home. To counter Islamabad’s support for the Afghan Taliban, Kabul was supporting the Pakistani Taliban.
By the time Pakistan realized it could no longer control the Afghan Taliban, it was already too late. As early as the 1970s, Islamabad sought regime change in Kabul to break what it saw as strategic encirclement by India in the east and a pro-New Delhi government to the west. Afghanistan has never recognized the border between them, and for decades the Pakistanis feared the threat of Kabul-supported Pashtun ethno-nationalism in their own northwest. To counter this threat, Pakistan promoted Islamism – both domestically and abroad – a strategy that gained momentum after the Soviet military intervention in 1979. By the early 1990s, with massive military and financial support from the United States and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan had defeated the Marxists in Afghanistan and weakened left-wing Pashtun nationalists on its side of the border. But this only made things worse, geopolitically speaking. Pakistan was no longer flanked by a hostile regime but by a massive power vacuum in which Islamist factions struggled for power.
When the Afghan Taliban emerged from this struggle in 1996, Pakistan thought it had finally gotten the strategic depth it wanted against India when, in fact, the opposite was true. The Taliban ideology was quickly gaining ground in Pakistan, even as al-Qaida’s particular brand of international jihadism took root in both countries. In no small part, this was due to Pakistani authorities enabling the flow of foreign fighters to Afghanistan as a force multiplier for the Taliban’s efforts to consolidate power.
9/11 laid to rest any doubt that Pakistan had created proxies it could no longer control. Pakistan’s perennial political and economic problems only got worse, sandwiched as it was between its ally in the United States, which had given it some $20 billion in assistance, and its premier Islamist proxy in the Taliban. By the time Washington withdrew its forces, Pakistan was critically unstable, while the Taliban had gone from a proxy force to a major national security concern. It was a natural consequence of a strategy of cultivating non-state proxies whose ideology challenged the national identity and narrative of the patron state.
Toward Open Conflict
Perhaps the larger problem for Pakistan is that the Taliban is no longer just a security threat. Afghanistan’s new Taliban regime promotes itself as a model of Islamic governance. This makes it a competitor to Pakistan’s Islamic republic, which was founded on the basis of Muslim nationalism, and which evolved into a hybrid of military authoritarianism, democratic politics and Islamism. Pakistan’s problem of religious extremism stems from the fact that there is a broad array of Islamist factions in the country that have long sought to transform the state along theocratic lines.
And now that the Afghan Taliban have recreated their emirate, Islamist forces in Pakistan feel emboldened to achieve their own ideological goals. The TTP is the most dangerous such faction because it is very much an extension of the original Afghan Taliban movement. It also has extensive experience in controlling large swathes of territory on the Pakistani side of the border. With the Pakistani government weak and with the Taliban's support, the TTP is gearing up for a major campaign against the state.
Local conditions in the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province are also similar to what they were before the TTP launched its first insurgency in the late 2000s. At the time, it benefited from the fact that an alliance of Islamist parties ruled the province for five years. Today, it is reemerging in the same area after opposition leader Imran Khan’s party has been ruling the province for a decade. Though not an Islamist group, Khan’s PTI, given its own right-wing religious nationalist bent, has championed a soft approach toward the Taliban rebels as well as their parent organization ruling Afghanistan.
The Pakistani government’s method of dealing with the TTP has been to rely on the Afghan Taliban to rein the group in. But the Afghan Taliban have neither the capability nor the will to stop the TTP from attacking Pakistan. Pakistan had hoped that if it helped the Afghan Taliban gain international recognition, they would stop encroaching on Pakistan. That, of course, is impossible. There are simply too many close tribal, ethnic, ideological, political and economic interests that bind the two together.
Worse for Pakistan is that the Afghan Taliban have even less reason to contain some of their more extremist elements, for they also face a challenge to their power from a transnational jihadist movement called the Islamic State-Khorasan Province. The ISKP has been taking advantage of the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal to reestablish its own caliphate and has thus been engaged in an extensive campaign to portray the Afghan Taliban as a faux jihadist movement, exploiting the group’s internal tug-of-war between pragmatism and ideological purity. Under these circumstances, the Afghan Taliban regime cannot risk muzzling the TTP since doing so would undermine its Islamic bona fides, leaving it vulnerable to accusation and defection.
More, the Afghan Taliban have an interest in promoting Afghan nationalism to counter the view among their subjects that they are nothing more than Pakistani lackeys. This is why they, like their predecessors, have refused to recognize their country’s international boundary with Pakistan.
Last, until now, the goal of the Afghan Taliban, which has long been marked by factional infighting, has been to avoid internal problems. But they understand that they cannot hope to keep their emirate next door to the Pakistani republic one whose long-term influence could undermine their hold over power. It is thus in their interest to have a buffer of sorts in the Pashtun-majority areas in western Pakistan.
Indeed, a TTP presence there could insulate the Taliban regime from the Pakistani state, but this is antithetical to Pakistani objectives of strategic depth. It would leave the government susceptible to more militant attacks and, as important, leave it vulnerable to an increasingly powerful India.
Aware of the limits of cooperation, the Pakistanis have thus already begun to engage in cross-border strikes against TTP facilities in eastern Afghanistan. What this does is slowly but surely push Pakistan closer to an open conflict with its longtime proxy. Of course, Islamabad would want to avoid one, but geopolitical realities rarely leave room for subjective preferences.
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https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/what-saw-afghanistan-abandoned-pool-changed-life?fbclid=IwAR0WjT8WDh8EMUx_9SHge_isaWq6-py0FPUI26kYKa8Pv2HUM47q0DLHHf0
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Food shortage in Pak. We in the west have likely never experienced this.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1612726626609135619 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1612726626609135619)
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And now no electricity in Pak for many hours. They have no money to buy coal to generate electricity. Also talks of a cyberattack. Country is in a death spiral.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1733207/govt-says-power-to-be-fully-restored-by-10pm-as-major-outage-hits-pakistan
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Pak PM doing his nursery routine in english
https://twitter.com/i/status/1617786613752528896 (https://twitter.com/i/status/1617786613752528896)
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Where Is Pakistan's Economic Crisis Headed?
10 MIN READJan 25, 2023 | 21:11 GMT
Pakistan's economic crisis will worsen in the coming months as structural deficiencies and policy uncertainty raise recessionary risks in the country, which will exacerbate political instability and security challenges. Pakistan's high foreign debt has caused a severe financial crisis and speculations of default. The country's foreign exchange reserves are at a nine-year low, leaving the government unable to purchase essential imports like oil, gas, fertilizers and food items. Additionally, Islamabad has experienced persistent high inflation through most of the past year, with food inflation hovering around 30%. This is adversely affecting economic activity and causing hardships for millions (and particularly low-income people) in Pakistan. In 2022, the government imposed import restrictions on various commodities to save dollars, which has modestly lowered the current account deficit. But this has also slowed industrial operations across Pakistan, and has even caused shutdowns and layoffs in some sectors.
Persistent current account and fiscal deficits and widening debt payments over the years have eaten into the State Bank of Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves, which totaled $4.3 billion as of Jan. 12 (down from around $18 billion at the start of 2022). Theoretically, the central bank only has enough reserves to fund four weeks worth of imports. This has negatively impacted Pakistan's credit rating and investor confidence.
For the fiscal year 2023 (July 2022-June 2023), Pakistan had $23 billion in debt repayments. Of that, about $6.5 billion has been repaid and $4 billion has been rolled over. Of the remaining $12.5 billion, about $8.3 billion are bilateral commercial loans that are expected to be rolled over, $3.5 billion is owed to multilateral bodies, with the rest being owed to commercial foreign banks. Pakistan's current account deficit is estimated to total around $10 billion for this fiscal year, as exports and remittances have remained lower than import bills.
Pakistan's external debt is roughly $99 billion, which includes some $42 billion owed to international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and some $38 billion owed to the Paris Club, the G-20 and other organizations (and includes a $23 billion exposure to China.)
To save money on energy imports, the Pakistani government has enacted a plan that aims to reduce the country's electricity consumption by forcing markets to shut down early and reducing power usage in government buildings. The plan also aims to increase Pakistan's production of energy-saving lightbulbs and imposes import restrictions on inefficient bulbs.
Since August 2022, food inflation in Pakistan has remained above 30%. Various provinces in the country are facing wheat shortages due to reduced imports, along with the ongoing domestic economic fallout from high prices and low productivity caused by last year's devastating floods.
Pakistan's crucial textile sector (which accounts for 11% of the country's GDP and employs about 40% of its workforce) is also facing shutdowns and layoffs, which disrupt production and thus further eat into Islmabad's export revenue. 50% of Pakistan's cotton crops were lost in the historic floods that swept over the country in 2022. Pakistani textile producers have also struggled to import critical raw materials, as banks refuse their letters of credit due to a shortage of funds in the country. The shortages of raw materials have severely reduced exporters' operating capacity, which has so far forced factories to lay off about 7 million people.
The rise in global commodity prices over the past year has hit Pakistan's import-dependent economy particularly hard. Most of Pakistan's energy supplies are imported (including natural gas for electricity production and oil for transportation). The country is also largely import-dependent for other essential items like fertilizers, food products (like edible oil) and many basic raw materials needed for most industrial production. This became particularly problematic in mid-2022 when prices of such commodities rose, which worsened food and energy shortages across the country by making imports all the more unaffordable for cash-strapped Islamabad. As a result, many households have struggled to heat their homes this winter, find gas for cooking, and feed their families. Operators in gas-intensive industries have also struggled to keep the lights on at their factories amid the ongoing energy crisis, further harming exports and the country's production capacity. The devastating floods in August-September 2022 — which caused an estimated $16 billion worth of damage to property, public infrastructure and farmland — have only exacerbated these problems.
Global natural gas prices have skyrocketed over the past year amid Ukraine-related surges in European demand. Pakistan's natural gas imports fell by 17% year-on-year in the first five months of the fiscal year 2023.
Pakistan's current economic crisis has been exacerbated by the government's continued failure to impose much-needed structural reforms. In addition to the recent global market shocks, many underlying factors are also contributing to Pakistan's economic malaise. The government's extensive electricity and fuel subsidies, for example, have significantly expanded Islamabad's debt levels, as well as its fiscal and current account deficits. But Pakistani leaders have lacked the political will to implement the unpopular economic reforms needed to address such structural problems and, in turn, secure the country's long-term economic stability. Instead, recent governments have pursued short-term solutions, which has seen Islamabad continue to seek bailouts from the IMF (as it did in 2019) and friendly creditor nations (like Saudi Arabia and China). The current review of Pakistan's IMF program is held up due to the government's inability to reduce the primary deficit and minimize circular debt in the energy sector. The IMF has demanded that the government scale back its energy subsidies and increase tax collections, but Islamabad has delayed enacting these austerity measures, which would risk triggering popular backlash by further increasing the cost of living at a time when many Pakistanis are already struggling to make ends meet.
Pakistan will likely secure enough financial assistance from friendly creditors and multilateral institutions to avoid a default in the short term, but the economy could enter a recession. The Pakistani government is currently trying to convince the IMF to resume its bailout program. It is also expecting financial help from friendly creditors like Saudi Arabia and China, both of which have rolled over their maturing deposits with central banks in the past (and are likely to do so in the future due to Riyadh and Beijing's close strategic relationship with Islamabad). In addition, the humanitarian aid Pakistan has received following the 2022 floods will likely augment the government's reconstruction efforts in the months ahead. This external support — along with the fact that Pakistan's next commercial bond payment isn't due until 2024 — means the country will probably avoid a default in 2023. But while financial aid may grant Islamabad temporary debt relief, the underlying problems contributing to Pakistan's high current account and fiscal deficits remain. Within this context, Pakistan could still enter a recession later this year, as inflation continues to dampen domestic consumption and economic activity by increasing the cost of both living and doing business in the country.
Pakistan's foreign debt servicing for the remainder of 2023 is around $4.7 billion. Commercial loans make up $1.1 billion of that total, with multilateral loans comprising the rest. China is Pakistan's closest ally in the region. Beijing has poured billions of dollars into energy and infrastructure projects in the South Asian country, including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) — the flagship project of China's Belt and Road Initiative.
Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has a close military relationship with Pakistan. The two countries' Muslim-majority populations are also closely interconnected, with about 2 million Pakistanis working in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is reportedly now considering investing about $10 billion in Pakistan (primarily in real estate and other development projects), up from the $1 billion worth of Pakistani investments the kingdom pledged in August 2022. Saudi Arabia has also agreed in principle to donate $1 billion worth of oil imports to help ease Pakistan's energy crisis. In December, Riyadh rolled over $3 billion in deposits in Pakistan's central bank. The United Arab Emirates has also agreed to roll over $2 billion deposits in Pakistan, on top of another $1 billion deposit.
The humanitarian aid following floods has not been completely delivered. On Jan. 9, various multilateral financing institutions and countries made about $10 billion worth of financial aid pledges to help Pakistan's flood reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts. However, most of this aid will be in the form of project loans, which will likely trickle in slower than expected as the government identifies various projects for these investments — thereby delaying the impact of these extra funds on Pakistan's economy.
In the medium term, however, Pakistan will face complex debt restructuring talks, a new stringent IMF program, and policy uncertainty due to domestic politics. While Pakistan is likely to avoid a default in 2023, its debt woes will persist in the coming years. Political calculations will continue to influence economic policy, which means the government is unlikely to enact needed structural reforms before the next general elections (which should take place no later than October, but could happen sooner if the country's socio-political situation continues to deteriorate). Additionally, although Saudi Arabia has moved to roll over its debt in Pakistan, the kingdom has also recently expressed plans to prioritize providing financial assistance to countries with politically stable governments that are enacting needed economic reforms. Pakistan, however, has a history of political instability and weak governments, as evidenced by the fact that no prime minister has ever finished a full term. This, along with Pakistani leaders' low appetite for enacting unpopular policies that improve the country's long-term outlook, creates a recipe for policy uncertainty. Following through with the IMF's current program through June 2023 would require Islamabad to enact reforms that'd lead to higher taxes and energy prices. But given its worsening economic situation, Islamabad will probably need another IMF package in the future that forces it to impose even more painful policy changes, creating further social and political turmoil. A new IMF program could also necessitate debt restructuring from bilateral and multilateral creditors, which would further degrade investor confidence in the country.
IMF data shows that Pakistan's annual external funding gap will exceed $35 billion through 2027, mainly due to large debt payments starting in 2024. Thus, even if the country avoids a default in 2023, debt restructuring will still be needed in the coming years.
Pakistan's economic crisis will feed into political instability and exacerbate security risks. The economic crisis and public discontent against the government will deepen the political turmoil in the country. The government that emerges after the general election will probably be unstable as the underlying structural problems with the economy cannot be resolved in the short term. The reduced confidence in Pakistan's political stability will continue to deter private investment. Pakistan's economic dependence on strategic partners like Saudi Arabia and China, meanwhile, will only increase. Political and economic instability will intensify the security risks in the country. Pakistan is already facing an increased threat from extremist militant groups like Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has pledged to increase its attacks against security personnel and infrastructure in the country. Separatist groups like Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) may also intensify attacks against the government and infrastructure as economic grievances of Baloch people, allegedly deprived of the region's development gains, bolster their resolve. It's possible that Pakistan's political turmoil could eventually create a power vacuum that enables the military to assume an even greater political role (either directly or indirectly). But for now, this scenario remains unlikely due to former President Imran Khan's popular rhetoric against the security establishment. Signposts for a military intervention include consistent economic and security deterioration that manifests as riots, protests and significant violence and a significant escalation in militant activity.
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Pak has no food, money or electricity. Soon inshallah no water. India's ex PM Nehru who was a pacifist, gave Pak an unfair advantage with respect to water sharing of the Indus river waters. Now India is piling on the pressure. It would seem to me that India's POK takeback program will rely on Pak collapsing internally, with citizens of POK demanding that they join India (as they are doing now). The Indus water treaty will take a long time to renegotiate, but the first steps have been taken after 60 years. Pak will be given an option, to handover POK peacefully, or to have massive cuts in water. The treaty is quite unequal as it stands with sharing of water, since the rivers originate in India (India is the upper riparian).
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/intransigence-india-notifies-pakistan-of-plans-to-amend-indus-waters-treaty/ar-AA16NliN (https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/intransigence-india-notifies-pakistan-of-plans-to-amend-indus-waters-treaty/ar-AA16NliN)
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India take back Pakistan
:-o wow
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YA:
Working from memory, several years ago you posted here an Indian intel piece suggesting a strategy for dismembering Pakistan. IIRC it suggested erasing recognition of the Durand Line and acknowledging the Pashtuns as a country of their own. One of the benefits of this idea it was argued is that the rest of Afghanistan could organize into a coherent whole without fear of being dominated by the Pashtuns.
It also suggested fomenting separatists in Baluchistan, with India peeling off relevant pieces from Pakistan's east
All while seizing the nukes, , ,
Or something like that.
Reading the following reminds me of that piece.
If we were still in Afghanistan we might have been in a position to back the creation of Pashtunistan , , ,
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February 1, 2023
Pakistan’s Meltdown
The country is too big to fail, but no one is rushing to its aid.
By: Kamran Bokhari
Decades-old political economic problems in Pakistan are coming to a head. The South Asian nation needs billions of dollars in financial assistance to avoid a default at a time when its usual patrons are disinclined to bail it out. The International Monetary Fund is insisting on tough reforms that the fragile coalition government cannot institute without taking a major political hit in an election year. Even if Islamabad dodges this particular bullet, it will have to massively overhaul the way it has managed the world’s fifth-most populous country. If it cannot, then it will further push Pakistan toward a systemic breakdown, which has major consequences for security in the world’s most densely populated region.
(click to enlarge)
Out of Options
An IMF team is visiting Pakistan from Jan. 31 to Feb. 9 to continue discussions on the release of $1.18 billion in assistance, part of a $6 billion aid program that was agreed on in 2019 (and increased to $7 billion in 2022) but that has since stalled. Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves have slumped to about $3.68 billion, barely enough to cover three weeks of imports. Inflation was already at 25 percent when the government announced on Jan. 29 a 16 percent hike in gasoline and diesel prices that will likely rise much further. Three days earlier, the Pakistani rupee fell 9.6 percent against the dollar, the biggest one-day drop in over two decades, after the government removed unofficial caps and allowed the currency to move toward a market-based exchange rate.
Earlier in the month, the country’s civil and military leadership traveled to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to secure the funds needed to avert a financial meltdown. Reports surfaced that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would provide several billion dollars. In sharp contrast with their past behavior, they aren’t willing to write a blank check; the Saudi finance minister said Jan. 18 that the kingdom was no longer providing “direct grants and deposits” to debtor nations without seeing reforms. The Saudis, the Emiratis and others who could provide the cash want to first see the Pakistanis accept an IMF program. Besides, the beleaguered South Asian nation’s financial needs far outstrip the global appetite to assist.
Islamabad, however, has been struggling to finalize what would be the country’s 23rd IMF arrangement since it first knocked on the lender’s doors in 1958. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, which heads the fragile and increasingly unpopular coalition government, has a lot to lose by agreeing to IMF terms that are bound to exacerbate harsh economic conditions. As it is, the PML-N and its allies are facing an uphill electoral battle against the populist opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Still, Pakistan’s political instability is the result of a much deeper malaise. Since the end of Pakistan’s fourth military dictatorship in 2008, the country nominally has experienced its longest stretch of civilian governance. 2013 marked the first time one democratically elected government transferred power to another. But the army continued to encumber both governments, and in 2018 it engineered the rise to power of Khan’s PTI in hopes that it would finally have a pliant civilian actor. That experiment was a colossal failure. It has weakened the military politically and has thus plunged the country into uncharted territory.
A similar situation has emerged on the economic front. Pakistan has always had financial problems, which over the decades continued to worsen. The country got by only because of a periodic influx of U.S. assistance, made possible by the broader global geopolitics of the time. There have been three such long periods – 1958-69, 1977-88 and 1999-2008 – each under a different military regime and coming at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, and the post-9/11 war on terror, respectively. In today’s changed circumstances, Pakistan is facing an unprecedented financial crisis because it never developed a viable economy and is without external bailout options.
The Nightmare Scenario
Without a major reform process – which is unlikely given the acute state of social and political divisions – Pakistan’s situation is likely to worsen. Its annual population growth rate is 1.9 percent, which is 237 times that of the global rate, and its fertility rate exceeds the global rate by 157 percent. At this pace, in another 10 years the country will have added 50 million people, increasing its population to 275 million. There is already a massive youth population. Sixty percent of Pakistanis are under the age of 23. As many as 44 percent of all Pakistani children between the ages of 5 and 16 do not attend school. Females make up almost half the population, and literacy among them is at 48 percent.
Dealing with the multiplicity of crises plaguing the country requires a political consensus. This is extremely difficult in the current highly polarized political climate, which is unlikely to abate anytime soon. Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, which has intervened in politics for much of the country’s history, is in an unprecedented dilemma. After the failure of its latest attempt to shape the country’s political economy, which ended with the April 2022 ouster of Khan, the top brass publicly committed to keeping the army out of politics. Rationalizing the economy, however, will take a long time – assuming the country’s tumultuous politics can be brought under control (a big if).
In moments like these, when normal politics produces only more chaos, the pressure (or temptation) for the army to hit pause or reset on the constitutional process is high. However, the general staff has been down that road many times, only to end up exacerbating the problems it aimed to solve. When problems are such that degradation is happening much more quickly than is the realistic efforts to fix them, stalling the political process could be akin to an out of the frying pan and into the fire type situation.
The only other option is to continue the slow path toward recovery, which is fraught with perils. As large swathes of the population suffer under the weight of debilitating economic conditions, intra-elite political struggles intensify. These are precisely the conditions that Islamist militants – both Taliban rebels and Islamic State militants ensconced in the neighboring emirate in Afghanistan – hope to exploit. A resurgent jihadist insurgency will likely force an already weakened Pakistani state into a new major military campaign – one that has serious potential to spill over across the border.
It is this nightmare scenario – a cash-strapped Pakistani state whose security is compromised on its western flank – that will eventually result in Arab Gulf states, China and the United States gaining greater influence in the country. Washington cannot allow Pakistan to descend into chaos, especially with Afghanistan under a Taliban regime. Likewise, China, which has pumped tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Belt and Road funds into the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, is not going to sit by and watch its investment sink. Pakistan is thus going to become an even bigger arena for the U.S.-Chinese competition. Meanwhile, the Saudis and the Emiratis, who have long played a major role in periodically mediating intra-elite power struggles in Pakistan, will likely have greater influence over Pakistan’s internal workings. In India, which only months ago surpassed the U.K. to become the world’s fifth largest economy, there is immense concern over how a financially collapsing Pakistan could affect New Delhi’s upward trajectory.
While it is too early to speak with any specificity on how external powers will behave, Pakistan can’t continue to chug along as it has. It may not always appear this way, especially in chronically fragile states, but long-term dysfunction adds up. Major fissures have emerged that outstrip Pakistan’s available resources, disrupting the status quo in which it was able to get by for so long.
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Pak is fighting TTP, who is killing a lot of paki soldiers, almost on a daily basis. They get shelter by the Afghan Taliban. Slowly the Durrand line is being erased. Afghan Talibs hate pakis. Baluchistan is a hot mess, a lot of paki soldiers getting killed there. Sindh is looking to separate, but is not violent as yet. POK will be lost over the next few years. Only the rump state of Punjab, which will be land locked will remain. The army has become unaffordable to maintain, the people cannot be provided, food , electricity, medicines. Its loans are not payable. They will soon have to sell their nukes, or territory to China. IMF wants stringent loan conditions, their Muslim friends are no longer giving out free money. They produce essentially nothing, how can they survive ? Their prime minister's main job is to go begging to every country (and now they even admit it!).
Current thinking in India is to let them implode internally and to help them implode. 2023 India has the G20 and SCO Presidency, 2024 is the big election, so if India makes a move, it would be after the summer of 2024. India is also raising its defense spending, #3 after China, 2.7 % of GDP. This (2.7%) is quite high for India, in past years it was below 2% as I recall.
(https://graphics.reuters.com/INDIA-BUDGET/zgvobkbyopd/chart.png)
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Pak foreign exchange reserves now 2.9 Billion $. Death spiral continues. IMF went back without giving a loan. They put conditions that Pak cannot meet, speculation is they want the assets of top military and civilian officials listed, want to know the terms of the Chinese CPEC agreement (dont want the money used to pay Chinese debt), cut down military spending. Unless new loans are provided, Pak will run out of foreign exchange within 3 months.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/crisis-hit-pakistans-macro-economic-indicators-2023-02-10/ (https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/crisis-hit-pakistans-macro-economic-indicators-2023-02-10/)
I can now see Modi's policy towards Pak clearly. It is to economically collapse Pak from inside, no trade with them, put them on FATF, etc, such that people of POK are now agitating to join Indian Kashmir. On the other hand, India is spending tons of money in Indian Kashmir, on education, health, electricity etc, such that the contrast becomes obvious and all the TV channels discuss this night and day. At some point, when the pain gets too much to bear, perhaps 2025 the knight in shining armor will walk in. In the meantime, the military is being prepared, new weapons systems, missiles etc are being updated. A lot of expense on artillery guns is being put, India makes the heavy guns and shells.
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Another big concern with respect to Pak, is that as Pak collapses internally, the refugees cross the border towards India. Millions of brainwashed jihadis moving towards India is not something India could handle. No doubt the west will pass sanctimonius statements as to why India must accept them. A similar scenario in 1971 lead to the formation of Bangladesh.
Note the population density of Pak, its along the Indian borders.
(https://i.imgur.com/ucYfbu2.png)
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Pak inflation hits estimated 33 %
https://www.dawn.com/news/1737284/inflation-in-pakistan-could-average-33pc-in-first-half-of-fy23-says-moodys-economist (https://www.dawn.com/news/1737284/inflation-in-pakistan-could-average-33pc-in-first-half-of-fy23-says-moodys-economist)
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So Pak blew up an Indian military truck, 5 burnt alive. They oppose the idea that India will hold a G20 meeting in Kashmir, to show the prevailing prosperity and peace in Kashmir. So India must decide, whether to respond before, or after the G20 meeting, but respond they will.
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/3/us-still-largest-donor-to-afghans-despite-taliban-/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=ok8C5H%2BW3TcWP88WcmuASOhKKwTMelctPBKRqVAxwJ0prxmLNPdlGQbn%2FonyaBPh&bt_ts=1683108724316
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/3/us-still-largest-donor-to-afghans-despite-taliban-/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=ok8C5H%2BW3TcWP88WcmuASOhKKwTMelctPBKRqVAxwJ0prxmLNPdlGQbn%2FonyaBPh&bt_ts=1683108724316
At what point do we conclude the USG/OGUS/FUSA is our greatest enemy?
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/taliban-moving-captured-us-military-vehicles-and-soviet-tanks-to-iranian-border/ar-AA1bZEY8?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=a214a4f9659c48b7967267a647dd085e&ei=62
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Inaugural delivery. Pakistan’s government hailed the arrival of the first Russian crude oil shipment, which arrived at the port city of Karachi. In January, Islamabad said it plans to buy more than 35 percent of its total volume of oil imports from Russia. Moscow and Islamabad are cooperating against security threats, boosting bilateral trade and implementing agreements on oil sector cooperation, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
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While folks were worried about money going to ukraine, 11 billion just went to Afghanistan since the disastrous withdrawal. Maybe they needed money for spare parts for all the equipment and Arsenal we left behind.
https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2023-10-30qr.pdf
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https://www.judicialwatch.org/taliban-creates-fake-nonprofits/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_content=&utm_campaign=tipsheet&utm_term=members
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December 11, 2023
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China and India Struggling in Afghanistan
Both countries are trying to find a way to work with Taliban regime.
By: Kamran Bokhari
Over two years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, China and India are both trying to forge working relationships with the regime. In September, China became the first country since the Taliban takeover to appoint an ambassador to Afghanistan. In October, the Afghan commerce minister was in the Chinese capital attending a forum on China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Meanwhile, in late November, the Taliban took control of Afghan consulates in two major Indian cities, Mumbai and Hyderabad, and their deputy foreign minister announced that the Afghan embassy in New Delhi would soon reopen.
For Beijing, these efforts are driven by its need to ensure Afghanistan doesn’t undermine its Belt and Road Initiative plans and destabilize its Muslim-majority northwestern Xinjiang province, especially at a time when the world’s second-largest economy is facing serious problems. From New Delhi’s perspective, the Taliban regime is key to managing its historical rivalry with Pakistan and security risks in its western regions. But dealing with the Taliban will be particularly challenging for both governments as they compete for influence throughout southwest Asia.
Beijing and Regime Change in Kabul
When Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the BRI in 2013, the region was a very different place. The U.S. had completed the handover of security responsibility to the internationally backed Afghan government, which was still being supported by a significant U.S. military presence in the country. That same year, the Taliban opened their political office in Qatar as part of talks with Washington, whose aim was to reach a power-sharing agreement between the jihadist group and the government in Kabul. From the Chinese perspective, the Americans were making sure that the instability in Afghanistan was contained, enabling Beijing to push ahead with the BRI in Central and South Asia through its multibillion-dollar infrastructure project called the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Afghanistan | A Key Country in the Region
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Put differently, China was able to push ahead with its BRI plans because the U.S. was underwriting security in South and Central Asia. The Chinese knew the U.S. was working toward disengaging from Afghanistan, but they didn’t anticipate the abrupt withdrawal in summer 2021 and subsequent collapse of the Afghan state. They also likely didn’t foresee that Russia’s war in Ukraine would weaken Moscow to the point that the Kremlin’s ability to maintain security in Central Asia would be seriously compromised, or that Beijing would find itself in dire financial circumstances and be forced to try to reach an understanding with Washington.
At the same time, the chronic political-economic instability in China’s ally Pakistan has metastasized to the point where Islamabad is in an unprecedented meltdown and deeply vulnerable to the insecurity radiating out of Afghanistan. The Chinese were relying on Pakistan – a longtime patron of the Afghan Taliban – to help them manage a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and thus secure their investments in South and Central Asia. With the Pakistanis struggling to maintain their own domestic security, China will itself have to take the lead with regard to regional security – something that the Chinese have never had to do. Engaging the Taliban diplomatically is part of this imperative, which will seriously limit the extent to which Beijing can commercially benefit from mineral-rich Afghanistan.
New Delhi’s Unstable Western Flank
Afghanistan has been a security threat to India since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. That same year, Indian-administered Kashmir experienced a major Muslim uprising, which Pakistan moved to exploit. Building on its experience of supporting Islamist insurgents in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Islamabad over the next decade deployed the same strategy in Indian Kashmir. The coming to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 1996 provided Pakistan with more room for maneuver on its border with India, evident from the way in which Pakistani troops crossed the Line of Control and occupied heights on the Indian side of the border, which led to the 1999 Kargil War.
Even after Pakistan withdrew its troops, leading to the end of the nearly three-month war, Islamabad continued to deploy Islamist proxies against New Delhi until well after the Sept. 11 attacks. By the late 2000s and under growing pressure from Washington to rein in the Taliban and anti-India Islamist militants, the Pakistanis began to lose control of their proxies. A fierce domestic Taliban insurgency between 2006 and 2016 had the Pakistanis pinned down, while the 2008 Mumbai attacks meant Islamabad could no longer back militants against India, at least not as it had in the past. Meanwhile, India had forged close relations with the Afghan government, which was dominated by anti-Taliban factions.
By 2021, when the U.S. completed its withdrawal and the Taliban returned to power, Pakistan was in the throes of its worst political-economic crisis, and the country’s relations with the Afghan Taliban had significantly soured. The Taliban’s return also undermined two decades of Indian efforts to establish a sphere of influence in Afghanistan as a means of countering Pakistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan together represent a large contiguous space of growing insecurity and instability on India’s western flank. However, the serious downturn in Pakistan-Taliban relations is also an opportunity that the Indians appear to be exploring.
Competition Over Southwest Asia
China and India are now both trying to find a way to work with the Taliban. Their immediate challenge is that the radical Islamist nature of the regime places severe limitations on how far they can go in developing a relationship. They both want to steer the emirate toward pragmatism, which cannot happen without some level of engagement. The dilemma is that the Taliban can go only so far in changing who they are without aggravating existing tensions between the politically expedient elements and the ideologues.
Nonetheless, China clearly has the upper hand in Afghanistan. Beijing has far more economic tools, as well as geographic proximity, it can use to shape the behavior of the Taliban regime. The Chinese objective is to emerge as the principal great power in the country at a time when the West will not engage with the regime. China’s strategic ambitions are also buoyed by the tremendous amount of influence it enjoys in Pakistan, which serves as a springboard from which the Chinese could operate in Afghanistan.
India, meanwhile, faces significant constraints. Despite offering substantial humanitarian and development assistance, New Delhi is not in a position to compete with Beijing’s plans to link Afghanistan to its BRI networks in Central Asia and Pakistan. Moreover, even a severely weakened Pakistan represents a geographic obstacle to India’s interests in establishing economic connectivity with Afghanistan and Central Asia. India could access Afghanistan indirectly through Iran, but the U.S.-led international sanctions on Tehran limit that option as well. Thus, China certainly has the advantage – though it, too, will face many challenges in trying to tame Afghanistan.
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February 15, 2024
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Pakistan’s Growing Civil-Military Pandemonium
The military’s power is weakening while democracy remains elusive.
By: Kamran Bokhari
They say there’s a first time for everything, and for Pakistan that was Feb. 8, when the military establishment failed to get what it wanted out of parliamentary elections. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the party of former populist Prime Minister Imran Khan, won the most seats (93 of 266) despite the electioneering campaign against it, while the military-backed Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) won just 75. In third place came the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) with 54 seats. The PPP has said that though it will not join the Cabinet, it will support the PML-N government, and its co-chairperson, former President Asif Ali Zardari, is expected to return to the presidency.
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Yet none of this bodes well for the stability of Pakistan. The military’s power may be in decline, but civilian actors remain weak and deeply divided, and as such they are unlikely to steer the country out of its ongoing political and economic morass.
For 33 years of its 76-year history, Pakistan has been governed by four military regimes led by Field Marshal Ayub Khan (1958-69), Gen. Yahya Khan (1969-71), Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1977-88) and Gen. Pervez Musharraf (1999-2008). But even when the generals were not directly at the helm, they kept civilian governments in check, frequently through the manipulation of elections. In fact, free and fair elections have taken place just three times – in 1970, 2008 and 2013 – and even then only when the military believed the elections served their interests. Put simply, the military is Pakistan’s kingmaker.
In 1985, for example, political parties were barred from participating in elections. Three years later, Zia died mysteriously in a plane crash, after which the military assembled a coalition led by Nawaz Sharif, which had come in second place after the PPP led by the late Benazir Bhutto, who became prime minister. She was removed from office less than two years later, and with the help of the general staff, Sharif won the 1990 election. Not content with just being the military’s proxy, however, Sharif fell out with the generals, leading to his own ouster three years later when the PPP returned to power in yet another army-overseen election. The second PPP government was in office longer than the first but was eventually ousted in 1996, triggering the 1997 elections in which Sharif’s party clinched a two-thirds majority.
Sharif had tried to insulate himself with a constitutional amendment that stripped pro-military presidents of the power to dissolve governments. Amid escalating tensions, the military ousted him again in a 1999 coup. Led by Musharraf, the new regime introduced 30 constitutional amendments by decree, which restored presidential authority to dismiss governments. It then held the heavily engineered 2002 elections in which both major parties were sidelined, and a pro-military coalition composed of their defectors formed the government. By late 2007, facing popular agitation, Musharraf was forced to step down as army chief, and his successor, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, made a rare decision to allow free and fair elections in early 2008.
The PPP won the election and led a government that became the first in the country’s history to complete its full five-year term in office. During that time, it passed the landmark 18th amendment that helped “civilianize” the political system. The 2013 elections were also free and fair and led to the PML-N’s victory, marking the first-ever transfer of power from one democratically elected government to another. It seemed as though Pakistan was finally breaking with its past, but behind the scenes, the military was working on a new project to cultivate a third political force: Khan’s PTI party, which the top brass thought would be the ideal civilian partner.
The 2018 election was designed specifically to install Khan. With the military’s assistance, the PTI quadrupled its seats in parliament. For the first three years, the military and the civilian government worked as one. The problem was that the generals relied on Khan, a populist who led a social movement seeking revolutionary change, not a seasoned politician who could shepherd the government through its chronic economic problems. Khan focused more on eliminating his opponents than on delivering governance, and though the economy grew appreciably worse, the military continued to support him.
Things came to a head in 2021, when Khan tried to expand his influence inside the military itself by attempting to elevate generals who were more staunch supporters of the PTI leader than others among the top brass. That is when then-army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa pulled the plug on the Khan project and realigned the military with the PML-N and PPP. The assumption was that without the military’s support, Khan’s movement would lose steam. It didn’t, and the military leadership faced challenges on two fronts: support for the movement within the armed forces and within the wider public.
The top generals were able to insulate their institution from Khan’s ingress when his party targeted military facilities last May after Khan was arrested for the first time. However, with the economic situation worsening under the coalition government and the army trying to cut Khan’s movement down to size, his popular support continued to increase. Hence the army’s efforts to suppress the PTI through a host of pre-election moves, including accusing Khan of corruption, endangering national security and unlawful marriage.
Many of Khan’s former associates were forced to defect from the party. Others were arrested. The PTI was barred from contesting the election on its own platform, forcing its candidates to run as independents. The establishment had hoped that, as was the case in the past with other parties, it would be able to limit the PTI’s success at the ballot box. The thinking was that Khan’s party became a major force because of help from the army and the intelligence service and that, with the security establishment now arrayed against it, the PTI would at most come in second place. But the fact that its candidates running as independents won the most seats was a rude awakening for the establishment – which explains the delays in announcing the outcome.
The confusion and disorganization in which the results were announced have fueled widespread claims of vote-rigging. The outcome of last week’s polls indicates that despite their sophisticated electioneering tradecraft, the general staff failed to shape the 2024 elections, boosting the morale of the PTI, which can be expected to continue to challenge the establishment.
In a sense, this is a huge development in the weakening of the military’s hold over power. But the civilian space remains deeply polarized. Unable to compete with the youth-energized and tech-savvy PTI, the PML-N and PPP rely on the military to keep Khan’s party at bay. The PTI has greater ambitions and is trying to force the hand of the military to achieve its goal of running a single-party state. Democratic rule, then, will remain elusive even as the military’s ability to dominate the polity wanes. Meanwhile Pakistan – a nuclear power – could experience unprecedented levels of instability given its already dire economic and security conditions. This is bad news for Pakistan’s strategic environs, which are already deeply mired in insecurity.
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Shehbaz Sharif elected PM of Pak a second time (after the army exiled his bro Nawaz Sharif earlier), but it was better to bring him back than letting Imran Khan win. Another rigged election.