Category Archives: Taliban

Stanley McChrystal’s long war

Stanley McChrystal’s long war
By Dexter Filkins, New York Times, October 18, 2009

In his initial assessment of the country, sent to President Obama early last month, McChrystal described an Afghanistan on the brink of collapse and an America at the edge of defeat. To reverse the course of the war, McChrystal presented President Obama with what could be the most momentous foreign-policy decision of his presidency: escalate or fail. McChrystal has reportedly asked for 40,000 additional American troops — there are 65,000 already here — and an accelerated effort to train Afghan troops and police and build an Afghan state. If President Obama can’t bring himself to step up the fight, McChrystal suggested, then he might as well give up.

“Inadequate resources,” McChrystal wrote, “will likely result in failure.”

The magnitude of the choice presented by McChrystal, and now facing President Obama, is difficult to overstate. For what McChrystal is proposing is not a temporary, Iraq-style surge — a rapid influx of American troops followed by a withdrawal. McChrystal’s plan is a blueprint for an extensive American commitment to build a modern state in Afghanistan, where one has never existed, and to bring order to a place famous for the empires it has exhausted. Even under the best of circumstances, this effort would most likely last many more years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and entail the deaths of many more American women and men.

And that’s if it succeeds. [continued…]

An inconvenient truth teller
By Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, October 10, 2009

Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, “Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?” Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. “And how much will we spend on Pakistan?” Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. “Well, by my calculations that’s a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we’re spending in Pakistan, we’re spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?” The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region. [continued…]

Why Joe Biden should resign
By Ariana Huffington, Huffington Post, October 14, 2009

It’s been known for a while that Biden has been on the other side of McChrystal’s desire for a big escalation of our forces there — the New York Times reported last month that he has “deep reservations” about it. So if the president does decide to escalate, Biden, for the good of the country, should escalate his willingness to act on those reservations.

What he must not do is follow the same weak and worn-out pattern of “opposition” we’ve become all-too-accustomed to, first with Vietnam and then with Iraq. You know the drill: after the dust settles, and the country begins to look back and not-so-charitably wonder, “what were they thinking?” the mea-culpa-laden books start to come out. On page after regret-filled page, we suddenly hear how forceful this or that official was behind closed doors, arguing against the war, taking a principled stand, expressing “strong concern” and, yes, “deep reservations” to the president, and then going home each night distraught at the unnecessary loss of life.

Well, how about making the mea culpa unnecessary? Instead of saving it for the book, how about future author Biden unfetter his conscience in real time — when it can actually do some good? If Biden truly believes that what we’re doing in Afghanistan is not in the best interests of our national security — and what issue is more important than that? — it’s simply not enough to claim retroactive righteousness in his memoirs. [continued…]

In Kabul, little hope that a runoff will be fair

In Kabul, little hope that a runoff will be fair
By Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, October 14, 2009

As experts pore over ballots to determine whether the fraud in this country’s presidential election was so big that a runoff vote was required, many Afghans interviewed here on Tuesday shared the same view: Why bother?

In shops, offices and bakeries around the capital, many Afghans said holding a second round of voting to designate a winner simply did not make sense.

It was not that they did not want a final result. Or that they thought the Aug. 20 election had been fraud-free. But years of disappointment in their government has hardened into cynicism, and many said a second round would only lead to another flawed result.

“It’s a waste of time and money,” said Muhammad Hashem Haideri, a 52-year-old movie theater manager. “It would be useless.” [continued…]

Not good enough
By Tom Friedman, New York Times, October 14, 2009

If President Obama can find a way to balance the precise number of troops that will stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan, without tipping America into a Vietnam there, then he indeed deserves a Nobel Prize — for physics.

I have no problem with the president taking his time to figure this out. He and we are going to have to live with this decision for a long time. For my money, though, I wish there was less talk today about how many more troops to send and more focus on what kind of Afghan government we have as our partner.

Because when you are mounting a counterinsurgency campaign, the local government is the critical bridge between your troops and your goals. If that government is rotten, your whole enterprise is doomed. [continued…]

A dogged Taliban chief rebounds, vexing U.S.

A dogged Taliban chief rebounds, vexing U.S.
By Scott Shane, New York Times, October 11, 2009

In late 2001, Mullah Muhammad Omar’s prospects seemed utterly bleak. The ill-educated, one-eyed leader of the Taliban had fled on a motorbike after his fighters were swiftly routed by the Americans invading Afghanistan.

Much of the world celebrated his ouster, and Afghans cheered the return of girls’ education, music and ordinary pleasures outlawed by the grim fundamentalist government.

Eight years later, Mullah Omar leads an insurgency that has gained steady ground in much of Afghanistan against much better equipped American and NATO forces. Far from a historical footnote, he represents a vexing security challenge for the Obama administration, one that has consumed the president’s advisers, divided Democrats and left many Americans frustrated.

“This is an amazing story,” said Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who coordinated the Obama administration’s initial review of Afghanistan policy in the spring. “He’s a semiliterate individual who has met with no more than a handful of non-Muslims in his entire life. And he’s staged one of the most remarkable military comebacks in modern history.” [continued…]

Afghan war debate now leans to focus on Al Qaeda

Afghan war debate now leans to focus on Al Qaeda
By Peter Baker and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, October 8, 2009

President Obama’s national security team is moving to reframe its war strategy by emphasizing the campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan while arguing that the Taliban in Afghanistan do not pose a direct threat to the United States, officials said Wednesday.

As Mr. Obama met with advisers for three hours to discuss Pakistan, the White House said he had not decided whether to approve a proposed troop buildup in Afghanistan. But the shift in thinking, outlined by senior administration officials on Wednesday, suggests that the president has been presented with an approach that would not require all of the additional troops that his commanding general in the region has requested.

It remains unclear whether everyone in Mr. Obama’s war cabinet fully accepts this view. While Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has argued for months against increasing troops in Afghanistan because Pakistan was the greater priority, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have both warned that the Taliban remain linked to Al Qaeda and would give their fighters havens again if the Taliban regained control of all or large parts of Afghanistan, making it a mistake to think of them as separate problems. [continued…]

Afghan Taliban say they pose no threat to the West
By Sayed Salahuddin, Reuters, October 7, 2009

The Afghan Taliban pose no threat to the West but will continue their fight against occupying foreign forces, they said on Wednesday, the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that removed them from power.

U.S.-led forces with the help of Afghan groups overthrew the Taliban government during a five week battle which started on October 7, 2001, after the militants refused to hand over al Qaeda leaders wanted by Washington for the September 11 attacks on America.

“We had and have no plan of harming countries of the world, including those in Europe … our goal is the independence of the country and the building of an Islamic state,” the Taliban said in a statement on the group’s website www.shahamat.org. [continued…]

War of the worlds
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, October 7, 2009

An unremarkable paragraph in a piece in my hometown paper recently caught my eye. It was headlined “White House Believes Karzai Will Be Re-elected,” but in mid-report Helene Cooper and Mark Landler of the New York Times turned to Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal’s “redeployment option.” Here’s the humdrum paragraph in question: “The redeployment option calls for moving troops from sparsely populated and lawless areas of the countryside to urban areas, including Kandahar and Kabul. Many rural areas ‘would be better left to Predators,’ said an administration official, referring to drone aircraft.”

In other words, the United States may now be represented in the Afghan countryside, as it already is in the tribal areas on the Pakistani side of the border, mainly by Predators and their even more powerful cousins, Reapers, unmanned aerial vehicles with names straight out of a sci-fi film about implacable aliens. If you happen to be an Afghan villager in some underpopulated part of that country where the U.S. has set up small bases — two of which were almost overrun recently — they will be gone and “America” will instead be soaring overhead. We’re talking about planes without human beings in them tirelessly scanning the ground with their cameras for up to 22 hours at a stretch. Launched from Afghanistan but flown by pilots thousands of miles away in the American West, they are armed with two to four Hellfire missiles or the equivalent in 500-pound bombs. [continued…]

A somber warning on Afghanistan

A somber warning on Afghanistan
By Alison Small, New York Times, September 14, 2009

Western powers now in Afghanistan run the risk of suffering the fate of the Soviet Union there if they cannot halt the growing insurgency and an Afghan perception that they are foreign invaders, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former U.S. national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter.

In a speech opening a weekend gathering of military and foreign policy experts, Mr. Brzezinski, who was national security adviser when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979, endorsed a British and German call, backed by France, for a new international conference on the country. He also set the tone for a weekend of somber assessments of the situation.

He noted that it took about 300 U.S. Special Forces — fighting with Northern Alliance troops — to overthrow Taliban rule after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Now, however, with about 100,000 U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan, those forces are increasingly perceived as foreign invaders, much as the Soviet troops were from the start, Mr. Brzezinski said. [continued…]

In Kandahar, a Taliban on the rise
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, September 14, 2009

The slow and quiet fall of Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city, poses a complex new challenge for the NATO effort to stabilize Afghanistan. It is factoring prominently into discussions between Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the overall U.S. and NATO commander, and his advisers about how many more troops to seek from Washington.

“Kandahar is at the top of the list,” one senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan said. “We simply do not have enough resources to address the challenges there.”

Kandahar in many ways is a microcosm of the challenges the United States faces in stabilizing Afghanistan. The city is filled with ineffective government officials and police officers whom the governor calls looters and kidnappers. Unemployment is rampant. Municipal services are nonexistent. Reconstruction projects have not changed many lives. A lack of NATO forces allowed militants free rein. [continued…]

Are US taxpayers funding the Taliban?
By Jean MacKenzie, GlobalPost, September 2, 2009

The United States Agency for International Development has opened an investigation into allegations that its funds for road and bridge construction in Afghanistan are ending up in the hands of the Taliban, through a protection racket for contractors.

And House Foreign Affairs Committee member, Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) vowed to hold hearings on the issue in the fall, saying: “The idea that American taxpayer dollars are ending up with the Taliban is a case for grave concern.”

U.S. officials confirmed that the preliminary investigation and the proposed hearings were sparked by a GlobalPost special report on the funding of the Taliban last month that uncovered a process that has been an open secret in Afghanistan for years among those in international aid organizations.

The report exposed that the Taliban takes a percentage of the billions of dollars in aid from U.S. and other international coalition members that goes to large organizations and their subcontractors for development projects, in exchange for protection in remote areas controlled by the insurgency. [continued…]

McChrystal: No major al-Qaida signs in Afghanistan
AP, September 11, 2009

The top commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan said Friday he sees no signs of a major al-Qaida presence in the country, but says the terror group still maintains close links to insurgents. [continued…]

Bin Laden calls Obama ‘powerless’ in Afghan war
AP, September 14, 2009

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden described President Barack Obama as “powerless” to stop the war in Afghanistan and threatened to step up guerrilla warfare there in a new audiotape released to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

In the 11-minute tape, addressed to the American people, bin Laden said Obama is only following the warlike policies of his predecessor George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and he urged Americans to “liberate” themselves from the influence of “neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby.”

The tape was posted on Islamic militant Web sites two days after the eighth anniversary of the 2001 suicide plane hijackings. The terror leader usually addresses Americans in a message timed around the date of the attacks, which sparked the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan the same year, and then in Iraq two years later.

Bin Laden said Americans had failed to understand that al-Qaida carried out the attacks in retaliation for U.S. support for Israel. If America reconsiders its alliance with the Jewish state, al-Qaida will respond on “sound and just bases.” [continued…]

‘I told the US to talk to the Taliban. They jailed me’

‘I told the US to talk to the Taliban. They jailed me’
By Kim Sengupta, The Independent, September 12, 2009

He was the man they called the mullah with a human face, the internet mullah, or the Rudolph Hess of the Taliban. Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil was the Taliban’s foreign minister. It was he who in October 2001, a month after 9/11 and weeks before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, broke ranks with the hardline clerical leadership and tried to broker a peace deal with Washington.

Eight years on, as the West struggles to form a coherent policy on Afghanistan amid mounting domestic opposition to the war, Mullah Muttawakil has claimed that the West has repeatedly squandered chances for peace.

“We have seen a lot of fighting since then, a lot of blood has been spilt, all for what?” he asked. “They are saying now that they will talk to some of the Taliban. That is what I said to them just after the war. I offered to put them in touch with the relevant people. Their answer was to put me in jail.” [continued…]

September 9: The shot that was not heard round the world

September 9: The shot that was not heard round the world
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 9, 2009

As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, in the minds of most Americans the attacks of September 11, 2001 remain the signal event that shaped everything that has followed. Yet had we been paying more attention, we would have known that September 9, 2001, the day that Ahmed Shah Massoud was assassinated, was no less significant.

On that day, Afghanistan lost a leader of global stature — a man who truly was irreplaceable. Now, as much as ever, as the Taliban is resurgent and American and its allies attempt to prop up a deeply corrupt government in Kabul, the memory of Massoud is a symbol of the Afghan people’s so many shattered hopes.

A year after Massoud’s death, John Burns wrote in the New York Times:

As Americans prepare to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary, with many still struggling to come to terms with the cataclysm of that day, Afghans are passing through their own harrowing remembrance, of an attack that was overshadowed for the rest of the world by what happened two days later in the United States. Only four men died on Sept. 9 — the 49-year-old Mr. Massoud, an aide and the assassins — but there has been little healing of the wounds the killers inflicted on the hearts and the hopes of millions of his countrymen.

Ask Afghans who knew Mr. Massoud what it was about him that inspires such grief, and they struggle. Like [Fahim] Dashti [who was with Massoud at the time of his assassination], they talk of his skills as the guerrilla commander who astonished Soviet generals he outfought during the occupation of the 1980’s, or of his years holding out against the Taliban, when almost all other guerrilla leaders had joined the Taliban or fled abroad.

They speak of Mr. Massoud’s directness, his lack of pretense or false piety, his modesty, the look of somber intensity that rarely left his face. But usually, they give up, as people do when they try to define charisma. Mr. Dashti, the editor, resorted, in the end, to the simplest words. “We loved him,” he said. “We loved him more than we loved our own mothers and fathers. He embodied everything we loved about Afghanistan.”

In 1998, in a letter to the American people, Massoud wrote:

Let me correct a few fallacies that are propagated by Taliban backers and their lobbies around the world. This situation over the short and long-run, even in case of total control by the Taliban, will not be to anyone’s interest. It will not result in stability, peace and prosperity in the region. The people of Afghanistan will not accept such a repressive regime. Regional countries will never feel secure and safe. Resistance will not end in Afghanistan, but will take on a new national dimension, encompassing all Afghan ethnic and social strata.

The goal is clear. Afghans want to regain their right to self-determination through a democratic or traditional mechanism acceptable to our people. No one group, faction or individual has the right to dictate or impose its will by force or proxy on others. But first, the obstacles have to be overcome, the war has to end, just peace established and a transitional administration set up to move us toward a representative government.

We are willing to move toward this noble goal. We consider this as part of our duty to defend humanity against the scourge of intolerance, violence and fanaticism. But the international community and the democracies of the world should not waste any valuable time, and instead play their critical role to assist in any way possible the valiant people of Afghanistan overcome the obstacles that exist on the path to freedom, peace, stability and prosperity.

Pepe Escobar recounts:

During the 1990s, and especially during the time of the Taliban rule, which began in 1996, Washington never knew exactly how to deal with Massoud. But after the attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents sought a meeting with Massoud in Dushanbe. The CIA wanted information on how to get to bin Laden. Massoud carefully considered all the angles, but ultimately he could not but criticize American shortsightedness. For the Bill Clinton administration, the ultimate aim was to get bin Laden and destroy al-Qaeda. For Massoud, the main point was to destroy the Taliban. He repeatedly stressed at the time that “without the Taliban, Osama can’t do anything”.

Massoud, indeed, had agents and intelligence in the heart of Taliban country. The best example is how his Panjshiris planted a powerful truck bomb just outside Mullah Omar’s compound in central Kandahar, in 1999. The explosion left a huge crater and killed 10 people, including three of Mullah Omar’s bodyguards. Omar escaped, almost by a miracle, but if the Northern Alliance could get close to the Taliban, they could not penetrate al-Qaeda’s ultra-hardcore security to try to find and menace bin Laden. And as much as the Northern Alliance could penetrate the Taliban, security chief Arif – now head of intelligence of Hamid Karzai’s government – says that “Osama was actively trying to recruit spies inside the Panjshir Valley”. But once again, no one investigated the “Moroccans”.

In his interview with Asia Times Online, the second-to-last in his lifetime, Massoud repeatedly portrayed al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Pakistan as a sort of “triangle of evil”. He criticized the US for basically following a Pakistani plan: try to “reform” the Taliban and concentrate on seducing Taliban “moderates” (a contradiction in terms). There were never any moderates within the Taliban. Mullah Omar was totally under the spell of bin Laden. American diplomats with knowledge of Central Asia were warning about the “Arabization” of Afghanistan. But no one in Washington was listening. The US only got the message after September 11 – and after Massoud’s death.

In the first months of 2001, Massoud calculated that he had to involve himself in a complex gamble: change his image from warrior to statesman. He addressed the European parliament in Strasbourg, France, in April 2001. This was his first official trip to the West. He tried hard to attract Western support for the resistance against the Taliban. But still no one was listening. In Strasbourg, Massoud delivered a stunning message that nobody took seriously at the time: “If President Bush doesn’t help us, then these terrorists will damage the United States and Europe very soon – and it will be too late.”

Afghanistan Revealed a documentary broadcast by National Geographic in October 2001, presents a portrait of Massoud and his struggle to save Afghanistan.

How the Taliban are winning the war

Warlord’s defection shows Afghan risk
By Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal, September 2, 2009

G Ghulam Yahya Akbari hulam Yahya, a former mayor of this ancient city along the Silk Road, battled the Taliban for years and worked hand in hand with Western officials to rebuild the country’s industrial hub.

Now, Mr. Yahya is firing rockets at the Herat airport and nearby coalition military headquarters. He has kidnapped soldiers and foreign contractors, claimed the downing of an Afghan army helicopter and planted bombs in central Herat — including one that killed a district police chief and more than a dozen bystanders last month.

Mr. Yahya’s stranglehold over the outskirts of Herat has destabilized a former oasis of calm and relative prosperity. “The security situation here is critical,” said Herat’s current mayor, Mohammed Salim Taraki.

The warlord’s odyssey from friend to foe shows how disillusionment with the Western-backed administration of President Hamid Karzai has pushed even some former enemies of the Taliban into the insurgency. Violence is rapidly spreading beyond the ethnic Pashtun heartland of southern and eastern Afghanistan, where much of the countryside already is in rebel hands, into parts of the country that were considered safe just a few months ago. [continued…]

U.S. to boost combat force in Afghanistan
By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2009

U.S. officials are planning to add as many as 14,000 combat troops to the American force in Afghanistan by sending home support units and replacing them with “trigger-pullers,” Defense officials say.

The move would beef up the combat force in the country without increasing the overall number of U.S. troops, a contentious issue as public support for the war slips. But many of the noncombat jobs are likely be filled by private contractors, who have proved to be a source of controversy in Iraq and a growing issue in Afghanistan.

The plan represents a key step in the Obama administration’s drive to counter Taliban gains and demonstrate progress in the war nearly eight years after it began. [continued…]

Taliban surprising U.S. forces with improved tactics
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, September 2, 2009

The Taliban has become a much more potent adversary in Afghanistan by improving its own tactics and finding gaps in the U.S. military playbook, according to senior American military officials who acknowledged that the enemy’s resurgence this year has taken them by surprise.

U.S. rules of engagement restricting the use of air power and aggressive action against civilians have also opened new space for the insurgents, officials said. Western development projects, such as new roads, schools and police stations, have provided fresh targets for Taliban roadside bombs and suicide attacks. The inability of rising numbers of American troops to protect Afghan citizens has increased resentment of the Western presence and the corrupt Afghan government that cooperates with it, the officials said.

As President Obama faces crucial decisions on his war strategy and declining public support at home, administration and defense officials are studying the reasons why the Taliban appears, for the moment at least, to be winning. [continued…]

Deputy intelligence chief is slain in Afghanistan
By Stephen Farrell and Abdul Waheed Wafa, New York Times, September 2, 2009

The second-ranking intelligence official in Afghanistan and a prominent ally of President Hamid Karzai was assassinated by a suicide bomber on Wednesday morning in a blast that also killed 15 others outside the main mosque in the official’s hometown, near Kabul, officials and witnesses said.

The official, Dr. Abdullah Laghmani, was the deputy director of the National Directorate for Security.

“As an intelligence expert, he knew a lot about Al Qaeda, and he was a person who was very actively fighting against the Taliban and against Al Qaeda in the 34 provinces of Afghanistan,” said the provincial governor, Mutfullah Mashal, in an interview at the scene of the attack here in the capital of the eastern province of Laghman. “His loss is really a major loss.” [continued…]

$600 for a Kalashnikov – a sign of bloodshed to come in Afghanistan
By Kim Sengupta, The Independent, September 2, 2009

The price of Kalashnikovs has doubled in Afghanistan. For a country awash with arms, the fact that the weapons are now fetching $600 apiece is a cause of some surprise, but a surge of demand is to blame for the increase, with a steady stream of weapons said to be heading for the north.

This is the Tajik constituency of Abdullah Abdullah, the presidential candidate who claims the election is being stolen by the incumbent Western-backed President, Hamid Karzai. [continued…]

U.N. sees Afghan drug cartels emerging
By Richard A Oppel Jr, New York Times, September 2, 2009

Afghanistan’s production of opium, the raw material for heroin, declined by 10 percent this year, and the amount of land used to cultivate opium fell by 22 percent, according to a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that is to be formally released Wednesday.

The smaller harvest, largely attributed to market forces and heightened interdiction efforts, is a rare bit of good news for the United States and the coalition of Western governments whose troops and taxpayers are supporting what even American commanders describe as a deteriorating situation as the war approaches its ninth year.

But while United Nations officials suggested that some opium-trafficking guerrillas were now less focused on Taliban ideology, they also reported that perhaps more than 10,000 tons of illegal opium — worth billions of dollars and enough to satisfy at least two years of world demand — is now secretly stockpiled. They said they were concerned that part of this stockpile could be a “ticking bomb” in the hands of people who could use it to pay for “sinister scenarios.”

Opium is easily smuggled and stored and “is an ideal form of terrorist financing,” Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said in an interview. “It’s a huge amount of money to have in the wrong hands.” He called on intelligence agencies to investigate the stockpiles. [continued…]

Contractors outnumber U.S. troops in Afghanistan
By James Glanz, New York Times, September 2, 2009

Civilian contractors working for the Pentagon in Afghanistan not only outnumber the uniformed troops, according to a report by a Congressional research group, but also form the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel recorded in any war in the history of the United States.

On a superficial level, the shift means that most of those representing the United States in the war will be wearing the scruffy cargo pants, polo shirts, baseball caps and other casual accouterments favored by overseas contractors rather than the fatigues and flight suits of the military.

More fundamentally, the contractors who are a majority of the force in what has become the most important American enterprise abroad are subject to lines of authority that are less clear-cut than they are for their military colleagues. [continued…]

Report details misbehavior by Kabul embassy guards
By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, September 2, 2009

Private security contractors who guard the U.S. Embassy in Kabul have engaged in lewd behavior and hazed subordinates, demoralizing the undermanned force and posing a “significant threat” to security at a time when the Taliban is intensifying attacks in the Afghan capital, according to an investigation released Tuesday by an independent watchdog group.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) launched the probe after more than a dozen security guards contacted the group to report misconduct and morale problems within the force of 450 guards who live at Camp Sullivan, a few miles from the embassy compound.

The report highlighted occasions when guards brought women believed to be prostitutes into Camp Sullivan and videotaped themselves drinking and partially undressed. It also outlined communications problems among the guards, many of whom don’t speak English and have trouble understanding orders from their U.S. supervisors. [continued…]

Is the war in Afghanistan in the interests of the United States and its allies?

Is the war in Afghanistan in the interests of the United States and its allies?
By Major Jeremy Kotkin, Small Wars Journal, August 30, 2009

Afghan landscape

Operation Enduring Freedom [OEF], through the lens of vital national interests, was largely won but for some inexplicable reason we have not realized it. What is worse, we allowed our strategy to change before the initial, imperative mission was fully accomplished. Having to a great extent captured, killed, and seriously disrupted the al-Qaeda leadership and training infrastructure in Afghanistan, the necessity, and therefore strategy for this war, has gotten away from us. This is true for one reason and one reason alone: we have transferred the consequence of the very real threat of al Qaeda to the Taliban, to fields of Afghan poppies, and to the political and economic shambles that was and is Afghanistan. These things are not existential threats to our nation. With public debate and approval, they might be worthy of continued political and economic transformation and support through other aspects of national power, but not wholesale military intervention.

It is not a threat to the United States if the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan decides to live as if it were in the 15th century and create laws to mandate it. It is not a threat to the U.S. if they decide to ban women from attending school or stone them for adultery or not wearing a headscarf correctly. Nor is it a threat if poppies are their main cash crop. These are all variously horrible, unfortunate, and things we would like to see change, but do not constitute a direct, existential threat to the United States requiring a military response. Therefore, if the direct threats are not the Taliban (who was in power minding their own business since 1996), Sharia law (which has been used in various countries at various levels of fundamentalism for over 1400 years without being a threat to us), drugs, or necessarily even the failed or ungoverned state itself (of which examples have always been present on the global stage, also without being a threat to us), what are they? The direct threat was and is the loosely tied organization of al Qaeda and its affiliates. They are best destroyed just as we successfully prosecuted the early stages of OEF- through a combination of limited relationship building with local populations, deployments of Special Operations Forces [SOF], thorough intelligence, and targeted airstrikes. When we need to, our nation can call upon these assets to attack and defeat these threats. Then those assets can come home. Any continued presence should only be conducted by the occasional SOF, Foreign Service Officers, and/or USAID representatives (in permissive environments) to maintain networks of relationships when and where necessary and promote US interests. If al Qaeda were to again coalesce in Afghanistan, we would find, fix, and kill/capture them. This is the same strategy we follow when we find them anywhere else, be it Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, or Newark, NJ. Why, then, does only Afghanistan warrant a total military-led effort to redesign their culture, system of government, and market-base based on US biases?

As Sun Tzu said, “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” What is facing us now is a series of tactics and operations with no overlying match of policy and strategy. Even if there is a higher strategy that is in line with national policy, this policy does not pass the “Family Factor” test that Kent Johnson defines in his article “Political-Military Engagement Policy: Casualty Avoidance and the American Public.” (Aerospace Power Journal, Spring 2001) Our limited war in early OEF quickly and silently evolved into something different with the intent of removing the Taliban in their entirety and ‘enabling’ a centralized democracy to exist where none has before. After the war for our vital national interests, we allowed our nation’s military to be the tool used to secure interests of a far less critical nature; to forcibly promote our beliefs of human rights, economic freedoms, and individual liberties. In our best Wilsonian imitation, we are determined to bestow the Peace of Westphalia upon Afghanistan, create a sovereign state in the best Western sense of the word, and allow them to move through the “majestic portal” to bring them into the family of evolved nations. Somehow, this will be better for America than whatever locally legitimate ruling authority rises to power in Kabul or the rest of Afghanistan’s provinces. In a utopian world, this might be fine, but in reality, where the native Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek people get a vote, it yields the quagmire we face today. Not only is this outside of our initial (and again, largely complete) mission in Afghanistan, it is outside of both the pragmatism and necessity of realpolitik and realism on one side and any cost-benefit analysis of political idealism on the other. To think that to secure the US homeland from attack we must install an amenable democratic government in Kabul awakens definite parallels in Afghani history.

Field Marshall Frederick Roberts who, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, led a successful attack against Kabul and the later 300-miles-in-3-weeks march from Kandahar to Kabul (to rescue an embattled British force) eventually said: “The less they see of us, the less they’ll dislike us.” In the end, he, and the British parliament, realized that after three consecutive wars in the same region for the same strategic purpose, Afghanistan wasn’t as strategically important to the British as they had supposed all along. In their effort to maintain varying levels of control or influence in Afghan affairs to counter supposed Russian aims on British India, the British fought three politically debilitating wars with the Afghans resulting in less regional influence, less control, and more loss of life each time. They would eventually conclude that if the Russians wanted to attack British India through Afghanistan, they, the British, should let them. The impossible task and effort of maintaining influence over the Afghans was inordinate compared to the cost of defending India at the gates of India, not at the Hindu Kush. Invading Afghanistan was easy; the follow-on governing was impossible. It would be far easier to let Russia try and stretch their LOCs [lines of communication] and expend their blood and treasure through unconquerable Afghan territory to get to India, not the reverse.

Something about Afghanistan must breed strategic overstretch. As British ‘Forward Policy’ of the 19th century delivered three strategically unwinnable wars, we similarly seem to think defense of the homeland begins at the Hindu Kush; that we must fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here. The British realized in their successive efforts that punitive strikes and raids when necessary into Afghanistan were far more effective in the long run than trying to maintain even a semi-permanent presence and installing British-friendly (malleable) governments.

Beyond the supposed and indefensible argument that the Taliban provides us with an existential threat, we have allowed something far more insidious to occur; we have enabled al Qaeda of the 21st century to replace Russia of the 19th century in the way we, and the Victorian British before us, looked at and dealt with the territory and peoples of Afghanistan. Academically, the parallel is illuminating; in reality, it is tragic. Al Qaeda, far from requiring a massive, conventional military deployment (nor a global war on terrorism), should in actuality warrant only local police actions. If that is not possible or within the capacity of local forces, a “low-intensity,” small footprint, or otherwise limited US response to negate that threat where present would suffice. This should be the modus operandi in Afghanistan, Yemen, central or northern Africa, Indonesia, or anywhere else. Large-scale deployments or nation building are not the answer. If for no other reason than to point out the fact that we do not see the need to try and “fix” every other un- or under-governed space across the world or forcibly promote our national interests everywhere else they might differ from our own. “Fixing” Afghanistan is not a vital national interest. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — “Operation Enduring Freedom, through the lens of vital national interests, was largely won but for some inexplicable reason we have not realized it.”

An inexplicable reason? If George Bush had not been surrounded by neoconservative handlers, I dare say that rather than come up with an overblown “war on terror” he would have kept it simple. The task in hand was to “get bin Laden.” And that’s why the war has never ended: it has failed to accomplish its primary goal.

Of course, as any fool knows, a real man hunt requires stealth.

Is Pakistan’s Taliban movement on the way out?

Is Pakistan’s Taliban movement on the way out?
By Saeed Shah, McClatchy, August 23, 2009

Pakistan’s extremist Taliban movement is badly divided over who should be its new leader, and analysts and local tribesmen say the al Qaida-linked group may be in danger of crumbling.

A wave of defections, surrenders, arrests and bloody infighting has severely weakened the movement since its founder, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed Aug. 5 in a U.S. missile strike. The announcement this weekend that Hakimullah Mehsud, a 28-year-old with a reputation as a hothead, would succeed him is likely to further widen the split.

Hakimullah has support from Taliban groups in Orakzai, where he is based, and Bajaur, both parts of the wild Pakistan tribal zone that borders Afghanistan. But the heart of the Pakistani Taliban movement lies in the Waziristan portion of the tribal area, where the warlike Mehsud and Wazir clans live and where a commander named Waliur Rehman is backed as the next chief. Rehman was very close to Baitullah Mehsud.

“There’s no way that the Mehsuds and the Wazirs are going to accept Hakimullah as chief. During his lifetime, Baitullah had given every indication that when he’s no more, Waliur Rehman is the next guy,” said Saifullah Mahsud, an analyst at the FATA Research Centre, an independent think tank in Islamabad. “Waliur Rehman is a cool, calm, calculated guy, a very good listener… That’s why the Taliban had liked Baituallah so much, he was a very cool guy, a very calm guy.” [continued…]

Could Afghanistan become Obama’s Vietnam?

Could Afghanistan become Obama’s Vietnam?
By Peter Baker, New York Times, August 23, 2009

President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead?

To be sure, such historical analogies are overly simplistic and fatally flawed, if only because each presidency is distinct in its own way. But the L.B.J. model — a president who aspired to reshape America at home while fighting a losing war abroad — is one that haunts Mr. Obama’s White House as it seeks to salvage Afghanistan while enacting an expansive domestic program.

In this summer of discontent for Mr. Obama, as the heady early days give way to the grinding battle for elusive goals, he looks ahead to an uncertain future not only for his legislative agenda but for what has indisputably become his war. Last week’s elections in Afghanistan played out at the same time as the debate over health care heated up in Washington, producing one of those split-screen moments that could not help but remind some of Mr. Johnson’s struggles to build a Great Society while fighting in Vietnam.

“The analogy of Lyndon Johnson suggests itself very profoundly,” said David M. Kennedy, the Stanford University historian. Mr. Obama, he said, must avoid letting Afghanistan shadow his presidency as Vietnam did Mr. Johnson’s. “He needs to worry about the outcome of that intervention and policy and how it could spill over into everything else he wants to accomplish.” [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — It’s not too soon to be comparing Obama to LBJ and it’s not too soon to be asking whether he’ll seek a second term. To call the war in Afghanistan a “war of necessity” was a strategic blunder. Obama first paddled up shit creek and then decided to throw away his paddle.

‘Is he weak?’
By Jim Hoagland, Washington Post, August 23, 2009

Shortly after the Group of 20 summit concluded in London in April, Nicolas Sarkozy blurted out to a small group of advisers a question that weighed on him as he watched President Obama glad-hand his way through the gathering: “Est-il faible?” (Is he weak?)

The French president did not answer his own blunt query, which faded as the American leader commanded a hectic round of domestic economic intervention and agenda-setting abroad in the weeks that followed. Initial doubts about Obama’s toughness went on the shelf at the Elysee Palace and elsewhere.

But the Sarkozy question was abruptly dusted off as Obama began hitting resistance to some of his most ambitious goals, including health-care reform, Middle East peacemaking and engagement with Iran. Is Obama making tactical retreats to gain better position on these hard cases — or is he, well, weak? [continued…]

Marines fight Taliban with little aid from Afghans
By Richard A Oppel Jr., New York Times, August 23, 2009

American Marines secured this desolate village in southern Afghanistan nearly two months ago, and last week they were fortifying bases, on duty at checkpoints and patrolling in full body armor in 120-degree heat. Despite those efforts, only a few hundred Afghans were persuaded to come out here and vote for president on Thursday.

In a region the Taliban have lorded over for six years, and where they remain a menacing presence, American officers say their troops alone are not enough to reassure Afghans. Something is missing that has left even the recently appointed district governor feeling dismayed. “I don’t get any support from the government,” said the governor, Massoud Ahmad Rassouli Balouch.

Governor Massoud has no body of advisers to help run the area, no doctors to provide health care, no teachers, no professionals to do much of anything. About all he says he does have are police officers who steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for “vacation.” [continued…]

Taliban attacks leave poll soaked in Afghan blood
By Jon Swain, The Sunday Times, August 23, 2009

Making Helmand safe to vote had been Britain’s military priority this summer, the bloodiest since 2001. The aim of the five-week operation Panther’s Claw, involving 3,000 British troops, was to push the Taliban from the north of Lashkar Gah.

Ten British soldiers died in the campaign. Lieutenant-Colonel Gus Fair, commander of the Light Dragoons battle group, wrote in his diary afterwards that, as a result, people who had been subject to the rule of the Taliban could now live without the fear of them “visiting in the middle of the night”.

With some optimism he added that they now had “the freedom to vote … the chance to look forward to enjoy some of the rights and privileges that we are lucky enough to take for granted”.

In Babaji district, where the British claimed they had brought 80,000 villagers under government control during daylight hours at least, only 150 people cast their vote. “There were supposed to be three polling stations but they were closed,” said Sardar Mohammed, 54, who lives in the district. [continued…]

U.S. seeks overhaul in Kabul after vote
By Peter Siegel and Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2009

US officials are strategizing about how to persuade Afghan President Hamid Karzai to overhaul his government, which is widely viewed here as corrupt and ineffectual, if he wins a second term.

At the same time, some in Washington fear a runoff election could steal valuable time from the international efforts to stabilize the country. Both Mr. Karzai and his leading challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, have claimed significant leads.

Results of Thursday’s presidential balloting in Afghanistan may not be available until Tuesday. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, and a runoff is necessary, these U.S. officials said it could be Oct. 1 before there is a functioning government in Kabul. [continued…]

New leader of Pakistan’s Taliban is named, though officials believe he is dead
By Ismail Khan and Lydia Polgreen, New York Times, August 23, 2009

A senior leader of the Pakistani Taliban announced Saturday that a brash young commander with a reputation for pitiless violence appeared to have won the struggle to lead the group — even as the government wrestles with conflicting information about whether that commander is even alive.

Intelligence officials in Pakistan say that the newly proclaimed leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, is dead. But Pakistan’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, said Saturday in an interview that he was alive, although gravely injured, and that Taliban fighters were desperately searching for his younger brother as a stand-in.

The news on Saturday adds to the confusion that has surrounded the leadership of the group since its head, Baitullah Mehsud, was reportedly killed this month in a drone attack.

Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, deputy commander of the group, had proclaimed himself successor to Baitullah Mehsud just a few days ago. But on Saturday he told reporters by telephone that the much younger and more aggressive Hakimullah Mehsud would be the insurgency’s new leader. [continued…]

Inside the Taliban: ‘The more troops they send, the more targets we have’

Inside the Taliban: ‘The more troops they send, the more targets we have’
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, The Guardian, August 15, 2009

I Haqqani Taliban fighters nstead of the trademark Taliban uniforms of turbans, eyeliner and flip-flops, these men wore Russian and Nato poncho raincoats over their shalwars, and boots and trainers. Most striking was the way they held their guns. Instead of carrying them in the standard militia style, on their shoulders or holding them like walking sticks, they wore them strapped around their chests, one hand by the trigger and the other holding the muzzle down. They stood just like the Americans.

The stout commander, Mawlawi Jalali, sat surrounded by his men. One carried the white flag of the Taliban and another a video camera, which he kept pointed at me at all times.

“We are Afghans fighting the jihad and defending our country under the leadership of Jalaluddin Haqqani,” the commander said. He spoke in a schoolmasterly tone. As well as being a commander, Mawlawi Jalali is a teacher in Haqqani’s madrasa.

“The Americans toppled the emirate [of the Taliban] and we are fighting to bring it back. When the Taliban were here the jihad was only in Afghanistan. Now, thanks to the Americans, the jihad has spread to many other countries.”

How did he plan to pursue his holy war? “We use different tactics: mining the streets, fighting and direct attacks. Here in this camp we make all the preparations and have all the men we need for these different tactics.”

What about the new American surge, I asked. Did it concern him?

“We attack the towns, like in Wazi Zadran, where there is a strong American and Afghan garrison, and mine the streets every day. We average two or three attacks a day against the Americans and their allies. The more troops they send, the more targets we have, so it’s good.” [continued…]

Why Taliban leaders prefer dead diplomats
By Jason Burke, The Observer, August 16, 2009

Also, the Taliban do not get most of their money from narcotics, as is often said, but they receive a significant amount from private donors in the Gulf or elsewhere in the Islamic world who are much less keen to pay for violence directed at voting Afghans than strikes on western troops or their “stooges”.

So it makes sense that the Taliban, or in this case probably the allied insurgent group led by hardline cleric and warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, have preferred to launch the first genuinely spectacular strike since the beginning of the election campaign against a diplomatic western target.

As their spokesman explained, rather than hit the military, the Taliban would have preferred dead diplomats. Though a bomb outside the Isaf headquarters would show the insurgents’ ability to strike anywhere, their key target is international public opinion. Given the number of journalists and TV crews in the Afghan capital to cover the elections, a spectacular suicide bombing was always going to be an easy way of getting the media coverage that they need. [continued…]

Afghanistan passes ‘barbaric’ law diminishing women’s rights
By Jon Boone, The Guardian, August 14, 2009

Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.

The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.

“It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’ to a girl who was injured when he raped her,” the US charity Human Rights Watch said. [continued…]

Has Kandahar already fallen?

Has Kandahar already fallen?
By Erica Gaston, Huffington Post, August 10, 2009

In a week where security in Afghanistan seems headed anywhere but up (rocket strikes on Kabul, a Taliban frontal assault in Logar province today), the question on many a commentator’s lips has been: where is this all going?

Some of the strongest analysis on stabilizing Afghanistan recently has come from Andrew Exum who just took a break from his position at the Center for New American Security to act as some-time advisor to General McChrystal. I was struck by a comment he made in an interview on the World Politics Review:

“The fall of Kandahar is not going to look like the Taliban rolling down the streets in tanks. The fall of Kandahar is going to look like the Taliban steadily making ground with a campaign of fear and intimidation, and creating an environment in which the Afghan government can’t operate in Kandahar, and Kandahar eventually becomes ideologically inhospitable to the government of Afghanistan, never mind Coalition forces.”

I think Ex is dead on. But by that standard, I have to question: Has Kandahar already fallen? [continued…]

President Karzai’s supporters ‘buy’ votes for Afghanistan election
By Tom Coghlan, The Times, August 12, 2009

S Afghan election campaign upporters of President Karzai are preparing to rig voting in next week’s presidential elections in unstable parts of Afghanistan’s south as Taleban violence threatens to intimidate voters and hit turnout in his traditional support base.

The Times has talked to several witnesses whose reports will bolster suspicions within the international community that there will be electoral fraud across the south, some of it allegedly orchestrated by Mr Karzai’s half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai.

Such irregularities could threaten the credibility of the election process and have led to threats of violent demonstrations in the north if Mr Karzai is thought to have stolen the vote.

One tribal elder in the Marja district of Helmand alleged that the vote rigging was being organised by members of Mr Karzai’s family and local tribal allies, particularly Sher Mohammad Akhundzada, the former governor of the province. [continued…]

U.S. ambassador seeks more money for Afghanistan
By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe, Washington Post, August 12, 2009

The United States will not meet its goals in Afghanistan without a major increase in planned spending on development and civilian reconstruction next year, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul has told the State Department.

In a cable sent to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry said an additional $2.5 billion in nonmilitary spending will be needed for 2010, about 60 percent more than the amount President Obama has requested from Congress. The increase is needed “if we are to show progress in the next 14 months,” Eikenberry wrote in the cable, according to sources who have seen it.

Obama has asked for $68 billion in Defense Department spending in Afghanistan next year, an amount that for the first time would exceed U.S. military expenditures in Iraq. Spending on civilian governance and development programs has doubled under the Obama administration, to $200 million a month — equal to the monthly rate in Iraq during the zenith of spending on nonmilitary projects there. [continued…]

Life, death and the Taliban: War of ideas
By C.M. Sennott, GlobalPost, August 7, 2009

Almost daily, girls’ schools are burned and bombed and teachers, principals, students and their families receive what are known as “night letters,” Islamic decrees of death issued by the Taliban and pasted on homes and the walls of villages in the dead of night.

In just two years, more than 640 schools in Afghanistan and more than 350 in Pakistan have been bombed, burned or shut down, according to the education ministries in both countries. Eighty percent of those targeted were girls’ schools.

In the Helmand Province in the south of Afghanistan, where the Taliban is effectively in control of most of the province, 75 of the 228 schools have been shut down by Taliban militias that disapprove of the secular teaching and the idea of girls receiving an education. [continued…]

Afghan drug lords: targeted until proven innocent
By Stephen Walt, Foreign Policy, August 11, 2009

So first we expanded our forces in Afghanistan. Then we took on the challenge of prison reform there (ignoring the fact that America’s own prison system is a national disgrace). And yesterday we learned that U.S. armed forces are putting suspected Afghan drug dealers on a “kill or capture” list. In other words, we are now extending the “war on drugs” to Afghanistan, ignoring the fact that this “war” (first announced by Richard Nixon four decades ago) hasn’t led to victory. The new strategy also ignores some of the obvious lessons of that “war,” and places the United States on some pretty dubious moral ground. [continued…]

Pakistan denies militants attacked nuclear sites

Pakistan denies militants attacked nuclear sites
AP, August 12, 2009

A military spokesman denied a recent report that militants have attacked Pakistan’s nuclear facilities three times in two years, saying Wednesday there is “absolutely no chance” the country’s atomic weapons could fall into terrorist hands.

Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said an article written by a U.K.-based security expert was false because none of the bases named actually had any nuclear facilities.

“It is factually incorrect,” he said.

Taliban militants’ brief takeover of areas some 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the capital, Islamabad, raised new fears about the security of Pakistan’s atomic weapons being seized by extremists linked to al-Qaeda, although the country insists its arsenal is secure.

Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University’s Pakistan Security Research Unit, wrote that several militant attacks have already hit military bases where nuclear components are secretly stored. The article appeared in the July newsletter [PDF] of the Combating Terrorism Center of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. [continued…]

Karzai offers rival top Cabinet post in effort to avoid election defeat

Karzai offers rival top Cabinet post in effort to avoid election defeat
By Tom Coghlan and Jeremy Page, The Times, August 11, 2009

One of the three main contenders in Afghanistan’s presidential election admitted yesterday that he had been offered a power-sharing deal by President Karzai in an apparent attempt to sideline the other leading candidate and avoid a second-round vote.

Ashraf Ghani, a former academic and World Bank executive, told The Times that a “weakening” Mr Karzai had attempted to persuade him to abandon his campaign in exchange for the position of prime minister in a new Karzai administration.

Mr Ghani, who was Finance Minister in Mr Karzai’s first Cabinet, said that he was “listening” to the approaches from Mr Karzai’s intermediaries but was not giving up his campaign for the election on August 20. “An offer was made. It was for a position as ‘chief executive’ [in the Cabinet],” he said. “The details were not worked out. I am not discontinuing my election campaign.”

The proposed deal could seriously undermine the campaign of the other major contender in the election, Abdullah Abdullah, who is widely regarded as the main threat to Mr Karzai’s continued grip on power. [continued…]

Afghanistan enlists tribal militia forces
By Anand Gopal and Yochi J Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2009

The Afghan and U.S. governments have launched a new effort to enlist tribal fighters from many of the country’s most violent provinces in the war against the Taliban, hoping that a tactic first used in Iraq can help turn the tide here as well.

Thousands of armed tribal fighters from 18 Afghan provinces will initially be hired to provide security for elections on Aug. 20, officials from both countries said. If the security is effective, Afghan officials say they will try to give the tribesmen permanent jobs protecting their villages and neighborhoods.

The tribal initiative is being run by a new branch of the Afghan government called the Independent Directorate for the Protection of Highways and Public Property. In coming days, officials from the agency will ask tribal shuras, or councils, in participating provinces to organize armed militias to guard polling places, roads and public gathering spaces. [continued…]

Al-Qa’ida intervenes in battle for control of the Pakistan Taliban
By Omar Waraich and Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, August 11, 2009

Al-Qai’da militants may be trying to install their own “chief terrorist” to succeed Baitullah Mehsud as the head of the Pakistan Taliban following his death during a US drone strike, Pakistan’s top security official believes.

The head of the country’s interior ministry, Rehman Malik, said the Pakistan Taliban was in disarray following last week’s targeted killing of Mehsud and that in the ensuing uncertainty al-Qa’ida was using its influence to try to ensure it selected his replacement.

Mr Malik voiced his concern as Pakistan said it was trying to collect DNA evidence to conclusively confirm the Taliban commander’s death in the rugged and inaccessible wilds of Taliban-controlled South Waziristan. Pakistani authorities will try to compare a sample to the DNA of one of Mehsud’s brothers, killed in a previous strike. [continued…]

Taliban now winning

Taliban now winning
By Yochi J Dreazen and Peter Spiegel, Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2009

The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency’s spiritual home.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that means U.S. casualties, already running at record levels, will remain high for months to come.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the commander offered a preview of the strategic assessment he is to deliver to Washington later this month, saying the troop shifts are designed to better protect Afghan civilians from rising levels of Taliban violence and intimidation. The coming redeployments are the clearest manifestation to date of Gen. McChrystal’s strategy for Afghanistan, which puts a premium on safeguarding the Afghan population rather than hunting down militants. [continued…]

U.S. to hunt down Afghan drug lords tied to Taliban
By James Risen, New York Times, August 10, 2009

Fifty Afghans believed to be drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed, reflecting a major shift in American counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan, according to a Congressional study to be released this week.

United States military commanders have told Congress that they are convinced that the policy is legal under the military’s rules of engagement and international law. They also said the move is an essential part of their new plan to disrupt the flow of drug money that is helping finance the Taliban insurgency.

In interviews with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is releasing the report, two American generals serving in Afghanistan said that major traffickers with proven links to the insurgency have been put on the “joint integrated prioritized target list.” That means they have been given the same target status as insurgent leaders, and can be captured or killed at any time. [continued…]

Claims differ on Pakistani Taliban struggle
By Sabrina Tavernise and Pir Zubair Shah, New York Times, August 10, 2009

Contested claims continued Sunday over a reported falling out among factions struggling for control of the Pakistani Taliban, a day after Pakistani officials said they had news that the No. 2 figure in the militant group had been shot to death.

Pakistani officials said Saturday that Hakimullah Mehsud, a young and aggressive commander, had been shot dead in a fight with another leader, Waliur Rehman, during a meeting in a remote area of South Waziristan. The officials said the men were fighting over who would take over the Pakistani Taliban after the apparent death of the group’s supreme leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in an American drone airstrike on Wednesday.

But on Sunday, Reuters reported that in a phone call, Mr. Rehman denied that any special meeting or fight had occurred, and insisted that Hakimullah Mehsud was still alive. [continued…]

Afghanistan will take 40 years

General Sir David Richards: Afghanistan will take 40 years
By Michael Evans, The Times, August 8, 2009

Britain’s mission in Afghanistan could last for up to 40 years, the next head of the Army warns today in an exclusive interview with The Times.

General Sir David Richards, who becomes Chief of the General Staff on August 28, said: “The Army’s role will evolve, but the whole process might take as long as 30 to 40 years.”

He emphasised that British troop involvement, currently 9,000-strong, should only be needed for the medium term, but insisted that there was “absolutely no chance” of Nato pulling out. “I believe that the UK will be committed to Afghanistan in some manner — development, governance, security sector reform — for the next 30 to 40 years,” he said. [continued…]

The Taliban will survive Baitullah Mehsud
By Jason Burke, The Guardian, August 7, 2009

Behind the rise of Baitullah Mehsud in Pakistan lie factors that are not going to be resolved by a missile fired from a drone.

Firstly, there is the fusion of Pashtun tribal identity with a radical Islamic identity. The latter has only ever really thrived when grafted onto a sense of local belonging. Hamas in the Gaza Strip represent radical Islam and Palestinians. Al-Qaida in the Maghreb, about the only off-shoot of the terror group that is thriving at the moment, are, as their name suggests, firmly fixed on a real location. Al-Qaida in Iraq failed through being insufficiently Iraqi, reduced at the end to pretending leaders were from Baghdad when they were Egyptian. But the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) knew who they were and where they were from. They were Pashtuns from the Pakistani side of the frontier that has split their tribal lands for over a century.

In 1998 and 1999, I travelled widely in FATA (the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies or Areas) where the TTP and Mehsud were strongest. At the time, I met no hostility. In 2001, as bombs rained on Afghanistan, I travelled up into the Khyber Agency and was warned by Pashtun contacts that the Taliban’s war was their war. So, they added, was that waged by al-Qaida. This remains the case today. This intertwining of ethnic identity, religion and politics will take decades to undo. [continued…]

Reports: Deputy says Pakistan’s Mehsud is alive
By Nahal Toosi, AP, August 8, 2009

A deputy to Baitullah Mehsud claimed Saturday that the Pakistani Taliban chief was not killed by a CIA missile strike, contradicting another aide who confirmed Mehsud’s death a day earlier.

His claim, reported widely by Pakistani media, flies in the face of growing confidence among U.S. and Pakistani officials that Mehsud died, and it could be a tactical maneuver aimed at delaying a decision on who will succeed Mehsud.

Local intelligence officials acknowledged Saturday that the missile strike said to have killed the Taliban chief was carried out with Islamabad’s help, indicating growing coordination between the two countries despite Pakistan’s official disapproval of the strikes. [continued…]

New Taliban code: Don’t kill civilians, don’t take ransom

New Taliban code: Don’t kill civilians, don’t take ransom
By Issam Ahmed, Christian Science Monitor, July 31, 2009

US commanders in Afghanistan aren’t the only ones worried that civilian deaths are costing them hearts and minds. The Taliban, which has planted bombs in schools and occasionally burned its opponents alive, has put out a new code of conduct for militants that appears to be an attempt to project a softer image to the Afghan people.

The little blue booklet, “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s Rules for Mujahideen,” is sort of a Scouts codee for the Taliban. Approved by Mullah Omar, titular head of the Afghan Taliban. Mujahideen or “holy warriors” are urged not to discriminate on the basis of ethnicity and to always behave “properly” with civilians. Suicide-bombing should only be used on high-value targets, and avoiding civilian casualties is paramount, the booklet says.

“Every member of the Mujahideen must do their best to avoid civilian deaths, civilian injuries and damage to civilian property. Great care must be taken,” the booklet urges Taliban fighters. “Suicide attacks should only be used on high and important targets. A brave son of Islam should not be used for lower and useless targets.” [continued…]

Losing Afghanistan’s drug war
Christopher Dickey interviews Antonio Maria Costa, Newsweek, July 31, 2009

Why give up on poppy eradication?
Last year the Afghan government eradicated 5,000 hectares of about 159,000 that were cultivated. More than 70 military and militia men were killed and a couple of hundred million dollars were spent—tens of thousands of dollars per hectare—to destroy 3 percent of the crop. Eradication is supposed to have a double function: first, to reduce cultivation; and second, to deter farmers from planting. But nobody is deterred by a 3 percent risk. The money would be better spent on development assistance, like hospitals and schools.

You’ve suggested that Afghanistan produces much more opium than the world actually consumes.
Oh, yes. Since 2005 the Afghans have cultivated almost twice world demand. The bottom should have fallen out of the opium market. It has not. And we have been wondering what happened to the opium, where it is. Now, in a number of military operations in the southern provinces, NATO troops have found huge amounts, which is evidence that the Taliban have been sitting on huge stockpiles. [continued…]