Category Archives: war in Afghanistan

Muslim US Army psychiatrist displayed suspicious interest in how Muslim soldiers might think and feel

Fort Hood suspect warned of threats within the ranks
By Dana Priest, Washington Post, November 10, 2009

The Army psychiatrist believed to have killed 13 people at Fort Hood warned a roomful of senior Army physicians a year and a half ago that to avoid “adverse events,” the military should allow Muslim soldiers to be released as conscientious objectors instead of fighting in wars against other Muslims.

As a senior-year psychiatric resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Maj. Nidal M. Hasan was supposed to make a presentation on a medical topic of his choosing as a culminating exercise of the residency program.

Instead, in late June 2007, he stood before his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members and lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by The Washington Post.

“It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,” he said in the presentation.

“It was really strange,” said one staff member who attended the presentation and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the investigation of Hasan. “The senior doctors looked really upset” at the end. These medical presentations occurred each Wednesday afternoon, and other students had lectured on new medications and treatment of specific mental illnesses. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Repeat after me: “the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy,” said David Brooks as he swung a pendulum before Dana Priest’s sleepy eyes, mesmerizing and helping her settle into the appropriate mindset before she sat down to write this report.

I jest, but truly this is a despicable piece of “reporting”.

Hasan was supposed to make a presentation on a medical topic of his choosing but instead he lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.

What kind of audacity and burgeoning violent extremism would lead an American Muslim training as a military psychiatrist to talk about the moral and spiritual anguish that other American Muslim soldiers might face in wars where they would likely end up killing fellow Muslims or destroying their homes?

Surely the only concern of such a doctor must be that he be well-versed in the diagnostic criteria laid out in the DSM-IV — the bible of modern psychiatry — and that he knows how to prescribe drugs appropriately.

A young confused Muslim American soldier comes in for counseling, troubled about the prospect or reality of killing fellow Muslims.

What’s a well-trained psychiatrist going to say?

“Look son, you’re in an all-volunteer army. Next please.”

Afghanistan: Time to leave

Afghanistan: Time to leave
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, November 8, 2009

Britain should start withdrawing, not reinforcing, its troops in Afghanistan. Sending extra troops is unnecessary and will prove counter-effective. The additional number of British troops is small, but the US is poised to send tens of thousands more soldiers to the country. The nature of the conflict is changing. What should be a war in which the Afghan government
fights the Taliban has become one which is being fought primarily by the American and British armies. To more and more Afghans, this looks like imperial occupation.

With regard to disputes in Washington and London about sending more troops, it is seldom mentioned that Afghans are against the deployment. Contrary to Western plans, just 18 per cent of Afghans want more US and Nato/Isaf forces in Afghanistan, according to an opinion poll carried out earlier this year by the BBC, ABC News and ARD of Germany. A much greater number of Afghans – 44 per cent – want a decrease in foreign forces.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Taliban have been able to win some support. The cruelty of their rule before 2001 is becoming a distant memory and they are successfully portraying themselves as the defender of the country against foreign occupation. Matthew P Hoh, the senior American civilian representative in Zabul Province east of Kandahar, resigned last week convinced that the US military should not be in Afghanistan. As a former US marine officer who served in Iraq, he says in his resignation letter that the US has joined in on one side in a 35-year-old civil war between the traditional Pashtun community and its enemies. “The US military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency,” he says. “Our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people.” [continued…]

The Fort Hood massacre and questions of terrorism

Fort Hood gunman gave signals before his rampage
By James C McKinley Jr. and James Dao, New York Times, November 9, 2009

In late July, Major Hasan moved into a second-floor apartment on the north side of Killeen, paying $2,050 for his six-month lease up front, said the apartment manager, Alice Thompson. The two-story faded brick complex, Casa del Norte Apartments, has an open courtyard with exterior stairs and advertises move-in specials.

A few days later, Major Hasan bought an FN Herstal 5.7-millimeter pistol at a popular weapons store, Guns Galore, just off the highway that runs between the mosque that Major Hasan attended and the base, federal law enforcement officials said.

The tenants generally saw him leave early and come home late in the afternoon, usually in his fatigues. He never had visitors, they said, but he was friendly with his neighbors.

“The first day he moved in, he offered to give me a ride to work,” said Willie Bell, 51, who lived next door. “He’d give you the shoes and shirt and pants off him if you need it. Nicest guy you’d want to meet.

“The very first day I seen him, he hugged me like, ‘My brother, how you doing?’ ”

In mid-August, another tenant, a soldier who had served in Iraq, was angered by a bumper sticker on Major Hasan’s car proclaiming “Allah is Love” and ran his key the length of Major Hasan’s car. Ms. Thompson learned of it and told Major Hasan about it that night, and though he called the police, Major Hasan did not appear to be angered by it. [continued…]

Officials: U.S. aware of Hasan efforts to contact al Qaeda
By Richard Esposito, Matthew Cole and Brian Ross, ABC, November 9, 2009

US intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.

It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said.

One senior lawmaker said the CIA had, so far, refused to brief the intelligence committees on what, if any, knowledge they had about Hasan’s efforts.

CIA director Leon Panetta and the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, have been asked by Congress “to preserve” all documents and intelligence files that relate to Hasan, according to the lawmaker.

On Sunday, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) called for an investigation into whether the Army missed signs as to whether Hasan was an Islamic extremist.

“If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have a zero tolerance,” Lieberman told Fox News Sunday. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — If an investigation and Hasan’s own testimony eventually lead to the determination that the Fort Hood massacre was an act of terrorism — meaning, it was a premeditated attack whose victims were selected for political rather than personal reasons — then there already appears to be enough evidence to draw one conclusion: Hasan was a US Army major who became a terrorist and not a terrorist who joined the army.

If it is determined that this was an act of terrorism, then the next question will be: at what point did Hasan make the transition from being someone with profound misgivings about the wars; someone who suffered the indignities of being a target of anti-Muslim bigotry; to someone who wanted to use violence not merely to vent stored up rage but in order to send a message.

At this point, in spite of mounting anecdotal evidence that the killings were an act of terrorism, there is no unambiguous signature — a fact that suggests that not only in this particular case far more remains unknown than known, but that the linguistic clarity through which we are now so used to applying these terms “terrorist” and “terrorism”, point to something far more complex and far more difficult to define than the glib use of these words imply.

As a psychiatrist, one might expect that Hasan’s understanding of the workings of the human mind will make his own testimony unusually illuminating.

Unfortunately, we live in an era where the treatment of tortured psyches has been reduced to an often perfunctory practice in dispensing brain-numbing drugs. This was a physician who appears to have had no inkling how to treat himself. His case may ultimately present more questions than answers.

Obama leaning toward 34,000 more troops for Afghanistan

Obama leaning toward 34,000 more troops for Afghanistan
By Jonathan S. Landay, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy, November 7, 2009

President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to send more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, but he may not announce it until after he consults with key allies and completes a trip to Asia later this month, administration and military officials have told McClatchy.

As it now stands, the administration’s plan calls for sending three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. and a Marine brigade, for a total of as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.

Another 7,000 troops would man and support a new division headquarters for the international force’s Regional Command (RC) South in Kandahar, the Taliban birthplace where the U.S. is due to take command in 2010. Some 4,000 additional U.S. trainers are likely to be sent as well, the officials said. [continued…]

British army wants to retreat in Afghanistan
By Christina Lamb, Jonathan Oliver and Stephen Grey, The Sunday Times, November 8, 2009

Army chiefs are drawing up plans to withdraw British troops from outlying bases in Afghanistan.

In what would be a significant change of strategy against the growing Taliban insurgency, they are considering abandoning several bases including Musa Qala, the scene of bloody battles that claimed 15 British lives. Army forces would attempt to hold only the larger towns in Helmand province.

It is understood the new “retrenchment” strategy is backed by the head of the army, General Sir David Richards. [continued…]

Is it time for Britain to pull out of Afghanistan?
By Christina Lamb, The Sunday Times, November 8, 2009

In a week where one of the policemen being trained by British soldiers to protect his own country turned on his mentors and shot dead five in cold blood, an increasing number of people are asking what we are doing in Afghanistan and whether it is worth it.

Public opposition to the war has risen sharply: in a ComRes survey for the BBC published today, 64% said the war was “unwinnable” and 63% thought British troops should be withdrawn “as soon as possible”. In a YouGov poll last week for Channel 4, 35% of people thought all UK troops should be withdrawn immediately, up from 25% two weeks ago.

On radio phone-in and news programmes, discussion has been of little else. “There is a real chance we will lose this struggle in the bars and front rooms of Britain,” warned Lord Ashdown, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Among those now calling for a “fundamental rethink” is Kim Howells, chairman of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee and a former Foreign Office minister.

Howells last week wrote an article questioning whether spending £2.6 billion a year keeping troops in Afghanistan was the best way to protect national security. He called for a phased withdrawal and more focus on domestic spying.

Nobody doubts the courage and skill of the armed forces, or seeks to betray the memory of the fallen by walking away. But is it right to keep sending more? Or is it time we changed strategy or even pulled out? [continued…]

Fears of anti-Muslim backlash after Fort Hood massacre

Fears of anti-Muslim backlash after Fort Hood massacre
By Paul Woodward, The National, November 8, 2009

The shooting rampage by a US army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, at Fort Hood in Texas, came almost six months after the Camp Liberty killings in Iraq where an American army sergeant killed five fellow soldiers at a combat stress centre.

Maj Hasan, one of only 408 psychiatrists serving 553,000 active-duty US troops around the world, was likely to have worked in such a centre when sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Among the 13 killed on Thursday at the Fort Hood Readiness Centre, a soldier’s last stop before deployment, five were fellow therapists, the army said. [continued…]

Little evidence of terror plot in base killings
By David Johnston and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, November 8, 2009

After two days of inquiry into the mass shooting at Fort Hood, investigators have tentatively concluded that it was not part of a terrorist plot.

Rather, they have come to believe that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused in the shootings, acted out under a welter of emotional, ideological and religious pressures, according to interviews with federal officials who have been briefed on the inquiry.

Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that Major Hasan believed he was carrying out an extremist’s suicide mission. [continued…]

Prospect of more U.S. troops worries Afghan public

Prospect of more U.S. troops worries Afghan public
By Alissa J Rubin, New York Times, November 6, 2009

As Americans, including President Obama’s top advisers, tensely debate whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan, Afghans themselves are having a similar discussion and voicing serious doubts.

In bazaars and university corridors across the country, eight years of war have left people exhausted and impatient. They are increasingly skeptical that the Taliban can be defeated. Nearly everyone agrees that the Afghan government must negotiate with the insurgents. If more American forces do arrive, many here say, they should come to train Afghans to take over the fight, so the foreigners can leave.

“What have the Americans done in eight years?” asked Abdullah Wasay, 60, a pharmacist in Charikar, a market town about 25 miles north of Kabul, expressing a view typical of many here. “Americans are saying that with their planes they can see an egg 18 kilometers away, so why can’t they see the Taliban?” [continued…]

The generals’ revolt
By Robert Dreyfull, Rolling Stone, October 28, 2009

In early October, as President Obama huddled with top administration officials in the White House situation room to rethink America’s failing strategy in Afghanistan, the Pentagon and top military brass were trying to make the president an offer he couldn’t refuse. They wanted the president to escalate the war — go all in by committing 40,000 more troops and another trillion dollars to a Vietnam-like quagmire — or face a full-scale mutiny by his generals.

Obama knew that if he rebuffed the military’s pressure, several senior officers — including Gen. David Petraeus, the ambitious head of U.S. Central Command, who is rumored to be eyeing a presidential bid of his own in 2012 — could break ranks and join forces with hawks in the Republican Party. GOP leaders and conservative media outlets wasted no time in warning Obama that if he refused to back the troop escalation being demanded by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander overseeing the eight-year-old war, he’d be putting U.S. soldiers’ lives at risk and inviting Al Qaeda to launch new assaults on the homeland. The president, it seems, is battling two insurgencies: one in Afghanistan and one cooked up by his own generals. [continued…]

The Pentagon’s building boom in Afghanistan indicates a long war ahead
By Nick Turse, TomDispatch, November 5, 2009

In recent weeks, President Obama has been contemplating the future of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. He has also been touting the effects of his policies at home, reporting that this year’s Recovery Act not only saved jobs, but also was “the largest investment in infrastructure since [President Dwight] Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s.” At the same time, another much less publicized U.S.-taxpayer-funded infrastructure boom has been underway. This one in Afghanistan.

While Washington has put modest funding into civilian projects in Afghanistan this year — ranging from small-scale power plants to “public latrines” to a meat market — the real construction boom is military in nature. The Pentagon has been funneling stimulus-sized sums of money to defense contractors to markedly boost its military infrastructure in that country.

In fiscal year 2009, for example, the civilian U.S. Agency for International Development awarded $20 million in contracts for work in Afghanistan, while the U.S. Army alone awarded $2.2 billion — $834 million of it for construction projects. In fact, according to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, the Pentagon has spent “roughly $2.7 billion on construction over the past three fiscal years” in that country and, “if its request is approved as part of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, it would spend another $1.3 billion on more than 100 projects at 40 sites across the country, according to a Senate report on the legislation.” [continued…]

Fort Hood suspect was ‘mortified’ about deployment

Fort Hood suspect was ‘mortified’ about deployment
By James Dao, New York Times, November 6, 2009

Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.

But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.

He had also more recently expressed deep concerns about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — A few thoughts:

1. I’m a firm believer in the Occam’s-razor-school of journalism (if only it existed!), so the most obvious explanation for why this happened is also the most credible explanation — absent further evidence to the contrary.

2. Hasan, as reported above, desperately wanted to avoid being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. He had multiple compelling reasons not to want to go, but probably highest among those reasons was the fact that he’d spent a great deal of time counseling war casualties. Just imagine how many recruits the US military would get if every kid walking into a recruitment office was first told to spend a few weeks talking to victims of post-traumatic stress disorder as they recounted their fresh experiences of war!

3. Just as is the case with a guy who goes on a shooting spree after being ignored for a promotion or getting fired, this is not rational behavior. Even the rationale that he hoped to get killed in the process seems questionable. Hasan’s behavior suggests he flipped out, which is to say, his capacity to make rational judgments was overwhelmed by extraordinarily intense emotions.

4. It’s incredibly unfortunate that he happened to be a Muslim. Had he been a Southern Baptist, I don’t imagine the blogosphere would now be busy attempting to ascribe his behavior to his religious beliefs. Timothy McVeigh, while awaiting trial, said in an interview with Time that he was raised Catholic and maintained its core beliefs. No one has suggested that might account for what he did. In Hasan’s case, the existence of web postings by a “NidalHasan” reveal nothing unless it can first be established that they were indeed written by the shooter.

5. The idea that a human being can snap like this is profoundly disturbing to most people and the need to rationalize it in some way so that its recurrence appears less likely caters to our collective desire to live in a world that is more predictable than it actually is.

6. Assuming this guy recovers, whatever he has to say should prove more illuminating than anything that’s been said so far.

Afghanistan’s civil war

No insurgency here
By Nader Mousavizadeh, Foreign Policy, November 5, 2009

Two conclusions are inescapable from the fiasco of Afghanistan’s presidential elections and the McChrystal assessment: There is no electoral solution to Afghan government’s crisis of legitimacy, and there is no military solution to the challenge of the Taliban. And when observing the current Afghan conflict not from the perspective of America’s post-9/11 intervention, but from Afghanistan’s own quarter-century of warfare, a third conclusion becomes still more apparent: What we confront is not, in fact, an insurgency but rather a civil war — one whose resolution can only be found in a new decentralized Afghan politics based on the enduring, if ugly, realities of power there, and not through another decade of Western military intervention.

If there is one lesson to be drawn from the withdrawal of Hamid Karzai’s main rival from the second round of the elections — and his own subsequent appointment as president for another term — it is that the ability of outsiders to influence the existing politics of Afghanistan is now near zero, even when the object of our entreaties is a politician whose very existence has long depended entirely on Western support and funding. Like a patient rising from a hospital bed after a near-death experience only to rob his doctor blind on the way out the door, Karzai has conclusively demonstrated that his utility to Western interests — as well as to the Afghan people whom he’s grossly robbed of a chance for representative government — is over. [continued…]

UN relocates foreign staff in Afghanistan
By Alissa J Rubin, New York Times, November 6, 2009

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan announced plans on Thursday to relocate hundreds of foreign staff members, sending some out of the country, in the wake of a lethal attack on its workers at a guesthouse last week.

The relocation of its workers here, while temporary, is one more signal of mounting pressure on United Nations operations as security deteriorates around the region. The move comes four days after the United Nations announced that it was withdrawing its international workers from northwestern Pakistan, where insurgents are fighting Pakistani troops and have carried out a string of attacks.

In recent weeks, United Nations workers on both sides of the border have been singled out in deadly attacks, in what appears to be a deliberate campaign by insurgents to undercut international support for the embattled Afghan and Pakistani governments. [continued…]

Karzai’s top rival denounces Afghanistan’s new government

Karzai’s top rival denounces Afghanistan’s new government
By Alissa J Rubin, New York Times, November 5, 2009

The erstwhile rival to President Hamid Karzai in the presidential election’s second round held a news conference on Wednesday in which he denounced Mr. Karzai’s newly anointed administration as illegal and said that the government would be unable to cope with the problems facing Afghanistan, including security and corruption.

“Eight years of golden opportunity we have missed,” said the former presidential candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, referring to the money and lives spent by international forces.

Although his words were sharp, they were delivered in a measured tone with little rancor. At the news conference, held at his home, Mr. Abdullah said that he saw the flawed Aug. 20 election as finished and that he did not plan to continue his efforts to challenge the results. [continued…]

Afghan National Police penetrated by Taliban at ‘every level’
By Thomas Harding and James Kirkup, The Telegraph, November 5, 2009

The Afghan National Police have been penetrated by the Taliban “at every level” with officers poorly trained, corrupt and some addicted to drugs, a former Army officer has said.

Capt Doug Beattie, who served two tours in Afghanistan working with the ANP, said many police officers are in the paid of insurgents and were more loyal to their tribes than the Afghan government.

British officers say that among low-ranking Afghan police, and particularly in more rural areas away from central control, there is widespread corruption and disloyalty. [continued…]

McGovern: get out of Afghanistan

McGovern: get out of Afghanistan
By Narda Zacchino, Truthdig, November 4, 2009

George McGovern has some advice for President Barack Obama: Get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

“I’m convinced that war is going to turn sour. I’m convinced we’re not going to prevail there,” McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, said Sunday at a Truthdig event in West Los Angeles.

The former U.S. senator from South Dakota noted that “some of the best reporters over there are telling us that the Taliban are getting stronger and we’re getting weaker in the minds of the people, and that you have a corrupt government involved in drugs, involved in just plain old-fashioned stealing and corruption. It’s a lousy government, and it’s very difficult, even for a great country like [the U.S.], to make them look good. So I think we have every reason to withdraw.” [continued…]

Afghan police officer kills five British soldiers
By Alissa J Rubin and Alan Cowell, New York Times, November 4, 2009

A rogue Afghan policeman shot and killed five British soldiers in southern Helmand Province on Tuesday and escaped, the British military said Wednesday. It was one of the highest British tolls from a single attack since the Afghanistan invasion eight years ago.

About the same time, militants attacked on the other side of the checkpoint, and during subsequent fighting a fire broke out. As residents tried to put out the blaze, warplanes attacked the militants and killed five civilians. It was not clear whether the two attacks had been coordinated.

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, told the House of Commons that the Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attack on the soldiers, which brought the British death toll in the Afghanistan war this year to 92, the highest single-year loss sustained by British forces since the Falklands conflict in 1982. Mr. Brown said insurgents may have infiltrated the rogue officer’s unit. [continued…]

Who wants to die for Obama?

One-term president?
By Gary Wills, New York Review of Books Blog, November 3, 2009

I am told by people I respect that Barack Obama cannot pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan without becoming a one-term president. I think that may be true. The charges from various quarters would be toxic—that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure. All that would indeed be brought against him, and he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate.

These are the arguments that have kept us in losing efforts before. They are the ones that made presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon pass on to their successors in the presidency the draining and self-lacerating Vietnam War. They are the arguments that made President George W. Bush pass on two wars to his successor.

One of the strongest arguments for continued firing up of these wars is that none of these presidents wanted to serve only one term (even Lyndon Johnson, who chose not to run for a second full term). But what justification is there for buying a second presidential term with the lives of hundreds or thousands of young American men and women in the military? [continued…]

Hollow victory
By John Mearsheimer, Foreign Policy, November 2, 2009

The conventional wisdom among most Republicans is that while the United States had serious difficulty in Vietnam during the early years, by the early 1970s things were turning around, and victory was on the verge. Unfortunately, the craven Democrats in Congress bowed to widespread anti-war sentiment and forced the Ford administration to end almost all support to South Vietnam, allowing the North Vietnamese to win the war in 1975. In the GOP version of the story, this decision was a disastrous mistake.

There has been a lot of talk lately about what the Vietnam War tells us about Afghanistan. According to the Republicans, the United States is once again at the crossroads of losing another critical war because of feckless Democrats, only this time in Afghanistan. They contend that while, yes, the United States has mismanaged the war over the past eight years, Washington has now found a formidable military leader in General Stanley McChrystal. He knows how to defeat the Taliban and keep al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. However, the major obstacle he faces isn’t in Afghanistan, it’s here at home: the American public is war-weary and the Democrats — who control both Congress and the White House — have no enthusiasm for the greater sacrifices that General McChrystal recommends.

This narrative is unconvincing for at least two reasons. First, the United States was not close to victory in Vietnam by the early 1970s, because the South Vietnamese army could not stand on its own. This was manifestly apparent in 1971 when that army invaded Laos and was badly chewed up by North Vietnamese ground forces. To stand any chance of holding off Hanoi’s offensives, the South Vietnamese army needed massive amounts of American airpower, which effectively meant that the U.S. military would have to continue fighting in Vietnam indefinitely just to maintain a stalemate. That hardly qualifies as being on “the brink” of victory.

In Afghanistan, there is little reason to think that the United States can decisively defeat the Taliban, mainly because they can melt into the countryside or go to Pakistan whenever they are outgunned, returning to fight another day (just as they did after the initial U.S. victory in 2001). Furthermore, the Karzai regime, corrupt and incompetent, stands little chance of ever truly being able to rule the country and keep the Taliban at bay, which means that the American military will have to stay there to do the job for many years to come.

But even if success was at hand in Vietnam and the United States could in the near future win quickly in Afghanistan, there is a second and more important flaw in the Republican narrative: Victory is inconsequential. [continued…]

Fareed Zakaria interviews Matthew Hoh

Fareed Zakaria interviews Matthew Hoh
Fareed Zacharia GPS, CNN, November 1, 2009

(The CNN embedded video above works in IE, Chrome but not Firefox.)

Matthew Hoh: The first place where I really had — where this was codified for me and where I started to understand what we were doing and how we were involved — the Korengal Valley, which I’m sure a lot of your viewers are familiar with. It’s been on the cover of TIME Magazine. The “New York Times” refers to it as the valley of death. Off the top of my head, unfortunately, I can’t remember how many American soldiers we have lost there, but it’s probably 30 or 40.

This is a valley, I don’t know, 15, 20 kilometers long. There’s only 10,000 people in it. They speak their own language. They speak Korengali. In the year 2009 we have a valley with people who speak their own language. Their only trade is the timber trade. And when they move their timber, they don’t even leave their valley. Most of the time, I believe, they just take it to the Mazar Valley, and a middleman picks it up and brings it to Pakistan for them.

We show up. We enter their valley. We occupy the richest man’s timber mill. And then we bring in Afghan army and Afghan police, who aren’t from there.

And then what do we do? Then we have the Afghan police and Afghan army. They say to the Korengalis, they say, “These mountains here that your families have been cutting trees down, sustaining yourselves for hundreds of years, you don’t own them. The central government does. And you have to pay tax on that.”

I’m not sure how many people anywhere else in the world wouldn’t take up arms against something like that.

And so, and for every Korengal we’re in, like I said before, there’s a hundred we’re not. And there’s like — and that would happen in those other valleys, the same thing, too, in the south. [Interview transcript]

Korengal village

Editor’s Comment — The “valleyism” that Hoh describes contains a crucial message for Americans considering the war in Afghanistan: this is a quagmire far more complex than Vietnam since America and its allies have sparked a thousand wars.

But perhaps more important than this military observation is the way the concept of valleyism should transform the value judgments outsiders make about Afghans and the land they inhabit.

What foreign armies and policymakers are up against is an incomparable level of adaptation where the non-transferable governing force is local knowledge — the means through which Afghans have made their homes in a land that others find utterly inhospitable.

In an analysis for the New York Times, David Sanger talks about Hamid Karzai as a flawed vessel in which the West had invested its hopes that Afghanistan could be saved and that Karzai could be re-legitimized through an election:

The question was whether that vote would demonstrate that a desolate nation that has always been at the mercy of larger powers would show it could find its own way.

In this image of a “desolate nation” that has yet to “find its own way,” there isn’t even an inkling that in many ways Afghanistan, as a patchwork of local communities, has found its own way admirably. Its greatest problem is that this is a way that few outsiders appreciate — especially those coming from a nation where human worth is so often measured by the size of someone’s bank balance.

As Rory Stewart says: “In every case, Afghans are more competent, more canny, more capable than we acknowledge, and we are less so.”

With Karzai, U.S. faces weak partner in time of war
By David E Sanger, New York Times, November 2, 2009

With the White House’s reluctant embrace on Sunday of Hamid Karzai as the winner of Afghanistan’s suddenly moot presidential runoff, President Obama now faces a new complication: enabling a badly tarnished partner to regain enough legitimacy to help the United States find the way out of an eight-year-old war.

It will not be easy. As the evidence mounted in late summer that Mr. Karzai’s forces had sought to win re-election through widespread fraud to defeat his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, administration officials made no secret of their disgust. How do you consider sending tens of thousands of additional American troops, they asked in meetings in the White House, to prop up an Afghan government regarded as illegitimate by many of its own people?

The answer was supposed to be a runoff election. Now, administration officials argue that Mr. Karzai will have to regain that legitimacy by changing the way he governs, at a moment when he is politically weaker than at any time since 2001.

“We’re going to know in the next three to six months whether he’s doing anything differently — whether he can seriously address the corruption, whether he can raise an army that ultimately can take over from us and that doesn’t lose troops as fast as we train them,” one of Mr. Obama’s senior aides said. He insisted on anonymity because of the confidentiality surrounding the Obama administration’s own debate on a new strategy, and the request by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan, for upward of 44,000 more troops.

“Needless to say,” the senior aide added, “this is not where we wanted to be after nine months.”

That is a huge understatement. [continued…]

Why all the president’s Afghan options are bad ones
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, November 1, 2009

In the worst of times, my father always used to say, “A good gambler cuts his losses.” It’s a formulation imprinted on my brain forever. That no-nonsense piece of advice still seems reasonable to me, but it doesn’t apply to American war policy. Our leaders evidently never saw a war to which the word “more” didn’t apply. Hence the Afghan War, where impending disaster is just an invitation to fuel the flames of an already roaring fire.

Here’s a partial rundown of news from that devolving conflict: In the last week, Nuristan, a province on the Pakistani border, essentially fell to the Taliban after the U.S. withdrew its forces from four key bases. Similarly in Khost, another eastern province bordering Pakistan where U.S. forces once registered much-publicized gains (and which Richard Holbrooke, now President Obama’s special envoy to the region, termed “an American success story”), the Taliban is largely in control. It is, according to Yochi Dreazen and Anand Gopal of the Wall Street Journal, now “one of the most dangerous provinces” in the country. Similarly, the Taliban insurgency, once largely restricted to the Pashtun south, has recently spread fiercely to the west and north. At the same time, neighboring Pakistan is an increasingly destabilized country amid war in its tribal borderlands, a terror campaign spreading throughout the country, escalating American drone attacks, and increasingly testy relations between American officials and the Pakistani government and military. [continued…]

Military refines a ‘constant stare against our enemy’

Military refines a ‘constant stare against our enemy’
By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2009

The Pentagon plans to dramatically increase the surveillance capabilities of its most advanced unmanned aircraft next year, adding so many video feeds that a drone which now stares down at a single house or vehicle could keep constant watch on nearly everything that moves within an area of 1.5 square miles.

The year after that, the capability will double to 3 square miles.

Military officials predict that the impact on counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan will be impressive.

“Predators and other unmanned aircraft have just revolutionized our ability to provide a constant stare against our enemy,” said a senior military official. “The next sensors, mark my words, are going to be equally revolutionary.”

Unmanned MQ-9 Reaper aircraft now produce a single video feed as they fly continuously over surveillance routes, and the area they can cover largely depends on altitude. The new technology initially will increase the number of video feeds to 12 and eventually to 65.

Like the Reaper and its earlier counterpart, the Predator, the newest technology program has been given a fearsome name: the Gorgon Stare, named for the mythological creature whose gaze turns victims to stone.

Unmanned aircraft, used both for surveillance and for offensive strikes, are considered the most significant advance in military technology in a generation. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — This “advance” promotes and rests upon the core delusion of the modern era: that what can be seen is more real and more significant than what cannot be seen.

Yet consider how much inevitably eludes the “constant stare” of a drone: names, relationships, intentions, history — everything that transforms the gray shapes of human figures appearing on a drone controller’s monitor, into living breathing human beings. And here’s a prediction: one advance that’s unlikely to be made will be that these images are improved from black and white to color. In color, operatives would have to deal with the sight of blood.

And this leads to the other key dimension of high-tech killing: “The technology allows us to project power without vulnerability,” said a senior Defense official.

In other words, America’s most highly evolved warriors are able to kill without the slightest risk of being killed.

Callousness will soon be worth more to the Pentagon than courage.

Afghan challenger drops out of runoff election

Afghan challenger drops out of runoff election
AP, November 1, 2009

President Hamid Karzai’s challenger withdrew Sunday from next weekend’s runoff election, effectively handing the incumbent a victory but raising doubts about the government’s credibility at a time when the U.S. is seeking an effective partner in the war against the Taliban.

Former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said he made his decision after Karzai turned down his demands for changes to the Independent Election Commission and other measures that he said would prevent massive fraud, which marred the first round of balloting on Aug. 20.

Abdullah stopped short of calling for an electoral boycott and urged his followers “not to go to the streets, not to demonstrate.” [continued…]

U.S. combat injuries rise sharply
By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, 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. [continued…]

Afghanistan doesn’t need more troops

Afghanistan doesn’t need more troops
By David Adams and Ann Marlowe, Wall Street Journal, October 28, 2009

From the beginning of 2007 to March 2008, the 82nd Airborne Division’s strategy in Khost proved that 250 paratroopers could secure a province of a million people in the Pashtun belt. The key to success in Khost—which shares a 184 kilometer-long border with Pakistan’s lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas—was working within the Afghan system. By partnering with closely supervised Afghan National Security Forces and a competent governor and subgovernors, U.S. forces were able to win the support of Khost’s 13 tribes.

Today, 2,400 U.S. soldiers are stationed in Khost. But the province is more dangerous.

Mohammed Aiaz, a 32-year-old Khosti advising the Khost Provincial Reconstruction Team, puts it plainly: “The answer is not more troops, which will put Afghans in more danger.” If troops don’t understand Afghan culture and fail to work within the tribal system, they will only fuel the insurgency. When we get the tribes on our side, that will change. When a tribe says no, it means no. IEDs will be reported and no insurgent fighters will be allowed to operate in or across their area.

Khost once had security forces with tribal links. Between 1988 and 1991, the Soviet client government in Kabul was able to secure much of eastern and southern Afghanistan by paying the tribal militias. Khost was secured by the 25th Division of the Afghan National Army (ANA), which incorporated militias with more than 400 fighters from five of Khost’s 13 major tribes. The mujahedeen were not able to take Khost until internal rifts among Pashtuns in then-President Mohammed Najibullah’s government resulted in a loss of support for the militias in Khost and, eventually, the defection of the 25th Division in April 1991. [continued…]

Obama seeks study on local leaders for troop decision
By Scott Wilson and Greg Jaffe, Washington Post, October 29, 2009

President Obama has asked senior officials for a province-by-province analysis of Afghanistan to determine which regions are being managed effectively by local leaders and which require international help, information that his advisers say will guide his decision on how many additional U.S. troops to send to the battle.

Obama made the request in a meeting Monday with Vice President Biden and a small group of senior advisers helping him decide whether to expand the war. The detail he is now seeking also reflects the administration’s turn toward Afghanistan’s provincial governors, tribal leaders and local militias as potentially more effective partners in the effort than a historically weak central government that is confronting questions of legitimacy after the flawed Aug. 20 presidential election. [continued…]

More schools, not troops
By Nicholas D Kristof, New York Times, October 29, 2009

Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad one, most likely a waste of lives and resources that might simply empower the Taliban. In particular, one of the most compelling arguments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there.

It’s hard to do the calculation precisely, but for the cost of 40,000 troops over a few years — well, we could just about turn every Afghan into a Ph.D.

The hawks respond: It’s naïve to think that you can sprinkle a bit of education on a war-torn society. It’s impossible to build schools now because the Taliban will blow them up.

In fact, it’s still quite possible to operate schools in Afghanistan — particularly when there’s a strong “buy-in” from the local community.

Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea,” has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed. The aid organization CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban. The Afghan Institute of Learning, another aid group, has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with none closed by the Taliban (although local communities have temporarily suspended three for security reasons). [continued…]

Reported ties from CIA to a Karzai spur rebukes
By Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, October 29, 2009

Senior lawmakers from both parties on Wednesday criticized what American officials said were financial ties between the Central Intelligence Agency and Ahmed Wali Karzai, a brother of the Afghan president, with one top Democrat suggesting that intelligence officials had misled him about Mr. Karzai’s role in Afghanistan’s opium trade.

The Democrat, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, demanded that members of Congress receive “untainted” information about Mr. Karzai’s drug connections in light of a news report that Mr. Karzai was on the C.I.A. payroll. [continued…]

Brother of Afghan leader is said to be on CIA payroll

Brother of Afghan leader is said to be on CIA payroll
By Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, New York Times, October 28, 2009

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. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Andrew Exum says this is the most important article on Afghanistan you’ll read this week:

Why, you ask? Because if this is true, and if the CIA is empowering Ahmed Wali Karzai at the same time in which NATO/ISAF is saying abusive local power-brokers are a threat to mission success, then this is yet another example of NATO/ISAF carrying out one campaign in Afghanistan while the CIA carries out another — with both campaigns operating at cross purposes to one another. I should say here that I am in no position to confirm or deny this report. I can, however, say that numerous military officials in southern Afghanistan with whom I have spoken identify AWK and his activities as the biggest problem they face — bigger than the lack of government services or even the Taliban. And so if AWK is “the agency’s guy”, that leads to a huge point of friction between NATO/ISAF and the CIA.

At some point, the CIA’s Congressional overseers — who’ve already complained that they have been misled by the agency on multiple occasions — should start asking some fundamental questions about the institution.

In this decade the CIA has had a central role in the biggest intelligence failure the US has ever had; it has implemented a torture program; operated ghost prisons; conducted kidnapping operations; and provided support for drug warlords. The list could I’m sure be made much longer. At what point will the conclusion be drawn that this Cold War anachronism does more to threaten than protect America’s national security?

Gunmen attack UN workers in Kabul
By Sabrina Tavernise and Sangar Rahimi, New York Times, October 28, 2009

Taliban gunmen stormed a guest house in central Kabul on Wednesday morning, killing six United Nations employees and two Afghan security officials, according to U.N. officials, the police and the Afghan Interior Ministry.

One of those killed was an American security guard who battled the attackers as they came through the front gate in the predawn hours, according to an American who was staying in the guest house and who joined in the gun battle before shepherding 25 other residents to safety.

The police said one of the victims, a woman, had been shot in the head, and another burned to death. A cellphone video taken by a security official and seen by a reporter showed just the head and torso of a third victim, apparently cut in half when one of the attackers detonated his suicide vest. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — While the Taliban say this attack is intended to deter people from assisting in the November 7 runoff election it clearly also challenges the concept of a strategy based on protecting the most populated parts of Afghanistan. Reinforce the perception that the center of Kabul is unsafe and it gets hard to promote the idea that anywhere can be made safe.

Add to that the fact that the Taliban has the upper hand even when outnumbered by 12 to 1 and the argument that tens of thousands more American troops will enhance security becomes increasingly implausible.

A crash course in democracy
By J. Scott Carpenter, Foreign Policy, October 21, 2009

The decision by both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his main rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, to accept a runoff election is a welcome development that provides the Afghan government with an opportunity to restore its damaged credibility. The runoff election now faces two main challenges: making the process more credible and ensuring the election actually contributes to security. Setting Nov. 7 as the date for the election makes both impossible.

Nationwide elections in any country are logistically difficult. In Afghanistan, they’re a nightmare. Funds need to be mobilized (the last elections cost more than $500 million), new poll workers need to be hired (or fired), observers have to be recruited, voters reassured, and security forces redeployed. Because ballots are often transported by donkey, it could take weeks to distribute them to Afghanistan’s remotest areas. A mad rush will be the only way to get all of this done, and such haste will not contribute to a credible process.

The first step in ensuring a credible election, therefore, is to postpone the date for the runoff. [continued…]

A letter from Afghanistan that every American must read

A letter from Afghanistan that every American must read
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, October 27, 2009

“… I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. 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. To put simply: I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures or resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.” From Matthew P Hoh, Senior Civilian Representative, Zabul Province, Afghanistan, in his letter of resignation to the State Department.

For weeks, President Obama and his advisers in the White House and from the Pentagon have been wrestling over the formulation of a revised strategy for Afghanistan. Central to that debate has been the question of how to respond to Gen Stanley McChrystal’s request for tens of thousands more American troops.

But perhaps the most important question — one which the president and his advisers have no doubt studiously avoided asking — is whether this war is worth fighting.

Matthew Hoh, a former US Marine captain who fought in Iraq, and who later served as a civilian State Department representative in the Zabul province of Afghanistan, in a letter of resignation submitted in early September, provided a definitive statement on the war’s failure — in its conception, its execution, and its aims. Rarely, if ever, has such an damning indictment of this war been so clearly and powerfully expressed.

The Washington Post reported:

The reaction to Hoh’s letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials, concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay.

U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer,” Holbrooke said in an interview. “We all thought that given how serious his letter was, how much commitment there was, and his prior track record, we should pay close attention to him.”

The Post has published Hoh’s letter in a printable format [PDF] which is likely to result in the whole letter not being widely read. In order to encourage readers to absorb the full force of this testimony, I’ve reproduced the letter in full below — the only place (as far as I’m aware) that it can currently be found on the web in a user-friendly format.

“We are spending ourselves into oblivion”
By Matthew P Hoh, Senior Civilian Representative, Zabul Province, Afghanistan, September 10, 2009

Dear Ambassador Powell,

It is with great regret and disappointment I submit my resignation from my appointment as a Political Officer in the Foreign Service and my post as the Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. Government in Zabul Province. I have served six of the previous ten years in service to our country overseas, to include deployment as a U.S. Marine officer and Department of Defense civilian in the Euphrates and Tigris River Valleys of Iraq in 2004-2005 and 2006-2007. I did not enter into this position lightly or with any undue expectations nor did I believe my assignment would be without sacrifice hardship or difficulty. However, in the course of my five months of service in Afghanistan, in both Regional Commands East and South, I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. 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. To put simply: I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures or resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.

This fall will mark the eighth year of U.S. combat, governance and development operations within Afghanistan. Next fall, the United States’ occupation will equal in length the Soviet Union’s own physical involvement in Afghanistan. Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people.

If the history or Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United States is no more than a supporting actor, among several previously, in a tragedy that not only pits tribes, valleys, clans, villages and families against one another, but, from at least the end of King Zahir Shah’s reign, has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modem of Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional. It is this latter group that composes and supports the Pashtun insurgency. The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, 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 and operations 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. In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.

The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency. In a like manner our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people. 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 strongmen allied to 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 election process dominated by fraud and discredited by low voter turnout, which has 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.

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 whose nationalism we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War ideology.

I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan. If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan where we rightly fear a toppled or weakened Pakistani government may lose control of nuclear weapons. However, again, to follow the logic of our stated goals we should garrison Pakistan, not Afghanistan. More so, the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries. Finally, if our concern is for a failed state crippled by corruption and poverty and under assault from criminal and drug lords, then if we bear our military and financial contributions to Afghanistan, we must reevaluate our commitment to and involvement in Mexico.

Eight years into war, no nation has ever known a more dedicated, well trained, experienced and disciplined military as the U.S. Armed Forces. I do not believe any military force has ever been tasked with such a complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission as the U.S. military has received in Afghanistan. The tactical proficiency and performance of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines is unmatched and unquestioned. However, this is not the European or Pacific theaters of World War II, but rather is a war for which our leaders, uniformed, civilian and elected, have inadequately prepared and resourced our men and women. Our forces, devoted and faithful, have committed to conflict in an indefinite and unplanned manner that has become a cavalier, politically expedient and Pollyannaish misadventure. Similarly, the United States has a dedicated and talented cadre of civilians, both U.S. government employees and contractors, who believe in and sacrifice for their mission, but have been ineffectually trained and led with guidance and intent shaped more by the political climate in Washington, D.C. than in Afghan cities, villages, mountains and valleys.

“We are spending ourselves into oblivion” a very talented and intelligent commander, one of America’s best, briefs every visitor, staff delegation and senior officer. We are mortgaging our Nation’s economy on a war, which, even with increased commitment, will remain a draw for years to come. Success and victory, whatever they may be, will be realized not in years, after billions more spent, but in decades and generations. The United States does not enjoy a national treasury for such success and victory.

I realize the emotion and tone of my letter and ask you excuse any ill temper. I trust you understand the nature of this war and the sacrifices made by so many thousands of families who have been separated from loved ones deployed in defense of our Nation and whose homes bear the fractures, upheavals and scars of multiple and compounded deployments. Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds, some that will never heal or will only worsen with time. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who 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 anymore be made. As such, l submit my resignation.

Sincerely,

Matthew P. Hoh
Senior Civilian Representative
Zabul Province, Afghanistan

cc:
Mr. Frank Ruggiero
Ms. Dawn Liberi
Ambassador Anthony Wayne
Ambassador Karl Eikenberry

This letter was addressed to:
Ambassador Nancy J. Powell
Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW

Rory Stewart: The T. E. Lawrence of Afghanistan – UPDATED

Rory Stewart: The T. E. Lawrence of Afghanistan
By Jason Zengerle, The New Republic, October 24, 2009

What would [Rory] Stewart’s version of muddling through in Afghanistan look like? While General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency plan calls for more than 100,000 American troops, and Joe Biden’s bare-bones counterterrorism proposal reportedly keeps troop numbers around their current level of 68,000, Stewart believes the foreign-troop presence in Afghanistan should actually be reduced–all the way down to 20,000. Those troops would then be used exclusively to fight Al Qaeda terrorists; the Taliban would no longer be an enemy. At the same time, while Stewart’s plan envisions continued aid to Afghans to support electricity, water, health, education, and agriculture development, the United States would cease with its state-building project and essentially leave the Kabul government to its own devices.

Stewart’s plan stems from his strange mixture of pessimism and optimism. On the one hand, he argues that the Afghan central government lacks the strength or legitimacy to actually run the country, nor does he have much faith in the ability of the United States to help it on those counts. “I have some friends in Afghanistan who will say, ‘If the U.S. government is infinitely flexible, capable, superbly informed, able to deliver programs precisely in every rural area, and its soldiers are able to avoid killing anybody and can identify exactly which tribal chief at the sub-district level to deal with, everything will be fine,’” Stewart says. “To which my answer is, ‘That’s a big if, and that’s not how our bureaucracies and administrations work.'” But Stewart also believes that things in Afghanistan aren’t as precarious as some fear. “There’s a certain kind of worst-case scenario view that Afghanistan is like this horrendous nightmare and, if we don’t get in there and sort it out, we’ll have global jihad, we’ll have a completely destabilized region, terrorists will have their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, American credibility will be finished forever,” Stewart says. “And these are not really, I think, fully developed positions.”

Under a “muddling through” plan, Stewart concedes that the Taliban might take some provincial capitals in Southern Afghanistan, but he believes that the Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek populations are stronger than they were in 1996 and, thus, would be able to keep the Taliban out of their areas. He also thinks it would take a minimal foreign military presence to prevent the Taliban from marching into Kabul. With the Taliban confined to certain parts of Afghanistan and its ability to exploit the ideology of religious resistance lessened due to the absence of a substantial foreign military presence, the rest of the country would, with substantial foreign assistance, be able to develop. Although his walk across Afghanistan led Stewart to believe that the country is, in some respects, ungovernable, it also gave him great faith in individual Afghans, on whom he depended for food, lodging, and frequently directions. (He didn’t carry a detailed map on his trek, since it might have made people think he was a British spy.) “We do consistently overestimate our own capacity and underestimate the capacity of others,” he says. “In every case, Afghans are more competent, more canny, more capable than we acknowledge, and we are less so.” [continued…]

UPDATE: Editor’s Comment — Readers who have been following the extraordinary career of Rory Stewart may be interested to hear that yesterday he took the first step in the next chapter: he was selected as the Conservative Party candidate for the English constituency of Penrith and The Border. This is a safe Conservative seat and with the Labour Party struggling in the polls, Stewart stands a good chance of not only entering Parliament after the next general election in Britain but quite likely gaining a position in the next British government. Talent is no guarantee of success in politics, but it will be interesting to see how far Stewart advances and what he might accomplish.

Taliban demand election boycott
By Anand Gopal, Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2009

The Taliban called on Afghans to boycott the upcoming presidential elections runoff and threatened to attack polling sites, sparking fears that thousands of voters will stay home on election day.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan urges the people of Afghanistan to not participate in the elections, and once again prove that they are true believers,” the group said in a statement emailed to the Wall Street Journal, using a name referring to the Taliban and allied groups.

“All mujahedeen are ordered to do their best to disrupt the elections and carry out attacks on enemy outposts and prevent people from going to the polling centers,” the statement continued. The group hinted that they would target election workers and voters. “If anyone, including the participants and the workers, gets harmed they have only themselves to blame, since the Islamic Emirate warned them in advance.” [continued…]

Afghan challenger considers runoff boycott
By Joshua Partlow and Pamela Constable, Washington Post, October 26, 2009

The challenger to President Hamid Karzai is considering boycotting the upcoming runoff if his demands are not met to remove the leaders of Afghanistan’s election commission who he believes are biased against him, campaign officials said Sunday.

Despite his public promises that he will participate in the Nov. 7 runoff, Abdullah Abdullah has been discussing the possibility of pulling out, an outcome that could create a new political crisis and throw the legitimacy of any new government into question. His aides argue that it would be dangerous to enter an election that might reproduce the massive fraud that discredited the vote in August.

Abdullah’s main running mate, Homayoun Shah Assefy, said that it was clear that the United States and the international community would resist such a boycott but that it might be necessary if the Independent Election Commission is not purged of its prominent Karzai supporters. [continued…]