Jason Gutierrez reports for Agence France-Presse on US marine thoughts on their situation in the southeast of Marjah in Afghanistan. The marines who are quoted describe very dangerous conditions and also how they think about just getting back to their families in the states. There is no reference here to larger military goals, although one is left with a sense of pessimism. Marjah is the town the Marines hope to take from the Talabin. It is a town where the farmers grow poppy and and the Talabin intimidate local people from in any way supporting the foreign troops. In short, this appears to be another Afghan locale that will be affected by military assaults from both sides, leaving the people and farmers in worse conditions than they have had.
Bob
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Published on Sunday, January 31, 2010 by Agence France-Presse
US Marines Facing a 'Different War' in Afghanistan
by Jason Gutierrez
SOUTHEAST OF MARJAH, Afghanistan - For the US Marines deployed to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan, life is fragile and thoughts focus on the day they see their families again, but something about this war is different.
An Afghan farmer watches on as US Marines patrol near a military base near Marjah, central Helmand. For US Marines deployed to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan, the war is changing with a major offensive on the Taliban urban stronghold of Marjah where the militants are offering stiff resistance.(AFP/Christophe Simon)They are preparing for an offensive on Marjah, one of the Taliban's big urban strongholds in the southern province of Helmand, but progress is slow with the militants apparently preferring fight to flight.
The Marines will soon be joined by tens of thousands more soldiers, the lion's share of the 30,000-strong troop surge promised by US President Barack Obama in December to try and turn around the grinding Afghan war.
A foot patrol for one platoon of Marines ends with a dash under a hail of bullets across a heavily-mined poppy field.
The soldiers have been pinned down in a muddy mound, the thorny weeds cutting through skin. They recover soon enough, however, manoeuvring away from the Taliban's crosshairs and driving them away with heavy machine-gun fire.
"I pray in the morning and at night, hoping that someone up there is looking after me," says Lance Corporal Justin Blancas, serving with the Marines 1st Battalion, 6th Regiment Alpha Company's 2nd Platoon.
"I have already made my peace with God because this war is different, it's not conventional," the 23-year-old bespectacled Chicago native says.
"These Taliban have learned their lesson. They adapt as fast as we do, but we are bound by our strict rules. They are not," he adds, panting after a 100-metre dash for cover behind an abandoned mud house.
"It can be a death run like this every day."
The US and NATO troop surge is set to swell the foreign force to 150,000 this year, but Afghan and Western officials are also talking about a political solution to end the Taliban-led insurgency as its enters its ninth year.
To force the Taliban leadership to the negotiating table however, US military officials have said there needs to be greater success on the battlefield -- and this is where the Marines come in.
But the challenges on the ground are immense. Fields are littered with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) responsible for most of the deaths of foreign troops in Afghanistan, which hit a record 520 fatalities last year. Related article: January Afghan death rate signal of tough 2010
The Taliban are also entrenched in their strongholds holding sway over the population and setting up shadow governments across the country, meaning they have the local intelligence that the Marines desperately need.
"Marjah has also been a stronghold by the Taliban for some time. They know where we are coming and can stage ambushes anytime," says one sergeant who asks not to be named.
Five Marines were killed in southern Afghanistan in two days of January alone in IED blasts and ambushes.
Platoon commander Lieutenant David Emison, a Virginia native and the first Marine in his family, still sports a busted lip and chipped teeth sustained from a recent bomb blast that killed a sergeant.
"They (the Taliban) make very powerful IEDs out here. If you step on them, you don't get a second chance," says Emison, the group's tactician, whose 25-year-old wife is pregnant with their second child back home.
He says that after the incident, he has tried to become more careful about where he treads, but knows that a blast could take any of them anytime.
The ex-college wrestler pushes away ugly thoughts and believes the unpopular war Obama inherited from the past administration will have a positive outcome.
"It does not pay to be scared," he says.
Blancas, meanwhile, arms himself with his assault rifle, two rosaries and prayer cards stuffed in his pockets as the Marines prepare a full-on assault on Marjah in the coming weeks or months.
Marjah has a population of at least 60,000. Built in the 1950s with US government help, it was intended to be a model agricultural town with an irrigation system flowing from the Helmand river.
But instead of legitimate crops, poor farmers plant opium poppy, the trafficking and sale of which bankrolls the Taliban movement.
The Marines' mission is to show US strength, assist in installing government control in Helmand province and let the local population know they have arrived.
The challenge however is huge. Taliban militants harass the villagers at night, warning them of trouble if they help US troops. Under the cover of darkness, they also plant IEDs in fields the Marines have to cross.
For father-of-one Blancas, it all comes down to one simple thing.
"We do what we have to do, but I plan to be out of the corps soon and be daddy. I just have to stay alive till then."
© 2010 Agence France-Presse
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/31-1
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
US anti-terrorism in Afghanistan
The article by Anand Gopal that follows is said to be the most extensive report on American counterterrorism in Afghanistan that has been written to date. The goal of counterterrorism is to kill or capture those suspected of being insurgents or supporters of insurgents. Special forces as well as regular US military units are involved. Those captured are sent to "black site" prisons and then to the prison at Bagram, just north of Kabul. Prisoners have no access to lawyers. Gopal writes that Bagram is often compared to Guantanamo.
While counterterrorism aims to kill terrorists in hit-and-run missions, counterinsurgency ideally aims also to secure areas, win the loyalty of local Afghans, and then to initiate reconstruction or development projects. Both strategies end up killing innocent civilians. But, in theory, the goal of counterinsurgency is to win the support of the local people, not just kill or capture those who are Taliban or who offer support to the Taliban.
Withal, both strategies are predicated on the questionable assumption that military force is necessary to win the "war," and must precede other efforts.
Bob
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Obama’s Secret Prisons Night Raids, Hidden Detention Centers, the "Black Jail," and the Dogs of War in Afghanistan By Anand Gopal
[The research for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.]
One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town’s bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost’s dust-doused streets for days. Village elders contacted Taliban commanders in the area who were wont to kidnap government workers, but they had never heard of the young man. Even the governor got involved, ordering his police to round up nettlesome criminal gangs that sometimes preyed on young bazaar-goers for ransom.
But the hunt turned up nothing. Spring and summer came and went with no sign of Ismatullah. Then one day, long after the police and village elders had abandoned their search, a courier delivered a neat, handwritten note on Red Cross stationary to the family. In it, Ismatullah informed them that he was in Bagram, an American prison more than 200 miles away. U.S. forces had picked him up while he was on his way home from the bazaar, the terse letter stated, and he didn’t know when he would be freed.
Sometime in the last few years, Pashtun villagers in Afghanistan’s rugged heartland began to lose faith in the American project. Many of them can point to the precise moment of this transformation, and it usually took place in the dead of the night, when most of the country was fast asleep. In the secretive U.S. detentions process, suspects are usually nabbed in the darkness and then sent to one of a number of detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families.
This process has become even more feared and hated in Afghanistan than coalition airstrikes. The night raids and detentions, little known or understood outside of these Pashtun villages, are slowly turning Afghans against the very forces they greeted as liberators just a few years ago.
One Dark Night in November
It was the 19th of November 2009, at 3:15 am. A loud blast awoke the villagers of a leafy neighborhood outside Ghazni city, a town of ancient provenance in the country’s south. A team of U.S. soldiers burst through the front gate of the home of Majidullah Qarar, the spokesman for the Minister of Agriculture. Qarar was in Kabul at the time, but his relatives were home, four of whom were sleeping in the family’s one-room guesthouse. One of them, Hamidullah, who sold carrots at the local bazaar, ran towards the door of the guesthouse. He was immediately shot, but managed to crawl back inside, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Then Azim, a baker, darted towards his injured cousin. He, too, was shot and crumpled to the floor. The fallen men cried out to the two relatives remaining in the room, but they — both children — refused to move, glued to their beds in silent horror.
The foreign soldiers, most of them tattooed and bearded, then went on to the main compound. They threw clothes on the floor, smashed dinner plates, and forced open closets. Finally, they found the man they were looking for: Habib-ur-Rahman, a computer programmer and government employee. Rahman was responsible for converting Microsoft Windows from English to the local Pashto language so that government offices could use the software. He had spent time in Kuwait, and the Afghan translator accompanying the soldiers said they were acting on a tip that Rahman was a member of al-Qaeda.
They took the barefoot Rahman and a cousin of his to a helicopter some distance away and transported them to a small American base in a neighboring province for interrogation. After two days, U.S. forces released Rahman’s cousin. But Rahman has not been seen or heard from since.
"We’ve called his phone, but it doesn’t answer," says his cousin Qarar, the spokesman for the agriculture minister. Using his powerful connections, Qarar enlisted local police, parliamentarians, the governor, and even the agriculture minister himself in the search for his cousin, but they turned up nothing. Government officials who independently investigated the scene in the aftermath of the raid and corroborated the claims of the family also pressed for an answer as to why two of Qarar’s family members were killed. American forces issued a statement saying that the dead were "enemy militants [that] demonstrated hostile intent."
Weeks after the raid, the family remains bitter. "Everyone in the area knew we were a family that worked for the government," Qarar says. "Rahman couldn’t even leave the city because if the Taliban caught him in the countryside they would have killed him."
Beyond the question of Rahman’s guilt or innocence, however, it’s how he was taken that has left such a residue of hate and anger among his family. "Did they have to kill my cousins? Did they have to destroy our house?" Qarar asks. "They knew where Rahman worked. Couldn’t they have at least tried to come with a warrant in the daytime? We would have forced Rahman to comply."
"I used to go on TV and argue that people should support this government and the foreigners," he adds. "But I was wrong. Why should anyone do so? I don’t care if I get fired for saying it, but that’s the truth."
The Dogs of War
Night raids are only the first step in the American detention process in Afghanistan. Suspects are usually sent to one among a series of prisons on U.S. military bases around the country. There are officially nine such jails, called Field Detention Sites in military parlance. They are small holding areas, often just a clutch of cells divided by plywood, and are mainly used for prisoner interrogation.
In the early years of the war, these were but way stations for those en route to Bagram prison, a facility with a notorious reputation for abusive behavior. As a spotlight of international attention fell on Bagram in recent years, wardens there cleaned up their act and the mistreatment of prisoners began to shift to the little-noticed Field Detention Sites.
Of the 24 former detainees interviewed for this story, 17 claim to have been abused at or en route to these sites. Doctors, government officials, and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, a body tasked with investigating abuse claims, corroborate 12 of these claims.
One of these former detainees is Noor Agha Sher Khan, who used to be a police officer in Gardez, a mud-caked town in the eastern part of the country. According to Sher Khan, U.S. forces detained him in a night raid in 2003 and brought him to a Field Detention Site at a nearby U.S. base. "They interrogated me the whole night," he recalls, "but I had nothing to tell them." Sher Khan worked for a police commander whom U.S. forces had detained on suspicion of having ties to the insurgency. He had occasionally acted as a driver for this commander, which made him suspicious in American eyes.
The interrogators blindfolded him, taped his mouth shut, and chained him to the ceiling, he alleges. Occasionally they unleashed a dog, which repeatedly bit him. At one point, they removed the blindfold and forced him to kneel on a long wooden bar. "They tied my hands to a pulley [above] and pushed me back and forth as the bar rolled across my shins. I screamed and screamed." They then pushed him to the ground and forced him to swallow 12 bottles worth of water. "Two people held my mouth open and they poured water down my throat until my stomach was full and I became unconscious. It was as if someone had inflated me." he says. After he was roused from his torpor, he vomited the water uncontrollably.
This continued for a number of days; sometimes he was hung upside down from the ceiling, and other times blindfolded for extended periods. Eventually, he was sent on to Bagram where the torture ceased. Four months later, he was quietly released, with a letter of apology from U.S. authorities for wrongfully imprisoning him.
An investigation of Sher Khan’s case by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and an independent doctor found that he had wounds consistent with the abusive treatment he alleges. U.S. forces have declined to comment on the specifics of his case, but a spokesman said that some soldiers involved in detentions in this part of the country had been given unspecified "administrative punishments." He added that "all detainees are treated humanely," except for isolated cases.
The Disappeared
Some of those taken to the Field Detention Sites never make it to Bagram, but instead are simply released after authorities deem them to be innocuous. Even then, some allege abuse. Such was the case with Hajji Ehsanullah, snatched one winter night in 2008 from his home in the southern province of Zabul. He was taken to a detention site in Khost Province, some 200 miles away. He returned home 13 days later, his skin scarred by dog bites and with memory difficulties that, according to his doctor, resulted from a blow to the head. U.S. forces had dropped him off at a gas station in Khost after three days of interrogation. It took him ten more days to find his way home.
Others taken to these sites never end up in Bagram for an entirely different reason. In the hardscrabble villages of the Pashtun south, where rumors grow more abundantly than the most bountiful crop, locals whisper tales of people who were captured and executed. Most have no evidence. But occasionally, a body turns up. Such was the case at a detention site on an American military base in Helmand province, where in 2003 a U.S. military coroner wrote in the autopsy report of a detainee who died in U.S. custody (later made available through the Freedom of Information Act): "Death caused by the multiple blunt force injuries to the lower torso and legs complicated by rhabdomyolysis (release of toxic byproducts into the system due to destruction of muscle). Manner of death is homicide."
In the dust-swept province of Khost one day this past December, U.S. forces launched a night raid on the village of Motai, killing six people and capturing nine, according to nearly a dozen local government authorities and witnesses. Two days later, the bodies of two of those detained — plastic cuffs binding their hands — were found more than a mile from the largest U.S. base in the area. A U.S. military spokesman denies any involvement in the deaths and declines to comment on the details of the raid. Local Afghan officials and tribal elders, however, steadfastly maintain that the two were killed while in U.S. custody. American authorities released four other villagers in subsequent days. The fate of the three remaining captives is unknown.
The matter might be cleared up if the U.S. military were less secretive about its detention process. But secrecy has been the order of the day. The nine Field Detention Sites are enveloped in a blanket of official secrecy, but at least the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations are aware of them. There may, however, be others whose existences on the scores of military bases that dot the country have not been disclosed. One example, according to former detainees, is the detention facility at Rish Khor, an Afghan army base that sits atop a mountain overlooking the capital, Kabul.
One night last year, U.S. forces raided Zaiwalat, a tiny village that fits snugly into the mountains of Wardak Province, a few dozen miles west of Kabul, and netted nine locals. They brought the captives to Rish Khor and interrogated them for three days. "They kept us in a container," recalls Rehmatullah Muhammad, one of the nine. "It was made of steel. We were handcuffed for three days continuously. We barely slept those days." The plain-clothed interrogators accused Rehmatullah and the others of giving food and shelter to the Taliban. The suspects were then sent on to Bagram and released after four months. (A number of former detainees said they were interrogated by plainclothed officials, but they did not know if these officials belonged to the military, the CIA, or private contractors.)Afghan human rights campaigners worry that U.S. forces may be using secret detention sites like Rish Khor to carry out interrogations away from prying eyes. The U.S. military, however, denies even having knowledge of the facility.
The Black Jail
Much less secret is the final stop for most captives: the Bagram Internment Facility. These days ominously dubbed "Obama’s Guantanamo," Bagram nonetheless offers the best conditions for captives during the entire detention process.
Its modern life as a prison began in 2002, when small numbers of detainees from throughout Asia were incarcerated there on the first leg of an odyssey that would eventually bring them to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In the years since, however, it has become the main destination for those caught within Afghanistan as part of the growing war there. By 2009, the inmate population had swelled to more than 700. Housed in a windowless old Soviet hangar, the prison consists of two rows of serried cage-like cells bathed continuously in white light. Guards walk along a platform that runs across the mesh-tops of the pens, an easy position from which to supervise the prisoners below.
Regular, even infamous, abuse in the style of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison marked Bagram’s early years. Abdullah Mujahed, for example, was apprehended in the village of Kar Marchi in the eastern province of Paktia in 2003. Mujahed was a Tajik militia commander who had led an armed uprising against the Taliban in their waning days, but U.S. forces accused him of having ties to the insurgency. "In Bagram, we were handcuffed, blindfolded, and had our feet chained for days," he recalls. "They didn’t allow us to sleep at all for 13 days and nights." A guard would strike his legs every time he dozed off. Daily, he could hear the screams of tortured inmates and the unmistakable sound of shackles dragging across the floor.
Then, one day, a team of soldiers dragged him to an aircraft, but refused to tell him where he was going. Eventually he landed at another prison, where the air felt thick and wet. As he walked through the row of cages, inmates began to shout, "This is Guantanamo! You are in Guantanamo!" He would learn there that he was accused of leading the Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (which in reality was led by another person who had the same name and who died in 2006). The U.S. eventually released him and returned him to Afghanistan.
Former Bagram detainees allege that they were regularly beaten, subjected to blaring music 24 hours a day, prevented from sleeping, stripped naked, and forced to assume what interrogators term "stress positions." The nadir came in late 2002 when interrogators beat two inmates to death.
The U.S. Special Forces also run a second, secret prison somewhere on Bagram Air Base that the Red Cross still does not have access to. Used primarily for interrogations, it is so feared by prisoners that they have dubbed it the "Black Jail."
One day two years ago, U.S. forces came to get Noor Muhammad, outside of the town of Kajaki in the southern province of Helmand. Muhammad, a physician, was running a clinic that served all comers — including the Taliban. The soldiers raided his clinic and his home, killing five people (including two patients) and detaining both his father and him. The next day, villagers found the handcuffed corpse of Muhammad’s father, apparently dead from a gunshot.
The soldiers took Muhammad to the Black Jail. "It was a tiny, narrow corridor, with lots of cells on both sides and a big steel gate and bright lights. We didn’t know when it was night and when it was day." He was held in a concrete, windowless room, in complete solitary confinement. Soldiers regularly dragged him by his neck, and refused him food and water. They accused him of providing medical care to the insurgents, to which he replied, "I am a doctor. It’s my duty to provide care to every human being who comes to my clinic, whether they are Taliban or from the government."
Eventually, Muhammad was released, but he has since closed his clinic and left his home village. "I am scared of the Americans and the Taliban," he says. "I’m happy my father is dead, so he doesn’t have to experience this hell."
Afraid of the Dark
Unlike the Black Jail, U.S. officials have, in the last two years, moved to reform the main prison at Bagram. Torture there has stopped, and American prison officials now boast that the typical inmate gains 15 pounds while in custody. Sometime in the early months of this year, officials plan to open a dazzling new prison — that will eventually replace Bagram — with huge, airy cells, the latest medical equipment, and rooms for vocational training. The Bagram prison itself will be handed over to the Afghans in the coming year, although the rest of the detention process will remain in U.S. hands.
But human rights advocates say that concerns about the detention process still remain. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that inmates at Guantanamo cannot be stripped of their right to habeas corpus, but stopped short of making the same argument for Bagram. (U.S. officials say that Bagram is in the midst of a war zone and therefore U.S. domestic civil rights legislation does not apply.) Unlike Guantanamo, inmates there do not have access to a lawyer. Most say they have no idea why they have been detained. Inmates do now appear before a review panel every six months, which is intended to reassess their detention, but their ability to ask questions about their situation is limited. "I was only allowed to answer yes or no and not explain anything at my hearing," says Rehmatullah Muhammad.
Nonetheless, the improvement in Bagram’s conditions begs the question: Can the U.S. fight a cleaner war? This is what Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal promised this summer: fewer civilian casualties, fewer of the feared house raids, and a more transparent detention process.
The American troops that operate under NATO command have begun to enforce stricter rules of engagement: they may now officially hold detainees for only 96 hours before transferring them to the Afghan authorities or freeing them, and Afghan forces must take the lead in house searches. American soldiers, when questioned, bristle at these restrictions — and have ways of circumventing them. "Sometimes we detain people, then, when the 96 hours are up, we transfer them to the Afghans," says one U.S. Marine, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They rough them up a bit for us and then send them back to us for another 96 hours. This keeps going until we get what we want."
A simpler way of dancing around the rules is to call in the U.S. Special Operations Forces — the Navy SEALS, Green Berets, and others — which are not under NATO command and so are not bound by the stricter rules of engagement. These elite troops are behind most of the night raids and detentions in the search for "high-value suspects." U.S. military officials say in interviews that the new restrictions have not affected the number of raids and detentions at all. The actual change, however, is more subtle: the detention process has shifted almost entirely to areas and actors that can best avoid public scrutiny: Special Operations Forces and small field prisons.
The shift signals a deeper reality of war, American soldiers say: you can’t fight guerrillas without invasive raids and detentions, any more than you could fight them without bullets. Through the eyes of a U.S. soldier, Afghanistan is a scary place. The men are bearded and turbaned. They pray incessantly. In most of the country, women are barred from leaving the house. Many Afghans own a Kalashnikov. "You can’t trust anyone," says Rodrigo Arias, a Marine based in the northeastern province of Kunar. "I’ve nearly been killed in ambushes but the villagers don’t tell us anything. But they usually know something."
An officer who has worked in the Field Detention Sites says that it takes dozens of raids to turn up a useful suspect. "Sometimes you’ve got to bust down doors. Sometimes you’ve got to twist arms. You have to cast a wide net, but when you get the right person it makes all the difference."
For Arias, it’s a matter of survival. "I want to go home in one piece. If that means rounding people up, then round them up." To question this, he says, is to question whether the war itself is worth fighting. "That’s not my job. The people in Washington can figure that out."
If night raids and detentions are an unavoidable part of modern counterinsurgency warfare, then so is the resentment they breed. "We were all happy when the Americans first came. We thought they would bring peace and stability," says former detainee Rehmatullah. "But now most people in my village want them to leave." A year after Rehmatullah was released, his nephew was taken. Two months later, some other villagers were grabbed.
It has become a predictable pattern: Taliban forces ambush American convoys as they pass through the village, and then retreat into the thick fruit orchards that cover the area. The Americans then return at night to pick up suspects. In the last two years, 16 people have been taken and 10 killed in night raids in this single village of about 300, according to villagers. In the same period, they say, the insurgents killed one local and did not take anyone hostage.
The people of this village therefore have begun to fear the night raids more than the Taliban. There are now nights when Rehmatullah’s children hear the distant thrum of a helicopter and rush into his room. He consoles them, but admits he needs solace himself. "I know I should be too old for it," he says, "but this war has made me afraid of the dark."
Anand Gopal has reported in Afghanistan for the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal. His dispatches can be read at anandgopal.com. He is currently working on a book about the Afghan war. This piece appears in print in the latest issue of the Nation magazine. To catch him in an audio interview with TomDispatch’s Timothy MacBain discussing how he got this story, click here.
Copyright 2010 Anand Gopal
While counterterrorism aims to kill terrorists in hit-and-run missions, counterinsurgency ideally aims also to secure areas, win the loyalty of local Afghans, and then to initiate reconstruction or development projects. Both strategies end up killing innocent civilians. But, in theory, the goal of counterinsurgency is to win the support of the local people, not just kill or capture those who are Taliban or who offer support to the Taliban.
Withal, both strategies are predicated on the questionable assumption that military force is necessary to win the "war," and must precede other efforts.
Bob
----------------------------------
Obama’s Secret Prisons Night Raids, Hidden Detention Centers, the "Black Jail," and the Dogs of War in Afghanistan By Anand Gopal
[The research for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.]
One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town’s bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost’s dust-doused streets for days. Village elders contacted Taliban commanders in the area who were wont to kidnap government workers, but they had never heard of the young man. Even the governor got involved, ordering his police to round up nettlesome criminal gangs that sometimes preyed on young bazaar-goers for ransom.
But the hunt turned up nothing. Spring and summer came and went with no sign of Ismatullah. Then one day, long after the police and village elders had abandoned their search, a courier delivered a neat, handwritten note on Red Cross stationary to the family. In it, Ismatullah informed them that he was in Bagram, an American prison more than 200 miles away. U.S. forces had picked him up while he was on his way home from the bazaar, the terse letter stated, and he didn’t know when he would be freed.
Sometime in the last few years, Pashtun villagers in Afghanistan’s rugged heartland began to lose faith in the American project. Many of them can point to the precise moment of this transformation, and it usually took place in the dead of the night, when most of the country was fast asleep. In the secretive U.S. detentions process, suspects are usually nabbed in the darkness and then sent to one of a number of detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families.
This process has become even more feared and hated in Afghanistan than coalition airstrikes. The night raids and detentions, little known or understood outside of these Pashtun villages, are slowly turning Afghans against the very forces they greeted as liberators just a few years ago.
One Dark Night in November
It was the 19th of November 2009, at 3:15 am. A loud blast awoke the villagers of a leafy neighborhood outside Ghazni city, a town of ancient provenance in the country’s south. A team of U.S. soldiers burst through the front gate of the home of Majidullah Qarar, the spokesman for the Minister of Agriculture. Qarar was in Kabul at the time, but his relatives were home, four of whom were sleeping in the family’s one-room guesthouse. One of them, Hamidullah, who sold carrots at the local bazaar, ran towards the door of the guesthouse. He was immediately shot, but managed to crawl back inside, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Then Azim, a baker, darted towards his injured cousin. He, too, was shot and crumpled to the floor. The fallen men cried out to the two relatives remaining in the room, but they — both children — refused to move, glued to their beds in silent horror.
The foreign soldiers, most of them tattooed and bearded, then went on to the main compound. They threw clothes on the floor, smashed dinner plates, and forced open closets. Finally, they found the man they were looking for: Habib-ur-Rahman, a computer programmer and government employee. Rahman was responsible for converting Microsoft Windows from English to the local Pashto language so that government offices could use the software. He had spent time in Kuwait, and the Afghan translator accompanying the soldiers said they were acting on a tip that Rahman was a member of al-Qaeda.
They took the barefoot Rahman and a cousin of his to a helicopter some distance away and transported them to a small American base in a neighboring province for interrogation. After two days, U.S. forces released Rahman’s cousin. But Rahman has not been seen or heard from since.
"We’ve called his phone, but it doesn’t answer," says his cousin Qarar, the spokesman for the agriculture minister. Using his powerful connections, Qarar enlisted local police, parliamentarians, the governor, and even the agriculture minister himself in the search for his cousin, but they turned up nothing. Government officials who independently investigated the scene in the aftermath of the raid and corroborated the claims of the family also pressed for an answer as to why two of Qarar’s family members were killed. American forces issued a statement saying that the dead were "enemy militants [that] demonstrated hostile intent."
Weeks after the raid, the family remains bitter. "Everyone in the area knew we were a family that worked for the government," Qarar says. "Rahman couldn’t even leave the city because if the Taliban caught him in the countryside they would have killed him."
Beyond the question of Rahman’s guilt or innocence, however, it’s how he was taken that has left such a residue of hate and anger among his family. "Did they have to kill my cousins? Did they have to destroy our house?" Qarar asks. "They knew where Rahman worked. Couldn’t they have at least tried to come with a warrant in the daytime? We would have forced Rahman to comply."
"I used to go on TV and argue that people should support this government and the foreigners," he adds. "But I was wrong. Why should anyone do so? I don’t care if I get fired for saying it, but that’s the truth."
The Dogs of War
Night raids are only the first step in the American detention process in Afghanistan. Suspects are usually sent to one among a series of prisons on U.S. military bases around the country. There are officially nine such jails, called Field Detention Sites in military parlance. They are small holding areas, often just a clutch of cells divided by plywood, and are mainly used for prisoner interrogation.
In the early years of the war, these were but way stations for those en route to Bagram prison, a facility with a notorious reputation for abusive behavior. As a spotlight of international attention fell on Bagram in recent years, wardens there cleaned up their act and the mistreatment of prisoners began to shift to the little-noticed Field Detention Sites.
Of the 24 former detainees interviewed for this story, 17 claim to have been abused at or en route to these sites. Doctors, government officials, and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, a body tasked with investigating abuse claims, corroborate 12 of these claims.
One of these former detainees is Noor Agha Sher Khan, who used to be a police officer in Gardez, a mud-caked town in the eastern part of the country. According to Sher Khan, U.S. forces detained him in a night raid in 2003 and brought him to a Field Detention Site at a nearby U.S. base. "They interrogated me the whole night," he recalls, "but I had nothing to tell them." Sher Khan worked for a police commander whom U.S. forces had detained on suspicion of having ties to the insurgency. He had occasionally acted as a driver for this commander, which made him suspicious in American eyes.
The interrogators blindfolded him, taped his mouth shut, and chained him to the ceiling, he alleges. Occasionally they unleashed a dog, which repeatedly bit him. At one point, they removed the blindfold and forced him to kneel on a long wooden bar. "They tied my hands to a pulley [above] and pushed me back and forth as the bar rolled across my shins. I screamed and screamed." They then pushed him to the ground and forced him to swallow 12 bottles worth of water. "Two people held my mouth open and they poured water down my throat until my stomach was full and I became unconscious. It was as if someone had inflated me." he says. After he was roused from his torpor, he vomited the water uncontrollably.
This continued for a number of days; sometimes he was hung upside down from the ceiling, and other times blindfolded for extended periods. Eventually, he was sent on to Bagram where the torture ceased. Four months later, he was quietly released, with a letter of apology from U.S. authorities for wrongfully imprisoning him.
An investigation of Sher Khan’s case by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and an independent doctor found that he had wounds consistent with the abusive treatment he alleges. U.S. forces have declined to comment on the specifics of his case, but a spokesman said that some soldiers involved in detentions in this part of the country had been given unspecified "administrative punishments." He added that "all detainees are treated humanely," except for isolated cases.
The Disappeared
Some of those taken to the Field Detention Sites never make it to Bagram, but instead are simply released after authorities deem them to be innocuous. Even then, some allege abuse. Such was the case with Hajji Ehsanullah, snatched one winter night in 2008 from his home in the southern province of Zabul. He was taken to a detention site in Khost Province, some 200 miles away. He returned home 13 days later, his skin scarred by dog bites and with memory difficulties that, according to his doctor, resulted from a blow to the head. U.S. forces had dropped him off at a gas station in Khost after three days of interrogation. It took him ten more days to find his way home.
Others taken to these sites never end up in Bagram for an entirely different reason. In the hardscrabble villages of the Pashtun south, where rumors grow more abundantly than the most bountiful crop, locals whisper tales of people who were captured and executed. Most have no evidence. But occasionally, a body turns up. Such was the case at a detention site on an American military base in Helmand province, where in 2003 a U.S. military coroner wrote in the autopsy report of a detainee who died in U.S. custody (later made available through the Freedom of Information Act): "Death caused by the multiple blunt force injuries to the lower torso and legs complicated by rhabdomyolysis (release of toxic byproducts into the system due to destruction of muscle). Manner of death is homicide."
In the dust-swept province of Khost one day this past December, U.S. forces launched a night raid on the village of Motai, killing six people and capturing nine, according to nearly a dozen local government authorities and witnesses. Two days later, the bodies of two of those detained — plastic cuffs binding their hands — were found more than a mile from the largest U.S. base in the area. A U.S. military spokesman denies any involvement in the deaths and declines to comment on the details of the raid. Local Afghan officials and tribal elders, however, steadfastly maintain that the two were killed while in U.S. custody. American authorities released four other villagers in subsequent days. The fate of the three remaining captives is unknown.
The matter might be cleared up if the U.S. military were less secretive about its detention process. But secrecy has been the order of the day. The nine Field Detention Sites are enveloped in a blanket of official secrecy, but at least the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations are aware of them. There may, however, be others whose existences on the scores of military bases that dot the country have not been disclosed. One example, according to former detainees, is the detention facility at Rish Khor, an Afghan army base that sits atop a mountain overlooking the capital, Kabul.
One night last year, U.S. forces raided Zaiwalat, a tiny village that fits snugly into the mountains of Wardak Province, a few dozen miles west of Kabul, and netted nine locals. They brought the captives to Rish Khor and interrogated them for three days. "They kept us in a container," recalls Rehmatullah Muhammad, one of the nine. "It was made of steel. We were handcuffed for three days continuously. We barely slept those days." The plain-clothed interrogators accused Rehmatullah and the others of giving food and shelter to the Taliban. The suspects were then sent on to Bagram and released after four months. (A number of former detainees said they were interrogated by plainclothed officials, but they did not know if these officials belonged to the military, the CIA, or private contractors.)Afghan human rights campaigners worry that U.S. forces may be using secret detention sites like Rish Khor to carry out interrogations away from prying eyes. The U.S. military, however, denies even having knowledge of the facility.
The Black Jail
Much less secret is the final stop for most captives: the Bagram Internment Facility. These days ominously dubbed "Obama’s Guantanamo," Bagram nonetheless offers the best conditions for captives during the entire detention process.
Its modern life as a prison began in 2002, when small numbers of detainees from throughout Asia were incarcerated there on the first leg of an odyssey that would eventually bring them to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In the years since, however, it has become the main destination for those caught within Afghanistan as part of the growing war there. By 2009, the inmate population had swelled to more than 700. Housed in a windowless old Soviet hangar, the prison consists of two rows of serried cage-like cells bathed continuously in white light. Guards walk along a platform that runs across the mesh-tops of the pens, an easy position from which to supervise the prisoners below.
Regular, even infamous, abuse in the style of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison marked Bagram’s early years. Abdullah Mujahed, for example, was apprehended in the village of Kar Marchi in the eastern province of Paktia in 2003. Mujahed was a Tajik militia commander who had led an armed uprising against the Taliban in their waning days, but U.S. forces accused him of having ties to the insurgency. "In Bagram, we were handcuffed, blindfolded, and had our feet chained for days," he recalls. "They didn’t allow us to sleep at all for 13 days and nights." A guard would strike his legs every time he dozed off. Daily, he could hear the screams of tortured inmates and the unmistakable sound of shackles dragging across the floor.
Then, one day, a team of soldiers dragged him to an aircraft, but refused to tell him where he was going. Eventually he landed at another prison, where the air felt thick and wet. As he walked through the row of cages, inmates began to shout, "This is Guantanamo! You are in Guantanamo!" He would learn there that he was accused of leading the Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (which in reality was led by another person who had the same name and who died in 2006). The U.S. eventually released him and returned him to Afghanistan.
Former Bagram detainees allege that they were regularly beaten, subjected to blaring music 24 hours a day, prevented from sleeping, stripped naked, and forced to assume what interrogators term "stress positions." The nadir came in late 2002 when interrogators beat two inmates to death.
The U.S. Special Forces also run a second, secret prison somewhere on Bagram Air Base that the Red Cross still does not have access to. Used primarily for interrogations, it is so feared by prisoners that they have dubbed it the "Black Jail."
One day two years ago, U.S. forces came to get Noor Muhammad, outside of the town of Kajaki in the southern province of Helmand. Muhammad, a physician, was running a clinic that served all comers — including the Taliban. The soldiers raided his clinic and his home, killing five people (including two patients) and detaining both his father and him. The next day, villagers found the handcuffed corpse of Muhammad’s father, apparently dead from a gunshot.
The soldiers took Muhammad to the Black Jail. "It was a tiny, narrow corridor, with lots of cells on both sides and a big steel gate and bright lights. We didn’t know when it was night and when it was day." He was held in a concrete, windowless room, in complete solitary confinement. Soldiers regularly dragged him by his neck, and refused him food and water. They accused him of providing medical care to the insurgents, to which he replied, "I am a doctor. It’s my duty to provide care to every human being who comes to my clinic, whether they are Taliban or from the government."
Eventually, Muhammad was released, but he has since closed his clinic and left his home village. "I am scared of the Americans and the Taliban," he says. "I’m happy my father is dead, so he doesn’t have to experience this hell."
Afraid of the Dark
Unlike the Black Jail, U.S. officials have, in the last two years, moved to reform the main prison at Bagram. Torture there has stopped, and American prison officials now boast that the typical inmate gains 15 pounds while in custody. Sometime in the early months of this year, officials plan to open a dazzling new prison — that will eventually replace Bagram — with huge, airy cells, the latest medical equipment, and rooms for vocational training. The Bagram prison itself will be handed over to the Afghans in the coming year, although the rest of the detention process will remain in U.S. hands.
But human rights advocates say that concerns about the detention process still remain. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that inmates at Guantanamo cannot be stripped of their right to habeas corpus, but stopped short of making the same argument for Bagram. (U.S. officials say that Bagram is in the midst of a war zone and therefore U.S. domestic civil rights legislation does not apply.) Unlike Guantanamo, inmates there do not have access to a lawyer. Most say they have no idea why they have been detained. Inmates do now appear before a review panel every six months, which is intended to reassess their detention, but their ability to ask questions about their situation is limited. "I was only allowed to answer yes or no and not explain anything at my hearing," says Rehmatullah Muhammad.
Nonetheless, the improvement in Bagram’s conditions begs the question: Can the U.S. fight a cleaner war? This is what Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal promised this summer: fewer civilian casualties, fewer of the feared house raids, and a more transparent detention process.
The American troops that operate under NATO command have begun to enforce stricter rules of engagement: they may now officially hold detainees for only 96 hours before transferring them to the Afghan authorities or freeing them, and Afghan forces must take the lead in house searches. American soldiers, when questioned, bristle at these restrictions — and have ways of circumventing them. "Sometimes we detain people, then, when the 96 hours are up, we transfer them to the Afghans," says one U.S. Marine, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They rough them up a bit for us and then send them back to us for another 96 hours. This keeps going until we get what we want."
A simpler way of dancing around the rules is to call in the U.S. Special Operations Forces — the Navy SEALS, Green Berets, and others — which are not under NATO command and so are not bound by the stricter rules of engagement. These elite troops are behind most of the night raids and detentions in the search for "high-value suspects." U.S. military officials say in interviews that the new restrictions have not affected the number of raids and detentions at all. The actual change, however, is more subtle: the detention process has shifted almost entirely to areas and actors that can best avoid public scrutiny: Special Operations Forces and small field prisons.
The shift signals a deeper reality of war, American soldiers say: you can’t fight guerrillas without invasive raids and detentions, any more than you could fight them without bullets. Through the eyes of a U.S. soldier, Afghanistan is a scary place. The men are bearded and turbaned. They pray incessantly. In most of the country, women are barred from leaving the house. Many Afghans own a Kalashnikov. "You can’t trust anyone," says Rodrigo Arias, a Marine based in the northeastern province of Kunar. "I’ve nearly been killed in ambushes but the villagers don’t tell us anything. But they usually know something."
An officer who has worked in the Field Detention Sites says that it takes dozens of raids to turn up a useful suspect. "Sometimes you’ve got to bust down doors. Sometimes you’ve got to twist arms. You have to cast a wide net, but when you get the right person it makes all the difference."
For Arias, it’s a matter of survival. "I want to go home in one piece. If that means rounding people up, then round them up." To question this, he says, is to question whether the war itself is worth fighting. "That’s not my job. The people in Washington can figure that out."
If night raids and detentions are an unavoidable part of modern counterinsurgency warfare, then so is the resentment they breed. "We were all happy when the Americans first came. We thought they would bring peace and stability," says former detainee Rehmatullah. "But now most people in my village want them to leave." A year after Rehmatullah was released, his nephew was taken. Two months later, some other villagers were grabbed.
It has become a predictable pattern: Taliban forces ambush American convoys as they pass through the village, and then retreat into the thick fruit orchards that cover the area. The Americans then return at night to pick up suspects. In the last two years, 16 people have been taken and 10 killed in night raids in this single village of about 300, according to villagers. In the same period, they say, the insurgents killed one local and did not take anyone hostage.
The people of this village therefore have begun to fear the night raids more than the Taliban. There are now nights when Rehmatullah’s children hear the distant thrum of a helicopter and rush into his room. He consoles them, but admits he needs solace himself. "I know I should be too old for it," he says, "but this war has made me afraid of the dark."
Anand Gopal has reported in Afghanistan for the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal. His dispatches can be read at anandgopal.com. He is currently working on a book about the Afghan war. This piece appears in print in the latest issue of the Nation magazine. To catch him in an audio interview with TomDispatch’s Timothy MacBain discussing how he got this story, click here.
Copyright 2010 Anand Gopal
Thursday, January 28, 2010
US efforts to build a Taliban army and counterforce are questionable
The part of the US strategy in Afghanistan that concerns counterinsurgency implies a number of tactics. One is to clear out the Taliban from villages and surrounding areas, village by village. Two is to secure them so that the Taliban cannot return to the villages. Three is start reconstruction projects, which will create jobs and generate demand for local businesses.
US forces do not have the resources to advance this counterinsurgency policy very far, or in a sustainable way. Therefore, the Obama administration is betting that, in time, there will be an Afghan army capable of dealing with the Taliban. There seem to be two plans for doing this.
The first, and dominant, plan is to build up the Afghan army so that its soldiers can take responsibility for the counterinsurgency efforts in the countryside. The article below indicates that there is little progress in creating a viable Afghan army.
The second plan, just being reported in various sources, is to pay rank-and-file members of the Taliban who pledge to leave the insurgency. Underlying this strategy is the assumption that many young Afghan men have been members of the Taliban for economic reasons. The Taliban pay their rank-and-file recruites monthly wages, while there are few or no opportunities beyond the Taliban. The US now plans to offer these men a wage and job to leave the Taliban.
This plan has been addressed in an early blog and raises the issues of how long the US will have to go on paying the Afghans, whether the jobs they will be given are of value to the villages and surrounding areas, and whether the recruits will be able or willing to secure these places from Taliban incursions. We don't see much merit in this approach, unless the elders or other leaders in the villages can be included in the process and be convinced that the plan is in the interest of their tribes.
Bob
--------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Comment, January 28, 2010
Cole's comments and references on the parts of Obama speech that focus on Afghanistan
Understandably, President Obama concentrated on domestic issues, especially job creation, in his State of the Union address. But there were a few paragraphs toward the end about foreign affairs that I want to talk about. While I thought the speech generally strong, and the flash polls suggest that the public did, as well, I felt that there were significant problems with the foreign policy passages that signal trouble ahead.
' In Afghanistan, we are increasing our troops and training Afghan Security Forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011, and our troops can begin to come home. We will reward good governance, reduce corruption, and support the rights of all Afghans – men and women alike. We are joined by allies and partners who have increased their own commitment, and who will come together tomorrow in London to reaffirm our common purpose. There will be difficult days ahead. But I am confident we will succeed.'
This passage was one of the few lauded by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell in the Republican response. But it is among the weaker parts of the speech.
1. Reserve Col. Lawrence Sellin, a Ph.D. and a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, summarized the problems with training the Afghan army:
a. The US has already spent more than $17 bn. since 2001 building the Afghanistan National Army, but without much success.
b. Although the government of President Hamid Karzai claims that the army numbers 100,000 now, in fact some battalions are at half strength and not combat ready. The chance that the ANA can be expanded to 240,000 effective soldiers for another $16 bn. in a year or two is slim to none.
c. If a new Afghan army can be built at all, it will take at least 4 years, and it is not plausible that US troops will withdraw beginning in 2011. Moreover, Memos of US ambassador Karl Eikenberry in Kabul insist that President Hamid Karzai is unreliable and refuses to try to take command of the country, so that he is not deploying the army he already has. The profound divisions within the Obama camp, among the most experienced Afghan hands, make it anything but certain that the counter-insurgency strategy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to which Obama committed himself, can succeed.
d. Veteran NBC war correspondent Richard Engel maintains that staff officers work short hours and are corrupt. Only some of the small companies of troops deployed in the countryside can effectively be said to be at war. Even these are 90% illiterate, and some have received only 2 weeks of 'show and tell' training. Drug use is rampant among troops, and some 25 percent go AWOL. See Engle on the Rachel Maddow show:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economyAs is often the case, in this paragraph Obama was attempting to please both right and left, with a troop escalation advertised as a mere prelude to withdrawal. But the task, of training an effective 240,000-man AFghanistan National Army is an enormous one and cannot be even partially completed by summer 2011.
US forces do not have the resources to advance this counterinsurgency policy very far, or in a sustainable way. Therefore, the Obama administration is betting that, in time, there will be an Afghan army capable of dealing with the Taliban. There seem to be two plans for doing this.
The first, and dominant, plan is to build up the Afghan army so that its soldiers can take responsibility for the counterinsurgency efforts in the countryside. The article below indicates that there is little progress in creating a viable Afghan army.
The second plan, just being reported in various sources, is to pay rank-and-file members of the Taliban who pledge to leave the insurgency. Underlying this strategy is the assumption that many young Afghan men have been members of the Taliban for economic reasons. The Taliban pay their rank-and-file recruites monthly wages, while there are few or no opportunities beyond the Taliban. The US now plans to offer these men a wage and job to leave the Taliban.
This plan has been addressed in an early blog and raises the issues of how long the US will have to go on paying the Afghans, whether the jobs they will be given are of value to the villages and surrounding areas, and whether the recruits will be able or willing to secure these places from Taliban incursions. We don't see much merit in this approach, unless the elders or other leaders in the villages can be included in the process and be convinced that the plan is in the interest of their tribes.
Bob
--------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Comment, January 28, 2010
Cole's comments and references on the parts of Obama speech that focus on Afghanistan
Understandably, President Obama concentrated on domestic issues, especially job creation, in his State of the Union address. But there were a few paragraphs toward the end about foreign affairs that I want to talk about. While I thought the speech generally strong, and the flash polls suggest that the public did, as well, I felt that there were significant problems with the foreign policy passages that signal trouble ahead.
' In Afghanistan, we are increasing our troops and training Afghan Security Forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011, and our troops can begin to come home. We will reward good governance, reduce corruption, and support the rights of all Afghans – men and women alike. We are joined by allies and partners who have increased their own commitment, and who will come together tomorrow in London to reaffirm our common purpose. There will be difficult days ahead. But I am confident we will succeed.'
This passage was one of the few lauded by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell in the Republican response. But it is among the weaker parts of the speech.
1. Reserve Col. Lawrence Sellin, a Ph.D. and a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, summarized the problems with training the Afghan army:
a. The US has already spent more than $17 bn. since 2001 building the Afghanistan National Army, but without much success.
b. Although the government of President Hamid Karzai claims that the army numbers 100,000 now, in fact some battalions are at half strength and not combat ready. The chance that the ANA can be expanded to 240,000 effective soldiers for another $16 bn. in a year or two is slim to none.
c. If a new Afghan army can be built at all, it will take at least 4 years, and it is not plausible that US troops will withdraw beginning in 2011. Moreover, Memos of US ambassador Karl Eikenberry in Kabul insist that President Hamid Karzai is unreliable and refuses to try to take command of the country, so that he is not deploying the army he already has. The profound divisions within the Obama camp, among the most experienced Afghan hands, make it anything but certain that the counter-insurgency strategy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to which Obama committed himself, can succeed.
d. Veteran NBC war correspondent Richard Engel maintains that staff officers work short hours and are corrupt. Only some of the small companies of troops deployed in the countryside can effectively be said to be at war. Even these are 90% illiterate, and some have received only 2 weeks of 'show and tell' training. Drug use is rampant among troops, and some 25 percent go AWOL. See Engle on the Rachel Maddow show:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economyAs is often the case, in this paragraph Obama was attempting to please both right and left, with a troop escalation advertised as a mere prelude to withdrawal. But the task, of training an effective 240,000-man AFghanistan National Army is an enormous one and cannot be even partially completed by summer 2011.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Three issues: tribal forms of gov, jobs,Afghan expats
Spiegel Online
01/26/2010 05:04 PM
A New Look at Afghanistan
'Civil Society Is Very Much Alive'
Can civilian reconstruction efforts help win Afghan "hearts and minds"? In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Afghanistan expert Almut Wieland-Karimi discusses why tribal forms of government may be more suitable to Afghanistan, the wisdom of using employment rates as a benchmark for success and how expat Afghans can help the reconstruction effort.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: NATO foreign ministers are gathering in London on Thursday to discuss the path forward for the Western alliance's engagement in Afghanistan. You have advised the conference's participants to listen to the Afghans more. What does that mean?
Wieland-Karimi: Afghanistan's civil society is very much alive. We just finally have to listen to the ongoing debates. In the country's big cities, in particular, intellectuals, journalists and tribal representatives are debating how Afghanistan should best be governed and organized.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What proposals are currently being discussed?
Wieland-Karimi: Western powers always present free elections as the most desirable outcome. But the latest presidential elections -- with all their irregularities and reports of fraud -- have disillusioned many Afghans. From people close to President Hamid Karzai and even Taliban representatives, we are currently hearing suggestions to hold a loya jirga, the traditional tribal gathering, in addition to elections. The possibility of such a convention is even mentioned in the Afghan Constitution.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What would such a gathering look like?
Wieland-Karimi: In the 18th century, a loya jirga formed the basis for the modern Afghan nation. Nowadays, it would most likely be a mix of traditional and more modern elements, with regional representatives and tribal leaders participating. One of the issues they could debate is the question of whether a presidential system can really work in a traditionally decentralized nation like Afghanistan. One potential alternative would be a more federal system and the chance for Afghans to elect their governors directly. They are currently appointed by the president in Kabul.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Would President Karzai ever support an idea like this, given that it could reduce his power?
Wieland-Karimi: That depends on the framing of such a proposal. Would Karzai perceive it as a project of the Western powers intended to drive him out of power? Or would he have to see it as a proposal made by Afghan civil society, which would be much harder for him to dismiss?
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Once again, the Americans are floating the idea of negotiating with Taliban fighters directly. How could that work?
Wieland-Karimi: Everyone talks about the Taliban, but it's not a homogenous group. Sure, we see Taliban fighters with an ideological agenda determined to transform Afghanistan into a safe haven for terror groups, such as al-Qaida. But many of the current Taliban fighters are Afghan men aged 25 or less -- and out of work. The Taliban offers them money, work and food. That is a very attractive offer to many young people. However, such fighters could be considered "moderates" since they lack of an ideological agenda. They could be open to concrete offers made by the Afghan government or the Western powers.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Could you estimate how many Taliban fighters could be seen as "moderates"?
Wieland-Karimi: Serious estimates are difficult to make, but we know that roughly 70 percent of the Afghan people are under 25 years old. Our goal should be to win the "hearts and minds" of this group, particularly of the young men. They need work, and getting them to work should be the key focus of our dialogue. We are used to measuring progress in miles of streets or hospitals being built, but it would make much more sense to use the level of employment for young male Afghans as an essential benchmark.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: In 2002, at the beginning of the NATO mission, there was a huge amount of enthusiasm in the local civil society for Western aid. Has it all evaporated since then?
Wieland-Karimi: Not necessarily. Young Afghans desire work and good prospects, just like their contemporaries in other countries. But it's true that this enthusiasm has declined considerably over the past eight years. People in Afghanistan have simply had to deal with too many setbacks.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Will your proposals be placed on the agenda for discussion in London?
Wieland-Karimi: There are many good ideas on the table. As always, the problem lies in the implementation. Afghan civil society needs to become the focus of our activities. Once a local village has been pacified, civil aid workers need to start the reconstruction effort. Still, the big question remains: What group of civilians can fulfill this mission?
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Couldn't the military help out? For instance, soldiers who have been specifically trained to interact with Afghan natives?
Wieland-Karimi: I don't think that's a good idea. We need close coordination between the military and civilian helpers. But both sides should focus on what they do best. A good proposal, however, is to get more Afghan expats involved in the civilian aid project. The Americans -- with their Afghan expat community of almost 500,000 -- have relied on this group heavily. A civilian aid worker who speaks the native language and is familiar with the cultural attitudes of the country is an invaluable asset. We have about 100,000 Afghan expats living in Germany. We should try much harder to make them a part of our civilian effort in Afghanistan. But, so far, our government has hardly tried this.
Interview conducted by Gregor Peter Schmitz
URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,674080,00.html
01/26/2010 05:04 PM
A New Look at Afghanistan
'Civil Society Is Very Much Alive'
Can civilian reconstruction efforts help win Afghan "hearts and minds"? In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Afghanistan expert Almut Wieland-Karimi discusses why tribal forms of government may be more suitable to Afghanistan, the wisdom of using employment rates as a benchmark for success and how expat Afghans can help the reconstruction effort.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: NATO foreign ministers are gathering in London on Thursday to discuss the path forward for the Western alliance's engagement in Afghanistan. You have advised the conference's participants to listen to the Afghans more. What does that mean?
Wieland-Karimi: Afghanistan's civil society is very much alive. We just finally have to listen to the ongoing debates. In the country's big cities, in particular, intellectuals, journalists and tribal representatives are debating how Afghanistan should best be governed and organized.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What proposals are currently being discussed?
Wieland-Karimi: Western powers always present free elections as the most desirable outcome. But the latest presidential elections -- with all their irregularities and reports of fraud -- have disillusioned many Afghans. From people close to President Hamid Karzai and even Taliban representatives, we are currently hearing suggestions to hold a loya jirga, the traditional tribal gathering, in addition to elections. The possibility of such a convention is even mentioned in the Afghan Constitution.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What would such a gathering look like?
Wieland-Karimi: In the 18th century, a loya jirga formed the basis for the modern Afghan nation. Nowadays, it would most likely be a mix of traditional and more modern elements, with regional representatives and tribal leaders participating. One of the issues they could debate is the question of whether a presidential system can really work in a traditionally decentralized nation like Afghanistan. One potential alternative would be a more federal system and the chance for Afghans to elect their governors directly. They are currently appointed by the president in Kabul.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Would President Karzai ever support an idea like this, given that it could reduce his power?
Wieland-Karimi: That depends on the framing of such a proposal. Would Karzai perceive it as a project of the Western powers intended to drive him out of power? Or would he have to see it as a proposal made by Afghan civil society, which would be much harder for him to dismiss?
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Once again, the Americans are floating the idea of negotiating with Taliban fighters directly. How could that work?
Wieland-Karimi: Everyone talks about the Taliban, but it's not a homogenous group. Sure, we see Taliban fighters with an ideological agenda determined to transform Afghanistan into a safe haven for terror groups, such as al-Qaida. But many of the current Taliban fighters are Afghan men aged 25 or less -- and out of work. The Taliban offers them money, work and food. That is a very attractive offer to many young people. However, such fighters could be considered "moderates" since they lack of an ideological agenda. They could be open to concrete offers made by the Afghan government or the Western powers.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Could you estimate how many Taliban fighters could be seen as "moderates"?
Wieland-Karimi: Serious estimates are difficult to make, but we know that roughly 70 percent of the Afghan people are under 25 years old. Our goal should be to win the "hearts and minds" of this group, particularly of the young men. They need work, and getting them to work should be the key focus of our dialogue. We are used to measuring progress in miles of streets or hospitals being built, but it would make much more sense to use the level of employment for young male Afghans as an essential benchmark.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: In 2002, at the beginning of the NATO mission, there was a huge amount of enthusiasm in the local civil society for Western aid. Has it all evaporated since then?
Wieland-Karimi: Not necessarily. Young Afghans desire work and good prospects, just like their contemporaries in other countries. But it's true that this enthusiasm has declined considerably over the past eight years. People in Afghanistan have simply had to deal with too many setbacks.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Will your proposals be placed on the agenda for discussion in London?
Wieland-Karimi: There are many good ideas on the table. As always, the problem lies in the implementation. Afghan civil society needs to become the focus of our activities. Once a local village has been pacified, civil aid workers need to start the reconstruction effort. Still, the big question remains: What group of civilians can fulfill this mission?
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Couldn't the military help out? For instance, soldiers who have been specifically trained to interact with Afghan natives?
Wieland-Karimi: I don't think that's a good idea. We need close coordination between the military and civilian helpers. But both sides should focus on what they do best. A good proposal, however, is to get more Afghan expats involved in the civilian aid project. The Americans -- with their Afghan expat community of almost 500,000 -- have relied on this group heavily. A civilian aid worker who speaks the native language and is familiar with the cultural attitudes of the country is an invaluable asset. We have about 100,000 Afghan expats living in Germany. We should try much harder to make them a part of our civilian effort in Afghanistan. But, so far, our government has hardly tried this.
Interview conducted by Gregor Peter Schmitz
URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,674080,00.html
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Million-dollar program assumes some Taliban can be paid to leave insurgency
It is safe to assume that some rank-and-file Taliban have joined the insurgency because the Taliban provides a monthly pay check, one that is higher than the Karzai government pays its own soliders. There is high unemployment throughout the country and the US-led occupation has overall done little to improve, and much to undermine, economic conditions. Given these conditions, wage and job incentives may work, provided they are, or lead to, long-term employment.
The article does not indicate what kind of jobs will be provided. Will the jobs be in the police force or Afghan army? Who will train them, our military officers or for-profit contractors? If the jobs created are jobs to help rebuild the Afghan economy and they spur an increase in Afghan enterprises, then it may turn out to be good for Afghanistan.
The reporters of the article also point out that some Taliban leaders will be offered "positions" in the Afghan government or governance structure.
One important point the reporters of the article make is that the new program, called the Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund, implies there is a recognition on the part of US generals that there is no military solution to resolve the Afghanistan war. It remains to be seen whether spending unknown millions on this program will be effective, sustainable, and with a minimum of corruption or rip offs. Past experience in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan does not hold out much promise.
If the US military command is able to create a program leading to long-term jobs that help to rebuild the country, then the Obama administration may learn something on what to do with the large unemployment problem in the United States. What an irony that would be? Or Farce?
Bob
---------------------------------
Taliban 'buy out' fund to cost hundreds of millions
Hamida Ghafour and David Sapsted, Foreign Correspondents
Last Updated: January 26. 2010 2:33PM UAE
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100126/FOREIGN/701259829/1138
LONDON // An international fund amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars will be established this week in a bid to buy off Taliban leaders in Afghanistan.An outline for the strategy, which will be principally funded by the US, Japan and Britain, was reported to have been drafted at a meeting in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago of top-level diplomats from 20 countries.
The announcement of the establishment of the Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund, which will seek to “split the Taliban” by luring into mainstream politics any leaders not connected to, or ready to break their links with, al Qa’eda is due to be announced at the end of Thursday’s summit on Afghanistan in London.
Some will see the plan as the most public acknowledgement yet that there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan.
But, assuming the scheme is approved on Thursday, it will represent the most comprehensive political attempt to draw the sting out of the insurgency since the fall of the regime in 2001.
According to The Times yesterday, the draft communiqué to be issued at the end of the conference also foresees Afghan troops “taking the lead and conducting the majority of operations in the insecure areas of Afghanistan within three years and taking responsibility for physical security within five years”.
Diplomatic sources in London yesterday stressed that this did not mean that a timetable was being drawn up for the withdrawal of the Nato-led force in Afghanistan, currently 110,000 strong. However, it will be the proposal for the “bribes” fund that will cause most controversy. Until now, many in the West had regarded opening a dialogue with the Taliban as appeasement.The new scheme’s aim will be to offer Taliban fighters jobs and training programmes while their leaders will be offered roles in the governance of the country in talks with the government of President Hamid Karzai.
The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, told reporters yesterday: “Over the long-term, we can split the Taliban. I believe there are many people who will be brought over, but they have to renounce violence, and be part of the democratic process.”A senior diplomat in London added: “The strategy of trying to lure fighters away from the Taliban has been going on for some time. This new proposal is of a whole different dimension: it will be structured, very well financed and aimed at bringing local warlords into the mainstream.
“It’s a carrot-and-stick approach. On the ground, there will be up to 40,000 more troops this year making things uncomfortable for the Taliban. The carrot is the money and a place within the power structure of Afghanistan.”In recent months, there have been an increasing number of reports of US involvement in negotiations with representatives of Mullah Mohammad Omar and other Taliban commanders, offering cash and jobs in a bid to get them to lay down their arms.
French, Italian and US troops have also been reported to have made cash payments on the ground, either to persuade Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons or simply to give safe passage to supply columns passing through their territories.Mr Karzai told the BBC last week that the United States and Britain had previously been opposed to his scheme to offer the Taliban money and jobs, but that they now had been won over to the idea.
He denied the scheme was a bribe. “If we call it bribery, then we are all taking bribes overseas because employment is something we are looking in all countries all over the world. It’s what young people seek, just like in America,” he said.The president also pointed out that, currently, the Taliban could afford to pay its volunteers more than his government could afford to pay its own soldiers.Political leaders have been quietly attempting to soften up public opinion over bringing the Taliban in from the cold. Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, recently described the Taliban as part of the “political fabric” of Afghanistan.
David Miliband, the UK foreign secretary, also said recently: “When people say to me: ‘Should the Afghan government be talking to the Taliban?’, I have a simple answer: yes, they should.”Kai Eide, the chief United Nations envoy in Afghanistan, has called for some Taliban leaders to be removed from a UN list of terrorists as a prelude to talks, while even Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of the foreign force in Afghanistan, said yesterday that he believed the Taliban had a role to play in government.
“I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past,” he told the Financial Times. “As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting.” However, military commanders are also making it plain that the carrot-and-stick approach will also involve plenty of stick.Major Gen Nick Carter, the commander of 45,000 Nato troops in Helmand province, said yesterday that a major offensive would be launched to “assert the control” of the Afghan government in areas currently controlled by the Taliban. “Helmand is very much a work in progress, with parts simply ungoverned. If they’re governed at all, it’s by parallel governments, provided often by the Taliban.
“If we’re going to win the argument on behalf of the Afghan government, then we need to assert the government’s control over those areas which are at the moment ungoverned.”Not everyone is happy with the idea of trying to buy off Taliban fighters. Adam Holloway, a British Conservative MP and member of the defence select committee in the House of Commons, described the plan as “ridiculous”.“That’s buying them off, that’s not reconciliation,” he said. “To think you are going to reconcile people to a corrupt, remote and unwanted government in Pashtun areas is ridiculous.
“It might work temporarily. There is no perfect solution, but if you think it is just about money, it is not going to work. It just symbolises they haven’t got it right.”Clare Lockhart, chief executive of the Institute for State Effectiveness, a think tank in Washington, and a former adviser to the UN and Afghan government, said unemployment was one of the root causes of insurgency and must be addressed.
“One of the reasons why young men are joining up various armed forces – whether the government forces, armed insurgent groups or just criminal gangs – is that there is no employment or livelihood. So it is very circular,” she said.“To address some of the root causes of instability one does need to focus on job creation.”
hghafour@thenational.aedsapsted@thenational.ae
The article does not indicate what kind of jobs will be provided. Will the jobs be in the police force or Afghan army? Who will train them, our military officers or for-profit contractors? If the jobs created are jobs to help rebuild the Afghan economy and they spur an increase in Afghan enterprises, then it may turn out to be good for Afghanistan.
The reporters of the article also point out that some Taliban leaders will be offered "positions" in the Afghan government or governance structure.
One important point the reporters of the article make is that the new program, called the Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund, implies there is a recognition on the part of US generals that there is no military solution to resolve the Afghanistan war. It remains to be seen whether spending unknown millions on this program will be effective, sustainable, and with a minimum of corruption or rip offs. Past experience in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan does not hold out much promise.
If the US military command is able to create a program leading to long-term jobs that help to rebuild the country, then the Obama administration may learn something on what to do with the large unemployment problem in the United States. What an irony that would be? Or Farce?
Bob
---------------------------------
Taliban 'buy out' fund to cost hundreds of millions
Hamida Ghafour and David Sapsted, Foreign Correspondents
Last Updated: January 26. 2010 2:33PM UAE
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100126/FOREIGN/701259829/1138
LONDON // An international fund amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars will be established this week in a bid to buy off Taliban leaders in Afghanistan.An outline for the strategy, which will be principally funded by the US, Japan and Britain, was reported to have been drafted at a meeting in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago of top-level diplomats from 20 countries.
The announcement of the establishment of the Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund, which will seek to “split the Taliban” by luring into mainstream politics any leaders not connected to, or ready to break their links with, al Qa’eda is due to be announced at the end of Thursday’s summit on Afghanistan in London.
Some will see the plan as the most public acknowledgement yet that there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan.
But, assuming the scheme is approved on Thursday, it will represent the most comprehensive political attempt to draw the sting out of the insurgency since the fall of the regime in 2001.
According to The Times yesterday, the draft communiqué to be issued at the end of the conference also foresees Afghan troops “taking the lead and conducting the majority of operations in the insecure areas of Afghanistan within three years and taking responsibility for physical security within five years”.
Diplomatic sources in London yesterday stressed that this did not mean that a timetable was being drawn up for the withdrawal of the Nato-led force in Afghanistan, currently 110,000 strong. However, it will be the proposal for the “bribes” fund that will cause most controversy. Until now, many in the West had regarded opening a dialogue with the Taliban as appeasement.The new scheme’s aim will be to offer Taliban fighters jobs and training programmes while their leaders will be offered roles in the governance of the country in talks with the government of President Hamid Karzai.
The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, told reporters yesterday: “Over the long-term, we can split the Taliban. I believe there are many people who will be brought over, but they have to renounce violence, and be part of the democratic process.”A senior diplomat in London added: “The strategy of trying to lure fighters away from the Taliban has been going on for some time. This new proposal is of a whole different dimension: it will be structured, very well financed and aimed at bringing local warlords into the mainstream.
“It’s a carrot-and-stick approach. On the ground, there will be up to 40,000 more troops this year making things uncomfortable for the Taliban. The carrot is the money and a place within the power structure of Afghanistan.”In recent months, there have been an increasing number of reports of US involvement in negotiations with representatives of Mullah Mohammad Omar and other Taliban commanders, offering cash and jobs in a bid to get them to lay down their arms.
French, Italian and US troops have also been reported to have made cash payments on the ground, either to persuade Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons or simply to give safe passage to supply columns passing through their territories.Mr Karzai told the BBC last week that the United States and Britain had previously been opposed to his scheme to offer the Taliban money and jobs, but that they now had been won over to the idea.
He denied the scheme was a bribe. “If we call it bribery, then we are all taking bribes overseas because employment is something we are looking in all countries all over the world. It’s what young people seek, just like in America,” he said.The president also pointed out that, currently, the Taliban could afford to pay its volunteers more than his government could afford to pay its own soldiers.Political leaders have been quietly attempting to soften up public opinion over bringing the Taliban in from the cold. Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, recently described the Taliban as part of the “political fabric” of Afghanistan.
David Miliband, the UK foreign secretary, also said recently: “When people say to me: ‘Should the Afghan government be talking to the Taliban?’, I have a simple answer: yes, they should.”Kai Eide, the chief United Nations envoy in Afghanistan, has called for some Taliban leaders to be removed from a UN list of terrorists as a prelude to talks, while even Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of the foreign force in Afghanistan, said yesterday that he believed the Taliban had a role to play in government.
“I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past,” he told the Financial Times. “As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting.” However, military commanders are also making it plain that the carrot-and-stick approach will also involve plenty of stick.Major Gen Nick Carter, the commander of 45,000 Nato troops in Helmand province, said yesterday that a major offensive would be launched to “assert the control” of the Afghan government in areas currently controlled by the Taliban. “Helmand is very much a work in progress, with parts simply ungoverned. If they’re governed at all, it’s by parallel governments, provided often by the Taliban.
“If we’re going to win the argument on behalf of the Afghan government, then we need to assert the government’s control over those areas which are at the moment ungoverned.”Not everyone is happy with the idea of trying to buy off Taliban fighters. Adam Holloway, a British Conservative MP and member of the defence select committee in the House of Commons, described the plan as “ridiculous”.“That’s buying them off, that’s not reconciliation,” he said. “To think you are going to reconcile people to a corrupt, remote and unwanted government in Pashtun areas is ridiculous.
“It might work temporarily. There is no perfect solution, but if you think it is just about money, it is not going to work. It just symbolises they haven’t got it right.”Clare Lockhart, chief executive of the Institute for State Effectiveness, a think tank in Washington, and a former adviser to the UN and Afghan government, said unemployment was one of the root causes of insurgency and must be addressed.
“One of the reasons why young men are joining up various armed forces – whether the government forces, armed insurgent groups or just criminal gangs – is that there is no employment or livelihood. So it is very circular,” she said.“To address some of the root causes of instability one does need to focus on job creation.”
hghafour@thenational.aedsapsted@thenational.ae
Monday, January 25, 2010
The Afghanistan War is costly and makes us less safe
Phyllis Bennis is the author of the following article. She focuses on the human and economic costs of the war and contends that the US occupation makes us less safe, not more safe. We could, she writes, use the money to fund jobs for a green economy or for health care for some of the tens of millions who do not have insurance.
Bennis' new book will be published in the next week: Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer. See a short bio at the end of the article.
Bob
---------------------------
Published on Monday, January 25, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Afghanistan: This War Won't Work
by Phyllis Bennis
The recent Taliban attacks on Kabul provide another wake-up call about why this war in Afghanistan simply isn't going to work. It won't bring security to Afghans. It won't turn Afghanistan into a democracy. And it won't make us safer.
In fact, the war killed more people in Afghanistan last year than the year before-40 percent more civilians, according to the United Nations. And the body count this year is already shaping up to be higher than last year. That goes for U.S. troops too.
And President Obama's escalation, the 30,000 new troops he just announced he's sending to Afghanistan? That's not helping either. The Taliban have mostly stayed in the countryside, based in the small villages where almost 80 percent of Afghans live. But now, after Obama announced that the additional troops would be deployed in Afghanistan's "population centers," meaning the cities, guess where the Taliban headed for their most recent assault?
The same thing happens when U.S. troops go after Taliban or al-Qaeda targets-they may or may not kill the "right" person, but they consistently do kill a whole bunch of people guilty only of being in the very wrong place at the very wrong time. The "wrong" people get killed.
And what happens then? The grieving and outraged family, friends, and tribe members of those "wrong" people get angry. Very angry. They start to hate those who killed their family members-us-even if they never did before. And some of them turn to violence when they never would have before. This isn't new-military and political leaders acknowledge that we're creating more terrorists than we're killing. And still the policymakers aren't hearing it.
So it doesn't make us safer. And here at home we have another problem too. Alongside the horrifying human cost-young soldiers killed, others coming home with horrifying life-shattering injuries, others returning to face traumatic brain injury and PTSD-we have to pay the financial cost for this war.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost us $950 billion. Yes, BILLION. That's not counting the $137 billion Congress appropriated for spending between now and September. And that also doesn't count the cost of those 30,000 new troops going to Afghanistan, which will cost roughly $30 billion more just for their first year.
Altogether, that means by the end of this year we will have spent about $1.08 trillion. Yes, TRILLION-a number so big it's practically incomprehensible.
What else could we do with that money? Well, just the cost of the current escalation could provide about six million people with health care. Or generate 600,000 well-paid green jobs.
Which is more likely to make us safer? Opposition to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, which peaked at almost 60 percent just a month or so ago, has dropped after Obama's escalation speech at West Point. We've got a lot of work to do to make sure his administration knows this war won't make us safer, and it just costs too much-too many lives and too much money. Are you listening, President Obama?
Distributed by Minuteman Media
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies [1]. Her books include Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer [2] and more recently Ending the Iraq War: A Primer [3]. If you want to receive her talking points and articles on a regular basis, click here [4] and choose "New Internationalism."
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/25-7
Bennis' new book will be published in the next week: Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer. See a short bio at the end of the article.
Bob
---------------------------
Published on Monday, January 25, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Afghanistan: This War Won't Work
by Phyllis Bennis
The recent Taliban attacks on Kabul provide another wake-up call about why this war in Afghanistan simply isn't going to work. It won't bring security to Afghans. It won't turn Afghanistan into a democracy. And it won't make us safer.
In fact, the war killed more people in Afghanistan last year than the year before-40 percent more civilians, according to the United Nations. And the body count this year is already shaping up to be higher than last year. That goes for U.S. troops too.
And President Obama's escalation, the 30,000 new troops he just announced he's sending to Afghanistan? That's not helping either. The Taliban have mostly stayed in the countryside, based in the small villages where almost 80 percent of Afghans live. But now, after Obama announced that the additional troops would be deployed in Afghanistan's "population centers," meaning the cities, guess where the Taliban headed for their most recent assault?
The same thing happens when U.S. troops go after Taliban or al-Qaeda targets-they may or may not kill the "right" person, but they consistently do kill a whole bunch of people guilty only of being in the very wrong place at the very wrong time. The "wrong" people get killed.
And what happens then? The grieving and outraged family, friends, and tribe members of those "wrong" people get angry. Very angry. They start to hate those who killed their family members-us-even if they never did before. And some of them turn to violence when they never would have before. This isn't new-military and political leaders acknowledge that we're creating more terrorists than we're killing. And still the policymakers aren't hearing it.
So it doesn't make us safer. And here at home we have another problem too. Alongside the horrifying human cost-young soldiers killed, others coming home with horrifying life-shattering injuries, others returning to face traumatic brain injury and PTSD-we have to pay the financial cost for this war.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost us $950 billion. Yes, BILLION. That's not counting the $137 billion Congress appropriated for spending between now and September. And that also doesn't count the cost of those 30,000 new troops going to Afghanistan, which will cost roughly $30 billion more just for their first year.
Altogether, that means by the end of this year we will have spent about $1.08 trillion. Yes, TRILLION-a number so big it's practically incomprehensible.
What else could we do with that money? Well, just the cost of the current escalation could provide about six million people with health care. Or generate 600,000 well-paid green jobs.
Which is more likely to make us safer? Opposition to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, which peaked at almost 60 percent just a month or so ago, has dropped after Obama's escalation speech at West Point. We've got a lot of work to do to make sure his administration knows this war won't make us safer, and it just costs too much-too many lives and too much money. Are you listening, President Obama?
Distributed by Minuteman Media
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies [1]. Her books include Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer [2] and more recently Ending the Iraq War: A Primer [3]. If you want to receive her talking points and articles on a regular basis, click here [4] and choose "New Internationalism."
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/25-7
Gen. Patraeus says no timetable for ending US occupation of Afghanistan
The important point in the following article on an interview with Gen. Patraeus, the commander of CENTCOM (e.g., including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, etc), is that Patraeus seems not to acknowledge that President Obama has set a target for the beginning of a withdrawal of US troops in the summer of 2011. Rather, the report suggests that any withdrawal of US troops will not likely begin until some unspecified years after that.
One implication: This is a stark example of the power of the military in US foreign policy. It is also a failure to accept the limits of American military power, a central theme of Andrew J. Backvich's widely read book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.
At the same time, Afghanistan is important to US leaders and advisers because it is located in an oil-rich part of the Casbian-Sea region and close to the biggest reserves of oil that lie in the Middle East. The US, as presently organized, needs this oil for herself and for her strategic allies in Europe and Japan. But there are now other countries who are bidding on or gaining access to the oil reserves in Central Asia and the Middle East, particularly China and Russia.
If the US loses her privileged access to these sources of oil, US international hegemony, already on the wain, would continue to decline. On this point, there is no better source than the work of Michael T. Klare. His most recent book is titled Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.
The upshot: Without her military power, the US is sunk and the capitalist economy is then in deep trouble, that is, unless there is a transformation of its political and economic structure based on a green economy and new cooperative international agreements.
Bob
------------------------------
Gen. Patraeus: Afghan War Will Take Longer Than Iraq
CENTCOM Commander Hasn't Heard Any Talk of a Timetable
by Jason Ditz, January 24, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/01/24/gen-petraeus-afghan-war-will-take-longer-than-Iraq
In an in-depth interview with the Times of London gearing up for the London Conference on Afghanistan later this week, CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus again cautioned that the war was going to “get harder before it gets easier.”
Likening the January 2007 surge in Iraq to President Obama’s December escalation, the general said he thought that the war in Afghanistan was going to take longer than the war in Iraq.
Perhaps even more troubling over eight years after the war began, Gen. Petraeus insisted he still hasn’t heard any talk of setting a timetable for the end of the war, and said any predictions would be “premature.” Several nations had hoped to use the London Conference to set out some sort of exit strategy for the seemingly endless conflict.
In fact, Petraeus suggested that the London Conference would not so much focus on setting a timetable for a transition, but on deciding “what transition actually means.” Though he provided little in the way of detail, it does suggest that officials have abandoned the pretense of starting the pullout in 2011.
One implication: This is a stark example of the power of the military in US foreign policy. It is also a failure to accept the limits of American military power, a central theme of Andrew J. Backvich's widely read book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.
At the same time, Afghanistan is important to US leaders and advisers because it is located in an oil-rich part of the Casbian-Sea region and close to the biggest reserves of oil that lie in the Middle East. The US, as presently organized, needs this oil for herself and for her strategic allies in Europe and Japan. But there are now other countries who are bidding on or gaining access to the oil reserves in Central Asia and the Middle East, particularly China and Russia.
If the US loses her privileged access to these sources of oil, US international hegemony, already on the wain, would continue to decline. On this point, there is no better source than the work of Michael T. Klare. His most recent book is titled Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.
The upshot: Without her military power, the US is sunk and the capitalist economy is then in deep trouble, that is, unless there is a transformation of its political and economic structure based on a green economy and new cooperative international agreements.
Bob
------------------------------
Gen. Patraeus: Afghan War Will Take Longer Than Iraq
CENTCOM Commander Hasn't Heard Any Talk of a Timetable
by Jason Ditz, January 24, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/01/24/gen-petraeus-afghan-war-will-take-longer-than-Iraq
In an in-depth interview with the Times of London gearing up for the London Conference on Afghanistan later this week, CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus again cautioned that the war was going to “get harder before it gets easier.”
Likening the January 2007 surge in Iraq to President Obama’s December escalation, the general said he thought that the war in Afghanistan was going to take longer than the war in Iraq.
Perhaps even more troubling over eight years after the war began, Gen. Petraeus insisted he still hasn’t heard any talk of setting a timetable for the end of the war, and said any predictions would be “premature.” Several nations had hoped to use the London Conference to set out some sort of exit strategy for the seemingly endless conflict.
In fact, Petraeus suggested that the London Conference would not so much focus on setting a timetable for a transition, but on deciding “what transition actually means.” Though he provided little in the way of detail, it does suggest that officials have abandoned the pretense of starting the pullout in 2011.
Afghan election postponed due to Washington concerns over election fraud
Juan Cole, along with a number of sources, reports that the Afghanistan parliamentary elections have been postponed for four months. Cole and others emphasize that pressure was brought on the Karzai government to postpone the election because of concerns in the administration to avoid another fraudulent election.
These reports help to confirm the view taken in other articles and comments on this blog, and by Malalai Joya, namely, that the Karzai government is riddled with corrupt officials, many of them warlords and/or narco-trafficker in control of districts or villages outside of Taliban-dominated areas.
Bob
---------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Monday, January 25, 2010
Afghanistan postpones parliamentary elections
Afghanistan postpones parliamentary elections - latimes.comThe LAT lays out the basic facts around the postponement of parliamentary elections in Afghanistan. The Afghan press stresses two factors aboveall:Afghanpaper.com writing in Dari Persian says it was told by concerned Afghan officials who declined to allow their names to be used that the four-month delay was almost entirely a result of pressure from the Obama administration and its Western allies, and was aimed at allowing UN election workers to allow for anti-fraud and anti-corruption measures to be taken so as to forestall a fiasco like the August presidential election, where substantial numbers of ballots were disqualified.
In addition, the electoral commission says it only has $70 mn. in the kitty to hold the parliamentary elections, which will cost $120. President Hamid Karzai is asking the international community for the other $50 mn., so presumably he had the Independent Electoral Commission make this announcement now so that he can go hat in hand to international donors at the Istanbul and London conferences. So the postponement is being positioned by Karzai and his people as a fundraising stunt (the political scientists would speak of the extraction of strategic rent). But Afghanpaper.com suggests that the money shortfall is only a cover story, and if we took that position seriously it would indicate that the Obama team just does not want another election fiasco in Afghanistan in the build-up to the 2010 midterms.
These reports help to confirm the view taken in other articles and comments on this blog, and by Malalai Joya, namely, that the Karzai government is riddled with corrupt officials, many of them warlords and/or narco-trafficker in control of districts or villages outside of Taliban-dominated areas.
Bob
---------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Monday, January 25, 2010
Afghanistan postpones parliamentary elections
Afghanistan postpones parliamentary elections - latimes.comThe LAT lays out the basic facts around the postponement of parliamentary elections in Afghanistan. The Afghan press stresses two factors aboveall:Afghanpaper.com writing in Dari Persian says it was told by concerned Afghan officials who declined to allow their names to be used that the four-month delay was almost entirely a result of pressure from the Obama administration and its Western allies, and was aimed at allowing UN election workers to allow for anti-fraud and anti-corruption measures to be taken so as to forestall a fiasco like the August presidential election, where substantial numbers of ballots were disqualified.
In addition, the electoral commission says it only has $70 mn. in the kitty to hold the parliamentary elections, which will cost $120. President Hamid Karzai is asking the international community for the other $50 mn., so presumably he had the Independent Electoral Commission make this announcement now so that he can go hat in hand to international donors at the Istanbul and London conferences. So the postponement is being positioned by Karzai and his people as a fundraising stunt (the political scientists would speak of the extraction of strategic rent). But Afghanpaper.com suggests that the money shortfall is only a cover story, and if we took that position seriously it would indicate that the Obama team just does not want another election fiasco in Afghanistan in the build-up to the 2010 midterms.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
US and UK put pressure on Karzai government
Here are the principal points from an article found in today's Independent newspaper (UK, on-line).
The US and UK administrations are putting pressure on President Karzai to expedite efforts to ban a key ingredient used in "improvised roadside explosives.
Karzai is also being asked to meet certain deadlines with respect to the number of Afghans sent to the British and US trainers for police and military training. General McCrystal wants training to be completed by October 2011 for a total of 171,000 troops and 134,000 police.
Bob
--------------------------------
On the eve of a London conference on his country, Afghanistan's President bans key ingredient used in insurgents' bombs
By Jane Merrick
Sunday, 24 January 2010 - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/karzai-takes-on-the-roadside-bombmakers-1877279
President Hamid Karzai has banned a key ingredient in the roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of British, American and Nato soldiers in his country as he moved to reassure the international community that he is acting against terrorism ahead of a major conference on Afghanistan this week.
The Afghan government outlawed the use of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, used by the Taliban in 90 per cent of improvised roadside explosives, on the eve of the London conference to set out a political and military plan for the region. President Karzai will join US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Gordon Brown for the one-day meeting, chaired by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, on Thursday. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and foreign ministers of Afghanistan's leading regional partners will also attend.
It will follow an emergency conference on Yemen in London on Wednesday, prompted by the heightened threat of terrorism following the attempted airplane attack on Christmas Day, which it is suspected was hatched in the country.
The Afghanistan conference will set out a strategy for the next 12 months, including milestones for President Karzai's government to pass before the eventual handover of military control and political governance to Kabul.
At the London gathering, President Karzai will propose a plan, funded by Western governments, to offer money and jobs to rank-and-file Taliban fighters, who are not members of al-Qa'ida or other terror groups, in an attempt to persuade them to switch sides and bring an end to the fighting. Taliban commanders pay their foot soldiers higher rates than government forces, but wages for Afghan forces would rise from $120 (£75) a month to $165 a month.
Mrs Clinton unveiled a plan last week, to be presented in London, for the stabilisation of Afghanistan, also including bringing low-level fighters back into mainstream society. Taliban leaders have been excluded from the reintegration plans, but yesterday Pakistan's foreign ministry said it was reaching out to "all levels" of the Taliban in an attempt to bring peace to Afghanistan.
The British government wants the conference to approve a timetable for transferring power to Afghan security forces and government.
At the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in November, Mr Brown called on Kabul to identify within three months from the date of the conference additional Afghan troops to be sent to Helmand for training. By six months, there should be a clear plan for police training, including tackling corruption, while within nine months some 400 provincial and district governors should be appointed. Within a year, the Prime Minister said, 50,000 additional Afghan troops must be trained, taking the total number of soldiers to 134,000. At least five out of 34 provinces should be under Afghan control within a year.
US General Stanley McChrystal, commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, wants the London meeting to set a target of 171,000 Afghan soldiers by October 2011, and police numbers to increase from 94,000 to 134,000 by that date.
The scale of the task facing world leaders was underlined on Friday with another death of a British soldier from an explosive device in Helmand. The soldier from A Company 4 Rifles was the 250th to be killed in the country.
Nato troops have seized tons of ammonium nitrate fertiliser over the past five months in southern Afghanistan, but the new ban is designed to send a message that the government is doing everything it can to curb the insurgency. President Karzai banned the use, production, storage, purchase or sale of the fertiliser and farmers have one month to turn in their stocks or face prosecution.
The Afghan president is under intense pressure to act against terrorism and corruption following his disputed second-term election last year. Mr Miliband last week said the Afghan government needed to show it was taking steps. Writing in the New Statesman, the Foreign Secretary said: "To remain resistant to Taliban intimidation, Afghans need to know that their government can provide basic justice and maintain order."
Mrs Clinton said on Thursday: "What [Afghans] want is a government that can and will function, and we are expecting a lot from President Karzai and his new government."
US President Barack Obama has set a timeline of July 2011 for the start of a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, echoed by Mr Brown.
The Independent on Sunday has led calls for a withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan within a year, while leaders in other EU countries are under pressure to demand a speeded-up withdrawal. Germany is among those said to be frustrated at the lengthy commitment.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who will not attend the talks at Lancaster House, central London, but who is instead sending her foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, yesterday stressed her country's commitment to training Afghan troops. She will hold talks in Berlin with President Karzai this week before he travels to London for the conference.
The meeting will also highlight the effort needed by Pakistan to tackle terrorism in its country and border areas with Afghanistan.
Pakistan's foreign ministry said yesterday that the government was reaching out to "all levels" of the Afghan Taliban to end the insurgency against Kabul.
The talks on Yemen on Wednesday will bring together the foreign ministers of the country's main development partners, including the US and Saudi Arabia. Britain arranged the conference to coincide with the Afghanistan meeting after a Yemen-based al-Qa'ida group claimed it was behind the failed bid to blow up the Amsterdam to Detroit plane on 25 December.
The talks will focus on security and development funding to prevent Yemen becoming a failed state and being used by al-Qa'ida to launch further attacks. The Yemen government is also contending with a Shia revolt in the north and separatist movement in the south.
Underscoring the fragility of the its authority over the country, the bodies of 20 of 26 Saudi soldiers reported missing were yesterday found on the border after fighting against Shia rebels.
US General David Petraeus, who discussed military co-operation with Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh earlier this month, pledged a doubling of aid from Washington to the country, taking it to $140m (£87m).
Saudi Arabia is believed to be spending between $200m and $300m a year on helping Yemeni security authorities conduct counter-terrorism work. Britain launched a £7m five-year justice and policing programme in the country in 2008, and earlier this month Mr Brown agreed funding with President Obama for a counter-terrorism police unit.
The US and UK administrations are putting pressure on President Karzai to expedite efforts to ban a key ingredient used in "improvised roadside explosives.
Karzai is also being asked to meet certain deadlines with respect to the number of Afghans sent to the British and US trainers for police and military training. General McCrystal wants training to be completed by October 2011 for a total of 171,000 troops and 134,000 police.
The article also notes that President Obama has set a deadline of July 2011 for the start of a withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
In addition, President Karzai will propose a plan, financed by Western governments, to offer money and jobs to rank-and-file Taliban fighters who are not affiliated with terrorist groups. The wages are designed to be higher than the Taliban commanders pay their "foot soldiers."
UK and Britain also expect the Karzai government to extend its control over provincial and district governments and to root out corruption in the government.
Comment: It remains to be seen whether these goals will be met. Past experience justifies some skepticism. It's not clear what types of jobs will be proferred to Taliban soldiers. There is nothing explicit here about rebuilding the economy or economic support for Afghan villages and towns. Obama's goals for the withdrawal of US troops, beginning in July 2011, offer few details about how many troops will be withdrawn or over what period of time. Many such pledges are qualified by "conditions on the ground."Bob
--------------------------------
On the eve of a London conference on his country, Afghanistan's President bans key ingredient used in insurgents' bombs
By Jane Merrick
Sunday, 24 January 2010 - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/karzai-takes-on-the-roadside-bombmakers-1877279
President Hamid Karzai has banned a key ingredient in the roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of British, American and Nato soldiers in his country as he moved to reassure the international community that he is acting against terrorism ahead of a major conference on Afghanistan this week.
The Afghan government outlawed the use of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, used by the Taliban in 90 per cent of improvised roadside explosives, on the eve of the London conference to set out a political and military plan for the region. President Karzai will join US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Gordon Brown for the one-day meeting, chaired by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, on Thursday. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and foreign ministers of Afghanistan's leading regional partners will also attend.
It will follow an emergency conference on Yemen in London on Wednesday, prompted by the heightened threat of terrorism following the attempted airplane attack on Christmas Day, which it is suspected was hatched in the country.
The Afghanistan conference will set out a strategy for the next 12 months, including milestones for President Karzai's government to pass before the eventual handover of military control and political governance to Kabul.
At the London gathering, President Karzai will propose a plan, funded by Western governments, to offer money and jobs to rank-and-file Taliban fighters, who are not members of al-Qa'ida or other terror groups, in an attempt to persuade them to switch sides and bring an end to the fighting. Taliban commanders pay their foot soldiers higher rates than government forces, but wages for Afghan forces would rise from $120 (£75) a month to $165 a month.
Mrs Clinton unveiled a plan last week, to be presented in London, for the stabilisation of Afghanistan, also including bringing low-level fighters back into mainstream society. Taliban leaders have been excluded from the reintegration plans, but yesterday Pakistan's foreign ministry said it was reaching out to "all levels" of the Taliban in an attempt to bring peace to Afghanistan.
The British government wants the conference to approve a timetable for transferring power to Afghan security forces and government.
At the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in November, Mr Brown called on Kabul to identify within three months from the date of the conference additional Afghan troops to be sent to Helmand for training. By six months, there should be a clear plan for police training, including tackling corruption, while within nine months some 400 provincial and district governors should be appointed. Within a year, the Prime Minister said, 50,000 additional Afghan troops must be trained, taking the total number of soldiers to 134,000. At least five out of 34 provinces should be under Afghan control within a year.
US General Stanley McChrystal, commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, wants the London meeting to set a target of 171,000 Afghan soldiers by October 2011, and police numbers to increase from 94,000 to 134,000 by that date.
The scale of the task facing world leaders was underlined on Friday with another death of a British soldier from an explosive device in Helmand. The soldier from A Company 4 Rifles was the 250th to be killed in the country.
Nato troops have seized tons of ammonium nitrate fertiliser over the past five months in southern Afghanistan, but the new ban is designed to send a message that the government is doing everything it can to curb the insurgency. President Karzai banned the use, production, storage, purchase or sale of the fertiliser and farmers have one month to turn in their stocks or face prosecution.
The Afghan president is under intense pressure to act against terrorism and corruption following his disputed second-term election last year. Mr Miliband last week said the Afghan government needed to show it was taking steps. Writing in the New Statesman, the Foreign Secretary said: "To remain resistant to Taliban intimidation, Afghans need to know that their government can provide basic justice and maintain order."
Mrs Clinton said on Thursday: "What [Afghans] want is a government that can and will function, and we are expecting a lot from President Karzai and his new government."
US President Barack Obama has set a timeline of July 2011 for the start of a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, echoed by Mr Brown.
The Independent on Sunday has led calls for a withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan within a year, while leaders in other EU countries are under pressure to demand a speeded-up withdrawal. Germany is among those said to be frustrated at the lengthy commitment.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who will not attend the talks at Lancaster House, central London, but who is instead sending her foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, yesterday stressed her country's commitment to training Afghan troops. She will hold talks in Berlin with President Karzai this week before he travels to London for the conference.
The meeting will also highlight the effort needed by Pakistan to tackle terrorism in its country and border areas with Afghanistan.
Pakistan's foreign ministry said yesterday that the government was reaching out to "all levels" of the Afghan Taliban to end the insurgency against Kabul.
The talks on Yemen on Wednesday will bring together the foreign ministers of the country's main development partners, including the US and Saudi Arabia. Britain arranged the conference to coincide with the Afghanistan meeting after a Yemen-based al-Qa'ida group claimed it was behind the failed bid to blow up the Amsterdam to Detroit plane on 25 December.
The talks will focus on security and development funding to prevent Yemen becoming a failed state and being used by al-Qa'ida to launch further attacks. The Yemen government is also contending with a Shia revolt in the north and separatist movement in the south.
Underscoring the fragility of the its authority over the country, the bodies of 20 of 26 Saudi soldiers reported missing were yesterday found on the border after fighting against Shia rebels.
US General David Petraeus, who discussed military co-operation with Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh earlier this month, pledged a doubling of aid from Washington to the country, taking it to $140m (£87m).
Saudi Arabia is believed to be spending between $200m and $300m a year on helping Yemeni security authorities conduct counter-terrorism work. Britain launched a £7m five-year justice and policing programme in the country in 2008, and earlier this month Mr Brown agreed funding with President Obama for a counter-terrorism police unit.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Central Asian countries affected by global economic crisis
Three countries that lie to the north of Afghanistan are suffering increasing economic difficulties, according to a report by the International Crisis Group. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan share borders with Afghanistan, while Kyrgyzstan is just north of Tajikistan. These countries are important to the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan because they have allowed NATO and the US to have "crucial military supply lines to Afghanistan." All of the countries are led by authoritarian governments with large impoverished populations.
Currently, the economic and political stability of these countries are in question because of the global recession. There are complex connections in this story.
Before the global recession, young men from the countries of Central Asia were able to find low-wage employment in Russia and Kazakhstan and earn enough to send remittances back to their families. This brought some increased economic, and also political, stability to their home countries. Economic assistance through remittances. Employment abroad for otherwise idle and alienated young men.
However, as a result of the global economic crisis, employment opportunities in Russia and Kazakhstan have declined. There are two consequences of the loss of employment in Russia and Kazakhstan for the Central Asian countries. One, an important source of income, the remittances, has declined. Two, young men who went abroad to find work will return to their home countries, where there are few economic opportunities for them.
Some anticipate that the heightened economic crisis may well, in turn, generate political instability. For example, unemployed young men are prime candidates for armed rebellion against oppressive governments. Increased political instability could, in time, lead to difficult logistical problems for the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Whether any of this transpires only the future will tell. However, the article below by the International Crisis Group reminds us that the occupation of Afghanistan is affected by, and is affecting, the conditions in surrounding countries. This makes the issue of occupation a regional and not only a national issue. We have been aware of how Pakistan has been a source of worry of the US military. But Pakistan is not the only worry for our generals.
Bob
-----------------------------
Central Asia: Migrants and the Economic Crisis
Asia Report N°183 5 January 2010
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6456&l=1
The economic crisis has caused millions of migrant labourers from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to lose their jobs in the boom economies of Russia and Kazakhstan. Remittances that kept their relatives afloat have plummeted and many migrants have returned home to certain destitution, putting weak Central Asian governments under severe strain. In Tajikistan half the labour force is without work, while Kyrgyzstan suffers from massive rural unemployment.
Before the crisis hit, up to five million people from these countries left home for Russia and Kazakhstan to take on poorly paid and unskilled jobs, often the unpleasant tasks that local people no longer wished to do. Yet at home they were viewed with respect: the most daring members of their society, who were willing to take a jump into the unknown to pull themselves and their families out of poverty. Remittances also boosted their home countries’ economic data, allowing governments with little ability or interest in creating jobs to claim a modest degree of success. By 2008 remittances were providing the equivalent of half Tajikistan’s gross domestic product (GDP), a quarter of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP, and an eighth of Uzbekistan’s.
The economic crisis of 2008-2009 destroyed this semblance of prosperity. First oil prices plummeted, then the crisis rolled through the highly leveraged banking sectors of Russia and Kazakhstan, finally bringing construction – the single largest source of migrant employment – to a near standstill. Migrant labourer quotas were cut, xenophobia increased in Russia, companies laid off migrants or in some cases simply stopped paying them. In the migrants’ home countries, governments first refused to believe the crisis would affect them, then slowly began to assemble a package of largely symbolic and ultimately unsuccessful palliatives. At least several hundred thousand and possibly as many as one million migrant labourers were believed to have returned home by the end of 2009.
The crisis has focused attention on one of the crucial weaknesses of Central Asian governments: the ability of states like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to survive a crisis depends on good external conditions, not good policy. They handled unemployment, for example, by exporting it, did little to create jobs at home, and are now floundering in the face of the crisis. In the past they would have just muddled through. Now problems are building up, and muddling through is becoming less of an option. Migrant labourers also unwittingly performed a valuable political service for Central Asia’s leaders. The export of surplus labour allowed governments to rid themselves for part of the year of the segment of society – especially young men – that is the most likely source of unrest.
The financial crisis and the return of labour migrants sparked predictions of unrest, intensifying the concern that radical Islamists had been making inroads into the labour diaspora. Though there are strong indications of attempts by radical Islamists to recruit among migrant labourers, particularly in Russia, there is not enough data to ascertain the breadth of their success. And while many labourers have returned home, many more are waiting it out in Russia and Kazakhstan, taking even more menial and lower paying work, or surviving on family handouts in the hope that the situation will improve. Many work illegally, at the mercy of corrupt police, officials and dishonest employers; in Russia they are also subject to considerable discrimination and even violence. Opposition leaders in the region have long believed that migrant labourers would one day form the spearhead of an attack on the entrenched and incompetent regimes. This shows no sign of happening yet.
All groups affected by the crisis hope that one day the boom years will come back. The hiring nations look forward to a time when they will again be serious players on the world economic stage. The labourers need the work, because their own countries cannot provide it. The labour exporting governments need, as usual, outside assistance to solve their problems: none of them under their present dispensations are likely to come up with a successful strategy either to reintegrate migrant labourers or find an alternative source of income. The chances are, however, that the story will not end so neatly. Russia and Kazakhstan are likely at best to achieve a sort of sub-optimal recovery – assuming that a second round of economic crisis does not, as many economists predict, hit in Russia.
In all three countries covered in this report, society has been politically inactive or silent for many years. In Tajikistan this is attributed to the still-fresh memories of a brutal civil war; in Kyrgyzstan to disillusion and cynicism that followed the so-called Tulip Revolution of 2005; in Uzbekistan because of a ruthless and often brutal system of top-to-bottom social control. Western pressure has done little to mitigate this behaviour in the past, and pressure is likely to diminish even further as NATO and the U.S. look to Central Asia to host crucial military supply lines to Afghanistan. Past performance in the region is, however, no guarantee of future behaviour. Insecurity is growing, in part domestically generated, in part because of proximity to Afghanistan; infrastructure is collapsing, weak economies are slipping still further. The governments of the region need to take energetic measures to carry out sweeping reforms. The international community needs to pressure them to do so. At the moment, neither seems likely.
Bishkek/Brussels, 5 January 2010
Currently, the economic and political stability of these countries are in question because of the global recession. There are complex connections in this story.
Before the global recession, young men from the countries of Central Asia were able to find low-wage employment in Russia and Kazakhstan and earn enough to send remittances back to their families. This brought some increased economic, and also political, stability to their home countries. Economic assistance through remittances. Employment abroad for otherwise idle and alienated young men.
However, as a result of the global economic crisis, employment opportunities in Russia and Kazakhstan have declined. There are two consequences of the loss of employment in Russia and Kazakhstan for the Central Asian countries. One, an important source of income, the remittances, has declined. Two, young men who went abroad to find work will return to their home countries, where there are few economic opportunities for them.
Some anticipate that the heightened economic crisis may well, in turn, generate political instability. For example, unemployed young men are prime candidates for armed rebellion against oppressive governments. Increased political instability could, in time, lead to difficult logistical problems for the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Whether any of this transpires only the future will tell. However, the article below by the International Crisis Group reminds us that the occupation of Afghanistan is affected by, and is affecting, the conditions in surrounding countries. This makes the issue of occupation a regional and not only a national issue. We have been aware of how Pakistan has been a source of worry of the US military. But Pakistan is not the only worry for our generals.
Bob
-----------------------------
Central Asia: Migrants and the Economic Crisis
Asia Report N°183 5 January 2010
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6456&l=1
The economic crisis has caused millions of migrant labourers from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to lose their jobs in the boom economies of Russia and Kazakhstan. Remittances that kept their relatives afloat have plummeted and many migrants have returned home to certain destitution, putting weak Central Asian governments under severe strain. In Tajikistan half the labour force is without work, while Kyrgyzstan suffers from massive rural unemployment.
Before the crisis hit, up to five million people from these countries left home for Russia and Kazakhstan to take on poorly paid and unskilled jobs, often the unpleasant tasks that local people no longer wished to do. Yet at home they were viewed with respect: the most daring members of their society, who were willing to take a jump into the unknown to pull themselves and their families out of poverty. Remittances also boosted their home countries’ economic data, allowing governments with little ability or interest in creating jobs to claim a modest degree of success. By 2008 remittances were providing the equivalent of half Tajikistan’s gross domestic product (GDP), a quarter of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP, and an eighth of Uzbekistan’s.
The economic crisis of 2008-2009 destroyed this semblance of prosperity. First oil prices plummeted, then the crisis rolled through the highly leveraged banking sectors of Russia and Kazakhstan, finally bringing construction – the single largest source of migrant employment – to a near standstill. Migrant labourer quotas were cut, xenophobia increased in Russia, companies laid off migrants or in some cases simply stopped paying them. In the migrants’ home countries, governments first refused to believe the crisis would affect them, then slowly began to assemble a package of largely symbolic and ultimately unsuccessful palliatives. At least several hundred thousand and possibly as many as one million migrant labourers were believed to have returned home by the end of 2009.
The crisis has focused attention on one of the crucial weaknesses of Central Asian governments: the ability of states like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to survive a crisis depends on good external conditions, not good policy. They handled unemployment, for example, by exporting it, did little to create jobs at home, and are now floundering in the face of the crisis. In the past they would have just muddled through. Now problems are building up, and muddling through is becoming less of an option. Migrant labourers also unwittingly performed a valuable political service for Central Asia’s leaders. The export of surplus labour allowed governments to rid themselves for part of the year of the segment of society – especially young men – that is the most likely source of unrest.
The financial crisis and the return of labour migrants sparked predictions of unrest, intensifying the concern that radical Islamists had been making inroads into the labour diaspora. Though there are strong indications of attempts by radical Islamists to recruit among migrant labourers, particularly in Russia, there is not enough data to ascertain the breadth of their success. And while many labourers have returned home, many more are waiting it out in Russia and Kazakhstan, taking even more menial and lower paying work, or surviving on family handouts in the hope that the situation will improve. Many work illegally, at the mercy of corrupt police, officials and dishonest employers; in Russia they are also subject to considerable discrimination and even violence. Opposition leaders in the region have long believed that migrant labourers would one day form the spearhead of an attack on the entrenched and incompetent regimes. This shows no sign of happening yet.
All groups affected by the crisis hope that one day the boom years will come back. The hiring nations look forward to a time when they will again be serious players on the world economic stage. The labourers need the work, because their own countries cannot provide it. The labour exporting governments need, as usual, outside assistance to solve their problems: none of them under their present dispensations are likely to come up with a successful strategy either to reintegrate migrant labourers or find an alternative source of income. The chances are, however, that the story will not end so neatly. Russia and Kazakhstan are likely at best to achieve a sort of sub-optimal recovery – assuming that a second round of economic crisis does not, as many economists predict, hit in Russia.
In all three countries covered in this report, society has been politically inactive or silent for many years. In Tajikistan this is attributed to the still-fresh memories of a brutal civil war; in Kyrgyzstan to disillusion and cynicism that followed the so-called Tulip Revolution of 2005; in Uzbekistan because of a ruthless and often brutal system of top-to-bottom social control. Western pressure has done little to mitigate this behaviour in the past, and pressure is likely to diminish even further as NATO and the U.S. look to Central Asia to host crucial military supply lines to Afghanistan. Past performance in the region is, however, no guarantee of future behaviour. Insecurity is growing, in part domestically generated, in part because of proximity to Afghanistan; infrastructure is collapsing, weak economies are slipping still further. The governments of the region need to take energetic measures to carry out sweeping reforms. The international community needs to pressure them to do so. At the moment, neither seems likely.
Bishkek/Brussels, 5 January 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
General McChrystal wants to fund/arm tribal militias
The following article presents evidence revealing the make-it-up-as-you-go US military plan for Afghanistan. General McChrystal wants to fund and arm local tribal militias through his "Local Defense Initiative." There are at least three implications. One implication is that the US military in Afghanistan does not have the personnel (and perhaps know how) to win the support of local village leaders in many of the areas outside of the areas already controlled by the Taliban. The second implication is that Afghan leaders, who have a dominating influence in villages or districts and who have militias to enforce their will, are warlords. According to Milalai Joya, warlords are no better for the Afghan people than the Taliban. Their power is based on fear and coercion rather than on the interests of the local populations. The third implication is that the Afghan military and police force remain unable to protect the security of the people in many areas of the country.
Bob
Eikenberry Blocking Gen. McChrystal’s Afghan Militias Plan
Posted By Jason Ditz On January 21, 2010 @ 8:34 pm
US officials say that the inability of General Stanley McChrystal to move forward with his “Local Defense Initiative” (LDI) in Afghanistan is directly related to Ambassador Karl Eikenberry’s opposition to the program.
The LDI, in short, is a plan for the US to fund and in some cases arm tribal militias in the hopes that those groups will be able to fight the nation’s ever growing insurgency. Gen. McChrystal has hoped the plan could make up for struggling NATO efforts to increase the size of the Afghan military and police forces.
But Eikenberry expressed concern that the program was unwise until they had managed to transform the Afghan central government into a credible ruling force, as increasing the power of locals could further threaten Karzai’s tenuous reign. He also reportedly said that shoddy intelligence could mean the US was funding groups whom it was fundamentally at odds with.
Making matters worse, officials have expressed concern that the LDI could further strengthen tribal warlords, who would presumably be leading most of these forces. Afghan society is rife with corruption, and warlords are seen as no small part of that phenomenon.
Though Gen. McChrystal is under pressure to produce quick results to sell the continuation of the war to the American public, the consensus, at least among civilian administrators, is that the LDI may create even more problems than it is supposed to solve.
Article printed from News From Antiwar.com: http://news.antiwar.com/
URL to article: http://news.antiwar.com/2010/01/21/eikenberry-blocking-gen-mcchrystals-afghan-militias-plan/
Bob
Eikenberry Blocking Gen. McChrystal’s Afghan Militias Plan
Posted By Jason Ditz On January 21, 2010 @ 8:34 pm
US officials say that the inability of General Stanley McChrystal to move forward with his “Local Defense Initiative” (LDI) in Afghanistan is directly related to Ambassador Karl Eikenberry’s opposition to the program.
The LDI, in short, is a plan for the US to fund and in some cases arm tribal militias in the hopes that those groups will be able to fight the nation’s ever growing insurgency. Gen. McChrystal has hoped the plan could make up for struggling NATO efforts to increase the size of the Afghan military and police forces.
But Eikenberry expressed concern that the program was unwise until they had managed to transform the Afghan central government into a credible ruling force, as increasing the power of locals could further threaten Karzai’s tenuous reign. He also reportedly said that shoddy intelligence could mean the US was funding groups whom it was fundamentally at odds with.
Making matters worse, officials have expressed concern that the LDI could further strengthen tribal warlords, who would presumably be leading most of these forces. Afghan society is rife with corruption, and warlords are seen as no small part of that phenomenon.
Though Gen. McChrystal is under pressure to produce quick results to sell the continuation of the war to the American public, the consensus, at least among civilian administrators, is that the LDI may create even more problems than it is supposed to solve.
Article printed from News From Antiwar.com: http://news.antiwar.com/
URL to article: http://news.antiwar.com/2010/01/21/eikenberry-blocking-gen-mcchrystals-afghan-militias-plan/
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
UnDoc finds corruption to be widespread in Afghanistan
The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime has just reported on a survey of 7,600 Afghans "in 12 provincial capitals and 1,600 villages around Afghanistan." [ See below.] The central finding of the survey is that "corruption" in government at all levels is a bigger worry than even security and unemployment, although security and unemployment are also widespread worries.
Corruption is undoubtedly related to weak and divided government and low wages for those in public jobs. The opium trade, though illegal, plays a major role in fueling corruption inside and outside of government.
It remain to be seen whether US counterinsurgincy strategies will reduce the level of corruption. The Central Karzai government lacks the legitimacy and resources to do it.
My impression is that things are so bad economically for so many Afghans that corruption and the opium trade have become two of the only ways people can earn or get money. If the US-led occupation cannot deal with these conditions, especially while the government remains crippled and largely ineffective, then corruption will continue.
---------------------------
Corruption widespread in Afghanistan, UNODC survey says get payments for necessary licenes,payments for the use of roads by ordinary afghan, official paperwork of all sort.
19 January 2010
Poverty and violence are usually portrayed as the biggest challenges confronting Afghanistan. But ask the Afghans themselves, and you get a different answer: corruption is their biggest worry. A new UNODC survey reveals that an overwhelming 59 per cent of Afghans view public dishonesty as a bigger concern than insecurity (54 per cent) and unemployment (52 per cent).
Corruption in Afghanistan: Bribery as Reported by Victims is based on interviews with 7,600 people in 12 provincial capitals and more than 1,600 villages around Afghanistan. It records the real experiences (rather than just perceptions) of urban as well as rural residents, men and women, between autumn 2008 and autumn 2009.
One of the respondents in the survey explains: "My cousin runs a medical practice. Some expired and low-quality drugs were found in his clinic and the health department started a procedure to take him to court. Later, he bribed the head doctor and his file was clean within a day. My cousin is still selling the expired and poor-quality drugs made in Pakistan, under the label of Germany and US."
In 2009, Afghan citizens had to pay approximately US$ 2,490 million in bribes, which is equivalent to 23 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), according to the report. By coincidence, this is similar to the revenue accrued by the opium trade in 2009 (which UNODC estimates at US$ 2.8 billion). "Drugs and bribes are the two largest income generators in Afghanistan: together they correspond to about half the country's (licit) GDP," said UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa as he released the report today in London.
The report shows that graft is part of everyday life in Afghanistan. During the survey period, one Afghan out of two had to pay at least one kickback to a public official. In more than half the cases (56 per cent), the request for illicit payment was an explicit demand by the service provider. In three quarters of the cases, baksheesh (bribes) were paid in cash. The average bribe is US$ 160, in a country where GDP per capita is a mere US$ 425 per year.
Another respondent explains: "There are people known as 'employed on commission' who operate in front of government buildings. They approach us saying that they can solve any kind of issue in a short time and then they quote the price. For example, if you need a passport or driving license or are paying taxes and customs duties, they can give you the final receipt which has been processed through all official channels in a matter of days, a process which takes usually weeks. Then they will take the money and share it with those who are sitting inside offices."
According to the survey, those entrusted with upholding the law are seen as most guilty of violating it. Around 25 per cent of Afghans had to pay at least one bribe to police and local officials during the survey period. Between 10-20 per cent had to pay bribes either to judges, prosecutors or members of the government. The international community does not escape criticism: 54 per cent of Afghans believe that international organizations and NGOs "are corrupt and are in the country just to get rich". Lack of confidence in the ability of public institutions to deliver public goods and services is causing Afghans to look for alternative providers of security and welfare, including criminal and anti-government elements.
"Corruption is the biggest impediment to improving security, development and governance in Afghanistan," said the head of UNODC. "It is also enabling other forms of crime, like drug trafficking and terrorism," he warned.
In order to prevent this condition from becoming terminal, Mr. Costa called on President Karzai to "urgently administer tough medicine based on the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which he pushed so hard to ratify". This includes preventive measures, like turning the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption into "an independent, fearless and well-funded anti-corruption authority. At the moment, this is not the case". He also called for vigorous vetting of public officials; public servants to disclose their incomes and assets; and governors and local administrators "with proven records of collusion with shady characters" to be removed.
Corruption is undoubtedly related to weak and divided government and low wages for those in public jobs. The opium trade, though illegal, plays a major role in fueling corruption inside and outside of government.
It remain to be seen whether US counterinsurgincy strategies will reduce the level of corruption. The Central Karzai government lacks the legitimacy and resources to do it.
My impression is that things are so bad economically for so many Afghans that corruption and the opium trade have become two of the only ways people can earn or get money. If the US-led occupation cannot deal with these conditions, especially while the government remains crippled and largely ineffective, then corruption will continue.
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Corruption widespread in Afghanistan, UNODC survey says get payments for necessary licenes,payments for the use of roads by ordinary afghan, official paperwork of all sort.
19 January 2010
Poverty and violence are usually portrayed as the biggest challenges confronting Afghanistan. But ask the Afghans themselves, and you get a different answer: corruption is their biggest worry. A new UNODC survey reveals that an overwhelming 59 per cent of Afghans view public dishonesty as a bigger concern than insecurity (54 per cent) and unemployment (52 per cent).
Corruption in Afghanistan: Bribery as Reported by Victims is based on interviews with 7,600 people in 12 provincial capitals and more than 1,600 villages around Afghanistan. It records the real experiences (rather than just perceptions) of urban as well as rural residents, men and women, between autumn 2008 and autumn 2009.
One of the respondents in the survey explains: "My cousin runs a medical practice. Some expired and low-quality drugs were found in his clinic and the health department started a procedure to take him to court. Later, he bribed the head doctor and his file was clean within a day. My cousin is still selling the expired and poor-quality drugs made in Pakistan, under the label of Germany and US."
In 2009, Afghan citizens had to pay approximately US$ 2,490 million in bribes, which is equivalent to 23 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), according to the report. By coincidence, this is similar to the revenue accrued by the opium trade in 2009 (which UNODC estimates at US$ 2.8 billion). "Drugs and bribes are the two largest income generators in Afghanistan: together they correspond to about half the country's (licit) GDP," said UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa as he released the report today in London.
The report shows that graft is part of everyday life in Afghanistan. During the survey period, one Afghan out of two had to pay at least one kickback to a public official. In more than half the cases (56 per cent), the request for illicit payment was an explicit demand by the service provider. In three quarters of the cases, baksheesh (bribes) were paid in cash. The average bribe is US$ 160, in a country where GDP per capita is a mere US$ 425 per year.
Another respondent explains: "There are people known as 'employed on commission' who operate in front of government buildings. They approach us saying that they can solve any kind of issue in a short time and then they quote the price. For example, if you need a passport or driving license or are paying taxes and customs duties, they can give you the final receipt which has been processed through all official channels in a matter of days, a process which takes usually weeks. Then they will take the money and share it with those who are sitting inside offices."
According to the survey, those entrusted with upholding the law are seen as most guilty of violating it. Around 25 per cent of Afghans had to pay at least one bribe to police and local officials during the survey period. Between 10-20 per cent had to pay bribes either to judges, prosecutors or members of the government. The international community does not escape criticism: 54 per cent of Afghans believe that international organizations and NGOs "are corrupt and are in the country just to get rich". Lack of confidence in the ability of public institutions to deliver public goods and services is causing Afghans to look for alternative providers of security and welfare, including criminal and anti-government elements.
"Corruption is the biggest impediment to improving security, development and governance in Afghanistan," said the head of UNODC. "It is also enabling other forms of crime, like drug trafficking and terrorism," he warned.
In order to prevent this condition from becoming terminal, Mr. Costa called on President Karzai to "urgently administer tough medicine based on the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which he pushed so hard to ratify". This includes preventive measures, like turning the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption into "an independent, fearless and well-funded anti-corruption authority. At the moment, this is not the case". He also called for vigorous vetting of public officials; public servants to disclose their incomes and assets; and governors and local administrators "with proven records of collusion with shady characters" to be removed.
Building schools for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan
The fascinating and courageous story of how Greg Mortenson has helped Afghan villagers finance the construction of schools for their children, especially for their girls, in the remote northeast area and other parts of Afghanistan and in Pakistan is told in Mortenson's two books, Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools. For the most part, local villagers designed and built the schools with their own imagination and labor.
The key to Mortenson's efforts has been his ability, along with luck, to create relationships with, and win the trust of, important leaders in the villages where he worked. His deep commitment also led him to learn the local language and appreciate and abide by local norms. His early successes brought him to the attention of other village elders and so the saga unfolded.
Mortenson has raised money for a 131 schools that have benefited 58,000 students. The schools have been financed by payments for Mortenson's hundreds of speechs across the US, from organizations of mountain climbers (Mortenson was once as accomplished mountiain climber), and a few large individual donors.
The money he raises is channeled through the Central Asia Institute, which Mortenson helped establish. It is an extraordinary story.
Top US general have sought out Mortenson to learn from his experience. And he has spoken to many military audiences in the US along the way. His first book is required reading at military academies.
There are two points of relevance about these military connections. Mortenson has never taken money from any military sources, or for that matter any government or corporate sources. More importantly, the military may marvel at Mortenson's accomplishments, but they are unlikely to be able to duplicate them. Afghans don't like foreign occupiers, especially when they have for so long do so much damage to their country and its people. The military does not have the resources, does not have the language or cultural knowledge, and does not have the tenacity to build relationships in the patient way that Mortenson has done. And, underlying the military's occupation, the principal goals are not "democracy" and "reconstruction." Rather, it is what is in the geopolical interests of the US.
The reader of his most recent book, Stones Into Schools, would have also noted the sub-title: "Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan." Hardly a militaristic sentiment.
Bob
---------------------------------
The website for Stones Into Schools is: http://www.stonesintoschools.com/
Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan was released on December 1, 2009. Over the past sixteen years, Greg Mortenson, through his nonprofit Central Asia Institute (CAI), has worked to promote peace through education by establishing more than 130 schools, most of them for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The story of how this remarkable humanitarian campaign began was told in his bestselling 2006 book, Three Cups of Tea. Mortenson’s philosophies about building relationships, empowering communities, and educating girls have struck a powerful chord. Hundreds of communities and universities, as well as several branches of the U.S. military, have used Three Cups of Tea as a common read.
Just as Three Cups of Tea began with a promise—to build a school in Korphe, Pakistan—so too does Mortenson’s new book. In 1999, Kirghiz horsemen from Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor rode into Pakistan and secured a promise from Mortenson to construct a school in an isolated pocket of the Pamir Mountains known as Bozai Gumbad. Mortenson could not build that school before constructing many others, and that is the story he tells in this dramatic new book. Picking up where Three Cups of Tea left off in late 2003, Stones into Schools traces the CAI’s efforts to work in a whole new country, the secluded northeast corner of Afghanistan. Mortenson describes how he and his intrepid manager, Sarfraz Khan, barnstormed around Badakhshan Province and the Wakhan Corridor, moving for weeks without sleep, to establish the first schools there.
Those efforts were diverted in October 2005 when a devastating earthquake hit the Azad Kashmir region of Pakistan. Under Sarfraz’s watch the CAI helped with relief efforts by setting up temporary tent schools and eventually several earthquakeproof schools. The action then returns to Afghanistan in 2007, as the CAI launches schools in the heart of Taliban country and as Mortenson helps the U.S. military formulate new strategic plans as a road map to peace. As the book closes, the initial promise to the Kirghiz is fulfilled.
Stones into Schools brings to life both the heroic efforts of the CAI’s fixers on the ground—renegade men of unrecognized and untapped talent who became galvanized by the importance of girls’ education—and the triumphs of the young women who are now graduating from the schools. Their stories are ones you will not soon forget.
“ What Greg understands better than most—and what he practices more than anyone else I know—is the simple truth that all of us are better off when all of us have the opportunity to learn, especially our children. By helping them learn and grow, he’s shaping the very future of a region and giving hope to an entire generation.” —Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
“ This week . . . I watched Greg Mortenson, the famed author of Three Cups of Tea, open one of his schools for girls in this remote Afghan village in the Hindu Kush mountains. I must say, after witnessing the delight in the faces of those little Afghan girls crowded three to a desk waiting to learn, I found it very hard to write, ‘Let’s just get out of here.’” —Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times
“ Sometimes the acts of one individual can illuminate how to confront a foreign-policy dilemma more clearly than the prattle of politicians. Such is the case with Greg Mortenson, whose work gives insights into an essential element of fighting terrorism.” —Trudy Rubin, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“ Mortenson’s story serves as a reminder of the power of a good idea and the strength inherent in one person’s passionate determination to persevere against enormous obstacles.” —Marilyn Gardner, The Christian Science Monitor
The key to Mortenson's efforts has been his ability, along with luck, to create relationships with, and win the trust of, important leaders in the villages where he worked. His deep commitment also led him to learn the local language and appreciate and abide by local norms. His early successes brought him to the attention of other village elders and so the saga unfolded.
Mortenson has raised money for a 131 schools that have benefited 58,000 students. The schools have been financed by payments for Mortenson's hundreds of speechs across the US, from organizations of mountain climbers (Mortenson was once as accomplished mountiain climber), and a few large individual donors.
The money he raises is channeled through the Central Asia Institute, which Mortenson helped establish. It is an extraordinary story.
Top US general have sought out Mortenson to learn from his experience. And he has spoken to many military audiences in the US along the way. His first book is required reading at military academies.
There are two points of relevance about these military connections. Mortenson has never taken money from any military sources, or for that matter any government or corporate sources. More importantly, the military may marvel at Mortenson's accomplishments, but they are unlikely to be able to duplicate them. Afghans don't like foreign occupiers, especially when they have for so long do so much damage to their country and its people. The military does not have the resources, does not have the language or cultural knowledge, and does not have the tenacity to build relationships in the patient way that Mortenson has done. And, underlying the military's occupation, the principal goals are not "democracy" and "reconstruction." Rather, it is what is in the geopolical interests of the US.
The reader of his most recent book, Stones Into Schools, would have also noted the sub-title: "Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan." Hardly a militaristic sentiment.
Bob
---------------------------------
The website for Stones Into Schools is: http://www.stonesintoschools.com/
Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan was released on December 1, 2009. Over the past sixteen years, Greg Mortenson, through his nonprofit Central Asia Institute (CAI), has worked to promote peace through education by establishing more than 130 schools, most of them for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The story of how this remarkable humanitarian campaign began was told in his bestselling 2006 book, Three Cups of Tea. Mortenson’s philosophies about building relationships, empowering communities, and educating girls have struck a powerful chord. Hundreds of communities and universities, as well as several branches of the U.S. military, have used Three Cups of Tea as a common read.
Just as Three Cups of Tea began with a promise—to build a school in Korphe, Pakistan—so too does Mortenson’s new book. In 1999, Kirghiz horsemen from Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor rode into Pakistan and secured a promise from Mortenson to construct a school in an isolated pocket of the Pamir Mountains known as Bozai Gumbad. Mortenson could not build that school before constructing many others, and that is the story he tells in this dramatic new book. Picking up where Three Cups of Tea left off in late 2003, Stones into Schools traces the CAI’s efforts to work in a whole new country, the secluded northeast corner of Afghanistan. Mortenson describes how he and his intrepid manager, Sarfraz Khan, barnstormed around Badakhshan Province and the Wakhan Corridor, moving for weeks without sleep, to establish the first schools there.
Those efforts were diverted in October 2005 when a devastating earthquake hit the Azad Kashmir region of Pakistan. Under Sarfraz’s watch the CAI helped with relief efforts by setting up temporary tent schools and eventually several earthquakeproof schools. The action then returns to Afghanistan in 2007, as the CAI launches schools in the heart of Taliban country and as Mortenson helps the U.S. military formulate new strategic plans as a road map to peace. As the book closes, the initial promise to the Kirghiz is fulfilled.
Stones into Schools brings to life both the heroic efforts of the CAI’s fixers on the ground—renegade men of unrecognized and untapped talent who became galvanized by the importance of girls’ education—and the triumphs of the young women who are now graduating from the schools. Their stories are ones you will not soon forget.
“ What Greg understands better than most—and what he practices more than anyone else I know—is the simple truth that all of us are better off when all of us have the opportunity to learn, especially our children. By helping them learn and grow, he’s shaping the very future of a region and giving hope to an entire generation.” —Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
“ This week . . . I watched Greg Mortenson, the famed author of Three Cups of Tea, open one of his schools for girls in this remote Afghan village in the Hindu Kush mountains. I must say, after witnessing the delight in the faces of those little Afghan girls crowded three to a desk waiting to learn, I found it very hard to write, ‘Let’s just get out of here.’” —Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times
“ Sometimes the acts of one individual can illuminate how to confront a foreign-policy dilemma more clearly than the prattle of politicians. Such is the case with Greg Mortenson, whose work gives insights into an essential element of fighting terrorism.” —Trudy Rubin, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“ Mortenson’s story serves as a reminder of the power of a good idea and the strength inherent in one person’s passionate determination to persevere against enormous obstacles.” —Marilyn Gardner, The Christian Science Monitor
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