Afghanistan News and Discussions

[Rage]

<In continuum>​

11. Another much-talked-about component of contemporary COIN strategy is the ‘hearts-and-minds’ component, the effort to win over local populations through developmental works. In the first instance, it is highly improbable that any such initiative can be successful as long as Predator and missile strikes continue to inflict disproportionate ‘collateral damage’ – though President Obama has committed particularly "to make every effort to avoid civilian casualties"36. Crucially, the USD 65 billion allocation for Afghanistan includes a developmental component that "doubles the size of the pot of money used by American commanders in Afghanistan to win over the population"37, though the US proposes to ‘limit its efforts to areas of expertise’, as far as developmental initiatives in Afghanistan are concerned, while greater emphasis would be placed on coordinating the efforts of other countries. Unfortunately, the record of developmental investment in Afghanistan has been disastrous – what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described as "heartbreaking":


For those of you who have been on the ground in Afghanistan, you have seen with your own eyes that a lot of these aid programs don't work… There are so many problems with them. There are problems of design, there are problems of staffing, there are problems of implementation, there are problems of accountability.38

A very large proportion of the aid, moreover, simply flows out of the country, funding profiteering western implementing agencies. Noting that "Foreign aid accounts for 90 per cent of public expenditure in Afghanistan"39, the aid agency OXFAM had earlier charged that much of the U.S. aid in Afghanistan is wasted on consulting costs, subcontractor fees and duplication40. Another commentator observes,

It is estimated that less than half of development-assistance money budgeted for roads, schools, hospitals, electricity and other structural needs actually reaches the projects it was ear-marked for and only a quarter of those funds actually get to end users in the rural areas where most Afghans live.41

At bottom, it is necessary to contend with the reality of the collapse of governance in Afghanistan, and the principal that you cannot develop42 what you do not control. Development can only follow once the disruptive dominance of the Taliban over an overwhelming proportion of the country is effectively neutralized. The truth is, "NATO forces may be able to defeat the Taliban in individual battles, but they are not able to hold territory, much less clear, build and develop." There is little possibility that NATO or the Afghan Government will be able to meet this necessary objective of counter-insurgency – to clear, build and develop – under the present policy framework and disposition of forces and resources.​

12. To reiterate, then, the surge is not a solution; only a sufficiency of forces and resources, deployed within a coherent strategic framework, can constitute a solution. President Obama’s AfPak strategy contains none of these elements. It brings, in effect, far too little and much too late to the Afghan theatre. It does so, moreover, at the expense of Iraq, where levels of stabilization remain, at best, tentative and fragile, and consequently risks escalation in that theatre as well.


3. Pakistan: The Seat of Political Desolation

1. It is in Pakistan that the Obama administration faces its greatest challenge, and where its policy fails most comprehensively to break new ground. Crucially, Obama’s perspectives remain firmly fixed on near-term challenges and the objective of securing a tenable ‘exit policy’ for US forces in Afghanistan, with drastically diminished goals within the region – specifically, denying the al Qaeda safe haven and an operational base in Pakistan’s border areas. The strategy to secure these limited objectives appears to be a virtual blank cheque to the Pakistan Army and Government, notwithstanding some tough rhetoric about ‘conditionalities’ and the diluted terms imposed by the Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement (PEACE) Act, 2009, which gives approveal to a tripling of non-military aid to Pakistan, even as it deleted the reference to "cross border attacks into India" – replacing this with the expression "neighbouring countries". While this may appear to be no more than a quibble, the reality is that Pakistan reads this as near-immunity for acts of terrorism on Indian soil. In any event, US conditionalities are of no real relevance. The US has no punitive capacities against Pakistan in view of its continued dependence on the latter to secure any kind of action against the Taliban – al Qaeda combine on Pakistani soil. Indeed, if the US had the capacities to impose effective penalites on Pakistan, it would not have ignored the Pakistani role in the hundreds of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, including many in which American lives were lost; or ignored the repeated and well documented warnings of an expanding Pakistani nuclear arsenal at a time when the security, from extremist forces, of the country’s existing arsenal is suspect. The truth is, the same old ‘strategic’ calculations and the logic of Pakistan’s ‘indispensibility’ to the ‘war against terrorism’ or "COIN (counter-insurgency) campaign"– or whatever politically correct euphemism the Obama Administration may now choose – will inevitably prevail the next time US or ISAF lives are lost in Afghanistan, or Indians are targeted in Afghanistan or in India, in an ISI-backed terrorist attack.

2. Curiously, augmenting US aid to Pakistan comes at a time when President Obama explicitly recognizes that the "civilian government there is very fragile and don’t seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services."43 Worse, despite the apparent magnitude of aid flowing in to Pakistan, these are paltry amounts in terms of the sheer demographic explosion and developmental deficits in the country. Far from addressing the country’s poverty and backwardness, infusions of foreign aid have historically acted as no more than bribes to the national elites – military and political – to secure minimal compliance with reduced US and Western policy objectives. There is no reason to believe that President Obama’s policy brings anything new to the table.

3. Worse, as Pakistan’s implosion gathers pace, neither the US nor the wider international community appears to be exploring the imperatives of responding to what is obviously a rapidly failing nuclear-armed state. Ignoring the entirety of the destructive dynamic that has been unleashed by enduring pathologies within the Pakistani state and society, the US leadership continues to clutch at the straws of ‘negotiated settlements’ with the ‘good Taliban’, of concessions on ‘outstanding disputes’, including Kashmir, and of developmental aid that is expected to choke off the "assembly lines of jihad" and the progressive formal and informal (non-state) militarization of Pakistan. But billions of dollars of aid to Pakistan in the post-9/11 era and a succession of failed experiments with the ‘moderate Taliban’ on both sides of the AfPak border have done nothing to stabilize this catastrophic country, and have only seen a continuous increase in the spaces for radicalization and religious extremism on its soil. Pakistan has, today, established itself as the very heart of global terrorism and the necessity of re-examining past policies with regard to this failing state is now inescapable.

4. The difficulty is that the world’s imagination has been conquered by a skilfully constructed nightmare fantasy, and this has long paralysed responses to a Pakistan that is now approaching the threshold of state failure.44 Islamist extremism and terrorism have remained integral to the ruling establishment’s approach to domestic political management and regional strategic projection, as well as of international resource mobilisation. In the latter context, Pakistan presents itself as part of the solution to the problems it creates, combining manipulation, intimidation, and blackmail – including nuclear blackmail – and is then handsomely rewarded for its ‘cooperation’. Against this backdrop,

…it is useful to conceive of Pakistan as a state acting as a suicide bomber, arguing that, if it does not receive the extraordinary dispensations and indulgences that it seeks, it will, in effect ‘implode’, and in the process do extraordinary harm to others. Part of the threat of this ‘implosion’ is also the spectre of the transfer of its nuclear arsenal and capabilities to more intransigent and irrational elements of the Islamist far right in Pakistan, who would not be amenable to the logic that its present rulers – whose interests in terrorism are strategic, and consequently, subject to considerations of strategic advantage – are willing to heed.45​

This threat has yielded enormous rewards in foreign assistance as well as great latitude in conduct that would otherwise be construed as unquestionably criminal and as appropriate grounds for international sanctions. It is under a benign international dispensation – rooted in fears of possible state collapse – that Pakistan has consistently remained a ‘minimal satisfier’, doing as little as is possible to secure itself against punitive action, but preserving its instrumentalities and networks of terrorism, sustaining its campaigns of terrorism at currently available levels of deniability and the international ‘tolerance of terrorism’.

5. The instrumentalisation of Islam and jihad remain an integral element of the political and strategic ambitions and outlook of the military-feudal-fundamentalist bloc that has ruled Pakistan since its creation. Despite the colossal ‘blowback’ of the jihadi-terrorist enterprise that the country is now experiencing, it remains the case that a powerful constituency in the political-military establishment remains sympathetic to and complicit with the Islamist extremist and terrorist formations that continue to operate with varying degrees of freedom across Pakistan. Ahmed Rashid thus notes,

A nuclear-armed military and an intelligence service that have sponsored Islamic extremism as an intrinsic part of their foreign policy for nearly four decades have found it extremely difficult to give up their self-destructive double-dealing policies after 9/11, even under the watchful eye of the CIA.46

6. Pakistan’s accelerating hurtle into the abyss now appears irresistible. Unfortunately, US policy continues to fail to deal with the realities of Pakistan and its enduring pathologies, and with what one commentator has described as "the slow transformation of the Pakistani state itself into an instrument of the jihadist agenda."47 The sheer urgency of the crisis has largely been neglected by America’s status quo policies, which ignore the fact that, as Ahmed Rashid notes, "the situation in Pakistan deteriorates at a pace faster than policymakers can grasp."48

7. It is critical to recognize the augmenting danger, in this context, of WMD terrorism. Graham Allison, a Harvard professor and a leading nuclear expert, observes,

When you map W.M.D. and terrorism, all roads intersect in Pakistan… The nuclear security of the arsenal is now a lot better than it was. But the unknown variable here is the future of Pakistan itself, because it’s not hard to envision a situation in which the state’s authority falls apart and you’re not sure who’s in control of the weapons, the nuclear labs, the materials.49​

8. Despite a growing realization among wide segments of its national elite that terrorism is doing irreparable damage to Pakistan, and despite the best-intentioned abundance of aid and advice from other countries, Pakistan’s paper-thin institutions and deeply compromised leaderships simply lack the capacities, the vision and the will to check the augmenting momentum. Traditional ‘solutions’ – democratisation, development, negotiated settlements and peace processes – have little scope for success in this context. The Army is the only significant and relatively stable power in the country, and it has historically held the nation together principally through the application of brute force and the instrumentalisation of radical Islamism – devices that are now producing diminishing returns. Crucially, this Army remains deeply ambivalent about the ongoing jihadi terrorism, treating it still as a principal instrumentality of regional power projection and domestic political management, even as it is locked in uncertain war with its own creations, stretched to the limits of its diminishing capacities across multiple theatres of internal conflict. This is an Army, moreover, that has long been mobilised on precisely the same ideology and principles of an aggressive, conquering Islamism that motivate the Taliban, al Qaeda and the numberless lashkars that project carnage across South Asia and into the wider world through their ‘global jihad’. It is an Army that cannot commit itself unambiguously to the objectives of counter-terrorism – even if the tasks of counter-terrorism could still be assessed to be within its capacities.

9. The strategic and foreign policy challenges for the US and the global community, within the emerging scenario, principally involve the neutralisation of Pakistan’s nuclear assets and the containment of the fallout of the country’s collapse into anarchy or takeover by a Talibanised terrorist order. Evidently, these are colossal challenges, and the temptation to lapse into the make-believe of aid-driven development, democratization, ‘peace processes’, ‘negotiated settlements’, and deals with the ‘good Taliban’ will be great. But these are precisely the contours of past failure. Unless the hard core of Pakistan’s ‘enduring pathologies’, its risk of state failure, and the cumulative consequences of these, are directly addressed, policy initiatives, including Obama’s AfPak, will secure nothing of enduring value.


4. From Wishful to Strategic Thinking

1. Regrettably, there is little in the US policy shift from Iraq to Afghanistan, or the related AfPak strategy, that gives grounds for any hope of a ‘new era of peace’ or any significant ‘opportunities for advancement’ in the South Asian region.

2. President Obama’s AfPak strategy overwhelmingly concentrates on unrealistic short-term targets and goals, based on irrational settlements with the most dangerous elements in the region – the Pakistan Army, the ‘moderate Taliban’, and a powerless and unreliable political leadership in Pakistan. At the same time, the setting of hard deadlines for US withdrawal, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, encourage an extremist calculus within a protracted war framework that simply seeks to exhaust the political will of the Western leadership to remain engaged in the war. It is only when the US and the West accept and operate within the protracted war paradigm that a rational policy framework can emerge.

3. For the moment, as President Obama has rightly noted, "there wil be more violence". Regrettably, this violence50, with its overwhelming dependence on both sides of the AfPak border, on long range weapons and aerial targeting, and the inevitable and disproportionate ‘collateral damage’ – the killing of numberless civilians – cannot lead to stabilization of either theatre. It has already provoked a massive displacement of populations, and this will also further feed radicalization, even as the Pakistan establishment’s duality on Islamist terrorism persists. Crucially, with urban centres and parts of Punjab increasingly affected, the very core of the surviving institutional base has come under threat. Within this centrifugal dyanmic, there is little within Pakistan’s existing institutional configuration or the foreign policy tools currently available to outside powers that can help stem the country’s ‘descent into chaos’.

4. President Obama’s ‘AfPak’ strategy rightly recognizes the irreducible connectivity of the many crises of the region, but fails to recognize that this ‘connectivity’ is itself part of the problem. Pakistan has successfully established an Afghan dependency through its strategy of disruptive dominance, and current US perceptions and strategy are perpetuating and institutionalizing this dependency. If Afghanistan is to escape the destructive dynamic imposed on it by Pakistan, it must be helped to escape this dependency, and not be forced into closer and closer "intertwining" of interests through initiatives such as the Reconstruction Opporutunity Zones (ROZs), joint security arrangements, etc. – structures and inititiatives that will always be held in jeopardy by a wilful, disruptive and extremist Pakistani state.51

5. It is necessary to recognize that Pakistan continues to dictate the agenda for the region through its violence and extremist perversity, and also that Afghanistan is now secure from all directions except Pakistan. None of its neighbours have demonstrated any evidence of hostile intent, and most (excepting, for extraneous reasons bound to the relationship with the US, Iran) are now cooperating, in various measure, with the US-led coalition. These are the ties that need to be enormously strengthened, both on tactical and strategic grounds.

6. Within the framework of strategic initiatives in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is crucial to understand that areas of conflict cannot be developed inless they are first recovered. The ‘clear and hold’ imperatives of COIN must – but rarely do – precede efforts of development.

7. While emphasis shifts increasingly to the AfPak complex, it is imperative that the ‘fragile and reversible’ gains in Iraq are not lost. There is significant risk that Iraq may be destabilized again.

8. While the AfPak strategy offers very little that is new in this region, it is also the case that there is no evidence of any alternative strategy within the US perspective. There is, in other words, no ‘Plan B’ that could engage with and contain the consequences of the high probabilities of structural failure in the region. Crucially, existing US perspectives seem to be focused on devices that are merely incremental and entirely inadequate. As one commentator notes, "No one in Washington is, as yet, responsible for winning the war."52​

From: The South Asia Terrorism Portal

 

[ajtr]

Afghan Militias Take on Taliban

In some parts of Afghanistan, neither the Afghan security forces nor the international ISAF troops have been able to protect ordinary people. Now the Americans are arming local militias so they can take on the Taliban. But some observers worry the move could lead to rivalries between different armed groups.

Abdul Gafar can't bear it when the sun rises in the morning and all he has to look forward to is working in the heavy dirt of his fields and coming home to the women in his house -- peace, in other words. Gafar, a militia commander in his early 40s, grew up with a Kalashnikov in his hand the way other children grow up with Lego sets.

The quiet years here in Kunduz weren't his best years: eight insignificant winters without anything to do. There were, of course, plenty of disarmament programs, monitored by representatives of the government in the faraway capital and by international experts. Now his old AK-47 is leaning against a wall in the living room again, out in the open, and Gafar, who is Pashtun, feels strong once again.
The 60 men under his command patrol the villages around Kanam-i-Kalan, a town surrounded by fields and pastures, 18 kilometers (11 miles) northeast of the city of Kunduz. Gafar stretches and smiles: "I'm a good shot, and I even hit my mark at night. I have rocket launchers and mortar shells."

The Taliban Come to Town

Last year, at the end of March, the Taliban came to Kanam-i-Kalan for the first time. The men, in their black turbans, roared through the town on motorcycles at night, in groups of up to 20 fighters at a time. They knocked on doors, holding their Kalashnikovs in their hands, expecting the residents to prepare dinner for them.

Most of the residents of Kanam-i-Kalan are Pashtuns, like the Taliban. They remember all too well how harsh and grim life was under the strict regime of the religious zealots, before the Americans drove them out in November 2001. Most never want to live under the heel of the radical Islamists again.

The Taliban specifically targeted former comrades, recruited spies (at least two in each village) and enlisted young fighters. They levied a religious tax known as ushr, demanding 10 percent of all agricultural earnings. They eventually set up checkpoints along the roads and began checking vehicles.

The Afghan government never showed up to put an end to these activities. It was simply absent. When the situation became too dangerous, the few police officers left the town, the Afghan army was unavailable and the German military stationed in Kunduz, the Bundeswehr, was busy coping with its own problems. There was no one left to protect the local population.

Then the Taliban murdered Abdullah i-Sabaz from Khan Abad, hanging him from a tree for protesting against them. They also shot Mohammed Ismail, a policeman from the neighboring village. The noted attached to his body read: "We will kill anyone who supports the government."

"That was the turning point," says Gafar. It was also the day he opened his secret weapons depot. He had concealed it from the United Nations inspectors and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for years. Now he expanded it by buying a few automatic rifles. The elders from 14 surrounding villages, representing close to 50,000 people, held a meeting. They elected commanders and gave themselves a command structure, and they trained their fighters. That was in the summer, and in late November they made their move. They told the Taliban that they could either leave or be shot. The Islamists left.

Filling the Vacuum of Power

The arbakis, or civilian militias, are as much a part of Afghan history as the wars that have been raging for more than 30 years. Since 2002, the international community has been trying to systematically disarm the Afghan militias. With the help of costly programs, the men were to return to a normal life as farmers, market vendors or craftsmen. A UN report from last year proudly concludes: "Excellent progress was (...) seen in disbanding illegal armed groups (IAGs)."

The disarmament of Afghanistan is a noble objective, but the reality is a different story. Last year, more than 2,400 civilians were shot, hung, beheaded or blown up. Two-thirds of these victims were murdered by the insurgents.

Militiamen are a rough bunch. They make their own laws, steal, drink and take girls and little boys, say the people in Kunduz. Nevertheless, many villages are now seeking to provide their own security with local militias. Men with Kalashnikovs thrown casually over their shoulders and bazookas strapped to their backs are suddenly welcome again in Kunduz, as well as in the country's south and southeast -- everywhere there is heavy fighting.

Militias fill the vacuum that the weak state allows to develop and that 100,000-odd Western soldiers are not filling. It is a precarious development that could be tolerable as a temporary solution, provided a strong Afghan state really develops in the foreseeable future. If it doesn't, the militias will quickly lead to armed rivalries between individual villages and a bloody gang culture. In that case, the arbakis would only be the forerunners of a civil war.

Part 2: Learning from Experiences in Iraq

In the Kunduz district of Khan Abad, the militias that were jointly fighting the Taliban in November are already at odds. "It'll be every man for himself soon," predicts Abdul Mohammed from the village of Aqtash, who sells pots and plastic jugs in the local bazaar.

The Americans, however, also see opportunities in the new developments. Local government representatives are even outfitting the militias with weapons and ammunition, as part of a program the US military calls the "Community Defense Initiative." General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander of ISAF, sees the village militias as potentially strong allies in the fight against the Taliban.

Before coming to Kabul, McChrystal carefully analyzed what went wrong in the invasion of Iraq and what tools eventually brought about a fragile peace. They included the "Sons of Iraq," Sunni militias that began, after three years of war, to rise up against al-Qaida terrorists in August 2006, eventually driving them from their stronghold in Anbar province. These men knew every corner of their neighborhood, a quality that, when combined with the technical superiority of the Americans, produced the desired results.

In Afghanistan, the plan is to incorporate the arbakis into the Western alliance as a kind of loosely organized band of foot soldiers. Thousands of these armed men will then defend their own villages. "The idea is to convince people to take responsibility for their security," says an American colonel on McChrystal's staff in Kabul. His special forces are now working closely with the militia commanders, and in Kunduz the two forces are already hunting down the Taliban together.

Locals' Fears

In Kunduz, the regional intelligence chief is kneeling in front of a giant map, so detailed that it includes even the tiniest streams and villages. General Mohammed Daud Ibrahimi, 43, is a powerful-looking man with bristly hair and darting eyes. He runs his fingers across the map and points to where the Taliban insurgents are located: in the center, in Gor Tapa, farther to the south, in Aliabad, and in the "cleared areas" to the northeast. The Afghan intelligence service, NDS, has become something of a coordinating office for militias in the north.

Today, when hundreds of armed men lie on the lookout in the troubled surrounding areas and report unusual activity to NDS headquarters in Kunduz, it is partly General Daud's achievement. "In places where they weren't active yet, I convinced residents at the end of last year, village by village. I provide the ammunition, and I say: Fight against the Taliban yourselves. That's how I made Kunduz safer again."

But there is still a clear discrepancy between the words of Afghan security officials who claim, after every operation, that the region in question is free of terrorists, and the fears of the local population. It senses that the Taliban has only withdrawn and could possibly return in greater force, even after the arrest of the key Taliban commander in Kunduz, Mullah Salam, in Pakistan a few weeks ago.

Militias have taken control of the northern part of the country once before. At the time, they also promised to protect the population and, at the time, the real issues revolved around who had power and influence in Kunduz, and who was collecting road tolls and fees from drug shipments. That was in the early 1990s, after the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

The Return of the Good Old Days

The Western coalition's new friends are the same militia leaders from those days, minor commanders like Abdul Gafar from Kanam-i-Kalan, who celebrated his first victories during the Soviet invasion and loves fighting more than peace. They also include men like Mir Alam, a notorious warlord.

Alam is sitting in his living room, patting his two-year-old daughter on the back and smiling. The veteran fighter is one of the most feared men in Kunduz. He was once one of the commanders serving under Ahmed Shah Massoud, the great strategist of the Northern Alliance which fought the Taliban. He also supported former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, whose marauding troops crisscrossed the country, stealing, kidnapping and raping. Many Kunduz residents remember this period as the worst years of their lives. And now they are expected to see the same men as their new protectors?

After the campaign conducted by the Americans and their allies, Mir Alam was deprived of power for a time. US soldiers searched his house for drugs and weapons, and German Bundeswehr commanders avoided all official contact. Mir Alam surrendered 2,000 weapons but, according to residents, he kept 3,000 more hidden away.

Then, a few months ago, intelligence chief General Daud personally reactivated the veteran fighter. The two men are bound together by close family ties -- the general's sister is married to Mir Alam. The old and new militia chief was General Daud's best choice for organizing the militias' defensive campaign in the region last year. Mir Alam is also in close contact with the US armed forces, and he has even been mentioned as the future chief of police in Kunduz.

At the end of our meeting, Mir Alam poses in the courtyard with his fellow soldiers from days gone by, all of them smiling, as they did in the past. The good old days, which were everything but good for the residents of Kunduz, have apparently returned.

Enayat Najafizada contributed to this report.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

 

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The Next Battles for Marja

THIS year will be the third in a row that tens of thousands of new United States troops have arrived in Afghanistan with plans to “clear, hold and build” areas controlled by the Taliban. Those previous surges have achieved little success at holding or building, as the international coalition and Afghan government have inevitably failed to come up with realistic plans for what happens after the fighting is done. Is the campaign in Marja destined for the same fate?

The international coalition’s strategic goal for Afghanistan is to build “an enduring stable, secure, prosperous and democratic state.” Only by focusing on the messy medium-term stages of reconstruction — those months, and possibly years, after the fighting dies down — do we have any chance of achieving such a goal. In this regard, Marja presents us with four distinct hurdles. (Disclosure: I work as an analyst for a military contractor, but these views are my own.)

The most pressing problem is displaced civilians. During the weeks leading up to the offensive, Afghan and American authorities asked residents to leave their homes. Many obliged: according to the United Nations, several thousand families, representing upward of 25,000 people, have fled the area.

But accurate reporting is always an issue in Afghanistan, and the Western coalition put the number of families that fled in advance of the fighting at about 200. In either case, aid workers say that the families cannot find temporary housing or medical assistance either in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, or Kabul. Many hundreds of other residents have had their homes and livelihoods destroyed in the fighting.

Then there is the question of how Marja will be governed. Unfortunately, Western leadership is undecided about the nature of the place itself. Depending on which official is speaking, Marja is either a teeming “population center” of 85,000 residents or an isolated farming town of about 50,000 or a district with about 125,000 people. But if Marja is a district, it is unrecognized by the Afghan Interior Ministry. And if Marja is a town, then it needs to hold a constitutionally mandated election to choose a mayor, and not face a governor forced upon it by Kabul.

Regardless of Marja’s status, the choice of new “district governor,” Haji Abdul Zahir, does not make sense. Mr. Zahir has lived in Germany for the last 15 years and had never set foot in Marja until two weeks ago. He is also widely seen as an unassertive crony of Gulab Mangal, the provincial governor. Mr. Zahir’s main power rival in the area is Abdul Rahman Jan, a fearsome former police chief whose forces had such a nasty reputation that people in Marja reached out to the Taliban for protection. The international force needs to either find more appropriate candidates or hold an election.

Good government will matter little, though, if the local economy is in a shambles. Marja’s agricultural base relies primarily on opium, and any new counternarcotics policies will wreak havoc; arresting or killing the drug traffickers will ultimately be the same as attacking local farmers. The timing of the offensive could not be more damaging: opium is planted in the winter and harvested in the spring, which means those who planted last year cannot recoup their investment.

In Helmand, opium is the only way farmers can acquire credit: they take out small loans, called salaam, from narcotics smugglers or Taliban officials, often in units of poppy seed, and pay back that loan in opium paste after harvest. If they cannot harvest their opium, they are in danger of defaulting on their loan — a very dangerous proposition.

Western aid groups distributed wheat seeds last fall, but there was little follow-up and it seems few farmers used them. This year, the aid workers should be prepared to pay farmers compensation for any opium crops they are unable to harvest as a result of the fighting, and the Western coalition should help the groups develop a microcredit system.

Last, progress on these other fronts will do nothing if the Taliban return, which means a significant number of troops must stay for at least a year. Gen. David Petraeus, head of the Central Command, has said that Marja was merely an “initial salvo” in an 18-month campaign to also retake neighboring Kandahar Province, the birthplace of the Taliban. Kandahar is Afghanistan’s second-largest city, so it is reasonable to assume that many troops will be pulled out of Marja for that campaign.

This looks like part of a familiar pattern: troops move into an area, kill anyone firing a machine gun, then move on to the next, bigger target hoping they have left behind a functioning government. It’s why many communities in central Helmand have experienced three influxes of NATO forces in three years.

At a minimum, at least two battalions should stay in Marja permanently, to undergird the new government. They shouldn’t build a new base outside the town for this, or “commute” to the area from strongholds in Helmand like Camp Leatherneck. They should live right inside the town, providing security and guidance from within. You can’t have a “population-centric” counterinsurgency unless you take care of the people.

 

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Marja and the drug war

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay, coming to you today from Washington. And joining us from London to discuss the war in Afghanistan and the battle in Marja is Muhammad Junaid. He's a Ph.D. student in London. He comes from Peshawar, Pakistan. Thanks for joining us again.

MUHAMMAD JUNAID, PH.D. STUDENT, LONDON: Thank you for having me.
JAY: So, Muhammad, what do you hear about the battle in Marja?
JUNAID: The sources from the media and the sources, you know, in Peshawar and other places whom we talk to normally, and those people who travel back from Afghanistan, the summary of the situation is that what NATO and and ANA [Afghan National Army], the Operation Moshtarak, wanted to project is rather slow, although there is success. The on-ground situation has very conflicting reports. Those people who have come from that place have normally indicated that there are enough civilian casualties to call it a bloody war. On the other hand, if you look at the embedded journalists or whatever is coming out controlled from that area, that shows a very rosy picture. However, it should be considered that there has to be some violence, some amount of violence.
JAY: Well, is the number of civilian deaths such that the whole thing's becoming counterproductive from the point of view of the Americans?
JUNAID: Yes. I think, you know, we have to look at it from multiple perspectives. You know, this is not a population waiting for an American and NATO forces to come here and get them rid of Taliban. This impression is, you know, very similar to the impression that was given when, you know, the Americans and British went to Iraq, that people there are waiting to get rid of Saddam Hussein. There is nothing, you know, like that in Marja. Even, you know, in Iraq it was a partial picture that was shown, but in Marja there is nothing like that. So these people are not waiting to be freed or something. However, you know, a very important point is, you know, to know the geography and, you know, the area, how it works. According to, you know, the military personnel who went there, the British military personnel, they record that, you know, in summers the temperature goes to 55 degrees C, and in winters it can go blow 0 to -20 degrees C. They also have said that the jungles around the Helmand River are as green as the jungles of Malaya and Vietnam. However, Helmand has a vast plain of deserts as well. So this is a place which has a very complex geography, and it is not easy to wage a guerrilla war there. It will be a long battle, and if the guerrillas lose, and it should be expected that they will go and, you know, they will rest in thick forests for years.
JAY: Now, in Afghanistan there's sort of two levels of reporting and two levels of the society and economy: there's the sort of official conversation that goes on, and then there is the maybe real conversation, which is the drug conversation and the drug economy. We know that Marja is in the center of a lot of poppy growing. Talk about the politics of drugs and this battle.
JUNAID: We have to again look into history a little bit. And it's all available on the Internet, although, you know, the sources are very few, because—I don't know. Somehow, you know, all those sources will come to you which are being projected more. Helmand River is, you know, and Helmand is one of the greenest area, if you take it, you know, around the Helmand River. And Helmand Valley Project was one of the projects that was launched by Americans, and in 1960s it was supposed to grow cotton in this area and it was supposed to be one of the biggest project around, the biggest technical project of that time. Somehow the irrigation system worked, and it was successful from that dimension; however, it was a failure in terms of growing cotton, because all that irrigation system was diverted to poppy growing, because they could grow it there. That was, you know, the beginning of that. But the poppy was being grown there, but not at this level. So now, you know, it produces 42 percent of all the poppy crop in Afghanistan, which is big percentage. Now, Helmand has, you know, a big population—almost 25 percent population consists of a Pashtun tribe which is called Alizais. So Alizai tribe is present in Helmand; they are also in Kandahar; they are in Balochistan—in Pakistani and in Iranian Balochistan as well.
JAY: Muhammad , when you say "tribe", how many people are we talking about that would be considered part of this tribe?
JUNAID: Now, a tribe also, you know, has levels, as you say, you know, levels. So we should be real cautious of that. There are those people who are drug lords who control the things. They may be, you know, around a few thousand. And then there are, you know, those who depend on them. That may be, you know, up to, you know, 500,000 people in that tribe. But this tribe is pretty important, from the respect of poppy growing. They would not want real development to come there, even, because they have a hold there—they are drug lords; they're earning a huge amount of money. And people there are living by that money as well. So there is a local economy to that. So you can expect a huge amount of resistance from them. One should be real cautious to look at it. The touch of caution is that they really expect, you know, NATO and ANA to be there, you know, for six months, or a year, or one and a half, so they can bear it for some time, but then, later on, it can, you know, explode into do something, because they would not—they would not, you know, want their poppy thing going out of hand.
JAY: Much of the Afghan army is Uzbek and Tajik, and much of that army is riddled with connections to warlords. And, as far as I know, some of the soldiers may even do double duty in terms of working part-time for warlords and part of the army. How does that affect the issue of the drug politics here?
JUNAID: When, you know, I analyzed it, I—you know, it was: let's do a stakeholder analysis of that. There are, you know, different parties with different stakes, and that can be—you know, they can make the situation understandable for us. There is ANA, the Afghan National Army, which is represented by Tajiks and Uzbeks, largely. There are the Taliban, who want their lost government to come back to them; they want their government back; you know, they want their rule. There is US and NATO, who want to develop that place and, you know, win the hearts and minds of the people. And there are drug lords. Now, drug lords is the most persistent, you know, species, I think, because they can be in Afghan National Army; they can be, you know, seen with Karzai; they can be seen from among the Alizai tribes; they can be seen, you know, from among Taliban, even. So they are the most persistent group in that. Each group in the area has, you know, their own benefits to take, their own stakes. The Tajiks and Uzbeks will obviously want to, you know, eradicate the poppy. That will, you know, give them an upper hand in the long run over Pashtuns in monetary terms.
JAY: Because they would still have poppy up north.
JUNAID: They will have poppy up north, exactly. As I said, you know, the Alizai tribes, which is the strongest tribe here, they have, you know, a lot of stakes in drugs as well. But now there is, you know, a drug war going on in this. These drug lords will be pitted against the drug lords which are, you know, from the northern Afghanistan, the Tajiks and Uzbeks, and again, you know, this will become a corporate war from that dimension. From the local dimension, if you tell people to, you know, go and, you know, ask for your money from NATO and ANA and, you know, take their support rather than having your own indigenous poppy, you know, and having your own money, that will, you know, create a shift.
JAY: The Alizai tribe, what is their relationship to the Taliban?
JUNAID: Their relationship with Taliban is, you know, you can expect that they're all Pashtuns, so there will be some of them who will be siding with Taliban. But Taliban would surely have allowed them to grow the poppy crop, and they will be, you know, sharing some riches. No doubt in that. That's, you know, a natural thing, because a lot of poppies coming out of that, and that place was controlled by Taliban. So they have actually allowed them to grow, and, you know, shared the money somehow.
JAY: So the battle of Marja is really taking place in the context of a much bigger drug war.
JUNAID: It's a much bigger drug war. I can imagine that, you know, it will also flood back into Baluchistan, you know, one of the very last provinces of Pakistan which is largely out of control these days. It is, you know, also rifed by insurgency and with law-and-order situation. I think, you know, there are many, many factors that are uncontrollable that will come out. And, you know, you can see Taliban showing their power, you know, once in a while. They went into Kabul and, you know, killed 17 people, most of them Indians. So they showed, you know, they can do anything they want, but they will do it when they want to. They would, you know, rather like to hide in the forests of Helmand and come out, you know, when they can, you know, take on Kabul.
JAY: And, of course, the American media portrays this as the US sort of above all of this drug-war fray, but it actually just decided which drug lords and warlords to ally with against other drug lords.
JUNAID: If you look at it from an independent dimension, it is bad, you know, that the US sides with the drug lords. But if you look at it from the US' angle, the problem is all the powerful people, you know, or most of them, are drug lords. So you have to, you know, talk to somebody; you cannot take the whole country on.
JAY: Thanks for joining us, Junaid.
JUNAID: Thank you very much.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
DISCLAIMER:
Please note that TRNN transcripts are typed from a recording of the program; The Real News Network cannot guarantee complete accuracy.

 

[ajtr]

FO rules out Pak-India proxy war in Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan says at this stage it is reluctant to label Thursday’s killings of Pakistanis and earlier killings of Indians in Afghanistan as a proxy war between Islamabad and New Delhi.

“I would not like to be drawn into this debate. It is important not to draw such conclusions at this stage. It is yet too early. US envoy Richard Holbrooke, too, had exercised restraint in blaming Pakistan for the killing of Indians in Kabul. It was unfortunate. The envoy said in that attack, the Indians were not the target,” the Foreign Office spokesman said while responding to queries during the weekly media briefing.

The Pakistanis were ambushed while on their way to work towards Kandahar’s Panjwai district. The dead were identified as Wazir Khan, s/o Amir Khan from Mianwali, Muhammad Khan, s/o Muhammad Akbar from Chakwal, Asghar Ali, s/o Sattaruddin from Sialkot, and Mazhar Hussain, s/o Muhammad Hussain, from Azad Kashmir.

Proxy wars between Pakistan and India are not new, and only lately Pakistan had complained to India about its interference in Balochistan and Fata from Afghanistan. Islamabad had brought this to the attention of the Afghan as well as the US authorities.

Responding to another query, the spokesman said: “Afghanistan is our immediate brotherly neighbour. Our bilateral relations have significantly improved since the signing of the joint declaration on January 6, 2009. We will never allow our territory to be used for carrying out terrorist acts in Afghanistan or anywhere in the world.”

Earlier, talking to The News from Kabul, Ambassador Muhammad Sadiq, said the embassy had issued a travel advisory for the Pakistanis travelling in the area where the Pakistanis were killed. “But these are labourers who do not ask us but go to different areas for jobs. This particular area is not under the control of the Afghan government and even before this attack, Pakistanis have been killed outside the city. At this stage, it would be difficult to say who was behind the killings,” he said.

He added: “Everyone here wants to hire Pakistani workers, including Afghans themselves. They are in great demand.”A few western diplomats in Kabul said the area where the Pakistanis were killed was not the one where there was any Indian influence.

“It could just be an ordinary crime, as there is a lot of resentment amongst the Afghan labourers against foreign workers. Though we do not have any intelligence, but our analysis is that the killings of the Indians earlier were a crude attempt to scuttle the foreign secretary-level talks,” said a European diplomat.

As the bodies of the four Pakistanis, who were working for a Japanese company, Saita, arrived in Pakistan, the spokesman said Pakistan’s ambassador in Kabul had asked the Afghan authorities to enhance security for the Pakistani citizens and arrest the perpetrators of this crime.

Meanwhile, Pakistan says it need not worry over the recent visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Saudi Arabia, because Pakistan’s own ‘brotherly’ relations with Riyadh have been built over decades.

“There is great mutual confidence and trust and this does not mean that India cannot have relations with Saudi Arabia. We need not worry over this visit,” the spokesman said while responding to a query.

He, however, said it was ‘unfortunate’, while the entire international community praised Pakistan’s role in the fight against terrorism, it was only India that did not see the ‘facts’ on the ground.

“Since we ourselves are a victim of terrorism, there is no question of Pakistan leaving any stone unturned to defeat this menace. Rather than commenting on what the Indian prime minister has said, I think it is important to keep the larger picture and perspective in view. It is unfortunate while the international community continues to praise Pakistan for its determined efforts against militancy and terrorism, it is only India that does not appreciate facts on the ground,” he said.

In reference to the recently-concluded foreign-secretary level talks, the spokesman said though one could not say that these talks succeeded or failed, but Pakistan was certainly not ‘happy’ that India was not ready to resume the composite dialogue.

“Obviously, we are not happy given that India is not yet ready to come back to the composite dialogue process. Pakistan, as the foreign minister has said, would like to engage with India purposefully and would like to have structured negotiations with India to settle and resolve all the bilateral disputes. There are proposals on the table and we will see what the Indian response is to our suggested roadmap. It is our desire for the sake of peace and prosperity in the region that India returns to a meaningful dialogue process,” he added.

Responding to a query, the spokesman said Pakistan did not see any change in the position of India or the US as far as Kashmir was concerned.

“I feel overall, the US has been helpful in encouraging India and Pakistan, as have been other friends, to resolve issues peacefully through dialogue. Now, it is up to our two countries and, particularly India, because Pakistan has been showing its sincerity and seriousness to engage constructively with India with a view to resolving all the bilateral disputes. Now, it is for India to respond to our gestures,” he said.

When asked about broad outlines of the roadmap that Pakistan had given to India, the spokesman said this was basically a way to reach towards a meaningful dialogue.He said: “Right now, all India wants is foreign secretary-level talks and some at the working level.”

“We would like this process to go beyond that and also include the political leadership on both sides of the border. That is the crux of our proposal. If India agrees to the roadmap, without any preconditions to resume the composite dialogue, India will not find Pakistan wanting in this context.”

APP adds: Meanwhile, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will represent Pakistan at the Nuclear Security summit, to be held in Washington from 10th to 13th of next month.Announcing this at the news briefing, Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said the summit would discuss issues relating to security of nuclear weapons and materials.

He expressed the hope that the event would be helpful in enhancing international understanding of the issues.Answering a question, he said the prime minister was also likely to represent the country at the forthcoming Pakistan-EU summit.

 

[ajtr]

Indian agents behind killing of Pakistanis in Kandahar

ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan has become the new ‘battlefield’ between India and Pakistan as Indian agents have taken ‘revenge’ in Kandahar on Thursday by killing five Pakistanis. The Indians had earlier accused Pakistani agents of killing 17 people, including nine Indians, in an attack on a Kabul guesthouse. Pakistan has refuted the Indian allegation.

The Afghan secret service, Riyast-e-Amaniyat-i-Milly (RAM), known for its anti-Pakistan disposition, is providing assistance to the Indian agents working on the soil of Afghanistan. The Pakistani authorities have credible information about the involvement of Indian agents in the Kandahar incident and the government would furnish evidence to important world capitals at an appropriate time. Pakistan has sought details of the Kandahar incident from the Afghan authorities and asked them to nab the real culprits before they flee to India.

The incident took place in the early hours of Thursday when the Pakistani workers were going to the construction site of a Japanese company, Saita. The road from Kandahar to Panjwai is under construction and the gory incident took place on the same road when two motorcyclists started firing indiscriminately on the bus in which the workers were travelling.

Sources told The News here that Indian Ambassador to Kabul Jain Pershad and some Indian diplomats had more than three meetings with RAM chief Amarullah Saleh since last week when the explosion took place in which some Indians were also killed. The Indian National Security Adviser (NSA), Shiv Shankar Menon, is in constant contact with the bosses of the secret service in Afghanistan and he is reaching Kabul today (Friday) to discuss the strategy to deal with Pakistan from the soil of Afghanistan. Some officials of RAW are also reaching Kabul with him.

The RAM spokesman Saeed Ansari told a western wire service early this week that there was evidence Urdu-speaking Pakistanis from the Lashkar-e-Taiba were involved in the attack and not the Afghan Taliban.

The Urdu language is widely spoken in India. According to the Indian officials, the RAM has established that the terrorists were indeed looking for the Indians and had specific information about who was present, including NGO women from SEWA and a senior diplomat on secondment to the Afghan interior ministry. She is working in the Afghan capital as an Indian under cover. For now, officials in New Delhi are guarded about involving Pakistan officially in the incident. They are trying to implicate “groups like the Haqqani network, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and LeT,” an Indian official said the other day in New Delhi on condition of anonymity.

The Afghan investigators have noted that last week’s terrorist attack was very different from the January 18 Taliban strike at the Faroshga mall in central Kabul. The gunmen had allowed Afghan shoppers to leave before training their guns on the security forces and destroying the building. In contrast, the Afghans guarding the Indian medical mission were the first to be shot dead by the terrorists who entered the compound following the huge explosion triggered outside. “The guards shouted: ‘don’t kill us, we’re Afghans’ but they were shot all the same,” an Indian official claimed. The claim itself establishes that the attackers were not looking for any particular national. They were terrorists and wanted to kill whosoever comes in their way, the sources added.

 

[ajtr]

Taliban call Pak army 'impure force'

PESHAWAR: The Taliban on Friday responded to the military's allegations that the militants were being backed by India and Israel by distributing pamphlets that described the Pakistan Army as an "impure force" working at the behest of the CIA and FBI.

The local Taliban distributed the pamphlets at mosques after Friday prayers in Miranshah and other areas of the Waziristan tribal region, local residents said.

The pamphlets described the Pakistan Army as a "napak fouj" (impure force) that worked at the behest of the CIA and FBI.

They said the army derived its strength from the "terrorists" of private security contractor Blackwater, US drones, CIA, FBI, India's RAW intelligence agency and Israel's Mossad spy service.

The pamphlets also said the Pakistan Army was funded by the US, NATO and the UN.

Children standing at the main gates of mosques distributed the two-page pamphlets to people, local residents said.

On March 2, Pakistani planes had dropped pamphlets in North Waziristan that claimed India, Israel and al-Qaida were funding Taliban fighters in the region.

 

[ajtr]

And if the Yanks don’t go home?

Foreign policy commentators in New Delhi and the Generals and strategic establishment in Rawalpindi-Islamabad are working on the same assumption: That the American withdrawal from Afghanistan is inevitable, inescapable and imminent. The Pakistani Generals have been quick on the draw. They have begun the scramble for a post-withdrawal Kabul even before the Americans have actually begun their retreat.

In the short term, the Pakistani Afghan strategy has three components. First, drive the Indians out of Afghan- istan. Second, weaken President Hamid Karzai. Third, play factional politics within the Afghan Taliban so that the Haqqani militia, considered closest to the Inter-Services Intelligence, emerges victorious.

February’s attacks on Indian targets in Kabul were a pointer in this direction. They were believed to have been executed by the Haqqani faction to further the ISI mission of scaring away Indian economic assistance and capacity-building efforts.

The Haqqani faction is the ISI’s proxy. It has gradually gained primacy among the various Taliban groups. Mullah Omar’s faction — the so-called Quetta Shura — is being gradually undermined by Islamabad. As per Pakistani media reports, in a “massive crackdown” nine of 18 key members of the Quetta Shura have been arrested in the past two months. In the coming weeks, expect more senior operatives to be ‘captured’ or ‘persuaded’ by the ISI to defect.

Pakistan has trained its guns on the Queeta Shura ever since elements of it began negotiating with President Karzai’s agents. The ISI sees this as insubordination and seeks absolute control over all Afghan Taliban factions. Essentially, Pakistan is clearing the ground for a post-Karzai, post-America power shift in Kabul. It wants the Haqqani faction to take over, no questions asked. It has been encouraging American contact with the Haqqanis for about a year and will try and present this group as the “good” Taliban or at least the Taliban the West can work with.

The diminution of Mullah Omar has to be seen in this context. He is too much of a religious nutcase to understand or play second fiddle to Pakistan’s strategic interests, which are quite independent of any Islamic projections. In September 2001, Mullah Omar brushed aside the Saudis and the Pakistanis and refused to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States. He preferred risking an American ground invasion instead. The Generals didn’t quite understand this. True, more and more of the senior ranks of the Pakistan Army are turning Islamist. Yet, at the very top, the military leadership remains rational, cut-throat and bloody-minded. It doesn’t love universal jihad as much as it hates India.

As such, Rawalpindi is not bothered about who is a better theologian and more suited to imposing Sharia’h-compliant behaviour laws in Afghanistan — Jalaluddin Haqqani or Mullah Omar. It is more interested in who will serve it better in re-establishing Pakistan’s strategic depth and permitting the use of Afghanistan for unremitting assault on India as a priority over terrorist strikes against the West.

It is quite possible the ISI will lose control of Jalaluddin Haqqani — or his son Sirajuddin — should this wing of the Taliban eventually get to power in Kabul. Yet, that is a problem for the future. For the moment, the ISI and Pakistani praetorian guard on the one hand and the Haqqani clan on the other are in complete synergy.

However, there is one niggling question that remains to be answered: Is it certain the Americans will go home? In other words, have the Pakistanis declared victory a bit too early? Despite the recent London Conference on Afghanistan — where the British Government’s advocacy of a deal with the Taliban seemed to have prevailed, aimed as it was at boosting the Labour Party before this summer’s general election — the final picture remains unclear.

In Washington, DC, there is a compelling battle on between competing wings of the Obama Administration. One school wants to opt out of Afghanistan and would prefer to tackle terrorism in the West within a crime-fighting framework rather than through the prism of a cross-continental ideological war. Another section fears an American withdrawal will be a crippling blow to the superpower and its aura, influence and long-term security. There is concern that if Osama bin Laden appears on the streets of Kabul a few weeks after some sort of Taliban take over — and nobody can rule this out, least of all the ISI — clenches his fists and says “We smashed America”, the consequences will be catastrophic.

That domestic debate in Washington, DC, has not been settled; perhaps it will never be. What that means is an all-out military assault on the multiple Taliban regiments, stretched across Afghanistan and Pakistan, will not happen. Nobody has the stomach for that and, with the unwillingness of European allies to commit forces, nobody has the troops either.

Yet, equally, it also means there will be enough pressure on the American President to not walk away altogether. If nothing else, covert operations within Pakistani territory could intensify, drone attacks being complemented by on-ground targeted killings or assassinations. In short, the status quo may persist longer than a lot of people, especially the Pakistani Generals, think.

November 2010 could prove a key month for Afghanistan’s medium-term future. Congressional elections are due in the United States and will take place exactly midway through President Barack Obama’s term. The Democrats are decidedly nervous and fear the building disappointment with Mr Obama will hand them a drubbing. The Republicans are smelling blood. This is expected to be Mr Obama’s midterm jolt, just as the Republican triumph in the Congressional elections of 1994 was Mr Bill Clinton’s first-term jolt.

That setback in 1994 converted Mr Clinton from a namby-pamby compromiser to a realist. What will 2010 mean for Mr Obama? He will have to re-craft his agenda and branding if he is to rescue his sinking presidency. Doubtless the economy will remain his, and the voter’s, primary concern. However, he would also want to avoid being labelled the President who ran away from Afghanistan, didn’t give his Generals the men and time they sought and in effect wrote America’s obituary as a global power. By neglecting that potential scenario, Pakistan’s Generals could be making a fatal miscalculation.

 

[DaRk WaVe]

U.S. winds down Afghan assault but bigger one on way

by Nasrat Shoib Nasrat Shoib – Fri Feb 26,2010

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) – US-led forces were Saturday winding down one of their biggest offensives yet in Afghanistan, but an official said it was a mere prelude to a larger assault in the works on the Taliban bastion of Kandahar.

The two-week Operation Mushtarak ("Together") had symbolically culminated Thursday when authorities hoisted the Afghan flag in Marjah, a poppy-growing southern area that had eluded government control for years.

A US commander based in Kandahar said that most combat operations had subsided, although US, British and Afghan troops would still need several weeks to exert control over more remote villages in the area of Helmand province.

"There will be some sporadic fighting, I believe, some tough areas where there are still a few holdouts," Brigadier General Ben Hodges told the PBS Newshour on US public television.

"I think most of the significant combat operations, though, will have subsided," Hodges said.

"I think the majority of the enemy has either been killed or driven out or blended back into the population," he said.

The assault has been billed as the biggest military operation since the 2001 US-led invasion ended the Taliban regime, and is a major test of US President Barack Obama's troop surge aimed at turning the tide in Afghanistan.

In a vivid reminder of the Taliban's reach, suicide bombers on Friday targeted guesthouses in the heart of the capital Kabul, killing 16 people including Westerners and Indians.

The new US-led counter-insurgency strategy, designed to allow Western troops to be drawn down by mid-2011, dictates military preparation and assault, then establishing civilian security and services such as hospitals and schools.

More than 4,000 families left Marjah amid the assault, many of them taking refuge in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah as food, medicine and other supplies ran low, humanitarian workers said.

But NATO said bazaars were opening and that rebuilding work had already begun on roads and bridges destroyed in the fighting. It warned, however, of the danger of hidden bombs.

In Washington, a senior Obama administration official said that Operation Mushtarak was just a preview of a wider campaign in the works to exert control in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city.

"I think the way to look at Marjah, it's the tactical prelude to larger, more comprehensive operations later this year in Kandahar city," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"It's a goal for 2010. If our overall goal for 2010 is to reverse the momentum and gain time and space for the Afghan capacity, we have to get to Kandahar this year," he said.

Kandahar is a cultural home to the Pashtun people and was the birthplace of the Taliban movement, which imposed an austere brand of Islam over the country from 1996 to 2001.

"It's their center of gravity," the administration official said of Kandahar, describing the US goal as being able to bring "comprehensive population security" to the city.

Alexander Vershbow, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, said that the Marjah offensive was "crucially important" for the Obama strategy.

"The goal of the new strategy is to reverse the Taliban's momentum, secure the population, and redouble efforts to build the Afghan national security forces so that they can take over security responsibility as conditions permit," he told reporters.

The anonymous administration official on Friday pointed to successes in a key part of the strategy -- Pakistan.

"In the last nine months we've seen a significant strategic shift in Pakistan," the official said. "That strategic shift is the decision by the Pakistani security forces to take the fight against the Pakistani Taliban."

Pakistan has launched offensives in its lawless tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, where much of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leadership is believed to be based.

US officials have long suspected that elements in Pakistan's powerful spy agency have abetted extremists.

 

[DaRk WaVe]

After Marja, ‘Kandahar Will be Next, Mullen

CORONADO, Calif., , March 4, 2010 – The nation’s top military officer today said the focus of American troops and their allies in southern Afghanistan would shift to Kandahar following an ongoing offensive in the former Taliban stronghold of Marja.

The comment by Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, marks the first time the senior-most military leader confirmed what many believed would be the next phase in a series of operations that have been characterized thus far as an early test of the new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

“I think General McChrystal’s been pretty clear that the focus will turn to Kandahar,” he told reporters at the Naval Air Station North Island here, referring to Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Mullen added: “His main effort is really in the south, and Kandahar will be next.”

The chairman noted that operations are ongoing in central Helmand Province’s Marja section, where military officials this week said the mission had shifted from clearing out the enemy to holding the gains the operation has brought about.

“We’re not through Marja,” Mullen said. “It’s been a very tough operation, (and) will continue to be.”

For months before the operation in Marja, U.S. and NATO military officials noted the strategic importance of the southern Afghanistan region and the goal to clear the area of Taliban fighters. The rationale for such a declaration of intent before the Marja offensive was to allow low-level Taliban fighters the chance to flee, and to warn civilians of the impending attack, officials said.

But what at first appeared to be a rare glimpse at the military’s playbook may actually signal an intention on the part of defense officials to disclose operations in southern Afghanistan before they come to fruition. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. Central Command, called Marja the “initial salvo” in a campaign that could last 12 to 18 months.

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John M. Paxton Jr., director of operations for the Joint Staff, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill last month of the military’s intent to focus on Kandahar following the first phase of operations.

Asked by senators why the campaign began in Helmand instead of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, Paxton replied that McChrystal concluded in his assessment in September that Helmand was at the heart of the coalition’s four-point mission to protect the Afghan people, enable Afghan security forces, neutralize the insurgency and allow for governance.

“General McChrystal’s plan was for Kandahar to be a place we would go, but central Helmand is where the insurgency had the most-safe haven,” Paxton said during the Feb. 22 hearing before Senate Armed Services Committee. “I think you’ll see Kandahar will closely follow, but central Helmand had to come first.”

As the military operations of the roughly 15,000 NATO and Afghan forces that have been engaged in Operation Moshtarak since Feb. 13 begin to wind down, the focus in Marja has shifted from what the military calls the ‘clear’ phase to the ‘hold’ phase.

Marja has been characterized as representing the first test of President Barack Obama’s strategy to add 30,000 more troops in the fight against Afghanistan-based insurgents. As the initial phase of operations comes to a close, Deputy Defense Secretart William Lynn said this week that Marja has emerged as an area where hope is returning.

“Because of our new strategy, and President Obama's deployment of additional troops,” Lynn told the American Legion in Washington, “Marja is one of many cities in Afghanistan that has begun to have hope.”

 

[DaRk WaVe]

NATO, Pakistan sharing tactical plans: US official

WASHINGTON: A senior US official on Friday said that NATO commanders in Afghanistan for the first time have begun traveling to Pakistan to share plans for military operations.

The apparent aim is to make sure that terrorists do not slip back and forth over the largely unmarked, mountainous border to escape coalition forces or the Pakistan Army. According to the official the sharing of tactical information represented a new level of cooperation for the military forces battling the Taliban, al Qaeda and other militants. ap

 

[DaRk WaVe]

How Afghans see Operation Moshtarak

Nushin Arbabzadah
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 February 2010 14.30 GMT
Article history
Media coverage of the joint military operation by Afghan and Nato forces in southern Afghanistan has catapulted the previously obscure Marjah and Nade Ali districts to worldwide fame.

The operation's name uses the word moshtarak, which means "together" in Dari, and – as the first major operation conducted in Afghanistan since President Barack Obama came to power – the prominence it has been given in world news is deliberate.

But the international coverage is in sharp contrast to the way it is regarded on the ground in Afghanistan. There, Operation Moshtarak is viewed through the prism of ethnic paranoia, national self-doubt and conspiracy theories: three key factors which have prevented the country's media from representing the Marjah and Nade Ali campaign as a united Afghan effort against a common Taliban enemy.

Reading between the lines of editorials in Afghanistan's opposition press, one cannot help but sense that the opposition is not interested in the successful completion of the operation. After all, military success in Helmand province would amount to the Kabul government regaining the legitimacy that it has lost as a result of the fraud-ridden 2009 presidential election. The opposition has little interest in such victory, so media outlets critical of the government have published editorials that belittled the operation, casting doubt over the strategic importance of Marjah and Nade Ali, and highlighting the issue of civilian casualties there.

Operation Moshtarak was launched to symbolise a new spirit of co-operation and Afghan ownership of the war against the Taliban. But on the ground in Afghanistan, it has become the embodiment of Afghans' internal struggles with themselves. Ironically, moshtarak – a spirit of togetherness – is exactly what is missing in the local media coverage of the operation.

The Daily Mandagar, a paper which had previously been banned after allegations of blasphemy, put its criticism in a characteristically blunt manner. It posed the question: are Marjah and Nade Ali really such strategically important districts to merit this concentration of efforts? The paper added that the local population themselves were astounded by the significance given to their region and doubted that the deployment of 15,000 troops was necessary to force out the Taliban.

Perhaps anticipating such criticism, the pro-government paper Anis had a ready answer to this question. It said that even though Marjah and Nade Ali were of no obvious strategic importance, the operation there was of symbolic value as it offered a chance to test the Afghan army's skills against the Taliban. The paper added that the operation's outcome would define the future of the war.

While both government and opposition papers denied that Marjah and Nade Ali had been chosen for clear, military and strategic reasons, the Taliban themselves had no such doubts. Judging by an interview with the Taliban commander in charge of Marjah, the movement regards the operation as part of an international imperialist conspiracy which renders Marjah and Nade Ali of special military and strategic importance. The interview with Mullah Abdul Rezaq Akhund, the Taliban commander in Marjah, was conducted in Pashto and posted on Cheragh Daily website.

The interview shows that seen through the Taliban's conspiracy prism, Helmand's geographic location gives the province strategic importance. In the interview, Akhund listed four primary reasons which, according to the Taliban, explain why Helmand is of great geo-strategic importance to Nato. The Taliban commander alleged that the US and the UK intend to set up surveillance centres along the border to collect Iranian military and intelligence data. Akhund further alleged that since Helmand is also close to Gwadar, a Pakistani port which is of economic significance to China, controlling Helmand allows Washington to curb the influence of its main economic rival in the region.

He then went on to allege that the US and the UK were also interested in taking control of the drug production laboratories located in Helmand in a bid to profit from the international heroin business. The fourth reason, as alleged by Akhund, is Helmand's uranium resources. In the Taliban commander's own words: "According to eyewitnesses, British forces are bringing a large amount of equipment to the area and have started extracting uranium there and British transport planes land and take off from this area several times every day."

Hence, seen in the terms of the international conspiracy theory as expressed by Akhund, US rivalry with Iran and China, plus uranium and the heroin trade are the reasons why military operations are currently being carried out in Marjah and Nade Ali districts.

According to anecdotal evidence, Mullah Akhund's views reflect those of a majority in Afghanistan. The conspiracy theory comes in variations but common to all versions is a denial of the fact that the violence has local roots and that the problem is self-created and self-perpetuated. It is this denial that is moshtarak, or shared, by all parties, from the government to the opposition and the Taliban.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/16/afghanistan-moshtarak-conspiracy

 

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Taliban Infighting Breaks Out In Northern Afghanistan. UPDATE

In Afghanistan's northern province of Baghlan, who's shadow governor was recently captured by Pakistan, infighting broke out between members of the Taliban and their allies Hizb-i-Islami, which is the network of the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. It's significant, and worth detailing below.

Setrak's diary :: ::
It's tough to figure out how many actually died in the fighting in Baghlan. Quqnoos conveys the guess of a local police official who thinks at least 25 militants died in the clash. 40 others were said to be wounded and 15 Hizb-i-Islami fighters are thought to have been captured. Tax collection is listed as a possible reason for the violence, along with "extending power".

It's very important to note that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is widely thought to have flirted with the government about peace and about even tolerating a foreign presence for a limited time. That puts him at odds with the Taliban leadership. It's unknown whether the unprecedented infighting will continue or be a one-time fluke. It's also unknown whether the infighting is somehow related to the reports regarding Hekmatyar's consideration of peace. If rumors about Baradar are true, then we shouldn't be surprised about how the Taliban treats those who wish to make peace.

Speaking of the Taliban, they seem to be getting their asses kicked in the northern agencies of the Federally Aministered Tribal Areas(FATA) of Pakistan. More big fish are reportedly killed in air strikes. Central-FATA seems to be next on the Pakistanis' sights. Southern-FATA, the Wazir/Mullah Nazir regions of South Waziristan and North Waziristan is where al Qaeda Central is thought to be most concentrated and North Waziristan's residents are starting to get very nervous lately for good reason.

To digress back to the Taliban's reported infighting in northern Afghanistan, Xinhua is reporting more fighting in north-eastern Afghanistan that has allegedly claimed another 50 lives. The fighting is said to be occurring between the Taliban and "rival militans" although few details are available and no specific province is mentioned. Hekmatyar's network is prominent in the north-east. Xinhua is also reporting that twenty members of Hizb-i-Islami have surrendered to the government in northern Afghanistan's Baghlan province.

The Taliban haven't been having a good year thus far.

Update:
It's all so very developing. The Associated Press weighs in, adding new details;
Fighting is still taking place over control of several villages in Baghlan province. Fighting is mostly in central Baghlan and concentrated around half a dozen villages in an area outside of the government's control. At least 50 dead. A police official in the province said that the Taliban moved into areas controlled by Hizb-i-Islami, which started the infighting.

Update II;
Per the News;

Up to 60 militants and 19 civilians may have been killed in bloody clashes between rival militant groups in northern Afghanistan, a police official said Sunday.

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"We have intelligence reports that 60 fighters -- 40 (from) Hezb-i-Islami and 20 Taliban -- have died so far. Our reports indicate that up to 19 civilians were also killed," Andarabi said.

Four Hizb-i-Islami commanders surrendered to the government. Security forces may be on the way. Still developing.

Update III:
BBC says at least 60 dead mostly Hizb-i-Islami fighters, 50 more of which were captured. 11 commanders from Hizb-i-Islami reportedly have defected to the government. Fighting still continuing.

An al Qaeda commander on the CIA's top ten list has been captured in Karachi, Pakistan. Abu Yahya Azam was reportedly the commander of foreign militants fighting in Afghanistan. Said to have been arrested with help from US intel. Developing.(Dawn, the News)

In North Waziristan near the main town of Miramshah, a Taliban commander was ambushed by unknown gunmen and killed. The Taliban commander reportedly led approximately 400 men on cross-border attacks against NATO/ISAF forces and allies in Afghanistan.(AP)

The Pakistani army has bombed what they suspect were militant hideouts in the Sararogha region of South Waziristan.(Dawn)

 

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Contours of the US-Taliban peace deal

by Zia Sarhadi
(Monday, March 8, 2010)
"US politics revolve round grabbing others’ resources - peacefully if they may, forcibly if they must. In Afghanistan’s case, force has failed to achieve the desired result so Uncle Sam, an ill-mannered and uncouth operator, is about to put on the charm offensive all over again, for oil and gas and to save his thick hide."

Regardless of US spin, the endgame in Afghanistan has begun. Aware that they cannot defeat the Taliban militarily, the Americans have changed tune. They are now talking about enticing “moderate” Taliban from the hardcore in order to weaken the insurgency but as even Mike Mullen, Chairman US Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted early last month, the insurgency has spread to Afghanistan’s northern provinces as well, much beyond the traditional Taliban stronghold in the south and west.
American officials including the top US general in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, have admitted that there is no military solution. McChrystal said that every military campaign must have as its endgame a political solution. When generals start talking about political solutions, it is a tacit admission that they have failed in their military mission and are looking for a face-saving exit strategy. Whether the Taliban will offer one is open to question.
The new policy was publicly announced in London on January 28 when foreign ministers from 70 countries assembled in the British capital, ostensibly to raise funds for Afghanistan that would be offered as inducements to preen away “moderate” Taliban from the hardcore. It is like looking for Dalmatians without spots. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, facing an increasingly hostile public, admitted that the war cannot go on forever. At the London conference an estimate $1 billion were pledged. Afghan President Hamid Karzai once again appealed to the Taliban to join his government and he also announced that a Loya Jirga would be convened and he invited the Taliban leader, Mullah Umar to join him. He was profuse in his praise of the one-eyed Taliban leader calling him a “brother” and said we have to sit together and talk.
Talking may be better than fighting but if the Taliban feel, as they clearly do, that they are winning and that the Americans do not have stomach for a prolonged fight especially in view of the rapidly deteriorating US economy with millions of people out of jobs and millions more forced to live in tents, they may decide to wait out the Loya Jirga even if Karzai promises to serve lamb kebab and rice.
According to Crescent International contacts in Pakistan, back channel negotiations are already underway between the Taliban leadership and the US through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Saudi regime. The Saudi intelligence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz has been negotiating with Mullah Omar through his senior aide and commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was captured in Karachi at the end of January but was reported only on February 15. His capture has raised questions about the true motive of the operation. Publicly, the Taliban have dismissed the idea of negotiations; this is for public consumption because they do not want to be seen as negotiating with the kafirs, especially in the eyes of their rank-and-file members who have been brought up on the notion that there will be no negotiations until all foreign troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan. If they are, there will be precious little left to negotiate.
The gap between public pronouncements and private dealings is being narrowed by Pakistani and Saudi intermediaries. During Karzai’s visit to Saudi Arabia under the cover of performing Umrah on his way back from London, he met King Abdullah on February 2. He again appealed to the Saudi monarch for help as he had done during the London conference. Abdullah told him that he would agree only if the Taliban were to first cut off links with Osama bin Laden. This would not be difficult; Osama is already dead, notwithstanding the fake audio taped messages that are periodically broadcast on Al-Jazeera, an American mouthpiece in the Middle East. Al-Qaeda, too, does not exist; it is a creation of the Americans and they raise this bogeyman in order to justify their worldwide military aggressions and to frighten their ill-informed public into supporting ill-conceived policies.
Secret discussions between the US and Taliban were resumed through Pakistani and Saudi intermediaries last November. The Americans wanted the Taliban to stop attacking government buildings in Kabul. The Taliban would have agreed but President Barack Obama’s troop surge announcement on December 1 at West Point upset them. Obama had taken several weeks before making the announcement. The US ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, too, had spoken out against the troop surge. It was not because of any higher principle or that the ambassador, who had served until 2007 as the top US commander in Afghanistan, had suddenly become a peacenik. Eikenberry was in indirect contact with the Taliban and he knew that the troop surge would undermine those efforts, especially since everyone had realized that America and its allies would not be able to defeat the Taliban militarily. His argument was: why provoke them?
He was proved right. As soon as Obama announced the troop surge, the Taliban cut off all contacts. And in order to drive home the point, they launched a massive attack on Kabul on January 18 targeting the presidential palace as Karzai was swearing in the few ministers appro-ved by parliament; the finance, justice and mines ministries, the central bank, as well as the Serena Hotel, the Ariana cinema and a new shopping mall. Some 20 Taliban were involved in the attack that was both daring and brazen in its scope. They delivered the message that no place, not even Kabul with its high security buildings, was safe from such attacks. Karzai certainly got the message; within 10 days, he was ap-pealing to the Taliban for talks.
Through Pakistani and Saudi interlocutors, the Taliban have been urged to resume negotiations. The new deal being hammered out is that the Americans would not increase their troop strength substantially; that troops heading for Afghanistan would simply replace those that are ending their tour of duty. This will save face on both sides: the Taliban would get what they want and Obama would say that he has fulfilled his pledge of a troop surge.
This does not mean that peace will break out in Afghanistan tomorrow. Negotiations, especially conducted through intermediaries and in secret, often have a tendency of falling apart as a result of misunderstandings or miscommunication. There are also the divergent interests of the parties involved. The Americans do not intend to leave the country completely. After all, they did not spend hundreds of billions of dollars to return home empty-handed. What they are looking for is a way to reduce direct military involvement while the heavy lifting is handed over to the Afghans. As Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University (England) put it, “The spin is that Afghanistan can take charge of its own security.” That is not the case and Karzai knows it. His regime would not last a few weeks if foreign troops leave, hence his talk about Western troop presence for the next 15 years or more. The real question is whether the Americans can afford such a long-term commitment to prop up a corrupt, unpopular puppet. The Taliban can at least guarantee security and would not need the Americans to prop them up.
So what does the future hold? No quick breakthroughs can be expected. The negotiations will drag on for quite some time. The Americans want to avoid the Saigon moment (the 1975 scramble out of Saigon when Americans clung to helicopter skids as they took off from the US embassy with the Vietcong pouring into the city) as well as the retreat march out of Kabul as the Russians experienced in February 1989. Instead, they would like to keep some contingents under the guise of reconstruction teams to “rebuild” Afghanistan, the country they have ravaged for nearly 10 years. They would even promise to pay for reconstruction provided the Taliban agree to allow the oil and gas pipeline from Central Asia through Qandahar and into Pakistan. It was the same pipeline deal they had rejected back in July 2001 that resulted in the US invasion of Afghanistan. The events of 9/11 were just a pretext for launching the invasion.
US politics revolve round grabbing others’ resources - peacefully if they may, forcibly if they must. In Afghanistan’s case, force has failed to achieve the desired result so Uncle Sam, an ill-mannered and uncouth operator, is about to put on the charm offensive all over again, for oil and gas and to save his thick hide.

 

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A guide to recent militant arrests and deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Abu Yahya Mujahdeen al-Adam. Though initial media reports suggested al-Qaeda's American spokesman "Azzam the American," Adam Yahiye Gadahn, was arrested in Karachi several days ago, it now appears that Gadahn's arrest was a case of mistaken identity: Abu Yahya Mujahdeen al-Adam, from Pennsylvania, is believed to be involved in al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan, and his name and origin probably caused the confusion.

Maulvi Faqir Muhammad. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander from Bajaur was reported killed by a Pakistani airstrike in Mohmand on Friday, but a Reuters reporter apparently identified his voice on a phone call in which Maulvi Faqir said he was fine and reports of his death were propaganda.

Agha Jan Mohtasim. This Afghan Taliban commander, who Pakistan's Daily Times writes is the son-in-law of Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, was reportedly captured on March 3 in Karachi.

Muhammad Tufail. A commander linked to attacks in Nowshera, Tufail was reportedly killed in a shootout with Pakistani security forces in FR Peshawar on March 2.

Muhammad Iqbal. Killed in the same shootout as Muhammad Tufail was this TTP commander who supplied suicide bombing materials to militants in Islamabad and across Pakistan.

Muhammad Alam Binouri. Also known as Maulana Khalil and Binouri Mullah, Binouri was one of the 21 most wanted Taliban commanders in the Swat Valley and was reportedly killed in a gunbattle with Pakistani security forces on March 1.

Muhammad Qari Zafar. This Punjabi Taliban commander wanted in connection with the deadly 2006 bombing of the U.S. consulate in Karachi was killed by a drone strike in North Waziristan on February 24.

Maulana Fazlullah's nephew. Though his name hasn't been reported, a nephew of Swat Valley Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah was arrested in Nowshera in late February.

Mullah Abdul Qayoum Zakir, Mullah Muhammad Hassan, Mullah Ahmed Jan Akhunzada, and Mullah Abdul Raouf. Anand Gopal reported that these four members of the Afghan Taliban's ruling Quetta shura were arrested in late February. Mullah Abdul Qayoum Zakir oversaw Afghan Taliban military operations; Mullah Hassan was a minister under the Taliban's rule of Afghanistan; Mullah Akhunzada is the former Taliban governor of Zabul; and Mullah Rauof ran operations in northeastern Afghanistan.

Umar Abdul Rehman. This Taliban operative was captured in Karachi on February 23 with a stash of suicide vest-making materials.

Maulavi Abdul Kabir. The Quetta shura member, commander of Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan, and former Taliban governor of Nangarhar province was arrested in mid-February in Nowshera.

Muhammad Haqqani. A suspected U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan killed this son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the head of the al-Qaeda linked Haqqani insurgent network. Muhammad Haqqani's involvement in the insurgency is unclear; some reports claim he provided a hideout for Arab fighters in the region, but others write that his brother Siraj, who leads the Haqqani network's operations, wanted him to pursue a "more normal" life.

Sheikh Mansoor. An al-Qaeda leader of Egyptian origin, Sheikh Mansoor was reportedly killed by a drone strike in North Waziristan on February 17.

Abdul Haq al-Turkistan. The leader of a Chinese separatist insurgent group called the Turkistani Islamic Party was killed by a U.S. drone in North Waziristan on February 15.

Mullah Abdul Salam. The Taliban's ‘shadow governor' of Kunduz, Mullah Abdul Salam was reportedly nabbed in Faisalabad in early February. Taliban sources say Mullah Salam was en route to meet with Mullah Baradar at the time of his capture.

Mullah Mir Mohammed. The Taliban ‘shadow governor' of Baghlan was reportedly arrested along with Mullah Salam.

Mullah Muhammad Younis. Not much known about this Taliban official, but he was reported captured by the BBC and the Christian Science Monitor in mid-February. Amir Mir of The News writes that he was an "explosives expert who served as police chief in Kabul" during the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan.

Mullah Baradar. The second-in-command of the Afghan Taliban was arrested in a joint CIA-ISI operation in Karachi in early February, and is currently being held by Pakistani security forces. It's unlikely he will be turned over to Afghan or U.S. authorities, reports claim, and a court in Lahore has ruled against his extradition, though the CIA, FBI, and Kabul reportedly want him.

Hakimullah Mehsud. The chief of the TTP is now believed to have died from injuries sustained from a U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan in mid-January. The TTP have denied this and recently released an undated video of Hakimullah, but Taliban sources say the TTP's top shura has not convened in two months and no one has stepped up to take Hakimullah's place.

Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim. A suspected U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan in early January killed this commander, who was wanted in connection with the 1986 bombing of Pan American World Airways flight during a stop in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

 

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Taliban, HIG infighting leads to split in Afghan insurgency in the North

More than 120 fighters from the anti-government Gulbuddin faction of Hezb-i-Islami have surrendered to local authorities in Baghlan after a weekend of fighting with the Taliban that left 60 insurgents and 20 civilians dead.

"Since Sunday 120 fighters including 70 armed men from Hizb-e-Islami have joined [the] government," a police spokesman in Baghlan told Xinhua. Mamor Malang, a local commander of the Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, or HIG, was among those who surrendered to the government. More HIG fighters are expected to join the government in the coming days.

The fighting began on Saturday as a dispute between the local HIG units and Taliban forces in several villages in the Baghlan-e-Markazi district came to a head. The two forces, which are normally allied against Afghan and Coalition forces, battled over control of the region and the ability to collect taxes there. Twenty-five fighters were reported killed in the first day of the fighting, which ultimately ended on Sunday.

It is not clear if this split is localized to the district or portends a wider problem in the North; Taliban and HIG leaders have not commented on the fighting.

HIG has allied with the Taliban in the northern Afghan provinces of Baghlan and Kunduz. The allied terror groups maintain safe havens in Baghlan and in neighboring Kunduz province. Of the seven districts in Kunduz province, only two are considered under government control; the rest of the districts - Chahara Dara, Dashti Archi, Ali Abab, Khan Abad, and Iman Sahib - are considered contested or under Taliban control, according to a map produced by Afghanistan's Interior Ministry in the spring of 2009. Two districts in neighboring Baghlan province - Baghlan-i-Jadid and Burka - are under the control of the Taliban [see LWJ report, "Afghan forces and Taliban clash in Kunduz," and Threat Matrix report, "Afghanistan’s wild-wild North"].

HIG commanders claim to have thousands of fighters and supporters under arms in northern Afghanistan, and say the group is flush with foreign support and fighters.

"We have around 3,000 to 4,000 Hezb-i-Islami men in the north," a HIG commander named Kalakub told a PBS Frontline reporter who spent a week with fighters in Baghlan. "People come to us from all over Afghanistan. … They come from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan. We get special mujahids from abroad, but we're not allowed to talk about them." Quraishi believes that these special mujahids are mainly Arabs from Yemen and Saudi Arabia who have been trained by Al Qaeda.

The northern HIG is led by Commander Mirwais, "a former millionaire businessman who turned to jihad after the US invasion of Afghanistan."

"Jihad has become a duty for all the Afghan nation because the foreign and non-believer countries have attacked us," Mirwais told PBS Frontline. "They're getting rid of our religious and cultural values in Afghanistan. They've increased obscenity and want to force Western democracy on our country."

HIG is a breakaway faction of the Hezb-i-Islami, which has joined the Afghan government. HIG is a radical Islamist group that is loosely aligned with al Qaeda and the Taliban. It is led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is closely tied to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Hekmatyar was a key player in the Soviet-Afghan war and led one of the biggest insurgent factions against Soviet and Afghan communist forces. His brutal battlefield tactics and wanton destruction of Kabul following the collapse of the Afghan Communist regime in the early 1990s led to the demise of Hekmatyar’s popularity. The Taliban overran his last stronghold south of Kabul in 1995 and forced him into exile in Iran from 1996-2002.

In May 2006, Hekmatyar swore alliance to Osama bin Laden. "We thank all Arab mujahideen, particularly Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri, and other leaders who helped us in our jihad against the Russians," he said in a recording broadcast by Al Jazeera.

"They fought our enemies and made dear sacrifices," Hekmatyar continued. "Neither we nor the future generations will forget this great favor. We beseech Almighty God to grant us success and help us fulfill our duty toward them and enable us to return their favor and reciprocate their support and sacrifices. We hope to take part with them in a battle which they will lead and raise its banner. We stand beside and support them."

Hekmatyar has since reached out to the Afghan government to conduct negotiations to end the fighting. His son is reported to have attended negotiations in the Maldives earlier this year. Also, last month Hekmatyar released terms for an end to the fighting. The 15-point plan calls for Coalition forces to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2010.

 

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Aide: Karzai ‘very angry’ at Taliban boss’ arrest

KABUL - The Afghan government was holding secret talks with the Taliban's No. 2 when he was captured in Pakistan, and the arrest infuriated President Hamid Karzai, according to one of Karzai's advisers.

The detention of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar — second in the Taliban only to one-eyed Mullah Mohammed Omar — has raised new questions about whether the U.S. is willing to back peace discussions with leaders who harbored the terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

Karzai "was very angry" when he heard that the Pakistanis had picked up Baradar with an assist from U.S. intelligence, the adviser said. Besides the ongoing talks, he said Baradar had "given a green light" to participating in a three-day peace jirga that Karzai is hosting next month.

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The adviser, who had knowledge of the peace talks, spoke on condition of anonymity because of their sensitivity. Other Afghan officials, including Abdul Ali Shamsi, security adviser to the governor of Helmand province, also confirmed talks between Baradar and the Afghan government. Several media reports have suggested that Baradar had been in touch with Karzai representatives, but these are the first details to emerge from the discussions.

Few details about Baradar’s arrest
Talking with the Taliban is gaining traction in Afghanistan as thousands of U.S. and NATO reinforcements are streaming in to reverse the Taliban's momentum. That has prompted Pakistan and others to stake out their positions on possible reconciliation negotiations that could mean an endgame to the eight-year war.

Officials have disclosed little about how Baradar was nabbed last month in the port city of Karachi. The Pakistanis were said to be upset that the Americans were the source of news reports about his arrest.

The capture was part of a U.S.-backed crackdown in which the Pakistanis also arrested several other Afghan Taliban figures along the porous border between the two countries, after years of being accused by Washington of doing little to stop them.

Far from expressing gratitude, members of Karzai's administration were quick to accuse Pakistan of picking up Baradar either to sabotage or gain control of talks with the Taliban leaders.

Whatever the reason, the delicate dance among Karzai, his neighbors and international partners put the debate over reconciliation on fast forward.

Top United Nations and British officials emphasized last week that the time to talk to the Taliban is now. The Afghan government, for its part, has plans to offer economic incentives to coax low- and midlevel fighters off the battlefield. Another driving force is President Barack Obama's goal of starting to withdraw U.S. troops in July 2011.

The United States, with nearly 950 lives lost and billions of dollars spent in the war, is moving with caution on reconciliation.

At odds over who should be at table
At a breakfast meeting in Islamabad last week, Karzai said he and his Western allies were at odds over who should be at the negotiating table. Karzai said the United States was expressing reservations about talks with the top echelon of the Taliban while the British were "pushing for an acceleration" in the negotiation process.

"Our allies are not always talking the same language," he said.

Karzai said overtures to the Taliban stood little chance of success without the support of the United States and its international partners. He says his previous attempts to negotiate with insurgents were not fruitful because "sections of the international community undermined — not backed — our efforts."

The U.S. has said generally that it supports efforts to welcome back any militants who renounce violence, cut ties with al-Qaida and recognize and respect the Afghan constitution, but it is keeping details of its position closely held.

Daniel Markey with the Council on Foreign Relations said that while Karzai is having discussions with senior people on the Taliban side, "it's not clear that Washington or other members of the international community have weighed in as to what they believe are the red lines or proper boundaries with respect to negotiations with the Taliban."

During his trip to Afghanistan last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it was premature to expect senior members of the Taliban to reconcile with the government. He said until the insurgents believe they can't win the war, they won't come to the table. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said she's highly skeptical that Taliban leaders will be willing to renounce violence.

Timing of outreach still under debate
A U.S. military official in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss reconciliation, said the top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has not yet solidified his opinion on this issue.

He said the U.S. is still debating the timing of the Afghan government's outreach to senior leaders of three main Afghan insurgent groups — Omar; Jalaluddin Haqqani, who runs an al-Qaida-linked organization; and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the boss of the powerful Hezb-e-Islami.

The official added that the international military coalition had no problem with the Afghan government's reaching out to anyone, at any time, but is concerned that a deal to end the violence not come at too high a price.


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Taliban: Kandahar bombings a ‘warning’
Deep differences remain within the Obama administration on reconciliation, said Lisa Curtis, a research fellow on South Asia for the Heritage Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington. "This disagreement is contributing to a lack of clarity in U.S. official statements on the issue and leading to confusion among our allies," she said.

"The military surge should be given time to bear fruit," Curtis argued. "Insurgents are more likely to negotiate if they fear defeat on the battlefield." In talks with Baradar
Karzai won't discuss his administration's talks with Taliban members or their representatives, but several Afghan officials confirmed that his government was in discussions with Baradar, who hails from Karzai's Popalzai tribe of the Durrani Pashtuns in Kandahar.

"The government has been negotiating with Mullah Baradar, who took an offer to the Taliban shura," Shamsi said, using the word for the group's governing board.

Shamsi said he'd seen intelligence reports indicating that Omar resisted the offer and that Baradar's rivals within the Taliban leadership were fiercely opposed to any negotiations with the Afghan government.

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An intelligence official in southern Afghanistan, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk with journalists, said there were reports that Omar was angry about Baradar's negotiations with the government and asked Pakistani intelligence officials to arrest him.

Nevertheless, Hakim Mujahed, a former Taliban ambassador to the United Nations, said many Taliban leaders are willing to talk.

"The problem is not from the Taliban side," he said. "There is no interest of negotiations from the side of the foreign forces."

Hamid Gul, a former director of the Pakistani intelligence service who has criticized the U.S. role in Afghanistan, said the insurgents want three things from the U.S. before talks could begin — a clearer timetable on the withdrawal of troops, to stop labeling them terrorists, and the release of all Taliban militants imprisoned in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Theories surrounding arrest
What actually precipitated Baradar's arrest remains a mystery.

Some analysts claim Pakistan wanted to interrupt Karzai's reconciliation efforts or force Karzai to give Islamabad a seat at a future negotiating table.

"I see no evidence to support that theory," Richard Holbrooke, U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, told reporters this month. "I know somewhat more than I'm at liberty to disclose about the circumstances under which these events took place and every detail tends to work against that thesis."

Another theory is that Baradar, deemed more pragmatic than other top Taliban leaders, was detained to split him from fellow insurgents. McChrystal said recently that it was plausible that Baradar's arrest followed an internal feud and purge among Taliban leaders.



There's also speculation that Baradar's arrest was just lucky — even unintentional.

If Karzai was still angry about Baradar's arrest, he didn't show it publicly last week on a two-day visit to Islamabad. His message was twofold — that Pakistan had a significant role to play in reconciliation and that its cooperation would be welcomed. He called Pakistan a "twin" and said Afghans know that without cooperation, neither would find peace.

 

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Battle over Afghan peace talks intensifies

WASHINGTON - The struggle within the Barack Obama administration over Afghanistan policy entered a new phase when the president suggested at a meeting of his "war cabinet" last Friday that it might be time to start negotiations with the Taliban, according to a report in the New York Times on Saturday.

Obama said the success of the recent operation to take control of the "insurgent stronghold" of Marjah, combined with the killing of insurgent leaders in Pakistan by drone attacks, might be sufficient to "justify an effort to begin talks with the Taliban", two participants in the meeting told the Times.

That proposal puts Obama directly at odds with key members of his national security team, especially Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Both Gates




and Clinton have argued in recent months that attempting to negotiate with Taliban leaders would be fruitless unless and until they had been convinced by US military operations that they were losing.

In an indication that Gates and Clinton intended to resist Obama's proposal to start talks soon the Times reported that two unnamed officials who attended the meeting said any plans for "reaching out" to the leadership of the Taliban were likely to be delayed until after US forces launched a major military offensive in Kandahar province.

That is the Gates-Clinton position on the issue, which is also held by General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan.

By hinting that Obama's suggestion was not likely to prevail, the opponents of early negotiations were expressing confidence that they would once again force him to back away from a position that was unacceptable to the military leadership and the field commander. They succeeded in getting Obama to retreat from his timetable for withdrawal from Iraq in March 2009 and from his initial resistance to a large troop increase in Afghanistan last November.

The argument that will now be made by Clinton, Gates and McChrystal that the administration should wait until after the Kandahar operation is launched before taking any negotiating initiative is evidently aimed at giving McChrystal's command as much time as possible to show successful results against the Taliban before negotiations begin.

The offensive in Kandahar is not expected to begin until this summer, according to military officials, and it could take several months before US troops even get into the city itself. The military and its allies in Obama's war cabinet would certainly argue for delaying talks until the operation could demonstrate clear success. That could mean waiting until well into 2011.

Obama identified mid-2011 as the trigger point for the beginning of a US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. But Obama will also need to show the US public that he is making progress on an exit strategy by 2012 - the biggest single prod for starting peace negotiations much earlier.

The question of when negotiations with the Taliban might begin has been hanging over the administration's national security team for weeks. As one official told the Times, starting negotiations "is now more a question of 'when' than a question of 'if'."

McChrystal has been worried that Obama would agree to a negotiated settlement with the Taliban involving a relatively short timetable for the withdrawal of US forces.

Contrary to the public position voiced frequently by Gates that the Taliban would not negotiate seriously under present conditions, McChrystal understands that there are indications the Taliban leaders would try to use their present strong territorial position as bargaining leverage on a settlement. That was the gist of what an official of McChrystal's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) told Inter Press Service (IPS) in late January.

The Taliban would presumably offer formal guarantees that they would sever all ties with al-Qaeda in return for withdrawal of all foreign troops, based on the signal conveyed in an article on the website of the Taliban's Islamic Caliphate of Afghanistan website on December 5.

The Washington Post's military correspondents reported on February 22 that "senior military officials" had decided to target Marjah mainly to convince US public opinion that the US military could be successful in Afghanistan. That shift in perception about military success, in turn, would be expected to translate into a slower troop withdrawal, according to the Post report.

That reasoning implied that a shift in public opinion toward support for military operations in Afghanistan would discourage Obama from agreeing to a short timetable for withdrawal in any negotiations with the Taliban.

When Obama announced a compromise strategy in November, he hinted that the war would have to end through negotiations, but left the question of how and when the United States would participate in those negotiations unresolved. In referring to the military objective in Afghanistan, Obama refused to talk about defeating the Taliban in his December 2 speech. Instead, he referred to "a strategy that will break the Taliban's momentum and increase Afghanistan's capacity over the next 18 months".

That was in sharp contrast to his March 27 speech in which he referred to the "uncompromising core of the Taliban" and said "they must be defeated". Obama was clearly implying that negotiations would be a necessary part of the strategy.

But Obama provided no explicit policy guidance on when and how negotiations would begin. That allowed Clinton and Gates to continue to offer arguments against such negotiations publicly.

On ABC News on December 5, Clinton suggested that there was no reason to believe that the Taliban would agree to the main US demand for an end to all ties with al-Qaeda, citing Taliban leader Mullah Omar's refusal to turn over Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. And Gates repeated the argument that the Taliban would only be ready to negotiate after their "momentum" had been stopped.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai had already begun asking the United States to support him in starting negotiations with the Taliban - something Clinton had publicly opposed. Karzai said on December 3 that he would invite Mullah Omar himself to talks.

He let it be known that he would use the London conference of January 27-28 to invite the Taliban to participate in a national loya jirga "grand council" meeting on peace.

That intention heated up the debate in Washington and in McChrystal's ISAF headquarters. In Kabul just four days before the conference, an ISAF official told IPS the issue then under debate within the administration was whether Mullah Omar would be an acceptable participant in a future Afghan government.

"If Mullah Omar were to turn around tomorrow and say he is ready to come back," he asked, "would we be comfortable with that?" The official suggested that the London conference was an opportunity to achieve consensus on the issue.

Seeking clarification of the US-North Atlantic Treaty Organization stance on the issue of Mullah Omar's acceptability now appears to have been aimed at getting a decision against early negotiations with the Taliban leadership. Barring Mullah Omar, the Taliban's spiritual as well as political leader, from participation in any negotiations would have meant, in practical terms, refusing to deal with the Taliban's leadership committee.

Back in Washington, however, Obama made no decision to support or oppose Karzai's proposal and, by extension, left open the possible participation by Mullah Omar in talks on a peace agreement.

An administration official recalled recently that the George W Bush administration adopted a firm policy against reconciliation with the Taliban, and that then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice once told Karzai in a phone conversation to "shut up about reconciliation" with the Taliban. But the Obama administration still hadn't adopted a new policy on the issue, the official told IPS.

Obama's initiative in proposing to take advantage of even modest successes in Afghanistan and Pakistan to start talks suggests that he is waiting for the earliest possible favorable moment politically to make a move toward diplomacy. It remains to be seen, however, whether he is willing to stand up to pressures from opponents of such an initiative or will retreat once again to avoid any confrontation with the military.

 

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Karzai for more Chinese support

BEIJING: Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday called on China to increase its economic support towards his country's rebuilding efforts, in meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao. The two countries on Wednesday signed three documents on economic and technological co-operation, more favourable tariffs for Afghan exports and training programmes. But seeking greater Chinese investment in Afghanistan's development and regional security issues were top of the agenda during Mr. Karzai's talks with Mr. Hu, said officials.

China has begun to emerge as an increasingly important player in Afghanistan, giving the country substantial financial assistance and also helping in rebuilding its infrastructure. Since 2002, China has given more than $200 million in financial assistance. China is also looking to increase its investment in the country's mineral deposits.

In 2007, the State-owned China Metallurgical Group signed a record $3-billion deal to develop a copper mine at Aynak. Security issues are another focus of this week's talks. Chinese officials have expressed increasing concern over the safety of their investments, which have slowed in recent months. China is also worried about unrest spreading from Afghanistan into its borders. Afghanistan shares a border with China's restive Muslim-majority Xinjiang region.

 

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Afghan Official Praises Role of Spanish Troops

MADRID – The governor of the western Afghan province of Badghis said on Wednesday that his administration works “like brothers” with the Spanish troops stationed there as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Delban Jan Arman is in Spain at this time with a delegation of officials from Badghis on a visit to tighten bilateral ties and to ask for aid for reconstruction activities in Afghanistan in the face of the threat from the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

In an interview with Efe, the governor acknowledged the role of the international community, and in particular Spain, on the road toward “improving the well-being” of the Afghan citizens after 30 years of war.

He transmitted those sentiments in his meetings on Wednesday in Madrid with Spain’s foreign and defense ministers, Miguel Angel Moratinos and Carme Chacon, respectively.

“After a very intense war of 30 years that has destroyed everything, to begin the reconstruction we’re counting on the support of the international community, in particular Spain,” said Arman.

The governor said that the objective of working “like brothers” with the Spanish troops had been achieved.

“The people of Badghis are very happy with the Spaniards. I have received no complaints,” Arman said, adding that some of the soldiers have been invited to eat lunch or dinner at the houses of citizens to speak about the problems they are experiencing and help them.

“We’re going to improve, to strengthen even more that cooperation between the Spanish security forces and the police forces and the Afghan army,” he added.

In the last five years, Spain has financed the construction of nine schools in Badghis, has provided the provincial hospital with a maternity/neonatal ward and a unit for malnourished children and has built seven rural clinics to give health care coverage to more than 100,000 people.

Spain has 1,509 troops serving with ISAF. Ninety Spanish military personnel have been killed since the mission to Afghanistan began in 2002. EFE