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

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Making matters worse in Afghanistan 

13/03/2010 03:00:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/Making-matters-worse-in-Afghanistan.html
 
 Civilian deaths inflicted by American firepower in Afghanistan are generating deep-seated anti-Americanism, with some Afghans saying that even the Russians were less violent.

(AFP) A recent NATO airstrike in the province of Uruzgan killed at least 27 Afghan civilians.

By Charles V. Peña

A recent NATO airstrike in the province of Uruzgan — against what was thought to be a convoy of Taliban insurgents on their way to attack Afghan and foreign military forces — killed at least 27 Afghan civilians, including four women and a child.

In February, more than 50 Afghan civilians are believed to have been killed in more than half a dozen U.S. and NATO military operations.

The good news is that “collateral” civilian casualties have dropped since Gen. Stanley McChrystal took over as the commanding general in Afghanistan, and he has apologized publicly for the casualties on Afghan national television.

The bad news, however, is that — although they are fewer than before — civilian casualties are counterproductive to counterinsurgency.

Although there is a military component to successful counterinsurgency, it is largely about winning hearts and minds. Killing innocent civilians — even unintentionally — is a prescription for defeat.

Consider the aftermath of a U.S. airstrike (targeting an alleged local Taliban leader) in March 2007 in the Kapisa province. Four generations of a single family were killed, including an 85-year-old man, four women, and four children ranging in age from five years to seven months.

According to one villager, “We used to hate the Russians much more than Americans. But now when we see all this happening, I am telling you Russians behave much better than the Americans.” The 7-year-old boy who survived the bombing said plainly enough about Americans: “I hate them.”

Such hatred harbored by a family member can become the impulse for turning someone into a terrorist.

For example, the suicide bomber responsible for killing 19 Israelis in Haifa at the beginning of October 2003 was a 29-year-old apprentice lawyer, Hanadi Jaradat — an educated woman with a good job who would not ordinarily fit a terrorist profile. But she had motivation: an Israeli crackdown that resulted in the shooting death of her brother and cousin.

Reportedly, Jaradat vowed revenge standing over her brother’s grave: “Your blood will not have been shed in vain. . . . The murderer will yet pay the price, and we will not be the only ones who are crying.”

After the Haifa bombing, family members said, “She carried out the attack in revenge for the killing of her brother and her cousin by the Israeli security forces.”

The Israelis justify their actions because they feel they must confront a direct and imminent mortal threat to the survival of their country. US actions in Afghanistan are more connected to the survival of U.S.-created government, not the United States itself.

The Taliban per se is not a direct threat to America, and local al-Qaeda threats within Afghanistan are not necessarily the same as the pre-9/11 al-Qaeda threat to the United States. Indeed, even Osama bin Laden and the remnants of al-Qaeda leadership thought to be in Pakistan may no longer be an operational threat.

What the United States needs to recognize is that continued military operations in Afghanistan are not in the nation’s larger strategic interests.

We must be understand that foreign military occupation — however well intended and however successful at the tactical, operational level — is not the solution, but rather part of the problem because of the resentment it creates (both in Afghanistan and also the larger Muslim world).

We must be true to our own principle of self-determination and allow the Afghan government to be fully sovereign and make decisions for itself — even if they are not the same decisions we would make. Our only real criterion should be that the government in Kabul — even if it includes elements of the Taliban — not provide support or safe haven for al-Qaeda to attack America.

-- Charles V. Peña is Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute as well as a senior fellow with the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, former senior fellow with the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute, and an adviser on the Straus Military Reform Project.



-- Middle East Online

 

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Deadly blasts rock southern Afghanistan

VISIT PAGE FOR VIDEO :
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/03/13/afghanistan.explosions/index.html?hpt=T1

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

-Explosions at four sites kill at least 35 in Kandahar province, officials say

-Unknown number of dead and wounded lie under collapsed structures

-U.S. commander spoke this week about securing volatile province


Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A series of explosions rocked southern Afghanistan's volatile Kandahar province on Saturday, killing at least 35 people and wounding 47 others, local officials said.

Provincial Gov. Toryalai Wesa confirmed the blasts hit four locations.

One of the explosions struck near the police headquarters in Kandahar, said Wesa's spokesman, Zalmai Ayoubi. Another blast struck near the province's prison and caused the collapse of some residences.

An unknown number of people are believed to be dead or trapped in the rubble, Ayoubi said.

The casualties include security forces and civilians, he said, adding that both the death toll and the injuries are expected to increase.

Afghan police said two of the four attacks were suicide bombings, while the other two are believed to have been mortar strikes.

Coalition forces in Kabul said the International Security Assistance Force in Kandahar was not targeted.

Follow the fight in Afghanistan

Last week, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan vowed that coalition forces "are absolutely going to secure Kandahar," as security efforts expand in the country's south.

"We already are doing a lot of security operations in Kandahar, but it's our intent -- under President [Hamid] Karzai -- to make an even greater effort there," Gen. Stanley McChrystal told reporters Tuesday.

McChrystal indicated a military operation could begin in the province as early as this summer, but McChrystal and Mark Sedwill, the NATO senior civilian representative to the country, cautioned that much political groundwork lay ahead for NATO-led coalition troops before an offensive can begin.

The push to secure Kandahar from what McChrystal calls a "menacing Taliban presence" is part of a larger counterinsurgency effort in the country's south. The effort started last month in Marjah in southern Helmand province.

CNN's Phil Black contributed to this report.
 
 
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/03/13/afghanistan.explosions/index.html?hpt=T1 

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4 Homicide Attacks Hit Afghanistan, Killing 30

Saturday, March 13, 2010 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,589182,00.html


KANDAHAR, Afghanistan  —  The Afghan president's half-brother says at least 30 people have died and dozens more hurt in four homicide attacks in the southern city of Kandahar.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, a member of the Kandahar provincial council, says a main target of the Saturday night attacks was a prison, but no prisoners escaped. In June 2008 a homicide bomber blew apart the Kandahar prison gates and a nearby checkpost. That freed hundreds of prisoners, many of them suspected insurgents.

Karzai, the half-brother of President Hamid Karzai, says a second explosion occurred close to the police headquarters, and casualties were reported at a wedding hall nearby.

Police officer Mohammad Nahim says at least four policemen were killed.

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Taliban Web site claims Afghan blasts were 'message' to U.S. general

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

-NEW: "Successful operation ... was primarily a message" to Gen. McChrystal, site says

-Thirty-five people were killed, dozens wounded in series of explosions

-U.S., coalition forces have pledged to secure volatile Kandahar province

For video go here:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/03/14/afghanistan.explosions/index.html?hpt=T2

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A series of deadly blasts in southern Afghanistan's volatile Kandahar province on Saturday was a message to the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, according to a posting Sunday on a Taliban Web site.

The "successful operation on Saturday ... was primarily a message to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's warning against their coming operation in Kandahar city," said the statement by Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi on the site.

McChrystal last week said coalition forces would launch a future operation to secure the province.

Five explosions in Kandahar on Saturday left 35 people dead and wounded 57 others, according to Zemeri Bashary, spokesman for Afghanistan's Interior Ministry. Officials said all but one of the blasts were suicide bombings.

The first explosion -- a suicide car bombing -- took place near the province's main prison. At the same time, a second suicide car bomb went off in front of the police headquarters, Bashary said.

The third attack was carried out by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle, and another targeted a bus station.

McChrystal has vowed that coalition forces "are absolutely going to secure Kandahar," as security efforts expand in the country's south.

"We already are doing a lot of security operations in Kandahar, but it's our intent -- under President [Hamid] Karzai -- to make an even greater effort there," he told reporters Tuesday.

Afghanistan Crossroads: The latest news on the ground

McChrystal indicated a military operation could begin in the province as early as this summer, but both McChrystal and Mark Sedwill, the NATO senior civilian representative to the country, cautioned that much political groundwork lay ahead for NATO-led coalition troops before an offensive can begin. Just as in the recent Marjah operation, they said, the goal is to gain the support of the Afghan people.

The push to secure Kandahar from what McChrystal calls a "menacing Taliban presence" is part of a larger counterinsurgency effort in southern Afghanistan. The effort started last month in Marjah in southern Helmand province.

"The Mujahedeen's successful operation in the heart of Kandahar city was a message to Stanley McChrystal and a reaction to the U.S. coming operation in Kandahar province," said the Taliban Web site. "The Mujahedeen of the Islamic Emirate are fully prepared and ready to fight the Americans, NATO and their allies, no matter whichever part of Afghanistan they may be [in]."

Saturday's fatalities included 13 police officers and 22 civilians, including six women and three children. Among the wounded were 40 civilians and 17 police officers, Bashary said. The Taliban denied killing any civilians in the Web site statement.

CNN's Matiullah Mati contributed to this report.
 
 
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/03/14/afghanistan.explosions/index.html?hpt=T2 
 

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Afghan Official Wants More Troops After Series of Blasts

Sunday , March 14, 2010
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,589188,00.html

March 14: An Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier keeps watch at the site of a blast near Kandahar prison.


KANDAHAR, Afghanistan  — The governor of Kandahar province demanded more security around Afghanistan's largest southern city Sunday after a series of explosions killed dozens of people in the Taliban heartland — the target of the war's next major offensive by Afghan and international forces.

The blasts, which occurred one after another for 25 minutes across Kandahar city Saturday night, indicate that the insurgents remain a potent force in the area where NATO plans an assault later this year, the follow-up to an operation that has driven militants from a key stronghold in neighboring Helmand province.

Residents say Taliban militants can operate in Kandahar with little restraint.

"They can do what they intend and want, and the government can't control the situation," said Javed Ahmad, 40, of Kandahar. "We don't feel secure in the presence of all the forces in Afghanistan, and it's terrible for us to live in this kind of situation. We don't feel safe even at home, and we can't walk around."

Gov. Tooryalai Wesa said the blasts included two car bombs, six homicide attackers on motorbikes and bicycles, and homemade bombs. The attackers targeted the city's prison, police headquarters, a wedding hall next door and other areas on roads leading to the prison.

Wesa told reporters that he had asked the central government in Kabul for more Afghan troops to protect the city in the run-up to the expected offensive in Kandahar province, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban. He also said he wants to coordinate with NATO forces to improve security.

The main target of the attacks was the prison, where investigators have found eight homicide vests, three rockets and AK-47 ammunition, police said.

Ministry of Interior spokesman Zemeri Bashary told reporters the attackers were trying to free prisoners and block security forces from responding, "but they failed in their mission."

"They were trying to open the jail, that is why they attacked cleverly in different parts of the city," said Kandahar provincial police chief Gen. Sardar Mohammad Zazi.

The assault mirrored a 2008 homicide bombing at the Kandahar prison gates that freed hundreds of prisoners, many of them suspected insurgents. No inmates escaped this time from the lockup, which Canadian troops reinforced with cement block after the 2008 attack.

Thirty-five people were killed in Saturday night's attacks, according to the ministry. Among the dead were 13 policemen and 22 civilians, including six women and three children. Most of the casualties occurred at the police headquarters and at the wedding celebration in a hall next door.

Another 57 people were wounded, including 17 policemen, and 42 homes were damaged, the ministry said.

"Last night was like doomsday for all of Kandahar's people," said Mohammad Anwar, a 30-year-old shopkeeper, whose relative lost a son in the attacks. He said residents blamed the United States and international forces for not battling the militants strongly enough.

"It is difficult for us to bear this kind of situation anymore," Anwar said. "We don't know the aim of these people," he said, referring to the insurgents. "Are they trying to kill civilians or eliminate the system? The government is too weak to control these kind of attacks."

Haji-Muhammad Aslam, 46, who also runs a store in the city, said residents of Kandahar feel helpless.

"What we can do?" he asked. "Almost nothing, except accept deaths and injuries. We are created to be killed by anyone, whether by militants, Americans or Afghan forces.

"Last night was a night beyond imagination. It took many innocent lives and most are suffering. But who is caring, and who will control it? Nobody. We are scared. We don't expect the current government to restore peace and stability," he said.

President Hamid Karzai's half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a member of the Kandahar provincial council, told The Associated Press that two of the explosions occurred near his home. But he said he was not being targeted personally.

The offensive that U.S., NATO and Afghan forces are planning in Kandahar later this year is a follow-up to the ongoing military operation in Helmand province's Marjah district. The operation is the first test of top Afghanistan commander U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's strategy to rout insurgents from areas, set up new governance and rush in development aid in hopes of winning the loyalty of the residents.

Kandahar city, population 800,000, was the seat of government for the Taliban when it ruled Afghanistan, imposing its vision of Islamic theocracy for five years before being toppled by U.S.-backed forces in 2001.

Armed Taliban bands still control villages around the city, and Taliban agents move through the city at night, delivering letters warning people against cooperating with the U.S.-backed government. International forces find homemade bombs almost daily as they patrol the city streets.

Another roadside bomb Sunday morning targeted a car carrying Pakistani construction workers south of the city in the district of Dand, according to the governor. Four of the Pakistani workers and their Afghan driver were wounded.

Training a workable Kandahar police force has become a priority for international forces trying to build trust in the Afghan government, which they hope will eventually be able to take over security. The 2,800 Canadian troops who oversee operations in Kandahar city and the surrounding province are due to leave Afghanistan next year.

The U.S. sent nearly 300 more military police to Kandahar in August to help build up the 2,000-strong local police force — a six-fold increase over the small Canadian and U.S. force that had been there training Afghan police, traditionally one of the country's least-trusted institutions.

Afghan National Police forces were the first to respond to Saturday's explosions and some Canadian troops later deployed to support them, Canadian military spokeswoman Capt. Cynthia LaRue said.

"The most important part here is to remember that ANP did a very good job and responded quickly," LaRue said Sunday.

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Who’s stealing Afghan cultural treasures?

RussiaToday

for video go to:

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-03-13/looters-steal-afghan-artifacts.html#


March 13, 2010
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64152&hd=&size=1&l=e
 

Afghanistan’s unique location has made it home to the world's most complex civilizations that left a rich cultural heritage. But the war-torn country has now fallen victim to looters, stealing the nation’s artifacts.

Ever since Afghanistan was invaded by Alexander the Great, nearly 2,500 years ago, the country has seen one foreign army after another.

In recent times – the British, the Soviets – and now the Americans …

And whatever reasons they give – the impact of war continues to leave a cultural scar that runs deep through Afghan civilization.

In many countries, the national museum is a source of pride where ancient treasures that explain that country’s history are on display. The Kabul museum, instead of boasting a collection that dates back hundreds of years, has bullet holes and destroyed artifacts.

In the civil war, the museum was a military base repeatedly struck by rocket fire and largely destroyed. Later, the Taliban ransacked whatever items had not been moved for safe-keeping.

And now there’s a new enemy – smugglers working in areas where foreign forces are currently in control.

Mir Ahmad Joyenda of the Afghan parliamentary international relations commission told RT: "Some military forces of other countries are doing some digging at night", he added "but unfortunately in the last eight years we didn’t put on trial a single smuggler for stealing the cultural heritage of Afghanistan. Nobody has been arrested, nobody has been put in jail and nobody has investigated this issue."

The Afghan government simply doesn’t have the resources.
Seven years ago a special police unit was set up to stop the illegal excavations.
But 500 officers can’t do much – especially when much of the digging is reportedly at night and in areas under NATO control.

Recently, around 7,000 artifacts that had been smuggled out of the country were returned to the museum.

Some pieces were found in England. It was easy for the museum’s director to recognize them as being from Afghanistan.

"Most of these 2,000 pieces were taken by these looters – who were Afghan looters – they transferred them from Afghanistan to neighboring country, then to Dubai, and from Dubai to Heathrow Airport. You can’t imagine one looter would be able to collect these kinds of artifacts, to steal them, to transfer them by airplane to Heathrow airport in the UK. The simple Afghan people cannot do these activities," says Omara Khan Masoudi, director of the Kabul National Museum.

But NATO forces deny the charges.

Brigadier General Frederick "Ben" Hodges, director OF operations, ISAF regional command south said "That is completely against the values we hold as an army, stealing is just not acceptable behavior. I’m not aware of it and I certainly wouldn’t tolerate it."

As a former crossroads of major trade routes, Afghanistan’s been home to some of Asia’s most complex and unique civilizations.

Today, there are 3,000 archaeological sites. And while that rich seam of history waits to be unearthed, those supposed to protect it will need to dig deeper to beat the looters.





 

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Afghan family killed as special forces defy night raid ban

by Miles Amoore

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64154&hd=&size=1&l=e

March 13, 2010

THE two helicopters swooped low over a cluster of mud homes, whirling in the cold night sky before landing in a wheat field on the edge of the small Afghan village.

From his home nearby, 23-year-old Najibullah Omar strained his eyes in the darkness as he made out the faint shapes of armed men pouring from the helicopters’ bellies.

A third helicopter circled menacingly in the moonless sky above the village of Karakhil in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul.

Then a loud explosion shook the ground and a plume of smoke rose from his cousin Hamidullah’s house 20 yards away. Its guest room caught fire. Omar heard a burst of gunfire before all went quiet.

His worst fears were confirmed the moment he walked through the compound gate at first light.

The body of his cousin, a 32-year-old construction engineer who had taken a break from his job in a far-off province to visit his family, lay sprawled next to those of his wife and their seven-year-old son. Blood ran in dark pools on the mud floor of the terrace outside their door.

The wife and son had been shot in the head, each with a single bullet. The engineer had died from a shot to the chest. The precision of the killings, coupled with his failure to find any bullet casings after the raid, led Omar to believe that his cousin was murdered either by US special forces or by an intelligence agency.

The sole survivor was the couple’s younger son, aged six, whose upper torso was riddled with puncture wounds from grenade shrapnel.

Some of the villagers dug away the fallen wooden beams, revealing the charred corpses of three Taliban fighters — a mid-level commander and two bodyguards, apparently killed where they slept by a missile from the circling helicopter.

"The Taliban often force themselves into our homes. What can we do?" said Omar. "We’re afraid of them. It’s better to keep your house and shelter the Taliban when they demand it than to lose your home."

Last week General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of Nato troops in Afghanistan, responded to President Hamid Karzai’s call for a ban on night raids by publicly ordering his troops to curb their use.

The general’s order aims to end the killing and detention of innocent civilians during night operations. According to the United Nations, 98 civilians were killed in such raids last year, provoking widespread outrage. They are believed to have swollen the ranks of the Taliban, who score an easy propaganda victory every time Nato kills a civilian.

In his order, first issued confidentially to officers in January, McChrystal wrote that violating Afghans’ homes made it more difficult to win vital public support.

The new policy has created tensions with officers commanding special forces units, who often launch night operations without informing Nato commanders.

McChrystal has tried to rein in the independently run special forces units blamed for many of the civilian casualties in night raids.

"They are used as a blunt tool to kill insurgents, so they don’t do McChrystal’s brand of counterinsurgency very well," said one source close to the Nato command. "The [special forces] are not designed for a touchy-feely counterinsurgency."

Intelligence agencies such as the CIA fall outside the control of the military. Human rights activists point to a lack of accountability currently enjoyed by the CIA, whose role in Afghanistan involves commanding militias that conduct some of the raids.

In February, a mixed force of Afghans and Americans raided the home of Rahmatullah Sediqi, a 61-year-old shopkeeper, in Ghazni province in the east of the country.

The previous evening, seven Taliban fighters carrying rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machineguns and Kalashnikov assault rifles had entered the village and demanded shelter from Rahmatullah.

The helicopter-borne force that stormed his home triggered a fire-fight that left his wife and son dead.

"We can’t refuse the Taliban shelter," said 42-year-old Mohammad Sediqi, Rahmatullah’s nephew. "My other brother is so angry that he is considering joining the Taliban to take revenge."

During a US- and UK-led offensive in Helmand province last month, errant Nato missiles and strikes killed as many as 28 civilians in the first two weeks.

Although McChrystal’s directive seeks to address these problems, doubt remains about how widely it will be heeded. "Intelligence and [special forces] are the ones primarily conducting these raids, so if they don’t adhere to the rules then there’s no point at all in the rules," said Erica Gaston, a human rights lawyer.

30 die in Kandahar suicide bomb attacks

Taliban suicide bombers struck across Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar last night, killing 30 people and wounding at least 50 in a series of strikes that militants said was a message to Nato.

Bombers attacked the prison and the police station and also set off two secondary blasts as a diversionary tactic.

The biggest attack was on the prison on the city’s outskirts, apparently an attempt to repeat a jailbreak there two years ago in which a truck bomb was used to blast down the walls; 1,000 prisoners were freed, 400 of them Taliban. This time, following reinforcement by Canadian troops, the raid failed to achieve its objective and no one escaped. The city, the second largest in Afghanistan, is at the centre of the Taliban heartland and the next target for Nato forces this year.

The majority of the 30,000 additional combat forces ordered to Afghanistan by President Barack Obama at the end of last year are expected to be deployed in Kandahar as part of the operation over the next few months. Thousands of Canadian troops also patrol the city.

Many of last night’s victims were women and children at a wedding hall near the police headquarters. Several buildings in the city collapsed with the force of the blast.




 

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U.S. report offers damning picture of human rights abuses in Afghanistan


Conditions are horrific, torture is common and police frequently
rape female detainees, the U.S. State Department finds

by Paul Koring

Pul-e Charkhi prison in Kabul

March 13, 2010
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64160&hd=&size=1&l=e


Afghan prison conditions are horrific, torture is common and police frequently rape female detainees, the U.S. State Department finds in its annual survey of human rights.

The damning report paints a grim picture of scant respect for human rights by the embattled regime headed by President Hamid Karzai. While Taliban treatment of civilians is even worse, the report's assessment of vile prison conditions and routine abuse and torture by Afghan police and security raises new questions about whether Canada and other nations are still transferring prisoners to known torturers. Doing so is a war crime under international law.

"Torture was commonplace among the majority of law enforcement institutions, especially the police," the U.S. report found, citing the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, the group used by Ottawa to help monitor whether detainees transferred by Canadian troops are abused or tortured.

Canadian diplomats compile a similar annual report on selected countries - including Afghanistan - but it isn't made public. Government censors blacked out all references to torture, abuse and extrajudicial killings by Afghan police and prison guards in the last available report obtained under Access to Information.

Yesterday's U.S. report makes no similar attempt to shield allies from human rights scrutiny, even in places where U.S. troops are deployed.

Michael Posner, the U.S. undersecretary of state for human rights and democracy whose group prepared the mammoth report - generally considered the most authoritative annual assessment of conditions in more than 190 countries - said the issue of foreign troops being ordered by their governments to hand detainees to Afghan security forces was vexed.

"How can United States and NATO countries ensure or guarantee safe treatment or fair process when those transfers occur. ... Those are issues very much on our minds," Mr. Posner said.

The U.S. runs a prison facility at Bagram where more than 600 battlefield detainees are held. Some of them have been there for six years. But Canada, Britain, the Netherlands and other NATO countries with troops fighting in southern Afghanistan turn prisoners over to Afghan police and the Afghan internal security service (National Directorate of Security), usually within 96 hours. For years, no follow-up inspections were made to ensure transferred prisoners weren't tortured or killed, but after publication of harrowing accounts of abuse, Ottawa added sporadic inspections.

Most Canadian detainees are turned over to the feared NDS. The U.S. report said it was impossible to determine how many prisons the NDS operates, or how many prisoners they contain. The report, which covers 2009, also noted that the Afghan government was making efforts to improve conditions in prisons.

Other countries where human rights abuses are identified include Iran and China.

Canada generally got good marks but the Harper government's long-running effort to keep a Canadian citizen from returning home was cited. "In July the government complied with an order of the Federal Court of Canada and facilitated the return to Canada of Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian-Sudanese dual national, after the Court determined that Canadian officials had been complicit in his detention in Sudan in 2003," the report said.

******

TORTURE, RAPE, CHILD ABUSE COMMON

Excerpts from the Afghanistan sections of the U.S. government's latest human rights report:

Afghan police and security "tortured and abused detainees. Torture and abuse methods included, but were not limited to, beating by stick, scorching bar, or iron bar; flogging by cable; battering by rod; electric shock; deprivation of sleep, water, and food; abusive language; sexual humiliation; and rape."
Afghan "police frequently raped female detainees and prisoners."
"Harems of young boys were cloistered for 'bacha baazi' (boy-play) for sexual and social entertainment ..."
"Child abuse was endemic throughout the country, based on cultural beliefs about child-rearing, and included general neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, abandonment, and confined forced labor to pay off family debts."

"Human rights problems included extrajudicial killings, torture, poor prison conditions, official impunity, prolonged pretrial detention, restrictions on freedom of the press, restrictions on freedom of religion, violence and societal discrimination against women, restrictions on religious conversions, abuses against minorities, sexual abuse of children, trafficking in persons, abuse of worker rights, the use of child soldiers in armed conflict, and child labor."

 

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Afghan resistance:

Australia and Canada Take a Rationale Decision after Holland

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64165&hd=&size=1&l=e

March 14, 2010

After the dissolution of Dutch government following its parliament’s hot discussion over the American war in Afghanistan, now Canada and Australia have decided to respect views of their people for unconditional withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

The Americans have been using various ploys and wiles in the last nine years to achieve their colonialist objectives, trying to show that the war in Afghanistan is the war of the West. Otherwise, they claim, the West would have to face harm as result or reap its benefits. The Americans have been able to keep a number of countries entangled in the Afghan war through play of wiles and display of ambitious goals.

But as the time went by, not only the Afghans realized the true face of America but other members of the Coalition in Afghanistan also came to know the true feature of USA as clearly as they see the broad day light. They know that America does know only its interests; it does not care about others; nor it pays any attention to other countries interests.

Western countries who are part of the Coalition in Afghanistan were thinking that they have vital interests in Afghanistan because Americans had told them so i.e. that Afghanistan was important for them geo-economically and militarily and that it was crucial for their long-term dominance over the whole region. That is why, Western countries divided all provinces and areas of Afghanistan among themselves, referring to them as areas of their influence and promised to carry out reconstruction there. As such, they simultaneously began to have confrontations with the Mujahideen. But during the past nine years, Mujahideen became more stronger with the passage of time; the Afghans sensitiveness against foreign troops growingly compounded ; the material and life losses of foreign troops kept spiraling up and the American domineering attitude ominously became evident. These ground realities forced America and its allies face frustrations and convincingly came around that the achievement of their objectives was almost unfeasible and impossible. Links of the chains of their victory started breaking smithereens.

Western analysts believe that Americans are not ready to give any role to the rest of the world to play in Afghanistan nor are they allow them to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people through positive measures. A French statesman Morg Basin says , there are many examples which indicate America overtly and covertly works against the stance of other countries because of its arrogance. They hurl hurdles in their ways. He further says whenever, French, Canada and German succeed in winning the hearts and minds of Afghans in a given area of Afghanistan through reconstruction work and other humantarisian activities, the Americans heavily bombard that area; they torture the residents and launch night raids on their houses . Thus they intentionally create resentments and wrath among the people. This contradictory image of America and its other domineering attitudes in addition to the presence of Mujahideen in 80% of Afghanistan have given rise to a rift among the ranks of the American-led Coalition in Afghansistan. The Coalition members want to pull out of the country one after another because they know, the current war in Afghanistan is only aimed at securing interests of Americans and Britains while other countries are being used as fodder of the cannon.

After the dissolution of the Dutch government over the mission in Afghanistan. , where the parliament was not ready to extend the military mission in the country , now the Australian and Canadian public have mounted pressure on their rulers to pay respect to the people’s demand for withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and notify America and NATO of their decision.

Observers believe that the Austrian and Canadian decisions to pull out of Afghanistan indicate the beginning of the fall of American empire and mastership. Their sun is about to set. They are facing defeat not only in the military field but their social system is on the verge of disintegration. If they keep traveling the way that leads to the well’s hole , they would certainly end up falling down into the pit if they do not amend their way. Only wiles, stratagems and ploys will not save them.



 

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Afghan government says coalition troops killed 12 civilians

BNO NEWS

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64167&hd=&size=1&l=e

March 14, 2010

KABUL (BNO NEWS) — Coalition troops killed twelve civilians during two recent operations in Afghanistan, according to the office of President Hamid Karzai on Sunday.

Karzai’s deputy spokesperson Hamed Elmi said the casualties, which included women and children, occurred during two separate airstrikes in the country’s Kandahar and Kunar provinces. He said the incidents happened earlier this week, but was not able to say on which day or days.

Elmi said President Karzai was informed of the casualties during a security meeting on Sunday, in which he "strongly condemned" the incident. Karzai called for compensation for the families of the victims.

NATO was still gathering information and was not immediately able to comment or confirm the report.







 

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This Time It's Pregnant Women:

Another US Atrocity in the Bush-Obama War in Afghanistan


by DAVE LINDORFF



March 14, 2010
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64171&hd=&size=1&l=e


Another night-time raid on a housing compound in Afghanistan. Another bunch of innocent Afghans killed. Another round of lies by the US-led forces of the so-called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Only this time, among the dead are two pregnant mothers and a teenage girl.

And once again the US media remain mute, accepting the official story, which was of ISAF forces responding to an attack which in reality appears never to have happened.

Haji Sharabuddin holds a picture of his two dead sons, a police commander and a prosecuter, murdered by US troops along with 2 pregnant women and a girl



Before I started to write this piece, which once again was broken by the intrepid Jerome Starkey, a reporter in Afghanistan who works for the Times of London, I thought maybe I should read the Sunday edition of the New York Times, to see whether America’s "paper of record" had reported on this latest atrocity. But the night before we had suffered a heavy storm that knocked down three large trees in my front yard, and there was currently a thunderstorm underway, with rain pouring down, so I decided, what the hell, I’ll just write it. There’s no way the Times would cover this story.

I was right, of course. When the rain let up, and I went out and got the paper, and scoured it for word of this latest obscene slaughter by US forces, I found nothing. The Times’ reporters in Afghanistan and the reporters in the paper’s Washington bureau who cover the Pentagon had ignored it. So, a Google search discloses, did the rest of the servile US media.

So what actually happened?

According to Starkey, US and Afghan Army forces on February 12 launched a pre-dawn assault on the home of a prominent and popular policeman’s home just outside of Gardez, the capital of Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan. The first person to die was reportedly the policeman himself, Commander Dawood, who had stood in his doorway protesting the innocence of his family. In the volley of fire directed against him by the brave US-led team, his pregnant wife, another pregnant woman and an 18-year-old girl were also slaughtered.

Commander Dawood had been hosting a party to celebrate the naming of a newborn baby boy, Starkey reported. As he writes:

Sitting together along the walls of a guest room, the men had taken turns dancing while musicians played. Mohammed Sediq Mahmoudi, 24, the singer, said that at some time after 3am one of the musicians, Dur Mohammed, went outside to go to the toilet. "Someone shone a light on his face and he ran back inside and said the Taliban were outside," Mr Sediq said.

Also killed was Dawood’s brother, Saranwal Zahir, a local prosecutor, who had been shouting for soldiers not to shoot as women had run outside to tend to the wounded.

A younger brother of the two men, Mohammed Sabir, was arrested by the invading forces and brought to a US base, where he was held for several days and interrogated by " an American in civilian clothes," before being released. Sabir said he was shown photos of a man who had been at the party, a certain Shamsuddin. Sabir says he told the interrogatyor, "Yes, he was at the party. Why didn’t you arrest him?" The man in question, Shamsuddin, later turned himself in and was, after questioning, reportedly also released.

Raising the question, what was this raid, and all the pointless killing, about in the first place?

As Starkey writes, the US and the ISAF initially, following what appears to be standard operating procedure, concocted a lie about the incident In a release immediately afterward, under the headline, "Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery," the NATO release claimed that the US-led team had found the women’s bodies "tied up, gagged and killed" in a room. That statement went on to say: "Several insurgents engaged the joint force in a firefight and were killed."

As Starkey, who charges NATO with a "coverup," reports: "The family, however, insists that no one threw so much as a stone."

He goes on:

Rear Admiral Greg Smith, NATO's director of communications in Kabul, denied that there had been any attempt at a cover-up.
He said that both the men who were killed were armed and showing "hostile intent" but admitted "they were not the targets of this particular raid."

"I don’t know if they fired any rounds," he said. "If you have got an individual stepping out of a compound, and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don’t have to be fired upon to fire back."

He admitted that the original statement had been "poorly worded" but said "to people who see a lot of dead bodies" the women had appeared at the time to have been dead for several hours.

Starkey reports that the Americans offered the distraught family $2000 per victim of the botched raid. But as the mother of the slain brothers, Bibi Sabsparie, told him bitterly, "There’s no value on human life. They killed our family, then they came and brought us money. Money won’t bring our family back."

So once again, we have a massacre (in a night-time raid that occurred two weeks after the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, ordered an end to the practice because of the number of errors and civilian deaths, and the bad public relations such raids cause among Afghans), with no coverage by the US media.

Meanwhile, Starkey says that even in the UK, his stories have been ignored by the rest of the British media, and that his own efforts to get at the truth have begun causing problems with the US-led military command in Afghanistan.

As he told one reader who had written him to congratulate him on his work:

Word in Kabul is that NATO are turning their wrath on me, personally, and about to release a rebuttal. All of a sudden it's a daunting prospect and more than ever I feel what it must be like to be churned through the military machine. It's good to know people appreciate it. I've also had emails from the victims' family, which is heartening.

It is not easy to be an honest reporter in wartime, where sycophancy and blind patriotism are what is demanded. Sadly, the US media are taking the easy way out, accepting the rules of being embedded, which require them to submit articles for censorship, to avoid being critical and to play the game, in return for getting easy human interest stories to send back to the readers and viewers back home.

That’s not journalism. It’s PR. It ought to be labeled as such.

Extra! Also ignored by the Times and most of the rest of the US corporate media was a historic decision by a federal judge in Chicago on March 4 to compel former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to respond to charges by to US torture victims that Rumsfeld authorized their torture by US forces at Camp Cropper in Iraq. The two men, David Vance and Nathan Ertel, were whistleblowers against the private security (mercenary) firm that had hired them, claiming it was secretly providing arms to insurgents. Instead of getting the firm investigated, they were arrested by US troops and held--and tortured, they claim--for three months, before being released without charge and sent home to the US.

Their attorney, Mike Kanovitz of Chicago’s Loevy & Loevy, correctly calls the quashing of Rumsfeld's effort to have the suit against him thrown out, "pretty historic"--a former secretary of defense is being accused of authorizing the torture of American citizens and will have to answer the charge in a federal court--but you wouldn't know it from the response of the US mainstream media, which has been...nothing.



 

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Survivors of family killed in Afghanistan raid threaten suicide attacks

by Jerome Starkey

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64177&hd=&size=1&l=e

March 14, 2010

A family whose members were killed in a botched night raid in eastern Afghanistan have rejected "blood money" from the Government and vowed to carry out suicide attacks unless the perpetrators are brought to justice.

Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a policeman and his brother were shot dead on February 12 by unidentified gunmen. Eight men were arrested in the raid on the village of Khataba in Paktia province. They have all been released.

No one has claimed responsibility for the killings. A US official in Kabul refused to identify the force involved, citing "utmost national and strategic security interests".

The United Nations has criticised intelligence agencies in Afghanistan in the past for using paramilitary groups to carry out "extrajudicial killings". If the force was controlled by the CIA or Afghanistan’s domestic intelligence service it would be exempt from new Nato guidelines designed to limit night raids, which came into force on January 23.

Local elders delivered $2,000 (£1,300) in compensation for each of the five victims to the head of the family, Haji Sharabuddin, after protests brought Gardez, the capital of Paktia, to a halt. "I don’t want money. I want justice," he said. "All our family, we now don’t care about our lives. We will all do suicide attacks and [the whole province] will support us."

Nato had claimed that the assault force found the women’s bodies "tied up, gagged and killed". In its initial statement it also said: "Several insurgents engaged the joint force in a fire fight and were killed."

An investigation by The Times at and around the scene found both those statements to be untrue. Although the family’s claims that they did not shoot back could not be independently verified, none of the dead was an insurgent. Relatives say that the women were killed during, not before, the raid.

Nato officials continued to brief journalists in Kabul yesterday that the women were victims of an "honour" killing. However, they did not explain why the bodies would have been kept in the house overnight, against Islamic custom, nor why the family had invited 25 guests to celebrate the naming of a newborn child the same evening. Nato denies accusations of a cover-up.

An undated document seen by The Times that was presented by US forces to Commander Dawood, the dead policeman, praised him for his work and "dedication and willingness to serve the people of Afghanistan". It said he would "ensure the stability of your country for many years".

Commander Dawood’s brother, Saranwal Zahir, was a district attorney in Ahmadabad district, also in Paktia. The two married women were four and five months pregnant. The teenage girl, Gulalai, was engaged to be married this summer.

"Before, when I heard reports of raids like this and elders said [foreign troops] only came to colonise Afghanistan, I told them they are here to help us," said Sayed Mohammed Mal, the vice-chancellor of Gardez University, whose son Mansoor was Gulalai’s fiancé. "But when I witnessed this in my family’s home, I realised I was wrong. Now I accept the things those people told me. I hate [foreign forces]. I hate the Government."

Afghan officials insist that the raid was a mistake. None of the people reached by The Times said that the family had links with the Taleban.

"My father was friends with the Americans and they killed him.," said Commander Dawood’s son, Abdul Ghafar, as he held a dog-eared photograph showing the policeman with three US soldiers. One of the Americans had his arm around Mr Dawood. "They killed my father. I want to kill them. I want the killers brought to justice."

The family suspect that a spy may have deliberately misled the assault force and the relatives have appealed to President Karzai to hand him over.

"If the Government don’t give us the spy I will carry a holy Koran to the presidential palace and ask, why don’t you help us? Why do you let the Americans carry out these operations?" Mr Dawood’s mother, Bibi Sabsparie, said. Haji Sharabuddin, her husband, said that he wanted the spy shot, hanged and burnt.

"The foreigners are always talking about human rights. But they don’t care about human rights," said Gulalai’s father, Mohammed Tahir. "They teach us human rights then they kill a load of civilians. They didn’t come here to end terrorism. They are terrorists."

Mohammed Sabir, whose wife, Bibi Shirin, was killed, suggested vengeance: "If the Americans don’t give us the spy, bring us seven Americans and we will kill them."

The family count seven deaths, not five, because the two women were pregnant.





 

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Down the Rabbit Hole in Afghanistan

by Alan Bock, March 15, 2010
http://original.antiwar.com/bock/2010/03/14/down-the-rabbit-hole-in-afghanistan/


The notion that the great American offensive to capture the Afghan outpost of Marjah was more public relations propaganda than military strategy or even effective counter-insurgency first began to impinge itself when U.S. and – to a lesser extent – Afghan officials started talking about it weeks before it was to take place. If it had been a real military offensive, you would think, they would have wanted the element of surprise. Instead, they informed the Taliban in advance that they would be coming.

That proved to have a downside. I don’t know whether military officials expected a relatively swift advance, perhaps on the order of the first American sorties in Iraq, when it looked as if victory would be swift and decisive, or not. But what they got was a painstakingly slow advance, slowed down by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of improvised explosive devices and mines. The Marines had to slog through on foot, looking out for explosive devices at almost every step and encountering the occasional ambush.

The Marines performed this thankless mission competently, but it meant that it took longer and was more dangerous than it might have been. Was that in part a result of announcing in advance to all and sundry just exactly where the Marines would be going and what they would be doing? Might that have been intentional, to add an air of courage and accomplishment to the mission, making for better propaganda? I don’t know.

Of course, propaganda is always part of a well-thought-out counter-insurgency strategy. Creating an image of noble heroes overcoming odds and managing to kill quite a few Taliban and insurgents along the way might have been part of a solid strategy.

That thought, however, was somewhat undermined by the news that, as a Washington Post story had it, "The Afghan official responsible for governing Marjah paid his first visit to this strife-torn community" on or about Feb. 22. Let me repeat that: his first visit. He wasn’t a respected local elder who was known in the community but had been forced to leave for a short while and would be likely to be welcomed back. No, Haji Zahir, the newly-appointed mayor of Marjah, had spent the last 15 years in Germany. Where he had been jailed. That would surely let the locals know that the central Afghan government had great respect for Marjah’s local traditions and local leaders.

According to this Washington Post story, the locals were appropriately skeptical. When Zahir said the U.S. Marines were "not here to occupy our country. They’re just here to bring you peace," a local grumbled, "The Taliban provided us a very peaceful environment. … They weren’t corrupt like the police." The locals didn’t want help from the central government, they just wanted to be left alone – some of them to grow opium poppies. Who wouldn’t, since prohibition creates such a huge premium for opium over alternative crops?

Then the potentially good propaganda was undermined a bit by the fact that during the course of the offensive, despite assurance from U.S. military officials that they had learned lessons from previous encounters and there would be a minimum of bombing that might kill innocent civilian bystanders, exactly that occurred. A NATO helicopter mission reputedly hunting for militants who had escaped the Marjah area and managed to get 150 miles away ended up killing as many as 27 civilians. All concerned were publicly befuddled. An Afghan National Army commander said his forces hadn’t called in the helicopter strike, and Dutch military officials – it was in an area purportedly controlled by the Dutch – said they hadn’t either.

Well, fog of war and all that. Mistakes are always made and collateral damage is perhaps inevitable.

The clincher for me, however, came in an article in the eminently establishment (though unusually open to different perspectives) Web site for Foreign Policy magazine, started by the Carnegie Endowment and now owned by the Washington Post Co. The article is by Thomas Johnson, who teaches national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey (which does also tolerate our old friend David Henderson), and Chris Mason, a retired State Department officer who served in Afghanistan. They have previously compared Afghanistan to Vietnam, at a pretty deep level [.pdf]. In "Down the AfPak Rabbit Hole," they compared U.S. "strategy" in Afghanistan, and the Marjah campaign in particular, to Alice in Wonderland. Some examples:

"Two months ago the collection of mud-brick hovels known as Marjah might have been mistaken for a flyspeck on maps of Afghanistan. Today the media has nearly doubled its population from 50,000 to 80,000 … and portrays the offensive there as the equivalent of the Normandy invasion, and the beginning of the end for the Taliban. In fact, however, the entire district of Nad Ali, which contains Marjah, represents about 2 percent of Regional Command (RC) South, the U.S. military’s operational area that encompasses Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul, Nimruz, and Daykundi provinces. RC South by itself is larger than all of South Vietnam, and the Taliban controls virtually all of it. This appears to have occurred to no one in the media.

"Nor have any noted that this nearly worthless postage stamp of real estate has tied down about half of all the real combat power and aviation assets of the international coalition in Afghanistan for a quarter of a year. The possibility that wasting massive amounts of U.S. and British blood, treasure, and time just to establish an Afghan Potemkin village with a ‘government in a box‘ might be exactly what the Taliban wants the coalition to do has apparently not occurred to either the press or to the generals who designed this operation."

Although the Afghan war at a macro level is a disaster fated to be regretted for a long time to come – whether it peters out gradually and most U.S. troops are withdrawn in 16 months or so or substantial U.S. forces are stationed there for decades, which is the only way to do nation-building in a country that has no particular desire to be a nation as Westerners understand the term. But one might have supposed that at least a few of the tactical operations involved could have been well-designed and well-executed, with something resembling a serious counterinsurgency purpose that actually accomplished some short-term gain.

However, the invasion of Marjah appears to be little more than a public relations or propaganda gesture, designed to make it seem that the "coalition" troops are doing something to earn their keep and the commanders can take some initiative. I will admit that some believe that Marjah is a more important Taliban stronghold than Johnson and Mason do and that the campaign just might have an influence beyond the tiny geographical area that it covers. But I’m skeptical, and I’ll let Johnson and Mason have the last word:

"So here we are in the AfPak Wonderland, complete with a Mad Hatter (the clueless and complacent media), Tweedledee and Tweedledum (the military, endlessly repeating itself and history), the White Rabbit (the State Department, scurrying to meetings and utterly irrelevant), the stoned Caterpillar (the CIA, obtuse, arrogant, and asking the wrong questions), the Dormouse (U.S. Embassy Kabul, who wakes up once in a while only to have his head stuffed in a teapot), the Cheshire Cat (President Obama, fading in and out of the picture, eloquent but puzzling), the Pack of Cards army (the Afghan National Army, self-explanatory), and their commander, the inane Queen of Hearts (Afghan President Hamid Karzai). (In Alice in Wonderland, however, the Dormouse is ’suppressed’ by the Queen of Hearts, not the White Rabbit or the Cheshire Cat, so the analogy is not quite perfect.)"

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Afghanistan | 14.03.2010
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5331876,00.html


Afghanistan's new great game: The undeclared wars within the war

The conflict in Afghanistan has long since taken on a new dimension and spilled over into Pakistan

Conventional Western public opinion regards the war in Afghanistan as a struggle between NATO and extremist Islamic militants. Since assuming office Barack Obama has redefined the conflict by calling it the Af-Pak war.

The US president's redefinition is recognition that the Taliban's nerve center, as well as al Qaeda's safe haven, are across Afghanistan's border in neighboring Pakistan. In the forbidding tribal territories, Waziristan especially, another dimension of the same fierce conflict is underway with more Pakistani troops thrown into the fray than the whole of NATO deploys on its side of the Northwest Frontier.

But unlike Afghanistan where NATO allows journalists free access to combat operations, the Pakistani military remains media-averse and highly secretive of its own internal counter-insurgency efforts. On the surface of things, however Pakistan is NATO's and particularly Washington's staunch ally in the regional and global campaign against terror. It's a role for which Islamabad in dire economic straits is rewarded handsomely with a massive combined US economic and military aid package it could not do without.

But as British author Moni Mohsin, a lifelong student of Pakistan, points out "Pakistan is also the only US ally America frequently bombs with drone missile strikes, which sometimes kill terrorists and just as often kill civilians."

And while Islamabad is at pains to denounce the Predator missile attacks and adamantly insists it does not authorize them, Mohsin told Deutsche Welle that there is tacit Pakistani government approval for the strikes. Yet when the attacks are publicized it only helps to feed the ever present anti-American propaganda in Pakistan's right wing media "which in turn becomes a pro-Talibanization as far as the public is concerned."

Anti-US sentiment

 Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, and its director general Lt. General Ahmed Shuja Pasha (R), have been accused of stoking up tensions in Afghanistan

The prevalence of anti-US sentiment in popular culture is something the Pakistani army and the all powerful military intelligence service, or ISI, seems to thrive on and encourage although they are ostensible allies of the West, in presumably the same struggle. The underpinning complexity of such duality is at the essence of what routine western analysis of South Asia often fails to pinpoint.

At the core of this double game, is Pakistan's traditional enmity with India, the dominance of the armed forces and its spymasters in Pakistan's national and political life and a long standing rapport with the Taliban and other radical groups which it has not only supported but also created in some cases.

British journalist Rishaad Salamat, a long time Pakistani analyst and a senior economic anchor with Bloomberg Europe, argues that from a national security perspective "there are elements in the ISI who don't want a democratic and stable Afghanistan. A state that they perceive as being in the pocket of India and one which has irredentist claims on Pakistani territory."   

Mohsin concurs. "The Pakistani army feels threatened by India on its right flank. And if most countries have armies, Pakistan is an army with a country and to remain in this preeminent position, the generals play up the Indian threat. But then India does have a massive presence and influence in Afghanistan. It has 26 consulates, what does Afghanistan have as one of the poorest nations on earth that India needs so badly?"

Proxy war means more instability

Muddling things further in what seems to be an ongoing proxy war between Delhi and Islamabad, though they are not playing it up, there is widespread suspicion in Western intelligence agencies that the ISI may well have behind the recent suicide attacks and shootings in Kabul aimed at the Indian community there.

Not surprising when the Pakistani Jihadist group Laskhar e Taiba which carried out the bloody raid on Mumbai in 2008 is clearly recognized as an offspring of the ISI, recruited, armed and trained by the intelligence service.

That thus far Islamabad has also refused to extradite or try a single suspect among over 40 militants linked to the slaughter has only exacerbated tensions with its Indian rival. This refusal arguably brought India and Pakistan to the brink of what might have become their fourth modern war since achieving independence from the British Raj in 1947.

It is also undeniable that the ISI has a clear hand in supporting separatist militants in Indian administered Kashmir. Though it isn't all one way mischief, India continues to covertly back Baluchi separatists in Pakistan deeply alienated from central government, in what endures as another, albeit lower-level rebellion within Islamabad's borders.

It is also now conveniently overlooked that the Taliban itself, ironically enough, was the very creation - with a lot of US funding - of both the ISI and the CIA, designed to act as a tool to confront Moscow during the Soviet War in Afghanistan.

What remains more confusing is that while the Pakistani army fights a costly war against the Taliban in its own tribal areas, every once in a while Taliban casualties in Afghanistan are discovered wearing Pakistani army dog tags, most of them officers on seconded, special duty. There have also been repeated instances of Taliban prisoners of war admitting that Pakistani regular army officers run specialized Taliban training camps.

So does it mean civil war has spread to the ranks of the Pakistani military itself? Is it a simple case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing? Not quite. Mohsin argues that there are elements of the Taliban the Pakistani army and the ISI do not control nor favor.

NATO and the ISAF troops are facing an uphill battle on several different fronts


"The army and ISI say (to Washington) look we will deal with al Qaeda and the Jihadists, but you have made it clear that you will withdraw sooner rather than later and we want an Afghan government in which we have a say, because we live here and we'd prefer a Taliban type of government we can play ball with," Mohsin told Deutsche Welle.

It is a stance that angers Washington but when "NATO is bleeding and Pakistani support is critical there is little that they can do and Pakistan is going to milk it for all its worth and keep collecting the aid looking to Washington to keep defusing tensions with Dehli."

History repeating itself?

Of course there are also other permutations of power geo-politics at play too. China remains a staunch Pakistani ally and military supplier because it suits China to have Pakistan as a thorn in India's side, with whom its also fought a war in the past and seeks to check its power.

Israel increasingly has also emerged as key provider of military technology for India which it sees as a natural ally in the fight against Islamic radicalism. But its hard to escape the perception that the Pakistani military and the ISI are really the key players in the drama of the Hindu Kush and the larger crisis of South Asia.

Within Pakistan itself the military's power far exceeds that of a weak civilian government. A massive portion of the national budget is allocated to the armed forces with no questions asked. There is no public nor international accountability of the nature of conflict in the territories, where there may well be large scale civilian losses and human rights abuses on both sides.

And among those that dissent in Pakistan, but who also oppose radicalization, the military and the ISI are challenging democracy itself, pitting the judiciary against the government and using nationalist sentiment in the conservative elements of the media to keep tensions at a fever pitch. It's a dangerous game and last year casualties from suicide bombings in Pakistan exceeded those in Iraq.



Foreign troops have more often than not failed in Afghanistan

The great game as it was once called pitted the British and Russian empires against one another with Afghanistan as the chosen battleground. During World War II, Nazi Germany even sought Afghanistan as a potential ally in its struggle against Britain, even sending a team of saboteurs to blow up bridges on the Afghan-Indian borders.

Of course the Soviets had their failed era and now it is America and its NATO European allies who are embroiled in the Hindu Kush. But it is much more complex than anyone dare admit and it would seem as ever, if history is anything to go by, it is the locals that will have the final say, not the outsider.

Author: Chris Kline
Editor:  Rob Mudge

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Operation in Marjah ‘jeopardises peace plan’

Chris Sands, Foreign Correspondent

Last Updated: March 15. 2010 1:06PM UAE / March 15. 2010 9:06AM GMT 
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100315/FOREIGN/703149839/1042



US marines guard a farmer, found hiding in an irrigation canal in Marjah, a stronghold of the Taliban. Patrick Baz / AFP


KABUKL // When US-led forces launched a major attack on a small corner of south-west Afghanistan recently, the operation was accompanied by a blizzard of military activity and media attention not seen since the war began almost nine years ago.



Weeks later, the true impact on Marjah of Operation Moshtarak is starting to emerge. The hype may have faded away, but tens of thousands of civilians caught up in the fighting are now trying to piece their lives back together.

“People are still very worried. It’s a very dangerous, troublesome and fearful situation,” said Haji Walii Jan Sabiri, a local MP.

Marjah lies in the Nad Ali district of Helmand province. A rural area where many of the residents earn their living from growing the poppies used to make opium, it fell under Taliban control in 2008.



Then, earlier this year, Nato forces openly announced it would soon be the target of a major operation. In the end, about 15,000 troops led by US Marines were sent to clear the region and, in a hail of press conferences and media briefings, the mission was quickly portrayed as a success and potential turning point in the war.

The reality on the ground is less black and white. Mr Sabiri described a situation in which civilians have been left hurt and intimidated by all sides involved in the fighting.


He accused the Afghan military and police of looting sheep, chickens, rice and flour from shops and houses. He also spoke of widespread displacement, saying 3,500 families had officially escaped to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

On top of this, Mr Sabiri said he had informal reports that 500 families had fled to the neighbouring province of Farah, 800 to Nimroz and over 100 to Pakistan, where he claimed many were falsely arrested on suspicion of being insurgents.



Despite all the suffering, he insisted the Taliban were still strong in Marjah and had beheaded seven local men, including an imam, for alleged links to the government in the wake of Operation Moshtarak.

Mr Sabiri blamed much of this on inadequate planning by international forces. Having initially met senior military commanders, including Gen Stanley McChrystal, the head of Nato and US troops in Afghanistan, he and other community leaders had been assured that the impact on civilians would be minimal. The co-ordination between the two parties lasted for just a few days before ending without explanation, Mr Sabiri said.



“They have done these kinds of operations in each district of Helmand and they do not fix the problems they make,” he added. “They leave the people by themselves.”

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, visited Marjah last week and heard complaints that foreign troops had killed and wrongly arrested civilians. But he promised the hundreds of local elders who had gathered to listen that security would be improved and schools and roads built.



When Operation Moshtarak was taking place, the media often described the target as “a city”, yet that was far from accurate. In reality, Marjah is overwhelmingly rural and incredibly poor even by this country’s standards.

The Afghan Red Crescent Society ran one first aid posts and had around 80 volunteers in the area when it was under Taliban control.

“Other services you could not find. When we visited there were no schools, no clinics, no hospitals, no roads, no clean drinking water, nothing,” said Abdul Rahman Kalantary, the society’s director of disaster management.



“My understanding is that the people need services. If the government doesn’t provide services for them, how can we expect them to work on peace and reconciliation and so on? They don’t have any basic facilities.”

According to Mr Kalantary, 1,400 families have been displaced in Marjah and Nad Ali alone. With a survey of the destruction still being carried out, he said 62 houses had so far been reported damaged.



He added that civilian deaths were “very low” and that mines planted by the Taliban had been the main danger to local people and soldiers.

As is often the case in Afghanistan, precise details are hard to pin down and events in Marjah have in large part already been consigned to history amid the fog of this ongoing war.

But a minimum of between 21 and 35 civilians are known to have died during Operation Moshtarak. Gen McChrystal apologised following one incident that killed 12 civilians.



Reports on the displaced also vary, but it is certain that tens of thousands of individuals opted to flee.

The UN’s refugee agency puts the figure at 4,275 families – the bulk of which went to Lashkar Gah. It claims around 800 have since returned home.

Controversy has also surrounded the Afghan government’s newly appointed civilian chief in Marjah, who is believed to have a criminal record in Germany for attempting to stab his own son to death. He denies any wrongdoing. Kandahar is now due to be the target for the next major offensive, probably this summer, by which time Gen McChrystal has said “our forces will be significantly increased around there”.



Lal Gul, the chairman of Afghanistan Human Rights Organisation, warned that the assault on Marjah had jeopardised plans for peace and reconciliation with members of the insurgency. He said rebels in Kandahar and Helmand often had the backing of local people, just as the Mujahideen did during their struggle against Soviet occupation.

“When they carried out operations with small guns or rocket launches and achieved a lot, there was just one reason: they had support from the public. Now also many people support the Taliban,” he said.

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Posted on Sun, Mar. 14, 2010


We've met the enemy in Afghanistan, and he's changed

Roy Gutman | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: March 14, 2010 05:45:09 PM
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/14/90083/weve-met-the-enemy-in-afghanistan.html

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KABUL — A decade ago, when the Taliban controlled the Afghan government, their militiamen — barely motivated, untrained conscripts — tried for five years to seize control of the entire country from more moderate forces but didn't succeed, even with the help of Osama bin Laden's Arab and other foreign volunteers.

Today, although the United States and more than three dozen NATO allies and other countries are supporting Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Taliban dominate a growing swath of territory, and their power trumps the government's in three-quarters of the country.

Although they're often portrayed as mindless fanatics, the militant Islamists' "life experience" from their years in the wilderness, their study of American military tactics and their analysis of the Karzai government's shortcomings have helped reverse their fortunes, U.S. intelligence experts say.

With President Barack Obama sending at least 30,000 additional American troops to knock the Taliban off-balance and a U.S.-led offensive in Helmand province, a better understanding of today's Taliban is central to the effort to defeat them and to begin withdrawing some American troops from Afghanistan in summer 2011.

While much is made of the recent arrests of Taliban leaders in Pakistan and the deaths of others in U.S. unmanned drone attacks, the group appears to be a movement in transition, with greater sophistication along with limited central control and considerable autonomy for its local commanders in Afghanistan.

Western intelligence officials cite varied signs of the "new" Taliban:


•During and after every military operation, top Taliban leaders — who intelligence officials think move along the Afghan-Pakistani border but sometimes retreat to Karachi and other Pakistani cities — routinely run circles around the Karzai government with rapid-response public relations.


•Some Taliban still fight as they did a decade ago, in flip-flops and traditional baggy pants, but the hard-core "Taliban cavalry" is equipped with North Face jackets, good boots, warm clothing and swift motorbikes purchased in Pakistan.


•The Taliban made some 8,000 improvised explosive devices last year, an astonishing rate of almost 22 a day. "An enemy that can generate 8,000 IEDS and bring 8,000 IEDS to bear and have a major effect, we ought to hire the J-4, the logistician," said a top general with the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force.


•Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar issued a 67-article code of conduct for his fighters last summer, ordering them to protect the civilian population.


•Based on debriefings of some 4,000 Taliban detainees captured over the past four to five years, the ISAF general concludes that the insurgents are motivated to seize power either by conquest or by negotiation and to establish the rule of law in the areas they control. Taliban fighters say they want to bring Shariah, Islamic law, to rural areas where government officials are known to be corrupt.

The Taliban "have totally changed," said Vahid Mojdeh, a former Taliban foreign ministry official who monitors the movement. "They've totally put behind them their international agenda" of spreading Islamist revolution "and now are just focused on Afghanistan."

Although Western and Afghan experts acknowledge that Omar, the one-eyed cleric, is the group's supreme leader, many Taliban innovations for controlling territory are probably of local origin.

Take, for example, an order to shut down cell phone communications after about 4 p.m. every day in four southern Afghan provinces. Taliban commanders approached the four commercial cell-phone companies in the area and told them to halt service or their towers would be blown up.

According to Mojdeh, the move is part of a Taliban effort to prevent spies from communicating Taliban positions to Afghan government officials.

However, it's also "to make sure they can get a good night's rest," the senior ISAF general said.

The Taliban also must communicate with one another, however, and their devices — VHF radio-relay networks that use hundreds of small antennas linked to big solar panels — have impressed Western militaries. The basic equipment is bought off the shelf in Pakistan or stolen from NATO trucks and assembled in the field.

"It's extremely sophisticated," the general, who couldn't be identified under the terms of the briefing, told McClatchy. On the other hand, he said, Taliban codes are "pretty easy to break."

Taliban policies also have become somewhat more sophisticated. Mojdeh said that in the past year, the insurgents had stopped burning down schools, and they no longer oppose vaccination campaigns for children or health clinics.

"There's a new generation. They are familiar with computers. They communicate with text messages. They're in favor of education," he told McClatchy. Unlike the Taliban of the 1990s, he said, "They are no longer all illiterates."

Drawing on insurgent tactics from the war in Iraq, the Afghan civil war in the 1990s, Pakistani trainers and al Qaida operatives, the Taliban have developed a plan for civilian governance of regions they control, appointing a governor — usually from another region, to avoid local tribal rivalries — a military commander, a financial official in charge and a judge.

Haroun Mir, the director of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies, who fought against the Taliban in the 1990s, said the insurgents had taken a leaf from their former archenemy, the late Afghan guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was an ethnic Tajik, unlike the mostly Pashtun Taliban.

The Taliban "previously never let anyone in (Massoud's) movement have influence," but now they're accepting ideas from below, Mir said. "I wonder if the traditional Taliban are still in control?" he asked.

He said the Taliban's new emphasis on justice paralleled Massoud's concern that people behind the front lines "should feel secure," he said. Mir also said that the principal slogan that Omar used today "is to expel the infidels, the same slogan we used against the Russians," but now meaning U.S. and European forces.

However, the Taliban also have adopted new and deadly tactics such as recruiting pupils from madrassas — Islamic schools — for suicide bombings.

Recruiters observe the students and "see who's the more emotional," Mojdeh said. They also seek volunteers from among those who've lost family members to U.S. or Afghan government attacks.

They "work on them and train them and give them a suicide belt — a fake one. If they don't show fear, they give them a real one," Mojdeh said. The suicide attackers say goodbye to their families, "and then they disappear."

The Afghan National Directorate for Security estimates that there are at least 1,000 mobile insurgent training centers in Pakistan's seven tribal agencies — lawless zones beyond the writ of the central government — most in the guise of religious education centers.

To a great extent, though, the Taliban remain motivated by revenge. The massacre in 2001 of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban detainees at the hands of an Uzbek warlord in northern Afghanistan still motivates Taliban to fight.

"That massacre was the base or foundation for all the fighting that is now going on," Mojdeh said.

The senior ISAF general agreed that the massacre was "absolutely" a recruiting tool for the Taliban. "Those kinds of things thicken the hatred and cause more people to join."

Last July, the U.S. military obtained a copy of the new code of conduct issued by Omar, with instructions to protect civilians and spare the lives of prisoners. It came on the heels of a tactical directive by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, that said the aim of American troops was to protect the Afghan population, not to kill Taliban.

Unlike the U.S. directive, however, which reduced the number of civilian deaths last year by 28 percent from 2008, there's little sign that the Taliban are implementing Omar's code, which says that Taliban suicide attacks should be carried out against "major" targets and "utmost steps" taken to avoid civilian casualties.

A U.N. report in January said the Taliban were responsible for 70 percent of the 2,142 civilian killings in 2009, up some 50 percent from the previous year. That included 1,054 victims of suicide bombings and IEDs and 225 victims of targeted assassinations and executions.

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Anti-US rally held in Afghanistan

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:48:54 GMT
http://presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=120854&sectionid=351020403

 
Afghan people condemn civilian casualties.


People in Afghanistan have protested against the killing of civilians by the US-led forces.

Protesters took to the streets in the eastern province of Kunar on Monday to condemn the killing of ten Afghan civilians by American troops.

They also demanded that the perpetrators of the attack be brought to trial. The US army earlier claimed six Taliban militants were killed in the raid.

On Monday, three more civilians were killed and three others wounded by a roadside mine in Ghazni province.

Afghanistan has been under attack both by militants and foreign troops since the 2001 US-led invasion. Large numbers of civilians have lost their lives across the country.

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and tribal elders have repeatedly criticized the foreign troops for killing and injuring civilians.

AGB/TG/DT

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Published on Monday, March 15, 2010 by Inter Press Service

Policy Battle Over Afghan Peace Talks Intensifies


by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The struggle within the Barack Obama administration over Afghanistan policy entered a new phase when the president suggested at a meeting of his "war cabinet" Friday that it might be time to start negotiations with the Taliban, according to a report in the New York Times Saturday.

A US marine is pictured at a military camp in Marjah city of Helmand province on March 1. Thirty-five people were killed in a Taliban assault on Kandahar described by rebels as a pre-emptive response to Western plans to eradicate them from the strategic city. (AFP/POOL/File/Massoud Hossaini)


Obama said that the success of the recent operation to take control of the "insurgent stronghold" of Marja, combined with the killing of insurgent leaders in Pakistan by drone attacks, might be sufficient to "justify an effort to begin talks with the Taliban", two participants in the meeting told the Times.

That proposal puts Obama directly at odds with key members of his national security team, especially Secretary of Defence Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Both Gates and Clinton have argued in recent months that attempting to negotiate with Taliban leaders would be fruitless unless and until they have been convinced by U.S. military operations that they are losing.

In an indication that Gates and Clinton intend to resist Obama's proposal to start talks soon, the Times reported that two unnamed officials who attended the meeting said any plans for "reaching out" to the leadership of the Taliban are likely to be delayed until after U.S. forces launch a major military offensive in Kandahar province.

That, of course, is the Gates-Clinton position on the issue, which is also held by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

By suggesting that Obama's suggestion is not likely to prevail, the opponents of early negotiations were expressing confidence that they will once again force him to back away from a position that is unacceptable to the military leadership and the field commander. They succeeded in getting Obama to retreat from his timetable for withdrawal from Iraq in March 2009 and from his initial resistance to a large troop increase in Afghanistan last November.

The argument that will now be made by Clinton, Gates and McChrystal that the administration should wait until after the Kandahar operation is launched before taking any negotiating initiative is evidently aimed at giving McChrystal's command as much time as possible to show successful results against the Taliban before negotiations begin.

The offensive in Kandahar is not expected to begin until this summer, according to military officials, and it could take several months before U.S. troops even get into the city itself. The military and its allies in Obama's war cabinet would certainly argue for delaying talks until the operation could demonstrate clear success. That could mean waiting until well into 2011.

Obama identified mid-2011 as the trigger point for the beginning of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. But Obama will also need to show the U.S. public that he is making progress on an exit strategy by 2012 - the biggest single prod for starting peace negotiations much earlier.

The question of when negotiations with the Taliban might begin has been hanging over the administration's national security team for weeks. As one official told the Times, starting negotiations "is now more a question of 'when' than a question of 'if'."

Gen. McChrystal has been worried that Obama would agree to a negotiated settlement with the Taliban involving a relatively short timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Contrary to the public position voiced frequently by Gates that the Taliban would not negotiate seriously under present conditions, McChrystal understands that there are indications the Taliban leaders would try to use their present strong territorial position as bargaining leverage on a settlement. That was the gist of what an official of McChrystal's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) told IPS in late January.

The Taliban would presumably offer formal guarantees that it would sever all ties with al Qaeda in return for withdrawal of all foreign troops, based on the signal conveyed in an article on the website of the Taliban's Islamic Caliphate of Afghanistan website Dec. 5.

The Washington Post's military correspondents reported Feb. 22 that "senior military officials" had decided to target Marja mainly to convince U.S. public opinion that the U.S. military can be successful in Afghanistan. That shift in perception about military success, in turn, would be expected to translate into a slower troop withdrawal, according to the Post report.

That reasoning implied that a shift in public opinion toward support for military operations in Afghanistan would discourage Obama from agreeing to a short timetable for withdrawal in any negotiations with the Taliban.

When Obama announced a compromise strategy in November, he hinted that the war would have to end through negotiations, but left the question of how and when the United States would participate in those negotiations unresolved. In referring to the military objective in Afghanistan, Obama refused to talk about defeating the Taliban in his Dec. 2 speech. Instead, he referred to "a strategy that will break the Taliban's momentum and increase Afghanistan's capacity over the next 18 months."

That was in sharp contrast to his Mar. 27 speech, in which he referred to the "uncompromising core of the Taliban" and said "they must be defeated". Obama was clearly implying that negotiations would be a necessary part of the strategy.

But Obama provided no explicit policy guidance on when and how negotiations would begin. That allowed Clinton and Gates to continue to offer arguments against such negotiations publicly.

On ABC News Dec. 5, Clinton suggested that there was no reason to believe that the Taliban would agree to the main U.S. demand for an end to all ties with al Qaeda, citing Mullah Omar's refusal to turn over Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. And Gates repeated the argument that the Taliban would only be ready to negotiate after their "momentum" had been stopped.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai had already begun asking the United States to support him in starting negotiations with the Taliban - something Clinton had publicly opposed. Karzai said on Dec. 3 that he would invite Mullah Omar himself to talks.

He let it be known that he would use the London Conference Jan. 27-28 to invite the Taliban to participate in a national "Grand Council" meeting on peace.

That intention heated up the debate in Washington and in McChrystal's ISAF headquarters. In Kabul just four days before the conference, an ISAF official told IPS the issue then under debate within the administration was whether Mullah Omar would be an acceptable participant in a future Afghan government.

"If Mullah Omar were to turn around tomorrow and say he is ready to come back," he asked, "would we be comfortable with that?" The official suggested that the London Conference was an opportunity to achieve consensus on the issue.

Seeking clarification of the U.S.-NATO stance on the issue of Mullah Omar's acceptability now appears to have been aimed at getting a decision against early negotiations with the Taliban leadership. Barring Mullah Omar, the Taliban's spiritual as well as political leader, from participation in any negotiations would have meant, in practical terms, refusing to deal with the Taliban's Leadership Committee.

Back in Washington, however, Obama made no decision to support or oppose Karzai's proposal and, by extension, left open the possible participation by Mullah Omar in talks on a peace agreement.

An administration official recalled recently that the George W. Bush administration adopted a firm policy against reconciliation with the Taliban, and that then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice once told Karzai in a phone conversation to "shut up about reconciliation" with the Taliban. But the Obama administration still hadn't adopted a new policy on the issue, the official told IPS.

Obama's initiative in proposing to take advantage of even modest successes in Afghanistan and Pakistan to start talks suggests that he was waiting for the earliest possible favourable moment politically to make a move toward diplomacy. It remains to be seen, however, whether he is willing to stand up to pressures from opponents of such an initiative or will retreat once again to avoid any confrontation with the military.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam [1]", was published in 2006.

Copyright © 2010 IPS-Inter Press Service

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

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/15-6

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The War in Afghanistan and the Central Asia Pipeline Plan

By Bruce Gagnon
 
Global Research, March 14, 2010
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18119
Organizing Notes 


The Washington Post has introduced us to a controversy over Afghanistan war strategy. The Post reports that operations in Delaram (in the southwest) are "far from a strategic priority for senior officers at the international military headquarters in Kabul. One calls Delaram, a day's drive from the nearest city, 'the end of the Earth.' Another deems the area 'unrelated to our core mission' of defeating the Taliban by protecting Afghans in their cities and towns."


Why then are the Marines fighting in this part of the country?


The Post continues, "The Marines are constructing a vast base on the outskirts of town that will have two airstrips, an advanced combat hospital, a post office, a large convenience store and rows of housing trailers stretching as far as the eye can see. By this summer, more than 3,000 Marines -- one-tenth of the additional troops authorized by President Obama in December -- will be based here."


Again the Post adds, "They [some officials] question whether a large operation that began last month to flush the Taliban out of Marja, a poor farming community in central Helmand, is the best use of Marine resources. Although it has unfolded with fewer than expected casualties and helped to generate a perception of momentum in the U.S.-led military campaign, the mission probably will tie up two Marine battalions and hundreds of Afghan security forces until the summer."


And finally the Post reports, "Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, the top Marine commander in Afghanistan now wants Marine units to push through miles of uninhabited desert to establish control of a crossing point for insurgents, drugs and weapons on the border with Pakistan. And he wants to use the new base in Delaram to mount more operations in Nimruz, a part of far southwestern Afghanistan deemed so unimportant that it is one of the only provinces where there is no U.S. or NATO reconstruction team."

When you check the maps above a clearer picture emerges. The bottom map is the proposed pipeline route to move Caspian Sea oil through Turkmenistan into Afghanistan and then finally through Pakistan to ports along the Arabian Sea where U.S. and British tankers would gorge themselves with the black gold.

The whole reason the U.S. is in Afghanistan and Pakistan today is to deny those pipelines from being routed through Russia, China, or Iran.

Then look at the top map where the U.S. Marines are operating inside Afghanistan and causing some controversy within the military. They are building big bases in desolate southwestern Afghanistan and wanting to extend control in that region near the border of Pakistan - all of which are areas that must "be controlled" if pipelines are to be successfully built and maintained.
 

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Afghan President Orders Extra Forces to Kandahar
 
 
16/03/2010 08:29:53 AM GMT     
 
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Afghan-President-Orders-Extra-Forces-to-Kandahar.html

 
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered extra security forces to Kandahar, a strategic southern city, following a series of suicide attacks that killed 35 people, Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar said Monday.
   
"The Afghan president has ordered new security forces for better security of Kandahar," Atmar told reporters.
   
A number of massive explosions rocked Kandahar city, capital of Kandahar province, late Saturday in what was one of the biggest coordinated assaults by the Taliban.
   
Provincial governor Turyalai Wisa said Sunday he had requested more troops to help secure the city from further attacks by the Taliban, who regard it as their spiritual center.
 
The Taliban claimed responsibility and said the attack was a pre-emptive response to plans by Afghan and NATO forces to launch anti-insurgent operations in Kandahar.
   
Atmar, who visited the city on Monday to offer condolences to the victims' families, said military operations in Kandahar would begin "after consultations with tribal elders".
¬
Source: Al Manar
 

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March 16th, 2010
04:33 AM ET
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/16/pentagon-investigating-purported-ad-hoc-spy-network/?hpt=T2
 
 Pentagon investigating purported ad hoc spy network

The Department of Defense has launched an investigation into whether a $24 million contract to gather information about developments in towns and villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan may have been inappropriately used instead to run an ad hoc spy ring, according to U.S. military officials.

Concern within the Central Intelligence Agency about the contract prompted the investigation, officials said. An investigation by the Defense Department's inspector general is under way, according to a U.S. defense official. It's not clear whether that is the only investigation.

The contract was meant to be limited to gathering what is known as "open-source information," in which material is gathered in an unclassified manner from, for example, local media and public events.

The contractors may have instead hired local agents to gather information on the specific locations and movements of particular individuals and passed it along to military officials for possible lethal strikes, according to government officials and private-sector businessmen familiar with the investigation.

Military officials say the concern is that contract money used for open-source information cannot be used to target individuals. But a source close to the man overseeing the program says there is an exception if there is a demonstrated threat to U.S. forces and "force protection can be invoked as a reason."

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South Asia
Mar 17, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LC17Df03.html 
 
Say hello to Marjah ... or 'Little America'


By Peter Lee

To Western reporters, Helmand is the poppy-growing heartland of the Taliban and the home of Marjah, the demonstration project for the Barack Obama administration's new and improved Afghan strategy, "Operation Moshtarak" (Together).

To the locals, the irrigated heartland of Helmand has another name: "Little America".

To the good fortune of observers interested in the context of current US counter-insurgency operations, the backstory of Helmand is told in one of the best books written about modern Afghanistan, Opium Season, by Joel Hafverstein (The Lyons Press: Guilford, Connecticut, 2007).

Hafverstein's book centers on the year he spent working as a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) contractor in the province of Helmand in the vicinity of the village of Marjah, the focus of the highly publicized "Operation Moshtarak", which sent 15,000 Western and Afghan troops into Marjah and surrounding areas to drive out the Taliban in February and to raise the Afghan flag over the village after several years of Taliban control.

"Moshtarak" is the centerpiece of the bigger, better and smarter "clear, hold, build and transfer" strategy. After Marjah is subdued, the armed forces will stick around and ensure that the Karzai government is able to effectively administer the area.

General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, inadvertently invoking an unfortunate coffin analogy, declared stoutly, "We've got a government in a box, ready to roll in." [1]

There's been a lot of informational warfare related to the campaign, in order to convince a weary international audience that Marjah is stern and successful proof that the West has discovered the will and the way to lick the Taliban. As Gareth Porter pointed out in his article Marjah: The City That Never Was [2], the epic character of the battle of Marjah has been somewhat overstated. A US Army briefing started the meme that Marjah was a "city of 80,000". As the story developed, it also became an "opium capital of Afghanistan" filled with 1,000 Taliban ready to fight to the death.
Marjah, however, is not an Afghan Fallujah, an urbanized, hostile bastion of anti-Western fanatics that must be subdued through savage street-by-street, house-by-house fighting, as happened in the Iraqi city.

It's a little market center, fields, ditches and mud houses with a tradition of close American engagement that dates to the 1950s when, as Hafverstein's book tell us, the Helmand River region was known as "Little America".

From the perspective of agriculture and urbanization, virtually the only worthwhile part of Helmand province is the small patch of green near the banks of the Helmand River. In the 1950s, the Harry S Truman administration embarked on an aid project to support the Afghan government in extending that patch of green into the surrounding countryside with an Afghan version of the Tennessee Valley Authority: the HAVA (Helmand-Arghandab Valley Authority).

American engineering giant Morrison-Knudsen dammed the Helmand and Arghandab rivers and built a network of irrigation and drainage canals to bring water to communities - like Marjah - near the Helmand. Morrison-Knudsen also built most of the city of Lashkar Gah - the capital of Helmand province where the two rivers come together - in the US image of tract houses and tree-lined streets, in order to house its engineers and operations.

Lashkar Gah, now a city of 200,000 people, has always been firmly under Afghan government control. Operation Moshtarak should be understood as an effort to extend effective control into Lashkar Gah's irrigated rural hinterlands.

Google Earth has recently uploaded a set of images that show Lashkar Gah and the area around it with eerie clarity. You can see the neat American-style streets and structures at the heart of the provincial capital, and the hulking HAVA headquarters - the largest building - that provided the office space for Hafverstein's USAID activities. There is the Helmand River, a narrow, deeper channel meandering through a broad, desiccated riverbed. You see a palm-shaped patch of green in the surrounding flats, veined by Morrison Knudsen's irrigation canals. Upriver are the two jewel-like reservoirs created by damming the rivers.

And a few kilometers west of Lashkar Gah, across the river at 31 degrees 32' 22 north, longitude: 64 degrees 9' 28 east, you can see Marjah. Not a lot of there there, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein's famous remark about Oakland, California: a few compounds scattered between fields crisscrossed by roads and the ubiquitous canals.

Far up beyond the irrigated region is Nawzad, mysteriously and imperiously renamed Now Zad for the visit of US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on March 10.

Apparently because Marjah was still in the clear-hold part of the process and not completely pacified, Gates visited Nawzad instead to extol a success story, albeit one dating from last December: the US Marines' successful expulsion of a determined Taliban presence from Nawzad, an old-fashioned confrontation that, instead of creating a welcome new sense of security had depopulated the town of 25,000.

Nawzad is in Hafverstein's book, too. Roads go into Nawzad, he notes, but don't go anywhere else. The town hugs a riverbed in a narrow valley, butting up against the mountainous wastes of Helmand's north, the stronghold of a pro-Taliban warlord.

Google Earth shows lines of stippled dots - each representing a manway accessing the indigenous irrigation tunnels - the ancient karez of Central Asia - that serve as the substitute for the modern canals of the Helmand River Valley and the focus of USAID's engagement with the remote valley.

It isn't Helmand's heartland - it's a distant and contested frontier, and a hint that the US writ might not reach beyond the populated agricultural centers to the wild and mountainous north of the province.

Hafverstein arrived in Lashkar Gah in 2004 to participate in a USAID project to provide alternate incomes - and compensation for the economic disruption of the opium eradication campaign - by paying thousands of locals to do pick-and-shovel work clearing out the silted-up drainage canals that keep the irrigated fields from becoming waterlogged and salinated.

In contrast to the military - Lashkar Gah was also home to a euphemistically-named "Provincial Reconstruction Team" composed of a hunkered-down National Guard battalion - the USAID team accumulated considerable local knowledge, contacts and goodwill in places like Marjah, Babaji and Nawzad as it staffed up with local hires, purchased thousands of shovels and negotiated with local leaders for access, labor and security.

The mission ended tragically as several local members of the USAID staff were murdered, perhaps at the order of opium lords angry at USAID's diversion of labor that was urgently needed for the opium harvest.

Hafverstein's thoughtful and knowledgeable book provides a vivid picture of the dynamics of Afghan rural life It includes portraits of Afghan co-workers that are sympathetic and, in light of the horrible end some of them met, extremely poignant.

In one passage, Hafverstein explains Afghan attitudes toward opium - and other intoxicants:
In Afghanistan, where all drugs were officially illegal, there was no question about the relative gravity of drug use. Hashish smoking was a widespread peccadillo, opium smoking (as distinct from heroin) only moderately more serious. Down here in Pashtun country, alcohol was the truly wicked drug, the addictive life-destroyer explicitly condemned by God. People indulged in it, certainly, but almost always in bad conscience. And the alcohol trade was a Western hypocrisy which the farmers of Helmand felt very acutely. "Why can American farmers grow wine and send it here, but we are bad men if we grow poppy and send it back?" I heard on a trip to Nad-i-Ali.
 
 
The USAID office also had to rely on the informal Islamic banking network, the hawaladars, that presumably derived its cash liquidity from the opium trade, to provide the sackfuls of cash needed to pay thousands of workers for their labor. However, USAID drew the line at buying equipment and materials originating in Iran - unless the labels indicating the sanctionable country of origin were discretely disappeared by the Afghan vendors.

Hafverstein provides insights into the perceptions and priorities of Americans "on the ground" in Afghanistan.

In Hafverstein's interactions with his staff - educated, hopeful, pro-American, addicted to Bollywood movies and viscerally opposed to the Taliban - one sees the US banking on the emergence of a bulwark of sophisticated Afghans who look to Washington and New Delhi as their natural allies against the Pakistan-supported Islamic Pashtun warlords.

He also illustrates the possibility that a Washington-friendly successor regime that doesn't hold with the Taliban/Pakistan alliance might raise the banner of a united Pashtunistan - and dismember Pakistan in the process.

An Afghan co-worker told Hafverstein: "I believe that in another 10 or 20 years, we will either have Afghanistan or Pakistan, but not both."

One also sees clearly that in 2004 there was no significant Taliban presence in the heart of Helmand province - but the local power structure of opportunistic warlords and calculating village elders had never left.

In his account of the struggles between powerful local families and warlords, Hafverstein highlights how warring factions call in support from the Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or the regime of President Hamid Karzai to attain an advantage. When one grouping demonstrated a decisive advantage in money and military throw-weight, the locals quickly slide into line.

The "Taliban" label could also be conveniently slapped onto a variety of local power struggles and score-settling:
I remember a story we had heard about Mir Wali, the governor of Helmand's main rival warlord, that illustrated the many uses of Taliban assaults. Back in September, the Kabul government had sent a police platoon to relieve Mir Wali of responsibility for security along the Helmand section of the national ring road. The commander ... had graciously complied, withdrawing his militia from the potentially lucrative highway checkpoints. Days after the national police takeover, the checkpoints had been hit by coordinated "Taliban" attacks for the first time in months. Fifteen policemen had been killed, and Mir Wali immediately reclaimed control of the road, berating the Kabul government and [Helmand] governor Sher Muhammad for their inability to keep order. There had been no further assaults on the checkpoints.
Hafverstein refutes a widely held view in the West - that opium was a key to Taliban power. As he persuasively demonstrates, the root of Taliban power is the ability to provide - or withhold - security. Opium production and trade is simply one of the most important areas in which the battle to establish a dominant security regime plays out.

Hafverstein makes it clear that eradicating opium without providing security will simply impoverish and infuriate Afghan farmers and make them yearn for the relative economic stability of Taliban control.

"We destroyed the bridge over our own canal, so no police tractor can reach these fields," a villager told me defiantly ... "All of us have too much debt," [declared a village elder]. "If we had jobs, no one would grow taryak [poppy] ... We know that taryak is far from Islam. But our children need to live. Any human being would do it. Give us jobs, and it will be the end for taryak."

It is no surprise that the US decided to roll out its new and improved Afghan strategy in the familiar and sympathetic environs of the Helmand River valley.

Nevertheless, the dominant instinct of the military is to attempt to repeat past successes as a way to overcome new challenges - an inclination that critics describe as "fighting the last war". Therefore, the US has announced its intention of duplicating its declared successes in Marjah and Helmand in the true heartland of the Taliban: the provincial capital of Kandahar.

The US military has announced that its summer "target" is Kandahar, the "centerpiece" as the Western media described it, of America's Afghan strategy, to which Marjah was "the prelude" [3] and a "confidence-builder" [4] .

However, Kandahar, a cultural and economic center of 800,000 people, is a vastly different place from the rural market village of Marjah.

For one thing, the Afghan government runs the place.

The somewhat bewildered Western media are attempting to shoehorn a dramatic narrative of urban conquest into the reality that Kandahar is - and always has been - under Afghan government control, with the Taliban competing with the municipal and provincial government for neighborhood loyalties.

McChrystal confessed that "Kandahar has not been under Taliban control, it's been under a menacing Taliban presence, particularly in the districts around it". [5]

Given the stated imperative that the US and Afghan governments establish control over a sizable city that they, at least nominally, already control, it is not surprising that one Washington Beltway pundit remarked: "I get the sense that [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] commanders aren't really sure what they should do there." [6]

The US strategy seems to regard the suburbs of Kandahar as a succession of Marjahs that the military will subdue militarily and then overawe with superior governance.

Once the struggle enters the city itself, however, the path to "comprehensive population security" in Kandahar is by no means clear. Also not clear is whether the US has a roadmap of equal quality and detail in Kandahar as it did in "Little America".

Notes
1. David E Sanger, A Test for the Meaning of Victory in Afghanistan, New York Times, February 13, 2010.
2. Gareth Porter, Marjah: The City that Never Was, Asia Times, March 10, 2010.
3. Anne Kornblut and Greg Jaffe, In Afghanistan, US Plans Major Push into Kandahar, Washington Post, February 27, 2010.
4. Ross Colvin and Sue Pleming, US to Launch Operation in Kandahar City, Reuters, February 26, 2010.
5. Plans Are Laid for New Afghan Offensive, New York Times, March 9, 2010.
6. Saeed Shah, Approaching Fight for Kandahar May Be Crucial Stage in Afghanistan War, The Guardian, February 21, 2010.


Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.

http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LC17Df04.html

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Central Asia
Mar 17, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/LC17Ag01.html 
 
Petraeus drums up support in Kyrgyzstan


By Farangis Najibullah

The head of United States Central Command, General David Petraeus, has met with Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in Bishkek to discuss bilateral cooperation and the situation in Afghanistan.

The visit comes a day after US diplomats confirmed Washington would provide US$5.5 million to the Kyrgyz government toward the construction of a counter-terrorism training center in southern Kyrgyzstan. The US Embassy in Bishkek, in a "talking points" memo issued on March 9, said construction of the center would begin next year, and that it will belong to Kyrgyzstan.

The memo also stated, "The US does not have and is not seeking to obtain a base in southern Kyrgyzstan." Nevertheless, Petraeus' visit came amid speculation that the planned training center could irritate Russia, which has plans for a military base in that area, as well as regional actors like Iran, which today expressed concerns over the presence of "foreign military bases" in the region.

The meeting was not open to the media and was not followed by a press conference, but a statement on the Kyrgyz president's website said Petraeus thanked Kyrgyzstan for its support of the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

Bakiyev said that "all the main challenges and security threats to Central Asia" come from Afghanistan, adding, "Therefore, Kyrgyzstan is interested in providing security and stability in this country, and it will continue to offer its endeavor for rebuilding Afghanistan - along with the international community."

Bishkek's role in Afghan mission
Kyrgyzstan hosts a US transit center in Manas airport outside Bishkek, which plays a key role supplying US-led military operations in Afghanistan and has been at the center of international attention for months.

A US air base was located in Manas from December 2001, but during a visit to Moscow in early 2009, Bakiyev announced that the base would be closed down within six months. The decision was reportedly due to Bishkek and Washington's failure to agree on a higher rent for the base. But speculation was rife that Moscow, which had expressed concerns over the duration of the US stay at Manas, had won Bakiyev over with pledges to provide more than $2 billion in loans, debt forgiveness and other incentives.

That announcement was followed months later by an announcement by the Russian-dominated Collective Security and Cooperation Organization that it planned to set up a counter-terrorism facility in the Batken region. Kyrgyzstan is already home to a Russian air base in Kant, some 40 kilometers from Manas.

Just ahead of the six-month deadline for US forces to evacuate Manas, a series of negotiations between Kyrgyz and US officials resulted in a new lease under which the status of the property was changed from "air base" to "transit center". Washington agreed to pay $60 million annual rent for Manas, three times more than previously.

However, the new Manas lease will expire in June 2010, prompting US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke during his recent visit to Bishkek to express Washington's willingness to extend the contract. The issue also was seen as a likely topic of conversation during Petraeus' visit.

New counter-terror center
On the eve of Petraeus' visit, in announcing the planned funding for the construction of a counter-terrorism training center, the US Embassy in Bishkek said it was "part of broader US-Kyrgyz security cooperation that has recently included the construction of the Besh-Kungei military hospital and the special forces, Scorpion compound in the town of Tokmok."

The March 9 memo also said the United States has undertaken several humanitarian projects in Kyrgyzstan, including the renovation of a school in Birdik and the planned construction of a women's shelter at a women's business development center.

Bakiyev has frequently expressed concerns over security in recent years. In June 2009, while the Pakistani government was engaged in a major offensive against Taliban insurgents dug in along its northwestern border with Afghanistan, he noted the seriousness of the situation. "If the conflict against the Taliban further deepens in Afghanistan, then toward which direction would they escape?" he asked. "God save us, but they would

toward Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan."

Why Batken?
Bakiyev has also in the past underlined the possible threats of extremist groups infiltrating southern Kyrgyzstan, which was once targeted by Uzbek militants.

Armed fighters from the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) entered Batken in 1999, kidnapping the local mayor and Japanese geologists. The hostages were subsequently freed after a large ransom was reportedly paid and a helicopter was provided to fly the militants to Afghanistan.

Located in the volatile Ferghana Valley, Batken also borders Tajikistan's Tavildara area, a onetime stronghold of Islamic opposition forces with close ties to IMU leaders. The US plans for a counter-terrorism training center will apparently bolster Kyrgyzstan's efforts to strengthen security in its southern region, but some observers believe the plan could upset Moscow.

Russia has not officially commented on the announced US plans for a base in Batken. But Aleksandr Knyazev, a political analyst for the CIS Institute in Bishkek who is seen as favoring the Kremlin's point of view, says Bishkek is being "irresponsible", seeing as the Kyrgyz economy depends on Russian investment to a great extent.

Throwing down the gauntlet
"Such a demonstrative act by the Kyrgyz side to agree - or to initiate, most likely - to [build the US-funded counter-terrorism center] is like throwing down a challenge to Russia and China," Knyazev says. "From a purely military point of view, any American military base on Kyrgyz territory cannot threaten Russian interests. Russia dominates in this region in any case. It's clear. But [Bishkek's plan] is only an irritation of a political nature for Russia, and a reason to withdraw from investment projects."

One country has officially commented on the presence of Western military facilities in Central Asia. Without mentioning any specific location, Iran's Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said on March 8 that "foreign military bases in the region do not contribute to the strengthening of [regional] stability, but originate from interventional and expansionists aims".

Mottaki said regional leaders - before signing agreements over hosting foreign military bases in their territories - should consider whether these bases wouldn't create threats to neighboring countries.

RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service contributed to this report.

Copyright (c) 2010, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036

(To view the original article please click here.) 
 
 

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Regaining Control of the Afghanistan Debate

by Josh Mull

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64209&hd=&size=1&l=e

March 15, 2010

Check out this short piece from NBC on an Afghan orphanage:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/35825767#35825767

Note that Afghanistan is referred to as a "dangerous" place with children "orphaned by war." But that’s OK, the subject of the piece is running a "happy place." Not only that, but she’s graciously being honored with some kind of award by the Washington establishment. Everybody gets to contribute to helping those poor, orphaned Afghans. Yay! And that’s it. 46 seconds. When originally broadcast, that snippet was followed up by several minutes of reporting on President Obama’s Nobel Prize donation to charity, because …he’s such a great guy and clearly more important?

But why is Afghanistan so dangerous? Why are all those children orphaned by war? What war? Didn’t the Washington establishment start that war? They’re giving awards to people who manage to round up all the surviving children from their bombing campaigns? If they had taken slightly longer than 46 seconds and provided the context to answer these questions, the whole affair would seem much more sickening and depraved, not something we should be happy about. Although it’s a lot more subtle than 2002, the media is still holding us back from having an honest debate on the wars we’re fighting.

This headline from the New York Times is instructive:

White House Weighs Talks With Taliban After Afghan Successes

It’s taken as fact that there have been "successes" in Afghanistan, and this story is just speculation on what might happen after those successes. There’s no discussion on whether or not you can count slaughtering more Afghan civilians than the Taliban as successfully protecting the population, or if installing a German expat who hasn’t been to Helmand in years is successful local governance, or even if capturing the moderate Taliban and radicalizing the remaining leadership will be successful at negotiating a withdrawal. Nope, just straight out "Afghan Successes" and what those successful war makers plan to do next.

We are forced into a position here of being for or against a successful war in Afghanistan. It’s never a good thing to be against something successful, so clearly the only rational choice is to be for the aggressive military violence against Afghanistan. How can you make a reasonable argument against the war when you’re trapped in the box of being against success? That’s not an honest debate.

Let’s look at another example, this time from an opinion piece by Michael O’Hanlon and Hassina Sherjon in the Washington Post. The only thing really honest in this piece is the headline, "Five myths about the war in Afghanistan," although technically O’Hanlon manages to propagate way more than just five myths.

1. Afghans always hate and defeat their invaders.

The Afghans drove the British Empire out of their country in the 19th century and did the same to the Soviet Union in the 20th century. They do fight fiercely; many American troops who have been deployed both in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years have asserted that the Afghans are stronger natural fighters.

Yet, the people of Afghanistan do not despise foreigners. Despite downward trends in recent years, Afghans are far more accepting of an international presence in their country than are Iraqis, for example, who typically gave the U.S. presence approval ratings of 15 to 30 percent in the early years of the war in that country. Average U.S. favorability ratings in recent surveys in Afghanistan are around 50 percent, and according to polls from ABC, the BBC and the International Republican Institute, about two-thirds of Afghans recognize that they still need foreign help.

So they debunk the racist myth that Afghans are xenophobic murder-machines (think "Graveyard of Empires") by immediately affirming its validity; American troops say Afghans are "stronger natural fighters" than Iraqis. Great, so not all Afghans are genetically pre-disposed to killing all foreigners, just more so than Iraqis. Even so, they continue, "the people of Afghanistan do not despise foreigners." Except for when they do. Got it.

But that last fragment there is probably the best example of how the American war debate operates. "About two-thirds of Afghans recognize that they still need foreign help," they write, which would seem to mean that we should continue on with our mission. But there’s a difference between "foreign help" and a massive influx of foreign combat troops, secret prisons, robotic airstrikes, vast base complexes, and scores and scores of dead civilians.

So either you’re for the aggressive war against Afghanistan and Pakistan, or you’re against those poor, America-loving Afghans who need foreign assistance, a full two thirds of the population by their count. Golly, I don’t want to be against two-thirds of Afghanistan, so I guess we have to support the war!

Why are we stuck in these binary choices? Surely the anti-war movement is offering more nuanced, reasonable arguments to the debate? Sadly, we’re not. As we discussed on Friday, the biggest policy move so far has been H.Con.Res. 248, a bill which simply called for the immediate removal of troops from Afghanistan. Your choice is to be completely against any involvement in Afghanistan, or being for the current war strategy.

There are legitimate concerns over Afghanistan that Americans want to address with policy; human rights, counter-terrorism, narco-trafficking, good governance, development and reconstruction. The proponents of the war say we ought to use aggressive military power to deal with that, and opponents have no better solutions to offer, so they fail. Unlike the war makers, who benefit greatly from confusing and deceptive arguments, the anti-war movement is actually harmed by putting forth such irrational, binary choices.

As we talked about last week, we have to do more than just be against the war. We have to expand the debate and allow for other solutions to be discussed besides just removing the troops. Obviously, the media is not going to be any help at all, so we’re going to have to pick up the slack ourselves and help craft an honest, open debate on what to do about the Afghanistan war.

How do we deal with counter-terrorism without foreign occupation? Perhaps we could expand FBI resources and enhance domestic security measures. How do we provide development and reconstruction aid to Afghans without military aggression? I can’t seem to Google up any stories about the Red Cross or the World Food Program accidentally blowing up 14 civilians with rockets. Maybe we could use more of them than our military?

These are just random suggestions, but it’s still more than offering the unfair choice of being against the war or being for it. We can answer the war makers’ arguments with better solutions than military violence, we just haven’t tried yet.

So drop me a line in the comments, and head over to Rethink Afghanistan’s Facebook page and join the debate there. Help us develop a reasonable alternative policy for dealing with Afghanistan so that we don’t have to be trapped in a dishonest, closed debate. Ending the war is a given, but how do we address the remaining issues in Afghanistan?

I am the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. You can read my work on The Seminal or at Rethink Afghanistan.

 

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March 15, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/world/asia/16afghan.html?hp

U.S. Is Reining In Special Forces in Afghanistan

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ROD NORDLAND


Hajji Sharaf Udin, whose home near Gardez, Afghanistan, was raided last month, has rejected compensation money

KABUL, Afghanistan — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has brought most American Special Operations forces under his direct control for the first time, out of concern over continued civilian casualties and disorganization among units in the field.

“What happens is, sometimes at cross-purposes, you got one hand doing one thing and one hand doing the other, both trying to do the right thing but working without a good outcome,” General McChrystal said in an interview.

Critics, including Afghan officials, human rights workers and some field commanders of conventional American forces, say that Special Operations forces have been responsible for a large number of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan and operate by their own rules.

Maj. Gen. Zahir Azimi, the chief spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said that General McChrystal had told Afghan officials he was taking the action because of concern that some American units were not following his orders to make limiting civilian casualties a paramount objective.

“These special forces were not accountable to anyone in the country, but General McChrystal and we carried the burden of the guilt for the mistakes they committed,” he said. “Whenever there was some problem with the special forces we didn’t know who to go to, it was muddled and unclear who was in charge.”

General McChrystal has made reducing civilian casualties a cornerstone of his new counterinsurgency strategy, and his campaign has had some success: last year, civilian deaths attributed to the United States military were cut by 28 percent, although there were 596 civilian deaths attributed to coalition forces, according to United Nations figures. Afghan and United Nations officials blame Special Operations troops for most of those deaths.

“In most of the cases of civilian casualties, special forces are involved,” said Mohammed Iqbal Safi, head of the defense committee in the Afghan Parliament, who participated in joint United States-Afghan investigations of civilian casualties last year. “We’re always finding out they are not obeying the rules that other forces have to in Afghanistan.”

“These forces often operate with little or no accountability and exacerbate the anger and resentment felt by communities,” the Human Rights Office of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan wrote in its report on protection of civilians for 2009.

Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, General McChrystal’s deputy chief of staff for communications, cautioned against putting undue blame on Special Operations forces. Since night raids are dangerous, and most missions take place at night, most of them are carried out by the more highly trained special groups. In January, General McChrystal issued restrictions on night raids.

Admiral Smith said that General McChrystal had issued the new directive on Special Operations forces within “the last two or three weeks.” While it is being circulated for comment within the military and has not been formally announced, General McChrystal has already put it into practical effect, he said.

Only detainee operations and “very small numbers of U.S. S.O.F.,” or Special Operations forces, are exempted from the directive, Admiral Smith said. That is believed to include elite groups like the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s Seals.

Previously, Special Operations forces in Afghanistan often had separate chains of command to their own headquarters elsewhere. That remained true even after General McChrystal was appointed last year and consolidated the NATO and American military commands under his own control.

Three recent high profile cases of civilian casualties illustrate the concern over Special Operations forces.

On Feb. 21 in Oruzgan Province, a small Special Operations forces unit heard that a group of Taliban were heading their way and called for air support. Attack helicopters killed 27 civilians in three trucks, mistaking them for the Taliban.

Military video appeared to show the victims were civilians, and no weapons were recovered from them. “What I saw on that video would not have led me to pull the trigger,” one NATO official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with his department’s rules. “It was one of the worst things I’ve seen in a while.”

General McChrystal promptly apologized for the Oruzgan episode, both directly to Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, and in a videotaped statement released to local television stations.

On Feb. 12 in a village near Gardez, in Paktia Province, Afghan police special forces paired with American Special Operations forces raided a house late at night looking for two Taliban suspects, and instead killed a local police chief and a district prosecutor when they came out, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, to investigate. Three women who came to their aid, according to interviews with family members and friends, were also killed; one was a pregnant mother of 10, the other a pregnant mother of 6.

A press release from the International Security Assistance Force, as NATO’s force here is known, said at first that the three women had been discovered bound and gagged, apparently killed execution style. NATO officials now say their bodies were wrapped in traditional manner before burial. Admiral Smith said Afghan forces fired the shots in the compound.

“The regret is that two innocent males died,” Admiral Smith said. “The women, I’m not sure anyone will ever know how they died.” He added, however, “I don’t know that there are any forensics that show bullet penetrations of the women or blood from the women.” He said they showed signs of puncture and slashing wounds from a knife, and appeared to have died several hours before the arrival of the assault force. In respect for Afghan customs, autopsies are not carried out on civilian victims, he said.

Interviews with relatives and family friends give a starkly different account and described an American cover-up. They say a large number of people had gathered for a party in honor of the birth of a grandson of the owner of the house, Hajji Sharaf Udin. After most had gone to sleep, the police commander, Mr. Udin’s son, Mohammed Daoud, went out to investigate the arrival of armed men and was shot fatally.

When a second son, Mohammed Zahir, went out to talk to the Americans because he spoke some English, he too was shot and killed. The three women — Mr. Udin’s 19-year-old granddaughter, Gulalai; his 37-year-old daughter, Saleha, the mother of 10 children; and his daughter-in-law, Shirin, the mother of six — were all gunned down when they tried to help the victims, these witnesses claimed.

All the survivors interviewed insisted that Americans, who they said were not in uniform, conducted the raid and the killings, and entered the compound before Afghan forces. Among the witnesses was Sayid Mohammed Mal, vice chancellor of Gardez University, whose son’s fiancée, Gulalai, was killed. “They were killed by the Americans,” he said. “If the government doesn’t listen to us, I have 50 family members, I’ll bring them all to Gardez roundabout and we’ll pour petrol on ourselves and burn ourselves to death.”

On Dec. 26 in Kunar Province, a night raid was launched on what authorities thought was a Taliban training facility; they later discovered that they had killed all nine religious students in a residential school. Admiral Smith said United States Special Operations forces were nearby at the time, but not directly involved in the attack, which was carried out by an Afghan unit.

Admiral Smith confirmed that all three events, which took place outside of any larger battle, involved Special Operations forces. But he said that General McChrystal’s unified command initiative was not in response to those events.

He depicted General McChrystal’s new policy as a natural outgrowth of the general’s plans all along to unify his command; when he first took charge, he brought together under his control what had been separate NATO and American command structures in Afghanistan.

The NATO official said that the unified command initiative would be obeyed, though it was not universally popular. “They may not like it, they may not want to follow it, but they are going to follow it,” the official said.

Aides to General McChrystal say he has been deeply troubled by the continuing episodes of civilian casualties, including the three major ones still under investigation. “You won’t believe how focused on these issues this command is, almost more than anything else,” the NATO official said.

Mr. Safi, the Parliament member, expressed concern that with the continued exemption of some Special Operations units from the directive, the problem of civilian casualties would continue. “If they are excluded, naturally it means the same thing will happen,” he said. “If there are individuals who do not obey McChrystal, then what are they doing in this country?”

General McChrystal addressed that concern in the interview. “There are no operators in this country that I am not absolutely comfortable do exactly what I want them to do,” he said. “So I don’t have any complaints about that, particularly after the latest change.”

Tension between Special Operations and conventional commanders has often surfaced in the American military, but General McChrystal himself has a great deal of credibility in the black operations world. Before he became the top commander in Afghanistan, he was in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and Afghanistan, which ran elite, secretive counterterrorism units, believed to include Delta Force and the Seals, hunting high-value targets.


Reporting was contributed by Sangar Rahimi in Kabul; Alissa J. Rubin in Kunar, Afghanistan; Thom Shanker in Washington; and an employee of The New York Times in Khost, Afghanistan.

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Pentagon Vows Investigation Into Contractor Assassination Team

Pentagon Official Hired Private Contractors to Kill Suspects

by Jason Ditz, March 15, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/03/15/pentagon-vows-investigation-into-contractor-assassination-team/
 

The Pentagon has promised that it will look into allegations that Pentagon official Michael D. Furlong channeled money to a secret program to create a team of private contractor assassins in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Officials who confirmed the program to the New York Times say that Furlong hired former CIA and Special Forces operatives through a program meant to gather information about tribes in the region.

Officials said they couldn’t confirm who, if anyone, had signed off on the program, which amounted to an off-the-books spying and assassination ring, but they said Furlong often would brag about his contacts and the attacks he had started.

One of the companies implicated in the report, International Media Ventures, is on the books officially as a “media analysis” group. Managed by former US army commados, the group is said to have been part of Furlong’s scheme.

Furlong was listed as the Deputy Commander of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element for SOCOM from August 2005-February 2008. Since then he is a Strategic Planner and Technology Integration Adviser at Lackland AFB.

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March 15, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/asia/15joya.html?ref=world

An Afghan Politician Pushes for a Comeback

By CAROLINE BROTHERS

Malalai Joya, the youngest elected politician in Afghanistan, in Canada in 2009.

PARIS — The people who want to silence Malalai Joya, the youngest elected politician in Afghanistan, are doing a pretty good job of it in her own country.

She has been expelled from Parliament. She has been barred from appearing in the Afghan media after denouncing the role of the warlords in politics.

What is more, she has received so many death threats that she now lives what she calls a fugitive’s life, changing safe houses every night under the protection of her bodyguards and her burqa. Even the flowers at her wedding were checked for bombs.

But Ms. Joya, 31, is speaking out nonetheless, hoping to engineer a political comeback in legislative elections scheduled for September.

Long an activist for democracy and women’s rights, Ms. Joya has survived at least four assassination attempts.

“My agenda is clear,” she said last month while in Paris for the French publication of her memoir, “A Woman Among Warlords.” “I’m risking my life to one day bring these criminals to court.”

Her confrontational approach has made her the scourge of many of the powers that be in her country. But it has also divided those who might be considered her allies. Nader Nadery, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, called her “a populist” during a newspaper interview last year, and said that “this is not always helpful.”

By law, 25 percent of seats in the Afghan Parliament are reserved for women. But Samira Hamidi, country director for the advocacy group Afghan Women’s Network, said she feared that security problems, and a lack of education and experience, would block the fulfillment of that promise.

Moreover, planned amendments to Afghan electoral law, including one that stipulates that any vacant seat be filled, will erode female representation, Ms. Hamidi said during an interview by telephone last month. “If we don’t get women from remote provinces, that means those seats will be filled by men, and that will decrease the number of women in Parliament,” she said.

In Ms. Joya’s case, security will be an overriding concern. “Just moving from house to house is a very big risk for me,” Ms. Joya said. Still, she has no lack of potential platforms. Supporters in five jurisdictions have asked her to represent them. They include Jalalabad, Nimroz, Takhar, Kabul and Farah — the western province that sent her first to the loya jirga, or traditional assembly, that ratified the Constitution, then elected her to Parliament, at age 27, in 2005.

She originally rose to prominence in 2003 for denouncing the presence of the warlords at the assembly in a speech cut off after 90 seconds. In response, she was called a communist and a prostitute and was mobbed and finally escorted from the building by supporters and U.N. officials, who installed her in a safe house. Later that night, she recounts in her memoir, a crowd came looking for her, threatening to rape and murder her, and tore apart the room she had vacated.

Her banishment from Parliament in 2007 followed her renewed criticisms of its warlord members and their allies. Her microphone was routinely cut off whenever she tried to speak, and members of Parliament hurled water bottles and sandals at her when she denounced what she said were criminal mujahedeen in the house. She was finally expelled when her opponents seized on inflammatory comments she had made in a broadcast interview — even though the expulsion process did not follow constitutional rules.

Now, preparing her political comeback, Ms. Joya said she would prefer to run as a candidate in the capital. “Security is much better in Kabul,” she said. “In the northern areas, the warlords have the upper hand, and they can eliminate me easily.”

Even if she gets the votes, Ms. Joya, whose supporters have grown to include groups of doctors and university students, says she may not be allowed to win. “What matters is not who is voting, it’s who is counting,” she said.

Lacking access to broadcasters and the media within Afghanistan means that her message “for women’s rights, for human rights, against injustice and occupation,” can be spread only by telephone, by clandestine meetings in safe houses and through a poster campaign.

Apart from the obstacles thrown in her way, some say she has done little to build political alliances with others who share her vision of a secular democracy.

“No one can question Malalai Joya’s courage,” said Jonathan Steele, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper and a former correspondent in Afghanistan. “But she needs to be part of a movement, not just a voice,” he said.

Ms. Joya counters that she has been invited to join some of the few democratic parties in Afghanistan but does not want to restrict herself to any one of them.

The United States cited the status of women among reasons for its intervention in Afghanistan. Yet Ms. Joya, who taught girls in secret basement schools during the Taliban years, argues that the situation of women has not improved.

Pointing to the 1920s, when Afghan women traveled to Turkey to study without head scarves or male relatives to accompany them, and to the 1950s, when Afghan women had professional careers, she said that the decline of women’s rights in her country was above all an issue of power.

Levels of domestic violence, rape, forced marriage and suicide make the condition of women today “worse than hell,” she says. For that she blames what she calls President Hamid Karzai’s “corrupt, misogynistic government and his circle of warlords” and on his appointments to Afghan courts.

Hamed Elmi, deputy spokesman for Mr. Karzai in Kabul, discounted Ms. Joya’s accusations. “The government is not corrupt, but we have some corrupt people in government — we try to identify and tackle the issue,” Mr. Elmi said by telephone.

He added that Afghanistan had made progress in involving women at all levels of government and that it could not be ascertained that there were warlords in Parliament since the courts had not proven them guilty. “We have an independent judiciary system,” he said. As for whether the government was misogynistic, he said simply: “She is wrong.”

Back in her homeland, Ms. Joya said, the NATO forces were perpetuating the repression of women by propping up warlords she described as interchangeable with the Taliban.

She called for the immediate departure of foreign troops, even if it would lead to more violence in the civil war. “It is better to leave us alone,” she said. “We will know what to do with our destiny.”

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U.S. struggles to track arms in Afghanistan

By Alan Gomez - USA Today
Posted : Monday Mar 15, 2010 9:26:36 EDT
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2010/03/ap_afghan_weapons_031510/
   
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Before stepping inside the underground bunker at the Afghan National Police headquarters in this southern city last week, U.S. troops were warned that there might be some unexploded mortar shells rolling around.

One by one, the troops pulled out long wooden boxes filled with weapons and ammunition seized from Taliban fighters and other insurgent groups.

Many of the decrepit weapons are common finds for them. Soviet-era AK-47s. DHSKA heavy machine guns. A couple of times, they've found something even rarer: a Pattern 1914, a British-designed rifle deemed obsolete in the 1940s.

"It's mind-boggling to see some of this stuff," Marine 1st Lt. Jon Farrar said. "They've had this hoarding mentality, thinking maybe they can fix them. Many of these weapons, if I tried to fire them, they'd probably blow up."

Even though some of those discoveries would thrill weapons collectors, they are not what the Americans are looking for. Farrar is part of Joint Task Force 1228, a group created by Congress last year to ensure better accounting of the 418,000 weapons, 51,000 vehicles and millions of rounds of ammunition the U.S. has purchased to equip the Afghan security forces.

The task force follows a similar effort created in Iraq after Congress learned that many of the weapons purchased to arm Iraqi security forces were ending up in enemy hands. Both programs track each defense item purchased by the U.S. from the factory to each police station and army post. That helps determine how weapons ended up in enemy hands and shows Afghan and Iraqi forces how to better manage their arsenal.

Securing armories
Members of the group travel to all parts of Afghanistan, from massive depots in Kabul and Kandahar to rural police stations and hilltop checkpoints. They meticulously record and photograph serial numbers found on each weapon, later entering that information in a database.

One recent stop was just outside the Kandahar Airfield, where coalition forces have helped an Afghan National Army commando unit build a base.

When Hector Del Valle arrived at the unit two years ago, he said the idea of checking weapons in and out was laughable. Monthly inventories were unheard of. The possibility of losing track of weapons — either losing them or having them sold — was big.

"They'd get the weapons, put them to the side and that's it," said Del Valle, who spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy and mentors the commandos as a civilian contractor.

Now, a well-stocked, well-secured armory has row after row of U.S.-purchased M-4 carbine assault rifles — the same kind of rifles used by many U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On a recent night mission, a commando had his helmet-mounted night vision goggles shattered when he jumped out of a helicopter. The team scoured the ground on hands and knees and brought back as many pieces of the goggles as they could.

Night vision technology is especially important because it gives coalition forces an upper hand against the Taliban, said Army Lt. Col. Michael Rayburn, chief of the task force.

U.S. troops wear items that are easily recognizable by the goggles, making it easy to find one another on the battlefield but potentially serving as a flashing bull's-eye if enemy fighters have night vision goggles.

That is why the goggles, which cost $3,000 to $7,000 apiece, are the only item task force members are required to see with their own eyes at least once a year. The U.S. has provided the Afghans with 3,800 sets, and only one pair has been reported lost.

Shortage of supplies
Operations such as the one run by the commandos are rare.

Bedmellah Waziri, a lieutenant colonel in the Afghan National Army, said the military had to start from scratch after 2001 because the Taliban had ruled the country for nearly a decade beforehand and gutted the organization of the army and police.

"The Afghan army lost everything," he said. "There was no control."

Creating a nationwide accountability system has been difficult.

During a surprise visit to a small police station near the Old City neighborhood of Kandahar, rifles lay unsecured in a hallway. Officers had to send word through the neighborhood for colleagues to bring in weapons for inspection. Ammunition clips used by those officers spit out a rainbow of mismatched bullets.

"Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't," Abdul Salaam, the assistant police chief of the station, said of the ammunition they have.

Salaam complained that the supply line starting with the Ministry of Interior, which runs the Afghan National Police, was so flawed that there was a severe ammunition shortage. Each officer at the station is given two clips of ammunition, which can be used up very quickly in a heavy firefight.

"When we finish, what do we do?" asked Saifullah, a police officer who, like many Afghans, goes by one name. "Everybody comes and takes reports, but there is no implementation."

Officer Noor Mohammad, 20, wondered what would happen if police came face to face with a Taliban attack.

"After 10 minutes, we'd be finished with our ammunition, and they'd capture us," he said.

Overall, members of the task force said, Afghans are adapting to the American accountability system. A team from the Afghan Ministry of Defense accompanied the task force on its trip to Kandahar, talking logistics and supply lines with officials in the field.

Rayburn hopes that kind of communication will lead to Afghans taking over accountability of their weapons. How close are they? Rayburn smiles: "They're getting much better."

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US military: Drone crashes in southern Afghanistan

US Air Force says a drone crashed on takeoff in southern Afghanistan

Staff
AP News
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/03/15/us-military-drone-crashes-in-southern-afghanistan/

Mar 15, 2010 04:25 EDT

The U.S. Air Force says a remote-piloted drone crashed on takeoff in southern Afghanistan on Monday.

The U.S. Air Forces Central Command said the aircraft — an MQ-1 Predator — was not shot down by hostile fire. An air force statement released Tuesday said there were no reports of injuries or property damage. An investigation into the crash is under way.

The Air Force says the primary mission of the aircraft is to conduct armed reconnaissance. No other details were provided.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

KABUL (AP) — NATO says one person was killed in an early morning rocket attack on Bagram Air Field north of the Afghan capital of Kabul.

A NATO spokesman said Monday the base received some rounds of indirect fire, but disclosed no details of the attack.

Abdullah Adil, the police chief in the Bagram district of Parwan province, says one rocket was fired about 4 a.m. A Taliban spokesman told The Associated Press that two rockets were fired on the base.

Separately in Ghazni province, Afghan police say three civilians were killed and three others were wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside mine while they were moving household goods. In Paktika province, police say Afghan security forces killed three suicide bombers Monday morning before they could launch an attack in Barmal district.

Source: AP News

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Afghan women fear loss of hard-won progress

By Karin Brulliard
Tuesday, March 16, 2010; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/15/AR2010031503669_pf.html


LAGHMAN, AFGHANISTAN -- The head-to-toe burqas that made women a faceless symbol of the Taliban's violently repressive rule are no longer required here. But many Afghan women say they still feel voiceless eight years into a war-torn democracy, and they point to government plans to forge peace with the Taliban as a prime example.

Gender activists say they have been pressing the administration of President Hamid Karzai for a part in any deal-making with Taliban fighters and leaders, which is scheduled to be finalized at a summit in April. Instead, they said, they have been met with a silence that they see as a dispiriting reminder of the limits of progress Afghan women have made since 2001.

"We have not been approached by the government -- they never do," said Samira Hamidi, country director of the Afghan Women's Network, an umbrella group. "The belief is that women are not important,'' she said, describing a mind-set that she said "has not been changed in the past eight years."

The Taliban's repressive treatment of women helped galvanize international opposition in the 1990s, and by some measures democracy has revolutionized Afghan women's lives. Their worry now is not about a Taliban takeover, Hamidi said, but that male leaders, behind closed doors and desperate for peace, might not force Taliban leaders to accept, however grudgingly, that women's roles have changed.

Those concerns share roots with the misgivings voiced by many observers, including some U.S. officials, about Afghan efforts to forge a settlement with the Taliban, whose leaders promote an Islamist ideology that seems wholly at odds with rights the Afghan constitution guarantees.

The unease about such a settlement stretches from Kabul to the mountain-ringed valleys of Laghman, a scrappy town in a province still stalked at night by Taliban fighters. As a young girl here, Malalay Jan studied in a private home, hidden from the Taliban regime that forbade her education. Four years ago, her girls' school was torched in a rash of suspected Taliban attacks. Now, she said, she is sure of one thing: Afghan women should have a spot at the negotiating table.

"We don't want them to stop us from getting an education or working in an office," said Jan, 18, wearing a rhinestone-studded head scarf at her rebuilt school. Women, she said, should be "the first priority."

Karzai, the Afghan president, has endorsed the idea of talking with all levels of the Taliban, and his aides insist that women need not worry about the equal rights the Afghan constitution guarantees them. But they also say they are performing a difficult balancing act, and suggest that making bold statements about the sanctity of such topics as women's rights might kill talks before they start.

"We will act from a position of principle. And that principle is that half the public wants these rights to be protected," said Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, who is drafting Karzai's reconciliation plan. "It is not the authority of a group of people in government or a group of people in the insurgency to decide the fate of a whole nation."

In today's Afghanistan, females make up one-quarter of parliament, fill one-third of the nation's classrooms and even compete on "Afghan Idol."

But violence against women remains "endemic," according to the State Department. The percentage of female civil servants is steadily dropping. Just one of 25 cabinet members is a woman, and female lawmakers say their opinions are often ignored.

That point was underscored in January, many observers said, when the women's affairs minister was not invited to an international conference in London on reconciliation and reintegration.

Bringing the Taliban into the government could make things worse, Hamidi said.

"They think women should stay at home," she said. "And all of them have the same perception and same beliefs, from the lowest to the top level."

The Taliban itself, led by Mohammad Omar, has tried to dispute that. As part of what analysts call a public relations campaign to soften the movement's image, Omar, though still in hiding, released a statement last fall that said the Taliban did not oppose women's rights and favored education for all.

Arsala Rahmani, a lawmaker and former Taliban government official, said he thought women's activists were being close-minded, defying what he called "a mother's duty to always try to unite their sons." He said that the Taliban restricted women to protect them from conflict -- not out of ideological misogyny -- and that Omar and his fighters would accept any ideas the Afghan public favors.

To human rights activists, those Taliban messages are ploys to dim support for U.S.-led military efforts in Afghanistan. They point to Taliban-dominated Kandahar province, where militants have closed two-thirds of schools, and Helmand, where tribal leaders say female teachers are threatened with death.

It is a worrisome prospect to women such as Khujesta Elham, an aspiring politician who on a recent day was chatting with friends between classes at Kabul University. She said she thought Taliban fighters should be shunned, though she did not expect that to happen.

"Whatever decision Karzai makes will be his alone," said Elham, 22. "The government does not care about women's rights."

The depth of the Taliban's control varies across Afghanistan, as was the case during its rule, and so do views on the movement. In the 1990s, the Taliban viewed Kabul as a den of depravity, and it was there that its notorious Vice and Virtue police most brutally wielded batons against women who exposed their faces or wore high heels.

In Laghman, a rural Pashtun province in the shadow of snow-capped mountains, patriarchal traditions meant many of those rules were already in force. The area's Taliban officials mostly ignored unauthorized girls' schools, said Qamer Khujazada, who ran one until the Taliban was ousted in 2001. Khujazada became principal of Haider Khani high school, but militants burned down its administrative offices four years ago.

Hanifa Safia, the women's affairs representative for the province, said she thinks a settlement is the only way to peace. The Taliban fighters who throw acid on schoolgirls' faces or threaten professional women do so just to antagonize the government, she said. "I have talked to so many Taliban. They are not against women," Safia said. "Once they have been given positions in government, they will definitely change."

Khujazada, the principal, tentatively agrees. She walks confidently through the halls of her fraying school, overseeing a staff that she boasts is exactly half female.

But many of the girls slip into blue burqas before they leave the concrete-walled schoolyard, and Khujazada acknowledged that most will be married off before they ever set foot in a university. What is important, she said, is that they have the right to continue their schooling.

"Education has a lot of friends," Khujazada said cautiously. "But it has some enemies, too."

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Petraeus:   2010 Will Be a 'Difficult' Year in Afghanistan 


16/03/2010 08:30:12 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Petraeus-2010-Will-Be-a-Difficult-Year-in-Afgha.html
 



US-led forces will face a "difficult" year in 2010 as they fight to push back Taliban militants from key areas, the head of US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, General David Petraeus, said on Tuesday.
   
Petraeus told lawmakers "the going is likely to get harder before it gets easier" in the Afghan war. He said that "2010 will be a difficult year, a year that will see progress and a reversal of the Taliban momentum in important areas, but also a year in which there will be tough fighting and periodic setbacks."
   
About 128,000 foreign troops are deployed in the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, with American forces comprising about two-thirds of the force. President Barack Obama has ordered in 30,000 US reinforcements and approved a new strategy in a bid to turn around the war, which has entered its ninth year.
   
"As we seek to expand security for the people and to take from the Taliban control of key areas, the enemy will fight back," Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
   
Casualties among US troops are on the rise, as a larger force seeks to clear out Taliban militants from southern strongholds.
   
Petraeus said that a surge of US forces was unlikely to produce the kind of dramatic reduction in violence that occurred in Iraq after additional American forces were deployed there. That was partly "because the levels of violence in Afghanistan are nowhere near those of Iraq at the height of the sectarian violence," he said.
¬


-- Al Manar

 

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U.S. to end 96-hour rule for Afghan detainees

By Abbie Boudreau and Scott Zamost, CNN Special Investigations Unit

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

-U.S. troops will now be able to hold Afghan detainees for up to 14 days instead of four

-Critics argued the 96-hour rule puts soldiers in danger

-Former Army captain Roger Hill was discharged for role in questioning Afghan detainees

U.S. troops will now get more time to interview Afghan detainees

Washington (CNN) -- A controversial policy that gives U.S. forces in Afghanistan four days to question detainees is being changed to give soldiers more time to interrogate the captives, Gen. David Petraeus said Tuesday.

Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee that American troops will now be able to hold detainees for up to 14 days before either releasing them or turning them over to the Afghan government. In some cases, longer detention will be an option, he said.

Currently, U.S. troops have 96 hours to question people picked up in the field before they must either release them or hand them over to Afghan authorities. The rule is designed to give the Afghan government control over detainees and avoid abuses.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said that all detainees won't be held for the full 14 days.

Blog: Afghanistan Crossroads

"This is a new authority that was requested by Gen. Petraeus and approved by Secretary Gates, but we don't anticipate it becoming our new standard operating procedure," he said. "Most combatants we pick up on the battlefield will still be turned over to Afghan authorities within 96 hours.

"However, there may be some who require more time in our custody in order to determine precisely who they are, what they're up to and how much of a danger they pose."

A CNN investigation in February found that one out of every four detainees has been released since NATO began keeping statistics, and soldiers complained the policy could put them in danger.

Petraeus said in January the 96-hour rule was a "big concern." He said the change has been approved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a critic of the policy, said he believes troops in the field "will appreciate that."

"I'm glad you've been given some relief, because the old rule just didn't make a lot of sense," said Graham, R-South Carolina. "And I think the new way forward does make sense."

The 96-hour policy has been in effect since December 2005. NATO does not track what happens to the detainees once they are let go.

Nearly half of all U.S. troops in Afghanistan operate under NATO rules and fight as the International Security Assistance Force. CNN confirmed Tuesday that the remainder are also being put under NATO, meaning the new 14-day policy will apply to everyone.

The decision to place the troops under NATO, which is led by an American supreme commander, "is for the purpose of unity of effort," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said. "That decision has been taken in principle, but the mechanics of it need to be worked out."

Asked about the United States changing the 96-hour rule, Appathurai said, "We don't have concerns about it. We understand the operational imperative behind it, but of course, it's also true we have to invest more as a group of nations in ensuring the Afghans handle detainees in an appropriate way."

U.S. Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, an International Security Assistance Force spokesman, confirmed about 30,000 troops are being transitioned to the assistance force and all will operate under the new rule.

Petraeus said in January that particularly when it comes to high-value targets, "96 hours is not enough if you are going to ensure that they stay behind bars."

"There has to be a process by which the individuals that need to be detained are detained, or that if they're handed off to Afghan officials, that there's confidence in the system working," he said.

Graham, an Air Force reserve colonel who visited Afghanistan last year, said in December the rule puts soldiers in danger.

"The one story I hear told over and over and over again, 'Sen. Graham, this policy makes no sense. It is putting our folks at risk for no higher purpose. It needs to change,'" Graham said. "So the level of frustration is now turning to anger, and quite frankly, here's what's going to start happening -- we're going to take less prisoners. They're going to start shooting these folks."

CNN began examining the 96-hour rule with the case of Roger Hill, a former Army captain, who received a general discharge for his role in the questioning of 12 detainees. Those men, including one who was his trusted interpreter, had worked on his base in Afghanistan.

Hill was the U.S. commander in Wardak Province, in eastern Afghanistan, for much of 2008, and said he feared the enemy was tracking his every move. He suspected an inside threat.

"Out of a 90-man company, we had 30 wounded, to include two killed in action," he said. He said his headquarters sent a team to the base to detect possible spies. The team screened cell phone activity to find out which Afghan civilians working on the base were really working for the Taliban -- and his interpreter was one of them.

Angry and frustrated that the interpreter might be the one sabotaging missions, Hill detained all 12 men in a small building on the base. That's when the 96-hour rule went into effect.

Hill said the rule does not work, and many times dangerous suspects are released because there's not enough time to gather evidence. As the clock ticked toward the 96-hour NATO deadline, Hill made a decision that would cost him his military career.

"I decided that I needed to break protocol and interrogate them myself," he said. "I took three gentlemen outside, sat them down, walked away, and fired my weapon into the ground three times, hoping that the men inside, left to their own imagination, would think that they really needed to talk."

Hill walked back inside. "And sure enough, some of the detainees started to talk," he said.

What the detainees told him was enough to persuade the Afghans to take all 12 men into custody, including Hill's interpreter. Hill said he felt he had made the correct decision to protect his soldiers, but the Army charged him with detainee abuse, leading to his discharge from the military.

The 12 men were released, despite the confession, according to Army investigators. No one knows where they are now and what's they're doing.
   
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/03/17/afghanistan.nato.detainees/index.html?hpt=T2 
 

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US military created private spy and murder squad in Afghanistan

By Patrick Martin

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64225&hd=&size=1&l=e

WSWS, 16 March 2010

A long-time US military official used Pentagon funding to establish a private intelligence and assassination network in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a report Monday in the New York Times. The network was shut down after the CIA station chief in Kabul objected to a competing military-backed intelligence operation, the newspaper said.

The article identified the official as Michael D. Furlong, a 25-year veteran of the Air Force who is now a senior Pentagon civilian employee, working at the US Strategic Command at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. He reportedly diverted money from a $22 million contract to gather cultural and political information about Afghanistan and funneled it to at least two private firms which employed former intelligence and military Special Operations personnel.

The Times report, written by Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti, has the character of a controlled release of information for the purpose of containing the damage to US covert operations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. It is not only the US military and intelligence agencies that are being protected, but the Times itself. According to the article, the newspaper hired two of the covert operatives who had worked for Furlong in its efforts to release Times reporter David Rohde, who was captured by the Taliban in December 2008 and escaped seven months later.

Despite its prominent placement and sensational language, very few actual facts are presented in the Times account, and the article begs the obvious question: Did the private, off-the-books operation funded and directed by Furlong contain an operational component? In other words, did Furlong contract for the creation of a private American death squad?

The Obama administration refused any substantive comment on the Times report. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told the media Monday, "The story makes some serious allegations and raises numerous unanswered questions that warrant further review by the department," but he declined to answer any questions. The Pentagon has refused to make Furlong available to the press.

Whatever the motivations of those who acted as sources for the Times article, including top executives of the Times itself, Monday’s report puts the spotlight on the murky netherworld of US covert operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, where official military and intelligence personnel rub shoulders with contractors and sub-contractors, as well as journalists and researchers who are little more than disguised intelligence operatives.

For example, two of the contractors hired by Furlong as part of the public effort to gather cultural information about Afghanistan were Robert Pelton Young, an author, and Eason Jordan, a former top news executive at CNN. Jordan was forced to resign his post in February 2005, after 25 years with the network, after he made comments at a conference in Switzerland to the effect that US military personnel were deliberately targeting foreign reporters in Iraq, where journalists have been killed in record numbers.

Despite the apparent bad blood between the former CNN executive and the military brass, he became a Pentagon contractor, setting up web sites to collect cultural and political information for the training of military personnel, first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. Young and Jordan apparently became discontented with Furlong because he failed to pay them on time, and, along with the CIA, helped expose the fact that Furlong was diverting money to the secret intelligence-gathering operation.

The Times account notably leaves out the most important facts about the Furlong affair: the names of those on whom his network spied and who were subsequently targeted for assassination, either by the CIA, the military, or private mercenaries working as subcontractors.

Two companies named as recipients of funds via Furlong are International Media Ventures, which is described as "a private 'strategic communication’ firm run by several former Special Operations officers," and American International Security Corporation, "a Boston-based company run by Mike Taylor, a former Green Beret."

The Times reports that Taylor said in a phone interview that "at one point he had employed Duane Clarridge, known as Dewey, a former top CIA official who has been linked to a generation of CIA adventures, including the Iran-Contra scandal."

The article then reveals that the Times itself hired Taylor and Clarridge in the effort to locate and rescue David Rohde—a fact which confirms the connection of the former Iran-Contra figure to ongoing US covert operations, 25 years later.

The Times account indicates that Taylor proposed an armed assault on a Taliban compound where he believed Rohde was being held, clearly suggesting that American International Security Corporation had paramilitary operatives at its disposal, the same type of personnel who would be deployed in an assassination.

The echoes of the 1980s Iran-Contra affair are significant. A Reagan White House official, Lt. Col. Oliver North of the National Security Council, established an off-the-books covert operation to aid the Contra terrorists at war with the Sandinista-led government of Nicaragua, in defiance of a congressional ban on military aid to the Contras.

North used funds obtained through another illegal covert operation—the secret sale of US weapons to Iran, during the Iran-Iraq war—to finance the arms shipments to the Contras.

As the Workers League, forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party, warned at the time, the Iran-Contra affair was not merely a scandal, but laid bare the existence of a secret government in the United States that threatened the democratic rights of the American people:

"The contra aid network gives a glimpse of the real face of American imperialism which should dispel any illusions that democracy is a permanent feature of American life. … Twelve years after the Watergate affair and the subsequent revelations in Senate hearings of the CIA’s counterrevolutionary operations, assassination plots and state terror, there has emerged a far more massive and dangerous development of an extra-constitutional apparatus of terror and repression." (Statement of the Central Committee of the Workers League, "Labor Must Act on Iran-Contra Crisis," December 23, 1986).

This threat to democratic rights has grown enormously since then, and especially in the period after the 9/11 terrorist attacks—themselves of murky origin and with unexplained connections to the US intelligence apparatus. Today, the US government is running a multitude of death squad operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, targeting those resisting the US occupation of Afghanistan and anyone else alleged to have links to "terrorism."

One significant fact referred to by the Times is that the operations directed by Furlong "seemed to accelerate in the summer of 2009," the period when Gen. Stanley McChrystal arrived to take command of US and NATO military operations in Afghanistan. McChrystal was previously the head of all US military Special Operations, and ran the assassination squads in Iraq which played an enormous role in the so-called "surge" of 2007-2008, when hundreds of Iraqi nationalists and militants opposed to the US occupation were hunted down by US Special Forces and murdered.

The Times report provides a reminder of the scale of such operations, and of their completely uncontrolled, illegal and unaccountable character. There is no reason to believe that the scope of such activities is limited to the mountains of the Hindu Kush.

The top Obama administration intelligence official, retired Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, has declared that the US government has the right to assassinate American citizens who are determined by the executive branch to represent a threat to national security—that is, the right of summary execution, without benefit of trial, due process or any constitutional protection.





 

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U.S. Army officer reveals ethnic cleansing in Afghanistan

by Dave Markland

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64239&hd=&size=1&l=e

March 16, 2010

Last fall, an American special forces commander acquired the fawning nickname "Lawrence of Afghanistan" after he published a study on military tactics in Afghanistan. Based on his own experiences, Major Jim Gant advocated for an alternative to reigning counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy and apparently caught the attention of General McChrystal, who widely redistributed the report.

The report involves a case study in Kunar province where his team of special forces operated in 2003. At first this involved Armed Reconnaissance Patrols through the countryside, "basically announcing our presence and inviting contact, friendly or hostile." At one village, they were told there was a "problem" in a different village called Mangwel, to where his eight-man team then went and subsequently met a local leader, Malik Noorafzhal.

Here's how Gant recounts the forming of a significant relationship with Noorafzhal, a tribal leader in Kunar province:

... there was a "highland" people and a "lowland" people... The highland people had taken and were using some land that belonged to the lowland people. The Malik told me the land had been given to his tribe by the "King Of Afghanistan" many, many years ago and that he would show me the papers. I told him he didn’t need to show me any papers. His word was enough. He then told me he had given the highlanders 10 days to comply with the request or he and his men would retake it by force...

He had asked for help, a thing he later would tell me was hard for him to do (especially from an outsider) and I had many options. Could I afford to get involved in internal tribal warfare? ...

I made the decision to support him. "Malik, I am with you. My men and I will go with you and speak with the highlanders again. If they do not turn the land back over to you, we will fight with you against them." ...

Without going into further detail, suffice it to say that the dispute with the highlanders was resolved... (link to pdf) 
http://blog.stevenpressfield.com/wp-content/themes/stevenpressfield/one_tribe_at_a_time.pdf

The current term for actions of this sort is ethnic cleansing, which according to a US State Dept study "entails the systematic and forced removal of members of an ethnic group from their communities to change the ethnic composition of a region." When official enemies do this, it is cause for an international crisis and accompanying vilification in the media. However, when our side does it, few so much as take notice.

Even on its own terms, Gant's approach, as he describes it, hardly merits the term strategy as tribal alliances like the one he modeled are quite ad hoc and don't readily lend themselves to horizontal spread. Thus the basic requirement, under military doctrine, of "unity of effort" would be elusive at best.

In a review of Gant's paper the Long War Journal similarly notes some fundamental flaws in his argument:

[Gant] himself points out that he and his team were safer in the village than in their outpost, and that he was unable to prevent the attacks the village suffered as a result of its cooperation. In other words, there's a real confusion about who was protecting whom... (link)
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2009/11/the-horror-the-horror-afghanis/

It is worth noting, however, that one innovation which Gant proposes appears to have been taken up by US military commanders. The latest military jargon for COIN theorists and commentators insists that troops have to live among the people. General McChrystal himself told the New York Times about his hopes in such terms, saying "we literally want to go in there and squat among the people."

Recent announcements indicate that that approach is being operationalised and the above comments from the Long War Journal thus apply equally to McChrystal's emerging strategy.

 

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Afghanistan Enacts Law That Gives War Criminals Blanket Immunity


by Jason Leopold

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64240&hd=&size=1&l=e

Truthout, March 16, 2010



A law that provides blanket immunity and pardons former members of Afghanistan’s armed factions for war crimes and human rights abuses committed prior to December 2001 was quietly enacted three years ago by parliament, despite previous assurances by President Hamid Karzai that he would not sign it or allow it to take effect.

According to Waheed Omer, Karzai’s spokesman, the amnesty law was enacted because it was approved by two-thirds of parliament and therefore did not need Karzai’s signature. Parliament is made up largely of former warlords who were accused by Afghans and human rights groups of war crimes.

"This law was passed with a two-thirds majority in our parliament, and according to our constitution, when a law is passed with a two-thirds majority, it does not require the president to sign it," Omer said during a briefing Tuesday, publicly acknowledging for the first time the blanket immunity provision is now law. Omer’s comments were first reported by Reuters.

The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), an organization founded in 2001 that assists countries in their pursuit of accountability for mass atrocities or human rights abuses, said "blanket amnesties promote impunity and are currently deemed unlawful under international law."

Human rights groups learned that the law was enacted after it was published in Afghanistan’s official gazette.

"It is not clear when this happened, as the date on the gazetted law is December 2008, while some sources say it was not published until January 2010, when printed copies of the law were received by organizations that monitor the gazette," according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), which condemned the law and demanded that it be repealed.

According to Aunohita Mojumdar, a reporter based in Kabul, "in Afghanistan’s legislative process, a draft law must be ratified by parliament, signed by the president, and then published in an official gazette before it takes effect."

"The actual process is sometimes far murkier," Mojumdar wrote in a report published Tuesday on Eurasianet.org. "Parliament passed a controversial amnesty law - offering immunity to all those involved in past, present and future hostilities, including war crimes or crimes against humanity - in 2007. But the initiative generated considerable opposition from Karzai’s international allies and human rights groups who saw it as an attempt by former commanders-turned-MPs to give themselves immunity. Thus, the Reconciliation and General Amnesty Law was not immediately published.

"In January of this year, however, news spread that the law had been quietly printed in December of 2008. With the international community now behind Karzai’s reconciliation strategy, the government is now apparently hoping that the amnesty law will be accepted without creating too much of a stir."

When it passed in early 2007, the National Reconciliation, General Amnesty and National Stability Law said anyone engaged in armed conflict before the formation of the Interim Administration in Afghanistan shall "enjoy all their legal rights and not be prosecuted."

The law provides amnesty to "all political factions and hostile parties who were involved in a way or another in hostilities before establishing of the interim administration [in December 2001]," including "those individuals and groups who are still in opposition to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and cease enmity after the enforcement of this resolution and join the process of national reconciliation and respect the constitution and other laws and abide them."

HRW said last week that the amnesty law "was passed at a time when Afghan public opinion was beginning to mobilize against warlords and impunity."

"An opinion survey published by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in 2005 indicated that large majorities favored prosecutions," according to HRW, which documented some of the widespread human rights abuses that took place between 1992 and 1993 in a report, "Blood Stained Hands: Past Atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan's Legacy of Impunity." "The Afghan government, the United Nations, the Commission, donor governments and others were involved in discussions about addressing past abuses through the government's 'Transitional Justice Action Plan.'"

In 2006 the government launched the Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice in Afghanistan, which makes clear commitments to: 1) acknowledge the suffering of the Afghan people; 2) ensure credible and accountable state institutions and purge human rights violators and criminals from the state institutions; 3) undertake truth-seeking and documentation; 4) promote reconciliation and improvement of national unity; and (5) establish a task force to recommend an additional accountability mechanism.

Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director, whose organization called on the Karzai government to repeal the law, said, "Afghans have been losing hope in their government because so many alleged war criminals and human rights abusers remain in positions of power."

"The amnesty law was passed to protect these people from prosecution, sending a message to Afghans that not only are these rights abusers here to stay, but more might soon be welcomed in," Adams said.

In a statement, The Transitional Justice Coordination Group (TJCG), which is made up of a coalition of 24 civil society organizations, called upon Karzai’s government to immediately suspend the law "with a view to its eventual abolishment."

"The TJCG contends that rather than promote reconciliation and stability, by granting a blanket amnesty this law promotes impunity and prevents genuine reconciliation," the group said. "Accountability, not amnesia, for past and present crimes is a prerequisite for genuine reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan. All Afghans will suffer as a result of implementation of this law, which undermines justice and the rule of law."

"The government of Afghanistan does not have the right to usurp the rights of victims. Only the victims have the right to forgive perpetrators," the group added. "But the state has a duty to investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations such as disappearances, torture and extra judicial killings."

Although a provision in the amnesty law allows victims of atrocities to file individual claims against alleged perpetrators, TJCG said it "places an unfair burden upon victims, who have already suffered so much and would put themselves at risk of reprisals given the impunity that prevails in Afghanistan today."

"This provision is particularly impractical so far as it concerns women and the many victims of sexual violence, who already face considerable barriers to obtaining justice," TJCG said. "Provision for the granting of amnesty in respect of future crimes further undermines the legitimacy of the law and serves as an open invitation for the continued commission of abuses with impunity."

Karzai’s government includes high-level officials who were accused of war crimes. According to Reuters, both of Karzai’s vice presidents "are former leaders of armed groups whose factions squabbled for control of Kabul in the 1990s, when thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands fled their homes."

His style of governing has been harshly criticized by US officials, including Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, who warned President Obama in two top-secret cables last year against sending additional troops to the country until Karzai began to take steps to root out corruption in his government.

So far, neither the Obama administration, United Nations officials or others in the international community have discussed the amnesty law. On Monday evening, Obama and Karzai spoke for more than an hour via a video teleconference about the US commitment to the region. But the amnesty law did not come up during their conversation.



 

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Posted on Tue, Mar. 16, 2010

Afghan poppy harvest is next challenge for U.S. Marines

Dion Nissenbaum | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: March 16, 2010 05:10:19 PM
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/16/90477/afghan-poppy-harvest-is-next-challenge.html



MARJAH, Afghanistan — U.S. Marine Sgt. Brad Vandehei stood on the edge of the small opium poppy field that serves as a central helicopter landing zone for the new military compound that's rising nearby.

"Those are poppies, sir?" Vandehei, 25, of Green Bay, Wis., asked Maj. David Fennell as they gazed at the spiked young plants that should be ready for harvest next month. "Let's burn it down, sir."

Fennell was scoping things out for another reason, however: That morning, the poppy farmer turned up with a dozen neighbors to complain about the Marines transforming his lucrative field into a rural helipad.

The swift American-led military offensive that drove the Taliban from power in this southern Afghan farm belt came at an inopportune time for the area's poppy farmers. That's created a quandary for Marjah's new, U.S.-backed leaders and for the American military as they try to transform this sweltering river valley, whose biggest cash crop is opium poppy, into a tranquil breadbasket.

"The helicopters are landing in my field," the weathered farmer told Fennell as they sat in the dirt outside the Marines' newest forward operating base in Marjah. "You have to stop landing there. Next time, the Taliban will put an IED in the field," an improvised explosive device, the military's term for a homemade bomb.

Using his skills as one-time trial lawyer, a few essential Pashto words and an evolving understanding of local tribal culture, Fennell sought to reassure the farmer.

"I apologize for your inconvenience," the 36-year-old Denver reservist told the farmer. "We're here to provide security, and one person must be inconvenienced to provide security for 1,000. But we're not like the Taliban. We're not just going to take; we're going to compensate you."

Unswayed, the Marjah men again pressed Fennell to stop using the field as a landing zone. When it became clear that the Marine wasn't going to budge, they asked for money to pay for the damaged poppy field.

"We're not here to eradicate your poppies, but we won't pay for damage to your poppies," Fennell said. "What we will do is pay for the inconvenience and for any damage to your wheat."

Marjah leaders and the U.S. Marines so far have no clear answers for farmers such as these. The Marines and the new Marjah government are still trying to figure out how to persuade poppy growers not to harvest their crops this spring.

"We are entering the poppy harvest season, which will also put us at great risk for having instability," Marine Col. Randy Newman warned Marjah leaders this past weekend. "So we must talk to the people with one voice about how we will deal with the poppy."

For years, Marjah has been the center of the drug trade in Afghanistan, which provides about 90 percent of the world's opium. About 50 percent of Afghanistan's poppy crop is grown in surrounding Helmand province, and much of the multi-billion-dollar industry is centered in and around Marjah.

The opium trade supports tens of thousands of local farmers and fuels the Taliban, who taxed the crops to pay for weapons and supplies.

"If I was a farmer here I'd be growing poppies," said Mike Courtney, the senior field director in Marjah for Adam Smith International, a global consulting firm that's working in Afghanistan. "It's a Catch-22. How do you win over the population and, at the same time, stop the drug trade?"

U.S. officials largely have given up on destroying Afghanistan's poppy fields as the best way to combat the drug trade. Razing the fields was seen as counterproductive.

Instead, the American-led coalition in Afghanistan launched programs meant to encourage farmers to plant wheat, cotton and other alternative crops. They've had modest success.

The wheat-for-poppy projects have been undermined by corrupt Afghan officials who've given mediocre fertilizer and inferior seeds to farmers and have siphoned off money for themselves.

At the end of the day, poppy brings in more money most years than wheat or cotton does.

"The opium issue takes time," said Haji Abdul Zahir, the newly appointed district governor of Marjah. "It's like if you swat a bee, 1,000 bees will come and sting you. It takes time to stop the drug trade. But we won't do it through eradication."

The Marines have developed a new plan to hand out modest grants to farmers who show that they're planting legal crops. The grants — some $500 per hectare, about two and a half acres — don't compare with the money made from poppy harvests in good years, however.

Plowing under the poppies also could be a dangerous gamble for farmers who took money from drug dealers and Taliban financiers, who might come back to collect the harvest.

At the moment, Afghan and U.S. leaders are betting that the insurgents won't feel bold enough to come looking for their poppies if they have to deal with thousands of American and Afghan fighters.

Some officials have suggested that they simply buy this year's harvest and take it off the streets. Buying millions of dollars in opium could be politically unpalatable, however.

"There's a problem with buying it. There's a problem with burning it," said Marine Capt. Matthew Andrew, of Boise, Idaho, the 30-year-old judge advocate for the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. "The larger problem is security. If they don't have poppies, there's no point in sticking around. The real test is going to be next year."

As the farmers pressed Fennell last weekend to pay for the damaged poppies, he pulled out another weapon in his verbal arsenal: guilt.

"We're not here to eradicate any poppies," Fennell told the men. "But we're worried, because we've seen the addiction to opium among Afghans and we know that good Muslims don't want that."

The men shifted uncomfortably and assured Fennell that they agreed. Then they asked him again to stop helicopter landings in the poppy field.

Fennell patiently told the men that that wasn't going to happen. He asked them to figure out what they thought was a fair price for the adjacent wheat field.

He's still waiting for them to return.

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Afghanistan violence escalates as US forces prepare Kandahar assault


By Patrick O’Connor

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m64254&hd=&size=1&l=e

WSWS, 17 March 2010

Intensified clashes between US-led occupying forces and Taliban and Afghan resistance fighters have seen a substantial increase in casualties for both sides, and a rising death toll for local civilians. Helmand and Kandahar provinces, on Afghanistan’s south-western border with Pakistan, remain the focus of Washington’s military escalation. Having captured Marjah town in Helmand last month, US military commanders are waiting for the remainder of the 30,000 additional troops deployed by President Barack Obama before launching a summer offensive in Afghanistan’s second largest city, Kandahar.

Last Saturday, Taliban forces in Kandahar launched one of their largest coordinated attacks. According to the Afghan interior ministry, multiple explosions, including four reported suicide bombings, killed 35 people and injured 57. Kandahar’s prison and police headquarters were the primary targets, with 13 police officers among the dead. Civilians were also reportedly killed, including six women and three children at a wedding celebration being held in a hall next door to the police headquarters. Afghan authorities claim that they found eight suicide vests, three rockets, and AK47 ammunition at the prison. Taliban fighters apparently unsuccessfully attempted to storm the facility, as they did in June 2008 in a coordinated attack that freed more than 1,000 people.

The Taliban declared that Saturday’s operation was in retaliation for recent comments by US commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, concerning preparations for an attack on Kandahar. "General McChrystal has said that soon they will start their operations, and now we have already started our operations," spokesman Yousef Ahmadi said. "With all the preparations they have taken, still they are not able to stop us... This was to sabotage the [US] operation and to show we can strike anywhere, anytime we want."

More than eight years after the US-led invasion, the inability of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to maintain control over Afghanistan’s second largest city demonstrates the continuing crisis confronting the occupation.

The Washington Post reported Sunday: "In theory, the Afghan government is in place in Kandahar, but its authority is nominal. Bombings and assassinations have left the government largely isolated behind concrete barricades and blast walls... The provincial council has trouble convening because many members have fled to Kabul. The police are viewed as ill-trained, corrupt and possibly in league with criminal gangs. If Kandahar city is sliding into lawlessness, the surrounding province appears in even worse shape. In the city, the government has retreated behind concrete barricades; in much of the countryside, there is no government presence."

In reality, US puppet President Hamid Karzai and his assorted coalition of ex-warlords, drug traffickers, and mafia types have little authority beyond the capital, Kabul, and even there anti-occupation forces now operate with increasing confidence.

While the US military is preparing to step up military operations once the "surge" is completed, the violence has already escalated. Unlike previous years, the 2009–2010 winter has seen no real lull in the activities of anti-occupation forces. As a result, the icasualties monitoring website has reported that the International Security Assistance Force death toll for February was more than twice that of the same month last year—55 dead compared to 24 for 2009. Already this March, 21 foreign troops have so far been killed, compared to 28 for the whole of the month in 2009.

General David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command, yesterday warned that Americans should expect "tough fighting and periodic setbacks". He told the Senate Armed Services Committee: "The going is likely to get harder before it gets easier."

Many of the latest casualties are caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs). According to the US army’s Joint IED Defeat Organisation, the number of concealed bombs planted in Afghanistan has been doubling every year. In 2009 they were being produced at a rate of 22 a day. Typically comprising explosives made from fertilisers and triggered by crude pressure or trip-wire triggers, the IEDs have a low metallic content making them difficult to detect.

Coordinated ambushes, and mortar and rocket attacks are also increasing. Last Monday one ISAF member, whose nationality has not yet been released, was killed during a rocket attack on Bagram Airfield, the largest military base in Afghanistan. Also among the recent casualties was 26-year-old US Corporal Jonathan Porto who was killed in Helmand Province last Sunday. According to media reports, Porto joined the Marines two years ago after he could not find a job. Deployed to Afghanistan last December, he is now survived by his wife and a two-month-old daughter who he never met.

Afghan civilians remain the primary victims of Obama’s criminal war of occupation. Massive air strikes continue to inflict enormous damage on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In the latest incident, an unmanned US drone fired missiles into a building about 40 kilometres west of Miranshah, the main town in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal agency. Ten "militants" were reported killed, with information about civilian casualties yet to emerge.

In the recently captured area of Marjah, several reports have emerged of US forces and their Afghan proxies confronting a hostile population. Remaining Taliban forces in hiding have threatened reprisals against residents who collaborate with the foreign troops. "We are in a very critical situation right now," an unnamed US military advisor attached to Afghan security forces in Marjah told Stars and Stripes. "The Taliban are reorganising. The capability they lost two weeks ago is coming back."

Sharp tactical divisions are emerging within the military and official foreign policy circles over how to proceed.

The Marjah operation has come under criticism as a wasteful diversion. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that "some senior officials at the White House, at the Pentagon and in McChrystal’s headquarters ... question whether a large operation that began last month to flush the Taliban out of Marjah, a poor farming community in central Helmand, is the best use of Marine resources". The Post noted that the operation would most likely tie down two Marine battalions and hundreds of Afghan security forces for months. "What the hell are we doing?" an unnamed senior Obama administration official said. "Why aren’t all 20,000 Marines in the population belts around Kandahar city right now?"

Similar questions were raised in the Foreign Policy magazine by Thomas H. Johnson, director of the Program for Culture and Conflict Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School, and M. Chris Mason, a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. Describing Marjah as a "strategically meaningless village", the authors insisted that "taking this nearly worthless postage stamp of real estate has tied down about half of all the real combat power and aviation assets of the international coalition in Afghanistan for a quarter of a year". Johnson and Mason derided US plans in Marjah as efforts to "establish an Afghan Potemkin village", and concluded that the operation was "essentially a giant public affairs exercise, designed to shore up dwindling domestic support for the war by creating an illusion of progress".

These strident statements indicate the frustration building in American ruling circles. The Afghanistan war was aimed from the outset at securing US domination in the strategically and economically vital Central Asian region. Defeat would open the door to rival powers in Europe and Asia and represent a major blow to Washington’s efforts to maintain its global dominance. The Obama administration has responded by preparing a massive show of force, including, if necessary, unleashing devastation on Kandahar on a scale similar to that inflicted on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in late 2004.




 

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Karzai a powerless president, says Mulla Salam
 
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=27832
 

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

by Rahimullah Yusufzai

PESHAWAR: The Afghan Taliban commander whose defection to the government three years ago was hailed as a major development in Taliban-dominated Helmand province has now regretted his decision and termed Hamid Karzai as a powerless president.

Mulla Abdul Salam, who was made district administrator of his native Musa Qala district as a reward for abandoning the Taliban, also accused the British forces deployed in Helmand of having come to Afghanistan to avenge their past defeats at the hands of the Afghan people.

In an interview with the private Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), Mulla Salam alleged that the British troops in Musa Qala and elsewhere in Helmand don’t fight the Taliban. He claimed the British forces refused to help the Afghan police fighting Taliban in the Shah Karez area since Monday morning and were instead asking the cops to vacate the place.

He said 14 Taliban fighters had been killed in the fighting while two policemen were killed and six others sustained injuries. Mulla Salam, who has survived a number of Taliban attempts on his life since his defection, demanded withdrawal of British soldiers from Musa Qala as he felt the situation would improve if they left the area.

“We are still slaves. Foreign advisers are sitting in the offices. I am a Muslim, a brave Afghan and Mujahid and cannot tolerate to be enslaved by others,” he stressed. He disclosed that no Afghan minister can visit Helmand without the permission of British military commanders.

Mulla Salam complained that he and Afghan policemen were besieged by the British forces in his office for several hours on Monday following a clash between the cops and the Britons. “It seems as if the British troops have captured this area.

They haven’t served our people and have yet to build schools or mosques in Musa Qala,” he said. However, Mulla Salam refrained from criticizing other foreign forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. He also refused to describe Afghanistan as an occupied country.

However, he alleged that foreigners had created rifts in every Afghan home. “I joined the government to help restore peace in Afghanistan but now I have realized that the foreigners don’t want peace in our homeland,” he asserted.

Asked as to why he defected to the government, Mulla Salam said he was deceived by the foreigners. “They deceived me. I thought they would really be fighting against Taliban who are the slaves of Pakistan and the British. However, Britons do not fight against Taliban in Musa Qala and they have started another game,” he argued.

The former Taliban commander also didn’t have kind words for President Karzai and his government. “Actually, the president has no power. He cannot do anything,” he contended. “Afghanistan is an Islamic country but there is no Shariah system here. Look at our chief justice; he doesn’t fulfil the requirements of Shariah,” Mulla Salam maintained.

Praised as a moderate Taliban with whom the US-led coalition forces and the Afghan government could do business, Mulla Salam now seems to be drifting apart from his new allies. He has developed differences with the British military authorities in Helmand and is a marked man for the Taliban.

The Taliban haven’t forgiven him for joining hands with their enemies against them and have tried several times to eliminate him. Mulla Salam’s example shows that the experiment by the Afghan government and the US-led Nato forces to lure Taliban commanders and fighters to their side and reintegrate them is unlikely to work.
 

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The cost of civilian casualties


By Hoda Abdel-Hamid in  Middle East  on March 17th, 2010
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2010/03/17/cost-civilian-casualties


Two issues dominate how Afghans views of coalition forces: civilian casualties and night raids.

There are two issues that dominate Afghan views of coalition forces: civilian casualties and night raids.

The problem was left to fester for years to the point that international forces lost a good chunk of credibility.

Erica Gaston is a young American who lives in Kabul and who has documented civilian casualties:

Each and every time, I am asked about what kind of democracy and freedom we were bringing to Afghanistan

There is a vague system of compensation for the victims or their relatives.

It all depends on the generosity of the country, but in general a loss of limb will cost the offending nation about $600 or less, and if your relative has been killed by mistake then you will get up to $2,500.

This is not compensation, because the term would imply an admission of guilt. Instead, depending on which country, it's called ex gratia, out of kindness, condolence or solacia money.

Unfortunately people are poor here and that money can help, at least to cover funeral costs. But many refuse. They find it insulting.

The tragedy is that those $2,000 or $2,500 will be spent, but the widow, the daughter or the son left behind will have an even tougher time making ends.
 
Maybe, one way to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people is to show them that their lives are worth a bit more in the unfortunate case someone was killed, even though no amount of money can ever replace the loss.

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South Asia
Mar 19, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LC19Df01.html 
 
 Karzai faces anger in Marjah

By Aziz Ahmad Tassal

HELMAND PROVINCE - Afghan President Hamid Karzai faced an angry reception from people in the southern town of Marjah following a major military assault against the Taliban.

During the unannounced visit on March 7, 10 days after the Afghan flag was raised over this former insurgent stronghold in Helmand province, Karzai said the expulsion of the Taliban meant full-scale reconstruction and development could get underway.

"Marjah will not be recaptured by the opposition," Karzai assured a meeting of tribal elders, officials and ordinary people in the center of Marjah, a ramshackle string of villages and markets known principally for its booming opium trade.

"You will have a good life, full security, employment opportunities and good governance," he added, promising swift delivery of schools, clinics, roads and other infrastructure to the local population of around 50,000 people.

Beginning on February 13 and involving some 15,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Afghan troops, Operation Moshtarak, which means "together" in Dari, expelled Taliban forces from the area after only limited resistance. Now Afghan and international authorities are under pressure to clear the surrounding farmland of hundreds of insurgent mines and fulfill development pledges.

Used to hearing generous messages from the Kabul leadership in recent years, local people gathered in Marjah were skeptical of Karzai's promises, and also lambasted the performance of his appointees in the region.

"The people you have sent here have been cruel to us," said one elderly man who rose from the crowd, visibly shaking with anger as he addressed the president. "We do not want such individuals," said the man, who said officials had been involved in abductions and extortion of money from local farmers.

His comments drew applause from the crowd, and after nodding in agreement, Karzai berated one official who was named, saying, "Shame on you!"

People who lost family members in the fighting also challenged the president, who was accompanied on the visit by the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, United States army General Stanley McChrystal.

"We are fed up with this life of ours," said a man called Harun, whose sister-in-law was killed and two brothers wounded by a shell burst during the battles. "If you do not help us in our predicament, don't provide us with employment opportunities in our area and don't support us, then will you ever help our orphans?"

The number of civilian casualties in the operation remains disputed. According to Helmand governor Gulab Mangal, 15 people died, while local people put the figure at 40. In the worst incident confirmed by NATO, 12 civilians died when two American rockets struck a house.

Led by United States Marines, the operation is considered the first big test of President Barack Obama's new "surge" strategy for Afghanistan. An extra 30,000 US troops are being deployed in an effort to break the Taliban's grip on areas like Marjah.

While hundreds of Afghan police sent to help keep the peace remain widely distrusted, Karzai urged Marjah's population to actively support the national security forces.

"If you want good security and governance, I ask the people and tribal elders to enroll your sons in the government forces so they will be trained and be able to serve and protect their country," said Karzai, who took the day's criticism in his stride.

"Well they are our people and we exchanged views, I heard them and they heard me, they had some very legitimate complaints," he said after the meeting. "They feel abandoned, which in many cases is true, and this sense of abandonment has to go away."

Some local people praised the president for visiting such a remote area and listening to their grievances and demands.

"No such senior official had ever visited Marjah before," resident Sediqollah said. "Moreover, there is no more fighting here now and the Taliban no longer come to my house every day and night and demand food. Karzai's speech shows that life in Marjah is going to improve."

But others who fled to the provincial capital Lashkar Gah ahead of the operation said the situation was still too volatile to return to their homes.

"I cannot go to Marjah because the foreigners arbitrarily search our houses there and disrespect us, which is outrageous," said a local man named Ostad. "It is better not to go there anymore."

To underscore the fragile security situation, insurgents fired several rockets at Marjah during Karzai's speech.

While a Taliban spokesman said in a text message sent to the Institute for War and Peace Reporting that several Afghan security officers died in the salvo, local people said nobody was injured.

"A rocket came but landed far from the meeting area and did not explode," Marjah resident Khan Wali said.

Aziz Ahmad Tassal is an IWPR-trained reporter in Helmand.

(This article originally appeared in Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Used with permission.)