Afghanistan News and Discussions

[ppgj]

continued from post #58 ......... http://www.defenceforum.in/forum/so...afghanistan-news-discussions-2.html#post98046 .

A related event is President Asif Ali Zardari?s handing over control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal to Prime Minister Gilani in an apparent bid to ease political pressure. According to analysts the move was to placate political and military critics, as an amnesty protecting Mr. Zardari from possible prosecution from National Reconciliation Ordinance expired. The amnesty gave him and several others immunity from corruption charges. It is doubtful if the transfer of nuclear command would necessarily assuage international concern over Pak nuclear assets falling into “wrong hands” defined as usurpation of national authority by domestic militants or by sociopath hard core India haters who would start a nuclear war with India irrespective of disastrous consequences for Pakistan itself.

In order to avoid this armageddon the international community has to think ahead of preventive measures that can be taken. The situation becomes serious in the light of the report that Pakistan faces a "demographic disaster" if its leaders fail to invest in a youth population that is disturbingly cynical about democracy. The report, commissioned by the British Council, said Pakistan is at the crossroads and its younger generation is losing faith in democracy. The report says that the nuclear-armed country is at a critical point, with its population forecast to swell by 85 million, from its current 180 million, over the next two decades. Half of Pakistan's population is aged fewer than 20, with two-thirds still to reach their 30th birthday. But they are deeply divided about how the country should be run. Only a third believes democracy is the best system of governance, one third support sharia law, while 7 per cent think dictatorship is a good idea.

An Indian newspaper reports that a majority of Pakistanis see the United States as a greater threat to their country than traditional arch-rival India or the dreaded Taliban. According to Gallup Pakistan's poll, 59% of more than 2,700 people surveyed across the country consider the US a threat. "Eighteen percent believe India is the threat while 11% say the Taliban are a threat. The survey findings show that some of the most vocal anti-Taliban groups were equally opposed to the US. Some Pakistanis believe that if the US is committed to eradicating militancy, it should try to solve the Kashmir issue to help Islamabad move its troops from the eastern border with India to fight the Taliban in the northwest. The poll group said Pakistanis were suspicious that Washington was working to control Islamabad's strategic assets. The poll revealed that a majority of Pakistanis support the offensive against the Taliban in their stronghold of South Waziristan, but more people blame the US for the violence than the militia itself, which experts say poses an existential threat to Pakistan. The near-daily destabilizing attacks have convinced many that the offensive is necessary. Over 50% people support the offensive.

There is cautious support in Pakistani public opinion for the military action. Thirteen percent opposed the military action while 36% said they were unsure. While a majority supported the action, only 25% respondents said the Taliban were responsible for the offensive; 35% blamed the US while 31% pointed to the government. Thirty-six percent people thought the offensive would improve security while an almost equal section (37%) believed it would lead to deterioration, the poll found.

The research group said public opinion was still divided on whether or not Islamabad was fighting America's war, but in what could be a major relief to the increasingly unpopular federal government, many more consider it Pakistan's own war compared to a year ago. In the latest survey, 37% people considered it Pakistan's war while 39% saw it as America's war. Last year, only 23% of those questioned considered military action in the northwest to be Pakistan's war. This dissonance among the Pakistanis about the war being waged against the al-Qaeda, despite the seriousness displayed by the Pakistan army in its fight with the militants in South Waziristan, is likely to affect the outcome of the war as many of the soldiers still remain to be convinced of the validity of the war because they are either partly sympathetic to the al-Qaeda cause or they were helping the Taliban in their fight against the Soviets or were indoctrinated in Islamist ideology during Ziaul Huq’s and/or Musharraf regime. As army remains the most powerful organ in Pakistan the character of the army will determine the fate of Pakistan?s alliance with the US and the Western powers.

Meanwhile Hillary Clinton publicly stated that the US was not interested in staying in Afghanistan and has no long-term stake there. Clinton turned up the heat on Karzai over alleged widespread corruption in his administration. Washington expected Karzai to set up a major crimes tribunal and an anti-corruption commission and warned that millions of dollars of US civilian aid was contingent on seeing progress on graft. Karzai, for his part, has called on the West to do its part to clamp down on corruption.

Clinton provided a reminder that Obama was taking a very different approach than his predecessor, former President George W Bush, whose administration pledged to spread democracy in troubled regions of the world. She reiterated that primary focus remains on the security of the United States of America. Top White House advisor David Axelrod said that though an open-ended commitment cannot be made now, and the US wanted to do this in a way that maximizes its efforts against al-Qaida, but within the framework of bringing troops home at some point. Obama's decision has been complicated by the fraud-tainted elections in Afghanistan which saw Karzai re-elected to a second term. Differences have also emerged between key US figures on how to proceed with US ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry expressing serious doubts about sending more troops before Karzai's government gets to grips with the corruption. The ambassador's position apparently put him at odds with Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal, who wants more than 40,000 extra US troops and has warned that without them the mission is likely to fail.

On 1st December President Barak Obama addressing the cadets at the West Point laid out his Afghan strategy defined “as disrupting, dismantling and defeating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and its allies in the future” because he is convinced that “our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al-Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted” This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat... And the stakes are even higher within a nuclear armed Pakistan because we know that al-Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons and we have every reason to believe that they would use them”. Following up on his Cairo speech President Obama described “al-Qaeda- a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world?s great religions” and the “Taliban-a ruthless, repressive and radical movement”.

Obama has reassured Pakistan that the US will remain “a strong supporter of Pakistan long after the guns have fallen silent so that the great potential of the people can be unleashed” Washington Post editorial (December 2, 2009) has described Obama?s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan as ?both correct and courageous: correct because it is the only way to prevent a defeat that would endanger this country and its vital interests and courageous because he is embarking on a difficult and costly mission that is opposed by a large part of his own party. New York Times Zeff Zeleny( Analyzing Obama’s Afghan speech) points out the conundrum to be faced by Pakistan as to how to convince the Pakistanis that the US will stay engaged even as Obama has set a goal for withdrawal.

Thomas Friedman (NYT-1ST DEC-THIS I BELIEVE) has disagreed with Obama’s decision to escalate in Afghanistan and suggested a minimalist approach working with the tribal leaders the way we did to overthrow the Taliban regime in the first place. Friedman is skeptical of US success because Afghanistan and the Muslim world suffer from deficit of freedom, education, and women’s empowerment. and also because Afghanistan cannot be turned into a nation-building project.

But Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that the al-Qaeda would try to provoke a war between India and Pakistan with the aim to destabilize Pakistan and gain access to its nuclear weapons. This was supported by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US Defense Chief Admiral Mullen. Secretary Gates added that in all cases the roots of the terrorists were traced back to the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The reality, he said, was that al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, placed more value on their affiliation with al-Qaeda in the FATA than linkages with any other organizations. The intent of the terrorists to seek nuclear weapons makes Pakistan the central focus of Af-Pak strategy.

According to Senator John Kerry what happens in Pakistan would do more to determine the outcome in Afghanistan than any increase in the number of troops. The centrality of Pakistan in the war against terrorism was thus unquestionably established. Anthony Cordesman (CSIS-THE AFGHAN STRATEGY CHECkLIST-NOV 2009) advised President Obama to ?make it clear that the ideological, demographic, governance, economic and other pressures that divide the Islamic world mean the world will face threats in many other nations that will endure indefinitely into the future. He should mention the risks in Yemen and Somalia, make clear that Iraq war is not over, and warn that we will face both a domestic threat and a combination of insurgency and terrorism that will continue to extend from Morocco to the Philippines, and Central Asia deep into Africa, regardless of how well we do in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the ultimate analysis it is difficult to foresee a victory in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the sense of obliteration of global terrorist threat and making the two countries responsible members of the international community. It is difficult to foresee Afghan economy and warlords abjuring poppy cultivation and replacing it with any other cash crop that will nearly compensate the farmers in their age old earning, as it is to see in Pakistan civilian government controlling the army and the general people convinced of the moral imperative of the NATO war against the Taliban. This war simply cannot be won. So the West and the US in particular has to strengthen and rely on Homeland Security, give assistance to eradicate poverty in the Muslim world, pressure their leaders to secularize the education system and pluralize their governance system while the countries of South Asia, particularly the Muslim majority ones, have to remain ever vigilant against Taliban and Taliban like terrorists taking roots pr getting sustenance within their territorial boundaries. Terrorism is indeed like the adverse effects of climate change-irreversible and deadly-like pandemic disease that has to be fought against on war footing yet unpredictable when it will again revisit the affected area.

(The writer is a former Secretary and Ambassador of Bangladesh)

 

[ppgj]

hilarious take.

How Mullah Omar will exploit Obama
S A Aiyar Sunday December 06, 2009, 01:08 AM

Various world leaders have given their somewhat tepid reactions to US President Obama's proposal to increase US troops in Afghanistan by 30,000 and then start withdrawing all troops by July 2011. No formal reaction has come from Mullah Omar, head of the Taliban. Let me try to get into his head and compose a message to his fellow Talibanis.


"Allah O Akbar. We have excellent news. The mother of all US retreats will soon begin in Afghanistan. Forget about the temporary surge in troops promised by Obama: he is merely playing to the infidel gallery at home, saving face before retreating. After a vain show of force for 18 months, infidel troops will start leaving, and should be out of our sacred soil by 2012. So, we should be able to take over in 2013, inshallah, aided by our Pakistani brothers.


"Will the infidels really leave in 2011? Republicans led by John McCain oppose any deadline for withdrawal. Defence secretary Robert Gates says US troops will be withdrawn in 2011 only after reviewing the situation to ensure that the insurrection has been contained, and that the Afghan army can handle the situation on its own.


"We understand these political compulsions. Obama cannot afford to just cut and run. But we also know that he hates the idea of being waist-deep in unending war during the presidential election of 2012, risking a repetition of Lyndon Johnson's fate in 1968. What Obama needs is a fig leaf to justify full withdrawal.


"We must supply that fig leaf. Comrades, some of you will not be happy with this approach. You sense that the Americans are weak and cowardly, and therefore, want to go on the offensive. Let me confess that my blood also boils with the desire to attack. Yet, we must remember what our strengths are, and not give way to temptation.


"Our strength lies in the immense depth of our faith, in our willingness to fight without end to cleanse our land of the infidel. We do not have the most arms, but we have the most stamina and moral strength. We should use these strengths, and not fall into the trap of precipitate action.


"Far from going on the offensive, we should go back into our shells in the next 18 months. We should deceive the enemy into believing that he is succeeding, and that we are on the run. We should reduce our attacks, and withdraw altogether from some difficult areas. This will strengthen Obama's hand, and make it politically easy for him to withdraw his troops. The infidels are vain and arrogant, and will easily be deceived into thinking they are winning.


"We should make it easy for them to leave in 2011. They will hand over military responsibility to the pathetic Afghan army, from which one in every four recruits has been deserting. Many in the army are already our sympathizers, and will cross over to our side when the day of reckoning comes.


"Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he is willing to negotiate with the Taliban. Even some Americans are in favour of this. I wonder if we should pretend to talk to this miserable American puppet. The Americans will leave even without negotiations. But it's worth recalling that in Vietnam, Le Duc Tho negotiated a truce with Henry Kissinger, and this led to US withdrawal from Vietnam. For this, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were given the Nobel Peace Prize. How utterly stupid the infidels can be! Once the Americans left, the Vietnamese army invaded the south and swiftly took over. The Americans fumed, but lacked the political will to go back and fight again.


"The main lesson for us is clear: once the Americans leave Afghanistan, they will not come back. Instead they will levy economic sanctions on us, as they did on Vietnam. No problem. We have friends aplenty in the Islamic world who have always helped us clandestinely and will in future help us more openly. Indeed, we should respond to US trade sanctions with even freer trade in opium. I know some of you believe that it is unIslamic to grow poppy to make opium, and i, too, have prayed to Allah for guidance in this matter. But in a dream, i heard a great voice telling me that while growing opium to corrupt fellow Muslims would indeed be a sin, selling it to infidels to sap their already degraded morality and stamina would be sacred work. We must pursue this sacred task, which fortunately happens to be immensely profitable too. God works in mysterious ways. Allah O Akbar."

How Mullah Omar will exploit Obama : World : S A Aiyar : TOI Blogs

 

[ppgj]

New Af-Pak: Taking on Jihadi Joe news

04 December 2009

Now that the American president has finally committed himself to a mini-surge, and also announced an exit plan as part of a reworked Af-Pak policy, the implications for his military commanders, and the region, are enormous. A look at the possible scenarios, by Rajiv Singh.

American president, Barack Obama, finally made up his mind on the kind of commitment he would like to make towards the Afghanistan war effort –and in the process decided to have his cake and eat it too. Extra troops will be committed to the war effort, he announced, but he would also like to be out of Afghanistan in 18 months.

Source: Central Intelligence Agency

The focus of the new Af-Pak policy would be on infrastructure development around the country and on training the Afghan security apparatus. Afghans ought to be able to assume responsibilities once the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, the nomenclature under which American and NATO forces operate, begin to vacate the premises.

So far, so good, for as plans go, it is about as sound as it can possibly get. Not for nothing is Afghanistan referred to as the graveyard of invading forces, and any declaration by an occupation force to depart can only be commended for the common sense principles that underlie it.


The new Af-Pak plan does two things simultaneously for a beleaguered American president – it signals his commitment to stay the course, and also reassures a home audience, tired of eight years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the end may be in sight.

Having it both ways on any issue is the sovereign right of any self-respecting politician, and it is to the US president's credit that he has come up with a plan that appears to allow him to have his cake and eat it too – to balance his international military commitments and domestic political needs all at the same time.

New Af-Pak

The new Af-Pak policy recognises the need to shift emphasis in Afghanistan from 'warring' to 'building' – from 'winning' against the Taliban to 'denying' them access to population centres and the political throne at Kabul.

In the process, it concedes the point, perhaps unwittingly, that the Taliban might not be defeated in the 18-month operational time span now laid down. So the need to 'deny' them control of Kabul and Kandahar and let the passage of time, and the impotence and lack of influence that comes with it, do the damage.

ISAF troops on patrol

And so, the new Af-Pak policy seems to say that even as the jihadi sulks in the ravines and valleys and the inaccessible caves of that stunning landscape, we will go about setting up the basic building blocks of a nation.

Not bad - as ideas go.

But at the end of the day if the proof of the fighting should be evidenced in the killing, then the proof of infrastructure investment should be evident in roads, power plants, hospitals, schools and services that either have, or failed, to come up. Critically, the evidence will be seen in training imparted to the populace to enable it to assume responsibilities for civic and military duties once the patrons depart.

What is notable about the new Af-Pak policy, it may be mentioned, is the manner in which it has been introduced. By calling up different capitals around the world before he went public with his announcement, Obama has departed substantially from the cowboy creed of his predecessor (''...with us or against us...''). It was a nice gesture, to take all stakeholders onboard before stepping on the podium.

The gesture also allows Washington to put moral pressure on the stakeholders for greater involvement in the conflict - it's your war as much as ours. An obvious benefit derived from giving the cowboy credo of yesteryears the boot.

New Delhi must have breathed a huge sigh of relief, as the list of phone calls included our own Dr Manmohan Singh. In the course of his Washington visit this November, the learned doctor of economics had gone substantially blue in the face insisting he was consulted on regional and global issues by the Americans, though the evidence all pointed the wrong way.

Taliban chief Mullah Omar

As the New Delhi establishment battles near irrelevancy under a new political dispensation in Washington, the cosmetics of a summit meet in Washington have failed to cover up the embarrassment that comes from a shift in priorities and friendships for the Obama administration.

Ind-Af

Now that the contours of the new Af-Pak policy have been outlined, India may find some reason to congratulate itself - quietly. Its policy of engaging with a war zone through development work has now become the cornerstone of the new Af-Pak policy.

Resisting all allurements from the cowboys of the past, and parking a division or two of its armed forces in the Afghan provinces in the process, India went about building civic infrastructure, training civil and military personnel, constructing power plants and, critically, roads that release Afghanistan from the stranglehold of Pakistani access points from Karachi.

So far this unglamorous development work had drawn just polite appreciation from world leaders. It has now been adopted as the credo for the new Af-Pak policy.

The Pakistanis, and Americans, may have had reason to be irritated by things Indian on Afghan turf – but now they will just have to learn to emulate the Indian example and provide the right of way for all things civillian.

Lashkar-e-Toiba

Taking on Jihadi Joe

Most critically - for the first time, perhaps - the new Af-Pak policy sheds ambivalence towards the patrons of jihadis. Glib rationalisations have allowed these sponsors to get away with playing both sides of the game for far too long. The new policy pronouncement appears to shed ambiguity regarding the sponsors and safe havens and expresses urgency and resolve in combating the festering evil that pretends to be a jihad, or holy war.

There is a suggestion that larger action will now be forthcoming on ''both sides of the border.''

"We are in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country. But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan. That is why we need a strategy that works on both sides of the border," Obama said in his Af-Pak speech at the West Point Military Academy.

It remains to be seen what form such a strategy takes. Will it be the same as now, with the Pakistanis on their side of the border playing out time, letting all know that it is only a matter of time before the American devil leaves so just hold on tight, and the ISAF on its side of the border seething with fury and impotence as jihadi foot soldiers and commanders seek sustenance and safety across the border.

Or are the ISAF commanders going to cross the Durand Line and go after Jihadi Joe and his sanctuaries.

Or are we reading too much into what may only be an innocuous statement?

Common sense dictates, however, that pressure on Americans and Pakistanis to deliver results will be enormous. There is no choice, because of the incredibly short time schedule provided for the American military, and their civilian counterparts, to complete the job and get out of the war zone.

Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Saeed

We need to keep in mind that the last of the 30,000 additional troops to be inducted into the war zone will step into place only around July 2010. As per the 18-month time schedule, it will then have only 12 months to do its job before the process of handing over charge to the Afghans begins.

The time for cute prevarications from the Pakistani allies may now be over.

Or, as always, this may be just another bout of wishful thinking for all concerned- the jihadi rat, we will discover, has once again disappeared down a hole.

Bags of gold
As some experts, including Russian ones, point out, every surge in international troop numbers in Afghanistan has been matched with a corresponding increase in Taliban numbers. Every time the ISAF has enlarged its footprint in Afghanistan, it has been promptly matched with a corresponding Talibani surge.

Poverty, narcotics financing and a determined military establishment, which reckons itself as front-line warriors of an Islamic world, is a volatile mix. A mix that allows a military or quasi-military establishment, such as that exists in Pakistan, to exploit the Afghanistan situation mercilessly – and in perpetuity.

Insurgencies, or wars, don't run on sermons and ideas but require other lubricants, such as funding. There may be discontent, but without funding there will be no insurrection with armed militias battling it out with opposing forces for years on end.

Haqqani Network chief Jalaluddin Haqqani

Talibani and other jihadi organisations have been accessing vast amount of funding for years on end, as is evidenced through their campaigns both in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as around the world.

An obvious source of funding for the Taliban, the jihadi outfits and the ISI is the narcotics network operating out of Afghanistan . But that is not the only one.

Donations made to jihadi organisations in the Middle East are huge and vast sums of money flow inwards to Pakistan to fill their coffers. How can such a source be shut down and Jihadi Joe denied access?

American funding, now being made available to Pakistan under the terms of the Kerry-Lugar dispensation, is bound to be another source. The money is to be made available for all kinds of reasons - primarily civil. But here we cannot shut our eyes to another curious fact that determines day-to-day life in Pakistan - something referred to as MILBUS, or Military Business in Pakistan.

MILBUS, according to Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, author of the book The Military Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy includes banks, insurance, cereals, fertilizer, cement, hospitals and clinics, radio and TV, schools, universities and institutes, etc. It is her assertion that the military has over 7 per cent share of the country's GDP, and controls one-third of heavy manufacturing in the country, along with 6-7 per cent of private sector assets.

When the contracts, arising from implementing the provisions of the Kerry-Lugar bill, begin to flow who is going to be the prime beneficiary? If the narcotics trade is substantially disrupted, and funds from the Middle East begin to be intercepted through some mechanism - wishful thinking this - then a useful fallback will be American funding from the Kerry-Lugar bill collected by the MILBUS apparatus inside Pakistan.

Inflated bills for services ought to provide quite a few hundreds of millions of dollars for holy activities - such as financing jihad.

Taliban in Herat 2001

Poverty is the best recruiter for jihad, as some state agencies in Pakistan and America realised very early on in the great game enveloping Afghanistan since 1980. Bags of gold had flowed from CIA and ISI coffers to tribal leaders to marshal their lashkars (militias) to take on the Soviets.

Thousands of 'jihadis' from villages and madrassas (seminaries) streamed across the Afghan-Pak border then to 'serve' the cause and were paid handsomely for their services.

The pattern has continued to this day.

Kasab, the lone survivor of the 26/11 Mumbai carnage, has confessed his father struck a deal for his services for the equivalent of a few thousand US dollars. That kind of money obviously delivered a lot of killing efficiency from a near-derelict who had run away from home and was picked up by pious jihadis from a street in Lahore where he was indulging in petty crime.

A full-scale insurgency against ISAF forces in Afghanistan will require financial commitments of huge amounts and these will have to come from somewhere.

Alternatively, Jihadi Joe may choose to wait out the 18-month time span when ISAF begins to make its exit and make his moves thereafter. A bit unlikely, though, for the thing with insurgencies is that they may be put on boil now and then, but certainly they have to be kept on simmer always - or they die a natural death.

Junking the jihadi

History is once again in the making and a beleaguered American president, battling too many career-breaking issues at the same time, would be interested in giving it a defining shape.

Fanciful it may be, and certainly it was not a part of the speech at West Point, but a day or two earlier, a leaked story in The Washington Post suggested that a certain kind of message may have been imparted to the MNNA (Major non-Nato Ally) Pakistan, a kind it may not have received before.

The thrust of the story was that Obama's national security advisor, Gen James Jones hand-delivered a two page letter to Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari in early November which warned the Pakistani president that Pakistan's use of insurgent groups for policy goals "cannot continue."

The letter called for closer collaboration against all extremist groups and named five of them – the al-Qaida, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

"Using vague diplomatic language, he said that ambiguity in Pakistan's relationship with any of them could no longer be ignored," The Washington Post reported.

More ominously, the daily said, Gen Jones told the top Pakistani leadership that should it fail to deliver, ''...the US may be impelled to use any means at its disposal to rout insurgents based along Pakistan's western and southern borders with Afghanistan."

Should the contours of the story hold, then president Obama may have sought to ensure through such a warning that his surge will not be matched by a Talibani surge. With a surplus of Talibanis hanging around jobless in the Pakistani 'frontier land' of Waziristan, Baluchistan and the Punjabi heartland, a Talibani surge should not be too difficult to organise.

''Any means at its disposal...'' has an ominous ring to it - it suggests a spill over of action over the Durand Line. It also suggests a lack of patience for the state of affairs as they have been allowed to persist. A strategy for ''both sides of the border'' may indeed have been formulated by Washington, or all this may just be wishful thinking and so many red herrings fed through the media.

One thing is for certain - a strategy for 'both sides of the border' is going to be a dash more difficult to set up and implement than laying down a deadline for exit from Afghanistan.

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domain-b.com : New Af-Pak: Taking on Jihadi Joe

 

[sob]

US Defence Sec in Afganistan

US defence secretary Robert Gates visits Afghanistan

The US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, has arrived in Afghanistan on an unannounced visit.Mr Gates will hold talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and meet US troops serving in the country.

Speaking to reporters in Kabul, he said he would tell soldiers the US was "in this thing to win".

Mr Gates is the most senior US official to visit comes Afghanistan President Barack Obama announced he was deploying 30,000 extra US troops to the country.

Speaking to reports on the flight to Kabul, Mr Gates said he would tell Afghan officials the US intends "to be their partner for a long time".He said he would discuss with Mr Karzai the US decision to send further troops and how it would be implemented.

But he said they would also talk about how to better train up Afghan security forces for an eventual US withdrawal.

"As the security situation improves and we're able, over time, to reduce our forces, the civilian, developmental, economic and other kinds of relations between us will become the predominant part of the relationship," the Reuters news agency quoted him as saying.

Mr Obama has ordered 30,000 more US troops to be sent to Afghanistan as quickly as possible, bringing US troop strength in the country to more than 100,000.

Nato allies in Afghanistan have agreed to contribute another 7,000 soldiers between them.

Announcing the surge, Mr Obama said the mission in Afghanistan was to defeat al-Qaeda, reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny them the ability to overthrow the government.

 

[ppgj]

taliban fighters have better pay than afghan soldiers!!!!!! read on...

Winning hearts and wallets in Afghanistan
By Laurie Ure, CNN
December 9, 2009 -- Updated 0438 GMT (1238 HKT)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, center, walks with his Afghan counterpart Abdul Rahim Wardak in Kabul on Tuesday

(CNN) -- Two of the biggest goals for U.S. forces in Afghanistan are building up Afghan security forces and convincing Taliban fighters to lay down their arms -- and cash could come into play in achieving both.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who arrived in Afghanistan Tuesday on an unannounced trip, said money is a key reason why the Afghan government might be having recruiting and retention problems with its security forces.

"One of the eye-openers for us was learning that the Taliban for the most part are better paid than the Afghan security forces, so that's something that we and the Afghans have already taken steps to correct," Gates said. "They're raising the pay of the police and they're putting in place a number of additional incentives and bonuses and so on for the army in terms of combat pay and various things like that, so that clearly will help. I think, frankly, that's the biggest obstacle."

How much money does the Taliban pay?

Around $300, according to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the senior NATO and U.S. forces commander in Afghanistan.

"There is no set pay scale, but by our intelligence, they are paying the equivalent than $300 a month and that is higher than we are paying Afghan army or police," McChrystal told the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he testified on Tuesday.

The U.S. and Afghan governments are responding by raising the pay for Afghan troops.

"In coordination with the Afghan government, we just almost doubled Afghan army and police training. It is in parity now. It is less than $300 a month but it's much closer," McChrystal told the committee.

The higher pay also could encourage lower-level Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons and join Afghan security forces.

"Obviously, you have to make it more attractive for individuals to serve on the side of the government rather than take up with the Taliban. Wages have to encourage," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

The U.S. and Afghanistan are looking to increase the Afghan security force of police and military to 300,000 strong by July 2011 from the current level of approximately 190,000. But Afghanistan, with its struggling economy, will need help to pay for that force with U.S. and international assistance for the next 10 to 15 years, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday.

"Afghanistan will not be able to sustain a force of that nature and capability with its own resources," Karzai said.

Winning hearts and wallets in Afghanistan - CNN.com

 

[Sridhar]

US asks India to step-up training of Afghan national army

09 Dec 2009 8ak: US government has asked India to step-up the pace of training being rendered to Afghan military personnel. While the immediate attention is on training them to tackle internal security threats the U.S. also needs them to continue fighting the Taliban once the International forces exit as per Obama's stated withdrawal in 18 months.
"The US and the coalition in Afghanistan are all interested in Afghanistan succeeding, Pakistan remaining stable and solving their own internal problems, and there is a sense of urgency in things being accomplished. So the US should welcome all assistance in the region in Afghanistan and Pakistan challenge that I think we all face," said US pacific commander-in-chief admiral Robert F Willard.
However, the Obama administration has ruled out applying any pressure on India to send forces to Afghanistan. Former US President George W. Bush has asked India to send its forces to join the international coalition in Kabul, but the Indian government had declined due to severe implications the move would have evoked back home.
"It is for the Indian military and the Indian government to decide" if it wanted a role in post-withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. India was playing a responsible role in Afghanistan,” Willard said. Adding, "Whether India should see or desire to contribute more is entirely for India to decide."
The Indian government has been providing humanitarian aid and financial aid to Afghanistan. The government has gifted commercial aircrafts to Afghan’s state run airline and provided buses to build a smooth public transport system. India is also building schools and setting up health care facilities in Afghanistan. India’s Border Roads Organisation (BRO) is building roads, which have been damaged badly after years of fighting.
Apart from this, India is also training the Afghan military personnel for the newly raised national army by posting some special forces officers to Afghanistan. Our national military academies like the National Defence Academy and Indian Military Academy has some Afghan cadets undergoing training to lead the men back home.


8ak - Indian Defence News: US asks India to step-up training of Afghan national army

 

[ppgj]

Commentary

We Need India's Help In Afghanistan
Marshall M. Bouton and Alyssa Ayres, 11.24.09, 12:01 AM EST

What Obama should keep in mind during Manmohan Singh's visit.

In the prolonged American debate over Afghanistan, the country best positioned to increase civilian assistance has not been mentioned: India. When it comes to Afghanistan, India and the United States have convergent interests as well as complementary capabilities. Formalizing our work together would deepen India's stake in a durable regional solution, and its strong civilian-side capabilities would enhance the developmental effort for the long term. As President Obama ponders our direction in Afghanistan, he should use Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Washington this week to engage India as a central player in the tough, uphill battle to secure South Asia.

Delhi and Washington view the challenge of stabilizing Afghanistan the same way. Both consider the Afghan insurgency and terrorism it spawns their most pressing national security challenge, and neither wants to see a Taliban-led government return. Both understand that failure will bring even greater dangers to their own doorsteps. Indeed, the growing instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a front-line concern for New Delhi, which does not want to see Mumbai, or any other city, again in flames.
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In addition to their military efforts to secure Afghanistan, the United States and NATO have struggled to ramp up economic assistance--the "build" part of counterinsurgency. Unfamiliar cultures and languages and harsh conditions have constrained Western capacity on the ground. As a practical matter, American NGOs have not been able to function outside major population centers in Afghanistan for two decades. Outsourcing to Beltway contractors is not cost-effective, and NATO has been unwilling or unable to help fill the gap.

But India has demonstrated unique and effective capabilities that will make a big difference in Afghanistan. With its historic ties and cultural affinity to the country, India has already provided impressive civilian assistance. It is the fifth-largest bilateral donor to Afghanistan. India's $1.2 billion contribution to date has supported projects in power, medicine, agriculture and education. Afghanistan's new parliament meets in a building constructed by India. Indian engineers built a port-access road in violent southern Afghanistan, and India has trained Afghan civil servants, demonstrating an Indian comparative advantage on the ground.

Deeper cooperation in Afghanistan would invest India with a broader stake in the effort to stabilize South Asia. In the process, India will take on a more committed leadership role in Afghanistan's future and emerge a more willing supporter of regional efforts to ensure a peaceful outcome. Engaging India in a more regular, formal and wide-ranging dialogue on the challenges in Afghanistan--wholly different from the ad-hoc and inconsistent consultation at present--would transform the way we work together, propelling the U.S.-India relationship to a new level of trust. The proposal to create a larger contact group of neighboring countries, including India, was contained in the Riedel report approved by the Obama administration earlier this year--but has not been implemented. At present, Delhi is standing warily aside, concerned that it will be asked to act unilaterally in ways that conflict with its own interest.

India's potential impact on Afghanistan's development may prove greater than NATO's, or our own. Afghanistan's economic development will require very long-term capacity building work, and India has the ability to make a key, and very efficient, contribution for many years to come. Take agriculture. United States Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been charged with improving agricultural technologies and markets so that Afghan farmers will no longer seek profits from poppy. But India's agricultural research and extension organizations know much better how to bring about change under subsistence farming conditions.

On the "software" that makes institutions function, India has led the way with civilian assistance training, including through bringing Afghan civil servants to Delhi. India's trainers have knowledge and expertise better suited for Afghanistan's situation, and their work with Afghan bureaucrats, judges, teachers, nurses and engineers should be expanded. India could also be helpful with the critical task of training Afghan police on a wide range of law enforcement matters.

Of course, a broader partnership with India in Afghanistan will be bitterly criticized across the border by some who believe that India threatens Pakistan's security and seeks to "encircle" it. Washington should not validate this perception when our own leadership believes it incorrect, and in that conviction has urged Pakistan to free up forces from the Indian border and deploy them along the al-Qaida-Taliban front to the west. In fact, no evidence suggests that Delhi seeks to undermine Pakistani interests through involvement in Afghanistan--unless those interests include supporting the Taliban and other radicals. If anything, given our own hope for a secure and stable Pakistan, greater coordination with India should reassure Islamabad by making India's goals more transparent, and should also help reduce tensions between India and Pakistan over time.

With Prime Minister Singh's arrival in Washington, President Obama has the opportunity to move U.S.-India relations even further toward its promise of strategic partnership. The Obama-Singh summit can infuse fresh purpose and energy to an India-U.S. relationship much transformed over the last decade but still vulnerable to mistrust, especially in matters of South Asian security. A partnership for Afghan development and security--where India can provide the kind of help Afghans, and the international community, need most--is just the place to start.

Marshall M. Bouton is president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Alyssa Ayres is director for India & South Asia at McLarty Associates. Both served on the Asia Society's Task Force on U.S. policy toward India.

We Need India's Help In Afghanistan - Forbes.com

 

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The AfPak Train Wreck

Conn Hallinan | December 7, 2009

Editor: John Feffer

Foreign Policy In Focus Foreign Policy in Focus - A Think Tank Without Walls

When President Barack Obama laid out his plan for winning the war in Afghanistan, behind him stood an army of ghosts: Greeks, Mongols, Buddhists, British, and Russians, all whom had almost the same illusions as the current resident of the Oval Office about Central Asia. The first four armies are dust. But there are Russian survivors of the 1979-89 war that ended up killing 15,000 Soviets and hundreds of thousands of Afghans as well as virtually wrecking Moscow's economy.

One is retired General Igor Rodionov, commander of the Soviet's 120,000-man 40th Army that fought for 10 years to defeat the Afghan insurgents. In a recent interview with Charles Clover of the Financial Times, he made an observation that exactly sums up the president's deeply flawed strategy: "Everything has already been tried."

Three Flawed Goals

The president laid out three "goals" for his escalation: One, to militarily defeat al-Qaeda and neutralize the Taliban; two, to train the Afghan Army to take over the task of the war; and three, to partner with Pakistan against a "common enemy." The purpose of surging 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, the president said, is to protect the "vital national interests" of the United States.

But each goal bears no resemblance to the reality on the ground in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. Rather than protecting U.S. interests, the escalation will almost certainly undermine them.

The military aspect of the surge simply makes no sense. According to U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones, al-Qaeda has fewer than 100 operatives in Afghanistan, so "defeating" it means trying to find a few needles in a 250,000 square-mile haystack.

As for the Taliban, General Rodionov has a good deal of experience with how fighting them is likely to turn out: "The war, all 10 years of it, went in circles. We would come and they [the insurgents] would leave. Then we would leave, and they would return."

The McClatchy newspapers reported this past July that the Taliban had successfully evaded last summer's surge of U.S. Marines into Helmand Province by moving to attack German and Italian troops in the northern part of the country. Does the White House think that the insurgents will forget the lessons they learned over the last 30 years?

Growing the Afghan Army?

Another major goal of the escalation is to increase the size of the Afghan army from around 90,000 to 240,000. The illusions behind this task are myriad, but one of the major obstacles is that the Afghan army is currently controlled by the Tajik minority, who make up about 25% of the population but constitute 41% of the trained troops. More than that, according to the Italian scholar Antonio Giustozzi, Tajiks command 70% of the Army's battalions.

Pashtuns, who make up 42% of Afghanistan, have been frozen out of the Army's top leadership and, in provinces like Zabul where they make up the majority, there are virtually no Pashtuns in the army.

The Tajiks speak Dari, the Pashtuns, Pashto. Yet Tajik troops have been widely deployed in Pashtun areas. According to Chris Mason, a member of the Afghanistan inter-agency Operations Group from 2003 to 2005, Tajik control of the army makes ethnic strife almost inevitable. "I believe the elements of a civil war are in play," says Mason.

Matthew Hoh, who recently resigned as the chief U.S. civil officer in Zabul Province, warns that tension between Pashtuns and the Tajik-led alliance that dominates the Karzai government, is "already bad now," and unless the Obama administration figures out how to solve it, "we could see a return to the civil war of the 1990s."

It was the bitter civil war between the Tajik-based Northern Alliance and the Pashtun-based Taliban that savaged Kabul and led to the eventual triumph of the Taliban.

Obama's escalation will target the Pashtun provinces of Helmand and Khandahar. The Soviets followed a similar strategy and ended up stirring up a hornet's nest that led to the creation of the Taliban. U.S. troops will soon discover the meaning of the old Pashtun axiom: "Me against my brothers; me and my brothers against our cousins; me, my brothers and my cousins against everyone."

Pashtun Pushback

Afghanistan has never had a centralized government or a large standing army, two of the Obama Administration's major goals. Instead it has been ruled by localized extended families, clans, and tribes, what Hoh calls a government of "valleyism." Attempts to impose the rule of Kabul on the rest of the country have always failed.

"History has demonstrated that Afghans will resist outside interference, and political authority is most often driven bottom-up by collective local consent rather than top-down through oppressive central control," says Lawrence Sellin, a U.S. Army Reserve colonel and veteran of the Afghan and Iraq wars. "It is absolutely clear that the path to peace in Afghanistan is through balance of power, not hegemony."

Yet a powerful Tajik-controlled army at the beck and call of one of the most corrupt—and isolated — governments in the world has been doing exactly the opposite in the Pashtun areas. A Pashtun pushback is inevitable. According to Hoh and Mason, it has already begun.

Partnering with Pakistan

The goal of a U.S. "partnership" with Pakistan is predicated on the assumption that both countries have a common "terrorist" enemy, but that is based on either willful ignorance or stunningly bad intelligence.

It is true that the Pakistan army is currently fighting the Taliban. But there are four Talibans in Pakistan, and their policies toward the Islamabad government range from hostile, to neutral, to friendly.

Pakistan's army has locked horns in South Waziristan with the Mehsud Taliban, the Taliban group that was recently driven out of the Swat Valley and that has launched a bombing campaign throughout the Punjab.

But the wing of the North Waziristan Taliban led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur has no quarrel with Islamabad and has kept clear of the fighting. Another South Waziristan Taliban, based in Wana and led by Mullah Nazir, is not involved in the fighting and considers itself an ally of the Pakistani government.

Washington wants Pakistan to go after the Afghan Taliban, led by Mullah Omar and based in Pakistan. But Omar has refused to lend any support to the Mehsud Taliban. "We are fighting the occupation forces in Afghanistan. We do not have any policy whatsoever to interfere in the matters of any other country," says Taliban spokesperson Qari Yousaf Ahmedi. "U.S. and other forces have attacked our land and our war is only against them. What is happening in Pakistan is none of our business."

The charge that the Taliban would allow al-Qaeda to operate from Afghanistan once again is unsupported by anything the followers of Mullah Omar have said. Gulbuddin Hekmatyer, a former U.S. ally against the Soviets and the current leader of the Taliban-allied Hizb-I-Islam insurgent group, told Al-Jazeera, "The Taliban government came to an end in Afghanistan due to the wrong strategy of al-Qaeda," reflecting the distance Mullah Omar has tried to put between the Afghan Taliban and Osama bin Laden's organization.

The "other" forces Ahmed refers to include members of the Indo-Tibetan Border Patrol, an Indian paramilitary group defending New Delhi's road-building efforts in southern Afghanistan. The Pakistanis, who have fought three wars with India — including the 1999 Kargil incident that came very close to a nuclear exchange — are deeply uneasy about growing Indian involvement in Afghanistan, and consider the Karzai government too close to New Delhi.

In short, Obama's "partnership" would have the Pakistanis pick a fight with all four wings of the Taliban, including one that pledges to remove India's troops. President Obama did not explain why the Pakistanis should destabilize their own country, drain their financial reserves, and act contrary to their strategic interests vis-à-vis India.

Escalation's Negative Consequences

Will the escalation have an impact on "vital American interests?" Certainly, but most of the consequences will be negative.

Instead of demonstrating to the international community that the United States is stepping away from the Bush administration's use of force, the escalation will do the opposite.

Instead of bringing our allies closer together, the escalation will sharpen tensions between Pakistan and India — the latter strongly supports the surge of U.S. troops — and pressure the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to scrape together yet more troops for a war that is deeply unpopular in Europe.

Instead of controlling "terrorism," the escalation will be the recruiting sergeant for such organizations, particularly in the Middle East, where the administration's show of "resolve" on Afghanistan is contrasted with its abandonment of any "resolve" to resist Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.

And finally, the deployment will cost at least $30 billion a year on top of the $70 billion the United States is shelling out to support its current force of 81,000 troops. In the meantime, the administration is too starved for cash to launch a badly needed jobs program at home.

And keep in mind that the president said such a July 2011 withdrawal would be based on "conditions on the ground," a caveat big enough to drive a tank through.

"More soldiers is simply going to mean more deaths," says Gennady Zaitsev, a former commander of an elite Soviet commando unit in Afghanistan. "U.S. and British citizens are going to ask, quite rightly, 'Why are our sons dying?' And the answer will be 'To keep Hamid Karzai in power.' I don't think that will satisfy them."

Looking back at years of blood and defeat, General Rodionov put his finger on the fundamental flaw in Obama's escalation: "They [the U.S. and its allies] have to understand that there is no way for them to succeed militarily…It is a political problem which we utterly failed to grasp with our military mindset."

That misunderstanding could become the epitaph for a presidency.


Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus.

Foreign Policy In Focus | The AfPak Train Wreck

 

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washingtonpost.com

Taliban shadow officials offer concrete alternative
Many Afghans prefer decisive rule to disarray of Karzai government

By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 8, 2009

LAGHMAN, AFGHANISTAN -- Like nearly all provinces in Afghanistan, this one has two governors.

The first was appointed by President Hamid Karzai and is backed by thousands of U.S. troops. He governs this mountainous eastern Afghan province by day, cutting the ribbons on new development projects and, according to fellow officials with knowledge of his dealings, taking a generous personal cut of the province's foreign assistance budget.

The second governor was chosen by Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and, hunted by American soldiers, sneaks in only at night. He issues edicts on "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" stationery, plots attacks against government forces and fires any lower-ranking Taliban official tainted by even the whiff of corruption.

As the United States prepares to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to bolster Karzai's beleaguered government, Taliban leaders are quietly pushing ahead with preparations for a moment they believe is inevitable: their return to power. The Taliban has done so by establishing an elaborate shadow government of governors, police chiefs, district administrators and judges that in many cases already has more bearing on the lives of Afghans than the real government.

"These people in the shadow government are running the country now," said Khalid Pashtoon, a legislator from the southern province of Kandahar who has close ties to Karzai. "They're an important part of the chaos."

U.S. military officials say that dislodging the Taliban's shadow government and establishing the authority of the Karzai administration over the next 18 months will be critical to the success of President Obama's surge strategy. But the task has been complicated by the fact that in many areas, Afghans have decided they prefer the severe but decisive authority of the Taliban to the corruption and inefficiency of Karzai's appointees.

When the Taliban government was ousted in 2001 following five disastrous years in power, a majority of Afghans cheered the departure of a regime marked by the harsh repression of women and minorities, anemic government services and international isolation. Petty thieves had their hands chopped off, and girls were barred from school.

Today, there is little evidence the Taliban has fundamentally changed. But from Kunduz province in the north to Kandahar in the south, even government officials concede that their allies have lost the people's confidence and that, increasingly, residents are turning to shadow Taliban officials to solve their problems.

Pashtoon said that on a recent visit to Kandahar, he heard from constituents who were pleased with the Taliban's judges. "Islamic law is always quicker. You get resolution on the spot," he said. "If they had brought the case to the government courts, it would have taken a year or two years, or maybe it would never be resolved at all. With the Taliban, it takes an hour."

For many Afghans, there is no choice. Across broad swaths of the country, especially Afghanistan's vast rural areas, the government has little to no presence, leaving the Taliban as the only authority.

Shadow government officials collect taxes, forcing farmers at gunpoint to turn over 10 percent of their crops, according to accounts of officials and residents. Taliban district chiefs conscript young men into the radical Islamist movement's army of insurgents, threatening death for those unwilling to serve. And the Taliban's judges issue rulings marked by a ruthless efficiency: With no jails in which to hold prisoners, execution by hanging or automatic rifle is the swiftly delivered punishment for convicted murderers and rapists, or for anyone found guilty of working with the government.

"Whether people like them or not, they have to support them," said Fatima Aziz, a parliament member from Kunduz, a province where she said the shadow government has emerged only in the past year.

There are no clear lines between the Taliban's fighting force and its shadow administration. Insurgents double as police chiefs; judges may spend an afternoon hearing cases, then take up arms at dusk.

But the shadow government represents an essential element of the Taliban's strategy. The Taliban emerged in the mid-1990s as an alternative to the lawlessness of the warring mujaheddin factions, and its leaders quickly imposed rigid rules of order in areas under their control.

Having been forced underground or into exile in 2001, the Taliban has returned not just to wage war but also to demonstrate that it is capable of delivering a different model of governance from the one offered by Karzai and his allies. Afghans who live under Taliban control say the group's weaknesses remain the same as during the movement's five-year tenure ruling the country. The Taliban provides virtually no social services, leaving Afghans on their own when it comes to health care, education and development.

Fed up with corruption

Hajji Hakimullah, a 38-year-old shop owner in Laghman's central city, Mehtar Lam, said he celebrated when the Taliban was ousted in 2001 because he believed the movement's extremist ideology was sending the country backward at a time when it should have been modernizing.

But after eight years of Karzai's government, he said he would happily welcome the Taliban's return. Government officials, he said, have demanded hundreds of bribes just to let him operate his modest fabric shop, and he can't take any more corruption.

"If he was honest, I would accept even a Sikh from India as my governor. But if my own father was governor and he was corrupt, I would pray that Allah destroys him," said Hakimullah as he sipped a murky cup of tea, his walls lined with a kaleidoscopic array of silks.

The Karzai-appointed governor of Laghman, Lutfullah Mashal, has developed what some fellow officials and residents here say is a well-earned reputation for corruption.

The governor, they say, has pocketed money from the sale of state lands, earned profits on the local timber trade and stalled international development work until the contractors pay him bribes.

The provincial council chief, Gulzar Sangarwal, played an audio recording for a Washington Post reporter that he said involved a provincial official insisting that a bridge construction project would not move forward until the governor was paid at least $30,000.

The authenticity of the tape could not be independently verified.

Mashal, in an interview, denied taking any bribes and said local contractors had turned against him because he demanded high-quality work.

Fearsome but clean

While Mashal is viewed with contempt by many residents, the shadow governor, Maulvi Shaheed Khail, is regarded as fearsome but clean. A former minister in the Taliban government, he became the shadow governor here last year after being released from government custody. Residents said he spends most of his time in exile in Pakistan but occasionally crosses the border to discuss strategy with his lieutenants.

This year, Taliban forces took full control of several Laghman villages, forcing 1,700 families linked to a pro-government tribe to flee. The families now live in a squalid camp on the edge of Mehtar Lam.

The tribe's leader, Malik Hazratullah, said that back in his home village, "there is no stealing, there is no corruption. The Taliban has implemented Islamic law."

By contrast, he said, provincial officials regularly steal wheat, oil and flour intended for the refugees in the camp and sell it on the black market.

"When I see what this government is doing, it makes me want to join the Taliban," said Hazratullah, a massive, one-eyed man whose beard extends to his chest.

But Hazratullah has already cast his lot with the United States and Karzai, and he said it would be nearly impossible for him to switch back now.

If the Taliban government ever returns to power across Afghanistan, Hazratullah said, he has no doubt what will happen: "They will cut off my head."

 

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Too few troops, too much spin
Half measures won't work in Afghanistan

By Tony Blankley

A sense of unreality overshadows our debate on Afghan war policy across the spectrum of opinions. The unreality derives from the simple fact that we do not have enough troops to rationally implement an adequate defense of our national interests. So every argument for Afghanistan policy tends to seem unserious, perhaps pointless.

For example, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's proposal calls for a counterinsurgency war (COIN) modeled on the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, developed by Gen. David H. Petraeus with strong input from Gen. McChrystal.

Pursuant to that standard, to fully man a COIN strategy we would need 20 to 25 troops per 1,000 residents in Afghanistan. That would require 600,000 U.S., NATO and Afghan troops and police.

According to CNN, at the height of the Iraq surge, there were 29 troops for each 1,000 residents. Currently, there are about 260,000 U.S., NATO and Afghan troops on the ground, about 11 troops per 1,000 residents. With additional 30,000 U.S. and 5,000 NATO troops, that would bring the force density rate up to 12.5 troops for every 1,000 residents - barely half that needed to reasonably hope for success. Moreover, the history of COINs - from Philippines, Algeria and Malaya to Vietnam - is that they will take many years to succeed - if then.

Notwithstanding that guidance, Gen. McChrystal asked for only 40,000 more troops because, obviously, we do not have another 340,000 troops available. And, given that the word from some of our troops in Afghanistan that the Afghanistan National Army more or less refuses to fight, we are not going to find another 300,000 adequate fighting soldiers from the locals in the next year or two.

Notwithstanding the insufficient number of troops requested by the general, President Obama has basically endorsed the McChrystal recommendations - with a time sensitive exit strategy added on. In the president's words:

"I do not make this decision lightly. I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. ... This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. And this danger will only grow if the region slides backwards, and al Qaeda can operate with impunity. ..."

The president went on in his West Point speech to explain why he was not endorsing the calls of others for "a more dramatic and open-ended escalation of our war effort": "I reject this course because it sets goals that are beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost, and what we need to achieve to secure our interests."

So, even though "our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan," we must make do without goals that are "beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost."

Note that the reason the president said he is increasing our troop strength is to "deny al Qaeda a safe haven. We must reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government." Yet, because we don't have sufficient troops, our strategy is merely to hold larger cities and towns, do what we can to build up the Afghan army and government, and start leaving in 18 months - inevitably al Qaeda will continue to have "safe haven" in much of the countryside bordering Pakistan - even if we succeed wherever we try to regain control.

Along with that critical strategic shortcoming of our new Afghan/Pakistan policy, critics of the president's escalation point out that al Qaeda can easily find safe haven in Yemen, Somalia and other parts of the Horn of Africa. (The jungles of South and Central America could be added to that list, as could parts of the dense cities of Hamburg, Germany; London; Paris; Rotterdam, Netherlands and Falls Church, Va.). But because we clearly don't have enough troops to gain control of those other areas, the administration and its Republican defenders largely ignore that gibe.

The failure of the war advocates to match up their correct description of the danger from radical Islamic terror violence with the U.S. troop strength needed to hold it back is what gives an unrealistic, almost insincere air to the entire debate.

On Dec. 8, 1941, when the United States declared war on Japan, the U.S. Army's strength was about 1.6 million. The Navy level was about 330,000.

But President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not limit his strategy to what his generals could do with those soldier and sailor levels. Roosevelt designed a strategy for victory - and back-engineered the necessary troop levels. By December 1942, the Army was up to about 5.4 million. By the spring of 1945 it was over 8 million, while the Navy was over 4 million men. (out of a total U.S. population of 139 million). Victory can come at that high a price.

But neither former President George W. Bush, nor Mr. Obama (nor, I'm sure, the American public) would consider, for example a draft (as I advocated in my recent book, "American Grit") to increase our fighting capacity. That level of sacrifice necessary to gain safety from the still-gathering threat of radical Islam is beyond current American sensibilities.

So United States governments (both Republican and Democratic) propose half measures - and receive only half support. People reasonably ask themselves why we should sacrifice life and treasure for a plan that won't even work.

Tony Blankley is the author of "American Grit: What It Will Take to Survive and Win in the 21st Century" (Regnery, 2009) and vice president of the Edelman public-relations firm in Washington.

Too few troops, too much spin - Washington Times

 

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Obama's Indecent Interval

Despite the U.S. president's pleas to the contrary, the war in Afghanistan looks more like Vietnam than ever.

BY THOMAS H. JOHNSON, M. CHRIS MASON | DECEMBER 10, 2009

As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said, truth is ridiculed, then denied, and then "accepted as having been obvious to everyone from the beginning." So let's start with the obvious: There isn't the slightest possibility that the course laid out by Barack Obama in his Dec. 1 speech will halt or even slow the downward spiral toward defeat in Afghanistan. None. The U.S. president and his advisors labored for three months and brought forth old wine in bigger bottles. The speech contained not one single new idea or approach, nor offered any hint of new thinking about a conflict that everyone now agrees the United States is losing. Instead, the administration deliberated for 94 days to deliver essentially "more men, more money, try harder." It sounded ominously similar to Mikhail Gorbachev's "bloody wound" speech that led to a similar-sized, temporary Soviet troop surge in Afghanistan in 1986.

But the Soviet experience in Afghanistan isn't what everyone is comparing Obama's current predicament to; it's Vietnam. The president knows it, and part of his speech was a rebuttal of those comparisons. It was a valiant effort, but to no avail. Afghanistan is Vietnam all over again.

In his speech, the president offered three reasons why the two conflicts are different. And all are dead wrong. First, Obama noted that Afghanistan is being conducted by a "coalition" of 43 countries -- as if war by committee would magically change the outcome (a throwback to former President George W. Bush's "Iraq coalition" mathematics). The truth is, outside of a handful of countries, it's basically a coalition of pacifists. In fact, more foreign troops fought alongside the United States in Vietnam than are now actually fighting with Americans today. Only nine countries in today's 43-country coalition have more than 1,000 personnel there; nine others have 10 (yes, not even a dozen people) -- or fewer. And although Australia and New Zealand have sent a handful of excellent special operations troops to Afghanistan, only Britain, Canada, and France are providing significant forces willing to conduct conventional offensive military operations. That brings the coalition's combat-troop contribution to approximately 17,000. Most of the other 38 "partners" have strict rules prohibiting them from ever doing anything actually dangerous. Turkish troops, for example, never leave their firebase in Wardak province, according to U.S. personnel who monitor it.

In Vietnam, by contrast, there were six countries fighting with the United States. South Korea alone had three times more combat troops in that country (50,000) than the entire coalition has in Afghanistan today. The Philippines (10,500), Australia (7,600), New Zealand (500), Thailand (about 1,000), and Taiwan also had boots on the ground. So the idea that Afghanistan's coalition sets it apart doesn't hold water.

The president went on to assert that the Taliban are not popular in Afghanistan, whereas the Viet Cong represented a broadly popular nationalist movement with the support of a majority of the Vietnamese. But this is also wrong. Neither the Viet Cong then, nor the Taliban now, have ever enjoyed the popular support of more than 15 percent of the population, according to Daniel Ellsberg, the senior Pentagon official who courageously leaked the Pentagon Papers revealing the military's endemic deceit in the Vietnam War.

The president's final argument, that Afghanistan is different because Vietnam never attacked American soil, is a red herring. History is overflowing with examples of just causes that have gone down in defeat. To suggest that the two conflicts will have different outcomes because the U.S. cause in Afghanistan is just (whereas, presumably from the speech, the war in Vietnam was not) is simply specious. The courses and outcomes of wars are determined by strategy, not the justness of causes or the courage of troops.

The reality on the ground is that Afghanistan is Vietnam redux. Afghan President Hamid Karzai's regime is an utterly illegitimate, incompetent kleptocracy. The Afghan National Army (ANA) -- slotted to take over the conflict when the coalition pulls out -- will not even be able to feed itself in five years, much less turn back the mounting Taliban tide. The U.S. Center for Army Lessons Learned determined by statistical analysis that the ANA will never grow larger than 100,000 men because nearly 30 percent either desert or fail to re-enlist each year. The ANA is disproportionately Tajik, drug use is a major problem, all recruits are illiterate, and last month the ANA reached only half its modest recruiting goal despite 40 percent unemployment nationwide. The American media, in its own regression to 1963, simply regurgitates Pentagon press releases that vastly inflate the actual size of the Afghan military, which is actually less than 60,000 men, just 32,000 of whom are combat troops.

The strategy's other component for dealing with the Taliban, "negotiating with moderates," is also ludicrous to anyone who is familiar with the insurgents. The Taliban are a virus. There is no one to negotiate with, and from their perspective, nothing to discuss. And the Taliban know they are winning. Meanwhile, commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal's plan to secure the urban areas (rather than the rural countryside where the insurgency is actually metastasizing) is plagiarized from the famous never-written textbook, How to Lose a War in Afghanistan, authored jointly by Alexander the Great, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union.

Most critically of all, Pakistan's reaction to Obama's speech was to order its top military intelligence service, the ISI, to immediately begin rebuilding and strengthening covert ties to the Afghan Taliban in anticipation of their eventual return to power, according to a highly placed Pakistani official. There will be no more genuine cooperation from Pakistan (if there ever was).

And that is why the United States is now headed for certain defeat in Afghanistan. Obama's new "strategy" is no strategy at all. It is a cynical and politically motivated rehash of Iraq policy: Toss in a few more troops, throw together something resembling local security forces, buy off the enemies, and get the hell out before it all blows up. Even the dimmest bulb listening to the president's speech could not have missed the obvious link between the withdrawal date for combat troops from Iraq (2010), the date for beginning troop reductions in Afghanistan (2011), and the domestic U.S. election cycle.

So we are faced with a conundrum. Obama is one of the most intelligent men ever to hold the U.S. presidency. But no intelligent person could really believe that adding 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, a country four times larger than Vietnam, for a year or two, following the same game plan that has resulted in dismal failure there for the past eight years, could possibly have any impact on the outcome of the conflict.

Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes used to say that "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." The only conclusion one can reach from the president's speech, after eliminating the impossible, is that the administration has made a difficult but pragmatic decision: The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, and the president's second term and progressive domestic agenda cannot be sacrificed to a lost cause the way that President Lyndon B. Johnson's was for Vietnam. The result of that calculation was what we heard on Dec. 1: platitudes about commitment and a just cause; historical amnesia; and a continuation of the exact same failed policies that got the United States into this mess back in 2001, concocted by the same ship of fools, many of whom are still providing remarkably bad advice to this administration.

We believe the president knows perfectly well that Afghanistan is Vietnam all over again, both domestically and, as we wrote in Military Review this month, in Kabul and out in the Afghan hills, where good men are bleeding and dying. And he's seeking the same cynical exit strategy that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger did in 1968: negotiating the best possible second-place position and a "decent interval" between withdrawal and collapse. In office less than a year, the Obama administration has already been seduced by the old beltway calculus that sometimes a little wrong must be done to get re-elected and achieve a greater good.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Thomas H. Johnson is research professor of the Department in National Security Affairs and director of the Program for Culture and Conflict Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

M. Chris Mason, a retired Foreign Service officer who served in 2005 as political officer for the provincial reconstruction team in Paktika, is senior fellow at the Program for Culture and Conflict Studies and at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington.


Obama's Indecent Interval | Foreign Policy

 

[ppgj]

Post-American scenarios in Afghanistan
By Ilhan Niaz
Sunday, 13 Dec, 2009

Afghan President Hamid Karzai. — AFP Photo

After three decades of turmoil, violence and killings, Afghanistan is still at war. A powerful foreign occupation force continues to hold in place a local collaborationist dispensation with few roots and even less demonstrable competence. Democratic development has replaced despotic Islamic rule which earlier replaced a socialist paradigm as the slop of the day dished out for public consumption.

The Islamic warriors who blunted and frustrated the armies of the ‘Evil Empire’ are now the ‘evil doers’. The other great enemies of the ‘Evil Empire’, namely the United States and its allies, once the benefactors of today’s terrorists have replaced the Soviets as the occupying force.

As guns and drugs boom, the writ of what is generously called the Afghan government is practically non-existent outside Kabul. Warlords, mafias and insurgents control 80 per cent of the territory and feed off the presence of the occupation forces. The reality is that a failing occupation is trying to prop up a failed state.

The Obama administration’s new surge-and-exit strategy reflects the exasperation of the western alliance as it struggles to balance the politically feasible with the militarily necessary. At least as far the exit part of the strategy is concerned the US and its allies are condemned to succeed. When it comes to leaving behind a stable, legitimate and semi-functional Afghan state, the alliance is almost certain to fail.

The new strategy is in part driven by domestic compulsions as Obama struggles to rein in US militarism and adjust overseas commitments to political will and economic capacity. The surge is designed to show that Obama is tough and determined. The exit part is meant to placate a war weary public in time for the 2012 elections. Of course, at a declaratory level senior members of the administration, including the secretary of defence Robert Gates, are putting a brave face on the situation and assuring their allies and Karzai that the United States is in it to win.

These assurances are hollow. The fact is that the United States is leaving Afghanistan. Starting in July 2011 the drawdown will begin. For Karzai and his regime the final countdown has now begun and the American exit amounts to a death sentence. All the Taliban have to do is wait another 18 months, lie low and melt into the local population while stockpiling arms, ammunition and funds siphoned off from drugs and Nato contractors in preparation for the re-conquest of their country.

There is no evidence that the Karzai regime, which is now handicapped by a newfound illegitimacy following the fraudulent August 20 elections in addition to its longstanding incompetence, has the ability to rise to the occasion or the will to at least try and set things in order.

If anything, the Karzai regime’s position is analogous to that of the South Vietnamese regime of President Thieu in 1972. Afghanistan’s narco-warlord elite now has an even greater incentive to loot as much as they can before the protective shield of the American and allied militaries evaporates and the Taliban onslaught begins again. Depending on the amount of damage the United States can inflict over the next few months a decent interval between imperial withdrawal and neo-colonial collapse may yet be secured. It is unlikely though that the regime left behind will be able to profit sufficiently from a prospective breather.

At one level, Musharraf’s strategy of hedging Pakistan’s bets in Afghanistan seems to have been based on a fairly realistic appraisal of what was politically and militarily possible for the western alliance. For Pakistan there can be no exit strategy from the Afghan quagmire. The double policy to the extent it could be sustained meant that no matter who won in Afghanistan Pakistan could claim to have helped the winning side. Now that the Americans have served notice that they will start vacating in 18 months Pakistan has every incentive to accelerate its campaign against those militants working against itself while leaving the Afghan Taliban alone. There are a number of post-American scenarios that Pakistan is now compelled to contemplate.

The first and most alarmist scenario is that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan will lead to a fundamental realignment of the regional political and societal equilibrium with Afghanistan and Pakistan going down like dominoes before a reenergized Taliban/Islamist/Jihadist push. This scenario is premised on the notion that it is the United States that has through military and economic exertions been containing a radical avalanche. Once that exertion ceases nature will take its course and fundamentalists and extremists throughout the Muslim world will be heartened by this victory and intensify their struggle for power.

The second scenario signals a return to the 1990s when Afghanistan’s neighbours were fuelling its internal conflicts. Russia, India and Iran would presumably support the Northern Alliance and Karzai. Pakistan may well be induced by residual US pressure to maintain a policy of malevolent neutrality and thus contribute covertly to Taliban resurgence. In this scenario attrition on all sides is likely to be high and Pakistan’s own extremists may well redirect their energies towards helping the Taliban seize control of Kabul and defeat the Northern Alliance. This could well relieve pressure on Pakistan though its rulers may not possess the political will or the administrative capacity to benefit strategically from such a reprieve.

The third scenario is that all the regional and Nato powers are able to work out a negotiated settlement although such attempts in the past have failed miserably. As long as the Afghans are determined to kill each other, there is not much that regional powers can do in diplomatic terms to stop them. Then, Pakistan-India disagreements over Afghanistan constitute a major obstacle. Any serious attempt at negotiating a power-sharing arrangement between the Taliban and the North Alliance is highly improbable to succeed.

The fourth scenario is that the US withdraws ground troops but keeps its drones, air force and special operations in play. Such a strategy would mean aligning with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban and containing the latter through air power, limited ground engagements and missile strikes. Thus, the US would almost completely ‘Afghanise’ the conflict and become a permanent party to a long running civil war. The effectiveness of such a strategy is open to question but it would allow the American leadership to defend itself against the charge that it had abandoned Afghanistan. It may also substantially delay the liquidation of the Karzai regime and the defeat of the Northern Alliance warlords.

The fifth scenario is that the US disengagement from Afghanistan and Iraq by 2011-12 will remove the rationale for extremist militancy and enable local powers to deal more pragmatically with such elements. This scenario is based on the premise that it is the West’s own imperialism that is primarily responsible for facilitating the spread of radical Islam which can then project itself as a successful resistance movement. Once the onslaught ceases the logic of resistance will be rendered inoperative. This is perhaps the most optimistic of all the scenarios.

Of course, all five of these scenarios are at this stage mere speculation. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive and a lot can happen in three years though it seems unlikely that there are any good options left to exercise. One can only hope that those in authority are seriously thinking about the post-American post-occupation regional configuration with particular reference to Afghanistan with the aim of at least trying to arrive at a workable and inclusive solution in accordance with enlightened self-interest. Or, Pakistan and other regional powers can wait until the Americans leave and once again plunge into the strategic depths of Afghanistan. In either case a war that began in 1979 and is now in its thirtieth year may well still be raging in 2039.

The writer is an assistant professor of history at the Quaid-i-Azam University.
[email protected]

DAWN.COM | World | Post-American scenarios in Afghanistan

 

[bengalraider]

Suicide bomb hits Afghan capital​

At least eight people have been killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, officials say.

The blast happened near a hotel in Wazir Akbar Khan district, home to several aid agencies and embassies.

Two bodyguards of former vice-president Ahmad Zia Massoud were among the dead, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said.

The attack took place shortly before President Karzai opened a three-day conference on corruption there, amid pressure from the West to clamp down.

Kabul has been hit by a number of explosions in recent months.

Last month, a car bomber struck outside a Nato base in Kabul, injuring three foreign soldiers and three Afghan civilians.

Tuesday's blast is the first such attack since President Karzai was sworn in for a second term in office last month, when he pledged to tackle corruption and insecurity.

Meanwhile, Red Cross (ICRC) officials have paid their first visit to detainees held by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The humanitarian organisation said its officials twice visited three members of the Afghan security forces held in Badghis province in the north-west of the country.

"We welcome this breakthrough. We plan to conduct and repeat visits in other regions, and hope to visit people held by other armed opposition groups...," said Reto Stocker, ICRC chief in Kabul.

'Suicide attack'

An eyewitness was quoted as saying that a black four-wheeled drive vehicle blew up as it passed the Heetal Hotel in the upmarket area.

"It drove very slow to the checkpoint of the hotel. And then it blew up," Humayun Azizi told the Associated Press news agency.

The blackened, smouldering carcass of the car bomb has been blown onto its roof, the remains of the attacker still inside, says the BBC's Ian Pannell at the scene.

Hundreds of police and investigators are at the site, he says.

It happened in one of the most heavily guarded areas of Kabul, and is just the latest attack in what's been the worst year for security in Kabul since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, our correspondent adds.

The home of Ahmad Zia Massoud was among the buildings damaged, although it is not clear whether Mr Massoud was the bomber's target.

Mr Massoud, a prominent opposition leader, is the brother of anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed in a suicide bombing in 2001.

AP said the hotel suffered damage, but quoted an unnamed intelligence official as saying none of the hotel's guests were hurt.

Police and emergency vehicles have taken the wounded away to hospitals.

Four men and four women were killed in the blast.

'Corruption commonplace'

The blast occurred as some 200 delegates gathered at the anti-corruption conference several miles away.

After the meeting began with a moment's silence, President Karzai acknowledged corruption was widespread, but warned it would be difficult to eradicate.

“ I know that corruption in our government and society cannot be eliminated overnight ”
Hamid Karzai Afghan president
"Every one of our police, every one of our soldiers, every one of our mayors, every one of our judges, every one of our governors can go to someone's house knock on the door and drag a man out of that house and terrorise him.

"In my opinion, this is the main form of corruption," he said.

But he added: "I am a realist. I know that corruption in our government and society cannot be eliminated overnight. We cannot even eleminate it in years."

Mr Karzai is facing mounting Western pressure to curb corruption, widely viewed as helping drive support for the Taliban.

Meanwhile, the top US military officer held talks in Kabul on Monday ahead of a surge of 30,000 American troops to fight Taliban and other insurgents.

Adm Mike Mullen said violence in Afghanistan was likely to get worse before it gets better.

"I told our troops heading here to steel themselves for more combat and more casualties," he said.

BBC News - Suicide bomb hits Afghanistan capital, Kabul

for pictures : BBC News - In Pictures: Bomb blast near Kabul hotel

 

[sob]

NATO is trying to get help from all quarters in their Afganistan mission, including from the Russians

Nato's Rasmussen seeks Russia's help in Afghanistan

Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is seeking greater Russian assistance for the war in Afghanistan, on his first official trip to Moscow.

He said Nato and Russia must look beyond their differences and try to build "practical co-operation".

Mr Rasmussen's visit is the first by a Nato chief since relations chilled after last year's Russian-Georgian war.The three-day visit signifies the alliance's determination to strengthen ties with Moscow, analysts suggest.

Mr Rasmussen will hold talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.

Seeking help

"Disagreements should not overshadow the fact that, basically, we share security interests in many areas because we are faced with the same threats," Mr Rasmussen said on Wednesday.

But Russia still sees Nato as fundamentally an anti-Russian military alliance, says the BBC's correspondent in Moscow, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes.

So Mr Rasmussen's main focus will be a topic on which Russia and Nato can agree - Afghanistan.

During his visit, the Nato chief is expected to request more Russian help with the alliance's military operations, particularly in the provision of military equipment such as Kalashnikov assault rifles to the emergent Afghan army.

There have also been reports in the Russian press that Nato is seeking an agreement to allow arms and ammunition to be transported through Russia to Afghanistan by train.

Until now, only non-lethal cargo has been allowed rail access, though a recent agreement allowed Nato to fly its equipment through Russian airspace.

The Kremlin says it wants Nato to win in Afghanistan and is willing to help. But so far its support has been largely rhetorical, says our correspondent.

And Moscow has drawn the line at sending troops to the country, where its forces spent a troubled 10 years before withdrawing in 1989.
Sensitive subject

Analysts say the atmosphere between the alliance and Moscow has improved recently. Earlier this month, the Nato-Russia Council convened for the first time since the Georgia conflict.

On this visit, there are expected to be discussions on missile defence, Iran, and on a joint review of new security challenges.

The expansion of Nato remains a sensitive issue between the two sides, with Russia firmly opposed to any move towards membership by Ukraine or Georgia.

Mr Rasmussen has previously said they would become Nato members as and when they satisfied the necessary criteria, but emphasised that Moscow should not see that as a threat.

 

[Daredevil]

Fired UN official had plan to oust Karzai

NEW YORK
December 18, 2009

AS EVIDENCE mounted of fraud in the Afghanistan presidential election in August, the second most senior UN official in the country proposed enlisting the White House in a plan to replace President Hamid Karzai, according to senior UN officials.

Mr Karzai, the officials said, was incensed when he learnt of the plan and was told it had been put forward by American diplomat Peter Galbraith, who had been installed in his UN position with the strong backing of Richard Holbrooke, the top US envoy to Afghanistan.

The disclosure of Mr Galbraith's proposal, contained in a letter written by his then boss, the top UN official in Kabul, Kai Eide, gives a new perspective on the crisis in Kabul that enveloped the UN and the feud between Mr Galbraith and Mr Eide.

Mr Galbraith abruptly left the country in early September and was fired weeks later.

He has said he believed that he was forced out because he was feuding with Mr Eide over how to respond to what he termed wholesale fraud in the Afghan presidential election. He said Mr Eide had concealed the degree of fraud benefiting Mr Karzai.

Mr Galbraith said he had discussed — but never actively promoted — the idea of persuading Mr Karzai to leave office.

The degree to which the US should stand behind Mr Karzai has been vigorously debated in Washington as the Obama Administration pondered how to handle the disputed election.

Mr Karzai is often criticised as being an ineffective leader in the battle against the Taliban and who tolerates widespread corruption in his ranks. He has an acrimonious relationship with many American leaders.

Mr Holbrooke, who also clashed with Mr Karzai over the election, said he was unaware of the idea of replacing Mr Karzai. "And it does not reflect in any way any idea that Secretary Clinton or anyone else in the State Department would have considered," he said.

Mr Eide, who is to leave his job as head of the UN mission in Afghanistan in March, said Mr Galbraith's departure in September had come immediately after he rejected what he called Mr Galbraith's proposal to replace Mr Karzai and install a more Western-friendly figure.

He said he told his deputy the plan was "unconstitutional, it represented interference of the worst sort and, if pursued, it would provoke not only a strong international reaction" but also civil insurrection. It was during this conversation, Mr Eide said, that Mr Galbraith proposed taking leave to the US and Mr Eide accepted.

Mr Galbraith's proposal would begin with "a secret mission to Washington", Mr Eide wrote last week in a letter responding to criticism of his work by a research organisation.

"He told me he would first meet with Vice-President [Joe] Biden," Mr Eide wrote. "If the Vice-President agreed with Galbraith's proposal, they would approach President Obama with the following plan: President Karzai should be forced to resign as president." Then a new government would be installed.

In response to questions from The New York Times, Mr Galbraith said that he had never put forth any fully fledged proposal and that he only considered an effort to persuade Mr Karzai to leave so that an interim government, allowed under the constitution, could be installed in case there was no run-off election until May 2010.

He said the UN had never told him those discussions played a role in his firing. "There were internal discussions," Mr Galbraith said. "I'm sure I discussed the crisis and I'm sure I discussed a way out. But that is an entirely different matter from acting on it."

He said he never promoted the idea outside the UN.

But according to a Western diplomat, Mr Galbraith discussed his plan with Frank Ricciardone, the deputy American ambassador in Kabul.

A spokeswoman for the American embassy in Kabul confirmed that Mr Galbraith had brought the plan to the embassy. She said it was summarily rejected.

NEW YORK TIMES

 

[Parashuram1]

Suicide bomb hits Afghan capital​

At least eight people have been killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, officials say.

The blast happened near a hotel in Wazir Akbar Khan district, home to several aid agencies and embassies.

Two bodyguards of former vice-president Ahmad Zia Massoud were among the dead, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said.

The attack took place shortly before President Karzai opened a three-day conference on corruption there, amid pressure from the West to clamp down.

Kabul has been hit by a number of explosions in recent months.

Last month, a car bomber struck outside a Nato base in Kabul, injuring three foreign soldiers and three Afghan civilians.

Tuesday's blast is the first such attack since President Karzai was sworn in for a second term in office last month, when he pledged to tackle corruption and insecurity.

Meanwhile, Red Cross (ICRC) officials have paid their first visit to detainees held by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The humanitarian organisation said its officials twice visited three members of the Afghan security forces held in Badghis province in the north-west of the country.

"We welcome this breakthrough. We plan to conduct and repeat visits in other regions, and hope to visit people held by other armed opposition groups...," said Reto Stocker, ICRC chief in Kabul.

'Suicide attack'

An eyewitness was quoted as saying that a black four-wheeled drive vehicle blew up as it passed the Heetal Hotel in the upmarket area.

"It drove very slow to the checkpoint of the hotel. And then it blew up," Humayun Azizi told the Associated Press news agency.

The blackened, smouldering carcass of the car bomb has been blown onto its roof, the remains of the attacker still inside, says the BBC's Ian Pannell at the scene.

Hundreds of police and investigators are at the site, he says.

It happened in one of the most heavily guarded areas of Kabul, and is just the latest attack in what's been the worst year for security in Kabul since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, our correspondent adds.

The home of Ahmad Zia Massoud was among the buildings damaged, although it is not clear whether Mr Massoud was the bomber's target.

Mr Massoud, a prominent opposition leader, is the brother of anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed in a suicide bombing in 2001.

AP said the hotel suffered damage, but quoted an unnamed intelligence official as saying none of the hotel's guests were hurt.

Police and emergency vehicles have taken the wounded away to hospitals.

Four men and four women were killed in the blast.

'Corruption commonplace'

The blast occurred as some 200 delegates gathered at the anti-corruption conference several miles away.

After the meeting began with a moment's silence, President Karzai acknowledged corruption was widespread, but warned it would be difficult to eradicate.

“ I know that corruption in our government and society cannot be eliminated overnight ”
Hamid Karzai Afghan president
"Every one of our police, every one of our soldiers, every one of our mayors, every one of our judges, every one of our governors can go to someone's house knock on the door and drag a man out of that house and terrorise him.

"In my opinion, this is the main form of corruption," he said.

But he added: "I am a realist. I know that corruption in our government and society cannot be eliminated overnight. We cannot even eleminate it in years."

Mr Karzai is facing mounting Western pressure to curb corruption, widely viewed as helping drive support for the Taliban.

Meanwhile, the top US military officer held talks in Kabul on Monday ahead of a surge of 30,000 American troops to fight Taliban and other insurgents.

Adm Mike Mullen said violence in Afghanistan was likely to get worse before it gets better.

"I told our troops heading here to steel themselves for more combat and more casualties," he said.

BBC News - Suicide bomb hits Afghanistan capital, Kabul

for pictures : BBC News - In Pictures: Bomb blast near Kabul hotel

But that I believe has nothing to do with Afghan locals. As we all know that the country has been embroiled in needless bloodshed and wars since 3 decades. The last time I visited the country to check the plight of ethnic Hindus and Sikhs, the general public there were fed up and despite a general conservative attitude were willing to embrace anyone who could give them peace. Many families have lost their children, brothers and loves ones and want to end the violence once and for all.

I took a short survey and surprisingly an overwhelming number of Afghan population spat venom against Pakistan, stating the country as being the source of all problems in Afghanistan. Older generation of Afghans still remember their time under their last government before Taliban takeover and Soviet invasion. Though American troops are still not welcome in the country, some of them covertly agree their presence better than Pakistani presence.

Quite a significant number of Afghans would have dark expressions and would turn serious at the mention of the word Pakistan and would either go into a tirade of cursing them or would refuse to continue the discussions. Not just from these but also I believe the recent warm relations between India and Afghanistan are indicative of Pakistan's negative involvement on both sides of its border. Personally, I believe that the world community should put more pressure on Pakistan to reign on its rogue military and espionage agencies, who due to their unquestioned autonomy, have become a source of nuisance in South Asia.

These comments are not just my personal views being a half-Indian, but you would be surprised to know that a lot of Westerners, especially French, Germans and some local Swiss here agree here. While there is a struggle by the Pakistani government to reign in the terrorists, they seem to deliberately ignore the source or militancy and its growth: their own agencies.

 

[ppgj]

No Insurgency Here

Let's be honest: What Afghanistan has on its hands isn't an insurgency, it's a civil war.

BY NADER MOUSAVIZADEH | 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.

This leaves the West with a stark dilemma. We can proceed to invest a government we ourselves have called fraudulent with an authority that few Afghans are willing to grant it, hoping it will eventually eschew the corrupt behavior that has sustained its power to date. Or we can make the unquestionably more difficult decision and insist, as a condition of our continued support, that a new political compact be put in place.

The reality is that the War of 9/11 against al Qaeda and its backers will not be won -- or lost -- in Afghanistan.

It is time to help Afghans resolve their civil war in the only way that is likely to help, and not further hinder, their search for security and stability. Painful as it is, the time has come to set aside the illusion of Afghan democracy and implement a new federal power-sharing agreement between those Afghans willing and able to provide security and governance in a sustainable manner for the Afghan people. The best chance we have of achieving minimal Afghan objectives at an acceptable cost to the West is by establishing a new Loya Jirga -- drawing on the shrewd diplomacy of the 2001 Bonn Conference and the persistent muscle of the 1995 Dayton Agreement, but looking forward as a New Afghanistan Conference.

This new Loya Jirga would be best jointly convened by Lakhdar Brahimi (on behalf of the United Nations), and Richard Holbrooke (on behalf of the United States). It can be done quietly, or it can be done publicly, but it must be done, and soon. In Brahimi, who led the negotiations at Bonn, this initiative would have a diplomat with unparalleled standing among Afghans actors and the key external actors in the region, including Saudi Arabia. Holbrooke, the architect behind Dayton, would not only bring the full backing of the United States, his involvement would also signal a shift away from a military solution to the politics of peacemaking and send an unmistakable message to Afghans that the days of occupation are numbered. Perhaps most importantly, the new Loya Jirga would ensure that the new politics of Afghanistan will be truly owned and enforced by Afghans, including reconcilable elements of the Taliban, and their neighbors, for whom caring about the nation's fate never will be a matter of choice.

It won't be easy. A Brahimi-Holbrooke convened Loya Jirga solution to the Afghan civil war will demand a compromise with the high ideals of the early intervention; a redrafting of the Afghan Constitution to allow for a decentralized structure of governance; a granting of provincial power to leaders and warlords with less than clean hands; a de facto reduced commitment to human rights and women's rights; a greater involvement of neighbors whose motives are mixed, and not necessarily aligned. While this solution would initially require a substantial troop presence, over time it will place responsibility for security among provincial and tribal leaders and the militias under their command, leading to a steady withdrawal of Western troops.

Despite the challenges of this approach, it's important to recognize that the West's early ambitions have been, in practice, long abandoned, and it's past time to end the callous hypocrisy of promising Afghans a Western-style democratic future we have neither the ability nor the will to deliver.

Instead of trying to end or somehow sublimate deeply held ethnic and tribal loyalties in pursuit of an imagined community of modern Afghan citizenship, we should rather embed the country's future security and governance mechanisms precisely within those allegiances and give each group the incentive and means to defend itself within a broader federal structure. Instead of seeking to impose a demonstrably failed Western construct of government on the Afghan polity, it is time to implement an Afghan peace to end an Afghan civil war.

It's time to recognize the true state of the conflict in Afghanistan -- a civil war. By Nader Mousavizadeh | Foreign Policy

 

[ppgj]

Let Taliban end fight with ‘dignity:’ McChrystal

Wednesday, 02 Dec, 2009

Gen. Stanley McChrystal addresses the media.— Photo from AP/File

KABUL: The top US commander in Afghanistan said Wednesday that the Afghan government and its international partners should use the coming 18 months to convince the Taliban they can’t win and offer militants a way to quit the insurgency ‘with dignity.’

Gen. Stanley McChrystal made the call after President Barack Obama announced he was sending 30,000 more US troops to the unpopular war. If conditions are right, Obama said American troops could begin leaving Afghanistan in 18 months.

The Afghan government welcomed Obama’s announcement but cautioned against setting a deadline for handing over security to Afghan forces and starting to withdraw.

In a statement, the Taliban said Obama’s plan was ‘no solution for the problems of Afghanistan’ and would give the insurgents an opportunity ‘to increase their attacks and shake the American economy which is already facing crisis.’

Reaction among Afghans and US soldiers was mixed, with many wondering whether the Afghan government can meet the challenges of fighting both corruption and the insurgents and whether the surge means more Afghan civilians will die.

‘I am asking America ‘What did you do for the last eight years against your enemies? You have killed Afghans and your enemies have killed Afghans. It seems you are weak and the enemy is strong. Will you defeat the enemy this time?’ said Haji Anwar Khan, a white-bearded resident of Kandahar in Afghanistan’s violent south.

Shortly after Obama’s speech, McChrystal told reporters the 18-month timetable was enough time to build up Afghan forces and convince the people of this war-ravaged country that they can eventually take care of their own security.

He said the Afghan government and the coalition should also use that period ‘to convince the Taliban and the people from whom they recruit that they cannot win — that there is not a way for the insurgency to win militarily.’

At the same time, he said the US should support the Afghan government in a reintegration program to allow insurgents a way to return to society.

‘I think they should be faced with the option to come back if they are willing to come back under the constitution of Afghanistan — that they can come back with dignity,’ he said. ‘If you look at the end of most civil wars and insurgencies, I think that everybody needs a chance to come back with dignity and respect and rejoin society. I think that will be important for us to look forward to.’

McChrystal said he met Wednesday with President Hamid Karzai for nearly an hour and described the Afghan leader’s reaction as ‘really positive.’

‘The president was very upbeat, very resolute this morning,’ he said. ‘I really believe that everybody’s got a focus now that’s sharper than it was 24 hours ago.’

But Interior Minister Hanif Atmar said 18 month timeframe was too short for a complete handoff from international forces.

‘That kind of time frame will give us momentum,’ Atmar said. ‘We are hoping that there will be clarity in terms of long-term growth needs of the Afghan national security forces and what can be achieved in 18 months.’

In neighboring Pakistan, Obama’s speech drew a lukewarm reaction. Key al-Qaida leaders including Osama bin Laden are believed to have taken refuge in Pakistan, and Obama’s announcement of a tentative date to begin withdrawing US troops could deter Pakistan from cracking down on Taliban fighters using Pakistani territory as a safe haven.

‘The Americans would like to keep the pressure on the Pakistan army to chase the militants all over the tribal regions, but Pakistan of course has to see whether it’s feasible,’ said Dr. Riffat Hussain, a professor of Defense Studies at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. ‘It seems Pakistan prefers the incremental approach.’

In Brussels, Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he expects the allies to boost the Nato-led force by more than 5,000 soldiers. He said the best way to overcome widespread public opposition to the war in Europe is by demonstrating progress on the battlefield.

Capt. Mark Reel from Norfolk, Virginia, US military civil affairs officer deployed in Wardak province, west of Kabul, said more troops mean nothing unless they can give local Afghans a sense of perceived security.

‘They have to believe they are more secure. You get thousands of troops on some of these bases here, but what are they really doing? The troops just have to get out there (in the field).’ The reason the surge worked in Iraq, he said, is because troops were able to get into the field and make Iraqis feel safer.

More than 850 members of the US military have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. Of those, the military reports nearly 660 were killed by hostile action. Nato reported that the latest member of the US forces to die was killed in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday when his patrol was attacked.— AP

DAWN.COM | World | Let Taliban end fight with ?dignity:? McChrystal

 

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McChrystal told reporters the 18-month timetable was enough time to build up Afghan forces and convince the people of this war-ravaged country that they can eventually take care of their own security.

after 8 years of no where, 18 months seems like funny.

‘I think they should be faced with the option to come back if they are willing to come back under the constitution of Afghanistan — that they can come back with dignity,’ he said.

must be the joke of the year.
even if they come back with dignity as the general is hoping, what is the guarantee that all will be fine later!!
economics is pinching the US really hard.

 

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Taliban video shows captive US soldier

Friday, 25 Dec, 2009

Bergdahl, a private who disappeared on June 30, is the first US soldier to be captured in Afghanistan since the US-led war in 2001. — File photo

KABUL: The Taliban released a new video on Friday purportedly showing US soldier Bowe Robert Bergdahl who was captured in Afghanistan about six months ago.

The video showed a brief clip of Bergdahl, 23, in front of a carpet wearing in combat fatigues, a helmet and sunglasses.

“I'm afraid to tell you that this war has slipped from our fingers and it's just going to be our next Vietnam unless the American people stand up and stop all this nonsense,” he said.

Bergdahl, a private who disappeared on June 30, is the first US soldier to be captured in Afghanistan since the US-led war in 2001.

In the video, Bergdahl, a private first class, gives identifying details about himself such as his rank, date and place of birth and other family information, as well as deployment details.

It was not clear when the video was made.

There was no immediate comment from the US military or Nato forces in Afghanistan.

In July, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced his capture as “outrageous” and said the United States was doing everything it could to locate and free him.

The Taliban issued another video of Bergdahl in July, showing a visibly shaken shaven-headed soldier pleading for US troops to leave the war-torn nation.

Hundreds of US soldiers and troops from other nations have been killed in Afghanistan battling the widening Taliban-led insurgency.

DAWN.COM | World | Taliban video shows captive US soldier