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

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October 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?_r=3&hp


Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll


This article is by Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen.


Ahmed Wali Karzai, right, the brother of President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, at a campaign event in Kandahar in August.


KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” said Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Wali Karzai said in an interview that he cooperated with American civilian and military officials, but did not engage in the drug trade and did not receive payments from the C.I.A.

The relationship between Mr. Karzai and the C.I.A. is wide ranging, several American officials said. He helps the C.I.A. operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists. On at least one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government, the officials said.

Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city — the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s founder. The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. “He’s our landlord,” a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Karzai also helps the C.I.A. communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban. Mr. Karzai’s role as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban is now regarded as valuable by those who support working with Mr. Karzai, as the Obama administration is placing a greater focus on encouraging Taliban leaders to change sides.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment for this article.

“No intelligence organization worth the name would ever entertain these kind of allegations,” said Paul Gimigliano, the spokesman.

Some American officials said that the allegations of Mr. Karzai’s role in the drug trade were not conclusive.

“There’s no proof of Ahmed Wali Karzai’s involvement in drug trafficking, certainly nothing that would stand up in court,” said one American official familiar with the intelligence. “And you can’t ignore what the Afghan government has done for American counterterrorism efforts.”

At the start of the Afghan war, just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, American officials paid warlords with questionable backgrounds to help topple the Taliban and maintain order with relatively few American troops committed to fight in the country. But as the Taliban has become resurgent and the war has intensified, Americans have increasingly viewed a strong and credible central government as crucial to turning back the Taliban’s advances.

Now, with more American lives on the line, the relationship with Mr. Karzai is setting off anger and frustration among American military officers and other officials in the Obama administration. They say that Mr. Karzai’s suspected role in the drug trade, as well as what they describe as the mafialike way that he lords over southern Afghanistan, makes him a malevolent force.

These military and political officials say the evidence, though largely circumstantial, suggests strongly that Mr. Karzai has enriched himself by helping the illegal trade in poppy and opium to flourish. The assessment of these military and senior officials in the Obama administration dovetails with that of senior officials in the Bush administration.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money are flowing through the southern region, and nothing happens in southern Afghanistan without the regional leadership knowing about it,” a senior American military officer in Kabul said. Like most of the officials in this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the information.

“If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck,” the American officer said of Mr. Karzai. “Our assumption is that he’s benefiting from the drug trade.”

American officials say that Afghanistan’s opium trade, the largest in the world, directly threatens the stability of the Afghan state, by providing a large percentage of the money the Taliban needs for its operations, and also by corrupting Afghan public officials to help the trade flourish.

The Obama administration has repeatedly vowed to crack down on the drug lords who are believed to permeate the highest levels of President Karzai’s administration. They have pressed him to move his brother out of southern Afghanistan, but he has so far refused to do so.

Other Western officials pointed to evidence that Ahmed Wali Karzai orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots for his brother’s re-election effort in August. He is also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots.

“The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone,” General Flynn said.

In the interview in which he denied a role in the drug trade or taking money from the C.I.A., Ahmed Wali Karzai said he received regular payments from his brother, the president, for “expenses,” but said he did not know where the money came from. He has, among other things, introduced Americans to insurgents considering changing sides. And he has given the Americans intelligence, he said. But he said he was not compensated for that assistance.

“I don’t know anyone under the name of the C.I.A.,” Mr. Karzai said. “I have never received any money from any organization. I help, definitely. I help other Americans wherever I can. This is my duty as an Afghan.”

Mr. Karzai acknowledged that the C.I.A. and Special Operations troops stayed at Mullah Omar’s old compound. And he acknowledged that the Kandahar Strike Force was based there. But he said he had no involvement with them.

A former C.I.A. officer with experience in Afghanistan said the agency relied heavily on Ahmed Wali Karzai, and often based covert operatives at compounds he owned. Any connections Mr. Karzai might have had to the drug trade mattered little to C.I.A. officers focused on counterterrorism missions, the officer said.

“Virtually every significant Afghan figure has had brushes with the drug trade,” he said. “If you are looking for Mother Teresa, she doesn’t live in Afghanistan.”

The debate over Ahmed Wali Karzai, which began when President Obama took office in January, intensified in June, when the C.I.A.’s local paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, shot and killed Kandahar’s provincial police chief, Matiullah Qati, in a still-unexplained shootout at the office of a local prosecutor.

The circumstances surrounding Mr. Qati’s death remain shrouded in mystery. It is unclear, for instance, if any agency operatives were present — but officials say the firefight broke out when Mr. Qati tried to block the strike force from freeing the brother of a task force member who was being held in custody.

“Matiullah was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mr. Karzai said in the interview.

Counternarcotics officials have repeatedly expressed frustration over the unwillingness of senior policy makers in Washington to take action against Mr. Karzai — or even begin a serious investigation of the allegations against him. In fact, they say that while other Afghans accused of drug involvement are investigated and singled out for raids or even rendition to the United States, Mr. Karzai has seemed immune from similar scrutiny.

For years, first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration have said that the Taliban benefits from the drug trade, and the United States military has recently expanded its target list to include drug traffickers with ties to the insurgency. The military has generated a list of 50 top drug traffickers tied to the Taliban who can now be killed or captured.

Senior Afghan investigators say they know plenty about Mr. Karzai’s involvement in the drug business. In an interview in Kabul this year, a top former Afghan Interior Ministry official familiar with Afghan counternarcotics operations said that a major source of Mr. Karzai’s influence over the drug trade was his control over key bridges crossing the Helmand River on the route between the opium growing regions of Helmand Province and Kandahar.

The former Interior Ministry official said that Mr. Karzai was able to charge huge fees to drug traffickers to allow their drug-laden trucks to cross the bridges.

But the former officials said it was impossible for Afghan counternarcotics officials to investigate Mr. Karzai. “This government has become a factory for the production of Talibs because of corruption and injustice,” the former official said.

Some American counternarcotics officials have said they believe that Mr. Karzai has expanded his influence over the drug trade, thanks in part to American efforts to single out other drug lords.

In debriefing notes from Drug Enforcement Administration interviews in 2006 of Afghan informants obtained by The New York Times, one key informant said that Ahmed Wali Karzai had benefited from the American operation that lured Hajji Bashir Noorzai, a major Afghan drug lord during the time that the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, to New York in 2005. Mr. Noorzai was convicted on drug and conspiracy charges in New York in 2008, and was sentenced to life in prison this year.

Habibullah Jan, a local military commander and later a member of Parliament from Kandahar, told the D.E.A. in 2006 that Mr. Karzai had teamed with Haji Juma Khan to take over a portion of the Noorzai drug business after Mr. Noorzai’s arrest.

Dexter Filkins reported from Kabul, and Mark Mazzetti and James Risen from Washington. Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington.

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LETS BUY OUT THE ENEMY, AGAIN !


Wednesday, October 28, 2009
12:59 Mecca time, 09:59 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/10/2009102873219600416.html
 
News Americas  
 
US plans to woo Taliban fighters 

 
Such payments, already used in Iraq, will be formally adopted for the first time in Afghanistan [EPA]  

The US military commanders in Afghanistan are to be allowed to pay Taliban fighters who switch sides and renounce violence against the government in Kabul.

The new provision is included in a defence bill Barack Obama, the US president, will sign into law on Wednesday.

The move establishes a programme in Afghanistan similar to one used in Iraq where former fighters were re-integrated into Iraqi society, Carl Levin, the senate armed services committee chairman, told the Reuters news agency.

Obama plans to sign the bill authorising Pentagon operations for fiscal 2010 on Wednesday, the White House said.

Reaching out

Reaching out to moderate Taliban members is part of the Obama administration's plan to turn around the eight-year-long war in Afghanistan.



in depth :

-  Redefining success in Afghanistan 
-  US trapped in 'bitter war'?
-  On the frontlines with US troops
-  Video: US weighs Afghan war strategy shift
-  Video: McChrystal's Afghan ideas
-  Riz Khan: Afghanistan in limbo
-  Afghan war 'needs regional plan' 

 
Levin also has advocated trying to convince Taliban fighters to change sides by luring them with jobs and amnesty for past attacks.

Under the legislation, Afghan fighters who renounce the violence would be paid for "mainly protection of their towns and villages," Levin said.

It would be "just like the sons of Iraq," he said, referring to the programme used in Iraq which military commanders say helped turn around a failing war.

"You got 90,000 Iraqis who switched sides, and are involved in protecting their hometowns against attack and violence."

The bill authorises using money from an existing Commanders Emergency Response Programme, which US commanders can use for a variety of purposes.

It does not set a specific dollar amount for the fighters' re-integration programme.

Troop levels

There is $1.3 billion authorised for the fund in fiscal 2010, which began on October 1.

The money must still be allocated by defense appropriators, who are working to finish the legislation.

As part of his overall strategy review on Afghanistan, Obama is debating whether to send more US troops to the region and is set to meet on Friday with Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and the heads of the military services, the White House said.

The Joint Chiefs office recently completed an internal assessment of the two leading proposals for troop levels in Afghanistan.

These were sending roughly 40,000 additional troops, as his commander for Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has recommended, or a far smaller number, an option McChrystal and other defense officials see as having a higher risk of failure.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

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McCain: Why we can -- and must -- win the war in Afghanistan

By John McCain
Special to CNN

Editor's note: John McCain is the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona.



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- For the first time since September 11, 2001, America is having a vigorous national debate about how to succeed in Afghanistan. This debate is entirely worth having. Whenever America sends its citizens into harm's way, it must do so with eyes wide open.

Though no veteran would ever think of himself as "pro-war," I believe that the fight in Afghanistan is critical to our national security. Our goals there are achievable and success is worth the continued sacrifice.

We must succeed in Afghanistan for many reasons, but one stands above all: the world walked away from Afghanistan once, and it descended into a cauldron of violence, hatred and human rights atrocities that served as the base for the worst terrorist attack in history against our homeland.

We cannot let that happen again, and we cannot let the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies conquer Afghanistan once more. Failure of this kind would also destabilize the entire strategically vital region, including nuclear-armed Pakistan.

We know what it takes to succeed in Afghanistan: a resolute commitment to the principles of counterinsurgency, which turned Iraq around during the surge.

I am confident that properly resourced counterinsurgency policy, adapted to the unique culture and geography of Afghanistan, can lead to success there. Our entire military chain of command supports this approach, as do our NATO allies, which they made clear at their recent defense ministerial meeting in Bratislava.

I supported President Obama when he called for a counterinsurgency plan in March, and I did so again when he deployed Gen. Stanley McChrystal to lead the command in Kabul. I agree with our commander's assessment of the security situation as "deteriorating" and that our civilian and military leaders urgently need more resources, including more combat troops, to turn the tide toward success.

I sympathize with our president, because sending men and women into harm's way is the most difficult decision that a commander-in-chief must make. However, Americans are already serving in harm's way in Afghanistan, and the sooner we can provide the reinforcements and resources they need, the safer and more successful they will be. So I am urging President Obama to move as quickly as possible to fully support Gen. McChrystal's request for more troops.

It is true that the Afghan government is not as strong or credible as we would like, but that should not deter us from committing more civilian and military resources now. Local governments in counterinsurgency environments are usually weak and fledgling. There is an insurgency in the first place because it seeks to exploit the local population's dissatisfaction with its government. As long as Afghanistan is insecure, it is unreasonable to assume that governance will improve.

That is why protecting the population must be job one right now, and in the immediate term, much of that work must be done by U.S. and NATO troops. As security improves, however, we will be able to train capable, battle-tested Afghan security forces that can defend their country.

We can break the insurgency's momentum, enabling Afghans to reconcile with former fighters who are willing to lay down their arms. And we can create an environment of safety in which it is more realistic to expect Afghan leaders to meet the high standards of their fellow citizens and their international partners -- namely, the provision of justice and opportunity, the protection of human rights and a crackdown on corruption.

Ultimately, Afghans will judge the legitimacy of their government not only by the result of one round of voting, but by its performance in delivering basic services.

Success in Afghanistan will emerge, as it did in Iraq, when local leaders and citizens are more and more able to take responsibility for governing and securing their own sovereign country without substantial international assistance. This won't be perfect or easy, but it will allow America's fighting men and women to leave Afghanistan with honor, and it will enable Afghans to build a better, more peaceful future. That is our goal, and we must stay in the fight until it is won.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John McCain.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/10/28/mccain.afghan.war/index.html

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TO REDUCE OUR CASUALTIES WE NOW 'RETREAT' TO THE BIG CITIES !!

October 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28policy.html?ref=asia


U.S. to Protect Populous Afghan Areas, Officials Say

This article is by Thom Shanker, Peter Baker and Helene Cooper.


U.S. soldiers fired mortars in the Pech Valley in Afghanistan's Kunar province on Monday.

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s advisers are focusing on a strategy for Afghanistan aimed at protecting about 10 top population centers, administration officials said Tuesday, describing an approach that would stop short of an all-out assault on the Taliban while still seeking to nurture long-term stability.

Mr. Obama has yet to make a decision and has other options available to him, but as officials described it, the debate is no longer over whether to send more troops, but how many more will be needed. The question of how much of the country should fall under the direct protection of American and NATO forces will be central to deciding how many troops will be sent.

At the moment, the administration is looking at protecting Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters, officials said. The first of any new troops sent to Afghanistan would be assigned to Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual capital, seen as a center of gravity in pushing back insurgent advances.

But military planners are also pressing for enough troops to safeguard major agricultural areas, like the hotly contested Helmand River valley, as well as regional highways essential to the economy — tasks that would require significantly more reinforcements beyond the 21,000 deployed by Mr. Obama this year.

One administration official said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, had briefed Mr. Obama’s advisers on how he would deploy any new troops under the approach being considered by the White House. The first two additional combat brigades would go south, including one to Kandahar, while a third would be sent to eastern Afghanistan and a fourth would be used flexibly across the nation, said the official, who like others insisted on anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

Administration and military officials said the strategy would include other elements, like accelerated training of Afghan troops, expanded economic development and reconciliation with less radical members of the Taliban.

But such a strategy would be open to complaints that American and allied forces were in effect giving insurgents free rein across large parts of the nation, allowing the Taliban to establish ministates with training camps that could be used by Al Qaeda.

“We are not talking about surrendering the rest of the country to the Taliban,” a senior administration official said.

Military officers said that they would maintain pressure on insurgents in remote regions by using surveillance drones and reports from people in the field to find pockets of Taliban fighters and to guide attacks, in particular by Special Operations forces.

But a range of officials made the case that many insurgents fighting Americans in distant locations are motivated not by jihadist ideology, but by local grievances, and are not much of a threat to the United States or to the government in Kabul.

At the heart of this strategy is the conclusion that the United States cannot completely eradicate the insurgency in a nation where the Taliban is an indigenous force — nor does it need to in order to protect American national security. Instead, the focus would be on preventing Al Qaeda from returning in force while containing and weakening the Taliban long enough to build Afghan security forces that would eventually take over the mission.

In effect, the approach blends ideas advanced by General McChrystal and by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., seen as opposite poles in the internal debate.

General McChrystal has sought at least 40,000 more troops for a counterinsurgency strategy to protect Afghan civilians so they will support the central government. Mr. Biden has opposed a buildup, contending that a bigger military footprint could be counterproductive and that fighting Al Qaeda in Pakistan should be the top priority.

A strategy of protecting major Afghan population centers would be “McChrystal for the city, Biden for the country,” as one administration official put it. Officials said Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was playing a crucial role, balancing the case made by commanders with the skepticism of some civilians on Mr. Obama’s war council as the debate entered its final days.

A senior military officer said the developing strategy adopted General McChrystal’s central tenet. “We are no longer thinking about just destroying the enemy in a conventional way,” the officer said. “We must remove the main pressure that civilians live under, which is the constant intimidation and corruption and direct threat from the insurgency.”

The officer said General McChrystal wanted the most expansive definition of population centers to include fertile valleys, economic belts and major roadways, in particular the national ring road central for commerce, as well as four or five roadways linking Afghanistan eastward to Pakistan and westward to Iran.

Officials said no exact statistics were available for the percentage of the Afghan population that would fall under a new population-centered policy.

Elements of the strategy are already being carried out. Over the past month, General McChrystal has closed half a dozen isolated military outposts in towns like Wanat, where nine Americans were killed in a vicious firefight in July 2008. The decision to close these bases has allowed the general to shift nearly 1,000 troops to other missions.

Historical analogies are imperfect, but the strategy being put in place can be viewed as a rejection of arguments that individual villages have a strategic importance — a Vietnam-era mistake — instead building on the lessons of the Iraq troop increase, when large population areas received the most reinforcements.

Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who has been working closely with the administration on Afghanistan, signaled the current thinking in a speech on Monday: “We don’t have to control every hamlet and village, particularly when non-Pashtun sections of the country are already hostile to the Taliban.”

One possible focus in the administration debate centers on Helmand, a lightly populated farming area and Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan. For years, insurgents controlled much of the province, but Marines arrived in force this year to reinforce British troops.

Some administration officials ask whether it makes sense for 20 percent of the foreign forces to be protecting 3 percent of the country’s population. But others point out that Helmand’s fertile valley is important to Afghanistan’s economy and that it has become a major source of opium used to finance the insurgency.

Mr. Obama will meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, his seventh major session since beginning his review.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

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Taliban's Strategic Revision: Towards a Pragmatic Policy

Setting up a Realist Regional Agenda


By Suhail Shaheen, Former Chief Editor of the Kabul Times


 

Mullah Muhammad Omar


IOL, October 27, 2009

Despite the Afghani Taliban's fierce resistance against the foreign troops and the government, they have moved onto adopting a more pragmatic approach of good relations towards their regional neighbors. The upcoming run-off elections between incumbent president Karzai and his opponent Dr. Abdullah, have not seemingly affected the movement's view of the US occupation and any US-backed regime.
Our contributor Mr. Suhail Shaheen tracks such a turning point in the strategic outlook of the Taliban that is consciously moving away from Idealism towards a Realist agenda of regional relations.

Mullah Muhammad Omar's last Eid Message, was quite different from his previous messages in content and tone.  It indicated a shift in Taliban's general policy and approach towards neighboring countries, the US and Europe.

The Taliban's leader, in his message, assured Afghanistan's neighboring countries that the Taliban will not harm them if they gain political power but rather will develop relations based on mutual cooperation. He said: "The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan wants to maintain good and positive relations with all neighbors based on mutual respect and open a new chapter of good neighborliness of mutual cooperation and development."

In the same tone, he assured China, India and Russia that the Taliban is going to play positive role in establishing peace and stability in the region. He added: "We consider the whole region as a common home against colonialism and want to play our role the peace and stability of the region."

In the same direction on October 7, the Taliban issued a statement on the eighth anniversary of the American aerial attack on Afghanistan, which further elucidated the Taliban's new policy: "We announce to all, that our aim is obtainment of independence and establishment of an Islamic system. We did not have any intention to harm other countries including Europe nor do we have such an agenda today."

Setting Priorities


War-hardened Taliban had come to realize that without gaining confidence of regional countries through diplomacy, military victories do not pay off. 

According to some observers who closely monitor the Taliban's activities, these are new efforts to set out their priorities by focusing on Afghani interests rather than holding to a wide global network. They are trying to assert themselves as freedom-fighters rather than being stamped as terrorists. That is why they are unveiling their new revamped agenda to the international community.

In a time where the response of the regional countries to the Taliban's new policy approach was yet to be known, the Taliban sent an open letter to Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on 15 September. 2009.
Originally, the letter was in Pashto - the language the majority of the Taliban speak - but its English version is available on the Taliban's website. Hamid Agha who was once the Taliban spokesman and now heads the Taliban's media wing has verified that it is a genuine letter, it says:

"We urge the participants of the Shanghai Summit to render assistance in the way of liberation of people and countries of the region from the claws of colonialists and take a decisive stand regarding the western invasion of Afghanistan. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as liberation movement, wants to play a positive role in peace and stability of the region besides its current mission of liberating the country."

This is a proactive thrust in otherwise Taliban stagnant diplomacy, in the past eight years, the Taliban were not active in this field. They were strictly occupied by military operations.

The silver lining of the past years is that the war-hardened Taliban had come to realize that without gaining confidence of regional countries through diplomacy, military victories do not pay off. It made them show, on one hand, some flexibility in their previous stands and, on the other hand, distance themselves from global and regional militant networks.

The other aspect of the Taliban's new policy is focusing on winning the hearts and minds of common Afghans. The Taliban expedited their contacts with the common people in rural areas after announcement of new strategy by Pentagon to win over the Afghans. In a part of the Eid's message, Mullah Omar says: "The Mujahideen should not consider themselves as an entity separate from people. They should protect people’s property, life and honor and should focus on Islamic education of masses."
 
Foreign Militants Factor

Mullah Omar says that the Islamic Emirate, as a responsible force, will not extend its hand to harm neighbors.
 
During the reign of the Taliban prior to 9/11, a great number of foreign jihadists were living in Afghanistan including some members of the Uyghur East Turkistan Islamic Movement from the previously Muslim dominant now Chinese Xinjiang province.
The Chinese government repeatedly urged the Taliban to hand over the Uyghur Muslim separatists to Beijing or at least refuse them stay in Afghanistan but the Taliban always denied their presence in the country. This prevented the two countries to develop good neighborly relations despite having some common consternation over the expansion of American influence in Asia.
 
Uzbekistan had the same concern. They wanted the Taliban to repatriate activists of the Uzbekistan Islamic Movement (IMU) to Uzbekistan.  At one point, the relations strained to the extent that the Uzbek side wanted to launch a full-fledged war against Afghanistan if the Taliban failed to prevent the IMU from carrying out attacks in Uzbekistan. However, diplomatic contacts between the two countries through their embassies in Islamabad averted this untoward incident.
 
Recent media reports indicate that Tahir Yudasheve, chief of the IMU was killed in an American drone attack in Kanigram in Waziristan on August 27. He was reportedly replaced by Abdur Rahman, a Tatar. However, the authenticity of such news is not verified because many of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders, who were reported to have been killed in drone attacks, resurfaced again.

Tahir Yuldasheve was not interested in attacks inside Uzbekistan. Instead, he had restricted his 2500 armed men to fighting in Afghanistan and supporting Pakistani Taliban. In a video distributed in 2007, he had said that, first of all, he wanted the liberation of Afghanistan from the American forces. But Abdur Rahman and other young leaders of the IMU are more interested in waging armed struggle inside Tajikistan and Uzbekistan rather than in Afghanistan.

According to recent reports, the IMU is expanding its presence in northern Afghanistan from where it can carry out attacks inside Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Some IMU members have already ensconced themselves in Kunduz and other northern provinces of Afghanistan.  But it is still unknown how the Taliban leadership will be able to control the IMU, if the Uzbek government reacts positively to the Taliban offer.

The other opponent of the Taliban is the Pakistani government, which put its airports at the disposal of Americans in 2001. Islamabad is still helping Washington as a front line state against the Islamic insurgency.

Previously, the Taliban leadership viewed Pakistan as an ally of America who deserved to be punished for their friendship with Washington but in the new message, Mullah Omar says that the Islamic Emirate, as a responsible force, will not extend its hand to harm neighbors. However, it will be difficult for Islamabad to respond positively to the Taliban gesture because of its commitment with Washington and financial benefits it receives for help in "war on terror".

Taliban Restrictions

Recently the Taliban have become more watchful of the foreign Jihadists in Afghanistan. They require foreign militants to work the under supervision of the Taliban provincial commanders. Foreign militant are now not allowed, like before, to carry out their activities independently.

The Taliban say that the previous rules for foreign jihadists were problematic for the Taliban, because some of their activities contradicted the Taliban's policies and goals. Last year, Mullah Muhammad Omar, issued instructions to his supporters in Afghanistan to disarm all anti-government armed groups who were not registered with Taliban. This step was taken after reports that some militant groups, posing as Taliban, were involved in kidnapping and extorting money from people.

In his new message, Mullah Omar stressed out that: "Mujahideen should stop all those who, under the name of Mujahideen, want to encroach on the property, life and honor of people by provocation of the enemy and they should impart Islamic education to people."

As the new rules point out, foreign militants have to share their information with local Taliban commanders and disclose all their activities. 
 
Possible Impact

Some Afghan intellectuals living abroad, who are against the American occupation of Afghanistan, will be willing to support the Taliban as a nationalist Islamist movement. 

The Taliban's new flexible stance will encourage some NATO member countries to put pressure on America to start negotiation with the Taliban. Some countries like Austria, Italy, Canada, and New Zealand have announced already, that they would pull out their troops from Afghanistan.
Some NATO member countries may contact the Taliban on individual basis to further inquire about the Taliban's new policy.  A number of Afghan intellectuals living abroad, who are against the American occupation of Afghanistan, will be willing to support the Taliban as a nationalist Islamist movement. Similarly, Russian and China will reconsider whether the Taliban are a threat to their security or an asset they can benefit from.

However, it will be difficult for Pakistan to openly make a rapprochement with Taliban because of the Kerry-Lugar bill that approved 7.5 billion dollars for Pakistan, which stipulates that the American aid shall not be given to Islamabad unless it proves that it has honestly struggled against Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

In the White House, a hot debate to ascertain whether the Taliban are as dangerous to American security as Al-Qaeda are, is still ongoing. Vice-president Joe Biden is among those who favor focusing on Al-Qaeda rather than on the Taliban. Yet it does not seem that the debate will reach conclusion any time soon nor America will change its military strategy in Afghanistan, at least for now as America maintains the inertia of its foreign policy.
 

 
Suhail Shaheen is a former Chief Editor of the Kabul Times and a freelance Journalist based in Afghanistan. He can be reached through politics.indepth@iolteam.com

 

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The Denial Continues, and the Horror Remains Unrecognized

by Arthur Silber



October 27, 2009

As soon as I read this Washington Post story about the resignation of Matthew Hoh, I knew I would write this article. The story is significant not only in itself, but also in the altogether predictable reaction it would elicit, particularly from those who criticize the United States presence and strategy in Afghanistan, and most especially from those who criticize our Afghanistan strategy most strongly. And I knew, before I read even one of those responses, that the reaction would miss or ignore what is most crucial to understand about Hoh's resignation and its meaning. In the event, everything I had thought proved to be accurate in every detail.

The opening of the Post story summarizes the key elements:

When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan.

A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed.

But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

The critics of U.S. Afghanistan policy are uniformly heralding Hoh's resignation as a rare triumph of "principle" over narrower concerns with career and other personal goals. But as we shall see, such praise is undeserved, and even dangerous because of the issues it avoids.

I view Hoh's resignation as a positive development in only one very limited sense. If a sufficient number of U.S. personnel resigned, for reasons similar to Hoh's or even for no reason at all, if they simply resigned, the U.S. would be unable to continue its current policy. But that will not happen, not in the numbers required.

What about the specific reasons Hoh provides for his resignation? Several aspects of those reasons are noteworthy. Hoh explains them in his letter of resignation (pdf), and the Post story accurately summarizes the key points:

[M]any Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there -- a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.

...

Hoh's doubts increased with Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election, marked by low turnout and widespread fraud. He concluded, he said in his resignation letter, that the war "has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modern of Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional. It is this latter group that composes and supports the Pashtun insurgency."

With "multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups," he wrote, the insurgency "is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S. and Nato presence in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified."

American families, he said at the end of the letter, "must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can be made any more."

The first point to be made about this should be obvious, although this is a lesson that few political leaders or commentators ever learn. And the point is this: the U.S. could and should have known all of this before even one soldier set foot in Afghanistan.

This is not specialized knowledge accessible only to alleged "experts." It is information readily available to any reasonably intelligent person, provided he is basically responsible and recognizes the necessity of knowing what he is doing before he acts. These days, many writers are offering comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam; for the most part, those comparisons are notable for what they miss. On this particular point, remember this passage from Barbara Tuchman's analysis of the criminal catastrophe in Vietnam (from The March of Folly):

Wooden-headedness, the "Don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts" habit, is a universal folly never more conspicuous than at upper levels of Washington with respect to Vietnam. Its grossest fault was underestimation of North Vietnam's commitment to its goal. Enemy motivation was a missing element in American calculations, and Washington could therefore ignore all the evidence of nationalist fervor and of the passion for independence which as early as 1945 Hanoi had declared "no human force can any longer restrain." Washington could ignore General Leclerc's prediction that conquest would take half a million men and "Even then it could not be done." It could ignore the demonstration of elan and capacity that won victory over a French army with modern weapons at Dien Bien Phu, and all the continuing evidence thereafter.

American refusal to take the enemy's grim will and capacity into account has been explained by those responsible on the ground of ignorance of Vietnam's history, traditions and national character: there were "no experts available," in the words of one high-ranking official. But the longevity of Vietnamese resistance to foreign rule could have been learned from any history book on Indochina. Attentive consultation with French administrators whose official lives had been spent in Vietnam would have made up for the lack of American expertise. Even superficial American acquaintance with the area, when it began to supply reports, provided creditable information. Not ignorance, but refusal to credit the evidence and, more fundamentally, refusal to grant stature and fixed purpose to a "fourth-rate" Asiatic country were the determining factors, much as in the case of the British attitude toward the American colonies. The irony of history is inexorable.

As is always the case in tragic and entirely avoidable episodes such as Vietnam, Afghanistan -- and, I emphasize, Iraq, and very possibly Iran next -- it is "[n]ot ignorance, but refusal to credit the evidence..." that leads to disaster. The evidence is always available to those who will look, but policy which has already been chosen will override that evidence as required for States to achieve their aims.

I mentioned Iraq, and I will have more to say on that subject in a moment. But I wrote about this same mechanism of deliberately cultivated ignorance -- which, I stress, is not genuine ignorance at all, but a determination to set the evidence aside in favor of predetermined policy -- in "Sacred Ignorance," and in an earlier piece on the same theme, "Embracing Ignorance on Principle: And Still, We Will Not See." In the latter article, I summarized this intentionally cultivated "ignorance" as follows:

This determined refusal to look at and understand the relevant facts, including the crucially relevant history, is a significant part of the reason why Bush's repeated mantra that "everyone wants freedom," and moreover that everyone wants freedom in roughly the same form that we enjoy it, is so hollow and so unconvincing. It was not true in Vietnam, and it is not true in Iraq. Peoples' attitudes, objectives, alliances and enmities are uniquely shaped by their particular history -- not by ours, or by no history at all. And it is the latter that is unavoidably implied by the attitude revealed by Bennet in his article, and by the Bush administration: they seem to believe that "freedom" and "democracy" are abstractions that are plucked by people from the sky overhead -- and then applied by everyone in precisely the same manner, regardless of history, geography, culture and every other aspect of their specific lives.

...

[T]his is yet another reason why I maintain, as I explained yesterday, that we should leave immediately, or as close to immediately as we can -- and set a time limit of six months at the outside, for example, for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops. Not only are we a significant source of the ongoing violence, but we continue to refuse to learn about the nature of the Iraqis themselves, and what their perspectives and their aims are.

Of course, we are not leaving Iraq, and we are not leaving Afghanistan. U.S. forces may be reduced or their particular composition may be altered, but we are not leaving.

Hoh's identifications of the reasons for the failure of U.S. policy in Afghanistan are certainly true, but I repeat that all those reasons have been readily apparent for years and even decades, if only those who fashion and implement U.S. policy cared to acknowledge them. But a more fundamental problem in analysis arises at this point: none of these reasons for failure have anything whatsoever to do with U.S. policy or why our leaders are so insistent on pursuing it.

The endless appeals to "spreading democracy," fostering "stable governments," and all the rest are nothing but marketing and public relations. They are the camouflage for the actual purposes of our government's actions. You can dissect and demolish those purported justifications for U.S. policy all you wish; our leaders don't care about any of that, no matter how successful your demolition efforts are, because all of that is completely irrelevant. But our leaders and most commentators do love the marketing, so with only very rare exceptions, their analysis and even their criticisms remain on this superficial level.

The actual reasons that drive U.S. policy aren't hidden. Again, the evidence is spread before you in plain sight: all you have to do is look at and understand it. I discussed the general contours of U.S. foreign policy for over the last hundred years in a piece just the other day: "The Empty Establishment: No One's Home in an Intellectual Wasteland." With regard to our presence in Afghanistan, a presence which will continue in one form or another for decades to come barring unforeseen developments (or possibly a regional conflagration, which would most likely be set off by a U.S. attack on Iran), I direct you to an invaluable article by the indispensable Robert Higgs. The article first appeared over a year ago, and I've been meaning to discuss it ever since.

I strongly recommend you read every word of it, several times at a minimum: "CENTCOM's Master Plan and U.S. Global Hegemony." For our purposes here, these are the critical paragraphs:
Many people deny that the U.S. government presides over a global empire. If you speak of U.S. imperialism, they will fancy that you must be a decrepit Marxist-Leninist who has recently awakened after spending decades in a coma. Yet the facts cannot be denied, however much people’s ideology may predispose them to distort or obfuscate those facts.

How can a government that maintains more than 800 military facilities in more than 140 different foreign countries be anything other than an imperial power? The hundreds of thousands of troops who operate those bases and conduct operations from them, not to mention the approximately 125,000 sailors and Marines aboard the U.S. warships that cruise the oceans, are not going door to door selling Girl Scout cookies. United States of America is the name; intimidation is the game.

Of course, the kingpins who control this massive machinery of coercion never describe it in such terms. In their lexis, American motives and actions are invariably noble. Listening to these bigwigs describe what the U.S. forces abroad are doing, you would never suspect that they seek anything but "regional stability," "security," "deterrence of potential regional aggressors," and "economic development and cooperation among nations." Inasmuch as hardly anybody favors instability, insecurity, international aggression, economic retrogression, and mutual strife among nations, the U.S. objectives, and hence the actions taken in their furtherance, would appear to be indisputably laudable.

Yet, from time to time, a U.S. leader lets slip an expression so revealing that it warrants a thousand times greater weight than the vague, mealy-mouthed banalities they routinely dispense. I came across such a statement recently. In seeking funds in 2007 for construction of a $62 million ammunition storage facility at Bagram Air Base, Admiral William J. Fallon, then the commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), referred to Bagram as "the centerpiece for the CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia."

Pause to savor this phrase for a moment; let it roll around in your mind: CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia. What an intriguing expression! What dramatic images of future U.S. military actions it evokes! But can those actions be anything other than the very sort that empires undertake? Ask yourself: why does the U.S. military anticipate conducting operations in Central Asia, a region that lies thousands of miles from the United States and comprises countries that lack either the capacity or the intention to seriously harm Americans who mind their own business in their own national territory? Indeed, what is the U.S. military doing in Central Asia in the first place? Have you ever heard of "the Great Game"?

When the Army sought the funds for the new ammunition storage facility at Bagram again this year, its request echoed Admiral Fallon’s sentiments by stating: "As a forward operating site, Bagram must be able to provide for a long term, steady state presence which is able to surge to meet theater contingency requirements." The statement’s reference to "a long term, steady state presence" would seem to be especially revealing because it takes for granted that U.S. forces will not be leaving this part of the world any time soon. Giving even more weight to this interpretation, Congress approved not only the $62 million for the ammunition storage facility, but also $41 million for a 30-megawatt electrical power plant at Bagram, a plant large enough to serve more than 20,000 American homes.

Along the same lines, Lt. Colonel John Sotham, commander of the 455 Expeditionary Force Support Squadron, which is now stationed at Bagram Air Base, recently described a number of improvements his squadron is making at the base, looking toward giving it "a more permanent footprint." He added: "It’s pretty clear that the U.S. Air Force will be at Camp Cunningham [a living area at Bagram] and involved in the fight against terrorism for a very long time." He relished the opportunity to "help drive Bagram from expeditionary to enduring!"

It comes as no surprise, then, that of all the unified commands, CENTCOM is the one in which, in today’s world, the U.S. empire’s rubber meets the road most abrasively. The command’s area of responsibility includes a great part of the world’s known petroleum and natural gas deposits, a preponderance of Israel’s enemies, and the places in which the George W. Bush administration has chosen to focus its so-called Global War on Terror. Of course, the region also includes Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have been fighting for years, and, sandwiched between these two battlefields, Iran, where Dick Cheney and the rest of the neocons ardently desire to extend the fighting at the earliest opportunity.
This is the general policy that Obama continues, and that he will continue into the foreseeable future. He made his intentions clear from the beginning of his campaign, and nothing has changed. Nor will it, certainly not insofar as Obama is concerned:
Any individual who rises to the national political level is, of necessity and by definition, committed to the authoritarian-corporatist state. The current system will not allow anyone to be elected from either of the two major parties who is determined to dismantle even one part of that system.
So all of the feigned bafflement and incessant caterwauling about the supposedly indecipherable actions of the United States -- Why, oh why, did we invade Iraq?, and Why, dear God, are we in Afghanistan? -- represent only the capitulation of the purported critics to precisely those arguments U.S. leaders hope you will engage. They want you to spend all your time on those arguments, because they're only marketing ploys having nothing at all to do with their actual goals. As I said the other day, if you want to stop this murderous madness -- and I dearly hope you do -- forget about what they say their goals are (fostering "democratic" governments, "regional stability," "security," and all the associated claptrap), and focus on the real problem: the carefully chosen policy of U.S. geopolitical dominance over the entire globe. On the day Obama announces the scheduled closure of at least one-third of the U.S.'s worldwide empire of bases, I'll believe he's serious about altering any of this, and not a moment before. He never will, and you know he won't. (I myself would prefer the closure within three to six months of three-quarters of them at a minimum. But contrary to some of my critics, I actually do reside in this world, and not the one I would prefer.)

Higgs' argument and those I consistently make explain the U.S. presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in countless other places around the world. And Iraq returns us to Matthew Hoh, and why his resignation is ultimately meaningless. In fact, it is much worse than that. To underscore the very limited nature of Hoh's protest, consider the conclusion of the Washington Post story:
If the United States is to remain in Afghanistan, Hoh said, he would advise a reduction in combat forces.

He also would suggest providing more support for Pakistan, better U.S. communication and propaganda skills to match those of al-Qaeda, and more pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to clean up government corruption -- all options being discussed in White House deliberations.

"We want to have some kind of governance there, and we have some obligation for it not to be a bloodbath," Hoh said. "But you have to draw the line somewhere, and say this is their problem to solve."
In this passage, you see how even Hoh supports the overall purposes of U.S. foreign policy. He refers to "combat forces," but this is deceptive terminology, which I analyzed in detail when the same device was used in connection with Iraq. And Hoh urges "more support for Pakistan," and "more pressure" on Karzai -- that is, he recommends continued and even greater involvement in countries that should not concern us because they do not threaten us, but he suggests we alter the emphasis and particular form of our involvement. This is tinkering around the edges, and it does nothing to address the actual problem.

But the worst is this passage earlier in the story:
"I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love," Hoh said. Although he said his time in Zabul was the "second-best job I've ever had," his dominant experience is from the Marines, where many of his closest friends still serve.

"There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys."
The critical facts are few in number, and remarkably easy to understand: Iraq never threatened the U.S. in any serious manner. Our leaders knew Iraq did not threaten us. Despite what should have been the only fact that mattered, the U.S. invaded and occupied, and still occupies, a nation that never threatened us and had never attacked us. Under the applicable principles of international law and the Nuremberg Principles, the U.S. thus committed a monstrous, unforgivable series of war crimes. Those who support and continue the occupation of Iraq are war criminals -- not because I say so, but because the same principles that the U.S. applies to every other nation, but never to the U.S. itself, necessitate that judgment and no other.

While it may be true that some "dudes" threatened Hoh's life and the lives of those with whom he served, Hoh could never have been threatened in that manner but for the fact that he was in Iraq as part of a criminal war of aggression. In other words, he had no right to be in Iraq in the first place. And if he had not been, he would never have been in a position to "whack[] a bunch of guys."

Hoh joined the U.S. military voluntarily. He was obliged to understand this. Ehren Watada understood it, and he therefore refused to go ("My participation would make me party to war crimes."). Without further information, I decline to pass a definitive, final judgment about the meaning of Hoh's actions in Iraq, for the complicated reasons explained in, "No, I Do Not Support 'The Troops.'" But I must acknowledge that this particular statement of Hoh's, especially his casual dismissal and even celebration of his willingness to murder people in what is, in fact, a criminal war of aggression, is a profoundly bad sign, and very likely an irreparably negative indication of his views. For those who repair to one argument in particular, please note that I discuss the "following orders" defense in the earlier essay. But as I noted there, almost all writers (including even those of the liberal-progressive variety) will recognize the invalidity of that defense in certain well-known historical instances of its use, while they simultaneously seize on it eagerly when they seek to deny moral autonomy to U.S. soldiers. "American exceptionalism" has many guises, and that is only another of them. Ehren Watada and the other individuals who emphatically said, "No," and who meant it even on pain of severe punishment, should be our honored guides on this question.

The significance of Hoh's own judgment of his actions in Iraq, and his own failure to acknowledge the true nature of the U.S. presence there, lies in the fact that it undercuts his protest about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan on the most fundamental level. Hoh offers no principled opposition to wars of aggression: he approves of a criminal war in Iraq, but opposes it in Afghanistan. And he opposes it in Afghanistan not because it's a crime and morally abhorrent -- which it is -- but because it's not "working." It's "ineffective." This perfectly mirrors the typical liberal criticism of the Iraq crime: that it was executed "incompetently." Opposition of this kind finally reduces to no opposition at all, except on specifics. Such opposition is futile, inconsistent and contradictory, and ultimately worthless. It fails to challenge U.S. policy on the critical, more fundamental level -- and it invites a future catastrophe on an equal or, which is horrifying to contemplate, an even greater scale.

Against all this, read Glenn Greenwald on Hoh's resignation. Greenwald begins by praising Hoh's action in precisely the terms that I anticipated would be the reaction from critics of U.S. Afghanistan policy: "Hoh's resignation is remarkable because it entails the sort of career sacrifice in the name of principle that has been so rare over the last decade, but even more so because of the extraordinary four-page letter (.pdf) he wrote explaining his reasoning." Greenwald focuses on Hoh's explanation of the reasons for the failure of U.S. policy, but he mentions none of the issues I discuss above.

And then comes the most revealing passage of all:
Hoh told The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung that he's "not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love" and that he believes "there are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," adding: "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys." Plainly, there's nothing ideological about his conclusions; they're just the by-product of an honest assessment, based on first-hand experiences, of how our ongoing occupation of that country is worsening the very problem we're allegedly there to solve.
In his use of the word "ideological," Greenwald appears to mean that Hoh's criticisms regarding Afghanistan are not driven by some predetermined, superficial political opposition. Instead, in Greenwald's view, Hoh's position is "an honest assessment, based on first-hand experiences..."

Greenwald considers this a good aspect of Hoh's more general position, in that it strengthens Hoh's particular criticisms of Afghanistan strategy. But as I explained above, all of Hoh's observations could and should have been understood long before our engagement in Afghanistan began, just as they could and should have been understood in Vietnam -- and all of the same reasons apply to Iraq as well. That Hoh cannot or will not see the application to Iraq of the issues he himself identifies is only one symptom of his inability or refusal to come to terms with U.S. policy and its actual motives and purposes. And that Greenwald glosses over all of this, and all of the arguments about Iraq set forth above, is another instance of the same inability or refusal to grapple with the much more basic problems in U.S. policy -- precisely those problems that all but guarantee another and possibly even worse future disaster with Iran, or North Korea, or some other country that is rarely mentioned today.

For me, the worst omission on Greenwald's part is his failure to comment on this statement from Hoh: "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys." I urge you to consider again the arguments as to why the U.S. invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq constitute an ongoing series of monstrous war crimes, and how Hoh's actions are only one part of an incomprehensibly awful larger criminal project. But Hoh "was never more happy" than when he "whacked a bunch of guys" -- "guys" that neither Hoh nor any other U.S. soldier should ever have been in a position to kill. And Greenwald finds none of this worthy of even momentary interest.

Yet in that single statement of Hoh's, and in all the assumptions that underlie it and all the policies to which it necessarily leads and to which it will lead again as long as those policies remain unaltered, lies a world of endless horror -- a world of agony, dismemberment, maiming, torture, of countless personal tragedies and lives forever changed and ended, and of growing instability and threats that are increased by U.S. actions. As long as the forces that drive U.S. policy are ignored or denied, as long as we do not engage this argument on those terms that are most crucial -- and as long as we will not identify the nature of U.S. actions for what they are, and in these instances, they are war crimes -- these horrors will continue without end.

In preparing this essay for publication, I happened to see just moments ago the final paragraphs of the post in which I included the Tuchman passage set forth above (a longer Tuchman excerpt will be found in the earlier entry). I wrote this over two years ago, and it tragically remains true today:
When we come upon a murderer covered with the blood of victims who never threatened him, we do not defend him by appealing to his "good intentions" or by claiming that "he meant well" -- at least, we do not if we seek to remain civilized.

In terms of its foreign policy of aggressive, ceaseless, violent interventionism, the United States has been a murderer of this kind on the world stage for over a century. And our ruling class continues to state repeatedly, in a manner demanding that we credit the assertions, that their infernal and bloody work is far from done.

 

[bigron]

'Fortress Kabul' - The next step?

By James Bays

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59466&hd=&size=1&l=e

October 28, 2009

I know the street where the latest attack took place well. It is close to the site of the former Al Jazeera bureau, where I first worked for this network four years ago.

It seems likely that the Taliban knew there were UN workers staying in the guesthouse and that they were deliberately targeted.

The Taliban does not see the UN as a neutral player. It has direct involvement supporting the election process, and NATO's International Security Force operates under a UN mandate.

Of course, many UN workers are doing humanitarian work that has nothing to do with politics or the military. For example, UN agencies, like the World Food Programme and the UNHCR, are feeding the starving and sheltering the displaced.

The attack is bound to change the way foreigners operate in the Afghan capital and the way they interact with Afghans on a daily basis.

As the security situation has deteriorated, particularly in the south and east of the country, aid workers have found they have been increasingly restricted to the safer parts of the country. For many Kabul is still seen as a place of relative stability.

Despite a number of high-profile attacks, life for the international community in the capital can sometimes seem almost normal. There are shops, restaurants, sports facilities, and even bars. Some foreigners seem to manage energetic social lives in this particular war zone.

Most Taliban attacks in the past have been aimed at Afghan and international forces, foreign embassies and government ministries.

Slowly security has been ramped up. Blast walls ("Hescos", named after the company that makes them) have appeared around the city. More and more roads have been closed.

Despite all this, only on two occasions has there been a mass departure of international personnel. In May 2006 as rioting spread across the city, buildings used by foreigners were among the targets and in January 2008 confidence again tumbled as the five-star Serena Hotel was attacked. That was what the experts call "a complex attack - suicide bombers blowing themselves up at the entrance, and then gunmen heading inside the building.

Exactly the same tactics seem to have been used today.

The latest attack on the guest house, which was followed by rockets fired again at the Serena, is likely to cause much more concern.

The Serena is a Kabul landmark. Right in the centre of the city, it is the only luxury hotel of a truly international standard in the country. The compound, where top level visiting dignitaries stay, will always be seen a potential target.

But international workers have always felt relatively safe in their small, much more discreet guest houses. Many aid agencies, contracting firms and advisers follow the UN lead when it comes to security.

If you are a UN worker in Afghanistan, you cannot just check into any hotel or stay wherever you like.

All premises used for accommodation have to be security cleared by the UN’s own advisers. They make a site visit, checking out the guard force, their weapons and their proficiency. Other requirements have to be met. For example, blast-proof film on the windows, barbed wire on the outer walls. Some owners have also installed safe rooms, blast walls and escape hatches.

Kabul is not yet Baghdad. At the height of the violence in 2005 and 2006, fighters lived and fought in the city - it seemed nowhere was safe, even the heavily-protected "green zone".

In the Afghan capital, the Taliban clearly has its supporters, sympathisers and informers; but each time they plan an attack, the weapons and the fighters need to be infiltrated into the city centre.

This latest attack will lead to a major security review. Heavily protected foreign enclaves may be the result. The idea of "Fortess Kabul", an Afghan "green zone", has been predicted before. It may now be closer to becoming a reality.

The Taliban clearly want to unnerve the international community. Many foreign workers will now, quite literally, not sleep at night.


 

[bigron]

South Asia
Oct 29, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ29Df04.html 
 
Taliban take over Afghan province

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - The United States has withdrawn its troops from its four key bases in Nuristan, on the border with Pakistan, leaving the northeastern province as a safe haven for the Taliban-led insurgency to orchestrate its regional battles.

The US has retained some forces in Nuristan's capital, Parun, to provide security for the governor and government facilities. The American position concerning the withdrawal is that due to winter conditions, supply arteries are choked, making it difficult to keep forces in remote areas. The US has pulled out from some areas in the past, but never from all four main bases. 

The move by the top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChystal, follows the death on October 3 of eight US soldiers as well as a number of Afghan National Army forces when their outpost in Kamdesh was attacked by more than 300 militants. On July 13, 2008, nine American soldiers were killed when their outpost in Wanat was attacked by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.

Nuristan is strategically located in the Hindu Kush mountains, the vast and rugged region in which al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his associates are believed to hide.

 The province is now under the effective control of the network belonging to Qari Ziaur Rahman, a Taliban commander with strong ties to Bin Laden. This makes Nuristan the first Afghan province to be controlled by a network inspired by al-Qaeda.



In a telephone conversation on Wednesday, a militant linked to Rahman said that now that they had control of Nuristan, the militants are "marching towards Mohmand and Bajaur to help their fellow Taliban fighting against Pakistani troops", referring to two tribal agencies across the border.

Rahman is not the son of a legendary mujahideen commander, but of a cleric named Maulana Dilbar. His ties do not lie with Pakistan, but with Bin Laden, having instructed him in the lessons of the Prophet Mohammed's life.

Ziaur, in his early thirties, was raised in the camps of Arab militants, who instilled in him the passion to fight against the Americans - not only in Afghanistan, but across the globe. Ziaur did not get his command as any hereditary right. First he had to prove himself on the battlefield, which he did by taking on US troops in Kunar and Nuristan provinces. He was the first to mount operations against the US in the Karghal district of Kunar and he engineered encounters in Nuristan. (See A fighter and a financier Asia Times Online, May 23, 2008.)

Mountainous Nuristan - and adjoining Kunar province and the Mohmand and Bajaur tribal areas - provide a natural labyrinth, ideal for insurgents to establish safe heavens. The majority of Nuristan's people adhere to the strict Salafi school of thought. As a result, Arab fighters, who are mostly Salafis, have always been drawn to the area. This happened during the jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s, when a virtually autonomous Salafi "kingdom" was established with aid from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. This was later eliminated by the Taliban.

In recent years, several top al-Qaeda leaders have been spotted in the area, including al-Qaeda deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, who escaped two missile attacks by US Predator drones. During the Soviet invasion, Nuristan was one of the few areas of the country that was never under occupation. Since the US-led invasion of 2001, it, along with Kunar, has been a hot-bed of activity.

The Taliban's control of Nuristan coincides with the big Pakistani military operation in the South Waziristan tribal area against the al-Qaeda-backed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, which has been underway for the past two weeks. As the militant who spoke to Asia Times Online said, there is now the opportunity to open a new front, with Rahman's forces on the Afghan side and those of Moulvi Faqir Mohammad on the Bajaur and Mohmand side.

This region is also home to displaced militants from Pakistan's Swat Valley, who withdrew earlier this year after a military offensive in that area. They are believed to have regrouped and are preparing for new action in Swat once the winter snows block passes, making it difficult for the army's supply lines.

The latest developments in Nuristan mark a dramatic about-turn. In late 2008, coalition forces, along with the Pakistani military, launched Operation Lion Heart. The idea was that militants would be squeezed between coalition forces in Kunar and Nuristan on the one side, and Pakistani troops in Mohmand and Bajaur on the other. Several months later, both armies announced - clearly prematurely - that they had succeeded in flushing out the insurgent sanctuaries in the region.

Lion Heart was planned following US and Pakistani intelligence reports that the Taliban bases in Mohmand and Bajaur and in Nuristan and Kunar fed into a network that went on to the Taghab Valley in Kapisa province, which is just to the north of the capital, Kabul. From here, the Taliban have been able to launch suicide squads for attacks in Kabul.

The US withdrawal from Nuristan, if it becomes permanent, will give an unprecedented boost to the Taliban in the whole region. In the immediate term, they are better placed than ever to disrupt next month's presidential election runoff between the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, and his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. The Taliban have already issued calls for people to boycott the voting.

In a foretaste of what is to come, the Taliban on Wednesday attacked a guest house in Kabul, killing at least 12 people, including six United Nations employees, two security officials and a civilian, according to police and UN officials. Kabul police said that three attackers, all wearing suicide vests, had also been killed.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

 
 
 

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The Taliban's new breed of leader  



VIDEO

http://www.atimes.com/video/ziaur-interview.html

Qari Ziaur Rahman, commander of the Taliban in Afghanistan's Nooristan and Kunar provinces, which border Pakistan, represents the new generation of anti-US resistance leaders and is tipped to become one of the most important Taliban commanders in the region. He spoke to Syed Saleem Shahzad in the Kunar Valley. (English subtitles.)

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South Asia
Oct 29, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ29Df05.html 
 
Britain's Afghan role in question

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

If only the United States would stop "wavering" and match Britain's resolve in Afghanistan, progress would follow. This is the message being pushed by London - reflected in a recent interview of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband with the New York Times. [1] However, evidence suggests that British forces could become a liability for US objectives in Afghanistan.

With 85 soldiers killed so far this year, the growing British casualty list alone is an indication of the insurgency's sharp focus on British forces. It seems the imperial legacy of Great Britain in Afghanistan - aptly narrated in the Patrick Macrory classic Retreat from Kabul: The Catastrophic British Defeat in Afghanistan, 1842 - makes British troops more of a target than their US counterparts.

Fearful that history may be repeating itself, various British military officials, pundits, and politicians are now warning of the country's imminent "strategic defeat" in Afghanistan. Some blame the lack of a clear-cut British strategy separate from that of the US, while others point a finger at US President Barack Obama and his "wobbling," "wavering" and "lack of will". [2]

Intent on winning the current debate in Washington on "counter-insurgency" versus "counter-terrorism" in favor of the former, the British government and British media outlets have spared no effort in their attempts to influence US decision-makers. The UK government even seems willing to resort to the type of disinformation that was used to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which included discredited intelligence reports of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

Suspicions have been aroused by a report on the BBC's Newsnight program last week claiming Washington had confirmed to Downing Street that the "substantial increase" in US troops requested by top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, would be approved. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs quickly dismissed the report, saying "it's not true either generally or specifically ... the president has not made a decision, and when he does, I think that you can assume that the BBC will not be the first outlet for such a decision."

Nonetheless, an apparent British focus on influencing policy at the Oval Office remains undeterred, even though its new occupant is not as amenable to such influence as his predecessor.

Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are unlikely ever to replicate former premier Tony Blair's cozy ties with former president George W Bush. The relationship is undermined by the Labour government's prominent support for the Iraq invasion, as well as Britain's questionable performance in maintaining stability in Basra, southern Iraq. A retired US army colonel, Peter Mansoor, accused the British in September of "abdicating responsibility" in Basra before their withdrawal in late 2007. [3]

The confidential British report partially leaked to the press in September claiming the British faced a similar debacle in Afghanistan is in marked contrast to comments made in the summer by the top British commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith. He triumphantly told the world's media that the insurgents in Afghanistan "are on the brink of defeat".

Leading the British charge for more US troops in Afghanistan, Brown has even crossed the lines in terms of diplomatic protocol by publicly backing McChrystal during a recent tour of Kabul. McChrystal has requested some 40,000 additional troops for the mission in Afghanistan and has warned of dire consequences if this does not materialize.

Given that officials including Vice President Joseph Biden have stated reservations over McChrystal's request and that Obama has distanced himself from the general, perhaps Brown should take steps to avoid the impression that he is a Washington lobbyist.

Prime Minister Brown earlier this month gave the go-ahead "in principle" for the deployment of an additional 500 British troops to Afghanistan, taking the total UK force in the country to 9,500. However, he said the reinforcements were dependent on a series of conditions being met - including that they be fully equipped. Nor did he indicate when the deployment would take place.

It is not entirely clear that the US strategy in Afghanistan would necessarily benefit from more British troops - on the contrary, there are reasons to believe the opposite. Firstly, while the US can capitalize on the collective Afghan memory of US support against the Soviet Union during the 1980s, negative perceptions of Britain's colonial legacy in Afghanistan only serve the insurgents' interests.

Many people in the region also blame the British forces for the failure of the anti-narcotics campaign after the 2001 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, as they ran the program. Since 2001, Afghanistan's narco-economy has grown into a monstrous tumor that feeds the insurgency as well as an international network of criminals. As of yet there has been no objective assessment of the British-run anti-narcotics campaign in 2001-2007, during which poppy seed production rose exponentially.

Another factor undermining the British presence in Afghanistan is the UK's tense relations with Iran. Tehran has accused London of meddling in Iran's post-election unrest [4] and of aiding an insurgent group, Jundallah, which recently launched attacks on Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps. Tehran's animosity toward British forces in Afghanistan could easily translate into operational support for Afghan insurgents willing to concentrate on attacking British forces.

"The British government blames Iran for its debacle in southern Iraq, and knows well that Iran is quite capable of considerable 'mischief' in Afghanistan, partly because of its strong connection with warlords who stayed in Iran during the era of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan," a Tehran University political scientist told Asia Times Online.

"If Iran concludes that its interests dictate taking a sharp turn against the British in Afghanistan, that could change the regional calculations," he said.

Britain feels slighted by its perceived exclusion from talks on Iran's nuclear program, while France and Russia have come to the fore. London is also unhappy that no nation has matched its unilateral increase in sanctions on Iran - a ban on trade with Iran's Bank Melli and the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines.

Principally because of Britain's stance on Iran, Tehran is unwilling to budge on the idea of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization supply corridor to Afghanistan via Iran. Nor is it willing to resume cooperation with the US on Afghanistan that was in place during 2001-2003. There is a link between Iran's nuclear crisis and the regional crises, and should current talks fail - and the British, Americans and others opt for more heat on Tehran - then Iran will likely hit back in Afghanistan.

There are glimmers of hope regarding the Iran nuclear issue and US-Iran cooperation in Afghanistan, but stumbling blocks remain and a British imperialism apparently intent on resurrecting its lost glories would be a major one.

Notes
1. See Britain Resolves, U.S. Wavers
New York Times, October 26, 2009.
2. Peter Spiegel and Alistair MacDonald, U.K. Presses Anti-Insurgent Strategy: Brown Finds Common Ground With Gen. McChrystal on Afghanistan as U.S. Debate Continues. The Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2009.
3. MoD blocked warning that Britain faces Afghan defeat The Sunday Times September 6, 2009.
4. In his recent New York visit, Iran's foreign minister complained that his British counterpart, Miliband, had told Arab leaders that the Iranian regime "is finished" due to the post-election disturbances.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry, click here. His latest book, Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) is now available.
 
 
 

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South Asia
Oct 29, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ29Df01.html 
 
Helicopter rumors refuse to die

By Ahmad Kawoosh

MAZAR-E-SHARIF - Persistent accounts of Western forces in Afghanistan using their helicopters to ferry Taliban fighters, strongly denied by the military, is feeding mistrust of the forces that are supposed to be bringing order to the country.

One such tale came from a soldier from the 209th Shahin Corps of the Afghan National Army, fighting against the growing insurgency in Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan. Over several months, he had taken part in several pitched battles against the armed opposition.

"Just when the police and army managed to surround the Taliban in a village of Qala-e-Zaal district, we saw helicopters land with support teams," he said. "They managed to rescue their friends from our encirclement, and even to inflict defeat on the Afghan National Army."

This story, in one form or another, is being repeated throughout northern Afghanistan. Dozens of people claim to have seen Taliban fighters disembark from foreign helicopters in several provinces. The local talk is of the insurgency being consciously moved north, with international troops ferrying fighters in from the volatile south, to create mayhem in a new location.

Helicopters are almost exclusively the domains of foreign forces in Afghanistan; the international military controls the air space and has a virtual monopoly on aircraft. So when Afghans see choppers, they think foreign military.

"Our fight against the Taliban is nonsense," said the soldier from Shahin Corps. "Our foreigner 'friends' are friendlier to the opposition."

For months or even years, rumors have been circulating in Afghanistan that the Taliban are being financed or even directly supported militarily by the foreign forces.

In part it stems from an inability to believe that major foreign armies cannot defeat a ragtag bunch of insurgents; in addition, Afghanistan has been a center of foreign intrigue for so long that belief in plots comes naturally to many war-weary Afghans.

The international troops hotly deny that they are supporting the insurgents.

"This entire business with the helicopters is just a rumor," said Brigadier General Juergen Setzer, recently appointed commander for the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, in the north. "It has no basis in reality, according to our investigations."

The general added that ISAF-North had overall control of the air space in the northern region.

But the persistent rumors that foreign helicopters have been sighted assisting the Taliban in northern Afghanistan were given an unexpected boost in mid-October by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who told the media that his administration was investigating similar reports that "unknown" helicopters were ferrying the insurgents from Helmand province in the south to Baghlan, Kunduz and Samangan provinces in the north.

Captain Tim Dark, of Britain’s Task Force Helmand, was vehement in his reaction.

"The thought that British soldiers could be aiding and abetting the enemy is just rubbish," he said. "We have had 85 casualties so far this year."

Engineer Mohammad Omar, governor of Kunduz, refused to comment on the issue, but Enayatullah Enayat, governor of Samangan, also denied that the helicopters were moving the opposition around in Samangan.

"I am in contact with both national and foreign forces in Samangan," he said. "I have not seen any suspicious helicopters bringing in the Taliban."

The north has recently witnessed a spike in insurgent activity, particularly in Kunduz and Baghlan. Provinces that were relatively calm even six months ago are experiencing armed attacks, suicide bombings and even outright Taliban control over several districts.

In a district of Baghlan province, Baghlan-e-Markazi, residents witnessed a battle last month in which they insisted that two foreign helicopters had delivered the Taliban fighters who then attacked their district center.

"I saw the helicopters with my own eyes," said Sayed Rafiq from Baghlan-e-Markazi. "They landed near the foothills and offloaded dozens of Taliban with turbans, and wrapped in patus [a blanket-type shawl]."

According to numerous media reports, the Taliban attacked the district center, and the district police chief along with the head of counter-narcotics and a number of soldiers were killed.

Commander Amir Gul, district governor of Baghlan-e-Markazi, insisted that the Taliban fighters had been delivered by helicopter.

"I do not know to which country the helicopters belonged," he told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. "But these are the same helicopters that are taking the Taliban from Helmand to Kandahar and from there to the north, especially to Baghlan."

According to Amir Gul, the district department of the National Security Directorate had identified the choppers, but it refused to comment.

Baghlan police chief, Mohammad Kabir Andarabi, said that his department had reported to the central government that foreign helicopters were transporting the Taliban into Baghlan.

The Baghlan provincial governor, Mohammad Akbar Barikzai, told a news conference on October 21 that his intelligence and security services had discovered that unidentified helicopters were landing at night in some parts of the province.

"We are investigating," he said.

Rumors have reached the point where US ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, felt compelled to address them last week at a ceremony honoring the more than 5,500 Afghan police and soldiers who have died during the present war.

The reports were "outrageous and baseless", said Eikenberry, as reported by McClatchey newspapers. "We would never aid the terrorists that attacked us on September 11, that are killing our soldiers, your soldiers and innocent Afghan civilians every day."

Afghan political analysts have woven elaborate theories as to why the foreign forces would be helping the Taliban.

According to Rahim Rahimi, a professor at Balkh University, America and the United Kingdom are trying to keep all of Afghanistan insecure, so that people feel the need for the foreign forces.

"They will try and destabilize the north any way they can," Rahimi said. "It is a good excuse to expand their presence in the area, to get a grip on the gas and oil in Central Asia."

Fighting Islamic extremists was one way to insert themselves into the area without provoking a fierce reaction from Russia and the Central Asian governments, he added.

Numerous websites have devoted blogs, columns and "investigative reports" to the helicopter rumors; literally everyone has heard the whispers, and many, if not most, believe them. It provides an added reason to suspect and fear the foreign forces, as well as an explanation for the rapid spread of the insurgency throughout the country.

In the end, it may not really matter whether the rumors are ever substantiated. The firm belief that Afghans have in them can determine attitudes and behavior, further fueling mistrust of the Westerners in their midst.

Ahmad Kawoosh is an IWPR journalist based in Mazar-e-Sharif.

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

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Obama Still Doesn’t Grasp Blowback

Posted By Ivan Eland On October 27, 2009 @ 11:00 pm

Although President Barack Obama has more empathy for the opinions of the Islamic world than his predecessor and seems to vaguely understand that they do affect U.S. security, he doesn’t seem to understand specifically that U.S. meddling in and occupation of Muslim countries inflames Islamic radicals and is the main cause of blowback anti-U.S. Islamist terrorism.

In Afghanistan, Obama has already thrown in more troops and will probably be goaded by the military and conservatives into further escalation. This despite a timeline that appears to indicate that the insurgency grows as a reaction to increased foreign presence in the country. Up until 2005, U.S. forces were stationed mainly in Kabul, and the Taliban presence in Afghanistan was minimal. During 2005, U.S. forces moved out into the rest of the country; strangely (or not so strangely) the Taliban resurgence began in 2006. In other words, escalating the number of U.S. forces has the counterproductive effect of merely escalating the conflict.

Obama and the rest of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment have ignored this glaring fact largely because the reverse is perceived to have happened in Iraq. A U.S. troop surge in 2007 there appears to have significantly dampened ethno-sectarian mayhem and the rebellion against the U.S. occupier. Yet many experts say the surge had less to do with reducing the violence than did the sectarian separation from prior ethnic cleansing and paying off the Sunni guerrillas not to fight U.S. occupying forces. After all, for the Iraqi election in 2005, U.S. forces had the same number of troops as during the surge, yet chaos reined. And Iraq is "not over till it’s over," as the recent massive bombings of Iraqi government buildings have shown. The restive Sunni militias have not been integrated into Iraq’s security forces, and one can only wonder what will happen when payments eventually stop.

More similar to Afghanistan than Iraq is the situation in Somalia. U.S. policymakers worry that the lack of a strong central government and an Islamist insurgency will make that nation a possible haven for al-Qaeda terrorists, but they rarely admit that U.S. policy caused the problem in the first place. Al-Shabaab, the militant Islamist movement now trying to take over the country, had minimal popular support before the CIA began supporting corrupt Somali warlords. Normally, Somalis tend to be moderate Muslims. The U.S. then sponsored and aided Somalia’s arch rival, Ethiopia, in its invasion of Somalia. Such foreign intervention and occupation caused popular support for al-Shabaab to skyrocket into the current problem. If a foreign country were intruding in or occupying the United States, Americans would probably support any force that would push back against outside interference.

In fact, Americans already did. Why can’t a country that was born out of exasperation about British control and occupation understand that people in other countries don’t like foreign interlopers any better than Americans do?

After 9/11, President George W. Bush alleged that al-Qaeda had attacked the U.S. because of its freedoms. Yet other countries that enjoyed political and economic freedoms weren’t attacked. Most foreign policy analysts chose to ignore or play down all of Osama bin Laden’s writings about his reasons for attacking the United States: U.S. meddling in and occupation of Islamic countries. Why?

Interventionism – a non-traditional U.S. foreign policy developed after World War II – has many supporting vested interests, especially government security bureaucracies, and thus has bipartisan support. Foreign interventions bring bigger budgets to such bureaucracies and also secretly subsidize various industries (for example, U.S. intervention in the Persian Gulf benefits U.S. oil companies). So despite endangering U.S. citizens – through being subjected to 9/11-style anti-U.S. terrorism – and swelling the ranks of militants and terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Somalia, U.S. meddling in the Muslim world and elsewhere continues because politically powerful interest groups benefit from the policy at the expense of the general public.

Read more by Ivan Eland
Is Adulation of the Military Really Patriotic? – October 20th, 2009
Five Facts About Afghanistan – October 13th, 2009
Fire McChrystal and Get Out of Afghanistan – October 6th, 2009
Empathy for ‘Adversaries’ – September 29th, 2009
Obama Needs to Expand on His Good Instincts in Foreign Policy – September 22nd, 2009

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

Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com

URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/eland/2009/10/27/obama-still-doesnt-grasp-blowback/

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October 28, 2009
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obamas-afghan-strategy-hit-by-deaths-and-dissent-1810517.html

Obama's Afghan strategy hit by deaths and dissent

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington


Matthew Hoh, a former Marine and State Department official in Afghanistan, said the involvement of American soldiers in the country was only fuelling the insurgency


October now bloodiest month in conflict while US diplomat resigns in protest at war

The loss of eight more American soldiers yesterday, the resignation of a highly regarded US Foreign Service officer, and new tensions over next week's Afghan election run-off have combined to intensify pressure on Barack Obama as he edges towards a crucial decision on a major increase in US troop strength in Afghanistan.

On Friday the President is to hold a further meeting with his military chiefs. He will be doing so at the end of the bloodiest single month in the conflict. The latest deaths bring to 55 the number of troops already killed in October, more than the previous high of 51 in August. They came the day after 14 US personnel died in separate helicopter accidents. In all more than 900 US soldiers have so far lost their lives in an eight-year war whose end is not in sight.

For Matthew Hoh, the sacrifice has simply become so pointless that he felt no alternative other than to become the first US diplomat known to have resigned over the war, citing reasons that reflect not just his own doubts over the conflict, but those of an increasingly disillusioned American public.

"I have lost understanding of, and confidence in, the strategic purposes of the United States presence in Afghanistan," says the resignation letter of the former Marine captain and Iraq veteran, who joined the State Department to work as the top American official in Zabul province in eastern Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan.

The US involvement was simply fuelling the insurgency, Mr Hoh wrote, and was causing American servicemen to die "in what is essentially a far-off civil war", or more accurately a number of small local wars in which the sides are united only in their resentment of a foreign intruder. His problem was not how Washington was pursuing the war - the issue Mr Obama is grappling with in round after round of consultations with his top national security and military advisers - "but why and to what end" his country was fighting it in the first place.

The resignation, revealed yesterday in The Washington Post, has sent shockwaves through the administration, which made repeated and strenuous efforts to change Mr Hoh's mind - including a one-on-one meeting with Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy for Afghanistan. "We took his letter very seriously," Mr Holbrooke told the newspaper. He described Mr Hoh as a good officer, and admitting that he shared much of the diplomat's analysis, although not his conclusion.

Tellingly, Mr Hoh emphasises he is no "peacenik or pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love". As he made clear to the Post, he is a tough former professional soldier, who believes the Taliban and al-Q'aida have "plenty of dudes who need to be killed", and the evidence of his personal courage makes him a difficult target for pro-war voices. Mr Hoh came home from Iraq with citations for "uncommon bravery".

Nor was he a mere grunt: in his time as a Defence Department civilian working on reconstruction in Tikrit, Iraq, he employed up to 5,000 people and handled millions of dollars in cash. Yet despite that experience, he said the weeks spent considering his decision and drafting the four-page resignation letter left him feeling "physically nauseous".

Later this week the now-resigned diplomat will meet with the chief foreign policy adviser of the Vice-President Joe Biden, the leading advocate in the administration of the approach favoured by Mr Hoh: a greater focus on Pakistan coupled with a scaled-down US combat presence in Afghanistan. "We have to draw the line somewhere, and say this is their problem to solve."

Complicating matters further is the new dispute over the election run-off, after Abdullah Abdullah, the challenger to the incumbent president Hamid Karzai, demanded the dismissal of the country's top election officer. Mr Abdullah, a former foreign minister, maintains that the supposedly neutral official could not guarantee a clean election, after the widespread fraud that marred the initial vote in August.

But yesterday Mr Karzai rejected that demand and others, with little sign of significant change in the practical organisation of the run-off, scheduled for 7 November. In retaliation, Mr Abdullah has threatened to boycott the vote - a move that would all but destroy the chances of Afghanistan gaining a leader with genuine national legitimacy, a declared pre-condition of a boost in US troop strength.

The request submitted by General Stanley McChrystal, the top allied commander in Afghanistan, reportedly seeks an increase of up to 40,000 men from the currently planned ceiling of 68,000. Failing that, the general argues, the war might to all intents be lost within a year.

Mr Obama has said he will not be rushed, and will make up his mind only when the election produces a clear-cut, accepted winner. In the meantime relations are by all accounts highly strained between the Obama team and Mr Karzai. The latter's agreement to accept a run-off was secured not by Mr Holbrooke, who reportedly has clashed with the Afghan President, but by the visiting John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Hoh's resignation letter: 'This reminds me horribly of Vietnam'

"In the course of my five months of service in Afghanistan... I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purpose of the United States' presence in Afghanistan

"My resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing the war, but why and to what end... I fail to see the value or worth in continued US casualties... in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year-old civil war

"Like the Soviets we continue to bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people

"If the history of Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United States is no more than a supporting actor, among several previously, in a tragedy that... has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modern of Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional.

"The Pashtun insurgency... is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The US and Nato presence and operations... provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified

"The bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but... against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes

"[This] reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam... against an insurgency we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War ideology."

Bloodiest month: US losses in October

27 October 2009 Eight American troops die in two separate bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan, making October the deadliest month of the war for US forces since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban.

26 October 2009 Eleven American soldiers are killed in separate helicopter crashes. One helicopter goes down in western Afghanistan, killing seven soldiers and three civilians working for the US government. In a separate incident in the south, two other US choppers collide in flight, killing four American troops.

3 October 2009 Eight US soldiers are killed when their outpost in Kamdesh, Nuristan, is attacked by as many as 300 militants. Another soldier dies in Wardak province when a bomb detonates as he attempts to disarm it.

The US military has suffered 905 fatalities since the invasion of October 2001.

Source: AP

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Thursday, October 29, 2009
07:03 Mecca time, 04:03 GMT
 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/2009102911650453873.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
UN 'undeterred' by Kabul attack  
 

Wednesday's attack has raised security concerns in the lead up to the November 7 runoff vote [AFP]

 
A deadly attack on a guest house used by United Nations staff in Kabul will not stop the UN from carrying out its mission in Afghanistan, the UN secretary general has said.

Speaking at UN headquarters in New York, Ban Ki-moon said the "shameless" attack had cost the lives of "women and men committed to the values of peace, dignity and respect for all."

But he said the UN would "not be deterred from this noble mission".

Wednesday's dawn attack by Taliban fighters on the privately-run Bekhtar guest house in central Kabul killed five UN workers.

The three Taliban attackers and four Afghans were also killed during a fierce gun battle that broke out after the raid.


In video

UN workers killed in attack
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/20091028210085398.html
 
In a statement the Taliban said it had carried out the attack on the UN because of its involvement in organising Afghanistan's presidential elections, the second round of which is due to be held on
November 7.

Ban said however that the UN would continue its work.

"In principle we are not and we should not be deterred by this heinous terrorist attack. We will continue our work, particularly on helping the Afghan government and people carry on this second presidential election," he told reporters.


FROM THE BLOGS :

Grim awakening

By Jonah Hull in The Asia Blog
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/asia/2009/10/28/grim-awakening
 
'Fortress Kabul' - The next step?

By James Bays in The Asia Blog 
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/asia/2009/10/28/fortress-kabul-next-step

He said the "despicable and brutal" violence seen on Wednesday showed that the difficulties of working in Afghanistan should not be underestimated.

Ban added that in the wake of the attack Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, had asked the country's interior minister "to provide strengthened security for UN staff."

In Washington the White House also said the attack would not succeed in derailing the planned November 7 runoff vote.

"The administration is confident that there are the appropriate resources to conduct an election," press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters.

"In Kabul obviously there is an attempt by some to disrupt the will of the Afghan people in choosing their next government that this administration believes will not succeed."

The identities of the UN staff killed in the attack have not been released, although all are assumed to be non-Afghan nationals.

The US embassy has confirmed one of the dead was an American.

Security review

The Bekhtar guest house is in central Kabul in an area close to several government ministries that is supposed to be under the highest security.


 
The guest house is one of several used by the UN in the city which must be given special security approval from the organisation to house its staff.

Following the attack Ban said the UN had ordered an immediate security review and would take measures to strengthen the safety of its premises across Afghanistan.

An internal e-mail to UN staff in Afghanistan said an emergency meeting will be held on Thursday morning to discuss future arrangements and asking all agencies "to review critical, essential and less essential staff lists."

As the stand-off at the guest house came to an end, a mortar attack was launched on a five star hotel, The Serena, also in the capital.

Witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from the top of the building, but the attack did not cause any casualties.

The hotel, close to the presidential palace and used by diplomats and journalists, was the scene of a Taliban attack in 2008 which killed six people.

Kabul has been on high alert as preparations continue for the presidential runoff.

Last week, the Taliban issued a statement calling for a boycott of the election saying they would step up attacks on foreign forces.

The statement warned that anybody involved in running the election would be considered a legitimate target.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 

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Published on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 by CommonDreams.org


An American Diplomat and a British Soldier Tell Their Leaders
They Have No Clothes: No to the Afghanistan War Strategy

by Ann Wright

British Army Lance Corporal Joe Glenton faces court martial for refusing to return to Afghanistan. He defied a direct order by his commanding officer to not participate in the in the Saturday, October 24, 2009, Stop the War march in London. 

Challenging his military command, Glenton told the 10,000 gathered for the march: "I expected to go to war but I also expected that the need to defend this country's interests would be legal and justifiable. I don't think this is too much to ask. It's now apparent that the conflict is neither of these and that's why I must make this stand.

"It is distressing to disobey orders, but when Britain follows America in continuing to wage war against one of the world's poorest countries, I feel I have no choice.  Politicians have abused the trust of the army and the soldiers who serve, that's why I am compelled and proud to march with the Stop The War Coalition today."  (http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1561/1/ [1])

On the day that the United States suffered the greatest number of deaths in its 8 year war in Afghanistan and in the month with the most casualties, an American diplomat assigned in Afghanistan resigned.  As one of three U.S. diplomats who resigned in March, 2009 in opposition to the Iraq war (http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0303/032103wright.htm [2]), I had been wondering how long the next resignation from the U.S. government over war policies would take.

Six weeks ago, on September 10, 2009, U.S. diplomat Matthew Hoh sent a letter of resignation to the Director General of the State Department over his concern about the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.  Hoh had served six years in the U.S. Marine Corps and had one combat tour in Iraq as a Marine Corps Captain and a second tour in Iraq as a Department of Defense civilian.

Hoh, who had been in Afghanistan five months as the Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. government is Zabal province, questioned "why and to what end" the United States is in Afghanistan.  Hoh said that "Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state while encouraging and an ideology and government unknown and unwanted by its people."... "The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led by non-Pashtun soldiers and police provide an occupation force against which an insurgency is justified."  "The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan contributes greatly to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency."

Hoh described the Afghan government as corrupt and said "Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency's true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam; an unpopular and corrupt government we backed at the expense of our nation's own internal peace, against an insurgency we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War ideology."   

He commented that the US support "for the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the people from their government.  The Afghan government's failings, particularly when weighed against the sacrifice of American lives and dollars appear legion and metastatic:

--Glaring corruption and unabashed graft;

--A President whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug lords and war crimes villains, who mock our own rule of law and counternarcotics efforts;

--A system of provincial and district leaders constituted of local power brokers, opportunists and power brokers allied with the United States solely for, and limited by, the value of our USAID and CERP contracts and whose own political and economic interests stand nothing to gain from any positive or genuine attempts at reconciliation, and;

--The recent electoral process dominated by fraud and discredited by low voter turnout, which created an enormous victory for our enemy who now claims a popular boycott and will call into question worldwide our government's military, economic and diplomatic support for an invalid and illegitimate Afghan government."   (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/ssi/wpc/ResignationLetter.pdf?sid=ST2009102603447 [3])

Senior officials in the State Department including US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke tried to get Hoh to stay in the State Department arguing that if he "wanted to affect policy then he should be inside the state Department, not outside, where you can get a lot of attention but you won't have the same political impact."  Holbrook even said that he "agreed with much of Hoh's analysis, although not his conclusion that the war wasn't worth the fight."

On Friday, October 23, Hoh decided not to remain in the State Department and made his resignation effective on that date saying  he had decided to speak out publicly because "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right."  (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/27/matthew-hoh-afghanistan-resign-us [4])  Hoh's resignation became public with the Washington Post article on October 27, 2009  (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603394.html?nav=hcmodule [5])

I was in Afghanistan three weeks ago, returning for the first time since I helped reopen the US Embassy in Kabul in December, 2001.  Eight years ago I had hopes that a short term United States presence might help the Afghan people out of the cycle of violence and that roads, schools and clinics could be built quickly before our "welcome" was worn out.  The Bush administration's diversion to invade and occupy Iraq short-circuited those hopes.

Now eight years later, there is little security in the country, despite 100,000 international troops, including 68,000 U.S. military, plus 90,000 U.S. trained Afghan soldiers.  According to a senior Army logistics officer, Afghanistan's roads are mined by insurgents forcing 180 U.S. military outposts to be resupplied by helicopters.  "We don't have freedom of movement on the ground," a senior Army logistics officer says. "We're resupplying between 30% and 40% of our forward operating bases by air because we just can't get to them on the ground." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091027/us_time/08599193238600 [6])

In the three weeks since I left Afghanistan, on October 8, a suicide bomber drove unimpeded on the "secure" road in front of the Indian Embassy and exploded the car killing 17 and wounding 76. In July, 2008, another car bomber killed 41 and injured 139 at the gates of Indian Embassy. 

Today, on October 28, 2009, Taliban gunmen dressed in old police uniforms came into a United Nations guest house in Kabul and killed six UN staff and wounded nine other UN employees.  Six Afghans including three attackers were killed.  Also, today, rockets hit the Serena hotel used by many international visitors in Kabul and the Presidential Palace, but no casualties have been reported.  On September 17, 2009, a suicide car bomber killed six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians on one of Kabul's main roadways.  (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091028/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan [7])

When senior policy makers will not be honest with decision makers, sometimes it's the more junior government employees who have the strength of character and courage to tell their Presidents and Prime Ministers when they and their policies have no clothes.

Matthew Hoh and Lance Corporal Joe Glenton have proven to be voices of conscience for us all.

Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book "Dissent: Voices of Conscience [8]." (www.voicesofconscience.com [9]).


Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/28-2

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Attack on UN in Kabul in lead-up to sham Afghan election

By Peter Symonds

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59502&hd=&size=1&l=e

WSWS, October 29, 2009

An attack by Taliban fighters on a UN guesthouse in the Afghan capital, Kabul, has underscored the fragility of the US-led occupation of the country in the lead-up to the second round of presidential elections on November 7.


At least 12 people died in the raid on the Bakhtar Guesthouse yesterday morning, including six international UN staff, two Afghan guards and three Taliban gunmen. The brother-in-law of Gul Afgha Sherzai, the governor of the eastern city of Jalalabad, was also killed. At least nine other UN staff were wounded.


Three Taliban fighters dressed as police reportedly killed the two guards then entered the guesthouse compound and a 90-minute siege ensued. The raid was preceded by a rocket attack on the presidential palace and was followed by further rockets against the Serena Hotel, a five-star hotel frequented by foreign diplomats and journalists.


A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told the New York Times that the attack on the UN guesthouse was meant to warn people not to take part in the runoff election between incumbent president Hamid Karzai and his challenger Abdullah Abdullah. The UN is playing a major role in preparing the poll after the first round was ruled inconclusive amid massive electoral fraud on the part of both candidates.


The US and UN condemned the attack, which was the most serious on a UN facility in Afghanistan since the toppling of Taliban in 2001. While the UN presents itself as a neutral, humanitarian body, it functions as an adjunct to the US-NATO occupation in Afghanistan and is widely perceived as such by Afghans. In the name of "democracy", the UN is helping to stage the country’s sham elections in an effort to politically bolster Washington’s puppet regime.


The first round on August 20 was marked by flagrant ballot stuffing, ghost polling stations and interference by staff from the Afghan government’s so-called Independent Election Commission (IEC). The turnout was only around 30 percent due to widespread popular disenchantment and hostility, as well as the threat of violence by the Taliban. Some 300 violent incidents were recorded on election day, in which at least 31 people were killed.


A drawn-out review of the results by the international Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), conducted against a backdrop of political wrangling in Kabul and Washington, found that a third of Karzai’s votes and 200,000 of Abdullah’s were fraudulent. Crucially, the ECC report released on October 18 dropped Karzai’s result to just below the 50 percent level required to avoid a second round. After heavy arm-twisting by the Obama administration, Karzai finally agreed to a runoff.


However, the second round will be just as illegitimate as the first. While some staff changes have been made to the IEC, Karzai has rejected calls by Abdullah to replace IEC head Azizullah Ludin. Ludin made his sympathies clear in recent comments to the New York Times, declaring: "We will have a new election and will have the same results. Karzai is going to win."


The Brussels-based think tank, the International Crisis Group, concluded on Wednesday: "Unless steps are urgently taken to reform Afghanistan’s electoral institutions, in particular to reconstitute the Independent Election Commission (IEC), there is little chance of reversing public disillusionment with elections… Barring sanctions against those at the highest-level responsible for the rigging and the swift adoption of extra security measures ahead of the run-off, it is more than likely that earlier missteps will be repeated."


Calls by the International Crisis Group and other commentators for the US and its allies to step in to patch up the electoral process only underline the neo-colonial character of the US-led occupation. The election is taking place under the tutelage of the US and the presence of more than 100,000 foreign troops. Whatever the outcome of the poll, the real decisions about the fate of Afghanistan and its people are made in Washington.


An article in yesterday’s New York Times reported that the Obama administration was focussing on a strategy for Afghanistan that would boost US troop numbers to consolidate occupation control over 10 major population centres, including Kabul and regional cities such as Kandahar, Herat, Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sharif. Weeks of intense White House discussions followed a report by General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan.


According to the New York Times, while McChrystal is pressing for at least 40,000 extra US troops and extending protection to major Afghan agricultural areas and highways, Obama advisers are pushing for a more restrictive approach centred on the major cities. The remainder of the country would effectively be transformed into a free fire zone.


A senior Obama administration official told the newspaper: "We are not talking about surrendering the rest of the country to the Taliban." Military officers explained that US forces would maintain pressure on the insurgents by using surveillance drones and local reports to locate and destroy pockets of Taliban fighters, in particular by Special Operations forces. Efforts would also be made to expand Afghan security forces and attempt to buy off sections of the Taliban and its tribal allies.


Elements of the US military have been sharply critical of the Karzai administration from the purely pragmatic standpoint that its obvious corruption and incompetence have undermined support for the occupation and boosted the Taliban. Any announcement of the Obama administration’s strategy for Afghanistan and increased troop numbers will likely be held off until after the election run-off and a new Afghan president is in place.


In neighbouring Pakistan, another car bomb blast yesterday wrecked havoc in a market in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, killing at least 101 people and injuring many more. The bombing is the latest in a series of high-profile attacks that have followed the launching of a large Pakistani army offensive into the tribal agency of South Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan.


The Obama administration has been pressing Islamabad to send troops into the border area, which has been used by anti-occupation insurgents inside Afghanistan as a safe haven. The offensive, involving 30,000 Pakistani troops, began on October 18 and has already resulted in whole villages being levelled and tens of thousands of refugees fleeing to safer areas. While not necessarily supportive of Islamist groups, broad layers of the Pakistani population are deeply resentful toward the US and regard the present government as little more than an American puppet.


US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew into Pakistan yesterday for a three-day visit aimed at bolstering the government of President Asif Ali Zardari and ensuring that its "war on terrorism" proceeds. Clinton denounced the Peshawar bombing and praised the offensive into South Waziristan, declaring it was "important for Americans to recognise the high price the Pakistanis are paying" in their fight against extremism.


Clinton’s visit simply highlights the fact that Washington’s reckless military adventure in Afghanistan has profoundly destabilised neighbouring Pakistan, with potentially dangerous consequences for the entire region.


The author also recommends:

The runoff farce in Afghanistan
[26 October 2009]
http://www.uruknet.info/pers-o26.shtml


 

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US Cedes De Facto Control Over East Afghan Province to Taliban

Handful of Troops Left to Protect Governor

by Jason Ditz

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59506&hd=&size=1&l=e

October 29, 2009



Following an all-out assault by several hundred insurgents on two US outposts in Nuristan earlier this month, the US quickly abandoned both sites.

The Pentagon maintains that they had been planning to abandon the bases at any rate, and that it was only a coincidence they were attacked just a few days before the move. Two other US posts in Nuristan has been attacked last year, and were also abandoned.

Those two outposts were America’s last in the area, and this has meant that the eastern province has only a handful of US troops now, protecting the governor, and that Nuristan Province is now under the de facto control of a Taliban faction run by Qari Rahman.

Nuristan lies along the border with Pakistan’s tiny Bajaur Agency, which the US launched a rare drone attack against late last week. Militants linked to Rahman, having effectively secured Nuristan, say they have their sights set on Bajaur, and the US strike was likely a last ditch American effort to stave off that eventuality, the last thing Pakistan needs after starting a major offensive on the other side of the tribal areas under intense US cajoling.



 

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South Asia
Oct 30, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ30Df05.html 
 
SPEAKING FREELY

Hamid Karzai: Afghanistan's Diem

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
 
The mountains of Afghanistan are quickly growing verdant in their similarity to the jungles of Vietnam. The revelation this week in the New York Times that Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmed Karzai, is a ''thug'', ''suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium trade'', and ''on the CIA payroll'', is striking not for its news quotient, but for the fact that it was made by what appear to be White House officials. We are in 1963 all over again.

It was that year that American president John F Kennedy, fresh off his victory in the Cuban missile crisis, began asserting himself more deeply in the Vietnam conflict, which had, until then, been run almost entirely by the US Central Intelligence Agency. The president was intervening because Ngo Dinh Diem, the CIA's man in Saigon, a city he ruled in a country he only tried to rule, had gained a reputation as a gangster, thug, and narcotics dealer both on the ground in Vietnam and in the international press.

Diem had carefully built a network of power from his base of Catholic supporters, French post-colonial arms and narcotics dealers, local criminals, control of the prostitution and bar industry, and through work with a longtime Saigon criminal syndicate known as the Bin Xuyen, originally river pirates, now traders in narcotics, and more importantly, information. His spy network was thorough and terrifying to the local populace. Through this network, Diem, a man who kept a working casino on the top floor of his presidential palace, had gained a firm grip on the security of Saigon.

However, the North Vietnamese had built a successful public relations campaign against Diem for these very reasons. Kennedy felt he had to win over the population of Vietnam, and could never do so with such a known thug in office. This was in direct contradiction to the CIA's perspective. Their chief man in Asia, Edward Lansdale, had personally nurtured Diem's rise to power. He felt that Diem, while dirty, had taken great strides in gaining control of a country that the colonial French had so recently fled.

The dispute became personal: Kennedy asked Lansdale to the White House, and Lansdale fought tooth and nail in a September 1963 National Security meeting for the president to back Diem and to give him moral and political, as well as financial and military, support. Lansdale berated the administration for not having already done so - even going so far as to accuse State Department officials of having tried to kill Diem in 1960.

Ultimately, Kennedy came round to the belief that the United States could better win over Vietnam by replacing Diem. He ordered the American ambassador at the time, Henry Cabot Lodge, not to meet with Diem, and soon American military commanders gave the go-ahead to a coup by Diem's own military leaders.

The new leaders let the network of thugs, criminals, gangsters, and ex-colonialists fall apart, and with it, Saigon's security. The coup led to a never-ending power struggle among South Vietnamese military leaders for control of the various power centers of the old network. Amidst the chaos, the North Vietnamese leadership was able to quickly infiltrate the city.

In the words of the North Vietnamese politburo: "Diem was one of the strongest individuals resisting the people and communism. Everything that could be done in an attempt to crush the revolution was carried out by Diem. Diem was one of the most competent lackeys of the US imperialists ... Among the anti-communists in South Vietnam or exiled in other countries, no one has sufficient political assets and abilities to cause others to obey."

Ho Chi Minh thought Diem was such a powerful figure that he ''could scarcely believe the American's could be so stupid'' as to have replaced him.

Indeed, Ho Chi Minh's prediction proved true. Under new rule, Saigon fell from bad to worse, forcing the CIA to later re-institute a ''strong-man'' policy in the city, only to see support for its rule and efficacy undermined by the Tet offensive. In Vietnam, neither the idealist route of dumping thugs nor the cynical route of reinstating them worked. Ultimately, there was no compelling reason to the Vietnamese why the United States should be in Vietnam.

And so it is little surprise, but a well-timed reminder, that also this week, a leading American figure in Afghanistan offered his resignation, stating, ''I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan.'' Mathew Hoh, the Senior Civilian Representative for the US Government in Zabul province, wrote on September 10 in a four-page resignation letter that ''I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.''

Now President Barack Obama is choosing between strategies in Afghanistan, with the New York Times reporting that his administration has ''deep divisions''. Yet they seem to be split only between the strategies of cynicism and of false idealism. The White House has already made clear that its decision will involve a troop increase, the question being only how large and deployed in what way.

Throughout the general mass media bonanza that has been covering the decision over Afghanistan, from the fawning entire Nightline episode dedicated to a ''day in the life'' of Stanley McChrystal, to the most recent New York Times piece about Karzai's allegedly drug-dealing brother, few have explored why the US remains in Afghanistan at all.

The New York Times article, based on statements of "American officials" indicates only one thing: that the White House has clearly decided to confront the CIA, and Karzai, over Afghan policy, undermining both in one quick news attack. What it has clearly not decided to do is pull out of Afghanistan.

There is an old British diplomatic saying, ''The United States will always do the right thing, after it's tried all its other options.'' Lets hope that 45 years after 1963 we have outgrown this. But it doesn't appear to be the case.

Michael Wallach is the former senior analyst for Middle East Public Opinion at the US State Department. He resigned, with little fanfare, due to the US's overall Middle East policy.

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. 
http://www.atimes.net/speakingfreely/
 

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South Asia
Oct 30, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ30Df01.html 
 
Rivals fiddle while Kabul burns

By Abubakar Siddique

Political tensions are on the rise in Afghanistan as the country braces for a challenging presidential runoff on November 7.

On October 26, incumbent President Hamid Karzai rejected demands from his election rival, former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, that key cabinet ministers be replaced and the country's top election official be removed if he was to participate in the electoral process.

Abdullah claimed that Azizullah Ludin, head of the Afghan Election Commission, should be fired immediately because "he has left no credibility for the institution and, unfortunately, for himself".

"These are practical, very technical [conditions]," Abdullah said in explaining his demand. "It will only help the transparency of the elections, and these are the minimum conditions. And by meeting these conditions, I think we can [build] the right foundation for the future of this country. It will be a step forward, and the outcome of such an election - I will be the first one to welcome it [whatever] that outcome would be."

Mohammad Yunos Fakur, a Kabul-based independent Afghan analyst, questions Abdullah's true motives. Fakur suggests that Abdullah, who officially finished second to Karzai in the first round with 31.5% of the vote, sees the unlikelihood of a second-round victory and is trying to gain key concessions, including power-sharing, ahead of the vote.

Analysts widely expect Karzai to improve on his first-round tally, which gave him just under 50% of the vote. They expect Karzai to capitalize on his incumbency by wooing Afghans who voted in the first round for third candidates, such as populist lawmaker Ramazan Bashardost and reform-minded former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani.

'Moving toward a clash'

The notion that "politics is the art of the possible" is stretched to extreme limits in Afghanistan. Given the country's peculiar circumstances, Afghan analysts suggest that looking at mere poll numbers and predicting results based on past voting patterns might only serve as a diversion from the real issue of how to restore stability and deliver a credible and legitimate government.

Fakur says the two candidates are "moving toward a clash" and "are not agreeing on any framework" on how to move forward. This, he says, is because both are reluctant to concede to anything that might lessen their respective chances of winning and, in turn, put them at risk of losing their political standing.

"Everything that led to their agreement, reconciliation, and possible solution pleased people," Fakur says. "But when their disagreements lead to tension and paralysis, it increases the concerns of the people. One reason for popular optimism in Kabul is that they are grateful that in the presence of international forces the political crisis would not morph into fighting."

In a country where recent history has been shaped by foreign invasions and regional competition played out by armed proxies, the idea of a peaceful transfer of power through elections has not gained currency among Afghan politicians and factional leaders.

With the Western media's focus on the threats posed by extremists, little attention has been paid to the importance of understanding the complexities of Afghan politics.

Fakur suggests that though Karzai might eventually win enough votes to be re-elected, it won't necessarily mean that he can deliver a strong, credible government. Given Afghanistan's unique situation, in which insurgents control large swathes of territory, Fakur suggests that Karzai will need to reach a compromise with Abdullah and other figures who oppose him.

"The conditions in Afghanistan are such that North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Americans, and our neighbors have their interests here. And we need to tailor our interests to their strategies," Fakur says. "If we keep on stirring Afghan sentiments against the international community and work to bring about a government here that clashes with the international community, it won't help. Such a situation will move toward crisis, and this is the basic problem."

Fakur suggests that apart from the internal dynamics, the lead-up to the runoff is being shaped by the acts of the international community, and the Afghans' perceptions of those acts.

He says that Karzai wants to show Afghans that he stood up to international pressure to remove him from power. And Abdullah, Fakur says, saw opportunity in Karzai's differences with the West, resulting in the demands he made ahead of the runoff.

No compromise

Afghan parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai, who now supports Karzai in the runoff, rules out the possibility of a compromise between the two and wants Afghan voters to decide their future leader.

She suggests that despite Karzai's alliance with many notorious Afghan strongmen, the electorate is likely to re-elect him because he is not associated with the internecine conflict of the 1990s, when anti-Soviet factions destroyed Kabul and other cities in their rapacious civil war. Abdullah was a senior aide to late Afghan guerilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud in the 1990s when the Afghan capital was destroyed in factional fighting between Masoud and other factions of the anti-Soviet mujahideen.

"For the people of Afghanistan, I think, Dr Abdullah is a symbol of yesterday's Afghanistan and Karzai is a symbol of today's Afghanistan," Barakzai says. "And Afghans won't like to go back to the dark days of our recent past. It is because if we go back to the past, we will give away our present."

Hajji Sayed Daud, who heads the Afghan Media Resource Center in Kabul, is well-acquainted with public opinion and popular thinking. He tells RFE/RL that deal-making and the fact that Karzai controls the government machinery will ensure his victory on November 7.

But he sees the rival sides as pushing the Afghan electorate toward ethnic fragmentation. Karzai, a Pashtun, and Abdullah, a Tajik-Pashtun, each received support that crossed ethnic and regional boundaries. But the mutual accusations of fraud that followed the first round at times developed ethnic undertones, with hawks from Karzai's side portraying themselves as protectors of Pashtuns, and hawks from Abdullah's side as protectors of Tajiks.

Daud sees the growth of such sentiments in the run-up to the runoff as a bad omen for the future of democracy and stability in his country.

"In the regions where Pashtuns live, they are being motivated to vote for a Pashtun. And regions where other ethnicities - Tajik, Uzbek, and Turkmen, Hazara - live, they are being told that the Pashtuns want to cling to the leadership," Daud says.

"In my opinion, voting based on ethnicity moves Afghanistan toward destruction, civil war, and division. It is the duty of both candidates not to exploit such issues. But unfortunately, both Karzai and Dr Abdullah are engaging in this now."

Daud suggests that to solve the governance crisis, disillusioned Afghans might prefer a traditional loya jirga, or grand assembly of elders, who would form an interim government and prepare ground for holding free and fair elections.

In an interview with RFE/RL last week, former United Nations and European Union special envoy for Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, suggested a similar solution.

Given its investment in the elections and the political process, the international community is solely focused on holding the November 7 runoff.

But if even a successful election process fails to deliver an efficient and credible administration, alternative solutions can be expected to gain currency among Afghan politicians and Western policy makers.

Note
This article was written before before gunmen wearing suicide vests on Wednesday stormed Bekhtar guesthouse in downtown Kabul, which is used by United Nations staff. At least 12 people reportedly died during fighting at the scene, including at least five UN staffers, three security guards and three Taliban gunmen. A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told the media the attack was meant to warn people not to help in the November 7 runoff presidential election. The guesthouse siege was preceded by a minor rocket attack on the presidential palace and followed two hours later by a rocket attack on the Serena Hotel, a luxury hotel that is popular among foreign diplomats and journalists and which has been attacked before.

 
 
 

[bigron]

Alas Afghanistan

Posted By Jeff Huber On October 28, 2009 @ 11:00 pm

The New York Times tells us that Obama’s advisers are curling themselves around a strategy that will protect "about 10 population centers" in Afghanistan. The debate is no longer over whether to send more troops but over how many more to send. Obama hasn’t made his mind up yet, the Times reports, but the story is a sanctioned leak, so you know he’s pretty close to a decision.  This is a propaganda technique known as "desensitizing."  By the time official word comes down the pike, we’ll already be used to the idea and will have moved on to caring about something else.   


The Times story comes on the heels of the news of the resignation of Matthew Hoh, a senior foreign service officer whose resignation letter said in part, "I feel that our strategies in Afghanistan are not pursing goals that are worthy of sacrificing our young men and women or spending the billions we’re doing there.  I believe that the people we are fighting there are fighting us because we are occupying them — not for any ideological reasons, not because of any links to al-Qaeda, not because of any fundamental hatred toward the West. The only reason they’re fighting us is because we are occupying them."


Lamentably, it looks like we’re going to keep occupying them.  But then, we all knew that was going to happen.  Obama can’t back down from his "war of necessity" statement.  The right-wing press and the hawks in Congress would shoot his face off. 


At first glimpse, the strategy being considered doesn’t look bad.  We clear and hold and build in Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters (according to unnamed official leakers).  From our bases of operations there, we strike remote pockets of Taliban with drones and special operations forces.


That’s all very lovely, but it has problems.  However the runoff elections turn out, assuming they take place at all, Hamid Karzai will win because he handpicked the election officials.  We’ll be backing one of the most corrupt governments on the planet. As Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan told the Times, "If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves."


Another twist of the knot: it turns out that Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a suspected major player in the Afghan opium trade, is on the C.I.A.’s payroll.  The drug trade is the major source of funding for the Taliban.  The C.I.A. pays Ahmed to recruit for an Afghan paramilitary force that operates in the vicinity of Kandahar, which is the first place new U.S. troops would be deployed.   


Does it sound like anybody making decisions in this Boolean goat rope knows what they’re doing? 


Syndicated columnist Gene Lyons asks the question "Why are we still in Afghanistan?" 


"One of the enduring oddities of the American foreign policy debate," he writes, "is that asking the most obvious questions is all but forbidden. For example, how does Afghanistan pose a threat to the United States?"


It doesn’t.   


The 9/11 attacks were an aberration.  So many people in our internal security and law enforcement structure were asleep at the wheel that it’s downright criminal.  An attack like 9/11 shouldn’t occur again.  Nobody in our Homeland Security apparatus wants to be the schmo who let it happen on his watch.  "Fighting them over there" has nothing to do with national security.  They don’t have an air force or a navy that can get us over here. 


As Lyons says, "Terrorists can’t defeat the United States; they can only cause American politicians to self-destruct in fear of taking blame for future atrocities."


That, unfortunately, is precisely why Obama is going along with this cockamamie escalation.  Imagine how Dick Cheney and the rest of the war banshees would wail if Obama stiff armed Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s escalation demand and somebody snuck through the Homeland Defense screen and blew up a school or a stadium or something.  Ouch!   


Military pundit Ralph Peters is on the right side of the Afghanistan issue. "Even if everything went perfectly in Afghanistan — which it won’t — the results would be virtually meaningless: Our mortal enemies (above all, al-Qaeda) have dug in elsewhere, from Pakistan to Somalia," he wrote recently in the New York Post.  "Our soldiers are dying for a fad, not for a strategy. Our vaunted counterinsurgency doctrine is the military equivalent of hula hoops, pet rocks and Beanie Babies: an oddity that caught the Zeitgeist."  Indeed, counterinsurgency (COIN) is the "it" strategy now, the Army’s reason for being.  There won’t be any big tank battles in the Fulda gap.  COIN is the only kind of war left; without it, there is no Long War.   


Of course, if we don’t need the Long War, we don’t need to do COIN in Afghanistan.   


And we don’t need the Long War.  But it looks like we’re going to get it.

Read more by Jeff Huber
Stan McChrystal’s Flying Circus – October 27th, 2009
Neocons and Pentagon Rage Against the Dying of the Fight – October 26th, 2009
Bleep NATO – October 25th, 2009
Make the World Go Away – October 23rd, 2009
General Treachery – October 21st, 2009

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

Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com

URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2009/10/28/alas-afghanistan/

[bigron]

 
Obama Considers Smaller Afghanistan Troop Option

by ANNE GEARAN and MATTHEW LEE | 10/28/09 10:28 PM | 


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/28/obama-considers-smaller-a_n_337876.html




WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is considering sending large numbers of additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan next year but fewer than his war commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, prefers, U.S. officials said.

Such a narrowed military mission would escalate American forces to accomplish the commander's broadest goals, protecting Afghan cities and key infrastructure. But the option's scaled-down troop numbers likely would cut back on McChrystal's ambitious objectives, amounting to what one official described as "McChrystal Light."

Under the pared-down option, McChrystal would be given fewer forces than the 40,000 additional troops he has asked for atop the current U.S. force of 68,000, officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Senior White House officials stressed, however, that the president has not settled on any new troop numbers and continues to debate other strategic approaches to the 8-year-old Afghanistan war. The officials say Obama has not yet firmly settled on the narrowed option or any other as his final choice for how to overhaul the war effort.

Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because Obama has not announced his decision, said the troop numbers under the narrowed scenario probably would be lower than McChrystal's preference, at least at the outset. The officials did not divulge exact numbers.

The stripped-down version of McChrystal's plan still would adopt the commander's overall goals for a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at turning the corner against the Taliban next spring.

But that pared-down approach would reflect a shift in thinking about what parts of the war mission are most important and the intense political domestic debate over Afghan policy.

A majority of Americans either oppose the war or question whether it is worth continuing to wage, according to public opinion polls dating to when Obama shook up the war's management and began a lengthy reconsideration of U.S. objectives earlier this year.

Story continues below 

Any expansion of the war will displease some congressional Democrats. If Obama does not meet McChrystal's request, Republicans are likely to accuse Obama of failing to give McChrystal all of what he needs.

A stripped-down approach would signal caution in widening a war that is going worse this year than last despite intense U.S. attention and an additional 21,000 U.S. forces on Obama's watch.

Fourteen Americans were killed Monday in Afghanistan in two helicopter crashes, and roadside bombings Tuesday left eight U.S. troops dead. October has been the worst month for U.S. fatalities since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan began in October 2001.

Even if McChrystal gets less than he wants from Obama, the U.S. may still end up adding more troops later in 2010. The most likely reason would be to fill voids left by some NATO allies who have been considering troop cutbacks.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has pushed back hard against a faction of administration officials, led by Vice President Joe Biden, who contend that much of the U.S. national security objective in Afghanistan could be accomplished by concentrating on strikes at al-Qaida along the Pakistan border.

That approach would hunt terrorists with techniques such as missile-loaded pilotless drones, and could require little or no additional U.S. manpower.

Gates has bridged both sides, officials said. Long wary of a large U.S. presence that could too easily look like an occupation army, he has suggested recently that he could support a carefully designed expansion.

Obama meets Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military leaders who would have the responsibility for carrying out his strategy decisions. White House officials said the president will continue to consider his options with advisers over the next couple of weeks, adding that other broad war council meetings may still be called during that period.

The White House preference is to announce the troop decision after Afghanistan's run-off presidential election on Nov. 7, but before Obama leaves for an unrelated foreign trip on Nov. 11. That timing is not assured, however, and no announcement plan has been settled upon by Obama and his aides, officials said.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is on record supporting a troop increase. He has not quantified his preference, but he signed off on McChrystal's assessment of the worsening conditions in Afghanistan and the need for a change in approach and boost in manpower.

Gates has not given a public opinion on McChrystal's request but has pushed for the commander's overarching strategy during recent weeks of review by the White House, officials said.

"I think that the analytical phase is ... coming to an end," Gates said last week in Europe. "Probably over the next two or three weeks we're going to be considering specific options and teeing them up for a decision by the president."

As for McChrystal, he already begun carrying out elements of his targeted counterinsurgency plan, which focuses on the volatile south and east of the country and emphasizes protecting civilians even if it means allowing individual militants to escape.

McChrystal's recommendations got broad endorsement from NATO defense chiefs last week, with the suggestion that some nations will increase troops or other resources.

The Friday meeting is the last formal session the president has scheduled to review the situation in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, a decision-making process that Republican critics say has taken too long.

___

AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.



Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/28/obama-considers-smaller-a_n_337876.html

[bigron]

Losing in Afghanistan and in Europe 


29/10/2009 02:00:00 PM GMT
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/Losing-in-Afghanistan-and-in-Europe.html
 
 The U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following the 11 September 2001 attacks was a means of taking over NATO and consolidating the U.S. beachhead in Europe.


(AFP) 'The U.S. has occupied Europe without firing a shot or losing a single soldier'

By Christopher King

General Sir David Richards speaks :

On 22 October the BBC showed a clip of the UK’s new chief of General Staff, General David Richards, who spoke of Afghanistan. General Richards said that in his “very humble opinion”, if the Afghanistan war should be lost, that country will once again become a training ground for Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda will become entrenched in populated areas that cannot be bombed without the effects of “wedding party syndrome”. Losing in Afghanistan will give the message to terrorists in every country of the world that they can do whatever they wish.

It’s altogether depressing. The officers’ mess might think it’s funny when the Americans can’t tell the difference between a wedding party and a Taliban training exercise but if they would apply their minds to what the Americans are doing in Europe they might not think it so amusing. Some of us don’t think that any part of this debacle is amusing.

General Richards said that he had spoken with British soldiers in Afghanistan, who were very happy with what they were doing. Well, it would be very odd if any serviceman, whatever his rank, should tell his chief of General Staff anything else.

The real terrorist threat comes from the USA
Never mind British soldiers. General Richards should consult the UK security services direct and get some raw reports on what the Americans are doing in Europe, not Afghanistan. As I said here,there’s no good reason whatsoever for any U.S. bases in Europe, much less making them permanent. At this moment, Europe is under armed occupation by the United States and the extra thousand intelligence staff that Anthony Blair said he was going to appoint following the London bombings should get their collective minds working on it. That is, if they exist.

The terrorist threat is from the United States. Anyone can see that from its stream of lies justifying present and future atrocities in the Middle East and U.S. behaviour there. Whatever the Americans are willing to do in the Middle East, they are willing to do in Europe to get their own way. To imagine otherwise is simply stupid.

But despite his class-based view of the world which is an essential requirement for the UK army’s top job, I am inclined to like General Richards. Even despite his 29 September lecture at Chatham House, an establishment think-tank, on which I will dwell in a moment. This contains all the usual guff about new-style warfare, maintaining our relationship with the U.S., proxy warfare is the future, the evils of Al-Qaeda, importance of winning in Afghanistan etc etc. Interestingly, he quotes part of Sun Tzu’s observation:

Generally, in war, the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this. To capture the enemy’s entire army is better than to destroy it; to take intact a regiment, a company or a squad is better than to destroy them. For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence... Thus, those skilled in war subdue the enemy’s army without battle. They capture the enemy’s cities without assaulting them and overthrow his state without protracted operations. (Chapter 3 – this translation by General Tao Hanzhang, formerly chief of staff of China’s Kwangzhou Military Zone.)

It is evident that U.S. and NATO operations in the Middle East violate this principle to our cost, as they do every one of Sun Tzu’s principles, but we should not draw the wrong conclusion. We should beware of the common stereotype that Americans are only capable of crude “carpet bomb everything” and “kick the door down” methods. That is by no means the case – and the evidence is before our eyes in the U.S. takeover of NATO and their permanent bases throughout Europe.

U.S. invasion of Afghanistan a means to take over NATO and Europe
It is a material fact that the United States has occupied Europe without firing a shot or losing a single soldier. The invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attack was a means of taking over NATO and consolidating the U.S. beachhead in Europe. Everything else, serious though it is, is to U.S. strategists merely froth on their cappuccino.

General Richards must consider whether he has been outflanked. He must consider whether subverted politicians have turned the state over to a foreign power while diverting our forces and our attention from an offensive attack by stealth on his own country and on Europe. I suggest that he should order the U.S. intelligence services to prepare an evaluation of that scenario.

He might also speak to David Milliband, our foreign secretary and professional politician about the possibility of treason in high places. This is not a metaphor. I mean treason against the state in its full meaning as it was applied to William Joyce, incidentally born in America, but carrying a British passport and hanged for his actions. The other day, I heard Milliband comment, “We don’t want the world controlled by America and China.” Maybe the Iraq inquiry is getting our pro-Israel, pro-America foreign secretary worried.

Negotiation with economic development – the only way forward in Afghanistan
But truly, General Richards does not need to ask anyone else in order to satisfy himself of the facts. He knows that most of what he, himself, says publicly about Afghanistan is nonsense. He’s following a political line. But I am inclined to like him because he can think for himself. In this Youtube clip, at point 6.20, we see that in 2006/07 as commander of 35,000 international forces in southern Afghanistan he negotiated a cease-fire with the Taliban at Musa Kala, much to the anger of the Americans.

But it worked. Subsequently he was replaced by an American who resumed kicking down doors and shooting the town up, alleging that the cease-fire merely allowed the Taliban to regroup. It’s clear that peace and reconciliation isn’t what the U.S. intends for Afghanistan. General Richards knows that negotiation with economic development is the way to end the war. He must have wondered why the U.S. will not follow this obvious strategy. At point 17.58 of the clip, Nassima Aliazi, an Afghan politician, says that foreign forces claimed to have come to rebuild Afghanistan, not to occupy or destroy it. More soldiers will have no effect on security. She says that if they wanted to they could rebuild Afghanistan with two soldiers and General Richards knows that she is correct.

America does not want to rebuild Afghanistan. Afghanistan could have been rebuilt within a few years of the initial invasion eight years ago, so why is it not being done? This war is a diversion. The prize to America is the economy, military force and manpower of Europe, secured in Europe through its bases and control of NATO, and in the U.S. through the NATO First Act http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h2797/show . Simultaneously, Russia is denied the benefits of closer integration with Europe, its natural cultural and economic partner.

Let us consider the American viewpoint. From this perspective, Europe might well appear to be a potentially unstable part of the world. Europe has a long history of warfare, including two great wars in which many Americans died. It produced the ideologies of communism and fascism with their attendant disasters. In concert with Russia, who knows what might occur in the future? There is something in this viewpoint but its context must be understood.

These European problems were part of the continuation of an effort that commenced many thousands of years ago with contributions from many cultures through Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, Israel, Greece and Rome. It is the effort to define and implement good government.

At present, the European Union is attempting to eliminate warfare by means of negotiated economic integration. That strategy, unique in history, has been very successful to date even if most Europeans have no knowledge of its beginnings. Precisely because of that underlying rationale it is vital to build a partnership with Russia. The EU is under severe stress at present, however, due to American interference both in pressing for fast EU expansion and the expansion of NATO. This can only lead to disaster as do all American interventions. That is their intention.

I mention the roots of this European process, discontinuous and tenuously linked though they might be, in order to emphasize the active, on-going development of European culture and governance, mistakes included. By contrast, the United States considers that process to be at an end. It has embraced the static image of the shining city on the hill, the beacon of hope, the liberator of the downtrodden. The basis? Due to success in its war of independence from the UK it claims the right to be the world liberator, to free other nations, absorb them or reform them in its perfected political and economic image.

Europe does not need lessons from or the presence of the United States from the evidence of its actions in the Middle East for the last eight years and the performance of its key economic institutions.

I hope that General Richards will reflect on his knowledge of American behaviour in Afghanistan and will wonder what the U.S. objective of unnecessary, continuous war there might mean for the UK and Europe.

As I have said before, such a war is a war crime. General Richards would be justified in citing the Nuremberg Principles and withdrawing British troops immediately. I am aware what the profound political implications would be. Such re-alignments are highly desirable. It might also occur to General Richards that the United Kingdom itself might be lost through this war because his army is in the wrong country and unless radical measures are taken he will be humiliatingly defeated without a shot being fired. If so, and he is willing to take action, I for one, would be at his disposal as would all but a few of this country’s citizens.

-- Christopher King is a retired consultant and lecturer. He lives in London, UK. This article appeared in Redress Information & Analysis.




-- Middle East Online

 

[Harconen]

'Fortress Kabul' - The next step?

James Bays
The Asia Blog
Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:44 EDT
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/asia/2009/10/28/fortress-kabul-next-step

I know the street where the latest attack http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/2009102825313142839.html took place well. It is close to the site of the former Al Jazeera bureau, where I first worked for this network four years ago. It seems likely that the Taliban knew there were UN workers staying in the guesthouse and that they were deliberately targeted.

The Taliban does not see the UN as a neutral player. It has direct involvement supporting the election process, and NATO's International Security Force operates under a UN mandate.

Of course, many UN workers are doing humanitarian work that has nothing to do with politics or the military. For example, UN agencies, like the World Food Programme and the UNHCR, are feeding the starving and sheltering the displaced.

The attack is bound to change the way foreigners operate in the Afghan capital and the way they interact with Afghans on a daily basis.

As the security situation has deteriorated, particularly in the south and east of the country, aid workers have found they have been increasingly restricted to the safer parts of the country. For many Kabul is still seen as a place of relative stability.

Despite a number of high-profile attacks, life for the international community in the capital can sometimes seem almost normal. There are shops, restaurants, sports facilities, and even bars. Some foreigners seem to manage energetic social lives in this particular war zone.

Most Taliban attacks in the past have been aimed at Afghan and international forces, foreign embassies and government ministries.

Slowly security has been ramped up. Blast walls ("Hescos", named after the company that makes them) have appeared around the city. More and more roads have been closed.

Despite all this, only on two occasions has there been a mass departure of international personnel. In May 2006 as rioting spread across the city, buildings used by foreigners were among the targets and in January 2008 confidence again tumbled http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/01/20085251839407971.html as the five-star Serena Hotel was attacked. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/01/2008525121739399182.html That was what the experts call "a complex attack - suicide bombers blowing themselves up at the entrance, and then gunmen heading inside the building.

Exactly the same tactics seem to have been used today.

The latest attack on the guest house, which was followed by rockets fired again at the Serena, is likely to cause much more concern.

The Serena is a Kabul landmark. Right in the centre of the city, it is the only luxury hotel of a truly international standard in the country. The compound, where top level visiting dignitaries stay, will always be seen a potential target.

But international workers have always felt relatively safe in their small, much more discreet guest houses. Many aid agencies, contracting firms and advisers follow the UN lead when it comes to security.

If you are a UN worker in Afghanistan, you cannot just check into any hotel or stay wherever you like.

All premises used for accommodation have to be security cleared by the UN's own advisers. They make a site visit, checking out the guard force, their weapons and their proficiency. Other requirements have to be met. For example, blast-proof film on the windows, barbed wire on the outer walls. Some owners have also installed safe rooms, blast walls and escape hatches.

Kabul is not yet Baghdad. At the height of the violence in 2005 and 2006, fighters lived and fought in the city - it seemed nowhere was safe, even the heavily-protected "green zone".

In the Afghan capital, the Taliban clearly has its supporters, sympathisers and informers; but each time they plan an attack, the weapons and the fighters need to be infiltrated into the city centre.

This latest attack will lead to a major security review. Heavily protected foreign enclaves may be the result. The idea of "Fortess Kabul", an Afghan "green zone", has been predicted before. It may now be closer to becoming a reality.

The Taliban clearly want to unnerve the international community. Many foreign workers will now, quite literally, not sleep at night.

[bigron]

Thursday, October 29, 2009
18:14 Mecca time, 15:14 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/20091029133026405295.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA  
 
Afghans plan extra polling centres  

 
The election commission plans to distribute materials to an extra 155 voting centres [EPA]
 
Afghan election officials plan to open many more polling stations for the presidential runoff on November 7, despite the UN recommending that the number of locations be cut to prevent a repeat of the mass fraud witnessed in the first round.

The Independent Election Commission said on Thursday that it planned to open 6,322 voting centres for the second round, up from 6,167 in the first round.

"Discussions with security agencies and our logistic preparations" assured the commission that it would be possible to open more centres, Zekria Barakzai, an election official, said.

Barakzai said that Afghan and international forces had acknowledged that they could provide security for as many as 6,600 polling stations, and the commission had actually cut that number by almost 300 because of its concerns about fraud.

The UN had recommended cutting the total number of polling stations to make sure there would were enough monitors and security at those that did open.

Ballot box stuffing

The first round of voting on August 20 was so badly affected by ballot box stuffing and distorted tallies that more than one million votes were thrown out, forcing Hamid Karzai, the incumbent president, into a second round against his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister.

 
Observers and UN advisers attributed much of the cheating to so-called ghost polling stations that never opened but returned results or to stations that opened in areas without enough oversight to ensure a fair balloting.

Peter Galbraith, the former deputy head of the UN's mission in Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera on Saturday that many of the polling station where cheating had taken place should not be reopened on November 7 to prevent fraud.

"It is now time to close down those ghost polling centres. These are places where a large number of votes were recorded but they never actually opened," Galbraith, who was sacked after speaking out about the fraud, said.

"... in each and every case where there was fraud, election commission staff either committed the fraud, co-operated with those who committed the fraud or failed to report it."

The decision to open the additional polling stations raises further concerns about the election commission, which has been widely criticised for a perceived closeness to Karzai.

Opposition demands

Abdullah has accused the commission of being complicit in the fraud and called for the resignation of Azizullah Lodin, the chairman, to ensure a fair runoff. Both the Karzai campaign and the election commission have said that Lodin will not step down.



Abdullah has called on the head of the election commission to resign over the fraud [AFP]

However, organisers have conceded to another demand from Abdullah's camp, registering 20,000 of his observers to be deployed to voting centres.

"One part of Dr Abdullah's demands was 20,000 new candidate agents from his side should be accredited, we agree to that and we will deliver the accreditation badges to his campaign by Saturday," Barakzai said.

Despite official concerns that the fraud of the first round will be repeated, most voters are more likely to be worried about Taliban attacks.

At least five UN workers and a number of Afghan security personnel were killed as Taliban fighters stormed a guest house in the capital, Kabul, on Wednesday.

"We'll intensify our attacks in the coming days. We'll disrupt the elections," Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said on Thursday.
   
"We have new plans and tactics for attacks to disrupt the elections."
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[bigron]

AFGHANISTAN: U.S., NATO Forces Rely on Warlords for Security

By Gareth Porter*

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59517&hd=&size=1&l=e

WASHINGTON, Oct 29, 2009 (IPS) - The revelation by the New York Times Wednesday that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has long been on the payroll of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg of heavy dependence by U.S. and NATO counterinsurgency forces on Afghan warlords for security, according to a recently published report and investigations by Australian and Canadian journalists.

U.S. and other NATO military contingents operating in the provinces of Afghanistan's predominantly Pashtun south and east have been hiring private militias controlled by Afghan warlords, according to these sources, to provide security for their forward operating bases and other bases and to guard convoys.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has acknowledged that U.S. and NATO ties with warlords have been a cause of popular Afghan alienation from foreign military forces. But the policy is not likely to be reversed anytime soon, because U.S. and NATO officials still have no alternative to the security services the warlords provide.

A report published by the Center on International Cooperation at New York University in September notes that U.S. and NATO contingents have frequently hired security providers that are covertly owned by warlords who have "ready-made" private militias which compete with state institutions for power.

The report cites examples of major warlords or their relatives or allies who have been contracted for security services in four provinces.

In Uruzgan province, both U.S. and Australian Special Forces have contracted with a private army commanded by Col. Matiullah Khan, called Kandak Amniante Uruzgan, with 2,000 armed men, to provide security services on which their bases there depend. That case was reported in detail in April 2008 by two reporters for The Australian, Mark Dodd and Jeremy Kelly.

Col. Khan's security force protects NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) convoys on the main road from Kandahar to Tarin Kowt, where more than 1,000 Australian troops are based at Camp Holland, according to the The Australian in April 2008.

Col. Khan gets 340,000 dollars per month – nearly 4.1 million dollars annually - for getting two convoys from Kandahar to Tarin Kowt safely each month. Khan, now police chief in Uruzgan province, evidently got his private army from his uncle Jan Mohammad Khan, a commander who helped defeat the Taliban in Kandahar in 2001 and was then rewarded by President Karzai by being named governor of Uruzgan in 2002.

The Australian Defence Force claimed to The Australian that Col. Khan is paid by the Afghan Ministry of Interior to provide security on the main highways of Uruzgan province. The Australian military had previously refused to confirm or deny Australian payments to Col. Khan.

CanWest News Service's Mike Blanchfield and Andrew Mayeda reported in November 2007 that the Canadian military had hired a "General Gulalai" to provide security for an undisclosed forward operating base. Gulalai is a warlord in southern Afghanistan who drove the Taliban out of Kandahar in 2001.

The same reporters revealed that Col. Haji Toorjan, a local warlord allied with Kandahar governor and major warlord Gul Agha Sherzai, was hired to provide security for Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar City, where Canada's provincial construction team is located.

Blanchfeld and Mayeda found that the Canadian military had given 29 contracts worth 1.14 million dollars to a company identified as "Sherzai", suggesting strongly that the former governor of Kandahar, who had become governor of Nangarhar province, was the owner.

The Canadian military refused to confirm whether Gul Agha Sherzai is indeed the owner.

In Badakhshan province, Gen. Nazri Mahmed, a warlord who is said to "control a significant portion of the province's lucrative opium industry", has the contract to provide security for the German Provincial Reconstruction Team, according to the NYU report.

The report suggests that the U.S. and NATO contingents are spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually on contracts with Afghan security providers, most of which are local power brokers guilty of human rights abuses.

In addition to Ahmed Wali Karzai, it names Hashmat Karzai, another brother of President Karzai, and Hamid Wardak, the son of Defence Minister Rahim Wardak, as powerful figures who control private security firms that have gotten security contracts without registering with the government.

Two anonymous United Nations sources cited in the report estimate that 1,000 to 1,500 unregistered armed security groups have been "employed, trained, and armed by ISAF" and "Coalition Forces" for security services. As many as 120,000 armed individuals are estimated by the U.N. sources to belong to about 5,000 private militias in Afghanistan.

Most Afghan warlords are widely reviled, mainly because the private armies they continue to control carry out theft and violence against civilians without any accountability.

In his initial assessment last August, Gen. McChrystal referred to "public anger and alienation" toward ISAF, of which he is commander, as a result of the perception that ISAF is "complicit" in "widespread corruption and abuse of power".

That remark suggests that McChrystal, who had carried out the Special Forces' policy of relying on Afghan warlords for security in the past, was now expressing concern about its political consequences.

Jake Sherman, a co-author of the NYU report, was a United Nations political officer involved in the effort to disarm warlords from 2003 to 2005. He is sceptical that U.S. policy ties with the warlords will be ended.

"I don't see how U.S. and other contingents could sustain forward operating bases without paying these guys," said Sherman in an interview with IPS.

Beyond their continuing dependence on the warlords for security services, Sherman sees another reason for keeping them on the payroll. If the U.S. and NATO military commanders tried to cut their ties with the private militias, Sherman said the warlords "would actually become a security threat".

Sherman recalled that during his period working for the United Nations in northern Afghanistan, local police were hired to guard a World Food Programme warehouse in Badakhshan. After a rocket attack on the warehouse, an investigation quickly turned up the fact that the police themselves had carried out the attack to pressure the U.N. to hire more guards.

The present U.S. and NATO dependence on warlord armies is rooted in the policy of the George W. Bush administration in the early years after the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

The Central Intelligence Agency put the commanders of the forces who had defeated the Taliban on the payroll and gave them weapons and communications equipment to help U.S. counterterrorism squads locate any al Qaeda remnants in Afghanistan.

The commanders used the U.S. support to consolidate their political control over different provinces or sub-provincial areas. Human Rights Watch observed in a June 2002 report on the new relationships forged between the United States and the warlords, "While the U.S. government does not view this policy as actively supporting local warlords, the distinction is often lost on Afghan civilians who see coalition forces openly interacting with the warlords."

Larry Goodson of the National War College, who participated in the 2002 process called the Loya Jirga under which the first post-Taliban Afghan government was established, told IPS he had recommended from the beginning a "de-warlordisation" process, in which "we took nasty, sleazy characters and turn them into less nasty, sleazy bosses."

But the warlords were kept on the payroll, Goodson recalls, mainly because the troops controlled by the former commanders were seen as "force multipliers", in a situation where foreign troops were in short supply.

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

(END/2009)





 

[bigron]

U.N. chief urges more security for staff in Afghanistan

From Terence Burke, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon calls for more security for U.N. staff in Afghanistan
Ban cited an escalated threat due to the U.N.'s support for Afghanistan's electoral process
He said U.N. won't be deterred by attacks, considering consolidating staff in country
Statement comes after Taliban gunmen killed five U.N. personnel and wounded nine in Kabul


Afghan police rush to the site of a Taliban attack on a hotel in Kabul on Wednesday.

10.30.09

United Nations (CNN) -- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is calling for additional security for U.N. staff in Afghanistan, citing a "dramatically escalated threat" due to the world body's support for that nation's electoral process.

Ban's comments came during an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council Thursday at the U.N.'s New York headquarters.

At that meeting, the Security Council issued a "presidential statement" unanimously condemning an attack by Taliban gunmen in Kabul on Wednesday that killed five U.N. personnel and wounded nine.

The Security Council also reiterated its support for the secretary-general and all U.N. personnel in Afghanistan.

Ban said the U.N. will "not be deterred" by the attacks, but is considering "consolidating U.N. staff in Kabul and around the country."

He also said the U.N. requires "the full protection of the Afghan security forces and the international community," and that his personnel are now considered "soft targets" by militants in Afghanistan.

Ban said that Afghan President Hamid Karzai telephoned him Thursday and assured him that the Afghan government will strengthen security assistance for U.N. personnel in Afghanistan.

Ban also said the U.N. is "exploring the feasibility of bringing in additional security units to guard U.N. facilities."

The U.N. currently has hundreds of staff in Afghanistan offering technical and operational support for Afghanistan's elections. Various other U.N. agencies are involved in humanitarian work in the war-torn nation.
 

 
 
 
Links referenced within this article

The Taliban
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/The_Taliban
Afghanistan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Afghanistan
United Nations
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/United_Nations
Ban Ki-moon
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Ban_Ki_moon
Hamid Karzai
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Hamid_Karzai
Ban
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Ban_Ki_moon
U.N.
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/United_Nations
Hamid Karzai
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Hamid_Karzai
Afghanistan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Afghanistan
Afghanistan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Afghanistan

 

 
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/29/afghan.un.staff.security/index.html 

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Taliban Violence Threatens Presidential Election


Thursday , October 29, 2009

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,570449,00.html


KABUL  — The Taliban's brazen attack on U.N. election workers undermines the U.N.'s ability to help steer Afghanistan through a runoff election in only 10 days. Although the U.N. insists it will not be deterred by the assault, another big attack could derail its limited ability to assure a credible vote and remain in the country.

Most of the U.N.'s international staff in Afghanistan were ordered to stay home Thursday, a day after militants stormed a residential hotel housing U.N. employees, killing five of them, including one American. Six other people died, including the three attackers.

The lockdown does not apply to the 140 U.N. personnel helping the Afghans prepare for the Nov. 7 presidential runoff, according to U.N. spokesman Dan McNorton. Time is running out to arrange a ballot that already faces threats ranging from Taliban violence to possibly early winter snow.

"They're going to warehouses or meetings, or the airport to check on logistics," McNorton said of U.N. election workers.

He said technical advisers will be sent to the provinces in time for the vote, although all assignments will be reviewed to make sure the staff is reasonably safe.

"Yesterday was obviously a disruption, but the work and the support that we're providing remains strong and is working," he said.

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed for more security personnel to protect U.N. staff and facilities in Afghanistan, especially in the run-up to next week's election.

Ban said he urged members of the 15-nation Security Council on Thursday to provide additional security units and would make a similar appeal Friday to the 192-member General Assembly.

Wednesday's attack was only the latest in a series of setbacks suffered by the U.N. mission assisting the Afghans in running an election on their own for the first time since the U.S.-led invasion brought down the Taliban government in late 2001.

The top-ranking American in the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan was fired after a public dispute with the mission's Norwegian chief over whether he had been bullish enough in preventing fraud in the Aug. 20 first-round vote.

The fraud allegations seriously undermined the credibility of President Hamid Karzai's election, forcing him into the runoff. Still, the Afghan election commission brushed aside a U.N. recommendation to reduce the number of polling stations to curb cheating and decided Thursday to open even more in the November ballot.

The Taliban regards the election as a Western plot. A credible result would do much to undermine its claim to be the only valid form of government for the nation of some 30 million.

The U.N. presence, which includes several hundred foreign staff, is essential to ensure the election meets an acceptable standard of fairness. Without that, the government's legitimacy as a credible partner with the U.S. and its allies in the fight against the Taliban would be in doubt.

U.N. officials were quick to quell speculation that the threats might drive out the world body.

"Just because somewhere is difficult and dangerous doesn't necessarily mean we will not be able to be there," McNorton said.

Nevertheless, Wednesday's daring daylight attack in the heart of Kabul has sent shock waves through the city's international community, which has generally enjoyed a freer life than their counterparts in Baghdad.

In addition to the guest house attack, Taliban militants fired rockets at the Serena, the country's most luxurious hotel. No one was hurt but dozens of Westerners and well-heeled Afghans fled into the basement when the lobby filled with smoke.

"Our work continues, and in terms of the elections, preparations are already well advanced," said Aleem Siddique, another U.N. spokesman. "But the impact this will have needs to be evaluated over the coming days, and it's too early to make any judgments."

Some Westerners said they are weighing whether Afghanistan has become too risky. They would not allow their names to be used for security reasons — and to avoid alarming their families back home.

The Taliban have in the past staged attacks against Western civilians, among the most dramatic the January 2008 assault against the Serena's gym. Six people, including a Norwegian journalist and two attackers, were killed.

Still, most attacks had been followed by long periods of calm in the capital, reinforcing a sense that Kabul was removed from the violence that grips other parts of the country.

This time may be different.

Wednesday's assault was the fourth major attack in Kabul since a suicide car bomber struck Aug. 15 near the front gate at NATO headquarters, killing at least seven people and wounding about 100. That blast was followed by a suicide attack Sept. 17 that killed six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians, and a suicide car bombing Oct. 8 at the Indian Embassy in which 17 died.

Another major attack ahead of the election — with large loss of life among U.N. and other international personnel — could well change the security equation. The August 2003 truck bombing at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 22 people, including mission chief Sergio Vieira de Mello, prompted the U.N. to shut down operations in Iraq for years.

So far, the U.N. has not ordered a general evacuation of its international staff, but those not working on the election have been encouraged to take vacations or work outside the country until the runoff is over.

An internal U.N. memo ordered restrictions on movement for the rest of the week and said U.N. departments would review lists of critical and nonessential personnel, suggesting some people may be moved to safety outside the country.

Threats against aid groups are also on the rise.

The Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an umbrella group of more than 100 local and international agencies, said attacks on its member organizations are at their highest in six years, with at least 23 workers killed this year, and many groups have had to restrict operations.

One agency, the U.N. women's fund, evacuated most of its international staff before the first round of voting on Aug. 20, brought them back and then sent them out again following Wednesday's attack, McNorton said.

The Geneva-based U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it was assessing the impact of Wednesday's attack on its work. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization will remain in Afghanistan "as long as the security situation would permit," spokesman Erwin Northoff said in Rome.

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U.S. To Protect 10 Afghan Population Centers

By Thom Shanker, Peter Baker and Helene Cooper, The New York Times

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23836.htm

October 29, 2009 "Post-Gazette" -- WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's advisers are coalescing around a strategy for Afghanistan aimed at protecting about 10 top population centers, administration officials said yesterday, describing an approach that would stop short of an all-out assault on the Taliban while still seeking to nurture long-term stability.

Mr. Obama has yet to make a decision, but as officials described it, the debate is no longer over whether to send more troops, but how many more will be needed to guard the country's most vital parts. The question of how much of the country should fall under direct protection of U.S. and NATO forces will be central to deciding how many troops Mr. Obama will dispatch.

In southern Afghanistan yesterday, eight U.S. military members died in combat, bringing October's total to 53 and making it the deadliest month for Americans in the eight-year war. September and October were both deadlier months overall for NATO troops.

The U.S. troops, along with an Afghan interpreter accompanying them, were killed and an undisclosed number of troops injured in several attacks involving "multiple, complex" improvised bombs, according to a statement by the NATO-led coalition.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said Taliban fighters had blown up two armored vehicles carrying the troops near Zabul province. He also said the Taliban had engaged in a fierce firefight lasting more than a half-hour with Afghan police in Zabul and killed eight.

His report could not be verified because the U.S. military is withholding additional information until families of the dead have been notified.

On Monday, two helicopter crashes resulted in the death of 11 U.S. troops and three federal drug enforcement agents, but hostile fire was almost certainly not a factor in those cases, according to a military spokesman.

The October toll of 53 U.S. soldiers killed exceeds that of August, when 51 died, according to icasualties.org, a Web site tracking military losses in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Also yesterday, the U.S. and NATO-led forces said an Army plane missing since Oct. 13 was found Wednesday with the remains of three civilian crew members in high mountains of northeastern Afghanistan over Nuristan province, where the military has been conducting extensive operations. The army said the plane's disappearance had not been announced until recovery efforts were complete.

The aircraft was stripped of all sensitive materials and destroyed in place, a statement from the NATO-led forces said. The case is under investigation, but the military said it did not think hostile action was the crash cause.

The United States has been increasing the number of soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan, and many have gone into some of the country's toughest areas. Southern Afghanistan has been the most contested ground, with both locally based insurgents and fighters who cross the border from Pakistan.

Under the strategy officials described yesterday, the administration now is looking at protecting Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters. The first of any new troops sent to Afghanistan would be assigned to secure Kandahar, the spiritual capital of the Taliban, seen as a center of gravity in pushing back insurgent advances.

But military planners are also pressing for enough troops to safeguard major agricultural areas, like the hotly contested Helmand River valley, as well as regional highways essential to the economy -- tasks that would require significantly more reinforcements beyond the 21,000 deployed by Mr. Obama this year.

One administration official said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, had briefed Mr. Obama's advisers on how he would deploy any new troops under the approach being considered by the White House.

Administration and military officials emphasized that the strategy would include other elements, such as accelerated training for Afghan troops, expanded economic development and reconciliation with less-radical Taliban members.

But such a strategy would be open to complaints that U.S. and allied forces were, in effect, giving insurgents free rein across large swaths of the nation, allowing the Taliban to establish mini-states complete with training camps that could be used by al-Qaida. "We are not talking about surrendering the rest of the country to the Taliban," a senior administration official said.

Military officers said they would maintain pressure on insurgents in remote regions by using surveillance drones and reports from people in the field to find pockets of Taliban fighters and guide attacks, in particular by Special Operations forces.

But a range of officials made the case that many insurgents fighting Americans in distant locations are motivated not by jihadist ideology, but by local grievances, and therefore are not much threat either to the United States or the Kabul government.

At this strategy's heart is the conclusion that the United States cannot completely eradicate the insurgency in a nation where the Taliban is an indigenous force -- nor does it need to do so to protect U.S. national security. Instead, the focus would be on preventing al-Qaida from returning in force, while containing and weakening the Taliban long enough to build Afghan security forces eventually to take over the mission.

In effect, the approach blends ideas advanced by Gen. McChrystal and by Vice President Joseph R. Biden, seen as opposite poles in the internal debate. Gen. McChrystal has sought at least another 40,000 troops for a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at protecting Afghan civilians, so they will support the central government. Mr. Biden has opposed a buildup on the grounds that a bigger military footprint could be counterproductive, and that fighting al-Qaida in Pakistan should be the main priority.

A strategy of protecting major Afghan population centers would be "McChrystal for the city, Biden for the country," as one administration official put it. Officials said Defense Secretary Robert Gates was playing a crucial role, balancing the case made by commanders and the skepticism of some civilians on Mr. Obama's war council, as the debate entered its final days.

A senior military officer said Gen. McChrystal wants the most expansive definition of population centers to include fertile valleys and economic belts as well as major roadways -- in particular the national ring road that is the central link for commerce -- as well as four or five roadways linking Afghanistan eastward to Pakistan and westward to Iran.
The New York Times' Alissa J. Rubin contributed to this report.

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Afghan Poppy Trade Blurs All the Lines


http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091029_afghan_drug_war_is_as_senseless_as_the_rest_of_it/


Posted on Oct 29, 2009
By Eugene Robinson

The opium poppy was introduced to Afghanistan more than 2,300 years ago by the armies of Alexander the Great. His forces were eventually driven out, like those of every would-be conqueror since. The poppy has proved more tenacious.

On Monday, three U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents—Forrest Leamon, Chad Michael and Michael Weston, all from the Washington area—were killed in a helicopter crash in western Afghanistan. U.S. officials have released few details about the incident. The Times of London reported that the aircraft was shot down following a raid on the compound of a prominent Afghan drug lord.

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that the CIA has been making regular payments to a suspected major figure in the Afghan opium trade: Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai. The newspaper quoted sources alleging that Ahmed Wali Karzai—who denies any involvement in the drug business—collects “huge” fees from traffickers for allowing trucks loaded with drugs to cross bridges he controls in the southern part of the country. 

So is it our policy to attack the Afghan drug trade while we also line the pockets of one of its reputed kingpins? Who is going to explain this to the families of agents Leamon, Michael and Weston?

Afghanistan’s status as a narco-superpower is another reason why President Obama would be wrong to deepen U.S. involvement. Opium is the one booming sector of the Afghan economy: Poppy fields in the south and west of the country produce the raw material for an estimated 90 percent of the world’s heroin. Money from the opium trade supports the resurgent Taliban, which is fighting to expel U.S. and NATO forces. Therefore, a blow against the drug business is a blow against the enemy.


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Except when it isn’t. Except when the “good guys” who are supposed to be our allies—and many of the Afghan citizens a counterinsurgency strategy would try to protect—are dependent on the drug trade as well. Except when the corruption that is an intrinsic element of the drug business not only blurs the line between friend and foe, but also obscures the difference between right and wrong in a thick fog of moral ambiguity.

As The Washington Post’s South America correspondent during the administration of George Bush the Elder, I watched firsthand our government’s costly and futile crusade against the cocaine industry. We tried attacking the problem in the coca fields—I visited a U.S.-financed military base in Peru’s Upper Huallaga Valley, where at the time 60 percent of the world’s coca was grown. We tried going after the processors—in Colombia, police took me to a jungle camp where chemists had been hard at work just hours earlier. We tried breaking up the trafficking cartels—I was served lunch at a Medellin prison by three cocaine bosses whose comfortable incarceration was almost like an extended stay at a hotel.

Nothing worked. All the U.S. managed to do was shift the coca fields from one valley to the next and break the big cartels into smaller ones. Profits from the drug trade still sustain a guerrilla insurgency in Colombia that has controlled huge swaths of the countryside for more than four decades. Meanwhile, cocaine is readily available throughout the United States. The illegal drug industry is driven by demand: As long as some people want drugs, other people will find ways to supply them.

DEA officials have said they are sharply increasing the agency’s presence in Afghanistan. Wisely, the Obama administration is abandoning the George W. Bush-era strategy of trying to eradicate the poppy fields; eradication, which robs rural communities of their only livelihood, may be the quickest and surest way to turn apolitical farmers into anti-American insurgents. The focus now is on the middlemen who buy, transport and process the drugs—which creates a different kind of problem.

Those middlemen logically seek, and obtain, official protection. In Latin America, they approach police and government officials with an offer of plata o plomo—silver or lead—meaning the officials can choose to accept the bribes they are being offered, or they can choose to be shot. In a country as poor as Afghanistan, with such weak central authority, the U.S.-backed government is vulnerable to bribery at almost every level.

The inevitable future is one in which we attack and support the Afghan drug trade at the same time. Is this a policy for which we can ask DEA agents to give their lives?

Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com

[bigron]

McChrystal Doesn’t Get It—Does Obama?


http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091029_mcchrystal_doesnt_get_it_does_obama/
Posted on Oct 29, 2009

By Scott Ritter


U.S. Marines walk through the sand inside Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

There is a curious phenomenon taking place in the American media at the moment: the lionization of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan. Although he has taken a few lumps for playing politics with the White House, McChrystal has generally been sold to the American public as a “Zen warrior,” a counterinsurgency genius who, if simply left to his own devices, will be able to radically transform the ongoing debacle that is Afghanistan into a noble victory that will rank as one of the greatest political and military triumphs of modern history. McChrystal’s resume and persona (a former commander of America’s special operations forces, a tireless athlete and a scholar) have been breathlessly celebrated in several interviews and articles. Reporters depict him as an ascetic soldier who spouts words of wisdom to rival Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent Gen. McChrystal to “fix” the war in Afghanistan in the way that his boss, that earlier military prophet Gen. David Petraeus, “fixed” Iraq. Whether by accident or design, McChrystal’s mission became a cause célèbre of sorts for an American media starved for good news, even if entirely fabricated, coming out of Afghanistan. One must remember that the general has accomplished little of note during his short tenure to date as the military commander in Afghanistan. His entire reputation is built around the potential to turn things around in Afghanistan. And to do this, McChrystal has said he needs time, and 40,000-plus additional American troops. There are currently around 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s request would raise that number to around 110,000 troops – the same number as the Soviets had deployed in Afghanistan at the height of their failed military adventure some 20 years ago.

McChrystal, or more accurately, his staff, has authored a not-so-secret report that outlines the reasoning behind this massive increase in American military involvement in Afghanistan. Rightly noting that the American-led effort is currently failing, McChrystal argues that only a massive infusion of U.S. troops, and a corresponding “surge” of American civilians, can achieve the stability necessary to transform Afghanistan from the failed state it is today. A viable nation capable of self-government, the new Afghanistan could maintain internal security so that terrorist organizations like al-Qaida will not be able to take root, flourish and once again threaten American security from the sanctuary of a lawless land. This concept certainly looks good on paper and plays well in the editorial section. And why shouldn’t it? It touches on all the romantic notions of America as liberator and defender of the oppressed. The problem is that the assumptions made in the McChrystal report are so far removed from reality as to be ludicrous.

McChrystal operates under the illusion that American military power can provide a shield from behind which Afghanistan can remake itself into a viable modern society. He has deluded himself and others into believing that the people of Afghanistan want to be part of such a grand social experiment, and furthermore that they will tolerate the United States being in charge. The reality of Afghan history, culture and society argue otherwise. The Taliban, once a defeated entity in the months following the initial American military incursion into Afghanistan, are resurgent and growing stronger every day. The principle source of the Taliban’s popularity is the resentment of the Afghan people toward the American occupation and the corrupt proxy government of Hamid Karzai. There is nothing an additional 40,000 American troops will be able to do to change that basic equation. The Soviets tried and failed. They deployed 110,000 troops, operating on less restrictive lines of communication and logistical supply than the United States. They built an Afghan army of some 45,000 troops. They operated without the constraints of American rules of engagement. They slaughtered around a million Afghans. And they lost, for the simple reason that the people of Afghanistan did not want them, or their Afghan proxies.

Some pundits and observers make note of the fact that the Afghan people were able to prevail over the Soviets only because of billions of dollars of U.S. aid, which together with similar funding from Saudi Arabia and the logistical support of Pakistan, allowed the Afghan resistance to coalesce, grow and ultimately defeat the Soviets and their Afghan allies. They note that there is no equivalent source of empowerment for the Taliban in Afghanistan today. But they are wrong. The Taliban receive millions of dollars from sympathetic sources in the Middle East, in particular from Saudi Arabia, and they operate not only from within Afghanistan, but also out of safe havens inside Pakistan.

Indeed, one of the unique aspects of the Afghan conflict is the degree to which it has expanded into Pakistan, making any military solution in one theater contingent on military victory in the other. But the reality is that the more one employs military force in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, the more one strengthens the cause and resources of the Islamic insurgents in both places. Pashtunistan, once a fanciful notion built around the concept of a united Pashtun people (the population in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan are primarily drawn from Pashtun tribes), has become a de facto reality. The decision by the British in 1897 to separate the Pashtun through the artificial device of the so-called Durand Line (which today constitutes the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan) has been exposed today as a futile effort to undermine tribal links. No amount of military force can reverse this.

Thus the solution itself becomes the problem, thereby creating a never-ending circular conflict which has the United States expending more and more resources to resolve a situation that has nothing to do with the reality on the ground in Afghanistan, and everything to do with crafting a politically viable salve for what is in essence a massive self-inflicted wound. It is the proverbial dog chasing after its own tail, a frustrating experience made even more so by the fact that any massive commitment of troops brings with it the fatal attachment of national pride, individual hubris and, worst of all, the scourge of domestic American politics, so that by the time this dog bites its tail, it will be so blinded by artificialities that rather than recognize its mistake, it will instead proceed to consume itself. In the case of Afghanistan, our consumption will be measured in the lives of American servicemen and women, national treasure, national honor, and, of course the lives of countless Afghan dead and wounded.

The manner in which McChrystal has peddled his plan for Afghanistan to the American media, and to Congress, may be politically savvy. It is certainly insubordinate. The decision to employ American military power is the sole prerogative of the American president. A general may offer advice, but any effort to engage the machinery of politics to pressure a sitting president defies the basic constitutional tenet of civilian control over the military. President Obama, once a constitutional law professor, should know as much, and would do well to severely reprimand McChrystal for his actions. Or better yet, Obama should fire McChrystal and replace him with someone who respects the rule of law and the chain of command.

Obama may have won the Nobel Peace Prize, but if he allows himself to be bullied into supporting McChrystal’s foray into Afghanistan, he will reveal himself as the worst kind of warmonger. True, he didn’t invent the Afghan quagmire. That honor resides with George W. Bush, who also is to blame for the American fiasco in Iraq. But history will be surprisingly gentle toward America’s 43rd president. Bush will share the blame for his calamitous military decisions with the mistaken policies of previous administrations, a compliant Congress, headstrong advisers, servile intelligence agencies and, of course, the shock of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Bush will be seen more as a useful idiot than a ruthless ideologue. Obama, with his obvious intelligence, soaring rhetorical skills and Nobel credentials, does not readily fit such a characterization. If he decides to reinforce failure in Afghanistan by dispatching tens of thousands more American troops to that disaster, America’s 44th president will cement himself as a grand fraud, a hawk hiding in dove feathers. Given his potential for doing good, one clearly would not want such a scenario to play out.

The president’s lack of military experience screams out when he calls America’s involvement in Afghanistan a “good war.” He would have been better off trying to make the case for a justifiable war, or even a necessary war, but to label a process that brings about the death and injury of thousands as “good” makes me wonder about Obama’s fitness to be commander in chief. His seeming inexperience on national security affairs and foreign policy leave him vulnerable to domestic political pressures that emanate from these arenas. The president does possess the vision to see a world in which America stands side by side with other nations as an equal, operating with a shared notion of due process and respect for the rule of law, but that doesn’t square with any decision to deploy more troops to Afghanistan. Expanding the war in Afghanistan will lend credence to the central worry about Obama: that, at the end of the day, this man of vision might in fact be little more than an Illinois politician who is willing to barter away American life, treasure and good will for political gain on the domestic front. And, in doing so, it will undermine his noble vision of an America “resetting” its relationship with the world following eight years of unilateralist militarism.

A true leader, one with substance and gravitas, would be able to stand up to the combined pressure of the military, the right-wing of Congress and the American media. He would draw the correct conclusions from the lessons of history, which prove again and again that Afghanistan is not a problem that can be solved by foreign military intervention. The fact that Obama might be compelled to alleviate the political pressure he is receiving from these sources by condemning America to another decade of death and destruction in Afghanistan and, most probably, Pakistan, reinforces any perception of his weakness as a national leader.

Afghanistan has, over the centuries, earned its reputation as the graveyard of empires. Just ask the Greeks, Mongols, British and Russians. If Barack Obama ultimately agrees to dispatch more American troops to Afghanistan, he will ensure not only that America will add its name to the list of those who have failed in their effort to conquer the unconquerable, but also that his name will join the ranks of those leaders throughout history who succumbed to the temptations of hubris when given the choice between war and peace. The Nobel committee will have failed in its gambit to motivate America’s 44th president to embrace the mantle of peacemaker, and the American people will be left to sort through the detritus of war brought on by yet another failed president.

Of course, the future is not yet set in stone. The decision to dispatch more troops, although the subject of much rumor and speculation, has been delayed pending the final dispensation of Afghanistan’s controversial presidential election. One can only hope that President Obama will take advantage of this timely “pause” to reconsider his options regarding Afghanistan beyond the single-minded rush to reinforce a current policy the U.S. military has acknowledged as having gone nowhere in the eight years of American military engagement.

Vice President Joe Biden had earlier proposed a policy course that would have de-emphasized military engagement with the Taliban, focusing instead on rooting out the forces of al-Qaida still operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. President Obama was reportedly not sold on Biden’s thinking when it was first presented last March. Perhaps now, upon reflection, the president will do the right thing and reduce America’s military involvement in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, either along the lines proposed by Vice President Biden, or through some other mechanism. There is no military solution to the problems facing the United States today in Afghanistan, and thus the correct course of action is to de-militarize the situation by reducing, not expanding, America’s military presence.

Clearly Gen. Stanley McChrystal is not the man for this task. He should be replaced by someone within the ranks of the U.S. military who shares Obama’s vision of peace, and with it the need to redefine the mission in South Asia. The legitimate requirements of American national security will not be satisfied by any massive military commitment to the region. Hopefully, President Obama will recognize this fact and get out. That would be a sign of greatness, and present to the American people and the rest of the world a leader worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine intelligence officer, chief U.N. weapons inspector and the author of numerous books on foreign policy.



A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
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[bigron]

Friday, October 30, 2009
14:22 Mecca time, 11:22 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/2009103094950243240.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Afghan bomb blast causes deaths 

 
The Taliban said the Kabul guesthouse attack was the first in a campaign against the runoff elections [AFP]
 
A roadside bomb has killed nine civilians in eastern Afghanistan, police say, the latest attack in a surge of violence before a presidential election runoff next week.

A taxi in the eastern province of Nangarhar drove over a bomb on Friday that police said was buried beneath a road, killing all those inside.

Villagers said a tribal elder who was a passenger in the car appeared to be the target of attack.

The incident followed a similar attack a day earlier in the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar which killed four Afghans, including a child, the interior ministry said.

Violent campaign

The Taliban has vowed to disrupt the runoff vote scheduled for November 7.

It warned Afghans to boycott the poll which was called after the first election in August was discredited due to widespread fraud.

A suicide attack on a UN guesthouse in the capital of Kabul on Wednesday killed five foreign staff members.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack, saying it targeted the guesthouse because the UN is helping organise the runoff.

Violence in Afghanistan has reached its worst levels since the the US-led invasion ousted the Taliban in 2001.

Both military and civilian deaths have reached record levels this year.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 

[bigron]

Taliban leader rejects U.S. attempts to lure away fighters with money

STORY HIGHLIGHTS:

-Mullah Brader Akhund calls the strategy "an old weapon that has failed already"

-Taliban reintegration plan aims to separate local Taliban from leaders, pay fighters to quit

-Plan has "reasonable chance for some success," may not be long-term solution, analyst says

-Top U.S. commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has backed Taliban reintegration plan


Sen. Carl Levin, Armed Services Committee chief, says Afghan leaders and the U.S. military think payoffs could work


Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A top Taliban political leader delivered a message Friday to President Obama, calling his attempt to lure away Taliban fighters with money "an old weapon that has failed already."

"The Mujahedeen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan are not mercenaries and employed gunmen like the armed men of the invaders and their surrogates," Mullah Brader Akhund said in the statement. "This war will come to an end when all invaders leave our country and an Islamic government based on the aspirations of our people is formed in the country."

Akhund is the deputy emir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is the political arm of the Taliban.

He was referring to the Taliban reintegration provision, part of the $680 billion defense appropriation bill that Obama signed Wednesday to pay for military operations in the 2010 fiscal year.

The provision would separate local Taliban from their leaders, paying the fighters to quit the organization, replicating a program used to neutralize the insurgency against Americans in Iraq, according to the Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Akhund said 19th century British invaders and Soviet fighters in the 1980s tried the same tactic, unsuccessfully.

He said the Taliban consider the U.S. measure "a sign of weakness and complete despondency of the enemy."

Obama is considering whether to approve the request from his top commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for as many as 40,000 additional troops in Afghanistan. The decision is being weighed against the backdrop of suddenly spiraling U.S. military fatalities. Fifty-six American troops have died in Afghanistan in October, the highest U.S. monthly toll since the war began eight years ago.

Obama meets Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who will tell the U.S. leader how a large deployment to Afghanistan would affect the military.

Akhund warned Obama against maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan, saying it "will only deepen your economic crisis and will harm your international reputation."

"Pull all your forces out of our prideful country and put an end to the game of colonialization by shedding the blood of innocent Muslim people under the unjustified name of terrorism," he said.

The Taliban reintegration provision is part of the Commander's Emergency Response Program, which is now receiving $1.3 billion. CERP funding also is intended for humanitarian relief and reconstruction projects at commanders' discretion.

"Afghan leaders and our military say that local Taliban fighters are motivated largely by the need for a job or loyalty to the local leader who pays them and not by ideology or religious zeal," Levin said in a Senate floor speech on September 11. "They believe an effort to attract these fighters to the government's side could succeed, if they are offered security for themselves and their families, and if there is no penalty for previous activity against us."

While the plan has a "reasonable chance for some success," analyst Nicholas Schmidle said that it may not be a long-term solution.

"So long as the Americans are keenly aware of this, you're buying a very, very, very temporary allegiance," said Schmidle, an expert on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region for the nonpartisan New America Foundation. "If that's the foundation for moving forward, it's a shaky foundation."

Peter Bergen, CNN security analyst, said the idea of paying off Taliban members to quit is nothing new.

"There's been an amnesty program for low-level Taliban in place for many years now, and thousands of people have taken advantage of it," he said. "So this is not entirely a new idea. The idea of bribing people, local guys, to come over. ... It's one of the most cost-effective ways to get people to lay down their arms, either to negotiate a peace or coerce them."

McChrystal has backed the Taliban reintegration plan, saying that most are not ideologically or even politically motivated.

"Most of the fighters we see in Afghanistan are Afghans, some with [a] foreign cadre with them," he said in a July 28 Los Angeles Times interview. "Most are operating for pay; some are under a commander's charismatic leadership; some are frustrated with local leaders."

CNN's Ed Hornick, Thomas Evans, Adam Levine, Barbara Starr and Nic Robertson contributed to this report.
 

 
 
 
Links referenced within this article

Taliban
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/the_taliban
Afghanistan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/afghanistan
military
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/u_s_armed_forces_activities

 

 
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/30/taliban.obama/index.html 

[bigron]

Obama still undecided on Afghan war strategies  
 
 
31/10/2009 10:37:00 AM GMT   
 
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Obama-still-undecided-on-Afghan-war-strategies-.html

 
US President Barack Obama remains undecided over the strategies for the war in Afghanistan as the conflict is taking increasing toll both on civilians and coalition forces.

During a private meeting at the US president's office in Washington on October 30, Obama demanded more choices in order to manage the controversial war in Afghanistan with lower military expenditures and slighter consequences for American troops, an unnamed senior Obama administration official told journalists on Friday.

The US president reportedly expressed his government's "very robust commitment in Afghanistan" during the seventh joint session with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the official added.

However, after reviewing the existing state of affairs for troops under US command, Obama reportedly asked for additional deliberations with his national security team and heads of the US armed forces in order to come up with a decision on America's troop level in Afghanistan which has been ravaged by eight years of alleged war against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.

Despite briefings by US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines chiefs, the president still harbors doubts regarding the recommendations of top military commander, General Stanley McChrystal, who has asked for an additional 40,000 troops in the war-torn country which has been suffering the dire consequences of Washington's 'war on terror' doctrine.

Afghan civilians have been the main victims of the long-fought war and the government of the President Hamid Karzai has been at loggerheads with Washington over the increasing number of people killed in indiscriminate attacks by the US-led coalition forces in his country.

McChrystal had earlier ruffled feathers in the US chain of command with his bleak predictions that his country's efforts against the guerrillas would end in failure unless his calls for additional troops are met.

The US, along with its allies, invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to arrest or kill Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden after the 9/11 events. Washington, the first military power in the world, says efforts to arrest or kill the leader of a the terrorist group and eradicate the militancy has been of no avail.

The United States currently has around 68,000 boots-on-the-ground in Afghanistan, aided by an estimated 50,000 other soldiers from 28 NATO member-countries and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The United States military has also come under mounting pressure over the number of US troopers killed in action and thousands more wounded.

The US Department of Defense has also been criticized for the rising number of suicides and cases of war trauma among US troops due to lengthy stays in the danger zones.
Source: Press TV
 

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Saturday, October 31, 2009
14:10 Mecca time, 11:10 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/20091031497459199.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA  
 
Uncertainty grows over Afghan poll  
 
Watch :

Afghan candidate threatens to boycott runoff - 31 Oct :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_39EGhc6yB0&feature=player_embedded
 
The main challenger to Afghanistan's incumbent president is expected to announce soon whether he will participate or withdraw from next week's election runoff.

Abdullah Abdullah had issued what he called minimum conditions for the runoff following the disputed first-round vote and set Saturday as the deadline for authorities to implement them.

Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull, reporting from Kabul, the Afghan capital, quoted Abdullah's campaign as saying that it would hold a news conference to discuss the matter on Sunday.

"His spokesman [says] that a final decision hasn't yet been made by Dr Abdullah to react to the fact that many of those conditions have not been met," our correspondent said.

"We're now told [Abdullah] is in intensive meetings; he is still making up his mind."

The first round of voting on August 20 was so badly affected by ballot-box stuffing and distorted tallies that more than one million votes were thrown out.

The fraud pushed Hamid Karzai, the president, below the required 50 per cent margin needed to win, forcing the country into a second round to be held on November 7.

Abdullah has accused the country's electoral commission of being complicit in the fraud.

Abdullah's conditions for the runoff to take place included the dismissal of Azizullah Ludin, the government-appointed co-ordinator, to ensure a fair vote.

But both the Karzai campaign and the election commission have said that Ludin will not step down.

'Stringent' demands

Our correspondent said Abdullah's list of conditions included "stringent" demands involving both the government and the election body involved in organising the polls.

"The only one of his conditions that has been met is a demand for more accredited observers from the Abdullah camp and they will give him 20,000 accreditations," Hull said.

"But that is the only one and that is what puts him in a difficult position of deciding whether to participate given that his own minimum requirements have not been met."

The growing uncertainty over Abdullah's participation comes as the US president continues consultations on further troop deployments to Afghanistan.


Barack Obama reviewed his options with the joint chiefs of staff - which includes the service chiefs from the army, navy, air force and marines - in Washington on Friday, his seventh such meeting.

General Stanley McChrystal, the leader of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, has request 40,000 more troops, giving warning on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

But the joint chiefs of staff did not make recommendations to Obama about troop levels, an unnamed senior administration official was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

The Washington Post newspaper reported, quoting US officials, that Obama asked the commanders to provide him with more options for troop levels.

Some of the alternatives would allow Obama to send fewer new troops than the number sought by McChrystal, one official said.

Obama is expected to receive several options from the Pentagon about troop levels next week, according to the two officials.

Before he can determine troop levels, Obama's advisers have said, he must decide whether to embrace a strategy focused heavily on counterinsurgency, which would require additional forces to protect population centres, or one that makes counterterrorism the main focus of US efforts in the country, which would rely on relatively fewer American troops.

Bush's warning

Against this backdrop, George Bush, the former US president, said on Saturday that the war against the Taliban must be won to stop a return to "brutal tyranny" in Afghanistan.

In a speech to a leadership conference in New Delhi, the Indian capital, he said defeating the anti-government fighters was "necessary for stability" and peace both in the region and globally.

"If the Taliban, al-Qaeda and their extremist allies were allowed to take over Afghanistan again, they would have a safe haven and the Afghan people, particularly the Afghan women, would face a return to a brutal tyranny," he said.

"This region and the world would face serious threats."

Bush said both the US and India were "involved in an ideological struggle against extremists who murder the innocent to advance a dark vision of extremism and control".

He said "they attack political, financial and diplomatic targets because they hate our way of life and they hate our vision for freedom and  human rights and human dignity and prosperity and peace".
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 

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Taliban leader rejects U.S. attempts to lure away fighters with money

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59561&hd=&size=1&l=e


 

October 30, 2009

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A top Taliban political leader delivered a message Friday to President Obama, calling his attempt to lure away Taliban fighters with money "an old weapon that has failed already."

"The Mujahedeen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan are not mercenaries and employed gunmen like the armed men of the invaders and their surrogates," Mullah Brader Akhund said in the statement. "This war will come to an end when all invaders leave our country and an Islamic government based on the aspirations of our people is formed in the country."

Akhund is the deputy emir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is the political arm of the Taliban.

He was referring to the Taliban reintegration provision, part of the $680 billion defense appropriation bill that Obama signed Wednesday to pay for military operations in the 2010 fiscal year.

The provision would separate local Taliban from their leaders, paying the fighters to quit the organization, replicating a program used to neutralize the insurgency against Americans in Iraq, according to the Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Akhund said 19th century British invaders and Soviet fighters in the 1980s tried the same tactic, unsuccessfully.

He said the Taliban consider the U.S. measure "a sign of weakness and complete despondency of the enemy."

Obama is considering whether to approve the request from his top commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for as many as 40,000 additional troops in Afghanistan. The decision is being weighed against the backdrop of suddenly spiraling U.S. military fatalities. Fifty-six American troops have died in Afghanistan in October, the highest U.S. monthly toll since the war began eight years ago.

Obama meets Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who will tell the U.S. leader how a large deployment to Afghanistan would affect the military.

Akhund warned Obama against maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan, saying it "will only deepen your economic crisis and will harm your international reputation."

"Pull all your forces out of our prideful country and put an end to the game of colonialization by shedding the blood of innocent Muslim people under the unjustified name of terrorism," he said.

The Taliban reintegration provision is part of the Commander's Emergency Response Program, which is now receiving $1.3 billion. CERP funding also is intended for humanitarian relief and reconstruction projects at commanders' discretion.

"Afghan leaders and our military say that local Taliban fighters are motivated largely by the need for a job or loyalty to the local leader who pays them and not by ideology or religious zeal," Levin said in a Senate floor speech on September 11. "They believe an effort to attract these fighters to the government's side could succeed, if they are offered security for themselves and their families, and if there is no penalty for previous activity against us."

While the plan has a "reasonable chance for some success," analyst Nicholas Schmidle said that it may not be a long-term solution.

"So long as the Americans are keenly aware of this, you're buying a very, very, very temporary allegiance," said Schmidle, an expert on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region for the nonpartisan New America Foundation. "If that's the foundation for moving forward, it's a shaky foundation."

Peter Bergen, CNN security analyst, said the idea of paying off Taliban members to quit is nothing new.

"There's been an amnesty program for low-level Taliban in place for many years now, and thousands of people have taken advantage of it," he said. "So this is not entirely a new idea. The idea of bribing people, local guys, to come over. ... It's one of the most cost-effective ways to get people to lay down their arms, either to negotiate a peace or coerce them."

McChrystal has backed the Taliban reintegration plan, saying that most are not ideologically or even politically motivated.

"Most of the fighters we see in Afghanistan are Afghans, some with [a] foreign cadre with them," he said in a July 28 Los Angeles Times interview. "Most are operating for pay; some are under a commander's charismatic leadership; some are frustrated with local leaders."

CNN's Ed Hornick, Thomas Evans, Adam Levine, Barbara Starr and Nic Robertson contributed to this report.






Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

Remarks of Esteemed Mullah Brader Akhund
Made to Media About Obama’s New Strategy




Dhu al-Qi'dah 11, 1430 A.H, October 30, 2009


In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate

After long waiting of one month and dithering about American reinforcement in Afghanistan, it has been unveiled by Carl Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee in the US Senate that Obama wants to get a by-law passed through this committee that would allow giving money and other financial aids to some members of Taliban in order to encourage them part way with the current armed resistance.

We would like to tell Obama that this is an old weapon that has failed already. The British invaders used it in the 19th century but failed; the former Soviet Union used it, it failed too. The Afghan Mujahid people and the Mujahideen at the front lines have vast experiences of the past three decades in this regard and know all tactics used by the enemy.

Seeing that you failed to win the war with the help of your cutting-edge and sophisticated technology; considering that your media failed to make any ground; bearing in mind that your allies are seeking ways to leave the field and that your internal gunmen are not able even to defend themselves; realizing that your newly-formulated policies face failure one after another, then how you would be able to gain success by resorting to this devilish tactic while our people are already aware of the essence of such tactic.

Similarly, considering this decision as a sign of weakness and complete despondency of the enemy, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan announces the following points for the moribund rulers of the While House:

1. All Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have been waging Jihad against the Americans and other invaders on the basis of an obligation of their belief and ideas. The terms of moderate (Taliban) and extremists are American-invented terms, which have no physical existence.

2. The Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan are not mercenaries and employed gunmen like the armed men of the invaders and their surrogates. Contrarily, the Mujahideen have been carrying out this Jihad for obtainment of independence of the country and establishment of a Sharia system there. This war will come to an end when all invaders leave our country and an Islamic government based on the aspirations of our people is formed in the country.

3. We remind Obama and all rulers of the White House to avoid wasting your time on ways which are not pragmatic but focus on ways, which provide a down-to-earth and realistic solution to this issue. Pull all your forces out of our prideful country and put an end to the game of colonialization by shedding the blood of innocent Muslim people under the unjustified name of terrorism.

4. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan warns the rulers of the White House that the huge military expenditure that you shoulder to maintain your military presence in Afghanistan and carry out operations and implement other failed strategies will only deepen your economic crisis and will harm your international reputation. Your people will face more problems and suffer from psychological diseases. You should know that the Afghans laugh at your irrational decision and unpractical strategies.

5. The American rulers should not think that all heroic Afghan nation is like the few well-known Afghan Americans who sell their country and who have received training in the CIA cells for many years. Here in this country, selling one’s country quid pro qu money and government slot is not only a crime according to Islam but also a historical taunt and infamy. Traditionally, it is a shameful act, which is unforgivable. If you do not believe this, then have a glance at the history of Shah Shuja and Babrak Karmal and his cronies, the surrogates of the former Soviet Union. Study what status they had in the eye of the Afghan masses. The Afghans, particularly, the Mujahideen do not want to solve their economic problems of daily life with the donations and other material aids of the intelligence networks of colonialism.

This pious and patriotic people have offered tremendous material and soul sacrifices in the way of their sacred objectives. The Mujahideen have not chosen this path of strife between the truth and the evil to obtain some material goals. They have lofty Islamic and nationalist aims. This war will only end when these goals are achieved. Inshaallah.


Mullah Brader Akhund
Deputy-Amir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

www.alemarah.info

 

[bigron]

Drug-War Assassinations

by Jacob G. Hornberger

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59560&hd=&size=1&l=e

October 30, 2009

The U.S. government has now extended its assassination program to the drug war. According to the New York Times, the Pentagon now has an assassination list for suspected drug dealers in Afghanistan.

No arrests. No hearings. No attorneys. No judges. No trials. Just kill them.

Great! So now the occupation of Afghanistan has expanded not only to CIA drone assassinations but also now to Pentagon’s drug-war assassinations.

U.S. officials are justifying the drug-war assassinations as part of their counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan. They say that they’re only going to be assassinating those drug dealers whose drug trafficking is benefiting the terrorists.

I wonder how they make that determination, especially without judicial hearings and trials.

Keep in mind that U.S. officials justify their occupation of Afghanistan as part of their overall "war on terrorism." Keep in mind also that according to them, in the war on terrorism the entire world is a battlefield, including the United States.

As part of their war on terrorism, U.S. officials claim the power to treat Americans as "enemy combatants," which entails the power to ignore the rights and guarantees in the Bill of Rights for people suspected of committing the federal criminal offense of terrorism. That includes the power to arrest suspected terrorists, incarcerate them for life, torture them, and deny them due process of law.

It also includes the power to assassinate suspected terrorists, a power that U.S. officials have exercised on "the battlefield" in such places as Yemen, where they assassinated an American citizen who happened to be traveling with a suspected terrorist, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. So far, they have not exercised the assassination power on that part of the battlefield that encompasses the United States, but they certainly now wield the post-9/11 power to do so.

And now they have extended their assassination power to the drug war. And without even bothering to ask Congress to enact a law giving them such power. Hey, this is the era of the war on terrorism. They don’t need no stinking assassination law. All they need is a presidential order to the CIA and the military to begin assassinating people.

Will they apply their assassination power to suspected drug dealers elsewhere in the world? After all, doesn’t the sale of heroin everywhere likely put money into the pockets of drug producers in Afghanistan, given that that’s where 90 percent of the world’s heroin originates?

We know that they are employing the power to assassinate suspected terrorists in different parts of the world. Time will tell whether they do the same with suspected drug dealers, including, of course, that part of the battlefield that encompasses the United States.

Meanwhile, families are mourning the deaths of three American DEA agents and 11 U.S. soldiers who died this past week in two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan.

Fourteen more senseless deaths. Where does this lunacy end?

End the assassinations. End the occupations. End the war on terrorism. End the war on drugs. There is no other solution for restoring freedom, morality, peace, prosperity, and security to our nation.

 



 

[bigron]

November 1, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/world/asia/02afghan.html?_r=1&hp


Karzai Rival Says He Is Withdrawing From Runoff

By DEXTER FILKINS and ALISSA J. RUBIN

KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdullah Abdullah, the chief rival to President Hamid Karzai, announced on Sunday that he would withdraw from the Nov. 7 Afghan runoff election, effectively handing a new term to Mr. Karzai but potentially damaging the government’s credibility.

Speaking at a news conference, Mr. Abdullah said that the Afghan people should not accept the results of an election run by the country’s Independent Electoral Commission, which has been accused of favoring Mr. Karzai.

“I will not participate in the Nov. 7 election,” Mr. Abdullah said, because a “transparent election is not possible.”

Mr. Abdullah said that Mr. Karzai’s government had not been legitimate since May, when the initial round of balloting was originally to have taken place.

Before Mr. Abdullah’s announcement, American and other Western diplomats said they were worried that a defiant statement by Mr. Abdullah could lead to violence and undermine Mr. Karzai’s legitimacy, and they were urging him to bow out gracefully. Obama administration officials have scrambled for weeks to end the deadlock, trying to ensure a smooth government transition as President Obama weighs whether to increase the American military presence in Afghanistan.

People close to Mr. Abdullah said that his representative met with Mr. Karzai on Saturday but that they were unable to make any progress on the issue that brought the two campaigns to loggerheads: Mr. Abdullah’s demands that the Afghan election system be overhauled to head off more fraud in the second round. After the first round of voting, a United Nations-backed panel threw out nearly a million of Mr. Karzai’s ballots — one-third of his total — on the ground that they were fake.

The status of the runoff vote itself remained an open question after Mr. Abdullah’s speech. Afghan officials said it seemed likely that the vote would simply be canceled; the possibility of Taliban violence alone would appear to render pointless another Afghan election where the winner was known in advance.

When asked by reporters if he was calling for his supporters to boycott the runoff, Mr. Abdullah said, “I have not made that call.”

The election deadlock over the last nine weeks has highlighted the Afghan state’s fragility and has showed deep and growing divisions among Afghans. And it has, like so many other recent events here, posed a worsening problem for American and other Western leaders, who have found themselves stuck with a leader who has lost the support of large numbers of Afghans, and whose government is widely regarded as corrupt.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, traveling in Abu Dhabi, gave the administration’s only comment on Saturday in response to the reports that Mr. Abdullah might withdraw. “We see that happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of the candidates decides not to go forward,” she said. “I don’t think it has anything to do with the legitimacy of the election. It’s a personal choice which may or may not be made.”

The concern among diplomats here on Saturday was that Mr. Abdullah would denounce Mr. Karzai even as he bowed out of the race, possibly causing greater anger, and even violence, among his followers. American and Western diplomats were leaning on Mr. Abdullah to pull out with little rancor and to urge his supporters to accept the fact that Mr. Karzai would be president.

Mr. Karzai’s supporters were also hoping Mr. Abdullah would choose that course. Over the past month, as the evidence of vote stealing piled up, Mr. Karzai’s ministers carried on with extraordinary self-confidence, portraying the fraud, and the runoff itself, as a nuisance that, once overcome, would allow them to get on with their jobs.

Against a backdrop of bargaining and diplomatic activity, Mr. Karzai stayed silent publicly. Only last month, Mr. Karzai succumbed to pressure from American and other Western officials, agreeing to accept the verdict of a United Nations-backed commission that put his vote total at under 50 percent.

To the horror of American officials here, Mr. Karzai had strongly considered overriding the Election Complaint Commission, a United Nations-backed body that found that nearly a million ballots had been forged for Mr. Karzai, and declaring himself the winner. Mr. Karzai still held a commanding lead over Mr. Abdullah — 48 to 27 percent — but the commission had pulled the president below 50 percent. That made a runoff necessary.

Only the forceful intervention of Senator John Kerry, who was visiting in Kabul, averted a full-blown political crisis.

But Mr. Abdullah concluded that without major changes to the election system, a second round would be as fraudulent as the first. His demands included the firing of the chief of the Independent Electoral Commission, which collected and counted the ballots, and the closing of hundreds of suspected “ghost” polling centers — fictional voting sites that were instrumental in allowing Mr. Karzai’s supporters to manufacture fake ballots. Mr. Karzai refused.

Those close to Mr. Karzai said there was a simple explanation for Mr. Abdullah’s withdrawal. Muhammad Ismail Yoon, a university professor close to Mr. Karzai, said Mr. Abdullah knew that if he went through with a second round, the Afghans would desert him. “No one invests in a loser in Afghanistan,” he said.

Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.

[bigron]

Occupiers involved in drug trade: Afghan minister 

01/11/2009 10:45:00 AM GMT
 
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Occupiers-involved-in-drug-trade-Afghan-minister.html


The Afghan minister of counter narcotics says foreign troops are earning money from drug production in Afghanistan.

General Khodaidad Khodaidad said the majority of drugs are stockpiled in two provinces controlled by troops from the US, the UK, and Canada, IRNA reported on Saturday.

He went on to say that NATO forces are taxing the production of opium in the regions under their control.

Afghanistan is the world's biggest supplier of opium.

Drug production in the Central Asian country has increased dramatically since the US-led invasion eight years ago.

A recent report by the United Nations states that Afghan opium is having a devastating impact on the world, killing thousands in consumer countries.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Ahmad Wali Karzai, a brother of the Afghan president, is involved in the opium trade, meets with Taliban leaders, and is also a CIA operative.

The opium trade is the major source of Taliban financing.


-- Press TV
© aljazeera.com
 

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U.S. combat injuries rise sharply

Three-month total in Afghanistan surpasses 1,000


By Ann Scott Tyson, WP

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59581&hd=&size=1&l=e

October 31, 2009

More than 1,000 American troops have been wounded in battle over the past three months in Afghanistan, accounting for one-fourth of those injured in combat since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

The dramatic increase in amputees and other seriously injured service members comes as October marks the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Expanded military operations, a near-doubling of the number of troops since the beginning of the year and a Taliban offensive that has included a proliferation of roadside bombings have led to the great increase in casualties. U.S. troops in Afghanistan are suffering wounds at a higher rate than those who were serving in Iraq when violence spiraled during the military "surge" two years ago. In mid-2007, 600 U.S. troops were wounded in Iraq each month out of about 150,000 troops deployed there. In Afghanistan, about 68,000 troops are currently installed, with about 350 wounded each month recently.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell acknowledged that the casualties in Afghanistan have surpassed Iraq surge proportions and noted that the violence in Afghanistan is directed more against U.S. and other coalition forces, whereas it was heavily sectarian in Iraq. "It shows you how we are the targets and how effectively they are targeting us," Morrell said.

He noted that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has become concerned about the rising number of wounded and has ordered thousands of additional support troops to Afghanistan to look for, and minimize, the roadside bombs.

Military doctors say the nature of the Afghanistan casualties is reminiscent of those in Iraq in 2007. "We're seeing similar types of injuries from Afghanistan that we saw in Iraq" before and during the surge, said Lt. Col. Shelton Davis, chief of physical medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

More than 1,000 improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs, exploded or were found in Afghanistan in August, more than double any monthly total until this summer. The bombs account for 70 to 80 percent of U.S. and coalition casualties in that country, according to Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, director of the Pentagon's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization.

Metz told military reporters this week that IEDs are now the "weapon of choice" for Taliban fighters. The bombs are so powerful, he said, that they can take out the latest mine-resistant vehicles the Pentagon has employed to protect troops. In addition, insurgents have begun targeting troops on foot. He said that the rise in bombings has coincided with the doubling of U.S. troop numbers this year and that further troop increases -- now under consideration by President Obama -- would bring more bombs.

As U.S. ground forces moved in this year, Metz said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing this week, "the enemy was ready with a very thick array of IEDs. . . . Those soldiers and Marines ran into those IEDs, and it was what we predicted."

Walter Reed's Ward 57 provides wrenching proof of the devastating effectiveness of the bombs, with patients suffering amputations, spinal cord damage, traumatic brain injuries and fractures.

On Aug. 18, Lt. Dan Berschinski, 25, of Peach Tree City, Ga., was serving as a platoon leader with the Stryker brigade combat team in Kandahar province, where the roads were laced with bombs and his unit had to operate without engineer support or mine-detection equipment. His platoon was crossing a footbridge when a bomb threw Berschinski to the ground, deafened a sergeant and blew up Pfc. Jonathan Yanney, a radio operator. An initial search located part of Yanney's shredded helmet, pieces of a boot and some small body parts that Berschinski said team members put in a plastic bag.

Realizing that not only the roads but also the foot trails were too dangerous, Berschinski and his men moved on by walking through shin-high water. Regrouping in a mud-walled compound later that day, Berschinski was passing a gate when another bomb blew up underneath him, bouncing him off a wall and tossing him back into the crater that had formed.

"I immediately reached down -- up, really, since I was upside down -- for my legs. I could tell they were gone," Berschinski said in a written account provided by his family. His right leg and hip and his left leg above the knee were amputated. According to Metz, few soldiers have survived stepping on such bombs.

But the survival rate among the wounded is greater than in previous conflicts because of improved first aid, quick evacuations to field hospitals and better armored protection.

Busy wards in wartime

As more wounded flow in, hospitals must adjust. "We can open more beds as needed and bring on more staff as needed. As you can imagine, that is not without its own challenges," said Col. Paul Pasquina, chief of orthopedics and rehabilitation at Walter Reed and the Bethesda National Naval Medical Hospital. He noted that although military medical personnel are in demand stateside, they also must deploy overseas.

"The ward is pretty full now," said Tracy Glascoe, a physician assistant on Ward 57.

One significant challenge, she said, is helping wounded troops transition from a regimen of constant ward care so that they can work on further physical rehabilitation.

Resting the stub of his right leg on his hospital bed one day last week, Spec. Harrison Ruzicka, 23, said he is eager for physical therapy. Ruzicka, who is from North Carolina knows he faces a long recovery but said he was thankful to be alive after a bomb flipped his armored vehicle into a river on Aug. 7.

He recalled being pinned under the vehicle and fearing he could drown in the river. He said he screamed for help but quickly realized no one was there. He somehow got loose, swam to the embankment and dragged himself onto land with his arms. He knew his legs were broken. "I didn't want to look at them because I would have put myself in shock," he said.

He started calling for his good friend, vehicle driver Sgt. Jerry R. Evans Jr., 23, of Eufaula, Ala. "I was in his wedding party," Ruzicka said. "There was no response. Nothing from him."




 

[bigron]

Matthew Hoh: Please refute what I'm saying

We are stuck in the Afghan civil war

By Eric Black

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23848.htm

http://www.minnpost.com/ericblack/2009/10/30/13018/matthew_hoh_please_refute_what_im_saying_we_are_stuck_in_the_afghan_civil_war

October 30, 2009 "MinnPost" -- Matthew Hoh, who recently resigned from his State Dept. job to protest U.S. policy in Afghanistan, gave his views on the Lehrer Newshour last night. I was impressed with his cogency, and also his quiet insistence that the current more-troops-or-not discussion get to the core question: Should the U.S. military be in Afghanistan at all. Politely but stubbornly, Hoh argues that the reasons usually given, in passing and without scrutiny, for a continued U.S. occupation, just don't hold up. Al Qaida is not in Afghanistan. A resurgent Taliban does not threaten U.S. national security. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan is not stabilizing the situation in Pakistan. We are in the middle of someone else's civil war.

The full transcript of the interview is here. Below are a couple of key excerpts, followed by video of the interview. Hoh, a former Marine captain, spent five months in Afghanistan before resigning in September. His resignation letter, explaining his reasons, went public this week. The Newshour interviewer was Judy Woodruff. Here are a couple of key moments:

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, is it your view that the U.S. should just get out?

MATTHEW HOH: Of course it's impossible to wave a magic wand and be gone from there. However, I do believe we are involved in a 35-year-old civil war.

I believe we are not the lead character in that war, that it's an internal conflict. I believe that 60,000 troops in Afghanistan do not serve to defeat al-Qaida and do not serve to stabilize the Pakistan government....

 

HOH: I found, we were fighting people who were fighting us only because we're occupying them or because we are supporting a central government that they view as occupying them.

 

HOH: Since 2001, al-Qaida has evolved. They have turned into, as I like to say, an ideological cloud that exists on the Internet and recruits worldwide. They -- if you look at the attacks al-Qaida has been successful with over the last seven, eight years, including attacks on 9/11, they weren't conducted by Afghans or Pakistanis.

And a lot of the preparation and training, it took place in Western Europe or even here in the United States. So, I don't think al-Qaida has any interest in ever tying itself again to a geographical or political boundary. I think they're content to exist as they have evolved. And they are a threat, and they should be our priority. We need to defeat them.

But, again, 60,000 troops in Afghanistan does not defeat al-Qaida.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about the Taliban?

MATTHEW HOH: The Taliban, we chased them out of power in 2001, like we rightfully should have.

However, what you have in Quetta now, I believe, is just the remnants of that. And while the Quetta Shura Taliban, as we refer to them, is a threat, and is a threat to the Karzai government, I don't believe they are a threat to the United States.

And, furthermore, I don't believe that they would be able to retake Kabul, particularly if we ensure that there was no Pakistani support for them if we left Afghanistan.

 

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you think would happen, though, if President Obama did give General McChrystal the troops he wants or a significant increase in the number of troops?

MATTHEW HOH: I believe it's only going to fuel the insurgency. It's only going to reinforce claims by our enemies that we are an occupying power, because we are an occupying power.

And that will only fuel the insurgency. And that will only cause more people to fight us or those fighting us already to continue to fight us.

 

HOH: I think we have to realize that, sometimes, people don't like us and don't want to be like us. And we have to accept that. And then we have to engage them politically and work with them that way.

 

(Woodruff introduced this question by saying that Hoh is only 36 and spent only five months in Afghanistan.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Who are you to say what the United States should be doing, when there are others who have been there longer, studied it for years, and so forth?

MATTHEW HOH: Sure. And I wish people would refute what I'm saying. I have seen that criticism, but I have not seen anyone tell me why it's not a civil war.

I have not seen anyone tell me how stabilizing the Afghan government will defeat al-Qaida. I have not heard anyone tell me how keeping 60,000 troops, or 80,000, or 100,000 troops in Afghanistan will stabilize Pakistan. So, I haven't heard the answers to those questions.

As for the criticisms about my age or that I was only there for five months, I was there for five months. I was in two parts of the country. I worked with as many local people as I could. And I listened as much as possible.

At that point, what I wrote -- first off, what I wrote in my resignation letter, there's not a novel or unique thought in that. Those are thoughts shared by military officers and State Department officers as well. My concern is not how are we fighting this war, but why are we fighting this war.

Visit foll page for Hoh's letter of resignation:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23848.htm
   

 VIDEO :

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