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

[bigron]

Sisyphus and Afghanistan's Drug War

The Skeptics
by Ted Galen Carpenter | January 6, 2011

Only a few months ago, UN and NATO officials were hailing a decline in Afghanistan’s opium crop and, therefore, a drop in the supply of the product that’s the raw ingredient of heroin. Closer reading of the data, though, showed that almost all the decline was the result of a fungus that blighted opium poppy plants. So the drop in supply was merely a temporary phenomenon, not a sign of progress in the war on drugs.

It turns out that the fungal blight may not provide even temporary benefits. Mohammad Ibrahim Azhar, Afghanistan’s deputy counter-narcotics minister, admits that while the poppy crop declined 48 percent in 2010, the price for the remaining crop nearly doubled. Understandably, Afghan farmers are rushing to plant additional opium poppies to take advantage of the financial bonanza.

MORE

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/sisyphus-afghanistans-drug-war-4679

[bigron]

As opium prices soar and allies focus on Taliban, Afghan drug war stumbles


By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 14, 2011; 12:00 AM



KABUL - After several years of steady progress in curbing opium poppy cultivation and cracking down on drug smugglers, Afghan officials say the anti-drug campaign is flagging as opium prices soar, farmers are lured back to the lucrative crop and Afghanistan's Western allies focus more narrowly on defeating the Taliban.

That combination adds a potentially destabilizing factor to Afghanistan at a time when the United States is desperate to show progress in a war now into its 10th year. The country's Taliban insurgency and the drug trade flourish in the same lawless terrain, and are often mutually reinforcing. But Afghan officials say the opium problem is not receiving the focus it deserves from Western powers.

"The price of opium is now seven times higher than wheat, and there is a $58 billion demand for narcotics, so our farmers have no disincentive to cultivate poppy," said Mohammed Azhar, deputy minister for counternarcotics. "We have gotten a lot of help, but it is not enough. Afghanistan is still producing 85 percent of the opium in the world, and it is still a dark stain on our name."

International attention to Afghanistan's drug problem has waxed and waned over the course of the war, often as a result of shifts in Western priorities as elected governments have changed and conflict with Islamist insurgents has intensified.

In the first several years after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, U.S.-led policy was military-driven and drugs were not seen as a critical issue. Poppy cultivation, once banned by the Taliban, surged. By 2004, the U.S. and British governments stepped in with programs to eradicate poppy, encourage farmers to grow other crops and train Afghan police and prosecutors in how to combat drug trafficking

MORE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/13/AR2011011306738.html

[bigron]

UK Army deploys troops to escape cuts

Fri Jan 14, 2011 12:29PM




A former British envoy to Afghanistan claims the UK troops have been deployed in Afghanistan because commanders feared the army would be slashed if left unused.

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles said former army chief, General Sir Richard Dannat had told him he re-commissioned troops coming from Iraq to Afghanistan because they could be retired as part of the government defense review plans, the daily Belfast Telegraph reported.

MORE

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/160116.html

[bigron]

US-NATO Killings of Civilians in Afghanistan


by Prof. Marc W. Herold

January 14, 2011


The Obama administration’s effort to persist in carrying out a deadly war in Afghanistan outside the public’s eye has been succeeding. Three means are employed: tight control over news flowing out of Afghanistan; vastly greater reliance upon secretive night raids by U.S. Special Forces; and a stepped-up use of private contractors/mercenaries on the ground in Afghanistan. The latter effort is crucial in helping reduce reported U.S. military casualties in Afghanistan, the primary factor which affects domestic U.S. politics. 

Every now and then, the mainstream media reports upon a particularly egregious incident which took place in Afghanistan. Nowhere can a reader get a sense of the overall level of pain inflicted upon average Afghan civilians by the actions of U.S. and NATO occupation forces. This brief essay paints a picture of ground reality in Afghanistan during the month of December 2010.  The United Nations’ UNAMA releases overall figures, but the data is simply presented in aggregate fashion and we are asked to believe. A skeptic cannot fact check the numbers. We are simply asked to believe these faith-based numbers. As I have noted many times, the UNAMA figures for civilians killed by U.S/NATO actions are at best around 70% of the actual numbers killed.  For example, for 2009, the UNAMA captured less than 60% of the civilians who perished
 
MUCH MORE HERE :

http://uruknet.com/?p=m73909&hd=&size=1&l=e

[bigron]

The Failure of Academia: British University endorses the "War on Terrorism"

The Book that Was Not Meant to Be Published


by Ramzy Baroud



January 15, 2011

Deepak Tripathi’s most recent book, Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism (Potomac Books) raises several issues, both within and outside of its content. It is based on research for his doctoral dissertation, the qualification for which he never received.

MORE

http://uruknet.info/?p=m73957&hd=&size=1&l=e

 

[bigron]

January 15, 2011


Jihadi Gangster: Censored in Afghanistan

(Image of Afghan Scene article on Afghan-American artist Aman Mojadidi banned by Afghan government censors.)


The Jihadi Gangster has been censored in Afghanistan.

Afghan government censors have branded the unrepentant Kabul Gangsta Godfather as an offense to the nation's traditional values and directed Kabul's largest English-language magazine to excise an article about the Afghan-American artist.

A story on the Jihadi Gangster, aka Aman Mojadidi, was slated to appear in the current issue of Afghan Scene, a glossy English-language monthly geared towards the expat community in Kabul.

When the latest issue was flown in from the Dubai printer, government censors were not too happy with what they found.

The article (a reprint of this Checkpoint Kabul blog post) featured photographs that Afghan government censors said were offensive to the country's mujaheddin anti-Soviet fighters.

One of the photos showed the Jihadi Gangster's faux campaign posters stuck up around town during last fall's parliamentary race.

The JG's campaign slogan, emblazoned on the poster, was simple: Vote for me. I've done jihad. And I'm rich



Read more: http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/kabul/2011/01/jihadi-gangster-censored-in-afghanistan.html#ixzz1BCT8ZWup

[bigron]

Afghanistan: NATO strike kills 6 of a family in Kunar


by Wali Salarzai & Mueed Hashmi



January 16, 2011

ASADABAD (PAN): NATO-led soldiers killed six members of a family during an airstrike in eastern Kunar province, a provincial council member alleged on Sunday. But the alliance rejected the allegation as baseless.

The overnight bombardment took place in the Kodi area of Asmar district, bordering Pakistan, Haji Sultan Siddiqui told Pajhwok Afghan News.

The victims included three children, two youths and an old man, he said, accusing foreign soldiers of disregarding civilian safety during operations.

MORE

http://uruknet.info/?p=m73969&hd=&size=1&l=e


 

[bigron]

U.S. Rewrites History to Hide Afghanistan Defeat

The Frontier Post, Pakistan

January 16, 2011


U.S. Vice President Joe Biden descended on Islamabad for a few hours, returning home after articulating familiar platitudes in public and talking tough with Pakistani interlocutors in the official corridors. America's top commander, Admiral Mike Mullen, has also harped on their familiar rhapsody: Pakistan’s tribal areas have become global terror's epicenter.

Biden may be a friend to Pakistan and Mullen may have developed a close rapport with Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, but both are trying to rewrite the history of their botched Afghan War. Like all other American officials, they are smothering the truth, distorting facts and hiding unpalatable realities. They, too, are loath to concede that America has lost the war. Deceitfully, they have dubbed the North Waziristan tribal agency as the Achilles’ heel in their Afghan war campaign. The want Pakistanis to finish off the Afghan Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies who they claim have safe haven and launch attacks against the U.S.-led coalition and Afghan armies.

But it's all a giant hoax to paper over the stupendous collapse of the occupation army, which is largely composed of U.S. troops, in a war that costs the American taxpayer some $100 billion a year. Nonetheless, U.S. commanders and their political bosses, in league with the embedded media, peddle half-truths and patent lies to a gullible home audience and the international community.

Meanwhile, the U.N. has come up with a map showing that at least 70 percent of Afghanistan is already under Taliban control, with there sway expanding. With such a dismal situation on the ground, the biggest lie of the 21st Century could be that none of the trouble is coming from within Afghanistan, and all of it is emerging out of Pakistan’s North Waziristan.

If the American warlords are indeed taken for their word, then the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters they claim are hiding in the tribal agency must have stealth aircraft, as they strike targets hundreds of miles away in Kunduz, Herat and Kabul, flying safely back to their sanctuary. Could anything be more ludicrous?

Then, according to the CIA’s own estimates, some 100 al-Qaeda fighters remain active in Afghanistan. How can it be that they remain uncaught and unchained if occupation armies control all of Afghanistan? Or do these al-Qaeda activists spend all their time in prayer while their mates are the one asserted to be holed up and doing the fighting in North Waziristan? Isn’t this a joke that stinks and stinks more?

MORE

http://worldmeets.us/thefrontierpost000063.shtml#axzz1BEdkTqLv


 

[bigron]

Towards Afghanisation of US Invasion


Class Struggle


January 16, 2011

In an interview the Afghan President Hamid Karzai said: It is not desirable for the Afghan people to have 1,00,000 or more foreign troops going around the country endlessly; the increased night raids by the US special operations forces could aggravate sufferings of Afghans and exacerbate the Taliban insurgency. The Afghan people don’t like these roids. Afghans have lost patience with the presence of American soldiers in their homes and armoured vehicles on the roads. The time has come to reduce military operations; to reduce the presence of troops in Afghanistan and to reduce the intrusiveness in to the daily Afghan life. The foreign troops should limit themselves to necessary operations along with Pakistan border. The US should apply more pressure on Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan while focusing on development projects and civilian assistance in Afghanistan.

This kind of talk coming from the head of a regime installed by the imperialists led by the US may sound surprising. But a look in the tactics being adopted by the imperialists will help to understand the real meaning of this talk.

Nearly a decade long war in Afghanistan shown that the freedom loving people can neither be suppressed nor cowed down by force. The methods of installing a puppet regime, the farce of democratic elections and bribery, etc used by the imperialist invaders here too did not work. With each passing day, the invading and occupationist forces earned more hatred, ire and resistance from the Afghan people. They are finding the Karzai regime too weak to serve their needs. They are trying various other methods simultaneously to tide over the situation.

MORE

http://www.classstruggle.in/dec/afghanisation.html



 

[bigron]

Published on Monday, January 17, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

From Military-Industrial Complex to Permanent War State

by Gareth Porter

Fifty years after Dwight D. Eisenhower's January 17, 1961 speech on the "military-industrial complex", that threat has morphed into a far more powerful and sinister force than Eisenhower could have imagined.  It has become a "Permanent War State", with the power to keep the United States at war continuously for the indefinite future.

But despite their seeming invulnerability, the vested interests behind U.S. militarism have been seriously shaken twice in the past four decades by some combination of public revulsion against a major war, opposition to high military spending, serious concern about the budget deficit and a change in perception of the external threat.  Today, the Permanent War State faces the first three of those dangers to its power simultaneously -- and in a larger context of the worst economic crisis since the great depression.

When Eisenhower warned in this farewell address of the "potential" for the "disastrous rise of misplaced power", he was referring to the danger that militarist interests would gain control over the country's national security policy. The only reason it didn't happen on Ike's watch is that he stood up to the military and its allies.

The Air Force and the Army were so unhappy with his "New Look" military policy that they each waged political campaigns against it. The Army demanded that Ike reverse his budget cuts and beef up conventional forces. The Air Force twice fabricated intelligence to support its claim that the Soviet Union was rapidly overtaking the United States in strategic striking power -- first in bombers, later in ballistic missiles.

But Ike defied both services, reducing Army manpower by 44 percent from its 1953 level and refusing to order a crash program for bombers or for missiles.  He also rejected military recommendations for war in Indochina, bombing attacks on China and an ultimatum to the Soviet Union.

After Eisenhower, it became clear that the alliance of militarist interests included not only the military services and their industrial clients but civilian officials in the Pentagon, the CIA's Directorate of Operations, top officials at the State Department and the White House national security adviser.  During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, that militarist alliance succeeded in pushing the White House into a war in Vietnam, despite the reluctance of both presidents, as documented in my book Perils of Dominance [1].  

But just when the power of the militarist alliance seemed unstoppable in the late 1960s, the public turned decisively against the Vietnam War, and a long period of public pressure to reduce military spending began. As a result, military manpower was reduced to below even the Eisenhower era levels.

For more than a decade the alliance of militarist interests was effectively constrained from advocating a more aggressive military posture.

Even during the Reagan era, after a temporary surge in military spending, popular fear of Soviet Union melted away in response to the rise of Gorbachev, just as the burgeoning federal budget deficit was becoming yet another threat to militarist bloc.  As it became clear that the Cold War was drawing to a close, the militarist interests faced the likely loss of much of their power and resources.  

But in mid-1990 they got an unexpected break when Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait. George H. W. Bush - a key figure in the militarist complex as former CIA Director -- seized the opportunity to launch a war that would end the "Vietnam syndrome".  The Bush administration turned a popular clear-cut military victory in the 1991 Gulf War into a rationale for further use of military force in the Middle East.  Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney's 1992 military strategy for the next decade said, "We must be prepared to act decisively in the Middle East/Persian Gulf region as we did in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm if our vital interests are threatened anew."

The Bush administration pressured the Saudis and other Arab regimes in the Gulf to allow longer-term bases for the U.S. Air Force, and over the next eight years, U.S. planes flew an annual average of 8,000 sorties in the "no fly zones" the United States had declared over most of Iraq, drawing frequent anti-aircraft fire.

The United States was already in a de facto state of war with Iraq well before George W. Bush's presidency.

The 9/11 attacks were the biggest single boon to the militarist alliance.  The Bush administration exploited the climate of fear to railroad the country into a war of aggression against Iraq.  The underlying strategy, approved by the military leadership after 9/11, was to use Iraq as a base from which to wage a campaign of regime change in a long list of countries.  

That fateful decision only spurred recruitment and greater activism by al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, which expanded into Iraq and other countries.  

Instead of reversing the ill-considered use of military force, however, the same coalition of officials pushed for an even more militarized approach to jihadism.  Over the next few years, it gained unprecedented power over resources and policy at home and further extended its reach abroad:    


•The Special Operations Forces, which operate in almost complete secrecy, obtained extraordinary authority to track down and kill or capture al Qaeda suspects not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in many more countries.

•The CIA sought and obtained virtually unlimited freedom to carry out drone strikes in secrecy and without any meaningful oversight by Congress.

•The Pentagon embraced the idea of the "long war" - a twenty-year strategy envisioning deployment of U.S. troops in dozens of countries, and the Army adopted the idea of "the era of persistent warfare" as its rationale for more budgetary resources.

•The military budget doubled from 1998 to 2008 in the biggest explosion of military spending since the early 1950s - and now accounts for 56 percent of discretionary federal spending.

•The military leadership used its political clout to ensure that U.S. forces would continue to fight in Afghanistan indefinitely, even after the premises of its strategy were shown to have been false.

Those moves have completed the process of creating a "Permanent War State" -- a set of institutions with the authority to wage largely secret wars across a vast expanse of the globe for the indefinite future.

MORE

 http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/17-6

[bigron]

War Crimes in Afghanistan?    Time To Investigate

by Josh Mull

FDL, January 17, 2011

I am the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for Brave New Foundation. You can read my work on Firedoglake or at Rethink Afghanistan. The views expressed here are my own.



After



Before


A few weeks ago, Rep. Darrell Issa, the new Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the House GOP’s self proclaimed "chief watchdog," released his agenda for upcoming investigations in the new congress. Some of the issues he intends to focus on are dubious and partisan, but others slated for investigation are very serious.

One of these serious issues is the war in Afghanistan. Politico reported at the time:

Rep. Darrell Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high-profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress. [...]

The sweeping and specific hearing agenda shows that Issa plans to cut a wide swath as chairman, latching onto hot-button issues that could make his committee the center of attention in the opening months of the 112th Congress. By grabbing such a wide portfolio — especially in national security matters — Issa is also laying down a marker of sorts, which could cement his panel as the go-to place for investigations.

Great, if there’s one thing we need, it’s a "go-to place for investigations" in congress, especially concerning national security.  And certainly most everyone agrees that "corruption in Afghanistan", referring here to waste, fraud, and abuse by US military contractors, could benefit from much stronger oversight in congress.

But here’s the problem: the bloody occupation of Afghanistan has been dragging on for ten long years now, the long-term cost is estimated to be in the trillions. The catastrophes we’re facing are much, much worse than losing a million or two here or there in graft.

MORE

http://my.firedoglake.com/joshmull/2011/01/17/war-crimes-in-afghanistan-time-to-investigate/

[bigron]

Some foreign forces to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014: Gen. Petraeus


by Nasim Hotak



January 17, 2011

QALAT (PAN): Some international troops would stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014, the deadline set for transferring security responsibilities to Afghan forces, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commander said on Monday.

At the Lisbon Conference in November, NATO members approved plans for security transition to Afghan lead by the end of 2014. However, the summit's declaration said the process would be conditions-based, not calendar-driven.

MORE

http://uruknet.info/?p=m74015&hd=&size=1&l=e

[bigron]

Fake feminism NATO-style


by David Cronin

NEW EUROPE , January 17, 2011

Back in 2002, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy brilliantly satirised the official excuses for the  invasion of Afghanistan . "It’s being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas," she said. "We are being asked to believe that the US marines are actually on a feminist mission."

The effort to rebrand militarism as compassionate and motherly continues today in NATO’s Brussels headquarters. Stefanie Babst, a senior official in the alliance working on "public diplomacy" (a synonym for propaganda), keeps busy trying to raise the profile of a decade-old United Nations Security Council Resolution on gender, peace and security. It is "extremely encouraging" that NATO is committed to this resolution – number 1325 in case you were wondering – and its call that women and children be shielded from violence during armed conflicts, Babst has declared.

Can it really be the case that NATO is sparing women from the horrors of the war it is waging in Afghanistan? Of course, it can’t.
UN data published in December stated that 742 civilians were killed or wounded by NATO or by Afghan forces loyal to Hamid Karzai’s government in the first ten months of last year. Most of these casualties – including 162 deaths – were attributed to air strikes, a NATO speciality.

Documents made public through the heroic work of WikiLeaks have helped give us a glimpse of what Afghans have to endure. On 16 August 2007 Polish troops mortared a wedding party in a village called Nangar Khel. Four women and one man were killed. A pregnant woman in attendance was among those wounded by shrapnel. Though an emergency caesarean was performed, her baby died.

NATO’s attempts to master the dark arts of spin cannot be allowed to conceal the brazen opportunism of the alliance. When the Soviet Union started to collapse, there was much nervousness among NATO staff that their beloved institution would go out of business. After a lengthy period of scrambling around for reasons why the alliance was still relevant now that the Cold War was supposed to be over, it was given a new lease of life with the implosion of Yugoslavia. In 1999, NATO celebrated its fiftieth anniversary by raining down cluster bombs –  weapons so dangerous that over 100 governments have subsequently agreed to ban  them – on Serbia. No soldier, general or political leader serving the alliance has ever been held to account for that monstrous war crime.

Afghanistan has helped ensure that NATO will remain alive and kicking for the foreseeable future. In August 2003, NATO took charge of the US-led "stabilisation force" occupying Afghanistan. Karl Eikenberry, now US ambassador to Afghanistan and a former deputy commander of NATO’s 28-nation military committee, stated in 2007 that "the policy of turning Afghanistan over to NATO was really about the future of NATO rather than about Afghanistan, one that could 'make’ the alliance. The long view of the Afghanistan campaign is that it is a means to continue the transformation of the alliance."

MORE

http://www.neurope.eu/articles/Fake-feminism-NATOstyle-/104172.php

[ekimdrachir]

You can't win a war against nobody.

[bigron]

Afghanistan: Resistance forces make gains against the occupation

Afghan and U.S. blood continues to flow while U.S. sends more troops


By Michael Prysner



PSL, January 17, 2011

As the deadliest year of the entire war wrapped up with 499 U.S. fatalities, Pres. Obama visited Afghanistan in early December and spoke to a room filled with members of the 101st Airborne Division, to tell them about the "progress" they were making in the war.

"Progress" for the Obama administration probably did not translate into "progress" for the soldiers in the 101st Airborne. They have taken the heaviest casualties of any unit since arriving in Afghanistan. Prior to Obama’s visit, they had just endured a grueling month of combat; of the 53 U.S. soldiers and Marines killed throughout Afghanistan in November, a stunning 25 came from that one unit. The photo-op for the president was a tragic irony for the soldiers he addressed. (www.icasualties.org)

He told them, and the whole world watching, "Today we can be proud that there are fewer areas under Taliban control." With the nine-year quagmire growing more unpopular by the day, and a December CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey showing that 63 percent of people in the United States oppose the war, he had to make it seem as if there were some purpose for the increased bloodshed.

The problem with his speech in Afghanistan, and his claim that the vast troop escalation has led to "fewefr areas under Taliban control," is that he was lying.

Confidential U.N. security maps, revealed at the end of December, completely contradict Obama’s claim of gains made against the Taliban and the Afghan resistance. In fact, they display quite the opposite.

According to the maps, resistance forces are launching attacks in areas where they have never been active before, controlling new territory. In southern Afghanistan, the security situation remains unchanged—"very high risk"—despite brass claims of "reversing the momentum" of the resistance.

While the U.S./NATO force has focused on laying waste to southern Afghanistan, resistance forces have been able to operate in new areas in the rest of the country. The U.N. security maps also show that in the north and the east, resistance forces have made clear gains in 16 districts.

In eastern Afghanistan, the people overwhelmingly reject the puppet Afghan government and support attacks on foreign troops. Capt. Robert Kellum, currently serving in the region, told the New York Times: "There’s definitely a fight here. It’s a definite safe haven for the Taliban." (Dec. 26, 2010)

In northern Afghanistan, although the number of U.S. and German troops has more than doubled, the resistance forces have greatly expanded their reach. An anonymous Western diplomat told the New York Times, "The situation in the north has become much more difficult, a much stronger insurgency than we had before." (Dec. 15, 2010)

Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital and the hub of the U.S./NATO command and the puppet Afghan government, is supposed to be the one place in the entire country where the U.S. can boast of calm and stability. The Afghan government even ordered barricades and blast-protection walls to be torn down to show how safe the city is.

Yet in December, resistance forces launched a wave of sophisticated and devastating attacks on Afghan government forces in the capital. A Taliban spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid, indicated that this was the beginning of a new focus on the supposed safe haven of U.S. forces and comprador Afghan politicians: "We are paying more attention to Kabul … [it] is most important for us as it’s the heart of the government and foreign troops." He also described their ability to operate there: "We can easily hit our targets in Kabul." (Wall Street Journal Dec. 21, 2010)

'Here we lose men every day’

For U.S. troops in Afghanistan, there is nothing but constant, heavy combat, with no end in sight. At the heart of the fighting in Helmand province, where the Obama administration would like to claim "progress," a U.S. military commander anonymously revealed the reality of combat there: A "'Tom and Jerry’ cartoon which never ends."

MORE

http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/afghanistan-resistance.html



 

[bigron]

Published on Monday, January 17, 2011 by OtherWords

The Tragic US Strategy in Afghanistan

Either the administration has deluded itself or it can't muster
the courage to tell the American public the truth.

by Eric Stoner

Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If that doesn’t accurately describe the more than nine-year-old U.S. war in Afghanistan, I don’t know what does.

The results of the surge of tens of thousands of additional troops into the “graveyard of empires” are now evident. More soldiers, humanitarian workers, and civilians were killed in 2010 than any year since the United States invaded. One tally put the dead at more than 10,000 last year alone.

At least 120,000 Afghans have also been driven from their homes due to the violence over the last year and a half. I visited Charahi Qambar in December, the largest of some 30 camps for the internally displaced around Kabul, and was horrified by the living conditions there. These refugees call simple mud huts home and lack adequate access to food, clean water, education, or work. The most vulnerable, especially the children, often die from the cold during the bitter winters.

Meanwhile, with the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan serving as one of its most effective recruiting tools, the Taliban has grown exponentially--from an estimated 7,000 in 2006 to 35,000 or 40,000 today, according to NATO.

But after the release of the December review of the war, President Obama nonetheless declared that the United States is “on track to achieve our goals.” Either the administration has deluded itself or it can't muster the courage to tell the American public the truth.

The entire city of Kabul, which the National Intelligence Estimates said is one of the few “ink spots” where there is relative security, feels like a prison. On almost every block there is at least one Afghan in camouflage with an AK-47. Concrete blast walls, sand bags, and razor wire are everywhere. I was frisked for weapons not only at the airport, but also at a nice restaurant. Despite all of these efforts, Kabul is far from safe. This was made painfully clear during my trip when suicide bombers attacked a bus, killing five Afghan army officers and wounding nine in the first major attack in the capital since May

MORE

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/17-4

[bigron]

War displaced people in Kabul slum cry for help


Xinhua

January 17, 2011

No education, lack of food and winter clothes. In Afghanistan's capital Kabul, hundreds of war displaced children and their families are crying for relief assistance from the government.

Currently, there are 804 families living in the slum, in west of the city, with the largest family of 15 children.

"We do not have enough food and clothes. We need help," Wakiltawos Khan, head of the slum, told Xinhua reporters.

"Nine months ago, my five sons were killed by U.S. air strikes in my hometown, and my daughter lost an arm. Kabul is safe, so we moved here. But we can not afford a house and have to stay here," Wakiltawos said.

To escape the ongoing conflict, most of the families are forced to leave their hometowns in south Afghanistan's Helmand province to find a safer place to continue their life.

MORE

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/7262294.html

[bigron]

Monday 17 January 2011
 
by Tim Black   


A war in search of a raison d'être.


The revelation that British troops are in Afghanistan simply to ‘keep busy’ exposes the surrealism of a disastrous war.  


It would be fair to say that Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles knows quite a bit about the Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan. He was the British ambassador in Afghanistan between May 2007 and April 2009. And then he became special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan before leaving his post in June last year. So when he says that the reason for the British army’s continued presence in the region has less to with any military objectives than with simply giving the army something to do, it’s a criticism to be reckoned with.

Cowper-Coles’s comments were made as part of written supplementary evidence given to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee last November, but they were only released on Thursday. Coming from a critic of the war, it might be possible for the Foreign Office to brush them aside, but coming from a semi-insider, that’s not so easy. Cowper-Coles writes that the Afghan War gave the army ‘a raison d’être it had lacked for years and resources on an unprecedented scale’. It is this, the unprecedented availability of resources, he says, that drove the strategy in Helmand and not an ‘objective assessment of the needs of a proper counter-insurgency campaign in the province’.

These aren’t just Cowper-Coles’s observations; he even quotes the then head of the British army, Sir Richard Dannatt, from a 2007 conversation. Apparently, Dannatt told Cowper-Coles that unless he used the battle groups freed up with the cessation of operations in Iraq, many of those battle groups would be lost. It didn’t matter that they might not be needed or that they were unsuitable: we’ll use them or we’ll lose them, that was the logic.

Not to be left out, the Royal Air Force also joined in the scrabble for resources. However, as Cowper-Coles reports, the request for more Tornados, a type of ground-attack jet, was difficult to justify given that the one thing NATO had said it did not need were ground-attack jets.

All in all, it’s a damning portrait of the British military. Afghanistan seems to feature as little more than a pretext for any number of internal demands, be it for more personnel or more equipment. As for the troops themselves, the Afghan conflict appears as little more than an opportunity to keep them busy, a form of military exercise for the proper war that never comes. It’s absurd and, given the wretched state in which Afghanistan now finds itself, tragic.

MORE

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10089/

 
 

[bigron]

Posted on Sun, Jan. 16, 2011

Key evidence in Stryker war crimes case remains secret


Adam Ashton | Tacoma News Tribune
last updated: January 16, 2011 11:24:00 AM

TACOMA, Wash. — From video-taped confessions to written sworn statements to voluminous investigative reports, little information has remained concealed as the Army held hearings at Joint Base Lewis-McChord for 12 Stryker soldiers accused of war crimes and misconduct in Afghanistan.

Yet a few documents and images are under wraps as legal proceedings unfold for the soldiers in the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. Five of the men are accused of murdering three civilians last year, crimes that drew international headlines about an Army “kill team” slaughtering Afghans for fun.

The restricted documents and images include:

MORE

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/16/106885/key-evidence-in-stryker-war-crimes.html

[bigron]

January 17, 2011, 2:10 pm

Embedistan: Outside the Wire, Off the Message

By RICHARD A. OPPEL JR.

AUSTIN, Tex. — At the end of his trip to Kabul in late March, President Obama declared after a high-profile military offensive that the Marines had pushed the Taliban out of the Afghan region of Marja, one of its major strongholds. But even as the president spoke those words, the Marines in Marja were telling a different story to an embedded reporter: The Taliban had retaken the momentum in much of Marja and stymied the troops’ strategy to win hearts and minds. Soon, high-ranking American officials began to acknowledge that Marja was not going nearly as well as hoped.

This is the fifth in an occasional series about conflict journalism, giving the viewpoints of correspondents, photographers and others who have worked in Iraq and Afghanistan while embedded, and unembedded. — Stephen Farrell, At War

Read the previous Embedistan posts on At War.
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/?s=embedistan

There are justified criticisms of embedding with the military, mainly that articles written from operations with Marines and soldiers cannot possibly include the perspective of the Afghans who bear the brunt of the fighting and sometimes wrongly become the targets of troops themselves. Even among the self-selected group of locals who are willing to talk to troops, and reporters accompanying them, those who have strong feelings against the occupation often won’t say that. In many cases the only way to get those perspectives in bloody war zones is from stringers – local reporters who speak the language and are paid a retainer by news organizations – but even they often will, understandably, not want to travel to areas of fighting and will do their reporting over the phone.

Yet, as the experience of Marja suggests, these legitimate qualms also ignore the highest utility of embeds: reporting the perspectives and emotions of the troops on the ground, who despite risk to their careers go well out of their way to describe, often bluntly, the failings and mistakes that have so often plagued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their comments often impeach the official line from Washington and serve as an important check on the influential opinions of others – including politicians, politically appointed officials, and many commentators – who, taken as a group, have tended to be far more optimistic, and incorrectly so, than troops doing the actual fighting.

There are few problems that troops on the ground won’t discuss: An Afghan government and Army that doesn’t bother to show up for a major offensive; a detainee seized and locked away with no evidence (but released after an Army reservist went public in The Times with his concerns); officers condemning widespread corruption that has made their mission impossible; young but highly experienced Marines describing the skill and tenacity of the Taliban; or, in Iraq, troops describing how one Iraqi Army division operated in league with Shiite death squads (whose commander was removed after these concerns were publicized in The Times).

It’s important to understand what embeds are not: flying around with generals, or spending time only at large bases. Done properly, an embed requires at least one week with a small unit, usually a platoon or company, and going out with them every day. Since many units in Afghanistan rarely use vehicles on daily patrols, that typically means hiking for 20 miles or so, and possibly much longer, over the course of a week, in parts of the country too dangerous for an unembedded reporter to visit. Reporters wear body armor and Kevlar helmets and carry water, notebooks and pens – photographers the same, with their cameras. The troops normally are in their late teens and 20s. The oldest might be a 25-year-old sergeant leading a 10-man squad, or a 23-year-old lieutenant commanding a 30-man platoon. Most of these men have lost friends in Afghanistan or during deployments in Iraq, and they have little interest in hewing to a “party line” – if they even know what the party line is supposed to be.

MORE

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/embedistan-outside-the-wire-off-the-message/?ref=world

[bigron]

Anti-Corruption Efforts Fail in Washington,  D.C.

Just as They Do in Kabul

by Matthew Nasuti



The powerful in both countries protect their friends and associates

Kabulpress.org, January 17 2011

It is just as difficult to arrest a corrupt official in Washington, D.C. as it is in Kabul. In both capitals, senior justice officials weigh the seriousness of the offense against the political importance of the defendant and the embarrassment to their President of any prosecution. In both capitals, the powerful protect their friends and associates. In July, 2010, Mohammed Zia Salehi, a senior aide to the Afghan President, was arrested in a night raid on his home in Kabul. He was almost immediately freed by order of President Hamid Karzai. While President Karzai’s intervention generated blustery statements of outrage from American officials, the same conduct regularly occurs in Washington, D.C. In January 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Inspector General released a report obscurely entitled: "A Review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Use of Exigent Letters and Other Informal Requests for Telephone Records." It is a stunning indictment of national security abuses by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The Inspector General (IG) discovered more than 2,000 instances in which FBI officials made false official statements and asserted fake terrorist emergencies in an effort to obtain confidential records.

The IG found that many of these abuses were committed by senior officials and were knowing violations of the law. Regardless, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine refused to call for criminal prosecutions. The FBI’s General Counsel, Valerie Caproni told the Washington Post that the 2,000+ criminal acts by FBI officials were mere "technical violations" and dismissed their significance. These officials adhere to what is called the "consensus theory of justice." Under this theory, the crime rarely matters; what matters is reaching consensus regarding the political implications of the prosecution.

Preventing embarrassment to the Administration and its friends is the compass that seems to guide decisions by the U.S. Department of Justice.

MORE

http://uruknet.com/?p=m74036&hd=&size=1&l=e

[bigron]

 
Published on Tuesday, January 18, 2011 by Open Democracy


Afghanistan: Losing the Afghan People


by Nir Rosen and Marika Theros

President Barack Obama came to power promising to get the United States out of Iraq and refocus attention and resources back to the “good” but “forgotten” war in Afghanistan.  After conducting perhaps the most thorough and frank assessment of the deteriorating security situation in the country, the new administration announced, in December 2009, a comprehensive new strategy backed by a massive injection of money and troops.  On the ground, the strategy has combined increased military activity to degrade the Taliban into submission, with civil activity to strengthen Afghan government capacity sufficiently to enable it to progressively assume full responsibility for its own security.  One year later, the President’s review [1] of the strategy concluded that there have been “notable operational gains” but which remain “fragile and reversible.” Tactically, US-led forces scored important gains against the Taliban over the last 12 months: disrupting its network, clearing several key districts in the south of insurgent activity, and killing significant numbers of mid-level commanders.  However, this rather optimistic assessment obscures the fact that tactical military gains have not reversed the bleak strategic outlook for the country. 

This unfolding narrative of progress simply does not match the security experiences of ordinary Afghan citizens or their increasing perception that the future remains dark. The year 2010 witnessed a significant spike in violence both in the south, with offensive military operations triggering greater Taliban intimidation [2] and assassinations of civilians, and in the north [3] in heretofore ‘stable areas’ where international neglect and government abuse provide fertile ground for insurgent expansion. Real progress has been further complicated by the increasingly poisonous relationship between the Afghan government, the international community, and the Afghan people, aggravated by a potentially catastrophic electoral crisis [4], even more predatory government corruption and brazen war-profiteering [5], and near total disregard for the average Afghan citizen.  As American and NATO forces enter their tenth year in Afghanistan, Afghan communities find themselves increasingly caught in a complex system of violence generated by insurgents, criminal gangs, drug lords, corrupt officials, US-allied local strongmen, and aggressive international forces.   

Initially, the new administration’s strategy raised expectations with its shift in emphasis from the enemy-centric military operations of before to a more comprehensive counter-insurgency (COIN) policy aimed at [6] improving governance and protecting the Afghan population. But this never quite happened on the ground [7]. In Kandahar, the US is bombarding populated areas with smart rocket launchers and guided warheads, razing orchards, destroying homes, and partnering with people like the brutal commander [8] Colonel Abdul Razik and his militia. This increase in offensive operations, night raids, drone attacks, and use of irregular local forces remain precisely the tactics that provoke civilian outrage [9] even as they increase Taliban losses. Even more problematic, the international community never developed a complementary and much-needed political strategy that reinforces Afghan national unity and builds trust between state and society through genuine political reform and reconciliation at all levels of society.   

In fact, it appears that we are dangerously disregarding the aspirations of the Afghan people.  They are the main actors in this drama, the ones who pay the price in blood and livelihoods and will determine the outcome of this struggle. Amidst all the noise in western capitals about progress or lack thereof, Afghan voices are conspicuously absent.  In December 2009, LSE Global Governance at the London School of Economics, together with the Civil Society Development Center in Afghanistan, embarked on a joint research and dialogue project that has engaged a range of selected Afghan citizens - community, religious, and tribal leaders; NGO and community activists; teachers and educators; and, students and youth leaders – in seven regions to capture their experiences of insecurity and their views on how to secure Afghanistan’s future.  Through in-depth conversations with Afghans in the provinces of Balkh, Baghlan, Herat, Kabul, Kandahar, Khost, and Nangarhar, we sought a better understanding of both the dynamics of violence at local levels and Afghan, not international, aspirations for the future of their country.

Afghan views of a mutual business enterprise gone badly wrong


MORE

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/18-8

[bigron]

South Asia
Jan 20, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA20Df02.html 
 

NORTHERN LIGHTS, Part 1

A shadowy new battlefield


By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Events of the past two years suggest that the plans of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to scale down its troop numbers in Afghanistan this year is not the beginning of the end of combat operations. Rather, it's a switch to a new plan that aims to facilitate the broader participation of regoinal allies such as Russia, India and the Central Asian Republics for the defeat of the Islamic militancy.

Already, there has been collaboration in Afghanistan between NATO and Russia's anti-drug operatives, while Uzbek President Islam Karimov's 2008 proposal that Western capitals set up a "6+3" initiative group to tackle problems in Afghanistan has been well received. This would include Central Asian countries, the
United States and NATO. Uzbekistan is becoming increasingly involved in reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. All of this affirms a roadmap of anti-terror operations involving more allies in Afghanistan following the draw-down of NATO forces starting this year.

The Taliban command council in Helmand province in Afghanistan became aware of this shift to involve regional players and responded by sending some of its top-ranking commanders to northern Afghanistan, where in late 2001 the Taliban had been routed by Northern Alliance militias backed by US forces during the invasion that led to the fall of the Taliban in Kabul. Their destinations included Kunduz, Baghlan and Mazar-i-Sharif.

Al-Qaeda's international wing, Jundallah, has also prepared a strategy for northern Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics to nip in the bud the deeper involvement of regional players.

The militant response thus involves the international strategy of al-Qaeda and indigenous Taliban plans, which stand alone at the moment but at some stage they are expected to fuse. Such a fusion would be similar to what occurred in the tribal areas straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan, where three different anti-American forces - pro-Islamic tribalism, the Taliban and al-Qaeda - initially pulled in different directions before eventually fusing into the neo-Taliban.

This was a new generation of local tribesman and other Pakistani and Afghans who absorbed al-Qaeda's ideology and decided to fight simultaneously on the regional as well as on the international front.

The Taliban decided to concentrate their northern forces in Baghlan province because of its sizeable Pashtun population, apart from Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. The Pashtun were send to Baghlan by former King Zahir Shah (on the throne from 1933 to 1973) to build a constituency - which has now been taken over by the Taliban.

Al-Qaeda chose Baghlan because of its strategic location near the Central Asian Republics in which al-Qaeda supports local Islamic opposition groups, especially Uzbekistan and Chechnya.

Shadowy battlefield

MORE

http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA20Df02.html


 
 

[bigron]

WikiLeaks Cables Show Obama Sent More Troops to Afghanistan Despite Warnings

by Mike Ludwig

Soldiers and Marines walk through a village in Badghis Province, Afghanistan, in early January of this year. (Photo: Sgt. Brian Kester / U.S. Marines)

t r u t h o u t |, January 18, 2011


Secret diplomatic cables recently released by WikiLeaks show that the Obama administration increased the United States' military presence in Afghanistan despite warnings that the surge could make 2010 the most difficult and bloody since the 2001 invasion.

US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry issued several cables in 2009 detailing serious concerns about the Afghan government and its leader, President Hamid Karzai.

Eikenberry claimed that Karzai "is not an adequate strategic partner" and "continues to shun responsibility for any burden, whether defense, governance or development."

In a cable dated July of 2009, Eikenberry reported that Karzai did not understand US policy, suspected the US had ulterior motives with other countries, and the US intended to encourage political rivals like former presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah to challenge him. Karzai defeated Abdullah in an election wrought with fraud in 2009.

Eikenberry also issued an alarming and undemocratic description of Karzai and his relationship with the US:

In these meetings and other recent encounters with Karzai, two contrasting portraits emerge. The first is of a paranoid and weak individual unfamiliar with the basics of nation building and overly self-conscious that his time in the spotlight of glowing reviews from the international community has passed. The other is that of an ever-shrewd politician who sees himself as a nationalist hero who can save the country from being divided by the decentralization-focused agenda of Abdullah, other political rivals, neighboring countries, and the US.

MORE

http://www.truth-out.org/wikileaks-cables-show-obama-sent-more-troops-afghanistan-despite-warnings66950



 

[bigron]

Report: Mullah Omar Spent Last Week in Karachi Hospital

Taliban Leader Said to Have Heart Attack on January 7


by Jason Ditz, January 18, 2011

Reports coming out of Pakistan claim that Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar had a heart attack on January 7 and spent much of last week in a hospital in Karachi. He has reportedly since been released.


MORE

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/18/report-mullah-omar-spent-last-week-in-karachi-hospital/

[bigron]

Human terrain mapping help fight Taliban

Updated at 1155 PST Monday, January 17, 2011

 

CHARKUSAH: "I'm 105 years old," said Bismiullah, an old man stopped by a patrol in southern Afghanistan as part of military efforts to map the population in the battle against the Taliban.

Asked what he thinks of the US army, the Afghan army and the Taliban, Bismiullah responded: "I like myself and my family, that's it." Questioned who is in charge in the area, he was similarly direct: "Allah is my chief."

The elderly man was stopped by a US-Afghan patrol in the village of Charkusah in the Zahri district of Kandahar, the southern Afghan province seen as the heart of the Taliban insurgency.

Troops in the region and across Afghanistan are gathering photographs, fingerprints and employment details as well as canvassing opinions from local residents to find out what they want for the war-racked province.

The goal is to strengthen relations between pro-government forces and the local population.

But the information gathered can also help troops catch Taliban fighters, for example by matching fingerprints on home-made bombs or guns.

Formally known as human terrain mapping, the process is a key strand of the strategy to build better ties between pro-government forces and local people as the war enters arguably its most important year.

MORE

http://thenews.com.pk/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=9559

[bigron]

Marine tanks prepare for their first missions in Afghanistan
 
1/18/2011  By Cpl. Ned Johnson, 1st Marine Division

Marines with Delta Company, 1st Tank Battalion, 1st Marine Division (Forward), fires the main cannon of an M1A1 Abrams tank during a range at Camp Leatherneck, Jan. 13, 2011. The Marines are the first tank unit to deploy to Afghanistan. 


CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan  — Early versions of the tank shaped the battlefields of World War I, and more sophisticated versions helped quickly end the Gulf War for the U.S. Now tanks have landed in Afghanistan to help bring security to Helmand province.

Marines with Delta Company, 1st Tank Battalion, 1st Marine Division (Forward), began preparing for upcoming missions by sighting-in the main cannon and machine guns on their M1A1 Abrams tanks during a firing range exercise at Camp Leatherneck, Jan. 13.

The tanks, which were flown here from Kuwait, are not the vehicles the Marines have trained with and some preparation must be done before they are ready for combat, said Capt. Daniel Hughes, commanding officer of Delta Co., 1st Tanks.

“The first order of business is to bore sight and screen your tank,” Hughes added. “Screening ensures that when you fire the main cannon on your tank, you hit the exact target you want to hit.”

MORE

http://www.marines.mil/unit/1stmardiv/Pages/MarinetankspreparefortheirfirstmissionsinAfghanistan.aspx

[bigron]

JTF2 command 'encouraged' war crimes, soldier alleges

Last Updated: Tuesday, January 18, 2011 | 10:42 PM ET CBC News


In this still image from a video provided by the Defence Department, members of Canada's elite special forces unit JTF2 rappel from a helicopter during a training exercise. (DND)

A member of Canada's elite special forces unit says he felt his peers were being "encouraged" by the Canadian Forces chain of command to commit war crimes in Afghanistan, according to new documents obtained by CBC News.

The documents from the military ombudsman's office show the member of the covert unit Joint Task Force 2, or JTF2, approached the watchdog in June 2008 to report the allegations of wrongdoing he had first made to his superior officers in 2006.

The soldier told the ombudsman's office "that although he reported what he witnessed to his chain of command, he does not believe they are investigating, and are being 'very nice to him,' " according to the documents, which CBC News obtained through access to information.

As such, the soldier alleged, the chain of command helped create an atmosphere that tolerated war crimes.

The ombudsman's documents state the soldier was subsequently directed to the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, CFNIS, which in turn launched its own investigation.

The CFNIS told the ombudsman the investigation was "now their No. 1 priority."

The member alleged that a fellow JTF2 member was involved in the 2006 shooting death of an Afghan who had his hands up in the act of surrender. That CFNIS probe ended without any charges.

The soldier who raised those allegations also claimed that in January 2008, his team was sent to conduct a mission alongside an American special operations team. He said he witnessed the U.S. forces kill a man who was wounded and unarmed.

The documents make clear that the soldier didn't believe the military was taking his allegations seriously and that he had lost faith in the forces' leadership.


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2011/01/18/military-jtf2-probe.html#ixzz1BTuRuWgH

[bigron]

Rubio tours Afghanistan, Pakistan, stresses opposition to ‘artificial timeline’ for troop withdrawal

By Brett Ader | 01.18.11 | 12:13 pm

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on the campaign trail in October 2010

In his first official overseas trip, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., joined Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and a handful of fellow freshman Republicans in Afghanistan this weekend to meet with U.S. military commanders and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. #

In a conference call with reporters held Monday in Kabul, Rubio stressed that while both he and President Obama support the war effort, now in its 10th year, he opposes the timeline for troop withdrawal scheduled to begin this summer: #


“I think we are on the timeline this year to have some real good news and make some significant progress,” the Florida Republican said. “But I think if you attach a date to it … you are really creating a difficult situation. The bad guys, the Taliban and even al-Qaida, must know all they have to do is wait.” #

“People want to make sure that we are in this to win this. We are in this for the long haul,” Rubio said. “Everyone on the ground is really enthusiastic about the progress that’s being made…There’s a long ways to go. There’s no way to overestimate how serious the challenge is but we are headed in the right direction.” #


Instead of an “artificial timeline,” Rubio suggested instead that progress be gauged by those territories that have successfully established government infrastructure and trained enough Afghan security forces. #

MORE

http://floridaindependent.com/19432/marco-rubio-tours-afghanistan-pakistan-stresses-opposition-to-artificial-timeline-for-troop-withdrawal

[bigron]

Marines of Operation Godfather see stark improvement in deadly Helmand province

By Josh Boak
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 18, 2011; 8:00 PM

GARMSIR, AFGHANISTAN - The Marines strode single-file across dusty farmland that the Taliban had controlled days earlier, facing little resistance beyond a boy who said, "Please, don't step on the poppies."

Not a single bullet was fired in the first few days of Operation Godfather, a 400-man offensive conducted with Afghan forces to clear out the last insurgent haven along the central Helmand River valley in Afghanistan's Garmsir district.

Marine officers concluded that the show of force beginning Friday - helicopters rushing through the sky, trucks hauling ready-to-be-built bridges, and convoys spanning the desert horizon - had caused the Taliban to back down.

"If we were here alone, we'd be shot at," said Lt. Brett De Maria, while leading a morning patrol through farming villages. "But we've got air support and tons of vehicles."

The offensive seemed a surreal departure from the past year of brutal violence and fighting in Helmand province, the epicenter of Afghanistan's opium industry and a corridor to Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. Almost 40 percent of the 499 U.S. deaths in Afghanistan last year occurred in Helmand, according to the Web site iCasualties.org, which tracks U.S. combat fatalities.

Marines recovered about two dozen weapons caches - evidence, they said, that the Taliban had planned to fight under better circumstances at a later time.

The hidden weapons also reflect the difficulties of combat in the dead of the Afghan winter, when temperatures plummet so low that fingers and toes surrender to an aching numbness.

Another possible reason the operation proved less violent came from a Marine infantryman. He noted that Marine patrols are smaller in Sangin, a district in northeastern Helmand where 29 U.S. troops have been lost during the past half-year.

"They're patrolling seven, eight guys, while we're 31 deep," the infantryman said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because his comment could be interpreted as a criticism.

There are key differences between the Taliban in Sangin and Durzay, the main village in Garmsir, which was targeted by Operation Godfather, said Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, the regional commander for southwestern Afghanistan. The insurgency in Sangin is mostly composed of local fighters defending their home turf, while those in Durzay are "professional cutthroats" who smuggle opium and stepped out of "the bar scene in 'Star Wars,' " he said.

"Durzay is a spot on the map where they sell their evil things, so they're not going to fight to the death," Mills said.

The Taliban does tend to go after smaller patrols, some Marine officers said, because of the insurgency's own modest size. In parts of Garmsir, just one or two men with a pistol can intimidate a whole village.

MORE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/18/AR2011011803020.html

[bigron]

7.3 million Afghans are 'food insecure'


UPI

January 19, 2011

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 19 (UPI) -- International partners teamed up with Afghan leaders to discuss the seriousness of food security issues in the country, the World Food Program said.

Louis Imbleau, the WFP representative in Afghanistan, met with Afghan leaders in Kabul to discuss bilateral measures needed to address food shortages in the war-torn country.

"This groundbreaking meeting is a sign of how serious all parties are about the need to improve Afghanistan's food security," said Imbleau.

MORE

http://uruknet.com/?p=m74078&hd=&size=1&l=e



 

[bigron]

South Asia
Jan 21, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA21Df02.html 

NORTHERN LIGHTS, Part 2


Taking on the Taliban
 
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Part 1: A shadowy new battlefield
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA20Df02.htmlhttp://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA20Df02.html


BAGHLAN, Pol-e-Khurmi - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for a long time stuck to the belief that armed opposition groups in the long-running Afghan insurgency comprised only Pashtuns. Its non-combatant forces were thus stationed in northern Afghanistan, on the premise that the ethnic Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek majorities dominated the region and it could not possibly be a Taliban bastion.

This ignored sporadic incidents of violence, then the mobilization in 2010 of a strong Taliban movement, with the establishment of command and control centers, dispelled all myths that the Taliban were only a southern-based outfit.

This coincided with the United States and Britain being largely left

 

alone in the Afghan war. All major allies gave deadlines for their withdrawal from the country, with the likes of the French and Germans categorically telling NATO that they would not participate in combat operations.

The administration of US President Barack Obama devised a war strategy for southern Afghanistan and the provinces around Kabul, similarly based on the understanding that the Taliban-led insurgency was a phenomenon only in Pashtun-majority areas. The entire battle surge and the deployment of additional forces was concentrated on southern Afghanistan.

The emergence of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan has left the occupiers with no option but to rely on indigenous strength.

On the political front, Munshi Abdul Majeed, a highly respected figure with a religious background and a former loyalist of veteran mujahid Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was in 2010 appointed governor of Baghlan province, about 200 kilometers north of the capital Kabul. His brief was to establish a line of communication with the Taliban and local tribes with the aim of brokering a ceasefire until NATO could come up with a new strategy to isolate ultra-radical militants.

On the security front, General Abdul Rahman Rahimi, a top security official with intense training by the Americans, was the district police chief of Kabul; he was the logical choice, when problems began in Baghlan, to take over as provincial commander of the police force to chop off the militancy.

A battle plan
The main police compound in Pol-e-Khumri, the provincial capital of Baghlan, is extremely well-guarded. Visitors have to pass through various checkpoints and security barriers and entry is not possible until clearance is received by wireless from the control room.

After spending at least 20 minutes crossing three security barriers, I expected to be met by a police commandant, but Rahimi himself was waiting for me in a courtyard, sitting on a chair.

"We met in Kabul earlier right?," Rahimi said after giving me a warm traditional hug and kiss.

MORE

 http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA21Df02.html


 

[bigron]

Iraqi Turkmen tell U.S. ambassador to stop meddling in domestic affairs
 

By Marwan al-Aani

 

Azzaman, January 19, 2011

http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news/2011-01-19/kurd.htm

Iraqi ethnic Turks, known locally as Turkmen, have asked U.S. ambassador to Iraq, James F. Jeffrey, to stop meddling in Iraqi internal affairs.

 

A statement by the Turkmen Front, a political umbrella for ethnic Turks in Iraq, accused Jeffrey of heightening ethnic and sectarian tensions in the disputed oil-rich province of Kirkuk.

 

Kirkuk is a mixed province where Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen all claim it to themselves. But the Kurds have deployed their militias in the city and currently hold joint patrols with U.S. invasion troops there.

 

“We call on the U.S. ambassador to put an end to his meddling in internal issues. We do not want him to become a factor deepening Kirkuk’s problems,” the statement,  a copy of which was faxed to the newspaper, said.

 

The statement was particularly critical of Jeffrey’s call for the implementation of a paragraph in the constitution which if translated into action may lead to full Kurdish control of the province with its massive oil riches.

 

Both Turkmen and Arabs, who together form the majority in both the provincial capital and the province at large, dispute the paragraph and call for its amendment, describing it as part of ‘an agenda’ to help Kurds wrest control of Kirkuk.

 

“The continuation of meddling by certain parties in (the country’s) internal affairs is a continuation of instability,” the statement said.

 

[bigron]

January 20, 2011
http://counterpunch.com/chernus01202011.html

Obama Trapped By Myth


Why Are We Still in Afghanistan?


By IRA CHERNUS

AWhen I try to figure out why we are still in Afghanistan, though every ounce of logic says we ought to get out, an unexpected conversation I had last year haunts me. Doing neighborhood political canvassing, I knocked on the door of a cheerful man who was just about to tune in to his favorite radio show: Rush Limbaugh. He was kind enough to let me stay and we talked.

Conservatives are often the nicest people -- that's what I told him -- the ones you'd like to have as neighbors. Then I said: I bet you're always willing to help your neighbors when they need it. Absolutely, he replied.

So why, I asked, don't you to want to help out people across town who have the same needs, even if they're strangers? His answer came instantly: Because I know my neighbors work hard and do all they can to take care of themselves. I don't know about those people across town.

He didn't have to say more (though he did). I knew the rest of the story: Why should I give my hard-earned money to the government so they can hand it out to strangers who, for all I know, are good-for-nothing loafers and mooches? I want to be free to decide what to do with my dough and I'll give it to responsible people who believe in taking care of themselves and their families, just like me. I'll give my money to the government only to protect us from strangers in distant lands who don't believe in the sacred rights of the individual and aim to take my freedom and money away.

What a story it is -- a tale of mythic proportions! As an historian of religions, I was trained to appreciate, even marvel at the myths people tell to make sense out of the chaos of their lives. So I can't help admiring the conservative myth: so simple yet all encompassing, offering clear and easy-to-grasp answers that cut through the everyday complexities besetting us all.

Of course, the answers are far too simplistic, as stupid (in my opinion) as they are dangerous. But I was also trained to be non-judgmental and to admire the power of a myth even when I find it morally abhorrent. And this one is impressive, with its classic good-guys-versus-bad-guys plot line turned into a stark political tale of freedom versus slavery.

White Americans, going back to early colonial times, generally assigned the role of "bad guys" to "savages" lurking in the wilderness beyond the borders of our civilized land. Whether they were redskins, commies, terrorists, or the Taliban, the plot has always remained the same.

Call it the myth of national security -- or, more accurately, national insecurity, since it always tells us who and what to fear. It's been a mighty (and mighty effective) myth exactly because it lays out with such clarity not just what Americans are against, but also what we are for, what we want to keep safe and secure: the freedom of the individual, especially the freedom to make and keep money.

The President Trapped in a Myth and a War

No politician who aspires to real influence on the national level can afford to reject that myth or even express real doubts about it, at least in public, as Barack Obama surely knows. Not surprisingly, President Obama has embraced the myth in his most important speeches: The bad guys are always out there. ("Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world.") The good guys have no choice but to fight against the evildoers. ("Force may sometimes be necessary.")

Because every myth has variants, though, politicians can still make choices. In Obama's version of the myth, the federal government can be a force for good. So he has a domestic fight on his hands every day against right-wingers who cast the government as an agent of darkness.

He's not likely to stand a chance of winning that battle if he tries to take on the myth of national security as well. Bill Clinton once put it all-too-accurately: "When people are insecure" -- which is exactly when they rely most on their myths -- "they'd rather have somebody [in the White House] who is strong and wrong than someone who's weak and right."

That's a truth everyone in the room undoubtedly had in mind back in the fall of 2009 when the top military field commanders came to the White House to talk about Afghanistan. Where else, after all, could our military act out the drama of civilized America staving off the savages? And what better-cast candidates for the role of savages could there be than the Taliban and al-Qaeda?

The generals who run the war also had to confront another vital question: Could they still act out some contemporary version of the myth of good against evil? They've given up on the possibility of victory in Afghanistan. So there's no real chance to go for the classic version of the myth in which the good guys totally vanquish the bad guys.

But since the Cold War era, the myth has demanded only that the good guys don't lose -- that they merely "contain" the evildoers who "hate our freedoms" (especially our freedom to make and keep money) and will swoop down to destroy us if we give them the chance.

These days the generals must sense that even the containment version of the myth is in trouble. Their predecessors failed to enact it in Vietnam, and though the judgment of history is still out on the Iraq War, it's looking ever more dim, too. If the U.S. loses in Afghanistan, the American public might abandon the myth that justifies the military establishment and its gargantuan budget. As a result, the generals prefer to fight on eternally.

President Obama is trapped at this point. He risks losing both a war and a presidency. Yet if he tries to ease up on the war accelerator, he knows he'll be pilloried by an alliance of military and right-wing forces as a "cut-and-run" weakling.

If he's ever tempted to forget that domestic political reality, the mass media are always ready to remind him. Just glance at the 145,000 Google hits on "Obama wimp." Even his liberal friends at the New York Times have asked in a prominent headline, "Is Obama a Wimp or a Warrior?"

Within the confines of the national insecurity myth, of course, those are the only two options. If pressure is ever going to develop to get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, progressives will have to offer a new option that actually speaks to Americans.

To Myth or Not to Myth

READ MORE

http://counterpunch.com/chernus01202011.html


 

[bigron]

South Asia
Jan 22, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA22Df01.html 
 
NORTHERN LIGHTS, Part 3

 
Soft Sufi, hard-rock militant


By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Part 1: A shadowy new battlefield
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA20Df02.htmlhttp://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA20Df02.html

Part 2: Taking on the Taliban
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA21Df02.html


The reason for the al-Qaeda-led militancy's success in the South Asia region is twofold. Al-Qaeda delegated resistance operations to Ibnul Balad (sons of the soil), and it restricted its connections to a select command and promoted its ideological and strategic framework to that group. Al-Qaeda never tried to approach the grassroot-level insurgency.

Secondly, al-Qaeda modified its structures according to local customs and traditions.

Al-Qaeda is using a similar strategy in northern Afghanistan and Central Asia, the home of Sufi Islam.

In classical philosophical interpretation, Sufi Islam gazes on spiritual eternity, while Salafi Islam eyes the temporal aspects of reality. The fusion of Salafism and Sufism has rarely emerged in Muslim history, but when it has happened it has been during a foreign invasion, as in Libya where Omar Mukhtar led the local resistance to Italian control of the country in the early 1900s.

Another example is the Muslim Brotherhood. Its founder, Hasan al-Banna, belonged to the Sufi school of Hasafia, and he declared the Brotherhood both a Sufi and a Salafi movement.

The phenomenon is so rare that no foreign actor, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), alien to the evolution of Muslim thinking, could contemplate the possible blending of these apparently contradictory ideas.

NATO has largely deployed non-combatant troops in northern Afghanistan, believing that all the fighting has to be done in the Pashtun-dominated southern areas. The Barack Obama administration's war reviews have not placed much emphasis on the situation in northern Afghanistan, with most plans centered on restive Helmand province and other southern areas.

NATO considers the Taliban a Pashtun movement under the influence of a Salafi al-Qaeda, and it estimated there was little chance for the emergence of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, which is dominated by ethnic Hazaras, Tajiks and Uzbeks and which is close to the Shi'ite sect, Sufism and secular trends.

They rightly understood that if the Taliban controlled the region in the late 1990s (when they were in control in Kabul), it was due to their military might and with the help of the local Pashtun minority.
There were other reasons to believe an enduring rout of the Taliban in the north.

After the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, the Taliban were easily defeated in northern Afghanistan - they were killed, arrested or escaped to southern Afghanistan or the Pakistani tribal areas across the border. They didn't find a single refuge or sanctuary in the north that would have given them a chance to make a comeback.

Several proposals have been put forward based on the assumption that the Taliban would never flourish in the north. These include the Balkanization of Afghanistan, as suggested by American think-tanks, including the division of Afghanistan along ethnic lines between north and south. Another proposal, discussed in the late 2000s, was to allow Taliban rule in southern areas, while yet another idea that is still under discussion is that after 2014, American forces would only be stationed in the north to keep themselves away from active combat operations.

After their defeat, the Taliban didn't attempt to make a comeback in the north - mainly as most of their leaders and commanders from the north had been arrested or been killed or had fled to Pakistan. The Taliban also did not have much grassroot following to tap into.
 
MORE

 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA22Df01.html

[bigron]

America's Moral Vacuum: Dead Afghans = Lost Emails


by Glen Ford

BAR, January 20, 2011

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

In reporting on U.S. slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan, the New York Times equated the loss of Afghan lives with the mislaying of emails. What has been mislaid is the American moral compass.

 

America's Moral Vacuum: Dead Afghans = Lost Emails

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

"The United States is suffering from an overload of depravity."

On the day that the federal government set aside to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the great man of peace, the New York Times featured an article on a major problem the United States is encountering in pursuing its endless, high-tech wars. No, its not money; the U.S. government spares no expense in financing the maintenance and expansion of American empire. And clearly, the Democratic congressional opposition to America’s wars has collapsed – certainly since a Democrat took on the job as war maker-in-chief. The great obstacle to perfection of the American style of mass killing, it turns out, is "information overload."

It seems that U.S. troops in the field are getting so much information from so many different sources about targets for obliteration, they’re having trouble figuring how who to kill. Assorted military experts told the Times that information overload is the reason the American military winds up massacring so many civilians in Afghanistan. All those smart bombs and automated, unmanned airplanes and other brilliant gadgets are just, well, too smart for the soldiers to keep up with, inevitably – but not on purpose, of course – causing collateral damage to Afghan women, children, families, wedding parties and other nuisances that clutter up the landscape of the country, getting in the way of the U.S. war machine.

MORE

http://uruknet.info/?p=m74111&hd=&size=1&l=e

[bigron]

AFGHANISTAN: Fears over child recruitment, abuse by pro-government militias


IRIN News

Little has be done to stop the use of children by armed groups Photo: Masoomi/IRIN

KABUL, 20 January 2011 (IRIN) - Pro-government militias in parts of Afghanistan are believed to be recruiting underage boys and sometimes sexually abusing them in an environment of criminal impunity, local people and human rights organizations say.
 
In a bid to counter the intensifying insurgency, the Afghan government and US/NATO forces have been setting up controversial community-based militias, such as the Afghan Local Police, in insecure provinces. To date, thousands of men have been recruited to such bodies in Kunduz, Baghlan and Kandahar provinces, says the Interior Ministry.
 
"The militias and commanders are hiring young, underage boys in their ranks for different illicit purposes," said Haji Abdul Rahim, a tribal elder in the southern province of Kandahar.
 
Another elderly man, Khan Mohammad, accused pro-government militias of kidnapping teenage boys primarily for sexual exploitation.
 
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) also said it had received reports of child recruitment by pro-government militias in some provinces.
 
"We’re seriously concerned about this," said Hussein Nasrat, a child rights officer at AIHRC, adding that his organization was investigating the issue.
 
"The use and abuse of children by local armed groups is very worrying because they [pro-government militias] fall beyond the formal, legal and disciplinary structures within which the police and army operate," he said.
 
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said it had not received "confirmed information" on the issue, but that it was concerned about the "association of children with such forces" due to their community-based status.
 
NGOs have demanded that the government and US/NATO forces stop using local militias and instead devote greater resources to developing a more professional and accountable police and army.
 
The International Committee of the Red Cross, meanwhile, has said the proliferation of armed actors impedes and threatens humanitarian work in Afghanistan.
 
Child soldiers  

Children are recruited and used for military purposes by the Afghan national police, as well as the following anti-government groups: Haqqani network, Hezb-i-Islamic, Taliban, Tora Bora Front and the Jamat Sunat al-Dawa Salafia, the UN Secretary-General said in a report in April 2010.

MORE

http://uruknet.info/?p=m74112&hd=&size=1&l=e


 

[bigron]

“Eid Gul was just one of 69 Afghan Civilians Killed by US/NATO Forces during December 2010”


by Prof. Marc W. Herold

Everyday life in Afghanistan was dangerous for children, women, Afghan Army and Police forces, clerics, road workers, public officials, saying night-time prayers, sleeping, driving to lunch, etc

January 20, 2011



The Obama administration’s effort to persist in carrying out a deadly war in Afghanistan outside the public’s eye has been succeeding. Three means are employed: tight control over news flowing out of Afghanistan; vastly greater reliance upon secretive night raids by U.S. Special Forces; and a stepped-up use of private contractors/mercenaries on the ground in Afghanistan. The latter effort is crucial in helping reduce reported U.S. military casualties in Afghanistan, the primary factor which affects domestic U.S. politics.

Every now and then, the mainstream media reports upon a particularly egregious incident which took place in Afghanistan. Nowhere can a reader get a sense of the overall level of pain inflicted upon average Afghan civilians by the actions of U.S. and NATO occupation forces. This brief essay paints a picture of ground reality in Afghanistan during the month of December 2010. The United Nations’ UNAMA releases overall figures, but the data is simply presented in aggregate fashion and we are asked to believe. A skeptic cannot fact check the numbers. We are simply asked to believe these faith-based numbers. As I have noted many times, the UNAMA figures for civilians killed by U.S/NATO actions are at best around 70% of the actual numbers killed.(1)For example, for 2009, the UNAMA captured less than 60% of the civilians who perished.

Graph 1. Cumulative total of civilians killed during December 2010.


The graph above plots the cumulative total of Afghan civilians killed in U.S/NATO military actions during December 2010. The total is 68-69 persons, a greater December toll than in the previous two years:

 
MORE

http://uruknet.info/?p=m74121&hd=&size=1&l=e

[bigron]

White House ‘Not Ready’ to Endorse Another Afghan Military Boost

Plan Floated to Add Another 73,000 Troops to Afghan Forces

by Jason Ditz, January 20, 2011

Officials with the White House confirmed that they are “not ready” to endorse the latest plan to dramatically increase the size of the Afghan military, citing concerns about the major amounts of money it takes to support the large, but not particularly effective fighting force.

The current plan eyes the creation of a 305,000 soldier security force by October, but traditionally whenever the deadline for a goal is close officials just push it back another year and add a bunch more troops. The new targeted officials are floating is 378,000.

MORE

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/20/white-house-not-ready-to-endorse-another-afghan-military-boost/

[bigron]

Constitutional Crisis in Afghanistan Over Parliament Postponement

New MPs Plan to Try to Enter Legislature on Sunday

by Jason Ditz, January 20, 2011

A Constitutional and perhaps governmental crisis is looming in Afghanistan following President Karzai’s decision to delay the seating of parliament over massive evidence of election fraud.

MORE

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/20/constitutional-crisis-in-afghanistan-over-parliament-postponement/