Why the US is losing in Afghanistan - updates on the Pashtun insurgency

[bigron]

Two NATO soldiers killed as Afghan offensive enters second week

DPA

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63512&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 21, 2010

Kabul - Two NATO soldiers were killed in separate attacks in Afghanistan, the alliance said Sunday as the alliance's biggest-ever operation in the south of the country entered its second week, with Taliban showing 'determined resistance'.

One of the soldiers was killed in roadside bomb blast in southern region, while the other died in indirect fire in country's east, the NATO military said in statements.

It did not disclose the nationalities of the soldiers, but said they did not die during Operation Mushtarak that began against one of the main Taliban bastions in southern Helmand province last week.

NATO said the offensive, the largest since the ouster of the Taliban regime in a US-led invasion in late 2001, was 'on track' as the combined Afghan, US and British forces were making progress through Marjah, a town in Nad Ali district. The area that is located some 20 kilometres from the provincial capital Lashkargah, is the main opium producing region in Afghanistan.

A total of 15,000 Afghan and NATO troops have taken part in the operation, aimed at extending the Afghan government's authority in the province's central region and trying to win the hearts and minds of locals by launching reconstruction projects.

Some sixteen civilians have been killed since last Saturday, along with 12 NATO troops, an Afghan soldier and more than 40 Taliban militants.

An Afghan commander in Helmand Province, General Muhaiyudin Ghori, said Sunday that the Taliban would soon run out of ammunition as the area was completely besieged by the combined forces.

The independent rights group, Afghan Rights Monitor, has expressed concern that the people trapped close to the frontline of the conflict could face a shortage of food and medicine.

An Afghan police unit was preparing Sunday to take over of security of the recently occupied areas from the combined forces, police official Abdul Hameed said.

Afghan and NATO officials estimate that it would be least one month before they could entirely clear the district of Taliban fighters.

The Afghan Interior Ministry said Sunday that six police officers were killed and two injured when they were attacked by suspected Taliban militants while destroying poppy fields in the Nawa district of Helmand the previous day.

Helmand produces more than half of Afghanistan's opium. The country supplies more than 90 per cent of the world's opium, the raw material for heroin and the main source of income for Taliban insurgents.

Eleven Taliban militants were killed in two separate operations by Afghan armed forces in Kandahar and Helmand provinces Saturday, the defence ministry said in a statement Sunday.

Read more: http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/articl
e_1535301.php/Two-NATO-soldiers-killed-as-Afghan-offensive-e ...





 

[bigron]

What Makes Us Think We Can Help "Govern" Afghanistan?

Why do American officials think they have the special ability to teach Afghans to embark on good governance in their country if we can't do it in Washington?

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on February 21, 2010, Printed on February 22, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145756/

Explain something to me.

In recent months, unless you were insensate, you couldn’t help running across someone talking, writing, speaking, or pontificating about how busted government is in the United States.  State governments are increasingly broke and getting broker.  The federal government, while running up the red ink, is, as just about everyone declares, “paralyzed” and so incapable of acting intelligently on just about anything.

Only the other day, no less a personage than Vice President Biden assured the co-anchor of the CBS Early Show, “Washington, right now, is broken." Indiana Senator Evan Bayh used the very same word, broken, when he announced recently that he would not run for reelection and, in response to his decision, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz typically commented, “The system has been largely dysfunctional for nearly two decades, and everybody knows it.” Voters seem to agree.  Two words, “polarization” and “gridlock” -- or hyperbolic cousins like “paralyzing hyperpartisanship” -- dominate the news when the media describes that dysfunctionalism.  Foreign observers have been similarly struck, hence a spate of pieces like the one in the British magazine the Economist headlined, “America’s Democracy, A Study in Paralysis.”

Washington’s incapacity to govern now evidently seems to ever more Americans at the root of many looming problems.  As the New York Times summed up one of them in a recent headline: “Party Gridlock in Washington Feeds Fear of a Debt Crisis.” When President Obama leaves the confines of Washington for the campaign trail, he promptly attacks congressional “gridlock” and the “slash and burn politics” that have left the nation’s capital tied in knots.

And he has an obvious point since, when he had a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, congressional Democrats and the White House still couldn’t get their act together and pass health-care reform, not even after a year of discussion, debate, and favors trading, not even as the train wreck of the Massachusetts election barreled toward them. These days the Democrats may not even be a party, which means their staggering Senate majority has really been a majority of next to nothing.

The Republicans, who ran us into this ditch in the Bush years, are now perfectly happy to be the party of “no” -- and the polls seem to show that it’s a fruitful strategy for the 2010 election.  Meanwhile, special interests rule Washington and lobbying is king.  As if to catch the spirit of this new reality, the president recently offered his vote of support to the sort of Wall Street CEOs who took Americans to the cleaners in the great economic meltdown of 2008 and are once again raking in the millions, while few have faith that change or improvement of any kind is in our future.  Good governance, in other words, no longer seems part of the American tool kit and way of life.     

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars, the U.S. military is promoting “good governance” with all its might.  In a major campaign in the modest-sized city of Marja (a place next to no one had heard of two weeks ago) in Taliban-controlled Helmand Province, Afghanistan, it’s placing a bet on its ability to “restore the credibility” of President Hamid Karzai’s government.  In the process, it plans to unfurl a functioning city administration where none existed.  According to its commanding general, Stanley McChrystal, as soon as the U.S. Army and the Marines, along with British troops and Afghan forces, have driven the Taliban out of town, he’s prepared to roll out an Afghan “government in a box,” including police, courts, and local services.

The U.S. military is intent, according to the Wall Street Journal, on “delivering a new administration and millions of dollars in aid to a place where government employees didn't dare set foot a week ago.”  Slated to be the future “mayor” of Marja, Haji Zahir, a businessman who spent 15 years in Germany, is, according to press reports, living on a U.S. Marine base in the province until, one day soon, the American military can install him in an “abandoned government building” or simple "a clump of ruins" in that city.

He is, we’re told, to arrive with four U.S. civilian advisors, two from the State Department and two from the U.S. Agency for International Development, described (in the typically patronizing language of American press reports) as his “mentors.”  They are to help him govern, and especially dole out the millions of dollars that the U.S. military has available to “reconstruct” Marja.  Road-building projects are to be launched, schools refurbished, and a new clinic built, all to win Pashtun “hearts and minds.”  As soon as the fighting abates, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has suggested, the post-military emphasis will be on “economic development,” with an influx of “military and civilian workers” who will "show a better way of life" to the town's inhabitants.   

So explain something to me: Why does the military of a country convinced it's becoming ungovernable think itself so capable of making another ungovernable country governable?  What’s the military’s skill set here?  What lore, what body of political knowledge, are they drawing on?  Who do they think they represent, the Philadelphia of 1776 or the Washington of 2010, and if the latter, why should Americans be considered the globe’s leading experts in good government anymore?  And while we’re at it, fill me in on one other thing: Just what has convinced American officials in Afghanistan and the nation’s capital that they have the special ability to teach, prod, wheedle, bribe, or force Afghans to embark on good governance in their country if we can’t do it in Washington or Sacramento?

Explain something else to me: Why are our military and civilian leaders so confident that, after nine years of occupying the world’s leading narco-state, nine years of reconstruction boondoggles and military failure, they suddenly have the key, the formula, to solve the Afghan mess?  Why do leading officials suddenly believe they can make Afghan President Hamid Karzai into “a Winston Churchill who can rally his people,” as one unnamed official told Matthew Rosenberg and Peter Spiegel of the Wall Street Journal -- and all of this only months after Karzai, returned to office in a wildly fraudulent presidential election, overseeing a government riddled with corruption and drug money, and honeycombed with warlords sporting derelict reputations, was considered a discredited figure in Washington?  And why do they think they can turn a man known mockingly as the “mayor” or “president” of Kabul (because his government has so little influence outside the capital) into a political force in southern Afghanistan?

And someone tell me: Just who picked the name Operation Moshtarak for the campaign in Marja?  Why am I not convinced that it was an Afghan?  Though news accounts say that the word means “togetherness” in Dari, why do I think that a better translation might be “crushing embrace”?  What could “togetherness” really mean when, according to the Wall Street Journal, to make the final decision to launch the operation, already long announced, General McChrystal “stepped into his armored car for the short drive... to the presidential palace,” and reportedly roused President Karzai from a nap for “a novel moment.”  Karzai agreed, of course, supposedly adding, “No one has ever asked me to decide before.”

This is a black comedy of “governance.”  So is the fact that, from the highest administration officials and military men to those in the field, everyone speaks, evidently without the slightest self-consciousness, about putting an “Afghan face” on the Marja campaign.  The phrase is revelatory and oddly blunt. As an image, there's really only one way to understand it (not that the Americans involved would ever stop to do so). After all, what does it mean to "put a face" on something that assumedly already has a face? In this case, it has to mean putting an Afghan mask over what we know to be the actual "face" of the Afghan War, which is American.

National Security Adviser James Jones, for instance, spoke of the Marja campaign having “'a much bigger Afghan face,' with two Afghans for every one U.S. soldier involved.”  And this way of thinking is so common that news reports regularly use the phrase, as in a recent Associated Press story: “Military officials say they are learning from past mistakes. The offensive is designed with an 'Afghan face.'"

And here’s something else I’d like explained to me: Why does the U.S. press, at present so fierce about the lack of both “togetherness” and decent governance in Washington, report this sort of thing without comment, even though it reflects the deepest American contempt for putative “allies”? Why, for instance, can those same Wall Street Journal reporters write without blinking:  “Western officials also are bringing Afghan cabinet members into strategy discussions, allowing them to select the officials who will run Marjah once it is cleared of Taliban, and pushing them before the cameras to emphasize the participation of Afghan troops in the offensive”?  Allow?  Push?  Is this what we mean by “togetherness”?   

Try to imagine all this in reverse -- an Afghan general motoring over to the White House to wake up the president and ask whether an operation, already announced and ready to roll, can leave the starting gate?  But why go on?

Just explain this to me: Why are the representatives of Washington, civilian and military, always so tone deaf when it comes to other peoples and other cultures?  Why is it so hard for them to imagine what it might be like to be in someone else’s shoes (or boots or sandals)?  Why do they always arrive not just convinced that they have identified the right problems and are asking the right questions, but that they, and only they, have the right answers, when at home they seem to have none at all?

Thinking about this, I wonder what kind of “face” should be put on global governance in Washington?

 


Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture.

© 2010 Tomdispatch.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/145756/

[bigron]

Monday, February 22, 2010
12:56 Mecca time, 09:56 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201022263657122852.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Nato raid 'kills Afghan civilians' 

 
Uruzgan is policed by Dutch soldiers whose imminent
departure poses a challenge to Nato [AFP]
 
 
Aghanistan government officials say at least 33 civilians have been killed by a Nato air attack on a convoy of vehicles in Uruzgan, a province in the country's south.

Nato confirmed that it fired on Sunday on a group of vehicles that it believed contained fighters, only to discover later that women and children were in the cars.

Isaf, Nato's force in Afghanistan, did not provide a figure of how many died.

Earlier, Amanullah Hothaki, the head of the provincial council for Uruzgan, said 19 people were killed in the attack, which hit three minibuses as they drove down a main road.

A 15,000-strong joint force of Afghan, Nato and US troops is battling the Taliban in Marjah, a town in neighbouring Helmand province, where the fighters have been in control for years.

'Clear mistake'

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Lashkar Gah in Helmand on Monday, said an "aerial weapons team" fired at minibuses carrying civilians.

"We understand they [civilians] came under attack from what Nato says was an aerial weapons team," he said.



In depth :
  Holbrooke on 'Operation Moshtarak' 
  Operation Moshtarak at a glance
  Gallery: Operation Moshtarak
  Video: Civilians flee Marjah fighting
  Video: Healing the wounded in Helmand
  Video: Pakistan's motives questioned
  Focus: To win over Afghans, US must listen
  Timeline: Afghanistan in crisis
  Blog: Human shields in Afghanistan
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201022263657122852.html


 
"That sounds to me like helicopters. The Nato spokesman I have spoken to ... says there was a Nato operation against the Taliban in the nearer area, and Nato thought they were reinforcements for the Taliban coming.

"And that's why they launched this air strike. But he says it's clear now it was clearly a mistake, and that in many of these minibuses there were women and children."

General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the international forces in Afghanistan, released a statement apologising for the deaths, our correspondent said.

"We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives," McChrystal was quoted by Bays as saying.

"I've made it clear to our forces that we're here to protect the Afghan people and inadvertentlly killing and injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We'll redouble our efforts to regain that trust."

The deaths in Uruzgan come close on the heels of an emotional appeal by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, for international troops to try harder to prevent civilian deaths.

He told parliament on Saturday that although progress was being made in limiting civilian casualties, people were still dying.

He held up a picture of an eight-year-old girl who lost 12 relatives in a Nato rocket attack during the second day of the assault on Marjah - Operation Moshtarak - which began on February 13.
 
 

[bigron]

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/americas/2010/02/21/police-key-afghan-stability


Police 'key to Afghan stability'

By John Terrett in  Asia on February 21st, 2010


Photo by Reuters
Colin Powell says "real test" will be ability of Afghan police to protect civilians once fighting dies down.

Americans are being told to expect the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan to last well over another year.
 
The head of US Central Command, General David Petraeus, says the current operation in Marjah is only in its initial stages and the months ahead will be difficult. He was speaking on NBC's Meet The Press.
 
"They'll be tough. I have repeatedly said that these types of efforts are hard and they're hard all the time. I don't use words like optimist or pessimist I use realist but the reality is that it's hard and we're there for a very, very important reason and we can't forget that.

"We're in Afghanistan to ensure that it cannot once again be a sanctuary for the kind of attacks that were carried out on 9/11."
 
The tough talk comes as civilian casualties in Afghanistan mount.  President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly asked Nato to protect civilians during combat operations.
 
The former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, spoke on rival CBS's Face The Nation.

Afterwards he told Al Jazeera that the Taliban is responsible for the deaths of most Afghan civilians but military and political leaders are well aware that ordinary Afghans are being caught in the crossfire.
 
"I think our military leaders and our political leaders and our military leaders in Afghanistan are very sensitive to it and they're doing everything they can to minimise that threat to the civilian population ... because at the end of the day they're the ones whose hearts and minds we're trying to win."
 
Questions remain about the transition from military operations to Afghan control - not least of all reconstructing the area once the fighting dies down.
 
The New York Times newspaper reports the Afghan military is far from ready to take on complex operations or act independently of Nato.

General Powell stressed the importance of the Afghan police when it comes to rebuilding.
 
"The real test, I think, is for the Afghan national police. They're the ones who will keep security in the region after the armies have moved out of the way. Armies fight people. Police protect people over the long-term and that I think is the real challenge in Afghanistan."
 
President Barack Obama's top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has spoken about delivering a "government in a box" to Marjah - by which he means a new governor, administrators and almost 2,000 police officers. 
 
But in order to get to that point he knows Nato forces must first defeat the Taliban and keep civilian casualties to a minimum - something that may be easier said than done.

[bigron]

Petraeus: U.S. losses in Afghan offensive 'will be tough'

STORY HIGHLIGHTS:

-U.S. commander says deaths in Afghan push could be comparable to Iraq "surge"

-Gen. David Petraeus tells NBC the Taliban are fighting back but "disjointed"

-Petraeus calls current offensive just the "initial salvo" of 12- to 18-month campaign


(CNN) -- As coalition and Afghan forces entered the second week of a major offensive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, the head of U.S. Central Command warned that the potential loss of lives among U.S. forces in the operation "will be tough."

Gen. David Petraeus said the losses could be comparable to those seen after the 2007 surge of U.S. troops into Iraq.

"They'll be tough. They were tough in Iraq," Petraeus said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

From the time the U.S. surge in Iraq began in January 2007 until its official end in July 2008, 1,125 U.S. troops died -- more than a quarter of the total 4,379 Americans who have died in the Iraq war.

"The reality is that it's hard, but we are [in Afghanistan] for a very, very important reason, we can't forget that," he added. "We're in Afghanistan to ensure that it cannot once again be a sanctuary for the kinds of attacks that were carried out on 9/11."

Despite stiff Taliban resistance to Operation Moshtarak in Helmand province, Petraeus said that the militants are "a bit disjointed at this point in time."

"When we go on the offensive, when we take away sanctuaries and safe havens from the Taliban and other extremist elements that we and our Afghan and coalition partners are fighting in that country, they're going to fight back," he added. "And we're seeing that in Marjah, we will see that in other areas, but we are going after them across the spectrum."

Petraeus noted that the offensive is just the "initial salvo" of what will be a 12- to 18-month military campaign, but results are being seen already.

"We have more of our special operations forces going in on the ground, and you've seen the results, you've heard some of the initial results of that with more ... Taliban shadow governors being captured, more of the high-value targets being taken down."

See more Afghanistan coverage at Afghanistan Crossroads blog

The Central Command chief also addressed his group's assessment of al Qaeda, following a dust-up a week ago between former Vice President Dick Cheney and current Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden had argued that another massive terror attack against the United States, like the one on September 11, 2001, was "unlikely."

But Cheney called that analysis "dead wrong," and said the biggest threat facing the United States now is a potentially huge terror attack with nuclear weapons or biological agents.

Petraeus said the assessment of the U.S. Central Command is that al Qaeda has been "diminished" in the past year.

"But ... al Qaeda is a flexible, adaptable -- it may be barbaric, it may believe in extremist ideology as it does -- but this is a thinking, adaptive enemy and we must maintain pressure on it everywhere."
 

 
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/21/petraeus.afghanistan/index.html?hpt=T2 

[bigron]

Outgunned Taliban Mounting Tough Fight in Marjah

Sunday , February 21, 2010
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,587070,00.html

Feb. 21: A Marine takes runs through a field after igniting a smoke grenade to mark a landing zone for a U.S. helicopter in Marjah.

MARJAH, Afghanistan — Afghan officials say outnumbered Taliban fighters are mounting a tougher fight than expected in Marjah, as U.S.-led forces converge on a pocket of militants in a western section of the southern Afghan town.

Despite continuing fighting, Marjah's newly oppointed civilian chief planned to fly into the town Monday for the first time since the attack to begin restoring Afghan government control and winning over the population after years of Taliban rule.

SLIDESHOW: U.S.-Led Forces Launch Attack on Taliban Stronghold
http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/world/2010/02/13/afghan-forces-storm-taliban-stronghold

LIVESHOTS: Major Taliban Operative Captured in Pakistan
http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/02/21/exclusive-major-taliban-operative-capture/

With fighter jets, drones and attack helicopters roaring overhead, Marine and Afghan companies advanced Sunday on a 2-square-mile area where more than 40 insurgents were believed holed up.

"They are squeezed," said Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, commander of 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. "It looks like they want to stay and fight but they can always drop their weapons and slip away. That's the nature of this war."

U.S. officials signaled their intention to attack Marjah, a major Taliban supply and opium-smuggling center, months ago, apparently in hopes the insurgents would flee and allow the U.S.-led force to take over quickly and restore an Afghan government presence.

Instead, the insurgents rigged Marjah with bombs and booby traps to slow the allied attack, which began Feb. 13. Teams of Taliban gunmen stayed in the town, delivering sometimes intense volleys of gunfire on Marine and Afghan units slogging through the rutted streets and poppy fields.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the U.S. and its allies had expected the Taliban to leave behind thousands of hidden explosives, which they did. But they were surprised to find that so many militants stayed to fight.

"We predicted it would take many days. But our prediction was that the insurgency would not resist that way," Azimi told The Associated Press in Kabul.

In a statement Sunday, NATO acknowledged that insurgents were putting up a "determined resistance" in various parts of Marjah, although the overall offensive is "on track."

Marine spokesman Lt. Josh Diddams said Sunday that Marines and Afghan troops were continuing to run into "pockets of stiff resistance" though they were making progress. Diddams said no area is completely calm yet although three markets in town -- which covers about 80 square miles -- are at least partially open.

"Everywhere we've got Marines, we're running into insurgents," Diddams said. In many cases, the militants are fighting out of bunkers fortified with sandbags and other materials.

Before the assault, U.S. officers said they believed 400 to 1,000 insurgents were in Marjah, 360 miles (610 kilometers) southwest of Kabul. About 7,500 U.S. and Afghan troops attacked the town, while thousands more NATO soldiers moved into other Taliban strongholds in surrounding Helmand province.

It was the largest joint NATO-Afghan operation since the Taliban regime was ousted from power in 2001.

NATO's civilian chief in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, said the military operation was moving slowly "because of essentially the ruthlessness of the opponent we face and the rules that we've set for ourselves" to protect civilians.

"We could have swept through this place in a couple of days but there would have been a lot of casualties." he said.

NATO said one service member died in a roadside bombing Sunday, bringing the number of international troops killed in the operation to 13. At least one Afghan soldier has been confirmed dead. Senior Marine officers say intelligence reports suggest more than 120 insurgents have died.

Two more service members were killed Sunday by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, though they were not related to the continuing offensive, NATO said.

The Marjah operation is a major test of a new NATO strategy that stresses protecting civilians over routing insurgents quickly. It's also the first major ground operation since President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan.

Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, said on NBC's "Meet The Press" that Marjah was the opening salvo in a campaign to turn back the Taliban that could last 12 to 18 months.

In a setback to that strategy, the Dutch prime minister said Sunday that his country's 1,600 troops would probably leave Afghanistan this year. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende spoke a day after his government collapsed when a coalition partner insisted the Dutch troops leave in August as planned.

Most Dutch troops are stationed in Uruzgan province, which borders Helmand to the north. Afghan officials expressed concern that Taliban fighters driven out of Helmand could regroup in Uruzgan without a robust NATO presence.

During Sunday's fighting, Marines found several abandoned Kalashnikov rifles along with ammunition hidden in homes, suggesting that insurgents intended to blend into the local population and fight back later.

Sporadic volleys of insurgent machine-gun fire rang out through the day.

"They shoot from right here in front of a house, they don't care that there are children around," said Abdel Rahim.

Abdul Rahman Saber, chief of the local council for Marjah, said the situation in much of the town was improving -- that some residents had been able to return to their homes.

Anxious to begin the task of restoring government authority, Zahir, the new district leader, said he plans to meet Monday with community leaders and townspeople about security, health care and reconstruction.

"The Marines have told us that the situation is better. It's OK. It's good," said Zahir, who like many Afghans goes by one name. "I'm not scared because it is my home. I have come to serve the people."

Life in Marjah, however, remains far from normal. The price of food had soared, with the price of sugar and other staples doubling as the fighting continues.

"The Taliban are fleeing the area, but there is sporadic shooting," Saber said. "Two or three days ago, 12 civilians were wounded by bullets when they were escaping."

[bigron]

The Warlord's Tune: Afghanistan's war on children

By Mark Bannerman for Four Corners

A 15-year-old bacha bazi, or 'dancing boy', performs before a large group of men. (Four Corners)


February 21, 2010
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63531&hd=&size=1&l=e

Sexual slavery involving boys as young as 10 is being condoned and in many cases protected by authorities in northern Afghanistan.

In a story to be broadcast on Four Corners tonight, the practice of bacha bazi or "boy play", as well as other allegations of child abuse, are explored.

Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi has filmed police attending a party where a young boy is the "entertainment". The police shown on the video include one officer from the youth crime squad.

Such parties are illegal under the law in Afghanistan and with good reason. The "dancing boys" are in effect sex slaves. They are lured off the streets by pimps. They are taught to dance and sing, to wear make-up and to dress like girls. Then they are made to perform before large groups of men. All of them are sexually abused.

"Dancing boys" are a lucrative business. Powerful former warlords and businessmen love to watch them and will pay a lot of money to have their own boy for bacha bazi. Some of the boys are traded like swap cards amongst the rich and powerful and if they disobey their "owners" they are killed or brutalised.

The trade in boys is well known to the United Nations. According to Nazir Alimy, who compiled a report on the issue for the UN, there is no doubt who is funding this practice and why the police refuse to stop it.

"According to our research these dancing boys are used by powerful men for sex," Mr Alimy said.

Tonight's Four Corners follows the criminal activity of two paedophiles who search for young boys so they can sell them or groom them to be trained as "dancing boys". In one case the journalist goes in the car with a paedophile named Dastager. As they drive, Dastager explains the type of boy he is looking for. Then in broad daylight the "dancing boy master" stops the car, goes to a shopfront and brings a boy back to his the waiting car.

According to a report prepared for the United Nations there is evidence that the practice of bacha bazi and the sexual abuse of boys is common throughout the north of the country. It confirms that young boys, some of them only 10 years old, are lured into life as a sex slave.

There is also evidence that this type of abuse is spreading throughout Afghanistan.

Mr Alimy says his research shows it is happening in the south and even in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

"It's true they make the boys wear girls' clothes and make them dance in front of many men," he said.

The powerful men he refers to are often former warlords who helped drive the Taliban out of the north. Others who involve themselves in the trade of boys are wealthy businessmen. Under the Taliban, bacha bazi was outlawed. Today it is still a crime but clearly there is no concerted effort being made to stop the practice and the criminal activity that surrounds it.

Unable to find anyone willing to do anything about the abuse of children, journalist Najibullah Quraishi flew to New York to meet Radhika Coomaraswamy, who has been appointed by the UN to raise awareness of the plight of children in war zones.

She explains she is deeply pessimistic about the future of these children and the capacity of officials to stop the trade in young boys.

"When I mentioned the topic it was as if I had dropped a big brick, especially in the circles, official circles," she said.

"It was very clear to me, and someone actually said it to me, these are not things people talk about. So let's first deal with the war and then we'll deal with these other issues."

The Warlord's Tune goes to air tonight at 8.30 PM on ABC 1.



 

[bigron]

Governor: NATO airstrike kills 27 Afghan civilians

DPA
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63530&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 22, 2010

Kabul - A NATO airstrike hit three vehicles in southern Afghanistan, killing 27 civilians, including women and children, a provincial governor said Monday.

The incident took place on Sunday in Dai Kundi province when three cars carrying the civilians were targeted from the air, Sultan Ali Uruzgani told German Press Agency dpa.

'In this attack, 27 people were killed,' he said, adding that four women and two children were among those killed. Ten others were injured.

The vehicles were en route to the southern province of Kandahar.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said its forces targeted a group of suspected insurgents 'resulting in a number of individuals killed and wounded.'

'After the joint ground force arrived at the scene and found women and children, they transported the wounded to medical treatment facilities,' ISAF said in a statement.

An investigation was underway, it said.






 

[bigron]

Gen. McChrystal Focuses on Upcoming Kandahar Offensive

Fighting in Marjah Still Far From Over

by Jason Ditz, February 21, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/02/21/gen-mcchrystal-focuses-on-upcoming-kandahar-offensive/


Though clashes are continuing in Marjah and NATO is attempting to focus on what are being called “pockets of determined resistance,” top US commander General Stanley McChrystal is already looking forward to the next offensive.

Gen. McChrystal

According to Gen. McChrystal, offensives against the Kandahar Province will be the next order of business, once the Marjah offensive is finally wrapped up. Control over Kandahar City remains hotly contested, over eight years after the US invasion.

British Lieutenant General Sir Nick Parker, the deputy commander of the NATO forces, says that similar offensives will be needed in multiple places in Kandahar, though education and health services will be the emphasis.

Gen. McChrystal called Marjah “a model for the future,” and lauded military efforts to reduce civilian deaths during the invasion. 16 civilians have been killed in Marjah so far, including 12 who died when a US rocket targeted their home.

[bigron]

From Times Online
February 22, 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7035587.ece

Full transcript of the interview with General Stanley McChrystal

by Deborah Haynes, Defence Editor

Roundtable with General Stanley McChrsytal, US commander of International Security Assistance Force, and Mark Sedwill, Nato’s new senior civilian representative. They were speaking on February 20 to The Times and five other journalists from France, Spain, Lithuania, Turkey and Slovenia.

McChrystal: Let me start by, only because this is a new team, a week or so old. Ambassador Mark Sedwill is my counterpart, senior civilian representative to Nato Isaf. I think what that does is rounds us out. It certainly gives us a lot more talent but it also gives us the opportunity to be more balanced, wider than just strictly military so I think it is really valuable.

Q: We’ve been having some briefings at Nato and everyone seems to be very optimistic. We were wondering if you have Plan B (if the new strategy fails)?

McChrystal: I think we will succeed and over the long period of the campaign, I am very confident that the Afghans will succeed. To put that in to context for you, I believe that what we are at is a point in which the Government of Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan have decided that in partnership with Nato Isaf that they are ready to shape their own future.

The insurgency, particularly the Taleban part, are very, very unpopular and we see significant efforts on the part of the Afghan people to resist that. There will be difficult days ahead. There will be set backs. There will be loss of life among Afghan civilians, Afghan military, coalition as we resist the insurgency but I’m very confident over the long haul in the fact that together we’ll be successful.

Q: What happens if not?

McChrystal: We will be successful. I think over the long haul that’s not something that we plan for.

Q: What makes you think you’re going to be successful?

McChrystal: This effort is not strictly a military effort. It is really a battle for the support of the Afghan people. A comparison could be made to an argument where each side is making their case. It will be decided in the minds of the Afghan people, who will decide that their government can provide them legitimate governance, can provide them relative acceptable justice within the Afghan cultural perimeters and then they will help resist the insurgency and I think we are already seeing that. When I talk to Afghans, and I get a chance to travel around the country quite a lot and not just Afghan military or Afghan government agents, but also people down in Shuras around the country. I’m convinced that they are absolutely committed to a future without the insurgency

Sedwill: It is just worth remembering how localised the insurgency is. Three-fifths of this country is largely outside the reach of the insurgency. So this argument, as the general talks about, is actually an argument within relatively limited communities. Even within those, if you look at any of the opinion polls they suggest that support for the insurgency is low so that in the end is the main reason to feel confident. Most of the country has rejected the insurgency anyway and even in those areas where the insurgency draws some strength from the local population they are still in a very small minority. Well under 20 per cent of the population in most of those areas would support and so that argument goes on but it goes on in very localise areas. It is vicious but it’s local and limited.

Q: Is the model that we are seeing with Operation Moshtarak, with the comprehensive approach, the targeted strikes and the people-centric mission, is that the model that is going to be used in future operations? If so where are your next areas of concern, is it towards Kandahar? Where is going to be the nest “Operation Moshtarak”

McChrystal: First off, it is a general model but every situation will be dealt with a little bit differently because conditions in every area are different. Some of the specific things about Moshtarak that I hope people notice are: It was an area that had been under Taleban control for several years but before Afghan and coalition forces went in we did extensive engagement with the population inside and those who had left. We engaged the population to the point where they actually requested the forces to come in. We also did other shaping in terms of informing them how things would go, what were the plans for after the military phase of it and also to provide the insurgents an opportunity to think about it. Clearly people say that provides them a chance to put in defences and they have done some of that but it also provided many of the insurgents a chance to rethink their position as insurgents some to leave, and we are not judging the effectiveness of this operation by how many insurgents we kill. It is can we protect the population? Can we retake the area in a way that allows as little property damage and as few civilian as possible. In many ways it is a model for the future. An Afghan-led operation supported by the coalition, very deeply engaged with the people.

Q: Where are the future trouble spots in your mind?

McChrystal: We are going to go to where significant parts of the population are at risk and Kandahar is clearly very, very important not just to the south but to the nation. It is not the only area though.

Q: In terms of Moshtarak itself, we’ve heard people talking about when the clearing stage is going to be over. Given the resistance that we are seeing what is your assessment of when we can start this government in a box?

McChrystal: I think it will start in parts of the area very, very rapidly but other parts will take much longer. The insurgents are fighting for the ground.

Q: Days, weeks?

McChrystal: I defer to General Carter who yesterday talked in terms of 25 to 30 days but I really want to make sure that everyone understands this is going to be based on the conditions and we are going to go as slowly as we have to go to minimise the risk of killing civilians and destroying the area. It’s been under Taleban control for a long time so for us to rush I think is less responsible than for us to take our time and get this right. Realising that many of the insurgents are showing a tremendous desire to try to inflict casualties, to include casualties on civilians.

Q: I understand that the main part of this is these two words: reintegration and reconciliation with the Taleban. Why do you think it will succeed? As you know, these people have different views from ours.

Sedwill: It is important to understand the complexity of the insurgency. About three quarters, probably more fight within a few miles of where they were born and where their families live. And so for them, many have drifted into the insurgency for a variety of reasons: local tribal grievances, friction, disaffection etc. We believe that they can be brought back into the political and economic mainstream reasonably straightforwardly. It is not that they are opportunistic but they have drifted into it for a lot of local reasons. In a sense they are fighting with the Taleban but not for them. That has happened a lot in Afghanistan in many of the civil conflicts that have gone on in the past.

There is a hard core of the insurgency who as you say have got a completely different views – not only, of course it’s not to us but it’s completely different views to the Afghan mainstream, which is what really matters. They need to understand that they can never get any purchase for those views. There is no popular support for it and therefore the conditions that have been set by President Karzai and others – and essentially there are only really two – firstly that they must respect the Afghan constitution and that of course includes protection for women’s rights and the rights of all ethnic groups and secondly that they renounce violence and terrorism and any association with terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. If they are willing to do that then there is an honourable and respectful way back to the mainstream but if they are determined to continue to pursue very hardline ideological goals and overthrow the Afghan state then there is no place for them and they will continue to be subject to the severest military action. Again, that does not apply to most of the insurgency. Most of the insurgency, we believe, is not really fighting this fight because of those reasons of ideology.

Q: You know or your believe?

Sedwill: We have good information to suggest that it is three-quarters or more. Inevitably there is a degree of imprecision about this but if you talk to the Afghans themselves who’ve worked very hard on this, the intelligence services the interior ministry, those are the sort of numbers and that is the kind of assessment they would make as well.

McChrystal: I agree with the Ambassador on this. President Karzai has made it very clear that he views any insurgent willing to come under the model that Ambassador Sedwill described as welcome back into society with honour and I think that’s an important option.

Q: What are the roadmaps to pull the Taleban into the political process and Parliament?

Sedwill: It is an Afghan roadmap. They are beginning to set it out now. I don’t think it is yet completely worked through but President Karzai spoke about it again this morning in his speech in Parliament and it was probably the main theme of that speech. The first key event is the peace jurga. He wants that to be an opportunity for the whole of the Afghan nation to come together. This essentially reflects the point that General McChrystal was just making. He is very clear that he wants to offer an honourable way back into the political and economic mainstream and that all of the disaffected compatriots as he describes them would be welcome back.

The peace jurga is an opportunity not only to start that process but to ensure the whole Afghan nation, all of the ethnic groups here, are behind him. That is what he is seeking to achieve. Of course there will need to be specific programmes, there will need to be specific measures in place to try and help people reintegrate back into society to help them get a job, to provide the security reassurances that they and everyone else needs about them. Those techniques are fairly well known and have been used in other programmes across Africa and in resolving other conflicts. The fundamental issue here is that political one and that sense of political will. The peace jurga is probably the first big milestone in that process.

McChrystal: I think what we are doing is trying to shape conditions in the country in two ways. First is we are trying to improve security to demonstrate we can protect the Afghan people so they have a choice to support the government and I also think we are trying to improve governance. On the military side we are trying to provide conditions so that governance can be improved so really you are offering the opportunity for people to have a choice but then you are trying to motivate them by showing that you can provide better governance than they had perceived before.

Sedwill: That goes to this issue that we were talking about a moment ago and that is ensuring local grievances don’t fuel disaffection and fuel the insurgency. Decent governance is absolutely critical to them

Q: Winning hearts and minds is also important. What are the strategies to change the negative image of Nato and Western forces here? Are you consulting with local or religious leaders for example?

McChrystal: Those are all part of it we are trying to talk to the people at every level. We are trying to talk to local tribal leaders, we are trying to talk to local people in the areas, we are trying to deal with political leaders at every level and be as open and as transparent as we can and not just talk to them but listen to them. Take their desires as we did on Operation Moshtarak. Much of what has been crafted has been based upon what the locals said they wanted for an outcome. We are also trying to chance some of the ways that we maybe perceived by the population, how we use fires. I put out a tremendous amount of limits on how we can use fires to hep reduce accidental civilian casualties. We try to drive better. We try to move along the roads in ways that signal that we respect the Afghan people and their rights on their roads. We spend a lot of time trying to train our force how they can understand. The Turkish forces are particularly good at this. We try to learn from each other. Each of the coalition nations is good at different things and we try to learn from the strengths. And then as we partner with the Afghan security forces they bring a particular strength. When a coalition force operates with an Afghan force they suddenly have language skills, they suddenly have an understanding that they just won’t have if they’re not Afghan. Together we become a much better team.

Q: Isn’t it too late to win hearts and minds after nine years?

McChrystal: I think it is important that that be our main effort but I would like to say that winning hearts and minds sometimes gets over simplified. It is not just popularity. The population is not looking for people who will hand out candy. They are looking for people who can provide them security from a very lethal insurgency and they are looking for people who will help them build a future to include governance. I think that if we can build our credibility with them that we are here for them to protect them and respect them then I don’t think it’s too late. I think it’s the right time.

Sedwill: We’re not trying to win hearts and minds in affiliation to us. It is trying to help the Afghan government do that. That’s the critical point. That is Afghan to Afghan so in a sense it is never too late.

Q: How worried are you that corruption makes Afghan weakest link in this strategy?

Sedwill: Corruption is a big issue here. We’ve all made it a major theme. It’s been a theme of President Karzai’s inauguration speech, the speech he gave today in Parliament he talked about it again. It is clearly a critical problem in addressing this crisis of confidence that the people have in their government. A lot of it is about capability. There are an awful lot of officials for example at low level who are paid so poorly that they have traditionally indulged in low level corruption frankly in order to feed their families.

Where we sometimes get this wrong looking in from the outside is that we focus on the big headline issues, the ones around the centre, the ones around misuse of aid and those issues, and they are all absolutely critical but actually to the ordinary Afghan citizen, whether their district police chief, district governor, district prosecutor, are straight or not is probably much more important than if they read about a grand corruption case involving a famous power broker in the headlines. That is absolutely critical in addressing this. In places like Helmand where we have these operations going on ensuring those people are genuinely going to serve the people is one of the most important measures of whether governance is going to extend.

There is a lot going on to address corruption. Ministers are getting on to this. Everyone knows this is a priority, but no one is under any illusion as to how hard it’s going to be to turn this around and of course these people are embedded in the power structure as in other countries and therefore it is going to take a time to winkle them out.

McChrystal: I’d like to add that it was interesting before Moshtarak was launched engagement engagement with the population included a large shura with many people from inside the areas held by the Taleban and some who were from there but living outside at this point. They put several conditions on their support for the operation. They said we want the operation but we want it done in a way that you will minimise civilian casualties as much as possible, we want you to guarantee that you will stay – and they didn’t mean coalition forces they meant Afghan army and police to provide long term security to keep the Taleban away for the future – and then last they said we want the best governance possible. We want legitimate, not-corrupt governance. It was that that I think was a good forcing function on everyone on how we operate and how we take it forward.

Sedwill: The important thing to remember about corruption is that it is not an issue between the international community and Afghanistan. It’s an issue between the government of Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan.

Q: What will you do to make Afghan government more effective, at the moment they have no influence outside Kabul?

Sedwill: I don’t think either of us would agree that they have no influence outside Kabul. It’s a criticism that’s been bandied around for a long time and it simply isn’t true. If you look at Helmand, which is probably the most challenging area of the country at the moment, you have one of the best provincial governors in the country who has built a strong team around him, he’s building up teams of district governors and one of the things that is different about Operation Moshtarak is the degree to which the central government and the provincial government have been integrated in their planning for this. In the past these things have tended to be left to the provincial level and this time the central government ministers have been down there and working on it. They are producing teams of young, energetic, bright, well, educated, straight civil servants to go down and work in all the various areas that the people down there want help, health, education, judicial work and so on. No doubt that won’t be perfect and of course it won’t because of the situation in this country. But even in somewhere like Helmand there is the reach of central government and the reach of the Afghan security forces with our support and of course in many other areas of the country which are already stable then the provincial governors, representatives of the central government are genuinely providing those services that the people want. Much of this country is not conflict ridden. It is just another poor, central Asian country. Half to three-fifths of this country looks that way and the central government runs throughout.

McChrystal: The Government must prove itself to the people as it goes into areas, particularly areas where we push the insurgents out. I think that’s good for the government. I think all governments need some pressure, all of our governments need some pressure to perform well.

Q: Do you see any obstacles on the way to success, some countries are losing their patience, consider pulling out their troops and we have several smaller members with very strict national caveats. Can that be a problem on the way to success?

McChrystal: I think there will be many challenges on the road to success. I think there will be things we have to work through and there will be unexpected challenges and there will be days when we will question ourselves and our progress but I think as we step back and look most of the challenges that we face in an effort like this if they are put in context are all things we can work over. Each of the coalition partners comes with limitations. They are not all rules. Sometimes it is the equipment they have, the experience they have, the size they have, but they are just realities. I don’t think of them as limitations. I think of them as characteristics. Some of the forces come with great strengths in certain areas and they make up for weaknesses for the coalition. So I think as a team it comes together that we’ll have to make adjustments all the time, we’ll have to account for things expected and unexpected but I think we will continue to move forward.

Q: So you don’t see problems in Nato itself or in Isaf?

McChrystal: No what I said is that I see many challenges. You can call it problems or whatever but I think that will keep us all busy. It will keep Ambassador Sedwill and myself busy every day as we go forward but that doesn’t mean we can’t do it.

Q: So the date of 2011 to start pulling out is very close to that strategy?

McChrystal: I think the date of 2011 needs to be put in context of what President Obama actually announced. First he announced in he near-term 30,000 additional forces and that was matched by a number of additional coalition forces so that’s between now and 2011 is much greater capacity. We are also increasing the Afghan national security forces, that was approved by Nato as well. Then in the long term what he said was he guaranteed a strategic partnership with the people of Afghanistan. In the long term he guaranteed that the United States would stay wired but Nato has offered the same partnership. So 2011, if you put them between those two realities, he just said that he was going to start to reduce American forces then but it would happen at a pace based on conditions. So I think that sometimes that date gets over emphasised militarily. I think that militarily it is another reality that we can work with.

Q: Which provinces are better prepared to start a kind of transition?

Sedwill: There are clearly provinces that are already stable and have been stable for a long time but we’ve got to be very cautious about naming them in advance for two reasons. Firstly, because you immediately set them up as a target for the insurgency to try and reduce the stability there. We need to be very confident that the capability of the Afghan security forces and in deed the Afghan government in those provinces is robust enough to stand the challenge that they will no doubt face so it would be wrong to announce those except at the right time.

The reason, which in essence is the more important one, is that this has to be a decision for the Afghan government as well as us. The Afghan government has full sovereignty across the whole of Afghanistan this is not a transfer of sovereignty. This is a question of simply reinforcing their sovereignty and enabling them to visibly take the lead in more and more of the country and President Karzai has said he wants to do that in the whole of the country within his second term, within the next five years, slightly less than five years now. The entire alliance has strongly endorsed that goal. As we identify areas of the country that between us we believe are stable enough and secure enough that Isaf can step back into a supporting role and maybe step back altogether at some point, we’ll work through that with the Afghans and we’ll announce those as we go, but the key operational requirement would be that those areas are robust enough to withstand the challenge they would be likely to face.

Q: You want to put responsibility on shoulder of Afghans so how would you assess capability of army and police?

McChrystal: In the long term you are correct. We want the Afghans to have responsibility for the defence of their own sovereignty. In the near term we use a saying called shared partnership and what that means is what we do is we partner units together. Shared responsibility for what happens is critical.

It can’t be a coalition war against the Taleban, nor are the Afghans ready to do it entirely without our help. So we try to hold each other accountable.

The Afghan National security forces are growing. They are not as mature as they’ll be a year from now or two years from now. They have got to develop leaders. We are helping them develop training programmes. But I would say that when you look at the relative challenges that they have in front of us you also have to look as I did just earlier this week young Afghan army soldiers down fighting every day in places like Marjah. Afghan national police holding checkpoints all around the country and dying at a higher rate than any other force on the battle field and not running away. With all the challenges that they’ve got, they’ve got an awful lot of strengths already.

Q: What is the significance of the recent arrest of Mullah Baradar and the other senior Afghan Taleban in Pakistan and why is it happening now? Has some deal been done between the United States and Pakistan to facilitate this?

McChrystal: I think the significance has yet to be fully determined and I think it will play out in the weeks and months ahead. But Mullah Baradar was clearly a significant member of the Taleban structure and so any time a significant member of the organisation is taken out it is going to have an impact on the organisation.

Q: Is he talking? Did you get some information?

McChrystal: I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to talk about it here.

Q: Would you agree that the key to success is not just here but is also in Pakistan?

Sedwill: Yes absolutely. The second big theme of President Karzai’s speech in Parliament this morning was about regional stability. All of use recongise that that is critical to bringing an enduring peace to Afghanistan. It is not just Pakistan but of course Pakistan probably more importantly than anywhere else. They are dealing with some very major challenges of their own. The Pakistani Taleban, they’ve got other extremist groups there, there’s still quite a large number of al-Qaeda floating around in Pakistan and other elements from other parts of central Asia. They are handling some absolutely vicious challenges of their own and their capacity to do so is under strain. But as they do so, with our support, then clearly all of their efforts are important to their stability but also the stability of Afghanistan as well. Each day they make progress, each day they manage to arrest or detain another significant figure whether from the Afghan Taleban or the Pakistan Taleban or al-Qaeda or another group is another step forward.

[bigron]

February 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/world/asia/22civilian.html?hp

Afghans Voice Their Fears Amid Marja Campaign

By C. J. CHIVERS


Afghan elders in Marja, Afghanistan, met Saturday with United States Marines, discussing the fighting and also expressing interest in development projects.

MARJA, Afghanistan — Since the American-led offensive into the last large Taliban enclave in Helmand Province began nine days ago, local Afghans have faced a dangerous and uncertain world.

Their homes are now in a region where the Marines have established a presence, the Taliban have moved into the shadows as a potent guerrilla force, and the Afghan government insists it will soon provide services and bring Marja into the national fold.

All the while, in northern Marja, the fighting grinds on at a pace of several firefights a day — a climate that has displaced many civilians and kept others hiding inside. Abdul Ajahn, an elder here, voiced a lingering fear.

“If the Taliban shoots from that side, and you are on this side, and I am in between?” he said to the Marines at a meeting arranged by a commander and local elders over the weekend. “Then I am sure you will shoot me.”

One by one at the meeting, attended by the elders of several rural villages and the leaders of Company K, Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, the elders asked questions and expressed worries, summarizing local reactions to an offensive that so far had frightened and disoriented them.

How can farmers water and feed their livestock or work on crops without risking being shot? When will it be safe enough to visit the bazaar, which has been all but closed? When will searches of their homes stop? Can the mullah move through the village before dawn to open his mosque for morning prayer?

If the meeting was any indication, the Marines face local Afghans deeply worried for their safety and suspicious of American actions, even as the elders expressed an interest in collaborating with development projects once security conditions improve.

But first things first.

One elder, Yamatullah, a man with a long, fine goatee, asked the Marines to respect the people’s possessions. On many days since the Marines landed by helicopter, firefights have led to Marines chasing Taliban gunmen, often into the mud-walled compounds that ring local homes. The Marines have also conducted deliberate sweeps. “We are innocent people,” Mr. Yamatullah said. “We have a lot of expensive things in our homes. Please do not break our things or take them.”

The Marines said they would try not to disturb anyone’s homes or goods. They also told the elders that once the fighting subsided, Marja would enjoy many services and development opportunities it had lacked: police protection, mosque repair, school and medical care.

About an hour into the meeting, long bursts of rifle fire and the thump of a machine gun could be heard a few kilometers away. A Marine reconnaissance unit was in a fight.

The shura, as the meeting was called, continued nonetheless. The Marines said they wanted to keep hearing from the elders.

One man, Izmarai, vented at the Marines for setting up an outpost at a home he said he owned. He demanded they leave.

“If you want to arrest me, arrest me,” he said. “If you want to shoot me, shoot me now. You say you want to make peace and security. Then why did you make your compound in my home, and between my home and my field? Did you ask me? No.”

Mr. Izmarai was so angry that at one point he tossed stones at First Lt. Cory J. Colistra, the company’s executive officer. The Marines promised the man they would not stay on his property long. They offered to pay rent.

Mr. Izmarai was unimpressed. After the shura ended, he at first refused to shake the Marines’ hands. But later he returned, saying his presentation had been a performance. There were Taliban members at the meeting, he said, and he spoke as he did to impress them. The Marines said they were not sure what to believe. Was he telling the truth? Or playing both sides?

By this time, midday Saturday, the company had returned to the current day-to-day fight. Third Platoon set out to set up an overnight patrol base. The Taliban were waiting. A firefight ensued. A Marine was struck by a bullet in the leg; he was evacuated and in good condition.

On Sunday, the fighting was more intense. Second Platoon left its patrol base to clear an area north of a bridge that the company seized last week. It came under machine-gun fire. A Marine was shot in the hip. (The names of both Marines have been withheld pending notification of their families.)

The Marine’s bleeding was difficult to stop. The corpsman who tried to save him lost the man’s pulse, then managed to resuscitate him. He kept the man alive until a helicopter could land and carry him to a military hospital. The platoon continued its sweep. Company K felt a surge a relief.

About an hour later the radio brought grim news. The wounded Marine had died.

In all but one of the nine days Company K has been clearing a small portion of Marja, there have been multiple skirmishes. And at times two or more fights have occurred simultaneously, as patrols in different places have clashed with separate groups of Taliban. Most have not resulted in American casualties. The Taliban have often bounded away as the Marines massed supporting fire or brought in air support.

But eight members of Company K and two Afghan Army soldiers have been struck by bullets in six different engagements. Two Marines and one Afghan soldier have died. The Taliban have suffered much heavier losses. Yet they continued through the weekend to fire at most of the company’s patrols.

The civilians, meanwhile, sought cues as to what to do. So far, the small number of Afghans tending crops in the fields or looking after livestock, or even walking along roads and trails, suggested that local Afghans were not convinced that it was safe enough here to resume their routines.

[bigron]

Battle for Marja not only militarily significant

By Greg Jaffe and Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, February 22, 2010; A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/21/AR2010022104201_pf.html


A year ago, the mention of Marja, a speck on the map in southern Afghanistan, would have drawn befuddled stares in the Pentagon.

Today the town of 50,000 is the target of the largest U.S.-NATO military operation since 2001. U.S. commanders are describing the dusty Afghan outpost as a "cancer," a key center of opium production in Afghanistan's poppy belt and an area critical to the Taliban's power.

Marja is indeed a Taliban stronghold, and the resistance there is real. Nine U.S. troops have been reported killed from roadside bombs and sniper fire since the offensive began a week ago. Dozens have been injured.

But in purely military terms, sending 11,000 U.S. and Afghan troops to defeat a few hundred Taliban fighters in Marja won't change much in Afghanistan. The greater significance of the battle is in how it is perceived in the rest of Afghanistan and in America.

The campaign's goals are to convince Americans that a new era has arrived in the eight-year-long war and to show Afghans that U.S. forces and the Afghan government can protect them from the Taliban. It allows Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander, who months earlier described conditions in the country as "grave and deteriorating," to make a clean break from past failures.

"You want to be able to define your narrative, and we've had trouble doing that in the past," said Mark Moyar, who has served as a civilian adviser to U.S. commanders in Afghanistan. McChrystal is under pressure to show progress fast: President Obama has directed that U.S. troops begin to withdraw in July 2011.

In recent days, U.S. commanders in Kabul and Washington have gone to great pains to describe the Marja offensive as a new beginning. "This is the start point of a new strategy," one senior military official told reporters on Thursday. "This is our first salvo."

Such declarations aren't new in military history. When Gen. Creighton Abrams took command of troops in Vietnam from Gen. William Westmoreland, he began by refocusing the U.S. war effort on a handful of rural villages. Although the campaign showed some success, it could not arrest the growing skepticism about the war in the United States or prevent the North Vietnamese army from overrunning the South.

In Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus pushed his forces into a few especially violent neighborhoods in the south and in Baghdad to show that the additional U.S. troops could stem the sectarian bloodletting gripping the capital.

Military officials in Afghanistan hope a large and loud victory in Marja will convince the American public that they deserve more time to demonstrate that extra troops and new tactics can yield better results on the battlefield. Although Obama has set a date to begin a pullout, he has not said how quickly the troops will leave. Success in southern Afghanistan would almost certainly mean a slower drawdown.

The other group McChrystal wants to influence is the Afghan people and the Taliban, who saw the July 2011 withdrawal deadline as a sign of wavering U.S. will. "This is all a war of perceptions," McChrystal said on the eve of the Marja offensive. "This is all in the minds of the participants. Part of what we've had to do is convince ourselves and our Afghan partners that we can do this."

A swift victory over the Taliban in Marja, followed with a robust development effort, could sway some Afghan fence sitters.

"Marja is not the single most important geographical point in Afghanistan that will turn around the war," said Thomas Ruttig, a former United Nations official and co-director of Afghanistan Analysts Network. "It's not the battle of Stalingrad. It's more like a symbol."

When McChrystal took over command of NATO forces in June, some of his closest advisers argued that U.S. troops should not even be in Marja or the surrounding central Helmand province. Nearby Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, has been the epicenter of the Taliban movement for more than two decades and should be the focus of U.S. efforts, these officials insisted.

Shifting the U.S. focus, however, would have been a logistical nightmare. The Marines had been working for months to build Camp Leatherneck, their sprawling base in the desert, and were on the verge of launching their first big attack to wrest the towns of Nawa and Garmsir in the central Helmand valley from Taliban forces. Those operations, which took place last summer and fall, have been relatively successful in pushing out the Taliban.

Marja also seemed far more likely than Kandahar to deliver a quick military and political win for McChrystal. One big obstacle to securing Kandahar is its tangled political rivalries. Among the local power brokers is Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Ahmed Karzai has been dogged by accusations of being a drug kingpin and, simultaneously, a paid CIA asset. He has denied both allegations.

"There are issues there which need to be solved, particularly in terms of governance and in terms of the political equilibrium that exists there," British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the top NATO commander in southern Afghanistan, told reporters last week.

In Marja and surrounding Helmand province, U.S. officials have built a close relationship with the local governor, Gulab Mangal, who has a reputation as a clean and effective technocrat. His cooperation boosts the likelihood that money set aside for development projects in Marja will not be siphoned off by corruption.

Even if U.S. troops succeed in driving out the Taliban and establishing an effective local government, the overall success or failure of U.S. efforts in southern Afghanistan will be determined by what Carter called "the next challenge for us."

That will be the battle for Kandahar.

[bigron]

Military sweep of Marja focuses on pocket of 'determined resistance'

Marines and Afghan troops fight to clear holdout insurgents from one corner of the city in southern Afghanistan. NATO says there is another casualty among Western troops, bringing the total to 13.

By Tony Perry and Laura King

8:16 AM PST, February 21, 2010
http://freedomsyndicate.com/fair0000/latimes00130.html

Reporting from Nawa, Afghanistan, and Kabul, Afghanistan -- Backed by fighter jets and attack helicopters, U.S. Marines and Afghan troops closed in on an insurgent-ridden sector of Marja on Sunday, the ninth day of a coalition bid to wrest control of the southern Afghan town from the Taliban.

The fighting, concentrated in northwestern Marja, took place amid what NATO called "determined resistance" from holdout fighters in various locations in and around the town. Advancing coalition troops faced a continuing threat from small-arms fire and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, the Western military said in a statement.

"We're still pushing through the city," said Lt. Josh Diddams, a Marine spokesman. Some of the remaining pockets of insurgents consist of only a handful of fighters, but at least 40 -- a relatively large concentration -- are thought to be holed up in the town's northwestern quarter, the Associated Press reported.

NATO said Sunday another service member was killed in connection with the offensive, bringing the number of Western troop fatalities to 13. At least eight were Marines.

The battle of Marja is the largest coalition assault since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban. NATO commanders want to break the insurgents' grip on the town and its environs as part of a larger effort to establish government authority for the first time in years in a strategic swath of troubled Helmand province.

NATO said the operation remained "on track," although commanders conceded last week that clearing operations will take a month or more, somewhat longer than originally envisioned.

In coming days, however, the coalition expects the town will be secure enough to bring in a newly appointed Afghan governor, marking a symbolic shift away from the military confrontation and toward job creation, school openings and the setting up of other long-absent public services.

The military said in a statement that route clearance -- ridding the roads of one buried bomb after another -- was improving freedom of movement for local people. Many Marja residents have been pinned down in their homes for days by the fighting or have fled to other parts of the province.

Shops are slowly reopening as well, field commanders and local officials said.

Although the Marja offensive is concentrated in the district of Nad Ali, where the town is located, related operations are taking place across Helmand, the insurgency's traditional heartland.

NATO forces on Sunday reported the capture of a Taliban commander and another insurgent in a shootout in Kajaki district, in the east of Helmand, which left one of the suspects wounded. Both of the men arrested Friday were thought to have helped plant IEDs and plan attacks.

In another operation last week that was tied to the Marja offensive, coalition forces in Sangin district, also in Helmand's east, captured three Taliban fighters and seized nearly 150 detonators for use in bombmaking.

[bigron]

Taliban is just one of many challenges faced by Afghan towns

Insurgents were driven out of the Nawa district last year, but residents are still frustrated with a weak local government that offers few services. Officials hope to do better in Marja.

By Tony Perry

9:27 AM PST, February 21, 2010
http://freedomsyndicate.com/fair0000/latimes00133.html

Reporting from Nawa, Afghanistan

Haji Abdul Manaf, the district governor for this region of Helmand province, was incensed.

An employee from the agricultural ministry of the provincial government refuses to come to Nawa unless he is assured a desk and a telephone at the district headquarters, where those items are in short supply.

Improving crop yields and persuading farmers to plant wheat rather than the poppies that produce heroin are key points in the U.S.- NATO coalition's plans to upgrade the standard of living in this farm belt in southern Afghanistan.

But for months, Manaf has been unable to get the support he wants from the provincial government.

"I don't know what to do," Manaf complained to a gathering of U.S. and British civilian aid workers.

The story of the agricultural employee and the desk and phone is not unusual. Although there have been improvements recently, the relationship between the district government and the provincial government in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, is tenuous.

The improvements in Nawa since the Marines chased the Taliban from control last summer are noticeable and significant: The bazaar was reopened, a clinic established, a school refurbished and opened, a community council formed, and irrigation canals cleaned. Afghan police now patrol the streets and back roads.

This month, just hours after the Marines and Afghan army began an offensive to drive the Taliban from the community of Marja, a U.S. officer told several hundred Afghan men that the goal is to provide the people of Marja with the same peace and prosperity now being enjoyed in Nawa.

But rifts between the locals in Nawa and the provincial government cover nearly all services and are hampering plans to make the district into a showpiece of the permanent improvements that can occur when the Taliban is no longer in charge.

"What we have to do is improve all these ministries," said Ian Purves, part of the multinational Provincial Reconstruction Team assigned to Nawa.

At a Saturday shura, or tribal meeting, at a school being refurbished, Manaf pleaded with residents not to become disenchanted with his district government and switch allegiance to the Taliban. "What has the Taliban ever done for you?" he said. "Nothing. They burned this school."

The Afghan government, prodded by the U.S. and Britain, has a plan for Marja designed to eliminate some of the frustration and discontent that comes from the slow, incremental pace seen in Nawa.

Dubbed the District Development Plan, or "government in a box," it calls for a local government structure to be established as soon as the fighting stops, with strong and permanent links to the provincial government, which largely controls the money.

"The government has realized they need to get a governmental presence more quickly in order to deliver basic services," Purves said.

The same strategy is being used in the Nad-e-Ali area, where British and Afghan forces are on an offensive similar to that in nearby Marja. Officials have announced that 2,000 people have registered for a "work for cash" program, two schools have reopened, and nearly a thousand residents have received aid.

Given the high profile of the push into Marja, the post-combat phase of establishing a government has taken on added significance, officials concede. Slowness, they said, could undercut attempts to win the confidence of residents and could frustrate impatient outsiders like the U.S. government.

The same concern has been expressed by those working in Nawa.

In his final report to his superiors, Marine Capt. Frank "Gus" Biggio, a Washington lawyer and reservist who headed a civil affairs squad in Nawa until December, warned that "one of the biggest threats to Afghanistan's future is not so much the drug trade, Taliban influence or corruption at the higher levels of government but rather the patience and persistence of her foreign partners."

In a reference to Nawa that might also apply to Marja, Biggio said, "There are daunting challenges ahead in this country."

[bigron]

Probes overlook McChrystal's role in costly Afghan battles

Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: February 21, 2010 02:01:45 AM
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/02/20/v-print/86824/probes-overlook-top-us-generals.html

WASHINGTON — Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, kept a remote U.S. base in the country manned last year at the local governor's request despite warnings from his field commanders that it should be closed because it was vulnerable and had no tactical or strategic value.

McChrystal's decision to maintain the outpost at Barg-e Matal prompted the top American commanders in eastern Afghanistan to delay plans to close a second remote U.S. outpost, Combat Outpost Keating, where insurgents killed eight U.S. troops in an assault Oct. 3, a McClatchy investigation has found.

Keeping Barg-e-Matal open also deprived a third isolated base of the officer who would have been its acting commander and left its command to lower-ranking officers whose "ineffective actions" led "directly" to the deaths of five American and eight Afghan soldiers in an ambush Sept. 8, according to a high-level military investigation.

In addition, an unidentified witness told the military investigators that the operations center that failed to provide effective artillery and air cover to the U.S. and Afghan force that was ambushed in the Ganjgal Valley was focused instead on Barg-e Matal.

However, the ambush inquiry and a similar high-level Army probe into the Oct. 3 deaths at COP Keating, the worst single American combat loss in 2009, don't mention that McChrystal's decision to keep Barg-e Matal open made the combat outpost and the Ganjgal operation more vulnerable.

Instead, the inquiries hit lower-ranking officers — including two field commanders who'd urged McChrystal for months to close Keating and Barg-e Matal — with administrative penalties.

The two officers, Col. Randy George and Lt. Col. Robert B. Brown, and other U.S. officials had warned repeatedly that the two outposts were worthless and too costly to defend, two American defense officials and a former NATO official told McClatchy.

Neither George nor Brown could be reached for comment.

A spokesman for McChrystal said the U.S. commander had ordered American troops to remain in Barg-e Matal to prevent it from falling to insurgents while a local militia was being trained there.

"The threat at that time was both significant and real," Rear Adm. Gregory Smith wrote in an e-mail.

Nuristan Gov. Jamalluddin Badr pressured the United States publicly and privately to keep troops in Barg-e Matal to prevent the village from falling to the Taliban before Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election. The two U.S. defense officials said McChrystal's decision to keep the outpost there open until the local militia was trained was intended to help Badr survive the political fallout had insurgents captured the village after an American withdrawal.

"Everyone knew why we were in Barg-e Matal," one U.S. defense official said. "McChrystal . . . was not in favor of pulling out because of the political ramifications."

The two American defense officials and the former NATO official said they wanted to discuss the matter because of what they considered flawed investigations that penalized the two field commanders but failed to hold McChrystal and other superior officers accountable. They requested anonymity to avoid retaliation.

They said that George, of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, based at Fort Carson, Colo., had begun making plans to close Keating in January 2009, six months before his 4th Brigade Combat Team deployed to Afghanistan last June.

He briefed plans to close Keating and Barg-e Matal to McChrystal, other senior commanders and top Afghan officials at a July 17 meeting in Kabul, they said, and he and Brown briefed McChrystal again in early August at Brown's headquarters at Forward Operating Base Bostick in Kunar province, they said.

"The Barg-e Matal operation made it impossible to close Keating," the former NATO official said. George "had a whole schedule for coming down out of those COPs accordion-style."

George, the American commander in four Afghan provinces that border Pakistan, has received a letter of admonishment; Brown, whose operational area included Keating and Barg-e Matal, has received an official reprimand.

The admonishment, which is a minor penalty, is unlikely to affect George's career, but the official reprimand could end Brown's career.

"They are screwing these two guys," the first U.S. defense official said of the field commanders.

"They were looking for heads," the second American defense official said. "It's a travesty."

Penalizing the pair is even more egregious, the U.S. defense officials and the former NATO official said, because their plans to close the outposts were consistent with McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy of moving American troops from remote areas to economically important population centers.

The fact that officers in the field are being punished while no mention has been made of the role that their superiors played signals that those on the front lines always will take the blame when things go wrong, the first U.S. defense official said.

"This will make the Army even more casualty-averse," he said. "This is the worst message at the worst time for McChrystal to send."

Army Lt. Gen. Guy Swan, who conducted the Keating investigation, didn't return calls seeking comment on why his report, which found that manning Barg-e Matal delayed Keating's closure for several months, didn't hold McChrystal or any other general officer responsible for that decision.

Fewer than 70 American soldiers were deployed at Keating, which was in a deep valley and under frequent attack. It was closed after the Oct. 3 assault by an estimated 300 insurgents, some 150 of whom are thought to have been killed after U.S. airpower finally arrived.

"By mid-2009, there was no tactical or strategic value to holding the ground" and "the chain of command" decided to close Keating in "July-August 2009," the report says. The withdrawal was "delayed when the assets required to backhaul base supplies were diverted to support intense brigade-level operations in Barg-e Matal."

In addition, it says, drone aircraft and other intelligence-gathering "assets that could have given the soldiers at COP Keating better situational awareness for their operational environment were reprioritized to support Barg-e Matal as well as the search for a missing U.S. soldier in the south."

"The delayed closing of COP Keating is important as it contributed to a mindset of imminent closure that served to impede improvements in force protection on the COP," the report continues. "There were inadequate measures taken by the chain of command, resulting in an attractive target for enemy fighters."

A U.S. Army spokesman in Afghanistan said he couldn't discuss why Barg-e Matal's impact on the ambush in Ganjgal wasn't included in that investigation.

The report found that the commander of Forward Operating Base Joyce, which had operational control of the ambushed force of Afghan troops and border police and their American Marine and Army trainers, was away on leave, and his deputy was assigned to Barg-e Matal.

"The absence of senior leaders in the operations center with troops in contact . . . and their consequent lack of situational awareness and decisive action was a key failure," the report says.

An unidentified officer said in a sworn statement on the incident that "during this same period, we were managing leave, and providing battalion command and control to the fight in Barg-e Matal. The fight in Barg-e Matal had an even greater need for a competent battle captain because they were constantly in contact (with the enemy), and the (sic) lethal fight far more complex at that time than anywhere else in our battlespace."

The roughly 200 10th Mountain Division troops in Barg-e Matal were nearly a third of FOB Joyce's combat power, creating a major strain on the contingent, which was spread across parts of Kunar and Nuristan provinces.

The area was so "expansive" that a quick reaction force that would have been dispatched to relieve the ambushed force in the Ganjgal Valley had been disbanded, the unidentified officer said in his sworn statement.

Smith, McChrystal's spokesman, acknowledged that the top U.S. commander had ordered the makeshift base in Barg-e Matal held from July until mid-September to prevent insurgents from seizing the area while a local militia was being recruited and trained. Four American soldiers died during that operation.

"We responded to a request by the government of Afghanistan to support nascent security forces that had come under direct and sustained insurgent pressure and were jeopardizing governance and the people in the area," he said.

The area was a "historical rat line" — or infiltration route — for the Hezb-i-Islami insurgent group and al Qaida, Smith added.

There also was a "political component to the decision," Smith said, indicating that in one pillar of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, McChrystal wanted to extend Afghan government authority to the district.

"The decision on the scale and tempo of support to Barg-e Matal was balanced against other competing operations," said Smith, who added that the local militia in Barg-e Matal is "doing a pretty effective job, so the investment has paid dividends."

Knowledgeable American officers and officials countered that the impoverished mountain backwater of 2,500 in Nuristan province has no strategic value, lacks any roads, is far from key population centers, traditionally has disdained the authority of the central government in Kabul and is historically hostile to outsiders, including other Afghans.

"It's lunacy to deploy forces to a location simply because the unseasoned, politically driven host government so requests," said a U.S. diplomat who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. "Bear in mind that this operation in what is undoubtedly one of the most remote and difficult locations in all of Afghanistan occurred at the time of discussion about revising our strategy to concentrate our forces in areas of dense population and strategic importance."

Barg-e Matal is deep in rugged mountains where insurgent snipers were so well dug in that American troops resorted to calling in jet fighters and attack helicopters to silence them, U.S. soldiers based there told a McClatchy reporter in September after he was denied permission to visit Barg-e Matal.

The troops, who originally were told that they'd be in Barg-e Matal for four days, said they were under constant attack.

The outpost of sandbags and concertina wire consisted of a girl's school and wooden homes on one side of a river that bisects the village, and the local administration compound where Afghan troops and Latvian trainers were based on the other.

It could be supplied only by dangerous nighttime helicopter missions, and the nearly constant fire made the reconstruction projects on which American counterinsurgency strategy hinges all but impossible. Local officials distributed some U.S. aid to the few locals who remained there, but they hoarded most of it, the American troops said.

Two Afghan soldiers shot and wounded themselves in September so they could be evacuated, U.S. troops said.

[bigron]

Holbrooke seeks Central Asia help for Afghanistan

Top US envoy Holbrooke tours Central Asia seeking help to stabilize Afghanistan

PETER LEONARD
AP News
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/02/21/holbrooke-seeks-central-asia-help-for-afghanistan-2/

Feb 21, 2010 07:40 EST

U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke visited Kazakhstan on Sunday to drum up regional assistance in stabilizing Afghanistan, the last stop on his tour of former Soviet states in Central Asia.

The recent surge in the U.S. military contingent in Afghanistan has been accompanied by a U.S. effort to enlist help from neighboring nations in rebuilding the war-ravaged country and to provide reassurances that the war won't spill over the border.

"We are talking to all the countries that have a concern in the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that is why we are here today," Holbrooke said in Kazakh capital of Astana.

Holbrooke's trip also included Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, where he met with heads of state and held talks on cooperation in Afghanistan.

In Tajikistan, an impoverished country that shares a long and porous border with Afghanistan, Holbrooke warned of the continuing danger posed to the region by al-Qaida.

The roles of Central Asia and Russia in assisting NATO operations in Afghanistan has grown over the past year with the opening of an overland route to Afghanistan from Europe via Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The route offers an alternative to the alliance's main logistics chain through Pakistan, which has come under repeated attack by militants.

During his tour, Holbrooke also discussed electricity and transportation networks linking Central Asian to Afghanistan.

Uzbekistan supplies electricity to around four million people in Afghanistan and is working on completing a rail route between the two countries. Tajikistan also hopes to complete a 1,000 megawatt project that would allow it to export power to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Uzbekistan has also renewed its commitment to act as a bridgehead for nonmilitary supplies to its neighbor to the south.

"Large amounts of humanitarian goods deliveries to Afghanistan will be made through the territory of our republic," the government Web site said as it reported on Friday's meeting between Holbrooke and Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

Uzbekistan's relations with the West deteriorated significantly after the government's violent suppression of a popular uprising in the city of Andijan in 2005. Uzbekistan expelled U.S. troops from a base on its territory in a dispute over the uprising.

Its government has since sought to capitalize on its role in assisting security operations in Afghanistan to curry favor with the West, but Holbrooke ruled out of the possibility of the United States reinstating its military base.

"Uzbekistan does provide us valuable opportunities to transit material to Afghanistan and that's important, but a military base, no," he said Sunday.

The United States has a sizable base in Kyrgyzstan, which it uses for transportation, refueling and supply for U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan.

Source: AP News

[bigron]

Monday, February 22, 2010
18:08 Mecca time, 15:08 GMT
   http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/2010222131948670751.html

News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Deadly blast hits Afghanistan 
 

A Taliban fighter tells Al Jazeera why he fights Nato forces and those who align themselves with them
WATCH :

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GThIFQPgwLI&feature=player_embedded

 
At least 15 people have died after a suicide bomber blew himself up among a tribal leaders and government officials meeting recently returned Afghan refugees in eastern Nangarhar province.

Among the dead in Monday's attack was Haji Zaman Ghamsharik, a local tribal leader and former mujahidin commander, as well as the head of the province's refugee ministry.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Lashkar gah in Helmand province, said that it appeared that Haji Zaman was the target of the attack.

"It's certain, I think, that the Taliban wanted him dead," he said.

The bomber, wearing an explosives vest, apparently walked up to the gathering in Khogyani district before detonating his device, police said.

Tora Bora role

Haji Zaman was a local commander in the Tora Bora mountains when US forces launched an operation to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, as he attempted to flee after the fall of the Talliban in 2001.

"Around that time Haji Zaman was at first the core commander and then the police chief in that area, he was alongside the Americans when they staged that failed operation," Bays said.

"After that, there were suspicions that he may have helped al-Qaeda escape Tora Bora and he was sent by Hamid Karzai's government into exile. He spent a lot of time in exile in Pakistan.

"It was only last year at the presidential elections, as Hamid Karzai was trying to get support from all kinds of different groups in Afghanistan, that Haji Zaman was invited back."

A number of civilians were also reported to be among the dead in the suicide blast.

Nato air raid

Monday's suicide attack came just hours after it emerged that a Nato air raid had killed at least 33 civilians in Uruzgan province on Sunday.

Nato on Sunday confirmed that it fired on a group of vehicles that it believed contained fighters, only to discover later that women and children were in the cars.

Isaf, Nato's force in Afghanistan, did not provide a figure of how many died.

The deaths in Uruzgan came on the heels of an emotional appeal by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, for international troops to try harder to prevent civilian deaths.

He told parliament on Saturday that although progress was being made in limiting civilian casualties, people were still dying.

He held up a picture of an eight-year-old girl who lost 12 relatives in a Nato rocket attack during the second day of the assault on Marjah - Operation Moshtarak - which began on February 13.

The latest deaths came as a joint Afghan, Nato and US force battled Taliban fighters in Marjah, in southern Helmand province, in an attempt to take the town and surrounding areas from their control.
 
 

[bigron]

Monday, February 22, 2010
06:49 Mecca time, 03:49 GMT   
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201022214235669261.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
US general: Marjah just the start 
 

There are growing fears for Marjah's civilian population [AFP]

 
The general overseeing the US military campaign in Afghanistan has warned that the offensive against the Taliban in southern Helmand province's Marjah town is just the start of an operation that could last 18 months.

General David Petraeus, the commander of US Central Command, said on Sunday that the months ahead will be "tough".

"I have repeatedly said that these types of efforts are hard and they're hard all the time. I don't use words like optimist or pessimist, I use realist but the reality is that it's hard and we're there for a very, very important reason and we can't forget that.

"We're in Afghanistan to ensure that it cannot once again be a sanctuary for the kind of attacks that were carried out on 9/11," he told US network NBC's Meet the Press programme.

He said Taliban resistance had been "a bit disjointed" but "formidable".

"The way the operation was conducted leaped over some of them. But there is tough fighting going on without question," he said.


Petraeus said the campaign, which started on February 13, would not stop with Marjah and nearby Nad Ali.

"This is just the initial operation of what will be a 12 to 18-month campaign as General [Stanley] McChrystal [the head of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan] and his team mapped it out," he said.

Barack Obama, the US president, ordered 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan last year in a plan he said that would enable American soldiers to begin pulling out as early as July 2011.

The stated aim of the Nato-Afghan offensive in Marjah is to bring government control over the region with security, clinics and schools planned for after the Taliban has been subdued.

But more than a week into the campaign, fears of a humanitarian disaster are mounting.

Humanitarian fears

Aid groups say they are worried many Marjah residents remain trapped, and that for those displaced, they will not have enough supplies to help them.

"People who are ill cannot get to hospitals and others cannot bring them medicines," Ajmal Samadi, the head of the Afghan Rights Monitor group, said.

"They cannot get food or even go outside to look after their farms."


In depth:
  Videos
  Civilians flee Marjah fighting
  Afghanistan's influential elders
  Taliban second in command captured
  Forces 'positive' on Afghan assault
  Holbrooke on 'Operation Moshtarak'
   
  Blogs
  Human shields in Afghanistan
  Police 'key to stability'
   
  Timeline
  Afghanistan in Crisis
  Operation Moshtarak at a glance
   
  Focus
  To win over Afghans, US must listen
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201022214235669261.html
 
The Marjah operation is a major test of a new US and Nato strategy that stresses protecting civilians over routing Taliban fighters as quickly as possible.

Eric Tremblay, a spokesman for Nato-led troops in Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that coalition forces had made civilians' safety their priority.

"General Stanley McChrystal has made it quite clear to our coalition partners and the Afghan national security forces that ... the strategy is to protect the population; it is about separating the insurgency from the population," he told Al Jazeera from Kabul on Sunday.

Despite Nato assurances, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, again called on international troops to prevent civilian deaths.

Addressing parliament's opening session in Kabul on Saturday, he said: "We need to reach the point where there are no civilian casualties. Our effort and our criticism will continue until we reach that goal."

Haji Zahir the newly appointed district governor of Marjah, said he would visit the town on Monday to discuss security and reconstruction with community leaders.

But questions remain about what happens after the military operation and whether Afghan forces can handle the rebuilding and security operations with Nato forces.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said the "real test" would be for the Afghan national police.

"They're the ones who will keep security in the region after the armies have moved out of the way. Armies fight people. Police protect people over the long-term and that I think is the real challenge in Afghanistan," he said.
 
 

[bigron]

McChrystal's nightmare

By James Bays in  Asia on February 22nd, 2010
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/2010/02/22/mcchrystals-nightmare

Photo from AFP

The overall number of Afghan civilian deaths as a result of NATO 'mistakes' has reduced,  but it will be very difficult to alter perceptions among the Afghan public.

Once again, a Nato attack has left many civilians dead.

The Afghan cabinet, after a meeting in the Presidential palace in Kabul, issued a statement saying that 27 civilians, included women and children had been killed.

The statement called the deaths "unjustifiable."

The military believed the three vehicle convoy in the remote mountains of Uruzgan province was carrying Taliban reinforcements. The order was given to strike them. The timing could not have been worse for NATO and US Commander General Stanley McChrystal.

Operation Moshtarak, the largest military offensive in Afghanistan since 2001 was supposed to be NATO's chance to retake the initiative in this troubled country, where the Taliban have been gaining ground in recent years. It is not just about gaining territory on the battlefield. Commanders know the more important goal is winning over ordinary Afghans.

The offensive stage of operations around the town of Marjah has dragged on longer than military planners had hoped. After the death of 12 civilians in the initial stages of the operation, commanders say they are being extremely cautious in an effort to avoid further deaths and injuries.

The military response to what happened in Uruzgan has been swift: The immediate announcement of an official military inquiry, and a visit by General McChrystal to President Hamid Karzai to apologise.

This PR response was so different from days when Generals Dan McNeill or David McKiernan were commanding NATO forces. I remember incidents in 2007 and 2008 when, for days, the military defiantly claimed the dead from similar incidents were Taliban fighters, despite the existence of television pictures showing the bodies of dead civilians.

This time, the chief spokesman for the NATO force actually telephoned me with news of the incident, ahead of the formal statement.

In the past, we would have waited hours for any comment. The PR operation is now much faster, and much slicker. However, in my view, that will not be enough to change things.

Under McChrystal's leadership, the overall number of civilian deaths as a result of NATO mistakes has reduced. However, it will be very difficult to alter perceptions among the Afghan public.

The effect of civilian casualties is cumulative. Today's awful tragedy just reinforces memories of so many other incidents in the last eight and a half years.

General McChrystal planned Operation Mostarak as a new start for his force. This is a very serious set-back.

[bigron]

Taliban mounting tough fight

AP

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63537&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 22, 2010

MARJAH, Afghanistan (AP) — Outnumbered and outgunned, Taliban fighters are mounting a tougher fight than expected in Marjah, Afghan officials said Sunday, as U.S.-led forces converged on a pocket of militants in a western section of the town.

Despite ongoing fighting, the newly appointed civilian chief for Marjah said he plans to fly into the town today for the first time since the attack to begin restoring Afghan government control and winning over the population after years of Taliban rule.

With fighter jets, drones and attack helicopters roaring overhead, Marine and Afghan companies advanced Sunday on a two-square-mile area where more than 40 insurgents were believed holed up.

"They are squeezed," said Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, commander of 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. "It looks like they want to stay and fight but they can always drop their weapons and slip away. That's the nature of this war."

U.S. officials signaled their intention to attack Marjah, a major Taliban supply and opium-smuggling center, months ago, apparently in hopes the insurgents would flee and allow the U.S.-led force to take over quickly and restore an Afghan government presence.

Instead, the insurgents rigged Marjah with bombs and booby traps to slow the allied attack, which began Feb. 13. Teams of Taliban gunmen stayed in the town, delivering sometimes intense volleys of gunfire on Marine and Afghan units slogging through the rutted streets and poppy fields.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the U.S. and its allies had expected the Taliban to leave behind thousands of hidden explosives, which they did. But they were surprised to find that so many militants stayed to fight.

In a statement Sunday, NATO acknowledged that insurgents were putting up a "determined resistance" in various parts of Marjah, although the overall offensive is "on track."

Marine spokesman Lt. Josh Diddams said Sunday that Marines and Afghan troops were continuing to run into "pockets of stiff resistance" though they were making progress. Diddams said no area is completely calm yet although three markets in town — which covers about 80 square miles — are at least partially open.

Before the assault, U.S. officers said they believed 400 to 1,000 insurgents were in Marjah, 360 miles southwest of Kabul. About 7,500 U.S. and Afghan troops attacked the town, while thousands more NATO soldiers moved into other Taliban strongholds in surrounding Helmand province.

It was the largest joint NATO-Afghan operation since the Taliban regime was ousted from power in 2001.








 

[bigron]

Afghanistan slams US-led forces over civilian deaths
 
 
22/02/2010 05:38:00 PM GMT   
 
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Afghanistan-slams-US-led-forces-over-civilian-deat.html

 
The Afghan cabinet condemned the killing of 27 civilians by US-led NATO forces in the south of Afghanistan, describing it as an "unjustifiable" act.

A NATO airstrike fired on civilians in the south near the border of Uruzgan and Dai Kondi provinces on Sunday. Initially the Afghan cabinet reported 33 deaths, but later clarified that 27, including four women and one child, were killed and 12 others were injured.

US General Stanley McChrystal, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement, "We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives."

"I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission," the statement added.

The incident was not part of Operation Moshtarak (together), a major NATO-led campaign to clear Taliban militants out of Helmand province in the south.

The Afghan government and the US-led forces say they have launched an investigation into the issue.

Sunday's toll remains the highest number of civilian deaths in months.
Source: Press TV
 

[bigron]

Published on Monday, February 22, 2010 by TimesOnline/UK

Civilian Deaths Continue Unabated in Afghanistan

NATO Airstrike Kills 27 Civilians in Afghanistan

by Jerome Starkey in Kabul and Philippe Naughton

NATO forces in southern Afghanistan bombed a civilian convoy, killing 27 people including women and children and injuring many more, Afghan officials said.

Afghans walks behind US Marines during an operation in Marjah, Helmand province  Photo: REUTERS
 
The airstrike in a remote part of Oruzgan province yesterday capped a bloody week for Afghan civilians that has seen some 60 innocent people killed by NATO weapons.

Afghanistan's cabinet called the attack "unjustifiable" and condemned the raid "in the strongest terms possible".

Officials said three vehicles were bombed, killing at least 27 people, including four women and one child, while at least 12 others were injured. The death toll had earlier been put at 33.

The cars were traveling between Kandahar and Daikundi, in Afghanistan's central highlands, when NATO and Afghan forces mistook them for insurgents.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said troops on the ground thought the civilians were militants "en route to attack a joint Afghan-Isaf unit" but they later confirmed that there were women and children at the scene and launched an investigation.

The local governor and the interior minister said all of the victims were civilians.

US General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said he was "extremely saddened".

"I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission," he said in a statement yesterday. "We will re-double our efforts to regain that trust."

NATO has been criticized in the past for relying on shoddy intelligence and calling in airstrikes when there is no immediate need.

General McChrystal has urged troops to refrain from using heavy weapons, by showing what he calls "courageous restraint". On Saturday President Karzai repeated calls for the coalition to eliminate civilian casualties.

"We need to reach the point where there are no civilian casualties," Mr Karzai said. "Our effort and our criticism will continue until we reach that goal."

But the last seven days have been anything but peaceful. Last Sunday at least nine civilians were killed when troops involved in Helmand hit a compound with a volley of rockets, during Operation Moshtarak.

On Monday NATO and Afghan forces mistakenly killed five men and injured two others in Kandahar province after deciding that they had been planting a roadside bomb. "The joint patrol called for an airstrike," Isaf said in a statement. "Following the strike, the Afghan-ISAF patrol approached the scene and determined the individuals had not been emplacing an IED."

On Thursday, an airstrike in northern Kunduz province missed insurgents and killed seven policemen while on Friday a man carrying a box was shot and killed in Nad-e Ali. "The man dropped the box, turned and ran away from the patrol, and then for an unknown reason turned and ran toward the patrol at which time they shot and killed him," NATO said in a statement. "After a search of the individual it was determined the box, which appeared to be filled with IED-making materials, was not an IED."

In December NATO was accused of killing 10 civilians, including eight schoolchildren, in Narang district in Kunar. NATO claimed they were part of a bomb-making cell.

Yesterday's civilian deaths come as a further blow to the Western effort in Afghanistan after the Dutch Prime Minister conceded that he could not prevent his forces being pulled out this year due to the collapse of his Government.

Jan Peter Balkenende lost the argument over extending the deployment at a 16-hour Cabinet session, in the first big reversal for the recently appointed NATO leader, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who had publicly requested a continued Dutch commitment.

"Our task as the lead nation [in Uruzgan province] ends in August," Mr Balkenende said. After a three-month draw-down, the Dutch will be completely out of Afghanistan by the end of the year.

There are concerns that other countries where public opinion is turning against the Afghan campaign could follow, notably Canada, which has had the biggest proportional casualty rate and is committed to withdrawing its 2,800 troops by the end of next year.

Another concern is the continued presence of 1,000 Australian troops. The Canberra Government has repeatedly refused to take over the lead role in Uruzgan if Holland leaves, demanding that a big NATO power provide the main share of troop numbers.

Just as important is the impression that European countries are struggling to find their share of the 10,000 extra troops requested by General McChrystal to join 30,000 extra US troops in Afghanistan, with France ruling out more forces and a fierce debate in Germany.

The Times understands that the Dutch forces in Uruzgan will be replaced by US troops, diverting them from the surge operation against the Taliban.

© 2010 Times Newspapers Ltd.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/22

[bigron]

Tuesday, February 23, 2010
13:18 Mecca time, 10:18 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/20102237950809185.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Deadly bombings rock Afghan towns 
 

Nato and Afghan forces have been carrying out an joint anti-Taliban offensive in Helmand [AFP]

 
At least eight people have died after a bomb exploded in the provincial capital of Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, amid a Nato and Afghan military offensive there.

Local authorities said all those killed in the attack on Tuesday in Lashkar Gah were civilians.

At least one woman was among the dead, Asadullah Sherzad, the Lashkar Gah police chief, told Al Jazeera.

Thirteen people were also wounded in the explosion, he said.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Lashkar Gah, said the bomb was apparently planted on a bicycle, although it was not clear if it was a suicide attack.

"The bomb went off, we believe, outside the headquarters of the traffic police ... and close to the main bus stop that people queue at in order to take the bus from Helmand to Kandahar," he said.

'Taliban revenge'

Gulab Mangal, the governor of Helmand, has already blamed the Taliban for the attack.


In depth :
  Operation Moshtarak at a glance
  Gallery: Operation Moshtarak
  Video: Civilians flee Marjah fighting
  Video: Healing the wounded in Helmand
  Video: Pakistan's motives questioned
  Focus: To win over Afghans, US must listen
  Timeline: Afghanistan in crisis
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/20102237950809185.html
 
"The Taliban have almost been defeated in Marjah, now they are taking their revenge big time on the people of Lashkar Gah," he told Al Jazeera, referring to the area where Nato and Afghan forces are carrying out a joint offensive against the Taliban.

Another blast in the northern city of Jalalabad, meanwhile, killed one person and injured five more on Tuesday.

In other developments, the US media reported on Tuesday that yet another senior Afghan Taliban commander had been captured in Pakistan.

Mullah Abdul Kabir, a member of the group's so-called Quetta Shura, was picked up several days ago in Nowshera district in Pakistan's northwest, according to reports in the New York Times and Washington Post that cited unnamed Pakistani security officials.

Pakistani officials declined to confirm the reports.

Last week, Pakistani and American officials said that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, better known as Mullah Brader, the No 2 Afghan Taliban leader, had been caught 10 days earlier in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

Two other Taliban leaders - Mullah Abdul Salam and Mullah Mohammad, respectively the "shadow governors" of Kunduz and Baghlan provinces - were arrested separately in Pakistan about 10 to 12 days ago, according to Mohammad Omar, the Kunduz governor.
 
 

[bigron]

Tuesday, February 23, 2010
08:25 Mecca time, 05:25 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/2010222131354638461.html
 
CENTRAL/S.ASIA 
 
Nato 'losing Afghan support'  

WATCH VIDEO :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GThIFQPgwLI&feature=player_embedded

Hamidullah says he is a member of the Taliban fighting against Operation Moshtarak - a joint Afghan-Nato offensive centred around Marjah, in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province.

He told Al Jazeera that the foreign troops' offensive is not succeeding, as they often kill civilians instead of Taliban fighters.

As a result, he says the Afghan people now support the Taliban more than before.

His statements come after a Nato air strike on what was assumed to be a bus carrying Taliban fighters on Sunday, killed 33 Afghan civilians.

Al Jazeera spoke to Hamidullah in an exclusive interview in Lashkar Gar, Helmand's capital city.
 
 

[bigron]

South Asia
Feb 24, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LB24Df01.html 
 
Strike reverberates beyond Afghanistan

By Charles Fromm

WASHINGTON - Amid growing European discontent over the war in Afghanistan, the head of United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces apologized on Monday for an air strike that killed at least 27 civilians in the central part of the country on Sunday.

"We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives," General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said in a statement. "I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission."

McChrystal continued: "We will re-double our efforts to regain that trust."

Sunday's attack consisted of a US helicopter firing on several vehicles as they traveled towards Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan.

The political implications of the attack, which, according to some reports was carried out by helicopter-borne US Special Operations Forces (SOF), could be serious, not just in Afghanistan itself but also in Europe and Canada, were electorates have become increasingly opposed to their militaries' involvement in the war.

This is especially true in the Netherlands, whose government collapsed on Saturday amid negotiations on whether to keep troops in Afghanistan. The air strike took place in a district controlled by the Dutch army, whose role, if any, in the attack has yet to be clarified.

The attack was carried out on the apparently mistaken belief that a convoy of vehicles was transporting Taliban fighters toward eastern Helmand province, where US and allied forces have launched a major offensive. That it took place in an area where Dutch forces are concentrated is likely to strengthen those factions in the Netherlands opposing any extension in The Hague's participation in the war beyond August.

The Dutch troops have been central in the war effort, despite their low numbers. The New York Times reported last week that the Netherlands - whose troop contribution to the Afghanistan mission is one of the highest per capita - has been subject to a higher casualty rate than other coalition forces, including the US, because of its troop postings in the dangerous southern province of Oruzgan.

This is the most lethal incident in which civilians were killed by US-led forces since last September, when a German-ordered air strike on fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban killed 140 people, the majority of whom were civilians. The strike at the weekend came despite the implementation of stricter rules of engagement regarding strikes ordered by McChrystal last summer when he took command of NATO/ISAF. ISAF officials insisted on Monday that the attack is being investigated to determine whether it violated those rules of engagement.

In a statement released on Monday, ISAF officials said, "Yesterday, a group of suspected insurgents, believed to be en route to attack a joint Afghan-ISAF unit, was engaged by an airborne weapons team resulting in a number of individuals killed and wounded. After the joint ground force arrived at the scene and found women and children, they transported the wounded to medical treatment facilities."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has frequently condemned the killings of civilians by US and NATO forces but has found himself largely powerless in terms of effecting change.

"The repeated killing of civilians by NATO forces is unjustifiable, we strongly condemn it," Karzai's cabinet said in a statement issued in Kabul. It said 27 civilians, "including four women and one child", were killed in the attack.

In another effort to improve the perception of ISAF forces, McChrystal revised the rules of engagement last summer to counter the rising numbers of civilian deaths attributed to coalition troops, and the increasing resentment toward his occupying army and the corrupt Afghan government that accompanies it. The shift in policy restricted the use of air strikes to situations where coalition forces were in imminent danger.

Though McChrystal's policy is thought to be responsible for a downturn in the number of civilian casualties, it is not clear that this has translated into meaningful improvements for everyday Afghans. According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the number of civilian casualties caused by coalition forces dropped by a third last year. However, the number of people killed by the Taliban and other militants rose by about 40%. The result is that the number of civilian deaths has increased 15% since last year, according to UNAMA.

In another effort to mitigate popular backlash surrounding these deadly attacks, a compensation system for death, injury or damage resulting from coalition operations was devised. According to the Associated Press, the death of a child or adult is worth US$1,500 to $2,500, loss of limb and other injuries $600 to $1,500, a damaged or destroyed vehicle $500 to $2,500, and damage to a farmer's fields $50 to $250.

The protection of the population is central to the coalition forces' mission in Afghanistan, according to McChrystal's statement.

As long as violence persists, it becomes almost irrelevant who is causing it, says David Wood, a veteran US war correspondent. "The perception among most Afghans is that the United States is responsible when Afghans are killed," he wrote last week in Politics Daily.

"It may seem counterproductive for the Taliban to deliberately kill civilians, as their strategic goal is to win the support of the population against the government in Kabul and its foreign backers. But counter-insurgency experts say intimidation tactics are extremely effective - at least for a while."

UNAMA reported that 2009 was the deadliest year for civilians in Afghanistan since the toppling of the Taliban regime by US forces in 2001.

This latest incident comes during the largest offensive yet for US-led coalition and Afghan forces, which have been fighting to secure the former Taliban stronghold of Marjah in southern Helmand province.

(Inter Press Service) 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 

[bigron]

Many Thousand Gone

by Chris Floyd

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63549&hd=&size=1&l=e
 

PAN, Feb. 17, 2010: The bodies of a dozen people killed in a NATO air strike in Marja district two days ago were handed over to their families for burial in southern Helmand province, residents said on Wednesday


February 22, 2010

The humanitarian march of civilization goes on, and on, and on, and on .....
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/world/asia/23afghan.html


A NATO helicopter airstrike on Sunday against what international troops believed to be a group of insurgents ended up killing as many as 27 civilians in the worst such case since at least September, Afghan officials said Monday. ...

The attack was carried out by United States Special Forces helicopters that were patrolling the area hunting for insurgents who had escaped the NATO offensive in the Marja area, about 150 miles away, according to Gen. Abdul Hameed, an Afghan National Army commander in Dehrawood, which is part of Oruzgan Province. General Hameed, interviewed by telephone, said there had been no request from any ground forces to carry out an attack. ....

Zemarai Bashary, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the victims were all civilians who were attacked by air while traveling in two Land Cruisers and a pickup truck, which carried 42 people in all ...


How dare these people go about in motor vehicles in their own land! Don't they know there's a war on?

Fortunately, the ever-apologetic commander of the Humanitarian Expeditionary League of Love (HELL), General Stanley "Black Ops" McChrystal, was quickly wheeled out once again to apologize profusely for "the tragic loss of innocent lives." Well, as long as you're sorry, that's OK.

But really, Barack Obama's vaunted "Nobel Peace Surge" in Afghanistan is churning out collateral damage at such a clip that Stan should probably just go ahead and schedule a regular "Oops" conference on, say, every Friday, so he can dole out a one-stop dollop of crocodile tears for all the week's atrocities. He's a busy man, after all; it takes a lot of time and energy to lead the forces of HELL.


 

[bigron]

February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/world/asia/23afghan.html

NATO Airstrike Kills Afghan Civilians

By ROD NORDLAND


Marines went on patrol Monday looking for improvised explosive devices on a road linking their outpost to a cellphone tower on a hill in Marja, Afghanistan.

KABUL, Afghanistan — An airstrike launched Sunday by United States Special Forces helicopters against what international troops believed to be a group of insurgents ended up killing as many as 27 civilians in the worst such case since at least September, Afghan officials said Monday.

“The repeated killing of civilians by NATO forces is unjustifiable,” President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet said in a statement. “We strongly condemn it.”

The Special Forces helicopters were hunting for insurgents who had escaped the NATO offensive in the Marja area, about 150 miles away, according to Gen. Abdul Hameed, an Afghan National Army commander in Dehrawood, which is part of Oruzgan Province. General Hameed, interviewed by telephone, said there had been no request from any ground forces to carry out an attack.

The airstrike took place in an area under Dutch military control, and there were concerns over the possibility of political repercussions in the Netherlands, where the Afghan war is unpopular. On Saturday the government collapsed over an effort to extend the deployment of 2,000 Dutch troops in Afghanistan.

But a Dutch Defense Ministry spokesman in The Hague said Dutch forces were not involved in calling for the airstrike. The spokesman, who spoke in return for customary anonymity, did not say who had called for air support.

NATO officials did not immediately identify the forces involved in the strike.

“Yesterday a group of suspected insurgents, believed to be en route to attack a joint Afghan-ISAF unit, was engaged by an airborne weapons team resulting in a number of individuals killed and wounded,” the American-led International Security Assistance Force, also known as ISAF, said in a statement released Monday. “After the joint ground force arrived at the scene and found women and children, they transported the wounded to medical treatment facilities.”

Zemarai Bashary, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, said the victims were all civilians. He said two Land Cruisers and a pickup truck carrying a total of 42 people were attacked by air near Khotal Chowzar, a mountain pass that connects Daykondi Province with Oruzgan Province in central Afghanistan.

Mr. Bashary said there were no Afghan forces known to be operating in the area where the airstrike took place, but an investigation was under way to determine who was involved. The cabinet statement, posted on the president’s Web site in English and Dari, said there were 27 dead, including 4 women and a child, and 12 people wounded. Mr. Bashary said only 21 dead had been confirmed so far, with 14 wounded and 2 missing, but he said those were preliminary figures.

The commander of ISAF, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, apologized to Mr. Karzai on Sunday night and ordered an investigation into what had happened, the international force said, and on Monday, the force distributed a video statement by the general translated into Dari and Pashto.

Mr. Karzai’s office said in a statement that the president “reminded the NATO commander that the issue of civilian casualties was a major hurdle against an effective war on terror and it must stop.”

“We are extremely saddened by this tragic loss of innocent lives,” General McChrystal said in the video. “I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people. I pledge to strengthen our efforts to regain your trust to build a brighter future for all Afghans.”

Last June, General McChrystal announced a shift in policy greatly restricting the use of airstrikes to reduce civilian casualties. The change meant airstrikes would normally be used only to save the lives of coalition forces when under attack, and would be carefully reviewed in advance.

“If the reports are true, this is the worst case since McChrystal has announced his new strategy of reducing the use of air power,” Nadir Nadery, commissioner of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said Monday. “In Kunduz, the target was legitimate militarily but the bombing was disproportionate, 70-plus civilians died, but at least it was a justified military target.”

A strike requested by German forces in Kunduz on Sept. 4 struck two fuel tanker trucks that had been seized by the Taliban, and it killed more than 90 people. It later emerged that most of the victims were civilians forced by the Taliban to participate in unloading the tankers.

The chief of staff of the German armed forces resigned over accusations that the German military withheld information about the civilian deaths, and the case provoked an inquiry in Germany’s Parliament.

The latest episode was far from the scene of the allied offensive in Marja, in southern Helmand Province, that began Feb. 13. The international force has apologized for the deaths of at least 16 civilians during the Marja campaign, including 12 killed by a ground-to-ground rocket strike.

A news release by the coalition forces on Monday said there continued to be “limited small-arms engagements throughout” the district of Nad Ali, which includes Marja, and in the city itself. “Determined resistance from small pockets of insurgents continues,” it said.

At the Pentagon, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a sobering assessment of progress in the offensive.

“We’re making steady, if perhaps a bit slower than anticipated, progress,” Admiral Mullen said at a news conference. “We will see success in Marja, but we must be patient, and we must resist the temptation to derive from any one event, good or bad, an unnecessary trend.”

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, at the same news conference, cautioned that it was too early to let the current status of the Marja mission influence long-term planning for operations in Afghanistan.

Separately, the international force also reported that in Kapisa Province, north of Kabul, a firefight Monday between joint international and Afghan forces and insurgents in the Tagab district resulted in insurgents firing a rocket into a civilian car, killing one passenger and wounding five others. The international force’s account of the episode, however, said that no civilians were killed but that four insurgents were.

Reporting was contributed by Sangar Rahimi, Taimoor Shah and Abdul Waheed Wafa from Kabul, an employee of The New York Times from Jalalabad; Marlise Simons from The Hague, and Thom Shanker from Washington.

[bigron]

Afghan resistance statement

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan press release concerning farcical claim about Maulavi Kabir


Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63551&hd=&size=1&l=e


Monday, February 22, 2010. A news report about detention of Maulavi Kabir is totally baseless and fatuous. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan diametrically refutes reports published in media regarding Maulavi Kabir, the eminent leader of The Islamic Emirate.

We say in clear words that these reports are farcical and groundless. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan believes that there are ploys and wiles on the enemy behind such fatuous rumor and publication of these reports in order to cash in on them in political and military fields. By doing so, they are trying to distract the attention of the people of the world from their shameful defeat at Marjah.

We once again rebut this report and call on mass media outlets not to discredit their good name by publishing such groundless reports. Leadership Council of The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan





 

[bigron]

US Death Toll Reaches 1,000 in Afghanistan

by David Knowles

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63553&hd=&size=1&l=e

(Feb. 22, 2010) -- The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan reached 1,000 Monday, nearly nine and a half years after an invasion was launched to overthrow the Taliban government and disrupt al-Qaida training operations.

According to figures compiled by iCasualties.org, a nonprofit group that tracks war casualties, the bulk of the deaths have occurred in two southern Afghan provinces, Kandahar and Helmand, where the U.S. Marines launched a major offensive last week.

Overall, with 319 soldiers killed, 2009 proved the most deadly year for U.S. forces, as President Obama shifted thousands of troops into the Afghan theater from Iraq. So far, 54 American soldiers have been killed in 2010.


By comparison to the U.S. toll, 264 coalition troops from the United Kingdom have died since 2001, and 140 Canadian soldiers have died in the fighting.

The 1,000th U.S. soldier to die in combat in Afghanistan was Cpl. Gregory S. Stultz of Brazil, Ind., the Department of Defense said. He was killed in Helmand province "while supporting combat operations."






 

[bigron]

Marjah Madness

by Jeff Huber, February 23, 2010

http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2010/02/22/marjah-madness/


As journalist Gareth Porter said in a recent interview with Real News, Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s offensive in Marjah, Afghanistan, is "more of an effort to shape public opinion in the United States than to shape the politics of the future of Afghanistan." Like so much of what we’ve seen in our woeful war on terrorism, the Marjah effort is short on substance and long on Newspeak, Doublethink, and other Orwellian deceptions.

The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and an unhealthy chunk of the rest of the news outlets are calling the Marjah madness a "test" of "Obama’s strategy" in Afghanistan. Amazingly, nobody is calling it a test of McChrystal’s strategy. Stan the Man is, after all, the maestro who orchestrated the big honking counterinsurgency (COIN) plan with its attendant troop escalation and who then, along with Gen. David Petraeus and the rest of the warmongery, boxed Obama into going along with the scheme through an expansive media campaign that included McChrystal’s September 2009 infomercial on 60 Minutes.

We don’t need to feel sorry for Obama, though. He asked for this during the 2008 presidential race when he decided to show the hawks his baby-makers by saying he’d pull us out of Iraq but he’d "get the job" done in Afghanistan. Pavlov’s dogs of war started frothing when he stepped on that land mine. Obama had a chance to get rid of the war dons – Petraeus, McChrystal, Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, and the Pentagon’s bureaucratic survival savant, Robert Gates – when he took office. But no, President Obama kept them around, despite the fact that they all had publicly criticized Candidate Obama’s plan to establish an Iraq withdrawal timeline. Obama exacerbated things when he named retired Army Gen. James Jones as national security adviser; Jones had stated for the record in 2007 that an Iraq withdrawal deadline would be "against our national interest."

So, yes, Marjah is a referendum on Obama’s fitness as commander in chief, and it’s becoming clear that the guy is in over his pay grade.

A key component of McChrystal’s hallucinatory COIN plan is an initiative to build up Afghanistan’s security forces to an end-strength of 400,000. He’d be better off paying them all off to go home and keep out of the way.

When 60 Minutes reported on the status of Afghan security forces training in late January, the native troops were literally shooting themselves in the foot and their instructors in the leg. According to 60 Minutes – which means according to what Af-Pak propaganda czar Rear Adm. Gregory Smith told 60 minutes – the Afghan troops were commandos, Afghanistan’s best soldiers, and they were being trained by Green Berets, America’s "best soldiers."

The "specialized" Afghan troops had received three months of "advanced training" before coming under the tutelage of the Green Berets. When they displayed their tendency to shoot everybody but the bad guys, the Green Berets drilled them in the fundamentals of how to load their weapons and hold them safely. When the Afghan commandos couldn’t even perform those tasks correctly, the Green Berets started treating them like raw recruits and tried to instruct them by yelling at them.

Yet somehow Smith and his spin merchants and their dupes in the mainstream media expected us to believe that by late February, Afghan forces were ready to take charge of their country’s destiny. "In Marjah offensive, Afghan forces take the lead," claimed a Feb. 15 headline in the Christian Science Monitor. But by Feb. 20 even the New York Times, the journalistic home of McChrystal idolater Dexter Filkins, had to confess that "Marines Do Heavy Lifting as Afghan Army Lags in Battle."

Bravo to journalist C.J. Chivers, a former Marine, for reporting that the assertion by American and Afghan officials that portrays "the Afghan Army as the force out front in this important offensive against the Taliban" conflicts with "what is visible in the field." By all important measures, "from transporting troops, directing them in battle and coordinating fire support to arranging modern communications, logistics, aviation, and medical support – the mission in Marjah has been a Marine operation conducted in the presence of fledgling Afghan Army units, whose officers and soldiers follow behind the Americans and do what they are told."

I hope the owners of the Times don’t fire Chivers. It would be nice to think that the rag of record has at least one reporter capable of telling the truth.


Another Times contributor, Timothy Hsia, a West Point graduate who has served in Iraq, says in a Feb. 18 piece that success in Marjah will hinge on a "civilian surge." Hsia has, lamentably, bitten off on the jagged piece of crack-pottery that says in order to succeed in Afghanistan we need lots and lots of American civilians to go over there and be policemen and fire dudes and construction workers and so on as part of a Civilian Response Corps. The idea is so ludicrous that its proponents picked Dick Cheney protégé Doug Feith, the dumbest freaking guy on the planet, to shill it in a May 2009 Wall Street Journal op-ed.

We already have a Civilian Response Corps; it’s called the Peace Corps, and it’s been around since before people joined it to get out of fighting in Vietnam. As you might have already inferred, the reason we call it a "Peace" Corps is that it only works in a peacetime scenario. Sending U.S. civilians into a hot war zone, especially one like we have in Afghanistan where there are no front lines, doesn’t accomplish a whole lot except get a whole lot of U.S. civilians killed. The only way to try to protect the civilians is to send more soldiers to the war zone or (aha!) hire mercenary outfits like Blackwater to do the job. Even then, the civilians have to stay holed up in areas where the soldiers or the hired thugs can protect them, so they can’t do what we supposedly sent them for.

But civilians provide a vital layer in the Pentagon’s lame-excuse stratagem. If our military can’t win a war, it’s because we don’t have enough military in the theater of operations. If we have enough military, we don’t have enough military from the country we’re fighting in to fight with us. If we have enough military from the country we’re fighting in but they turn out to be a pack of Gomer Pyles, then we don’t have enough civilians involved. Next, I suppose, come household pets.

Of course, civilians might be able to do one thing that our Green Berets can’t: teach Afghan soldiers how to load and carry their rifles.

[bigron]

Outgoing UN Representative Urges Talks With Mullah Omar

Eide Warns Bribery Might Actually Strengthen the Insurgency

by Jason Ditz, February 22, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/02/22/outgoing-un-representative-urges-talks-with-mullah-omar/


In what will likely be one of his last public interviews before leaving office, outgoing UN Special Representative to Afghanistan Kai Eide today urged Western officials to accept talks with Taliban leader Mullah Omar.


 
Kai Eide

Omar, the former de facto ruler of Afghanistan, has been in hiding since the 2001 American invasion. US officials have ruled out including him or other high ranking Taliban members in the Karzai government’s rapprochement strategy.

But Eide warns that the strategy, which amounts to offering cash to militants to support the Karzai government, could actually strengthen the insurgency if it is done without Mullah Omar’s involvement, as it would underscore the perception of a Karzai government that runs on bribery and corruption.

Eide announced his resignation in December, following mounting criticism of his role in Karzai’s fraudulent reelection. Swedish-Italian diplomat Staffan de Mistura will replace Eide next month.

[bigron]

FEBRUARY 22, 2010.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704057604575080640203691352.html?mod=WSJ-hpp-LEFTTopStories#

U.S. Special Operations Ordered Deadly Afghan Strike

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
 

Associated Press U.S. Marines, tasked with protecting civilians while fighting the Taliban, carry an Afghan boy with a gunshot wound to a medevac helicopter.
.
KABUL—U.S. Special Operations Forces ordered an airstrike that killed at least 27 civilians in southern Afghanistan and the soldiers may not have satisfied rules of engagement designed to avoid the killing of innocents, Afghan and coalition officials said Monday.

The airstrike Sunday hit a group of minibuses in a remote part of the south near the border between Uruzgan and Daykundi provinces. The area is hundreds of miles from Marjah, where the largest allied offensive since 2001 is now in its second week. But the airstrike nonetheless illustrated one of the major problems for coalition forces as they try to win over civilians in Marjah and across Afghanistan: figuring out who is a civilian and who is an insurgent—and not killing the civilians.

Related VideoNATO 'Progressing' in Afghanistan (02/17/10)Afghan Offensive Enters Third Day (02/15/10)The Hard Work Starts in Afghanistan (02/14/10)News Hub: U.S. Troops Touch Down in Marjah (02/12/10)Can Marjah Offensive Turn Tide of Afghan War? (02/12/10).
It also underscored the risks of the expanding use of Special Operations Forces, whose primary mission is hunting down Taliban, as the leading edge of the fight against the insurgents. Many Special Operations missions by their very nature emphasize the use of violent force, and coalition officials say they have led to a string of recent successes against valuable targets.

By contrast, operations now being carried out by conventional forces, such as the Marines fighting in Marjah, place a greater emphasis on protecting ordinary people.

Afghanistan's cabinet called the latest airstrike "unjustifiable." Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials ordered an immediate investigation into the incident, and both sides dispatched investigative teams to the site, officials said.

A large proportion of the thousands of civilians killed by coalition forces since 2001 have been slain in errant airstrikes, and the anger over such deaths runs deep here.

Afghans can often recite from memory the deadliest coalition mistakes: the bombing of fuel tankers in the northern province of Kunduz in September that killed up to 142 people, many of them civilians; the 2000-pound bomb dropped by a B-1 bomber during a battle in western Farah province in May that left dozens of civilians dead; the November 2008 airstrike on a wedding in the southern province of Kandahar that killed 37 people.

The incidents have repeatedly handed the Taliban propaganda victories. The errant strikes now pose a direct challenge to the counter-insurgency strategy laid out by U.S. Army Gen. McChrystal, the top coalition commander in Afghanistan, and endorsed by President Barack Obama.

The strategy uses conventional forces to protect civilians and emphasizes the role of governance in an effort to win the trust of the Afghan people and wean them from the Taliban. Special Operations Forces are being more quietly employed to go after the middle and upper ranks of the insurgency, in theory presenting them with a choice of giving up the fight or facing the consequences, say NATO officers with knowledge of the effort.

Journal Communitydiscuss..“ Modern war is more and more like a video game. It's so easy to push the button and kill the bad guys, or just anything that's moving. ”
.—Mike Zheng.
Aware of the fallout caused by civilian deaths, Gen. McChrystal ordered the rules under which airstrikes could be called in tightened when he arrived this past summer. Civilian casualties caused by coalition forces dropped by a third last year. In contrast, the number of people killed by the Taliban and other militants rose by about 40%.

But Gen. McChrystal and Afghan President Hamid Karzai say the number has to come down much further if the coalition and the Afghan government are to prevail over the Taliban and its allies.

The coalition and Afghan forces fighting in Marjah have also accidentally killed civilians since the offensive began after midnight on Feb. 13. So far, at least 19 civilians have been killed in the offensive, along with at least 13 coalition troops and one Afghan soldier, officials have confirmed.

Coalition commanders say they worry the civilian deaths will undermine the operation's ultimate goal – restoring the authority of the Afghan government in the southern town and convincing the people there to throw in their lot with the government and the coalition.

Sunday's airstrike appears to be precisely the kind of incident that Gen. McChrystal and his team were trying to avoid with the new rules.

 .NATO's Afghanistan task force said its forces believed the minibuses were carrying insurgents who were on their way to attack Afghan and NATO troops. It engaged the minibuses with "airborne weapons," NATO said in a statement, without elaborating.

But when troops went to the scene, they "found women and children," the statement said, not insurgents. The wounded were taken to a NATO facility for treatment.

Afghan officials said 27 civilians were killed. The NATO statement didn't provide additional details on the incident.

A NATO spokesman said he couldn't confirm that U.S. Special Operations Forces called in the strike. But other NATO and Afghan officers said the airstrike was ordered by Special Operations Forces who were carrying out a raid with Afghan soldiers and believed the minibuses carried fresh Taliban fighters sent to help those under attack.

How the soldiers came to that conclusion was unclear.

The NATO investigative team is trying to determine whether the soldiers had satisfied the requirements for calling in an airstrike.

Under the rules, which are classified, airpower is meant to be a last resort for soldiers who can't pull back from an imminent threat or sit it out. Airstrikes are also allowed on targets engaged in clearly predatory action, such a planting a hidden roadside bomb, one of the deadliest threats faced by coalition forces.

Troops calling in an airstrike on a threat that isn't immediate are, when possible, supposed to have secondary confirmation that the target is indeed hostile, such as from a spotter or a trusted informant on the ground.

A NATO officer in Afghanistan cautioned that the investigation is still in its preliminary states. But right now, "it doesn't look like the rules were properly followed," the officer said.

Special Operations Forces missions have recently led to the deaths or capture of a number of senior and mid-level Taliban field commanders. But NATO officers also say a number of recent accidental killings have been the result of Special Operations Forces actions, although they declined to specify which ones.

Afghan officials complain Special Operations Forces are killing and arresting too many civilians in so-called "night raids," a major source of tension between coalition officials and the Karzai administration.

"Nobody has an idea what were they doing there because they don't share anything with the Afghans," said an official at the presidential palace. He added that U.S. Special Operations Forces "arrest people and they raid houses without keeping the Afghans in the loop."

Regional ViolenceView Interactive
.Follow events in Afghanistan and Pakistan, day by day.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704057604575080640203691352.html?mod=WSJ-hpp-LEFTTopStories#

More interactive graphics and photos .

The presidential palace echoed those sentiments in a statement condemning Sunday's air raid. Afghanistan's "council of ministers strongly urges the NATO forces to closely coordinate and exercise maximum care before conducting any military operation so that any possible mistakes that may result in harming civilians … can be avoided," the statement said. Gen. McChrystal apologized to Mr. Karzai, according to a later statement released by the palace.

In the statement released by NATO, Gen. McChrystal was quoted as saying, "I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We will re-double our efforts to regain that trust."

Read MoreNATO Chief: Support for Mission Still Strong .
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703494404575081481431687918-search.html

Meanwhile, a suicide bombing in the eastern city of Jalalabad killed at least 15 people, including a prominent tribal elder, Mohammad Zaman Ghamsharik. Mr. Ghamsharik, also known as Haji Zaman, led the Afghan forces who cornered Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora in 2001 before bin Laden slipped away. Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province, confirmed he was among the dead. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.

—Michael M. Phillips in Marjah, Afghanistan, and Habib Zahori in Kabul contributed to this article.

[bigron]

A Report From The Afghanistan Resistance

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

Marjah Operations are an Exemplary Lesson for the Invaders

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24844.htm

Rabi' al-awwal 09, 1431 A.H, Tuesday February 23, 2010

In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate

For the last two weeks, a 15,000-strong army of NATO, British and American forces has been carrying out military operations in a small are i.e. Marjah which is located in Nad Ali district. A number of jet bombers of the enemy including unmanned drones and 60 gunship helicopters are taking part in the operations. In addition to this, the enemy have brought to the battle field their huge and most advanced tanks by the name of Abraham and Shifton, which approximately weigh 65 tons. But despite the preparations, boasts and propaganda stunts, the enemy have not been able to make any headway against a small group of Mujahideen who are not more than 1000 armed men and their weapons are no match with those of the enemy. But still the sacrificing and committed Mujahideen have bravely blocked the invaders’ way successfully.

Skilled snipers have put shock and awe into the ranks of the enemy. The Mujahideen have blown up 53 tanks; shot down two unmanned drones and one helicopter besides killing tens of soldiers. An Afghan honor-loving woman made history by shooting soldiers pointblank in the bazaar. She revived the memory of Malalai of the past and proved by her heroic act, that still there are many sisters-in-arms of Malalai in this land. If we count the crews in the tanks which have been destroyed, we can easily conclude that the enemy losses are more than one hundred soldiers.

Approximate, just two weeks ago, McChrystal, top commanders of American forces in Afghanistan, was boasting and claimed that he would soon take Marjah from Mujahideen. But today he admits that they are facing stiff resistance, which he did not imagine before. He said we thought if we make announcement about Marjah before the inception of the operations, Taliban would either fled or lay down their arms but now we are facing tough resistance contrary to our expectations.

Similarly, the enemy twice tried to airdrop soldiers behind the line of the fighting but soon Mujahideen besieged them and after Mujahideen’s inflicting on them losses, the enemy hastily left the area. Major General Nick Carter, NATO commander of forces in Helmand says we will be able in three months to say whether the operations were success or not.

These are the words uttered by the enemy and they are the ground realities, which are a good lesson for the moribund generals of Pentagon and the new rulers of the White House Administrations. There are thousands of towns in Afghanistan like Marjah in addition to about 385 districts in the country.

Seeing that they were not able to take a small area like Marjah in two weeks, so ironically, how much decades and how massive force they would need to take the whole Afghanistan. Still it is a matter of pondering that the Mujahideen learn new tactics with the passage of time and their knowledge in the field of politics, culture and military experience increase with every passing day.

It will be better for the rulers of the White House to put an end to the current unsuccessful adventure in Afghanistan. All invaders, beginning with Alexander, the Great up to the time of the former Soviet Union have tried this adventure in this Mujahid-bearing land but they all failed. By traversing the same path of failure and fiasco, Obama only prolongs days and nights of his failure and disgrace. Similarly, Obama should stop resorting to other stratagems and ploys because the resistance of Mujahideen has now evolved into a mature phase. This candle could not be extinguished by just blowing it away. The caravan of the holy martyrs and fighters will surely reach its destination soon or later. If Allah willing.

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
 
  

 

 

[bigron]

Published on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 by Raw Story

Kucinich Challenges Gates on Civilians Killed in Afghanistan

by Ron Brynaert

The buck doesn't appear to be stopping anywhere in Afghanistan.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)  wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday "demanding information on the decision-making process and the underlying intelligence that led to a NATO attack on a civilian convoy." (Raw Story - File)

"Two days after Afghanistan's deadliest attack on civilians in six months, many questions remain unanswered," The Canadian Press reports [1]. "Perhaps the two most pressing are: Who called in the air strike? And on what grounds?"

The article continues, "Dual investigations by NATO and the Afghan government are underway to answer those questions. But the cabinet of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has already made it clear the attack was, in a word, 'unjustifiable.'"

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) -- whose own press release notes that he remains "a vocal critic of the war in Afghanistan" -- wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday (pdf link [2]) "demanding information on the decision-making process and the underlying intelligence that led to a NATO attack on a civilian convoy."

"Media reports indicate that 27 civilians were killed, including women and children and many more were injured," Kucinich's press release notes, adding, "The U.S. government has an obligation to protect civilians under international law. As Secretary of Defense, you have an obligation to ensure that all military operations conducted in Afghanistan are conducted in accordance to such laws."

Kucinich writes, "Please provide information about the events leading up to the air strike, including the name of the person who granted authority to US Special Forces helicopters to conduct the aforementioned airstrike, the name of the person who ordered the airstrike, a detailed description of how it was determined that the civilians traveling by minibus were Taliban insurgents, and the protocol for ordering this airstrike and all other airstrikes."

The press release adds:

Kucinich demanded a response within two weeks, citing "the gravity of the situation and the tragic loss of life." Kucinich added, "The United States must demonstrate a clear commitment to protecting civilian lives in Afghanistan, and the results of this investigation are vital to ensure that an adequate system of oversight and accountability is in place."

Kucinich warned, "If necessary, I will direct the request for information via a Resolution of Inquiry in the House of Representatives." A Resolution of Inquiry is a procedure to force a House vote to force the release of documents from the Executive Branch. Under House Rules, a Resolution of Inquiry must be referred to committee and acted upon within 14 legislative days.

While specifics about what happened hasn't really been adequately addressed yet, the new Pentagon policy apparently believes in at least taking responsibility for errant actions.

The Christian Science Monitor notes [3], "Another botched airstrike, another apology."

"In a video distributed Tuesday in Dari and Pashto, the main languages spoken in Afghanistan, the top NATO commander here Gen. Stanley McChrystal said he was sorry to the nation for 27 civilian deaths, after US special forces killed a convoy of Afghan civilians they had mistaken for insurgents. It was the coalition's deadliest mistake in six months," Julius Cavendish writes for CSM.

The article adds, "While public apologies by NATO have become almost commonplace - this was just one of half a dozen in the past 10 days, and the second by McChrystal himself - the push to admit mistakes and say sorry is unprecedented in NATO's nine-year intervention in Afghanistan. It fits into McChyrstal's new strategy that prioritizes winning over the population."

© 2010 Raw Story

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/23-6

[bigron]

South Asia
Feb 25, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LB25Df01.html 
 
Marjah push aimed to shape US opinion


By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Senior military officials decided to launch the current United States-British military campaign to seize Marjah in large part to influence domestic US opinion on the war in Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

The Post report, by Greg Jaffe and Craig Whitlock, both of whom cover military affairs, said the town of Marjah in Helmand province would not have been chosen as a target for a US military operation had the criterion been military significance instead of impact on domestic public opinion.

The primary goal of the offensive, they write, is to "convince Americans that a new era has arrived in the eight-year long war". United States military officials in Afghanistan "hope a large and loud victory in Marjah will convince the American public that they deserve more time to demonstrate that extra troops and new tactics can yield better results on the battlefield", according to Jaffe and Whitlock.

A second aim is said to be to demonstrate to Afghans that US forces can protect them from the Taliban.

Despite the far-reaching political implications of the story, the Post buried it on page A9, suggesting that it was not viewed by editors as a major revelation.

Jaffe and Whitlock cite no official sources for the report, but the evidence supporting the main conclusion of the article clearly came from information supplied by military or civilian Pentagon sources. That suggests officials provided the information on condition that it could not be attributed to any official source.

Some advisers to General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the International Security Assistance Force, told him last June that Kandahar city is far more important strategically than Marjah, according to Jaffe and Whitlock.

Marjah is a town of fewer than 50,000 people, even including surrounding villages, according to researcher Jeffrey Dressler of the Institute for the Study of War in Washington DC. That makes it about one-tenth the population of Kandahar. Marjah is only one of a number of logistical centers used by the Taliban in Helmand province, as Dressler observed in a study of the province published by the Institute last September.

Kandahar, on the other hand, is regarded as symbolically important as it is the place where the Taliban first arose and the location of its leadership organs even during the period of Taliban rule.

Nevertheless, McChrystal decided to commit 15,000 US troops and Afghan troops to get control of Marjah as the first major operation under the new strategy of the Barack Obama administration.

That decision has puzzled many supporters of the war, such as author Steve Coll, who wrote a definitive history of US policy toward Afghanistan and is now executive director of the New America Foundation. Coll wrote in the New Yorker last week that he did not understand "why surging US forces continue to invest their efforts and their numbers so heavily in Helmand".

Coll pointed to the much greater importance of Kandahar in the larger strategic picture.

The real reason for the decision to attack Marjah, according to Jaffe and Whitlock, was not the intrinsic importance of the objective but the belief that an operation to seize control of it could "deliver a quick military and political win for McChrystal".

Choosing Kandahar as the objective of the first major operation under the new strategy would have meant waiting to resolve political rivalries in the province, according to the Post article.

In public comments in recent days, Central Command chief General David Petraeus has put forward themes that may be used to frame the Marjah operation and further offensives to come in Kandahar later this year.

Last Thursday, an unnamed "senior military official" told reporters, "This is the start point of a new strategy," adding, "This is our first salvo."

On Sunday, Petraeus appeared on NBC's Meet the Press and said the flow of 30,000 new troops that Obama recently ordered to the region is starting to produce "output". Marjah is "just the initial operation of what will be a 12-to-18-month campaign", he said, calling it the "initial salvo".

Petraeus suggested that Taliban resistance to the offensive in Marjah was intense, as if to underline the importance of Marjah to Taliban strategy. "When we go on the offensive," said Petraeus, "when we take away sanctuaries and safe havens from the Taliban and other extremist elements, they're going to fight back."
In fact, most of the Taliban fighters who had been in Marjah before the beginning of the operation apparently moved out of the town before the fighting started.

Petraeus seemed to be laying the basis for presenting Marjah as a pivotal battle as well as a successful model for the kind of operations to follow.

The Post article implies that Petraeus and McChrystal are concerned that the Obama administration is pushing for a rapid drawdown of US forces after mid-2011. The military believes, according to Jaffe and Whitlock, that a public perception of US military success "would almost certainly mean a slower drawdown".

As top commander in Iraq in 2007-2008, Petraeus established a new model for reestablishing public support for a war after it had declined precipitously. Through constant briefings to journalists and congressional delegations, he and his staff convinced political elites and public opinion that his counter-insurgency plan had been responsible for the reduction in insurgent activities that occurred during this command.

Evidence from unofficial sources indicates, however, that the dynamics of Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian conflict and Shi'ite politics were far more important than US military operations in producing that result.

McChrystal himself seemed to be hinting at the importance of the Marjah offensive's potential impact on the domestic politics of the war in remarks he made in Istanbul just before it began.

"This is all a war of perceptions," McChrystal said. "This is not a physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants."

McChrystal went on to include US citizens as well as Afghans among those who needed to be convinced. "Part of what we've had to do is convince ourselves and our Afghan partners that we can do this," he said.

The decision to launch a military campaign primarily to shape public opinion is not unprecedented in US military history.

When president Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, launched a major bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese capital in late December 1972, they were consciously seeking to influence public opinion to view their policy as much tougher in the final phase of peace negotiations with Hanoi.

The combination of the heavy damage to Hanoi and the administration's heavy spin about its military pressure on the North Vietnamese contributed to broad acceptance of the later conclusion that Kissinger had got a better agreement in Paris in February 1973.

In fact, Kissinger had compromised on all the demands he had made before the bombing began. But the public perception was more important to the Nixon White House.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

(Inter Press Service) 
 
 

[bigron]

Forces in Afghanistan told to limit nighttime raids

By Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent

STORY HIGHLIGHTS:

-U.S. official: Directive pertains to coalition forces' raids on Afghan homes, compounds

-Coalition trying to lower tension between military and civilians, keep Afghan public support

-Raids seen as violation of privacy of Afghan homes, and they can turn violent

=New rules are said to call for use of Afghan troops, analysis of whether night raid is essential


U.S. soldiers, with Afghan troops and national police, look for Taliban insurgents during a night raid in Ghazni province.

Washington (CNN) -- A new classified directive to coalition forces in Afghanistan puts restrictions on nighttime raids of Afghan homes and compounds, according to a senior U.S. official who has seen the document.

The official declined to be identified because a declassified version of the document has not been made public. The directive is signed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, the official said.

The directive comes as the coalition seeks to reduce tension between its military forces and Afghan civilians in an effort to maintain Afghan public support.

Nighttime raids in which troops enter private homes have sparked problems for U.S. and NATO forces. The raids are viewed as overly invasive -- a violation of the privacy of the home in Afghan culture -- and they can turn violent.

The document orders forces to use Afghan troops at night "whenever possible" to knock on doors of residences and compounds, and to use them if forcible action is required for entry, the official said.

But the directive also orders troops to "conduct an analysis" of whether it is militarily essential to conduct a raid at night or whether it can be put off until daylight, the official said. If troops can keep a target under surveillance but wait for daylight, they then can enlist the aid of village elders, perhaps, in determining if a home or compound poses a threat, the official said.

The official emphasized that troops always have the right to defend themselves and are given leeway to use their best judgment on the battlefield.

McChrystal also is updating another directive, first issued last year, on conducting operations to minimize civilian casualties, the official said.

The updated version, which is yet to be published, will include "more clarity" for troops on how to operate in "escalation of force" incidents, such as when a vehicle approaches a checkpoint in a potentially threatening manner and troops must decide whether, and when, to fire at it. The official declined to offer further details but said the aim is to make sure even the most junior troops have full understanding of rules and procedures.

Some troops and local commanders have expressed concerns that recent rules can inhibit their ability to take action under fire.

These directives come as the coalition has been involved in several recent incidents in which civilians were inadvertently killed, and as the coalition conducts major operations in southern Afghanistan.

McChrystal released a video message to the Afghan populace apologizing for an incident this week in which 27 Afghan civilians were killed.

"I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people. I pledge to strengthen our efforts to regain your trust to build a brighter future for all Afghans," he said in the message.

The official said the documents may be made public in the coming weeks, after current operations ease.
 

   
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/02/23/afghanistan.night.raids/index.html?hpt=T2 

[bigron]

Published on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 by Democracy Now!

Phyllis Bennis on Ending the US War in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, the number of civilian casualties continues to rise. On Tuesday, at least eight people died after a bomb exploded in the southern provincial capital of Lashkar Gah amid a major US-led offensive in the area. Local authorities said all those killed in the attack were civilians. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s government has condemned a NATO air strike on a convoy on Sunday that killed twenty-seven civilians, including four women and a child. NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal went on Afghan television to apologize for the attack. Last year was the deadliest of the war for civilians and foreign troops. And while there is no reliable count of the number of Afghans killed, the number of US soldiers killed in the war has reached 1,000.

Phyllis Bennis, along with David Wildman, is the author of the recently published, Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer [1].
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566567858?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1566567858



© 2010 Democracy Now!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/02/23-0

[bigron]

US Military decides that Afghan lives are worth up to $2,500

By Andrew Steele

February 23, 2010
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63569&hd=&size=1&l=e


How much money is a human life worth?  In Afghanistan it can range from $1500-$2500, the value of a few paychecks for the average worker here in the United States.   

According to The Washington Post, US Army units now fighting in the Helmand province have instituted a "compensation" system that callously tries to make up for the continuing bloodshed and occupation in Afghanistan by throwing money, (what amounts to very little when compared to most wrongful death lawsuit settlements in the US) at local family members of civilian victims of NATO strikes and to owners of damaged property.

The article states:

The death of a child or adult is worth $1,500-$2,500, loss of limb and other injuries $600-$1,500, a damaged or destroyed vehicle $500-$2,500, and damage to a farmer’s fields $50-$250.

The system is also useful for gathering intelligence on insurgents, says 1st Sgt. Gene Hicks of Tacoma, Washington.

The military pays villagers in local currency for information about the location of roadside bombs as well as "where they’ve seen people at, where they’ve seen people moving, where they’ve seen people shooting from," Hicks said.

What’s remarkable, other than the amounts paid and the fact that a vehicle could be priced the same as a human life, is how ripe for abuse such a strategy is.   The article mentions very little of what safeguards are put in place to keep locals with personal axes to grind against their own enemies, or just for financial gain, from  falsely turning each other in for "aiding the Taliban".  Nor does it explain how claims are investigated to prevent locals from committing fraud by destroying  their own property for profit or placing bombs themselves on roadsides in order to report the location to the military and collect the money.

"It’s not an exact science," states the article, "but some Afghan civilians in the area of Badula Qulp, northeast of the contested Taliban stronghold of Marjah, have been quick to exploit it. In any casualty case, the Americans are mindful that they might be asked to compensate for the death of an insurgent, rather than a civilian."

Another article from The Nation in November of 2009 titled, "How the US Funds the Taliban"  revealed how the US Military pays money to former Taliban members to "protect" American supply routes:

"In this grotesque carnival, the US military’s contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban.

"It’s a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents."

All of this money being thrown around Afghanistan, along with the troop surge and the installment of  around 700 bases there paints a sobering picture of what the motivation behind the Afghan War continues to be under Obama– not liberation, but occupation.  Caught in a quagmire and unable to force the population into an unconditional surrender, US dollars are being dumped into the country to temporarily buy-off the opposition while the US seizes control of the natural resources and creates a long term presence there, all the while quietly expanding its war into Pakistan.

By paying locals to tattle on each other it allows a constant conflict to ensue as new enemies are created, and even possibly fabricated, to justify the military’s presence in Afghanistan.  Bestowing a pittance to the families of civilians killed conjures the illusion of compensation for the lives cut short to concerned Americans at home, many of whom are becoming increasingly resigned to the United States’ execution of perpetual war.  In reality, civilian deaths stir up hatred in Afghanistan from the friends and families of the victims, some of whom take revenge and become "the enemy", thus strategically prolonging the stay of our soldiers who are caught in the middle of Washington’s geopolitical chess game.



 

[bigron]

Taliban commander: Afghan war cannot be won

By Channel 4 News
Updated on 23 February 2010
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/taliban+commander+afghan+war+cannot+be+won/3558257


Exclusive: a senior Taliban commander claims Nato's strategy in Afghanistan is in tatters and tells the families of British forces that "this war cannot be won".
WATCH:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid62612474001?bctid=68193815001

In an exclusive interview, Mullar Nasir has told Channel 4 News his forces will not stop fighting while foreign troops remain.

He is widely tipped to become the insurgents' new field commander, but he is also thought to have been at last month's peace talks with the UN in Dubai.

Nasir, also spelt Nisar, has been based in Marjah in Helmand, the scene of the latest Nato offensive. He went south to meet the cameraman - the exact location was kept secret.

"My message to whole of the west, especially the parents of those soldiers who are fighting for the America's vested interests in Afghanistan is that they should not trust the American propaganda," Nasir said.

"I want to address those parents and European countries who sent their soldiers to Afghanistan not to sacrifice their sons on the interests of US. This war can't be won.

"They should consult the Afghan history. No force on the face of the earth had defeated Afghans so far. The Russians were defeated and so are they."

He also insisted that the Taliban could force the allied troops from Afghanistan.

"They (the United States) had announced in the start of the current year that they would stay for about 40 years in Afghanistan but after increasing attacks on their troops they were forced to change their stance within weeks and announced to withdraw forces from Afghanistan in 2011.

"The Canadians and Hollanders also announced their withdrawal plan as well. Let me tell you, if we intensify the attacks on them further it wouldn't take much time to change their withdrawal plan from weeks to moments. They can not stay for even a year."


More from Channel 4 News
- 'Accepting war in Afghanistan is critical'
- Nato target Taliban and strengthen their hand
- Airstrike kills Afghan civilians 'by mistake'
- British fatalities in Afghanistan
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/taliban+commander+afghan+war+cannot+be+won/3558257

Nisar only admitted he had also heard the reports of peace talks, but insisted the "Islamic Emirate are united" in their approach to negotiations.

"If formal talks were initiated, withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan is the first demand of the Taliban. It's the condition set by the head of the Emirate that we would come to the table if foreign forces were withdrawn from the country. We did not move from our principle stand."

Mullar Nisar also claimed the Taliban had been offered money in order to give Nato convoys safe passage.

"I had also been offered US $30,000 per convoy by the Polish soldiers to provide them safe passage," he said. "The very next day of the $30,000 offer, we attacked one of their convoy and inflicted millions of dollars losses on them.


"We called the jirga members and asked them what they say now after the losses had crossed millions in dollars. The torched vehicles are still present in the battlefield."

However Mullar Nisar's claims were rejected by former army captain Patrick Hennessey, who has visited Afghanistan.

He told Channel 4 News: "Poll after poll has shown the Afghans don't support what this man and his bodyguards stand for. Only yesterday 2,000 people in Nad Ali, after the success of Moshtarak, signed up for cash for work programmes.

"People like these are out on the fringe," he said.
WATCH PATRICK
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid62612474001?bctid=68193816001

[bigron]

Top UN official calls for talks with Mullah Omar

By Ben Farmer in Kabul and Dean Nelson in New Delhi

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63587&hd=&size=1&l=e

The top UN official in Afghanistan has called for direct peace talks with Mullah Omar's Taliban leadership to find a political settlement to the eight year war.

February 23, 2010

Writing exclusively in the Daily Telegraph , Kai Eide said plans to use financial incentives to persuade militants to abandon their war would not succeed without negotiations with their leaders.

His comments challenge President Barack Obama's "carrot and stick" strategy of military surge while offering jobs, retraining, resettlement and protection to Taliban figures who break away from Mullah Omar's insurgency.



According to Mr Eide, who will stand down as the UN Secretary General's special representative next month, the strategy could actually strengthen the insurgency.

He said the West has underestimated the number of Taliban fighters driven by conviction rather than simply money. He said attempting to bribe them may actually backfire.

"Often, such motivation stems from a conviction that the [Afghan] government is corrupt and unable to provide law and order combined with a sense of foreign invasion – not only in military terms, but in terms of disrespect for Afghanistan's culture, values and religion," he said.

The "Reintegration Trust Fund" announced at last month's London Conference would only help if offered alongside talks with the Taliban's political leadership, he said.

The fund was not a "game changer" but could help if combined with talks with those ideologically-driven Taliban and "if at some point that process involves the political structures of the insurgency. If you want relevant and sustainable results, you will have to involve relevant people with authority in an appropriate way," he said.

He has proposed a series of confidence-building measures to improve the atmosphere for talks, including a pledge by Mullah Omar's Taliban to stop attacking schools and hospitals, freeing some Taliban figures from the American Bagram Detention Centre and removing Taliban leaders from the UN's sanctions list.

Last month US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there was no place in the reintegration scheme for Mullah Omar or his Taliban leadership.

"You have to begin to go right at the insurgents and peel those off who are willing to renounce violence, renounce al Qaeda That is not going to happen with (Taliban chief) Mullah Omar and the like," she said, but it could tempt those who fight because the Taliban pays better wages than they could earn peacefully.

Mr Eide's challenge to the current strategy in Afghanistan follows dramatic developments in Pakistan in the last two weeks where the Taliban's military leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was captured in Karachi along with four other senior leaders. The raids marked a new understanding on greater co-operation between Washington and the Taliban's former allies in Islamabad.

Michael Semple, a leading authority on the Taliban and a former European Union diplomat, welcomed Mr Eide's comments but questioned whether the Karzai government was ready to talk about peace.

"Kai Eide's political process would specifically engage the Taliban who are committed to their movement and consider it a moral force," he said.

"The political process to solve this conflict will have to be protected from spoilers on all sides including from those on the Kabul government side who so far have been content for the conflict to drag on, while the bulk of the military and fiscal burden is borne by the United States," he said.
According to Mr Eide, who will stand down as the UN Secretary General's special representative next month, the strategy could actually strengthen the insurgency.

He said the West has underestimated the number of Taliban fighters driven by conviction rather than simply money. He said attempting to bribe them may actually backfire.

"Often, such motivation stems from a conviction that the [Afghan] government is corrupt and unable to provide law and order combined with a sense of foreign invasion – not only in military terms, but in terms of disrespect for Afghanistan's culture, values and religion," he said.

The "Reintegration Trust Fund" announced at last month's London Conference would only help if offered alongside talks with the Taliban's political leadership, he said.

The fund was not a "game changer" but could help if combined with talks with those ideologically-driven Taliban and "if at some point that process involves the political structures of the insurgency. If you want relevant and sustainable results, you will have to involve relevant people with authority in an appropriate way," he said.

He has proposed a series of confidence-building measures to improve the atmosphere for talks, including a pledge by Mullah Omar's Taliban to stop attacking schools and hospitals, freeing some Taliban figures from the American Bagram Detention Centre and removing Taliban leaders from the UN's sanctions list.

Last month US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there was no place in the reintegration scheme for Mullah Omar or his Taliban leadership.

"You have to begin to go right at the insurgents and peel those off who are willing to renounce violence, renounce al Qaeda That is not going to happen with (Taliban chief) Mullah Omar and the like," she said, but it could tempt those who fight because the Taliban pays better wages than they could earn peacefully.

Mr Eide's challenge to the current strategy in Afghanistan follows dramatic developments in Pakistan in the last two weeks where the Taliban's military leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was captured in Karachi along with four other senior leaders. The raids marked a new understanding on greater co-operation between Washington and the Taliban's former allies in Islamabad.

Michael Semple, a leading authority on the Taliban and a former European Union diplomat, welcomed Mr Eide's comments but questioned whether the Karzai government was ready to talk about peace.

"Kai Eide's political process would specifically engage the Taliban who are committed to their movement and consider it a moral force," he said.

"The political process to solve this conflict will have to be protected from spoilers on all sides including from those on the Kabul government side who so far have been content for the conflict to drag on, while the bulk of the military and fiscal burden is borne by the United States," he said.