IN THESE TIMES
This article is permanently archived at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/6011/
The Case for Negotiations
Dealing with the Taliban is unsavory--but this war cannot be won.
By Gilles Dorronsoro
May 24, 2010
The coalition's strategy in Afghanistan is at an impasse. The renewed efforts undertaken since the summer of 2009 have failed to temper the guerrilla war. A few tactical successes are possible, but this war cannot be won. The coalition cannot defeat the Taliban as long as Pakistan continues to offer them sanctuary. And increasing resources to wage the war is not an option. The costs of continuing the war--to use Ambassador Karl Eikenberry's expression in the leaked telegram to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--are "astronomical."
The entire U.S. strategy revolves around a swift Afghanization of the conflict, yet the coalition's Afghan partner is weaker than it was a year ago. The state's presence in the provinces has declined sharply and the legitimacy of President Hamid Karzai's government is contested.
As a result of the massive fraud in the August 2009 presidential elections, the government has no popular legitimacy, and the legislative elections slated for fall 2010 will probably undermine the political system even further because fraud is inevitable. It is unlikely that the Afghan regime will ever be able to assume responsibility for its own security.
As a result, the coalition faces an endless war accompanied by an intolerable loss of life and treasure. A less costly alternative would be to negotiate a broad agreement with the Taliban leadership to form a national unity government, with guarantees against al Qaeda's return to Afghanistan. But even if such negotiations might occur, they hold no guarantee of success.
Yet the cost of their failure is negligible compared with the potential gain: a relatively swift way out of the crisis that preserves the coalition's essential interests. Time is not on the coalition's side. The United States should contact Taliban leaders as soon as possible rather than waiting for the situation to deteriorate further.
In pursuit of a losing strategy
The Taliban cannot be defeated militarily because the border with Pakistan is and will remain open for the insurgents. The Pakistani army, which refuses to launch an offensive against the Afghan Taliban, has never considered taking action against the Taliban leadership based in Pakistan. The February arrest of acting Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is probably a sign that the Pakistani military wants more control over the insurgency to prepare for the negotiation process.
What's more, the insurgency is now nationwide and cannot be contained by counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in two or three southern provinces. The COIN strategy cannot succeed because of the immense resources it requires. In a marginal, strategically unimportant district such as Marjah, the coalition would have to keep thousands of troops for years to prevent the Taliban's return. To replicate such strategy, even in one province, would overstretch the U.S. military.
In addition to COIN, military strategists think they can quickly weaken the Taliban through the creation of militias, the co-opting of Taliban groups and targeted assassinations. These policies will not strengthen the Afghan government's legitimacy or influence; to the contrary, they are destroying the Karzai government's credibility. The effects of this strategy are irreversible, and with the acceleration of political fragmentation, the coalition is faced with the prospect of a collapse of Afghan institutions.
The Karzai government is unlikely to engage in institutional reform, given that it is increasingly dependent on the networks that ensured its fraudulent re-election. Consequently, the coalition is having more and more trouble influencing Karzai. The weakness of the central political institutions means that the development of the army and the police force--the coalition's priorities--is occurring in a vacuum. Transferring security responsibilities to our Afghan partner will probably not be possible in the foreseeable future.
Afghans perceive their representative institutions as illegitimate. Between 10 percent and 15 percent of Afghan voters are believed to have supported Karzai during the 2009 presidential elections. All indications point to a high level of cynicism among the people and their rejection of the government; in fact, they massively refrained from voting even in places where security was reasonably good.
The legislative elections scheduled for September 2010 will further erode faith in the political system. The lack of security makes it impossible to hold credible elections in at least half of Afghanistan. And in February 2010, Karzai seized control of the ECC (Electoral Complaints Commission); there is no longer an independent institution to validate the process.
Aside from fraud and corruption, Karzai's lack of legitimacy is linked to his presumed lack of autonomy vis-à-vis the coalition. Internal U.S. Army studies, and the experiences of numerous journalists and researchers indicate that a majority of the population in combat zones now considers the foreign forces as occupiers. Military operations are polarizing the population against foreign forces and further weakening Karzai's regime, which appears irreparably unpopular and illegitimate. The coalition is perceived as the main provider of insecurity. Villagers do not want to see the establishment of coalition outposts that can bring only bombings and IEDs.
Furthermore, the coalition is hurt by the dependence of Karzai on his local allies, who generally oppose the coalition's objectives. The coalition is also undermined when the Afghan government aggressively distances itself from the coalition when civilians are killed by "friendly fire."
The failed Karzai government
The government in Kabul is now too weak to reassert control over the periphery of the country. As a result, the coalition is increasingly dependent on local strongmen who it helped put in place or with whom it has worked.
The weakening of the Afghan regime is very bad news for the coalition, which is promoting Afghanization in order to reduce its own investment. It is hard to build a military that is independent of the institutional network that constitutes the state. Problems such as ethnic tensions, local and national corruption, and the lack of a clear purpose make it hard to motivate soldiers and officers.
The coalition should recognize that an autonomous Afghan army is a very distant goal. The coalition's large offensive to "clear" Taliban territory will not work, because the Afghan army and the police are not ready. If the coalition tries to secure Taliban territory on a long-term basis, it will overstretch itself and casualties will increase significantly.
Modest objectives would be more realistic. Most observers recognize the impossibility of a military solution. Nonetheless, different arguments have been put forward to reject negotiations. First, the coalition needs more time. Reinforcements are not yet fully in place, so talk of failure is premature. Second, experts such as Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid explain that the Taliban have reached the height of their influence, implying that the coalition would be in a stronger position in the future.
One can counter that the coalition should begin negotiations now while it still has the means to exert military pressure. There is nothing to indicate that the Taliban are going to slow their advance. They are pursuing a strategy that includes expanding their influence in the cities. And nothing indicates that the Karzai regime won't be even weaker a year from now.
From this perspective, the Afghan surge will have had the same result as all troop increases since 2003: a deterioration of security. Consequently, marginal military gains for the coalition in the next 18 months are the exact equivalent of a strategic defeat. Hence the need for a negotiated settlement.
But negotiations with Taliban leaders can be undertaken only if the Pakistani army agrees to act as a broker. Without Pakistan, there will be no solution in Afghanistan. Official negotiations must also include the Karzai regime and international guarantees preventing the return of radical groups to Afghanistan.
Along with negotiations, it is important to increase areas of cooperation with the insurgence. A ceasefire must therefore be observed during the negotiation process. The reduction in violence could help demobilize the Taliban and distance them from the radical groups currently in Pakistan, such as al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. Likewise, aid must be demilitarized and NGOs must be permitted to negotiate directly with the Taliban in order to work in the regions under their control.
The privatization of security (reliance on militias, deals with individual tribes and private companies) is also dangerous. These groups will be difficult to control in the event of an agreement and are currently weakening Afghan institutions. The United States should immediately stop funding militias, which is counterproductive in the long term, and immediately bring an end to the proliferation of these armed groups.
Nothing guarantees that negotiations--if agreed to by the Taliban--will succeed. Furthermore, the regime that such negotiation will establish will be unstable for months, perhaps even years. But if the negotiations succeed, they will enable the formation of a national unity government in Kabul, a new constitution negotiated during a Loya Jirga, and both internal and international guarantees to prevent the return of al Qaeda.
Given the current impasse in which the coalition finds itself, such an outcome is the best that the United States can hope for.
This essay was adapted from Gilles Dorronsoro's April 2010 report "Afghanistan: Searching for Political Agreement," which can be read on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace website.
Gilles Dorronsoro, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is the author of Revolution Unending: Afghanistan 1979 to the Present.
Friday, May 28, 2010
US Senate votes for more funding for Afghanistan war and no timetable
One of the "headlines" on radio/TV/internet broadcast today is that "The Senate Approves War Funding, Rejects Timetable for Afghan Withdrawal." The implication of this vote is that the U.S. Congress stands behind an U.S. occupation of Afghanistan for the indefinite future. This is a sad action by the U.S. Senate, which is likely to be followed by similar action in the House of Representatives, the legislation signed by President Obama, and cheered on by the military-industrial complex and those eager to continue U.S. influence, if not domination, of the rich oil reserves in the larger region. Here is the disheartening headline from Democracy Now.
"In other news from Capitol Hill, the Senate has approved a nearly $60 billion measure in continued funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The measure includes full funding for President Obama’s deployment of an additional 33,000 troops in his escalation of the Afghan war. In earlier voting, the Senate rejected an amendment from Democratic Senator Russ Feingold that would have required President Obama to submit a timetable for a US withdrawal from Afghanistan."
"In other news from Capitol Hill, the Senate has approved a nearly $60 billion measure in continued funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The measure includes full funding for President Obama’s deployment of an additional 33,000 troops in his escalation of the Afghan war. In earlier voting, the Senate rejected an amendment from Democratic Senator Russ Feingold that would have required President Obama to submit a timetable for a US withdrawal from Afghanistan."
Still no security for many Afghan citizens
Here are excerpts from two articles printed today, May 28, 2010, in Outlook Afghanistan. Both articles offer evidence of continued insecurity and casualties among Afghan civilians in areas where US-led assaults have occurred or continue.
#1 - The full Internet address for the first article is: http://outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/main_news.html#01
"Hundreds of families, fearing the resumption of clashes between the Taliban and security forces [US-led military forces] have fled troubled districts of Marja and Nad-Alit in southern Helmand province. The fresh exodus of 400 families from the towns comes nearly three months after a massive counter-insurgency operation, involving thousands of Afghan and foreign [US-led] troops."
[....]
The article includes a quote of a resident, Haji Aminullah, who says: "We have trenches around us, set up by the rebels [groups of "Taliban"] and foreign troops. As a result, we are confined to our homes...."
[....]
Another resident Sahib Khan says "innocent people were being killed in clashes on a daily basis."
[....]
"a large number of families have fled their houses, migrating to Lashkargah...."
"An official responsible for refugee affairs in the province, Haji Ghulam Farooq Noorzai, said 10 families arrived daily in Lashargah. Linking the displacement to frequent clashes, bomb blasts, search operations, and threats from the Taliban, he said they have so far registered 379 families."
#2 - "Civilian Casualties Causing Deep Unrest." http://outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/opinion.html#03
"...The number of suicide bombings, political assassinations, and armed clashes has risen in the northern provinces of Afghanistan, which indicates a gradual deterioration of the situation in this relatively peaceful part of the country...According to news reports Coalition Forces have killed around 76 civilians, mostly children...during an air operation."
#1 - The full Internet address for the first article is: http://outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/main_news.html#01
"Hundreds of families, fearing the resumption of clashes between the Taliban and security forces [US-led military forces] have fled troubled districts of Marja and Nad-Alit in southern Helmand province. The fresh exodus of 400 families from the towns comes nearly three months after a massive counter-insurgency operation, involving thousands of Afghan and foreign [US-led] troops."
[....]
The article includes a quote of a resident, Haji Aminullah, who says: "We have trenches around us, set up by the rebels [groups of "Taliban"] and foreign troops. As a result, we are confined to our homes...."
[....]
Another resident Sahib Khan says "innocent people were being killed in clashes on a daily basis."
[....]
"a large number of families have fled their houses, migrating to Lashkargah...."
"An official responsible for refugee affairs in the province, Haji Ghulam Farooq Noorzai, said 10 families arrived daily in Lashargah. Linking the displacement to frequent clashes, bomb blasts, search operations, and threats from the Taliban, he said they have so far registered 379 families."
#2 - "Civilian Casualties Causing Deep Unrest." http://outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/opinion.html#03
"...The number of suicide bombings, political assassinations, and armed clashes has risen in the northern provinces of Afghanistan, which indicates a gradual deterioration of the situation in this relatively peaceful part of the country...According to news reports Coalition Forces have killed around 76 civilians, mostly children...during an air operation."
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
All relevant actors should be at the bargaining table
After the Karzai Visit, Who's at the Negotiating Table?
By Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Phyllis Bennis's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
An overview of what an alternative to war in Afghanistan might look like - negotiations, what a concept...The high-profile Washington visit of U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai is only partly about smoothing over what has become his extraordinarily prickly relationship with the Obama administration. Even the appearance of smoothing over those rough edges, corruption-related and otherwise, is only part of the story. (Although that part is pretty important to the White House as the Congressional vote nears on President Obama's demand for $33 billion more in taxpayer money to fund the current military escalation in Afghanistan.)
The most important part of the Karzai visit has to do with resolving the huge strategic disagreement between the Afghan president and his U.S. benefactor on the fundamental question of negotiations and reconciliation. Everybody admits-and history confirms-that every war ultimately involves negotiations at the end. But for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is increasingly isolated from its friends, allies, and even dependents over the key issues of when, with whom, and over what, those negotiations should take place.
The Obama administration agrees that negotiating with the Taliban will be necessary. In January, when U.S., British, and other NATO leaders met in London to discuss Afghan strategy, Pentagon CentCom chief General David Petraeus told the Times of London that he recognized the possibility of "the concept of reconciliation, of talks between senior Afghan officials and senior Taliban or other insurgent leaders.
Kill More Afghans FirstTheir big hesitation, they say, is on the timing. President Obama's hand-picked Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal said in London that he hoped the recently announced escalation of 30,000 new troops would weaken the Taliban enough that its leaders would accept a peace deal. In other words they want to weaken the Taliban first-Pentagon-speak for "kill more Afghans." We should negotiate, but only from "a position of strength." They're wrong. Whatever other things the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan, winning a "position of strength" is not one of them. The biggest U.S./NATO offensive since the beginning of the war in 2001 began in February in Marjah. It failed. According to a survey of Marjah's men conducted by the International Council on Security and Development, 61 percent feel more negative about the occupation forces after the get-rid-of-the-Taliban-and-win-the-Afghans'-hearts-and-minds military offensive than they did before. Hardly the definition of a position of strength.An even larger-scale U.S./NATO offensive is scheduled to begin in earnest in early June in and around Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and the original home of the Taliban. The prospect of U.S. troops emerging in a "position of strength" from that almost certain debacle is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty lousy. There is simply no reason to believe that the Taliban leadership will be any more likely to negotiate after more of them (and many more civilians) have been killed, than they are now. U.S. influence over events in Afghanistan is diminishing despite the increase in military attacks. Karzai is eager to initiate negotiations with the Taliban ASAP, and may have already begun moves to do so; he knows that his corrupt and delegitimized government may well not survive any lessening of U.S. support. But because Karzai's government is widely viewed by most Afghans as not only corrupt but largely unable to implement any serious governance outside of parts of Kabul, the current U.S. prohibition on talks guarantees that negotiations that could lead to real reconciliation cannot go forward. The Taliban needs the U.S. at the table, not just Karzai.
Negotiations Over What? The Obama administration also insists that any negotiations with the Taliban, whenever they happen, must be limited essentially to terms of surrender. Low-ranking Taliban foot soldiers might be offered "de-radicalization" programs and maybe even some job possibilities, but key regional and national Taliban commanders, the ones who would actually have to sign off on any deal to make it work, would be offered only the option of complete surrender, giving up their weapons and any claim to power or influence, plus maybe the possibility of exile in another country. Saudi Arabia has been mentioned. But the Taliban are Afghans, not Saudis; their goal has always been to rule Afghanistan, not to go abroad. They speak a different language than Saudis do, they are not Arabs. Saudi exile is not likely to win negotiators' hearts and minds-or acquiescence. It seems those in the Administration floating such trial balloons have forgotten what their own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, answered when challenged by a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Taliban have no tanks, no planes, said the senator, so how is it that they're winning? "It's their country," Mullen answered. So who's saying what about all this? The U.S. position is pretty clear (despite already visible disagreements even within the administration). Efforts to bribe and buy off low-level Taliban foot soldiers are grudgingly acceptable. Serious negotiations with Taliban leadership is forbidden until more Taliban soldiers or leaders (or civilians near them?) have been killed or, more rarely, captured. Any future negotiations with Taliban leaders will be limited to the terms of their surrender; power-sharing in a unified Afghanistan is not an option.
The Afghan government-or at least President Karzai himself, since it's unclear who else he speaks for even within his own government-wants to begin negotiations with the Taliban right away. He disagrees with his U.S. sponsors on timing, but appears to accept their view that only surrender is an option for top Taliban commanders; he has no interest in sharing power with them. Pakistan's primary concern is to insure a reliable surrogate to defend its interests in a post-U.S., post-occupation Afghanistan where arch-rival India will have influence. In the past that surrogate has been the Afghan Taliban, and there's no indication Islamabad is making a different choice. Pakistan is determined to have a say in when, whether, with whom and over what negotiations might occur; the recent arrest of a top Taliban leader, Mullah Baradar, after years of providing him with safe haven in Pakistan, was widely viewed as a message to the U.S. and Kabul, reminding them that if negotiations are going to occur, Pakistan is going to be part of them. Pakistan supports immediate negotiations aimed at a power-sharing role for the Taliban in the future.
The British position and that of some other NATO countries is close to that of Karzai, accepting negotiations with the Taliban at all levels right away. London has accepted (though it is unclear what changes the new government under David Cameron's Conservative-Lib/Dem coalition might make) the idea of some sort of power-sharing in Afghanistan that could include the Taliban. Who else needs to be at the table? Of those commentators and pundits who recognized the centrality of the reconciliation issue, almost all focused on whether/when/what the U.S. should negotiate with the Talilban. But that's not enough. If negotiations are to be taken seriously, if there is any hope that reconciliation is possible, who is present is also crucial. Everyone must be at the table. Does that include the Taliban? Of course it does. But Afghanistan isn't a two-sided country, where the only local players are the U.S.-backed government and the anti-U.S. Taliban. The resistance isn't only the Taliban, and the government doesn't reflect much of the population. Afghan society is richly complex, with men and women, rural and urban, cosmopolitan and traditional, a wide variety of ethnicities, languages, and cultures playing important roles. And Afghanistan doesn't exist in a vacuum; it is bordered directly by six complicated countries in a strategic region roiling with political, economic, and social tensions.
Real negotiations mean everyone who has a legitimate stake in the outcome must be at the table. That means the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban, and inevitably some of the other warlords, often longtime clients of the United States, who remain as regressive and repressive towards women as the Taliban ever were. Those warlords exist both within the Afghan government and among the anti-government resistance forces. But it also means including representatives of Afghanistan's traditional governing structures, the tribe- and village-based leaders, mosque-linked and otherwise, who are recognized as holding the country's legitimacy. It means women must be involved, both as an organized sector and as individuals, including the professional women's associations who have recently publicly called for negotiating with the Taliban. It means the traditional and newly rebuilding civil society of both cities and rural areas, including farmers' alliances and trade unions, organizations of teachers and doctors, students, and so many more. If the national peace jirga, or council, is held as planned, all of these components of Afghan society must be present. They must be empowered to speak and to participate in the consensus process that Afghan governance has long relied on.And if an Afghan peace jirga is to succeed, it will have to be part of a much broader international diplomatic process. That means bringing together all of Afghanistan's neighbors, including Iran and Pakistan, and all of the regional powers, including China and India. Key Muslim countries such as Turkey and perhaps the Organization of the Islamic Conference will play vital roles, all under the umbrella of the United Nations. And once all its troops are on their way out the U.S. will have to endorse, bankroll, and support such a campaign-but, crucially, will have to break from its long and painful pattern of dominating such efforts. With U.S. and NATO troops and mercenaries withdrawn and serious diplomatic efforts underway both inside Afghanistan and in the region, perhaps we can finally begin making good on the enormous debt-financial, humanitarian, developmental and so much more-that we owe to the people of Afghanistan.
But first, everybody has to be at the table.Thanks,Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
By Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Phyllis Bennis's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
An overview of what an alternative to war in Afghanistan might look like - negotiations, what a concept...The high-profile Washington visit of U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai is only partly about smoothing over what has become his extraordinarily prickly relationship with the Obama administration. Even the appearance of smoothing over those rough edges, corruption-related and otherwise, is only part of the story. (Although that part is pretty important to the White House as the Congressional vote nears on President Obama's demand for $33 billion more in taxpayer money to fund the current military escalation in Afghanistan.)
The most important part of the Karzai visit has to do with resolving the huge strategic disagreement between the Afghan president and his U.S. benefactor on the fundamental question of negotiations and reconciliation. Everybody admits-and history confirms-that every war ultimately involves negotiations at the end. But for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is increasingly isolated from its friends, allies, and even dependents over the key issues of when, with whom, and over what, those negotiations should take place.
The Obama administration agrees that negotiating with the Taliban will be necessary. In January, when U.S., British, and other NATO leaders met in London to discuss Afghan strategy, Pentagon CentCom chief General David Petraeus told the Times of London that he recognized the possibility of "the concept of reconciliation, of talks between senior Afghan officials and senior Taliban or other insurgent leaders.
Kill More Afghans FirstTheir big hesitation, they say, is on the timing. President Obama's hand-picked Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal said in London that he hoped the recently announced escalation of 30,000 new troops would weaken the Taliban enough that its leaders would accept a peace deal. In other words they want to weaken the Taliban first-Pentagon-speak for "kill more Afghans." We should negotiate, but only from "a position of strength." They're wrong. Whatever other things the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan, winning a "position of strength" is not one of them. The biggest U.S./NATO offensive since the beginning of the war in 2001 began in February in Marjah. It failed. According to a survey of Marjah's men conducted by the International Council on Security and Development, 61 percent feel more negative about the occupation forces after the get-rid-of-the-Taliban-and-win-the-Afghans'-hearts-and-minds military offensive than they did before. Hardly the definition of a position of strength.An even larger-scale U.S./NATO offensive is scheduled to begin in earnest in early June in and around Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and the original home of the Taliban. The prospect of U.S. troops emerging in a "position of strength" from that almost certain debacle is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty lousy. There is simply no reason to believe that the Taliban leadership will be any more likely to negotiate after more of them (and many more civilians) have been killed, than they are now. U.S. influence over events in Afghanistan is diminishing despite the increase in military attacks. Karzai is eager to initiate negotiations with the Taliban ASAP, and may have already begun moves to do so; he knows that his corrupt and delegitimized government may well not survive any lessening of U.S. support. But because Karzai's government is widely viewed by most Afghans as not only corrupt but largely unable to implement any serious governance outside of parts of Kabul, the current U.S. prohibition on talks guarantees that negotiations that could lead to real reconciliation cannot go forward. The Taliban needs the U.S. at the table, not just Karzai.
Negotiations Over What? The Obama administration also insists that any negotiations with the Taliban, whenever they happen, must be limited essentially to terms of surrender. Low-ranking Taliban foot soldiers might be offered "de-radicalization" programs and maybe even some job possibilities, but key regional and national Taliban commanders, the ones who would actually have to sign off on any deal to make it work, would be offered only the option of complete surrender, giving up their weapons and any claim to power or influence, plus maybe the possibility of exile in another country. Saudi Arabia has been mentioned. But the Taliban are Afghans, not Saudis; their goal has always been to rule Afghanistan, not to go abroad. They speak a different language than Saudis do, they are not Arabs. Saudi exile is not likely to win negotiators' hearts and minds-or acquiescence. It seems those in the Administration floating such trial balloons have forgotten what their own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, answered when challenged by a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Taliban have no tanks, no planes, said the senator, so how is it that they're winning? "It's their country," Mullen answered. So who's saying what about all this? The U.S. position is pretty clear (despite already visible disagreements even within the administration). Efforts to bribe and buy off low-level Taliban foot soldiers are grudgingly acceptable. Serious negotiations with Taliban leadership is forbidden until more Taliban soldiers or leaders (or civilians near them?) have been killed or, more rarely, captured. Any future negotiations with Taliban leaders will be limited to the terms of their surrender; power-sharing in a unified Afghanistan is not an option.
The Afghan government-or at least President Karzai himself, since it's unclear who else he speaks for even within his own government-wants to begin negotiations with the Taliban right away. He disagrees with his U.S. sponsors on timing, but appears to accept their view that only surrender is an option for top Taliban commanders; he has no interest in sharing power with them. Pakistan's primary concern is to insure a reliable surrogate to defend its interests in a post-U.S., post-occupation Afghanistan where arch-rival India will have influence. In the past that surrogate has been the Afghan Taliban, and there's no indication Islamabad is making a different choice. Pakistan is determined to have a say in when, whether, with whom and over what negotiations might occur; the recent arrest of a top Taliban leader, Mullah Baradar, after years of providing him with safe haven in Pakistan, was widely viewed as a message to the U.S. and Kabul, reminding them that if negotiations are going to occur, Pakistan is going to be part of them. Pakistan supports immediate negotiations aimed at a power-sharing role for the Taliban in the future.
The British position and that of some other NATO countries is close to that of Karzai, accepting negotiations with the Taliban at all levels right away. London has accepted (though it is unclear what changes the new government under David Cameron's Conservative-Lib/Dem coalition might make) the idea of some sort of power-sharing in Afghanistan that could include the Taliban. Who else needs to be at the table? Of those commentators and pundits who recognized the centrality of the reconciliation issue, almost all focused on whether/when/what the U.S. should negotiate with the Talilban. But that's not enough. If negotiations are to be taken seriously, if there is any hope that reconciliation is possible, who is present is also crucial. Everyone must be at the table. Does that include the Taliban? Of course it does. But Afghanistan isn't a two-sided country, where the only local players are the U.S.-backed government and the anti-U.S. Taliban. The resistance isn't only the Taliban, and the government doesn't reflect much of the population. Afghan society is richly complex, with men and women, rural and urban, cosmopolitan and traditional, a wide variety of ethnicities, languages, and cultures playing important roles. And Afghanistan doesn't exist in a vacuum; it is bordered directly by six complicated countries in a strategic region roiling with political, economic, and social tensions.
Real negotiations mean everyone who has a legitimate stake in the outcome must be at the table. That means the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban, and inevitably some of the other warlords, often longtime clients of the United States, who remain as regressive and repressive towards women as the Taliban ever were. Those warlords exist both within the Afghan government and among the anti-government resistance forces. But it also means including representatives of Afghanistan's traditional governing structures, the tribe- and village-based leaders, mosque-linked and otherwise, who are recognized as holding the country's legitimacy. It means women must be involved, both as an organized sector and as individuals, including the professional women's associations who have recently publicly called for negotiating with the Taliban. It means the traditional and newly rebuilding civil society of both cities and rural areas, including farmers' alliances and trade unions, organizations of teachers and doctors, students, and so many more. If the national peace jirga, or council, is held as planned, all of these components of Afghan society must be present. They must be empowered to speak and to participate in the consensus process that Afghan governance has long relied on.And if an Afghan peace jirga is to succeed, it will have to be part of a much broader international diplomatic process. That means bringing together all of Afghanistan's neighbors, including Iran and Pakistan, and all of the regional powers, including China and India. Key Muslim countries such as Turkey and perhaps the Organization of the Islamic Conference will play vital roles, all under the umbrella of the United Nations. And once all its troops are on their way out the U.S. will have to endorse, bankroll, and support such a campaign-but, crucially, will have to break from its long and painful pattern of dominating such efforts. With U.S. and NATO troops and mercenaries withdrawn and serious diplomatic efforts underway both inside Afghanistan and in the region, perhaps we can finally begin making good on the enormous debt-financial, humanitarian, developmental and so much more-that we owe to the people of Afghanistan.
But first, everybody has to be at the table.Thanks,Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
Monday, May 17, 2010
The hubris of US military policy in Afghanistan
May 17, 2010
http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney05172010.html
A Roadmap to Folly in Afghanistan
The Arrogance of Ignorance
By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY
Nisos Kos, Greece.
A report by Jonathan Landay and Dion Nissenbaum for McClatchy Newspapers provides important insights into our rapidly diminishing prospects for success in Afghanistan, some direct, others inferential:
First, the direct: the Qandahar operation that General McChrystal began trumpeting in late February is clearly going wobbly before it begins. The promise to demonstrate progress (i.e., to see light at the end of the tunnel) in Afghanistan by this summer is being bow-waved at least into the Fall, during the height of mid-term election season. The scope of the looming operation is also being scaled back, and its goals are being redefined in more ambiguous terms.
The Qandahar offensive always strained credulity: According to Landay’s sources in the Pentagon, the original concept assumed 20,000 troops could pacify the urban/rural region with 800,000 inhabitants. This level of effort always appeared grossly insufficient, especially when compared to recent Marjah offensive, which used 10,000 troops for an operation aimed at pacifying a rural region with one-tenth as many inhabitants. And the success of the Marjah operation to date has been problematic, to put it charitably. McChrystal can not rely on the Afghan forces to protect the Marjah “ink spot,” so he still needs the presence of Marines to pacify the region, which means less troops for spreading that ink spot of security to Qandahar. Moreover, a key component of McChrystal’s strategy -- the so-called ‘government in a box’ that McChrystal bragged he would put into place in Marjah -- has turned out to be a sham that has proven unable to protect the people. Given (1) that Qandahar is second largest city and the only major city in Afghanistan with an overwhelming Pashtun majority, (2) the fact that Qandahar is the spiritual home of the Taliban, and (3) the fact that the local ruler is the unmanageable, obscenely corrupt half brother of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, the task of permanently cleansing Qandahar of the Taliban on a permanent basis will be far more difficult than failed effort to clean out Marjah. Even if one were to assume that our counter insurgency strategy is a blueprint for success, achieving this object with confidence would require far more troops. But those troops are not available, and the probability of General McChrystal successfully squeezing the President again for another “surge” of reinforcing troops is close to nil.
More important in my opinion, however, is the information that can be teased out of the McClatchy report. This is embodied in the mindset revealed by the words General McChrystal used to explain his strategy: "It's important that we engage the population so that we shape the leaders, the natural leaders, the elders, political and economic leaders so that their participation helps shape how we go forward," [emphasis added]. This statement reveals why our current strategy is a roadmap to folly.
Landay et al did not say much about this comment, except to say that our forces have “made little headway in building a foundation for a respected local government capable of winning the confidence of the nearly 1 million Afghans who live in and around Kandahar,” a point expanded on in greater detail by Patrick Cockburn in an excellent report in the 16 May edition of the Independent. McChrystal’s verbiage is not casual milspeak -- the idea of “shaping” is deeply rooted in the US military mindset and derives from the doctrinal concept of shaping a battlefield prior to doing battle. In this case, however, the ‘shaping’ has been mutated into a cultural imperative, which is a far more subtle thing. The statement assumes we can “shape” the outlook and behaviour governing the minds of the natural leaders of the Pashtuns, or more precisely, that we can manipulate the all important Orientation function in the Observation - Orientation - Decision - Action or OODA loops of the traditional leaders.[1]
Just who are these leaders?
For starters, they are the leaders of the most xenophobic, historically-minded, proud tribal cultures in the world. McChrystal’s theory of shaping the OODA loops of these “natural” leaders reveals a contemptuous sense of superiority that is not just arrogant but also appallingly ignorant of the culture it assumes it can manipulate.
In the Pashtun culture, leaders at all levels (sub clan, clan, tribe, and tribal group) are not picked by primogenitor or god, they emerge out of an arduous process of consensus building among the members of the group. Leaders rise naturally, by consent, like cream in milk, based on demonstrated wisdom, bravery, and especially, the strength of their personal character, which is always ascertained in accordance with the Pashtun moral code, known as Pashtunwali. They have reached their position by demonstrating their worthiness to lead by adhering to and exemplifying the values of this code, which just happens to be one of the strictest and most demanding tribal codes of personal honor ever to have evolved. They are not easily manipulated, especially by outsiders.
When Pashtuns are left to themselves, the code of Pashtunwali is strong enough to limit the internecine quarrelsome behaviour of the members of the largest tribal vendetta culture remaining in the world. Being a vendetta culture means that Pashtuns have long memories, that affronts to honor are of paramount importance and must be avenged. Pashtuns also have a tradition of hospitality and sanctuary. Yet, they are united by hatred of foreign invaders and they often put aside internecine fighting and vendettas to expel invaders. And they are extraordinarily proud of their ability to expel invaders, which they have done with considerable success over the last 2,300 years. Pashtuns may have a wild and woolly culture from our perspective, but it would be a mistake to think of it as primitive or lacking a coherent moral center; it is highly evolved value system, well-tuned to the harsh conditions of the natural Afghan environment. It is also a culture that is very alien to the western European and American traditions, and therefore difficult for outsiders to comprehend.
It is the leadership of this culture that McChrystal and his fellow COIN travelers think they can turn into puppets
That the leaders in the United States military believe they can construct a successful strategy based on the premise that outsiders like themselves will be able to manipulate Pashtun leaders like puppets descends into transparent absurdity, when one juxaposes McChrystal’s ambition to the fact, well known among Pashtuns if not Americans, that the United States has contributed directly or indirectly to the murderous horror that has been Afghanistan since 1979.
The American complicity in this horror goes back at least to 1979, when the US National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, established the policy of inflaming Islamic fundamentalists (via the CIA) to destabilize Afghanistan in the hope that the threat of fundamentalist instability on Soviet Union’s vulnerable Central Asian flank would induce the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. Brzezinski’s aim was seduce the Soviets into entrapping themselves in their own Vietnam-like quagmire. The plan worked like a charm, as Brzezinski proudly admitted in a still little appreciated interview in the influential Parisian news magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur (15-21 January 1998, translation here). When asked if he had any regrets, Brzesinski dismissed the question in a tone that dripped with condescension, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?” [see the last two paragraphs of the interview]
Now, ten years and a lot of stirring later, the details of the script may have changed, but the arrogance of the ignorance shaping the outlook of our leaders has not. That is why we now have an Army General concocting a “shaping” strategy based on the assumption that the American military can manipulate the behavior of millions of stirred up Afghans like puppets.
Don’t count on it.
Franklin “Chuck” Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon. He currently lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean and can be reached at chuck_spinney@mac.com
Note.
[1] For readers unfamiliar with the theory of the OODA LOOP and its inventor, the American strategist Colonel John Boyd: A brief introduction can be found in my essay Genghis John. More comprehensive but accessible descriptions can be found in the books by Robert Coram and James Fallows, and Chet Richards, among many others. For those readers who are interested in heavy intellectually lifting, see Franz Ozinga's analysis of Boyd's strategic thought or even better, they could study Boyd's original presentations, which can be downloaded from the folder labeled “Boyd Briefs” in my Public Folder.
http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney05172010.html
A Roadmap to Folly in Afghanistan
The Arrogance of Ignorance
By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY
Nisos Kos, Greece.
A report by Jonathan Landay and Dion Nissenbaum for McClatchy Newspapers provides important insights into our rapidly diminishing prospects for success in Afghanistan, some direct, others inferential:
First, the direct: the Qandahar operation that General McChrystal began trumpeting in late February is clearly going wobbly before it begins. The promise to demonstrate progress (i.e., to see light at the end of the tunnel) in Afghanistan by this summer is being bow-waved at least into the Fall, during the height of mid-term election season. The scope of the looming operation is also being scaled back, and its goals are being redefined in more ambiguous terms.
The Qandahar offensive always strained credulity: According to Landay’s sources in the Pentagon, the original concept assumed 20,000 troops could pacify the urban/rural region with 800,000 inhabitants. This level of effort always appeared grossly insufficient, especially when compared to recent Marjah offensive, which used 10,000 troops for an operation aimed at pacifying a rural region with one-tenth as many inhabitants. And the success of the Marjah operation to date has been problematic, to put it charitably. McChrystal can not rely on the Afghan forces to protect the Marjah “ink spot,” so he still needs the presence of Marines to pacify the region, which means less troops for spreading that ink spot of security to Qandahar. Moreover, a key component of McChrystal’s strategy -- the so-called ‘government in a box’ that McChrystal bragged he would put into place in Marjah -- has turned out to be a sham that has proven unable to protect the people. Given (1) that Qandahar is second largest city and the only major city in Afghanistan with an overwhelming Pashtun majority, (2) the fact that Qandahar is the spiritual home of the Taliban, and (3) the fact that the local ruler is the unmanageable, obscenely corrupt half brother of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, the task of permanently cleansing Qandahar of the Taliban on a permanent basis will be far more difficult than failed effort to clean out Marjah. Even if one were to assume that our counter insurgency strategy is a blueprint for success, achieving this object with confidence would require far more troops. But those troops are not available, and the probability of General McChrystal successfully squeezing the President again for another “surge” of reinforcing troops is close to nil.
More important in my opinion, however, is the information that can be teased out of the McClatchy report. This is embodied in the mindset revealed by the words General McChrystal used to explain his strategy: "It's important that we engage the population so that we shape the leaders, the natural leaders, the elders, political and economic leaders so that their participation helps shape how we go forward," [emphasis added]. This statement reveals why our current strategy is a roadmap to folly.
Landay et al did not say much about this comment, except to say that our forces have “made little headway in building a foundation for a respected local government capable of winning the confidence of the nearly 1 million Afghans who live in and around Kandahar,” a point expanded on in greater detail by Patrick Cockburn in an excellent report in the 16 May edition of the Independent. McChrystal’s verbiage is not casual milspeak -- the idea of “shaping” is deeply rooted in the US military mindset and derives from the doctrinal concept of shaping a battlefield prior to doing battle. In this case, however, the ‘shaping’ has been mutated into a cultural imperative, which is a far more subtle thing. The statement assumes we can “shape” the outlook and behaviour governing the minds of the natural leaders of the Pashtuns, or more precisely, that we can manipulate the all important Orientation function in the Observation - Orientation - Decision - Action or OODA loops of the traditional leaders.[1]
Just who are these leaders?
For starters, they are the leaders of the most xenophobic, historically-minded, proud tribal cultures in the world. McChrystal’s theory of shaping the OODA loops of these “natural” leaders reveals a contemptuous sense of superiority that is not just arrogant but also appallingly ignorant of the culture it assumes it can manipulate.
In the Pashtun culture, leaders at all levels (sub clan, clan, tribe, and tribal group) are not picked by primogenitor or god, they emerge out of an arduous process of consensus building among the members of the group. Leaders rise naturally, by consent, like cream in milk, based on demonstrated wisdom, bravery, and especially, the strength of their personal character, which is always ascertained in accordance with the Pashtun moral code, known as Pashtunwali. They have reached their position by demonstrating their worthiness to lead by adhering to and exemplifying the values of this code, which just happens to be one of the strictest and most demanding tribal codes of personal honor ever to have evolved. They are not easily manipulated, especially by outsiders.
When Pashtuns are left to themselves, the code of Pashtunwali is strong enough to limit the internecine quarrelsome behaviour of the members of the largest tribal vendetta culture remaining in the world. Being a vendetta culture means that Pashtuns have long memories, that affronts to honor are of paramount importance and must be avenged. Pashtuns also have a tradition of hospitality and sanctuary. Yet, they are united by hatred of foreign invaders and they often put aside internecine fighting and vendettas to expel invaders. And they are extraordinarily proud of their ability to expel invaders, which they have done with considerable success over the last 2,300 years. Pashtuns may have a wild and woolly culture from our perspective, but it would be a mistake to think of it as primitive or lacking a coherent moral center; it is highly evolved value system, well-tuned to the harsh conditions of the natural Afghan environment. It is also a culture that is very alien to the western European and American traditions, and therefore difficult for outsiders to comprehend.
It is the leadership of this culture that McChrystal and his fellow COIN travelers think they can turn into puppets
That the leaders in the United States military believe they can construct a successful strategy based on the premise that outsiders like themselves will be able to manipulate Pashtun leaders like puppets descends into transparent absurdity, when one juxaposes McChrystal’s ambition to the fact, well known among Pashtuns if not Americans, that the United States has contributed directly or indirectly to the murderous horror that has been Afghanistan since 1979.
The American complicity in this horror goes back at least to 1979, when the US National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, established the policy of inflaming Islamic fundamentalists (via the CIA) to destabilize Afghanistan in the hope that the threat of fundamentalist instability on Soviet Union’s vulnerable Central Asian flank would induce the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. Brzezinski’s aim was seduce the Soviets into entrapping themselves in their own Vietnam-like quagmire. The plan worked like a charm, as Brzezinski proudly admitted in a still little appreciated interview in the influential Parisian news magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur (15-21 January 1998, translation here). When asked if he had any regrets, Brzesinski dismissed the question in a tone that dripped with condescension, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?” [see the last two paragraphs of the interview]
Now, ten years and a lot of stirring later, the details of the script may have changed, but the arrogance of the ignorance shaping the outlook of our leaders has not. That is why we now have an Army General concocting a “shaping” strategy based on the assumption that the American military can manipulate the behavior of millions of stirred up Afghans like puppets.
Don’t count on it.
Franklin “Chuck” Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon. He currently lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean and can be reached at chuck_spinney@mac.com
Note.
[1] For readers unfamiliar with the theory of the OODA LOOP and its inventor, the American strategist Colonel John Boyd: A brief introduction can be found in my essay Genghis John. More comprehensive but accessible descriptions can be found in the books by Robert Coram and James Fallows, and Chet Richards, among many others. For those readers who are interested in heavy intellectually lifting, see Franz Ozinga's analysis of Boyd's strategic thought or even better, they could study Boyd's original presentations, which can be downloaded from the folder labeled “Boyd Briefs” in my Public Folder.
US "flailing wars" in Afghanistan, etc.
In the following entry, I paraphrase and draw loosely on Tom Engelhardt's essay, "Obama's Flailing Wars." The full and original version of the article can be retreived at http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/05/16/obama-flailing-wars
Engelhardt sees US military strategy and operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a "tragedy," when not viewed as a "farce."
He reviews recent attempts by the US President and other US military and civilian leaders to stir Afghan President Hamid Karzai into more productive action, advising him, threatening him. Barak Obama recently flew into Kabul for a six hour for a dressing down of Karzai. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen met with Karzai a few days later in the same critical mode.
Then changing the tone, at least for the media, Karzai and some of his government officials visited the White House for what was orchestrated as a congenial confab. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Afghan War Commander Gen. Stanley McChristal were reported to reassure Karzai that the US military presence in Afghanistan was for the long term.
The flip flops, as Engelhard describes them, "seemed to reflect tactical and strategic incoherence," both with respect to Afghanistan and to Pakistan. He adds (later), "In place of strategic coherence, there is just one knee-jerk response: escalation," something like "the Washington mentality in the Vietnam War years."
Some seriously-grounded evidence indicaes that "the US mission in Afghanistan is going dreadfully, evan as the Taliban insurgency gains potency and expands." The recent US offensive in Marjah has proven to be a "fiasco," as Taliban groups "re-infiltrate the area," in the absence of a competent and non-corrupt Afghan government, police, and military. Engelhardt refers "to a report by the International Council on Security and Development...," which finds "the local population [in Marjah] is far more hostile about NATO forces after" the US-led attacks than before them.
Engelhardt stresses that the US occupation and escalation cannot succeed without an effective Afghan government "partner," and without well-trained, honest, and reliable Afghan police and army troops.
Any vision of winning some sort of American hegemony in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) is losing credibility, at great expense and destructiveness. That's a tragedy. That it is has something to do with ridding the world of Islamic extremists or Islamic insurgents appears more and more like a "farce."
Engelhardt sees US military strategy and operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a "tragedy," when not viewed as a "farce."
He reviews recent attempts by the US President and other US military and civilian leaders to stir Afghan President Hamid Karzai into more productive action, advising him, threatening him. Barak Obama recently flew into Kabul for a six hour for a dressing down of Karzai. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen met with Karzai a few days later in the same critical mode.
Then changing the tone, at least for the media, Karzai and some of his government officials visited the White House for what was orchestrated as a congenial confab. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Afghan War Commander Gen. Stanley McChristal were reported to reassure Karzai that the US military presence in Afghanistan was for the long term.
The flip flops, as Engelhard describes them, "seemed to reflect tactical and strategic incoherence," both with respect to Afghanistan and to Pakistan. He adds (later), "In place of strategic coherence, there is just one knee-jerk response: escalation," something like "the Washington mentality in the Vietnam War years."
Some seriously-grounded evidence indicaes that "the US mission in Afghanistan is going dreadfully, evan as the Taliban insurgency gains potency and expands." The recent US offensive in Marjah has proven to be a "fiasco," as Taliban groups "re-infiltrate the area," in the absence of a competent and non-corrupt Afghan government, police, and military. Engelhardt refers "to a report by the International Council on Security and Development...," which finds "the local population [in Marjah] is far more hostile about NATO forces after" the US-led attacks than before them.
Engelhardt stresses that the US occupation and escalation cannot succeed without an effective Afghan government "partner," and without well-trained, honest, and reliable Afghan police and army troops.
Any vision of winning some sort of American hegemony in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) is losing credibility, at great expense and destructiveness. That's a tragedy. That it is has something to do with ridding the world of Islamic extremists or Islamic insurgents appears more and more like a "farce."
Sunday, May 16, 2010
US military/gov optimism dashed on the ground in Afghanistan
I have quoted some of the points from an article by Patrick Cockburn that were published in The Independent online site on May 16, 2010. The gist of the article is captured by the title, "'Nobody is winning' admits McChrystal." You can find the full article at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/nobody-is-winning-admits-mcchrystal-1974697.html.
From what I've been reading, the Obama administration/Pentagon generals may well fulfill the promise of "beginning" a withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011. However, this may turn out to be a very small and slow troop withdrawal, given the lack of military success so far in subduing the "enemy." Indeed, the Occupation/war may be drawn out for many years to come. Cockburn offers evidence that as of now there is no better than a military stalemate between US-led forces and insurgents. Part of the problem, Cockburn emphasizes, is that US leaders have yet to understand that they are embroiled in a civil war in which they have implicitly taken sides.
In what promises to be an extended war and occupation, there are many losers, including, for example, the Afghan civilian population, the continued destruction of Afghan villages and infrastructure, the increasing number of US troop casulaties, the American taxpayers and the society as a whole as debt-financed wars deepen the national debt, and the lack of progress by the Obama administration in diminishing the US economy's growing dependence on foreign oil.
---------------------------
Quotes from Cockburng's article.
'Nobody is winning,' admits McChrystal
The weakness of the Kabul government is hindering attempts by US and Nato forces to gain much ground from the insurgents
By Patrick Cockburn
Sunday, 16 May 2010
"Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrived in London yesterday as US generals express doubts that the fight against the Taliban is having any success.
"The US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who was boasting of military progress only three months ago, confessed last week that "nobody is winning". His only claim now is that the Taliban have lost momentum compared with last year."
[....]
"... the failure so far of General McChrystal's strategy of using his troops to seize Taliban strongholds and, once cleared, hand them over to Afghan forces. He sold this plan, under which he was promised an extra 30,000 US troops, last November but all the signs are that it is not working. Starting in February, 15,000 US, British and Afghan troops started taking over the Taliban-held area of Marjah and Nad Ali in Helmand province."
[....}
"Three months after the operation in Marjah, however, local people say that the Taliban still control the area at night. Shops are still closed and no schools have reopened. Education officials who returned at the height of the US-led offensive have fled again. The local governor says he has just one temporary teacher teaching 60 children in the ruins of a school. Aid is not arriving. The Taliban are replacing mines, the notorious IEDs, removed by US troops and often use the same holes to hide them in.
"Pentagon officials increasingly agree with the Afghan villagers that the Marjah operation failed to end Taliban control and put the Afghan government in charge. This puts in doubt General McChrystal's whole strategy which also governs the way in which 10,000 British troops are deployed. He is being held to account for earlier optimism such as his claim at the height of Marjah offensive that "we've got a government in a box ready to roll in". Three months later, people in Marjah say they have yet to see much sign of the Afghan government.
"Lack of success in Marjah is feeding doubts about the promised US-led offensive in Kandahar, parts of which are under Taliban control. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned against destroying the city in order to save it.... Local elders have lobbied against it on the grounds that it will bring nothing but ruin to their city.
"So far the much-heralded attempt to turn the tide in Kandahar has simply terrified local people about what is to come. US and Nato supply columns thunder through the narrow streets, the soldiers guarding them gesturing menacingly to Afghan vehicles not to get too close. "An atmosphere of terror is hanging over Kandahar," Ahmad Wali Karzai, the president's much-criticised brother who is also head of the local council, is quoted as saying. 'People are breathing terror here.'"
[....]
From what I've been reading, the Obama administration/Pentagon generals may well fulfill the promise of "beginning" a withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011. However, this may turn out to be a very small and slow troop withdrawal, given the lack of military success so far in subduing the "enemy." Indeed, the Occupation/war may be drawn out for many years to come. Cockburn offers evidence that as of now there is no better than a military stalemate between US-led forces and insurgents. Part of the problem, Cockburn emphasizes, is that US leaders have yet to understand that they are embroiled in a civil war in which they have implicitly taken sides.
In what promises to be an extended war and occupation, there are many losers, including, for example, the Afghan civilian population, the continued destruction of Afghan villages and infrastructure, the increasing number of US troop casulaties, the American taxpayers and the society as a whole as debt-financed wars deepen the national debt, and the lack of progress by the Obama administration in diminishing the US economy's growing dependence on foreign oil.
---------------------------
Quotes from Cockburng's article.
'Nobody is winning,' admits McChrystal
The weakness of the Kabul government is hindering attempts by US and Nato forces to gain much ground from the insurgents
By Patrick Cockburn
Sunday, 16 May 2010
"Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrived in London yesterday as US generals express doubts that the fight against the Taliban is having any success.
"The US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who was boasting of military progress only three months ago, confessed last week that "nobody is winning". His only claim now is that the Taliban have lost momentum compared with last year."
[....]
"... the failure so far of General McChrystal's strategy of using his troops to seize Taliban strongholds and, once cleared, hand them over to Afghan forces. He sold this plan, under which he was promised an extra 30,000 US troops, last November but all the signs are that it is not working. Starting in February, 15,000 US, British and Afghan troops started taking over the Taliban-held area of Marjah and Nad Ali in Helmand province."
[....}
"Three months after the operation in Marjah, however, local people say that the Taliban still control the area at night. Shops are still closed and no schools have reopened. Education officials who returned at the height of the US-led offensive have fled again. The local governor says he has just one temporary teacher teaching 60 children in the ruins of a school. Aid is not arriving. The Taliban are replacing mines, the notorious IEDs, removed by US troops and often use the same holes to hide them in.
"Pentagon officials increasingly agree with the Afghan villagers that the Marjah operation failed to end Taliban control and put the Afghan government in charge. This puts in doubt General McChrystal's whole strategy which also governs the way in which 10,000 British troops are deployed. He is being held to account for earlier optimism such as his claim at the height of Marjah offensive that "we've got a government in a box ready to roll in". Three months later, people in Marjah say they have yet to see much sign of the Afghan government.
"Lack of success in Marjah is feeding doubts about the promised US-led offensive in Kandahar, parts of which are under Taliban control. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned against destroying the city in order to save it.... Local elders have lobbied against it on the grounds that it will bring nothing but ruin to their city.
"So far the much-heralded attempt to turn the tide in Kandahar has simply terrified local people about what is to come. US and Nato supply columns thunder through the narrow streets, the soldiers guarding them gesturing menacingly to Afghan vehicles not to get too close. "An atmosphere of terror is hanging over Kandahar," Ahmad Wali Karzai, the president's much-criticised brother who is also head of the local council, is quoted as saying. 'People are breathing terror here.'"
[....]
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Battlefield executions in Afghanistan, Seymour Hersh reports
The following is one of the headlines from today's Democracy Now program, which you can access at: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/12/headlines#7.
Hersh: US Carrying Out “Battlefield Executions” in Afghanistan
In other news from Afghanistan, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says US forces are carrying out battlefield executions of prisoners in Afghanistan. Hersh made the comment during a discussion at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva. In 2004 Hersh broke the story about the abuse and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Seymour Hersh: "And the purpose of my [Abu Ghraib] stories was to take it out of the field into the White House, and where it—you know, it’s not that the President or the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld, or Bush or Cheney—it’s not that they knew what happened in Abu Ghraib. It’s that they had allowed this kind of activity to happen. And I’ll tell you right now, one of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, I mean, to those we capture in Afghanistan. They’re being executed on the battlefield. It’s unbelievable stuff going on there that doesn’t necessarily get reported. And things don’t change.”
Seymour Hersh went on to say that he had been told about the battlefield executions by five or six different people.
Hersh: US Carrying Out “Battlefield Executions” in Afghanistan
In other news from Afghanistan, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says US forces are carrying out battlefield executions of prisoners in Afghanistan. Hersh made the comment during a discussion at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva. In 2004 Hersh broke the story about the abuse and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Seymour Hersh: "And the purpose of my [Abu Ghraib] stories was to take it out of the field into the White House, and where it—you know, it’s not that the President or the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld, or Bush or Cheney—it’s not that they knew what happened in Abu Ghraib. It’s that they had allowed this kind of activity to happen. And I’ll tell you right now, one of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, I mean, to those we capture in Afghanistan. They’re being executed on the battlefield. It’s unbelievable stuff going on there that doesn’t necessarily get reported. And things don’t change.”
Seymour Hersh went on to say that he had been told about the battlefield executions by five or six different people.
US financed contracts sometimes end up in the wrong places
"Warlords feed on US contracts, say critics." This is the headline of an article written by Richard Shilito and Matthew Green (in Kandahar) for the Financial Times, May 11, 2010. You can find the full article at: http://freedomsyndicate.com/fairOOOO/ft05.html.
On this blog or ours, we have reprinted and/or commented on reports of corruption in the Afghan government and among warlord in provinces and districts outside of Taliban dominance. In some cases, the warlords also hold positions in the government. Since the US military has not defined the warlords as Al Qaeda or Taliban, they are implicitly considered allies of the US-led occupation and given far more trust than they deserve.
The corruption aspect has to do with how US funded contracts, or some portion of them, end up in the hands for powerful warlords and are used to consolidate their own power and serve their private interests rather than for projects in the public good for which they were intended. some of this money trickles down to various Taliban groups. The opaque networks involved in the trucking business border on the absurd.
Shilito and Green provide new details for this story.
From the article:
On this blog or ours, we have reprinted and/or commented on reports of corruption in the Afghan government and among warlord in provinces and districts outside of Taliban dominance. In some cases, the warlords also hold positions in the government. Since the US military has not defined the warlords as Al Qaeda or Taliban, they are implicitly considered allies of the US-led occupation and given far more trust than they deserve.
The corruption aspect has to do with how US funded contracts, or some portion of them, end up in the hands for powerful warlords and are used to consolidate their own power and serve their private interests rather than for projects in the public good for which they were intended. some of this money trickles down to various Taliban groups. The opaque networks involved in the trucking business border on the absurd.
Shilito and Green provide new details for this story.
From the article:
"...mounting evidence that a $2.16bn trucking contract is enriching Afghan warlords linked to the controversial half-brother of President Hamid Karzai."
"...congressional investigators are looking into whether millions of taxpayers' dollars are being paid to militia commanders to protect convoys ferrying supplies through Kandahar province, where US troops are preparing an offensive."
"Critics say the militias form part of a mafia-like network..."
"...in Washington, concerns are growing that inadequate oversight of Afghan expenditure is financing a heavily armed cabal that will jeopardise the broader US strategy of promoting good governance to counter the Taliban."
"John F. Tierney, a Democratic member of Congress from Massachusetts....chairs the national security and foreign affairs subcommittee, which launched the investigation, partly in response to a Financial Times report on Taliban insurgents extorting money from trucking contractors supplying Isaf, the international force in Afghanistan."
The companies on which the investigation is focusing includes "eight trucking contractors who share the US military's $2.16bn (€1.7bn, £1.5bn) two-year host nation trucking contract. The companies in-clude NCL Holdings, run by Hamed Wardak, the son of Afghanistan's defence minister, and others founded by US and Gulf investors."
Key points: "The system relies on an opaque network of sub-contractors who pay Afghan security companies to escort their trucks. Investigators suspect these companies in turn pay tolls to militia leaders with groups of hundreds of gunmen."
".... Industry insiders say militias run what amount to protection rackets on convoys passing through their territory."
"Investigators suspect that commanders controlling long stretches of highway share multi-million-dollar incomes each year by demanding $1,000-$1,200 for each of the trucks, making up to 10,000 trips a month under the contract."
"Investigators also suspect that some of the funds from the contract end up in the hands of the Taliban, either through bribes paid by sub-contractors or extortion rackets run by militia leaders colluding with insurgents."
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
US Afghan policy not working
Gareth Porter compiles evidence that the US counterinsurgency strategy is not working in the targeted Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.
The US then is left with a limited number of options. More counterinsurgency, i.e., more of the same. As one of Porter's informants notes, this may mean keeping US troops in Afghanistan for more years than planned. This option has the feeling of quagmire. Negotiating with key Taliban leaders, with an agreed upon end to the US-led occupation and war. This would mean that the US would have to alter its demonizing rhetoric and "the war on terrorism." Shift in tactics from mostly military to more, or mostly, economic and humanitarian assistance. Would probably require an international plan. A plan for the withdrawal of US troops. That's what we have favored.
What about the larger US geopolitical interests? If US planners decided to withdraw from Afghanistan, they would then have to take a harder look at the US economy itself and the growing dependence on petroleum and other resources. What are the alternatives in this regard? And is it likely that a major turn toward the creation of a truly green domestic economy could represent one step toward a less militarized and unequal international system?
One thing is pretty certain: We can't afford more war or ever-increasing dependence on foreign oil and other foreign resources.
http://counterpunch.org/porter05112010.html
Although Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's plan for wresting the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar from the Taliban is still in its early stages of implementation, there are already signs that setbacks and obstacles it has encountered have raised serious doubts among top military officials in Washington about whether the plan is going to work.
Scepticism about McChrystal's ambitious aims was implicit in the way the Pentagon report on the war issued Apr. 26 assessed the progress of the campaign in Marja. Now, it has been given even more pointed expression by an unnamed "senior military official" quoted in a column in the Washington Post Sunday by David Ignatius.
The senior military officer criticised McChrystal's announcement in February that he had "a government in a box, ready to roll in" for the Marja campaign, for having created "an expectation of rapidity and efficiency that doesn't exist now", according to Ignatius.
The same military official is also quoted as pointing out that parts of Helmand that were supposed to have been cleared by the offensive in February and March are in fact still under Taliban control and that Afghan government performance in the wake of the offensive had been disappointing, according to Ignatius.
The outlook at the Pentagon and the White House on the nascent Kandahar offensive is also pessimistic, judging from the comment to Ignatius by an unnamed "senior administration official". The official told Ignatius the operation is "still a work in progress", observing that McChrystal's command was still trying to decide how much of the local government the military could "salvage" and how much "you have to rebuild".
That is an obvious reference to the dilemma faced by the U.S. military in Kandahar: the entire government structure is controlled by Ahmed Wali Karzai, the much-despised brother of President Hamid Karzai. The U.S.-supported provincial governor now being counted on to introduce governance reforms, on the other hand, is generally regarded by Kandaharis as powerless, as Jonathan Partlow reported in the Washington Post Apr. 29.
These negative comments on the campaign in Helmand and Kandahar by senior Washington officials pointing to problems with McChrystal's plan suggest that even more serious concerns are being expressed behind the scenes.
The Pentagon report on the war betrays similar doubts about the strategy being carried out by McChrystal, both by what it highlights and what it fails to say. Damning with faint praise, the report says the offensive waged in the Marja region and elsewhere in Helmand achieved only "some success in clearing insurgents from their strongholds".
Paralleling the quote from the "senior military official", the report says progress in "governance and development" in has been "slow". Demonstrating that the Afghan government could provide "governance and development" had been announced as the central aim of the offensive in Marja.
The section of the Pentagon report on the state of the insurgency goes even further toward declaring that the McChrystal plan had failed to achieve a central objective, concluding that the Taliban strategy for countering the offensive "has proven effective in slowing the spread of governance and development".
The key finding is that the Taliban have "reinfiltrated the cleared areas" of Helmand and "dissuaded locals from meeting with the Afghan government" by executing some who had initially collaborated.
The overall negative tone of the analysis of what happened in Helmand appears to reflect a decision by Pentagon officials to withhold its vote of confidence in the McChrystal war plan.
The only feature of McChrystal's strategy which the Pentagon report treats as having proven effective against the insurgents is its most controversial element: the programme of Special Operations Forces (SOF) night raids against suspected Taliban in their homes, which has stirred anger among Afghans everywhere the SOF have operated.
In an indirect expression of doubt about the impact of the McChrystal strategy, the report suggests that the willingness of Taliban insurgent leaders to negotiate will be influenced not by the offensives aimed at separating the population from the Taliban but by the "combined effects" of the high-level arrests of Taliban leaders in Pakistan and targeted raids by special operations forces against "lower level commanders".
In fact, Taliban leaders have already indicated a readiness to negotiate, although not on terms the Barack Obama administration is yet prepared to accept.
McChrystal appears to have responded to the setbacks he has encountered in Helmand and Kandahar by setting aside his most ambitious counterinsurgency aim: the creation of a large zone of control covering both provinces. In late January, an official working for McChrystal at the ISAF told IPS, "The first thing you'll see is an effort to establish a contiguous security zone in Helmand and Kandahar accounting for 85 percent of the economic resources."
McChrystal referred to that same aim in his interview with the Financial Times published Jan. 25. "If we can protect 85 percent of the people and deny access to them from the insurgents, it's pretty hard for them to have a significant effect," he said.
But since the end of the Marja operation, neither McChrystal nor any other ISAF official has said anything about a plan to establish a "contiguous security zone".
McChrystal has to provide a one-year assessment of the progress of his strategy in December 2010, and senior administration officials told the Washington Post in late March that he will have to show that the "overall transition to stability and vastly improved governance" has been completed by that time.
McChrystal was confident in a talk in Kabul in late January excerpted in a NATO video that, by December, he would be able to "show with hard numbers and things, real progress".
But the failure to clear Taliban guerrillas from areas where they have been strongest, along with the inability to break the power of Karzai's brother in Kandahar and the absence of support from the population and tribal elders for military occupation in the province, is likely to make administration officials highly sceptical of such a case.
McChrystal's staff has made no secret of their hope to convince the U.S. public that his strategy is making such progress in Helmand and Kandahar that it should be extended past mid-2011, when President Obama has said he would begin a U.S. military withdrawal and transition to Afghan responsibility for security.
After interviewing members of McChrystal's team in Kabul, pro-war journalist Robert Kaplan wrote in the April issue of Atlantic magazine, "The very prospect of some success by July 2011 increases the likelihood that U.S. forces will be in Afghanistan in substantial numbers for years."
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
The US then is left with a limited number of options. More counterinsurgency, i.e., more of the same. As one of Porter's informants notes, this may mean keeping US troops in Afghanistan for more years than planned. This option has the feeling of quagmire. Negotiating with key Taliban leaders, with an agreed upon end to the US-led occupation and war. This would mean that the US would have to alter its demonizing rhetoric and "the war on terrorism." Shift in tactics from mostly military to more, or mostly, economic and humanitarian assistance. Would probably require an international plan. A plan for the withdrawal of US troops. That's what we have favored.
What about the larger US geopolitical interests? If US planners decided to withdraw from Afghanistan, they would then have to take a harder look at the US economy itself and the growing dependence on petroleum and other resources. What are the alternatives in this regard? And is it likely that a major turn toward the creation of a truly green domestic economy could represent one step toward a less militarized and unequal international system?
One thing is pretty certain: We can't afford more war or ever-increasing dependence on foreign oil and other foreign resources.
---------------------------
Doubts Grow Even in the Pentagon
McChrystal's Afghan War Plan Unravels
By GARETH PORTER
http://counterpunch.org/porter05112010.html
Although Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's plan for wresting the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar from the Taliban is still in its early stages of implementation, there are already signs that setbacks and obstacles it has encountered have raised serious doubts among top military officials in Washington about whether the plan is going to work.
Scepticism about McChrystal's ambitious aims was implicit in the way the Pentagon report on the war issued Apr. 26 assessed the progress of the campaign in Marja. Now, it has been given even more pointed expression by an unnamed "senior military official" quoted in a column in the Washington Post Sunday by David Ignatius.
The senior military officer criticised McChrystal's announcement in February that he had "a government in a box, ready to roll in" for the Marja campaign, for having created "an expectation of rapidity and efficiency that doesn't exist now", according to Ignatius.
The same military official is also quoted as pointing out that parts of Helmand that were supposed to have been cleared by the offensive in February and March are in fact still under Taliban control and that Afghan government performance in the wake of the offensive had been disappointing, according to Ignatius.
The outlook at the Pentagon and the White House on the nascent Kandahar offensive is also pessimistic, judging from the comment to Ignatius by an unnamed "senior administration official". The official told Ignatius the operation is "still a work in progress", observing that McChrystal's command was still trying to decide how much of the local government the military could "salvage" and how much "you have to rebuild".
That is an obvious reference to the dilemma faced by the U.S. military in Kandahar: the entire government structure is controlled by Ahmed Wali Karzai, the much-despised brother of President Hamid Karzai. The U.S.-supported provincial governor now being counted on to introduce governance reforms, on the other hand, is generally regarded by Kandaharis as powerless, as Jonathan Partlow reported in the Washington Post Apr. 29.
These negative comments on the campaign in Helmand and Kandahar by senior Washington officials pointing to problems with McChrystal's plan suggest that even more serious concerns are being expressed behind the scenes.
The Pentagon report on the war betrays similar doubts about the strategy being carried out by McChrystal, both by what it highlights and what it fails to say. Damning with faint praise, the report says the offensive waged in the Marja region and elsewhere in Helmand achieved only "some success in clearing insurgents from their strongholds".
Paralleling the quote from the "senior military official", the report says progress in "governance and development" in has been "slow". Demonstrating that the Afghan government could provide "governance and development" had been announced as the central aim of the offensive in Marja.
The section of the Pentagon report on the state of the insurgency goes even further toward declaring that the McChrystal plan had failed to achieve a central objective, concluding that the Taliban strategy for countering the offensive "has proven effective in slowing the spread of governance and development".
The key finding is that the Taliban have "reinfiltrated the cleared areas" of Helmand and "dissuaded locals from meeting with the Afghan government" by executing some who had initially collaborated.
The overall negative tone of the analysis of what happened in Helmand appears to reflect a decision by Pentagon officials to withhold its vote of confidence in the McChrystal war plan.
The only feature of McChrystal's strategy which the Pentagon report treats as having proven effective against the insurgents is its most controversial element: the programme of Special Operations Forces (SOF) night raids against suspected Taliban in their homes, which has stirred anger among Afghans everywhere the SOF have operated.
In an indirect expression of doubt about the impact of the McChrystal strategy, the report suggests that the willingness of Taliban insurgent leaders to negotiate will be influenced not by the offensives aimed at separating the population from the Taliban but by the "combined effects" of the high-level arrests of Taliban leaders in Pakistan and targeted raids by special operations forces against "lower level commanders".
In fact, Taliban leaders have already indicated a readiness to negotiate, although not on terms the Barack Obama administration is yet prepared to accept.
McChrystal appears to have responded to the setbacks he has encountered in Helmand and Kandahar by setting aside his most ambitious counterinsurgency aim: the creation of a large zone of control covering both provinces. In late January, an official working for McChrystal at the ISAF told IPS, "The first thing you'll see is an effort to establish a contiguous security zone in Helmand and Kandahar accounting for 85 percent of the economic resources."
McChrystal referred to that same aim in his interview with the Financial Times published Jan. 25. "If we can protect 85 percent of the people and deny access to them from the insurgents, it's pretty hard for them to have a significant effect," he said.
But since the end of the Marja operation, neither McChrystal nor any other ISAF official has said anything about a plan to establish a "contiguous security zone".
McChrystal has to provide a one-year assessment of the progress of his strategy in December 2010, and senior administration officials told the Washington Post in late March that he will have to show that the "overall transition to stability and vastly improved governance" has been completed by that time.
McChrystal was confident in a talk in Kabul in late January excerpted in a NATO video that, by December, he would be able to "show with hard numbers and things, real progress".
But the failure to clear Taliban guerrillas from areas where they have been strongest, along with the inability to break the power of Karzai's brother in Kandahar and the absence of support from the population and tribal elders for military occupation in the province, is likely to make administration officials highly sceptical of such a case.
McChrystal's staff has made no secret of their hope to convince the U.S. public that his strategy is making such progress in Helmand and Kandahar that it should be extended past mid-2011, when President Obama has said he would begin a U.S. military withdrawal and transition to Afghan responsibility for security.
After interviewing members of McChrystal's team in Kabul, pro-war journalist Robert Kaplan wrote in the April issue of Atlantic magazine, "The very prospect of some success by July 2011 increases the likelihood that U.S. forces will be in Afghanistan in substantial numbers for years."
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
Shift in public opinion on Afghanistan raises questions
There are two news items from Just Foreign Policy on the Web, http://justforeignpolicy.org/node/572, that are worth a few comments.
The first item is that award-winning and widely admired journalist Seymour Hersh has taken a position on the US-led Afghanistan occupation and war that is at odds with the US administration, military, and congressional, positions. The headline from Just Foreign Policy reveals Hersh's view: "Only solution in Afghanistan is settlement with Taliban. And the only person to settle with is Mullah Omar." (See the longer statement and an accompanying video interview with Hersh at http://michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/seymour-hersh-obama-being-dominated-us-military.)
One implication for why the Obama administration refuses to negotiate with Taliban leader Mullah Omar is that US Afghanistan policy is being driven more by the interests of the US miitary and other powerful interests than by public opinion. The bloated US military needs to continuously find justification for the massive money US citizens are pouring into the Pentagon budget as a whole and to "wars" like those in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another implication is that given the domestic political strength of the Pentagon, Obama has chosen to heed their recommendations. If this is true, it is not a new story. C. Wright Mills wrote a book in the 1950s titled The Power Elite, in which Mills argued how the Pentagon was a major force in US foreign policy. This analysis was later expanded in the work of Seymour Melman in books like his Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War.
The second item from today's Just Foreign Policy on the Web, refers to a new opinion poll that indicates a negative turn among the US public on the Administration's Afghanistan military policy.
"Afghan president Hamid Karzai's visit to the White House this week arrives as the public's take on the war there has tilted back to negative, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
"A majority says the war in Afghanistan is not worth its costs, marking a return to negative territory after a brief uptick in public support in the wake of the announcement of the administration's new strategy for the conflict.
"Despite the shift in views on the war, President Obama's ratings for handling the conflict have remained positive since the unveiling of the new strategy - 56 percent approve, 36 percent disapprove.Views on the war's value have become more negative among both Democrats and independents. In the new poll, 56 percent of independents say it is not worth fighting, up from 47 percent in December. Among Democrats, 66 percent say it's not worth it, including half who feel that way strongly.
"Republicans are solidly behind the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, with 69 percent saying the war is worth its costs....
There are two things that stand out about the poll. One is that the trend among Independent and Democratic respondents is become increasingly opposed to the idea that the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting. This suggests that despite the paltry coverage of the Afghan war in the US commercial media, a high percentages of Americans are finally expressing opposition to the war and imply that US troops should be withdrawn according to some reasonable plan. The other point about this item is that Obama's handling of the war is still viewed by majorities as positive.
The two points appear contradictory. It's not clear why majorities of Independents and Democratics have come to view the Afghan war/occupation as not worth fighting any more, while a substantial majority overall think Obama is doing good enough. The answer may be that the polls are invalid, or that many Americans cannot connect the two, a war going badly and Obama's responsibility in that quagmire.
It also suggests that there is a rightward tilt in Obama's Afghanistan policy that reflects the influence of the military-industrial complex, other big corporate interests (e.g., bail out of Wall Street), the need to maintain the credibility of the US military forces, and a host of right wing psuedo-patriotic groups. Public opinion, with its ups and downs, doesn't rank very high in the Obama White House.
Behind it all, we must remind ourselves, there are larger geo-political interests in Central Asia and the Middle East that, in the final analysis, dictate Obama's policies and, in the end, make public opinion superfluous.
The first item is that award-winning and widely admired journalist Seymour Hersh has taken a position on the US-led Afghanistan occupation and war that is at odds with the US administration, military, and congressional, positions. The headline from Just Foreign Policy reveals Hersh's view: "Only solution in Afghanistan is settlement with Taliban. And the only person to settle with is Mullah Omar." (See the longer statement and an accompanying video interview with Hersh at http://michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/seymour-hersh-obama-being-dominated-us-military.)
One implication for why the Obama administration refuses to negotiate with Taliban leader Mullah Omar is that US Afghanistan policy is being driven more by the interests of the US miitary and other powerful interests than by public opinion. The bloated US military needs to continuously find justification for the massive money US citizens are pouring into the Pentagon budget as a whole and to "wars" like those in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another implication is that given the domestic political strength of the Pentagon, Obama has chosen to heed their recommendations. If this is true, it is not a new story. C. Wright Mills wrote a book in the 1950s titled The Power Elite, in which Mills argued how the Pentagon was a major force in US foreign policy. This analysis was later expanded in the work of Seymour Melman in books like his Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War.
The second item from today's Just Foreign Policy on the Web, refers to a new opinion poll that indicates a negative turn among the US public on the Administration's Afghanistan military policy.
"Afghan president Hamid Karzai's visit to the White House this week arrives as the public's take on the war there has tilted back to negative, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
"A majority says the war in Afghanistan is not worth its costs, marking a return to negative territory after a brief uptick in public support in the wake of the announcement of the administration's new strategy for the conflict.
"Despite the shift in views on the war, President Obama's ratings for handling the conflict have remained positive since the unveiling of the new strategy - 56 percent approve, 36 percent disapprove.Views on the war's value have become more negative among both Democrats and independents. In the new poll, 56 percent of independents say it is not worth fighting, up from 47 percent in December. Among Democrats, 66 percent say it's not worth it, including half who feel that way strongly.
"Republicans are solidly behind the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, with 69 percent saying the war is worth its costs....
There are two things that stand out about the poll. One is that the trend among Independent and Democratic respondents is become increasingly opposed to the idea that the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting. This suggests that despite the paltry coverage of the Afghan war in the US commercial media, a high percentages of Americans are finally expressing opposition to the war and imply that US troops should be withdrawn according to some reasonable plan. The other point about this item is that Obama's handling of the war is still viewed by majorities as positive.
The two points appear contradictory. It's not clear why majorities of Independents and Democratics have come to view the Afghan war/occupation as not worth fighting any more, while a substantial majority overall think Obama is doing good enough. The answer may be that the polls are invalid, or that many Americans cannot connect the two, a war going badly and Obama's responsibility in that quagmire.
It also suggests that there is a rightward tilt in Obama's Afghanistan policy that reflects the influence of the military-industrial complex, other big corporate interests (e.g., bail out of Wall Street), the need to maintain the credibility of the US military forces, and a host of right wing psuedo-patriotic groups. Public opinion, with its ups and downs, doesn't rank very high in the Obama White House.
Behind it all, we must remind ourselves, there are larger geo-political interests in Central Asia and the Middle East that, in the final analysis, dictate Obama's policies and, in the end, make public opinion superfluous.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Peace candidates could stir a debate on Afghanistan policy
Bill Boyarsky has an article on Truthdig.com that has some relevance for the position we take on this website, namely, to end the US-led war in Afghanistan. The article, "America's War Disease," can be found at: http://truthdig.com/report/item/americas_war_disease_20100507
The thrust of Boyarsky's article is to offer hope for a timely withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in a situation where President Obama is increasing troop levels in the country, where liberal congressional representatives are by and large supporting Obama's policy, where the media have virtually ceased covering the issue, and at a time when the country is saddled with a host of crises that redirect the attention of the society in other directions. The basis for his hope is that there are some peace candidates running against incumbent office-holders in congressional elections.
One such peace candidate is Marcy Winograd, who is challenging incumbent Jane Harmon in the Democratic Primary. The congressional district involved "reaches from the Los Angeles suburbs through beach cities and inland cities. It is a district that Harmon has represented from 1993 to 1998, and then from 2000 to the present.
While Winograd and Harmon agree on many progressive issues, they have different positions on Afghanistan policy. Harmon supports President Obama's policy of a "carefully calibrated timetable, flexibly based on conditions on the ground. Harmon voted against a resolution brought to the House floor by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). The resolution called for a withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan within 30 days of the passage of his bill and assistance to Afghanistan in rebuilding its war-torn society. Unlike Harmon, Winograd says she would have support the Kucinich resolution.
Boyarsky is excited about the candidacies of peace supporters for congressional seats, because they will help stimulate, he thinks, a debate over our embroilment in Afghanistan (and in Iraq and Israel-Palestine). But there are not many peace candidates and they aren't given much of a chance to win. In the case of the Harmon-Winograd electoral race, Harmon has the party establishment's support, much more name recognition, and more money to spend on her election than Wiongrad. In addition, the electorate is more concerned about housing foreclosures, unemployment, state budget shortfalls and cuts in services, than the war in Afghanistan.
We would love to see Winograd unseat Harmon, but think it's unlikely. We do not deny that one factor in a movement for a transformed foreign policy would include courageous and dedicated candidates like Harmon, along with an aroused public. Unfortunately, at the moment, the odds do not look good for peace candidates. Thus, to quote the last sentence of Boyarsky' article, "Otherwise, the US will continue to be mired in this fruitless war." And we add, with more on the horizon.
The thrust of Boyarsky's article is to offer hope for a timely withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in a situation where President Obama is increasing troop levels in the country, where liberal congressional representatives are by and large supporting Obama's policy, where the media have virtually ceased covering the issue, and at a time when the country is saddled with a host of crises that redirect the attention of the society in other directions. The basis for his hope is that there are some peace candidates running against incumbent office-holders in congressional elections.
One such peace candidate is Marcy Winograd, who is challenging incumbent Jane Harmon in the Democratic Primary. The congressional district involved "reaches from the Los Angeles suburbs through beach cities and inland cities. It is a district that Harmon has represented from 1993 to 1998, and then from 2000 to the present.
While Winograd and Harmon agree on many progressive issues, they have different positions on Afghanistan policy. Harmon supports President Obama's policy of a "carefully calibrated timetable, flexibly based on conditions on the ground. Harmon voted against a resolution brought to the House floor by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). The resolution called for a withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan within 30 days of the passage of his bill and assistance to Afghanistan in rebuilding its war-torn society. Unlike Harmon, Winograd says she would have support the Kucinich resolution.
Boyarsky is excited about the candidacies of peace supporters for congressional seats, because they will help stimulate, he thinks, a debate over our embroilment in Afghanistan (and in Iraq and Israel-Palestine). But there are not many peace candidates and they aren't given much of a chance to win. In the case of the Harmon-Winograd electoral race, Harmon has the party establishment's support, much more name recognition, and more money to spend on her election than Wiongrad. In addition, the electorate is more concerned about housing foreclosures, unemployment, state budget shortfalls and cuts in services, than the war in Afghanistan.
We would love to see Winograd unseat Harmon, but think it's unlikely. We do not deny that one factor in a movement for a transformed foreign policy would include courageous and dedicated candidates like Harmon, along with an aroused public. Unfortunately, at the moment, the odds do not look good for peace candidates. Thus, to quote the last sentence of Boyarsky' article, "Otherwise, the US will continue to be mired in this fruitless war." And we add, with more on the horizon.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Openings for peace talks in Afghanistan?
The following article is reported on the Just Foreign Policy News website on May 5, 2010: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/567. The source of the article is, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/04/afghanistan-taliban. Jonathan Steele wrote the article.
Steele finds from his interviews and various reports that there is serious consideration now being given from the Karzai government, Afghan woman leaders, overwhelmingly by the Afghan people as a whole, and even the British, a key US ally, for and end to the war and talks with the Taliban. The Taliban are reported to be willing to end hostilities in return for the opportunity to share power in the national government. The chief reason for this widespread change in views among the Afghan is the disillusion with the war and with the notion that the US-led occupation will lead to improvements in the material conditions of the Afghans and an increase in security.
Steele also reports that the Taliban have become less intolerant toward the idea of girls and women going to school and working in the larger economy (e.g., as doctors). While a harsh patriarchy is pervasive in the rural areas of Afghanistan, this is a cultural fact that has existed for generations. Afghan women overwhelmingly want talks to occur with the Taliban leaders.
In short, the Afghan people want an end to war and are willing to take risks that the Taliban is less rigid and intolerant of other beliefs than before. On an encouraging note, Steele also points out that the Taliban in Pakistan send their girls to school and accept them in professions and work outside the home.
Steele says nothing about whether the Taliban still insist that talks be preconditioned on the departure of foreign troops from the country.
The Obama administration has not yet shown a willinging to become a part of, initiate, or even encourage talks with the Taliban.
--------------------------------
From Just Foreign Policy: Excerpts from Jonathan Steele's article.
Afghanistan: is it time to talk to the Taliban?Until recently it seemed an absurd idea. But now, eight years after its overthrow, is negotiating with the Taliban the only realistic way forward?Jonathan Steele, Guardian, Tuesday 4 May 2010 21.00 Thttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/04/afghanistan-taliban
Eight years after they were overthrown by US air power, a drumbeat is starting to sound across Afghanistan in favour of talking to the Taliban, the country's once-hated former rulers. An idea that used to seem absurd, if not defeatist, is coming to be seen as the only credible way to end an ever-widening war. Moreover, the proposed agenda of negotiations is not a Taliban surrender, but an offer to share power in Kabul.President Hamid Karzai and other senior Afghan politicians support the idea. So too do a growing number of foreign governments, including Britain's - at least tentatively - now that British troops are being killed at twice the rate they were in early 2009.
Perhaps most surprisingly, even among Afghanistan's small but determined group of woman professionals, the notion of making a deal with the ultra-conservative men who forced them into burkas and denied them the right to work outside the home is no longer anathema. A desperate desire for peace is trumping concern over human rights.
[...]
I was one of the few journalists in Kabul as the Taliban swept up from Kandahar to take control of the Afghan capital in 1996, prompting the mujahideen warlords to abandon resistance and flee. The sudden shift left everyone stunned, but the crowds that came out to watch the Taliban's pick-up trucks roaring around the streets were mainly supportive. The bearded young Islamists with their promise of social justice seemed to offer an end to the fighting between rival mujahideen leaders that had devastated large parts of the city and forced hundreds of thousands into refugee camps abroad.
[...]
Young Taliban gunmen ran into hospitals, ordering male doctors to grow beards and female doctors to go home. Burkas, once worn only by poorer women in the bazaar, became compulsory for all women. Taliban thugs flayed the ankles of anyone who showed even an inch of bare skin below the regulation new hemlines. But even as repression grew women could still be heard saying that their family's new-found safety from the civil war's shells and rocket-fire made it worth it.A similar calculus of security-versus-rights is re-emerging now. Three years ago, when I was last in Kabul and the Taliban were only just starting their comeback on the battlefield, defeating them was the watchword of the day. There has been a tectonic shift in Afghanistan's public mood since then. It is prompted by a host of factors: growing disappointment with western governments and the ineffectiveness of billions of dollars in aid that seems to go nowhere except into the bank accounts of foreign consultants or local politicians; a sense that there can be no military solution to the new civil war and that outsiders are deliberately prolonging it; grief and despair over the mounting toll of civilian casualties, many caused by US airstrikes; rising nationalist anger and a feeling of humiliation; and a desire to return to an Afghan consensus in which Afghans create their own space and find their own solutions. Karzai's recent outbursts against the Americans and other foreigners are no aberration. They reflect a widely held mood.
[...]
Anders Fänge, the country director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, a large aid agency, has spent around 20 years in the country, also working as a journalist and a UN official. The Taliban should never have been portrayed in the black-and-white terms that Bush and Blair used, he says. During their period in power they often turned a blind eye to the discreet "home schools" where teachers taught girls in people's flats or family compounds. "In 1998 the Taliban governor of [the central Afghan city] Ghazni told me, 'We know you have these girls' schools, but just don't tell me about them.' A Taliban minister even approached me and said, 'I have two daughters. Can you get them in?'" he recalls.
Similar attitudes exist today, he says. In Wardak, a province close to Kabul that is heavily contested by Taliban and Nato forces, "we don't have much problem with the Taliban," says Fänge. "They accept girls' schools and women doctors. They just ask for two hours of Islamic education in schools, that teachers grow beards and not spread propaganda against the Taliban."The difficulty comes from foreign Taliban, the Pakistanis and Arabs, or Taliban from other provinces. "At the local level, it's a patchwork, a mosaic of local commanders, who may recognise Mullah Omar as their spiritual leader but are not under his control," he adds.
Fänge's points support the case, rarely mentioned by western politicians, that Taliban conservatism differs from the rest of the country in degree, not in kind. Afghanistan is a largely rural society where the oppression of women runs deep. Even in villages populated by Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek, Afghan women are routinely banned by husbands or fathers from leaving the family compounds, and girls are kept out of school, according to Afghan women reporters.
[...]
Arsalan Rahmani was deputy minister of higher education and later minister of Islamic affairs in the Taliban government. Four years ago Karzai invited him back to Kabul and made him a senator. He accepts the Taliban made a string of mistakes. "They didn't have good management, they were young, they had no experts, doctors, and couldn't run ministries. My boss was a boy of 25, who couldn't even sign an official letter."He describes reports of restrictions on girls' education and women being denied the chance to work as false. "That wasn't their idea, then or now. We didn't let girls go to school because of lack of security. There was a war on. But now in Pakistan, Taliban girls go to school and university. My son is a doctor and I want him to marry a lady doctor. I've got three daughters. During the Taliban time they were in Pakistan and all studied there."He goes on to tell an incredible story. "When I was deputy minister of higher education, people came to me and said they had girls who had finished school and wanted to study medicine. I consulted Mullah Omar and he authorised us to set up rooms in a central Kabul hospital, now called Daoud Khan hospital, where women could study to become doctors. Around 1,200 graduated, and if you track them down you'll see my signature on their degree certificates," he says.
I have no time to follow his advice but I do locate Shukria Barakzai, an independent woman MP who stayed in Afghanistan throughout the Soviet occupation, the four-year rule by mujahideen warlords, and the Taliban period. She confirms the senator's story.
Like many educated Kabulis, she criticises the warlords as strongly as the Taliban (during the warlords' clashes she lost a son and daughter). She too favours talks with the Taliban. "I changed my view three years ago when I realised Afghanistan is on its own. It's not that the international community doesn't support us. They just don't understand us. Everybody has been trying to kill the Taliban but they're still there, stronger than ever. They are part of our population. They have different ideas but as democrats we have to accept that. Every war has to end with talks and negotiations. Afghans need peace like oxygen. People want to keep their villages free of violence and suicide bombers."Her relaxed attitude to the Taliban stems, in part, from confidence that they cannot win again. "They no longer have the support and reputation they had back then. Taliban is an ideology. It's no longer a united force," she says.
If Afghan women now overwhelmingly want talks with the Taliban, the same is true of many of the country's male politicians, particularly the Pashtun. They want "a rebalancing of forces" in Afghan society, as a former minister who wanted to remain anonymous put it. The US invasion in 2001 put the warlords of the so-called Northern Alliance in power, but failed to produce stability. "In October 2001 the Taliban controlled 90% of Afghanistan, while the Northern Alliance had 10%. After December 2001 the Northern Alliance had 70% and the country's majority group, the Pashtun, were marginalised. Now this needs to change. There's an Afghan consensus on that," he says.
[...]
The trouble, as diplomats see it, is that Obama has not even authorised the CIA to put out feelers to the Taliban leadership on a "deniable" basis, a common way of initiating contacts. Nor has he begun to prepare the American public for the notion that the Taliban may not be demons but necessary negotiating partners. It would be as massive a U-turn in US policy as it was for the British government to talk to the IRA.[...]
Steele finds from his interviews and various reports that there is serious consideration now being given from the Karzai government, Afghan woman leaders, overwhelmingly by the Afghan people as a whole, and even the British, a key US ally, for and end to the war and talks with the Taliban. The Taliban are reported to be willing to end hostilities in return for the opportunity to share power in the national government. The chief reason for this widespread change in views among the Afghan is the disillusion with the war and with the notion that the US-led occupation will lead to improvements in the material conditions of the Afghans and an increase in security.
Steele also reports that the Taliban have become less intolerant toward the idea of girls and women going to school and working in the larger economy (e.g., as doctors). While a harsh patriarchy is pervasive in the rural areas of Afghanistan, this is a cultural fact that has existed for generations. Afghan women overwhelmingly want talks to occur with the Taliban leaders.
In short, the Afghan people want an end to war and are willing to take risks that the Taliban is less rigid and intolerant of other beliefs than before. On an encouraging note, Steele also points out that the Taliban in Pakistan send their girls to school and accept them in professions and work outside the home.
Steele says nothing about whether the Taliban still insist that talks be preconditioned on the departure of foreign troops from the country.
The Obama administration has not yet shown a willinging to become a part of, initiate, or even encourage talks with the Taliban.
--------------------------------
From Just Foreign Policy: Excerpts from Jonathan Steele's article.
Afghanistan: is it time to talk to the Taliban?Until recently it seemed an absurd idea. But now, eight years after its overthrow, is negotiating with the Taliban the only realistic way forward?Jonathan Steele, Guardian, Tuesday 4 May 2010 21.00 Thttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/04/afghanistan-taliban
Eight years after they were overthrown by US air power, a drumbeat is starting to sound across Afghanistan in favour of talking to the Taliban, the country's once-hated former rulers. An idea that used to seem absurd, if not defeatist, is coming to be seen as the only credible way to end an ever-widening war. Moreover, the proposed agenda of negotiations is not a Taliban surrender, but an offer to share power in Kabul.President Hamid Karzai and other senior Afghan politicians support the idea. So too do a growing number of foreign governments, including Britain's - at least tentatively - now that British troops are being killed at twice the rate they were in early 2009.
Perhaps most surprisingly, even among Afghanistan's small but determined group of woman professionals, the notion of making a deal with the ultra-conservative men who forced them into burkas and denied them the right to work outside the home is no longer anathema. A desperate desire for peace is trumping concern over human rights.
[...]
I was one of the few journalists in Kabul as the Taliban swept up from Kandahar to take control of the Afghan capital in 1996, prompting the mujahideen warlords to abandon resistance and flee. The sudden shift left everyone stunned, but the crowds that came out to watch the Taliban's pick-up trucks roaring around the streets were mainly supportive. The bearded young Islamists with their promise of social justice seemed to offer an end to the fighting between rival mujahideen leaders that had devastated large parts of the city and forced hundreds of thousands into refugee camps abroad.
[...]
Young Taliban gunmen ran into hospitals, ordering male doctors to grow beards and female doctors to go home. Burkas, once worn only by poorer women in the bazaar, became compulsory for all women. Taliban thugs flayed the ankles of anyone who showed even an inch of bare skin below the regulation new hemlines. But even as repression grew women could still be heard saying that their family's new-found safety from the civil war's shells and rocket-fire made it worth it.A similar calculus of security-versus-rights is re-emerging now. Three years ago, when I was last in Kabul and the Taliban were only just starting their comeback on the battlefield, defeating them was the watchword of the day. There has been a tectonic shift in Afghanistan's public mood since then. It is prompted by a host of factors: growing disappointment with western governments and the ineffectiveness of billions of dollars in aid that seems to go nowhere except into the bank accounts of foreign consultants or local politicians; a sense that there can be no military solution to the new civil war and that outsiders are deliberately prolonging it; grief and despair over the mounting toll of civilian casualties, many caused by US airstrikes; rising nationalist anger and a feeling of humiliation; and a desire to return to an Afghan consensus in which Afghans create their own space and find their own solutions. Karzai's recent outbursts against the Americans and other foreigners are no aberration. They reflect a widely held mood.
[...]
Anders Fänge, the country director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, a large aid agency, has spent around 20 years in the country, also working as a journalist and a UN official. The Taliban should never have been portrayed in the black-and-white terms that Bush and Blair used, he says. During their period in power they often turned a blind eye to the discreet "home schools" where teachers taught girls in people's flats or family compounds. "In 1998 the Taliban governor of [the central Afghan city] Ghazni told me, 'We know you have these girls' schools, but just don't tell me about them.' A Taliban minister even approached me and said, 'I have two daughters. Can you get them in?'" he recalls.
Similar attitudes exist today, he says. In Wardak, a province close to Kabul that is heavily contested by Taliban and Nato forces, "we don't have much problem with the Taliban," says Fänge. "They accept girls' schools and women doctors. They just ask for two hours of Islamic education in schools, that teachers grow beards and not spread propaganda against the Taliban."The difficulty comes from foreign Taliban, the Pakistanis and Arabs, or Taliban from other provinces. "At the local level, it's a patchwork, a mosaic of local commanders, who may recognise Mullah Omar as their spiritual leader but are not under his control," he adds.
Fänge's points support the case, rarely mentioned by western politicians, that Taliban conservatism differs from the rest of the country in degree, not in kind. Afghanistan is a largely rural society where the oppression of women runs deep. Even in villages populated by Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek, Afghan women are routinely banned by husbands or fathers from leaving the family compounds, and girls are kept out of school, according to Afghan women reporters.
[...]
Arsalan Rahmani was deputy minister of higher education and later minister of Islamic affairs in the Taliban government. Four years ago Karzai invited him back to Kabul and made him a senator. He accepts the Taliban made a string of mistakes. "They didn't have good management, they were young, they had no experts, doctors, and couldn't run ministries. My boss was a boy of 25, who couldn't even sign an official letter."He describes reports of restrictions on girls' education and women being denied the chance to work as false. "That wasn't their idea, then or now. We didn't let girls go to school because of lack of security. There was a war on. But now in Pakistan, Taliban girls go to school and university. My son is a doctor and I want him to marry a lady doctor. I've got three daughters. During the Taliban time they were in Pakistan and all studied there."He goes on to tell an incredible story. "When I was deputy minister of higher education, people came to me and said they had girls who had finished school and wanted to study medicine. I consulted Mullah Omar and he authorised us to set up rooms in a central Kabul hospital, now called Daoud Khan hospital, where women could study to become doctors. Around 1,200 graduated, and if you track them down you'll see my signature on their degree certificates," he says.
I have no time to follow his advice but I do locate Shukria Barakzai, an independent woman MP who stayed in Afghanistan throughout the Soviet occupation, the four-year rule by mujahideen warlords, and the Taliban period. She confirms the senator's story.
Like many educated Kabulis, she criticises the warlords as strongly as the Taliban (during the warlords' clashes she lost a son and daughter). She too favours talks with the Taliban. "I changed my view three years ago when I realised Afghanistan is on its own. It's not that the international community doesn't support us. They just don't understand us. Everybody has been trying to kill the Taliban but they're still there, stronger than ever. They are part of our population. They have different ideas but as democrats we have to accept that. Every war has to end with talks and negotiations. Afghans need peace like oxygen. People want to keep their villages free of violence and suicide bombers."Her relaxed attitude to the Taliban stems, in part, from confidence that they cannot win again. "They no longer have the support and reputation they had back then. Taliban is an ideology. It's no longer a united force," she says.
If Afghan women now overwhelmingly want talks with the Taliban, the same is true of many of the country's male politicians, particularly the Pashtun. They want "a rebalancing of forces" in Afghan society, as a former minister who wanted to remain anonymous put it. The US invasion in 2001 put the warlords of the so-called Northern Alliance in power, but failed to produce stability. "In October 2001 the Taliban controlled 90% of Afghanistan, while the Northern Alliance had 10%. After December 2001 the Northern Alliance had 70% and the country's majority group, the Pashtun, were marginalised. Now this needs to change. There's an Afghan consensus on that," he says.
[...]
The trouble, as diplomats see it, is that Obama has not even authorised the CIA to put out feelers to the Taliban leadership on a "deniable" basis, a common way of initiating contacts. Nor has he begun to prepare the American public for the notion that the Taliban may not be demons but necessary negotiating partners. It would be as massive a U-turn in US policy as it was for the British government to talk to the IRA.[...]
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Reasons why US military should exit Afghanistan
David Swanson informatively expounds on six points for why the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan should be brought to an end. In a seventh point, he writes that we, as citizens, have the constitutional means, if enough of us act on them, to accomplish the goal of bringing U.S. troops back to their homes. I identify his key points with selected excerpts on each of them. You can retreive the full article at: http://www.zcommunications.org/seven-deadly-sins-in-afghanistan-by-david-swanson. It was printed there on May 5, 2010.
His principal assumptions are that clear and well-documented arguments will, sooner or later, convince American voters that the war in and occupation of Afghanistan must be ended. He puts his faith in the potential rationality of the American electorate, and that if properly educated democracy will overcome plutocracy, the unprecedent power of the Pentagon, corporate-domination of all major sectors of the economy and the media, and the desire of the U.S. ruling class to maintain American hegemony in the Middle-East and Central Asia, especially because of the resources (especially oil) in these regions.
First point: The US occupation of Afghanistan is illegal under the UN Charter and Article VI of our Constitution. Additionally, Swanson writes:
"Revenge is not a legal ground for war and makes very little sense on its own terms. The 9-11 hijackers were already dead and not from Afghanistan. Much of the planning had been done in Europe and this country. And Al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan. We're fighting a war against the Taliban that, because it is a foreign occupation and there are no other jobs, fuels the extremely unpopular Taliban, which wouldn't invite Al Qaeda into Afghanistan if it could. And Al Qaeda in Afghanistan would not make the United States less safe than Al Qaeda in the locations it's in now, except to the extent that we enrage the people of Afghanistan against us.
The US occupation represents the "supreme international crime.
"Our crimes include using weapons that kill large numbers of civilians, targeting civilians, using cluster bombs and depleted uranium, assassination, imprisoning people without charge, abusing and torturing. The United Nations has warned the United States about its growing illegal use of drones. A former assistant secretary of state during Bush's presidency wrote in the Washington Post this April 2nd that if the International Criminal Court begins prosecuting crimes of aggression this year, potential defendants will include members of congress who fund aggressive wars.
President Obama has reasserted his power to make war
"... President Obama asserted his power to make war in a peace prize acceptance speech in Oslo, and recently created a policy of never using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, with the exception of Iran."
Second Point: This war is immoral.
"... most of the people we kill with drones are civilians....
"... Killing the people of Afghanistan is the mission of the U.S. military.
"We are killing thousands of civilians per year, plus non-civilians, plus over 1,000 US troops with over 5,000 wounded, plus mercenaries, plus those diagnosed with brain injuries after leaving Afghanistan, plus suicides which are now probably higher than combat deaths, plus the violence to others that troops bring home, plus anyone damaged by heroin during our occupation of Afghanistan. Arguing that the other guys kill more civilians than we do is not the point, and clearly not a point the people of Afghanistan weigh heavily. From their point of view, we are killing their brothers, whether civilian or not, and we are foreign occupiers.
Third point: This war and occcupation are against the public will in Afghanistan and in the US.
"A recent survey of Kandahar, the area where the escalation is planned, found that 94% of the people there prefer peace negotiations to U.S. attacks, and 85% see the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers." The survey was funded by that radical pacifist organization, the United States Army.
Back in December, U.S. pollsters asked Americans if they supported funding an escalation, and in several polls a majority said No. So a lot of congress members voted for more war funding but promised to oppose the escalation funding in the spring. Then the White House began the escalation, and the pollsters (apparently assuming that our servile congress would fund anything the president had already begun, even if the people opposed it) stopped polling on the escalation. Polling just on the war, pollsters find the US public evenly split or leaning slightly in support. But they ask whether people support the president, not how much longer they want the war to last or whether that's their top choice for where to spend a trillion dollars."
"...Yesterday, the Pentagon issued a new report finding that one in four Afghans in important areas support Karzai's government, violence is up 87% in the past year, European allies are bailing out, corruption runs rampant, insurgents still control Marjah, the Taliban is growing, and the Afghan government is getting weaker."
Fourth point: It is economically catastrophic.
"The money we are spending to take away lives could be spent to save even more lives. So the casualty figures must be more than doubled. We could save millions from starvation and disease around the world or in Afghanistan or our own country. We could have 20 green energy jobs paying $50,000 per year for every soldier sent to Afghanistan: a job for that former soldier and 19 more, and reduced demand for the oil and gas and pipelines and bases. We're spending as much as $100 per gallon to bring gas into Afghanistan where the US military used 27 million gallons of the stuff last month. We're spending hundreds of millions to bribe nations to be part of what we pretend is a coalition effort. We're spending at least that much to bribe Afghans to join the right side, an effort that has recruited 646 of the Taliban's 36,000 soldiers, but then lost many of them who took the money and ran back to the other side."
"We've spent $268 billion on making war on Afghanistan, and using Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz' analysis of Iraq we need to multiply that by four or five to get a realistic cost including debt, veterans care, energy prices, and lost opportunities. Public investment in most other industries or in tax cuts produces more jobs than investment in military."
Fifth point: It's counterproductive militarily and in the "war against terrorism."
"During the global war of terror we have seen a global increase in terrorism."
"...A RAND Corporation study just released looked at 89 of what it called insurgencies. With a weak government, like that of the Mayor of Kabul, the insurgency won 90% of the time."
Sixth point: It is a cynically motivated and based on a hidden agenda.
"Last summer a majority of the Democrats in the House voted for a so-called exit-strategy. A simple truth has been lost. You do not exit a war by escalating it."
"...We know that last year President Obama sent 21,000 more troops and 5,000 more mercenaries to Afghanistan, and that violence increased as a result. What's staggering is that the president said he was going to send those troops first and then figure out a plan for Afghanistan later. Sending the troops was an end in itself."
"We know that a pipeline and major military bases are part of the desired plan, but so is winning elections back home, which is where war opposition comes in."
Seventh point: Americans have the potential power, if only they use it, to end the policy supporting the Afghanistan war and occupation.
"No matter how awful Afghanistan is when the U.S. military leaves, it can never become a decent place to live during a foreign occupation. And the post-occupation Afghanistan is likely to be worse the longer the occupation has lasted."
"...But there is no reason our troops could not employ their bravery to clean up cluster bombs before they leave. There is no reason we cannot fund non-drug agriculture as our ambassador to Afghanistan advises us to do instead of escalating the war. Ron Fisher, who helped plan this event, has a plan available on the table. Jobsforafghans.org recommends spending $5 billion for jobs through the National Solidarity Program, which is run by local elected leaders."
"...Congress needs to build a caucus large enough to vote down war funding whether or not the president approves. Doing so puts the power of war where our Constitution so wisely put it and prevents future wars while ending a current one.
"So I want to see members of Congress join Dennis Kucinich and Jim McGovern in urging their colleagues to vote No on $33 billion. We saw 32 congress members vote No on war funding last June, and that was before the war had worsened, before the president had lost that new car smell, and while people still believed that would be the very last war supplemental bill.
"... Votes to cut-off war funding historically have always provided for orderly withdrawal. The chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, who has probably learned more about the troops than any other congress member, plans to vote No."
"...Senate and the president can do as they please, they just can't escalate a war without our money.
David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.
His principal assumptions are that clear and well-documented arguments will, sooner or later, convince American voters that the war in and occupation of Afghanistan must be ended. He puts his faith in the potential rationality of the American electorate, and that if properly educated democracy will overcome plutocracy, the unprecedent power of the Pentagon, corporate-domination of all major sectors of the economy and the media, and the desire of the U.S. ruling class to maintain American hegemony in the Middle-East and Central Asia, especially because of the resources (especially oil) in these regions.
First point: The US occupation of Afghanistan is illegal under the UN Charter and Article VI of our Constitution. Additionally, Swanson writes:
"Revenge is not a legal ground for war and makes very little sense on its own terms. The 9-11 hijackers were already dead and not from Afghanistan. Much of the planning had been done in Europe and this country. And Al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan. We're fighting a war against the Taliban that, because it is a foreign occupation and there are no other jobs, fuels the extremely unpopular Taliban, which wouldn't invite Al Qaeda into Afghanistan if it could. And Al Qaeda in Afghanistan would not make the United States less safe than Al Qaeda in the locations it's in now, except to the extent that we enrage the people of Afghanistan against us.
The US occupation represents the "supreme international crime.
"Our crimes include using weapons that kill large numbers of civilians, targeting civilians, using cluster bombs and depleted uranium, assassination, imprisoning people without charge, abusing and torturing. The United Nations has warned the United States about its growing illegal use of drones. A former assistant secretary of state during Bush's presidency wrote in the Washington Post this April 2nd that if the International Criminal Court begins prosecuting crimes of aggression this year, potential defendants will include members of congress who fund aggressive wars.
President Obama has reasserted his power to make war
"... President Obama asserted his power to make war in a peace prize acceptance speech in Oslo, and recently created a policy of never using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, with the exception of Iran."
Second Point: This war is immoral.
"... most of the people we kill with drones are civilians....
"... Killing the people of Afghanistan is the mission of the U.S. military.
"We are killing thousands of civilians per year, plus non-civilians, plus over 1,000 US troops with over 5,000 wounded, plus mercenaries, plus those diagnosed with brain injuries after leaving Afghanistan, plus suicides which are now probably higher than combat deaths, plus the violence to others that troops bring home, plus anyone damaged by heroin during our occupation of Afghanistan. Arguing that the other guys kill more civilians than we do is not the point, and clearly not a point the people of Afghanistan weigh heavily. From their point of view, we are killing their brothers, whether civilian or not, and we are foreign occupiers.
Third point: This war and occcupation are against the public will in Afghanistan and in the US.
"A recent survey of Kandahar, the area where the escalation is planned, found that 94% of the people there prefer peace negotiations to U.S. attacks, and 85% see the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers." The survey was funded by that radical pacifist organization, the United States Army.
Back in December, U.S. pollsters asked Americans if they supported funding an escalation, and in several polls a majority said No. So a lot of congress members voted for more war funding but promised to oppose the escalation funding in the spring. Then the White House began the escalation, and the pollsters (apparently assuming that our servile congress would fund anything the president had already begun, even if the people opposed it) stopped polling on the escalation. Polling just on the war, pollsters find the US public evenly split or leaning slightly in support. But they ask whether people support the president, not how much longer they want the war to last or whether that's their top choice for where to spend a trillion dollars."
"...Yesterday, the Pentagon issued a new report finding that one in four Afghans in important areas support Karzai's government, violence is up 87% in the past year, European allies are bailing out, corruption runs rampant, insurgents still control Marjah, the Taliban is growing, and the Afghan government is getting weaker."
Fourth point: It is economically catastrophic.
"The money we are spending to take away lives could be spent to save even more lives. So the casualty figures must be more than doubled. We could save millions from starvation and disease around the world or in Afghanistan or our own country. We could have 20 green energy jobs paying $50,000 per year for every soldier sent to Afghanistan: a job for that former soldier and 19 more, and reduced demand for the oil and gas and pipelines and bases. We're spending as much as $100 per gallon to bring gas into Afghanistan where the US military used 27 million gallons of the stuff last month. We're spending hundreds of millions to bribe nations to be part of what we pretend is a coalition effort. We're spending at least that much to bribe Afghans to join the right side, an effort that has recruited 646 of the Taliban's 36,000 soldiers, but then lost many of them who took the money and ran back to the other side."
"We've spent $268 billion on making war on Afghanistan, and using Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz' analysis of Iraq we need to multiply that by four or five to get a realistic cost including debt, veterans care, energy prices, and lost opportunities. Public investment in most other industries or in tax cuts produces more jobs than investment in military."
Fifth point: It's counterproductive militarily and in the "war against terrorism."
"During the global war of terror we have seen a global increase in terrorism."
"...A RAND Corporation study just released looked at 89 of what it called insurgencies. With a weak government, like that of the Mayor of Kabul, the insurgency won 90% of the time."
Sixth point: It is a cynically motivated and based on a hidden agenda.
"Last summer a majority of the Democrats in the House voted for a so-called exit-strategy. A simple truth has been lost. You do not exit a war by escalating it."
"...We know that last year President Obama sent 21,000 more troops and 5,000 more mercenaries to Afghanistan, and that violence increased as a result. What's staggering is that the president said he was going to send those troops first and then figure out a plan for Afghanistan later. Sending the troops was an end in itself."
"We know that a pipeline and major military bases are part of the desired plan, but so is winning elections back home, which is where war opposition comes in."
Seventh point: Americans have the potential power, if only they use it, to end the policy supporting the Afghanistan war and occupation.
"No matter how awful Afghanistan is when the U.S. military leaves, it can never become a decent place to live during a foreign occupation. And the post-occupation Afghanistan is likely to be worse the longer the occupation has lasted."
"...But there is no reason our troops could not employ their bravery to clean up cluster bombs before they leave. There is no reason we cannot fund non-drug agriculture as our ambassador to Afghanistan advises us to do instead of escalating the war. Ron Fisher, who helped plan this event, has a plan available on the table. Jobsforafghans.org recommends spending $5 billion for jobs through the National Solidarity Program, which is run by local elected leaders."
"...Congress needs to build a caucus large enough to vote down war funding whether or not the president approves. Doing so puts the power of war where our Constitution so wisely put it and prevents future wars while ending a current one.
"So I want to see members of Congress join Dennis Kucinich and Jim McGovern in urging their colleagues to vote No on $33 billion. We saw 32 congress members vote No on war funding last June, and that was before the war had worsened, before the president had lost that new car smell, and while people still believed that would be the very last war supplemental bill.
"... Votes to cut-off war funding historically have always provided for orderly withdrawal. The chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, who has probably learned more about the troops than any other congress member, plans to vote No."
"...Senate and the president can do as they please, they just can't escalate a war without our money.
David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Time Magazine choses Malalai Joya as among most influential but distorts what she represents
I found the following article at http://www.zcommunications.org/time-magazine-sneaky-way-of-muffling-the-message-of-an-afghan-peace-activist-by-malalai-joya
The article is based on an interview with Malalai Joya by Sonali Kolhatkar, both well-known and well-regarded in progressive circles for their courageous work in Afghanistan and their writing in support of an independent, democratic, and just Afghanistan. One of the basic points of the article is that Time Magazine included Joya in their "100 Most Influential People of 2010" but failed to identify her as an activist and leader who wants the US/NATO occupation ended and who has been an outspoken critic of the Afghan government, Afghan warlords allied with the government and occupation, and the misogynist and authoritarian Taliban.
-------------------------
Time Magazine's Sneaky Way of Muffling the Message of an Afghan Peace Activist
Malalai Joya gets named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2010, but allows Ayaan Hirsi to make the announcement and distort Joya's message.
By Malalai Joya and Sonali Kolhatkar
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Malalai Joya's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
(May 3, 2010) -- Outspoken Afghan activist and former member of the Parliament, Malalai Joya has been one of the most vocal opponents of the US and NATO war in Afghanistan. In a recent op-ed she called on the US to "stop murdering my people."
Joya was suspended from the Afghan Parliament nearly 3 years ago for challenging warlord domination and lives in constant fear of her life. She has survived several assassination attempts but chooses to live in Afghanistan. Her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords with Derrick O'Keefe was published late last year (Simon and Schuster). Last week Malalai Joya was named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2010. I reached her for an interview via satellite phone in Afghanistan on May 3rd 2010.
Sonali Kolhatkar: You were just named one of the 100 most influential people of 2010 by TIME Magazine. But author Hirsi Ali, who wrote the announcement, said "I hope in time she comes to see the U.S. and NATO forces in her country as her allies. She must use her notoriety, her demonstrated wit and her resilience to get the troops on her side instead of out of her country." How do you respond to this statement?
Malalai Joya: I am very angry with the way they have introduced me. TIME has painted a false picture of me and does not mention anything at all about my struggle against the occupation of Afghanistan by the US and NATO, which is disgusting. In fact every one knows that I stand side-by-side with the glorious anti war movements around the world and have proved time and again that I will never compromise with the US And NATO who have occupied my country, empowered the most bloody enemies of my people and are killing my innocent compatriots in Afghanistan. What TIME did was like giving an award to someone with one hand and getting it back with another hand. I have sent my protest through my Defense Committee, but TIME did not bother to even answer than protest letter. Perhaps this is the kind of freedom of expression exercised by TIME and the US. But I'm happy to see that many of my friends and supporters have objected to the write-up and expressed it by posting their comments on TIME's site or sending me many emails.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Earlier this year some journalists were able to confirm that US troops had killed two pregnant women during a night-time raid. How common are such occurrences in Afghanistan today?
Malalai Joya: Yes, the US and NATO often lie when they kill innocent people and also stop media from reporting civilian casualties. Most of the civilian casualties take place in remote areas of Afghanistan where there is no media to report it, so no one notices it. In many cases after killing people NATO [releases] statements saying that many insurgents were killed. When you try to find out from the local people, they are actually women and children killed, not insurgents. Afghan media are also mostly in the hands of the Afghan criminal bands. They rarely report civilians killed by the US and NATO. In Afghanistan most media outlets, especially TV channels, are a tool for warlords of the Northern Alliance. For example warlords like Atta Mohammed, Qanooni, Mohseni, Mohaqqiq, Rabbani and others, each have their own TV channel and they naturally do not want to report civilian casualties by their US and NATO masters.
The US Embassy in Kabul has an office that carefully monitors all media in Afghanistan and if they find any of them reporting against US interests, they try using different means to stop it. Bribes are a very common means used. For the US it's not just fighting a war through military means, but also on the propaganda front. I think propaganda plays a major role. They are trying to show the war is justified. When they kill civilians they immediately deny it and say that all the people killed are Taliban. When there is no chance for any independent confirmation, the lies are the only things reflected in the world media. There are only a few cases where some brave and justice-loving journalists like Jerome Starkey have come forward to unmake their shameful lies.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Much has been made recently of Karzai's statements in favor of the Taliban. How close is the Afghan central government to forging a peace with the Taliban? What will that mean for the US/NATO war? What will it mean for the people of Afghanistan?
Malalai Joya: I think Karzai cannot dare to make such a statement or try to meet the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party leaders without having an "OK" from the White House. Actually it is the US that asks him to make peace with the Taliban and Hekmatyar's party or at least share power with them. Also the US government needs to show the people of NATO countries that it is not a war-monger and is in favor of peace talks with the Taliban. But it is just a show. The US doesn't want to fight the Taliban forever as it needs them as an excuse to continue the occupation of Afghanistan in the implementation of its strategic, regional, and military interests. I think some of the Taliban and Hekmatyar's leaders are already part of Karzai's regime. One of the main leaders of Hekmatyar's party called Hadi Arghandiwal is now the Minister of Economy under Karzai.
This is what the US wants. These brutal and inhuman leaders have been created by the US in the past and are ready to work for the US as long as their pockets are filled with dollars and high posts are offered to them in the government. Actually the US government is trying hard to empower reactionary forces and individuals in Afghanistan as they can use them to stop the emergence of pro-democracy and nationalist forces and groups in my country.
Sonali Kolhatkar: You recently wrote in an op-ed in the Daily Beast that there are a lot of anti-US protests happening in Afghanistan today that go unreported. Tell us more about these protests - where are they happening, who is protesting, and are they also against the fundamentalists or just the US/NATO?
Malalai Joya: Yes, we have witnessed the protests of people especially in the Eastern and Western parts of Afghanistan over the past year. They are mostly reactions to civilians killed by the US and NATO. With every bombardment by NATO, angry people come to the streets to raise anti-US slogans. But unfortunately they are not organized and in some cases the Taliban uses them. We have seen most of these protests in Nangahar, Ghazni, Loghar, Herat, and Helmand provinces but they are usually not reported. A few days ago angry protestors burned about 20 fuel tankers of NATO in Loghar which was one out of many such protests reported by the world media.
These protestors are not only against the US and NATO but also against the Afghan government. People see that this government is deeply corrupt and in the hands of looters and murderers of the Northern Alliance. So they are deeply fed up. Last month a large crowd of thousands of workers in Baghlan province protested against Mahmood Karzai [vice chairman of the Afghanistan chamber of commerce and Hamid Karzai's younger brother], head of the "economic mafia" of Afghanistan who has his hold on some previously state-owned factories. The US and NATO and the Afghan government usually ignore people's protests. But I believe that given enough time, such protests will become even more organized out of people's anger. Afghans are on the verge of uprising but poverty, destitution, and the non-existence of powerful democratic-minded forces in our country stops them from a very serious uprising. I'm sure in the next few years such forces will emerge and these protests will turn more powerful to shake the Afghan puppet government and the occupation forces.
Sonali Kolhatkar: The US has made no secret for many months that it is about to launch an offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar. What do you think will happen this summer as a result of this offensive?
Malalai Joya: As I said before, the US does not want to fight the Taliban forever. They only fight with them here and there to show the American people that the US is at war in Afghanistan and their presence is necessary here. The offensive in Kandahar will not be different from Marjah and other areas of Helmand where they had such operations in the past. They make such a hue and cry about their military actions but in fact they just push the Taliban to other areas and then install some corrupt officials and police forces who are worse than the Taliban. In a few days the Taliban return as we experienced in the past. They declared Marjah as a Taliban-free district but in fact the Taliban has a permanent presence there. They had just left the area for a short time.
After the Marjah operation, a spokesperson of the Afghan Defense Ministry was asked at a press conference why they allowed the Taliban to leave the area and why the Taliban were neither killed nor arrested in Marjah. He answered that the purpose of the operation was not killing or arresting the Taliban, instead it was to push them out of the area.So we expect that they will do the same thing with Kandahar. They will launch the operation and then allow the Taliban to go to another area and then later start an operation there. This is a battle for show, not a real war against terrorism. Otherwise for the US and NATO, it is a task of only a few days to uproot the Taliban and defeat them forever. But then everyone will ask them to end the occupation of Afghanistan.The only outcome of the Kandahar operation will be civilian casualties. Poor and innocent people are the only ones killed in the war. But the Taliban do not experience any defeat or even major casualties. Afghans know very well that the US will neither bring democracy nor peace to Afghanistan. They know that the US and NATO are empowering the enemies of democracy. But it is the duty of the Afghan people to fight for their values and understand that the occupation will only drag us more deeply into slavery. As always I pass this message to justice-loving people around the world that no nation can donate liberation to another nation.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Can you tell us what the status of your own parliamentary position is right now, since you were stripped of your elected position by the fundamentalists some years ago. Have you ever been made to face a court? Can you run again for parliament in the next elections?
Malalai Joya: In the last stage of the Interparliamentary Union meeting, a delegation of Afghan parliamentarians promised that they would end my suspension so I could return to Parliament. But it was just a lie and they did not stand by their promise.
I received a letter from the court some months ago and I answered truthfully what my strong position was against the warlords. They asked me to apologize [for my statements made in a TV interview --and said that they would allow me back to the Parliament. But I stressed the truth of my statements and said that I would never apologize to criminals and looters. However, I still can run for elections which are due to happen later this year. But I have not made up my mind to run.
But whether I serve in Parliament or outside it, I will continue my fight for justice, democracy and against the occupation. Parliament was just a small part of my struggle but I still have many other options and fields. Going to a Parliament of criminals was a big torture for me. It was a torture everyday to see the faces of these brutal men such as Qanooni, Sayyaf, Mohaqqiq, Piram Qul, Haji Almas, Haji Fayeed, etc there. But I accepted the task on behalf of my people.
I think the next election will be even more disgusting and full of fraud. The new chief of the election commission is a known warlord of the Northern Alliance and he will try to bring all these warlords to the Parliament and stop the emergence of democratic-minded people like me. Many people think that at this point they will never allow me to win the election as they can't bear to have me inside the parliament once more. But I will continue the struggle as long as these criminals are in power, these sworn enemies of democracy, women's rights, human rights, and as long as these occupation forces are bombing from the sky, and supporting the enemies of my people and killing innocent people of my country.
For more information, visit malalaijoya.com.
Sonali Kolhatkar is Co-Director of the Afghan Women's Mission, a US-based non-profit that funds health, educational, and training projects for Afghan women. She is also the host and producer of Uprising Radio, a daily morning radio program at KPFK, Pacifica in Los Angeles.
The article is based on an interview with Malalai Joya by Sonali Kolhatkar, both well-known and well-regarded in progressive circles for their courageous work in Afghanistan and their writing in support of an independent, democratic, and just Afghanistan. One of the basic points of the article is that Time Magazine included Joya in their "100 Most Influential People of 2010" but failed to identify her as an activist and leader who wants the US/NATO occupation ended and who has been an outspoken critic of the Afghan government, Afghan warlords allied with the government and occupation, and the misogynist and authoritarian Taliban.
-------------------------
Time Magazine's Sneaky Way of Muffling the Message of an Afghan Peace Activist
Malalai Joya gets named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2010, but allows Ayaan Hirsi to make the announcement and distort Joya's message.
By Malalai Joya and Sonali Kolhatkar
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Malalai Joya's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
(May 3, 2010) -- Outspoken Afghan activist and former member of the Parliament, Malalai Joya has been one of the most vocal opponents of the US and NATO war in Afghanistan. In a recent op-ed she called on the US to "stop murdering my people."
Joya was suspended from the Afghan Parliament nearly 3 years ago for challenging warlord domination and lives in constant fear of her life. She has survived several assassination attempts but chooses to live in Afghanistan. Her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords with Derrick O'Keefe was published late last year (Simon and Schuster). Last week Malalai Joya was named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2010. I reached her for an interview via satellite phone in Afghanistan on May 3rd 2010.
Sonali Kolhatkar: You were just named one of the 100 most influential people of 2010 by TIME Magazine. But author Hirsi Ali, who wrote the announcement, said "I hope in time she comes to see the U.S. and NATO forces in her country as her allies. She must use her notoriety, her demonstrated wit and her resilience to get the troops on her side instead of out of her country." How do you respond to this statement?
Malalai Joya: I am very angry with the way they have introduced me. TIME has painted a false picture of me and does not mention anything at all about my struggle against the occupation of Afghanistan by the US and NATO, which is disgusting. In fact every one knows that I stand side-by-side with the glorious anti war movements around the world and have proved time and again that I will never compromise with the US And NATO who have occupied my country, empowered the most bloody enemies of my people and are killing my innocent compatriots in Afghanistan. What TIME did was like giving an award to someone with one hand and getting it back with another hand. I have sent my protest through my Defense Committee, but TIME did not bother to even answer than protest letter. Perhaps this is the kind of freedom of expression exercised by TIME and the US. But I'm happy to see that many of my friends and supporters have objected to the write-up and expressed it by posting their comments on TIME's site or sending me many emails.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Earlier this year some journalists were able to confirm that US troops had killed two pregnant women during a night-time raid. How common are such occurrences in Afghanistan today?
Malalai Joya: Yes, the US and NATO often lie when they kill innocent people and also stop media from reporting civilian casualties. Most of the civilian casualties take place in remote areas of Afghanistan where there is no media to report it, so no one notices it. In many cases after killing people NATO [releases] statements saying that many insurgents were killed. When you try to find out from the local people, they are actually women and children killed, not insurgents. Afghan media are also mostly in the hands of the Afghan criminal bands. They rarely report civilians killed by the US and NATO. In Afghanistan most media outlets, especially TV channels, are a tool for warlords of the Northern Alliance. For example warlords like Atta Mohammed, Qanooni, Mohseni, Mohaqqiq, Rabbani and others, each have their own TV channel and they naturally do not want to report civilian casualties by their US and NATO masters.
The US Embassy in Kabul has an office that carefully monitors all media in Afghanistan and if they find any of them reporting against US interests, they try using different means to stop it. Bribes are a very common means used. For the US it's not just fighting a war through military means, but also on the propaganda front. I think propaganda plays a major role. They are trying to show the war is justified. When they kill civilians they immediately deny it and say that all the people killed are Taliban. When there is no chance for any independent confirmation, the lies are the only things reflected in the world media. There are only a few cases where some brave and justice-loving journalists like Jerome Starkey have come forward to unmake their shameful lies.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Much has been made recently of Karzai's statements in favor of the Taliban. How close is the Afghan central government to forging a peace with the Taliban? What will that mean for the US/NATO war? What will it mean for the people of Afghanistan?
Malalai Joya: I think Karzai cannot dare to make such a statement or try to meet the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party leaders without having an "OK" from the White House. Actually it is the US that asks him to make peace with the Taliban and Hekmatyar's party or at least share power with them. Also the US government needs to show the people of NATO countries that it is not a war-monger and is in favor of peace talks with the Taliban. But it is just a show. The US doesn't want to fight the Taliban forever as it needs them as an excuse to continue the occupation of Afghanistan in the implementation of its strategic, regional, and military interests. I think some of the Taliban and Hekmatyar's leaders are already part of Karzai's regime. One of the main leaders of Hekmatyar's party called Hadi Arghandiwal is now the Minister of Economy under Karzai.
This is what the US wants. These brutal and inhuman leaders have been created by the US in the past and are ready to work for the US as long as their pockets are filled with dollars and high posts are offered to them in the government. Actually the US government is trying hard to empower reactionary forces and individuals in Afghanistan as they can use them to stop the emergence of pro-democracy and nationalist forces and groups in my country.
Sonali Kolhatkar: You recently wrote in an op-ed in the Daily Beast that there are a lot of anti-US protests happening in Afghanistan today that go unreported. Tell us more about these protests - where are they happening, who is protesting, and are they also against the fundamentalists or just the US/NATO?
Malalai Joya: Yes, we have witnessed the protests of people especially in the Eastern and Western parts of Afghanistan over the past year. They are mostly reactions to civilians killed by the US and NATO. With every bombardment by NATO, angry people come to the streets to raise anti-US slogans. But unfortunately they are not organized and in some cases the Taliban uses them. We have seen most of these protests in Nangahar, Ghazni, Loghar, Herat, and Helmand provinces but they are usually not reported. A few days ago angry protestors burned about 20 fuel tankers of NATO in Loghar which was one out of many such protests reported by the world media.
These protestors are not only against the US and NATO but also against the Afghan government. People see that this government is deeply corrupt and in the hands of looters and murderers of the Northern Alliance. So they are deeply fed up. Last month a large crowd of thousands of workers in Baghlan province protested against Mahmood Karzai [vice chairman of the Afghanistan chamber of commerce and Hamid Karzai's younger brother], head of the "economic mafia" of Afghanistan who has his hold on some previously state-owned factories. The US and NATO and the Afghan government usually ignore people's protests. But I believe that given enough time, such protests will become even more organized out of people's anger. Afghans are on the verge of uprising but poverty, destitution, and the non-existence of powerful democratic-minded forces in our country stops them from a very serious uprising. I'm sure in the next few years such forces will emerge and these protests will turn more powerful to shake the Afghan puppet government and the occupation forces.
Sonali Kolhatkar: The US has made no secret for many months that it is about to launch an offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar. What do you think will happen this summer as a result of this offensive?
Malalai Joya: As I said before, the US does not want to fight the Taliban forever. They only fight with them here and there to show the American people that the US is at war in Afghanistan and their presence is necessary here. The offensive in Kandahar will not be different from Marjah and other areas of Helmand where they had such operations in the past. They make such a hue and cry about their military actions but in fact they just push the Taliban to other areas and then install some corrupt officials and police forces who are worse than the Taliban. In a few days the Taliban return as we experienced in the past. They declared Marjah as a Taliban-free district but in fact the Taliban has a permanent presence there. They had just left the area for a short time.
After the Marjah operation, a spokesperson of the Afghan Defense Ministry was asked at a press conference why they allowed the Taliban to leave the area and why the Taliban were neither killed nor arrested in Marjah. He answered that the purpose of the operation was not killing or arresting the Taliban, instead it was to push them out of the area.So we expect that they will do the same thing with Kandahar. They will launch the operation and then allow the Taliban to go to another area and then later start an operation there. This is a battle for show, not a real war against terrorism. Otherwise for the US and NATO, it is a task of only a few days to uproot the Taliban and defeat them forever. But then everyone will ask them to end the occupation of Afghanistan.The only outcome of the Kandahar operation will be civilian casualties. Poor and innocent people are the only ones killed in the war. But the Taliban do not experience any defeat or even major casualties. Afghans know very well that the US will neither bring democracy nor peace to Afghanistan. They know that the US and NATO are empowering the enemies of democracy. But it is the duty of the Afghan people to fight for their values and understand that the occupation will only drag us more deeply into slavery. As always I pass this message to justice-loving people around the world that no nation can donate liberation to another nation.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Can you tell us what the status of your own parliamentary position is right now, since you were stripped of your elected position by the fundamentalists some years ago. Have you ever been made to face a court? Can you run again for parliament in the next elections?
Malalai Joya: In the last stage of the Interparliamentary Union meeting, a delegation of Afghan parliamentarians promised that they would end my suspension so I could return to Parliament. But it was just a lie and they did not stand by their promise.
I received a letter from the court some months ago and I answered truthfully what my strong position was against the warlords. They asked me to apologize [for my statements made in a TV interview --and said that they would allow me back to the Parliament. But I stressed the truth of my statements and said that I would never apologize to criminals and looters. However, I still can run for elections which are due to happen later this year. But I have not made up my mind to run.
But whether I serve in Parliament or outside it, I will continue my fight for justice, democracy and against the occupation. Parliament was just a small part of my struggle but I still have many other options and fields. Going to a Parliament of criminals was a big torture for me. It was a torture everyday to see the faces of these brutal men such as Qanooni, Sayyaf, Mohaqqiq, Piram Qul, Haji Almas, Haji Fayeed, etc there. But I accepted the task on behalf of my people.
I think the next election will be even more disgusting and full of fraud. The new chief of the election commission is a known warlord of the Northern Alliance and he will try to bring all these warlords to the Parliament and stop the emergence of democratic-minded people like me. Many people think that at this point they will never allow me to win the election as they can't bear to have me inside the parliament once more. But I will continue the struggle as long as these criminals are in power, these sworn enemies of democracy, women's rights, human rights, and as long as these occupation forces are bombing from the sky, and supporting the enemies of my people and killing innocent people of my country.
For more information, visit malalaijoya.com.
Sonali Kolhatkar is Co-Director of the Afghan Women's Mission, a US-based non-profit that funds health, educational, and training projects for Afghan women. She is also the host and producer of Uprising Radio, a daily morning radio program at KPFK, Pacifica in Los Angeles.
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