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

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Taliban Challenge U.S. in Eastern Afghanistan

By RAY RIVERA
Published: December 25, 2010


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/world/asia/26ghazni.html?_r=1&hp

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Obama’s Afghanistan Review: A Whitewash of a Disastrous Occupation

According to the Obama administration, nothing can happen in the U.S. war in Afghanistan that doesn’t mean good news.

By Phyllis Bennis and Kevin Martin, AlterNet
Posted on December 24, 2010, Printed on December 26, 2010



http://www.alternet.org/story/149321/

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US Allies Turned Foes, Haqqani Network Spreading in Afghanistan


NATO Claims of 'Short-Term' Gains Appear Difficult to Justify

by Jason Ditz, December 26, 2010

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/26/us-allies-turned-foes-haqqani-network-spreading-in-afghanistan/

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 Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010


U.S. trapped in a civil war

By GWYNNE DYER


LONDON — U.S. President Barack Obama seems to be working under a serious misapprehension. Releasing the White House's annual strategic review to the public on Dec. 16, he declared that U.S. policy in Afghanistan was "on track" to defeat al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Who told him that the United States is fighting al-Qaida in Afghanistan?


"It was Afghanistan where al-Qaida plotted the 9/11 attacks that murdered 3,000 innocent people," he said, which is an accurate historical statement.

READ ON

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20101222gd.html

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Bottom of the 4th Inning of the Great Game:

Afghanistan is Now Open for Business

BY  Michael Skinner



Socialist Project, December 26, 2010

Many of the Canadian military, police, and civilian personnel who risk their lives in Afghanistan truly believe they are fighting a just war of good against evil. But America's and Britain's claims that the unsanctioned unilateral invasion of Afghanistan, which began the Global War on Terror, was justified by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are as credible as claims the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian terrorist justified Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia to begin WWI.

It is time to look beyond faith in baseless beliefs to investigate facts. What interests are at stake in Afghanistan?

When I visited Afghanistan in 2007, many Afghans told me they distrust our motivations for invading and occupying their land. Many initially held some hope for positive change, but they had good reasons to be wary of Western interests. There is even more evidence today to back their fears.

Afghans know why invaders throughout history sought control of Afghan real estate. Not only does Afghanistan contain some of the richest mineral deposits in the world, but it also sits astride the shortest trade routes between China and Europe as well as between Russia and India. In this age of globalizing free trade and an accelerating scramble for natural resources, Afghanistan sits at the epicentre of Eurasia.

And as Zbigniew Brzezinski noted in 1997: "What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and historical legacy."

 
READ WHOLE REPORT HERE

http://uruknet.info/?p=m73280&hd=&size=1&l=e

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Losing hearts and minds in Marjah?
May 6th, 2010
12:19 PM ETA
http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/06/losing-hearts-and-minds-in-marjah/?hpt=Sbin


U.S. Senate hearing on Thursday offered a grim assessment of the state of Marjah, almost three months after the major NATO offensive Operation Moshtarak began in the southern region.

Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Marjah does not appear to be a turning point in the overall mission in Afghanistan.

"A recent survey conducted by the International Council on Security and Development showed that a vast majority of villagers felt negatively about foreign troops and that more young Afghans had joined the Taliban over the last year," he said at the hearing. "Worse still were the reasons they had signed up with the Taliban: they said they joined because they had no jobs, because they had no money to get married or buy land, because they had no other future. In short, the coalition and their own government have not provided promising alternatives."


Read More

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Afghanistan: Losing hearts, minds and the war

by Abid Mustafa
(Monday, September 7, 2009)
http://world.mediamonitors.net/Headlines/Afghanistan-Losing-hearts-minds-and-the-war

"The only military asset the West’s has in its arsenal to reverse its fortunes in Afghanistan is the Pakistani regime. In the past, America exploited the Pakistani army, the country’s rich resources and ingenuity of its people to help the Afghan Mujahiddeen defeat the Soviets. Later, the US collaborated with Pakistan’s elite and created the Taleban to promote stability in Afghanistan and act as a conduit for the transportation of oil and gas from Central Asia. Today, America is conniving with the Pakistani leadership to confront the Afghan resistance and destroy it, even if this leads to the dissolution of Pakistan’s territorial integrity. If it was not for Pakistan, America’s preponderance in the region would have terminated long ago."

The events in Afghanistan over the passed few days clearly demonstrate that America and her allies are running out of options to extricate themselves from a hazardous quagmire that threatens to end their occupation in disgrace...

 Read Whole Article:

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Christmas Weekend Edition
December 24-26, 2010

Come What May


Staying the Course in Afghanistan


By BRIAN M. DOWNING

http://www.counterpunch.org/downing12242010.html

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Between haven and hell 

 
The last in a three-part series addressing necessary changes in US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Robert Grenier Last Modified: 27 Dec 2010 14:12 GMT

Pakistan has been a reluctant partner in the past, but their help remains an invaluable asset if the US ever hopes to bring stablity to the region [EPA]

FULL ARTICLE HERE

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2010/12/20101227101940967207.html

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Published on Monday, December 27, 2010 by Informed Comment


Top Ten Myths about Afghanistan, 2010

by Juan Cole


URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/27-0

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COMBAT GENERATION: ELUSIVE VICTORY


U.S. troops battle to hand off a valley resistant to Afghan governance


By Greg Jaffe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2010; 12:00 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122602622.html

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Australian police help build secret hit lists

by Rafael Epstein
December 27, 2010
 
EXCLUSIVE



http://www.smh.com.au/world/australian-police-help-build-secret-hit-lists-20101226-197wg.html

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Barney Frank: Cut NATO Spending, It 'Serves No Strategic Purpose'



First Posted: 12-27-10 02:25 PM   |   Updated: 12-27-10 03:40 PM


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/27/barney-frank-nato_n_801515.html?ref=email_share

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Analysis

U.S. Can’t Account for Billions Spent in Afghanistan


By DAVID FRANCIS, The Fiscal Times on Dec 27, 2010

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Issues/Budget-Impact/2010/12/27/US-Cant-Account-for-Billions-Spent-in-Afghanistan.aspx

BILLIONS OF DOLLARS ‘VANISH’ IN AFGHANISTAN
The United States has spent more than $55 billion trying to rebuild war-torn Afganistan and win the confidence of the people, but most of that money can’t be accounted for or has been wasted on failed projects.

READ FULL REPORT

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Issues/Budget-Impact/2010/12/27/US-Cant-Account-for-Billions-Spent-in-Afghanistan.aspx

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Insurgents Set Aside Rivalries on Afghan Border

By THOM SHANKER
Published: December 28, 2010

U.S. soldiers under attack near the Pakistani border.

Behrouz Mehri/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Rival militant organizations on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have increasingly been teaming up in deadly raids, in what military and intelligence officials say is the insurgents’ latest attempt to regain the initiative after months of withering attacks from American and allied forces.

MORE:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/world/asia/29military.html?_r=3&partner=TOPIXNEWS&ei=5099

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US: No Way to Seal Afghan Border With Pakistan

Officials Keep Pressuring Pakistan to Do a Job that Can't Be Done


by Jason Ditz, December 28, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/28/us-no-way-to-seal-afghan-border-with-pakistan/

Speaking to the media today, a top US military commander in charge of securing the vast, mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan admitted that there was literally no way for the US to actually accomplish this.

More

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/28/us-no-way-to-seal-afghan-border-with-pakistan/

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Army edits its history of the deadly battle of Wanat
 
 
By Greg Jaffe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 29, 2010; 12:01 AM

The Army's official history of the battle of Wanat - one of the most intensely scrutinized engagements of the Afghan war - largely absolves top commanders of the deaths of nine U.S. soldiers and instead blames the confusing and unpredictable nature of war.

This Story

-Army edits its history of the deadly battle of Wanat

-Combat Studies Institute report

-Army overrules inquiry faulting 3 officers in Wanat ambush

-Q&A, Transcript: Battle of Wanat: Not 'Just Another Casualty'

-The Battle of Wanat | The Valley Today: 'They Feel Like Outsiders and They Don't Want to Be'

-The Battle of Wanat | A Father's Pursuit: Not 'Just Another Casualty'

-The Battle of Wanat | Inside the Wire: 'Almost a Lost Cause'

-Special Report: The AfPak War

-Interactive: The Battle of Wanat

-The Road to Wanat

-Deadly Attack By Taliban Tests New Strategy

-After the Battle at Wanat


For links on above topics and complete article go here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/28/AR2010122804334.html

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Aid Groups Dismiss US Claims of Afghan War Progress

Situation Actually Getting Dramatically Worse, Note Analysts


by Jason Ditz, December 28, 2010



http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/28/aid-groups-dismiss-us-claims-of-afghan-war-progress/

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Taliban Recede:    Coalition or Winter's Advance?

By Jason Motlagh / Kabul and Muhib Habibi / Kandahar Monday, Dec. 27, 2010

Lieutenant Evan Slee from Bravo Troop 1-75 Cavalry 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, walks into an abandoned house after having blown up two unexploded rockets in the Haji Ghaffar village during a clearance patrol in the Zari district of Kandahar province on Dec. 27, 2010 Behrouz Mehri / AFP / Getty Images

For U.S.-led forces, breaking the Taliban's grip on the insurgents' home province of Kandahar has been a costly slog. The year 2010 was the deadliest yet in the Afghan war, with one-third more coalition casualties than in the previous year, most of them Americans in combat operations in the Taliban stronghold in the south. U.S. military officials insist the coalition has made major inroads, as attested to in part by the losses. For many area residents, however, the tactical gains touted by the White House in the latest war review had another cost: thousands of Afghans who fled the hostilities have returned to find their property damaged or destroyed, with reports of a number of hamlets entirely leveled.

For all the bitterness surrounding displacement and loss of property, Afghan officials and ordinary citizens in the three key districts surrounding Kandahar city agree that security has improved — at least for the time being. Changes are perhaps most pronounced in Arghandab, an ambush-ready river valley of grape and pomegranate orchards, where the Taliban used to control clusters of villages. Some American units lost more than half their men in the region this year. In October, the district shook almost around the clock from air strikes and firefights. But during December, displaced natives trickled back. Muhibullah, 36, a fruit merchant near the front gate of the district center, says business has picked up. "Now there are no Taliban in Arghandab, and we feel secure," he says, a change he chalks up mostly to winter but also to the U.S. military push that left the "trees naked," making it hard for insurgents to hide.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2039748,00.html#ixzz19Vb2dfQc

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DECEMBER 29, 2010.

'Malign' Afghans Targeted

U.S. and Afghan Allies Describe Web of Corruption but Say Prosecution Stalls.
   
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG

KABUL—U.S. officials in Afghanistan have spent thousands of hours over the past few years charting what they call "Malign Actor Networks"—webs of connections between members of President Hamid Karzai's family, businessmen, corrupt officials, drug traffickers and Taliban commanders.

Mr. Azimi of Afghan United Bank, in his Kabul office this month, denied corruption allegations against him. Joël van Houdt for The Wall Street Journal

Using intelligence drawn in part from informants and a powerful wiretapping system, these officials say they have found an economic and political order—underwritten by billions of dollars in aid, reconstruction and logistics funds from the West—that is undermining the Afghan government from within and aiding a Taliban insurgency that is trying to topple it from without.

The officials and their Afghan allies have had less success, however, breaking these bonds.

The futile attempts so far at prosecuting one individual—a banker named Haji Muhammad Rafi Azimi—illustrate the depth the problem.

Mr. Azimi has bribed senior officials, moved money for drug traffickers and kept the Taliban flush with cash, say several current and former Afghan and U.S. officials who described what they say are hours of wiretaps, information provided by informers and financial documents connected with the bank where Mr. Azimi works.

In an interview, Mr. Azimi denied any wrongdoing.

More
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513204576047734260414722.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

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NATO General: Afghan War to Escalate in 2011

German General Says NATO Moving Into 'Hold' Phase

by Jason Ditz, December 29, 2010

Even as he tried to stick to the official stance about progress, NATO spokeman Brigadier General Joseph Blotz conceded that violence would escalate yet further in 2011, adding that “there is no end to the fighting season.”

More

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/29/nato-spokesman-afghan-war-to-escalate-in-2011/

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NATO: Clashes Growing Around Tora Bora


Remote Afghan Mountain Range Once Again a Center of Combat

by Jason Ditz, December 29, 2010

More

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/29/nato-clashes-growing-around-tora-bora/

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An Election Gone Wrong Fuels Tension in Kabul


By CARLOTTA GALL and RUHULLAH KHAPALWAK

Published: December 29, 2010


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/world/asia/30pashtun.html?_r=1&ref=world

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Most Dangerous Year Ever, From Secret Spaceships to Killer Drones


By Noah Shachtman  December 31, 2010  |  7:00 am  |

The Afghanistan War Gets Ultraviolent


http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/12/most-dangerous-year-ever/

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Lindsey Graham: Permanent U.S. Presence In Afghanistan Would Be 'Enormously Beneficial'


BY Sam Stein

HuffPost , January 2, 2011

NEW HAVEN -- There was, with really no notable exception, an absence of discussion of the Afghanistan war during the course of the 2010 campaign. But that may have been more a product of the electoral landscape (congressional races often don't lend themselves to foreign policy debates) and strategic timelines (the start date for withdrawal begins in July 2011) than anything else.

And, indeed, during an interview Sunday morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) provided some indication that Republicans would push U.S. permanency in Afghanistan in the years ahead, insisting that it would be "enormously beneficial" to show that type of force "in perpetuity."

 
READ MORE & WATCH VIDEO :

http://uruknet.info/?p=m73525&hd=&size=1&l=e

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Over 10,000 died in Afghan violence in 2010

January 2, 2011

KABUL — More than 10,000 people, about a fifth of them civilians, lost their lives in violence in Afghanistan last year, an AFP count based on official figures and an independent website tally showed Sunday.

Afghanistan's interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary revealed new figures for the number of civilians, police and militants killed in 2010 -- a total of 8,560 people.

In addition, the Afghan defence ministry said that 810 Afghan soldiers died in 2010, while independent website icasualties.org puts the total death toll for international troops last year at 711.

That brings the overall number of dead from the war last year to 10,081, according to an AFP calculation.

Afghanistan has been in the grip of a Taliban insurgency since the hardline Islamists were ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States.

 
READ MORE HERE :
http://uruknet.info/?p=m73505&hd=&size=1&l=e

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Published on Monday, January 3, 2011 by Inter Press Service

How Afghanistan Became a War for NATO

by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The official line of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO command in Afghanistan, is that the war against Afghan insurgents is vital to the security of all the countries providing troops there.

In fact, however, NATO was given a central role in Afghanistan because of the influence of U.S. officials concerned with the alliance, according to a U.S. military officer who was in a position to observe the decision-making process.

U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry (R) confers with General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, before a press conference with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace in Kabul December 8, 2010. REUTERS/Win McNamee/Pool)

"NATO's role in Afghanistan is more about NATO than it is about Afghanistan," the officer, who insisted on anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the subject, told IPS in an interview.

The alliance would never have been given such a prominent role in Afghanistan but for the fact that the George W. Bush administration wanted no significant U.S. military role there that could interfere with their plans to take control of Iraq.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/03-3

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Published on Monday, January 3, 2011 by The Nation

A Real December Review for Afghanistan

by Greg Kaufmann

The War in Afghanistan is the longest in US history [1], at 110 months, and the most expensive, at $1 million per soldier and over $100 billion annually. There have been over 2,200 [2] US and coalition casualties, and tens of thousands of Afghan civilian deaths. Additionally, nearly 600 US troops are wounded [3] every month.

Given these extraordinary human and economic costs—at a time when there is great economic pain at home and 60 percent [4] of Americans think the war is not worth fighting—there was much anticipation of the "December Review" President Obama promised one year ago when he announced a 30,000-troop increase in Afghanistan.

But last month the administration began to downplay the review's significance, saying it would only look at the strategy's progress rather than consider policy alternatives. And there was no shortage of leaks revealing that the report would show progress is being made.

So when an unclassified version [5] of the review was finally released, it came as little surprise that it concluded that "the strategy is showing progress."

Unfortunately, one needs to look elsewhere for a more candid assessment.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/03-12

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WikiLeaks' Most Terrifying Revelation:   Just How Much Our Government Lies to Us

Wikileaks has shown that our government and military form a 'vast lying machine' that perpetrates mass murder in our name.

By Fred Branfman, AlterNet
Posted on January 3, 2011, Printed on January 4, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149393/

"Try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them."
-- Julian Assange, 2007 blog entry

Do you believe that it is in Americans' interest to allow a small group of U.S. leaders to unilaterally murder, maim, imprison and/or torture anyone they choose anywhere in the world, without the knowledge let alone oversight of their citizens or the international community? And, despite their proven record of failure to protect America -- from Indochina to Iran to Iraq -- do you believe they should be permitted to clandestinely expand their war-making without informed public debate? If so, you are betraying the principles upon which America was founded, endangering your nation, and displaying a distinctly "unamerican" subservience to unaccountable authority. But if you oppose autocratic power, you are called to support Wikileaks and others trying to limit U.S. Executive Branch mass murder abroad and failure to protect Americans at home.

These two issues became officially linked for the first time when former U.S. Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal explicitly stated that the murder of civilians increases rather than decreases the numbers of those committed to killing Americans, and actually implemented policies -- since reversed by General Petraeus -- to reduce U.S. murder of civilians. McChrystal said that “for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies." By so doing he made it clear that killing civilians is not only a moral and war crimes issue, but -- in today's interdependent world -- also threatens U.S. national security.

As important as is the issue of free speech, it is the question of whether the U.S. Executive is in fact protecting the American people through its mass murder abroad that really lies at the heart of the Wikileaks controversy. Executive Branch officials justify persecuting and threatening to murder Assange on the grounds that he has damaged U.S. "national security." If McChrystal is right, however, it is the past decade of U.S. Executive mass murder in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, now revealed beyond any doubt by Wikileaks, that is the real threat to U.S. national security.

The chilling fact is this: whether you believe that September 11, 2001 was due to incomprehensible fanaticism or genuine grievances, it seems likely that U.S. leaders’ murder of countless Muslims since 2001 will cause the next 9/11 should, God forbid, it occur, The recent suicide-bomber in Sweden who came perilously close to succeeding taped a message saying "so will your children, daughters, brothers, and sisters die, like our brothers, sisters, and children die." Similar sentiments were voiced by the Times Square bomber, and it is likely that those responsible for future American deaths will also be motivated by revenge for the hundreds of thousands of Muslims for whose deaths U.S. leaders are responsible since 2001.

This is not, of course, to justify such attacks. Any attacks on civilians, whether by the Taliban or General Petraeus, are totally unjustified and crimes of war. But if the issue is how best to enhance U.S. national security, it is critical to rationally discuss the most prudent and sensible means of preventing further attacks -- which in this case is to stop creating huge numbers of people who want to kill Americans. If General McChrystal is correct, every American should tremble at the long-term danger to America caused by the last decade of U.S. war-making in the Muslim world. If only 1/100th of 1% of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are moved to want to attack America because of America's post-9/11 killing of Muslim civilians, for example, the U.S. Executive will have created a pool of 160,000 Muslims devoted to murdering Americans.

Nothing is more emblematic of the service Assange is doing Americans than the July 25 N.Y. Times headline announcing its publication of the Wikileaks "Afghan War Logs": "View Is Bleaker Than Official Portrayal Of War In Afghanistan."

The N.Y. Times thus not only acknowledged that Wikileaks had supplied Americans with vital information about the war that its own government was denying them, but that this information had not been provided by the U.S. mass media. If it had been doing its job, after all, America’s “newspaper of record” not Wikileaks would have long ago revealed that the Afghan war was "bleaker than official portrayal of the war." The Guardian newspaper's headline on the same day drove the point home: "Massive Leak Of Secret Files Exposes Truth Of Occupation," i.e. the truth as opposed to U.S. Executive lies.

These "Afghan War Logs", like the Iraqi war logs after them, and much material in Wikileaks' recent release of diplomatic cables, reveal above all that U.S. Executive war-making is marked by massive deception of the American people -- particularly lying about (1) the enormous civilian casualties the U.S. is causing and (2) its claim to be pursuing a "counter-insurgency strategy" designed to install a democratic Afghan government. The Times and Guardian stories describe how these official U.S. documents reveal constant U.S. Executive Branch lying to the American people.

-- U.S. MURDER OF CIVILIANS: "A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents," (Guardian) "Incident by incident, the reports resemble a police blotter of the myriad ways Afghan civilians were killed -- not just in airstrikes but in ones and twos -- in shootings on the roads or in the villages, in misunderstandings or in a cross-fire, or in chaotic moments when Afghan drivers ventured too close to convoys and checkpoints". (N.Y. Times) "The Nato coalition in Afghanistan has been using an undisclosed "black" unit of special forces, Task Force 373, to hunt down targets for death or detention without trial ... The logs reveal that TF 373 has also killed civilian men, women and children and even Afghan police officers who have strayed into its path." (Guardian)

-- REGULAR COVERUPS OF U.S. CIVILIAN MURDER: "The dead, the reports repeatedly indicate, were not suicide bombers or insurgents, and many of the cases were not reported to the public at the time." (N.Y. Times) "War logs show how marines gave cleaned up accounts of an incident in which they killed 19 civilians ... There would be no punishment." (Guardian) "The logs detail how US special forces dropped six 2,000 lb bombs on a compound where they believed a `high-value individual' was hiding, after `ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area'. A senior US commander reported that 150 Taliban had been killed. Locals, however, reported that up to 300 civilians had died." (Guardian)

-- U.S. AND A CORRUPT AFGHAN GOVERNMENT ARE ALIENATING AFGHAN CIVILIANS AND LOSING THE WAR: "The documents illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001 ... The reports paint a disheartening picture of the Afghan police (who) are often described as distrusted, even loathed, by Afghan civilians. The reports recount episodes of police brutality, corruption petty and large, extortion and kidnapping ... The toll of the war -- reflected in mounting civilian casualties -- left the Americans seeking cooperation and support from an Afghan population that grew steadily more exhausted, resentful, fearful and alienated ... The expanding (U.S.) special operations have stoked particular resentment among Afghans -- for their lack of coordination with local forces, the civilian casualties they frequently inflicted and the lack of the accountability." (N.Y. Times)

READ MUCH MORE :

http://www.alternet.org/story/149393/wikileaks%27_most_terrifying_revelation%3A_just_how_much_our_government_lies_to_us

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Obama’s reign of terror in Afghanistan


BY James Cogan

WSWS, January 4, 2011
http://uruknet.info/?p=m73563&hd=&size=1&l=e

2010 was the bloodiest year of the now nine-year conflict in Afghanistan and the tribal border regions of Pakistan. Under the command of General David Petraeus, a massively expanded US and NATO force is waging a campaign of extermination against various ethnic Pashtun and Taliban-linked insurgent movements that have not accepted the foreign invasion of their country.

Still justified with threadbare rhetoric about fighting terrorism, the occupation is in fact a neo-colonial and criminal enterprise. Its motive is to crush resistance and transform Afghanistan into a US client state in the oil and gas-rich Central Asian region. It is part of a geo-political struggle for dominance over territory and lucrative resources, both in Afghanistan itself and in surrounding states, against US rivals such as China, Russia and Iran.

Obama had made the so-called "Af-Pak War" a cornerstone of his administration’s foreign policy. Since he took office in January 2009, American troop numbers in Afghanistan have been doubled to close to 100,000. Thousands of additional troops have also been sent by various NATO states, pushing the overall US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to more than 150,000. By contrast, the Soviet force that occupied the country in the 1980s never exceeded 110,000.

The escalation of the war led to unprecedented violence and brutality in 2010. Thousands of US marines were sent into major offensives against Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan. In areas of Kandahar province, entire villages were razed to the ground, ostensibly to remove insurgent booby-traps. Kandahar itself, a city of 500,000, was turned into a maze of concrete blast walls and checkpoints. Residents are subjected to constant intimidation, searches and biometric eye scans.

Supplementing the offensives, there was a major intensification in US air strikes. In October, over 1,000 missions were flown, compared with 640 the year before. Every several days, ISAF is issuing a new press release hailing the slaughter from the air of another group of alleged insurgents.

Special forces death squads, tasked with assassinating or detaining alleged insurgents, have increased their operations by 600 percent under Obama. The US military claimed that between mid-September and mid-December alone, such squads carried out 1,785 raids, killed or captured 880 "insurgent leaders", killed a further 384 rank-and-file fighters and captured another 2,361 alleged insurgents.

The statistics only convey something of the reign of terror that such a scale of special forces’ operations represents. Villagers across insurgent-held areas of Afghanistan live in daily fear that their family will be the next targeted. Homes are smashed into in the dead of night, women and children bailed up with guns and the men blindfolded, bound and dragged away. If any resistance is shown, deadly force is used.

Captured men are subjected to intense interrogation and generally handed over by American personnel to be detained in the puppet Afghan government’s squalid and overcrowded prisons. The National Directorate of Security (NDS), which operates the prisons, is widely accused of abusing and torturing detainees.

Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific director, Sam Zarifi, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last month that the American system of handing detainees over to the NDS "is essentially a violation of international law".

Despite the repression against the Afghan people, insurgent attacks against ISAF and Afghan government targets increased by 66 percent last year. Resistance broadened geographically as well, with the number of districts registering insurgent activity increasing.

American and NATO troops paid for Obama’s escalation with the highest number of casualties of the war. A total of 711 lost their lives—499 Americans, 103 British and 109 from other countries contributing troops to the occupation—compared with 521 in 2009 and 295 in 2008. As many as 3,000 were wounded, including dozens who suffered horrific injuries in roadside bombings.

The United Nations estimates that the number of Afghan civilian deaths soared in the first 10 months of 2010 by 20 percent to close to 5,500. A large number lost their lives as a result of detonating insurgent roadside bombs rigged to target ISAF or Afghan government forces.

The coming years are shaping up to be no less bloody than 2010. The Obama White House has repudiated any talk of withdrawing a substantial number of American troops by mid-2011. Instead, the end of 2014 has been adopted by NATO as the date when the pro-occupation Afghan army and police will be sufficiently trained to take over all security in the country. Even if such a perspective was realised, it is the intention of the US military to leave a substantial residual force in Afghanistan indefinitely.

CONTINUE READING :

http://uruknet.info/?p=m73563&hd=&size=1&l=e



 

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Obama Should Read WikiLeaks on Afghanistan

by Ray McGovern, January 04, 2011

http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2011/01/03/obama-should-read-wikileaks-on-afghanistan/

Perhaps President Barack Obama should give himself a waiver on the ban prohibiting U.S. government employees from downloading classified cables released by WikiLeaks, so he can get a better grasp on the futility of his Afghan War strategy.

For instance, if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has hidden from him Ambassador Karl Eikenberry’s cables from Kabul, he might wish to search out KABUL 001892 of July 13, 2009, in which Eikenberry reports that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is “unable to grasp the most rudimentary principles of state building.”

And, while he’s at it, he should dig out the September 2009 cable from the U.S. Ambassador in Pakistan, Anne Patterson, in which she warns: “There is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance … as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these [Taliban and similar] groups in Pakistan.”

The same conclusion is contained in the recent National Intelligence Estimates on Afghanistan and Pakistan. My advice to Obama would be: Don’t let anyone gist them for you; read at least the Key Judgments.

In his recent defense of his Afghanistan-Pakistan policy, Obama acted as if he didn’t know or understand the full import of these disclosures. Instead, he simply reiterated the “three areas of our strategy” in Afghanistan:

“To break the Taliban’s momentum and train Afghan forces so they can take the lead; to promote effective governance and development; and regional cooperation, especially with Pakistan, because our strategy has to succeed on both sides of the border.”


But, Mr. President, you should know that the Taliban’s momentum has not been broken; nor is it likely to be. And good luck with President Karzai on that “effective governance” thing, not to mention the part about getting cooperation from Pakistan.  Indeed, the real Achilles heel of Obama’s strategy, the true showstopper, is the forlorn hope of stronger cooperation from Pakistan.

Other WikiLeaks cables make Pakistan’s deep concern about the encroachment of India in Afghanistan unmistakably clear. In one cable, for example, Pakistani Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani is reported to have been “utterly frank” about the consequences of a pro-India government coming to power in Kabul, saying: 

“The Pakistani establishment will dramatically increase support for Taliban groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan … as an important counterweight.”


CONTINUE READING HERE:

http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2011/01/03/obama-should-read-wikileaks-on-afghanistan/

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NATO: No Winter Lull in Afghanistan This Year

General Predicts Increase in Violence Over the Winter

by Jason Ditz, January 03, 2011

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/03/nato-no-winter-lull-in-afghanistan-this-year/

In comments today NATO spokesman General Josef Blotz insisted that there would be no lull in fighting over the winter, as there has been every single year so far in the war, and indeed predicted that there would be an increase in violence over the course of the winter.

CONTINUES:
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/03/nato-no-winter-lull-in-afghanistan-this-year/

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Ethnic discrimination infests Afghan army, soldiers say

By Claire Truscott (AFP) – 1 day ago

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ix6_E0ebrinN05bxP-CFnPz1ADsg?docId=CNG.9b3734321ed62d26cc8b8df2670a9dc0.141

MUSA QALA, Afghanistan — Disgruntled Afghan soldiers dish out five-dollar dinner plates of fried rice and potatoes to US Marines at a camp on the frontline against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.

This culinary sideline, which supplements the US forces' spartan rations, helps the Afghans save enough cash to bribe their commander to give them time off to see their families, the men say. Some never return.

Speaking in secret afterwards, the Afghan troops told AFP that because they are ethnic minorities in the country's Pashtun-heavy army, bribery is the only way they can make sure their Pashtun commander gives them a break.

"The commander tells us, 'search your pockets'. If somebody gives him money, he can take vacation. I don't have any money so I can't go," said one soldier, a 20-year-old ethnic Hazara man.

"As a non-Pashtun, I'm cheap. I'm not as valuable to them (the army) as a Pashtun soldier," added a Tajik, who like others requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

The situation is sapping morale among young recruits at a small base in the Musa Qala district of volatile Helmand province, a highly dangerous area and one of Afghanistan's main Taliban flashpoints.

MORE:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ix6_E0ebrinN05bxP-CFnPz1ADsg?docId=CNG.9b3734321ed62d26cc8b8df2670a9dc0.141

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U.S.-funded infrastructure deteriorates once under Afghan control, report says

By Josh Boak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 4, 2011; 12:19 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/03/AR2011010302175.html

Roads, canals and schools built in Afghanistan as part of a special U.S. military program are crumbling under Afghan stewardship, despite steps imposed over the past year to ensure that reconstruction money is not being wasted, according to government reports and interviews with military and civilian personnel.

U.S. troops in Afghanistan have spent $2 billion over six years on 16,000 humanitarian projects through the Commander's Emergency Response Program, which gives a battalion-level commander the power to treat aid dollars as ammunition.

A report slated for release this month reveals that CERP projects can quickly slide into neglect after being transferred to Afghan control. The Afghans had problems maintaining about half of the 69 projects reviewed in eastern Laghman province, according to an audit by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

The spending in Afghanistan is part of the $5 billion provided to U.S. military commanders for projects in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2004. The new report is the latest to identify shortcomings and missteps in the program, whose ventures have included the Jadriyah Lake park in Iraq, planned as a water park but now barren two years after a U.S. military inauguration ceremony.

The dilapidated projects in Afghanistan could present a challenge to the U.S. strategy of shifting more responsibility to Afghans. Investing in infrastructure, notes President Obama's December review of the war, "will give the Afghan government and people the tools to build and sustain a future of stability."

"Sustainment is one of the biggest issues with our whole strategy," said a civilian official who shared details from a draft of the report. "The Afghans don't have the money or capacity to sustain much." The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the Defense Department is preparing a response to the audit.

Photos in the report show washed-out roads, with cracks and potholes where improvised explosive devices can be hidden. Among the projects profiled is a re-dredged canal that filled with silt a month after opening.

Multiple reports by the Government Accountability Office have noted a lack of monitoring by the Pentagon. And because formal U.S. oversight stops after a project is turned over to Afghans, it is difficult to gauge how projects are maintained countrywide.

When asked whether the Afghans have trouble sustaining projects, the U.S. military issued a statement saying it does not have the information to provide an immediate answer.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said in Senate testimony last year that CERP is "the most responsive and effective means to address a local community's needs." He previously relied on the discretionary fund as the commanding general in Iraq, where $3.5 billion has been spent through the program. Over the past two years, Petraeus has pushed for stricter controls to stop any fraud and waste.

In response to "insufficient management," CERP guidance for Afghanistan was revised in December 2009, according to a statement by the military. The new guidance emphasizes the need to meet with Afghan leaders when choosing what to fund. It does not, however, require U.S. troops to continue inspecting projects after they are placed under Afghan control

READ MORE:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/03/AR2011010302175.html

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The Urge to Surge


Washington’s 30-Year High

By Tom Engelhardt

If, as 2011 begins, you want to peer into the future, enter my time machine, strap yourself in, and head for the past, that laboratory for all developments of our moment and beyond.

Just as 2010 ended, the American military’s urge to surge resurfaced in a significant way.  It seems that “leaders” in the Obama administration and “senior American military commanders” in Afghanistan were acting as a veritable WikiLeaks machine.  They slipped information to New York Times reporters Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins about secret planning to increase pressure in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, possibly on the tinderbox province of Baluchistan, and undoubtedly on the Pakistani government and military via cross-border raids by U.S. Special Operations forces in the new year.

In the front-page story those two reporters produced, you could practically slice with a dull knife American military frustration over a war going terribly wrong, over an enemy (shades of Vietnam!) with “sanctuaries” for rest, recuperation, and rearming just over an ill-marked, half-existent border.  You could practically taste the chagrin of the military that their war against... well you name it: terrorists, guerrillas, former Islamic fundamentalist allies, Afghan and Pakistani nationalists, and god knows who else... wasn’t proceeding exactly swimmingly.  You could practically reach out and be seared by their anger at the Pakistanis for continuing to take American bucks by the billions while playing their own game, rather than an American one, in the region.

If you were of a certain age, you could practically feel (shades of Vietnam again!) that eerily hopeful sense that the next step in spreading the war, the next escalation, could be the decisive one.  Admittedly, these days no one talks (as they did in the Vietnam and Iraq years) about turning “corners” or reaching “tipping points,” but you can practically hear those phrases anyway, or at least the mingled hope and desperation that always lurked behind them.

Take this sentence, for instance: “Even with the risks, military commanders say that using American Special Operations troops could bring an intelligence windfall, if militants were captured, brought back across the border into Afghanistan and interrogated.” Can’t you catch the familiar conviction that, when things are going badly, the answer is never “less,” always “more,” that just another decisive step or two and you’ll be around that fateful corner?

In this single New York Times piece (and other hints about cross-border operations), you can sense just how addictive war is for the war planners. Once you begin down the path of invasion and occupation, turning back is as difficult as an addict going cold turkey.  With all the sober talk about year-end reviews in Afghanistan, about planning and “progress” (a word used nine times in the relatively brief, vetted “overview” of that review recently released by the White House), about future dates for drawdowns and present tactics, it’s easy to forget that war is a drug.  When you’re high on it, your decisions undoubtedly look as rational, even practical, as the public language you tend to use to describe them.  But don’t believe it for a second.

Once you’ve shot up this drug, your thinking is impaired.  Through its dream-haze, unpleasant history becomes bunk; what others couldn’t do, you fantasize that you can.  Forget the fact that crossing similar borders to get similar information and wipe out similar sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos in the Vietnam War years led to catastrophe for American planners and the peoples of the region.  It only widened that war into what in Cambodia would become auto-genocide.  Forget the fact that, no matter whom American raiders might capture, they have no hope of capturing the feeling of nationalism (or the tribal equivalent) that, in the face of foreign invaders or a foreign occupation, keeps the under-armed resilient against the mightiest of forces.

Think of the American urge to surge as a manifestation of the war drug’s effect in the world. In what the Bush administration used to call “the Greater Middle East,” Washington is now in its third and grimmest surge iteration.  The first took place in the 1980s during the Reagan administration’s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and proved the highest of highs; the second got rolling as the last century was ending and culminated in the first years of the twenty-first century amid what can only be described as delusions of grandeur, or even imperial megalomania.  It focused on a global Pax Americana and the wars that extend it into the distant future.  The third started in 2006 in Iraq and is still playing itself out in Afghanistan as 2011 commences.

In Central and South Asia, we could now be heading for the end of the age of American surges, which in practical terms have manifested themselves as the urge to destabilize.  Geopolitically, little could be uglier or riskier on our planet at the moment than destabilizing Pakistan -- or the United States.  Three decades after the American urge to surge in Afghanistan helped destabilize one imperial superpower, the Soviet Union, the present plans, whatever they may turn out to be, could belatedly destabilize the other superpower of the Cold War era.  And what our preeminent group of surgers welcomed as an “unprecedented strategic opportunity” as this century dawned may, in its later stages, be seen as an unprecedented act of strategic desperation.

That, of course, is what drugs, taken over decades, do to you: they give you delusions of grandeur and then leave you on the street, strung out, and without much to call your own.  Perhaps it’s fitting that Afghanistan, the country we helped turn into the planet’s leading narco-state, has given us a 30-year high from hell.

So, as the New Year begins, strap yourself into that time machine and travel with me back into the 1980s, so that we can peer into a future we know and see the pattern that lies both behind and ahead of us


MORE HERE

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175336/tomgram:_engelhardt,_war_is_a_drug/

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South Asia
Jan 6, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA06Df01.html   

Afghans pay for fuel halt


By Abubakar Siddique

Afghans are grappling with rising fuel prices and dwindling supplies in the depth of winter, while convoys of relief aid stand idle just across the border with Iran.

Thousands of fuel tankers and trucks carrying compressed-gas cylinders used for cooking and heating were stranded after Iranian officials imposed a blockade on the Afghanistan-bound deliveries because they claim such supplies would help North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces.


READ MORE :

http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA06Df01.html



 
 
 

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Afghanistan War Weekly: January 2, 2011

Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2011-01-03 04:39 Afghanistan

http://warisacrime.org/content/afghanistan-war-weekly-january-2-2011

Though winter has slowed the war fighting in Afghanistan, year-end assessments of the war and especially of the recent four-stage “surge” around Kandahar continue to report little in the way of real progress. The increasing level of violence in Afghanistan made 2010 the bloodiest year of the war yet, with 500 US killed and 5,000 US wounded, a record number of air strikes in Afghanistan and drone strikes in Pakistan, and unknown numbers of Afghanistan killed and wounded. Sketchy reports of last fall’s fighting also indicate massive destruction to many villages, especially the result of air strikes, artillery, and surface-to-surface missiles. Two articles linked below describe the spread of the war to the north, to the province of Kunduz, and a good package of articles linked below describes Afghanistan’s entrenched corruption, a problem the US cannot hope to solve without destroying the façade of an Afghanistan government. The war is very different than it was a year ago.

Scarcely visible in the US media, Pakistan’s US-friendly government teeters on the edge of collapse, as two small parties have now left the governing coalition, raising the likelihood of elections and further destabilization. An interesting packet of articles linked below describes some of the problems in sealing the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the war managers are contemplating a “solution” based on US incursions into Pakistan territory. A second set of articles reviews the damage done by the drone attacks, now vigorously opposed by all Pakistan political parties and by great majorities on public opinion polls. An election under these circumstances would make the US war a front-burner issue, with unpredictable consequences.

Week Five of the WikiLeaks saga did not produce any major developments, except that the major media in possession of the State Department cables have more or less ceased publishing stories about them. With less than 2,000 of the 251,000 cables now in the public domain, it is likely that WikiLeaks will begin publishing the cables themselves. (Until now, they have posted only those cables that have been previously published by the major media.) Linked below are many good articles about the significance of the Leak, the problems the US will have prosecuting Assange, and a few stories about what the cables tell us about Empire Management.

Also below are links to several good articles about the impact of the war on soldiers, vets, and their families. The most recent public opinion poll finds that US opposition to war now stands at 63 percent, an all-time high, with opposition from self-identified Democrats at over 70 percent.
 
READ MORE :

http://warisacrime.org/content/afghanistan-war-weekly-january-2-2011

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Afghanistan: From The British Empire to the NATO Invasion: "Blind Man Walking on a Roof."


Porous Pakistan: Afghan border a headache to NATO

By Scott Taylor
 
Global Research, January 4, 2011

Chronicle Herald 

READ MORE

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22625

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US Pushes Karzai to Double Private Security Contractors

With Attempted Ban in Tatters, US Looks to Grow Armed Contractors

by Jason Ditz, January 05, 2011

It has been less than five months since Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced that the Afghan government was entirely banning all 40,000 private security forces in the country, with an eye toward recruiting the newly unemployed workers into the military.

Karzai’s ban ended in failure, of course, backing off the total ban in October as a result of US condemnations and saying NATO’s employees (which is to say most of the contractors) were exempt. By early December, Karzai announced he was scrapping the ban entirely, with some 25,000 still in their positions

READ MORE

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/05/us-pushes-karzai-to-double-private-security-contractors/

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NATO: $20 billion over 2 years for Afghan training

AP – An Afghan Army commando stands in front of weapons on display for the media, in Kabul, Afghanistan, …

Reuters By TAREK EL-TABLAWY, Associated Press
– Wed Jan 5, 1:56 pm ET

KABUL, Afghanistan – By the end of the year, NATO will have spent $20 billion on developing Afghan security forces since the start of 2010 and will maintain a training presence through at least 2016, the commander of the training mission said Wednesday.

Soaring illiteracy rates among service members and a shortage of specialized trainers, however, remain major hurdles as Afghans prepare to take control of securing their nation by the 2014 deadline for NATO to withdraw combat forces, said U.S. Lt. Gen. William Caldwell.

"We have made great strides in providing the Afghan national security force with both capable and sustainable weapons, vehicles and equipment over this last year, while building a very strong and self-reliant security force," Caldwell said.

The $20 billion for 2010 and 2011 is paying for training, equipment and infrastructure. The figure is a large increase over the $20 billion spent between 2003 and 2009.

READ MORE

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110105/ap_on_re_as/as_afghan_nato_training